'You'll come in and take a smatter of something? For the night air?'
'I cannot impose on you at such an hour, Mrs Clarke . . .' But already he is following her and her light into the house, past the shadow-elongated hat of the sleeping sexton, whose snores just reach them as they gather in the kitchen. Here the bedded embers of the fire give off their steady heat.
The house is but the slightest bit smaller than the one James was a child in, the house at Blind Yeo, and there is much about it, the humble, scrubbed look of things, the complex blend of odours, the play of light on polished surfaces, that is as familiar to him as his own face.
Mrs Clarke brings in her husband's mug, filled with ale, and sets it down in front of her guest. For herself she has a small glass of ginger wine. Sam, standing like a footman at James's shoulder, drinks milk out of a wooden cup.
'Your husband is well?'
'Thank you, sir, he is. But he must have his measure of sleep, mind. He says that working with so many eternal sleepers gives him an appetite for it.'
'An appetite for what, madam?' The sudden warmth after the cold air has made him drowsy. Mrs Clarke blushes.
'For sleep. Doctor. Only for sleep.' She glances at her son, then laughs unexpectedly. 'It is his joke. Doctor.'
James says: 'There is not a profession in the world as does not have its particular humour. I regret that that of medical men is perhaps the grossest of them all. A proximity to the suffering of others produces a drollery more cruel than truly comic. It begins as a defence against horrors but soon becomes merely a way with them.'
'I'm sure it was not so with you,' says Mrs Clarke. There is always, in the doctor's conversation, a gratifying air of imminent indiscretion.
'No, madam, it was not, for the suffering of others did not trouble me in the least. I understood it only in so far as there existed a correlation between the sharpness of the pain and the fee that might be had for its relief James, whose gaze as he spoke was directed at the table, now looks up to measure the effect of this confession. There is an instant's confusion in her eyes but it passes quickly. She shows she is determined to be kind to him.
'Sure you knew your business best. Doctor.'
'Depend upon it, madam. I was - and this is no puff- the only surgeon of my acquaintance whose good reputation was not an utter fiction. Most had tongues and fancies that could have turned a tavern brawl into the siege of Troy, but come to the real business of healing and you had might as well be attended by a goose. Gold swords and hearts of the cheapest brass.' He pauses, smiling to take off the edge of anger that has crept into his voice. 'You see how unkind I am to my old profession. There were some good men
among them, ay, and good women too. Those who knew how to comfort without touting hope when there was none. In truth, Mrs Clarke, there is little enough we can do, very little. We are born too late and too early - between the secret arts of the old world and the discoveries of the age to come. I had a certain genius, madam, mostly for the knife. But I never had that way of looking . . .' He gestures loosely in the air above his ale. '. . . that quality of attention towards another's suffering which marks out the true healer.'
'Why, I fancy you are too hard on yourself. Doctor.'
James shakes his head. 'No, madam, I am merely just. I was good in the smallest sense of the word. Wonderful dextrous but no man ever came to me for kindness.'
There is a weight in the words and something iron in his tone which makes this last unanswerable. There is a long pause, then Mrs Clarke says: 'You have a sister, I think?'
'I had two.'
'They . . . ?'
'Ay, the pretty one, Sarah. Died as a child along with my brother. I believe the other still lives, my Liza. That is, I do not know of her not doing so. I have not seen her since I was a boy.'
'You told me they all died,' says Sam. 'That you was alone.'
'Hush now,' says his mother, afraid to disturb so fragile a mood.
'Did I say so, Sam? Well, it was near enough the truth.' He falls silent.
Mrs Clarke waits, then offers, 'Mayhap you shall see her again.'
'She would not be glad of it, I think. She has no cause to love me.'
'A sister does not need cause to love her brother, Doctor. 'Tis her duty.'
'There can be no talk of duty. I wronged her.'
'As a boy. And boys often wrong their sisters. Lor', when I think of my own brothers. Yet we are friends enough now.'
James shakes his head. 'I should not be able to look at her.'
'Then she might care to look at you, her own flesh an' blood.'
Impossible.'
'Forgiveness is a great thing,' she says, 'for those with the heart for it.'
James, his hand on Sam's shoulder, eases himself up from the table. In a quiet voice he says: 'She is blind. Was blind. The smallpox.'
Sam is sent to bed. Mrs Clarke, candle in hand as before, leads James to the door. Stepping out from the house, he says: 'Did I talk strangely?'
'You are always welcome
