Ingenious Pain Read online

  They go, glancing back, the faintly shocked expressions of people who have sobered too quickly.

  Joshua, Elizabeth, Amos and the stranger remain. 'Marley Gummer,' says the stranger, 'at your service, ma'am. I have some experience of chirurgical procedures.'

  Amos puts a hand on Joshua's shoulder. 'You take off now wi' yer lady. I'll work fasser and cleaner wi' just Mr Gumly here.'

  'Gummer, sir. Marley Gummer.'

  Joshua looks to his wife. She is sitting on the edge of the bed. She gazes for several seconds into the boy's face, then kisses his brow. 'Why, he's brave,' she says. 'See how brave he is?'

  With Joshua and Elizabeth gone, the two men strip off their coats, Amos to his last good shirt, Gummer to a fine though faded waistcoat, in sea colours. Across the bed they hold a hurried consultation. Several times the blacksmith urges the boy to rest easy. Gummer observes that he does, remarkably so.

  Amos, with blunt fingers, examines the break. He has set

  perhaps twenty bones in his time. He has never seen a break so complete as this. The longer he delays, the less hope there is of saving it. It may already be too late.

  'Daft business climbing trees, eh, Jem?'

  'Surely', says Gummer, 'the folly is in falling rather than climbing.'

  'Then as don't climb . . . Damn, but I'd feel easier if 'e'd squeal a bit. Baint natural jus' lying there.'

  'He never speaks?'

  'Never.'

  'And yet he seems to understand. James Dyer, are you sensible of having broken your leg?'

  James glances down, looks at his leg, then at Gummer. He nods. Gummer holds the boy's gaze then looks over at the blacksmith. Gate says: 'We'd best be doing it.'

  Gummer holds up a hand. 'A minute more, sir. I begin to be intrigued. James, do you feel something here? A kind of fire?' Gummer sharply taps the swollen foot. The boy's expression is thoughtfiil, as though he were listening for a stone to sound in the bottom of a well. He shakes his head.

  The men exchange stares. Gummer jumps up from the bed, searches rapidly around the room and takes from the table next to the window a candle and tinder box. He lights the candle and brings it to the bedside.

  'Close your eyes, boy, and give me your hand.' There is something avuncular in his tone which for the first time makes the child wary. After a moment's hesitation James closes his eyes. He feels Gummer take his hand, a firm grip; then a sensation as if Gummer were brushing the tips of his fingers with a feather. He smells something, burnt meat. The blacksmith says: 'Thars enough now, Gumly.'

  When James opens his eyes there is a red, smoky weal across the fingertips. Gummer blows out the candle.

  'Most suggestive, Mr Gate, is it not?'

  Amos rasps his fingers in the stubble at his neck. 'You think as the fall has smashed his senses?'

  'The odd thing here, sir, is not so much that he feels no pain, as that he does not expect to. What do you make of that, sir?'

  "Tis past believing.'

  'Not quite, please God, not quite. What is truly past believing is worthless, and I doubt not but this could sell better than the rabbit woman of Godalming - dealt with correctly, of course. There would have to be the right man in charge . . .'

  'Charge of what?'

  'My dear Mr Gate, come now, you appear perplexed. Do you not see it? If my surmise is correct we have with us here an oddity of the most subtle kind. Eh, boy? An aberration of nature. A true rara avis. A . . .' - lowering his voice - '. . . a commodity.' He laughs, throws his head back with a curious jerking movement. 'My, but today has had its surprises. Life, Mr Gate. Do you not find it voluptuous?'

  The blacksmith's face is solemn; it is the face he assumes when straightening horseshoes. 'Josh Dyer's son is not for sale, nor ever shall be. I can tell 'ee that much, mister. And we have a bone to set. So let's to it. Hold him fast now.'

  Standing by the end of the bed, Amos takes hold of the boy's foot. Gummer shrugs, pulls off his wig to reveal a head of unevenly cropped hair. 'As you wish, Mr Gate. Though I hardly think we need trouble to restrain him.'

  He binds the child in his arms. 'Haul away! Ha!'

