The Crimson Portrait

by Jody Shields

  The look they exchanged didn’t hide their pain from each other.

  ANNA OFTEN TURNED to Catherine, vexed by her silences, her selfishness, certain of the portrait she’d created in her mind of this woman. She constantly made demands of Catherine, figuring this was her obligation as owner of the estate. But gradually, as if Catherine were an object Anna studied for hours—delicate, elusive as white on white—her image underwent a transformation. She realized the younger woman sought work as an escape. Every hour and day altered Catherine’s memories of her house and her husband.

  While Anna’s attention was bound by hand and eye to her work, Catherine retreated into the privacy of her secret waiting. She seldom spoke of her husband. She exposed as little of herself as possible, only the smoothest surface of her character, a false agreeableness that masked the black and red emotions that possessed her. Cold and hot.

  Both women were veiled. Neither of them would have acknowledged their mutual collaboration, as if seasoning a dish that neither of them wished to taste.

  A FIERCE DRONING STARTLED Catherine from sleep into wan light. The noise seemed to expand the ceiling into heavy flatness, weighing it down toward her. Enemy aeroplanes had come. She must flee the blackness that would follow. The house couldn’t protect her.

  Certain she was watched, followed, she swiftly moved downstairs in the dark, her torch held like a weapon. Outside, her eyes swept the horizon, the night sky empty, lucid. She’d expected chaos, fleeing figures. Had no one heard the noise of aeroplanes? Was she alone?

  She swore the droning started low in the distance and slowly spread across the sky. No flame guided its progress, no gunfire. Catherine quickly moved away from the house, certain it was the target, keeping the fence that bordered the estate at her right side. A motorcar directed its headlights along the length of the fence, recasting its iron posts into an endless line of spears.

  She ran along the path by the lake. Nothing appeared familiar. Each time her torchlight struck an object, its surface was grotesquely enlarged, seemed to surge toward her. A block of wood was too brown and coarse; the flecks and discolorations on the stones seemed to have risen from deep within their interiors. Colossal shadows loomed beside the path as if poised to descend. Near the grotto, an ominous shape became bricks carelessly piled by workmen. A tilted, angular block was a barrow, a rough pyramid a pile of branches.

  The entrance to the grotto was invisible; she felt it as a plume of chill, distempered air. Her foot found a stone step, then a second and third step. Startled, she slipped, and her arms flailed in emptiness until her hand found the wall and her breath calmed.

  She cautiously stepped into the silent grotto, the faintest lace of light from the doorway weaving itself onto the floor behind her. The rough, half-seen shapes of tables, chairs, and vats appeared forsaken, as if salvaged from another purpose. The familiar odor of stone and clay, the honeyed smell of turpentine and wax, were pronounced, as if intensified by her limited vision. The thin light of her torch greedily sought the shells on the walls, their pattern of spirals writhing in tight, hypnotic motion.

  She’d never explored the second chamber, and now sand scraped under her shoes, and the echo revealed the emptiness of the space as she entered. Her breath slowed, allowing her perception to flow out against the width of the unseen walls hollowed into the earth.

  She sensed an unevenness above, something static, threatening. Her torchlight swung up and pulled dazzling white stalactites from the ceiling. Her throat was exposed to their points. Like fixed bayonets, she thought. The torch slipped from her fingers, and its crack against the floor brought blackness around her.

  Catherine’s heartbeat thrust down her arms as she crawled forward, her blind fingers groping stone and sand, searching for the torch. Her hands raked the ground in a wider arc, then grasped cold metal. She switched on the torch, sending light careening against a wall, fracturing into brilliant silver angles. Suddenly something moved. She started, and the shadow moved. A mirror. The wall was covered with broken mirror. She laughed softly.

  A thread of air led to the dark shape of a closed door. Another sound. The murmur of moving water. There was a soft splash, and in that instant Catherine perceived herself as doubled, observed by another. Her eye fit itself to a crack in the door, her vision expanding into the next room, where a man crouched in a circular pool, his naked back to her. His cupped hands released water over his shoulders, attracting luminous light to his wetted skin, as if her vision had glazed his body.

