John Brown's Body

by A. L. Barker

  “What worries me,” said Bertha, “is what do we do – what can we do – if there is water under the house?”

  Ralph smiled. Here was Bertha’s quality offsetting this defect of Emmeline’s, Bertha took Emmeline’s theories and held them up like knitting to see what the final measurements would be.

  “We could move.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Ralph. This is my home.”

  And the final measurements were shown to be nothing.

  “Thorne is well-built and structurally sound, Arnold would never have taken it otherwise. Where he came from they didn’t merely pinch the fruit before they bought, they ate it to see if it was worth paying for. He checked everything, he sent men up the chimneys and down the drains, he even had the brick content analysed. But he overlooked something that mattered more than any of that.”

  “Not to him,” said Bertha. “I really don’t think it would ever have mattered to him, except insofar as it mattered to you –”

  “Of course it wouldn’t. He was desensitised by his years in the East, he had reached maximum absorption and saturation point. He felt nothing.”

  “He wasn’t bothered,” Bertha explained. “By it, I mean.” She had a way of tidying up after people, interpreting and representing them when they were dead or absent, in the kindest light.

  “To my mind the terrestrial rays are more important than bricks and mortar. If they’re bad, a dry roof and good plumbing can’t compensate.”

  Bertha put her hand on Ralph’s. “I’ve made you baked jam roll. Emmy and I are ending with fresh fruit. We sleep better without pudding.”

  “I’ve never known you sleep badly.”

  “Emmy has very disturbed nights.”

  “Is it to be wondered at if I’m subjected to electromagnetic radiation all the time I’m in bed?”

  Ralph knew better than to ask how it had started. How did it ever start? Not with a bang but a whimper, as someone once said.

  “If there is a stream under the house it is here,” she said. “That I know, I feel.” She tapped a cigarette smartly on the table before putting it between her lips. Ralph observed that she tapped the wrong end. “I shall close this room and move my bed to the other side of the house.”

  Things being as they were it would be better if he did not observe so much, he had no intention of changing anything at this end, he accepted what had emerged at Thorne. Indeed, almost any other combination of the ingredients would have been the worse for him – and he was obliged to take whatever shaped up. Things being as they were, he had run a considerable risk.

  “What do you think, dear?” said Bertha.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters! We’re waiting for your opinion, aren’t we, Emmy?”

  “I think Emmy should get married again,” he said, and filled his mouth with pudding.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Bertha went turkey-red with alarm, Emmeline’s powder turned mauve.

  Ralph said thickly, with pastry loading his tongue, “It would solve all your problems.”

  Emmeline got up and left the room. Her chair, pushed back too violently, fell on its side. Bertha hurried to pick it up. “You shouldn’t have said that.”

  “I suppose not. It would be a poor lookout for us if she did marry again.”

  “Why did you say it?”

  “I wanted to rough her up for talking such nonsense. This is excellent pastry, Bert.”

  “It was unkind. Sometimes you can be unkind, dear.”

  But he knew that she did not think seriously of it, only as seriously as if she had been obliged to say that his hands were sometimes dirty. To her, unkindness and dirt were skin deep.

  He licked in some sweet flakes and tidied his lip from corner to corner with a sweep of his tongue. “It’s true. She needs a husband.”

  “Marriage is the answer to a lot of things,” agreed Bertha. She sat beside him and kissed his ear and he chose that moment, or was it chosen for him, to think again of the new little creature.

  After leaving the train he had put her firmly from his mind, intending to regard the journey down as being a journey away from her, with Thorne as its farthest point. When he got into the train to go back to London, when the first bend of the track hid Bertha from sight, that was to be the time to re-start thinking. But here he was, remembering the miracle with shocking clarity. Shocking because the locale was wrong, the time was wrong and the physical circumstance – Bertha nibbling his ear – was ludicrously wrong.

  “I’ve got something to tell you.” He jerked his head away. “I’ve cashed a cheque for two hundred pounds on our account.”

