Ingenious Pain Read online

  What prompts James to go, finally? Why one day rather than another? He is caught in something, the moist cogs of a vast machine. He does not know how to call it. There is light and hay-dust in his glands. His dreams are littered with dogs. The previous week he gazed for an hour at the dissected genitalia of a woman in a volume of anatomy, studying it like the map of a country he would shortly be travelling in. This morning he wakes, shrugs on his dressing-gown and goes straight to the girls' room, as though he has received a message from them, an invitation threaded secretly through the air from their room to his.

  He finds them still in bed, sitting up, peeling boiled eggs. It is a week before their birthday, a fortnight before his own. Round their necks each wears a string of pearls, an early present from Mr Canning. They smile, and where he stands their smiles intersect. The girls put down their eggs, half peeled. Ann pulls back the covers. James climbs in, lies back, gazes at the canopy.

  Later, he remembers how much giggling there was, how much

  the girls seemed to know. And years later, riding in an open carriage in Bath, two young wives huddled on the seat opposite, he realises that the twins' knowledge could only have been the fruit of experience. With whom? Canning? Molina? Were they Molina's mistresses?

  Between the giggles, odd concentrated silences. Whole minutes of hard physical work. Being joined, each of the twins feels the other's pleasure. Stroke one breast; both sisters sigh. How long does it last? Long enough to bore him. The girls pant like invalids, coo and chide him, grow momentarily fierce. He goes along, wishing the experience to be tidy, to have a proper end. After half an hour the string of Anna's pearls snap; the warm pearls run like quicksilver between their bodies, into the creases of the sheets. The girls squeal, kneel up, start to pick them, placing the pearls in their mouths as they find them. James watches them a while, scrabbling in the sheets, their mouths full of pearls. Then he puts on his gown, goes back to his room.

  Another day. It is still dark. The fat man is sitting at James's bedside. He has a candle in his hand. He smells of rain and brandy.

  'How is my marvellous boy?'

  He reaches out a cold hand, touches the boy's cheek.

  Says James: 'Is it today? For the twins?'

  'Ay, today.'

  'And I may watch it?'

  'Why, of course you shall.'

  'Will they die?'

  'And what would you care if they do? But you are the one I'd like to cut. I'll wager there are secrets in you. What d'you say, boy - shall it be you? I could count on you to keep still. Keep your trap shut.'

  The door opens, Mr Canning leans in. 'Bentley?'

  *Ay, Canning. I'm with you.'

  They leave.

  The boy lies awake.

  He enters Mr Canning's private operating theatre by a door high at the back of the room leading directly to the benches on the balcony above the operating table. Molina is with him, his drawing things beneath his arm. Canning has asked him to make a record. Molina looks unwell; his breath is tainted. When he takes the charcoal his hand is shaking.

  Canning wears a satin coat, white and embroidered with silver roses, as if this were his wedding day. Beside Canning, several gentlemen from the society are already in their seats. They chatter excitedly, somewhat loud. Daylight slides in evenly from the skylight, and around the table, a bare wooden table such as kitchens have, with wooden blocks for the girls' heads, there are three tall candelabra and a servant with a trimmer to trim their wicks. Boxes of sawdust are tucked neatly beside the table.

  The lower doors open. A quartet of musicians enter. They sit, fumble with their music and examine their instruments as though they have only recently discovered them. They play a few tentative notes then fall silent. Next comes Mr Bentley with his assistant, Mr Hampton, and Mr Hampton's assistant, the doorman Lute, who carries a large tray covered with a cloth. The gentlemen on the benches applaud. The operators bow, neatly and in time. Then Mr Bentley detaches himself, goes to the door, opens it and escorts the twins into the theatre. More applause. The twins are wearing a kind of shift, cut down the middle and tied with ribbons. The

  applause is louder. Mr Canning stands; the others follow. Molina starts to sketch at speed, charcoal hissing on the paper. The sketch looks like an attempt to hide something.

