The Virgin and the Whale

by Carl Nixon

  Dr Parkinson is shaking his head. ‘No. I do not recommend that, not at all.’

  ‘To what purpose?’ asks Mrs Blackwell.

  ‘I believe that given the excellent progress that he has made, even another month will see great changes for the better.’

  ‘He has improved a lot. Do you really think he might remember me soon?’

  ‘It is possible.’ Although I doubt it. ‘Surely another month can’t hurt?’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘I disagree,’ says the doctor churlishly. Both women are forced to look at him. ‘In my opinion a month could make a great deal of difference to your husband’s recovery. I don’t have to remind you, Mrs Blackwell, that it is only a few days since he attacked a man.’

  ‘It was a misunderstanding,’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Nonetheless, a man was stabbed. Mrs Blackwell, please, listen to reason. This woman is well intentioned, I’m sure, but the fact is she is completely unqualified to express any opinion whatsoever in this matter. Sunnyside is the only suitable place for your husband. The sooner he is under my care the better.’

  A lesser woman would have crumpled under the man’s stern gaze. Mrs Blackwell regards him coolly. ‘Did you go to the war, Dr Parkinson?’

  He seems surprised by this change in tack. ‘No, but I hardly think that is relevant.’

  ‘Mrs Whitman may not be a psychiatrist, but she has dealt extensively with wounded soldiers, both here and overseas. She is greatly respected by those doctors who have worked alongside her. I think you would do well to remember that.’

  ‘I meant no disrespect.’

  ‘I am sure you did not.’

  Mrs Blackwell draws herself up to her full height. ‘I will allow her to tend to Paul, but only for another month, up until his birthday on the 29th of July. Unless there is a radical change, and he remembers who he is, at that date he will come here to you for treatment.’

  Dr Parkinson lips are tight and bloodless. ‘I think that is a mistake.’

  ‘Possibly,’ says Mrs Blackwell firmly. ‘But I have made my final decision, and you can be sure, Dr Parkinson, that I will not be changing my mind again.’

  thirty-five

  The Tiger walked ahead, leading the Balloonist through the jungle. It was dark beneath the high canopy of the trees, and the great cat was just one more shadow among the deeper shadows, slipping easily in and out of view between the tree trunks, solid for a second or two before vanishing into thin air like a ghost.

  The man scrambled and pulled himself up, pushed and heaved over fallen trees and through narrow gaps. Sometimes he was forced to wriggle his way on his belly through the mud. He gasped and grunted and sweated. The jungle was nothing like the native bush near his home in Mansfield. Here, the enormous trees were supported by tangles of exposed roots, some as thick as his waist. The ground was always boggy and the air so hot that it felt as if it had come straight from a kitchen kettle. Thickets of bamboo and hanging vines grew everywhere.

  It began to rain, but this did not make the air in any way cooler. The man’s uniform was soaked through within seconds, so wet that he could very well have been swimming in it. He could hear the raindrops hitting the broad leaves around him. At first there were a few at a time: they made a sound like clap, clap, clap. Soon the fat, wet claps were coming so hard and so fast that it was as if the jungle were filled with mocking applause.

  He had not seen the Tiger for some time. He stopped and looked around. Warm rain dripped from his eyebrows and nose and from the tips of his fingers. This part of the jungle looked exactly the same as all the other jungle that he had passed through that day.

  He called, ‘Tiger? Tiger? Where are you?’

  There was no reply except for the clapping of the rain. Suddenly the Tiger was standing right beside him. He had not heard his approach at all.

  ‘How slowly you go.’

  ‘Is it much further?’ asked the man.

  ‘At this pace everywhere is much further,’ said the Tiger and walked off.

  The Balloonist sighed and followed.

  Actually, their destination was not very far. The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun. The trees thinned out slightly, and where sunlight hit the ground the earth steamed. The man found himself walking through a thin mist. The floor of the jungle began to slope upwards and he realised that he was now following the Tiger up what must be the side of a mountain. Stopping to collect his breath, he looked back and through a gap in the trees he saw that he was already quite high up. The jungle stretched as far as he could see in every direction, unbroken green in countless shades.