  *

  It wasn’t doubt that made Bertha ask questions. Of Ralph she had no doubt and she was quite easy about the money. She simply wanted to be easier still. She was like that in bed, stirring gently round and round before she went to sleep, making sure that everything was in the best possible place.

  “Shall we make a lot of money?”

  “No-one makes a lot nowadays with capital gains tax.”

  Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to tell her that he had invested the money.

  “Stock market dealings are like this, you get a tip and you have to be ready to take a chance. I took this one for both of us.”

  “I think it’s exciting. When shall we know how we’ve done?”

  He wanted the thought to occur that she might not see the money again, she need not retain the suspicion, but it ought to cross her mind.

  She asked if the investment was anything to do with kaffirs. Emmeline had told her that kaffirs could be gold shares.

  “I don’t want Emmy to know about it. What we do with our money is our business.”

  The plural was justified because he had done it for her too. It was a kind of investment.

  Later she asked who had given him the tip. Was it someone he could trust?

  “You must trust me,” he said. “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course, dear. And it’s your money too.”

  She wanted to know what it was they had bought. Shares in what? “Perhaps I shall see something about them in the paper. Emmy reads the financial page, so shall I now.”

  “If she sees you, she’ll cotton on. You know how quickly she can.”

  “The gardening notes are on the same page and I always read them. She won’t see anything different.”

  On the Saturday evening, just before the Chinns arrived, she asked what would affect the price of their shares. What caused them to go up or down.

  “A lot of things that we can’t control,” said Ralph, “at home and abroad – trade, strikes, politics, takeovers. Shares are vulnerable.”

  “I hope they won’t be affected by the Vietnam war – I shouldn’t like to profit from that.”

  The answers seemed to be lying about in his head, any number of lies lay about ready to be told. And it was easy to deceive Bertha, she didn’t ask for the fiction whole and tongued and grooved and caulked to hold water, she was satisfied with snippets of lies and took each one away and stored it in her mind and came back for another.

  But he heard her voice bringing them all out again one by one, and if from him they had sounded like truth, coming from her they sounded like lies. He had to rely on her not telling them to anyone, he had asked her not to, but he was going to get his own back for years because she would not forget it. He cursed Krassner, Krassner need never lift another finger, he was already built into their lives.

  “Do they give you certificates like they do when you buy premium bonds?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s nice to have something to show even if you’re not sure how much it’s going to be worth.”

  “I can’t show you, I haven’t got them with me.”

  “They wouldn’t mean anything to me, dear.” They were changing for dinner and she was putting powder into her neck, excitement had made her neck pink. “I can’t read small print. Oh, is that a
car in the lane? I must put some Parmesan on the table in case they take it with soup.”

  The Chinns were important people, they moved in unmysterious ways through local politics. They had unshakeable faith: if it did not move mountains it shifted many molehills.

  “What’s the matter, Shilling? You look as if you’ve lost a fiver and found yourself.”

  Dr Chinn did not smile at his own jokes but he expected others to, and faced with his strong wolfish stare they usually did. At public meetings he could stare titters out of an audience of several hundred. Ralph had himself tried the stare before a mirror but he had not enough white to his eyes to make it daunting.

  “Ralph’s in a mood,” said Emmeline, “we’re hoping you’ll shake him out of it.”

  “He’s a little tired,” said Bertha. “He has such a busy week, so much to think about and do, it can’t be any wonder if he likes to be quiet.”

  “I daresay I can match him,” said Dr Chinn. “I’ve seen a hundred or more patients this week, delivered a baby, driven to Colchester for a consultation, written an article on Zygotes and Eggs, inspected the effluents at Bull Marsh and Neap and lime-washed a hen house.”

  “The pace is so different in London,” said Bertha. “It’s so wearing with everyone rushing about. I always start to trot as soon as I get out at Liverpool Street.”

  “We’re all rather tired,” said Emmeline, “and I have my own idea why.”

  “Indeed?” Mrs Chinn raised her eyebrows. “What is your idea?”

