by Jem Poster
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, as calmly as I could.
‘You can see what I’m doing.’ She raised the shears to the back of her neck again. I knelt beside her and took up a loop of hair from the packed earth.
‘Your father said—’
‘What my father said’ – I heard the blades clash and grind – ‘won’t have come within a country mile of the truth. Did he tell you about this?’ She hauled sharply on the hair twisted in her left hand so that her head went back between her shoulders and her long pale throat lay exposed. Her teeth were bared in a fierce rictus, the breath hissing between them as she struggled, in grotesque pantomime, to free herself from her own unyielding grip. I leaned forward and took her gently by the shoulder.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘You’ll harm yourself.’
‘Not the way he’s harmed me. But let him try it now.’ She relinquished her hold and ran her hand with a vicious clawing or combing motion across the cropped side of her head. ‘See? Try for yourself. Go on.’ I could feel her trembling beneath my hand. ‘I said, go on. Make to grab me by the hair as if—’
‘Easy, Nell, easy,’ I said, very softly but firmly, as though I were quietening a frightened animal. ‘You’re not to excite yourself.’
‘Who says not?’ She peered into my eyes, her face so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my skin. ‘I suppose my father’s told you I’m brainsick, has he? A poor deluded child who doesn’t know what day of the week it is?’
I lowered my eyes, unable to sustain the intensity of her stare. ‘Not exactly. He told me that since your mother’s death you’ve been prone to—’
‘Damn him,’ she cried, arching her body sideways and breaking my hold on her shoulder. ‘Damn him and his lying tongue.’ She set to once more with the shears, chopping and tearing frenziedly at the remaining hanks of hair. I snatched at her arm, a futile gesture in any event and, as it transpired, worse than futile. She gave a sharp cry and the shears clattered to the ground. I leaned behind her with the intention of retrieving them and saw the smooth skin of her neck broken, the blood seeping into the white collar of her blouse.
I remember the momentary silence, the acute and quite disproportionate spasm of anguish that went through me as I gazed at the nick below the ragged line of her hair. I reached into my breast pocket for my handkerchief.
‘Bend your head forward,’ I said. I folded the handkerchief into a thick pad and dabbed gently at the cut. ‘It’s hardly more than a scratch. Certainly nothing to worry about.’
‘Oh, I’m not troubled. Believe me, I’d take the blades to my face if I thought there was no other way of getting clear of it all.’
‘This is wild talk, Nell. You’re to stop it, do you hear?’ I picked up the shears and slipped them quickly, blades first, into my side pocket.
‘I’ll talk as I please,’ she said sullenly. She half turned, groping behind her with her left hand, then swung back violently to face me. ‘Where are they?’
‘The shears?’ I fingered the protruding grip, feeling her touch still there in the warm steel. ‘I have them.’
‘Give them to me.’
‘They’re safer with me, Nell.’ I rose cautiously to my feet and stepped back a couple of paces. ‘You don’t need them.’
‘Of course I need them. I can’t go back to the house with my hair like this.’
‘You should have thought of that before you started.’
‘I mean’ – she tugged irritably at the last strands of uncut hair – ‘with the job unfinished. Let me have them.’ She held out her hand and stared up at me, her eyes daring me to refuse.
‘I’ll finish the job for you,’ I said, ‘but not with a pair of blunt sheep-shears. What were you thinking of, Nell?’
‘I wasn’t thinking. Just feeling. The shears came to hand, that’s all – the way things do when they’re needed.’
I went to my table, unfastened my satchel and drew out the case of instruments. I spread it flat and selected the larger of the two pairs of scissors.
‘Come and sit here,’ I said, pulling the chair away from the workbench and swivelling it round to face her.
‘Just give me the scissors. I can do it myself.’
‘You can have no idea,’ I said, a little more brusquely than I’d intended, ‘what kind of a mess you’ve made. Let me tidy it up for you.’
She stood still for a second or two, irresolute but visibly calmer now; then she stepped over and seated herself decorously in the chair. I pushed the door wide and the light came flooding in.
