‘Patient under,’ intoned George, voice muffled.
‘Shall I start?’ asked Rimmer.
‘I’m ready if you are—’
‘I need to cough—’
‘You can’t—’
‘Lens removed from right eye. Aperture stiff … Will need iridectomy.’
‘Preparing to cut window,’ said George.
My part, on request, was to pump the bulb supplying ether; not too much, for I’d been warned an excess could halt the poor beast’s heart, nor too little, for then it might wake and its frantic thrashings cause the blades to snip too deep. In between administrations I was urged to keep an eye open for tremors and prod for rigidity of muscle, neither of which tasks I was in any fit state to perform, my breathing having become so laboured that each inhalation hurt like the devil. I was also nauseous and imagined I’d turned the colour of paper. For two pins I’d have left my post, only I doubted my legs would carry me.
The ungodly interference having come to an end, we returned the ape to its cage and I staggered of eside. I retched, but my stomach was near empty and there was nothing to bring up save a watery fluid that stank of brandy. I had barely recovered when George ordered me back in again to put up the developing tent. No sooner had I shuffled away the dust and debris and erected the wigwam than he peered inside and pronounced it useless. It would, he said, admit far too much light. He was in the right of it; surrounded by glass we might as well have set up in the open air. He sent me off in search of a shed.
It took some time, most of the outbuildings being either piled with gardening and agricultural implements or else chock-full with broken statues too massive to shift. I came across a painted figure, shaped like a coffin and propped on end, its wooden casing rotted at the base. A lump of stained bandages poked out, nibbled by field-mice, from which three toes protruded, their bony segments the colour of honey. Then I thought I understood what had turned William Rimmer into a doctor, though for the life of me I couldn’t work out what had influenced George, unless it was the sight of his mother’s face looming above the cradle, eyes round as marbles.
It was the stable boy who showed me the ice-house, tunnelled beneath the rhododendrons and not twenty yards from the glass-house. George was satisfied with it, so I fetched the wheelbarrow and we got on with coating the plates.
The ape was awake on our return, and apparently none the worse for its torture. It sat with one hand gripping the bars, shaking its head from side to side as though baffled. William Rimmer, elated and sounding off like a preacher, declared that the veil had dropped from its eyes and it now saw the world clearly.
‘Clever, what?’ he crowed, thumping George on the shoulder.
‘Damn clever,’ agreed George, smirking with satisfaction.
I kept my opinions to myself; I didn’t doubt their cleverness, but what use was a world only glimpsed from a cage?
When it came to be photographed the ape turned its back on the camera. First I tried shying pebbles at it, and when that didn’t work, dragged the scissors along the bars. Its shoulders rippled, but it wouldn’t budge. Then Rimmer hit on the idea of singing to it. He had a pleasant voice and warbled some kind of lullaby; sure enough, it did the trick, the beast swivelling round to stare at him. George took four studies, though the last was marred by the ape suddenly vomiting.
Once back in the ice-house, he developed the pictures by the puny gleam of a shaded candle, dipping each plate in a mixture of pyrogallic and acetic acid. It was my job, once George had judged the correct density of each image, to fix the results in a solution of potassium cyanide. Afterwards, he made me carry out the trays and pour the excess chemicals into the ground, on account of their being so poisonous. Often I’d washed my hands in the stuff to be rid of silver stains, and I reckoned he was over-cautious.
I ate my dinner along with the servants, and hardly did justice to it. My head ached and nothing tasted right. A footman ticked me off for coming to the table with blackened fingers. Too queasy to defend myself, I stayed silent. One of the women had been in service in Strawberry Fields and had known of Mrs Prescott and her daughters. She quizzed me as to Miss Annie’s present condition and I said I believed she was in her fourth month and that this time she was holding. She said it was astounding, Miss Annie always being under the weather, considering she’d been so bonny as a child. I replied I didn’t find it in the least astounding, and had known it happen the other way round.
‘He’s right,’ agreed an old woman seated to my left. ‘Look at our Henry,’ and she pointed with her knife further down the table at a man built like an ox. ‘Would you believe a breath of wind would have blown him away as a babby?’
