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May shrugged.
Martie nibbled the edge of her thumb. ‘Do you think maybe they won’t cover something … self-inflicted?’
‘It’s not like he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge,’ said May.
‘But if he took it—’
‘Shut up! We don’t know what he took or what he thought it was. Get off his case!’
There was a long silence. ‘I care about Laz as much as you do,’ said Martie. ‘Probably more.’
‘Fine,’ said May, her voice tired.
Martie got up and walked off. She dawdled by the vending machines, and came back with something called Glucozip.
A girl had come into the waiting area, arm in arm with her mother. The girl had a deformed face, something red and terrible bulging between her huge lips. Martie looked away at once.
May whispered, ‘I didn’t think that was possible.’
‘Don’t stare,’ said Martie, mortified.
‘She’s put a pool ball in her mouth! I tried it once, but no way.’
Martie looked over her shoulder. So that’s what it was. ‘You tried to do that?’ she repeated, turning on her elder sister. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘I was thirteen or so; I don’t know. It was a dare.’
‘That’s not a reason!’
Her sister shrugged.
Martie sneaked another look at the girl with the ball in her mouth. The mother was scolding loudly. ‘Where’s your so-called friends now, then?’ The girl twisted her head, made a small moan in her throat.
Martie turned away again and offered her sister some Glucozip. ‘You should, even if you don’t feel thirsty,’ she urged her. ‘We’re probably dehydrated. Unless we’re in shock, in which case they say you shouldn’t drink anything, in case they have to operate.’
May stared at her sister.
‘Are your extremities cold?’ Martie persisted.
‘What do you know?’ said May, harsh.
The younger sister looked away, took another drink. Her throat moved violently as she swallowed.
‘One crappy First Aid for Beginners course, and suddenly you’re an expert?’
Martie took a breath, paused, then spoke after all. ‘I know more than you.’
‘Like what? Like what do you know?’
She spoke rapidly. ‘For instance, if someone’s got no pulse and he’s not breathing, he’s dead. Technically.’
‘He fucking isn’t!’
‘Technically he is. That’s the definition of death,’ Martie told her sister shakily. ‘It’s not brain death but it’s technically death, until they get the heart started again.’
‘It’s you who’s brain-dead,’ growled May.
‘I just—’
‘I don’t want to hear it!’
Silence. Martie, eyes shining, read the back of her can.
‘They’ve probably infibrillated him,’ May told her, ‘and now they’re just letting him rest.’
‘I think you mean defibrillate.’
‘I don’t think so,’ snapped May. ‘And also, they’ve got chemicals they can use. There was that scene in
Pulp Fiction,
when Uma Thurman snorts heroin by mistake, and they stick an adrenaline needle in her heart.’
‘I can’t stand that kind of movie,’ said Martie. ‘They’re totally unreal.’
‘No, they’re too real,’ her sister told her, ‘that’s what you can’t stand.’ She let out a long breath. ‘When are they going to tell us something?’ she said, leaping to her feet. ‘I mean, Jesus!’
‘Could you keep your voice down?’ whispered Martie. ‘Everybody’s staring.’
‘So?’ roared May. ‘I mean, what the fuck does that mean?’ – throwing out her arm at the sign that said UNNECESSARY NOISE PROHIBITED. ‘What the hell is unnecessary noise? If I make a noise, it’s because I need to.’
‘You don’t need to shout.’
‘Yes I do!’
Martie seized her elder sister by the hand and pulled her back into her seat. May went limp. Her head hung down. The people who had been watching looked away again.
‘Do you think,’ Martie asked May half an hour later, ‘I know this probably sounds really stupid, but do you think it’s any use, do you think it’s any help to people, if you’re the re?’
‘Where?’ asked May, eyes vacant, taking a sip of Glucozip.
‘Near them. Thinking about them.’
‘Like, faith healing?’
Martie’s mouth twisted. ‘Not necessarily. I just mean, is it doing Laz any good that we’re here?’
‘I think maybe we’re irrelevant,’ said May, without bitterness. ‘He never liked either of us that much in the first place.’
‘You don’t have to like your family,’ said Martie uncertainly.
‘Just as well,’ said May under her breath. ‘Just as well.’
‘Laurence Coleman? Laurence Coleman?’
They both registered the words at last and jerked in their seats. ‘He’s not here,’ said Martie confusedly to the man in the white coat, whose small badge said DR P.J. HASSID. ‘They took him in there,’ pointing vaguely.
