The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  Recognizing Artis’s deftness, McCleary assigned him small tasks to perform. The boy became a committed hunter of wayward surgical instruments in the rooms where he had once lit lamps and carried serving dishes. The nurses treated Artis kindly, and the doctors accepted him more easily than did the orderlies, an unruly group of men who were jealously conscious of their inferior position.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, following a successful round of operations, McCleary found Brownlow alone in the supply room and expressed his sympathy for the young soldier’s death in surgery.

  Brownlow wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I miscalculated his weight. The anesthesia was too strong. He survived the battlefield to die on an operating table in his own country.”

  “I can’t allow you to take all the blame.”

  Brownlow’s voice was slow and thick. “When a man is under my care during surgery, he’s filled with my air, my anesthesia. I’m settled inside his body, under his ribs, in his lungs. I calculate everything, even the fear that quickens his pulse and his breath. I’m exacting. But I failed.”

  McCleary noticed that the anesthetist’s shoulders were drawn up in distress, and he spoke from fatigue and the fumes threaded into him during hours of surgery. His own light-headedness echoed Brownlow’s condition, as they had both worked without protection from leaking anesthetics. “The body is utterly unpredictable. Even pain is difficult to locate.”

  Chapter Four

  THREE CROUCHING WORKMEN deftly unrolled gray linoleum over the parquet floor in the dining room.

  “What are you doing?” Catherine stood in the doorway.

  A workman leaned back and squinted up at her. “Ask him. He’s a doctor.”

  She turned to face a tall man in a uniform. “Dr. McCleary.”

  They gravely shook hands.

  “Since you’re in charge, tell me why they’re covering the floor.”

  “This will be the new operating theater.”

  “Please, you must use a different room.”

  “The dining room was selected because of the light. The north-facing windows.”

  McCleary read her face. Her blue eyes narrowed, the muscles at the corners of her mouth, triangularis menti, moved downward, indicating distaste. Not hostility. Possibly she remained civil only because of his age. He straightened his back. “After we leave your home, this room will appear exactly as it was before we arrived. Even the floor will be restored to its original state.”

  “But men could die on the operating table. In my dining room. How could I invite . . .” She let her question trail off.

  McCleary was touched by her concern—no, optimism—about a future dinner in this room. One day, God willing, there would be guests here. A table set with china and silver. Faces flattered by candlelight. “Ma’am, the house must date from the sixteenth century. Over the years, the rooms have certainly been the setting for many unpleasant events.”

  Her expression didn’t change.

  “I am an excellent surgeon. I swear I will leave no ghosts.”

  As she abruptly left him, McCleary noticed sawdust around the hem of her skirt, pointed shapes like flames.

  With a single swift motion, a workman drew a blade down the thick roll of linoleum, and it neatly fell in two.

  IN A BOX of papers salvaged from the library, Catherine had found a map of the estate, a bird’s-eye view inked as fine as a feather by a draftsman in 1721. The main house was a rectangle surrounded by formal gardens, the trees drawn as circles, a code, dot-dot-dot, as if the paper had been punctured. The pleasure garden was divided by serpentine walks, which began at the house and led down to the smallest pond. The draftsman had filled the interior of the lakes and larger ponds with wavy lines, the irregular evidence of water, and his unerring quill had laid down the carriage drive to scale in a gentle five-mile curve, east to north, through oak and wynch elm to the stables.

  The border of the map held chevaux-de-frise and a stream with artificial cascades, just as they determined the actual boundaries of the estate. The severely trimmed hedges and the ha-ha, a trench running for miles across the pasture, no longer existed, commanding space only on the map. But the ancient brick walls guarding the two kitchen gardens still stood, gently crumbling, and the coach houses and the lodges were recognizable, although rebuilt and expanded past their original outlines. A number of the later structures not featured on the map—the conservatory, the three-division vinery, the cold greenhouse, the span-roof flower and mushroom houses—had fared less well; few of their glass panes remained intact, and rust bloomed inside and outside.