  The twins look up at the balcony, the benches, the men leaning over with their chivalrous smiles, wigs newly dusted, fresh shirts, fine coats, barely one who has not had Canning's barber run over his face with a razor. The twins are dazed, squinting. Drugged, perhaps drunk. When their eyes reach James they hardly seem to recognise him. Bentley's hand is at Anna's elbow. Lute waits between the girls and the door as if to bar their way should they try to run. The gentlemen resume their seats. Canning makes a sign with his hand. Bentley nods, leads the girls to the table, helps them up, settles their heads on the wooden blocks. Lute draws two handkerchiefs from his fist like a conjurer and places one over each girl's face. The handkerchiefs rise and fall rapidly over the girls' mouths. The tray is uncovered; below the covering it is bright with knives. Bentley and Hampton pick them over as though they were thinking of buying one. Lute murmurs in a musician's ear. The violinist taps his foot and the theatre fills with a dainty overture from something popular in town. The operators take up their implements, the ribbons of the twins' shift are pulled undone. Bentley gropes at the girls' hips, finds his place and drives in his knife. The girls' bodies jerk up from the table. Lute and Hampton press down. The room is suddenly very warm. The girls do not scream, not until the fourth cut. MoHna leans back with a groan; James leans forward. The screaming lasts about a minute, then there is a sudden access of blood, a red wash of it, tiding off the table. Lute kicks one of the boxes to catch it but kicks too hard so that the blood splashes off its side. Hampton is trying to collect the vessels Bentley has cut. He sees one, clamps it, starts to tie it but the blood is unrelenting. The musicians have lost each other; each plays what is left in his own head. Bentley's knife slips from his hand, clatters on to the floor. He swears and

  seizes another from the tray. His apron is sodden. James turns away to see Molina, slumped, ashen, vomit over his shoes.

  The cloths over the girls' faces barely move now. Hampton is working furiously; his wig has slipped down by his right eye and when he pushes it back he leaves on it a scarlet handprint. Bentley steps away from the table, waves to the servant to bring him a glass. The servant pours the brandy carefully yet still spills it. He brings it on a little tray. Bentley downs it; goes back to his work. The twins are attached now only by some matter at the shoulder. Bentley leans with his big shoulders and sunders them. Hampton cannot keep up. He shouts, something utterly garbled, at Lute. Another wash of blood, this time caught in the box. Bentley to Hampton, pointing at the offending vessel: Tick it up, man! Pick it up.'

  The oboist has left the room. The violinist and flautist play on, dreamily, quite separate now. The handkerchiefs no longer rise and fall. Bentley puts down his knife, looks around for a cloth to wipe his hands and, not discovering one, takes the handkerchief from Ann's face. The girl's face is turned towards her sister, mouth open, eyes ajar. There is not the slightest sign of life. Molina has gone. James takes the paper and charcoal, begins to draw. Hampton is crying, still fiddling with something, some artery. He says, as though speaking to the girls: Too past! Poo bloody fast!' Canning stands, says quietly: 'Thank you, Bentley. I am sure that you did your best.' He walks out like a French king, his courtiers behind him. Bentley waves a hand dismissively. When next he looks up at the benches only James is there, finishing his sketch.

  That night, stripped to the waist, washing, James finds on his skin minute fragments of eggshell. They are surprisingly hard to remove.

  The musicians, altered men, stay on to play a dirge in the chapel

  at the twins' funeral. Mr Canning weeps copiously for ten minutes, looks stricken in the pew, then recovers, and is quite his old self at the party after, walking the length of the gallery
arm in arm with Mr Bentley.

  The girls are buried in separate coffins, a private graveyard of the estate. James is there, looking over the lip of the grave to see the coffins stacked. He wonders briefly which is which, if it is Ann or Anna on top. There is no way of knowing. It is cold for September; the mourners do not stay past the throwing of the first clod.

  He does not see Molina until the following week when he comes upon him urinating into one of Mr Canning's amphora. The painter is drunk but not very.

  Well, my friend. All things must end. You, me, Canning. Even this fine house will be dust one day. For me, I prefer to leave my bones in a civilised country. English cruelty is like EngHsh games. I do not understand. I am going home. Goodbye, James. Get away from this place.'

