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

looks for Dot. He cannot see her; nor can he see Asquini, who was whispering in her ear, the two of them together, Oberon and Titania, while waiting for their cues. Asquini is a handsome man; his madness is not offensive. He often speaks well; he has seen the world, and what he has not seen he fluently invents. Nor does he stink like most of the Bedlamites, and James has seen how he looks at Dot, his come-hither eyes.

When Wagner moves away from the door, searching among the bottles for one still with a mouthful of wine, James slips out. His leg is throbbing. He leans against a wall and takes off his shoes, then runs like an ape towards the room with the jackets. There is a light at the foot of the door. He knows what he will see when he opens it: Asquini's arse bobbing in Dot's lap. He puts his ear to the door, hears nothing. Have they heard him coming in the passage? Are they listening to his listening? He presses the handle. The door moves almost silently on its hinges. His sight is drawn to the candle, the flame burning very straight until the draught from the passageway rolls it over. Dot says: 'Close the door, Jem.'

She is alone, sitting on a stool beside the candle. Across from her is a second stool, and on top of it a chipped porcelain bowl. The bowl is full of cherries, their skins luxuriously dark, the green stalks catching the light.

Dot says: 'They are from Mr Rose.'

'He gives you presents?' James looks around the room as if its shadows might be hiding Asquini or Rose or both.

Dot laughs. She moves the bowl and sets it on her lap. James sits on the other stool. She takes a cherry in her mouth, then draws James to her by the edges of his coat and passes the fruit from her mouth to his. In this manner they work through half the bowl. There is nothing brazen. Nothing louder than a smile. They bury the stones under the jackets. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor.

When they have eaten they lie on the jackets. He tumbles her. She marks his back with her nails, stickies his face with her cherry tongue and cherry lips. It is quick, tender; almost unimportant.

Dot says: 'God keep Augustus Rose.'

'Amen to that. Dot?'

'What, Jern?'

'Marry me.'

'Mad people do not marry, Jem.'

'Then we shall not be mad, for we shall be married.'

'You do not know me, Jem. I cannot always help myself. Inside a month I should be here again or at Tyburn with a rope at my neck.'

'I would help you.'

'You who can barely help yourself.'

'Dot!'

'Hush, Jem! Set your lips to this.' She pulls the cork from a bottle. Rough green glass. He takes it, swallows angrily. It is not wine. He sputters, spills some of the liquid out of his mouth. Warmth spreads through his chest. 'Brandy?'

Dot takes the bottle. James watches the slide of her throat as she swallows. He did not understand it before, this manner of drinking. It was part of the ugliness and mystery of other people. Not something he would ever do, ever need to do. Now when she passes him the bottle he is greedy for his share. When it is empty they lie in each other's arms on the jackets, their breath a fiery

cloud around their heads, the candle burning lower and lower, consuming itself, the flame bobbing and snapping in currents of air, the room trembling with shadows. They doze, wake, doze. James hears the jostling of carriages, the noise of a distant dog-fight; hears footsteps in the passage. He frees himself clumsily from Dot's arms. His movements are urgent but slow, like a man undressing under water. He means to snuff the candle so its light will not betray them. It is a long way to the candle. He touches the flame. It burns him, then goes out, a speck of red at the wick's end.

Dot says: 'What is it, Jem?'

As she speaks the door opens. At first they cannot see who is there; it is a man with a lantern, two men with lanterns, perhaps more. Then O'Connor enters the room. There is the gleam, the ring, of chains.

The brandy takes off the worst of the pain, and in truth, O'Connor was too drunk himself, too idle to do much harm. Some kicks, a dozen strokes from the cane; vile, but bearable. James is learning to survive, to bear pain; uncovering the springs of courage. Love is his teacher.

He licks his fingers, reaches down, rubs gently between the fetters and the chafed skin of his legs. Chains, irons; Iron Garters they called them in the Navy.

Thanks to God they did not make him wear a strait jacket, nor did they chain his hands. Dot they carried off quietly enough. A keeper on either side of her and she looking back sleepily, drunkenly, smiHng. She did not speak. He heard her laughing as they carried her into the women's wing.

He pictures her, sitting in her cell, in chains as he is, sitting in the hot air, thinking of him as he is thinking of her. It is too hot to sleep; his mind is busy with plans.

He looks at the shadow of his hands. Might he not, one day, regain his touch, his gift? It cannot all have gone. Why not be a

sawbones in some county town? Somewhere in the north or the far west. Away from here, from ambition. Patch up farmers; bleed the squire. He would only need a horse, and the patience to ride over the county. He might roll his own pills as Mr Viney once taught him to, and Dot would sell eggs and what not and they would ride to church in a little cart and be like Adam, no man's enemy.

The phantasy warms him like the brandy. He squirrels down into the unclean straw, arranges his feet to be as easy