The footman was curious to know what we’d been up to with the ape; he’d helped manoeuvre the cage into the glass-house. After I’d enlightened him, he looked me up and down, scorn in his eyes, and remarked that he’d never have taken me for a doctor’s assistant.
‘I don’t pretend to be,’ I said. ‘I’m a photographer.’
‘Nor that,’ he drawled. ‘Though perhaps you come in useful when trundling a wheelbarrow.’
I rather lost my head, and spouted off about appearances not being everything, and how my father had been a gentleman and remained so, though in reduced circumstances. I could tell he didn’t believe me, and was glad when he was summoned upstairs. My pa, so I’d been told, had enlisted in a Lancashire infantry regiment some months before I was born, and promptly embarked for India. To my knowledge, he’d never returned, either from choice or on account of colliding with his maker.
George sought me out in the late afternoon. It was obvious he’d had a fair amount to drink, for his speech was slurred. He said he’d decided to stay the night and that I was to return alone. Rimmer would lend him a horse in the morning. I was to stick to the main road going back, so as to avoid ruffians down on the shore. I knew it was his precious camera he was concerned about rather than my safety. I must be sure to tell his mother he was stopping over.
‘Should my wife be unwell …’ he began, and hesitated.
‘I’m to come back and fetch you,’ I prompted.
‘Perhaps …’ he dithered. His expression was anguished, his plump mouth drooping with discontent. He looked what he was, a spoilt man. Then, making up his mind, he blurted out, ‘No, that won’t be necessary. I shall be home before breakfast.’
I almost pitied him. For years he’d been at the beck and call of his mother; now he had a second woman to run him ragged. Mrs O’Gorman thought it a crying shame, but I reckoned he got satisfaction out of playing the martyr.
Ten minutes later, while I was in the yard stowing the apparatus, he sent out word that I was to wait for him after all. I’ve never known such a man for shilly-shallying. When at last he approached, leaning heavily on Rimmer, he insisted on clambering inside the carriage, where, scattering my carefully stacked baggage in all directions, he eventually burrowed himself into a corner beneath the folds of the developing tent. I reckoned he’d be asleep before we had quit the grounds.
The light was ebbing from the day when I rode away from the Hall. Once out of the trees I flicked the horse to a gallop, the carriage wheels lurching over the uneven ground, the wind swelling my clothes and blowing the ache from my head. Above the fields, black clouds tumbled through a sky white and glittery as ice. I had been melancholy on account of the footman putting me in my place, and angry with myself for having risen to his bait, but now the stormy landscape restored my spirits and I was seized with exhilaration. It did my heart good to think of George rattling insensible among the trays and bottles. ‘One day,’ I shouted aloud, standing up in the traces like a charioteer, ‘one day …’
The tide was on the turn when I reached the sand dunes, sashaying in over the waste of shore, the blood-red ball of the sun dropping towards the horizon. Slowing the horse to a reasonable trot I headed towards the gas-yellow haze of the distant town.
Midway between Waterloo and Seaforth I came near an
old man before a driftwood fire, sparks whirling about his head. I would have passed by, but just as we drew level a furious banging came from within the carriage and I was obliged to halt. George had woken.
If he was angry at finding himself on the sands he didn’t let on. Perhaps he was drawn by the picturesque aspect of the scene – the bleak waste of dimming shore, the wind-tossed blaze, the fiery snap and crackle of burning wood above the hiss of the encroaching sea. At any rate, he asked the old man if he could join him at the fire. He was, he said, chilled to the bone, and indeed, in his flapping clothes he appeared to tremble like a man in a fever.
The old cove didn’t answer right away. I noticed he glanced down to make sure the stout stick he used for walking was within his grasp. Then he said George was welcome, as long as he behaved himself, which tickled me.
He was talkative, and George treated him with politeness, addressing him as sir, which he’d never done for me, though I expect it was the old man’s years that made the difference. I sat apart, watching the twilight dwindle and a half-moon climb the sky. I thought of Myrtle, in her school-room somewhere beyond the curve of the bay, spouting a foreign language and learning to swoon when dogs barked too loud.
