The Essex Serpent

by Sarah Perry

  Behind her freckles Naomi turned pale. She felt slights keenly, and never more keenly than this. Before she had a chance to respond Joanna was at the woman’s side, and had kissed her cheek, and was saying, ‘I thought you did very well’ – Just as if she were a grown-up too, and didn’t still wipe her nose on her sleeve when she thinks no-one’s looking! Naomi hadn’t eaten that day, and hunger made the room begin to turn about her; she tried to stand, but Mr Caffyn appeared at her desk and set down a pot of black ink, a sheaf of paper, and something that looked like a garden snail made of grey stone.

  ‘Oh do sit up straight, Naomi Banks,’ said the teacher, who was not unkind, but who felt that Mrs Seaborne and her monsters had turned out to be less of an asset to the day than he’d hoped. ‘You’re a better artist than most of us here: see what you can do with that.’

  What will I do with it, thought Naomi, hefting it in her right hand and then her left: she would’ve liked to toss it at Cora Seaborne and strike her square on the forehead. Who was she anyway? They’d all been all right before she came, Jo and her with their spells and fires. Probably she was a witch, she thought: wouldn’t put it past her with a coat like that; probably the Essex Serpent was a familiar she’d brought with her. The wickedness of the idea cheered her, and when Joanna came back to her seat Naomi was circling her paintbrush in the pot of ink, laughing. Probably sleeps with it tethered to the end of the bed, she thought: probably rides it. She stirred and stirred the pot of ink, and blots appeared on the sheet of white paper in front of her. Probably gives it her breast at night! she thought, and laughed harder, only wasn’t sure whether the laughter really had anything to do with her own thoughts, because it was so loud and strange, and she couldn’t stop it, even though she saw Joanna look puzzled, and a little cross. It’s probably here – on the step – outside the door, she thought: I bet she whistled for it like the farmer does with his dogs. She looked down at her own hands, with the little white pockets of flesh that linked each finger, and they seemed to her to be gleaming with salt water, and scented with scraps of fish. Her laughter shook her and grew a little high-pitched, and it was the unmistakable pitch of fear: she glanced over first her left shoulder and then her right, but the classroom door was closed. The paintbrush in the inkpot went frantically round, as if someone else were guiding her hand, and the desk jolted, and a jar of water toppled and spread across the ink-stained page. Look at it, there it is, thought Naomi, still laughing, still jerking her head over her shoulder (when it came she’d be the first to see it!): ‘LOOK,’ she said, to Joanna, or to Mr Caffyn, who appeared again in front of her, wringing her hands, saying something she couldn’t hear above her own high peals of laughter. ‘CAN’T YOU SEE IT?’ she said, watching the water make the ink bloom, making – surely they could see it! – the coiled body of a serpent of some kind, heart pulsing through the thin skin of its belly and a pair of black wings opening. ‘Not long now,’ she said, ‘not long now –’: over her shoulder she looked, again and again, absolutely certain the serpent was on the threshold – she could smell it, certainly she could: she’d know the scent anywhere … and besides, others could see it too – there was Harriet in her yellow dress, and she was laughing, and craning her head so far over her shoulder you’d think her neck would break, and there were the twins from across the road, who barely spoke, even to each other, and now dashed their heads left and right, left and right, snapping them back and forth, and laughing as they did it.

  Cora, appalled, watched as laughter spread outward from the red-haired girl’s desk, missing Joanna, moving around her like a flow of water interrupted by a rock. It was as if they’d all heard a silent joke which had passed the adults by: some girls laughed behind hands pressed to their mouths; others threw back their heads and roared, thumping the desk in front of them, as though they were older women and the joke had been a bawdy one. Naomi, who’d begun it all, had worn herself out, and sat giggling quietly, putting her hands in the water-and-ink that spilled across the paper, now and then pausing to look over her shoulder and giggle a little more loudly. The child in the yellow dress, who was nearest the door, had laughed herself into frantic tears, and instead of turning to look over her shoulder had turned her chair around and sat facing the door, her hands pressed to her cheeks, chanting It’s coming ready or not, coming ready or not between open-mouthed gulps at the air.

