Ingenious Pain Read online

  The Reverend, his sister, Mr Astick and James eat dinner at a table in the parlour where tonight the Reverend w^ill entertain the gentlemen farmers. The others will eat in the kitchen, according to custom. The main dining room, unused since Michaelmas, needs a two-day fire in winter to heat it through and is unnecessarily large for the one party, inappropriately fine for the other.

  'Another wedge of this good fat mutton, Mr Astick?' The Reverend has thrived on his morning's sport. It has brought him two large hares. James has seen their mauled corpses in the kitchen.

  'Nell - that's the silver bitch. Doctor - was like a leopard today. Mad with it she was. Could hardly walk coming home. Trembling and lolling her tongue.'

  'Let me charge your glass, Doctor,' says Dido, sitting at James's side.

  'Now don't you disguise the doctor in drink. Dido,' says the Reverend, himself somewhat disguised from the punch before dinner. 'We are under his knife this afternoon.'

  'I understand. Doctor,' says Mr Astick, 'that surgeons are like to drink as much as their patients before an operation. Equal courage being needed on both sides.'

  'I have known it,' says James, pushing a piece of meat about his plate.

  'Dr Dyer wasn't one of those,' says the Reverend.

  'I meant', says Mr Astick, 'that it must take as much bottom to perform an operation as to undergo one. Is that not so?'

  James says: 1 have witnessed a very reputable surgeon in a great hospital heave before going into the theatre. I have seen a thousand-pound-a-year man run out in the midst of operating.'

  Tray you, gentlemen,' says Dido, tapping her fork on the table. *We have not ate our pudding yet.'

  'Very true, my dear,' says the Reverend, and I have been impatient for one of Mrs Cole's puddings ever since breakfast. Ha ha!'

  'You shall dig your grave vv^ith your teeth, brother.'

  'As you won't eat, sister, I must eat for two. When will you want us. Doctor?'

  'When it is convenient to yourselves.'

  'Then I shall rob you at Loo first and you shall have it back in blood later,' the Reverend says.

  Even Dido laughs at this. A strange excited laugh.

  He is in the parlour, reading, when Tabitha is sent to fetch him. He has read the same passage out oi Roderick Random four or five times - Roderick making up to the decrepit Miss Sparkle - but has taken in neither the comedy nor the cruelty of the scene. He has been thinking what excuses he might make, even now, and listening to the rumble of the Reverend's footfall in the room overhead. On the card table by the fire, laid by the cards of his last, losing hand, is a neat tortoiseshell case containing the lancets. It belongs to the Reverend, belonged to his father before him. James does not know what became of his own set. In someone else's pocket now.

  Tabitha enters the parlour. 'Miss Lestrade is ready for you to go to 'er now.'

  'Miss Lestrade?'

  In 'er room, sir.' She points vaguely upwards.

  He asks: 'What have you there?'

  She walks over and hands it to him: a tin-glazed, earthenware bowl. 'Reverend said to give it you.'

  'Thank you, Tabitha.'

  James takes the bowl, the tortoiseshell case, and mounts the stairs, turning left and stopping to knock lightly at the first door on the right.

  Dido Lestrade is sat by the table at the window of her room. She has changed her dress since dinner and wears now a gown of pale primrose and a quilted white petticoat. Her face is illumined by the afternoon light, a painter's light. She is, James believes, near the same age as himself. Her eyes are good, very human, but she has plucked her eyebrows to damnation.

  He has never been in the room before. He is aware that it is on display for him and that he should admire it. He glances round, notes the Chelsea porcelain, the peacock-feather fans, the petit-point screen, the lacquered commode, the bed-hanging of Indian cotton, decorated with the Tree of Life. Endless frills and knickery-knackery; all in a room older than the church, a chamber better suited to blocks of solid, rustic furniture, the sort of stuff, sepulchral and stinking precisely of time, that stands about the rest of the house. Here is Dido's protest, her discreet rebellion: a Bath boudoir in the belly of North Devon. It moves him, and in some obscure way he would like to comfort her. He is aware that there is a gesture somewhere in the lexicon of such things that would convey his sentiments exactly, but he cannot find it. He says, more gruffly than he meant: 'You have a cloth for your arm?'

