The Passionate Witch, page 13
Despite his blinding, face-down position in that bed, the cruel throbbing of his bottom, he faced a fact, a terrible, staring fact. Jennifer. She was in the old mare. That was why her curse still held. Knowing her as he did, Mr Wooly could easily surmise how it had come about. Unstaked, covered with Christian earth, with only run-of-the-mill, orthodox spells said over her by the Reverend Fergus Peyton, she had torn herself free of her somewhat bunged-up corpse and then with all the fury and the stubborn malevolence of her nature had aimed herself straight at the Wooly residence or rather at a habitation within the corporeal envelope of, say — yes, of course — of Hortense, the upstairs maid, who would be in such an excellent position relative to Mr Wooly for the convenience of further devilish plans. Evidently Jennifer had missed her aim: doubtless because Hortense was at just that time too occupied by Officer Connolly, and her mind, too, by thoughts of him. So Jennifer had caromed off the upstairs maid into the pocket provided by the stupid and empty-minded old horse. And there she was! There must have been a time while Jennifer was struggling out of that inadequate Christian trap in the Cloudy Lawn Cemetery that her curse on him had subsided. But now with her proximity in the stables, it was back at work in full force. That he so well and clearly understood all this did not, however, help Mr Wooly to be resigned to his fate. He was a deeply troubled widower, Mr Wooly.
Not before the first pale fingers of the dawn, as the old tales have it (without ever specifying how many fingers the dawn might have), did Mr Wooly achieve the blessed state of slumber, and then it was not blessed, but loud and confused with galloping nightmares.
Chapter 15
The Flapping Woo-boos and Their Cure
Every worthwhile skill in this world must be learned by many attempts and maintained by constant practice, even though the learner be vibrant with natural talent. This is particularly so of the skill or skills necessary for the endurance of hang-overs. The timorous, the mediocre, who for the first time is shaken by an acheful pulsation, who for the first time meditates with haggard visage a pit of despair which before his excessive sinning was merely the pit of his stomach, who feels for the first time that It, faceless, imponderable, but enormously threatening, lurks just south of his shoulder blades, while in ambush around the nearest corner, be it of his bedroom door or of a thoroughfare, lies some such anonymous Disaster as a personified revelation of the essential, ugly horror of this thing we call life — such a tyro, stranger to perseverance, to brilliance, is likely to refuse the bargain right there and at once and never again try the pleasure, the personal enhancement of the lilting tilt. He may not be a complete dullard. He may be able to understand that here on this earth you get nothing for nothing; he may merely object that what came after was in his opinion too great a price for what he got the night before. Success, in a word, is not for him.
To succeed in the endurance of hang-overs one must try and try again. The first fact about a hang-over is the worst. There is no cure for it. It must be gone through. The speeding train may dislike and dread the tunnel, but if there be a tunnel ahead, then eventually the train must go into it, for a certain measure of time maintain itself in the dreary dark and the unnatural air before it again achieves the sun. In sober truth there is no cure, finally no avoidance, of the earned hang-over; this is a law, but there is always the possibility of postponement.
A first-day hang-over, treated at birth with ‘some of the same’, evaporates, or seems to, giving place often, especially with determined and skillful persons, to a condition even better than that of the previous night. The second morning, however, brings the second-day hangover. One might guess that this would be twice as bad as a first-day hang-over. One would be in error. The second is about twenty per cent worse than the first-day sort. Again a postponement may be effected, and even a fourth, fifth or sixth postponement, but all the time the bill is rising, slowly, of course, but rising, until it can be expressed only in the largest denominations. Beginning with the brown whimpers, it mounts step by step, from the huddle and mutters to the whips and jingles to the flapping woo-hoos, and worse and worse, until is reached a nameless hang-over that is variously described, sometime as a state of — but never mind; let us not think of it!
The best way with a hang-over, as with a maid, is to meet it fairly and frankly and take it. Its life is brief: it rises and dies with the day; dusk is its shroud. Lay it down. Let tomorrow’s hang-over be a new one. The pusillanimous, the niggardly, the irrational, object that then all one’s days march under the shadow and the woe of hang-overs. But how bright the night’s thereof!
