‘This is truly, truly awful,’ she said.
‘I thought you’d think it was the dog’s bollicks.’
Although she’d let go of her nose she still held her hands up half covering her lower face. Sort of looking over her fingers. She moved across to another table.
‘So many,’ she said.
‘You’ve never seen one — all of a sudden you see fourteen.’
‘Is this a man or a woman?’ The head hair had been closely shaved to a grey stubble. The chest pouches could have belonged to either sex. The sex organs were in process of dissection. ‘They all look like they’ve been half chewed. I want to cry but I can’t.’
Martin had his hands joined behind his back. The white tiled walls were covered with plastic diagrams: of the nervous system, the muscle system, the skeleton. He walked up to the blackboard and back again. Cindy was looking down at another dead woman’s face. She turned and made a horrified face, pointing beneath the table.
‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘That stuff dripping out.’
Martin shrugged.
‘It’s just fixative.’
‘It’s the first table I’ve ever seen with a penis.’
There was an overflow pipe pointing into a bucket beneath each of the stainless steel tables. ‘You see that bucket — that’s where they put the bits.’
‘What bits?’
‘The leftover bits of each body. The chicken bones, the skin. When they dissect it.’
‘Yeuchhh.’
‘Each of them will get a Christian burial — correction — a burial of their choice. All their bits get gathered together in a coffin. Whether you’re a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist we can cater for you. Burnt or buried, sir? And you don’t want to go mixing them up. You don’t want Auntie Dinkie’s knee bone turning up in some old rabbi’s coffin, do you? So everything has to go into the right bucket. And from the bucket into the coffin with the right name on it. I’ve seen them, in the basement. At the Last Judgment the trumpet shall sound. And it’ll cause no end of bother if people have been mixed up.’
‘You shouldn’t make fun,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget I’m a minister’s daughter. And I still believe in God.’
‘God is the great lie and we are the generation who found it out.’
‘This is very heavy for so early in the morning.’
‘I used to think there was some sort of justice. The fat capitalist when he died would get his comeuppance in hell, and his thin victim would get to heaven. But we all end up like this. This is the only way things even out. The scales balance. Everybody dies, everybody disappears.’ Martin looked around the Dissecting Room. ‘Maybe comedownance would be better.’
There was a number of high stools for the students, like bar stools at each table, and Cindy slid on to one. Martin came and stood in front of her. Her legs were ajar.
‘I wish I hadn’t come in here,’ she said. ‘I thought it’d be horrible. But it’s just sad. So so so sad.’ He began to touch the insides of her thighs lightly.
‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Sorry.’ She was on the verge of tears. She slid off the stool and stood staring down at a woman. From behind, Martin chastely put his arms around her and put his face to the side of her face. They both looked at the body. ‘She probably had about six nippers,’ said Cindy. ‘Tied their hair in bunches. Ginger Belfast kids with freckles. Good stone throwers.’
‘She’s probably not from here.’
‘What?’
‘They ship them in. We ship ours out — to Leeds, or London.’
‘Why?’
‘If they’re not local then there’s less chance of a student getting his granny to cut up.’
‘Christ Almighty. Not only is she dead, but she’s away from home.’ She closed her eyes and fought hard against crying. Martin joined his hands across her stomach.
‘Let’s go then,’ he said. ‘I knew this was a bad idea.’ He put gentle pressure on her to move towards the door. She allowed him to push her. In the corridor he kissed her but she did not respond. He began to touch her but she stopped him and stepped away.
‘I’m raw,’ she said. She moved back along the corridor to the lab. Martin locked up and followed her. ‘I forgot my tea,’ she said. Martin went back and unlocked the Dissecting Room and brought her tea. When he came into the lab she had the histology book open again. She was staring down at the photo doing her lips with the Vaseline. She nodded at the page.
‘This is worse than in there,’ she said. ‘They’re dead. They don’t feel anything.’
He went over and closed the book.