I trim my own hair as a matter of course and I had no scruples about dealing with Eleanor’s, particularly since, as I was tactless enough to hint, her recent efforts had left so much scope for improvement. There’s no great mystery to the craft: like the skinning of a bird, it requires a certain delicacy of touch but is otherwise largely a matter of patience and concentration. I worked with care, but with vigour and fluency too, running my hand smoothly upward from nape to crown through the thick curls, lifting and cutting, lifting and cutting, absorbed in the easy, repetitive movement. And it wasn’t until the job was almost done that I was struck – feeling with a queasy tenderness the contours of her skull beneath my fingertips – by the strange intimacy of the whole business, and by some attendant notion of its impropriety. I withdrew my hand and straightened up.
‘Have you finished?’
‘Very nearly.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘A good deal better than it did ten minutes ago, but – hold still now.’ I leaned over her again and snipped away a stray wisp of hair.
‘But what?’
I snipped again. ‘You’d better go in and see for yourself,’ I said. ‘I’ve done what I can.’ I shook out the folded handkerchief and flapped the cut hair from the back of her neck.
‘You’re angry with me, aren’t you?’ She tilted back her head, staring up into my face.
‘Angry at what you’ve done, yes. Angry at this wilful violation of your own beauty.’
‘If my beauty’s my own,’ she said, colouring, ‘I can do what I like with it.’
‘That’s not true, Nell. Your beauty is valued by others. This isn’t simply an outrage against yourself, but against those who care for you.’
I saw her shoulders stiffen and go back. ‘Outrage?’ she said quietly. ‘Violation?’ Her voice was very clear and cold. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the words. I’ll show you outrage. I’ll show you violation. I’ll show you how he cares for me.’
She rose to her feet and turned to face me, both hands at her throat. I had no sense at first of what she was up to; then the hands slipped an inch or two lower, and I saw that she was unbuttoning herself.
‘What is this, Nell? What are you doing?’
She made no answer but continued, with deft, economical movements of her thin fingers, to unfasten her blouse. It wasn’t the action alone that alarmed me but the terrible fixity of her gaze, her eyes trained on mine but seeming to look clean through me to the shadows at my back. I stepped forward to restrain her.
‘No,’ she said sharply. And then, as I hesitated, she put her right hand to the collar of her blouse and tugged it down over her shoulder so that her left breast lay exposed.
You have to bear in mind that, since the death of my mother, all my dealings with women had been of an essentially impersonal nature, and certainly nothing in my experience had prepared me for this – an act of unsettling complexity, simultaneously suggestive of licentiousness and trusting innocence, of vulnerability and barely suppressed fury. And if I was unsettled by the act itself, I was horrified by the damage it disclosed: what I was looking at was not the smooth pallor familiar to me from my days in the art galleries of France and Italy, but a blotched patchwork of scabs and bruises.
What should I have said? I felt the need of words, but for a long moment could only stare in appalled fascination at what I took to be a bite-mark, a ragged oval, visibly infected, an inc
h or so above the nipple; and when words came they were, as I knew at once, the wrong ones. ‘That needs attention,’ I said, gesturing awkwardly at the inflamed area.
‘I am attending to it,’ she said quietly. ‘I always do.’ She turned away as though belatedly registering the impropriety of the situation, and began to refasten her buttons.
‘If there’s anything I can do …’
She raised her head and glanced back at me over her shoulder. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘You’re my witness.’ Then she stepped out into the sunlight. I hurried after her as she strode purposefully up the path towards the house, her cropped head held high and her skirts swaying. It seemed to me that there was more to be said, but she never once slowed her pace or looked back.
Vane was leaning on the rail of the veranda, smoking. I saw his head jerk up as we approached; then he stubbed out his cheroot and struck diagonally across the lawn towards us, stumbling a little as he came, his eyes fixed on his daughter’s face. As Eleanor drew level with him, he stretched out his arm, meaning, I supposed, to detain or embrace her; but she brushed past him as though he were an importunate street-beggar and swept into the house. As he gazed after her, I caught in his eye the most extraordinary expression of anguished entreaty, and I imagined that he would follow her; but he drew himself up sharply, rammed his hands into his jacket pockets and veered off towards the gates without so much as a glance in my direction.
