The Virgin and the Whale

Home > Other > The Virgin and the Whale > Page 9
The Virgin and the Whale Page 9

by Carl Nixon


  Staring at the portrait, she wonders how she can possibly bring this man back. What tools does she have at her disposal to rekindle him? Put simply, how on earth can she get him to remember who he was?

  nineteen

  Elizabeth is late for the tram. As she hurries down the driveway, striding through the shadows of the lime trees, the sun dips behind the mountain range to the west. The shadows fade and blur and the air becomes chill. The tram is just rattling up as she arrives at the stop, slightly out of breath.

  She waits her turn in the queue of half a dozen people and eventually finds herself standing in front of the driver just as an idea rolls over inside her. She tries to grasp it but somehow misses. Something to do with the engraved brass plates beneath the portraits at Woodbridge.

  Paul Blackwell.

  The same name as the one that ran up the spine of the book she had been reading earlier.

  As Elizabeth stands like a statue in front of the tram driver, one idea jostles another idea and then, in a small cascade of thoughts and connections, something known and assumed to be true teeters and wobbles and eventually falls.

  ‘You going to buy a ticket?’ asks the driver.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘A ticket, love?’

  ‘No. Sorry. I’ve changed my mind.’

  Elizabeth turns and apologises her way past a man who has joined the queue behind her. Almost running, she rushes back down the road. She is breathing hard when she eventually pushes open the front door of the house. Merry, standing in the foyer holding a small tower of ironed and folded sheets, jumps back in surprise. The sheets sway and several of them fall to the floor.

  ‘Bugger,’ says Merry and then her eyes go wide. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ve heard worse.’

  ‘Is everything all right, ma’am?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Merry. And I’ve told you before, call me Elizabeth. Or Lizzy if you like.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Elizabeth leaves the girl picking up her lost sheets and rushes up to Paul Blackwell’s room. The key is still in the lock. She gives no consideration to the danger of entering the room without Martin Templeton as her bodyguard. Taking a moment to compose herself, Elizabeth slowly opens the door and enters.

  He is lying on the bed. His eyes are open, staring at the stippled ceiling. He turns his head to look at her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘but I have a question.’ His eyes are large in his gaunt face, his mouth lost in his wildman’s beard. ‘Would you mind telling me your name?’

  There is a long pause while he considers. He sits up, swings his feet to the floor and standing slowly walks to within a few feet of her. When he speaks his voice is a rusty tool that creaks from lack of use.

  ‘Lucky. My name is Lucky.’

  ‘Lucky,’ she repeats.

  He stares into her eyes. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘You’re the first person here who’s asked. The others think I’m someone else.’

  ‘Someone else?’ says Elizabeth.

  ‘Yes. But they’re wrong.’

  twenty

  Lucky.

  It’s the laconic punch line of a joke: ‘A man with a bone through the side of his head walks into a bar …’

  What else, though, would you call a soldier whose companions were, without exception, blown to pieces by a shell?

  Lucky.

  It’s just right for a man who survived the rest of that day and the night which followed with everything except his head and one shoulder buried under the collapsed earth wall, half smothered among the dead and the pieces of the dead. He lay there the next day as well, lapsing in and out of consciousness. The trench was briefly overrun by the Germans but none of them looked at him closely. Dead bodies were a dime a dozen. They were so common that they were sometimes buried strategically so they formed temporary steps or became infill when repairing a trench wall.

  He lay listening to the constant pound of artillery fire that went on day and night, the devil’s orchestra, until the tide of the battle turned and a platoon of Australians recaptured his position.

  ‘Jesus wept, this bloke’s still alive.’

  He opened his eyes and there was a face peering down at him.

  ‘G’day, mate, you’re lucky.’

  Lucky.

  Of course that’s what you call a man carried back by the stretcher bearers, lurching and stumbling over a mile of broken earth. At the clearing station he was put to one side, among those deemed too close to death to bother with. The young doctor who re-examined him four hours later was just on his way to get some sleep.

