Ingenious Pain Read online

  'Hallooo there! There's men dyin' o' thirst here!' Several of the company are waving their mugs as evidence while the others begin drumming on the table with their fists. The beat gains momentum, rings out like the tread of soldiers.

  'Come, Sam.' James stands, smiles, apologises to the farmers with a slight bow. He takes the jugs, two in either hand, and goes through the door at the back of the kitchen into a chill, windowless room with a copper and mashing tubs and barrels where the Reverend, at each quarter-year, supervises the brewing of his table beer, and where Mrs Cole creates her country wines, the bottles stacked up against two of the walls. Despite the cold, Mary is sat there, very still on a straw-bottom chair, doing nothing discernible. A candle burns by her feet, which are tucked together, neat as cats. James draws the beer. When

  he has finished he says: 'Come through. "Tis cold in here, even for you.'

  She observes him, her eyes, two sucked black pebbles.

  They are but small farmers,' he says. 'Sound and fury. It means nothing. Nothing but this.' He raises one of the jugs. 'Come sit vv^ith Sam and me by the fire.'

  James carries the beer into the kitchen and sets it on the table. He wishes very much he could be sure she is happy; contented at least.

  'Aah! Your 'Ibdr of life, Doctor. You saved us from a dry grave.'

  'Long life to you, gentlemen. Health and happiness.'

  'You won't bibe wi' us?'

  'If it wiU please the company.'

  'Well spoke, man!'

  The jug is passed around, beer slopping on to the table at each pour.

  'A toast, lads!'

  'The King!'

  'Farmer George and ol' Snuffy.'

  'To the best cunt in Christendom!'

  'Nay, boys.' It is Ween Tull speaking. 'To our own Dr Dyer. Not happy in 'is name, I'll grant you . . .' - cheers for this wit -'. . . but as he gives no patents to any man or wife, nor takes up a knife more than to cut his bread, he saves more lives than any in the kingdom!'

  The toast is called. Says James: 'Generous of you, gentlemen Most.'

  A voice cries: 'Where's Will Caggershot? Gi' us one of your verses. Will. Gi' us "Sally SaUsbury"!'

  Caggershot wriggles up from the bench. '"The Epitar of poor Sally Salisbury".'

  The company gazes at him Hke happy schoolboys. Caggershot clears his throat.

  'Here flat on her back but inactive at last

  Poor Sally lies under grim death;

  Through the course of her vices she galloped so fast

  No wonder she's now out of breath.

  'To the goal of her pleasures she strove very hard

  But tripped up ere halfway she ran

  An' though everyone fancied her life was a yard . . .'

  He stops, gawping over the others' heads towards the door of the brewing-room. The rest now twist in their seats to see. James stands from the hearth bench, his arms open as if hoping physically to bring the company together again. "Tis only Mary, gentlemen. No need to leave off your songs.'

  We know who 'tis, Doctor.' Caggershot takes his seat. The farmers pool their gaze in the centre of the table. James shrugs and, going to Mary, hands her on to the bench next to Sam. Slowly the talk resumes, like an old pump, temporarily blocked. They drink; the drink is replenished. Mary is forgotten. Caggershot sings his songs, each more lewd than the last. Then Een Tull, brother of Ween, and the undoubted and piteous fool of the company, points his weebling finger at Mary, calling: "Ow 'bout the woman, Doctor, showin' off 'er teef an' that.'

  The request is chorused by others, and so swiftly it is evident that Een has said only what others have been thinking. James has half feared such a turn, yet hoped they would refrain out of respect for him as 'the Doctor', as the Reverend's friend, as Mary's evident protector. It stings him, this apparent betrayal. And it is he who is to blame, he who has exposed her. He stands, loaded with breath.

  'NO FREAK SHOWS, GENTLEMEN!'

  There is no one in the room, not even Mary, who knew James Dyer as the immaculate young man setting out for Russia in the

  autumn of 1767. None who have seen him in his finery, his coat of thunder and lightning, shaking the hand of the imperial ambassador as though it were the ambassador who should be honoured by the contact. None even who have imagined such a thing, save Sam perhaps, arranging gorgeous puppets in his mind as a kind of history. For the moment, the farmers are utterly routed.

