by Bruno Noble
The second peel of the doorbell announced the arrivals of Dr Dearman and, much to my surprise and Cosmo’s delight, a girl who, although a little shorter and thinner than me, looked to be about my age, and who was introduced to us as Dr Dearman’s niece Kimberley. There were similarities between the two of them but where he was bullish, she was bovine; where he seemed sinister, she appeared benevolent, coming across as simple and pliant, as though never having possessed an intense emotion or a will of her own. Dr Dearman helped her out of a coat that was too big to be hers beneath which she, too, wore a nightie. She wore not shoes but slippers that she removed and placed by the bookcase where she stood, quite nonchalantly – composed despite her unfamiliar surroundings, registering nothing when Cosmo went to her and held her hand. He offered her a crisp that she accepted with neither reluctance nor enthusiasm, and then another that she also took with equanimity. For a moment, the only sounds were of Kimberley crunching crisps and the crackle of the fire, and then the grown-ups all talked at once.
‘Very nice,’ observed Professor Rennet, pince-nez in hand. ‘Very nice.’
‘I hope you two will be good friends,’ said Dr Dearman to Kimberley and me.
‘A man could die of thirst here!’ exclaimed Dr Faben exaggeratedly.
‘Say hello to Dr Dearman, Cosmo,’ said Papa.
Cosmo lifted his hands to Dr Dearman’s belt buckle that sparkled in the light of the fire.
‘Steady on,’ said Dr Dearman, pulling back and grinning sheepishly around the room.
‘Only continental Europeans wear belts with suits,’ stated Professor Rennet.
‘Continental Europeans and Dr Dearman,’ corrected Dr Faben and then, addressing me, ‘What about our drinks, young lady?’
‘Drinks!’ cried Papa, clapping his hands.
I filled four glasses on the tray on Papa’s desk and handed them around to the grown-ups.
‘Have one yourself,’ said Dr Faben pleasantly to me, an eye on my father.
‘Me? No!’ I looked at Papa too. Sometimes, his friends were very funny.
Papa, standing with his legs crossed and a drink in one hand while supporting himself with the other on the mantelpiece, was the epitome of nonchalance. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. ‘Why not? Just once in a while won’t hurt.’
I couldn’t believe my ears.
Cosmo had followed Papa’s and my exchange with interest.
‘Go on. Have a sip,’ encouraged Papa.
‘Kimberley will have one. Won’t you, Kimberley?’ Dr Dearman sought corroboration.
Kimberley nodded. She had yet to speak. I found myself wondering what she would sound like.
‘Here,’ said Papa covering the hearthrug in two strides and holding his glass to my lips. ‘Have a sip of mine.’
Papa’s beer tasted warm, flat, bitter, dull, belying the first, faint fragrance of fruits and sweet vegetal matter I’d smelt when he’d held his glass below my nose.
‘What do you think?’ enquired Papa.
I reached for another sip.
‘Right,’ said Papa definitively, decanting a bottle of the pale brown liquid into the remaining glasses on the tray and handing the fuller ones to Kimberley and me and the third to Cosmo. ‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers!’
‘Gee!’
‘Down the hatch!’
‘Down in one!’
‘Let’s have another!’
Papa’s study grew hot. Cosmo amused us by spinning around wildly and laughing grotesquely before bursting into tears; at times his inability to communicate became impossibly frustrating for him. Dr Faben held his arms out to him and, to my astonishment, Cosmo went to them and crawled into the space on the sofa between the two doctors, where he appeared to fall into fitful sleep, his face in Dr Faben’s lap, his bottom and legs on Dr Dearman’s. I observed that Kimberley swayed in time to a music only she was hearing, until it occurred to me that I was swaying or, perhaps, that we both were, the realisation that the one didn’t preclude the other tipping me into a fit of giggles. The fire demanded my attention, it dictated my moves and thoughts, it was the conductor, Papa’s study the stage and we the instruments. There was a universal symmetry that I was a part of, reflected in Papa’s study either side of the sun in the grate: the picture frames at the two ends of the mantelpiece, the two men – Papa and Professor Rennet – at either end of the mantelpiece in identical postures; the two high, wingback chairs in front of which Kimberley and I stood barefoot and in nighties; Drs Faben and Dearman reclining deep in the sofa’s remote corners, a blowing and grunting, tossing and turning Cosmo between them completing the circle. Above them, Papa’s butterflies in their hundreds fluttered their wings in the flickering firelight as though in warning or to escape their glass cages. Grandpapa sat forward in his wicker chair in the garden in the photograph, looking on intently, approvingly. In the light cast by the agitating fire, the clouds behind Moore’s king and queen ran across their sky. I found everything portentous one minute and uproariously comical the next, especially Papa’s adding more logs to the already roaring, well-stoked fire, without being able to put my finger on why exactly.