  She has it ready on the table, a silk scarf, thickly dyed. Her gown is short-sleeved, but James draws it further up before he ties the scarf. He is aware of being physically closer to her than he has

  ever been. Aware of her scent, the texture of her skin. The blue and white at the crook of her elbow is affectirfg. 'Not too tight?' he asks.

  She is looking away from him, shakes her head. He takes the case from out of his waistcoat pocket, pulls off the lid, chooses one of the little blades, draws it out, drops it, fumbles for it on the Turkey carpet, retrieves it, clears his throat, takes her arm - cool beneath his grip - spies out a vein, positions the bowl, pricks the vein and watches the blood slope off her arm into the bowl. When he has collected, he guesses, six ounces, he presses his thumb over the wound, removes the scarf, breathes. A ball of wool serves as a plug. She folds her arm and holds it across her breast, like flowers or a sickly pet. Tm sure Dr Thorne takes twice that,' she says, looking into the bowl.

  It is more use to you in than out.'

  'My father thought bleeding the greatest boon for pragmatic women.'

  'And was your mother like that?'

  'She was thought to be. As, in turn, I am too.'

  'I have never thought of you so,' says James, very nearly scrupulous.

  'I believe you have not.'

  'How do you feel?'

  'Pure well, thank you.'

  *I shall be with your brother should you need me.'

  The Reverend is gazing out of his window; a view over the garden, the rising fields, the woods. He greets James without turning. He is in sombre mood, suddenly sober after the sport, the good cheer of the morning. Out with the dogs, the first hour, he felt he was revisiting his youth, his body a robust, powerful implement, pleasing to use, and even in the thrill of the chase, his mind had retained a delicious coolness, a brightness he strained for

  uselessly on other occasions . . . Well, he must be grateful for it, for his hour.

  James, to whom the Reverend, in a fit of confidence, once confessed that he versified - though not all the port in Christendom could have induced him to say what kind of verse, still less to whom it was addressed - now asks, by way of having something to say, and subtly impressed by the Reverend's aura of melancholy, if he is turning lines in his head. The Reverend, pricked by embarrassment, answers hastily: 'No, indeed. Not that. The Muse deserts me like everything else - hair, teeth, breath. No, I was thinking of ... of putting some wheat and turnips in the little field. What do you think of it? Did you not say one time that you grew up upon the land? I'm sure you did.'

  'I made no study of it. My knowledge of turnips is that I like them roasted if I like them at all.'

  The Reverend says: 'I wish I knew a little more. I mean of what is good to do. I should like to set an example. They laugh up their sleeves at me, you know, the farmers. They'll be at it tonight, you wait. Will you sup in the parlour?'

  'I thought rather I would play king of the kitchen. We had some fine singing there last year.'

  'Whatever you wish.'

  It is to be with Mary, of course, but the offer has been made. It is a pity, muses the Reverend, starting to grin, that James does not show more interest in Dido. They would make an interesting pair, but the little foreign woman has him, great, deep cables connecting them. Never seen them touch, though. Are they carnal?

  He peers into the bowl in James's hand. 'I see you've done her, then. My sister.'

  'I had meant to empty it,' says James, flushing. 'I cannot imagine how I failed to do so. Forgive me.
'

  'Peace, Doctor. After all, it is the same stuff as animates me - though mine is a less watery soup than hers. Now, sir, I'd be

  grateful to you if you would open a vessel here,' He taps his right temple. 'Thome's done it before now and I feel it would relieve me. Greatly.'

  James stares at him, looking for a sign to know if he is quite serious. He says: 'The blood circulates about the entire body. To take it from one place is to take it from another.'

  'That, I grant you, may be the theory, yet I experience a surfeit, a plethora, quite local to the head.'

  'It would be dangerous. Unnecessarily so.'

  'Nay, man, not to one of your accomplishments.'

  *You confuse me . . . with my former self.'

  'Come, come now. I'll sit here still as a wall.' To prove it he takes up position upon a stool, as stiff and unmoving as if he were sitting for his likeness. Thinks James: I shall refuse. Then: why should I not do it? I could have done it before in a blindfold. The devil take us both. I shall do it.