  James says: 'You said once you would show me the moon boy.'

  Molina looks around, frowns incomprehension, then laughs as he remembers. 'You want to see?'

  The boy nods.

  'Bueno, vamos . . .'

  Through the great salons, past the gilded mirrors, the tapestries, the looted idols; past enormous paintings, past elegant furniture . . . Now up the stairs, corridors, sudden windows, the disappearing back of a servant, the distant shutting of a door.

  In here,' says Molina. 'In this room.'

  James looks back along the corridor, momentarily lost. He thought they had come to his own door. Now he realises that they have. Molina opens the door.

  'Come, James. Do not be shy.'

  He takes the boy's hand, not too gently, and pulls him into the room, over to the mirror.

  *You have met before?'

  Molina backs to the door. 'Adios, my friend. This is a dangerous place. Peligroso. Even for you.'

  James stares. The moon boy stares back. Outside, a fine blue rain is falling. A servant with a bucket is tramping to the house by the lake.

  A boy, twelve-months taller, steps out of the woods carrying in his arms the luminous globe of a puffball as though it were the head of an ogre he has slain. Behind him lollops a dog, a grey, three-legged mongrel. They are companions of sorts; the dog indiscriminately fond, the boy content to let it be with him, his awkward shadow. Now and then he throws a stick for it, amusing himself with its comical gallop, its enthusiasm. It serves him in other ways too. The previous spring it came to the house, left ear hanging on, hanging off, by a strand of purple flesh. With needle and thread and Mr Collins to hold it down, James sewed the ear back on, neatly if not quite straight. It was his first patient, and when the dog failed to pick up more wounds, James administered them himself, with knife or stick, such that the dog that runs past him now towards the topiary in the Italian gardens bears a dozen scars, some livid, some pale, but each more cunningly tailored than the last.

  He follows it towards the garden, loses sight of it among the clipped green walls, hears its nervous bark build to a crescendo, then abruptly cease. He calls to it; it does not come. He enters

  the garden, sees the gardener's barrow half flill of prunings, but no gardener and no dog, though the animal's three-pronged track is visible in the grass. The hedges glisten. A family of birds is flung suddenly upward, wheeling off towards the woods. A voice is singing, faintly, huskily, a servant perhaps, illicitly to his sweetheart. Then the voice speaks to him, addresses him by name, out of the heart of an evergreen globe.

  'James! Over here.'

  By burrowing near its southern pole, the globe may be entered. James crawls in. Gummer is sitting, pleased as punch beside the body of the dog.

  For the moment James says nothing. He is looking at Gummer as though he has come across him floating in a jar of preserving fluid. And he is preserved, though there are grey hairs in his nose, and his teeth are another shade of brown and the skin looser at his neck. James feels as if he has dreamt this meeting in the green dripping gloom of the garden, even its details, such as the wide-bore short-barrelled pistol Gummer casually aims at his belly.

  'When do we go?'

  'Well spoken, boy! Soon as ever you like. May I trust you to fetch your accoutrements from the house? I think I may. And should you happen to pack some of Mr Canning's silver, why, 'tis only recompense, a paying back without the trouble of forcing the rogue to law; for you were my property, boy, and the bastard stole you. Some cheese while you're at it, and meat, and a bottle of good wine. I shall take up my station over the way such that I may see you come and go. Any surprises and you shall join poor Cerebus here.' He pats the carcass kindly. 'Comprendy vous? Damn, but I'm glad to see you, boy.'

  James goes into the house, toys momentarily with the idea of alarming the servants to Gummer's presence, then swiftly packs the better part of his wardrobe. He goes to the library and helps

  himself to those of his favourites he can quickly lay hands on. From one of the galleries he takes four silver snuff-boxes, and from the kitchen where the cook snores in her seat toasting her feet by the fire, he helps himself to a pair of cold roast pigeons and a half-bottle of the cook's gin.

