The Essex Serpent(54)
‘With pot plants in the window,’ said Stella, taking to the idea: ‘And receptionists in white blouses. No-one will ever have any secrets again – aren’t you hot? Could we open the window? – and I’d like to see her happy again.’ It occurred to her to wonder what Will might think: he’d not yet met the doctor, or shown any inclination to, and she supposed he might baulk at the thought of Jo submitting to a procedure her own mother couldn’t pronounce. But then, Cora wouldn’t do anything Will might dislike. It was comforting, she thought – never in her life having felt envy, unable to imagine what it was like – to think of her husband so steadfastly and loyally liked. ‘Open the window wider,’ she said: ‘I am only ever hot, these days.’
Cora turned to Luke, who’d taken Stella’s wrist in a chivalrous gesture, hoping she’d not notice he was taking her pulse (and yes – yes, as he’d suspected: it was skittish below the skin). ‘Well: why don’t we call Jo, and ask her, and see if she is willing?’
And since she had been willing (‘Am I going to be an experiment?’), she lay now on the most comfortable couch, gazing up at the ceiling where the plaster had begun to peel. It was difficult to take the thing seriously, since she’d overhead Cora call the doctor an imp and could not help thinking how apt that was (he ought to’ve carried a pitchfork, not a Gladstone bag!).
Drawing up a chair beside her, and leaning in so that she could smell something like lemons rising from his shirt, Dr Garrett said: ‘This is what will happen. You will not sleep, and I’ll have no power over you, but you’ll be more comfortable – more at ease – than you ever were before. And I’ll ask you questions – about how you have been, and about that day – and we’ll see what we can learn: how it began, and what it is you felt.’
‘All right,’ she said. But there’s nothing to learn about that day, and the laughing, she thought, or I’d have told them all I knew. She looked for her mother, and Stella blew her a kiss.
‘Do you see that mark on the wall – there above the fire where the paint is chipped? I want you to keep looking at it, however heavy your eyelids, however sore your eyes …’
There were other instructions, delivered murmuringly and as if from a great distance: she was to let her hands fall, her head droop, her breath slow, her thoughts wander into other rooms … it was impossible to keep her open eyes fixed on the mark, and when permission was given to close them she did so with a sigh and almost fell in her relief from the couch. She never knew until later what it was she said as she hovered midway between waking and dreaming (later they told her it was something about Naomi Banks, and a leviathan, but that she hadn’t seemed at all afraid). What she remembered was a polite rap on the door, then the drag of it against the carpet; and then her father’s voice raised in a rage she’d never heard before.
Will saw his daughter prone on a black couch with her arms hanging at her sides and her mouth half-open, while a creature bent over her and whispered. He’d come home from making his round of the parish to find the house empty, and calling for Stella found a note on his study directing him to Cora’s, should he care to join them. Crossing the common he’d pictured Stella’s bright head and Cora’s untidy one framed in a window, lamp-lit, impatiently waiting his arrival, and his step had quickened.
He’d known, of course, that Dr Garrett was coming, and felt resentful at the intrusion. The village had had quite enough of that sort of thing, he felt: what with Londoners and serpents it had been a troublesome year; couldn’t they have a moment’s peace? Then he considered how fondly Cora spoke of him, and how proudly she had reported the surgery which had saved a man’s life, and concluded the surgeon must be the sort of man he could come to like. He’d be short and slight and anxious, he decided, reaching the shadow of Traitor’s Oak; he would have a long despondent moustache and finicky aversions to food and drink. Probably the poor fellow could do with a country break, given the state of his health.
Martha had greeted him with a curious look, not quite able to meet his eye; it was so unlike her usual directness that he felt uneasy long before he opened the door and encountered a crouching black-browed thing whispering at his daughter’s side. She lay quite still, as if stunned by a blow; her head was tilted back, and her half-open eyes had a vacant gaze. He was for a moment rigid with shock and distress; when he saw Stella and Cora observing placidly from a nearby sofa, evidently complicit in the scene, he found himself tripped into a fury which not the Essex Serpent nor Cracknell nor any event of the past puzzling months had induced. Quite what he thought was unfolding in that well-furnished room with its curtains blowing out he couldn’t later say, only that he felt a kind of revulsion: it was his daughter, and she was murmuring – something Latin, was it? – and laid out like a fish on a slab! He crossed the room and fitting his fingers beneath the crouching man’s collar tried to tug him from his chair. But if the rector was strong, the surgeon was heavy: there was a tussle which Cora briefly found hilarious before growing afraid that Will in his righteous temper might actually do her friend harm. She thought of the sheep as it struggled in the mud, and how it raised cords of muscle on Will’s forearm; she stood up and said, ‘Mr Ransome – Will! It’s only Dr Garrett – he’s only trying to help!’
Joanna, frightened and drowsy, rolled from couch to floor and struck her head on the hard seat of a chair. She stared up at the ceiling and said, ‘It’s coming,’ then knuckled at her eyes and sat up. Stella, who’d been half-dozing despite the chill coming in through the open window, looked at her husband in surprise (‘Darling, don’t drip on Cora’s carpet!’) and went over to her daughter. ‘How do you feel – are you sick? Have you hurt your head?’