The Taxidermist's Lover

by Polly Hall

  “Oh, hi. I’m Scarlett.” Blushes spread up my neck and face as I shuffled round onto my bottom and blindly reached behind me to grab the glue.

  “You certainly are!” he laughed and moved toward me. “Admiring the taxidermy, are you?”

  “My husband did it actually.”I could feel the leaked glue start to stiffen my fingers together and tried to prize them apart.

  “Oh yes, Penny mentioned he was a stuffer.” A stuffer! The jumped-up twat had nerve. His lips were moist as if he’d just applied lip gloss, and he had shoulder-length damp brown hair that looked freshly washed.

  “You must be Singe-on,” I said and held out my left hand (the one without the glue) and he took it awkwardly with his right and shook it, a puzzled expression on his face. The glue was well and truly hardened, so two of my fingers were stuck fast.

  Penny arrived with a tray of rattling floral tea cups on bone china saucers and a matching tea pot, steam curling out of its spout.

  “St. John, darling, I see you’ve had the pleasure of meeting our Scarlett.” Our Scarlett—I didn’t know when I became hers. I was yours and yours alone.

  He puffed himself up, more peacock than cobra, as Penny came in the room. His feet were encased in flat black espadrilles and I couldn’t help noticing a large tattoo of oriental writing stationed up and around his calf. He saw me looking so I pretended I was admiring the vile upholstered chair whose pattern made it look as if someone had been sick on it several times, then sat on it and smeared it with feces. It was too much to be in their company.

  “I’ve just remembered I’m late for an appointment.” I had accomplished what I had come for and quickly squeezed past Penny, keeping my glued fingers behind my back. I bundled Rudy and Jinx in the car. Later, I told you I glued my fingers while mending an old picture frame, but that was actually how I came to have superglued fingers that day. I had been reconstructing Parker. Only it wasn’t as simple as putting it all back together again. He wasn’t Humpty Dumpty. It was more like mending a china cup where miniature gaps could still let the liquid seep through. Parker’s soul was not going to be released so easily.

  After my fingers had been unstuck by your special glue-dissolving liquid, I found my copy of Wensley’s booklet wedged down the side of the sofa and retrieved it. One of the pages had been creased. Slightly annoyed, I turned to the section entitled, “The Transition of the Soul.” I was trying to work out if the sketched image of the mermaid had a real human head when you came crashing through the door, loud enough to wake the dead.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Just an old book . . .”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Souls and stuff . . .” I didn’t want you to know I was unnerved by your taxidermy when you had become so inspired.

  “Souls? What about them?” You came nearer so I covered the book and averted you with the offer of my lips.

  “I meant what I said about us.” You looked intently at me and pressed your lips against mine.

  “What?” I slid Wensley’s book beneath me and enfolded my arms around your neck.

  “The ever after. Us together, Scarlett.”

  I knew what you were saying, but how could we promise something when we had no evidence it could even be achieved?

  “What is ever after, Henry?” I wanted you to be clearer, irritated at your assumptions that we could just float off together like happy spirits.

  “Us—we’ll be together forever. Ever after.”

  “But where and how and what will it be like?”

  You sat beside me and touched my leg. “Scarlett, you think too much. It’s just a promise. That’s all we need to remember.” Just a promise. It was never just this or just that, there was always something more, something hidden.

  “But what if consent taints free will. Souls can be tainted by other souls in the transition from this life to the next if their material, or physical, bodies are polluted in the process.” I was quoting from Wensley at this point.

  “Polluted? By what?”

  “Don’t you see, Henry? These things, these weird hybrids,” I swept my hand around the room to further highlight my point. “They’re not right. There’s a reason they aren’t real creatures. Because once you start messing with nature—it, well, it starts messing with you.”

  “Scarlett, what has got into you? They. Are. Dead. Animals!”

  “No, no, that’s where you’re wrong,” I pushed myself away from you and you watched me with a puzzled, slightly concerned expression. “You haven’t let them die. Can’t you see? You keep them alive.”

