What Happen Then, Mr Bones?, page 22
‘Anne Green didn’t ever want to return to the hovel, to a man who could use his own hands to plant his seed there was so much dirt on them. She didn’t want to lie in childbed with the fever in her, slowly killing her from the cunt up.’
‘So what did she do then?’
‘She ran away with one of her cousin’s books.’
‘Only one?’
‘She only needed one. It was The Compleat Midwife.’
Ivo stretches and yawns. No doubt he thinks he has heard the worst — a young woman running off from her family to practise the dubious sorcery of midwifery. ‘I think I should be going,’ he says. ‘It’s dark enough. I don’t want the snow to get too thick.’
Valentina dresses and accompanies Ivo downstairs. By an unhappy coincidence, Charles Montague is at the door ready to knock when she opens it. Ivo hurries off into the darkness without speaking. Charles throws open the door and steps inside in an obvious rage. Before Valentina can calm him, he has rushed upstairs to the bedroom. He flings back the covers and runs his hands over the sheets. They are still warm. He straightens up, his face blanched, and then he catches sight of the wall. ‘What is that defacement?’
‘England. And a portion of the Holy Roman Empire, I believe.’
‘This is another man’s house. What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
‘It will come off.’
‘It will almost certainly leave a stain.’
Valentina feels like laughing. Charles is furious because of the sheets, yet he vents his fury on the walls. But it’s no use trying to wash the picture off now. If it doesn’t come away cleanly, self-righteousness will only inflame him further. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she says. ‘I’ll give you a glass of whisky.’
‘Oh? And will you have one too? Will you be getting drunk as well as …’
‘As well as what?’
He wouldn’t dare say — bites his tongue as she knew he would. The effort brings back a measure of self-control. She places her hand on the small of his back and propels him towards the door.
The sitting room exerts its usual effect. They are civilised men and women again, not animals, they each have two opposable thumbs. Charles grasps the glass manfully. Valentina is not naïve enough to suppose that his feelings will go away — tomorrow they will return magnified — still, she is glad for this small respite. She talks about this and that while he sits there as if in a trance. ‘It’s getting very late,’ she finally says.
‘Too late,’ he answers mournfully. ‘Much too late.’
‘I’d like to go to sleep now,’ Valentina concludes.
A shadow passes across Charles Montague’s face. In fact, there is no moving shadow here, there’s only the flickering light of the fire and a single candelabrum, but that’s what you say isn’t it, when the shudder in the viscera becomes visible. Charles stands up and slowly does up his thick cloak, then obediently follows her to the door. She has never seen him so docile. Three days later his first marriage proposal is hand-delivered by a servant. Valentina wonders what kind of self-inflicted torture has turned his sexual rage into this prim missive, and drops it straight into the fire. Then she forgets about him immediately. She is in love with another man, and the pain of any other cannot obtain lodging in her head. All the rooms are reserved for Ivo.
So, again the white bed, but the snow has melted outside the window, the white hellebore droops in the white vase, there’s a smell of decay coming from the water. The white walls still display a partial map of the world in red. It was ever like this: some things remain the same, other things measure the irresistibility of time with decay and complication. Ivo and Valentina snuggle like innocents till the sweat dries, then lie apart.
‘Surely Anne Green must have needed more than one textbook to practise midwifery?’ Ivo asks, as if he has been pondering the question in the interim.
‘Well, her cousin Valentine had no learned medical books of the kind found in the universities. Anyway, Anne wouldn’t have been able to read them — they would have been in Latin. So she took the only book that was relevant. But in her carry-bag when she starts work there’s opium, mandragora if she can get it, and henbane, as well as infusions and ointments from these as appropriate — all for the relief of pain. No obstetrical forceps of course. She knows of their existence, everyone talks about them, but hardly anyone has ever seen them. The grandson of the inventor hid them in a box when he attended deliveries, whipped them out straight under the sheet — a trade secret. And there’s a couple of herbal remedies, one alleged to stop haemorrhaging, the other to hasten the expulsion of the afterbirth.’