  For two weeks James lies on the trundle bed watching the light ebb and flow on the whitewashed walls. Bees, flies, butterflies nose in through the open window. His leg is splinted with two boards left over from the building of the cow-stall. At some point the chickens have excreted on the boards as they excrete

  on everything. James picks at the hard black-and-white matter, flicking it at targets on the opposite wall. For three days there is fever, then the fever abates. The fall, in memory, in dreams, in waking fantasy, is the axis round which he slowly spins. Twice, on evenings when he is left alone with the candle, he repeats Marley Gummer's experiment. He does it once when Liza is there. She snatches his hand away, horrified. Thus he gathers the evidence.

  His leg mends with a speed amazing to all, all but himself. Viney calls, stays half an hour examining the boy, says he has never seen the like. Miss Lucket comes with a basket of strawberries from her garden. Elizabeth brings him his food, watches him eat, studies him as if she seeks to catch him out. One morning the Widow lumbers in, dips her finger into the water of his chamber pot, sniffs it, scowls at him. Gummer does not come. He wishes Gummer would come.

  Liza is his most frequent visitor. She brings paragraphs she has copied from the local papers. She reads them to James, sitting on the end of the bed and doing her best to bring out the gossipy or sensational tone, to breathe life into the comings and goings of ships and lords. Rinderpest has broken out again; a Quaker has been robbed at gunpoint on St Phillips Green; an old woman who left a candle by the curtains has been burnt to death. Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of St Albans are arrived at the Hot Well in Bristol. The death of the Irishman John Falls is announced, his life remarkable for his having once drunk two quarts of whiskey at a sitting and afterwards being able to walk home.

  She can feel him listening, peeping at the outer world through these chinks of information. When she has no more to read to him she chatters, telling him who she has seen during the day, who said what to whom. She asks him questions and answers them herself. It is a mode developed over the years; it is how one talks to James, She finds it restful, and all the family have long since ceased to expect him to talk. So when, one evening - she

  is sat at the end of the bed massaging his leg - he answers her, she looks round at the door to see who has come in. He has only said *Yes' or *no', neither can afterwards recall his first word, but it is enough. His silence, like an immense pane of glass, is shattered. Inside of a minute everyone is gathered about the bed. Liza says: 'Ask him a question!'

  No one can think of what to ask.

  Elizabeth says: 'How is your leg today, son?'

  For a long stretch he does not answer. Then he says: 'I wish to sleep now.'

  Joshua takes off his hat, shakes his head in wonder. It is like the lifting of a curse. He smiles broadly at his wife. 'Whatever next?' he says. 'Whatever next, eh?'

  A breeze curls into the room. Liza goes to the window, sniffs the air. 'Like rain,' she says, tears in her voice. She puUs the casement closed, draws the curtain.

  On an evening four days after the wedding, Amelda Ketch discovers a rash of red pimples on her forehead which, by the following morning, covers most of her body. Mr Viney is called, makes a cautious diagnosis of measles. Six hours later he is called back, Silas Ketch banging frantically on the front door. When he examines the girl a second time and sees how the pimples have formed into thickly grouped clusters, he warns them to prepare for the worst. On his way home he stops at a high place on the road and looks over the quiet country where death is stealing across the fields. He prays in the saddle, rides home, and knowing he will be at

  one bedside or another for weeks to come, goes straight to bed and sleeps.

  The following day he sees the papules are already changing into watery sacks that will shortly distort her face to the point where it is no long
er recognisably her own. He does what he can to comfort her, both for the physical pain and the mortal terror that has gripped her, but there is little he can do and he knows she has sensed as much. He orders the family to keep the fire banked, and to give her what water she wants together with a little wine to fortify her. More importantly, she is to be attended only by those servants and family who have themselves already suffered the smallpox. No children are to visit her. Any mirrors should be removed from her room. Yes, he has seen worse cases come through. There can be no excuse for losing hope.

  That evening the pustules form; by midnight she is delirious, and to the petrified relief of those who watch over her, the girl dies two days later, an hour before sunrise.