‘If you would come this way—’
They both scurried after Dr Hassid. May plucked at the doctor’s sleeve. ‘Is he alive?’ she asked, and burst into tears.
Martie stared at her elder sister, who had tears dripping from her chin. One of them landed on the scuffed floor of the corridor.
‘Just about,’ said Dr Hassid, not stopping. There were dark bags under his eyes.
Laz, lying in a cubicle, didn’t look alive. He was stretched out on his back like a specimen of an alien, with tubes up his nose, machines barricading. May wailed. Martie took hold of her elbow.
‘Laurence will get through this,’ said Dr Hassid, fiddling with a valve.
‘Laz,’ May sobbed the word. ‘He’s called Laz.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Martie.
But Dr Hassid was amending the clipboard that hung at the end of the bed. ‘L-A-S?’
‘Zee,’ gulped May.
‘L-A-Z, very good. It’s better to use the familiar name. Laz?’ the doctor said, louder, bending over the boy. ‘Will you wake up now?’
One eyelid quivered. Then both. The boy blinked at his sisters.
‘Touchy Subjects’ was first published as a self-contained chapter in
Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel,
devised and edited by Dermot Bolger (Dublin: New Island, and London: Macmillan; San Diego and New York: Harcourt, 1999).
‘Expecting’ was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1996, and first published in
You Magazine/Mail On Sunday,
8 October 2000.
‘Oops’ was first published in a shorter form in
Sunday Express
(Summer 2000).
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ is adapted from a short radio play, part of my
Humans and Other Animals
series (2003), produced by Tanya Nash for BBC Radio 4.
‘The Cost of Things’ was first published in
The Diva Book of Short Stories,
edited by Helen Sandler (London: Diva Books, 2000), and then adapted into a short radio play as part of my
Humans and Other Animals
series (2003), produced by Tanya Nash for BBC Radio 4.
‘Pluck’ was first published in
The Dublin Review
(Autumn 2002); before publication, I adapted it into a ten-minute film of the same name, directed by Neasa Hardiman and produced by Vanessa Finlow (Language, 2001).
‘Good Deed’ was first published in
Rush Hour,
edited by Michael Cart (Volume 1, 2004).
‘The Sanctuary of Hands’ was first published in
Telling Moments,
edited by Lynda Hall (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).
‘Team Men’ was first published in
One Hot Second: Stories of Desire,
edited by Cathy Young (New York: Knopf, 2002).
‘Speaking in Tongues’ was first published in
The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica,
edited by Rose Collis (London: Constable/Robinson; New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000).
‘The Welcome’ was first published in
Love and Sex: Ten Stories of Truth,
edited by Michael Cart (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
‘Enchantment’ was first published in
Magic,
edited by Sarah Brown and Gil McNeil (London: Bloomsbury, 2002).
‘Necessary Noise’ was first published in
Necessary Noise,
edited by Michael Cart (New York: Joanna Cotler Books, 2003).
I’d like to record my gratitude to Sinéad McBrearty for providing all the soccer knowledge for ‘Team Men’, to Dermot Bolger for editing ‘Touchy Subjects’, to Tanya Nash for her work on the radio version of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ and to Vanessa Finlow and Neasa Hardiman for their work on the film version of ‘Pluck’.
For inspiring these stories, on the other hand, I want to thank Maria Walsh for ‘Speaking in Tongues’; Helen Stanton for ‘Oops’; Sharon Switzer and Claire Sykes for taking me on the trip to LA that lies behind ‘Baggage’; Helen Donoghue for the one in Belgium that led to ‘The Sanctuary of Hands’ (and also Catherine Dhavernas for her conference on The Hand which was the story’s occasion); Denis Donoghue for proposing I take a fresh look at Martha, Mary, and Lazarus in ‘Necessary Noise’; all my former housemates at Paradise Housing Co-operative in Cambridge for ‘The Welcome’; Wen Adams and Nairne Holtz for ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’; and Emma our late great cat for ‘The Cost of Things’.
Novels
Stir-Fry
Hood
Slammerkin
Life Mask
Landing
The Sealed Letter
Room
Short Story Collections
Kissing the Witch
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits
Touchy Subjects
Copyright © 2006 by Emma Donoghue.
All rights reserved.
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published in Great Britain in 2006 by Virago Press This Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2011
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-1-44340-746-5
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ePub Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 978-1-443-40747-2
For my seven far-flung siblings
(Dave, Helen, Hugh, Celia,
Mark, Barbara, Stella),
with love always.
