After Sundown

by Mark Morris

  My fear, of course, was that when the last Mood took me, I was in mid-sentence to you. And that my letter would be discovered by Crispin – really, how could it not have been, as he dosed me from his stock of ammonium carbonate to revive me? When I came to I couldn’t see the letter anywhere, and I feared that he must have taken it and read it, and after destroyed it – and the repercussions he would visit on you would be most terrible. That he would have to step up his game. That in trying to warn you, I had only put you at still greater risk. But I found the letter. I found it in my pocket, neatly folded. I can only think that as the Mood descended I still had the presence of mind to protect myself and to protect you.

  This letter makes you so vulnerable. It is a curious power I have over you, I realise. The thrill of it. Well.

  It is possible, of course, and do not think I have not considered it, that Crispin found the letter, read it, then folded it and put it in my pocket. But I am still here. And yes, you are still here. I have seen you arrive at my husband’s surgery this very morning. I have suffered the look of ironic amusement you flashed at me as you make your appointment. The contempt you have for me! And I have seen you emerge once more from private consultation, from behind the door I am no longer permitted to open, and you have been all smiles, still quite yourself.

  I do not feel such urgency to warn you any longer. I deduce from the ledger this Deep Mood lasted three days. I assume from the number of appointments you have made to see my husband, and so blatantly too, that I am too late, that you are already lost.

  Still, I will write. And if I tell you long details of my personal history, and by doing so blunt the urgency of this letter even further, do not believe I am punishing you deliberately. Or, believe it, if you must.

  I fell in love with Crispin Watt on the 6th of April, 1844. I did not sentimentalise the date, not even then. But all appointments are recorded within a ledger, and I am now in charge of the ledger, and I can turn back a few pages and see the record of my first visit, so. As you may anticipate, like yourself, I made his acquaintance to employ his professional services, vis-à-vis my aching tooth.

  I was not inclined to love a dentist. I confess it, I have a great fear of dentistry. I do not, I should add, have a great fear of pain. I do not enjoy pain, but I understand that a life must inevitably prompt a certain amount of it, and it is an uncomfortable thing but not a frightening thing, and if it is not to be feared then it can be withstood. The birth of my daughter Eloise was especially difficult, and I remember there was a lot of blood, and I was led to believe there was some doubt whether we could both survive the process. I should have died, so my child should live. That would have been the correct form for it. And yet I pulled through – which, I suppose, in retrospect, was a little self-centred of me. I survived because I focused upon the fact there was some objective to it all, the suffering, the pain, the sheer embarrassment of lying there while midwives pulled something breathing from out between my legs – there was a reason, and if I could just clamp my jaws tight and ride through it, I would gain a little girl. There would be Consequences. With dentistry, with all the pain there, yes, and all the embarrassment too, what, at the end of the procedure, is the Consequence? A bloodied chunk of enamel to take home, something to stick under the pillow for the tooth fairy. What could I want with that?

  And it seems to me that toothache is the most personal and private pain to withstand – because isn’t the mouth the most intimate part of the body? When John fondled at my breasts, or put his hand inside my hole, really, it only took the smallest concentration and I could make those parts of the body seem so very far away, they had very little to do with me at all. But my mouth – oh, I didn’t want him fixing his lips upon mine – it was mine. And the pain within my mouth was mine too. I would not want a dentist, a stranger, making me open up wide so he could find my pain, to see right into me, to invade myself like that.

  When I was a little girl I went to the dentist, and he extracted a tooth. It was probably the work of seconds, and I’m sure he was the best dentist that could be bought – my father would not have stinted in such matters. But it seems in my memory to have lasted a hellishly long time, and I can see that dentist as a giant, a big hulking brute. How I cried. How I tried to fight him off, and my arms had to be pinned behind me. On the way home, after the deed was done, Mother and Father told me that they were ashamed of me. That I should wipe my eyes, and never behave so demonstratively again. And I learned two things from that. I made two vows. That I should never cry. (And I have kept that vow, I didn’t shed a tear when either of my parents died.) And that I should never again visit a dentist.