  Turning away, he felt his duffel bag catch on something tugging at his shoulders. The man was standing beneath a jibjab tree. He could see the famous jibjab thorns protruding from its branches. It was one of these that had snagged his bag. He was just tall enough to reach up and pull down the lowest branch. Very carefully he grasped the nearest thorn and twisted it free. It was 8 inches long and razor sharp along its outer edge and at its vicious tip. Wrapping the thorn in a piece of material ripped from the spare shirt in his bag, the man slipped it into his pocket and resumed walking up the mountain.

  The Tiger was waiting for him, twitching his tail impatiently. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ lied the Balloonist. He could feel the reassuring shape of the jibjab thorn, long and sharp as a dagger, pressed flat against his thigh. ‘Shall we carry on?’

  ‘No need, we are here.’

  The man looked around, confused. All he could see were more trees, more vines, more bamboo. ‘Follow me,’ said the Tiger as he went between two trees into a wall of green leaves. The man followed.

  He emerged at the entrance to an old mine. Without pausing, the Tiger stalked into the dark mouth of the mountain. Only a few feet in front of the man the darkness became as thick as squid ink. How far the mine shaft extended into the mountain was impossible to say.

  ‘I will be able to see perfectly well in the dark,’ said the Tiger, his eyes shining, ‘but as your species is inferior in so many ways that count, you may require the use of one of those.’ He flicked his tail in the direction of several whale-oil lamps, which were hanging from hooks on the wall.

  The Balloonist took down a lamp and lit it, using the matches he had cleverly thought to pack in his bag. He noticed that the Tiger eyed the flame suspiciously.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the Tiger.

  The shaft ran straight into the heart of the mountain. They passed several side tunnels but the Tiger never veered either to the left or to the right. When he finally stopped, the man held up his lantern. They were in a natural cavern the size of a small room where shadows twisted over the walls. Scattered around on the uneven ground were picks and shovels.

  ‘What happened to the men who dug this tunnel? It looks as though they left suddenly.’

  ‘They did not leave,’ said the Tiger. ‘They are still here.’

  The man got quite a shock when the Tiger said that. He held his lantern higher and strained his eyes and his ears. Sure enough, the Tiger had been telling the truth and he saw the miners. In the corner was a pile of human bones.

  The Tiger licked one paw. ‘In his youth, my father developed quite a taste for your kind. I asked him about it once. He said that you taste a lot like chicken. But on the whole, he believed that hunting you was more trouble than it was worth. It was he who told me about this place.’

  The man shivered. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ said the Tiger.

  The man looked around the cavern. He saw the white bones and some water that dripped darkly down the walls. ‘I see rocks.’

  ‘Look closer.’

  It was only then that the Balloonist noticed how the light from his lantern was reflecting in several places off the walls as though dozens of small dusty mirrors were protruding from the rock. He walked over to the nearest one and prised it free with a pickaxe that lay nearby. It was the size of a large marble
, rounded and milky.

  ‘Diamonds,’ he murmured. ‘This is a lost diamond mine.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘You want to buy back your wife and cub with diamonds.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Tiger, ‘A few of the larger ones should be enough. And because there is not much time before my family are put on a boat and lost to me forever, can I suggest that you start digging?’

  thirty-six

  In the days that follow Mrs Blackwell’s decision, Lucky develops a new symptom. There’s something amiss with his balance: he teeters on the balls of his feet and begins to stumble from mantelpiece to doorframe, to the edge of the bed and back again like a green cabin boy in a storm. The tremor in his hands returns and for several days he runs a fever and sweat soaks his sheets. Even so, he complains of the cold. At his insistence the fire is built up until the flames cause the bricks at the back of the fireplace to glow.

  Elizabeth has no medical explanation beyond the complexity of the human body. She tells Lucky that the unsteadiness and the fever will pass and ensures that he drinks glass after glass of tepid water flavoured with lemon and honey. She asks Mrs Booker to prepare chicken soup.