I was seized by a longing for space and solitude. I left word with the servants that I should be away for the remainder of the day, then collected my net and killingbottle from the barn and set out for the creek. Dinner that evening was a miserable occasion. Whether as a result of the turmoil of the preceding twenty-four hours or because I had spent too long in the full glare of the afternoon sun, I was oppressed throughout the meal by a sick headache that deprived me both of my spirits and my appetite. And Vane, too, seemed distinctly out of sorts: moodily preoccupied, he scarcely troubled to acknowledge my presence until we were half-way through the main course.
‘I’ve come to realise,’ he said at last, ‘that I should have been more explicit about my daughter’s condition. What I described this morning as hysteria might more appropriately be characterised as a form of mania. To put it bluntly, Eleanor suffers from delusions. I don’t mean the fantasies natural to impressionable girls of her age, but ideas – usually of persecution or assault – that invade her mind and grow there until they become indistinguishable from the reality around her. It’s a vile business, Redbourne, hard for her, and harder still on those who care for her. And of course’ – he shot me a sharp glance – ‘it makes her entirely unmarriageable. That’s a heavy burden for a father to bear.’
I said nothing. Whatever I thought I had seen – up in Eleanor’s room, out there in the shadowed barn – seemed to melt and blur, equivocal as the broken images of a midnight dream.
Vane picked up his napkin-ring and studied it carefully, as though it bore some arcane inscription. ‘There’s something else I have to say, Redbourne. I believe that your presence in the household may have contributed in some measure to these recent outbursts. Please don’t misunderstand me – there’s no personal criticism implied – but the coincidence is suggestive. I’m no expert in such matters myself, and I make no judgement, but the plain fact is that until last night she was showing every sign of having outgrown the more extreme manifestations of her illness.’
‘If you’re asking me to leave—’
‘Please, Redbourne.’ He reached out and gripped my sleeve with awkward familiarity. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You’ll be gone by Thursday in any case, and that’s all too soon for me. But I suggest that you avoid Eleanor’s company in the interim – avoid it entirely. For your own good as well as hers.’
He placed the napkin-ring carefully beside the meatdish and glanced across at my plate. ‘You’re not eating,’ he said.
I shook my head and felt a spasm of pain pass like fire from the back of my skull to my left temple. ‘I seem to have lost my appetite,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if I retire?’
He leaned forward, scrutinising my face. ‘You look flushed,’ he said. ‘Are you unwell?’
‘A little. A touch of the sun, perhaps.’ I rose unsteadily to my feet and made for the door.
‘You’ll bear in mind what I’ve told you, Redbourne?’
The words were clear as crystal but seemed to come to me from an enormous distance. I inclined my head vaguely in their direction, let myself out into the hallway and slowly climbed the stairs to my room.
I had made a vow to myself on leaving England that my opium-taking would in future be restricted to cases of medical necessity and, despite moments of temptation during the voyage, the bottle of tincture I had brought with me was still unbroached. I cracked the seal with my pocket-knife and eased out the cork. I took the tumbler from the washstand and poured into it a finger of brandy from my hip-flask. Then I added a few drops of the tincture, knocked back the mixture and eased myself, still half clothed, between the sheets.
It was a night of dreams, all forgotten now except the last. I was back in the swamplands where we had killed the heron, up to my calves in the silt at the water’s edge. And she was there too, kneeling or squatting beside me, though in the half-dark – some dullness or misting of the air around us – I didn’t recognise her until she spoke. Not in words, I think; but I knew clearly enough what she wanted and why she had joined me there, and I slipped the blouse back from her shoulders and began to wash the lacerated skin, scooping up the water in cupped hands and letting it fall from above so that it ran in rivulets down her throat and breasts. Swamp water, yes, but shining as it fell; and her skin taking on the shine, the scars and bruises fading as I worked. And then, because I knew that this, too, was what she wanted, I knelt and placed the tips of my fingers lightly against the healed flesh.