‘What are you trying to do? Roast us?’ asked Professor Rennet rhetorically; intending to mop his brow with his handkerchief, he had dislodged his pince-nez that, hitting the fireguard, had fallen the right side of it and onto the hearthrug – to his evident relief.
Dr Faben moaned. The heat must have got to him. He rested a hand on Cosmo’s head; his eyes were shut, his head lolling to one side.
‘It is indeed hot,’ stated Dr Dearman, patting Cosmo’s bottom through his fine cotton pyjamas.
‘I know – why don’t we take our jackets off?’ suggested Professor Rennet.
‘That’s a good idea, but what about those of us who don’t have jackets to remove?’ asked Dr Dearman, looking around him.
‘It might be fairer if we each remove one item of clothing,’ conceded Professor Rennet.
‘I’m afraid it is indeed very hot,’ said Papa apologetically. ‘And when it’s hot, one must drink.’ He filled Kimberley’s and my glasses for the third time and encouraged us with, ‘Drink it down! Drink it down!’
Dr Dearman leant forward and held up a stubby finger, as though struck by a thought, and looked from Kimberley to me. ‘But, hold on a moment, if we remove our jackets, what will you remove?’
I handed my empty glass back to Papa and exclaimed, ‘But we’ve only got our nighties on!’ Really, Dr Dearman was so funny! The entire room balanced on the tip of his finger. The floor of the room rocked. Its walls wobbled. By fixing my eyes on the upheld finger and sitting on the wicker chair nearest me, I could keep myself from falling.
‘Well, off they go,’ dictated Dr Dearman, extricating himself from Cosmo’s legs, the depths of the sofa and, finally, his jacket.
‘Off it goes,’ concurred Professor Rennet, removing his jacket and hanging it over the back of Papa’s desk chair.
Papa removed his jacket wordlessly, looking at me complicitly as though to say, What a lark!
‘And you two!’ exclaimed Dr Dearman, in what I considered mock seriousness. ‘Play the game! Maintain your end of the bargain!’
Kimberley crossed her arms and leant forward to catch her nightie by its hem. She pulled it off slowly and gracefully, naturally. She stood still, held it in her hand a moment and let it fall by her side in a pastel puddle of cotton on the Oriental rug. Her shoulder-length hair rested on her shoulders, just. Her fringe courted her eyelashes. The firelight that played on her slender form lent her the illusion of movement. Our admiring looks clothed her naked form in adoration and approbation. I felt it imperative that I join her and stood and divested myself of my nightie too, though with less dignity and more haste, reluctant as I was to not be excluded from this wonderful game for a moment longer than I could help.
Papa clapped his hands again. ‘More drinks!’
Dr Dearman looked at Cosmo by his side and said, ‘Poor Cosmo.
It’s so unfair. He still has his pyjamas on.’
Dr Faben’s eyes swam in his glasses. He pushed them up, off the wart on which they had rested, and searched in his pocket for a handkerchief that he used to wipe the spittle Cosmo had deposited in his sleep, and then his own mouth and moustache.
‘Down in one,’ commanded Papa to Kimberley and me.
The beer was warmer now than at the first time of my drinking it, and headier.
‘Now dance,’ said Professor Rennet who had removed his waistcoat as well as his jacket and loosened his tie.