Our Mr Wooly, innocent, without the slightest education in such things, awoke with his first hang-over. If it could have been separated from him and exhibited in a cage in some children’s zoo it would have spoiled the lives of all his little visitors, making bigots of them, persuading them in a way never to be forgotten that liquor was poison and Bacchus the devil himself.
Fortunately for the tots, unfortunately for poor Mr Wooly, it could not be separated from him. . . . He had awakened by degrees. While the ache in his bottom was a grievous one, so was the ache in his head. His head seemed unusually large also. He did not know where it stopped, really. Lying there staring into darkness, he did not know which ache was his head. Here was a problem to be approached coolly, to be solved by deliberate and careful thought. No time for panic, Mr Wooly said to himself. No. He winked his eyes, willed this act, and the lids obeyed. But where were his lids? It was a unique but terrible situation in which to find oneself — this inability to tell his head from his — his other ache. He devoutedly hoped that they had not during the night changed their places. If that had happened what would he do? Mr Wooly had not been wholly deprived of an imagination, and the spectacle he thought up to represent himself terrified him. Where would he wear his hat? He moaned slightly. He could have discovered the straight of himself at once by testing the joints of his arms, which seemed located somewhere about midway between his aches. These were not, after all, universal joints, unless they, too, had changed during the night, so by bending them he might find some clue as to their true location as well as the relation of other parts of him to them. But he did not want to move his arms. He was afraid they would fall off.
Mr Wooly felt fragile. He felt fried on both sides. His feeble brain gave up the jigsaw puzzle he seemed to have become, dismissed it as beyond its effort. He dozed, motionless, and thought his mouth was the subway at Forty-second Street. Downtown trains roared along his left molars, uptown along his right; when they struck his bridgework they thundered over, heedless of their danger. He dreamed that he awakened, dreamed that he opened his eyes to look up at himself in the mirror that roofed his enormous bed. At once he closed his eyes again, for what he dreamed he saw up there was an alligator, stark naked. Then he did wake up and discovered the darkness surrounding him was not the night but the pillow. He twisted and looked; daylight stabbed one eyeball as he peeled it. He knew at once where his head was; it was behind that eyeball. And south of his head, all in proper sequence, yet all in disorder, lay his hot throat, his heaving bosom and that wide consternation which was his middle. He moaned.
In a second there was Bentley, saying, “Shall I bring you some nice breakfast, sir?”
“No, no, no,” groaned Mr Wooly. “Don’t mention such a thing. Never mention it to me again. As long as I live — which won’t be long. Something awful has happened to me, Bentley. I am poisoned from head to foot. Bring a doctor, for mercy’s sake, a doctor.” His voice sank to a whisper. He heard the mumble and mutter of Bentley’s scattered, ignoble thoughts: “ ’Ow he takes on. Poison, me eye. Not what you were a-drinking of, Mr Wooly, not my Irish whisky isn’t poison!” Aloud he said: “Doctor Mannix is ’ere, sir. ’E’s in the drawing room, sir.” And off went Bentley to be succeeded in a minute or two by Dr Mannix.
Dr Mannix said: “Good morning!”
Mr Wooly groaned. A long, desolate groan.
Dr Mannix sat down, pressed the bridge of his thick spectacles with his forefinger. He began to think, and what he thought was at once communicated to Mr Wooly’s aching head.
“What a hang-over,” thought Dr Mannix without a trace of sympathy in his mental tone. “Wonder what a hang-over feels like when you’ve put off having one all your life the way he has. Maybe it will teach him a little humility — horrid, strutting little prig that he’s been all these years. God, doesn’t he look awful? Makes my optic nerve throb just to think of his! Wonder what his motor nerve feels like; bet his stomach’s full of butterflies and an electric fan to keep ’em moving against his tripes! My, my — what a human man will do to give himself permission to go have a bust. But it took this little fathead to invent a witchwife persecuting him with old medieval curses. What an ignoble, shameful, stinking little mess his mind must be to cook up such a self-delusion as that!”