I can’t get back to it now – not to the charged heart of the dream. But I remember that, lying there in its thrilling afterglow, I conceived the notion that the waking world and the world of the dream were one and the same; and in my confused or exalted state I imagined myself padding down the corridor to Eleanor’s room and gently rousing her from sleep to ask whether she knew in what miraculous fashion we had both been blessed.
14
Eleanor wasn’t at breakfast the next morning, and Vane seemed scarcely able to acknowledge my presence, let alone to maintain a civilised conversation. He ate with nervous, preoccupied haste, and only when he had cleared his plate and poured himself a second cup of coffee did he raise his eyes to mine.
‘I’ve sent for Bullen,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d want another day out before you leave.’
‘Thank you, Vane, but I’d prefer to stay here. I’ve two skins to prepare, and I shall need time to pack for tomorrow’s journey.’
‘Bullen won’t be here until eleven. I imagine that will give you time enough.’
His anxiety to have me off the premises was so painfully evident that I decided not to argue the point. ‘I’ll set to work now,’ I said. ‘No doubt I can arrange my affairs around the excursion.’
‘Thank you, Redbourne.’ His features softened into a weak smile. ‘I know you appreciate the delicacy of the situation.’
‘Is Eleanor any better this morning?’
‘It’s hard to say. She’s quieter, as she generally is after one of these episodes, but she’s still far from well.’
‘Has the doctor examined her?’
‘There’s no need.’ Vane drained his coffee-cup and set it carefully back in its saucer. ‘He’d prescribe complete rest as usual. If she keeps to her room for the next few days, she’ll gradually return to a more orderly state of mind.’
‘I hope I shall be able to see her before I leave.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ he said, rising abruptly to his feet. ‘But I should be glad to pass on any message you may have for her.’
I was quite unprepared for the wave of
desolation that swept over me at that moment, and it took me a second or two to recover my equilibrium. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You might just tell her that I look forward to seeing her fully restored to health on my return.’
It was barely a flicker, but the expression that crossed Vane’s face told me as clearly as words could have done that I shouldn’t presume on boundless hospitality on any future visit to the villa. ‘I mean,’ I added hastily, ‘when I call by to collect my trunk.’
‘Of course,’ he murmured, but even as he spoke I could see from his expression that something – perhaps some small sound from beyond the door – had distracted him. He stood alert for a moment, head lifted like that of an animal scenting danger, and then, scarcely troubling to excuse himself, strode swiftly past me and out of the room.
I was glad at first to get out to the barn but I found it difficult to concentrate and I made a poor job of the first specimen, tearing the delicate skin in several places. The second bird fared even worse, its pale breast-feathers stained with bile as a result of my carelessness and, on a sudden nauseous impulse, I disposed of the entire mess in the scrub outside the door. It was Eleanor, I realised, as I wiped my instruments and returned them to their case, who had distracted me, her presence so deeply engrained in the place – or perhaps simply in my receptive mind – that it was impossible to be there without thinking of her.
I made my way back to the house in a state of subdued agitation, and as I rounded the shrubbery and looked up I saw her at the window of her room, her face close against the glass. I was unable to interpret either the words she mouthed at me or the fluttering action of her raised right hand but I judged it best, in the first instance at least, to remain where I was. I ducked back out of sight of the house and waited.
I heard the rustle of her skirts as she approached, and knew from the sound that she was moving fast, half running towards me across the open lawn. As she drew level with the end of the shrubbery she caught sight of me and veered round with a movement so impetuous as to bring her within an ace of falling into my arms. And seeing her standing there, her face lifted to mine and her hand flat against the base of her throat as though to steady her own quick breathing, I was struck by the thought that a man differently reared or constituted – a man, in short, of less ambiguous temperament than myself – would hardly have let such an opportunity slip for want of a welcoming gesture.
