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

On Christmas Day there is a concert organised by Mr Rose. The keepers take James down to the room where he once rehearsed for the play. The razor in his shoe makes his limp extravagant. The keepers parade him in front of Rose, showing off their handiwork. Rose comes forward, bows, looks sombre and says: 'I am sorry to see you are not well, sir. If these gentlemen will permit it, I should like you to sit here at the front.'

When the Bedlamites are assembled, when they have been

hushed by prods and stares, Rose introduces Faustina Bordoni, a slight, spangled figure dressed in the high fashion of 1730. When she moves she sounds like a ship at sea; it is the creaking of her whalebones, the hissing of yards of silk and taffeta. Her face is sleepy and magnificent; the papery skin rouged and dotted, her eyes brown, burnished under the heavy lids. A fat young man accompanies her at the piano. She sings, faintly but very sweetly. The lunatics are moved. A man named Clapp leaps from the benches and embraces her. The keepers drag him away. Signora Bordoni smiles, jokes in Italian with the fat young man and sings again while the rain that has followed the snow drips and patters musically on the window.

After the concert Rose speaks again with James, speaks of Dot Flyer, his esteem for her. Later, James sees him speaking closely with the Physician. On Boxing Day the chains on James's feet are removed; a parcel of blankets arrives. On Twelfth Night Wagner delivers to him a suit of dark blue wool. James is afraid to wear it. It is like a ruse to draw him back into the world again. For days the parcel sits half opened on the floor. Then he peels off his rags, stands naked, shivering, sharp-boned in his cell, and draws on the suit.

The keepers avoid him. Even the Physician is content merely to look into the cell as he passes, nod his head, and move on to try his arts upon less visible, less protected men. James takes the razor from his shoe and gouges upon the palimpsestic surface of old wainscotting a crude heart. Dot's name, his own, and the date: February 1770.

'Adam?'

'Speak, James.' 1 shall never love again.' We cannot always choose.' 'I shall never love again.'

'Nothing stays, brother. And never is a poor word.'

When she died, your wife. What did you do? Adam?'

'I ran mad.'

'And have you loved since then?'

'It is Hke the rain, brother. You cannot always be out of it.'

He waits, faintly appalled to find he is recovering, that he does not have the character to die of grief, that the life in him is too stubborn.

And he waits for her, whom dreams have assured him will come. The architect. The subtle witch. He looks for her from his window, day after day, until an evening in March when he is certain of her presence. A group of men, foreigners, are standing near the steps leading up to the hospital gardens. They are admiring the hospital, pointing out its features with their gloved hands. Fragments of their voices drift up on the blustery air. Then they move and he sees her, stood behind them in a dark dress with a red scarf at her neck. He does not wave to her. She will know that he has seen her. She waits ten minutes, still as a tree, then walks off towards Finsbury.

She is there again the next day. How she tests him! Does she not understand that it is too soon? That he has not the strength? That he is not yet well? Yet he trusts her, more than he trusts himself She has come for him. He must go. The certainty of it is a reUef. He goes to Wagner and begs an interview with the Physician. The interview is granted. Three days later, early, Wagner comes to collect him from the cell, and James limps behind him through doors noisily unlocked by Wagner's keys. Stone gives way to carpet, darkness to light. The air loses its stink of incontinence, smelling instead of wax and cooked meats and sea coal. On a table by an open window is a vase of daffodils. James can barely pass them: exemplars of all beauty, all perfection. Wagner calls to him, not unkindly. Calls as if he has often seen men in James's state, stunned by flowers.

A door, broad and brilliantly polished. Wagner knocks. They are summoned. The Physician, his pendulous face topped with a velvet cap, vermillion, gazes at them from behind his desk. A secretary sits at a smaller desk deeper in the room, his arms in cotton covers to protect his sleeves from the ink. In front of the Physician is an open newspaper and next to it a half-empty glass of claret, a plate of queen cakes, and a cup from which drifts a rich perfume of coffee. He says to Wagner: 'What does he want?'

'Begging your pardon, sir,' says the keeper, 'but he wishes to leave the hospital.'

'Leave?'

'Ay, sir. That is what he has told me.'

The Physician stares at James. For a moment James meets his eyes, then he looks down. He is afraid that his legs will begin to shake.

'Does he consider himself recovered?' asks the Physician, looking from James to Wagner. Now Wagner looks at James. Standing here among these men who mean him no good, James does not feel recovered at all. He is afraid that somehow he will betray himself, that he will say some mad thing; that he will start to sing or to slobber or he will fall on to his knees shrieking. He knows he must find his voice. The silence in the room is already dangerously extended.

'Yes,' he says. The sound of his own voice, almost aggressively loud, breaks the spell. He looks up.

'What does he mean?' says the Physician. 'What does he mean by "yes"? You