I have never seen him afraid of any natural or man-made thing, except one. He will never venture forth from the house when there is a mist. When he achieves his more acid heights, I am tempted to point out that, for someone dogged by this persistent mania, he has chosen a peculiar climate and position in which to live.
“Manning’s cure,” he said to me. “Eh, Charles? Eh? Manning’s cure!”
Here is how, twenty years ago, I accidentally caused Alonso to become an opium fiend.
There is nothing I could have refused him in those days, or he me. It was a constant point with him: that the man and the work were one. It was a joy the like of which I have never known, before or since.
I think that we were drunk again. I know we sat before the fire, in the dark. The house was in dust sheets; we had no time for so petty a thing as housekeeping, and the furniture loomed pale in the firelight behind us like a choir. We settled, as was our habit, on the boards before the smoldering hearth.
“We work with animals now,” he said. (We did indeed. There were at that time several cages in the cellar, their occupants in varying stages of disrepair.) “What if we were to introduce the study of Man into our efforts? Do you not see that this is the logical end to our work?”
“I understand the principle. The execution of it?” I studied him. He was suffused with a spirit I had not seen before. The gin and the giddiness that had affected us all evening began to achieve its highest pitch. The scuffle of London at night seemed now to come from a long distance, as if we had already left the paltry mortal world behind and ascended to a higher plane.
“We will choose the test,” Alonso said. “Each for the other. For fifty days, you may do what you like with me. You may administer any medicament. I will take it without question. You will note the effects. And I will be unconscious of the treatment. I insist that I am given no hint of what is underway or what you are dosing me with. I cannot seek to countermand it or to avoid it.”
“It is a great exercise in faith.”
“But of course,” he said. “I will be doing the same to you.”
The distance and the knowledge that had been building in me reached a height. I laughed. He did not but looked at me kindly.
“You will not kill me. Do you see? It is our absolute trust in each other that will guide us.”
We spent some time devising the methods by which we would proceed. We must be sufficiently healthful to minister to one another and for observation; the doses must be given in quantities that were moderate enough for the subject to maintain muscular control and a reasonable degree of mobility. We must always record. No matter what state of illness or fatigue we felt ourselves to be in, we must always note the results. And at the end of fifty days, we would make sure that the process began its reversal.
We made preparations for isolation. No one knew of our intention. Now, when I look back on that time, I think perhaps we should have consulted with someone or other. We arranged for other men to attend our patients. We sealed the house in certain ways and gave out that we would be away from town. We did all to ensure that we would have the leisure to conduct our research undisturbed. In our usual fashion, chaos reigned jointly with order in these preparations. We arranged an ingenious method of goods delivery through the coal chute—but I discovered at the end of our experiment that the street door had been left unlocked throughout.
We began. It was commonplace. He gave me a piece of bread every morning. I took it without reservation. And I gave him a thimble of brandy five times a day. Other than these small practicalities, we did not discuss the matter but went about our business as usual—indeed, much more pleasantly, for we had not the bother of social obligations or duty. For a month and a half, we were a contented little island.
On the last day, he handed me his book that I might see the progress of his research.
The first note in that book was an extract copied from Chambers’s journal. When I read it, I laughed. I noted it:
Lastly, let me urge upon all who adopt the Styrian system to make some written memorandum that they have done so, lest, in case of accident, some of their friends may be hanged in mistake.
It became a something of a settled joke between us: “Do not be hanged in mistake!”
I was most interested in the record of Alonso’s work, as I had read of the Styrian system, the practice of eating arsenic to give stamina and wind for hard work. It is common among certain tribes in Europe; immunity builds progressively and cumulatively as the dosage increases.
I remained in perfect health throughout. He attributed a certain fatigue to me, but I was not conscious of it. I can in honesty say that I suffered no serious ill effects. My skin had a pallor, and my hair acquired a new sheen, but these were nothing. The treatment was a pleasant suspension of the humdrum. I spent most of it consolidating my reading on bowel disorders. When I was weaned off it, I felt the effects of poison for a day or two, but mildly, and was not incapacitated. His notes were thorough. The dosage increased in perfect increments. He was never in danger of being hanged.
