Points of Departure: Stories

by Pat Murphy

  John was sorry that Charlie had reacted so precipitously. He reviewed the conversation in his mind, wondering how he might have made his suggestion more delicately. In the end, he decided that nothing he could say would have overcome the giant’s superstition, and John made peace with himself. He spent that night at Earl’s Court, dissecting a series of worker bees, an exacting task that soothed his nerves.

  The next day, on his morning stroll, John noticed a new variety of flower growing in the meadow. The plants grew low to the ground and bore tiny golden blossoms. They grew only in discreet patches. John realized, on close examination, that the flowers had sprouted in the giant’s footprints. He attributed this curious effect to the compression of the soil beneath Charlie’s feet and drew up plans for a series of experiments to test the sprouting of seeds under pressure.

  Charlie heard John’s voice calling him back, but he did not stop. It was a cold afternoon, and the walk back to London was a long one. A farmer gave him a ride for a few miles in an ox-drawn cart filled with straw, but he walked the rest. His legs ached by the time he reached the outskirts of the city proper. He let his head hang, unwilling to look up and see the smoky sky overhead. The road was cold and hard beneath his bare feet.

  When rain began to fall, he made no effort to take shelter. The cold drops soaked his coat, plastered his hair to his head, ran down his cheeks like dirty tears, leaving tracks of soot behind.

  Back at the rooms, he fell ill and lay on the straw-tick mattress that served as his bed, unable and unwilling to move. “It’s the gin,” Vance said. “I told you it’d be the death of you.” Charlie did not reply. He lay on the pallet of blankets that served as his bed, staring into the flames of the fire.

  A few days later, Kathleen found him there. When he did not come to visit her stall in Covent Garden, she came looking for him. On the door beside the cane shop, a notice said: “No show today. Come back tomorrow.” By the look of it, the notice was several days old. When Kathleen banged on the door, Mary, the landlady, answered and regarded her with a sour look.

  “I have come to see Charlie,” Kathleen said. “I’m a friend.”

  “Visit him quick,” Mary said in a scornful tone. “He may not have much time left.” She let Kathleen in and the hunchback found her way through the dimly lit, stale-smelling rooms to Charlie’s bedside.

  He lay on a straw-tick mattress by a fire that burned low. Light from the glowing coals gave his face a ruddy color that did not match his feverish eyes and mournful expression. He was shivering despite the blankets that covered him. “Ah, Kathleen,” he murmured. “Sit with me for a time. I am lonely now, very lonely.”

  Sometimes, he shivered and huddled closer to the fire; sometimes, he threw off all his blankets, suddenly drenched in sweat. He complained that his head ached constantly.

  He was sick and delirious for three days, and she stayed with him, bringing him bread and cheese to eat, tucking the blankets close around his shoulders, holding his hand so that he would know he was not alone. On the seventh day, he came to himself again. Kathleen had fallen asleep on the floor beside his mattress, and she woke to see him watching her.

  “Kathleen,” he said. His eyes were sad, but the fever had left them. “What are you doing here?”

  “Taking care of you, Charlie my lad.”

  “There’s not much use to that now,” he muttered. He shook his head weakly. “I’ve been foolish. I thought that the magic would be strong enough. But that’s dead and gone. The world is changing.”

  “Don’t say that, Charlie.” Now that he was finally giving up his mad notions, it pained her to see it.

  “I’ll die here in London.”

  “No, Charlie,” she said, “you’ll get better soon.” He just shook his head, recognizing the lie.

  “Have you seen Joe Vance?” he asked.

  Kathleen went out looking for Vance. After the darkened room, the courtyard seemed brilliantly lit. She found Vance lounging in the gray light that passed for sunshine in London, practicing a game involving three shells and a pea. When she told him that Charlie wanted to see him, he reluctantly followed her into the room.

  “You’re looking bad,” Vance said. “That doctor—John Hunter—came to see you again. Says he might be able to give you something for the fever, if he could see you. A swell gentleman, by the look of him.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I told you I will not see him.”

