‘Yes, it’s just its rather—’
‘Good God, man, you’re wearing more than we are! You don’t see young Parksy whining for jumpers and woolly vests, do you? You’ 11 need to be made of sterner stuff than that, I’m afraid, Mercer. Something else to wear, indeed!’
Patrick took a deep breath. ‘The issue of source material,’ he said, ‘is a thorny one. Often we are dealing with texts that have been reproduced over many hundreds of years. Bibles, for instance, or saints’ lives—’ He stopped. At the edge of the group, Parksy was batting a live fish between his hoofs like a cat toying with a mouse.
‘What’s wrong now, man?’ said Longbottom.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Patrick, ‘but—’ he gestured at Parksy ‘—its very distracting.’
‘Fling it, Parksy,’ barked Longbottom. The fish was flicked back into the water. ‘Mr Mercer, if you please.’
‘Prod him.’
‘What?’
‘See if he moves.’
‘He’s not pretending, you know.’
‘If you won’t, I will.’
‘Shh!’
‘What?’
‘He said something.’
I didn’t hear anything.’
‘Something about a vest.’
‘That’ll be the morphine talking.’
Patrick had been talking for close to an hour, he estimated. Although he hadn’t touched on a lot of what he’d prepared, he didn’t want to risk boring his audience, and it was impossible to gauge whether they were still interested or not. He put his hands behind his back in what he hoped was a confident pose, but he could feel the gap in the back of his gown. He folded his arms across his chest instead. ‘Are there any questions from the floor at this stage?’
‘I have a question, young man.’ A plummy-toned nanny goat raised herself as far as her figure would allow. Her chest wobbled as she spoke, and Patrick couldn’t help thinking of Mrs Morrin, who had lived next door when he was a boy, and whose reading glasses had hung from a chain against her enormous, upholstered bosom. ‘You mentioned zoomorphic ornamentation—I wonder if you would tell us in a little more detail the sorts of illustrations one might encounter. Zoomorphically speaking.’
‘Well,’ said Patrick, ‘it’s a vast field, as you can imagine. Not only did medieval artists pepper their work with known animals, they also painted creatures from classical mythology, and beasts entirely of their own invention. The matter is further complicated when you realise that, even when they were drawing on the natural world—’
‘I thought you said they painted.’
Patrick sighed.
‘My lovely wife is correct, Mr Mercer, you did say they painted.’
‘Yes. They painted. My point is, even when they—took inspiration from the natural world, very often they had never set eyes on the animal in question.’
‘You mean they just imagined what an elephant, for instance, might look like, and then made it up?’
‘Precisely,’ said Patrick, pleased he was finally getting somewhere.
‘Outrageous,’ tsked the nanny goat.
‘Do you think he can hear us?’
‘I don’t know. No.’
‘He looks so emaciated.’
‘So would you.’
‘It’s a shame about his hair. He had such lovely soft hair, even after it went grey’
‘Maybe we should have a conversation.’
‘I don’t think he’s feeling that chatty.’
‘Us, not him. You and I should have a conversation.’
‘I thought we already were.’
‘About him. Things he might recognise.’
‘Um. All right, museum, illuminated manuscript—’
‘That’s not a conversation.’
‘I feel stupid.’
‘Nobody can hear you.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
‘Paper,’ said the doe in a silky voice. ‘Perhaps Mr Mercer could tell us something about paper production.’
‘Of course,’ said Patrick, and smiled at her. If he could get Melanie on side, perhaps Longbottom would settle down a little. ‘Although paper began to be used widely only after the fifteenth century.’
‘Well what did they use before then?’ said Longbottom. It said in the brochure that you’d cover manuscript production from the fifth century. They can’t have made books without paper, can they?’
Laughter rippled around the group. Even Melanie was smirking.
‘Well,’ said Patrick, ‘paper was used earlier than then, but—’
‘Oh, so it was, was it? Just forgot for a minute, did we?’
