Ingenious Pain Page 9

  James says: "Tis a swan.'

  'A swan? Father, Jem says 'tis a swan.'

  'Glory be,' says the farmer. 'She has come back.'

  The bird stays several nights and then, disturbed by Joshua's frequent visits, it leaves as suddenly as it came. Joshua does not appear troubled by its going. The change in him, the extraordinary reverse of his decline occasioned by the bird's arrival, continues. He does not drink, he shaves his face and wears his church-going clothes. Much of his time he is alone in his room, in prayer or meditation. The farm he has no interest

  in. His thoughts are on higher things, and when Liza gently chides him, he smiles at her and strokes her face saying: 'Soon, wench. Soon enough.'

  James knows that soon means never. He is curious, a little impatient, to see how things will end. He suspects that Joshua will one day disappear, leaving without warning, without any indication of where he has gone.

  It is the spring thaw when the day finally arrives. There are violets growing on the banks at the side of the road and the first brimstone butterflies are flying over the hedgerows. Joshua has not been seen since the previous evening. As darkness comes, Liza, hoarse from calling, sends James to fetch Tom Purely. Tom comes back with James. The Widow is already red-eyed, silently keening. Tom takes a lantern and sets off to go around the farm. James goes with him but Tom is less friendly than in the old days. He is not alone in thinking the boy is somehow at the root of the family's disasters.

  They do not have a long search. Joshua is in the barn, at the back where there are still feathers from the swan. At first they do not see him, but the light catches the nail-heads in his boots. He is lying face down in his dark suit, his knife gripped tight in his right hand. There is blood, a black pool that frames his head. Tom inches closer; the light trembles in his hand. He reaches down, takes a hold of Joshua's shoulder and slowly turns him until he lies upon his back. Above the slashed throat the mouth seems to smile still and the open eyes gaze upward as if, in his last agony, Joshua Dyer had seen something wonderful moving in the air above him. Tom runs out of the barn, hollering. James stays in the dark a moment, nudges the corpse with his foot as if to be sure the farmer is gone, then turns, feels his way into the yard, pauses, looks one last time at the star-illumined litter of the place, then fetches from his room dead Charlie's winter coat.

  Dawn finds him walking steadily on the Bristol road, a parcel tucked beneath his arm. In Blind Yeo, in a dead house, a girl cries and cries his name. No one comes.

  FOURTH

  Tain, friends, is from the devil. It is his touch, his caress. His venemous embrace! Who here has not heard a man in agony cry out and curse his God . . . Or a woman in childbed, blast the unborn infant's ears with groans and shrieks . . . The loving parent is transformed into an ogre. The child by pain is parted from his prayers, the good man from his goodness. It is a hell on earth! It casts us into the flame while yet we live . . . And doctors! We know how much they may do! We know how their ministrations can double our suffering . . . And then they rob us when we are too weak, too much out of our wits to boot them down the steps of our house. Death is sweet release. Think now, I ask you, think now of your greatest suffering, of a day, a night, when some raging pain in your tooth or bowels, in your skull, in your leg ... a burn from the fire, a fall from your horse, or one of the thousand noxious diseases that rend us from within. Remember, how each and every one of you, in your torment, would have exchanged your skin with the most wretched in the kingdom, just but you might have a minute, nay, a half-minute's relief.

  Tea, I tell you this: it shall come to you again, and worse than you have known before, worse tenfold. You are the candle; your suffering is the flame. It feeds on you! What would a man not then give to have at hand some inexpensive remedy he might himself

  administer? Think of that, friends. Think what you would not give for such a boon . . .' Gummer pauses to let the words do their work. He is in good voice today and there is a good crowd to hear him, as many perhaps as fifty, crammed into the stale, grassy, boozy air. There is the sound of money, very faint, but quite audible to Gummer.

  James, who has heard the speech a score of times, twists about to take a better view of the people he will shortly be performing for. Farmers in hot broadcloth steaming like cattle; apprentices in fustian, hungry for any diversion, something to hoard in memory and nibble at through the tedium of the week. Market women in linen caps and gowns, some with their chapped hands clutched by local beaux in leather waistcoats. At least two faces he recognises from other fairs; professional showmen. One walks a high-wire, the other sells charms to protect against gunshot wounds, or the clap, or toothache. They will recognise him, of course, but there will be no trouble. An unofficial guild exists between the showmen. A good new act is more an asset than a threat. More punters, more excitement. Purse strings loosen.