  “Been a week since any money came in,” Vance said slowly. “And Mary will be looking for her rent, come Monday.”

  Charlie said nothing. He was watching the flames, ignoring Vance’s words. When Vance stood up, as if preparing to go, he roused himself. “You got to help me, Joe,” he said. “Can you tell me where I’d find an honest undertaker?”

  Mr. Fields, undertaker and friend of Joe Vance, studied Charlie with an expert eye and decided that he wouldn’t last long. His face was pale and wet with sweat; his eyes were bloodshot.

  “You’re interested in a coffin?” said Fields. “I’ll have to build it special. That’ll be extra.”

  “You must make the arrangements for me,” Charlie muttered weakly. He reached out and grasped Fields’s hand. “Take my body back to Ireland. To my mother’s farm. You must see to it. I’ll pay.”

  “I’ve heard of Chinamen sending their bones home,” the undertaker said, “but never an Irishman.”

  “Please,” Charlie said hoarsely, squeezing the man’s hand. “You must see to it.” He fumbled in his bedclothes and pulled out a small pouch that clinked in his hand.

  Fields eyed it, assessing its contents. “You must take me home safe.”

  “For a price, anything can be arranged,” Fields said heartily. “You can rest easy, Mr. Bryne.”

  Kathleen nursed Charlie as best she could. But when her money ran out, she had to return to her stall in the afternoons and evenings to earn the money she needed to bring him food. She brought him bread and cheese and mutton stew, though he did not eat half of what she brought.

  It rained that week, a dark sooty rain that turned the streets to mud. The costermongers went out late and came in early, with little profit to show for their efforts. The mud clung to the wheels of coaches and to the horses’ hooves, and the hackney drivers cursed the weather. The men who carried sedan chairs got chilblains.

  Early in the morning on the seventh day of rain, all the dogs of St. Giles Rookery congregated at the door to the cane maker’s shop. The cane maker tried to drive them away with kicks and curses, but as often as he scattered them, they returned. He gave up at last and tried to ignore them, glancing out only occasionally to see the filthy mongrels sitting beneath his sign. Surprisingly, the dogs did not fight.

  The cats came later, slinking over the rooftops. Despite the rain, they crouched above the cane maker’s shop, glowering at the people in the street below. Strangely, the dogs did not bark at the cats and the cats did not yowl at the dogs. They waited quietly.

  Early in the afternoon, a sparrow came to perch on the wooden sign that marked the cane maker’s shop. For a time, it sat alone in the rain, its feathers fluffed against the cold. Then it was joined by another sparrow and a pair of finches. A little later, four mourning doves came to perch on the sign, not far from the cats. But the cats made no move to stalk them.

  The cane maker looked up when a sound that was at once familiar and strange penetrated his consciousness, making its way past the rattle of coach wheels and the cursing of drivers. He paused, brush in hand. Still holding the cane that he had been varnishing, he went to the doorway, following the sound that called up memories of his boyhood in the country. Sitting on his sign, above the filthy street, a meadowlark was singing its heart out.

  From the eaves, the mourning doves watched him with their bright black eyes. From the gutter, the dogs regarded him sadly. The cane maker looked up at the small, goldflecked bird, then retreated into his shop.

  Twilight settled over London. The light had a peculiarly gray
tone, as if the city had sucked all color and life from the air. The proprietor of a pie shop was lighting an oil lamp to hang in the door of his establishment. Here and there, the yellow glow of burning lamps marked the shops and taverns that remained open.

  Joe Vance emerged from the hallway beside the cane maker’s shop, kicked his way through the crowd of waiting dogs, and made his way to the nearest tavern. Just inside the door he surveyed the smoky interior, then made his way to the corner table, where the undertaker waited with John Hunter.

  “How fares the patient?” the undertaker asked jovially.

  He had been drinking gin, by the smell of it, and he was smiling, an expression that sat uncomfortably on his long face.

  “Won’t be long now,” Vance said. “I took him a bottle of gin to ease the pain.”

  “And hurry him along,” said Fields, chuckling. He grinned at John Hunter, but John glared back, not sharing the joke.

