The Butcher's Hook

by Janet Ellis

  Did Dr Edwards pause, did he question how he might proceed and discard caution? I see myself, barely nine, looking up at him, all infant brightness and keen anticipation, and then I see him regarding me with, perhaps, a different gaze. Did he clear his throat? I think he cleared his throat.

  ‘It is a complicated thing, this difference of which you speak,’ he began. ‘It is mainly regarding the matter of new life. Did your aunt just recently bear you a cousin?’

  ‘She did. A squalling thing, too. Must we speak of babies?’

  ‘Inspect him closely, before we speak again.’

  ‘Inspect him? In what way?’

  ‘The virile difference, child. The way he’s shaped.’

  How I wished I had only asked about the umlaut and why it bent the vowels in its charge. Or why spices made me sneeze. But I had posed a question and Dr Edwards would answer it. I had no need to peer closely at a baby boy, I understood what Dr Edwards hinted at – the nobbly flesh sac between the legs of a male. It was its purpose I’d wondered at, not its existence. I blush now to think how I’d asked him such a thing outright, and I blush even more at what happened next.

  * * *

  You cannot say my teacher wasn’t eager to impart what he knew, and you must marvel at how practical the lessons became. The next week Dr Edwards arrived with sheaves of paper, each illustrated with representations of men and women together.

  Fear not, they were not in any way demonstrative of what I’d enquired: the reason for their differences. They were depictions only of men and women posed in pairs, as if they were courting. Chastely, his painted examples gazed at each other, they held hands at most, and only their eyes met.

  ‘Do you see how these two types of person, the opposite of each other in many ways, must cleave together?’ Dr Edwards shuffled his pages to show yet more pairs at play or conversation.

  ‘Must they?’ I’d given up thinking about what I’d asked. Since our last lesson, I’d heard a song in French that amused me, eaten a berry I’d never tasted before and watched a spider spin a web. I had much to ask about each, but here was Dr Edwards still wandering doggedly in the cul de sac of last week’s enquiry, not out on the open road of this week’s fascinations.

  Dr Edwards got up from his seat, walked to the doorway and stood there listening, his gaze on me the while. ‘Are we alone?’ he asked. ‘For this instruction is a private one, and we mustn’t be disturbed.’

  I nodded. The household seemed uninterested in what Dr Edwards and I talked about in our lesson, and left us alone for its duration. Obediently, I fell silent too. We listened together: the house was still.

  Dr Edwards began to unbutton his coat. His britches were tight about his waist and his shirt billowed above them. Sitting back down beside me, he wrestled the fabric from its tucking and draped it with some care over his lap. He continued to fret and worry his hands underneath this shroud. Why didn’t he speak? This extraordinary action surely needed a commentary. He only breathed heavily, his face working as if he were chewing hard bread.

  ‘There!’ He turned his head sideways to me, and freed one hand to take mine.

  In hindsight, I like to think that I was reluctant, that I pulled back a little from his grip, but I think I let him guide me all too easily to where he wished my hand to go. My fingers were placed around what I fancied felt like a child’s small arm, tense and warm to my touch. All the while, Dr Edwards looked me in the eyes, his expression triumphant, as if he had performed a magic trick I should admire. I moved my hand away a little, which had a startling effect on Dr Edwards, who till then – although serious – had stayed calm.

  ‘No!’ Was he angry? I began to retract my hand. ’No!’ he cried again, and placed my hand back on the object. ‘This a man has,’ he said, in a hoarse whisper, ‘and the woman must make a little space between her legs to let it enter her. Thus, a baby is born.’

  We had only studied the merest Latin till then, and briefly dallied with a little French and German. There was some Italian, too. Now I felt as if he talked in another language altogether, and puzzlingly fast, too. Enter a space between a woman’s legs to make a child? The man was clearly mad, and I began to feel a little frightened. Not of his strange claims – I could cast those off as soon as he left, I had obviously reached the very edges of his learning and he was consequently resorting to invention – no, I was afraid of his demeanour, of his reddening face and tense gait. He sat bolt upright, all his energies going into that one place, to the thing I held, that I was barely able to keep my fingers around even as he bid me keep them there. It seemed to grow and swell, it fought against my grip while Dr Edwards exhorted me to hold on.