‘So that is what you did?’ Ivo clarifies. ‘Went round helping women to have babies?’
‘Yes, but only for a little while. Then I went round helping them not to have babies.’
‘But that’s terrible! You gave women poisons to stop the babies being made …’
‘No,’ Valentina interrupts him firmly. ‘The babies were already made. But still very small. I gave the women medicines to make the babies die.’
Is there any real point trying to find words to describe his reaction? He’s standing naked outside the bed and yelling hysterically in his gravel language — it’s like having gravel flung at you too, hurts like flung gravel. He goes over to the wall and snatches up the rouge and draws an enormous St Peter’s opposite a now undersized Westminster Abbey and starts hammering at it with his fist. Valentina is certain she’s being told about the iniquity of abortifacients — well, she’d told him she had gone on a crime spree, did he think she’d been robbing graves? Actually, it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea robbing graves for an income. You could sell the bodies to the anatomists at quite a worthwhile rate.
‘Most of these woman had already had a narrow escape,’ Valentina explains. ‘They’d had fevers and haemorrhages and worse, or they already had so many children they couldn’t feed them.’
Ivo carries on shouting and waving his arms, but your mind wanders when you can’t understand what’s being said. Valentina looks at the wall. How did these churches get to be watching us in our bedroom, she wonders. We drew them, yes, but why did we choose these buildings to mark out our places, these great forbidding edifices with their endless Thou shalt not. What if we rubbed them out? Wouldn’t they still be there nevertheless, ghost-like, and just as controlling in their subtlety?
‘Come back to bed,’ Valentina says with a loud sigh. ‘Everyone agrees with you. And you can be certain that I was punished.’
Ivo quietens down but does not come back to the bed, even though the room is freezing. He sits down in the armchair where Valentina usually sleeps and pulls over himself the thick blanket that she has folded across the arm.
‘How were you punished?’ he asks.
‘Will you forgive me if my punishment was harsh enough?’
‘It’s not up to me to forgive you.’
‘Why are you bothering to shout at me then? Don’t you think your God can accomplish His vilifications on His own?’
‘He’s your God too,’ Ivo replies sourly.
‘I just don’t understand why mankind always feels so compelled to help out the omnipotent,’ Valentina returns.
Ivo makes no reply to this, and Valentina says, ‘I will tell you everything. What I did and how I was caught. How I was punished and how I died. But only if you are not going to shout at me every step of the way. And only if you stay in the bed. You can hate me, but let’s at least be warm. And later, let’s scrub those churches off the walls. They have caused more trouble than all the paltry sins of mankind put together.’
Valentina climbs the stairs to the room where she sleeps and sits down at the small table in front of the window that looks out onto the snow-covered garden. Today she will begin to write her Life — or perhaps that should be her Death, since that is where everything begins and back to which the whole sorry tale will be heading. She sits and chews the end of her quill. Everything can be revised. She didn’t used to think so, but when you have endured what she has, what other conclusion can you come to? Even death might be nothing but a prelude to the continuance of your mundane life.
Yes, the priest who attends her final death will be surprised to read that! To make sure he does, she has obtained a large leather book which she will leave on the table where he might temporarily place his Bible after the last rites. When he turns to pick up his Bible on leaving, his eye will fall on this beautiful cover. He will open it and skim the first page. If there are no relations to intervene, he will most certainly take the remainder home. All night long he will toss and turn: he didn’t know about this miracle, and now it’s his duty to make it public.
But how uneasy he is. The miracle is immoral, unrepentant and, worse, she says there’s nobody out the back of the church. Where can she mean? The sacristy, presumably — best bury the horrible stuff at the bottom of the blanket box. It doesn’t matter. Years later the story will resurface. His brother’s son’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter, sick to death of children and husbands, will take great delight in spreading it far and wide: look how this woman carried on, what a hoot!