  The days are still fine although it is now after mid-morning before the sun can truly be said to give any warmth. On the fifth morning Elizabeth judges that Lucky is well enough to resume their rambles. She pushes him out the front door in a large wheelchair that was apparently used by his father, although she does not inform Lucky of its provenance. He wears a heavy overcoat and has a woollen blanket draped over his legs.

  They wander with no objective in mind. If plotted on a map, their travels would leave a cat’s cradle strung between oak and poplar, stretching to the east, to the stand of ash, around the brick chapel, and on to western border of the garden. At last they find themselves beneath the large magnolia growing in the middle of the lawn in front of the house.

  ‘How did you meet your husband?’ he asks unexpectedly.

  ‘It was at the hospital in London. I’d only been there about a week. We were understaffed and I didn’t know where anything was and it was all a bit daunting. Jonathan had just been admitted with shrapnel wounds to his legs and back. One morning I was blundering around the ward on the verge of tears and then there he was, leaning on his crutches and grinning at me.

  ‘He said to me, “Haven’t we met before?” Which sounds like the most terribly silly thing to say, but it turned out that we had met. We were both from here, from Mansfield, and we’d been introduced at a dance a couple of years before the war. We’d even had one dance together. We ended up laughing and chatting like old friends. After that I felt right at home at the hospital and had no trouble at all. Jonathan and I talked every day, although I had to be careful not to be seen to be favouring him over the other patients. I was surprised how upset I was when he was discharged but as it turned out he was sent to a training camp just outside the city. The army had redeployed him there as a machine gun instructor.

  ‘Whenever we could arrange for our leave to coincide he would visit me. After about two months he asked me to marry him. I said yes straight away.’

  ‘Because you loved him?’

  ‘Yes, very much. My parents said later that I shouldn’t have rushed into it. They don’t understand that time moves differently when you’re in a war. Six weeks was a lifetime. Married women weren’t allowed to continue nursing so we were married secretly by one of the army chaplains, a friend of Johnny’s. I had a friend from the hospital, another nurse, as my bridesmaid and Johnny had a sergeant from the training camp for his best man. Both were sworn to secrecy.’

  ‘What was it you liked about him?’ asks Lucky. He sounds curious. ‘Is he very handsome?’

  Elizabeth laughs. ‘Oh, heavens no. Johnny’s just average-looking, really. I suppose that I liked him at first because he was funny — he made me laugh. And because, even on crutches in the middle of a busy hospital ward, he seemed so relaxed. He always looked as though he were just off on a stroll down a country lane, without a care in the world.’

  She picks up a magnolia leaf from the grass and strokes the broad shiny surface. ‘Then he was unexpectedly sent back to the fighting in France, to the front. I didn’t even get to see him before he shipped out. It was another three months before we saw each other.’

  Lucky closes his eyes and turns his face towards the sun. ‘Do you think that he is still alive?’

  ‘I still have hope.’

  ‘If the war is finished, why hasn’t he come back to you?’

  ‘I’ve thought of a hundred things that could have kept him. The most likely is that he has been captured and sent east somewhere. Maybe he escaped and is hiding in the mountains, not even knowing that the war is over. It’s possible he was badly wounded and is being cared for somewhere. Maybe he has lost his memory.’

  Lucky opens his eyes and regards her. ‘I understand that does sometimes happen.’

  ‘Yes, apparently it does.’

  It is the first time Elizabeth has heard Lucky laugh. She likes his laugh, likes it a lot.

  thirty-seven

  Elizabeth is cutting Lucky’s hair. It falls black and tangled onto the wooden floor of his room. Sitting on a stool with an old bed sheet draped around his shoulders and fastened at the back with a safety pin, he squirms and wriggles.

  ‘Sit still.’

  They are to go into Mansfield that afternoon and the haircut is a condition that Elizabeth has imposed; Lucky must let her make him look at least halfway presentable.

