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

of the room. The corridor is black except for a single arc of light from a half-open door. He pads towards it, hears from within a muttered singing. He peeps in; he has an excellent view. Mr Canning is sitting naked by the fire in his bedroom reading the St James Chronicle. The paper rustles, Canning turns the page and then, as if suddenly tiring of it, folds it briskly in two and drops it on the floor beside him. At first it seems a trick of the light. Canning, in spite of the cock curled between his thighs, has breasts. Not large or full, not beautiful, but undeniably breasts. Some movement of the boy betrays his presence, Canning looks out, eyes darting in a face of stone, then seeing who it is he smiles, as if to say, 'Had you not guessed? Surely you had guessed.'

In the middle of July there is a storm of hailstones, stones big as pigeon eggs, large enough to stun sheep, to kiU them. For a week it is spoken of as an omen, then forgotten in the work of harvests. Mr Collins in his summer coat throws open the windows of the library; blue-bottles stumble in, zag the bookish air. James reads or dozes. He has made two more trips to London with Mr Canning and lost two more nails. Nothing is required of him now. The twins continue sickly: vomits in May, spotted fever in June. When, in August, they take the air

for the first time in weeks, leaning on Molina's arm, they appear from the library windows like two ancients out for a turn with their favourite nephew.

The season recovers them; they achieve a fragile vivacity. Soon, James's company is required on expeditions to collect wild flowers. When Molina comes he sketches them together and some of these he works up with oils: two girls and a boy, sat beneath trees, hazy in the smashed sunshine. Of all the pictures of James Dyer - the freak boy, the fashionable physician - these of Molina, little more than sketches in paint, the paint handled very freely, little by way of detail, these are to be preferred. The girls are shown with their tragedy intact; the boy sits up straight against a tree, his expression as unflinching as one of Mr Canning's statues. It is the face of a child assassin, an idiot king. Even a casual viewer is unsettled. They are in the presence of an enigma.

What prompts James to go, finally? Why one day rather than another? He is caught in something, the moist cogs of a vast machine. He does not know how to call it. There is light and hay-dust in his glands. His dreams are littered with dogs. The previous week he gazed for an hour at the dissected genitalia of a woman in a volume of anatomy, studying it like the map of a country he would shortly be travelling in. This morning he wakes, shrugs on his dressing-gown and goes straight to the girls' room, as though he has received a message from them, an invitation threaded secretly through the air from their room to his.

He finds them still in bed, sitting up, peeling boiled eggs. It is a week before their birthday, a fortnight before his own. Round their necks each wears a string of pearls, an early present from Mr Canning. They smile, and where he stands their smiles intersect. The girls put down their eggs, half peeled. Ann pulls back the covers. James climbs in, lies back, gazes at the canopy.

Later, he remembers how much giggling there was, how much

the girls seemed to know. And years later, riding in an open carriage in Bath, two young wives huddled on the seat opposite, he realises that the twins' knowledge could only have been the fruit of experience. With whom? Canning? Molina? Were they Molina's mistresses?

Between the giggles, odd concentrated silences. Whole minutes of hard physical work. Being joined, each of the twins feels the other's pleasure. Stroke one breast; both sisters sigh. How long does it last? Long enough to bore him. The girls pant like invalids, coo and chide him, grow momentarily fierce. He goes along, wishing the experience to be tidy, to have a proper end. After half an hour the string of Anna's pearls snap; the warm pearls run like quicksilver between their bodies, into the creases of the sheets. The girls squeal, kneel up, start to pick them, placing the pearls in their mouths as they find them. James watches them a while, scrabbling in the sheets, their mouths full of pearls. Then he puts on his gown, goes back to his room.

Another day. It is still dark. The fat man is sitting at James's bedside. He has a candle in his hand. He smells of rain and brandy.

'How is my marvellous boy?'

He reaches out a cold hand, touches the boy's cheek.

Says James: 'Is it today? For the twins?'

'Ay, today.'

'And I may watch it?'

'Why, of course you shall.'

'Will they die?'

'And what would you care if they do? But you are the one I'd like to cut. I'll wager there are secrets in you. What d'you say, boy - shall it be you? I could count on you to keep still. Keep your trap shut.'

The door opens, Mr Canning leans in. 'Bentley?'

*Ay, Canning. I'm with you.'

They leave.

The boy lies awake.

He enters Mr Canning's private operating theatre by a door high at the back of the room leading directly to the benches on the balcony above the operating table. Molina is with him, his drawing things beneath his arm. Canning has asked him to make a record. Molina looks unwell; his breath is tainted. When he takes the charcoal his hand is shaking.

Canning wears a satin coat, white and embroidered with silver roses, as if this were his wedding day. Beside Canning, several gentlemen from the society are already in their seats. They chatter excitedly, somewhat loud. Daylight