The Virgin and the Whale

by Carl Nixon

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ she says. Lucky does not turn his head but makes a small sound that may be acquiescence.

  ‘What is your first memory?’

  ‘Smells.’

  ‘The smell of what?’

  He does not take his eyes of the slowly circling goldfish. ‘It was night so I couldn’t see but I could smell. The earth that covered me stank of manure and of mud that has been wet for a long time. There was also the smell of blood from the dead men. Shit and piss from the ones who’d had the time before they died. There was one body lying very close to me. He smelled of …’ Lucky pauses while his mind fumbles for the right word, ‘something strong that soldiers drink.’

  ‘Gin? Whisky?’

  ‘Maybe whisky. He had a flask in his jacket. It had leaked.’

  Elizabeth shuffles uncomfortably. ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘I couldn’t move, nothing except my head. All that first night the artillery hardly stopped. I could hear the shells flying overheard and later the explosions. It was like …’

  ‘Thunder?’

  ‘Maybe. Sometime in the night, a red flare lit up in the air right above me. It drifted slowly and I thought it was very beautiful. I must have been asleep or unconscious for a time because in the red light I could see new snow over everything but I hadn’t seen it fall. The snow looked pink. And then I saw a rat moving up the trench towards me.’ Lucky holds up his hands, forming a gap that makes Elizabeth shudder. ‘I couldn’t remember how I came to be in that place but I knew the word rat and I knew the words snow and trench. At first the rat moved slowly. It was afraid, ready to turn and run away. It was aware that I was watching it. In the end it came very close to me. It must have decided that I wasn’t dangerous because it started to feed on a nearby body.’

  ‘How long was it before someone found you?’

  ‘I was there that night, and most of the next day. I would have frozen to death except I was wearing a heavy coat and gloves and I was covered by a blanket of earth. The trench was overrun by men who spoke but I couldn’t understand them, and later by men in a different uniform. Nobody noticed me. There was fighting. I saw a man shot through the eye. Another bled to death leaning on the wall very close to me. He tried to speak to me but I couldn’t understand his words either. I was relieved when he finally died because I was able to go to sleep.’

  twenty-four

  What is your first memory?

  Perhaps it is of a flurry of ducks squabbling, flapping and splashing over the bread your grandmother gave you to throw into the pond. It may have been scary at the time, or thrilling. Probably that is why you still remember it.

  Or is your first memory of the bolder girl, a neighbour or cousin, who picked you out as her friend and sealed the deal by giving you her third-best doll to keep forever?

  A birthday party. Candles and cake and music and squealing as the parcel is passed round and round with only one prize buried deep in the folded newspaper. There were tears when you lost and the humiliation of being sent from your own party to your bedroom.

  The smell of eucalyptus oil and petroleum jelly being rubbed onto your chest.

  Is it of your mother hurling insults and crockery at the man in the doorway?

  You were running away from home that day with the family dog for company.

  The big snow of 1972, the one that left behind a marshmallow world.

  A grave injustice.

  A triumph.

  Perhaps you remember something that is seemingly trivial to you now you are an adult, but for some reason has been selected for preservation.

  And how old were you when this memory was first stored in the wide shallow drawers of your mind? When was it pinned down and labelled, carefully slid back into place so that now it can be brought out and examined at will?

  Perhaps you were not yet two years old (a precocious child), or three, four? There’s no shame in being five: the first day at school is a common seminal memory.

  Lucky has all of us beaten in the memory stakes. He remembers clearly the moment that he first opened his eyes. Not just the day, although that would still make him unique, but the very moment when his consciousness awoke. Consider what it must be like to be born as an adult, as the Bible tells us only Adam and Eve have been. Lucky was also drawn forth from the earth, fully formed, capable in body and mind.

  twenty-five

  ‘Listen,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I want to tell you a story.’

  It is two days after their first walk in the grounds of Woodbridge, their third excursion. They have come across the fern house. The building is small, really just a circular room with stone walls up to waist height and cedar boards above. There are opaque windows set all the way around and the ceiling comes to a high point in the middle. A brook has been diverted so that water runs through the middle of the building, falling over a construction of rocks and bisecting the path where a flagstone acts as a bridge. The room is full of ferns, in all sizes and shapes. The tallest, planted in the middle, brush their serrated leaves across the ceiling. One of the gardeners turns on the sprinkler system every morning and when Elizabeth and Lucky find the house everything is already damp and dripping. Martin Templeton waits outside.

  Lucky stands by the door and watches a spider spin between two leaves. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I think you’ll like it.’

  ‘What’s this story about?’

  ‘Just listen. While I was travelling to England before the war, I met an Irish nurse who was on her way home. Her name was Patience Flannery. We became very good friends for a short while, as you do on a long sea voyage and Patience told me the story of her childhood. Her parents worked in a circus in England: her father was a knife thrower and her mother mended costumes and tents and sold tickets to the various acts. Unfortunately, her mother died when Patience was seven years old.