  “If I were to state it in present company I should be laughed to scorn. It isn’t nice to be mocked for having the courage of one’s convictions, especially by those one has been obliged to regard as one’s nearest and dearest. But of course I am the only one under that obligation. Shall I pour you a whisky, Dr Chinn?”

  “Dear lady, please.” The doctor turned to Ralph. “What have you been up to, Shilling?”

  Ralph felt Bertha’s hand touch him for comfort or warning or both.

  “Scorn? Mockery? I wouldn’t have thought it commensurate with your nature.” He stared round, hunting up smiles. “What’s that thing of Burns’s about giving us the giftie of seeing ourselves as others see us?”

  “We had a slight difference of opinion,” said Bertha. “It happens in the happiest of families and my sister has been under considerable pressure lately. There was no mockery, no-one scorned anyone.”

  “A little leg-pulling?” The doctor stooped solicitously to Emmeline. “One cannot always take it from whence it comes. Or if one can, the source may make it harder to take at all.”

  “It was a serious discussion,” Bertha said firmly.

  Mrs Chinn drained her glass. “What pressure has Mrs Openshaw been under?”

  “I may tell you later. It would be a relief. Ralph, do give Mrs Chinn another sherry.”

  Ralph hoped she would tell them, he looked forward to hearing the doctor on terrestrial rays and ionization by secret streams. He wanted to ask if anyone had noticed pressure at Bull Marsh, walking about over the effluent. Shouldn’t that sort of stream be twice as lethal?

  During dinner the Chinns talked about themselves. The subject should have been a varied one since their activities were, but they seemed always to follow the formula which brought them out one hundred per cent right. Ralph couldn’t blame them. Had he been able to find such a formula he would have kept on it too. He listened without rancour through the soup, with Parmesan, through the stuffed roast pork and the green salad, the apple and lemon pie, the Bath Olivers and cheese, and blew a silent fanfare right into their faces.

  He tried the Krassner incident their way, by their formula. How would it have come out for Dr Chinn? Krassner had said, “I’m glad you’re human, old boy, it’s a weight off my mind. If people are born putty saints how are the rest of us poor bastards going to feel, having to fight temptation all the time? Yes, I’m glad you’re going to put up the money, it shows that temptation’s where you find it.” Krassner had said, “You’ve been tempted to save your office skin, old boy.”

  Ralph heard Dr Chinn reply, “You’ve just made your second big mistake, Krassner. The first was to steal, the second is to suppose I would compound a felony.”

  Dr Chinn wouldn’t have replaced the money, the formula would have seen him right, the formula would have taken care of everything and taken the blame to the top. To Pecry? That would have made history.

  “Ralph! What are you dreaming about?” Emmeline called down the table. “Ralph! Dr Chinn is speaking to you.”

  The doctor disliked not being attended to. He leaned across and tapped Ralph’s plate with the side of his knife. “I said it’s not smart to work in London. You should consider your arteries.”

  “Ralph takes exercise,” said Bertha. “He walks everywhere.”

  “He doesn’t have an expense account,” said Emmeline.

  “What could be wrong with his arteries?”

  “Nothing, dear lady, provided he remembers that he has them.”

  “I think we should look beyond flesh and blood for the causes of our illnesses,” said Emmeline.

  “We should, we should!” cried the doctor. “Of all creation our flesh and blood is most qualified to be perfect. Only yesterday, as I held a newly-born child by the heels I said to Nurse, ‘Here’s a brand new creature, a perfect being. What will we make of him? What will he make of himself?’”

  Ralph stared. Here was his miracle stated, here was medical authority for it.

  “We should look at the infected universe, everything in it is pathogenetic,” said the doctor, fixing them for the joke, and Ralph was wondering with alarm and despondency how many men had seen the perfectability of the flesh as he, Ralph, had seen it. How many had already discovered her in her flower of life?

  “We should look at Shilling’s pesticides which preserve the crop and poison the eater,” said Dr Chinn.

