Chapter Thirteen 1896
Chapter Thirteen
Theo and Ralph spent Christmas and New Year at Hallewell House.
The weather was cold, though nothing compared to the previous winter.
By midday, the morning’s frost had thawed to drab green and brown.
A huge fir tree had been erected in the hallway, decorated with nuts and ribbons and gingerbread stars, and they sat down to Christmas lunch with the paying guests.
A large chunk of roast venison, endless potatoes, and plum pudding with custard.
Theo sat in polite silence while Ralph talked and Diana talked, and the guests all talked.
Stuck there for the duration, she felt fifteen again, longing to make her excuses and leave the table.
Rain kept them cooped up indoors for two days, then Ralph went back to Shaftesbury.
Theo stayed on without him, ostensibly for her mother’s sake, but really because, for the first time since her wedding, she wanted to stay.
She craved a little distance from Tout Hill House, from her husband, and the constant expectation of a new pregnancy.
Just a few days away, in order to go home refreshed. Galvanised for more.
She went walking, and let her mind wander.
It wandered, inevitably, to Missy’s skull.
Theo trusted Albert Mackie, and on his advice she had tried to forget what she’d seen at the hospital.
Mortuus Est. She’d tried to forget that her husband had cut off her best friend’s head, leaving her body to be buried without it.
But it was impossible. The hands that held hers, that roamed her body in the night, that thumped the table when she disobeyed him, had done that terrible thing.
Dr Mackie had made it perfectly clear that Ralph had done nothing wrong, as long as he’d had permission from Missy’s guardian.
But when she’d discovered his cupboard at the hospital, the way he’d rounded on her had been frightening.
The way he’d snapped, and ignored those questions it hadn’t suited him to answer.
He had not wanted her to know what he kept in there.
Then again, given how they had come to know one another, perhaps that was unsurprising.
Theo’s breath plumed as she squelched through drifts of rotten leaves. She walked right out of Hallewell to West End, and beyond; following the lane as it got narrower and muckier. The sky was the dirty white of an unwashed fleece.
Do you mean to imply that I botched her operation?
His words wouldn’t leave her alone. She hadn’t meant to imply any such thing, and yet he had leapt to that conclusion.
She was reminded of her disastrous appearance before the magistrate in Shaftesbury, when she’d been so horribly aware of the lie she was about to tell that she’d accidentally proclaimed it – the involuntary expression of a hidden truth: It isn’t a lie.
The magistrate had guessed her true meaning at once.
I wonder why you should feel the need to make that assertion?
So, was that what Ralph believed? Did he know he’d made a mistake during Missy’s operation?
The thought lodged inside her like an icicle.
But perhaps it was only his sense of guilt that Missy hadn’t survived, which he’d confessed to many times.
Everything was performed correctly this time, he had also said.
Which implied that there were times when it had not been.
Weary at last, Theo stood for a while by a field gate, beneath a dripping ash tree.
Her toes had gone numb. The field beyond the gate was ploughed and empty.
Nobody came past her, and no birds flew overhead.
She stared across the furrowed earth but saw no gulls, not even any rooks.
She had wanted to be by herself – and it was a relief.
She just hadn’t noticed, until then, how very alone she truly was.
On the way back, her feet took her to St Agnes’s. She knocked without really planning to, and asked to see Mrs Vine. The matron looked surprised and not especially pleased to see her.
‘Mrs Anscombe,’ she said flatly. ‘A happy new year to you.’
‘And to you,’ Theo said, without feeling.
‘Is there some problem? Trouble with Audrey, perhaps?’
‘Audrey is exemplary. Did you . . . Mrs Vine, did you sell Missy Cartwright’s body to Dr Anscombe for dissection?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, did you sell Missy’s—’
‘No! I most certainly did not.’
Theo stared at the matron, and knew that she was lying. The woman’s throat was bobbing like a frog’s.
‘I know that you did,’ she said. ‘He is my husband, after all. The only way he could have done it was with your permission. How much were you paid, Mrs Vine?’
‘Now, look here, I bade him treat her – cure her! And if he could not, then to . . . examine her, if he pleased, before she was laid to rest.’ Mrs Vine tried to sound righteous. ‘And so he waived the fee for her treatment. I was quite within my rights.’
