The patient immobile, the rubber tube tugging at his lip to give the impression of a sneer, Garrett removed the plaster and surveyed the wound. The tension of the skin had caused it to open in the shape of a blind eye. Burton had so little fat on him that the grey-white bone of the rib was visible beneath the severed skin and muscle. The opening was insufficient, and having first washed the flesh in iodine Garret took his knife and made it larger by an inch in each direction. With Spencer and Fry attending, to suck and swab and keep clear his view, Garrett saw it would be necessary first to remove a section of the rib that covered the wounded heart. With a fine bone-saw (he’d used it once to amputate a girl’s crushed toe, despite her protestations that she couldn’t possibly dance in sandals if she was down to just the four) he cut the rib to four inches shorter than creation intended, and put it in a pan held nearby. Then with steel retractors that would not have looked out of place in the hands of a railway engineer he opened up a cavity and peered within. We’re so tightly packed, thought Spencer, marvelling as always at how bright and beautiful it was. The marbling of red and purplish-blue, and the scant deposits of yellow fat: they were not the colours of nature. Once or twice the muscles all around the opening flexed slowly, like a mouth arrested in a yawn.
And then there was the heart, thrumming in its slick case, the damage seeming so slight. Garrett had promised that the cut was to the case alone and had gone no further, and believed himself truthful, and now with a probing finger saw that he was. The chambers and valves were undamaged: he gave a little cry of relief.
Spencer watched as Luke slipped in his hand – the wrist angled a little, the fingers curved – to cup the heart where he could, to feel it, because (he’d always said, even with the dead ones) it was the most intimate thing, and sensual, and he saw by touch as much as by sight. With his left hand he steadied the heart, and with his right he took from Fry the curved needle threaded with a catgut ligature so fine it would have been fit for wedding silk.
Much later, Spencer would be stopped on the wards and in the corridors and asked: ‘How long did it take? How many stitches were there?’ and he took to saying ‘A thousand hours and a thousand stitches,’ though in truth it seemed he barely breathed in and out again before he heard the grinding of the retractor bolts, and the wet slip of the instrument as it was removed; the muscles at the rim of the open cavity slammed shut, and then it was only the skin being stitched over a hollow place where the rib had once been.
They passed a long hour then, moving about the bedside as opiates replaced chloroform and dressings were fitted and nervously watched for slow or sudden bloomings of blood. Sister Maureen Fry, straight-backed and bright-eyed, as if she could happily have done it all again and then again, passed them water which Spencer could not drink, and which Luke took in draughts that almost made him sick. Others came and went, peering curiously around the door, hoping for triumph or disaster or both, but seeing no movement and hearing nothing went away disappointed.
At the beginning of the second hour Edward Burton opened his eyes and said loudly, ‘I was just by St Paul’s, that was all, wondering how the dome stays up,’ then, more quietly, ‘I’ve got a sore throat.’ To those who’d seen so much of life in ebb and flow, the colour on his cheek and the attempt to lift his head were as telling as any careful daylong chart of pulse and temperature. The sun had gone down: he’d see it come up.
Garrett turned, and left, and finding one of the many cupboards where linens were stored crouched for a long while in the dark. A dreadful trembling took hold of him, and shook him so violently that only by making a straitjacket of his own arms could he prevent his whole body from throwing itself against the closed door. Then it subsided, and he began instead to cry.
3
William Ransome, walking coatless on the common, saw Cora come towards him. From a distance he’d known at once it was their visitor: she strode like a boy, and seemed always to be pausing to peer at something in the grass, or to put something in her pocket. Low sun lit the long hair loose upon her shoulders; when she saw him, she smiled and raised her hand.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Seaborne,’ he said.
‘Good afternoon, Reverend,’ said Cora. They paused, and smiled, not taking their greeting seriously, as if long years had passed and made the niceties absurd.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he said, seeing that certainly she must have walked miles: her coat was unbuttoned, her shirt damp at the neck and marked with moss, and she held a stem of cow parsley.