  On a morning of light rain, Catherine walked around the sentries and orderlies at ease on the steps. They barely moved aside, their focus on their cigarettes, the parallel motions of their arms as they smoked. She was nameless, unconnected to official business. Not wounded. A woman.

  Under an open umbrella, she paced out the dimensions of the vanished garden she had calculated from the draftsman’s map, seeking the huge fountain that had been its hub, a circle besieged by radiating lines. Forty steps. Here. The fountain must have been here. She pressed her fingers into the sod, searching for a subtle shift of depth, a rupture, a hard line where the subterranean lead pipes had directed water to its transformation, the joyful release of spray. Perhaps there would be fragments of stone, marble, broken evidence of the fountain. She found nothing.

  She tilted her umbrella for an unobstructed view of the vast lawn. Charles could have deciphered the plan of this landscape. Why had she never asked him? She studied the grass, a crosshatch of colored lines hiding the lost garden and its fountain. After a time, a barely perceptible pattern of squares and circles emerged in the grass—wan green—where the urns, statuary, and herms had once stood. It was as if they had been sunk but their shapes radiated up through the earth, as an object is visible in a depth of water.

  Catherine imagined her former life restored, the house wavering, its walls fluid, shimmering free from the moment it had stopped when Charles died. She was the beloved mistress, and he would reappear, a dim figure in a familiar tweed jacket, whistling “Barbara Allen” over and over, making his way to her on a path since made insignificant by weeds.

  MCCLEARY HAD SOLEMNLY paced through the house and was surprised to find that some of the grandest spaces had been haphazardly converted to storage. On the second floor, the Green Bedroom had been stripped of carpeting and draperies, and was empty except for a massive dining table. The floorboards had protested as he circled the table, then stooped over, conscious of his stiffening back, to examine it more closely. A thin, errant stripe of sunlight revealed the reddish tone of its dark-grained wood, secret as a glimpse through a keyhole. The table must have been more than two hundred years old, the style of its tapered legs indicating its age. What feasts had been set here? he had wondered aloud.

  An orderly had delivered McCleary’s note to Catherine, forgetting to place it on a tray as ordered. The next day, she slipped into McCleary’s office. After talk about the weather—neither mentioned the occupants of her home—he moved from the desk to the armchair next to her.

  “It has been a difficult fortnight for the staff,” he said. “Perhaps it’s a fanciful notion, but would you agree to hold a dinner? You can be properly introduced to everyone.” As she hesitated, he quickly added, “Our cooks will prepare the meal. The orderlies will deliver it on trolleys and do the serving. This exercise of etiquette will do them good.”

  “I’m willing to be your hostess, but please don’t bring the patients to my table.”

  “You don’t need to be concerned. It isn’t correct protocol for doctors to dine with patients. We’ll be a small group. Brownlow, our anesthetist; Dr. Pickerill, one of our young surgeons; and Hunt, our head orderly, will be invited.”

  They agreed the dinner would be held in the Green Bedroom, where the table was located, since it could not be easily moved.

  Two days later, Catherine dressed in black for their dinner. A widow’s armor. Her wardrob
e contained infinite degrees of black, transparent silk, crepe, opaque wool, and weightless taffeta, veils of such matte, uncompromising pitch they could have been powdered with charcoal, kidskin gloves so precisely fitted that her hands appeared to be oiled. Nothing, nothing was black enough to ease her heart.

  Burdened with its candelabra, the table was a white raft that held Catherine and the four men together against the darkness that submerged the room. Now I can rest, thought McCleary, his eyes passing over the flushed faces around him. Just for an hour. Or an evening. Conversation, meals, sleep, a book, everything was interrupted by the patients’ needs. Several bottles of wine had been brought up from the cellar, and he savored a glass of Château Latour, 1871, heavy and fragrant, before he surfaced back into the conversation.

  “We were able to locate the enemy by sound,” a voice repeated from the end of the table.

  “How could that be possible?” Surprised, Catherine put down her glass and stared at Pickerill.