And what of me? How did I use that license we had extended to one another? I chose a true poison. If I have railed against that person I saw before me today, I have no right to do so, for I made him. I gave Alonso opium. I began him on this path. It was a terrible error on my part. I had heard of Manning’s new cure for opiate addiction. It consisted of a cordial of chlorate of gold every few hours, with daily hypodermic injections of strychnine and atropine. I thought that it would surely work.
It did not. When the time came to ease him off the opium, Alonso reacted most violently to the cordial; he was delirious and enraged. I believe all the injections accomplished was to give him the idea to inject the morphia intravenously. Thirty days beyond the end of our trial, his lust for the drug was greater than ever.
Alonso must have known that I was giving him laudanum. He must have. He was a doctor and not of my average talent—very gifted. But he did not turn from our purpose, for he trusted me. And then it was too late.
I must plead a certain license and draw a veil; I find, after all, that I cannot speak of those times. There ensued secrecy and pain and various other things. The other things being predictable, common to many other tales, easily imagined. I need not repeat them here. Alonso became a travesty of a man. When he retired to the country and then to Italy, to pursue opium eating in peace, when he became the shadow he is today—it was relief I felt.
Late, by night
By stealth or by force, I must get out of here, I must.
My dreaming self, my night self, is a most alarmist person. What possesses me to write these things? The hand is surely mine, and fairly neat. As it should be. I was not so very far gone last night. Sleep writing—a new phenomenon?
IRIS
Summer 1914
I’m fifteen.
I am half buried in straw in the depths of Nell’s stall, watching the gentle shift of her elegant legs. Her tail swoops and flicks, black and yellow and steel gray. I’m not in trouble yet, but I will be when they find the broken vase in the dining room. Best to sit it out. The straw is warm and prickly. The stable is quiet. I slip in and out, treading the edge, the abyss of sleep.
My father’s voice is suddenly in my ear, and it’s all I can do not to leap to my feet and squeak.
He is strange, of late. My father. He looks at things that aren’t there. He answers questions I have not asked. He speaks to people who I know are long, long dead. His lined face pierces my heart. His great brown eyes are soft, too soft, where they should be sharp. He sounds all right now.
Of course, he’s not actually in my ear, but close enough, in Soldier’s stall next door. Must have been dreaming deeper than I thought, or they’ve crept up on the lightest of feet. His question, Shakes’s voice replies.
Papa’s saying, “The poultice should set it right by next week.”
They’re quiet. I picture them all three bent and earnest over Soldier’s hoof.
“He’s doing well,” says Papa.
“Yup,” says Tom.
Papa says, “The horses will miss you.”
Tom says, “Someone else’ll come along soon enough.”
“And the horses will learn to like it,” says Shakes, comfortable.
“Not everyone wishes to work at Rawblood,” says my father. He sounds tired. The hollow sound of Soldier knocking his bucket with a hoof. He hopes it’s feed time. My father whispers to him. The good hard clap of a palm on shining hide. “I will look in on him again tomorrow,” Papa says. I feel him, his dark presence behind the stall door as he goes.
From Soldier’s stall, there comes the whisper of caps being put back on heads. Someone lights a pipe. The blue smoke is idle on the air. Soldier knocks his bucket.
“Well,” says Shakes, “maybe it’s no bad thing, you going.”
“Suppose,” says Tom, “you keep quiet, just for a bit? Just while we muck out the boxes. After that, why, you go on and get it all off your chest. I’ll be miles away, but you’ll feel better.”
“Used to be such a nice little bugger, you did.”
“Ah, well.”
“Grown too fast, your common sense hasn’t kept pace. Bad lot. Not fit to be around gentle people.” Shakes’s scorn rings high into the stable rafters. “Young ladies and so on.”