  Lucky.

  A good name for the man who didn’t die after all. They took him to an old hall in a French town once famous for its soft cheeses but now deserted by everyone except those who had absolutely nowhere else to go. The town hall had become a makeshift surgery and hospital. It was there that a surgeon carefully removed the bone from the side of his head. It came out with the same sound a boot makes when pulled from thick mud. In the days that followed, he burned with fever. On the wall above him was a plaque, a list of French names — those who had represented the town in cycling.

  The surgeon had placed a steel plate the size of a shilling over the hole in Lucky’s skull before drawing the skin back and sewing it together the best he could. He had no doubt the man would die. Everybody from the stretcher bearers to the nurses to the doctors thought he would die. Even the wizened Frenchman who mopped the floor was sure of it.

  Lucky. The name is perfect.

  twenty-one

  Only a second has passed since Elizabeth asked the man standing in front of her for his name. The implications are still hanging in the air between them.

  ‘What is your name?’ he asks.

  ‘Elizabeth Whitman. Some people call me Lizzy.’

  He stares at her openly, some might say brazenly, although not like the young Arabs with switchblade eyes who trailed her during her ship’s stopover in Alexandria on her way to England. This man, Lucky, seems merely curious. It is as though he has found something — a fossil, or mottled goose egg, a frost-frozen thrush — that he has not seen before.

  Even so, Elizabeth has to force herself not to step back as he moves close to her; close enough that the heavy musk of his unwashed body threatens to overwhelm her. Standing this close to him, she can see how thick and dark his eyelashes are and the thought occurs to her that such beautiful lashes are wasted on a man. His matted beard is dense as a hearth-brush and his long hair provides an unruly frame for his face. All this she now sees in detail. It is to her credit that Elizabeth does not flinch when he reaches out and gently touches the shoulder of her uniform. She can feel the heat of his skin through the fabric.

  ‘You are a nurse.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘There are always nurses.’

  ‘You mean the nurses at the hospitals where you’ve been treated?’

  He nods. ‘And on the ship coming to this place. The nurses always think that I am broken.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He holds her gaze in a way that she finds disconcerting. His eyes are dark brown with flecks of gold.

  ‘I did not understand most of the things they tried to talk to me about. I couldn’t answer their questions. I heard one of the nurses say that this,’ he touches the side of his head, ‘had made me simple. That means broken, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘Do you think that I’m simple?’

  ‘Actually, Lucky, I’m starting to think that you’re not at all simple. Quite the opposite, in fact.’

  twenty-two

  Mrs Blackwell is appalled. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Whitman, no. My husband’s name is Paul Edward Blackwell.’

  They are in the library and Elizabeth’s revelation has transformed Mrs Blackwell into an animal pacing in a small cage. When she reaches the shelves full of
fossil crabs she is forced to turn for another agitated length of the room.

  ‘How can he possibly not know his own name?’

  ‘He believes that his name is Lucky.’

  ‘Lucky,’ she repeats. ‘It is not even a proper name, it is an adjective.’

  ‘Soldiers often give each other nicknames. They probably called him Lucky because in many ways he was. Apparently there was some confusion because his identity tags were lost. It’s not uncommon. For a long time nobody knew what his name was. He told them that it was Lucky.’

  ‘He said all this?’

  ‘Some of the details I’ve had to surmise, but yes, we talked for quite some time.’

  Mrs Blackwell shakes her head in amazement. ‘Well, at least he’s talking. That is certainly progress, and more than I would have expected. He has not said more than a dozen words to me in all the time he has been home. Now I can concentrate on retrieving his memories.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Having questioned him in some depth, I think we may have to consider the possibility that he has no memory left to retrieve.’

  A more vigorous shake of the head perched upon that long neck shows Elizabeth how Mrs Blackwell feels about that idea. ‘No. Paul’s memories are not lost, I am certain of it. They can be found.’

  ‘You should at least consider the possibility.’

