Radical love, p.1
Radical Love, page 1
About the Author
Neil Blackmore is the author of five novels. His work has been acclaimed for its radical redrawing of the historical fiction form and the parameters of queer historical fiction. His third novel, The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize for LGBTQ+ Fiction. The Dangerous Kingdom of Love, his fourth, was memorably described as ‘like Hilary Mantel on acid’ and chosen as one of The Times’ Best Historical Fiction Novels. He lives in London.
Also by Neil Blackmore
Soho Blues
Split My Heart
The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle
The Dangerous Kingdom of Love
Neil Blackmore
* * *
RADICAL LOVE
Contents
Author’s Note
PART ONE: The Place Being London (well, sort of …), And The Year Being Eighteen Hundred And Nine Chapter One: or Fuck You, Napoleon!
Chapter Two: or Erections Under Evening Gowns
Chapter Three: or Boys
Chapter Four: or Who’s Afraid Of A Bit Of Faggotry?
Chapter Five: or The Truth Comes Out … But Not The One You’re Expecting
Chapter Six: or O, Several Explanations!
PART TWO: The Following Spring, The Year Being Eighteen Hundred And Ten Chapter Seven: or A Twist!
Chapter Eight: or Ladies Still Want To Be Ladies
Chapter Nine: or Hampstead
Chapter Ten: or Love
Chapter Eleven: or I Am Not A Woman!
Chapter Twelve: or Disaster Strikes
Chapter Thirteen: or Ghosting
Chapter Fourteen: or Killing
PART THREE: Eighteen Months Later, The Year Finally Becoming Eighteen Hundred And Twelve Chapter Fifteen: or Monsters!
Chapter Sixteen: or Remember When I Wrote Some Letters?
Chapter Seventeen: or A Radical Love
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
This is a true story. All named characters at Vere Street were real people, as revealed in both pseudonyms and actual names in the press and in legal reports of the time.
Newspaper reports, published pamphlets, fragments of letters from John Church to Ned, and cited popular poems are all real. The trial transcripts are, for the most part, verbatim from the record.
‘The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate.’
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
‘The most sublime act is to set another before you.’
William Blake, ‘Proverbs of Hell’
Part One
* * *
THE PLACE BEING LONDON (WELL, SORT OF …), AND THE YEAR BEING EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINE
CHAPTER ONE
or
Fuck You, Napoleon!
Know this of me: I was born to be Nothing, but I have turned myself into Something. When I say I was born to be Nothing, I mean that when I was two or three years old, I was found – by whom, I was never told – wandering in the street, clapping my hands outside a church. I was yelling – to no one, to myself perhaps – at the top of my lungs a word sounding like ‘John’. That was why they named me John Church – it was no deeper than that.
I spent most of my childhood in the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury, where London leaves its abandoned children to rot. There, the wardens, both male and female, showed me emphatically my worth: ‘Ooh, look at him, he is a Mary-Ann from the very ground up!’ – whack! – ‘What a filthy little thing, all filled up with a pervert’s nature!’ – thump! – ‘O, no wonder his mother chucked him, look at him, the pathetic little runt!’
What does the clever orphan know? That love is not for every child. Yet, once, I did know love. One day, when I was very young, a woman came to the Foundling Hospital. The wardens said that she was my mother now. I do not know if she was my native mother, or some other person, it was never explained. She took my small hand in hers, leading me through the city to the public coach station. We rode out into the country in a shared carriage to a place named Tunbridge Wells. The other travellers told her what a pretty son she had. My black hair, my blue eyes: my new mother said thank you so politely. I sat in silence, astonished.
Even now that I am thirty years of age, I remember that sumptuous summer. Her tiny country house, nestled down a hedgerowed lane. How it felt for me, raised against cold, dripping stones and daily punches of the Hospital, to play in country fields. How bright was the sun – unadulterated by city smoke – on my skin. How the church bells and the birdsong patterned the redolent air. At dinnertime, my mother’s voice would call to me: John! John! John! I would lift from whatever outdoor mischief I was at and feel love emanating towards me.
Then, one day, she took me back. We caught the public coach back to London. My mother did not tell me where we were going. I didn’t realise until the Foundling Hospital appeared in the distance. ‘No!’ I cried, starting to yank away from her. She just tightened her grip on my hand: ‘Come on, John! Come on!’ I would have run away if I could, bit her hand, kicked her shin, but she was too strong. Standing on the Hospital steps, she explained to the warden: ‘He’s too much. He’s just … too much.’ Her voice was flinty with irritation; that irritation, of course, was for me. I could not understand; hadn’t it been the same sumptuous summer for her? I remember watching her walking away, vanishing down to a black speck in the street. All I was thinking was: turn back and look at me. Mother, turn back and look at me. TURN BACK AND LOOK AT ME! But she did not turn back.