  The woman beside James delivers a surreptitious dig to his ribs. It means: 'Keep still. Draw no attention to yourself.' The woman's name is Grace Boylan, former prostitute, though still available to those who favour a larger, motherly sort of whore. Gummer says she has a good face, that is, a face that betrays almost nothing of her character. Nor does she play her part too strongly like the strumpet they used in Devizes who waved her arms and wailed like a village Thisbe. The crowd laughed at her and things went dangerously wrong. Grace behaves herself; she is credible. Best of all, she is oddly unmemorable.

  Gummer draws a handkerchief from his sleeve and wipes his brow. He is dressed in a good black coat, part parson, part physician. The sweat is real enough; so too are the heat and the breath and the gawping hundred-eyed creature gazing up at him.

  The deceit is very physical; the hard but stylish end of the market. It is something to be proud of, and Gummer is proud. His sole ambition, from his brathood in some unspeakable neighbourhood of an English city, has been to become Marley Gummer, and by virtue of his unstinting effort, his unerring eye for another's weakness, he has achieved it. Mentally, he w^alks through fields of cloth of gold. Only now^ and then, liverish on dark, inclement days, does he look over his shoulder at the young v^^olves coming up behind him; looks and shudders.

  'Friends! I am a Christian gentleman. As such I come among you today. I do not seek personal profit' - he waits for the jeers; a half-dozen come; he closes his eyes in the manner of one long used to such injustice - 'I do not seek personal profit more than that which will enable me to continue my crusade. For if pain comes from the devil, then to fight pain is to fight with angels!'

  Behind Gummer is a box, iron-bound. He opens it and lifts out a bottle of dark brown fluid. For the rest of his pitch he holds the bottle over his heart with both hands.

  'I was, in my youth, betrothed to a girl of infinite sweetness. A girl of such loveliness and virtue . . .'

  A voice calls: 'One or other. Never the twain t'gether!'

  '. . . of such Christian virtue I shall never look upon her like again. Not in this world. She was my bride but one brief year, then took sick of a complaint that baffled the most eminent minds. The sight of her suffering' - he gulps; there are moans of sympathy from some of the women - 'brought me to the very precipice of madness. I prayed that I might take her place, that I might die and she live. 'Twas not to be.' His eyes fill; a plump tear winds down his cheek. For a moment he seems incapable of continuing. He groans.

  'Why, I asked, was I spared? For what? There was no happiness in the world without my bride. And then it came to me in a dream, that I, Marley Gummer, had been chosen as the instrument through which the burden of man's suffering might be eased.

  Heavy task! I searched for years among the wisdom of the ancient world. I devoured Hbraries. I studied Galen. I corresponded with the great Boerhaave. All to no avail. I was, I confess it, on the point of abandoning my search when, in the great library of Alexandria, a scholar of that place, a man of antique manner, brought to me a volume crusted with the dust of centuries and said . . .'

  With what tongue did he
converse?'

  The heckler possesses an alarmingly cultured voice. Gummer's face betrays a flicker of discomfort, an instant's loss of poise. He cannot see who called out. He lobs his reply in the general direction.

  'He spoke, sir, with his own tongue, and I with mine. We had but one apiece. "This," intoned the relic, "is what ye seekest." I opened the tome and began to read, ay, and was reading still when the cock crowed and the sun climbed into the sky. This book, friends, was writ by the very doctor who cured the archer Philoctetes of the serpent's bite . . .'

  'Does it cure warts?'

  'How much is it?'

  'Patience, patience ... In those pages I discovered the recipe which, with some alterations to render it palatable to a Christian people, I present to you this afternoon.' Gummer holds the bottle aloft like a communion chalice. "Yet I would not have you take my word on it. Indeed, I forbid you to purchase even one bottle until its efficacy is proved beyond doubt.'

  'How you gonna do that, then?'

  Grace leans again into James's ribs. This time it means: Get ready.

