The Virgin and the Whale

by Carl Nixon

  But, no, she will not oblige us. She continues to stare straight ahead.

  Elizabeth walks this route every working day, rain or blinking sunshine, wind or even hail (it seldom snows in Mansfield), but she habitually fails to so much as glance at the record-breaking skeleton of Balaenoptera musculus.

  May in this part of the world is autumn. Elizabeth is warm enough in the early morning sunshine, but visibly draws deeper into her coat when walking through the many shadows stretching out across her path. An easterly wind attempts to scalpel through her layers of clothing, although the sky is bright blue and empty, stretched taut above her from horizon to horizon. The plane trees growing along the side of the avenue have already shed most of their leaves. They lie along the bottom of the iron railings, piled by the wind into ochre drifts. She does not notice any of this.

  Why not? Why is Elizabeth Whitman so distant, so stubbornly unobservant? For the meteorologically minded it would be apt to say that even on such a clear day a cloud hangs over her. Elizabeth’s thoughts are far away; literally on the other side of the world. I will leave the reason for her state of mind as a small mystery for the moment. In the interests of good storytelling, I will merely whet your appetite before leaving you — for a short while at least — up in the air.

  Much closer than the other side of the world, on the other side of the avenue from Elizabeth, opposite the Botanic Gardens, is the university. As is true with so much in this city — the significance of the place names cannot have escaped you — the University of Mansfield’s stony face is modelled on institutions that are also far away. On her way to work, Elizabeth passes Platonic shades of the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. For those who know them, the original forms come to mind in the stone cloisters and courtyards. A copying from Trinity College here; a dab of Christ Church there. There is further familial resemblance in the arching brows of the Gothic Revival windows, or about the wart-like gargoyles leering from the high shadows. You should, however, picture buildings that are much newer and on a smaller scale. The University of Mansfield was built relatively quickly, over decades rather than centuries, and with the limited resources available to a colonial town.

  Imagine an idea that has been boxed and shipped; a kitset that has been reassembled without exactly the right tools; a book imprecisely translated into a new language. Through its narrow cloisters and low spires, its stunted observatory and small quadrangle, the university can really only aspire. The effect is similar to meeting a friend’s first cousin. For a moment, you think you know her, but then you realise that it’s a case of mistaken identity, and actually she isn’t as poised or as pretty as your friend, whom you’ve always secretly admired.

  On this day, a small group of students crosses the avenue in front of Elizabeth. A decade earlier, they would have been out in far greater numbers but the ranks of the university’s population have been decimated by the war and there are fewer weekly lectures. At this early hour, the few students who are enrolled move as sluggishly as cold honeybees. They pay Elizabeth no mind.

  A nurse walking to work at the nearby hospital is as commonplace in the centre of Mansfield as the levitating skeleton of a blue whale.

  three

  You are undoubtedly wondering about this story’s name — The Virgin and the Whale.

  Perhaps it is the title that has caused you to dip a figurative toe into these pages? Despite the prurient grin the pairing will raise from some readers as they casually lift this story from the bookshop shelf or toss aside the bright wrapping paper, the pairing of whales and virgins is not unprecedented.

  Both, for example, are constellations. A full twelfth of the zodiac is given over to virgins. The world is full of people born between 23 August and 22 September who live their whole lives under the sway of the unsullied stars; practical, reliable people who can also be perfectionists and are prone to being conservative.

  The whale is a more obscure grouping of heavenly bodies. Cetus, as it is called, is a constellation of the southern sky, appropriately located in the region known as the Water. It lies near other watery constellations such as Aquarius, Pisces and deep-eddying Eridanus. Cetus has been known since antiquity; in ancient Mesopotamia the constellation was identified with the female sea-monster Tiamat.

  If you happen to live below the equator, don’t bother stepping outside your back door this evening to look for Cetus. Even seen at its best, the constellation is just a few blurry spots of light in the night sky; nothing at all like a sea-monster, much less a whale. Stay indoors. It is far more satisfying to confine the celestial leviathan’s existence to your imagination.

  The Bible also contains references to both whales and virgins. Mary was the most famous virgin, of course, although as the mother of Jesus she was a somewhat oxymoronic one. Rebeccah, the future wife of Isaac, is another well-known example. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells the story of the five wise virgins and the five foolish virgins. Flick back through the pages a bit and it was undoubtedly a whale that swallowed Jonah, although the original Hebrew refers to a ‘great fish’.

  It is worth noting that Jonah would have been very unlikely to survive the hazardous passage through the jaws of any of the toothed whales. If we are to believe that a man lived inside a whale for any length of time we can eliminate the smaller species of baleen whales; a minke or Bryde’s whale simply wouldn’t have had the stomach for a fully grown Israelite.

  The longest reported specimen of blue whale to date was caught in the 1920s and measured just over 110 feet. The heaviest was a 190-ton female killed by a whaling ship, shortly after the Second World War. At that size the stomach would have been positively roomy. Jonah could have built a bungalow — a bay villa! — within. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to suggest that it could have been a distant ancestor of Mansfield’s own specimen that swallowed that recalcitrant Jewish prophet as he tried to flee from his god.

