The Essex Serpent(76)
‘Luke – can you hear us?’ said Martha, touching him with gentle hands; he roused, then sat up and turned towards them, and the colour left Martha’s cheek. From collar to belt his shirt was scarlet, and his right hand and forearm were gloved with blood. When Charles came close – having seen that the brown-coated man would certainly never get up again – he thought at first the doctor was clutching a scrap of meat. But it was the flesh of his own hand, flayed from the bone where the knife had crossed his palm as he grasped it, so that it hung down towards the wrist in a thick and glistening flap. Underneath it greyish bones were visible, and a tendon or ligament of some kind had been severed and lay in among the blood like pale ribbon snipped with scissors. Luke appeared not to be in pain, only grasped his right wrist with his left hand, peering at the visible bones of his hand and reciting over and over as if it were a liturgy: ‘Scaphoid – unciform – carpus – metacarpus …’ Then his black eyes rolled backward and he fell into the arms of his kneeling friends.
2
A mile or so west of that dim courtyard Cora came up towards St Paul’s with a letter in her pocket. Her time in London had been dreary: friends came and went, and found her stand-offish and distrait. Cora, for her part, found them all too neatly turned-out and too cautiously spoken; the women’s hands were white, their nails sharp and glossy; the men were shaved pink as children or wore absurd moustaches. They knew their politics and their scandal and which restaurants would serve you the latest fad, but Cora would’ve liked to sweep everything off the table and say, ‘Yes, yes, but have I told you how once I stood by an iron grating in Clerkenwell and heard the buried river running out to meet the Thames – did you know I laughed the day my husband died – have you ever seen me kiss my son? Do you never talk, ever, about anything that matters?’
Katherine Ambrose had visited with Joanna by her side. Soon after Stella’s diagnosis, Katherine and Charles Ambrose had taken charge of the Ransome children (Dr Butler, awaiting Will’s decision on how his wife should be treated, urged peace, and good clean air, and the children sent elsewhere). Appalled to find his quiet home full and noisy, Charles nonetheless found himself coming home earlier than necessary and with his pockets stuffed full of Cadbury’s and games of cards, which he played with them until rather too late in the evening. They all longed for Stella, but bore it bravely: Joanna was at once let loose on the Ambrose library, but also learned to curl her hair with rags; James drew devices of impossible complexity and sent them to his mother in envelopes sealed with wax.
‘I’m glad to see you,’ said Cora, truthfully: Joanna had grown almost into womanhood in the space of a month and wore her mother’s eyes above her father’s mouth. She was studying hard at Charles’s books and intended (she said) to be a doctor or a nurse or an engineer, something like that, she hadn’t decided; then she’d remember her mother, and how much she missed her, and her violet eyes would grow cloudy.
‘What are you doing here in London, Cora?’ said Katherine, nibbling at a square of bread and butter. ‘What made you leave, when you were so happy, and saw so much? If ever anyone could unravel the mystery of the Blackwater beast it surely should be you! At midsummer we all said you looked a country girl born and bred, and doubted we’d ever see you get on a train again.’
‘Oh, all that mud and muddle,’ said Cora brightly, not fooling her friend for an instant: ‘I’m a city mouse and always was – all those mad girls, that whispering about the serpent, the horseshoes in the oak tree – I thought if I stayed any longer I’d go mad. Besides’ – she listlessly crumbled a piece of bread – ‘I didn’t really know what I was doing.’
‘But you’re going back to Essex soon though, aren’t you?’ said Joanna: ‘You shouldn’t leave your friends when they’re ill because that’s when they need you!’ Her tears came, and could not be stopped.
‘Oh – yes,’ said Cora, ashamed of herself: ‘Jojo, of course I’m going back.’
Later, Katherine said, ‘What did happen, Cora? Will Ransome – you talked about him so much – I was almost afraid of what was coming! But then I saw him with you and you barely spoke, and I thought you hardly liked each other … it seems a strange friendship but then you never did do anything the way the rest of us might – and now, with Stella as she is …’ But Cora – who since her widowhood could never conceal a thought that passed behind her eyes – drew down the blinds and tersely said: ‘There was nothing strange about it: we enjoyed each other’s company for a time, that is all.’
If Cora could’ve explained what had gone awry she might have done, but for all the thought that she gave it – late into the night, and immediately on waking – she could not unravel things. She’d prized Will’s affection because it was impossible that he might want her as Michael once had; his affection was bounded off on all sides by Stella, and his faith, and by what she’d gratefully thought was his complete failure to notice she was a woman. ‘I might as well be a head in a jar of formaldehyde, for all he cares,’ she’d once said to Martha: ‘It’s why he prefers to write to me than see me – I’m only a mind, not a body: I’m safe as a child – don’t you see how I might prefer it?’