  He lays a large handkerchief upon the Reverend's shoulder, selects a lancet and leans close to the side of the Reverend's head, examining the skin beneath the stubbled, grey-blond hair. Free for an instant from all hesitation, he lodges the tip of the lancet, feels the involuntary flinch, absorbs it, digs deeper. He is aware of the noise of rapid breathing; imagines it to be the Reverend's, then realises that it is his own. A trail of blood snails over the Reverend's jowls. The Reverend speaks through his teeth: 'Deeper, Doctor, deeper.'

  And something goes wrong; wrong as in a dream where the steady flow of images erupts without warning into something elemental and hideous that sends the sleeper fleeing out of sleep. A spasm - as though his hand had been touched with electricity; a spastic contraction of the muscles, God knows. Instantly, the whole side of the Reverend's face is a sheet of blood. The lancet falls, also the bowl, splashing the Reverend's shirt with blood. The Reverend groans, yaws like a stricken ship, clutches his head. He says, his

  voice very calm: 'Help me, James.' And James runs out. Out of the Reverend's room and into his own. Seconds pass, minutes perhaps, before he can find the courage to return; minutes of staring furiously at his coat hanging from a nail on the back of the door. Then he snatches up all the linen he can see - a shirt, a nightcap, a square he uses to dry his face - and runs back, like the lover in a farce, to the Reverend's room.

  The Reverend is on his bed, a hand pressed to the wound. James drops to his knees at the side of the bed, gently lifts the Reverend's hand. Such is the effusion of blood he cannot at first make out the wound. He wipes, makes a compress with the square and fixes it with the nightcap. He hurries to the top of the stairs, shouts: 'Tabitha!'

  Her face, dusted with flour, appears in the stairwell. He sends her for hot water, hot water and claret. His chest is heaving as if he had run full pelt up the lane. Dido comes on to the landing, still holding her folded arm, staring at James in amazement. What is it?' she asks. 'Are you hurt?'

  He gapes at her, cannot answer, and runs back into the room, leaning over the prostrate Reverend as if sheltering him from rain. Dido follows, issues little cries of alarm, glares angrily at her brother. 'Christ, brother . . , has he shot himself?' There is a noise, ominous at first, a liquid wheezing in the Reverend's throat. 'Is he dying?' asks Dido, all natural colour gone from her face, but for the moment her manner admirably composed.

  'Not dying,' says James. He knows that sound better than most. He says: 'I believe he is laughing.'

  Out of the curled man on the bed comes a reedy voice, hugely amused: '"Has he shot himself"! . . . oh, very good . . . very good, sister . . .'

  A minute later and Tabitha arrives with the tray, the wine, the water. Mrs Cole is behind her, alarmed at Tabitha's description of the doctor waving his arms like a lunatic at the top of the stairs.

  What they see is the Reverend sitting on the edge of the bed, pale but grinning, his head swathed in a bloody nightcap, Dido sitting beside him, her mouth shut tight as a mussel, and the doctor, of whom all those stories just might be true, sat on the other side of the Reverend, sobbing like a child.

  'How is supper coming, Mrs Cole?' asks the Reverend. What heroics! Yes, sir, the afternoon has been an unexpected success.

  The two of them go out for wood, a man and a boy, under the November moon. The man, somewhat stooped, limps from an affliction of his right leg, his head bobbing like a swimmer's. The boy, hands tucked under his own shoulders for warmth, walks two steps behind. A frost is building, glittering around the lights of the house.

  They come to the wood-pile. James stretches out his arms for the boy to load him. From the logs comes a reek of earth, fungus, rotting bark.

  'Take from the back there, Sam. Are they drier there?'

  'They all has a little wet on 'em.'

  'Fetch out those at the side there - the beechwood.'

  It has been a hot summer, a wet, mild autumn; a poor harvest. Wheat is fifty shillings and eight pence per quarter; up three shillings over the previous year.

  'We'll take what we have, Sam, and dry them at the fire.'

  They move back towards the lights. A young dog, restless at the end of its chain, sets up yapping. From James: 'Hush, sir!' It slinks into its shadow, ears cocked against the movements, the soft calls of the country beyond.

