The Specimen Page 4

  On her way back up to the house Gwen saw a familiar young man come slithering down the shady path towards her in finely tailored clothes and a shiny top hat. Freddie Fernly batted at the overhanging ferns with a lacquered cane. She hadn’t seen her cousin all winter and spring. He was as dapper as ever. His voice rang out as he noticed her.

  “You know, it’s an absolute bore having to chase after you all the way down here, Gwen. Mother has been waiting up top for at least an hour and your dear sister hasn’t yet deigned to emerge.”

  “Freddie. How lovely; I didn’t know you were coming today.”

  “Hello, old thing.” He took off his hat and gave her a kiss on each cheek. “You look wild,” he said, “like a tempestuous creature from a novel.”

  “Idiotic fellow, you look expensively over-dressed.”

  “Vulgar, as always. I have so missed your tenacious wit.”

  “And I yours. You should have told me you were coming.”

  “And if I had, you would have put us off.”

  “How is your mother, Freddie? Is she well?”

  “There must be another way back up without having to go through all this verdant jungle.”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “Oh. Well, you know, I am her biggest frustration, and having given up on me for the time being, she thought she would make an impromptu call on the most eligible young lady in all of Cornwall.”

  “I’ll see if I can persuade Effie to come downstairs.”

  “Not her, you gorgeous goose. You know Mother’s opinion of ghosts and rappings and shaded lamps well enough. You and I are now at the top of her list.”

  “But she has given up on you.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “I see. Ask me quickly, Freddie, so that we can get it over with.”

  “This suit is brand new. Mark my words, I am not getting down on bended knee in the mire.”

  “Ask.”

  “Gwen Carrick, will you be my wife?”

  “Certainly not. Never in my life, Freddie Fernly.”

  “Thank God for that. Well, let’s go and tell Mother the good news.”

  “I can’t believe she really thought it would come off.”

  “No. I think it’s a mark of how desperate she has become to get rid of me once and for all. She has already been through every possible candidate this season and I have refused every single one of them. We are back early because she is in a fit of pique.”

  Gwen laughed. “You should just tell her, Freddie, in simple words that even she can understand.”

  “What? Dearest Mother? It would finish her off. In any case, I am glad to see you more cheerful.”

  “I’m not unhappy.”

  “What tosh. You’ve turned yourself into a veritable hermit. No one can be happy living like this. Which reminds me, we are having a little gathering, Tuesday week. Do say you’ll come.”

  Gwen had no desire to spend an evening with Mrs Fernly, despite her affection for Freddie. They arrived at a level path, halfway up to the house, where they stopped to get their breath back, Freddie more than Gwen.

  “Euphemia won’t be able to call off her engagements for that night.”

  “I know, that’s why I fixed it for a Tuesday. I found out, you see, which nights your sister entertains her ladies.”

  “So very wicked of you, Freddie. There are male clients, too, just occasionally.”

  “Pooh to them all! So, now you will accept?”

  “You won’t let your mother make me sing, and you won’t let some horrid crony of hers corner me.”

  “I promise that Mother won’t even be there. It will be fun. And perhaps you can wear that lovely blue silk, because it will go very nicely with my new waistcoat and everyone will leave us both quite alone, because we shall strike such a stunning effect.”

  “I don’t have it, Freddie. I sold most of my gowns.”

  “You do know that you have committed a mortal sin? That blue was heavenly on you. Never mind, whatever you shall wear will be irrelevant. You are truly the most eligible young lady in the entire county.”

  “If it weren’t for my so-called hermitism and the fact that I can’t sing.”

  “That and your love of stones. If you would just love the shiny kind.”

  “I do, just not in that way. And you’ve forgotten something.”

  “Of course. I am sure there is a perfect match for you out there. If some gentleman were to present you with a big shiny beetle I am sure your heart would melt at once.”

  “Don’t tease. I can’t think of anything more hideous than handing over my future and property to some—”

  “Pax! I won’t tease you any more. Do come Tuesday week.”

  They moved off again, going slowly up the steep path arm in arm; Freddie cajoling Gwen until she agreed that she would go to his party.

  “Ha! I knew you would,” he said, as they reached the house. “I’ll send you a lovely present—but you must promise not to sell it. At least wear it once.”

  “You mustn’t do anything extravagant on my behalf, Freddie.”

  “Not at all. I have something perfectly exquisite in mind.”

  “Your mother will have entirely the wrong impression if you send me gifts.”

  “I don’t much care if she does. I want you to sparkle and be happy. I’ve neglected you, old thing; I want to make reparations.”

  Chapter V

  London. May, 1859.

  Edward had suffered a long and uncomfortable journey; dirty, tired and hungry, he’d been so dispirited on his return that he had considered booking a room somewhere for the first night back in London. He wished that he had decided after all to tear up his ticket and stay in Cornwall.