‘I’m not sure: two weeks an Aldwinter woman and still it’s all a mystery! I walked west, I know that. I bought some milk, which was the best I ever had; I trespassed on the grounds of a stately home, and frightened the pheasants. My nose is burned – look! – and I fell over a stile, and am bleeding from the knee.’
‘Conyngford Hall, I should think’ – he did not acknowledge her wounds: ‘Were there turrets, and a sad peacock in a cage? You were lucky to get away without being shot for a poacher.’
‘A bad squire, then? I should’ve set the peacock free.’ She surveyed him placidly. No man ever looked less a parson: his shirt was loose, and grubby at the cuffs; there was soil beneath his nails. His clean Sunday cheek had given way to a light beard, and where the sheep’s hoof had left its curled scar, no hair grew.
‘The worst of squires! Trap a rabbit on his acres and he’ll have you up before the beak by breakfast.’
They fell easily into step, matching pace for pace; it occurred to him that their legs must be the same length, their height the same, perhaps the span of their open arms. Cherry blossom drifted on the idle wind. Cora felt herself brimming with things to offer, and could not keep herself from giving them: ‘Just before I saw you a hare paused right there on the path and looked at me. I’d forgotten the colour of their fur, like almonds just out of the shell – the strength in their hind legs, and how tall they are, as they pelt off over the fields, suddenly, as if they’ve remembered something they ought to be doing!’ She glanced at him – perhaps a country man would think her childish in her delight? – but no: he smiled, and inclined his head. ‘There was a chaffinch,’ she said, ‘and the flash of something yellow, which may have been a siskin – are you any good with birds? I’m not. Everywhere there’s acorns splitting open and sending out a root and a stem: a white thing burrowing into the soil where last year’s leaves are rotting, and a green leaf beginning to unfold! How did I never see that before? I wish I had one to show you.’
He looked, bemused, into the empty palm she held out. How strange she was, to notice such things, and think of telling him; it sat curiously on a woman whose man’s coat could not conceal her shirt’s fine silk, its pearl fastenings, the diamond on her hand. ‘I’m not as good with birds as I’d like,’ he said, ‘though I can tell you the blue tit wears a highwayman’s mask, and the great tit wears the black cap of the judge that’s going to hang him!’ She laughed, and he diffidently said: ‘I wish you’d use my name. Do you mind? Mr Ransome will always be my father.’
‘If you like,’ she said. ‘William. Will.’
‘And did you hear the woodpeckers? I listen for them, always. And have you found the Essex Serpent – are you come to deliver us from bonds of fear?’
‘Neither hide nor hair of it!’ said Cora, ruefully: ‘Even Cracknell looks cheerful when I mention it. I believe you informed the wretched thing I was coming, and sent it to Suffolk with a flea in its ear.’
‘Oh no,’ said Will: ‘I assure you, rumours abound! Cracknell may put a brave face on for a lady but he never leaves his window without a candle. He’s keeping poor Magog indoors, and her milk’s dried up.’ She smiled; he said: ‘What’s more, either the folk of St Osyth are careless with cattle or something’s taken two calves from their mothers and they’ve not been seen since.’ Likelier to be theft, he thought, but let her have her daydream.
‘Well, that’s encouraging, at least. No hope, I suppose’ – she spoke gravely – ‘that another man has drowned?’
‘None, Mrs Seaborne – Cora? – though it pains me to disappoint. Now then: where was it you were going?’
They’d come, by silent consensus, to the rectory gate. Behind them on the common lengthened the shadow of Traitor’s Oak; before them the chequered path was bordered by blue hyacinths. They gave out a strong scent, and Cora reeled with it, felt it indecent – it caused a response in her so like unsought desire that her pulse quickened.
‘Where was I going?’ She looked down at her feet, as if they’d carried her without consent. ‘I suppose that I was going home.’