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

'Not quite, please God, not quite. What is truly past believing is worthless, and I doubt not but this could sell better than the rabbit woman of Godalming - dealt with correctly, of course. There would have to be the right man in charge . . .'

'Charge of what?'

'My dear Mr Gate, come now, you appear perplexed. Do you not see it? If my surmise is correct we have with us here an oddity of the most subtle kind. Eh, boy? An aberration of nature. A true rara avis. A . . .' - lowering his voice - '. . . a commodity.' He laughs, throws his head back with a curious jerking movement. 'My, but today has had its surprises. Life, Mr Gate. Do you not find it voluptuous?'

The blacksmith's face is solemn; it is the face he assumes when straightening horseshoes. 'Josh Dyer's son is not for sale, nor ever shall be. I can tell 'ee that much, mister. And we have a bone to set. So let's to it. Hold him fast now.'

Standing by the end of the bed, Amos takes hold of the boy's foot. Gummer shrugs, pulls off his wig to reveal a head of unevenly cropped hair. 'As you wish, Mr Gate. Though I hardly think we need trouble to restrain him.'

He binds the child in his arms. 'Haul away! Ha!'

For two weeks James lies on the trundle bed watching the light ebb and flow on the whitewashed walls. Bees, flies, butterflies nose in through the open window. His leg is splinted with two boards left over from the building of the cow-stall. At some point the chickens have excreted on the boards as they excrete

on everything. James picks at the hard black-and-white matter, flicking it at targets on the opposite wall. For three days there is fever, then the fever abates. The fall, in memory, in dreams, in waking fantasy, is the axis round which he slowly spins. Twice, on evenings when he is left alone with the candle, he repeats Marley Gummer's experiment. He does it once when Liza is there. She snatches his hand away, horrified. Thus he gathers the evidence.

His leg mends with a speed amazing to all, all but himself. Viney calls, stays half an hour examining the boy, says he has never seen the like. Miss Lucket comes with a basket of strawberries from her garden. Elizabeth brings him his food, watches him eat, studies him as if she seeks to catch him out. One morning the Widow lumbers in, dips her finger into the water of his chamber pot, sniffs it, scowls at him. Gummer does not come. He wishes Gummer would come.

Liza is his most frequent visitor. She brings paragraphs she has copied from the local papers. She reads them to James, sitting on the end of the bed and doing her best to bring out the gossipy or sensational tone, to breathe life into the comings and goings of ships and lords. Rinderpest has broken out again; a Quaker has been robbed at gunpoint on St Phillips Green; an old woman who left a candle by the curtains has been burnt to death. Their Graces the Duke and Duchess of St Albans are arrived at the Hot Well in Bristol. The death of the Irishman John Falls is announced, his life remarkable for his having once drunk two quarts of whiskey at a sitting and afterwards being able to walk home.

She can feel him listening, peeping at the outer world through these chinks of information. When she has no more to read to him she chatters, telling him who she has seen during the day, who said what to whom. She asks him questions and answers them herself. It is a mode developed over the years; it is how one talks to James, She finds it restful, and all the family have long since ceased to expect him to talk. So when, one evening - she

is sat at the end of the bed massaging his leg - he answers her, she looks round at the door to see who has come in. He has only said *Yes' or *no', neither can afterwards recall his first word, but it is enough. His silence, like an immense pane of glass, is shattered. Inside of a minute everyone is gathered about the bed. Liza says: 'Ask him a question!'

No one can think of what to ask.

Elizabeth says: 'How is your leg today, son?'

For a long stretch he does not answer. Then he says: 'I wish to sleep now.'

Joshua takes off his hat, shakes his head in wonder. It is like the lifting of a curse. He smiles broadly at his wife. 'Whatever next?' he says. 'Whatever next, eh?'

A breeze curls into the room. Liza goes to the window, sniffs the air. 'Like rain,' she says, tears in her voice. She puUs the casement closed, draws the curtain.

On an evening four days after the wedding, Amelda Ketch discovers a rash of red pimples on her forehead which, by the following morning, covers most of her body. Mr Viney is called, makes a cautious diagnosis of measles. Six hours later he is called back, Silas Ketch banging frantically on the front door. When he examines the girl a second time and sees how the pimples have formed into thickly grouped clusters, he warns them to prepare for the worst. On his way home he stops at a high place on the road and looks over the quiet country where death is stealing across the fields. He prays in the saddle, rides home, and knowing he will be at

one bedside or another for weeks to come, goes straight to bed and sleeps.

The following day he sees the papules are already changing into watery sacks that will shortly distort her face to the point where it is no longer recognisably her own. He does what he can to comfort her, both for the physical pain and the mortal terror that