  He had been back in London for about ten days but he had lost sense of the exact date. During this time he had witnessed his wife miscarry her child. The pregnancy had been troublesome; Isobel had lost blood on and off throughout, both from her womb and through leeches on her arm, courtesy of some quack in Edward’s absence. She had been determined it would go to the full term and had neglected to continue the treatment he had secured for her. Now, Edward found himself organising a minute coffin and a funeral to go with it while also sourcing the right concoctions to dry up the milk which now leaked from her swollen breasts. Already it was all becoming too much again. He didn’t know how many days he would be able to stand it.

  After his supper, Edward took a cab to Leicester Square. To walk and to think—or rather to lose himself in the cacophony of sounds and smells, to see the sights, and be thoroughly revolted by all of it, so that he could go back to the miserable house and try to find something living there, some small remnant of the positive feelings he had once harboured for his wife.

  He stood on the left-hand flight of steps leading to the entrance of the insalubrious Saville House. Beneath its three storeys of shabby late-baroque grandeur, Edward recalled snatches of his times with Natalia Jaspur. The memories of her person, her voice, and the physical presence she had. The way she owned the air in the room. Edward hesitated on the steps. Should he go up to the door and go in? What kind of tricks would he see there now? Would she still be there, or would she have moved on, as she had promised she would? There were few who could deny the quality of her voice. She was the kind of person to somehow always find a way of getting what she wanted. Notoriety of the right kind would surely fall her way. And what about him? There was a time when he had believed that Natalia Jaspur’s medical condition was going to provide him with the evidence to make his name. That the condition had already been scientifically described had not prevented this belief for a while.

  There was loose change in his coat pockets and in his trouser pockets. He couldn’t remember putting the coins there. Some was change from the cabby. Some must be kept for the ride back home. Edward advanced a couple of steps higher but found himself clinging to the newer memory of Gwen Carrick, both in the summerhouse and on the beach. Such an extraordinary woman; so co
mplex, so intuitive and so angry about the world. Why could he not have told her more? Did he really have to know her deepest passion and she his? He knew the answer to that. Edward looked up and tried to focus properly on the crowd of night-time revellers, the shadows from the lamplight making their faces ugly, every one of them.

  Edward pushed his way down through the people now crowding up the steps to Saville House. They were welcome to their cheap entertainment. He found a cab and gave the address of his club. There he found Alexander Jacobs looking morose and staring into the fire, swirling a full measure of whisky, his half-bald head catching the warm glow from the grate. When he saw Edward he perked up, stood to shake his hand and offered him a drink.

  “Hell, Scales, where the devil have you been hiding yourself? I was beginning to think you must be either dead or in the West Country.”

  Edward tried not to recoil. “I’m very much alive, as you can see. What makes you think I’d be in the West Country?”

  “I didn’t, not really. It’s just that a lot of people have shot off there at the invitation of that Fernly.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t know him? I thought everyone did.”

  “But you didn’t go.”

  “Christ, no. I have my patients to consider. What are you doing with yourself though, Scales. When are you coming back?”

  Edward was grateful for the fact that Jacobs had pretended not to know what had kept him away from London for so long. He couldn’t remember if he had ever talked to Jacobs about his interest in the West Country, or that he’d considered looking for a small property there. Never mind if he had or had not. The fossil hunting was common knowledge.

  “I don’t think I shall. I’ve been considering a change of scene.”

  “But you’ve had a change of scene. You ought to come back and finish training. I always said you’d make a damn fine surgeon. We could fix you up in next to no time. Damn sight more talent than Jeffreye and I have put together.”

  “I don’t know about that; rather late in the day. I don’t think I shall ever elevate myself beyond general practitioner.”

  “Nonsense! This is unwarranted modesty. You still have youth and your health on your side. Jeffreye’s gone off for that Fernly’s Ball, you know; wanted me to join him. Had the devil of a time myself trying to persuade him not to go.”

  “Indeed.”

  “By the look on your face I can see that you two are still not reconciled. I don’t know what your quarrel was, but if you’ll take my advice, you should patch things up. It’s a terrible thing to lose a true friend over a squabble.”

  “It’s no simple quarrel. No doubt he’s gone off in search of another self-indulgent medieval dose. Pity the unsuspecting in the West Country.”

  “Of course, I’m intruding where I’ve no business. It’s between the two of you. Have another?”

  Edward accepted a second whisky and decided not to mention Isobel. Now that the drink was loosening his wits, he didn’t trust himself to remain neutral after Jeffreye’s name had come up.

  Jacobs moved the conversation on and went along quite happily without much contribution from Edward. He talked about his horses and his dogs, and invited Edward to dinner the next week so that he could show them off. Then he talked about a difficult skin case at the hospital, and tried to elicit some advice from Edward on the matter. It was an attempt to try and prove to Edward that his proper place was by his side, at the hospital, that his talent in medicine was being wilfully squandered. But Edward was noncommittal, and kept the talk moving without promising Jacobs anything definite. The pair talked until after one in the morning and Edward took a ride back to Hyde Park in Jacob’s carriage.

  “Good night, then. Give my best to your wife. How’s she coming along?”