Now Valentina loses herself in contemplation of the future effects of her Life. Well, it’s not written yet, she eventually chastens herself. Nearly all inexperienced writers flare too easily into impassioned admiration of their own completed text; indeed, many old hands share the same fault. But now that she has imagined the priest who will read her the last rites, it’s difficult for her not to feel mischievous. There are many kinds of priests in this world — some dry and humourless, some gorbellied and garrulous. Valentina’s is an intelligent man skewered on doubt: he might even say intelligence is the bad habit of never being sure. This priest also has a fine sense of irony which he has tried to communicate to his flock, but all sheep are resolutely un-ironic.
Valentina has had the last rites read to her before, of course. The dusty priest stood there intoning them while she tried to get control of her fear. Yes, she was afraid the first time she died, although that rather understates the case. Well, this is it, she thought. Will I be able to observe the snuffing out of the light? Will I be able to say now? She recalls that the whole time it was happening — it’s an extended process in a situation like hers, no matter how instantaneous the observers say it is — she kept waiting for that now, waiting to say it. How could there be life after death if she couldn’t acknowledge the exact instant when she passed from one to the other? Her second priest understands the problem, of course — he’s an educated man. The first, well, he just stood there reading as the deaths rolled past him. He could have been standing there without food or drink for centuries: if someone had pushed him he probably would have crumbled away himself.
Valentina looks up. It’s getting dark outside — how time has fled. She has written nothing and the end of her quill is ruined. Never mind, in the morning she will make a more resolute attempt at Life. Right now there is life without a capital knocking discreetly at the front door. Valentina goes downstairs and lets Ivo in. He takes her in his arms immediately and covers her with passionate kisses. She would like to lead him straight up the stairs, but first there must be coffee and conversation in front of the fire — she is scared of shocking him with her enthusiasm and audacity. In front of the fire their eyes will work the magic: his will seek hers, she will drop hers demurely to her lap, the animal in him will sense an easy kill and discover itself to be strong and masculine.
Valentina leads Ivo to the sitting room and leaves to make the coffee. When she returns the fire is roaring with extra logs, and Ivo is stretched out on the chaise as if he owns the place. She serves the drinks and sits on a chair a modest way off. Ivo begins to talk about his homeland and his family.
‘My father was a poet, of course,’ he announces.
‘Why do you say of course?’
‘In a land ruled by poets, who would choose to be anything else?’
‘But surely there must be some criterion. I mean, can you be a poet simply by self-proclamation?’
‘He wrote a few poems in his early years.’
‘Were they good?’
‘That is beside the point.’
‘So your rulers are only would-be poets?’
‘Some of them are excellent. As good as any of yours.’
‘Well, why do they let the bad poets rule?’ Valentina persists.
‘Why not? Statesmen everywhere are of variable quality, and they vary not just in their irrelevant capabilities, but in the skill most salient to the job — statesmanship.’ Ivo sips his coffee authoritatively.
‘Is the writing of good poetry an irrelevant capability?’
‘Not in my republic. Everyone prefers an excellent poet to a poor one, but there just aren’t enough of them for the job. Still, at least the worst are restrained by the system of rotation.’
‘You rotate poets?’
‘Certainly. A poet whether bad or good rules only for a fixed time, and a short time at that — the poets change monthly.’
‘Monthly — but that must be chaos.’
‘No, there’s no chaos. All are committed to the same objectives, all must have demonstrated a willingness to denounce injustice and defend liberty in their verse.’
‘Ha — it’s very easy to pretend in a poem.’
‘Less easy when the poet has to live out his poetry in public.’
Valentina contemplates this statement while drinking her own coffee and staring at the raging fire. ‘But what will happen when the Goths and Huns come?’ she asks provocatively. ‘They’ll find a rotating poet spouting on about injustice and the defence of freedom, and they’ll simply overrun the place with their clubs and maces.’