  As Baby Eloise was teething I would hold her close and try to will the pain away – but I would refuse to think of my own teeth, and how every day my gums would bleed, and how so often (and for so long too) there would be a dull ache when I woke in the morning (John would say I ground my teeth in bed, I think that’s what did it), and how I had taken to eating cautiously on only one side of the mouth – this particular side, naturally, varying dependent on which side was the most sensitive that day.

  But there came a time when I could ignore the pain no longer. I would pace the house all night waiting for dawn, because it seemed that pain was so much worse in the dark, in the small hours when everyone was abed it turned into a demon and blotted out all thought. And John insisted I must go to a dentist. John was a man who rarely insisted on anything, so I knew it was time to listen. He told me I wasn’t running the house efficiently for lack of sleep. That I was snapping at Eloise and at her nanny. That moreover he loved me, and could hardly bear to see me in such discomfort. He told me he would accompany me to the dentist if I so wished, he would take the day off from the bank – and I said that would not be necessary. He told me that he wished he could take my pain from inside my mouth and put it inside his, so he could suffer instead of me. And I rather think he meant it.

  I should explain. John is my first husband, some would say my true husband. But I don’t see how he can be now. I don’t see how that is possible. And Crispin and I may have never walked up the aisle together (indeed, we have never together been to church!), but he is my husband, he is mine. Just as I fear he may become yours. Just as I fear he may already be.

  Of course, I was frightened visiting the dentist. I considered not even entering the establishment – no one could have stopped me – I could have just turned, and fled far away. There would have been Consequences – I would never have seen John again, nor Eloise neither, and my whole life would have changed – and so it seemed like a very drastic option to take, yet still, it was an option. But I would still have had the toothache. Believe me, if I could have run from my life and left the toothache behind, I might have done it.

  I gave my name to the woman at the desk with the ledger. She was old and ugly, and seemed barely to have any teeth in her head herself, and I remember at the time thinking she was hardly a good advertisement for the firm. The ugly woman wasn’t kind, but she wasn’t exactly rude, and she told me I should take a seat, and that the dentist would see me soon.

  The dentist was not as I expected. You know Crispin, of course. You know what an impression he makes. But to me, with my memory of dentists as being big and brutish, the contrast between my dread expectations and the reality of the man was all the more acute. Bookish, lanky, a gentle face hidden somewhat behind owlish glasses. I looked him over critically.

  “Your arms,” I remember saying, “hardly seem strong enough to pull a tooth from out of my head.”

  He smiled. “I assure you, madam, I am equal to the task.” And he offered me his hand to shake. I thought that was a peculiar thing for a dentist to do, and then it occurred to me that maybe he was inviting me to inspect the strength of his wrist, so I shook his hand firmly, and was in no especial way reassured.

  “Where is the offending tooth?” he asked, and I opened my mouth and showed him. I imagined it
was by this stage bright red and pulsating, it should have been easy enough to spot. “I see,” he mused, “well, we can have that out in a moment! How long has it been since you last visited a dentist?” And I didn’t want to answer that, because to have done so would have suggested my age, and I thought that his asking was rather an impertinence.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, and he smiled, and I could see at last his own teeth, and how white they were, and how neat, and how full his mouth was. “There’ll be no pain. I’m a practitioner in the Arts of Innovative Medicine. There’s a new method, straight from the Americas. Tell me,” and he leaned forward, as if in confidence, as if he were telling me the biggest, naughtiest secret, “have you ever taken nitrous oxide?”

  * * *

  Another break in the narrative, and I apologise – but even at the mention of that sweet, beautiful gas I give myself up to oblivion. I must be more careful. I shall be more careful. I dreamed of Eloise. I think. Sometimes in my Deep Moods I dream of nothing at all, but now there’s a memory of Eloise in my head. I’m glad. Most days I can barely remember I even have a daughter.

  So even if this letter does you no good – and I worry about you, I see there have been six new appointments made, I fear by now you are as lost as I am – at least writing to you does me good, if it brings even briefly my little Eloise back to me.