  You know what happened next, I think. How his hard muscle erupted in a terrible hot mess then softened in my grasp, how his breath laboured then calmed. You can imagine how he took my hand tenderly and wiped my fingers with his handkerchief. I recall I blanched at this, because to add to the indignity of my suddenly sticky hand, his kerchief had recently attended to his nose and I had a vivid image of its contents smeared onto my open palm. I felt as dizzy as when you leave a carousel, and the spinning world in your head adjusts slowly to the stationary ground under your feet.

  I did not feel afraid, but I knew all was changed between Dr Edwards and me. I once kept a mouse for a few days in a wooden box in my bedroom. I had found it small and sickly in the middle of the floor; it had made no attempt to escape when I lifted it – its body so light I could only tell that I held it by keeping my eyes fixed on its little form – and I fancied I could tame it and restore it to full mouse health. Of course, it did not live long and when I found its tiny corpse, I felt as sad as if I had loved it for all my life. I had wanted a playmate pet; I had imagined making miniature beds and toys for it, and it had died and none of this was possible. Such plans I had for it, all now dead, too, and how my little heart grieved.

  I had similarly conjured a world where Dr Edwards and I would continue to study together. Why should we not? We had both enjoyed our meetings, after all. Until this time, he was the fount of all wisdom to me and I imagined I would never tire of his teaching. Perhaps we would progress to the practical, not in the grotesque way Dr Edwards had done, mind, but with a little botany in the open countryside, some geography in travel, much conversation in situ. We had created a schoolroom in an unloved part of the house, we could just as easily build a classroom in a field or foreign town.

  Fount of wisdom? Oh there was a fount all right. His personal geyser had fairly flooded the land of my ignorance and wiped out my innocence, too, as it spilled its gelatinous matter. I was crudely shot to the study of advanced physiology in one lesson and could not unlearn what I knew.

  What happened next? There must have been an adjustment of his clothing, a gathering of his papers, I don’t recall. Did he pause at the door to turn and talk to me? I don’t remember what was said. I do know that Dr Edwards did not exhort me to keep my counsel about the events of the afternoon, neither did I weep when he left, though I was miserable.

  ‘Do you leave now, Ted?’ My father stopped him in the hallway. There was a scrabbling noise as Dr Edwards pulled on his cape; next I heard his boots scuffing the floor. Around me, the portraits on the wall met my gaze. We all knew more now than we knew a moment since.

  ‘On my way, Sir.’ Dr Edwards coughed a reply.

  ‘And is her head more full of matter now?’ Said with a smirk in his voice. The painted faces around me leered.

  ‘Indeed it is. You will find her much enhanced.’

  There was some more muffled conversation with my father as he left – no wonder he hurried away – and shortly after, my father called to me. He stood in the hallway as I came downstairs, taking each step as slowly as a toddler. He saw nothing different about me, I’m sure, though I felt transfigured. In a clear voice, I told my father I had had enough of learning. He was delighted. He fancied a girl’s head co
uld not hold much, anyway, and although he’d found my recitations and the like diverting, it never occurred to him it might have any value to me. My wishing to retreat was proof positive that, had I continued, it would all have come to nothing in time.

  It was not that I was repulsed by Dr Edwards’ member or its unexpected contents. If he had promised never to behave in such a way again, if he had chastised himself to me for this aberration and sworn he had not intended it to happen, I still could not have studied with him afterwards. It was for this reason: when I held him and worked my hand around him, I saw that I was making a thing happen to him that I was completely in charge of. His expression of desire had waxed and waned according to the grip of my fingers. His urgency unmanned him and made him weak.