“Not delusion — objective fact,” groaned Mr Wooly. He couldn’t help interrupting. He had had very close to enough of that soliloquy. He said as much, groaning and grasping between the words: “I never did like soliloquies, not even Shakespeare’s. Couldn’t ever believe in them; always wanted to throw something at the confounded nuisance standing up there talking to himself. Now you come in here, and I have to listen to your conceited babble!”
“I haven’t said a word, Mr Wooly,” said Dr Mannix with cold dignity. “I have just been sitting here thinking.”
“And I have to listen in, don’t I?”
“Nonsense!”
“Wish it were,” moaned poor Mr Wooly. “You thought butterflies in my stomach. Right? Well, I’ll tell you they don’t feel like butterflies; they feel like bats. I’ve got bats in my belly. That’s what! Not butterflies. And all that about self-delusion!” He paused.
Dr Mannix, aloof, tight-lipped, waited, his thoughts beginning at once: “Good guesswork, but not difficult. How he clings to his delusion! There you are, you souse! T. Wallace Wooly! Wonder what the T. stands for? Teetotaler? Tub thumper? Tosh?”
Mr Wooly spoke. “Ten-Eyck,” he said.
“Ten-Eyck?” echoed the medical man. “What’s that?”
“What the T. stands for,” said Mr Wooly. “My first name. Very old New York name.”
Now at last the scientific mind of Dr Mannix had been given pause. He had been wondering what the T. stood for. Maybe he had unconsciously said it aloud?
“Your mouth was closed,” Mr Wooly told him, more awake than he had been and, while still as sick as ever, able to take a bit of malicious satisfaction out of this.
“It is impossible,” Dr Mannix said, “and therefore it isn’t true.”
“Think of a number,” sneered Mr Wooly. “Put your hand over your mouth, turn your back.”
Dr Mannix did so.
“Seven,” said Mr Wooly, and then: “Seven hundred and sixty-nine million, 372 thousand, 627. How’s that? Guesswork?”
Dr Mannix turned to face him again. He found his handkerchief and used it on his wrinkled brow. He polished his glasses. Mr Wooly heard his consternated thinking, ragged thoughts running around in disorder, piling on top of each other. Mr Wooly said: “I’m listening in, you know. I’m telling you nothing cuts me off, disconnects me, but ardent spirits — in sufficient quantities.” His stomach shook at this overt mention of last night’s invader, and Mr Wooly, his waxen cheeks blushing a clear green, swallowed, swallowed again, gasped and was, so to speak, still there at the helm.
Dr Mannix faced an ugly decision. If he gave in, if he believed in this unnatural horror, he would never be the same, nor would his world; the foundations of the latter were crumbling and sliding under his feet.
Here a light knock on the door, which was then opened by the upstairs maid, Hortense, a small brunette in uniform. Should she straighten up the room now or later?
Dr Mannix, squinting, examined her. His thought came clearly to Mr Wooly: “Nice mammaries; slight glandular fullness in the neck, but how white and soft; like to put my nose under ear. . . . Wonder what her . . .”
Mr Wooly, revolted, wanting to hear no more, defended himself with song: “Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? The rockets’ red glare . . .” While he sang he waved Hortense away. She only stared. He paused to shout, “Go away.” She went suddenly. Mr Wooly subsided.
“Nice what?” asked Mr Wooly of Dr Mannix. “What about her ear? You wonder what her what is? You lecherous, foul-minded old” — he searched for a word to blow the man down — “old mud-turtle neck.”
Dr Mannix looked wounded, but he also looked downright embarrassed. “Get out of my mind,” he yelled suddenly, “and stay out!”
“I know too much about your mind already,” Mr Wooly said. “I don’t want to be in the dirty place. I want to get out of it.”
“How much do you know about it?”
“I said too much. You’re a loose thinker, Doctor,” he said, knowing that Dr Mannix would suspect from these words that he, Mr Wooly, had listened in on his inmost secrets. The nature of these, as yet really veiled from Mr Wooly, was, nevertheless, suggested by the horrified expression on Dr Mannix’ face. “Doctor,” Mr Wooly said, ruthlessly pressing his advantage home, “I want a long cold glass of what you’d prescribe for yourself if you felt as I do. And I want it now!”