The old man had been a fisher of eels, so he claimed, for the pie trade in Widnes, until, some years past, fuddled in drink, he’d let his boat be smashed to pieces at high tide at Rock Ferry. His two eldest daughters had taken him in, or rather he’d divided his time between them, and gained little comfort from either. In that respect, George held, he was very like a king, which showed how tipsy he remained. The old man now lived with his youngest daughter in a lean-to next to a blacksmith’s, and was at her mercy, which was why he slept nights on the sand. She had a mouth on her like a navvy and he preferred the nip of the sand-hoppers to the sting of her tongue.
‘She’s six young ones,’ he said, by way of excuse. ‘And no man to support her.’
‘Life is cruel, sir,’ George agreed, chucking another length of wood on to the fire, sending the sparks showering.
‘If I had my chance again,’ the old man said, ‘I’d go for a soldier. They gives you a pension.’
‘They also furnish you with a fair opportunity of getting killed,’ George argued, at which the old man said there were worse ways of leaving this world than from the swift kiss of lead.
We left him then. A true philosopher, George called him, collapsing to his knees on his third attempt to climb up beside me. I bundled him inside the carriage, fearful he would do his addled self an injury and I’d be blamed for it. When I made to close the door, he seized my hand and tried to drag me in with him. I couldn’t see his expression, for now it was night, yet his sly smile was imprinted in my head, mouth curved like those of the man-beasts keeping guard outside Blundell Hall.
I’d seen that face on him once before, after we’d laid his father down and Myrtle had been sent off to the kitchens to fetch water for washing. He’d thanked me for my help and declared I was remarkably practical for my age and that he would never forget my kindness, nor my reticence. It was my intelligence, he said, that rendered me incapable of taking advantage of the present situation. His words, spoken with such apparent sincerity of feeling, took me aback. Up until then I’d been biding my time, having every intention of squeezing five shillings out of him before I left the house. We were standing on either side of the bed, his dead father between us, and for one warm moment I did indeed imagine I was possessed of a superior sweetness of character. ‘You’re a good boy,’ he murmured, and then he raised one knee on to the coverlet and hoisting himself up leaned across to touch my cheek. I knew instantly what he was about, and quit the room. I wasn’t a stranger to that sort of happening, nor unduly alarmed by it, and if he’d not laid on the flattery I might have indulged him – it’s not a vice restricted to any one class, though it’s my experience that the better off bend to it from inclination and the poor more often out of necessity. It was his conning me into thinking I was something other than I was, something better, that shook me off guard. Dr Potter was coming out of the parlour as I ran down the stairs. Startled, I’d clung to the banister rail, expecting to be denounced. He’d never seen me before and he could have, should have, taken me for a thief, or at least demanded to know my business, but he just looked at me, and I fancied he read the trouble in my eyes. I had difficulty opening the front door; coming to my side, he tugged at the latch and let me out.
It was some minutes to seven by the Observatory clock when we crested the hill beyond the Boulevard and turned into Blackberry Lane. Within the carriage George was bawling at the top of his lungs the chorus of ‘Mother Dear, I am Fading Fast’. The queer thing was, when we came to a standstill at the end of the drive and I helped him down on to the moonlit gravel, he uttered those self-same words of praise, You’re a good boy – only this time, too late, I believe he meant it.
I brazened it out, of course, and think I got away with it, there being no evidence to incriminate me. It was Dr Potter who did the confronting, which was tricky, he being a man who saw through people.
He was waiting for George and beckoned him into the study the moment we stepped through the door. I went out to see to the unpacking, and as I came back in with the tripod and the tent, George burst from the room and ran ahead of me up the stairs. When I came down again Dr Potter was standing in the hall, staring at me. He said, ‘Pompey Jones, I’d like a word with you when you’ve emptied the carriage.’ I knew something was up from the look on his face; my stomach lurched. Each time I descended he was still there, still staring. Finally, I had nothing more to carry in and was about to lead the horse round to the yard when he came on to the porch and said I was to leave off what I was doing and come inside immediately.
