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

of the puddles left by the storm. The Reverend closes the stable door, crosses the yard. In the stable, Mary is sitting up with James. Burke and Ross left the body tolerably sealed and the Reverend, with Mr Killick, placed it in the box at dusk, nailing the lid. Killick, a good man, helped sluice and scrub the stable and scatter fresh straw and handfuls of dry herbs. By the time Mary appeared the air was breathable, the horror of the afternoon eradicated but for a few tea-brown stains on the table. They hid these beneath a cloth.

Weary, yet at ease for the first time that day, the Reverend loiters in his garden. It is nothing more than a cottage garden, nothing one might boast of, yet it is one of the things of his life that he loves, solidly and without reserve. Of what else can he say so? His sister Dido perhaps, on most occasions other than when she harasses him to have the panelling changed for something more modern, or lectures him on his dress and habits, which it pleases her to liken to a poor country curate who keeps a drinking-shop.

His patroness, Lady HaUam? She has aged. How vast her bosom has become, what a weight for her! But still the sweetest disposition, the sweetest intelligence. Worth every sonnet he scratched for her, all the hours poring over blotched sheets struggling to make the things scan, to force out a rhyme not utterly devoid of sense. Half a dozen might be good, that out of more than a hundred, two hundred. He must burn them, of course, next year or the year after, and certainly should his health fail. Intolerable they should be read by strangers - the fat vicar at Cow who wished to play bull with Lady H.

He walks to his pond, claps his hands and a dozen ripples break over the surface, threads of light circling out to the banks. Good, clean-fleshed creatures. With Mrs Cole to sauce them one would look in vain for better food on a gold plate in any bishop's palace. He must expect a summons to the palace in Exeter before long. A poUte pressing to put Mary out. Her being there while James was alive was part of the Reverend's charity towards the doctor. But such a woman, such a very irregular woman in the house of an unmarried servant of the Church . . .

Leaning down, he dips his fingers in the water, intrigued by the dark bowl of his reflected head. A light moves in the parlour window. He stands and goes closer. The curtains are undrawn. Tabitha is lighting the candles in the sconces. A great, strong, heavy girl, a hoyden, not pretty, her face distinguished only by youth, health. The first month she was in the house she suffered with nightmares, pissed her bed and moped red-eyed about the house, dropping glasses, incapable of following the simplest orders. There was a difficult interview between the Reverend and his housekeeper, Mrs Cole, Mrs Cole threatening to go to her sister in Taunton if Tabitha remained in the house. She had repeated it several times - 'Taunton, Reverend, Taunton' - as if the town lay on the far side of the Bosphorus. But the nightmares passed, the girl became handy, and in the winters Tabitha and Mrs Cole share a bed, the housekeeper curled behind the girl like moss on a warm stone. It has crossed the Reverend's mind he might enjoy that himself.

He takes a last draught of night air, goes into the house, shoots the bolts and turns into the parlour. Tabitha, who has in her hands a tray of his second-best long-stemmed glasses, starts as if he were the devil, come to snack on her. It is a nervous habit that never fails to irritate him. They stare at each other a moment and then he remembers how very naturally she cried at James's death. A generous heart.

He says: 'Are you going to your bed now, Tabitha? Are you tired?'

'Middlin', sir, but if you fancied a posset or what not. Gran'father alius had a posset before bed.'

'Does he thrive still?'

'No, sir.' She smiles happily. 'He fell in the fire one time an' died of it. He were a cheerful make of man, though. Before, like.'

The Reverend sees it: an old man in the fire, a pair of bandy legs, truly bandy, like the metal knacks for taking off the top of an egg. Like something out of Bosch. 'I won't have anything now, my dear. I shall sit up a while. Perhaps I shall read.'

She curtseys; he notes her cleavage, fears again for his glasses. At the door she says: 'An' I can come to the burying tomorrow, mayn't I? Mrs Cole said as I should ask.'

'Surely. I should like to see you there. You were fond of him?'

'Lor', sir, I misses him already. Don' you miss 'im, sir?'

'Very much.'

'I misses him.' She pauses, wets her lips. 'I were gonna ask you summat, only Mrs Cole said I should not.'

Well, you must ask it now.'

'Whether it were a miracle when Dr James ... I means, sir, Dr Dyer, when he saved that Negro?'

'I fear, Tabitha, that this is not the age of miracles.'

She gawps at him as if he has said something wildly important, shocking. What were it, then, if weren't a miracle?'

'The doctor's skill.'

"E calls 'imself Lazarus now, sir, the black fellow.'

What did he call himself before?'

'John Amazement.'

'I like that better.'

Alone, he peels off his wig and scratches vigorously at his scalp. A moth, which he vaguely remembers having flown in the previous evening, begins to fly about one of the candles, then settles on the mirror. Its wings are coloured like wood grain and on each there are marks like staring eyes. Nature's cunning.

From a cabinet he takes a decanter and glass, fills the glass with smuggled brandy, drains it with a single gulp. He sets the glass on the mantelpiece, takes