  She blinked.

  His head instantly turned, and the space between them collapsed as she hurtled into a memory of him, for she had seen this man before. He had stood outside the house that night. She had believed he was Charles.

  Chapter Eleven

  BROWNLOW, ARTIS, AND HUNT, the head orderly, slumped against the greenhouse wall, a motionless frieze, as if a spell had left them suspended there. Sunrise transformed the glass squares above their heads into a fiery curtain, and Brownlow stirred and steadied himself on Artis’s narrow shoulder.

  “Let me rest against you. That’s better.” His voice was thick, groggy from the effects of ether and a lack of sleep. “God, look at the sun. How long was the last patient anesthetized?”

  Artis blinked nervously, strained by fatigue and the unexpected contact with Brownlow’s hand. “Many hours. I lost count.”

  “Young master, you must pay closer attention if doctoring is your goal. Don’t take anesthesia for granted.” With difficulty, Brownlow pushed himself away from the boy. “Anesthesia was once forbidden, and the art of creating twilight sleep was lost. Even so, some wise medical men considered any incision vulgar that caused a patient pain. They were masters, artists of surgery. They performed operations in minutes. A craniotomy took half an hour. Thirty minutes to open up a man’s head, by God. Not one of our surgeons has that ability.”

  Hunt was at rest, his big head laid on his folded arms. Clearly longing for sleep, Artis hesitantly observed that Dr. McCleary was a kind man.

  “A surgeon’s only kindness is to spare a man pain.” Animated by the growing light, Brownlow launched into railing language. “Anyone can cut open a body. And sew it up. But put a mind to sleep and bring it back, that is the skill of Morpheus. Sometimes I can scarcely believe that I have this gift.”

  Artis addressed Brownlow’s back as he lit a cigarette with shaking hands. “On Saint Mark’s Eve, you can wait on the church porch and see the spirits walk in. Only they’re not spirits of the dead. They’re spirits of the living who will die the next year. That’s what my father once said. Gospel truth.”

  “A pitiful hope, not truth. If you see spirits, they’re a hallucination. A vapor mistaken for an image. The only haunting is in our heads. Sleeping potions can summon angels or devils.”

  “But where does the mind go to see such things?”

  Brownlow clutched the boy’s arm. “Through the divine gate. I can open it.”

  Artis squirmed to escape his grip. “I saw you did that to someone,” he whispered.

  A treacherous crack opened with his words.

  “What are you talking about?” Hunt shook himself awake.

  The intense red point of Brownlow’s cigarette faded against the yellowing sky. “Let me show you something, Artis. Come with me. Hunt can stay and sleep.”

  Brownlow and Artis crossed the field, the mist rising in spiraling, wraithlike plumes, making a frail attempt to halt their passage. A dark and ominous silhouette waited in the distance, a group of figures engaged in some conflict. Closer, what had looked like spiked antlers atop a half-human shape was recognizable as a stag’s body with a man’s head and torso, surrounded by snarling dogs. The goddess who had worked this terrible enchantment, Diana, stood next to him. The statue’s frozen violence was disconcerting in this pastoral setting.

  Brownlow sprawled at the statue’s base. “Here. Sit by me.”

  Artis reluctantly obeyed.

  “You have an interest in s
pirits, so I will share this.” Brownlow produced a rubber device, like a mask, and a small vial from his jacket pocket. He uncorked the vial and released a few drops onto a piece of cotton wool.

  Artis made a face at the odor. Brownlow inserted the cotton into the rubber mask and held it over the boy’s nose. His body relaxed on the grass, his thin arms spread out as if he had wafted to earth from a great height.

  Brownlow watched with satisfaction. Then he too inhaled ether, quickly becoming agitated. With clumsy confidence, he clambered up the stag and straddled its back as Artis watched, grinning beatifically.

  Brownlow lurched from his precarious seat on the stag, shouting, “Hear this! Call down the gods. I can match their power.”

