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

last of his prize-share from a French privateer overhauled hy Aquilon off Brest and saved for just such an occasion. In the theatre James changes his coat, stretches luxuriously.

'You have my fee I think, madam.'

He holds out his hand for the watch. Agnes Munro snaps shut the lid, gives it to him, then, as he turns to the door, she draws a handkerchief from her sleeve, reaches up on tiptoe and wipes a spot of blood from his cheek.

*You are the strangest man I ever knew, James.'

James considers his reply. Something gallant, something out of a novel, a play. But he reads no novels and the few plays he has seen, at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, have made precious little sense to him. The game is too tiresome and his mind is still enamoured of his work with Grimaldi's bladder; the neat way he was able to dilate the neck, his skilful avoidance of the artery. A gold watch was little enough for such work, for an instrument of God.

He bids her good day, goes out. She stays a minute, watching the blood darken the floorboards. She smiles, then shivers. The abbey bells tumble out their music.

Grimaldi recovers. Lord B sends James a diamond ring, then sends his friends, his circle. By midsummer the practice boasts three baronets, a general, an admiral, a bishop, a celebrated painter and two Members of Parliament among its patients. The competition is not pleased. Mr Crisp in particular has been busy spreading rumours, calling them barbers and quacks and saying old Munro

could not rise in the morning without a bottle of port wine, could not rise at night either. Perhaps his young protege could? He places two fingers above his head, waggles them, grins, gets his laugh.

But Crisp loses the wealthy Mrs Davy to them, and then the Robinson family, a populous tribe whom James inoculates against the smallpox. Three guineas a head, an outrageous sum, yet Mr Robinson is convinced that the lives of his loved ones are safer in this man's hands, young as he is, than in those of any other operator in Bath. Munro is there, of course, to keep an eye on things, to soften the young man's presence and nod senatorially at his work.

They advertise in the papers:

MUNRO AND DYER, SURGEONS in the ORANGE GROVE BATH beg leave to announce they are willing to receive a SMALL number of NEW PATIENTS due to the RECOVERY and COMPLETE RESTORATION of those formerly under their care. INOCULATIONS, CUTTING for STONE, REMOVAL of TUMOURS WARTS FIBROUS GROWTHS, the SETTING of LIMBS, the HEALING of GUNSHOT wounds a speciality. Favoured by the QUALITY and all who DEMAND the BEST service. LADIES treated with the utmost DISCRETION

Gummer takes care of such matters; advertisements, puffs. His figure, tall and weathered, is a common sight among the gardens and Palladian walkways, arm slipped through the arm of some influential gentleman who nods and smiles, half amused and half flattered to be in the company of such a worldly rogue. Gummer also handles the billing; he knows people who know how to see that a bill is never left unpaid. Masters of the nudge, the honeyed threat, and when other means fail there is never a shortage of

brawlers in tight coats who, for a shilling, will loaf outside the debtor's door. So the money comes in: gold, silver; large, beautiful banknotes. Also hogsheads, bolts of cloth, heirlooms.

Munro's old sign comes down. A new one - Jms Dyer & Rbt Munro, Surgeons - swings from the iron scroll above the door, and beneath its shadow come the citizens of the republic of pain: the chronic sufferers, and those struck down suddenly by some bloody disaster, and hustled in, faint, in the arms of friends. And most come out again, if not precisely healed, at least somewhat easier than when they entered, and all dazzled by the young man's skill, soothed by the elder's kindness. Some even die grateful.

On James's twenty-first birthday, Munro gives a party, crowding the first-floor dining room with friends and feasting them on beef and oysters, summer pudding, syllabubs and champagne. Grimaldi sings for them, a sweet tenor voice that carries across the half-lit Grove to where a band of homegoers stops to listen.

At the end of the port decanter's second round, Munro throws down his napkin, attains his feet and makes a speech. There are tears in his eyes, a web in his throat as he speaks. 'My boy,' he says, 'my boy,' gesturing to James at the opposite end of the table, and there are those among the guests who wonder if Munro means it, if James might be the progeny of some youthful adventure of Munro's. They look from one to the other, trying to discern some likeness. That mouth? The chin? And then their eyes turn to Agnes Munro, and even the dullest are struck by the transformation in that face.

She could not say exactly when it started. Perhaps that first day when he strolled into the drawing room svelte beside her bumbling husband; or when he spoke to her through the mirror when she came to fetch him to attend to Grimaldi; or on any one of those occasions, frequent as she can contrive them, when she has watched him work, his face like clear water.

She is careful, wary of the force of her feelings, but her life is already slung between one encounter and the next, the anxious suspense of not seeing him and the anxious joy of his presence. With Munro she is polite, more so than at any time since their wedding. Yet the harder she plays her part - good wife, loyal wife, wife not enamoured of the beautiful young wolf they have brought under their roof - the more intent he seems on throwing her in James's way. The shopping expeditions, the visits to balls, the evenings at the theatre, the Sunday promenades, all at Munro's suggestion, while he himself takes off to