“’Round here?”
“That’s cheek, right there,” says Shakes. “Yes. Drinking and chasing girls and whatnot.”
“Whatnot.”
“Army’ll teach you what’s what,” says Shakes. “Mark my words. War will.”
“Well,” says Tom, and there’s a little crack of uncertainty in his voice, “not sure I’m right for it.”
“Best notion you’ve had in years.”
“Not mine,” says Tom, “as it happens. He gave me the boot.” There’s silence. Soldier knocks his bucket.
“How’s that?” Shakes says.
“Himself. Told me I was no longer needed.”
“Well. See? Drinking. Chasing girls. That’s what you get.” But Shakes’s voice has lost its confidence.
“Gave me a hundred quid, told me to enlist. Well shy of eighteen, I am. He said they’d take me anyway. And they did.”
“A hundred quid? I’ll go and all.” They go away down the stable, voices raised, bickering and fond.
Long after they’re gone, I am pinned in place. My eye at the crack in the stall door, straw rustling, Nell breathing warm into my back.
I have abided by his rules, in recent years, so closely. I have kept my word. I have obeyed him to the letter. But Papa is sending Tom away, and that is not in our agreement.
When I think of Tom going to war, my heart stops, actually stops.
• • •
Before the glass, I smooth the dark fabric one last time. The stays are unfamiliar, another skeleton between cloth and skin. I am tight but brittle somehow, as if I might break. The perfume of lilies hangs in the air, which I regret. I have tried to wash it off my wrists. It is pale, lingering, persistent. I don’t think it’s a scent for skin. For wigs or cloth or something.
It took an hour, maybe more, to get the riding habit on. Sixty tiny jet buttons fasten me, throat-high, to the mandarin collar that brushes my chin. The jacket small, severe. Whalebone pinching me in at the waist. Swags and swathes of serge skirt; a heavy train, with a loop for the wrist. The deep, deep blue faded in patches to stormy gray. Attic dust still clinging in the folds.
I present a strange, antiquated silhouette. Tall, wasp-waisted. Armored. Anyhow, I don’t look like myself, which can only help. My flesh is restless. Behind me in the glass, the window shows blue sky. That’s good. I must look different, be different, now; I will no longer be told what to do and what to fear.
There’s no denying things haven’t come out quite right. I smell like a syrup or a sweet, sickening. The corsetry is snappy, cracking. I can’t feel my lungs. The glass shows me pale and cross. I pinch my cheeks, but it makes no difference. Part the hair over the left eye or catch it back in a low pompadour and pull out softening locks over temples and ears with your comb… Soft bandings across the hair are universally becoming. My hair won’t even stay under my hat. I lick my wrists, rub them on the skirt. Bitter, oily taste on my tongue.
I give it up. I spit into the ewer, take my whip in hand, and go.
“There you are, old chap,” says my father, melting out of his darkened study into the bright hall. His spectacles are askew. His nose wrinkles at the cloud of roses. He says, “Riding? Iris, there was a vase, in the dining room—”
“To Grimspound,” I say quickly.
He sees me. He stills. Even at a distance, I feel all his muscles go quiet. He says, “Where’s your twill?”
“It’s muddy,” I say. As if this were a sufficient reason to go to the attic, find and put on my dead mother’s riding dress.
“It fits well,” he says at last. A quick furrow between his brows. “I’ll put you up,” he says, and we go.
The sun is blinding after the dim hall. On the blazing white drive, Nell stands, her pale legs in constant movement, shifting, twisting her into the glistening surface. A brown hoof lifts, strikes the marble chips, tosses them into a spray. Matilda throws herself sideways. At the horses’ heads, the groom tuts, soothes each in turn.
When I come near, Nell stills, lifts her ears. I stroke her neck. Her withers curve against the sky.
My father’s hand is cupped for my foot. I swing the habit up over my arm in an unfamiliar, heavy swathe, reach for the high pommel, step in. Something happens as he lifts me—beneath my foot, his hand is gone, and I’m caught, suspended in air. Then I fall. My skirt billows.
