James Miranda Barry

by Patricia Duncker

  ‘Captain Loughlin, Miss Walden is seventeen and if I am not in error you cannot be much more. Seventeen is an age when we are all quite capable of mistaking politeness for proposals. Now, sir, I wish you a good evening.’

  And Barry turned aside to help himself to a bevy of cold meats, decorated with olives and tomatoes cut into serrated bowls, as if they had developed teeth. But Captain James Loughlin had passed well beyond the reach of reason and sensible argument. He had been insulted. Calmly and deliberately insulted. And so he presented his challenge as if he were an actor, dressed for his part in a comedy that was about to turn nasty in the fourth act.

  ‘Sir! I demand satisfaction. My colleagues will call upon you tomorrow morning.’

  Barry acknowledged his words with the slightest of nods and a faint curl of the lip, closer to a sneer than a smile. Loughlin suddenly saw himself as the toy soldier, wound up and programmed to do silly things. He discovered that his fists were clenched and that he was sweating with anger and alarm. He almost hit the doctor in the face, but withdrew at once as the tiny man turned away to give his full attention to the ladle in the fruit punch bowl.

  There was an odd scent left lingering in the officer’s nostrils, a strange, fragrant aroma that he could not identify, but which he had noticed in the hospital. This hallucinatory odour must have been present in the doctor’s hair. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the peculiar scent and the doctor’s cold glance. Then he stepped off the verandah onto the pebbled walkways. He was followed by dozens of curious eyes, from behind fans, curtains, ornamental palms, and over the elbows of their dancing partners. And Charlotte, with her head tucked against her friend’s shoulder, watched Captain Loughlin’s exit, her mouth stricken with regret and distress. You’ve sent a handsome young man about his business, who had no greater ambition in life than to cut a fine figure and to make you damnably happy.

  The night was alive with the sounds of toads, squealing in the undergrowth. Lanterns hung in the trees. He could see the thick white shapes of women’s dresses, columns moving slowly up the gardens in the darkness. The darker shapes of the men were invisible. There was a warm night breeze from the sea. He could hear the waves breathing against the rocks. He looked back into the house. Every window was lit up; there was the music and the uneven beat of the dancing, excited cannonades of laughter and the chink of forks on empty plates. James was convinced that the momentous event had passed unnoticed. He had put his life on the line for the sake of a seventeen-year-old girl and nobody had noticed. The doctor had a formidable reputation for being both bad-tempered and a crack shot. Loughlin sobered up. He was no longer confident of the outcome. He began to wonder if he had put too high a price on his dignity and self-love. Then he began to feel very sorry for himself. He escaped from the luminous gardens and fled away down the beach.

  * * *

  Well after midnight Loughlin sat in Boaden’s rooms next to the barracks, explaining himself. William Boaden was very far from impressed.

  ‘Are you out of your mind, man? Barry’s a crack marksman. He’s known for it. Why in God’s name do you think he’s here? The Governor of Cape Town had to move him on. He’s already fought half a dozen duels and killed his man every time. Well, I know of two for certain. He’s a quarrelsome devil, but he doesn’t do it just for fun. You must have been excessively offensive.’

  ‘I was drunk,’ said James miserably.

  Boaden leaped off his bed and circled the room like a bat.

  ‘You’re a fool, James. And you’ll soon be a dead fool. Barry can drink an entire regiment into a vat of malmsey without a curl out of place or his hand shaking. I’ll wake the others up. We’ll have to try for a reconciliation. My God, the things you do to me.’

  Two giant moths battering the screen door came billowing in on the wave of his departure; one of them, hurtling down the glass funnel of the lamp, was immediately extinguished in the flames. James contemplated this sudden cremation. He was possessed by gruesome premonitions.

  He slept fitfully, still wearing his boots, on a camp bed in Boaden’s dressing room. Despite the fear that crept around his body with eerie persistence, affecting first his feet, with a glacial chill, then his chest, with sharp, shooting pains, and finally his brain, with an explosive headache, James fell asleep and remained unconscious until the moment came, just after six, when the sun streamed into the barracks and Boaden’s servant stood over him, like a messenger from purgatory, with hot water and fresh towels.

