15
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee.
JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
Fasque, Mearns, 13 April 1850
The woman squirmed and twitched against the leather straps restraining her on the bed, the dark hair plastered against her brow. Her legs fought against the bonds, aching to spread and let Jesus in, eyes wild, as the addiction bit deep. O sweet opium, bring me your beautiful dreams, let me walk in fields of gold, let me taste the honeycomb, let me kiss the purple hem, let the incense burner trail its perfect smoke around my naked body, let the Holy Wafer melt in my mouth with fine indulgence, let Christ’s blood flow in the firmament, let me bathe in it like Cleopatra in the ass’s milk, let my Faith shine free!
Dr Purdie moved away from the writhing figure towards the man who stood watching, helplessly, as his sister continued the inner dialogue with her present God.
Both manner and dress proclaimed the doctor to be a tightly buttoned Presbyterian, but he was not an unkind man.
‘I’m afraid she took the death of your daughter Jessy very badly, Mr Gladstone,’ he said. ‘She evaded the scrutiny of her nurse and, as far as we are able to ascertain, imbued herself with near to three hundred drops of laudanum. It is a massive dose. We have had to hold her down by force while the leeches were applied and now we can only wait and pray.’
‘How is my father?’
‘Sir John is … resting. Upstairs. In his bed. He wishes to conserve his strength. For tomorrow.’
Outside, the rain beat against the windows, adding to the gloomy spectral air of the room which was shrouded, the dark drapes pulled tight.
A bedside light was the only illumination and it cast their shadows on to the pale violet walls where portraits of family ancestors looked down in no great approval, as the woman jerked convulsively.
The nurse, starched like a nun, and a brawny specimen to boot, laid a cold compress on the brow. It provoked an outcry and a shiver.
Purdie noted a response from the man, hand clenched to a fist, nails dug into palm. The whole family would be on medication soon.
The man’s voice was slow, sonorous, it betrayed little of the dreadful tension within.
‘Tomorrow Jessy will be buried in the family vault. I would not wish my sister Helen to attend.’
‘I do not think her capable, sir.’
‘I would not wish it in any case.’
‘A wise decision,’ murmured Purdie who had a sudden outlandish vision of the patient in her nightgown, leaping on to the coffin and scandalising the granite slabs. This madness was catching.
‘Has she asked for me?’
The doctor coughed.
‘Not immediately. She did, in her … perturbation demand the presence of a priest but I thought it better to wait until yourself or Sir John might advise me on the matter.’
It was as if he’d shoved an iron bar into the rectal region. Purdie knew that Helen Gladstone had converted to Catholicism some eight years ago, and though the family was High Anglican, a priest would be as welcome in this house as a rat with the plague.
‘I would like to be alone with my sister.’
A command Purdie hastened to obey. He would be glad to get out of the place, the very walls seemed to be closing in and there was a feeling of being constantly observed and spied upon, eyes everywhere, the servants of the house more like sentinels. Besides the man oozed a kind of baleful power, and it was said that when he rose to speak in the House of Commons, opponents feared his oratory as they would fear a projectile from the sky.
The good doctor, who had no wish to be projected upon, signalled the nurse to leave also.
Apart from one curious glance as she passed the man by, Eileen Marshall, for that was her name, did as she was bade.
The room was now empty, save for the rigid tense figure of the man and the restless dreamer.
16
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true and fair.
JOHN DONNE, ‘Song’, op. cit.
A frenzied series of barks in the distance downstairs broke the spell. Fergus must have burnt his nose on the hot oven.
Joanna Lightfoot had fallen silent.
McLevy was like a wee boy with his face pressed up against the sweetie-shop window.
‘What followed after?’ he demanded.
‘That is for someone else to say.’
‘Such as who? The sister?’
‘She died not long ago. January past. Events may have once more been set in motion by that particular death.’
Joanna sighed and threw back her head to reveal a white throat, where McLevy could make out the faintest beating of a pulse just above the purple collar.
The fishbone was driving him mad. To hell with it.
While her eyes still glazed up at the mottled ceiling, he dug a thumbnail into his back teeth, hooked out the offending fragment and flipped it surreptitiously into the hearth.