Papa’s study floor rocked like the deck of a ship in a squall, the Oriental rug rising and receding like a fine, frothy wave. Kimberley’s and my shadows cast by the fire raced up the butterfly-festooned walls and onto the ceiling and back. And up again and back, to and fro, up and down. Professor Rennet clapped his hands. Dr Dearman sang a ditty. Papa looked on, a grin fixed above his hand-cupped chin. Dr Faben helped Cosmo out of his pyjamas and to his feet. Cosmo stood, a little unsteady, and swayed and waved his arms in imitation of Kimberley and me. I, too, was copying Kimberley, unsure of the extent to which I was succeeding in actually dancing like her as opposed to just staying on my feet and not keeling over. The room shrank in the heat. Dr Dearman’s teeth and Dr Faben’s moustache grew larger. Dr Dearman’s breath was warm and smelled of salt and vinegar and cheese and onion crisps; Dr Faben’s of beer and cigarettes. Their tongues, rasping and wet, tickled me where they touched me and their fingers and palms, clammy but firm, supported me when I risked falling. The shudder and slip of Dr Dearman’s teeth on my skin and the cooling of his saliva trail on my legs gave me goose bumps. I wanted to divest myself of my surface membrane like a worm casts its cuticle, to climb out of myself like a butterfly out of its chrysalis. Papa and Professor Rennet assisted Kimberley, attentively, closely, lovingly. Cosmo fell asleep where he had slumped, curled like a cocoon with his head on the Oriental rug and his back against the sofa. I found myself on the rug, too, my arm reaching to pat his. Dr Faben’s ministrations as he moved from the small to the top of my back were those of a cleaning lady, the broom of his moustache preceding the mop of his mouth. Somewhere near my left ear, I could hear the professor panting. I noted the soles of Kimberley’s feet in the firelight and the tips of her toes aligned with the sweetness and perfection of ducklings behind their mother. I wished Dr Dearman would keep his fingers still. He rolled me over. He had reverted to his larval stage and was using his fingers like prolegs and true legs, feeling and fiddling, prodding and probing, pushing and shoving. Momentarily, I thought we were in Papa’s butterfly pavilion, the flicker of the fire’s flames lending the pinned butterflies on the study wall the illusion of flutter and flight. The caterpillars chomped and chewed, bumped and butted. The caterpillars are hungry tonight. The butterflies had disrobed and displayed their proboscises with a hungry bravura. Kiss the proboscis. Kiss, kiss, kiss, push, push, push. We were playing caterpillars and butterflies but, this time, I was being consumed at both ends simultaneously and my butterfly’s route out was blocked and I panicked and gagged and bit and spat and my butterfly finally flew. Dr Faben remonstrated. I rested on the fireguard where I dried my wings for a moment, my wings’ shadows on the ceiling above me on the rug pulsing like angels’ wings and then becoming smaller when I drifted up on the fire’s hot air, across the glass cages of my fellow, imprisoned Lepidoptera, across the spines of Papa’s many books until they, my wings and their shadows, met, up against the distant ceiling.
I flew up and out, up above the city that throbbed with the heartbeats of its inhabitants, that resonated with the steady drum of their footsteps, the city that, sonorously, below it all, as though deep underground, vibrated with its own life-supporting and -enhancing pulse. Concert halls, pubs and cinemas were emptying. Heartbeats and footsteps, laughter and chatter, bus and car engines formed the city’s constant hum. People were walking and cycling, talking and listening, joking and arguing, pushing and shoving, slipping and slapping, juddering and blowing, panting and ceasing. People and caterpillars finished their dinners. Men dressed in the warm light of a dying fire and children were bathed and put to bed. It’s better to give than it is to receive. Somewhere, far below me now, I had made a gift of myself to Papa and his friends. No, not of myself, but of my body. Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you. You can touch my body but you can’t touch me. I was out of reach. I couldn’t be bought with warm beer, crisps and late nights. One day, I would want my body back. I fluttered high above the Brüderkrankenhaus St. Josef Paderborn where Opa was leaving his, vacating his body with elegance and humility, where red-eyed Mama and Oma, heads bowed and seated either side of a grey-painted hospital bed, each held one of Opa’s hands, Paderborn’s drumming heart the undercurrent to Mama’s sporadic sobs and Oma’s ardent weeping.
And then, three months going by in a flutter of sorties. Months in which I lived more as a butterfly than as a schoolgirl, daughter and sister, given Mama’s long absences in Germany where, despite her pregnancy and her neglected children’s vulnerability to their predatory father, she assisted Oma in the immediate aftermath of the loss of her husband.