  Mr Caffyn, both outraged and afraid, plucked at his tie and cried, ‘Stop this! Stop this!’, looking furiously at their troublesome visitor, who’d gone very white and stood gripping Joanna’s hand in hers. Then a girl doubled over, laughing so violently her chair toppled and she fell to the floor with a yell that pierced the muddle of foolish laughter, which immediately began to recede. Naomi put a hand to her neck – ‘It hurts,’ she said: ‘Why does it hurt? What have you done?’ and looked around at her classmates, blinking and shaking her head, bemused at their tear-streaked faces. Little Harriet twisted the yellow hem of her dress and had a fit of the hiccups, and one or two of the older girls had gone to comfort the weeping child who cradled a swelling wrist beside an upturned chair.

  ‘Joanna?’ said Naomi, looking at her friend, ‘What’s wrong? Was it me? What have I done this time?’

  Cora Seaborne 3,

  The Common

  Aldwinter

  15th May

  Luke – You’re basking in your celebrity I know and are probably up to your elbows in a chest cavity somewhere, but now WE need you.

  Luke, something’s going wrong. Today something went through the children here as fast as fire – not sickness in the way it’s usually meant, something in the mind, and down they all went like dominoes. By evening all was well again but what could have done it – was it my fault?

  You understand these things: you had me under hypnosis when I would not believe that you could – had me walking over the heath to my father’s house while I lay there on the couch – won’t you come down?

  I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything anymore: that all got used up a long time ago. But something’s here – something’s going on – something isn’t right …

  Besides, you must meet the Ransomes, and most of all Will. I’ve told him about my Imp.

  Can you bring more books for Francis? Murder, please, and the bloodier the better.

  Love,

  CORA

  Luke Garrett MD

  Pentonville Rd

  London N1

  15th May

  Cora –

  Don’t fret. There are no mysteries anymore.

  One word: ergotism. Remember? Black fungus in a crop of rye – a pack of girls hallucinate – Salem hangs its witches. Check their lunches for brown bread and I’ll be with you by Friday next.

  Enclosed: 1 x note for Martha, with Spencer’s regards. Something about housing: he bores me and I don’t listen.

  LUKE

  George Spencer MD

  10 Queen’s Gate Terrace

  15th May

  Dear Martha –

  I hope you are well. How is Essex in the spring? Do you miss civilisation? I thought of you when I saw the gardeners out in force in Victoria Park, and how neat the flowerbeds are. I don’t suppose Aldwinter is growing tulips in the shape of a clock face.

  I’ve been thinking about our chat. I’m glad you shook me out of my complacency and made me look elsewhere and ashamed it took you to do it. I’ve read everything you said I should read, and more. Last week I went to Poplar and saw for myself the state of their homes, and how they live, and how the one feeds the other.

  I’ve written to Charles Ambrose, and hope he’ll write back. He has more influence than me, and understands better how government works, and I think he can be useful. I’m hoping he can be persuaded to come with me to Poplar or Limehouse and see what you and I have seen. If so, might you come too?

  I’ve enclosed a clipping from The Times I thought might cheer you: it seems the Housing of the Working Classes Act is at last making itself felt beyond the
city. The future’s coming to meet us!

  With good wishes,

  GEORGE SPENCER

  4

  Luke came to Aldwinter in triumph and a new grey coat. For all that his success had not proved a cure to all his own ills, it was useless to deny that this evidence of his skill and courage gave him stature. Over in Bethnal Green the heart of Edward Burton beat stronger by the hour: he’d taken to making drawings of the dome of St Paul’s, and was likely to return to work by midsummer. Luke felt Burton’s heart beat beside his own, so that he walked with the vitality of two; and though he knew how pride precedes a fall, it seemed so novel to have any distance to tumble he willingly faced the risk.