  Boaden himself, disturbingly awake and bubbling with irritation, slammed the screen door behind him as he came in, flinging his cap upon the unmade bed.

  ‘No good. I called on Barry at the hospital. He’s there every day from five a.m. onwards. He won’t hear of an apology. Pistols at dawn tomorrow, before the Governor gets to hear about it all. He hardly lifted his eyes to speak to me and he didn’t even offer to shake my hand. The man’s a midget with a mission to exterminate damn fools like you. And he gets all his formal conversation out of books. Please inform Captain Loughlin that I shall discharge my obligations to the letter. Who on earth talks like that nowadays? It’s as if he’s repeating lines that have already been written.’

  Boaden flung himself flat on the bed, ignoring the servant, who was standing there, saucer-eyed, and who had of course taken everything in. James gazed at the ceiling, desperate.

  ‘I felt that. Last night. I was talking as if I was in a play.’

  ‘That’s because you’re stupid. And you don’t think. James, how could you be such an arse? You’ve got to go through with it now. The heat will be terrible today. For God’s sake, man. Get washed, shaved. The boy’s standing there, waiting.’

  Boaden got up and paced the room, attacking flies with a thick swatter made of patterned palm leaves. Then he flung himself down again. James sat staring at the steaming vat of hot water and the scrubbed black child in immaculate whites with gold buttons, standing to attention before him. He put his head in his hands. He had the most appalling hangover.

  The heat shimmered on the gravel and unleashed the rich, wet scents of the gardens outside: the acacias, frangipani and purple torrents of bougainvillea, pouring over the wall. James shaved carefully, noting every curve and dip on his cheek and jaw. The mirror returned a handsome face, hollow-eyed, perhaps, and a little drawn, but a face worth kissing and preserving. The fear of death surged through him with all the force of a burst dam. What mattered? James was not a philosopher and what mattered to him was well-cooked red meat and good wines, the smell of a woman’s warm skin close to his face, and winning at cards. All these things appeared before him, the temptations of Tantalus, shortly to be whisked away by a harpy with pale red curls, chilly hands, a peculiar aroma and the steady eye of a professional killer. James pitied his own fate from the bottom of his heart. He had not deserved this. He turned from the mirror and addressed Boaden’s gleaming boots with their gentle coat of white dust, which was all he could see through the dressing-room doorway.

  ‘I say, Will, is there really no chance of a reconciliation?’

  ‘None whatever,’ snapped Boaden, gazing upwards, unseeing, into empty space. The boy leaned forward, pouring more water into the basin. The pattern of vine leaves swirled among the bubbles, delirious in china. James wondered if he was shaving his jaw and washing the magnificent brush of black hair on his chest for the last time. Suddenly Boaden was standing in the doorway.

  ‘God dammit, James,’ shouted Boaden, terrifying them all, ‘I love you better than anyone else I know and tomorrow I shall have to bury you.’

  * * *

  Barry’s second was one of his assistants at the hospital, whose clothes didn’t fit. He looked nervous and embarrassed as he approached Boaden across the uneven clumps of grass, spangled with goat shit. The ungainly figure appeared to change shape in the mist slithering down the diminishing river. Sometimes he seemed to be small, shambling, at other times he was magnified, monstrous. It was an odd trick of the light. In
a few weeks the water would have vanished and the mist would be gone in the dawn and the grass would grow among the rocks, flourishing at first, then browning into dead threads, until the winter rains came, and the river rose again.

  Barry was almost invisible. Boaden thought he saw someone moving up and down, up and down, far away under the trees; but the bush was too dense for him to be certain. He was very upset. The entire affair was a mistake. Barry’s choice of a half-caste hospital orderly was an insult to his fellow officers. The doctor was so convinced of his success that he had not bothered to comply with the minimum standards of courtesy demanded by the situation. As the man approached, Boaden set about adjusting his expression into a haughty sneer. Then he thought of James and tried to look more conciliatory. His thick jaw and heavy jowls accordingly assumed a look of lopsided cantankerousness. At least this man was also a doctor. But if Barry’s reputation was deserved then an undertaker would have been more appropriate.

