The Virgin and the Whale

by Carl Nixon

  Elizabeth is shocked to realise that the man’s left leg has a metal cuff around the ankle. From this a chain snakes to a heavy ring fastened to the floor. Although his wife is out of reach, he is close enough to Elizabeth to turn and rip the heavy fossil out of her hands. For a man who looks as though he had been starved, he is surprisingly strong. He raises the ammonite above his head and Elizabeth is sure that he is going to bring it down on top of her own skull.

  His eyes reflect the glowing fire. ‘Go away!’ he yells. ‘Leave me alone!’ Taking a step back, he throws the fossil at the floor between them. Mrs Blackwell screams and Elizabeth jumps back as it strikes the boards with a hollow boom. She hears wood splinter and feels the impact ripple up through the soles of her shoes. The fossil breaks into two parts, cracking along its own internal fault lines.

  ‘Go away!’ he roars.

  Elizabeth backs slowly towards the door, her heart banging in her ears. ‘I’m sorry if we upset you, Mr Blackwell.’ At the door she turns and takes the visibly shaken Mrs Blackwell firmly by the arm so they can make their escape.

  The last Elizabeth sees of Paul Blackwell is a glimpse of him before the door closes. Standing in the middle of the steaming room, his shoulders and chest heaving, he resembles nothing so much as a spent hunter from a prehistoric age, his stone tool shattered at his feet.

  nine

  In the moments that follow their hasty exit from the room, Elizabeth and Mrs Blackwell stand silently in the corridor. Both women are breathing hard, their faces flushed. Mrs Blackwell fumbles with the key, trying to relock the door, her hands shaking.

  ‘I’m sorry. Paul appears to be having one of his bad days.’ She struggles to control her voice. ‘I should have warned you that he is easily agitated.’

  ‘I can’t believe that you keep your husband chained to the floor.’

  ‘I realise how it must look, but without the chain he attempts to run away.’

  ‘Surely locking the door is enough.’

  ‘Since Paul has been here, he has twice escaped out the window.’

  ‘Then I suggest you have it nailed shut.’ Elizabeth’s voice rises.

  Mrs Blackwell is on the verge of tears. ‘We did that after the first time. He broke the glass and climbed up onto the roof.’

  Elizabeth forces herself to breathe deeply. ‘Mrs Blackwell, I’ve nursed men whose minds have been badly affected by the war. You’ve heard the term “shell shock”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve often seen it in the wards. I don’t believe there’s any shame in it. But you must understand that I’m not a psychiatric nurse.’

  ‘Paul is physically injured. He has suffered a head injury. Here.’ She touches her temple just in front of and slightly above her right ear. ‘You cannot see the scar because of his hair, but it is there, I promise you.’

  ‘A bullet wound?’

  Mrs Blackwell hesitates, then gestures Elizabeth away from the door. They walk along the hall until they are standing at the top of the stairs. Light falling through a stained-glass window spills across the ground at Elizabeth’s feet like coloured liquid, blue and red, splashing up over her shoes.

  ‘All I have been told is in a letter from his doctor in England. Some type of fragment pierced his head in an explosion. They said that most likely it was from a shell.’

  ‘Is there any metal still in the wound?’

  ‘I am told that whatever was there was removed at a field hospital. I shudder to think under what circumstances.’

  During her time nursing in England Elizabeth saw hundreds of wounds, raw and jagged. She knows better than anyone the very wide variation in the ways and means of inflicting damage on the human body.

  ‘I see,’ is her only comment. (She is aware that those two words are becoming something of a refrain.) ‘And besides being easily agitated, what are your husband’s other symptoms?’

  ‘He cannot remember anything from before the accident.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes widen. Here, after all, is something new to her, not in the means but in the outcome. ‘He remembers nothing at all?’

  ‘So he claims.’

  ‘Do you have reason to doubt him?’

  ‘No, other than it seems so improbable.’

  ‘How long ago was he wounded?’

  ‘Eighteen months.’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of memory loss, but never for so long or so profound.’

