To my family
And did you get what
you tvantedfrom this life, even so?
I did
And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
RAYMOND CARVER
FIRST
On a hot, cloud-hemmed afternoon in August, three men cross a stable yard near the village of Cow in Devon. The grouping is oddly formal: the two younger men, like heralds or warders, solemnly precede their host, or, more fancifully, draw him on - his black-coated bulk, his red face - by the reins of an invisible harness. One of the guests carries in his hand a leather bag from which, as he walks to the stable door, there comes a muffled jangling.
It is the older man who, after a pause, opens the door, standing back for the others to enter. They do so, slowly against the darkness. The stable has been swept clean. The smell of horses, of hay, of leather and dung, is mixed with the smell of burnt lavender. Despite the season there is no offensive odour from the corpse. The Reverend wonders if Mary knows the secrets of preserving flesh. In old days the gods kept dead heroes sweet until the funeral games were done, the pyres lit. There are ways, no doubt, still. Ointments, spells, certain prayers. She has been sitting on a milking stool by the table. She stands when they enter, a neat, squat figure, feathered with shadows. Well,' says the Reverend, 'I said we should come. These gentlemen' - he indicates the younger men - 'are Dr Ross and Dr Burke. Doctors, Mary.'
She looks past the Reverend, looking not at Burke and Ross but at the bag in Dr Ross's hand.
'Doctors,' he says again, a hushed voice. He wants to call her lass', but though, measuring by her looks, she has less years than he has, she seems immeasurably older, and not simply older, but as if she belonged to a different age, a different order; a relative of rocks, venerable trees.
She goes, not just quietly, but with no audible sound at all. Burke looks at Ross, mouths the word witch'. They cross themselves discreetly, as if adjusting buttons on their waistcoats. Says Burke: 'We should make a start or we shall be riding back in a storm. Have you a lamp there. Reverend?'
There is a lamp, brought when the body was moved. The Reverend lights it from his tinder box - tac, tac; flint on steel -and passes it to Ross. Ross and Burke come up to the table where James is laid, his length in a woollen nightgown. His hair, almost white when he first came to the rectory, began, in the last year, to darken. Mary has washed it, rubbed it with pomade, brushed it and bound it with a black ribbon. He does not look like he is sleeping.
'A handsome corpse,' Burke says. 'Oh yes, there are features all right.'
Beneath James's crossed hands lies a book in scuffed leather binding. Burke snatches it, views the spine, grins, passes it to the Reverend, who has already recognised it: Gullivers Travels. James borrowed it from the study only a week or two ago. Who placed it here? Sam? Mary? Sam shall have the book if he wants it. The boy should have something.
Ross strips the body, drops the gown on to the floor. From the bag he takes a knife and passes it to Burke who looks along its edge and nods. Burke places a hand on James's chin, and slashes the trunk from the top of the sternum to a point just above the pubic hair. He then cuts across below the ribs to make an inverted cross, bloody-edged, moist. He pauses to take a spectacles case from his waistcoat pocket, fixes the spectacles on to his face, blinking. He mutters something under his breath, takes hold of a flap of skin and fat and peels it away. He uses the knife to free it, to coax it from the matter below. His hands are muscled like a sailor's. Ross holds the lamp aloft. He has a short stick he swooped up on their way over from the house. He uses it to prod at James's guts.
Would you care for a more intimate view, Reverend? You can see little from there, I think.'
The Reverend shuffles forward. Burke disgusts him.
Dr Ross says: 'The Reverend's interest is in the invisible tenant of the house rather than in the house itself Heh?'
The Reverend Lestrade says: 'Just so, sir.'
'Now for the heart,' Burke says.
They begin to tear at the chest, working at the ribs with a handsaw, then using the knife to worry through the great vessels. The doctors are visibly excited, bright as eggs. There shall be a paper in this, societies addressed, circles of illuminati: 'Some Thoughts, hm, upon the Case of the Late Jm Dyer. An Enquiry into . . . the Curious and Remarkable . . . who until his twenty-something year was insensible to . . . knew not. . . entirely without all sensation . . . feeling . . . knowledge of. . . pain. With proofs, illustrations, exhibits and so forth.'
The Reverend turns away, looks out at the yard where two birds peck grain from a cake of dung. Beyond, in the wall where he grows sweet-william, a green door leads into the garden. He associates the door with James; James coming through and examining the pears or simply standing in the yard, frowning as if he could not remember what he was about.
Noises, like a boot stepping in mud, disturb him. Ross has got it in his hands, the broken muscle of James Dyer's heart. He looks, thinks the Reverend, as if he might like to eat it, and only some very little shame is keeping him from it. Burke wipes his hands on a rag and takes a folded newspaper from his coat pocket. He opens the paper, spreading it over James's thighs, then takes the heart from