Tell us underneath what skies,
Upon what coasts of earth we have been cast;
We wander, ignorant of men and places,
And driven by the wind and the vast waves.
Virgil,
The Aeneid,
translated by Allen Mandelbaum (1971)
LONDON
1882
O
ff your tuck this morning, aren’t you? That’s not like you. It’s the chill, perhaps. These March winds come straight from the Urals, up the Thames, or so they say. No, that’s not your favorite Horse Guards playing, can’t fool you; you never like it when they change the band. Fancy a bun? You’ll feel the better for a good breakfast. Come along, have a couple of buns…. Please yourself, then.
Maybe later, after your bath.
I had some unpleasantness with the superintendent this morning. Yes, over you, my boy, need you ask? He’s applied to the trustees for permission to buy a gun.
Calm down, no one’s going to shoot you, or my name’s not Matthew Scott. But let it be a warning. I don’t mean to lay blame, but this is what comes of tantrums. (
Demented rampages,
the superintendent calls them.) Look at this old patched wall here; who was it that stove it in? To err is human and all that, but it don’t excuse such an exhibition. You only went and hurt yourself, and you’re still not the better for that abscess.
Anyway, the superintendent has an iddy-fix that you’re a danger to the kiddies, now you’re a man, as it were. Oh, you know and I know that’s all my eye, you dote on the smalls. You don’t care for confinement, that’s all, and who can blame you? I can always settle you with a little wander round the Gardens to meet your friends. But the superintendent says, “What if you’re off the premises, Scott, when the musth next comes on Jumbo? No other keeper here can handle him; every time I assign you an assistant, the creature terrorizes the fellow and sends him packing. It’s a most irregular state of affairs, not to mention the pungency, and stains, and … well, engorgement. That member’s wife almost fainted when she caught sight!”
I pointed out you could hardly help that.
“Besides, bull Africans are known for killing their keepers,” he lectured me. “In one of his furies, he could swat you down with his little tail, then crush you with his skull.”
“Not this elephant,” I said, “nor this keeper.”
Then he went off on a gory story about a crazed elephant he saw gunned down in the Strand when he was knee-high, 152 bullets it took, the superintendent’s never been the same since. Well, that explains a lot about him.
I assure you, my boy, I stood up for you. I looked the old man in the watery eye and said, “We all have our off days. But Jumbo’s a cleanly, hardworking fellow, as a rule. I have never felt afraid of him for one moment in the seventeen years he’s been in my care.”
He muttered something impertinent about that proving my arrogance rather than your safety. “I believe it’s gone to your head, Scott.”
“What has, Superintendent?”
“Jumbo’s fame. You fancy yourself the cock of the walk.”
I drew myself up. “If I enjoy a certain position in this establishment, if I was awarded a medal back in ‘sixty-six, that is due to having bred, nursed, and reared more exotic animals and birds than any other living man.”
He pursed his lips. “Not to mention the fortune you pocket from those tuppenny rides—”
The nerve! “Aren’t I the one who helps the kiddies up the ladder, and leads Jumbo round the Gardens, and makes sure they don’t topple off?” (By rights the cash should be half yours, lad, but what use would it be to you? You like to mouth the coins with your trunk and slip them into my pocket.)
The superintendent plucked at his beard. “Be that as it may, it’s inequitable; bad for morale. You’re all charm when it earns you tips, Scott, but flagrantly rude to your superiors in this Society, and as for your fellow keepers, they’re nervous of saying a word to you these days.”
That crew of ignorami!
“I have plenty of conversation,” I told him, “but I save it for those as appreciate it.”
“They call you a tyrant.”
Well, I laughed. After all, I’m the fifteenth child of seventeen, no silver spoons in my infant mouth, a humble son of toil who’s made good in a precarious profession, and I need apologize to nobody. We don’t mind the piddling tiddlers of this world, do we, boy? We just avert our gaze.
There’s a crate sitting outside on the grass this morning. Pitch-pine planking, girded with iron, on a kind of trolley with wheels. Gives me a funny feeling. It’s twelve feet high, as near as I can guess; that’s just half a foot more than you. Nobody’s said a word to me about it. Best to mind my own business, I suppose. This place—there’s too much gossip and interference already.