  “I’d help him if I could,” John muttered defensively.

  “Certainly you would, Dr. Hunter,” Vance said expansively.

  “We all would. Why, I care about the lad as if he were my own son. Isn’t that so, Fields?”

  John scowled and shook his head, believing none of it.

  “Let’s get on to business,” he said.

  The undertaker nodded and spoke softly. “Now; we were discussing the price. Dr. Hunter had offered twenty pounds for the body.”

  “Twenty pounds?” Vance scowled, forgetting his love for the giant at the mention of money. “Out of the question.”

  “It does seem inadequate for the unusual merchandise we have to offer,” the undertaker murmured. “It seems to me that ten times that amount would he fair.”

  John Hunter looked up from his beer. “You’ll need few takers for such merchandise.”

  “Ah, you would be surprised,” said the undertaker. “My conversations with the head surgeon at St. George’s Hospital suggest that there may be a number of takers.”

  “Thirty pounds,” John said.

  The bargaining was protracted. Vance spoke of his great affection for the giant so eloquently that his eyes became moist with tears. He was the giant’s friend, perhaps his only friend, and he would never consider the doctor’s offer were it not for his own need for capital. Persuaded by his own eloquence, he felt a brief pang of regret, but dismissed it as John raised the price.

  Fields stressed the rarity of the commodity they offered.

  “Unique on the face of the earth,” he said. “An opportunity like this comes along once in a lifetime—if you’re lucky.”

  John was the least garrulous of the lot, protesting that the two of them had unrealistic notions of their merchandise’s value. But clearly Vance and Fields had the advantage.

  Finally, after much gin and talk, John settled at one hundred pounds and would not budge. They drank to seal the bargain.

  The clock was striking eleven when Vance went to check on the giant. The street seemed unnaturally quiet. In the dim light of the tavern’s lantern, Vance could see that the dogs were still waiting. He heard a rustle of feathers above his head. Suddenly, the lark sang, a sweet burst of glory, like a sudden ray of sunshine in a dark place. The largest of the mongrels tilted back his head and began to howl, and the rest joined in, wailing like banshees.

  A man in a nightshirt flung open the window above Vance’s head and shouted at the dogs, but the howling continued. The shouting was followed by a pail of water and then the contents of a chamberpot. Vance quickly ducked for the protection of the tavern doorway. Retreating inside, he said to Fields and John Hunter, “I suppose he’s dead.”

  In the dark of night, with the help of Vance and Fields, John Hunter stripped the corpse of the dead giant, slipped a sack over the body, and loaded the sack into his coach.

  In his haste to be off, he overlooked the giant’s staff, which was propped in the corner by the fire.

  The pack of mongrels that hung about the door followed the coach for half a mile or so, but he lost them after that.

  At Earl’s Court, the coachman, who had grown used to nocturnal errands, helped him load the body into a barrow and transport it to the basement workshop.

  Alone with the cadaver, John hesitated. “So Charlie,” he muttered. “You came to me after all, whether you would or not. I feel half-sorry for you, but I suppose you died happy enough.” He shook his head, thinking of the giant’s superstition and ignorance. Then he wielded his sharp knife and prepared Charlie’s bones for the boiling pot.

  It was nearly dawn when he became aware that the caged lark in the next room was singing its heart out. He cocked his head to listen, wondering what had prompted the bird to sing. In the months that he had kept it in confinement beneath the earth, the lark had never to his knowledge sung a note.

  Putting the last bone in the pot, John went to investigate, but the bird fell silent at his approach and never sang again.

  Charlie was gone when Kathleen returned from Covent Garden that night. His room was dark and the fire had burned out. His clothing was scattered about the strawtick mattress, and she guessed at what had happened.

  When she found his staff by the fireside, its blossoms wilted and dry, she knew he was dead. He never would have left without it. She took the staff with her when she left. It had a nice feel in her hand and it reminded her of Charlie.

  It was strange, but her hump never ached when she held the staff in her hand. Free of the pain, she drank less gin. After a time, it seemed to her that the hump was beginning to shrink. And then she was sure of it: the twist in her back grew straighter every day.