  “What happens to arteries,” Bertha wanted to know, “to make them harden?”

  “They fur up like a kettle,” said Emmeline.

  “Dear lady, that’s a whimsical thought. But I’m sure we don’t want to discuss the degenerative changes of animal tissues.”

  “I do,” said Bertha. “Will anyone try a pear?”

  Ralph felt sad. It was true that in the new-born child Dr Chinn had observed only the theory while Ralph himself had been privileged to see it in its beautiful practice. But the miracle now seemed less of a miracle. I’m being absurd, thought Ralph, if I expect to have a monopoly of truth.

  Mrs Chinn turned to Emmeline. “There was something you were going to tell us. About pressure.”

  “It’s a family matter.” Bertha stood up. “Shall we go into the garden-room for coffee?”

  “It helps to talk about family matters outside the family,” said Mrs Chinn. “Disinvolvement is an asset.”

  Ralph stood up beside Bertha. Dr Chinn began to pick up and sniff the pears. He selected two and put one on his wife’s plate. Ralph and Bertha sat down again.

  “I’m seriously wondering whether this is a good place to live” said Emmeline.

  “Good? In what sense?”

  “Whether it’s good for our health.”

  “Salubrious? From that point of view I consider it one of the best sites in the district.”

  “On the face of it, yes. I’m considering what’s underneath.”

  “Dear lady, what is underneath?”

  “I mean to find out.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “I shall employ a water-diviner.”

  There was a pause during which Dr Chinn quartered his pear and peeled each piece as if he were removing a membrane.

  “I shouldn’t have thought this house was damp,” said Mrs Chinn.

  “It isn’t. There’s something much more potent about water than its wetness.” Emmeline crushed her cigarette into the crumbled pastry on her plate. “There are radiations. They operate with or against, and here at Thorne they are against u
s.”

  “But only in this part of the house. And of course Emmy feels it,” said Bertha, “because she sleeps in the room over this one.”

  “Feels what?”

  “I can only describe it as a pull in the wrong direction.” Emmeline signalled to Ralph and he fetched the cigarette box from a side table. “It’s tiring to have to fight little fights all the while.”

  “Would it be correct to say that you are having trouble with the plumbing?”

  “No.” Emmeline got up and began to stir around the room. Her dress was unfashionably long and of some noisy material which cracked across her knees at every step. “Do you know anything about radiesthesia?”

  “I’m familiar with the principle of the copper bracelet.”

  “Are you familiar with the principle that everyone, every living creature, every thing, has an electro-magnetic field? An area of influence, of radiation? I don’t end here –” Emmeline slapped her cheek and spread her arms wide – “this is also me. And this –” she embraced the air above Dr Chinn’s head – “this is also you. This room is full of radiation, our magnetic fields are here, Mrs Chinn’s and Bertha’s, Ralph’s and this auricula’s – yes, this plant has a magnetic field, so have these chairs and this carpet and curtains and that bit of iron in the chimney-breast.”

  It was necessary for Emmeline to be seen doing whatever she was doing. She always pushed herself to an extreme in public, though never to an extremity. “Who shall say where we finish?” She whirled, with crackling skirts, around Dr and Mrs Chinn. “Can you be sure of a place, any place, where there’s none of me, nothing of you?”

  Dr Chinn dissected a brown speck from his pear. “There’s nothing of any of us out at Bull Marsh.”

  “Time and distance don’t finish us!” cried Emmeline. “Nor does death.”

  “We are not in that effluent area,” said Dr Chinn.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Dear lady, I never disbelieve anyone as sincere as you are. Occasionally a doctor has to suspend his critical faculties and recognise the power of unreason.”

  “I’m simply looking beyond my nose. Moonshots and space probes are done by mathematics – I shan’t say ‘simple’ mathematics although comparatively speaking they are, because the equations are on the blackboard waiting to be worked out. But there are some things that cannot be written down. Sometimes I think that chimney-breast is to blame.”