The Dumb House (17 page)

‘Hello,' she said, smiling brightly. ‘We haven't seen you for a while.'

From the slight sharpness in her tone, I assumed she had not yet forgiven me for deserting her library.

‘Hello,' I replied, innocently. ‘How nice to see you. Is the library closed?'

‘Not at all,' she said, laughing a little too readily. ‘I don't actually live there, you know, though it sometimes seems that way.'

I smiled to show appreciation of her dedication, and her self-deprecating sense of humour.

‘What's going on?' I asked, with obvious, and slightly impolite curiosity.

‘Ah.' Miss Patterson came reluctantly to the matter at hand. ‘They seem to have found a corpse.'

She pronounced the word with some relish, like someone who has been allowed, after a lifetime of abstinence, to enjoy some dark pleasure.

I reacted appropriately.

‘A corpse? Here? I'm sorry, I—'

‘A body,' she interrupted. ‘Everyone seems to think it's a murder.'

‘I see.' I allowed a moment for thought. ‘Do you know who it is?'

‘The murderer?'

‘The body.'

‘Ah.' She smiled with grim satisfaction. ‘They think it was one of the vagrants. You know the ones. They came into the library once, when you were there.'

‘Oh.' I nodded. It didn't seem appropriate to show concern or sympathy with the victim. Miss Patterson obviously had none.

‘What's happening now?' I asked her.

‘They're searching the grounds,' she said.

‘What for?'

‘The weapon, I suppose.'

‘Have they found anything.'

She shook her head.

‘Not while I've been here. It's not really very interesting, as a matter of fact. Just some tramp. Maybe he wasn't murdered at all. You know how people are.'

She gave me a sidelong glance.

‘I don't suppose you're much interested in the affairs of some dead tramp, anyway,' she said.

I nodded agreement.

‘Not much. Still, it's a little inconvenient.'

‘Well, I look at it this way.' Miss Patterson replied, ‘As far as I'm concerned, these people are mostly just a nuisance. They come into the library to get warm and they frighten people. They sit around begging. It's just one less disturbance to worry about.'

‘Quite,' I said, curtly. I noticed that the young policeman had overheard Miss Patterson's last remark and was watching her out of the corner of his eye. I think he had something he wanted to say, but again, he stuck to his duties.

I loitered a few moments longer, then excused myself. Miss Patterson offered to walk with me to the library, but I told her I had to go back for something. As soon as I reached the car park, I got into the car and drove away. I was already regretting my weakness. Even if the police did find the Stanley knife, there was no possibility of their tracing it to me. The only obvious danger was of my losing my nerve and attracting attention to myself.
In any investigation, the real detective is the suspect. He is the one who provides the clues, he is the one who gives himself away. As long as I remained calm, and treated the problem as a question of logic, I would be quite safe.

I kept an eye on the papers for a while, but the news was thin. The police had found the body of a homeless man in the church grounds, they did suspect foul play, but they had no clue as to the murderer's identity or motive. They questioned Jimmy's former associates; for a while, it looked as if they were going to charge one of the men I had seen him with, that day in the pub, but nothing further emerged and eventually the story dried up. I kept the papers out of Lillian's sight, even though I knew she couldn't read them, and there were no photographs of the murder victim. I didn't want to take any risks of upsetting her now.

As the weeks and months passed, she grew strange and awkward, as if she were some creature I had fished from the sea. The swelling on her belly looked alien and uncomfortable in a body as thin as hers, it was too local, it did not seem to belong to her body, and her skin changed colour suddenly, from its usual rose-white to a shade of vellum. She was tired all the time. I have always been suspicious of the phrase,
the glow of pregnancy
, and my suspicions were only confirmed by Lillian's appearance. Instead of a glow, her whole body seemed to become more and more dull, sallow and sickly-sweet and vague, like a candle burning out or a line of smudged writing. Nevertheless, she remained cheerful. She tried to continue with her work around the house, even when I assured her that I could look after things. Sometimes she spent whole days in bed, watching television. It appeared that her happiness was too large, too strong to be affected by a temporary physical setback. I think
I was more affected by the change in her appearance than she was. I found a book in Mother's library which described what happened during pregnancy; I found another that showed how a child was delivered, by conventional methods and by Caesarean. This was invaluable. When it came time, I would be obliged to manage the delivery myself.