  It has been a week — a full quarter of her allotted time — since her arrangement with Mrs Blackwell began. Lucky’s balance has returned as mysteriously as it departed but other than that he has made no obvious progress. She feels that he has taken two steps back and one step forward. Elizabeth knows that the restoration of his memory is less than unlikely. So what, she wonders as she snips at his heavy locks, is she hoping to achieve? Perhaps she is just delaying the inevitable.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing. Keep your head still.’

  ‘Is it almost finished?’

  ‘Soon. If it’s any consolation, you’re looking better already.’

  Elizabeth works slowly and methodically. She asks him to tilt his chin up and snips at his wild beard. At least when she holds the scissors close to his throat Lucky stops wriggling.

  ‘There,’ she says at last, stepping back.

  ‘Can I see?’

  Lucky tilts the hand mirror she gives him this way and that, a frown upon his face. ‘I wouldn’t know myself.’

  It is only when a fraction of a smile tugs at his lips that she realises that he is making another joke. She laughs and immediately feels better.

  After lunch, Martin Templeton drives them into the city, his shoulder still bandaged beneath his jacket. Elizabeth does not know for sure how Mrs Blackwell managed to avoid involving the police after the stabbing. She suspects that some type of financial arrangement has been reached with the driver. Even so, civility does not seem to have been part of the bargain. It is plain that he holds a grudge, and not just against Lucky. He has barely said a word to Elizabeth since that day; in fact he positively bristles in her presence.

  Martin Templeton parks the car close to the university and they go on foot towards the central square, Elizabeth and Lucky walking ahead, the driver hanging behind. Lucky moves slowly, drinking in the sights. He is wearing a new suit that his wife has had made for him. It is navy and double-breasted, a very fine cut. Even with his hair shortened and beard trimmed, people look at Lucky uneasily, give him a wide berth. There is still something of the foreigner about him. It is there, in the unguarded way that he stares at everyone, particularly children, and everything as though seeing it for the first time.

  One boy of about four meets his gaze and begins to cry. The boy’s mother takes her son’s hand and hurries him on his way.

  ‘You do know what a child is, don’t you?’ asks
Elizabeth.

  ‘Of course. I just haven’t been so close to one before.’

  This has never occurred to her. Of course there would have been no children on the hospital wards or aboard the troopship that brought Lucky back from England.

  ‘I should introduce you to Jack.’

  Lucky is still staring after the boy. ‘Children are very strange.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘They are like real people but also not like them.’

  ‘Adults?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true, but every one of us was once a child,’ she says and then adds, ‘including you.’

  Lucky gives her a look but does not contradict her or become angry as she is sure he would have done when they first met. Elizabeth takes this as a sign of progress.

  They cross the bridge over the shallow Stratford River and Lucky pauses to watch the ducks bobbing for food. He stares for a while at a young couple sitting hip to hip on a tartan rug on the river bank.

  In the Square the shadow of the cathedral spire lies across the cobblestones at their feet. Lucky tilts his head and gazes up at the spire. At the tip is a tarnished copper cross, green against the blue sky.

  Elizabeth says, ‘When I was a young girl, an earthquake knocked the top of the spire right off. My father took me to see it.’

  ‘Do you remember it?’

  ‘Not really. I remember the ice cream he bought me afterwards.’

  ‘Then how do you know you saw the fallen cross?’

  Elizabeth frowns. ‘It’s something that my family has talked about since then. Would you like to go inside?’

  Lucky nods.

  The interior of the cathedral is vast and dim and cold, stretching away from the entrance down twin rows of marble columns, which prop up a vaulted ceiling. Martin hangs back by the doors, his mood as cold as the air inside, while Elizabeth follows Lucky down the aisle. Half a dozen people, all women, are kneeling, still and silent as though they had been planted between the pews in wooden furrows and were waiting for sunlight to come through the stained-glass windows to make them grow. Elizabeth is grateful Lucky doesn’t ask her questions about the purpose of prayer, or about God. They circle the pulpit with its lectern carved into a wooden eagle, a large Bible resting open on the back of its outstretched wings. The massive pipes of the organ rise above the choir stalls.