  He triumphantly raised his arms, and the transparent vial in his hand caught the light. He swayed, lost his balance, the vial dropped and shattered against the stag. For an instant, the odor of ether hung carelessly in the air, a foreign scent in the field, before the air stole it away.

  THE FIRST PATIENT was ready to be discharged, but the medical staff couldn’t agree on an official procedure.

  McCleary gazed at the men standing around his desk and took a deep breath. “Our patient can’t simply walk out the door and go home. Masefield’s family haven’t seen him since he enlisted. The shock of his disfigured face would be too great for them. And for Masefield himself.”

  Pickerill didn’t conceal his impatience. “We don’t have the luxury of debate during this crisis. Once a man is discharged, our responsibility ends. If he requires additional care, he can be readmitted.”

  The others were startled by the vehemence of McCleary’s disagreement. “The men must leave holding the same trust they had when they entered,” he declared.

  Too nervous to sit still, Brownlow began to rifle through the drawers of a metal cabinet. “Trust? Masefield’s family will look at his scrap of a face and never trust medicine, the military, the government, or God again. I swear.”

  “We have rules,” Pickerill said.

  Kazanjian spoke from the back. “This conversation seems like a trial.”

  “Gentlemen, I volunteer to deliver mercy,” said Brownlow. “I will dose Masefield’s family with morphine to ease the trauma of his homecoming. It would be the greatest kindness to numb them into a welcome for their soldier.”

  The others were silent. It was pointless to answer Brownlow, as he rarely listened or responded to another opinion.

  McCleary felt anger eroding his self-control. “Oblivion isn’t a solution.”

  “There are some who manage oblivion on a daily basis.” Pickerill glanced sharply at Brownlow, but he was studying the frozen, bubble-strewn glass heart of a paperweight he’d found in the drawer.

  It was finally agreed that McCleary would prepare Masefield and his parents before their reunion. “It’s your show from here, Doctor,” Pickerill said with unusual warmth.

  LATER, KAZANJIAN ASKED MCCLEARY why he was so determined to help Masefield and assume an obligation that was certain to be uncomfortable.

  “Because Masefield must be allowed to have some say about his treatment.”

  Kazanjian tactfully didn’t interrupt McCleary’s thoughtful silence. After a moment, he began to speak.

  “Years ago, I had a patient, a young man burned in an accident. Morphine didn’t help his terrible pain. He complained constantly, and the nurses resented him. I resented him. I always reassured him that I knew how badly he was hurting, how he suffered. His morphine was increased. There was no remedy for his condition.”

  McCleary’s unfeeling fingers held a cigarette, while in the calm center of his mind he visualized his patient. “Finally I sat next to the young man’s bed. How do you endure this pain? I asked. I will always remember his words. I don’t know. I never knew I had this strength. The young man’s face had an expression of relief and astonishment.”

  McCleary directed the broad gesture of his hand at a wide and invisible audience of his peers. “Do you know, after our few brief words, he complained less. Did he suffer less? Had words healed him?” He saw that Kazanjian was also puzzled by this, and there was no answer. “Is there something in my work I haven’t quite grasped? Or known how to relinquish?”

  “Poetry, my friend. We need the blank believing leap of poetry.”

  Although it was late, McCleary’s walk to his quarters revived him. In his room, he allowed Mondeville’s Chirurgie to fall open at random and read a quotation from Constantinus Africanus: “Imagination rules all the other virtues, and consequently it may help or hinder recovery from illness.” This lesson was wholly directed at him.

  AN ORDERLY MANEUVERED his way across the crowded ward, pushing a heavily bandaged man in a wheelchair.

  “Coming through. New arrival. Everybody gangway.”

  McCleary stopped, keeping one hand deep in his pocket as if in protection. “What’s this?” He gestured at the small red scraps littered over the blanket on the patient’s lap.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, sir.” The corpulent, sweating orderly shrugged, impatient to move on.

  Puzzled, McCleary examined one of the bright scraps, then searched the patient’s blanket, uncovering a wilted rose. He gently laid it across the injured man’s lap.