  Edward jumped down to the street and steadied himself, clinging to the cabin door. “Isobel lost the child a few days ago.”

  “Oh. Bloody bad luck.”

  “Yes.”

  “Still, early days yet. There’ll be others. Don’t give up.”

  “No.”

  “Good chap.”

  “Good night, Alex.” Edward shut the door and the cab pulled away. He took his shoes off in the entrance hall. In the dark, he twice missed the peg on the stand before his coat found its place. He blundered as quietly as he could, but his head was thick. He found a lamp and managed to light it after rummaging a long time for the box of matches in his trousers. He hadn’t smoked in a long while but kept up the habit of having matches about him. He came to the bottom of the winding flight of stairs and gripped the turned end of the banister. He put his foot on the bottom step but then changed his mind. He didn’t want to go and lie in bed wide awake. He just didn’t want to go upstairs at all. Edward went to his study and turned the lamp up full. He poured himself another drink and pulled open the drawers where he kept his case-study papers. Perhaps Jacobs was right; he’d allowed himself to wallow for too long. He had once believed in himself as much as Jacobs now pretended to. He shuffled through them, looking for the file he’d kept on Natalia Jaspur. He could not find it; his mind was fixed on the naked body of Natalia Jaspur, and the extraordinary effect it had produced in him. He’d felt his whole being punched alive; a spark, a jolt, something unexpected. The revulsion he’d anticipated, and had been prepared to hide from her, had not been there. The sight of her naked body, so completely covered in hair, had caught him so sharply, so intensely that he had been afraid of his own desire. The papers were gone. He had no recollection of having destroyed his work, but, then again, he had not been terribly well. He could not settle. Seeing Alexander Jacobs again had caused the feelings he’d buried to migrate to the surface of his mind. When he closed his eyes he could not fully conjure Miss Carrick’s face; the restorative effect she had brought to him was obscured by the too-familiar throw of the lamp’s shadows in the room and the memory of Natalia Jaspur, the countless hours he had spent in her company, and then the striving to release himself from her hold. Meeting Miss Carrick had opened up something better in him—something he now knew that he valued above everything, and that he had never thought to own. There was no word nor expression that matched what he felt for her, and so he let the nameless thing exist without trying to pin it down. The torture he had minutes ago felt in remembering Natalia Jaspur dulled, and he fell asleep in the chair at his desk.

  When he woke in the morning he was still drunk. He roused himself and looked at the chaos of paperwork he had strewn about the night before. He knew he could be better than the sum of these papers. It was just a matter of finding his own truth. Miss Carrick seemed to be aware of her own truth; she seemed to have a clear sense of purpose and a fierce determination, in spite of the hand that had been dealt her. He went upstairs to bed where he slept until late morning. Waking for the second time he threw himself out of the covers. He stood still for a moment at the bedside and reeled at his hangover, determined not to throw up. The pressing thought that he must find the Burns poem before he went back to see Miss Carrick was clear in his mind. As he splashed water on his face at the wash-stand he knew, suddenly, what the inexplicable feeling was. The thing he had been unable to name was simple. He was in love.

  Chapter VI

  “They are taking advantage of your vulnerable state, Isobel. These people are the lowest sort.”

  “Then you should be happy that I shall find myself in suitable company, Edward.”

  “Those are your words, not mine. What is done is done, but this will only serve to compound your unhappiness, not cure it.”

  “I am not looking for a cure, Edward, I am looking for my child.”

  “We buried him. Two days ago, we buried him; you know where his body lies. Wherever his tiny spirit has gone, I can guarantee that you will not find it in some spinster’s parlour overstuffed with horsehair, velvet and threads of manipulation tied to hidden china bells.”

  “They say the spirits sometimes bring gifts from the other side. The Enderby siste
rs say—”

  “All of it is nonsense, Isobel, and if you were not in this unfortunate state you would say the same yourself, without any doubt. Pure nonsense; it is nothing more than cheap trickery.”

  “And, of course, you are an authority on that particular subject. Why can’t you let me grieve?”

  “I wish you would grieve, but this is no way to go about it.”

  “You are punishing me because of the child.”

  “I have no wish to do any such thing.”

  “And yet, had he lived, I think you would have punished me more.”

  “Isobel, you are not yourself. Let me take you home.”

  “No.”

  Isobel’s comment about his authority on trickery had pricked him, but he felt it unjust. Spirits quite simply could no more be conjured than congealed blood be made liquid and life-giving. Life was governed by the function of a body. Its deterioration to the point of cessation of functioning parts stopped the flow of blood. It—the flow of blood, that ordinary substance in veins—this in Edward’s mind was where the spirit lay. Blood became infected with disease, and the body still living could exist for a time with the process of decay. He glanced at his wife, whose expression was unreadable. After the last breath, thought Edward, blood congealed, and then decayed. Once the body was dead, the spirit too was dead. He had watched, in his observation of patients’ deaths, for evidence of the departure of the spirit. He could not attach to the process of a human death the sentiment enjoyed by those zealous purveyors of idiotic lies.