  The stillness is broken by a sound like the onset of rain. Mary moves to the head of the table, her hands neatly gathered at her waist as though about to sing for them. She waits - that sure theatricality of hers - then parts her Hps in a snarl, so that the front teeth, neatly filed into points, are bared to the gums. From the table comes a low moan of wonder. How much better this is than a double-headed sheep or a mathematical fish in a stinking booth at a country fair. Their expressions are so ludicrous, some of them unwontedly mimicking Mary's snarl, that James's anger translates itself to laughter, a loud, liberating laughter, which might have earned some angry words had the Reverend not then entered the kitchen, his face, despite the bleeding, dangerously ripe after five hours of food and drink and cards. He peers quizzically at James, then addresses himself to the farmers.

  'Gentlemen, I fear I must detain you no longer. I am enough in the farming way myself to know you will be anxious to regain your homes.'

  The appearance of a superior, even one so free from glamour as a parson, is unpleasantly sobering. Pipes are tapped out, the last of the beer swilled from the mugs. Their expressions seem already to anticipate the cold sensations the next dawn will bring; the renewed struggle with recalcitrant beasts, the tramping through still, dark fields like the first or last men on earth.

  James brings out hats and greatcoats, scarves and gauntlets, sorry now that he has laughed. The yard fills with the manoeuvring, the shuffling and stamping of men and horses. The dog, which

  launched itself into a frenzy of yelps at their appearance, has received across its snout a sharp slap from the Reverend, and now lies on its belly in an ecstasy of restraint. Hooves on the cobbles ring like showers of flints. The farmers depart, their horses picking their way up the track towards the road, until at length only James and Sam and the Reverend remain, grouped in the emergent quiet, chiaroscuro fashion, around the Reverend's lantern.

  The boy shivers. The Reverend looks down at him as if surprised to find him there.

  'Had you your wits about you, Sam, you might have had a ride home with one of our guests.'

  James says: 1 shall walk him. I've been keeping him up with old stories.'

  *Ah, stories. . .' The Reverend nods as though the word signified to him in some special way. 'Well, you've some to tell.'

  'And some we share.'

  A smile flickers on the Reverend's face. 'We do that.' He sniffs the air. 'Watch your step on the ice, Doctor. Shall you take the lantern?'

  'Nay. Sam and I are learning our stars. We shall see them better without a lantern.'

  Sam has run back into the house to fetch their coats and James's staff. Waiting in the yard, James eyes the edge of the dressing that pokes from beneath the Reverend's wig. He wants to ask how he goes on with it, but the business of the bleeding continues to trouble him. He is relieved when the Reverend nods towards the open door, through which, visible among the remaining lights, Sam stands beside Mary, taking his leave of her.

  'He is fond of her,' the Reverend says.

  'Ay. There's something between them.'

  'Does she ever speak to him?'

  James shrugs. 'He understands how she means towards him.'

  Sam brings his coat, the heavy surtout, its pockets deep enough for books and apples and paper for sketching.

  WeU, then.'

  'God speed.'

  'Good night to you.'

  'Good night, good night, Sam.'

  They are drawing apart. The Reverend turns tow^ards the house, scratches behind the dog's ear and sighs, sighs so heavily it surprises him, as
if his body possessed some secret knowledge yet to permeate through to consciousness. His temple throbs; he touches it tenderly with two fingers. Odd that James's nerve should go like that. Odd how a man can change. Finished as a doctor, of course. All that talent! True, he was a hard and unlovable man before. But useful; by God he was. What does the world need most - a good, ordinary man, or one who is outstanding, albeit with a heart of ice, of stone? Hard one that. This dog's too skinny. Needs worming. Time to sleep now. Dream something good.

  From the house there is nearly a mile of pitted trackway to reach the bridge and the road that runs uphill to the village. It is darker here, under the shadow of trees and tall hedgerows, but the moon still guides them, showing deep ruts sequinned with frost, and the snaking of branches from the invisible to the invisible across bars of diffuse light. Where they find the sky unhindered they stop, Sam following the arc of James's hand as he names the stars, both of them staring up into the depths of heaven until it seems they can feel the earth tumbling under their feet, and they must look down or stagger. Their walking startles

  an animal; eyes in a body of umbra, a creature insubstantial as the quick, dry rustle of its escape through the hedge. Sam claims it for a fox, says he shall tell George Pace of it and earn a penny.