  “The crowd threw flowers at the train station. For us,” the patient croaked, his jaw weighted with a wire support, plaster, and thick gauze. His good eye blinked, and his head wobbled from emotion or strain from the bandage doubling the size of his skull.

  “As you deserved to be honored. Good luck to you, sir.” McCleary quieted his need to hurry. He respectfully touched the man’s shoulder, and studied him more closely, deciphering an expression of pride on his damaged face. The doctor was suddenly ashamed that more and more frequently, he identified the patients by their bandages and dressings, not by name. There were so many injured men in the wards.

  There was an unexpected movement across the room, and McCleary watched Artis hurriedly maneuver around the beds.

  “Something has happened.” The distraught boy thrust an envelope at him.

  Before McCleary even opened the letter, he knew Artis had been called up. He had come of draft age. A boy for the jaws of war.

  “I’m brave as any soldier,” Artis said, but his eyebrows lifted toward each other near the nose, forming an expression of fear and distress. His voice became a whisper. “Sir, I wish to serve. But I’d rather die than be injured like the men here. It could happen to me.”

  McCleary felt his own face tighten. “It’s every man’s duty to help, but perhaps you can continue to work here. You have a little time before you must report for duty. Keep this to yourself, understand?”

  A smile shaped the boy’s face. A true smile, involving the zygomaticus major.

  “Have you boiled up the instruments in the sterilizer yet? And see that the operating-theater mackintoshes have been scrubbed and carbolized. Be quick about it.”

  “Sir.”

  McCleary vigorously straightened the covers on a bed, transferring his anger into movement until it became as slight as a scratch, a pinprick, the bite of an insect. He’d sacrificed for his profession and for the war. Donated a generous portion of his salary to Queen Alexandra’s Field Force Fund. Relinquished the certain peace of retirement. His life would end in this hospital in the service of others. This certainty released a ruthless streak in his character, and he calculated that Artis should be spared as an exchange. A fair trade. Someone to follow his teachings. The boy would make a fine surgeon.

  AT THE ARRANGED TIME, Masefield’s mother and father arrived to take their wounded son home. They were quickly conducted through an empty corridor and into McCleary’s office. The doctor dispensed with formalities, abandoned his desk to sit next to them.

  Masefield’s mother, a faded woman in an ill-fitting dress, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “Your son has made remarkable progress,” McCleary said gently. “I must tell you that his face is still healing.” He
didn’t explain that young Masefield’s face was salvageable and fortunately still had expression.

  The distraught couple stared at him. “We didn’t know how badly he was hurt. He never let on in his letters,” the woman said.

  “We will continue to treat your son as time goes by. There is always”—the doctor stopped himself from saying hope—“improvement.” He didn’t trust himself to say more than this, as he had already made them apprehensive.

  “We’re just glad to have him back. So many men . . .” She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, unable to continue. Her husband crushed his cap in his rough hands and nervously watched McCleary.

  “Your son is a remarkable young man and he has been extraordinarily brave. Now, he is waiting for you. Follow me, please.”

  McCleary led them through a long stretch of corridor, his steps slowed to the solemn measure of ceremony he had practiced as an acolyte, giving them time and silence to prepare for the reunion with their son. They entered the patients’ ward and proceeded down the center aisle between the beds. The patients didn’t flinch or turn away from the strangers, but watched them pass. All conversation stopped.

  McCleary briefly glanced at the couple beside him as they glimpsed one ruined face after another. He saw the initial shock on their faces replaced by frozen determination. The father’s posture stiffened and he looked straight ahead. His wife nodded to the patients as she passed, not from pity but with a mother’s grave acceptance.

  At the end of the ward, McCleary opened a door and stood aside. The couple preceded him into the room where their son struggled to keep his hands folded on the table and not hide himself. His face was twisted with an agony of apprehension, but his mother cried out with relief and hurried to embrace him. The father touched his son’s shoulder. They had passed across the battlefield. Scorched earth.