I followed him into the study, heart thumping. I reckon it was the ether as much as apprehension. He took his time to come to the point, clearing his throat and fiddling with the buttons on his waistcoat. Most fat men look foolish when they’re acting serious; not Dr Potter. I kept telling myself I hadn’t done anything really bad, but his eyes made me believe I had.
At last, he said, ‘I’m not unaware of the position you hold in this family … and perhaps we are the ones most at blame. I’m not sure you’ve been given sufficient guidance—’
‘I have received nothing but kindness,’ I interrupted. I wasn’t being insincere. With him, it wouldn’t have been wise.
‘That’s as may be,’ he said. ‘You were little more than a boy when you came here …’ He paused, eyes searching my face. I put up my hand to cover my mouth, as though the mulberry stain on my lip had returned.
‘But you are now a man,’ he said, and again he paused.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I believe I am.’
‘A man,’ he repeated. ‘And a man must take responsibility for his actions, however innocently or ignorantly conceived.’
‘It would be better if you came out with it,’ I said, stung by his reference to ignorance.
So he enlightened me. First thing that morning young Mrs Hardy had gone into the dining room to fetch the needlework she’d left on the sideboard the night before. ‘The curtains were still drawn,’ he said, ‘and in the half-light the rug appeared menacing—’
‘The rug,’ I blustered. ‘What rug?’
‘Frightened out of her wits,’ he thundered, ‘she turned to run out of the door and tripped—’
‘Tripped—’ I echoed.
‘She fell against the wall. Result … a broken wrist. And that’s not all …’
I stayed dumb, but my face burned with shame. I truly felt remorse.
‘A broken bone can be set,’ he said. ‘Dashed hopes are not so easily mended. You take my meaning?’
I didn’t, not then, though I nodded.
‘At first,’ he went on, ‘it was thought Lolly had been slovenly in her work. Mrs O’Gorman spoke up for her. She herself had inspected the room before she retired for the night and everything was in order. She said you were in th
e house at dawn.’
‘I was told to come,’ I protested. ‘Master George told me to come. I know nothing about a rug.’
Mrs O’Gorman wept when I left the house. Half of it was on account of young Mrs Hardy having miscarried again, the other to losing me. She sniffed she wouldn’t be able to bear it if she was stopped from knowing me. I told her she wasn’t to worry, that things would blow over. ‘George won’t part with me for long,’ I said. ‘You’ll see.’
I walked to my lodgings under a heaven sprinkled with stars. I wasn’t cast down. One lives and learns, I reasoned.
Plate 3. 1854
TUG-OF-WAR BESIDE THE SWEET WATERS OF EUROPE
We began our ill-advised excursion to Constantinople on 27th February, sailing from Liverpool Docks on the Cunard steamer, Cambria. I speak of our expedition in such pessimistic terms, owing to the inclusion of the women and children, not to mention the maid and nursemaid deemed necessary to attend them. It had been originally planned that only George, Myrtle and I would make the journey. It could be, I felt, that in the advent of war, an event which day by day seemed more and more likely, George and I might be of use, he in his capacity as surgeon, myself as observer. Twenty years earlier I had visited the Crimea, in particular Balaclava and the coastal range, and, indeed, published a scientific paper at my own expense on the formation of the Steppe limestone common to the western portion of the Noghai plain. Result – no interest whatsoever, but perhaps that is beside the point. Myrtle was to accompany us for the simple reason that she was unable to let George out of her sight.
Quite when George had been inveigled into taking Annie along eludes me. There had been a cholera epidemic two years before, and fearful of another outbreak, she’d argued it would be safer for the children to be out of the town during the coming summer. No quarrel with that. I understood she had written to an aunt, who had a house overlooking the Menai Straits in Anglesey, asking to be allowed to stay there, and received a reply by return of post to the effect that she would be most welcome, and Beatrice too. As far as I knew, both women were perfectly content with the arrangement. Then, two weeks before we were due to depart, George feebly announced that Annie was coming with us after all. ‘She insists on it, Potter,’ he said. ‘In the circumstances, how can I refuse? She is, after all, my wife.’ I suspect Myrtle had a hand in it, on account of the children.
The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1 Page 36