I land neatly on my feet with a crunch of gravel. Nell turns a dark, surprised eye.
When I look, there is a thin, old gray man where my father should be. His arms shake by his sides as he stands. I begin to say, “Papa, are you…” But the old man flaps his hand like the muscular wing of a bird. His lips are trembling, loose. He shuffles toward me, hand outstretched once more for my foot. His eyes are somewhere else.
“Meg,” the old man says, reaches for me.
The groom brushes past him, comes silently to my side, throws me aloft in one quick movement, settles my foot in the stirrup.
My father stops, blinks. He turns, goes up the steps, goes inside. I look after him, a bent figure vanishing into the shadowed hall. Then I put Nell’s nose into the breeze. She huffs, plays with the bit, wanting to go. The drive scatters around us with the sound of breaking glass. It’s not till we’re on earth, grass, that I hear Matilda behind. I don’t look back. We pound up the hill into the copse.
We slow out of sight of the house, and Matilda comes up beside us, settles into place at my side. The breeze wanders through the trees. My heart is heavy and burning.
“Horse coming on nicely,” he says, nodding at Nell.
“You’d no call to do that,” I say, “to shame him like that.”
His face is unreadable in the shadow of his cap. He says nothing.
“He was all right. How could you show him up?” A feeling like taut wire in my chest. And I think again of what I heard yesterday in the stable. “How dare you,” I say to him and nudge Nell. She moves on, ears pricked at the rustles of the woodland. Matilda hurries to keep pace beside her.
I say, “Fall behind, Gilmore.”
He starts to speak, then touches his cap, pulls Matilda up, falls a proper distance behind.
This was supposed to go so differently.
We move into untenanted country, alone but for the larks and the rabbits. He stays behind, a precise five feet. I feel him like a weigh
t. Bees hum. Grasshoppers sing. My head aches. The stink of lilies hangs in my throat.
He comes up beside when we reach the ford. He fixes me with the side of his eye, blue and white. He pulls his cap off, rubs his head, puts it back on. The Dart runs wide and bronze before us. I’ve never seen it so high. Shining surface, deep water. Summer rain running to the sea.
“Iris,” Tom says.
I lift my chin up and away.
He says, “You ride with Shakes. Not with me.”
I’m silent, eyes on the burnished river.
“Why today?” Tom asks.
I think of what Shakes said to my father in the stable. Tom watches me and waits. He’s taller than I remember. Quieter. His face used to show everything. He has shut himself away, and I’m facing a stranger. Matilda, who likes to dance and bite and fret, stands like stone under him. His hands on the reins are not boy’s hands.
It’s no good. We haven’t spoken to one another in so long. I can’t remember how to do it.
Tom gives me a long measuring look, then shrugs, sharp and furious. “All right,” he says and surges past. He plunges Matilda into the ford. She moves surely through the water, climbs the far side, her wet tail a mean thin streak of bay. Tom wheels her around on the bank to face us.
Nell steps out with cautious hooves; she fusses as the river stones shift under her. She bends, breathes her disapproval at the quick brown surface. I let her make her own way. She won’t fall. When the water’s at her flanks, the folds of my skirt come loose from my hand, and the hem skims the water. The cloth blackens, hauled in by the running stream.
I say, “Damn,” pull at it, gather it up.
“I’ve time to finish that book,” says Tom from across the river. “Or pop over to London for the day to see the king, shall I? Take a cruise on the Nile. Still be back by the time you get here.”
Matilda shifts, patient, under him. She bows a long mahogany neck, salutes us from the bank. In the river, Nell stops, plants her legs, shivers.
“Particular, aren’t you?” Tom calls. Nell pays him no mind, breathes crossly at the water. Tom drops his reins, folds his arms as if for sleep, tips his cap over his nose, snores.
The Girl from Rawblood Page 12
