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

slides in evenly from the skylight, and around the table, a bare wooden table such as kitchens have, with wooden blocks for the girls' heads, there are three tall candelabra and a servant with a trimmer to trim their wicks. Boxes of sawdust are tucked neatly beside the table.

The lower doors open. A quartet of musicians enter. They sit, fumble with their music and examine their instruments as though they have only recently discovered them. They play a few tentative notes then fall silent. Next comes Mr Bentley with his assistant, Mr Hampton, and Mr Hampton's assistant, the doorman Lute, who carries a large tray covered with a cloth. The gentlemen on the benches applaud. The operators bow, neatly and in time. Then Mr Bentley detaches himself, goes to the door, opens it and escorts the twins into the theatre. More applause. The twins are wearing a kind of shift, cut down the middle and tied with ribbons. The

applause is louder. Mr Canning stands; the others follow. Molina starts to sketch at speed, charcoal hissing on the paper. The sketch looks like an attempt to hide something.

The twins look up at the balcony, the benches, the men leaning over with their chivalrous smiles, wigs newly dusted, fresh shirts, fine coats, barely one who has not had Canning's barber run over his face with a razor. The twins are dazed, squinting. Drugged, perhaps drunk. When their eyes reach James they hardly seem to recognise him. Bentley's hand is at Anna's elbow. Lute waits between the girls and the door as if to bar their way should they try to run. The gentlemen resume their seats. Canning makes a sign with his hand. Bentley nods, leads the girls to the table, helps them up, settles their heads on the wooden blocks. Lute draws two handkerchiefs from his fist like a conjurer and places one over each girl's face. The handkerchiefs rise and fall rapidly over the girls' mouths. The tray is uncovered; below the covering it is bright with knives. Bentley and Hampton pick them over as though they were thinking of buying one. Lute murmurs in a musician's ear. The violinist taps his foot and the theatre fills with a dainty overture from something popular in town. The operators take up their implements, the ribbons of the twins' shift are pulled undone. Bentley gropes at the girls' hips, finds his place and drives in his knife. The girls' bodies jerk up from the table. Lute and Hampton press down. The room is suddenly very warm. The girls do not scream, not until the fourth cut. MoHna leans back with a groan; James leans forward. The screaming lasts about a minute, then there is a sudden access of blood, a red wash of it, tiding off the table. Lute kicks one of the boxes to catch it but kicks too hard so that the blood splashes off its side. Hampton is trying to collect the vessels Bentley has cut. He sees one, clamps it, starts to tie it but the blood is unrelenting. The musicians have lost each other; each plays what is left in his own head. Bentley's knife slips from his hand, clatters on to the floor. He swears and

seizes another from the tray. His apron is sodden. James turns away to see Molina, slumped, ashen, vomit over his shoes.

The cloths over the girls' faces barely move now. Hampton is working furiously; his wig has slipped down by his right eye and when he pushes it back he leaves on it a scarlet handprint. Bentley steps away from the table, waves to the servant to bring him a glass. The servant pours the brandy carefully yet still spills it. He brings it on a little tray. Bentley downs it; goes back to his work. The twins are attached now only by some matter at the shoulder. Bentley leans with his big shoulders and sunders them. Hampton cannot keep up. He shouts, something utterly garbled, at Lute. Another wash of blood, this time caught in the box. Bentley to Hampton, pointing at the offending vessel: Tick it up, man! Pick it up.'

The oboist has left the room. The violinist and flautist play on, dreamily, quite separate now. The handkerchiefs no longer rise and fall. Bentley puts down his knife, looks around for a cloth to wipe his hands and, not discovering one, takes the handkerchief from Ann's face. The girl's face is turned towards her sister, mouth open, eyes ajar. There is not the slightest sign of life. Molina has gone. James takes the paper and charcoal, begins to draw. Hampton is crying, still fiddling with something, some artery. He says, as though speaking to the girls: Too past! Poo bloody fast!' Canning stands, says quietly: 'Thank you, Bentley. I am sure that you did your best.' He walks out like a French king, his courtiers behind him. Bentley waves a hand dismissively. When next he looks up at the benches only James is there, finishing his sketch.

That night, stripped to the waist, washing, James finds on his skin minute fragments of eggshell. They are surprisingly hard to remove.

The musicians, altered men, stay on to play a dirge in the chapel

at the twins' funeral. Mr Canning weeps copiously for ten minutes, looks stricken in the pew, then recovers, and is quite his old self at the party after, walking the length of the gallery arm in arm with Mr Bentley.

The girls are buried in separate coffins, a private graveyard of the estate. James is there, looking over the lip of the grave to see the coffins stacked. He wonders briefly which is which, if it is Ann or Anna on top. There is no way of knowing. It is cold for September; the mourners do not stay past the throwing of the first clod.

He does not see Molina until the following week when he comes upon him urinating into one of Mr Canning's amphora. The painter is drunk but not very.

Well,