  By and by James persuades Sam to sing for him. Sam walks a way in silence, pondering his repertoire, then starts in with 'Old John Barleycorn'. His voice is too soft at first, then suddenly he is in his stride, a light treble voice, husky on the higher notes:

  'There was three men come out of the West Their fortunes for to try. And these three men Made a solemn vow John Barleycorn should die . . .'

  For some three or four minutes, this singing expresses for James more of the natural melancholy of Ufe than anything he has heard in cathedral or concert hall. Or madhouse.

  'They wheeled 'im roun' an' roun' the field Till they came unto a barn And there they made a solemn mow Of poor John Barleycorn . . .'

  They come out at the bridge, a stone hump with low parapets, and turn up the hill to Cow. A single light shows feebly from a house at the brow of the hill - Caxton's place. Passing, they peep in through the half-curtained window, at the backs of men working at their drink. Then they go on into zones of shadow, winding between the shut stone faces of sleeping cottages, the dark gardens, the breathing and shiftings of animals. Far off, yet very clear, comes the call of an owl, and its answer, equally clear, equally distant.

  The sexton's house is marked by a glow seeping through the glass of a downstairs window. The light shifts at the noise of their approach and the door is opened before they have knocked. The boy's mother stands in the entrance with her candle.

  *I trust he has been no worry to you, Doctor.' And then to the boy: What do you mean giving the doctor such trouble, walking all this way in the middle of the night?' There is more relief than anger in her voice.

  James says: 'I pray you not be too hard on him. I am to blame. And to walk on such a night is no hardship. Sam has been singing for me. He has a fine voice. I was thinking he should be among the choir. They are not over-endowed with fine singing there . . . Your good husband being a notable exception.'

  *You are kind to say so, I'm sure.' She makes the briefest curtsey, only really perceptible in the movement of the candle flame. Despite the doctor's present condition - virtually a hanger-on among the Reverend's household - he carries with him a vague measure of fame, and a certain gentility, which makes him, in her eyes at least, one of the Important People. She is touched also by his friendship for her son. It is a good light for the boy to be in; a good warm light.

  'You'll come in and take a smatter of something? For the night air?'

  'I cannot impose on you at such an hour, Mrs Clarke . . .' But already he is following her and her light into the house, past the shadow-elongated hat of the sleeping sexton, whose snores just reach them as they gather in the kitchen. Here the bedded embers of the fire give off their steady heat.

  The house is but the slightest bit smaller than the one James was a child in, the house at Blind Yeo, and there is much about it, the humble, scrubbed look of things, the complex blend of odours, the play of light on polished surfaces, that is as familiar to him as his own face.

  Mrs Clarke brings in her husband's mug, filled with ale, and sets it down in front of her guest. For herself she has a small glass of ginger wine. Sam, standing like a footman at James's shoulder, drinks milk out of a wooden cup.

  'Your husband is well?'

  'Thank you, sir, he is. But he must have his measure of sleep, mind. He says that working with so many eternal sleepers gives him an appetite for it.'

  'An appetite for what, madam?' The sudden warmth after the cold air has made him drowsy. Mrs Clarke blushes.

  'For sleep. Doctor. Only for sleep.' She glances at her son, then laughs unexpectedly. 'It is his joke. Doctor.'

  James says: 'There is not a profession in the world as does not have its particular humour. I regret that that of medical men is perhaps the grossest of them all. A proximity to the suffering of others produces a drollery more cruel than truly comic. It begins as a defence against horrors but soon becomes merely a way with them.'

  'I'm sure it was not so with you,' says Mrs Clarke. There is always, in the doctor's conversation, a gratifying air of imminent indiscretion.

  'No, madam, it was not, for the suffering of others did not trouble me in the least. I understood it only in so far as there existed a correlation between the sharpness of the pain and the fee that might be had for its relief James, whose gaze as he spoke was directed at the table, now looks up to measure the effect of this confession. There is an instant's confusion in her eyes but it passes quickly. She shows she is determined to be kind to him.

  'Sure you knew your business best. Doctor.'

  'Depend upon it, madam. I was - and this is no puff- the only surgeon of my acquaintance whose good reputation was not an utter fiction. Most had tongues and fancies that could have turned a tavern brawl into the siege of Troy, but come to the real business of healing and you had might as well be attended by a goose. Gold swords and hearts of the cheapest brass.' He pauses, smiling to take off the edge of anger that has crept into his voice. 'You see how unkind I am to my old profession. There were some good men

  among them, ay, and good women too. Those who knew how to comfort without touting hope when there was none. In truth, Mrs Clarke, there is little enough we can do, very little. We are born too late and too early - between the secret arts of the old world and the discoveries of the age to come. I had a certain genius, madam, mostly for the knife. But I never had that way of looking . . .' He gestures loosely in the air above his ale. '. . . that quality of attention towards another's suffering which marks out the true healer.'