So, what is the nature of my achievement, and of my self? If you were to see me in the din and throng of a London street, you might notice me. I am a fellow above six feet tall, broad of shoulder, positive of disposition, handsome of face. Do you raise an eyebrow? Don’t – it’s true. I am not in the habit of understatement, you’ll find. Though I wear a good black suit, unfussy but well made, you might not expect that my profession is that of preacher. To most folk I am not ‘John Church’ but ‘The Reverend Church’. Mine might not seem that impressive a journey, but to me, from where I began, I as good as flew to the moon. My hopeful and positive spirit has profited me. My adult nature retains its mischief and its confidence. If all this renders me an uncommon sort of priest, then that is not a matter of regret; for I do not regret very much.
The chapel where I preach, which – through miraculous effect on my part – I bought a few years before the start of this story, is named the Obelisk. It is a severe, puritanical type of building: granite walls cold to the touch, vaulted undecorated ceilings from which pigeons shit. You’ll find it in Kennington, the very last part of Southwark before open Surrey fields turn marshy underfoot. On fine, cloudless days, you can walk not ten minutes from the Obelisk into arbours of country lanes, hawthorn blossom bewitching in springtime, fully sunlit in summer. But Southwark is no bucolic vision. Everyone knows that London’s mirror city, on the other side of the Thames, is a shithole – metaphorical, literal and moral. It is a centre not of trade, politics and polite society, but of fucking and drinking. If the river rises, the sewers bubble grey-brown water out through people’s cobbled floors, popping strangers’ farts into your kitchen’s air. Factory owners and brothel madams lock workers in secret attics, tell no one if the building catches fire and those inside burn to death. But there are two wonderful things about Southwark. First, it is full of radicals; second, it is marvellously cheap!
Four distinct categories of person come to the Obelisk: common or garden Southwark radicals who have heard of ‘Reverend Church’ and his teachings; those who live round and about and just want to hear a preacher on Sundays; modest bluestockings who come to glance up and down at a handsome priest, eyes darting with desire, bibles on their laps; and lastly, smallest in number, a group of African abolitionists. It is this last group we shall presently come to consider. It is they who matter most, in how everything would change.
It was a Sunday morning, late in the year. Not yet wintry: London stays mild whilst the rest of Britain freezes. Sunday morning is my main service of the week; I do not hold an evening Sabbath. Standing above my chapel’s worshippers in the plain stone pulpit, I gazed out at the crowd; the pews were full. I was more than halfway through my sermon, and I was coming to the crux.
‘We must love radically,’ I was saying to my congregation. ‘Ordinary folk, when they are encouraged to practise hate in the name of religious bigotry and intolerance, serve not Christ. They serve priests, perhaps, and bigots. And kings.’ A round of approving murmurs. What I teach is very simple. That people should love was Christ’s only real instruction. In faith, we need a revolution as we have had in recent decades in politics and thinking. We need a revolution of love, acceptance and tolerance, in remembrance of Christ’s simple instruction, and to set aside the religion of old authorities – cruel, bigoted, judgemental laws and punishments. In freeing themselves to love, ordinary folk will free themselves in more profound a way, in recognising their interest is with one another, and not with princes. And so I continued: ‘Our chapels and churches should be radical spaces, not fortresses from which our enemies can oppress us. Our mission is to say that bigotry and violence serve no one but those enemies who wish to oppress us. The next great revolution, my friends, will be the revolution of tolerance!’
A man in rags leapt to his feet. ‘Praise Jesus!’ he cried. ‘And praise Reverend Church! He is the bringer of a
There was an air of levity in the moments after the man had shouted, and it is good in preaching to allow a few seconds for the room to breathe. I let my eyes scan my congregation. Row after row, face after face: different faces every time yet somehow always the same. It was then that I first saw him. He was looking straight at me, his eyes intelligently watchful, alert to the moment, a hint of shyness. His face was long and angular with high, severe cheekbones. A young African man, he was younger than me, in his twenties. I studied him closer. I could write a list of descriptions, if that’s what’s required: his chin almost unshaven, a light black fuzz across his jaw; his throat, long and slim; prominent collarbones revealed by his open-necked white shirt. But more than that, there was a softness to him, something you might call feminine, a prettiness as much as a handsomeness, a hazy kind of beauty, one that is not sure of its own existence. Looking at him, I felt that sensuous crackle of seeing someone for the first time; perhaps the only time, you never know. My throat clenched, my eyelids flickered. Just as suddenly, he seemed aware that I was looking at him. Some embarrassment entered him; his gaze fell away, as if to read a pamphlet on his lap. Clearing my throat, I looked back down at my hands, spread on the pulpit lectern. And that was it: nothing more.
When the service was done, people came forwards to exchange words with me, to shake hands. Among the first was my friend, Mrs Caesar, one of the Africans who came to the chapel, a marvellous person for whom I held the highest respect. I knew little of her history save that she had been born in her native land, a country in Guinea, then was enslaved in the West Indies. She emancipated herself in London – through what efforts I do not know. She then became a campaigner for the end first of the Slave Trade, achieved two years past, and now of Slavery in its entirety, still to be achieved. Always, a troop of smart, scholarly young men followed her around, a line of starch-shirted ducklings following their mother. But she was not their mother. She was their leader.