  Her livelihood shrank with her hump—no one would pay for a fortune from a straight-backed Irishwoman. She lost business to the fortune-teller on the other side of the garden, a dark-skinned man who wore multicolored scarves and stared into a crystal to see the future. Finally, with the last of her earnings, Kathleen returned to Ireland. There was no reason to stay in London, and the staff in her hand gave her the urge to wander. She went to Ireland and wandered the winding roads, telling stories in return for a bit of food and a place to sleep. Sometimes, she told stories of London. Sometimes, she talked about a giant named Charlie, and in her tales he grew to nearly the size of Bran the Blessed. It was not a bad life.

  A month of wandering and she found herself in County Derry. Enquiring here and there, she found her way to the wild pastureland known as the Giant’s Boneyard.

  There she leaned the staff against the largest boulder and stood for a time, looking out over the valley and thinking of Charlie. At last, she decided to walk back to the village and look for a friendly home where she might sleep—but when she went to pick up the staff she found that it had taken root. White blossoms sprouted from the dry wood, and new green shoots reached for the gray sky. She left it there, where it belonged. She had had it long enough.

  Eventually, Kathleen married a farmer. As a farmer’s wife, she took care of the land. It was a hard life, but one for which she was well suited, with her strong back and willing ways…

  John Hunter examined Charlie Bryne’s skeleton carefully, but the doctor died without learning why Charlie had grown so large. More than one hundred years after Hunter’s death, a surgeon named Harvey Williams Cushing examined Charlie’s skull and noticed a deformity in the bone that had covered the pituitary gland. This observation ultimately led to Cushing’s discovery that the pituitary plays a role in controlling human growth, one more small piece in the great puzzle that John Hunter was trying to solve.

  Cushing did not explain why birds often congregated at the window of the room in which the giant’s bones hung.

  The sill was thick with their droppings. Sometimes, they would rattle on the glass with their beaks and flap their wings impatiently, as if demanding to be let in.

  Perhaps Cushing did not notice them. Like Hunter, he was preoccupied with understanding what made the human body tick. He had no time for the foolishness of birds, the poetry of cloud formations,
the illegible scrawls left by snails crawling across the slate paving stones in the garden.

  That’s the truth, as near as I can tell it. Oh, historians may quibble with some events I have described. I can find no historical documentation detailing the flowers that grew on Charlie’s staff or mentioning the staff at all, for that matter. And perhaps the birds did not really gather at the window to pay court to Charlie’s bones. I can find no records that say they did—but then, I can find no denial of it either. Surely these are minor points. At its heart, the tale is true.

  Charlie Bryne is dead and gone and his bones still hang in London’s Royal College of Surgeons. In the Giant’s Boneyard, songbirds nest in the hawthorn thicket that has grown up near the boulder that old people call the Giant’s Skull. In this lonely spot, there lingers a sense of sadness and loss. Sometimes, a foolish traveler, heading home late at night, will feel a sudden chill as he passes the field.

  When the chill touches him, he’ll clutch his coat around him, glance back over his shoulder like a man pursued by ghosts, and hurry home to the safety of electric lighting, content to live in a world where ghosts do not walk and bones rest easy.

  Afterword—Why I Write

  WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, my mother read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis, aloud to me and my brothers. The story fascinated me: these kids walked through a perfectly ordinary wardrobe into a new world. After hearing that story I was convinced, beyond any doubt, that there were other worlds out there, just waiting for me to find them.

  When I was old enough to read for myself, I read other stories about secret places and powerful magic: the Oz books; Five Children and It, by E. Nesbit; The Borrowers, by Mary Norton; and The Time Garden, Half Magic, and numerous other magical books by Edward Eager. When I was a little older, I branched out into science fiction and adventure fiction, reading all the Tarzan and Doc Savage books from my older brother’s collection. These seemed to me to be extensions of the original impulse: They all dealt with worlds that were more dangerous, more beautiful, and more intriguing than the one in which I lived.