  How foolish he looked! If ever I think of Dr Edwards now, it amuses me to remember his round eyes and lolling tongue.

  * * *

  ‘Why do you laugh, you foolish girl?’ My father addresses me now as I sit at the table with him: I swear I had quite forgotten he was there. I don’t think he has heard me speak in a good long while, much less say his name.

  ‘I was imagining the sweet games I might play with my new sister,’ I reply, knowing this answer would silence him. He has no time for the pretty thoughts of women. Any of their thoughts, come to that.

  He makes a sound in his throat as he stands and pushes back his chair. Without another glance in my direction, he leaves. The air in the room ripples a little as he swings the door wide.

  Chapter 3

  How were the days punctuated after Dr Edwards left me so abruptly? In the great world beyond our doors, the world turned as it ever does. I suppose that the sun rose and set and the seasons changed. As usual, buds swelled and blossomed. Rain washed away leaves. I imagine that snow replaced frost. Water would have hardened to ice then melted. These things happen regularly, whether we are aware of them or not. There was a pattern to our habits, too, but it was a dull one, devoid of colour. My father farted at nine o’clock in the morning as he performed his ablutions; the church clock chimed in his malodorous wake. The clamour of the house rose toward noon, while tradesmen called and those with household duties bumped heads or clinked crockery, then subsided towards dusk. We had a few visitors; sometimes they sat with my mother and, once, I heard her laugh. I waited till her companions left and when I peeped over the banister, I saw her tug her cap back to the middle of her head where she’d skittered it happily askew.

  My mother was mostly to be found in her bed, though: either keeping her insides still to hold a baby there, or to rest them after they had expelled another unformed infant. There were always copious sheets and linens hung to dry in the yard. The flapping of them as they caught in the wind made me think of ships and sails. But I was marooned. Dr Edwards had cast me off from boredom and let me fish in new waters. Until his ridiculous behaviours struck rock and wrecked us both.

  All the knowledge that Dr Edwards had put in my head sat there unmoving, a petrified forest whose branches would never send out leaves. I truly believed that I had learnt everything I would ever know. No one spoke to me at length any more. I was enduring a grotesque hibernation; it was not a delicious oblivion but a waking torpor. I am describing the passage of some two years, I suppose, but there were few anniversaries to punctuate the passing months.

  From only one room in the house did I hear anything like the exchange of information, beyond women’s voices giving instruction about stewing food or starching laundry. My father conducted some of his morning business in his room and, more often than not, I found myself pausing as I passed to listen to what was being said.

  Before long I was deliberately waiting at the window of the drawing room to see if my father had visitors. From this upper vantage point, they were a collection of wigs and hats. Sometimes a protuberant nose was visible or a cloak flowed behind them. Some dawdled and strolled, others flapped and rushed. They never raised their eyes, so no one ever noticed me and I was keen to remain unseen. As soon as I thought they were ensconced in his study and after the first pleasantries had been exchanged (for I learnt to avoid the preamble about health or the weather), I would creep as near as I could and, having opened my little book of fables to seem occupied with reading it, I would sit on the stairs and eavesdrop.

  If you were to pull my fingernails from their roots with sharp pliers, I could not recall a single useful sentence from that time. It was all to do with monies and weights and foremen. They spoke of forecasts. They argued about timetables and transactions. It was not of course the content that I craved, but the delightful ebb and flow of conversation. With each slight altercation or shared amusement, my skin tingled with pleasure. Although I did not understand their meaning, the words thrilled me, too. I wrote them afterwards on a blank page at the back of my book, spitting in my inkwell to revive it. I could make only a poor attempt at the spellings.

  My father would signal the end of these episodes with a rise in volume, and a bluff ‘Well, then!’ or ‘We shall see!’ as he brought things to a conclusion. This was my cue to scurry away.

  One day, though, I was so genuinely distracted by the tale of the ‘Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ that it was only when my father and his companion stood in front of me in the hallway, their boots close together on the tiles, two brown and two black, that I looked up.