‘Your rights? Shame on you, Mrs Vine! You never liked Missy!’
The matron almost smirked. ‘The advancement of medical science is a noble endeavour, Mrs Anscombe. I’d have thought you of all people would cleave to that. Why shouldn’t some good come of that girl’s sad end? Now, I must get on. I’ll bid you a good day.’
She held the door for Theo to leave, but wouldn’t look her in the eye.
Leaning close as she passed, Theo said: ‘He took her head, Mrs Vine. It remains at the hospital to this day. She was buried without her own head – may it haunt you!’
And had the satisfaction of seeing the woman’s face drain of blood as that sank in.
Theo knew Mrs Vine wouldn’t mention her visit to anyone, least of all to Ralph, and she knew she couldn’t confront him herself.
There was nothing to gain. He didn’t like her to mention Missy, or Kit, or the past. He liked her to be meek, and fragile, as she had been when they’d first met. He liked her to do as she was told.
Theo refused to join her mother and the guests for dinner, and didn’t trouble herself to give an excuse.
It felt good. She was no longer a child, and she no longer felt meek.
Lonely, yes. Powerless, most certainly; and beset by doubts.
But not meek. She asked for the fire to be lit in her father’s old study and sat in front of it with Audrey, only half listening as she read from The Island of Doctor Moreau.
The room, finally cleaned and stripped of all remnants of Seymour’s solitary existence, was ordinary again, even cosy.
Theo stared into the flames, and she thought.
She pictured Missy’s skull, in the few stunned seconds before Ralph had interrupted, and could recall it as clearly as if it were in her hands now.
Shock had fixed the memory: the whiteness of the bone; the blackness of the eyes.
She saw the label written on one side: Mortuus Est. She saw the circle of bone sawn neatly through the upper left part of the forehead.
Saw that disc of bone fall away when she disturbed the drawer.
But what Theo didn’t see was anything on that disc of bone.
No crack, no puncture, no signs of a break.
No visible injury whatsoever, to mark where Kit’s stone had struck.
The fracture to her skull was more severe than it had appeared, Ralph had said, in a conversation years before that she would also never forget.
From the safety of Hallewell House, she wrote a new letter to Dr Mackie.
Another gravely ill patient was rushed to the Westminster Memorial Hospital.
It was only a broken arm, belonging to a lad of eleven who’d fallen out of a tree; but his parents were poor and had tried to reset it themselves, though the bone was out through the skin.
When the wound went bad they bought a salve of primrose leaves from a wise woman.
The boy had developed septicaemia – Ralph described the angry red tendrils of infection creeping under the skin, up towards his shoulder, reaching for his heart.
Ralph had dosed him with arsenic, washed the wound with a copper solution, and amputated above the elbow.
Having lain insensible with fever for three days, the lad was now awake, sitting up, and learning to eat with one hand.
Despite this recovery, Ralph was morose.
‘Rank stupidity,’ he muttered, calling for wine though it was still early afternoon. ‘If the parents had brought him to me the day the bone broke, he’d be as fit and whole as ever at this moment.’
‘They didn’t know,’ Theo murmured.
‘They didn’t think,’ Ralph said. ‘Well, his disablement is upon their consciences now.’
‘You . . . you did not tell them so?’
‘Why not? People must learn.’
‘But they must surely have felt it already? And been very afraid?’
‘You think me cruel?’ He gave her a look. ‘You were not made to witness the child’s fear as his life ebbed away!’
‘But it did not ebb away – you saved him. Modern medicine saved him.’
‘“Modern medicine”? Modernity has an uphill battle against such ingrained, peasant ignorance. I could have saved the limb with ease; instead, I was forced to perform an act of butchery better suited to a barber-surgeon of two centuries ago.’
Hesitantly, Theo crossed to where Ralph was sitting and put her hand on his shoulder. He jerked away but then slumped, covering her hand with his. She sat down on the arm of his chair, and Ralph leaned against her.
‘The utter, dispiriting . . . mundanity of it,’ he murmured.
‘But the boy lives, and he will learn to do without the arm. You saved him, Ralph.’
Theo cradled his head, smoothing his hair. She hoped to stave off the dark mood that seemed bound to follow the outburst. It was confusing; Ralph was usually made jubilant by success, but sounded as though this success had not been of sufficient quality, or magnitude.