Eye of a Rook

by Josephine Taylor

  A break from each other, just to see, she’d said to Duncan a week ago, and he’d agreed. Then he’d taken his pillow to the spare room.

  Alice stepped towards the verandah, the squawking of gulls and the ocean’s heave filling her ears, her feet squishing remnants of a conifer, toes rubbing the old needles into the warming sand and massaging them back to life. The resinous scent brought Rottnest with it: the hairy, pooey scent of quokkas … bathers stiff with salt, rubbing red … the stinging welt of a stinger and the pungent slosh of vinegar … steamy buttery bakery bread … Mum sipping an ‘adult’ drink, gazing out over Fays Bay … somewhere, fish being fried …

  The verandah boards were loose and rubbed smooth by the tread of countless feet. When she perched herself on their edge and looked towards the last of the sunset, the warmth of the wood radiated up through her body. A light sea breeze lifted the hair around her face.

  Would it be like a holiday to live here, in Wrigleys Point? Might it bring a kinder beginning?

  She allowed herself to imagine it, living in a shack by herself, driving to uni to teach that one unit each week, pulling some of her old life into her new. She saw Sally and Denise and the others parking their cars here, on this crack-crazed driveway. Pictured herself laughing freely with Pen right here, on this deck. Imagined ringing her mother and speaking the hard words, seeing if they could get past them. Saw herself conjuring the courage to push into the world again, making the attempt to find a home for her collection of stories, her slumbering motley families.

  And she imagined herself waking, each day, to the writing. To Arthur and Emily. Working their torment inside her, listening for the moment when Arthur would decide, discovering whether Emily would recover.

  But what about Duncan? How might he fit into such a life? Could he? Did she even want him to? For a moment she saw his face, closed to her; the moments when he’d refused to believe in her, in them.

  Maybe it was a particular aptitude, the ability to protect someone weaker or with a greater need, this love that put someone else first when it mattered. To defend them, even to fend for them. The word seeming right, somehow: old-fashioned … gentlemanly; kind and good.

  Anyway, it was not the kind of love she had – she’d had – with Duncan. She knew she couldn’t call him a narcissist, or deeply damaged, or anything of the sort; she was no longer sure of her judgement on this, didn’t even know whether such labels helped anyone. What she did know was that he did not, at least, have the capacity to put her first when it would have made the difference. And though it made her sad, with a deep, tired sadness – another letting go, another loss – maybe it was for the best that the baby with Duncan she’d imagined into being – it felt so very, very long ago – would never now breathe life.

  The sun had dropped away. Time to return to the city. Time to talk properly. To decide.

  She opened the car door and lifted the silk purse from the passenger seat. Thought for a moment about the purse and how it had changed, the way she saw it: the contents still fragmented by pain, with loss and suffering, but threaded now with creativity, with possibility. She pulled her mobile from the purse and keyed in the numbers. Perhaps she would claim this place in the sun.

  CHAPTER 23

  LONDON, JUNE 1867

  Arthur stands, and wriggles to shuck the shirt from his back. The room is stuffy with heat, all odours oppressing—wax, charcoal, the men themselves.

  “Yes, it’s sweltering.” Charles pulls at his necktie. “I have struggled to sleep this week.”

  “The days are no better,” says Arthur. “The stench from the Thames is enough to stymie reason in the courts.”

  “I read that the politicians are struggling too.” Tom sips languidly at his brandy.

  “Father says Parliament has almost lost sight of the reasoning behind extending the male vote,” Arthur says. “The heat and stink make all of them irritable—Liberals and Conservatives both—what with amendments to Disraeli’s bill being proposed and defeated, members of Parliament no longer knowing what they’re voting for—”

  “It’s chaos on the streets too,” Tom adds. “The demonstrations in Hyde Park, the weather becoming hotter and hotter, the stench affecting breathing …”

  “The heat poses a threat to the health of many,” says Charles. “My young and elderly patients struggle particularly.”