I did all I could to make Lillian comfortable over those last few months. I had no idea, of course, that I was about to lose her, but I am glad I treated her so well, looking after her when she was sick, finding the kinds of food she could bear to eat, tending to her when she was too tired to get up. I feel better now, when I think how happy she was for that little time. And there were moments, even towards the end of the pregnancy, when she seemed beautiful to me, in spite of everything, moments when she seemed perfectly balanced, immersed in a cool white light, almost incandescent. Whenever I remember her, I will see her like that, just as she was before the twins were born.

The day came. I had been waiting for the moment with a mixture of dread and anticipation. On the one hand, I was afraid for Lillian, and for the child; on the other, I wanted to observe this bizarre process, I wanted to see how a body worked when giving birth. To be honest, I was mystified by everything I had read, how sometimes the head is too large for the birth canal; how, sometimes, small incisions must be made between the anus and the vagina, to allow it to pass through; how the child will sometimes turn around and come feet first; how the birth can be so difficult that a section of the woman's belly must be lifted, in order to free it. Even the easier births might demand the use of forceps to pull the child free, with the risk of damage to the head, or even the brain, if too much force were applied. It seemed to me that the whole process was too
complicated, too unnatural, as if humans had not been intended to give birth at all.

I was apprehensive, naturally, about the possibility of having to cut Lillian when the time came; obviously a Caesarean, or any other complex surgical procedure was out of the question. Yet, as it happened, the birth was relatively easy. She seemed to suffer some pain, but she was patient, stoical, even brave – especially when, after the first child emerged, I felt something else was there, inside her, and I realised the child I had just prised loose had a twin.

In spite of her bravery, the process of giving birth to twins damaged Lillian badly. Afterwards, she would not stop bleeding: the blood was thick and dark, and I was worried that she would lose too much and become ill, or die. After several hours, however, the bleeding stopped and, though Lillian was too weak and tired to feed the twins, I managed to keep her and them well through their ordeal. Or so I imagined. I have no idea, now, what would have happened if Lillian had survived. The experiment would have taken quite a different course, naturally; perhaps the outcome would have been different, under different circumstances. Not that there is any profit, ever, in speculation. There is only one possible course through life, and that is the course one takes. No other decisions could have been taken, no other circumstances could have arisen.

The next morning, Lillian developed a fever. The children were unaffected, but she was still unable to feed them, and I had to continue with a compound feed. Fortunately, I had stocked up on feeding material, in case such difficulties arose. I had also set up a temporary crib arrangement in the spare room, which was fortunately large enough to take both children, so that, while I was involved with tending to Lillian, they were
never left alone. They had one another for company. Perhaps that was where their extreme attachment began. Perhaps it was not nature after all, that made them as they were. It might just have been the circumstances of those first few days, when they lay as close together in the world as they had done in the womb. Strangely, for new-born children, I don't remember their crying very much. They seemed hushed, awed, as if they were aware, with some residue of womb-knowledge, of their mother's condition. I was certain Lillian had contracted a serious infection, and I considered taking her to a hospital. Her condition seemed to worsen by the hour, and she began to bleed again. Needless to say, it was a difficult time. For the first time, I considered the possibility that Lillian might die, and it was a delicate process, getting the twins established on the feed compound. I am surprised, now, that they survived that stage.

I watched Lillian closely. Her symptoms were dramatic: extreme pain, fever, tenderness in her stomach and belly. I soon realised that my first guess had been correct; she was suffering from an infection of some kind, worsened no doubt by the dramatic loss of blood over the first few hours. Once again, I considered calling a doctor, but I convinced myself that it was too dangerous. To call a doctor in would not only jeopardise the future of our experiment, it would also link me, through Lillian, to Jimmy. It wasn't just one life that was in danger, it was everything: my life, Lillian's new-found happiness, our whole enterprise. If I had brought in medical help, I might have saved Lillian's life, but that would have been all. She would have been taken away from me, and placed in an institution, where she would, most certainly, have been unhappy, perhaps even subject to the kind of abuse she had suffered before she met me. She was a girl who had probably been abused all her life. Without
me, she would be helpless. Wherever she went, a Jimmy would appear and take over. There were thousands of Jimmys.