  “I assure you, Scarlett, they are very much dead. Even the ones that look like they are alive. It’s not like us humans who can live eternally. They are dumb beasts.” You patted me on my leg and got up. I felt like a child again, consoled for having wild fantasies, but I knew I was right and you were wrong. Those dumb beasts, as you called them, were more alive than you could imagine. Wensley confirmed all the feelings and suspicions that had haunted me over the years. Death was just as important as life. And while all living things were not equal, it seemed all dead things were. You went to have a shower.

  The floorboards above creaked as you walked about, stripping off your clothes and stepping into the bathroom. I peered behind me at the hybrids. Their glass eyes peered back. “Glue us and stitch us and harness us to this world,” they said, “but we will always be yearning for the great beyond. The time will come. For all of us.”

  I turned my back on them and wondered what Rhett was doing and where he was now while I was trying to survive. He could’ve been camping in a desert or hiking up a mountain or building an igloo for all I knew. I heard the water from the shower splash against you in synchronized beats with the raindrops on the window ledge.

  There should be different words for rain, because the rain here is not uniform. It can be cruel and hammering, lashing down in sheets like a waterfall, or it can be light and misty, almost as if someone were spraying an aerosol over your head. There is the type of rain that soaks, rain that bounces, rain that trickles or floats or ripples like tears down a cheek. We have seen and felt all types of rain since living here on the moor, but the rain at the end of August was not just unwelcome; it was intrusive and hindering. This was biblical rain. The rain Noah had been warned of, that prompted him to build an Ark for his family and all the creatures of the earth.

  Out here we knew the risks of water sinking and meandering through the landscape. It was pumped and managed from our rivers and ditches so we could live in dry, clean homes. But when the rain kept falling, the noises from the villagers rose up above the pitter pattering of raindrops. We all knew that water found the easiest route. It didn’t discriminate between those who had built a home and the vulnerable farm fields absorbing the excess. Yet we continued to mop up the water that dripped into our lives, onto the floors as we discarded our saturated clothing, down our necks, between our toes. Muddy smudges were all over the kitchen floor, and the dogs in their pen shrank back into their kennel and looked out with low, gloomy expressions.

  “This is not a proper summer.” I felt depressed as I looked out at the grey sky and darkened ground. “When will it ever stop?”

  I still walked the dogs every day in the rain, and even they seemed reluctant to go out, lowering their muzzles and shaking their coats to spray droplets of water in wide arcs. “It’s good for the plants,” you said and kissed me on the top of my head. “I thought you liked living out here.”

  I said nothing but stared outside at the rain lashing down.

  Christmas Day—Today

  3pm

  I see him limping with a delicate hop on one white paw, like a ballet dancer protecting an injury. I turn away but cannot avert my gaze for long. He whimpers, and I feel a slow ache leak from my heart area. Then I sense eyes behind me and lurch from sympathy to survival.

  The head of a hawk on the body of a sloth edges closer, a slow-motion parody of predator matched with placi
d tree-dweller. A laugh surfaces from within like a hic hic hic and the thing turns its head away, as if it were an adult disgusted with the presence of a child with a dirty nose.

  My soul dips to the soles of my feet and spreads out in a viscous puddle like black treacle.

  I take a mental note of the hybrids in the room:

  Swoodle

  Wallopea

  Mynizard

  Cockapussy

  Cowstrich

  Slo-hawk

  A collection of jackalopes

  If I catalogue them like this I can be prepared for their shifts in activity as the day progresses. The nocturnal creatures take control as night descends; the diurnal parts of animal are more confident in the morning as day breaks. Hunger rises up and dampens down. Instinct battles against the confines of their form. The souls fight each other with ripping intensity. It grates on my own being, like a rake being dragged across a slate floor.

  What would I do without Wensley’s gobbets of knowledge? He states that he is an amateur, but I know no other who has devoted their time to the study of souls contained in the bodies of hybrid animals. They have been created by man to satisfy . . . to satisfy what? A need for some variety. Had we not enough variety already, created by gods (or evolution, whichever your leaning), placed on our hurtling globe for us to wonder at?