  It is not hard to leave. He rides behind Gummer on Gummer's horse, rides south, his bag slung between them. Wherever possible they keep off the roads and out of villages. Now and then some rustic with a mattock over his shoulder, or a girl out berrying, gives them an enquiring look but mostly they are alone, observed only by the cattle, by sheep and by those creatures drawn to the light of their fire at night.

  On their third day they ascend a winding lane between hedgerows blue with fruit. Sea-birds balance overhead, then a hundred yards beyond the crest of the hill, the world ends and a salt wind throws off Gummer's hat and flicks it idly down in swoops to the sea.

  They cross Southampton Water by the ferry and come in sight of Portsmouth in the last hour of daylight, the first of night. The water stays light longer than the land. Not even at Bristol has James seen such a congregation of ships, ships in the Pool, and a great mass of them, more than could be quickly counted, out by Spithead. Between the great ships all manner of smaller vessels -wherry boats, jolly boats, gigs - rowing to and fro, the voices of the sailors carrying clear as the cries of sea-birds. They ride down into the city. Everywhere the rolling walk of sailors, libertymen in bum-freezer jackets, all conversation at the bellow, and on their arms scruffy whores, loud as their men. James and Gummer ride under the lights of a recruiting inn. From its upper windows hangs a white flag with a red cross, big as a sail. Men in uniform, dark faces, bright assessing eyes, watch them pass. One calls: 'Ho there, lads . . .' and Gummer presses his heels into the horse's flanks, urges her on with a soft click of his tongue.

  The house is in the back streets. The horse must pick its way through trash. Figures swish past them in the darkness.

  'Here's home, boy - for now. Come meet your step-mama.'

  Home, from the vague shadowing of its form, appears like the outhouse of a farm and may once have been so before the city swallowed it. Inside, however, there is a sense of rudimentary housekeeping. A fire growls in the hearth, there are pictures on the wall, china in the dresser, even two geraniums at the curtained window and, above them, a large, vicious-looking parrot, rocking edgily on its perch.

  Grace Boylan stands at the door with a candle, a shawl over her hair. She glances at the boy, then searches over his shoulder for Gummer, reaching out to take his arm and lead him into the warm. She sits him on a chair, knocks up a glass of curdled milk and ale, and as he drinks it she strokes his cheek, coos and settles her bulk upon his knee.

  Gummer drains his glass with a sigh, beams and says: 'I said I should fetch him. See how tall he has become. My, they must have been feeding him well.' He pushes the woman off his knees, winces and stands. 'First things first.'

  He covers the space with remarkable agility, fetches the boy a clout on the side of his head. While James reels Grace fetches him another, then a third, sweetly weighted, sweetly timed. James goes down. They begin to kick him.

  'Not the head!' cries Gummer. 'Not the head!'

  They keep at it for five minutes, then flo
p in seats, wheezing. Boylan looks done up, bad as if they have been kicking her, yet peacefijl, as if it has done her some good, brought her some peace.

  James sprawls on the floor. He is not uncomfortable; it is only that he cannot find his breath. The ceiling pulses Hke a skin. The room is growing darker. He sees Gummer take off his shoes and warm his feet above the coals. 'Tomorrow, Gracie, we shall celebrate. Drink the town dry. What do you say to that?'

  The parrot, like a decayed angel, swoops from its perch and settles on the back of Gummer's chair. 'Not the head!' it cries. 'Not the head! Not the head!'

  When James wakes he is in bed, fiiUy dressed. Opposite the bed is a small window. The day's grey beginnings ooze over the roof of the house across the way. He sits up, strips off his shirt and looks at the welts on his chest. Impressive. He slides from the bed, goes to the window. No parkland, no maze, no purple woods. In the street below, the cobbled gutter, a girl-child, one arm round the neck of a dog, squats and watches the golden rope of her water wind through the crevices between the stones. A man leans out of a window, rubs his face, looks up at the weather.

  At the foot of the bed is a parcel. James sits on the bed and lifts it on to his lap. Old clothes, most quite useless now, too small, too ragged. He drops them on to the floor. Underneath is the box, its sides scratched, splintered in places. He opens it. Venus rolls about like a marble. The sun is dented. The moon leans drunkenly away from the Earth.