  ‘Apparently after he was wounded no one knew who he was for a long time. It was only by pure chance that someone recognised him at a special hospital for men with head injuries.’

  ‘Eastbourne or Shand?’

  ‘Shand. After the armistice they felt it was finally possible for him to make the voyage home. Mrs Whitman, let me be frank with you.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Paul has been home for almost five weeks but …’ she shakes her head, ‘he is making no real progress, if I am honest, quite the opposite. He becomes wilder by the day.’

  ‘Who’s been looking after him?’

  ‘At first I imagined that I could do it myself but, as you can see, it is clearly beyond me. Merry and the rest of the staff are terrified of him. He keeps that awful fire going in his room night and day and refuses to eat the food we give him. He insists we bring him tins of food which he hoards under the bed. If I refuse, he starves himself. It is impossible to predict what will enrage him.’

  ‘Have you thought about sending him to a specialist hospital? Sunnyside perhaps? They have a number of the worst cases from the war.’

  ‘I was hoping that he would not have to be institutionalised.’

  ‘Of course, but sometimes it is for the best.’

  ‘I am asking you, Mrs Whitman, please take over his care.’

  ‘I do sympathise, I really do, but I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s anything I could do to help your husband.’

  Mrs Blackwell turns her head away and her hooded eyes blink slowly. ‘Well, thank you for your time, Mrs Whitman. I do appreciate it.’ Without another word she leads the way down the stairs and through the house to the front door.

  Outside, the autumn sun is still bright. Wisteria vines thread their way up the carved fretwork and Elizabeth can smell freshly cut grass. The car is waiting for her on the shingle driveway.

  Mrs Blackwell stops on the edge of the verandah. ‘I wish you could have met Paul before the war. He was a Rhodes Scholar, you know, and took his degree from Oxford. If it were not for the war and this,’ she starts to raise her hand to her the side of her head but does not complete the gesture, ‘he would have been the director of the Mansfield Museum by now.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  For a moment Mrs Blackwell relaxes her stiff shoulders and her voice loses its formality. ‘Won’t you just consider my offer?’ Elizabeth is unsettled to see that Mrs Blackwell is almost begging.

  ‘Your husband’s condition is beyond my ability to help.’

  ‘Thank you for coming, Mrs Whitman.’ She turns her face aside.

  Elizabeth is tempted to lay a hand on the other woman’s shoulder but is not sure how that would be received. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Blackwell. I really do wish you the best of luck.’

  Mrs Blackwell does not reply. She turns, walks back across the verandah and is lost in the shadows of the house.

  Martin Templeton holds the car door open for Elizabeth, but this time she does not mind, as she is eager to be gone. The car throbs into life and pulls slowly away. As it swings wide on the gravel in front of the house, Elizabeth glances up and sees Paul Blackwell standing at his window, in the gap she made between the curtains. He is gazing out over the grounds. She knows that look. Despite his long, tangled hair and fierce beard, she recognises the expression common to all those who are hopelessly lost.

  ten

  The Mansfield Museum still has a human brain in a jar, even now in the twenty-first century. It floats in a bath of slightly milky formaldehyde. Discounting some accident — if the next cu
rator is not a butterfingers — the brain will last almost indefinitely.

  In the year of our story, this brain is not on display. It sits on a shelf in the lower artefacts room, gathering dust. It was put into storage as far back as 1893, and has been kept there ever since. It was about that time that one of the junior staff christened the brain ‘Charlie’. The thought process behind this choice of name has been lost. Maybe it was named after a famous actor of the day, or perhaps after the staff member’s particularly dull (brainless) uncle. Whatever the reason, the name has stuck. It was a name used only by the staff; few others even knew of the brain’s existence. That was because successive museum directors judged the brain swimming in a jar too disturbing for the museum’s patrons to see.

  Why? Why any more so than, say, a human skeleton? There is one of those on permanent display just off to the left of the entrance to the main hall. Despite the sternly worded signage, generations of children have leant over the rail and enjoyed the macabre thrill of prodding the thin white arm, making the bones rattle together. ‘Dem bones, dem bones.’ If only the museum’s donation box had a shilling for every time it heard that refrain.