‘Why do you look at it, if it annoys you?’
‘Because I can hardly believe it. A pregnant eye. Can you imagine the pain of that? And somebody causes you to have it?’
He tried to put his arms around her but she turned away and began to pack her toothbrush and things into her rucksack.
‘I’m going to try and catch the early boat. I think there’s one at seven.’
‘It wasn’t me did that experiment.’
‘I know. But I associate it with here, with you, with this place.’
‘Hey — don’t go all serious on me.’
She shook her head with all its hair as if to get rid of the thought.
‘Hey — I associate … this was something good. I associate you with something really good. Cindy.’ She allowed him to lean his face against her shoulder, then to put his arms around her.
‘I still want to get that early boat,’ she said. ‘Your sannies were good but I badly need some breakfast. My belly thinks my throat’s cut.’
‘Do they say that in Australia too?’
‘No. But they do in bonny Scotland.’
He put the Dissecting Room key back exactly as he had found it then walked down the stairs with her. Again the echo and scrape of their feet on the stone.
‘It was great to meet you,’ said Martin.
‘Liar.’ Cindy still looked sombre.
‘No, no really, it was,’ said Martin. ‘Hey, come on — we had a really good time. Well, I had. I really like you.’ She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
‘Gee thanks,’ she said.
‘Why for the sarcasm?’ Cindy continued down the steps. She hitched her rucksack higher up on her shoulder. ‘Cindy?’
‘I think what you do is really sad.’
‘What?’
‘Being cruel to animals. Killing them, cutting them up.’
‘I’m not cruel to animals.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘It’s part of my job, for God’s sake. How could I be a technician in here if I refused?’
‘You could get another job. Be a hairdresser. Work in a hotel.’
‘A hairdresser.’ His voice went high pitched and echoed in the stairwell.
‘You see — you do think I’m a piece of shit.’
‘I do not.’ They stopped on the stairs.
‘All night you’ve been examining me and letting me know I’m a piece of shit.’
‘Cindy.’ He tried to put his arm around her but the rucksack made it awkward. ‘That’s not true. Not true at all. You’re great.’ He pulled her head with its bush of hair into his shoulder. Then she allowed him to kiss her on the mouth. After the kiss she tightened her lips as if she was about to cry again. ‘You can’t say that.’
‘OK — maybe I’m paranoidal.’
‘You are, you are.’ He opened the door and swung it wide. ‘Tonight was great. What about an address?’
‘I’m thinking of moving on from that hotel,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you my father’s address in Australia if you like. You could contact me there. If you ever came over. See Bondi Beach.’
‘OK.’ She had a tiny notebook with a spiral spine and he handed her his ballpoint pen. She wrote the address and tugged the page from the book with a tiny ripping sound. Martin glanced at it — saw c/o Rev. Jake Atkins in big fat backh
and. ‘Thanks. It was great,’ he said. ‘Take care.’
As she walked away she raised her hand and waggled her fingers instead of waving goodbye.
Back in the lab he turned on the knife sharpener again and listened to its rhythmic scringeing. He just stood there watching it, in a hypnotic state — watching the sliver blade turning over — the glass plate slowly revolving. Like the hypnotist swinging a gold watch. A pendulum. Simple harmonic motion. If there was no gravity there could be no pendulums. Or should it be pendula? Would Baldy Ned Kelly know an answer to a thing like that? Time was a part of it too. How long each swing took. It also depended on the length of the pendulum. Why was he thinking in this dumbfuck kind of way? He had to force himself to move. To snap out of the little trance he had allowed himself to fall into. He moved his arm. And scratched his upper lip. His fingers smelled of sex. Of Cindy. He smiled and slipped on clear plastic gloves. That way he wouldn’t have to wash his hands when he’d finished what he was doing. He felt totally knackered. He needed to get his head down for a few hours at least. The only thing that would help was sleep. He remembered one of his mother’s supper evenings when they had addressed themselves to the subject and examined it in some detail.