  Viney is not there when she dies. He already has five new cases, three of them children. They are the kindling; he can only guess how the fire will rage, how it will spread. He rides from one stricken home to another, eating his meals on horseback or standing in the kitchen while some sobbing woman cuts a slice from the spit. Were he a heartless man it might have amused him, how his powerlessness spurs them on to greater faith in him, as though his very shape atop the grey mare were enough to ward off disaster. He is loneHer than he has ever been in his life.

  The first death. The news is everywhere within hours. Elizabeth hears it from Dan Miller's wife, Ruth, who has heard it from Biddy Bidewell who has heard it from another. The Dyer children are sat about the table in the kitchen, all but James, still laid up in the little parlour. She does not say anything to them but her face betrays her. Liza gives her a worried, questioning look. Who was that at the door, Mother?'

  'Just Ruth Miller with a pot o' gossip.' She knows they will find out soon enough. Of the family, only Joshua and the Widow have been with the smallpox.

  Elizabeth takes a basket into the dairy, fills it with cheese and butter and cream to go over to the Ketch family the next morning, then goes upstairs to her room. When Joshua comes, the two of them sit on the edge of the old casement bed, hand in hand, wordless and pale, hardly a sound in the world beyond the rise and fall of their own breath.

  Hearing of Amelda's death, Sarah and Liza cry for an hour; then there are chores in the dairy, the hens to feed, a shirt to be darned. They do not feel especially threatened; they are fuU of strength and youth, and though they have seen the marks of smallpox on the faces of their elders, they have never seen the sickness at work. Life goes on. A half-dozen cases are reported in Coverton. One of Lady Denbeigh's kitchen servants is said to be in the balance. Elizabeth holds to what comfort she can and tells herself that the disease is not spreading as fast as they had feared, that there has not been much dying. Perhaps the disease is of a mild type and it was Amelda's constitution more than the sickness which carried her off. Then too, no near neighbours have been affected. The worst of it seems to be Kenn way and towards the sea. For a day, two days, she relaxes her vigilance. Then, as if the sickness had been waiting for a moment's inattention, it comes.

  Sarah complains of a persistent headache. Her limbs ache. She feels feverish. When the marks come Elizabeth resigns herself to saving what she can. Sarah is followed by Liza. Then Charles. She nurses them without tears or sighs. She sets her face against the power of the disease, attempts to resist the onslaught through the unremitting exercise of her love. James remains free from infection. She keeps him away both from herself and from the other children. The house divides into camps. Elizabeth, Sarah,

  Liza and Charles, Joshua, the Widow and James. From one camp come strange, pathetic cries, the air of fever. From the other, a tense and impotent silence.

  Elizabeth carries her bedding into the children's room and lives there with them, spooning honey-water, changing sweat-soaked clothes, mumbling prayers as she goes from one to the other. She feels oddly calm, as she did that night on the frozen river, but now the ice is thin and cracking and the voices of her children, seeping through the swollen membranes of their mouths, are the sound of the dark, cold-flowing river beneath.

  Joshua, on the understanding that he will not afterwards go to James, visits the sick-room, hanging above his children like an ineffectual planet, touching them with a despairing tenderness. Sarah, whose beauty has given him such great and quiet pride, affects him the most cruelly. The disease has turned her face into a mask of livid blisters, so that when she dies he is almost glad, though in the hour of her death he feels himself wrapped in a cloak of madness. Viney comes and helps lay the girl out and wrap her in her shroud. He sees in Elizabeth her will, hard and tempered. He knows that she will last at least as long as the storm. Joshua he persuades to keep to his work, tells him of other families, also grieving. Joshua hardly hears him.

  On his way out, Viney speaks to his old assistant through the door of the parlour. 'Your sister Sarah is with God, Jem, but your mother is a fine nurse. I have great hope of the others being well again.'

  The boy's voice comes muffled through the wood: 'Shall I die too?' The question is cool, undistressed.

  'We must all die one day, Jem.'

  'But shall I die now? Like Sarah?'

  'I think not, child.'

  'Nor I,' says the voice.