And then one more month, the sixth of her pregnancy, at the end of which I was flying above Horton General Hospital and looking down upon two mortuary attendants who contemplated Mama’s swollen body in silence. They pulled back the sheet it lay under to reveal its blotched purple necklace and its swollen pale blue lips. I alighted and gave my mother’s lips one last kiss. I wept butterfly tears then, globules of salt water as big as my eye segments that trickled down my thorax and abdomen before falling as rain on Oxford’s gardens, droplets that weighed me down as they gathered and threatened to take me down with them before they broke and detached from me, after which I rose suddenly; tears that lent to my flying an odd, bobbing, fitful motion. Exhausted, I eventually fell to earth.
*
To my shame, I resented Mama’s sudden departure, her abandonment of us, as though she were complicit with Papa, and I was fascinated by Oma’s grief that had a terrifying, vicious quality to it, as though she too knew Papa to be the reason behind her daughter’s violent, inexplicable death. Oma offered to take Cosmo and me to Paderborn but Papa, as I would have expected, and the other Bicourts, to my surprise, would have none of it.
‘They’ll be quite all right here,’ said Papa, running his fingers through my hair, raking my scalp and bunching my hair up at the ends so that, holding it in one hand, he could tug it down, raise my head in so doing and, looking down into my eyes, ask me for confirmation. ‘Won’t you, Isabella?’ Where others saw a gesture that denoted affection, a play of fondness between father and daughter, I knew it to be shorthand for his molestation and control of me, made all the worse by its public nature. ‘Hasn’t Isabella nice hair?’ he asked the collection of Bicourts before releasing me slowly. I wanted to cut it and even to shave it off in order to spite him but, aware that were I to do so I would effectively be ceding absolute control to Papa in that he would have been the cause of my radical act, I didn’t.
Grandmother was the only one to reply. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘just like her father’s when he was a child, until he insisted he had it cut.’ She cast her husband an indifferent glance, by now too weary and jaded to add venom to the look.
There had been a disagreement between Papa and Grandfather about whether or not my grandfather should minister at the funeral service, though whether he wanted to and Papa didn’t or he didn’t and Papa did, I didn’t know. Following Grandmother’s instruction, I had taken tea to them in Papa’s study, where Grandfather had said, ‘Our days are like the grass. We flourish like a flower of the field; when the wind goes over it, it is gone and its place will know it no more.’ Although he had been looking at me, I felt he had been making a point to Papa who had requested, by way of equally obscure reply, that I place the tray on his desk. Grandfather, looking knowingly at Papa, had tapped the family photograph on the mantelpiece with a fingern
ail.
‘It will be time for you to go soon,’ said Papa to his father, attempting to look at his wristwatch without spilling his tea.
My paternal grandparents gave the impression of having drifted into Mama’s and my sister’s funeral and wake by mistake, and accepted the condolences offered them for the deaths of their daughter-in-law and granddaughter with the requisite melancholy and humility, as though in modest denial of the great affliction the loss was to them. They resembled actors who had stumbled onto the wrong stage but who had the good fortune to know the lines of the play they found themselves in and to have prior knowledge of the extras. Aunts Linda and Mary made sympathetic clucking noises; Aunt Patricia wrung her hands and, when not doing so, kept them clutched around her quite visible pregnancy. Clearly, the nature of Mama’s sudden death was particularly disconcerting for her; she wouldn’t let Uncle Neville from her side for a moment. Uncle James ruffled my hair and kissed my forehead and, leaning that little further, did the same to Cosmo. Such overt demonstrations of affection were unusual in the Bicourt family; reason enough, I sensed, for Uncle James to undertake them. He sat us either side of him during the wake while family, neighbours and Mama’s former friends and colleagues drifted in and out of her room, the kitchen and the garden, and he said, ‘Anything, anything at all,’ and looked as though he might weep at any moment.
‘Ging, ging,’ said Cosmo and jumped down from his chair to follow Deborah to a kitchen table laden with cakes and sandwiches.
‘What is the matter with him?’ asked Uncle James, following Cosmo with his eyes.
‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘Papa doesn’t seem too concerned. He says that Cosmo will learn to talk when it suits him. When he wants something badly enough.’