  “The radiographs were set up at three different points in the field.” Pickerill gestured with a spoon. “Each recoil of enemy artillery created a wave of sound that was timed and charted by the radiograph machines. The engineers were then able to locate the position of the guns. I saw this demonstrated countless times.”

  “Miraculous. To pull something invisible from the air and make it visible.”

  “No more miraculous than a machine flying in the air.”

  Brownlow’s sarcasm was ignored by everyone but Hunt, eager to prove himself to this company. “True miracles aren’t made by man. Dr. Pickerill, were you near the battlefield when the angels appeared?”

  “The angels of Mons? No. They were sighted quite a distance from the base hospital where I was stationed.”

  “But do you believe they really appeared?”

  “All the newspapers reported it was so.”

  “They said the angels were thirty feet tall and hovered over the battlefield like pillars of fire. They held the enemy back with flaming swords. The angels prove that we have God’s blessing and will triumph.” Hunt’s defiant gaze traversed the table.

  “Many men take good-luck charms into combat,” McCleary pointed out. “Italians carry crosses. Strangely, some put three peas in a pocket. I’ve never deciphered this particular symbolism.”

  “Perhaps the Holy Trinity?”

  “Heathens,” Brownlow muttered.

  “Who can say? A Bible in a pocket can stop a bullet. So can a medallion of the evil eye.”

  “Yes, that’s the trouble with religion, sir.”

  “Well said, Brownlow.”

  Hunt’s voice sputtered against the laughter around the table. “But the newspapers’ account of the angels must be accepted as truth.”

  “The papers? They don’t even print all the names of those who died,” Brownlow declared. “I knew someone killed by a zeppelin bomb in the city. His name never appeared in the newspaper. I checked every day. That’s your truth.”

  “The papers probably have their secret orders,” whispered Hunt.

  Two gangly young orderlies angled trays of thickly sliced beef and potatoes around the table, their utensils clattering, as they had no skill at serving. There was fresh bread and last year’s root vegetables, retrieved from barrels in the cellar. Catherine drank but didn’t eat so the wine would quickly release her, make her careless. Her fingers were light around the wineglass; it seemed to float from the table to her lips. She leaned back, fully accepting the disaster she imagined for herself, welcoming the lacy plasterwork that would drop from the ceiling over her face and neck like a net, white dust and red blood.

  She remembered a dinner at Rufford Abbey, when Charles had been seated across the table. He had glanced at her; she had blushed and looked away, pierced by what his eyes had revealed, as if he had fashioned arrows from their intimate secrets and struck her heart. Everything else—the brilliant prickling of the women’s diamonds, the reflected silver and crystal, the murmured conversation, the figures around the table—was less real than his knowledge of her. His private arsenal.

  Brownlow drunkenly motioned for more wine and stared at Catherine. “Sometimes the patients can hear your music, ma’am. When you play the gramophone. Thought you should know.”

  “I didn’t know. I apologize.”

  He laughed. “No, no. The men enjoy it. Someone is always awake in the wards. No matter how small the hour.”

  “Brownlow is our god of sleep.” McCleary acknowledged his colleague with a gesture.

  With an effort, Brownlow rose from his chair, waving his wineglass over their heads. “My lady and gentlemen, here’s to Morphia. My muse.”

  They drained their glasses to humor him, the men’s tired faces softened by the candle flames.

  “With morphia, I can make men babble and cry for their lost companions.” Brownlow continued his spoken skirmish. “Betray their own confidences. Free their body from care. Give a man morphia and you can take off his arm neat as a door from its hinges and he feels nothing.”

  “Until he sees his empty sleeve when he’s conscious.”

  “The patients hate Brownlow more than the enemy.” Hunt resolutely crossed his arms, perhaps needing protection to continue. “Just watch them before an operation. When Brownlow walks in, you’d think the devil had arrived to collect his due. Although judging by their faces, the devil has already done his damage.”

  “What’s wrong with their faces?” Catherine’s voice interrupted.