As a matter of conscience, however, I asked her what she wanted me to do. I told her to nod if she wanted me to take her to the hospital, and shake her head if she wanted to stay with me. I explained that, if she went to the hospital, I couldn't stay with her anymore, but that someone else would look after her and the twins. She shook her head.

For the next couple of days, I convinced myself that she could pull through. She was in terrible pain – that was obvious – but she seemed to have the will to fight. I had found some antibiotics amongst Mother's medicines, and I administered these till they ran out. I don't know how much good they did. After a while, she began to sink, and I realised she wasn't going to make it. All that remained was to make her as comfortable as possible, and prepare her for what was to come.

I have always admired the literature of the Tibetan Buddhists. They alone have understood the power of language in manipulating, not only this world, but the world beyond this, the world between one world and another, the
bardo
, the otherwise silent reaches of limbo. What could be more appropriate, I thought, than to use the Tibetan Book of the Dead to ease Lillian's passing from this life to the next. It was, in a sense, the ultimate power of the word: the story was there to guide the soul through death, to sustain its awareness of itself, as it was dislodged from one state and hurled forward into another. So it was that, on the last night of her life, I sat down by Lillian's bed and began to read. I had read her stories before; I had read her poems and fairy tales only recently, during her illness, but this was different. I began at the beginning and continued reading far into the night. When the pain was too great, I dabbed her face with a damp cloth and let her sip a little water, but I did not allow
the course of the reading to be interrupted. I am certain that it helped her. I don't know how much she understood, but there are different levels, different ways of understanding. Of course, she suffered a great deal: that was inevitable. When she died, just before dawn, she had lapsed into a semi-conscious state; by then, I think she was less aware of what was going on.

It is a mistake to mourn the dead. I know that now. It makes no sense. We keep ourselves occupied, forgetting our own mortality, as if we possessed a unique form of presence, a unique reality, but what we also forget is the reality of the dead. It's as if the living were more real for being present – yet there's no logic in that position, it admits too much of transience. When Mother died, it didn't make her any less real. On the contrary, it fixed her forever in a single moment, a perfect attitude. When Lillian died, she seemed as real to me as she had been, living. The words I was speaking brought her into focus during those last several hours: I think she knew what I was doing, even if she didn't understand at an intellectual level, and I think she was glad. I know she smiled when I came to the part where the body of the departed becomes a rainbow, then finds itself in paradise, amongst the angels. I think she was ready to die, then. One part of her knew what was happening, and accepted its fate. For my part, I was able to let her go easily, without regret.

What is the scientist? This is the most important question. I am not talking about the people who play at the edge of science, whose loyalties are to other powers, to home and family, to self, to business. They are the ones who talk about ethics, but they do not possess the true scientific ethic, which is total commitment. The scientist is the one for whom everything is a hypothesis, the one who is wholly dedicated to the experiment. There can be no exceptions. Although I can say, quite truthfully, that I had become fond of Lillian, although I missed her in
the weeks after her death, I never once allowed myself to compromise the experiment for her sake. I could easily have taken her to a hospital and handed over the responsibility for her life to someone else. Instead, I did all I could to save her and, when that failed, I let her go. To have done otherwise would have meant betraying the experiment and, probably, betraying her. I do not believe, even now, that she would have wanted me to allow that to happen. The night after she died, I laid her out in one of the dresses I had bought her, on our first shopping trip. She looked utterly at peace. I carried her out to the grave I had prepared for her, in the new iris bed, and I laid her thin body in the cold earth. Before I covered her up, I kissed her, once, on the mouth. She had become a part of something larger than herself, larger than either of us, and I was sad, for a moment, that I had never been able to tell her that. It seemed a shame, that she would never know what part the twins might possibly play in the development of ideas. It seemed a shame, that she couldn't have had one glimpse into the future, and become aware of the possibilities it presented.