  'I intend, before your very eyes, here upon this dais' - a dozen tea chests covered by a sheet of muddy canvas - 'to demonstrate in the clearest manner imaginable the miraculous force of this draught. I carry no testimonies, though I could pave the road from here to Scotland with them if I chose. I prefer the witness of your own

  eyes. Thomas, after all, was no less a saint for wishing to place his fingers into our Saviour's wounds.'

  'You blaspheme, sir!' Again, that voice.

  Gummer says: "Tis in the gospels, friend, should you care to read them.' He sets the bottle on a small table on which there is also a candle stub, and something that catches the light: an implement.

  In pursuit of verus - his voice booms - 'it will of course be necessary to inflict pain before I may relieve it. The suffering wiU not be lengthy but the sharper the fangs the sweeter the relief which follows. Who among you will come up? Who will sacrifice a little blood for his feUow men. The risk, I assure you, is very nearly negligible.'

  He takes up the implement. It is a steel pin turned to a very obvious sharpness. 'Come now, somebody . . .' He hits upon the least likely among the crowd, gathers their refusals, their hurried 'Not I, by God'. His eyes settle on James, then on Grace.

  'Madam, are you the mother of that fine boy?'

  'Ay, sir. His sole parent since his father died in the French wars.' Murmurs of approval and interest.

  Says Gummer: 'Gave his life for his country. Noble. And might the boy, madam, give a drop of his father's martial blood for something greater than nations? I mean, madam, for the Truth!'

  'My Billy! Never! Why, 'is skin's like silk. He has but to graze his knee and he turns white as eggmeat.'

  'A sensitive child?'

  'Oh, very, sir, begging your pardon.'

  'Then do you not see how he is precisely the subject I require? Madam, if you will but let me have him' - some cries of 'Let 'im!' - 'it shall, I promise you, be your proudest boast that your Billy brought the light of understanding, the beacon of hope, the balm of ease to these' - a grand sweep of his arm - 'goodly folk.

  Come, madam, the suffering will be but a moment. A blink of the eye. For his father's memory.'

  James says: 'Let me go. Mother. Let me be brave like my father.'

  It is Gummer's experience that one can never be too obvious in these matters. He reaches out over the heads of the crowd, exalted as a Methodist. 'Pass the boy up! Pass him to me.'

  James is handed forward. A local butcher, dried blood black beneath his nails, lifts the boy on to the stage. 'There,' says Gummer, 'there now. This is a great day for you, Billy. A great day.'

  James faces the crowd. He has never felt a moment's stage fright. Gummer's hand is on his shoulder. James looks down at the foolish open faces. Near the back of the booth, by the opening, he catches sight of a large wig, half a face, an intelligent eye, a collar and shoulder of good cloth. For a moment the eye holds him, probes him, then Gummer turns him and the act begins.

  Gummer invites the butcher on to the stage to hold the boy steady. The butcher grins, pleased, self-conscious. Gummer flourishes the steel pin for the crowd to admire. He asks the butcher to touch its point. The butcher dabs the point with his finger. It draws a pearl of blood. The butcher frowns at his finger, then grins again and holds it up for the crowd. Gummer takes hold of James's fingers and turns the boy's hand palm up. For several seconds, as if wrestling with a tender conscience, he holds the needle poised above the taut skin of the boy's palm. Then he pricks it, the point of the needle making a tiny shallow wound. James screams and faints in the butcher's arms. The crowd bursts into excited chatter. Gummer waves his arms to silence them. He puts the pin on the table and lights the candle. Salts are waved under the boy's nose. He revives. The butcher pats his shoulder like a worried uncle then, at Gummer's request, seizes the boy in his arms. Taking hold this time of the boy's wrist.

  Gummer quickly runs the flame over the delicate skin. James writhes in the butcher's grasp; he screams, howls, begs; he laughs. He faints again; he is revived. The candle is returned to the table.