Patrick bent so that his face was level with Longbottom’s nose. He caught a whiff of fetid breath. ‘Parchment,’ he said. ‘That was what they used before paper caught on.’
‘What’s that you say? Parchment? Never heard of it.’
‘Parchment, or vellum. There is a slight technical difference between the two, but basically they’re the same material.’ And then Patrick told them how the skins were scraped of fat and hair, how they were immersed in lime, scraped again, stretched and dried. There was a flesh side and a hair side to any page of parchment, he said, and it was usually possible to tell which was which.
When he finished, there was silence. He scanned his audience, waiting for comments, perhaps a question or two, but the animals just stared at him. One or two lambs and calves began crying.
‘But that’s barbaric,’ said Melanie quietly. ‘Longbottom, this is appalling. Must we listen to these horror stories?’ ‘Sir, we are outraged,’ said Longbottom in a pale voice. ‘You come here supposedly to entertain us, it’s billed as a lively and informative talk for the whole family, and then you force us to listen to these, these atrocities.’
‘But I don’t—’
‘Silence! You have said quite enough, sir.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite—’
‘I said silence!’
Patrick shivered. While he’d been talking he hadn’t noticed the cold, but now the snow was biting into his toes, the wind numbing his nose, his ears. And his head was pounding again.
‘Are you cold?’ said Longbottom. ‘Perhaps you’d like a nice woolly coat, how would that be? And some cosy fur-lined boots?’
The animals began to approach him, fanning out to form a semi-circle. They struck the ground as they moved, sending up clouds of snow, thousands of icy slivers.
‘I’ve offended you,’ said Patrick. ‘I’m not sure what I’ve said, but I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
The animals moved in closer, hoofs churning the snow. It whirled around them, a haze of silver and white, blurring their outlines. They could have been rocks, Patrick thought. Angry, advancing rocks. He crouched down into a ball, made himself as small as possible. Perhaps they would not find him in this white storm; perhaps it would bury him before they reached him. By now he could see only the snow. He closed his eyes, and could still see nothing but white. He felt himself being lifted, and through the blizzard he could just hear a voice, below him now.
‘Mummy, that wasn’t true, was it? What that man said, that was just made up.’
‘Yes, darling, it was just a story.’
‘I thought so.’
‘This house is getting run down, you know,’ Ruth said in bed one night.
‘Mm,’ said Malcolm, his face shadowed by newspaper.
The doors need sanding, and the downstairs carpet’s badly faded from the sun. Most of the windows stick. The oven’s temperamental. The paper’s coming away in Daniel’s room. And all the ceilings need repainting.’
They both looked up. The ceilings were one of the house’s most interesting features: plaster scalloping and garlands and elaborate central flowers. They reminded Ruth of wedding cakes.
‘They need a bit of attention, I suppose,’ said Malcolm. ‘I could do a few repairs over summer.’
‘We don’t need a place this big,’ said Ruth. ‘When I’m back at the library fu
ll-time I won’t be able to keep a place this big clean.’ She studied the scalloping, followed the pattern around each corner. ‘The room in best shape,’ she said, ‘is Laura’s.’
‘That’s because it’s not used.’
‘Exactly.’ Ruth’s eyes traced the outline of a flower. The light fitting hung from the centre, its bulb a bright stamen. ‘Maybe we should move,’ she said.
Malcolm took a long, slow breath. ‘Maybe we should.’
The next morning Ruth bought a paper on the way to work, and at lunchtime, in the staffroom, she turned straight to the realestate pages, leaving the other sections neatly unread. Jan, her boss, watched her, but made no comment. Be quick, the advertisements cautioned, won’t last. And she would be quick, she decided, otherwise she and Malcolm and Daniel would never move. They would stay forever in the old house, the high-maintenance house with its vast garden, its warped windows, its turret that watched the sea. Ruth ringed several advertisements, without any idea what OSP or H&I or sunny ROW site meant. There was no glossary. And perhaps the abbreviations were common knowledge, and everybody else was familiar with them, these shortcuts that made life simpler. Since Laura had gone, Ruth sometimes felt as if she’d been lost too, as if she were living in a place where she no longer knew the rules or the language. She remembered being faced with a choice of three new yoghurts at the supermarket once. She’d stood there staring at the different cartons, picking them up and putting them down again, reading the labels as if they would provide her with advice.