  ‘I will not, not yet. It is too soon.’

  ‘It’s been eighteen months since your husband was wounded. He told me that he has never, in that time, remembered anything at all from his previous life.’

  ‘But now that he is home there is so much more to stimulate his memories.’

  ‘Granted, that is true.’

  ‘I cannot give up hope, Mrs Whitman. We must persevere.’

  ‘Any solution is going to take time. Your husband will have to be handled very carefully. Try and put yourself in his shoes. All this must be very foreign.’

  ‘Foreign?’ Mrs Blackwell looks around at the panelled walls, the bookshelves, the rows of fossils. ‘But this is Paul’s home. He grew up here.’

  ‘The man who believes that his name is Lucky insists that he has never seen this place before in his life,’ says Elizabeth patiently. ‘I’m sorry, this must be very difficult for you.’

  ‘His memory will return.’ Mrs Blackwell’s voice is firm.

  ‘I hope so. I’d like your permission to take him out into the grounds tomorrow.’

  ‘Is that safe?’

  ‘I think a brief expedition would be good for him. I suspect that he becomes agitated only when pressured to remember. When I talked to him this evening he was quite calm.’

  ‘If you take him out then it must only be inside the grounds and I must insist that Mr Templeton accompany you at all times.’

  ‘All right, but Martin can keep a discreet distance.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘There’s one more matter I’d like to discuss.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I asked your husband why he won’t eat anything except food from a can. He said that when he first came here he ate the food Mrs Booker prepared for him. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He told me that you began poisoning his food.’

  Mrs Blackwell looks indignant. ‘That is, of course, a complete delusion. As if I would poison my own husband.’

  ‘I didn’t think so, of course. However, I must ask if anything was added to his food?’

  The hooded eyes flicker for a moment. ‘Certainly not poison.’

  ‘Something else, though?’ Elizabeth insists.

  Mrs Blackwell sighs. ‘Dr Frengley has been our family physician for many years. He recommended that we add some medication to Paul’s food. You have to understand, my husband was very agitated.’

  ‘What type of medication?’

  ‘Something to make him calmer. That’s all it was.’

  ‘Perhaps an opiate of some sort? Or lithium bromide?’

  ‘The doctor may have mentioned lithium,’ Mrs Blackwell concedes. ‘It certainly did make him calmer.’

  ‘Yes, it would. It’s a powerful sedative.’

  ‘It was done on medical advice.’

  ‘I understand. But when your husband realised that his food was being drugged it was no wonder that he began to eat only from sealed tins.’

  ‘At the time I believed that it was the right thing to do. Do you think I was wrong?’

  ‘I’m sure you did what you thought was best. However, drugging his food has left your husband with a profound lack of trust. It has reinforced the impression that he’s a prisoner here.’

  ‘He is not a prisoner. This is Paul’s home.’

  ‘On the day I first saw him, he was chained to the floor.’

  ‘I explained all that. Mrs Whitman, I am not on trial here. Everything, absolutely everything, that I have done has been for Paul’s own good. ‘

  Elizabeth can see that she is getting nowhere. ‘Of course. It’s a very complex situation.’

  Mrs Blackwell makes an effort to regain her composure. ‘All these arrangements are just temporary. This is simply what must be done until Paul has recovered. Afterwards he will thank me.’

  There are certain people whose opinions are like reeds. Elizabeth has met them before. No matter how hard the wind of reasoned argument blows they always return to the same position.

  ‘I’ll try to persuade your husband to eat Mrs Booker’s food again. We can’t expect him to return to physical health on a diet of tinned meat. I’ll need your word that nothing else will find its way into his food.’

  A curt nod.

  Elizabeth waits but Mrs Blackwell has turned back to the window. Behind the glass the grounds are dark and the other woman’s face is a pale reflection. Elizabeth herself hovers over the poor woman’s shoulder, as if she were about to whisper in her ear. Whether she is an angel or a devil is uncertain, even to her.

  twenty-three

  Whether you think of the man living upstairs at Woodbridge as Lucky or Paul Blackwell during the rest of this story is, at the end of the day, a philosophical choice.