  A quick definition: virgin n. & adj. — n. 1 a person (esp. a woman) who has never had sexual intercourse

  And a clarification:

  Elizabeth Whitman is not a virgin. It is important to settle this point right now in case it becomes one of those misunderstandings that drag on indefinitely.

  Think of the boss who is introduced to a new worker at the office and for some reason — a wax build-up in one ear, a sudden noise on the other side of the room, a fleeting thought about his dying mother — believes that the man’s name is Rupert, when in fact it is Robert. Robert is by temperament slightly shy. After several days of the boss calling him Rupert to his face and receiving no obvious contradiction, Robert effectively becomes Rupert for the duration of his time in that job.

  The careful reader will recall that Elizabeth has a four-year-old son. She also has a husband. Or she had a husband; there is some doubt here at the start of this story over the correct tense to use. It is time to reveal that the emotional cloud hanging over her as she walks to the hospital on this autumn morning in 1919 is because her husband, Jonathan Whitman, who she calls Johnny, has not returned from fighting in France.

  The Great War ended on 11 November 1918; officially, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — a poetic conclusion to four years of slaughter. It has been over for just under five months. Technically Lieutenant Jonathan Edward Whitman is missing in action. On 4 November 1918, he was seen leading a group of three soldiers to look for wounded in a small wood near Le Quesnoy. Shortly after, the area came under heavy artillery fire from the Germans who were holding the town. That was the last anyone saw of the lieutenant or his companions.

  The case of Jonathan Whitman and his wife, Elizabeth, is not unique; far from it. Throughout Europe and the British Empire the war has created hundreds of thousands of half-widows and almost-orphans. In some regions the number of missing matches that of the known dead. In times of war, people become small toys, rolling under couches and into the back of drawers. They slip into holes in skirting boards and down drains, never to be seen
again.

  A full day’s train journey north of Mansfield, in the capital city, the words PRESUMED DEAD have been stamped on Jonathan Whitman’s file at the Army Department. The block capitals and funereal black ink have turned the usual meaning of ‘presumed’ into a clerk’s polite euphemism.

  As we continue to watch Elizabeth walking on towards the hospital it is, however, possible to deduce from the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, the purposeful manner of her progress, that she is not a woman who has been made despondent by these circumstances. We may even be able to conjecture that Elizabeth still allows hope to flicker inside her — a lit candle she nurtures against an increasingly bitter wind.

  four

  A car pulls up with a throaty growl on the side of the road close to Elizabeth. In 1919 cars are only for the very wealthy. Luckily, Mansfield is an obligingly flat town (built on a drained swamp, remember); most of its citizens travel without complaint by bicycle or ride the trams.

  Elizabeth observes without any real interest that the car door is the refulgent black of a rain beetle’s wings. For a moment she can see herself reflected in its paint and, although by no means a vain woman, she moves her hand reflexively across her hair.

  She has already walked on when she hears her name called.

  ‘Mrs Whitman. Mrs Whitman!’

  She turns to see the driver still in the act of unfolding himself from behind the wheel. He raises one hand in the air as he calls her name again. A trilling school of half a dozen factory girls on bicycles veers wide of the car door and shoots off up the road.

  The driver is tall, his face long and thin — not unlike that of a horse, Equus ferus caballus (of which, coincidentally, the Mansfield Museum has a complete skeleton on display in its main hall, barely 100 feet away). With half a dozen strides the man’s long legs have covered the distance between them. Elizabeth notes that his trousers and jacket make up a type of uniform, although not a military one.

  ‘Mrs Whitman, sorry to bother you like this. Do you remember me? It’s Martin Templeton. I knew Jonathan from the war. I visited him in hospital in London.’

  Elizabeth has a vague recollection of the man waiting awkwardly in the day room for Johnny to be wheeled through.

  ‘Yes, I think I do remember. How are you?’

  ‘Can’t complain, thanks. I’m sorry to stop you on the street like this, it’s very rude, but I’ve got a message for you from the lady I work for, Mrs Blackwell.’

  She frowns. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I know Mrs Blackwell.’

  ‘It’s definitely for you, though. I was told to deliver it to you personally at the hospital. I was just on my way there when I saw you walking along. A bit of luck, eh?’

  ‘Yes. What’s it about?’

  A shrug of his bony shoulders. ‘No idea, sorry. The Blackwells don’t tell me their business.’

  It would be foolish to put this meeting down to anything as portentous as fate (or worse, poor storytelling). Such meetings are commonplace in a city the size of Mansfield. To walk its streets in 1919 is to invite a meeting with a friend, acquaintance or relative. To employ someone who knows someone to whom you wish to be known is nothing.

  Martin Templeton fishes in his jacket pocket and hands Elizabeth an envelope. The paper is so heavy and textured that it reminds her of human skin.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Jonathan.’ His eyes flicker across her face and slide down to the footpath.