‘And how’s Mary?’
‘I can’t complain, Father.’ She lowered herself into the armchair, with a sound of deflation. When she got settled she said, ‘What am I talking about? I’m among friends. I’m bate to the ropes. Awful. I haven’t slept well one night this week.’
‘It must be something in the air,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘I haven’t slept a wink since Tuesday.’
‘What about a wee cup of hot milk?’ said Mrs Brennan.
‘Och, no thanks dear. I’ll just wait for the tea.’
‘No — I mean for the sleeping. At night.’
‘Sorry, love,’ said Mary Lawless. ‘I thought you were offering me hot milk now. At this minute. Says I, what’s come over Mrs Brennan running around offering people hot milk in the middle of the evening.’
‘I was wondering,’ said Nurse Gilliland. Father Farquharson smiled and then began to chuckle to himself.
‘What’s tickling your fancy, Father?’ said Mrs Brennan.
‘Nothing, Mrs Brennan. Nothing at all.’ But he went on smiling. Mrs Brennan asked him a second time. He straightened his face.
‘I’m very easily amused. My funny bone is very near the surface tonight,’ he said. ‘Have any of you ever heard tell of the great churchman Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott Knox?’
‘Was he not a Scottish Protestant?’
‘You’re right there,’ said Mary Lawless.
‘No,’ said Father Farquharson. ‘He was an entirely different kettle offish. You’re talking about John Knox — a bad pill, if ever there was one. The man I’m talking about was a scholar and a gentleman. Ronnie Knox engaged himself in the piffling task of translating the whole of the Bible. The New Testament first. Then the Old Testament.’
‘Would he not have been better to go at it the other way round?’
‘Start at the beginning.’
‘That is not the issue here,’ said Father Farquharson. ‘What I’m saying is that he was a man of high intellectual gifts. And for relaxation he wrote detective stories.’
‘Did he write them under the pen-name of Father Brown?’
‘No …’
‘Agatha Christie?’
‘Jeff Chandler?’
‘As far as I know he wrote them under his own name.’
‘That was brave of him.’
‘Why have a dog when you can bark yourself,’ said Mrs Brennan.
‘The point is,’ said Father Farquharson, ‘that he was not a great sleeper.’
‘He didn’t know about the hot milk, did he? Eh, Mrs Brennan?’
‘Divil the bit.’
‘And I remember reading somewhere — or did someone tell me about it? No, I think I read it — even as a four-year-old child he suffered badly from insomnia, and he was asked how did he cope with it — as a child — and he said “I just lay there and thought about the past.” At four years of age.’ Father Farquharson chuckled and patted his thigh lightly. Mrs Brennan looked all around.
‘Most children can talk by the age of four,’ she said.
‘Wasn’t he the right wee tinker, too,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘I’d have given him a bit of a smack and let him cry himself to sleep. Bible or no bible.’
‘At four years of age,’ said Mary Lawless, ‘he couldn’t have had much of a past to worry about.’
‘That’s my point,’ said Father Farquharson. ‘That’s what’s amusing about it.’
‘Oh I’m with you now, Father.’
‘All days even to the consummation of the world.’
‘I remember the old ones talking about taking valerian. To get over to sleep.’
‘I’ve heard of valerian, but what is it?’
‘A sedative,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘Something to make you sleep. A drug.’
‘I always keep a book on the bedside table,’ said Mary Lawless. ‘A thriller. Most times, one page and I’m asleep. But not this week. No sir.’
‘Did you ever wake up with the book on your chest and the light still on?’
‘Many’s the time.’
‘Are you worried about anything?’
‘I’m worried about everything.’
‘It’s not getting over that’s my problem,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘It’s when you wake up in the dark at half four or five. And you’re as bright as a button. And you find yourself up, wandering the kitchen, making herb tea and whistling like Ronnie Ronald.’