  In the train from London and the cab from Colchester he’d thought of Cora, and smoothed her letter on his knee: we need you, she’d said, and scowling he wondered whom she meant by ‘we’: was it also this parson of hers, who peppered her correspondence, who’d drawn her away from London into the Essex mud? The envy he’d felt watching her stoop over her husband’s pillow and kiss his greasy forehead in the final days was nothing to what went through him when he saw that name in her handwriting. First she’d written of Mr Ransome, the title keeping him at arm’s length; then The Good Reverend, with a mocking fondness that had made him uneasy; then – lately, and easily, with no warning – Will (and not even William, though that would’ve been bad enough!). Luke scoured the letters for evidence of any feeling on Cora’s part that might indicate a connection beyond cheerful friendship (he grudgingly conceded she’d a right to other friends), and found none. But even so Luke looked out at the fields scudding past the window, and his own dark reflection laid over them, and thought: Let him be old, and fat, and smelling of dust and Bibles.

  In her grey house on the common Cora stood waiting at the door. Since the morning in Mr Caffyn’s classroom she’d slept uneasily, feeling it all to have been her fault. Will had warned her not to put flesh on the bones of the Blackwater terror, and he’d been right: there’s no imagination like a child’s, and she’d fattened it up ’til the Essex Serpent was solid as the cows grazing under Traitor’s Oak. Those girls laughing, and the snapping back and forth of their necks! It had been horrible, and she relied on Luke to find some consoling explanation.

  In the aftermath Joanna had grown withdrawn, and though she still went early to school with her books under her arm she’d have nothing to do with Naomi Banks, and at the end of each day sat studying in the kitchen, where there was no chance she’d find herself alone. Worse, she had not laughed once since, afraid that if she started she might not stop, and no amount of teasing or capering on the part of her brothers could raise a smile. Cora had been afraid her new friends would blame her for the incident, and for Joanna’s sombre state, but neither Will nor Stella had seen it happen, and when it was explained to them could only think that girls were ridiculous creatures and always getting the giggles over nothing at all.

  Worst of all, Cora’s cheerful interest in the Blackwater was soured. She didn’t (of course!) think it a judgment from God – but perhaps there were soft dark places in all of them that ought not to be probed. Then came Luke, striking out over the common, clutching a case to his chest, seeing her at the threshold and breaking out, almost, into a run.

  Later that same week Joanna folded her hands in her lap and surveyed the black-haired doctor with mistrust. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. His manner was brisk, but Jo was not entirely fooled. ‘Just do as you’re told and you’ll be all right. Tell her, Cora.’ And Cora, wearing her scarf with the birds stitched on, had said, ‘It’s all right – he did it to me once, and I slept better that night than in years.’

  They sat in the largest room in Cora’s grey house, with no lights lit. It was raining drearily, without the stormy conviction that makes for a comfortable afternoon, and Joanna was not warm. On a large sofa beneath the window her mother sat between Cora and Martha, and the women held hands: you’d’ve thought they were in for a séance and not a process no more mysterious (Luke said) than the removal of a tooth.

  Only Martha had disapproved of the plan to put the girl under hypnosis to see what light might be shed on what she called The Laughing Incident. ‘The Imp thinks of us all as nothing but cuts of meat, and you’d trust him with a child’s mind and memory?’ She’d bitten her apple down to the pips and said, ‘Hypnosis! He makes it up. It’s not even a word.’

  The question of hypnosis had not been raised until certain other matters had been settled. Mr Caffyn, fearing for his career, had produced a report made in the days following, listing the names of the girls involved, their ages and addresses, their fathers’ occupations and their average grades and appending a chart showing the position of each girl at each desk. He deplored Cora’s presence in the village, but didn’t dream of saying so. Little Harriet consented to be questioned from her mother’s lap, and gave such an elaborate description of a coiled snake unfolding wings like umbrellas that she was put down as a nice child but a dreadful liar (Francis, listening at the door, thought: ‘Is a dreadful liar bad at lying, or good at it?’). Naomi Banks, who began it all, refused to say anything other than that she had no idea what she’d been thinking, and could they leave her alone. Parents were delighted to have their daughters examined by a London physician, and declared one after the other in perfect health (save for six instances of ring-worm, which were treated on the spot, and could not account for their hysteria).