  “As do the impoverished,” Tom inserts.

  The physicians chat on and Arthur leans against the cool wall and allows his mind to float, relaxed in the company of his friend and his father-in-law.

  It’s a regular occasion now—just like his weekly luncheon with Tom—this evening appointment. “The three bachelors”, they sometimes laugh over late supper, before taking brandy in his Portland Place library and sharing news and opinions. Tonight it’s been easy talk: Cissy’s approaching wedding with the Earl of Whatley—A fine match for her! pronounced Charles; his own niggling concern for his father’s wellbeing; Beatrice’s support of votes for women—Tom’s disbelief, Did she tell you she signed the suffrage petition last year?; Edith’s letters to Charles, reporting on their daughter’s progress …

  It’s the second year now, Emmie with her mother at Almsford for spring and summer’s beginning, his own hurried visits to her there, letters back and forth, the planned Rochdale family reunion at Hierde House in July. Once Disraeli’s bill is settled—and it must be settled soon, one way or the other—he will escape from the city and travel with his wife to Herdley.

  It’s not ideal, this separation, and he chafes against it at times, but he is prepared to suffer it for her sake, if the countryside has helped heal her and continues to provide comfort. He could endure almost anything for her sake. And they will be together for several months, soon enough, then they can explore their rediscovered passion for each other, even if both are still hesitant, even if she is still haunted by a pain he cannot begin to imagine. Nevertheless, they are already able to share the new words that come slowly, like a language both must learn, at night, in their bed—he asks her where he can place himself; she tells him where he might touch.

  And now it returns to him—her words, her hands, her opening—and his body aches with longing.

  “… since he was expelled from the Obstetrical Society.”

  Tom’s words catch at him. Arthur calms himself, returns to his armchair to listen.

  They all feel it on these evenings, the pressure to discuss Isaac Baker Brown—the desire to account for, and maybe leave behind, that terrible time—though Arthur can barely trust himself to speak on the matter.

  “Yes, I hear of the decline in his fortunes.” Charles speaks tersely. “I’m not sure that expulsion was the best outcome, y’know, yet the ill-feeling made it inevitable.”

  “And with good reason,” says Tom. “It must be admitted that he conducted himself in a most ungentlemanly, even criminal, manner. The advertising and promoting, the failure to protect the sensibility of the weaker sex, the operating on women of unsound mind when his Surgical Home is not even licensed, the … demeaning of women’s reputation with this claim about their purported practices—never proven, of course.”

  Charles’s eyes shift about as Tom speaks; he shuffles his feet and resettles his compact, cocky body in the chair. “It is plausible,” he says, “that excessive … that overstimulation plays a part in causing the disorder in some women, or maintaining it, once established.”

  “Plausible? Perhaps, perhaps not. This is not proven. And, even so, all these women acting thus? And then so many ‘cured’ by the barbarous excision, as Brown insists?” Tom shakes his head. “I have little sympathy for the man at this juncture.”

  “Baker Brown is prone to exaggeration,” says Charles, “but I remain convinced of the benefits of surgery in the case of severe hysteria.”

  Arthur sees it again of his father-in-law: Charles must be right. Having argued for Emily’s operation, he has no choice now but to stand by his guns, to make concessions only w
hen it comes to Baker Brown’s character—and even then only small allowances—not his surgical “solution”.

  “We must disagree on this”—Tom making his point—“even if we share concern about his future and, more so, that of his family.”

  “Yes, it is wrong that his whole family must shoulder this shame. But I do feel for the man, y’know, and I cannot imagine his career will recover.” Charles’s expression is uncharacteristically pensive. “It’s a tremendous cost for ambition and rash, misguided action. But does that make Mr Baker Brown a bad man? You are not yet fathers … do not yet know what pushes you on as the head of a family.” He looks down at his hands. “In some ways, y’know, I believe Baker Brown to be an ordinary person. He loved his children; he struggled—as we all do, yes?—through doubts; he made mistakes, yet hoped to better himself. Should we punish him further when he has already fallen? When he might be already broken?”

