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

'Bless me, it is you, Dr Dyer. How did you find this place?'

'I merely wandered into it. In these days I do very little intentionally. Here, sir, drink a little of this comfortable cider. I took the liberty of bringing out some from the kitchen. There is plenty left.'

The Reverend drinks from the stone lip of the jar. James is right. The cider is good. One can taste the whole tree in it.

1 perceive you have been sketching, sir.'

'I like to try my hand. Do you wish to see them?' He lays on the silver grass five sheets of paper, each of which has only a single inky circle, crudely done, yet with an undeniable energy.

'These two I did with my finger.' He shows the dark tip of his index finger as evidence.' I have more paper - will you not have a turn? The trick is to think of nothing. Not how beautiful it is, nor how difficult to catch, nor of catching it at all. The doing of it should surprise you.'

*You mean I am to do it and not to do it at one and the same time?'

James says: 'Precisely so.' Then, seeing the look of confusion on the Reverend's face, he says: 'Perhaps we have not drunk enough of the cider.'

Each man takes three long swallows. The jug gives back a strange, hollow music. The Reverend belches, then plunges his finger into the open ink bottle and draws a ragged loop that is yet, somehow, very moonlike.

'Bravely done!'

They sit, untalking, long enough for certain stars to slip beyond the fretted horizon of the oak-tops.

'Dr Dyer, sir, I should wish you joy of your recovery, for I see now that you are indeed recovered. I confess we all greatly feared for you at Easter.'

If I am recovering - I would not say recovered, not yet a while - then it is your kindness, and the kindness of your sister, your household . . .'

'And Mary . . .'

'And Mary, of course. Her ways must appear very odd. But then, you know something of what she is. You were the first to see her. In some measure she owes you her life.'

The Reverend nods and remembers: torches, dogs, the woman's silent running.

'She is,' says James, 'so I believe, an infallible judge of a man's character. It was no accident she brought me here.'

'That is an endorsement. Doctor, that I will cherish. You know you must stay, of course - you and Mary - quite as long as you wish to. The room you occupy at present can be made more homely with a few alterations, and Mary' - he treads lightly - 'is, I think, tolerably comfortable in the little room next to Tabitha.'

'We are both very comfortable. But I feel as if I should explain to you ... I mean, you must wonder . . .'

'I confess it, but I require no explanation. First we must confirm your recovery. Is that leg still sore?'

'It gives me some trouble. It is a very old hurt. It is the same with my hands. The pain is not violent now. It is almost companionable.'

'Forgive me. Doctor, but you were once, so it seemed, impervious to its fangs. Pain, I mean.'

'Not "seemed". Reverend. I did not feign it. It was precisely as I said. I never had a moment's physical suffering until. . . well, until Petersburg. I begin to find it hard to believe in it myself. Suffice to say, I have been making up for what I missed.'

'He is quite gone, then?'

'Who sir?'

'The old James Dyer.'

'Quite gone.'

'And you do not regret his passing?'

'There are times when I think of the great certainty my immunity provided me with. I have become something of a coward. Always filled with some morbid dread or other. And whereas once I was as free from hesitation and doubts as any man may possibly be, I am now constantly prey to them. Ha! I am half an hour deciding what coat to wear in the morning, and as you know, I have but two of 'em.'

'This will pass. It is but an effect of your being ... so unwell.'

'I wonder. I have been born into a new state, a new self, one as distinguished by weakness as the other was marked by strength.'

Says the Reverend: 'Is not this new self marked also by a certain softening, a gentleness?'

'It may be. I hardly know yet what I am, what I may expect. Sure my days with a knife are done with. Perhaps I might turn a shilling with my painting.'

'Lady Hallam remembers you from your Bath days. She says you had the most remarkable reputation.'

'I had several, and it is kind of Lady Hallam to remember me, though God's honour, I could wish myself, my old self, as unremembered as if it were a handfiil of dust.'

'We shall not chase you with your shadow. Doctor. After all, a man must be free to change. Many are trapped in old skins they would do better to shed.'

'Like the adder? I hope, sir, you shall not shed your old skin.'

'I would not have your courage, though you call it weakness.'

'It was not a thing I chose.'

The Reverend, feeling the intimacy of their meeting in such a spot, emboldened by it, says: 'In Russia, at the apartment on Millionaya, I witnessed something that . . .'

James raises a hand, leans suddenly forward, staring, as if, in the summer night air, he had glimpsed some large and elusive matter, some form that signed to him a message which he must

immediately grasp. The Reverend, following the other man's gaze, sees only a family of rabbits, their coats silvery in the moonlight, romping in the grass ten yards from their feet. He looks at James's face, whispers: 'What is it, sir?'

James settles back, shakes his head slowly, sniffs, reaches for the jug.

'Ghosts. Merely ghosts. You were saying?'

'Nothing at all, sir. Nothing at all.'

EIGHTH

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