  Also, why is a human brain more likely to offend than the preserved head of one of the indigenous people of the country (which, following traditional practice, had the brains removed)? In the early days of European settlement there was a brisk trade in these heads between the local tribes and the whalers and sealers. So much so that the chins and cheeks of slaves captured in battle were sometimes tattooed like chiefs and the slaves then butchered to order. In 1919 the museum has three of those heads on display and they are inordinately popular with the public.

  Here’s a theory for you.

  Perhaps the brain in a jar was kept out of sight because, more than any other part of the human anatomy, we identify the brain with our Self.

  ‘I think therefore I am.’

  — DÉSCARTES (DISCOURSE ON THE METHOD, PART IV 1637)

  See how inextricably linked the organ of thought and Self are? To lose an arm or a leg, while certainly regrettable, is not to lose a significant part of your true self.

  If asked, that man (or the woman in Laos missing both her legs, or the Samoan boy in the newspaper article I was reading just last week who was deprived by meningitis of both legs and arms) would probably reply that, ‘No, actually, I don’t feel as if my fundamental self has been diminished. I am still here.’ Or words to that effect.

  Most people believe that their body exists as a handy device for carrying the Self around. The legs, the arms, the torso are designed to lift you up out of the dirt and transport you through life. They, in addition to a heart, lungs, the surging red blood full of oxygen and all the rest, are simply parts of a mobile life-support machine. The dark flashing eyes, the wavy hair, youth’s muscular torso and strong thighs are all very well, but when we get down to the nitty-gritty, they are essentially window dressing for the brain. That is the impression most of us have, is it not?

  Why else the radio report at noon today where it was announced that the police have found the body of Mr Jones, the missing fisherman? Note that the PR woman for the police is by implication stating that they have not found Mr Jones himself, only his body. This puts his flesh on a par with a missing wallet or a pilfered car stereo. When Mr Jones himself is eventually located, what is rightfully his will be returned to him.

  For those of us who believe in the existence of a non-material something, which inhabits the body — often referred to in the western world as the soul — the part of the body where this ghostly presence chooses to dwell is behind the eyes. No one loses half a hand in an accident with a mortar shell and claims to have lost their soul. Our true Self — I, me (insert your own name at this point) — inhabits the space just here, in behind the eyes. I am here. Tap tap tap on the front of the head.

  And what is behind the eyes? Hey presto, the brain!

  Think of those science-fiction movies from the 1940s and 1950s where some boffin has managed to keep a brain alive in a jar. Say, for argument’s sake, the brain of a man named Charlie.

  It’s not hard to imagine that inside that glass tank and all the bubbling liquid Charlie still exists. Admittedly, it’s not an ideal position for him to be in. But it is undoubtedly better than if Charlie were still inside his body when it died (when it ‘gave up the ghost’).

  Now, to postulate even further — stick with me here — what if a healthy body could be provided for the brain that is Charlie? Say, if the progress of science meant that a body could be grown in a vat, and this brain successfully implanted into that fresh unblemished vessel? Wouldn’t it be true that Charlie lived on?

  Charlie’s wife may well be surprised when a man bearing no physical resemblance to her husband turns up at the door one Tuesday morning claiming to be Charlie. But after a relatively brief conversation and the exchange of some personal information that only Charlie could have known, surely his wife would be convinced that, yes, despite everything, this is Charlie.

  This chain of thought leads us down a winding but ultimately circular road back to Paul Blackwell. If Self is inextricably linked to the brain and the memories it holds, then what can be said of a man who has been left with his body intact but a brain as blank as a fresh fall of snow?

  eleven

  Elizabeth’s mother bustles around her small kitchen. She is a woman who likes things just so. Jack sits at his grandfather’s feet in the living room by the coal fire and busies himself with a piece of paper and crayons, of which he owns four — red, blue, yellow and black. Jack is a quiet boy, with sandy blond hair and his father’s wide, easy smile.

  Her mother pointedly rattles the pots on the stove. ‘Three pounds a week, Lizzy. Imagine that. And you’d only have the one to look after.’