  You have woken and reignited the fire. The paper from the presents we unwrapped curls and blackens in the flames. Beside me a beautiful silk gown with hand-stitched embroidery is laid out. Your gift to me. I feel like Cinderella when her fairy godmother arrives and announces—“You shall go to the ball.” It is a feeling of expectancy with a fluttering of nerves.

  I remember creating my gift for you. I had to wait for the right time of the month, then positioned the end of the pipette between my legs and drew the menstrual blood into the glass tube. It was a bit messy, I admit, but it looked magnificent when I had transferred it to the glass phial with the silver top and chain.

  You smile. There is little more you can do. How I love your smile. It has become a rarity these past few months. You hold the phial up to the light, look at me, then fasten the chain around your neck, tucking it beneath your jumper so it can sit against your bare skin. There, it will become warm from your own blood.

  You sift through the cards and unopened envelopes dropped off for us along with some supplies from villagers who have left their homes for Christmas. There is a long, thick cream envelope bearing the insignia of FdS. You run your finger inside the envelope flap to create a jagged edge and slide the card from it. Then with a roar you rip it up and throw the pieces of card and envelope on the fire.

  I am startled by your sudden vehemence after your earlier tenderness. There can be only one person to incite such a reaction. I stare into the fire and watch as the shapes of animals form then disappear. Then the face of Felix leers out, grins, winks and is gone. I want to spit at him, but my mouth is dry and tight.

  The stockings hang on either side of the fireplace. They are red and green felt with five-pointed gold stars dotted asymmetrically on the fabric. I try to count them but my vision becomes blurry. You take a swig of cider from a bottle and jab at the fire with the iron poker to shift the logs. Then you pace about the room, lifting up the pile of books and papers on the small table. What are you searching for? You find it and start ripping and tearing, screwing up paper and throwing it on the fire. Not just scrap paper—I spy a cover, large and hardback, a new book. I catch a glimpse of the image of the wolpertinger with its fangs and antlers projecting from a hare’s body—it is Felix’s book, Wolpertinger Dreams. You are destroying it. I want to encourage you but don’t know why. The fire eats it up like the meal of some hungry demon who feasts on others’ dreams.

  Will you go so far as to add your own creations to this feast of destruction? Please, please—we can start again. A new birth. A shining star of promise in this gloomy hinterland. Perhaps it is not too late for us to be saved from our own mistakes. You sit with your head in your hands. A lull in the animal noises brings the illusion of peace. I stare at your body, searching for the shape of your spirit in the hunched figure before me.

  September

  In a quiet place, you realize how noisy the world is; it pulses and thrums. Past the periphery of the windswept branches, through gaps in fences, circling around buildings and benches and vehicles, the artifice of machinery and the endless rattle and scrape of plastic and metal, past the metallic hum of electromagnetic waves, even beneath the rumble of our bellies—the borborygmi of our digestive systems—there is another indistinct sound, a sound most human ears have forgotten to decipher. It is the nonverbal sound of life itself, and without it we would cease to have a purpose. It tells us who we are, and why we are.

  Babies and animals are more attuned to this sound. Some call it instinct. But if you really notice this whisper of the void, in the space between the spaces, it is likely to make you question everything you’ve learned about this world. If you sit motionless for long enough, do you detach from the world or do you become a part of it? I had tried to remain still through the practice of meditation. Then I found the fidgets set in to my muscles. I was distracted intermittently by minutiae—dust on the edges of books and ornaments, a fluttering racket of a pigeon’s wings on a branch, the changing pattern of light and dark on the inside of my eyelids as I tried to blink out the interruptions.

  Outside, for example, everything moved. Even the apparent dormancy of the bulbs I had planted pulsed and slowly merged with the soil, waiting. They were active even in their resting state. We wait on the surface of this planet, compressed by gravity, but we are whizzing at huge velocities through space and spun constantly on the earth’s axis like pinned moths on a board; our only reference point is the change we see around us, a cycle of never-ending revolution.