She folded the newspaper and rinsed her coffee mug. ‘I’m just popping downtown,’ she said to Jan. ‘Shouldn’t be too long.’
‘What sort of place are you looking for?’ said the real-estate agent. ‘A family home?’
‘Well, not a large place,’ said Ruth. ‘My husband and I are just finding our old house too big. But we’d like to move right away, as soon after Christmas as possible.’
‘So you’re wanting somewhere low maint, two or three brms,’ said the woman. She began writing on a pad. ‘There are some gorgeous townhouses around.’
‘Do they have gardens?’ said Ruth. ‘My husband loves to garden.’
‘Some of them do, smallish plots. Although of course that will increase the price.’ She scribbled away for a moment. Ruth wished she could see her notes. It felt like a visit to the doctor, as if her defects were being recorded, her frailties assessed. The woman looked up and smiled. ‘How many children do you have?’
‘Just one, at home. He starts school in March.’
‘But you might have others staying from time to time?’
‘Yes,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s possible.’
‘They never really leave, do they?’ said the woman. ‘I can’t get rid of my thirty-year-old. He still brings his ironing round,’ She laughed. ‘Three brms, then,’ and she noted it down on her pad.
Ruth nodded.
‘Any animals?’
‘Just a cat. We used to have a labrador, but that was years ago.’
‘Dogs are a lot of work,’ said the woman. ‘Mind you, cats can be fussy too, can’t they? What’s yours called?’
‘Fluffy,’ said Ruth. ‘My son named it.’
‘Here’s a trick for you.’ The woman leaned across the desk, as if to whisper. ‘When you do move, butter Fluffy’s paws once you get to the new place. It’ll stop him from running away’
Someone was reading to him. A woman, there was a woman reading to him in a hushed voice usually reserved for the terminally ill, or children at bedtime.
‘But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.’
The voice reminded him a little of his mother’s. He wished she would be quiet, just leave him alone. But on she droned, on and on: ‘Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.’ Perhaps she thought she was helping. Perhaps, because of his work, she assumed he was religious. In the Middle Ages, he recalled, it was customary to read saints’ lives to the afflicted. The scrapings of manuscripts were mixed with water and administered to victims of snake-bite. The Book of Durrow was used to cure sick cattle; the finger bones of an Irish scribe who had copied countless gospels performed a miracle after his death. ‘And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.’ Perhaps the woman wanted to save his soul, or lull him to sleep. ‘Are there not twelve hours in the day?’ she asked. ‘If any man walk in the day he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.’
Patrick thought of the legend of Saint Columba; how he’d copied Saint Finnian’s psalter illegally and how, in the church at night, his fingers had shone as he wrote. ‘And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written,’ Patrick imagined copying a book by hand. Mistakes would be inevitable. He wondered if Columba had made mistakes, whether Finnian’s copy was accurate. He tried to ignore the voice, the story-time, nearly-time-for-lights-out voice that sounded like his mother’s. The woman had no idea what she was reading. It was outrageous. Who knew what the real story was? How could anyone ever believe what they read?
Patrick’s mother was a small, careful person, deliberate in her actions. Unlike her son, who left behind him a trail of crumbs, books, toppled trains and soldiers, she left no wake.