  Elizabeth sighs. ‘Head injuries are difficult. I doubt that he’ll improve much, if at all. I’d be more of a nanny than a proper nurse.’

  ‘But it’s still three pounds a week.’ As she speaks, Elizabeth’s mother strains the hot water from the peas into the sink. Steam rises up and fogs the kitchen window.

  ‘There’d be no variety. At the hospital I have all sorts.’

  ‘It sounds to me like less work and more money.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I don’t see the maybe in it. You’re looking a gift horse in the mouth, Lizzy.’

  Jack appears at the kitchen door. He has heard a tone in his grandmother’s voice. ‘What’s a gift horse?’

  ‘It’s all right, Jack,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Nana and I are just having a chat. You go and tell Granddad that his dinner will be ready in a few minutes.’

  ‘All right, Mum.’ Jack retreats to the living room.

  Elizabeth gets out four plates and lays them on the plain wooden table. ‘His wife claims that he has no memory of his life before he was wounded.’

  ‘Claims?’

  ‘It’s far more likely that he’s just another of those poor men who’ve cracked under the strain.’

  Her mother sniffs pointedly, making it clear what she thinks about men lacking in mental fortitude. Elizabeth lets it pass. They have been bickering too much lately.

  ‘I’m not trained to deal with that type of thing. It’s not a wound that I can see and treat.’

  ‘How do you know he won’t come right?’

  ‘It’s been a long time since he was wounded.’

  ‘Maybe all he needs is some proper care.’

  ‘I’ve seen head injuries before.’

  Elizabeth won’t tell her mother the details, but she is thinking of a soldier she nursed in Longhurst. He was a captain. Several shell fragments nestled inside his head like a clutch of warm eggs in a nest. The doctors had deemed them too dangerous to remove. Written on his chart was: ‘Keep comfortable and observe.’

  At first he could shuffle around the ward and talk a little. But as the weeks went by he gradually became less coherent. Sentences slipped backwards into broken phrases, often repeated. Ove
r a stinking hot August when no breeze came in through the open windows in the wards, the phrases became single words. By then he was bedridden. His thoughts were water draining out the bottom of a cracked bowl onto the polished wooden floor.

  Three months after she met him the captain stopped speaking altogether. He stayed curled in his bed, knees to his chest, oblivious. Sometimes she found him sucking his thumb. She wonders what became of him.

  Elizabeth’s mother serves up the food. The meal is boiled potatoes, cabbage, peas and sheep’s kidneys. The kidneys are a special treat, hand-delivered by a cousin of Elizabeth’s who works in a butcher’s shop.

  Her mother will not let the subject of Paul Blackwell drop. ‘And so what if in a year or so he does end up in Sunnyside with the rest of the loonies? By then you’ll have saved a nice little nest egg. Perhaps it will be enough to get you and Jack a place of your own.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Elizabeth has been living with her parents since the day she came back from England, married to a man they had never met and six months pregnant. It is fair to say that there are lingering tensions. Although the hastiness of their daughter’s nuptials has almost been forgiven — ‘not even a telegram!’ — the working man’s cottage is undeniably too small for three adults and an active boy. On her return from Woodbridge that afternoon, Elizabeth could not help but note that their living room is only half the size of the library where she had drunk tea with Mrs Blackwell.

  Elizabeth and Jack have shared the smaller of the bedrooms since the day she brought him home from the maternity hospital. At first he lay next to her at night in the double bed, snuffling like a hedgehog. Now that he is older there are two single beds in the room. Her father cut the double in half so expertly that you would swear they had been made that way.

  ‘Ilam’s a long way to travel each day,’ counters Elizabeth, setting down the glass salt and pepper shakers.

  ‘It’s not the moon, Lizzy. There’s always the tram. And for three pounds a week, I’d think you’d want to consider working on the moon.’ She forks the boiled cabbage onto the plates and the smell thickens the air. ‘Your father and I like having you around the place and Jack’s a good boy, but this arrangement was never meant to last forever. I’m not sure it’s the best thing, are you?’