  'Why, I fancy you are too hard on yourself. Doctor.'

  James shakes his head. 'No, madam, I am merely just. I was good in the smallest sense of the word. Wonderful dextrous but no man ever came to me for kindness.'

  There is a weight in the words and something iron in his tone which makes this last unanswerable. There is a long pause, then Mrs Clarke says: 'You have a sister, I think?'

  'I had two.'

  'They . . . ?'

  'Ay, the pretty one, Sarah. Died as a child along with my brother. I believe the other still lives, my Liza. That is, I do not know of her not doing so. I have not seen her since I was a boy.'

  'You told me they all died,' says Sam. 'That you was alone.'

  'Hush now,' says his mother, afraid to disturb so fragile a mood.

  'Did I say so, Sam? Well, it was near enough the truth.' He falls silent.

  Mrs Clarke waits, then offers, 'Mayhap you shall see her again.'

  'She would not be glad of it, I think. She has no cause to love me.'

  'A sister does not need cause to love her brother, Doctor. 'Tis her duty.'

  'There can be no talk of duty. I wronged her.'

  'As a boy. And boys often wrong their siste
rs. Lor', when I think of my own brothers. Yet we are friends enough now.'

  James shakes his head. 'I should not be able to look at her.'

  'Then she might care to look at you, her own flesh an' blood.'

  Impossible.'

  'Forgiveness is a great thing,' she says, 'for those with the heart for it.'

  James, his hand on Sam's shoulder, eases himself up from the table. In a quiet voice he says: 'She is blind. Was blind. The smallpox.'

  Sam is sent to bed. Mrs Clarke, candle in hand as before, leads James to the door. Stepping out from the house, he says: 'Did I talk strangely?'

  'You are always welcome wi' us. Doctor.'

  'Thank you. I feel it. My regards to your husband.' Again he marks the awkward curtsey. The door closes, a bolt slides home and the woman's footsteps fade into the body of the house. James makes his way up the path, blinking to clear the imprint of the candle flame from his sight. It feels colder now; the stones grate like glass beneath his shoes. He has reached the road when he is stopped by a softly floated 'tssst!' from the house.

  'You'll tell the stories, Dr James?' The voice seeps from a small casement under the eaves. Sam himself is quite invisible.

  'I shall.'

  'The Empress?'

  'Yes, Sam.'

  'An' why Mary's got pointy teeth?'

  'Go to bed, Sam.' He raises his arm, waves.

  The sexton's ale, bright and wholesome as it is, is not quite adequate protection against the frost now fingering its way through the folds of James's coat. Neither, after his conversation with Mrs Clarke, does he feel like trudging directly home - home! - to the Reverend's house and a cold, most Hkely empty bed. A half-hour of human society, a glass of rum and water, some insubstantial chatter - these

  shall settle him again. What did he mean, going on to Mrs Clarke like that?

  Coming abreast of Caxton's, he bows in through the low door, stands in the choppy light and breathes in the vile air of the place. A small front room with a small fire, benches polished to jet by countless breeches, and four tables upon which single candles give off coarse threads of smut. Caxton himself stands by the fire, arms akimbo, looking over the shoulders of a half-dozen of the Reverend's recent guests who are playing at dominoes, almost imbecilic with fatigue and drink. Seeing James, Caxton works his face into a semblance of welcome and the two men exchange greetings. Not having set foot in the place for months, James had forgotten how much he dislikes Caxton; not for the tavern-keeper's association with local poachers — poachers, by and large, are honourable men - nor yet for the rumours, strongly grounded, of his having sold evidence to the constables which led to the turning-off of a boy on a charge of stealing a gentleman's pocket-watch. His unease concerns the girl, Caxton's daughter, who stands, heavily pregnant and picking at the quicks of her nails, an arm's length from her father. Feeling James's gaze on her, she attempts a smile yet manages to express only a profound embarrassment. Caxton calls: What'll it be, then. Doctor? What shall the wench fetch you?'