  He’d not told the truth about the nitrous oxide. There was pain, there was a lot of it, and I recall even now with so much else forgotten that awful ripping sensation as he tore the tooth out of my head. But the nitrous oxide meant I didn’t care. I knew what was happening was bad, and that every instinct in my body was shrieking at me to protect myself – but I let it all happen anyway.

  Isn’t that just like love? When you can’t stop yourself. Even if you know nothing good can come out of it. Even if you know that all before you is ruin, and shame, the loss of honour and so many more important things besides. But the love makes you woozy.

  I get ahead of myself. And besides, you know. You know. I can see it in your smiles. I’d like to slap those mocking smiles off your face.

  John was waiting for me at home. He was worried for me, he told me he’d taken the day off from the bank anyway, he couldn’t concentrate knowing I was undergoing such a fearsome operation. And sometimes when John would say such dear and loving things I’d feel a softening towards him, but now the sensation was numbed, everything he said sounded a bit annoying, and I wondered whether that too was an effect of the gas. I was still in pain. And a rudimentary analysis with my tongue revealed that the dentist hadn’t extracted the entire tooth; he’d broken it, and the stump still remained embedded in my gum, sharp now and splintered, and still throbbing away with gusto. John was furious. He told me that he’d go and see the dentist, expose him as a charlatan. He’d find someone more worthy to venture inside my mouth. I told him not to worry. I would go back the next day, see Mr. Watt for myself, and I was sure everything would be put right.

  The receptionist didn’t look surprised I had returned so soon, and entered my second appointment big and thick into the ledger. I went in to see the dentist. I opened wide, in he peered. “Oh dear,” he said, and laughed a little awkwardly. “I do seem to have let you down rather. Let me have another try.”

  “With more nitrous oxide?” I asked.

  “With more nitrous oxide,” he agreed, “and lots of it! But this time, if you trust me, I shall have to administer it to you much more carefully. But do you trust me?” I told him I trusted him; I opened my mouth as large as it would go. The day before he had wafted the gas over me every which way with a bit of rubber tube, there’d been no direction or control to it at all. Now he took the tube – he put it in his own mouth – he sucked on it, hard, until his eyes bulged fit to pop.

  I was surprised, but I kept my mouth wide open.

  And then he clamped his lips upon mine, and blew the gas into my mouth.

  As I write it down, I can see that it sounds untoward. But I want to stress that even at this stage this wasn’t a kiss, there was nothing informal about it, and as he pressed his mouth against my own, and wiggled about a little to ensure that the gas filled every possible crevice in there, it all seemed very medical and proper. At length he pulled away.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Perfectly,” I assured him.

  “Good,” he said, and took another puff. Then he was back at my mouth once more. This time I began to feel light-headed; I determined to enjoy the experience; I closed my eyes, and drifted a bit. I resolved to keep my tongue away from his, but the tongue loved the gas, it danced in it, it writhed – and I think it may have brushed against his, it couldn’t help it.

  I think we forgot about my tooth for a while. Again I told him that his arm was too scrawny to extract a tooth properly, and he laughed, and said maybe I was right; and I said that my arm was stronger than his, and he asked if that were a challenge, and I said it was, and we arm wrestled for a time, and I won, although I wonder now whether he let me.

  “Oh, your tooth,” he said suddenly, maybe half an hour later, and he yanked out the little stump, and presented it to me with all ceremony. He did a little bow. I tried a curtsey in response, but I was lying on a couch, it was hard to do, and I nearly rolled off.

  And then suddenly the dentist was holding his head in his hands, turning from me. “Oh, G_d,” he said, “oh, G_d.”

  I asked him what was wrong.

  “I think I’m in love with you,” he said. “I can’t control myself.”

  I told him that was most unfortunate, because I was a married woman.

  “I know,” he said, “and I’m a married man, the situation is impossible.” He told me he was married to the toothless old crone out in reception. I confess, I admitted some surprise he’d got himself shackled to such a fright. “You mustn’t judge her,” he said, “she’s a good woman, she’s kind. And maybe I did all that to her, who knows what horrors we do to each other in the name of love? Oh, G_d!”