It’ll be time to stretch a leg soon, boy. The kiddies will be lined up outside in their dozens. They missed you yesterday, when it was raining. Here, kneel down and we’ll get your howdah on. Yes, yes, I’ll remember to put a double fold of blanket under the corner where it was rubbing. Aren’t your toenails looking pearly after that scrub I gave them?
There’s two men out there by the crate now, setting up some kind of ramp. I don’t like the looks of this at all. If this is what I think it is, it’s too blooming much—
I’m off to the superintendent’s office, none of this
Please make an appointment.
Here’s a sack of oats to be getting on with. Oh, don’t take on, hush your bellowing, I’ll be back before you miss me.
Well, Jumbo, I could bloody spit! Pardon my French, but there are moments in a man’s life on this miserable earth—
And to think, the superintendent didn’t give me so much as a word of warning. Just fancy, after all these years of working at the Society together—after the perils he and I have run, sawing off that rhinoceros’s deformed horn and whatnot—it makes me shudder, the perfidiousness of it. “I’ll thank you,” says I, “to tell me what’s afoot in the matter of my elephant.”
“Yours, Scott?” says he with a curl of the lip.
“Figure of speech,” says I. “As keeper here thirty-one years, man and boy, I take a natural interest in all property of the Society.”
He was all stuff and bluster, I’d got him on the wrong foot. “Since you inquire,” says he, “I must inform you that Jumbo is now the property of another party.”
Didn’t I stare! “Which other party?”
His beard began to tremble. “Mr. P. T. Barnum.”
“The Yankee showman?”
He couldn’t deny it. Then wasn’t there a row, not half. My dear boy, I can hardly get the words out, but he’s only been and gone and sold you to the circus!
It’s a shocking smirch on the good name of the London Zoological Society, that’s what I say. Such sneaking, double-dealing treachery behind closed doors. In the best interests of the British public, my hat! Two thousand pounds, that’s the price the superintendent put on you, though it’s not as if they need the funds, and who’s the chief draw but the Children’s Pal, the Beloved Pachydermic Behemoth, as the papers call you? Why, you may be the most magnificent elephant the world has ever seen, due to falling so fortuitously young into my hands as a crusty little stray, to be nursed back from the edge of the grave and fed up proper. And who’s to say how long your poor tribe will last, with ivory so fashionable? The special friend of our dear queen as well as generations of young Britons born and unborn, and yet the Society has flogged you off like horse meat, and all because of a few whiffs and tantrums!
Oh, Jumbo. You might just settle down now. Your feelings do you credit and all that, but there’s no good in such displays. You must be a brave boy. You’ve got through worse before, haven’t you? When the traders gunned down your whole kin in front of you—
Hush now, my mouth, I shouldn’t bring up painful recollections. Going into exile in America can’t be half as bad, that’s all I mean. Worse things happen. Come to think of it, if I hadn’t rescued you from that wretched Jardin des Plantes, you’d have got eaten by hungry Frogs during the Siege of Seventy-one! So best to put a brave face on.
I just hope you don’t get seasick. I reminded the superintendent you’d need two hundred pounds of hay a day on the voyage to New York, not to speak of sweet biscuits, potatoes, loaves, figs, and onions, your favorite…. You’ll be joining the Greatest Show on Earth, I suppose that has a sort of ring to it, if a vulgar one. (The superintendent claims travel may calm your rages, or if it doesn’t, then such a huge circus will have “facilities for seclusion,” though I don’t like the sound of that, not half.) No tricks to learn, I made sure of that much: you’ll be announced as “The Most Enormous Land Animal in Captivity” and walk round the ring, that’s all. I was worried you’d have to tramp across the whole United States, but you’ll tour in your own comfy railway carriage, fancy that! The old millionaire’s got twenty other elephants, but you’ll be the king. Oh, and rats, I told him to pass on word that you’re tormented by the sight of a rat ever since they ate half your feet when you were a nipper.
Of course you’ll miss England, and giving the kiddies rides, that’s only to be expected. And doing headstands in the Pool, wandering down the Parrot Walk, the Carnivora Terrace, all the old sights. You’ll find those American winters a trial to your spirits, I shouldn’t wonder. And I expect once in a while you’ll spare a thought for your old pa—
When you came to London, a filthy baby no taller than me, you used to wake screaming at night and sucking your trunk for comfort, and I’d give you a cuddle and you’d start to leak behind the ears …
Pardon me, boy, I’m overcome.