  ‘After his wife’s death, her father quit the circus and took his daughter back to County Cork, where he had been born. Cork is one of the Irish counties in the far south. Her father found himself with nothing to his name but a daughter and a set of five well-balanced knives with ivory inlays in the handles. Apparently, for a knife thrower, a pretty daughter is a good thing. She told me that a young girl’s innocence stands out in stark contrast to the hard gleam of the steel knives.’

  Lucky shifts his eyes from the spider to regard her thoughtfully.

  ‘So that’s how my friend came to grow up travelling around Ireland working as her father’s assistant. She told me that in spring and summer the two of them worked county fairs, but in the wet and cold Irish winters they were forced into smoky pubs. Her father would set up against a wall a wooden circle the size of a cartwheel, with a red bullseye painted on it. The wheel had hinges that allowed it to be folded and transported. Before he even spoke, he always placed a dented black top-hat on the ground. He never referred to the hat directly but would nod in appreciation whenever anyone dropped in a coin. First, he would invite people from the crowd to inspect the five knives. Men would run their thumbs lightly down a razor-sharp edge or weigh one appreciatively in their hands. Women tended to touch the tips and withdraw their fingers quickly.

  ‘Some people grinned, certain they were being conned. They predicted that the knives would never actually leave the man’s hand. Others believed that if the knives were thrown they wouldn’t come within spitting distance of the pretty colleen. Even so, it was not unknown for women to step forward from the crowd and offer Patience’s father money not to throw the knives.’

  Elizabeth brushes a stray strand of hair from her face. ‘Patience demonstrated for me how she used to stand. She stood on the ship’s deck with her legs apart, arms out between waist and shoulder height, fingers splayed like a starfish. Other passengers stared at her as though she were mad. Patience said she pressed her back hard against the wooden circle but she always kept her eyes open as her father drew back his arm and threw, hard and fast.

  ‘One above her left should
er close to her ear.

  ‘One above her right.

  ‘The third between her hip and outstretched right arm.

  ‘The fourth in the same spot but on the other side of her body.

  ‘The fifth and final knife went between her legs. It sank into the wood at knee height.

  ‘Patience straightened up and laughed. She told me that not one knife was ever more than a hand’s distance away from her. She was her father’s assistant from the time she was seven years old until he died of pneumonia. That was when she was seventeen. Patience admitted to me that sometimes the constant travelling did grow tiring. Her father taught her to read and write and to do her sums, but he was not always the best company. In all those years she never seriously contemplated leaving him, even though after she turned fourteen there were many offers of marriage, three of them serious. There was also an aunt up north in Dublin who every year wrote to Patience repeating the offer of a decent place to live and a proper school. She accepted the offer after her father died.

  ‘I told Patience that I thought it sounded like a terrible way to grow up, but she insisted that it wasn’t bad at all. Apparently, her father loved her dearly. She always had a warm bed and a full stomach. Standing near the rail of that ship, somewhere off the west coast of Africa, she said that in all those years her father had only ever missed twice.

  ‘She said, “All things considered, I carry fewer scars from my childhood than most people.”’

  twenty-six

  Lucky has an undeniable pungency.

  Elizabeth questions Merry and discovers that since his arrival at Woodbridge her patient has occasionally and then very reluctantly agreed to exchange his pyjamas for a laundered pair. Apparently he has not bathed at all.

  The morning after their visit to the fern house she leads him to the bathroom halfway down the corridor. The floor and walls are tiled in white and black.

  ‘Why are we here?’ His voice echoes off the tiles.

  ‘I think it would be a good idea if you took a bath.’

  He scowls at her. ‘The nurses at the hospital were always trying to dab at me with wet cloths. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Not a bed-bath. You’re more than well enough for a proper bath.’

  Lucky looks sceptically at the bathtub. It is deep and narrow and rests on four cast-iron legs, each one shaped into a clawed lion’s foot grasping a metal ball. The inside of the bath is enamelled a stark white.

  ‘In this?’ he says.

  Although he claims to remember objects and concepts Elizabeth is sure that he doesn’t recall everything. Sometimes words, nouns especially, dance on the tip of his tongue. That very morning he had been reduced to calling an egg the child of a bird. Now he looks at the bath as though it were an alien artefact.

  ‘You turn on these taps, like this.’

  The copper pipe shudders inside the walls and the tap splutters before a steady stream of water begins to pour into the bottom of the bath. Elizabeth fits the plug into place. Lucky puts his hand into the water and pulls it back. ‘It’s cold.’

  ‘It takes a while for the hot water to travel from the boiler. There, see, it’s getting warmer already.’

  The sound of the falling water rolls and surges back and forth between the tiled walls like surf in a narrow strait. Soon the water is steaming hot. ‘You have to turn on this tap as well to let cold water in. That way you can get the temperature just right.’

  When the bath is three-quarters full Elizabeth turns the water off. ‘Take off your clothes. I’ll have them washed. I’ll ask Merry to leave some fresh ones outside the door, but not pyjamas.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You should start wearing proper clothes and not just when we go walking.’

  ‘Why?’ he repeats.

  ‘Because that’s what people do.’