  ‘George Washington Karageorghis. Your servant, sir,’ muttered the unfortunate subordinate.

  Boaden let fly an indignant snort.

  James stood to attention, virgin-pale but wonderfully dignified. He had spent hours dressing. For one indulgent second Boaden felt proud of him. Then he remembered his duty and stepped forward to propose a bloodless resolution to a futile dispute. This young lady’s honour was not worth a good man’s life. He bit his lip. Charlotte Walden was a bumptious little flirt who had probably allowed more than one officer to squeeze her pert little nipples and perhaps take even greater liberties. Her name was often accompanied by sly smiles and knowing chuckles. James was going to die for the sake of a cracked piece of pottery, not even a decent Coalbrookdale dinner service. What a waste. Boaden thought about the row of cheerful young prostitutes who looked forward to his arrival, entertained him heartily and had no honour to lose. But here was Barry’s disgraceful half-caste colleague, executing a formal salute. Captain William Boaden’s whiskers trembled with rage at his friend’s foolishness.

  No, it was just as he had feared, Barry would not negotiate. His second snapped open a polished walnut case, with a trim blue velvet lining and a brace of engraved silver duelling pistols, custom-built by one of London’s finest gunsmiths, Cannon’s of Leicester Square. As he checked the weapons Boaden noticed the initials in elegant italics: F de M. The guns did not belong to Barry, but F de M presented no immediate clue as to the identity of their owner. He nodded curtly to the orderly, and was somewhat mollified to notice that the man was terrified and embarrassed.

  Twenty paces. Turn and fire.

  Point-blank range.

  James was already a phantom of his usual self and as he cocked his pistol he was unable to speak. They marched towards Barry in complete silence through the croaking bush and the eerie half-light. Boaden was already imagining the court martial. He was determined to hound Barry out of the colony as a pitiless murderer. This doctor saved lives with one hand and slaughtered them with the other. He should have embraced his friend for the last time. Then suddenly they were standing in front of him.

  It was beyond Boaden’s comprehension. They had all gone mad. His wonderful, handsome James with the gay laugh and the dark, bouncing curls, his friend, his beloved friend, was to be turned into worm’s food by a tiny beardless boy in a formal white collar and a coat that was too big for him. It was not natural. But something in Barry’s eye, for the second time, steadied Boaden’s hands. However bizarre this tiny man’s appearance and attire, he was not playing games.

  The duel was played out like a formal piece of music. Every action was premeditated, deliberate. James, noble to the last, stepped away from Barry to Boaden’s clear count, like the soldier he was, as courageous as he should have been. A single shot sent hundreds of birds no one had noticed, squawking into the air, and started a thunderous, sudden rustling in the bush. A dozen invisible creatures vacated the spot in flight, wrenching the vegetation aside. Boaden blinked. Barry’s orderly had dropped the pistol case in fright. Far away the horses whinnied in alarm. The next moments stretched out into an eternity and a slight wind suddenly raised the dust into whirlpools at their feet. James stood, unmoving, his pistol raised and smoking in the cool air. Barry’s gun was still vertical. No one moved as the doctor’s arm levelled steadily towards his opponent. James leaned forward, all his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to take the bullet full in the chest, his face awash with tears.

  There was a second shot.

  James staggered back, his throat and left ear on fire. Barry had neatly sliced off one epaulette and a dark curl of hair. The shot had been careful and deliberate. Had he wished, Barry could have forged a channel directly into James’s heart or laid his brains waste in the wilderness, as he had supposedly done to other men on other occasions. But he had not done so now.

  Without a word, and with no explanations, Barry nodded to Boaden and his colleague and turned away. He stuck the pistol in his pocket and strode off towards his horse in the strengthening day, leaving the others staring at one another, shocked and baffled by his abrupt departure.

  * * *

  Captain James Loughlin called upon Miss Charlotte Walden. He asked to see her alone. She was exceedingly pale and very excited. All pretence of formality was abandoned.

  ‘You can tell me the truth now, Charlotte. And I think you owe me the truth. No one is listening. What is said here will go no further. Did you ever permit Barry to make love to you?’