‘Lemon balm is supposed to be very good.’
‘And maybe a few hops.’
‘Hopping would put me off my notion of sleeping,’ said Mrs Brennan.
‘Hops — the plant — like leaves. They make beer out of it.’ They all began to laugh. They laughed so much they had difficulty speaking. Mary Lawless rolled around in her chair and her bosom shook. Nurse Gilliland stuck her legs out straight and threw her head back. Father Farquharson covered his eyes in embarrassment for Mrs Brennan and her mistake and clumped his false teeth. Mrs Brennan herself tried several times to speak but lost what she was going to say in the next bout of laughter. Eventually she got it out.
‘And there was me thinking of hopping around the kitchen at four in the morning trying not to spill my cup of hot milk.’ And they laughed all over again. Gradually the laughter disappeared, but it came back in little ripples — eyes were wiped with handkerchiefs, smiles were left on faces. There was a lot of nodding.
‘If the crack was any better you couldn’t stick it,’ said Mary Lawless.
‘As I’ve said before — the hot milk is hard to beat. With maybe a spoonful of honey in it,’ said Mrs Brennan.
‘And no hops.’
‘No — divil the hops.’
They were back on even keel. No one said anything for a moment or two.
‘Och, there’s no doubt about it, we’re all becoming a bit dotery.’
‘Every last one of us.’
‘The march of old age. It’ll trample on us all.’
‘We’re becoming a dotery coterie,’ said Mary Lawless and that was them all away laughing again.
‘And what was laudanum when you’re writing home?’ said Mary Lawless. ‘My granny used to talk about that too.’
‘I think it was opium — pure and simple,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘More drugs.’
‘Every day ends with the mystery of how we sleep,’ said Father Farquharson, ‘and each morning begins with the miracle of how we wake.’
‘Well said, Father.’
‘Oh I nearly forgot,’ said Mary Lawless. ‘Martin, hand me over that handbag. I’ve some photos.’
‘I love photies,’ said Nurse Gilliland and rubbed her hands vigorously together making a dry skin sound. Mary Lawless fed the photographs to her left to Mrs Brennan who handed them on to Nurse Gilliland who handed them on to Father Far
quharson who returned them to Mary Lawless. Mrs Brennan scrutinised the first picture.
‘She’s arms on her like thighs,’ said Mrs Brennan. ‘Whoever she is.’
‘It’s my sister.’
‘Oh is that your sister? She has such a sweet smile.’ There was silence for a moment or two. Murmurs only as each picture was looked at and passed on.
‘I’m always cutting the heads off people,’ said Mary Lawless.
‘With me it’s the feet,’ said Nurse Gilliland. ‘I’m always cutting them off at the ankles. I can’t seem to get the camera angled down.’
‘Would you look at the age of you in that one. Mary Lawless, you’d swear you were twenty-five.’
‘You’re far too young looking for your age.’
‘Very photogenic. As they say — the camera loves you.’
‘Isn’t it a great invention altogether? The camera.’
‘It’s like everything else,’ said Father Farquharson. ‘It can be used for good or ill.’
‘What could you do wrong with a camera, Father?’ Mrs Brennan knitted her brows. Father Farquharson looked at the ceiling, then down to Martin where he was sitting on the floor. Mrs Brennan twigged.
‘I suppose you’re right, Father.’
‘Never spoke a truer word.’
‘I would enlarge that one,’ said Nurse Gilliland.
‘I’m big enough, says you.’
‘The photos bring back memories.’
‘They certainly do. It’s a long time since we had a look in the Black Magic box.’
‘If you’re going to do that, I’m off,’ said Martin.
‘Aww, he’s shy.’
Later the Black Magic box was produced and the Brennans’ family past was gone over again. School photographs, small black and white photos — some sepia.
‘I don’t know what you’re all talking about — we couldn’t afford a camera,’ said Mrs Brennan.
The Anatomy School Page 37