‘Our republic has already successfully defended itself against the Muslims, Turks, Venetians and who knows what else,’ Ivo answers with disdain. ‘And also it has defeated its enemies within. You forget the most important skill of poets …’
‘Subtle persuasion?’ Valentina offers.
‘No, playing one side off against the other.’
‘I’ve never heard that described as the most important skill of poets.’
‘That is because you come from a place ruled by kings. Kings don’t seem to be much good at it. There is always mayhem in a country ruled by a king.’
Valentina wants to fly to her country’s defence but the truth is there hasn’t been anything but mayhem for years.
‘Poets choose their words more carefully than kings,’ Ivo begins to lecture her. ‘They are aware of the surface meaning of a word and also its resounding depths. The best are highly skilled in deception and use the surface to hide the depths. Poets easily have people believing things that they wouldn’t if only they could get to the bottom of things.’
‘Is that so?’ Valentina asks a little coolly.
Ivo nods. ‘The poet-rulers deflect the cunning of the state’s enemies onto the state’s other enemies. Then the enemies kill each other off while the poets continue to orate splendidly in the public squares.’
‘Very pretty. I’m sure it’s not true.’
‘It is,’ Ivo assures her.
‘And how is it you know so much about poetry?’ Valentina presses.
‘In a land ruled by poets, everyone studies poetical method.’
‘Everyone except the state’s enemies?’
‘They are too bent on murder and pillage to learn the lessons.’
‘Ridiculous. Does a child know he is going to be the state’s enemy when he grows up?’
‘If he doesn’t learn his poetical method, he can be nothing else,’ Ivo says. ‘He will grow up without the skills to rule, but if he still has the desire to rule he will have to try to rule in opposition to the state. But the state is more skilled and therefore more powerful … you see, it’s very simple.’
Valentina laughs. ‘I think the state is just more powerful.’
‘But we have no army, no navy. We have only our voices to throw the enemy into disarray. We throw our words at them like boulders, and they flee in all directions. They cannot bear to hear the words liberty, justice.’
‘If I were them, I’d steal the poets’ words,’ Valentina says. ‘What would happen then?’
‘Then that would be the end of us. But the poets know this must be prevented, that when the sciolists and scobberlotchers go round proclaiming the poets’ words they will no longer have any meaning. They will not be the words that hold a republic together, they will be the words that tear it apart.’
Valentina smiles. The foreigner is so grave and emphatic, so unlike the young doctors, all of whom are frivolous, to say the very least.
‘Shall we go upstairs now?’ Ivo asks.
Valentina nods but she is less eager than when he first arrived. Discussions such as that above are very effective anaphrodisiacs.
2
The medical students fill their off-duty time with fencing and fine dining, not to mention shopping trips to obtain expensive delicacies and fashionable clothing. This is what all young men do for pleasure these days. Even the King will eventually complain to Parliament about the extravagance, although other social commentators will archly note that the young are only copying him. John Evelyn has recorded scathingly that he has seen a man walking through Westminster Hall wearing as much ribbon as would set up twenty country peddlers or plunder six shops, that he looked like a Tom-a-Bedlam cap or a maypole. This is hard to square with the vision of a certain Mr Thomas Hobbes, viz that the life of a man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, but of course this may be only another occurrence of a miserable philosopher among the happy pigs.
Valentina has not read his newly published Leviathan, nor will she, and so she will remain for ever ignorant of whether Hobbes’s ultimate truth — for this is what it is, in spite of all the ribbon — occurs in this particular tome or in another. Leviathan will go on to become hugely expensive for those who do wish to illuminate the darkness. Samuel Pepys will pay three times the publisher’s price for a second-hand copy in 1668. He might even read it, and then he will be one of the few to know that Hobbes’s famous epithet is in fact an if/then statement, applicable only if man lives in a state of war with other men. Eleven years after Pepys’s rash purchase, all copies remaining in Oxford will be publicly burned and everyone can go round misquoting Hobbes, saying that the life of every man is nasty, brutal and short — no matter what.