  Now the bottle containing the remedy is uncorked and held to the boy's lips. James takes in as little as he can. He knows the taste well enough; vinegar, laudanum, honey. The bottle is stoppered. The crowd scrutinises every movement. After only a few seconds the child's strength seems to return. He stands up strongly. It is amazing how little fear he shows. Gummer takes up the pin once more. The butcher makes ready to grab the boy but Gummer shakes his head. Again the point of the needle is held above the skin of the boy's palm and slowly, slowly, Gummer drives it through the flesh until a half-inch of steel appears through the back of James's hand. The butcher's jaw drops. It is a moment Gummer adores. There is not a mind in the place he does not now command. He withdraws the pin, wipes it on a white cloth and holds up the cloth like a bride's wedding-sheet. He fetches the candle and burns the boy's skin. The child does not so much as sigh.

  Even before Gummer has extinguished the flame, the first voices are clamouring for the potion. James jumps down to rejoin Grace Boylan. Some of the crowd touch him, as if for good luck. Gummer gets down to business, dealing with several customers at a time -money from this one, change to another, orders from a third, smiling encouragement to a fourth. It lasts an hour. People who have not seen the show but see a steady stream of people emerge from the booth with bottles in their hands go in to buy for themselves. Something this popular must be good. With the last twenty bottles Gummer doubles the price. It is a gamble, but no one complains. The last bottle is bought by a gentleman with green eyes.

  James and Grace have left the fair. They are sitting under a tree eating bread and cold bacon. It does not do to be seen too much.

  As night falls they make their way back to the booth. The flaps of the entrance have been roped together except for an opening at the bottom through which, on hands and knees, James and the woman crawl into the silence of the booth. A servant, Adam Later, is sleeping under a sack. Gummer is sitting on the boxes. To his right the candle burns, throwing watery shadows over the canvas. Next to the candle is an ornate, long-barrelled pistol, cocked.

  'Aha!' He beams at them, already a Httle drunk. 'The changeling and the tart! Come hither, boy. Claim your reward.'

  James approaches. The blow knocks him backwards on to the trampled earth.

  Says Gummer: 'Let that remind you to keep your amusement to yourself. Laughter, by God! We had trouble enough teaching you to scream.'

  James stands, brushes the grass from his jacket. Gummer shakes his head. 'Alas, 'tis almost pointless to strike him. What a prodigy! What a very dangerous child. Come, I shall not hit you again.' He rests a hand on James's shoulder. For some seconds they gaze into each other's eyes. 'Sleep,' says Gummer. 'Mistress Boylan and I shall finish the bottle.' He draws a watch from his pocket. 'The pair of you leave two hours before sunrise. We meet at Lavington.'

 
Says Grace: 'We shall settle accounts first, mind.'

  Gummer nods. 'You shall have gold, dear Grace. Gold and silver.'

  'And shall I?' James is standing just beyond the candle's first ring of light.

  'The boy gives me the creeps,' says Grace, helping herself to the bottle. Gummer shrugs. 'You do not need to love him. He, after all, could no more love you than this could.' He taps the barrel of the gun.

  'Ay,' says Grace. 'God forbid he should ever grow to manhood.'

  James lies awake beneath his coat for an hour, listening to the hum of their voices. Figures pass by the booth, some singing snatches of song in drunken voices, some quarrelling; a dog sets up barking. How familiar these sounds of the human forest have become to him. At first they kept him from sleep, listening, weighing up each cry. He was wary, and though never fearful he kept himself in readiness for flight. It did not occur to him that Gummer might protect him.

  He had found Gummer in Bristol, in a house in Denmark Street, hard by the hustle of the docks. He was not hard to find; it was merely a case of enquiring from those who in looks most approximated Gummer himself. Thus, by a trail of card-sharps, showmen, impersonators and pimps, he was brought to the door of the house. A middle-aged woman admitted him and passed him on to a younger woman who led him to a chamber, a bare room with clothes strewn on the cot and floor, a table with the remains of a meal, a glass broken at the stem. Gummer was kneeling by a wall, apparently in prayer. He turned at the sound of the door opening. He did not seem surprised to see the boy. He looked at him, then back at the wall, then waved the boy over. There was a small knot-hole in the wall. Gummer moved aside. James placed his eye to the hole, felt the coolness of air against his eye. The room he was looking into was larger than Gummer's and there were pictures on the wall and a four-poster bed with a cat and a chamber pot beneath it. On the boards an old man, naked, on hands and knees, was being ridden by a woman, who struck his flabby arse with a riding-crop and made him carry her about the