  Using his elbow on the latch, James opens the kitchen door. There are sudden, good-humoured complaints about the cold from the men at the table until Sam pushes it shut with his heel. They lay down the logs and brush the earth from their coats. At the table, twelve men, fat and thin, are doing their all to eat back what they have lost by the tithe. To eat and drink it back with a kind of hilarious determination. James knows most of them, most know him - know him, if not exactly what they should make of him.

  Tabitha drops a jug, one of the big ones. It explodes impressively at her feet, drenching her stockings in clouds of cider. She cries, more from fatigue than shock or fear of Mrs Cole who is serving in the parlour. The farmers cheer. James goes to her, says: 'Go to bed, Tabitha. Sam and I shall serve them.'

  The tithe supper, an event entirely pleasing to no one, is drawing to its end. The table is massed with cups and glasses, greasy plates of dented pewter; with the sucked and shattered skeletons of duck and chicken and hare, the browned, nubbed bones of the beef, sharp mutton bones.

  'How then, Sam,' says James, will all these beasts find their parts on Judgment Day?'

  'Taint just gonna be folk, then?'

  'Bless me, no. Chickens, cats, Jonah's whale.' He looks down at Sam: an agile, scrawny, wonderfully ugly boy of eleven years. At fifteen he will be untellable from any red-faced son of the plough in spotted neckerchief and leather breeches, roaring in some market town. By thirty he will be one of these at the table; still lusty, but already half broken by work and worry, drinking to forget.

  They sit together on the bench beside the fire. James feels its heat against his face.

  Sam says: 'You said as you were gonna tell the story, Dr James.' Dr James: a form of address used openly only by Sam, privately by others.

  'What story was that, Sam?' Knowing well what story.

  "Bout the race.'

  'Oh yes.'

  'An' the queen an' that.'

  'An empress, Sam. Better than a queen.'

  'An' 'bout Mary.'

  'Can you hear in all this rumpus?'

  Sam nods.

  For James this is an experiment; turning his life into anecdotes for a child. A series of small, safe detonations, preventing him, he trusts, from bawling a stream of fearful, undigested revelations to a stranger, or - worse - to one who knows him. And Sam is a good listener, tolerant of revisions, following the story as he follows a plough blade in the fields.

  'And where did we arrive to upon the last occasion?'

  Says Sam: 'Your friend, Mr Gummer.'

  A vision: Gummer's face, that is, the eyes, for the rest is muffled by a scarf against the cold. Could he pos
sibly have described Gummer as a friend?

  James drinks from his cup, draws off one glove, wipes his lips with the back of his hand; feels the mottling of the scars.

  You know, then, how I first met Mr Gummer when I was a boy, how he stole upon me while I lay on my belly in the grass on the old hill-fort the day of the wedding and how, after my fall out of the cherry tree . . .'

  'An' breakin' your leg.'

  'Indeed . . .'

  'An' the fella what set it . . .'

  'Amos Gate, the smith. Good, then. Now, after my leg was mended - it has unmended since - there was ... a sickness in the house. A very sharp sickness, so that my mother and brothers and sisters were all carried off. . .'

  'All?'

  'Ay, all,' confirming his lie. 'Leastways, I was alone, and set out

  to walk into Bristol to find Mr Gummer, thinking that he, who had shown a kind of interest in me, might take me in. I was younger than you are today, Sam, and yet I walked the whole of that road, mostly through rain as I recall. Have you been in the city, Sam, in any great city?'

  Sam shakes his head.

  'No more had I. Such a prodigious number of people! Soldiers and sailors and fat merchants; fine ladies holding their gowns out of the muck - for the city is much more filthy than the country. It was the first time that I ever set eyes on a black man or a Chinee. And there were ships from every blue corner of the world, one next to the other like creatures in a pen. And shops, Sam, lit up like Christmas, and a vast to-ing and fro-ing, a vast racket of men and beasts. Now, finding Mr Gummer among this, hmm, entropy, was, you may imagine, a far from simple business, and yet by following my nose I did find him and very surprised and, after a manner, pleased he was to see me, though I must tell you, he was not a kind man. But as I was not a kind boy we were a match of sorts. That was the . . .'