  You likened me to a reptile, preferring to absorb the heat and light, assessing my environment, adapting myself chameleon-like to situations and people. Was I too adaptable or not enough? There are limits to how far you can adapt before you are caught by your tail and have to shed it to escape.

  “Chameleons can see two things at the same time,” you told me. “Their eyes rotate at three-hundred-and-sixty degrees independently.” If I could roll my eyes backwards, could I see my brain? As a child, I used to think that would be an impressive trick; to examine the inside of my body with my own eyes. You have touched the brains of animals, eased the moist, grey whorls of matter from the skull cavity; you have scraped the layers of fat from their skin, and discarded the skeletons and fibrous sticky tissue. You have touched death’s glorious aftermath.

  Once, I stroked a dead heron that lay on your work bench, smoothing over its prehistoric beak with my forefinger and touching the sparse tuft of feathers on the crown of its head.

  “What if you could extract more than physical parts?” I said to you. I imagined you tentatively teasing out the soul of a dove with an olive branch or luring a heron’s soul with the effigy of an eel. “Where would the soul reside? In the head or in the heart?”

  “Solar plexus,” you said.

  “The what?”

  “Where you feel butterflies, your tummy, that’s where you’d feel it.” You poked my stomach between my bellybutton and breasts, making me draw a sharp breath through my nose. I wanted to grab you but enjoyed the tension that played out between us in those moments when the air thickened like we were drowning together but didn’t know it. It was like the time we had talked about my parents’ death and I wanted to be alone, to wallow in my own memory in which you played no part. Yet, you were my rock when I hit the bottom of that particular watery well and all I could taste was stale emptiness.

  “Stop being so hard on yourself,” you said. “You were just a kid.” But advice is not always easy to swallow. Not when you are being eaten up by guilt.

  You left the door of your workshop open one day, and a waft of dried-out hide met my nostrils as I approached. That was the first time I realiz
ed the descent of my obsession, as if it had ripped through the boundaries of this world to the next. I thought I saw the creatures move, but the lightbulb was flickering and could’ve tricked my senses. You smiled at me, a wry silent smile of closed lips that had met contemplation but not tasted it.

  “I don’t want to intrude,” I said.

  “No,” you sounded quieter than usual.

  “Can I come in for a moment?”

  “Scarlett?” As you softly said my name, I felt the distance disappear between us. You had been working for so long I didn’t know if I could bear your absence any longer. It wasn’t the physical absence; we still saw each other every day and shared the same home and bed. But you had gone someplace far away from the “us” we used to be. Something had come between us. Does that make any sense? We were fast becoming the strangers we were when we first met, and I wanted to draw you to me like I had back then.

  “I’ve been thinking about Christmas,” I said.

  “Christmas?”

  “Yes, just wanted to plan a few things, get organized.”

  “Of course, yes.”

  “I’d love a real tree this year.”

  That was when we decided we would pick and fell our own tree, trudge up to the woods and see it in its natural splendor. There were factors to consider: potential height, breadth, branch distribution, overall shape, and color. Once presented with numerous possibilities, how could we quickly decide? It was almost better to be given an option and be done with it. But no, we allowed ourselves a few hours to walk to the hills where the trees had been planted to stake our spot like settlers of the Wild West. We would find our tree and claim it.

  A group of walkers trudged in our slipstream, following us on a single track through the woods. All the rain had meant the ground was sodden and fertile, yet that day was bright and warm. The sunlight played through the leaves like it was made of symphonies or liquid gold. The disinfectant smell of pine, combined with early stages of leafy decomposition, rose up from the forest floor. I wanted to plaster my arms and face with it. You had persuaded me to wear boots and something to cover my legs. My thin jacket was tied in a loose knot by its arms about my waist. My arms were bare and my cheeks felt aflame with the first kiss of autumnal air, pleasantly warm but with an edge of the winter to come.