  The men shifted uneasily in their chairs and looked expectantly at McCleary, waiting for his answer. Pickerill made a motion as if he would answer, then thought better of it.

  Betrayed by fatigue, McCleary was at a loss for words and felt the pressure of tears behind his eyes, spreading like a stain.

  “Perhaps our hostess should meet the patients. The nurses could conduct her through the wards during a quiet time,” Brownlow said.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Everything was suddenly sharpened, as if a lens had refocused the room. McCleary broke the silence, his words selected as carefully as beads. “All the men here—the patients—have face wounds,” he said slowly. “It is extraordinarily difficult for the men and those who care for them. But I can assure you that after a time, their faces lose the power to shock.”

  “I don’t wish to see these men. They’re at liberty to wander through the house?”

  McCleary shook his head. “I know you wouldn’t want to isolate them, ma’am. They don’t carry the plague. Their faces have been destroyed, but many men still have sound, healthy bodies.”

  “It won’t help if she treats the men like monsters,” Brownlow added loudly. He always sought contact with a surface and he leaned against the mantelpiece, arm stretched out along its edge.

  “Remember we are here because of the generosity of our hostess,” McCleary said. “Gentlemen, more wine?” He carefully filled their glasses, their servers having long since left the room.

  The conversation changed as immediately as a pulled curtain obliterates an unwelcome view. Pickerill related an anecdote about the château of Pronleroy, where he had once been quartered. The owner of the château, a widow, had stubbornly remained in the house even as battle uncoiled closer and closer. She never spoke of the conflict, and anyone who mentioned it during a meal was obligated to forfeit a coin into a small box on the table.

  McCleary thoughtfully took a coin from his pocket, and it made a clean, brittle sound as it dropped into a porcelain dish. “I suggest we follow the widow’s discipline. Here is my contribution. Now, will you please excuse me? I go to my evening rounds.”

  Expressionless, Catherine followed McCleary to the door, and he bent his head in acknowledgment as she walked by without a word.

  Why hadn’t the doctor warned her? He’d brought the injured men here to haunt her house. He had mentioned the plague. Wasn’t misfortune equally infectious? Catherine imagined a line of men, their faces wrapped in banda
ges, walking through dry woods and the trees alongside spontaneously bursting into flames as they passed, like water churned by a boat.

  She was dizzied as the angles of the walls seemed to solidify, the windows settled into mercilessly clear shapes, preparing for the moment when she would encounter a man with a ravaged face in the corridor or unexpectedly on the stairs, behind a door, turning a corner. This was as inevitable as the slam of a clock’s black hands around a dial.

  ANOTHER NIGHT MARKED by sleeplessness. Catherine silently peered into the open doors along the corridor, discovering that the lights recently installed by workmen had transformed the still pools of the rooms, creating unfamiliar depths and shadows. The Pink Drawing Room had been entirely rearranged; its new furnishings—tables, cabinets, lamps with glass shades—possessed a clean and unadorned inevitability that she now recognized as a function of service. On a trolley, white enamel containers held medical instruments upright, like jagged, leafless metal bouquets. With each footstep, the instruments betrayed her with a rattling sound, cold as chimes. She stopped. Silence. The rattling waited until she stepped forward, then spread throughout the house, a signal for a weapon or a watchman.

  She escaped this trap through the door into the corridor, and disoriented by the sudden brightness, she didn’t notice a man silently approaching until he was fifteen paces away. Brownlow abruptly slowed down, his eyes scanning the corridor, encountering no recognizable object. Behind him, the light from a sconce erupted around his head, a halo.

  “Have you been working?”

  He nodded absently, spreading one hand against the wall to steady himself, and his eyes trailed over Catherine as if she were painted on the wall. Was he drunk? Sleepwalking? Suffering from nerve strain? Some soldiers had returned from battle mute, unable to speak. Then Catherine noticed the man reeked of anesthetic and realized their conversation would waver from Brownlow’s mind. She was a wraith, an invisible woman, free to ask any question.