  So, Arthur sees, it is not just about being proven right: Charles can see himself in the aspirations of Baker Brown—in his pushy self-promotion, his desire to insert himself in society. But, in possession of all the facts, would Charles have countenanced inflicting harm on his own daughter?

  “These are difficult questions,” Arthur begins, “yet I find it impossible to think kindly on the man.” He falters for a moment: “It is difficult … It frustrates me that I do not understand the medical details more fully and that I am unable to comment with authority. I am no physician or nerve specialist, just a husband whose wife was endangered.”

  “Which makes you more entitled than anyone to have an opinion on the matter,” says Tom. “You have seen the situation from the inside—comprehend the implications of the operation more than most.” Tom plays his fingers on a side table, considers. “If you wish, though—if you do want to understand Brown’s unravelling from a more … medical perspective—I have articles you might read. From last year and into this.”

  Arthur feels a pulse of resistance. “Perhaps,” he says slowly. “I wonder though. Do I really want to know the whole palaver? Make an effort to fathom the man and his actions?” He stands. “Still, I appreciate the offer, my friend. I’ll think on it.”

  He walks to the window; peers through it as the meandering conversation of his companions resumes; wonders if Emily is looking out into a clearer, cooler night, and missing him.

  HERDLEY, AUGUST 1867

  Arthur’s eyes flick over and through sentences, wanting to leave the words behind as quickly as they leap from the pages into his mind: regrettable spirit of exaggeration … moral questions … erroneous physiology … completely unjustifiable … removal … without the cognisance … highest degree improper … even left worse … and whole paragraphs filled with high-minded censure—

  the disgust which reasonable and thinking men must feel at the public discussion, before mixed audiences, of sexual abuses. It is a dirty subject, and one with which only a strong sense of duty can induce professional men to meddle; and then it needs to be handled with an absolute purity of speech, thought, and expression, and, as far as possible, in strictly technical language.

  Sexual abuses. Dirty subject. Arthur thinks back to the appointment with Isaac Baker Brown: the insidious suggestions and the slurs cast on his wife—all in her absence and without the capacity to defend herself. How does Emily feel now, reading words about women meant only for men? Is she offended by the intimate language? Made angry at what might have been, had they gone ahead? Should he have kept them to himself, these articles? Emily had thought not: she ’d been insistent when she noticed the British Medical Journal papers piled on his study desk, apprehending their content before he could stop her. I need to understand the matter more fully, she ’d said, and went on to challenge him by asking how he could have assumed she would not take an interest in the surgeon’s fate, when theirs had been intertwined with it—almost disastrously so. He ’d felt sheepish as he brought the medical articles into their own private Hierde House drawing room and away from the questions of Beatrice or Father, but reluctant too, that impulse to shield her from harm still adamant.

  Now his wife looks up; says, “It is unequivocal, Arthur,” and reads out loud,

  Both of them declared they had not practised self-abuse. They were not in any way benefited by the operation. They further stated that the operation was performed without their being at all aware of its real nature.

  She turns several pages one-handed and scans to where her other hand has fixed a passage. “And, look here,” she says. “This poor woman was operated on in July of 1865, but it says that by January 1866, she was worse than ever. January 1866, Arthur. It could have been me; it could have been us!”

  The image comes to him again—his Emily lying unrobed in a narrow bed in Baker Brown’s “Home”, her eyes wells of despair, accusation. He shudders as he thinks of their alternative fate: of her alone, without his defence or protection; of her insupportable pain, stretching into the future. What if reading this reminds her too? Brings back the old, paralysing terror, just when she is regaining trust and reaching for him again, her body restored to itself? Should he not continue to fend for her? Encourage her to plan for the future; to leave the past well enough alone?