  Elizabeth hears many variations on this sentiment, more so as each week passes with no news. ‘Sorry to hear about your husband.’ ‘What will you do now?’ ‘Such a pity for your boy. How’s he bearing up?’ ‘The war was terrible but we all have to cope, don’t we, dear?’

  She nods. ‘Thank you, but Jonathan is still only missing.’

  His horse’s face twitches as though bothered by a fly. ‘Yes. Of course.’ He is obviously uncertain what to say when confronted by such feminine impracticality.

  For the first time, Elizabeth notices that the man is missing three fingers and part of the palm of his left hand. He sees her appraising look and unselfconsciously holds up what remains. ‘A trench mortar.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Not a really bad wound, though. I’ve seen a lot worse.’

  ‘Yes, so have I.’

  ‘Leastways it was a decent Blighty. Got me out of there.’

  ‘It’s healed nicely,’ she says. ‘Whoever the surgeon was, he did a good job.’

  ‘That’s what the nurses in London reckoned.’

  ‘You were lucky that you didn’t have more shrapnel injuries when the shell exploded.’

  He grins. ‘Actually, I was supposed to be firing the bloody thing. Sorry, pardon my French. What with all the excitement and whatnot, I hung onto it for a bit long.’

  ‘At least you’ve still got your thumb. That makes all the difference.’

  ‘Too right.’ He opens and closes his thumb and remaining finger. ‘The blokes in hospital used to call me Crab.’ (A man with the face of a horse and the hand of a crab. Martin Templeton is a Victorian taxidermist’s practical joke.)

  Elizabeth smiles. She remembers a young soldier at the hospital in London where she nursed at the start of the war, whom the other men in the ward christened Long John. There was a Hawkeye as well. And later, when she was sent to nurse at Longhurst, she met a Pretty Boy.

  ‘Well, thank you for delivering the letter.’

  ‘Just doing what I’m told. Okay, then, I’d better get going. Nice to see you again.’

  ‘And you.’

  She watches as he gets back into the black car, folding himself back down behind the wheel like a ship’s deckchair being put away on a rainy day. The car pulls out into the street and drives off. The bicycles scatter before it like lesser fish before a shark.

  Elizabeth, left standing on the side of the road holding the envelope, stares blankly into the middle distance. She has been doing that a lot lately. How long she stays there is impossible for her to say. It is not until there is a gust of cold wind and the piled leaves close to her feet shiver and shift that their brittle whispers bring her back to herself.

  Slipping the letter into her coat pocket, she turns and continues on to the hospital where her shift is due to begin in ten minutes.

  five

  Mrs P. Blackwell

  Woodbridge House

  West Ilam

  Mansfield

  Dear Mrs Whitman,

  I write to request a meeting with you in order to discuss an important matter, which may be of benefit to us both. I will be at home on Saturday, May 17th, at nine in the morning. If you are willing, I will have my driver, Mr Templeton, with whom I believe you are already acquainted, collect you from your home at 8.30 sharp.

  Please confirm your attendance by return post.

  I look forward to meeting you.

  Yours sincerely

  The signature is illegible, pressed deep into the heavy paper as though by a tattooist’s needle.

  Elizabeth folds the letter carefully and slips it back into the envelope, from which comes a faint smell of lavender. She picks up her cup of tea, too hot to drink yet but still a warm comfort in her hand. From the window of the nurses’ day room on the second floor of the hospital she can see north across the tops of the trees of York Park. Immediately below her half a dozen patients are out on the river bank enjoying the morning sun. Some are standing, two sit in wheelchairs with blankets draped over their knees.

  Another nurse, Kitty Sullivan, a short woman with milk-bottle glasses and ‘hips like a draught horse’ — her own description — puts her hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder.

  ‘What’s the matter, Lizzy?’

  ‘Nothing, why?’

  ‘You look worried. I thought it might be bad news?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’ Elizabeth has grown used to the other nurses watching her for signs that she has received confirmation of Johnny’s death. ‘It’s an invitation to visit someone, a Mrs Blackwell
. Apparently she lives out in Ilam.’

  Kitty’s eyes grow even bigger behind the thick circles of glass. ‘Oh, lah-di-dah! Aren’t you mixing in the right circles then.’

  ‘I’ve never met her. Who is she?’

  ‘You must’ve heard of the Blackwells?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Yes you have. They’re one of those old families, came over on the first ships and all that. They’re rich as King Midas.’

  ‘Oh, I see. But I’ve still got no idea what she wants.’

  ‘Maybe you looked after one of her relatives overseas and she wants to thank you in person.’

  ‘I don’t remember any patient named Blackwell.’

  ‘It’s a mystery then. How exciting.’

  Elizabeth puts down her cup next to the sink. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, I’m not going to get too worked up about it.’ She glances at her watch. ‘I’d better go. And please, Kitty, I’d appreciate it if this was just between us.’

  ‘Of course, you know me.’

  She does know Kitty Sullivan. The news of Elizabeth’s impending meeting with Mrs P. Blackwell would be all over the hospital before the day was out.