  Luke, who’d been introduced to Stella Ransome over lunch (and noted the rosy bloom on each cheek), had said, ‘There’ll be something at the heart of the matter – a shared memory or fear; the question is how to allay the fears when the girls cannot or will not share them?’

  Stella had pulled at the blue beads looped around her wrist, and taken a liking to the scowling London doctor; only wouldn’t it be awful to be ugly, she thought. ‘Cora tells me you practise hypnosis – am I saying it right? – and that somehow it might help Joanna? She’d like it – she likes everything new. She’d write it all up in her schoolbook.’

  It had been tempting for Luke to take Stella’s small hand and say that yes, yes: certainly it would help; that her daughter would restfully recount what it was that had been seen and heard that day, if anything at all, and in coming to would regain her good cheer. But his ambition faltered before the blue eyes turned on him in trust, and he said: ‘It might, but it might not, though I don’t suppose it would do any harm.’ His insistent conscience pricked him: he said, ‘I have never tried it on anyone so young. She might resist it, and laugh at me.’

  ‘Laugh!’ said Stella: ‘I wish she would!’

  ‘When I was hypnotised,’ said Cora, pouring tea, ‘I felt swept clean as a chimney, as they say. It was restful, and I said very little. There is nothing to be afraid of: there is nothing strange; it is all just the working of the mind.’ The tea had spilled in the saucer; the light had faded on the wall. ‘I can almost imagine that by the time she’s your age and mine it’ll be so commonplace there’ll be hypnotists on the High Street beside every chemist’s and shoe-shop.’ (At her shoulder the absent Will was gravely watching, and was ignored.)

  ‘With pot plants in the window,’ said Stella, taking to the idea: ‘And receptionists in white blouses. No-one will ever have any secrets again – aren’t you hot? Could we open the window? – and I’d like to see her happy again.’ It occurred to her to wonder what Will might think: he’d not yet met the doctor, or shown any inclination to, and she supposed he might baulk at the thought of Jo submitting to a procedure her own mother couldn’t pronounce. But then, Cora wouldn’t do anything Will might dislike. It was comforting, she thought – never in her life having felt envy, unable to imagine what it was like – to think of her husband so steadfastly and loyally liked. ‘Open the window wider,’ she said: ‘I am only ever hot, these days.’

  Cora turned to Luke, who’d taken Stella’s wrist in a chivalrous gesture, hoping she’d not notice he was taking her pulse (and yes – yes, as he’d suspect
ed: it was skittish below the skin). ‘Well: why don’t we call Jo, and ask her, and see if she is willing?’

  And since she had been willing (‘Am I going to be an experiment?’), she lay now on the most comfortable couch, gazing up at the ceiling where the plaster had begun to peel. It was difficult to take the thing seriously, since she’d overhead Cora call the doctor an imp and could not help thinking how apt that was (he ought to’ve carried a pitchfork, not a Gladstone bag!).

  Drawing up a chair beside her, and leaning in so that she could smell something like lemons rising from his shirt, Dr Garrett said: ‘This is what will happen. You will not sleep, and I’ll have no power over you, but you’ll be more comfortable – more at ease – than you ever were before. And I’ll ask you questions – about how you have been, and about that day – and we’ll see what we can learn: how it began, and what it is you felt.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. But there’s nothing to learn about that day, and the laughing, she thought, or I’d have told them all I knew. She looked for her mother, and Stella blew her a kiss.

  ‘Do you see that mark on the wall – there above the fire where the paint is chipped? I want you to keep looking at it, however heavy your eyelids, however sore your eyes …’

  There were other instructions, delivered murmuringly and as if from a great distance: she was to let her hands fall, her head droop, her breath slow, her thoughts wander into other rooms … it was impossible to keep her open eyes fixed on the mark, and when permission was given to close them she did so with a sigh and almost fell in her relief from the couch. She never knew until later what it was she said as she hovered midway between waking and dreaming (later they told her it was something about Naomi Banks, and a leviathan, but that she hadn’t seemed at all afraid). What she remembered was a polite rap on the door, then the drag of it against the carpet; and then her father’s voice raised in a rage she’d never heard before.