  Lucky frowns but accepts this without comment. Now that he has committed himself to the idea of the bath he seems anxious to get in. His pyjama top is so baggy that he can easily pull it above his head. Elizabeth watches the muscles in his shoulders as they slide over each other, contract and expand to achieve the manoeuvre. His shoulder blades protrude alarmingly. When he turns to face her she can see the half-dozen shrapnel scars on his chest and torso. Steam rises up from the hot water, filling the air between them.

  ‘Do any of those old wounds still give you pain?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You were fortunate with this one. It’s very close to your jugular.’

  The scar is about half an inch long and slightly raised. It nestles near the base of his neck in against the raised collarbone. She reaches out and touches it with the tip of her index finger. Lucky shivers.

  Elizabeth steps back. ‘You’re cold. You should get in. There’s soap in the dish. Make sure you use it. Give your hair and beard a good scrub as well.’

  She has barely turned away, let alone left the room, before Lucky has lowered his trousers. Elizabeth focuses on gathering together his discarded clothes but she cannot help catching a glimpse of his flanks — as thin as a greyhound’s — as he steps into the hot water. He lowers himself slowly. ‘Ahhh, that’s good.’

  She addresses the wall. ‘I told you that you’d like it.’

  Lucky stretches himself out. The steam rises up into the cooler air. His beard has become a clump of seaweed hanging just below the surface.

  ‘If it cools off, you can add more hot water later.’

  There is no reply so Elizabeth slips from the bathroom, followed into the hallway by a swirl of steam.

  She finds Merry in the kitchen talking to Mrs Booker and hands over the washing with instructions for fresh clothes to be delivered to the bathroom. In Lucky’s bedroom Elizabeth opens the window to let in fresh air and then changes the linen on the bed. Technically, this is Merry’s job, but Elizabeth hates having nothing to do. Her mother has always been fond of saying that the devil takes a special interest in the idle. Although the war has destroyed the last vestiges of Elizabeth’s belief in devils and angels — but not good and evil — she still prefers to keep busy. Besides, if there is one thing a nurse knows how to do properly, it is make a bed.

  She has just finished smoothing out the bedspread when she hears a scream from the corridor. Running out of the room she finds Merry by the open bathroom door, both hands pressed over her eyes. Lucky is standing in front of the girl, frowning. He is stark naked and dripping wet. His penis points at the ceiling.

  Lucky turns to her. ‘Why is she making that awful noise?’

  Elizabeth stoops to pick up the clothes that Merry has dropped and thrusts them at him.

  ‘Here, take these. For God’s sake go back in the bathroom.’

  ‘She knocked. All I did was open the door to see what she wanted.’

  ‘I know.’

  Merry’s screams have turned to wails. ‘That’s a very annoying noise,’ says Lucky, frowning deeply at the girl, whose eyes are still clamped shut.

  ‘Just go back inside and get dressed.’

  Lucky retreats into the bathroom, shaking his head, and Elizabeth closes the door firmly. Merry is still crying as Elizabeth helps her down the back stairs and into the kitchen. She finds Mrs Booker preparing a leg of mutton. The cook has been delighted that Mr Blackwell is again eating her food. She looks up in surprise.

  ‘Oh dear, what’s the matter with her then? What happened?’

  Elizabeth sits the sobbing girl at the table. ‘Merry’s had a bit of a shock, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Broke some of the good china, did she?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. She’s accidentally seen Mr Blackwell without any clothes on.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Perhaps if you could get her a nice cup of tea, Mrs Booker.’

  ‘Fine, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about.’ Muttering to herself, the cook walks over to the stove.

  Merry’s eyes are puffy and red. She sniffs. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘I’ve told you to
call me Elizabeth.’

  ‘I just brought his clothes like you said to. You told me to leave them on the floor outside so I knocked, just to let him know they were there, and then suddenly the door opened and there he was all … big.’

  Over at the stove, Mrs Booker laughs. ‘Oh, is that what happened?’

  ‘It was just an accident,’ says Elizabeth. ‘It was nobody’s fault.’

  Merry’s bottom lip quivers. ‘But why was it like that?’

  ‘Sometimes if a man has been …’ Elizabeth pauses, lost. She starts again. ‘Well, in warm water for example, that can happen. Mr Blackwell was taking a bath.’

  ‘Or if he hasn’t been getting his oats regular,’ chips in Mrs Booker. ‘You sure he wasn’t just showing off? He wouldn’t be the first young fella to show his cock to the maid.’

  Merry’s eyes go as wide as the saucers lined up on the sideboard.

  ‘No, Mrs Booker, it wasn’t like that,’ says Elizabeth quickly. ‘Something about Mr Blackwell’s injury has made him unselfconscious, unusually so. He doesn’t think of nudity as at all unnatural. Which, if you think about it, of course it isn’t.’

  ‘If you say so, love,’ says the cook sceptically.

  Mrs Booker brings the kettle and pours a cup for Merry. Both women watch as the girl ladles in three heaped teaspoons of sugar.

  ‘I think I’ll have a cup as well,’ says Mrs Booker. ‘Do you want one, dear?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ says Elizabeth.

  Mrs Booker peers at Merry above her cup. ‘You shouldn’t carry on like that. It’s nothing really. When I was a girl we had a neighbour who was always pulling down his trousers and showing us his funny pete.’