Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

'Thank you. I feel it. My regards to your husband.' Again he marks the awkward curtsey. The door closes, a bolt slides home and the woman's footsteps fade into the body of the house. James makes his way up the path, blinking to clear the imprint of the candle flame from his sight. It feels colder now; the stones grate like glass beneath his shoes. He has reached the road when he is stopped by a softly floated 'tssst!' from the house.

'You'll tell the stories, Dr James?' The voice seeps from a small casement under the eaves. Sam himself is quite invisible.

'I shall.'

'The Empress?'

'Yes, Sam.'

'An' why Mary's got pointy teeth?'

'Go to bed, Sam.' He raises his arm, waves.

The sexton's ale, bright and wholesome as it is, is not quite adequate protection against the frost now fingering its way through the folds of James's coat. Neither, after his conversation with Mrs Clarke, does he feel like trudging directly home - home! - to the Reverend's house and a cold, most Hkely empty bed. A half-hour of human society, a glass of rum and water, some insubstantial chatter - these

shall settle him again. What did he mean, going on to Mrs Clarke like that?

Coming abreast of Caxton's, he bows in through the low door, stands in the choppy light and breathes in the vile air of the place. A small front room with a small fire, benches polished to jet by countless breeches, and four tables upon which single candles give off coarse threads of smut. Caxton himself stands by the fire, arms akimbo, looking over the shoulders of a half-dozen of the Reverend's recent guests who are playing at dominoes, almost imbecilic with fatigue and drink. Seeing James, Caxton works his face into a semblance of welcome and the two men exchange greetings. Not having set foot in the place for months, James had forgotten how much he dislikes Caxton; not for the tavern-keeper's association with local poachers — poachers, by and large, are honourable men - nor yet for the rumours, strongly grounded, of his having sold evidence to the constables which led to the turning-off of a boy on a charge of stealing a gentleman's pocket-watch. His unease concerns the girl, Caxton's daughter, who stands, heavily pregnant and picking at the quicks of her nails, an arm's length from her father. Feeling James's gaze on her, she attempts a smile yet manages to express only a profound embarrassment. Caxton calls: What'll it be, then. Doctor? What shall the wench fetch you?'

James orders his rum, turns down an offer to join in the dominoes, and sits by himself at one of the other tables. The girl - for at fourteen or fifteen, despite her condition, it is hard to call her anything else - brings him his glass, wipes the table with a beer-damp cloth, and sets the glass in front of him. He asks her how she goes on, glancing at her great belly which seems on the verge of overwhelming her. Avoiding his eyes, she says: 'Right enough.'

*You shall be brought to bed of it soon, Sally. You are not afraid?'

*I shall be glad to be rid of it, sir.'

'Who shall attend you?'

'Mother Grayley.'

'She has much experience,' says James, silently appalled that a woman known as a hard drinker and with a regiment of dead infants to her credit should be called upon by anyone other than the devil. This must be Caxton's wish.

'Simple is best, Sally. You are young. No need to go dosing yourself with nostrums and the like.'

The girl whispers her thank yous, hurries off. James takes up his glass and drinks. This brief interview with Sally, and the sight of her father, sHck and loutish, even of the farmers hunched over their Httle rectangles, a pile of grubby coins in the centre of the table, all of it depresses him. There is no real happiness here; little even of hope. In the girl's vulnerabiHty and in the hardness of the men there are equal measures of dogged suffering; and though some suffering is earned, some pain doubtless a kind of nemesis, what comfort, what satisfaction is there in that? All pain is real enough to those who have it; all stand equally in need of compassion. God knows he craves it for himself.

The door opens; he looks up. A man of such size it appears he has been made from the material for two men, a man with black skin - or is it brown, or in fact a kind of grey, like night over snow? - enters the little room like an adult entering a house of children. Stooped under the beams, he shuffles in decayed crimson shppers towards Caxton. He holds out a small jug, a cream jug, and whispers in a voice like the soft raking of coals, a single word:

'Gin.'

'Gin?'

The black man nods, points delicately at the jug. Caxton takes the jug and hands it to his daughter, who goes with it into the back room to fill. The black man reaches into the pocket of his short jacket, takes out a purse and shakes a sixpence into his open palm.

Thinks James: You could hide a cricket ball in such a hand. How stiff the fingers are, like an old man's. Still powerful, though.

The Negro receives his jug from Sally, thanks her and waits for his change from Caxton until, seeing he is to get none, he nods wearily and shuffles back to the door. The door swings shut. For two, three seconds, there is nothing but the erratic rhythm of the fire, then the farmers chatter excitedly, each telling the other what he saw, as if each were the sole witness of this marvellous encounter. Caxton is congratulated on cheating the stranger. A farmer warns him he will be eaten in the black man's cooking-pot. Roars of laughter. Another, turning to James, asks if a Negro is made the same as a white man, if perhaps their