  Elizabeth calls him Lucky to his face. In Mrs Blackwell’s presence she fudges the question out of consideration for the other woman’s feelings. She refers to ‘your husband’ or simply ‘he’. For the purpose of our story I will side with Elizabeth and also call him Lucky.

  Shortly after ten o’clock the next morning Elizabeth escorts Lucky into the grounds. She has already spent an hour cleaning and tidying his room, something that he only reluctantly agrees to. It is a cool morning but as they leave the house the windless day warms. Lucky moves tentatively down the gravel paths, in and out of patches of sunlight, seemingly unsure of what to make of such boundless space. He seems to prefer to walk slightly ahead of Elizabeth and stops often to examine things that catch his eye: a serrated leaf here, a caterpillar mountaineering on a stone sundial there. Elizabeth, not wanting to crowd or hurry him, mirrors his stuttering progress.

  As instructed by Mrs Blackwell, Martin Templeton follows. He ambles among the trees, holding a thin switch picked up from the ground and occasionally slicing listlessly at the air or punishing a tree trunk for some misdemeanour. On the whole, he keeps far enough away not to bother them.

  Elizabeth has persuaded Lucky to relinquish his pyjamas in favour of a pair of corduroy trousers that billow out from his legs. The belt that Merry found required a new hole punched into the leather before it would function properly. He wears a white shirt open at the collar and a faded jacket. Elizabeth suspects that the clothes may have been his when he was an adolescent but says nothing of this to Lucky. For some reason that he cannot explain, he categorically refuses to wear shoes. Elizabeth does not press the matter. She sees no harm in it, despite her mother’s dire warning every time Elizabeth allows Jack to go barefoot.

  The grounds of Woodbridge are even more extensive than Elizabeth had imagined — ac
re after acre. Oak and plane, maple and eucalyptus, pine and lime are only some of the trees that she can identify. They are dotted around, singly and in small stands. She eventually gives up trying to keep track of where they are and allows the magnetism of the shingle paths to draw Lucky where they will.

  Shortly after they leave the house he points up into the branches of an oak. ‘Look.’

  ‘It’s a bird’s nest,’ she said.

  He nods thoughtfully. Since then he has been silent.

  Elizabeth is aware of the soft crunch of their footsteps, the sound of a blackbird flicking aside autumn leaves, unseen water bubbling among shaded ferns. By sheer chance, they come across a rhododendron walk. They eventually reach a meadow where the grass brushes her knees. On the far side, they enter the shadows beneath a stand of eucalyptus trees. There seem to be many different varieties of tree and Elizabeth finds herself wishing that she knew their names. Some are moulting, the bark peeling away in strips. Others have trunks that twist like giant plaited ropes or contain pregnant bulges. There is no undergrowth but Elizabeth and Lucky have to contend with fallen branches and flayed bark.

  ‘Yes,’ says Lucky when Elizabeth suggests they turn back. He is beginning to look tired. They retrace their footsteps and when they come across a narrow stream that cuts across their path they follow its course until they reach a large pond not far from the house.

  ‘Let’s rest for a while,’ says Elizabeth.

  She sits on a stone bench and Lucky squats by the water. He watches half a dozen large goldfish circle the stems of lily pads close to the bank. Elizabeth observes that his hands are shaking. He holds them, fluttering lightly, in his lap. She cannot say whether this is a new symptom or something familiar that ceased for a time but has now returned. It is also impossible for her to separate the physical symptoms resulting from his head wound from the results of the stress caused by what has happened to him, what is happening. Since he does not seem to be paying any attention to her she examines him as unobtrusively as possible. The sunlight reflecting off the water flickers over his pale skin. There is a patch near his right ear where the hair does not grow although it is not obvious among the dark tangle of his heavy mane.

 

‹ Prev