  ‘What’s this?’ said the other fellow, taking the book from me without my permission and bending it to read the cover.

  ‘This one always reads,’ my father said, as though he was apologising for a fault.

  ‘I have such a child at home,’ the man returned the book to me with a wink. ‘It is like a thirst, isn’t it, so I suppose a little book from time to time will quench it.’ He winked again. I kept my two eyes on him without blinking.

  By now I had risen to my feet and was going backwards up the stairs away from them, feeling for each tread with my heel.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the man continued, ‘I should bring my daughter here, to sit with her, next time we meet.’

  My father’s eyebrows rose in query. ‘If you think it a good idea,’ he said, without enthusiasm. His visitor must be valuable to him, I supposed, otherwise he would have squashed that notion flat. My heart sank at the prospect of a companion, particularly one I hadn’t chosen. This man was a great long coil of a person, his face was a thin stripe of flesh with features squeezed on, even his hands were stretched and narrow. I imagined his daughter perched beside me, so tall that her hair would catch the breeze, like a pennant on a ship’s mast.

  ‘She is a little older, I think.’ He regarded me carefully as if he could determine my years by staring. ‘What age are you? Ten?’

  ‘Twelve,’ I said, peeved that he thought me so childish.

  ‘Ah, Keziah is fourteen. Not so much your senior.’ Enough to create a chasm, I thought, already convinced that she was an old maid.

  Satisfied, the two men went to the door where I could hear them slapping hands and backs in farewell.

  All the taste and flavour had gone out of my spying. My father set off alone the next day anyway, but I didn’t watch him go.

  * * *

  A few weeks later, when I was despairing of any distractions, he told me at dinner that Mr Heath had called in the morning and he was bringing his child. ‘You might look out some books,’ he said. Unmoved by his instruction, I did not reply. I was not about to oil the wheels of his business by entertaining sundry offspring. I resolved to keep my counsel and to make the girl feel entirely unwelcome on her first visit and thus she would wish to abstain from another. By habit, I stood at the window to watch them arrive. Heath was loping, bent slightly forward to show me the curve of his back. His stride was as long as his height and, beside him, reaching only to his shoulder, bounced an unbonneted head of yellow hair.

  I do not know why my heart quickened at the sight of her, because I had not seen Keziah’s face then and her
little hands were hidden in a muff. Perhaps it was the keen vigour of her gait, or the way her feet pointed out from her skirt that excited me. When I think of her now, in spite of everything that happened, I can still summon that sharp thrill at her arrival.

  We stood awkwardly beside our fathers as they introduced us. She gazed up at hers with affection as he announced her name to me: ‘Keziah!’ But I only stared at her. She kept her hands in her silk muff and I thought they must be warm there. I longed to feel inside it. Once the men had closed the door behind them, she looked enquiringly at me.

  ‘Where shall we sit?’ she said, looking about. There was no chair in the hall. The stairs looked coarse and inhospitable – she wore a pale costume and wouldn’t want it marked.

  ‘Shall we go to your room?’ she asked. That startled me: when I thought of that most private space, the walls seemed to bulge and swell and the furniture grew sharp. How would this girl manage without snagging her dress?

  ‘Do you keep your books there?’ She was already going upstairs. She must have thought I slept in a library.

  ‘There are only a few,’ I panted as I tried to keep up. She was taller than I and took the stairs easily. My own legs felt stunted in comparison. With each step, she appeared stronger and more graceful while I shrunk and thickened. On the landing, she had to pause to let me lead the way. The ranks of closed doors offered no clue as to which was mine. I went ahead of her down the corridor and had to stop myself knocking before I went into my own room, as if to warn it that we had company.

  I doubt that I would have arranged anything differently if I had known that she might inspect here, but I noted with relief that my pot was tucked away and my coverlet pressed flat. There were no items of clothing left about and only a poke of lace from the dresser drawer betrayed any intimacy.