  He seemed very distraught, and I wanted to reassure him, so I got to my feet. The upright position no longer seemed a natural one to adopt, and I wobbled a bit. And I tried to give him some nitrous oxide of my own, I pressed my lips to his and exhaled deeply, just so he might get some of my last traces.

  “I just want to be happy,” he said. “Don’t I deserve that? I’m not a bad man. In spite of what I do to people. Forgive me!”

  I thanked him for his dentistry, gave him one last blast of my gas. Pushed it as far as I could with my tongue, and wiggled it around a bit. And told him I wouldn’t see him again.

  That night I went back to John. John seemed a very comfortable thing all of a sudden, warm and reassuring, and not a little dull. He asked me if I was all right, and I showed him the tooth stump Crispin had given me, and he winced a bit, and said we need hardly have it as a keepsake, and threw it into the fire.

  He said to me in bed, very gently, in the dark, “Darling, I think it’s Thursday.” And I’d so forgotten which day of the week it was. “But we don’t have to,” he assured me, “not if you don’t want to, not with the awful trial of the last two days.” But I told him I was ready. And so he took off his pyjamas, and got up on top of me, and he began to grunt. And I lay there and I thought of the wonders of modern dentistry, that pain could be suppressed so easily, it was really a marvel – and I thought of the dentist too, Crispin Watt, his name was Crispin Watt. I tried the surname on for size, and it sounded naughty, it sounded odd, but it sounded good. “Are you all right?” John asked, and I said I was. And then, and it was the funniest thing, I felt I began to smell the nitrous oxide coming off me. I could breathe it, it was in my lungs, it was in my nostrils as I exhaled, exhaled thick clouds of it, and if I puffed with my mouth I could fancy I was sending out big greasy bubbles of the stuff, bubbles floating over me, floating over John as he pumped away, bubbles that just would
n’t burst. “Are you sure you’re all right?” John said, and I said I was, yes, perfectly, yes. I could tell he was wondering why I was panting air at him, so I thought I’d better stop – or, at the very least, pant it out a bit more discreetly. But the gas made me want to laugh, I had to swallow my giggles down, I didn’t want John to be alarmed, I didn’t want him thinking I was enjoying myself. And then – and then – and then I felt I wasn’t quite me at all – that I was watching from above, that I was up there floating with the bubbles, and I was looking down on this poor woman being flattened by a tedious old goat, and I was wondering why she’d bothered, why she didn’t kick him off and find someone more handsome and more charming and just plain better – and then – and then, I swear – it was as if I could feel my skin changing, I could feel it getting looser, puddingy, I could feel my eyes glaze, and I could feel there wasn’t a tooth in my mouth – and then there was the pain, the familiar pain, and it pulled me right back into myself, I heard the goat grunt, I grunted too, I couldn’t help it – “Are you all right?” said John, as he rolled off. “Tell me you’re all right, I need you to be all right, I love you so much,” and I said I was all right, of course I was all right, I was always all right, and I said I loved him too.

  * * *

  We spoke today. Do you remember? Up you came to the reception desk to make another appointment, and you wanted me to write your name down fat and thick in my ledger. Oh, you wanted me to write your name. And I thought this was my chance. I could warn you, right then and there. My tongue is more lively today, I can form actual words – so long as they are simple and don’t have too many syllables! Or I’d say nothing at all, just take out the letter written thus far, and thrust it into your hands. Even this incomplete account might be enough to save you.

  But I didn’t. Because I understood the way you looked at me. I knew. I know. The way the mistress looks at the wife. There wasn’t a scrap of pity in it, just scorn. You think you’re saving him. You think you’re saving him from me. The irony of it. I would laugh, but laughter is as hard as talking. You are cruel. Was I cruel to my predecessor at the reception desk? Perhaps. I did not mean to be. I did not help you. I did not save you today. I was not kind, but I was not exactly rude. I told you to take a seat, the dentist would be with you soon.