  Brazen as a bitch on heat, she never even lowered her eyes. Modesty was clearly a thing of the past.

  ‘Yes’ was all she said.

  James gazed at her, amazed. Barry was half her size. He couldn’t possibly have touched her. He would have disappeared between her breasts. Even Boaden, who was no friend to the Governor’s daughter, admitted that it would be like entering a tropical rainforest. James decided that he still wanted to cover her breasts with kisses. Barry obviously had. The unfortunate young officer was transfixed with jealousy and regret. Then he shook his head, disbelieving. This affair was too unlikely, incredible.

  He knew that he should ask no more questions, but he could not help himself.

  ‘Where did you meet? Not here. It’s impossible.’

  ‘I visit regularly at the hospital. I think he’s an extraordinary man. I persuaded Father to invite him to dinner at least twice a week. He came. He talked brilliantly. Then, when Father was away in the north of the island, I invited him myself. I didn’t tell him that Father wasn’t here. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come. He’s desperately correct. But my brother was with us. Nobody else. It was all perfectly respectable. Dr Barry drank Joe under the table, and then put him – and me – to bed.’

  She smiled cheekily up at James, like a naughty schoolgirl. But his face was blank, like an atheist faced with a miracle. He stood up and bowed, speechless. She sprang from her seat and clutched his arm, angry at his open incredulity.

  ‘I was in love with him, James. But he won’t have me. Don’t think I haven’t tried. I’ve even asked him outright. He has vowed never to marry.’

  She was like a woman possessed. Her throat heaved and all her bracelets rattled. She was near to tears.

  ‘There is no one like him. Now you know. Go on, get out. I don’t care if you never speak to me again. Leave me, then. Go on.’

  She turned away to the window, biting her lip. Yet here was something odd, unexplained. These were not the words of a woman who had been seduced and abandoned, but of a woman obsessed, unashamed, who had tasted something unheard of, unknown, a magic nectar, whose life was laid waste without it. She spoke with her back turned.

  ‘Oh, go away, James. Don’t start getting concerned for me. I’ll live. I’ll marry someone else eventually. But I won’t ever want anyone else. Other than him.’

  He was dismissed. Very quietly, James backed away and closed the double doors behind him. He stood on the steps of the Governor’s residence, staring at his boots and at the gleaming hands of the man
who was holding his horse. Now he faced a disciplinary action for fighting a duel with a fellow officer for the sake of a woman whose honour had never existed. She had admitted the whole thing. She had thrown herself at Barry, to whom he now owed not only his life, but the profoundest apology. He swung into the saddle and, despite the midday heat, rode straight up the hill to the hospital. Barry was not there. He had completed his morning rounds and departed homeward for his afternoon siesta. He was to be found at the green house, that one over there, with the mosquito mesh encircling the verandah. James was unable to look Dr George Washington Karageoghis in the eye.

  Disconsolate, he waited until five o’clock and then presented himself at the door of Barry’s residence. It was a house without eyes. The gardens were extraordinary: carefully tended green edges enclosing foaming colours. He recognised hibiscus and jasmine, wisteria and arum lilies, their white trumpets dusted with pollen, the carefully tended roses, cut well back since Christmas. There were flowering vines he could not identify, with trunks growing as thick as your thigh. An eerie precision characterised the doctor’s garden. James stood upon the steps, staring at a lizard frozen in mid-flight down the wall and an army of red ants marching in step away to their lair under the house. Like all the military buildings in the colony, the house was raised up on little brick fortifications above the corrupting earth. James stood irresolute, certain in the knowledge of what he should do, but incapable of passing from intention to act.

  Barry solved the problem by opening the frame door and appearing on the steps like the performing dwarf in the pantomime. He made a comic entrance, tiny, courteous and impeccably dressed, his collar stiffly white with golden pins.

  ‘Good evening to you, sir’ was all he said. And there he stood, calm, unwavering, rocking on his heels, with his hands clasped behind his back. James stared. The unbidden spectacle of this man mounting Charlotte rose into his head. He felt like Iago, a sexual psychopath whose mind revolved on nothing but obscenity. Barry waited patiently.