Dr Mannix got up, breathing hard, trembling.
“At once, Mr Wooly,” he said.
He went away. In five minutes Bentley tiptoed in, accompanied by a sound as of silver tambourines and xylophones. . . . These and the sounds of his breathing and his incoherent thoughts drew near, departed, while Mr Wooly kept his eyes closed in a pretense of sleep, for he wanted no more of either God’s daylight or of converse with his fellow man.
He opened one eye. Bottles, glasses, ice. He closed his eye again. It came over him in a wave of panic that it was beyond his ability even to touch any of it, let alone get it down inside himself. But, he argued, he must be brave; he must somehow prove his self-control. Had this not been his aspiration all these years — to do the right thing, even though difficult, even though seemingly impossible? Was he, T. Wallace Wooly, to quail before an ordeal, any ordeal, even this one — if it were for his own good? With this great and noble thought he opened his eye again; with rigid arm forced to obedience by his inexorable will power he extended a trembling hand until it grasped the one tall glass Dr Mannix had himself prepared. It was very cold, and that sensation Mr Wooly found was not disagreeable. His hand, the arm from which it grew transported the tall cold glass nearer to Mr Wooly’s burning lips. Nearer still. With closed eyes he sipped.
Now Dr Mannix had taken Mr Wooly at his word, and he had poured into the tall glass an inch and one half of brandy (Bentley’s); into this he had added ‘t.f.’, as the prescriptions say, meaning ‘to fill’, chilled champagne (Bentley’s), very dry. Nothing else; no bits of salad, no garbage peels — nothing. Poor Mr Wooly’s fevered lips and throat, expecting the harsh outrage of straight whisky — so little did he know! — were pleasantly — nay, rapturously — surprised; and it was not long before all the glass was gone and he was preparing himself another and similar dose, following the penciled prescription thoughtfully laid upon the tray by the doctor. Before he had swallowed more than two swallows from this second, his mind, like a satisfied octopus, withdrew its tentacles, curling them under itself as a kitten its paws; his mind rested, satisfied with its own cave, ignorant of other caves and thankful for this solitude, this ignorance.
Dr Mannix stuck his head in the door.
“Come in,” cried Mr Wooly, “come in, my old friend.” And he added: “It’s gone. It’s cured. I’m myself again. Come sit here, and perhaps you’ll forgive me if I err in this — I know nothing about such things — perhaps you will yourself partake of some of your remarkably effective, therapeutic, stimulating prescription.”
“You do not err,” said Dr Mannix. And when he had partaken he thought what a splendid chap this Mr Wooly was, indeed, that is, with a couple of drinks in him. Born sober, born six drinks short, poor old chap, thought the doctor, and this thought which might not have bothered Mr Wooly, after all, was not communicated to Mr Wooly. His mind was at sea, pleasantly at sea, and the shores were nowhere in sight.
And now, having cured the one, Dr Mannix turned his attention to that other ache, removing coverlet, blanket and sheet.
“Remarkable,” he exclaimed almost reverently.
“What is?” asked Mr Wooly, who lay, of course, face down.
“Symmetrical,” cried Dr Mannix. “The old girl can aim; one hoof there and one hoof there. Perfect distribution. And what color. I would like to take a Kodachrome of this, Mr Wooly. It’s the most beautiful and the biggest bruise I have ever seen in all my professional experience.”
“How about your unprofessional experience?” Mr Wooly asked him.
Dr Mannix was too busy to reply.
Here the maid again entered, her soft knock having been disregarded. Hearing the door close, Mr Wooly asked with some modest apprehension: “Is that Hortense?”
Dr Mannix twisted his neck to look at her where she stood deftly rearranging things on the dresser top. “Seems quite relaxed,” Dr Mannix said and added as he poulticed and bandaged with surgeon’s gauze, “But what language, Mr Wooly. Heh, heh.”