Today’s the evil day, Jumbo, I believe you know it. You’re all a-shiver, and your trunk hovers in front of my face as if to take me in. It’s like some tree turned hairy snake, puffing warm wet air on me. There, there. Have a bit of gingerbread. Let me give your leg a good hard pat. Will I blow into your trunk, give your tongue a last little rub?
Come along, bad form to keep anyone waiting, I suppose, even a jumped-up Yankee animal handler like this “Elephant Bill” Newman. (Oh, those little watery eyes of yours, lashes like a ballet dancer—I can hardly look you in the face.) That’s a boy; down this passage to the left; I know it’s not the usual way, but a change is as good as a rest, don’t they say? This way, now. Up the little ramp and into the crate you go. Plenty of room in there, if you put your head down. Go on.
Ah, now, let’s have no nonsense. Into your crate this minute. What good will it do to plunge and bellow? No, stop it, don’t lie down. Up, boy, up. Bad boy. Jumbo!
You’re all right, don’t take on so. You’re back in your quarters for the moment; it’s getting dark out. Such a to-do! They’re only chains. I know you dislike the weight of them, but they’re temporary. No, I can’t take them off tonight or this Elephant Bill will raise a stink. He says we must try you again first thing tomorrow. The chains are for securing you inside the crate, till the crane hoists you on board the steamer. No, calm down, boy. Enough of that roaring. Drink your scotch. Oi! Pick up my bowler and give it back. Thank you.
The Yankee, Elephant Bill, has some cheek. He began by informing me that Barnum’s agents tried to secure the captured King of the Zulus for exhibition, and then the cottage where Shakespeare was born; you’re only their third choice of British treasures. Well, I bristled, you can imagine.
When you wouldn’t walk into the crate no matter how we urged and pushed, even after he took the whip to your poor saggy posterior—when I’d led you round the corner and tried again half a dozen times—he rolled his eyes, said it was clear as day you’d been spoiled.
“Spoiled?” I repeated.
“Made half pet, half human,” says the American, “by all these treats and pattings and chit-chat. Is it true what the other fellows say, Scott, that you share a bottle of whiskey with the beast every night, and caterwaul like sweethearts, curled up together in his stall?”
Well, I didn’t want to dignify that kind of impertinence with a reply. But then I thought of how you whine like a naughty child if I don’t come back from the pub by bedtime, and a dreadful thought occurred to me. “Elephants are family-minded creatures, you must know that much,” I told him. “I hope you don’t mean to leave Jumbo alone at night? He only sleeps two or three hours, on and off; he’ll need company when he wakes.”
A snort from the Yank. “I don’t bed down with nobody but human females.”
Which shows the coarseness of the man.
Settle down, Jumbo, it’s only three in the morning. No, I can’t sleep neither. I haven’t had a decent kip since that blooming crate arrived. Don’t those new violet-bottomed mandrills make an awful racket?
Over seven thousand visitors counted at the turnstile today. All because of you, Jumbo. Your sale’s been in the papers; you’d hardly credit what a fuss it’s making. Heartbroken letters from kiddies, denunciations of the trustees, offers to raise a subscription to ransom you back. It’s said the Prince of Wales has voiced his objections, and Mr. Ruskin, and some Fellows of the Society are going to court to prove the sale illegal!
I wish you could read some of the letters you’re getting every day now, from grown-ups as well as kiddies. Money enclosed, and gingerbread, not to mention cigars. (I ate the couple of dozen oysters, as I knew you wouldn’t fancy them.) A bun stuck with pins; that’s some sot’s idea of a joke. And look at this huge floral wreath for you to wear, with a banner that says A TROPHY OF TRIUMPH OVER THE AMERICAN SLAVERS. I’ve had letters myself, some offering me bribes to “do something to prevent this,” others calling me a Judas. If they only knew the mortifications of my position!
Oh, dear, I did think today’s attempt would have gone better. It was my own idea that since you’d taken against the very sight of the crate, it should be removed from view. I told this Elephant Bill I’d lead you through the streets, the full six miles, and surely by the time you reached the docks, you’d be glad to go into your crate for a rest.
But you saw right through me, didn’t you, artful dodger? No, no tongue massage for you tonight, Badness! You somehow knew this wasn’t an ordinary stroll. Not an inch beyond the gates of the Gardens but you dropped to your knees. Playing to the crowd, rather, I thought, and how they whooped at the sight of you on all fours like some plucky martyr for the British cause. The public’s gone berserk over your
sit-down strike,
you wouldn’t believe the papers.