  He studies his wife across the drawing room table. She is reading again, her finger moving across the page, emotions passing fleetingly over her expressive face: surprise, dismay and then, unexpectedly, an ironic twist of the mouth. It reassures him, the fleeting smile, reminds him of her cleverness—a resilient intelligence that seems to have only strengthened through her ordeal, when it might have faltered, or become bitter. She is becoming her own person, he sees now; is no longer the girlish woman he fell in love with and married.

  He turns more pages of the article before him, picking up the tone and trajectory, the playing out of the whole sorry affair in reports and letters from medical men, the pages brimming with righteous indignation and contempt: her firm determination … promised it would effect a cure … lamentable failure … wives and daughters … unjustly taxed with filthy habits … wantonly exposed … worse than futile operations … theories as wrong as they are filthy—

  He stands and strides to the window, unable, suddenly, to contain his revulsion.

  How had Baker Brown been allowed to carry out these operations? And for so long?

  The Naze is solid and certain against the vivid blue sky. They should walk Hierde Hill after luncheon, he and Emily. If he strides on ahead, perhaps he can exercise the fury that has suddenly gripped him. Exorcise it from his body. Return to her, hold her hand, feel calm; reclaim—

  “Here it is!”

  He goes to her. Looks over the netted and beaded gold of her chignon.

  APRIL 6, 1867

  The Obstetrical Society

  MEETING TO CONSIDER

  THE

  PROPOSITION OF THE COUNCIL

  FOR THE REMOVAL OF

  MR. I.B. BROWN.

  He places his hand on her shoulder as they take in the words, feel the gravity of the occasion. Then they slowly make their way through the pages, her finger tracing the names of the eminent men gathered from all around the country to determine the fate of this one contentious surgeon. [A]mong women … we have constituted ourselves, as it were, the guardians of their interests, he reads, and in many cases, in spite of ourselves, we become the custodians of their honour. Then the interjection of the mass of men—their hearty approbation: hear, hear—and the words that follow:

  We are, in fact, the stronger, and they the weaker. They are obliged to believe all that we tell them. They are not in a position to dispute anything we say to them, and we, therefore, may be said to have them at our mercy.

  Arthur squirms a little as he reads, uncomfortable in a way he would not be were he alone. It is reading the words through Emily’s eyes, he realises; understanding how close being protected is to being patronised—even, perhaps, controlled. He flicks the thought from his mind.

  “And here, Arthur. About o
perating on lunatic women.”

  He takes the chair next to his wife and reads along with her: Baker Brown finding himself on the horns of a dilemma, trying to win … recognition? acclaim? while disavowing wrongdoing—he took credit with the public of having cured cases of insanity, yet to screen himself from legal proceedings he denies it before the Commissioners. And then the surgeon’s response to his accusers, page upon repetitive page of it—common fairness … fair play … common fair play as an Englishman … open and honest worker … painful position … not kind … fair opportunity … honest and open worker … honest man—without properly addressing any of the charges against him, and all the while, the wandering, plaintive, even wheedling address interrupted by cries of protest, of indignant men rising in judgement against him.

  “He only made matters worse for himself by conducting his own defence so ineptly,” Arthur says. “Still, they were divided. This one”—he points out the passage—“defended Brown’s right to speak—to be uninterrupted. And here, the suggestion that he acted out of ignorance, not malice. But the remainder? I think they ’d made up their minds.”

  “Perhaps they hoped he ’d change after the faults in his action and behaviour were pointed out. And when he didn’t, he became the enemy, or the buffoon.” She indicates: I must admit Mr. Brown, no doubt, is “owdacious.”

  It is a relief to laugh along with the roars of laughter, but he can sense the men’s dismay too—their fear at this chaotic intrusion into that principled world—just as he can feel their own, his and Emmie’s. And he can feel the desire to be done with it, this impossible subject, in the men’s demand for a vote and some kind of reckoning that would settle the matter, especially here, in these words. “They’re right, you know,” he says.