The Lightning Cage by Alan Wall Page A

marks of derangement upon him would have meant that the normal rules did not apply. Gin was the drink of the poor. It was lethally powerful, and its effects troubled the government of the day so much that it introduced not one, but two, acts in rapid succession in an attempt to limit its sale. In Hogarth’s prints, Beer Street and Gin Lane, the effects of traditional English ale are contrasted with this novel concoction, so potent it swiftly makes mothers sodden with oblivion, oblivious enough, indeed, to allow their own infants to fall to their deaths in the stairwells below. It is the poison of skeletal apparitions. Pelham had started to drink it in his days of penury on Grub Street. And just as, many years later, the Paris painter Utrillo would refuse a fine vintage, for he could take pleasure only in cheap, harsh wine drunk in great quantities, so it seems that the damaging intoxication supplied by gin provided Pelham with a sensation nothing else could match. Lord Chilford’s wine had merely served by way of a prelude before the return of this darker theme.)
    By the time he returned to the villa, he was ill, sick in his body as well as his mind. Jacob saw his ragged figure coming across the grass and led him gently to his room, where he put him to bed. At some point over the next twelve hours the symptoms which others had described, but neither Jacob himself nor his master had ever witnessed, returned in full. The sound of the crashing and yelling below woke Jacob and he rushed down the stairs to find Pelham surrounded by wreckage and yelling obscenities in a manner he would never have expected, given his knowledge of this deranged but gentle man. The newly acquired strength of the raging figure astonished him too, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he managed to subdue him. So alarmed was he at the unexpected power confronting him in the shape of the diminutive poet that he shouted to Josephine to bring in the restraints that Thomas Parker had brought with him from the asylum. With these devices he chained and clamped Pelham to the bed, telling his wife to leave them so that she should not be tainted by the filth spewing from the man’s mouth. Only when he was sure Pelham could not escape his restraints did he go out and saddle his horse. Then he rode at full speed to Lord Chilford’s house on Piccadilly.
    By the time his lordship arrived at Twickenham in the early hours of the morning, Pelham’s fit had ceased. Although not asleep, he seemed to be drained of all energy, emotion or even capacity for speech. He lay in a state of tremulous vacuity. Josephine stood in silence at the edge of the room, staring at his supine shape on the bed.
    Chilford walked over quietly to his side.
    â€˜How do you feel, Richard?’ There was no reply. Chilford took his hand, and noted how cold it felt. The room too seemed icy. ‘You have had one of your seizures, you poor man. Can you remember anything of it?’ Still there was no reply. Chilford placed the palm of his hand upon the poet’s forehead. The sweat had dried now, and the flesh felt as chilly as that of a corpse. Pelham appeared to be in some kind of trance. His lordship turned to go, but Josephine had started to point at Pelham’s chest.
    â€˜What is it?’ asked Jacob. But she said nothing, only carried on pointing. Chilford walked to the bed once more and pulled back the sheet. He stood staring at the marks on Pelham’s flesh. He turned back towards Jacob and Josephine.
    â€˜Has he had access to any implement?’ They both shook their heads. ‘And you are sure these marks were not here when you undressed him, Jacob?’ In silence, Jacob nodded his head slowly to show that they had not been. Chilford asked Jacob to go to his study, and bring back a quill, ink and paper, then he carefully copied what he saw, reproducing it as exactly as he could.
    Later, sitting alone at his desk, he stared at the page