  A tumbril, the wheels muffled with sacking, comes next morning. Joshua goes with them to see his daughter into the ground. Elizabeth remains with Liza and Charlie. Delirious, their voices loop and shudder in the air. Charlie dies the day after his sister is buried. The last thing he does is to reach up, as if to pick an apple. Liza lies, one hand with her mother, one hand with death. In the hall the clock has not been wound. The hands stand at half past three. There is no fire in the kitchen. Even the cats have gone.

  James becomes a reader of sounds, recognising the muttered voices of Pegg the undertaker, and Viney and the parson. Sometimes there is a neighbour, kindness overcoming caution. Often he hears Joshua, the wheezing in his chest, the sudden, thunderous oaths. Widow Dyer brings James his food, a bare cold diet, yet he eats it with great appetite, licks the plate clean.

  He waits for Liza to come down like the others but the pustules on her face dry and scab over. Elizabeth holds down the girl's hands to stop her tearing at the scabs. On the morning of the twelfth day Liza sits up in bed and calls in a weary voice for her mother. Elizabeth, folding and refolding Sarah's clothes, sees the girl's blind gaze, the glutinous eyes, and goes to her, embraces her, presses the last of her strength into the girl's ribs. One has been saved, an immeasurable victory, and she notices, with something like indifference, the red marks that have risen on her own hands.

  Kitty Gate is the last to catch it; a boy called Slight is the last to die. The villagers bury their dead and the burial yard is raw with turned earth. The stonecutter

  has a new apprentice. Some find solace in the church, some in the bottle. Viney stables his horse, sleeps in the day and sits up at night, drinking brandy and muttering to those who ran past him into eternity; ran past him like children in a game, fleet of foot, easily ducking his clumsy hands.

  There are many, mainly young, whose faces show the marks of the sickness. Passing each other in the village, they nod warily and look about themselves as though in search of their former lives. But the old rhythms re-emerge. The first laughter, the first forgetful children spinning their tops on a flagstone; the first lovers walking the paths their mothers and grandmothers walked. The fruit is ripe and must be harvested. This season there are fewer arms, fewer quick hands. The shortage leaves the others numbed, too tired to think, too weary to grieve. Apples are 7s 6d a bushel; winter will not wait on their grief. Thus time, the sheer weight of days, turns them like water on a mill-wheel paddle.

  Farmer Dyer, his blind daughter and lame son, are pitied. In the aristocracy of suffering. Farmer Dyer is a lord. Not a great lord, but grand enough to be avoided, to be spoken of in a solemn voice. He appears to be losing his wits, growing wild. Goodwife Kelly, meeting Goodwife Coles on the Madderditch road, remarks that Dyer will be on the parish before Easter. The other replies with a shake of her h
ead. Josh Dyer will be cold in the ground before then and it's a poor look-out for the children and the old mother. Who would take them in now, even as servants? A word hangs between their heads unspoken. Workhouse.

  The yard, once the bright unblinking eye of the farm, becomes cluttered, overgrown, useless. The pig is sold, as are the sheep, and the grass grows high in the orchard. Christian Vogue, estate manager for the Denbeighs, rides down, speaks to Joshua from the saddle. When Liza asks what Vogue wanted Joshua will not

  answer, stares at her, too ashamed to speak. James he has ceased to notice.

  When drunk, the farmer calls for Liza to sing to him; lullabies. On nights when he finds no consolation in her voice he staggers into the yard to rant at the sky until exhaustion drives him in again.

  In the New Year Joshua comes into the parlour where James has slept ever since his fall. He wakes the boy, shaking him and pulling him from the bed. He says: 'I've seen her! In the barn! She be an angel now, Charlie.'

  Liza, a cloak around her shoulders, is standing by the back door. She reaches for her brother's arm. The three of them cross the frosted yard, a lantern swinging from Joshua's hand. They enter the barn. Tools and aromatic sacking hang from the walls; grain-seed crunches under their feet. Joshua holds up the lantern.

  'There!'

  Liza says: 'What is it, Jem?' She tugs at his arm.

  James peers forward to where the light laps faintly against the blackness at the far end of the barn. Something is moving there, white and faintly luminous. It is several seconds before he can distinguish it, the soft S of the neck, the slender head where the eye is set like a diamond.