Patrick knew this hadn’t always been the case. He had seen school photographs of her, when she had been captain of the athletics team. Her limbs were long and muscular and in one picture she was stretching out a baton, relaying to the viewer some schoolgirl message. In others she flew across hurdles, cradled the heavy shot to her cheek like a violin. And there she was on a bicycle, the outline of her knees showing through her skirt, her hair a rippling pennant. It seemed she was never still. In many of the photographs—which Patrick had labelled young in his mind, although they were very old—parts of his mother were smudged. Her hair and her cheeks smeared the pictures, her arms were blurred wings. None of the photos was an original, of course; they’d all been lost in the fire. These were copies, mostly taken from Aunt Joyce’s collection, a few from his grandmother’s They weren’t as sharp as the originals, and they felt different, too; whereas the old paper had been thick, textured like skin, these were thin and slippery, difficult to hold. They showed every fingerprint. And there were gaps: here was Patrick as a newborn, then all of a sudden he was starting school. Here was his mother at school, there she was married.
Her wedding photograph was one of the few in which she was perfectly still. She was tiny inside the frame, insignificant against the ornate dress. It was heavy with beading and embroidery, and the train had been swept around her ankles and spread in front of the wedding party like an extravagant blanket, as if, after the photo had been taken, everyone would sit down for a picnic among the stitched butterflies and flowers and tiny, gold-flecked birds. Patrick imagined her walking up the aisle in the massive garment, the train slowing her, keeping her steps steady, ladylike, no relay races here. She had been sewn into the dress, she’d told Patrick once. Her mother had insisted. It gave a better line than catches and buttons and hooks and eyes.
‘Your grandmother stitched me in herself,’ she said, ‘and she pricked me with the needle, by accident, but there was just a tiny spot of blood and it didn’t show through.’
There was no blurring in photographs of Patrick’s mother after the fire. She could sit still for hours, it seemed. Sometimes she did. Patrick blamed the fire for his mother’s slowing down. And the fire was nobody’s fault.
Patrick’s father wore a pocket watch which his wife had given him on the day they were married. The chain could be seen glinting in the wedding photograph, while hidden in the waistcoat was the thick golden disc that sat under his ribs and ticked like a second heart. Sometimes, on
special occasions, he would open the back and show Patrick the tiny mechanism that made it work. Patrick was always surprised at the neatness of it. Hours and minutes never felt tidy to him; they leapt and raced like hares. He wondered if his own insides were that neat.
‘This is the hairspring,’ said his father, pointing to a tight coil, ‘and this is the escape wheel. And here’s the part that makes the sun and moon pictures move.’
The pictures were Patrick’s favourite part of the watch. When the sun was in full view, the moon couldn’t be seen at all, and vice versa. It made him shiver as if he knew a secret when he thought of a hidden moon, a hidden sun, moving behind the golden workings. His father insisted they were useless.
‘Purely decorative,’ he said. ‘A man knows if it’s night or day without having to consult his watch. Your mother liked them.’
Patrick peered at the watch side-on to see the sun slip away.
‘Do you think,’ he asked his father, ‘there’s a time of day when you can’t tell if it’s morning or evening? If you were shut in the dark for a week, say, and then let out, could you tell what time it was?’
But his father didn’t answer. He simply pocketed the watch and said, ‘Bed.’
The bed had been made too tightly. Patrick moved his leg, tried to untuck the sheets with his foot. The woman’s voice stopped.
‘He seems restless.’
‘Should we ring for the nurse?’
‘Let’s just plump his pillows for him. Here, tuck the sheet in on your side, it’s coming loose. Right—my substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.’
Patrick was on a train with his father. They were on their way back from a seaside holiday, and his mother must have been there too, somewhere, but Patrick was leaning against his father and the motion of the train was lulling him almost to sleep, except he didn’t want to go to sleep, he wanted to make the holiday last and last, and sleeping was a waste of time. His father was dozing, cupping his pocket watch in his hand, and Patrick kept himself awake by watching the second hand move round and round the white dial, and outside the train everything became dark, and Patrick saw the moon rise in his father’s palm.
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