I shall confess straightaway. I know only a little of abolitionism, only what any person knows: that in the last century there were cases in which ordinary African folk sued their masters for their freedom, proving that Slavery was not legal in England but only in its colonies; that a great number of liberal Englishmen began to agitate for the end of the Trade, holding huge meetings, writing massive letter campaigns; that the struggle for Emancipation was now decades old, allegedly delayed by the war, but really by what people called ‘The Interest’, a group comprising White West Indians, merchants and politicians in London, Bristol and Liverpool, and the Royal Family. I wish heartily to see the end of the evil practice, but again, I must tell you: of the subject, I am no expert!
‘Ah, Reverend Church,’ Mrs Caesar began, ‘your sermon was most thought-provoking and insightful.’ She let out a knowing laugh. Her eyes were quick like mercury, full of good humour. ‘As always, O!’ she added, as if correcting an oversight. She beckoned forwards her young men to greet me and introduced them by name, as they stopped in a line: a Josiah, a Joseph, a Jebediah. But then there was the sole female follower she seemed to possess: her daughter, Miss Lydia Caesar, whom I already knew. An austere person, of high intelligence, well read on radical and revolutionary subjects, far beyond my own knowledge, she was not the friendliest soul. She had a habit of keeping her gaze to the ground whilst speaking, then suddenly looking up at one piercingly, often saying quite stark things. I always felt Miss Lydia did not like me, though I never understood why, for am I not a perfectly charming fellow?
‘How are you today, Miss Lydia?’ I asked.
Eyes down: ‘Most well, thank you, Reverend Church.’
‘Did you enjoy the sermon?’
Eyes up: ‘Somewhat, Reverend.’ Somewhat? ‘Your ideas are quite interesting.’ Quite interesting? ‘I just don’t know how applicable they are.’ Eyes back down.
‘Applicable, Miss Caesar?’
Eyes up: ‘Realistic is perhaps a better word.’
Before I had a chance to respond, her mother spoke: ‘Reverend Church, my Lydia is a preacher too! You will come to see her speaking one day. Then you could give your impressions to her. She will surely value your advice.’ Lydia’s eyes fell to the chapel flagstones. She did not want my advice. O, but I would gladly give it, to annoy her, to enjoy it. The thought passed through me, so trivial. I looked along the straight line of her mother’s followers. It was then I saw him again. He gave me the very smallest of smiles and nodded, almost imperceptibly: the young man from the pews. Mrs Caesar did not introduce us. Sensing her daughter’s irritation, she said good day. There were no more introductions.
Presently the chapel emptied. Sweeping along pews to check for forgotten hats, dropped gloves, I found myself distracted. I had a horrific duty to perform that afternoon and it was weighing heavily on my mind. I dreaded it; but I would do it. That is the nature of ‘the duty’, the responsibility on men like me. Lost in my thoughts, I heard a voice behind: ‘Reverend Church …?’ I turned. It was the young man again; he had come back. Standing in the chapel’s great doorway, left open, he held a felt hat in front of his body. The way he fiddled with it – fingering and turning the brim in his hand – made him seem nervous. He took a step forwards and moved into a pool of sifted light falling from the high chapel windows. It gilded him; but its haze made him seem diaphanous. ‘Reverend, I … I just wanted to say how I enjoyed your sermon. I hope you don’t mind me coming back to say so.’
He had this curious stillness about him, his form long and elegant. Obscured somewhat by the light, he was simultaneously there and not there; that would turn out to be his whole quality, in fact.
‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘Thank you. Did you not leave with Mrs Caesar and your fellow Society members?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I am not truly part of her group. I just know one of the members.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I thought I had never seen you here before.’
He smiled and gave a small shake of his head as if to confirm I had not. ‘I just wanted to say that I find your ideas most interesting. I am not sure I understand how all of it works in practice’ – just as Miss Lydia had said – ‘but I would appreciate the opportunity to talk of them more.’ His voice was clear, deep but light, a trace of a northern accent, a soft sibilance barely discernible unless you listened closely. He turned his face hesitantly to one side. Falling at an angle, the light from the windows brushed his face, revealing the contours of his cheek and jaw. His lips pursed momentarily in thought. ‘Do you have time to talk now about your ideas, Reverend?’
Every part of me wanted to say yes. But still I had my duty to perform. I had to commit myself to doing the right thing. ‘I cannot today, I am sorry.’
‘O, I see …’ He seemed sincerely disappointed.
‘Will you come to the service next week?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said.
Know this: I am driven by impulses, by my urges in the moment. Come what may, they rule me; I do not rule them. ‘Well, if you do, we could go for a walk after service then and talk about my ideas. I could give you as much time as you like another day.’
