The Underground Man (12 page)

‘Good Lord, and oxtail, too,' I went on, excited. ‘I had an oxtail soup just yesterday.'

‘Beef does not agree with you,' she repeated.

This time I heard her and conceded, ‘Very well. I'll steer clear of beef from now on.'

Then the two of them exchanged further meaningful glances before the other sister said, in an even quieter voice, ‘When you first came in … we noticed …'

I nodded at her, to help her along.

‘We noticed that your aura is not right.'

Well, I must say, this rather stumped me. I had not the first idea what my aura was. Had been ignorant of the fact I even owned one until that very moment.

‘It is the light which emanates from a person,' the other sister said. ‘Yours is incomplete.'

Well, as you can imagine, this was highly distressing news. Who would want an aura which is incomplete?

‘Then how do I make it whole again?' I asked.

‘Perhaps you are lacking something,' the quieter sister said, and gave me a second to digest this. ‘You must make it your business to find the gap and fill it in.'

I handed them their fee in the hallway, shook their hands and thanked them for their time. When they opened the door the daylight flooded into the hall. I paused on the doorstep for a moment or two.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, ‘but if you don't mind my asking … what exactly do you see when you look at a man?'

‘We see inside him,' said one.

The other added, ‘We see how he is put together.'

Clement met me at the garden gate and escorted me back to the carriage. ‘They're not fakers, Clement. Honestly,' I told him. ‘They saw the essence of beef.'

Clement nodded appreciatively as we carried on down the hill. At some point I turned and looked back at the sisters' cottage and thought I glimpsed a white face peering out between the velvet curtains, but when I looked again a second later the face was gone.

A long while ago, when I was still a socializing man and drank brandy and smoked cigars, I heard the most curious anecdote from my friend, the good Lord Galway.

While we sat gazing into the coals of a roaring fire, coming to terms with the enormous dinner we had just packed away, he told me about an old friend of his who had come bounding up to him at a function the previous spring with ‘the most wonderful news'. And indeed it was good news for, after many a barren year, his wife had just been told she was pregnant and, not surprisingly, Lord Galway's friend was as pleased as Punch, not least because he might finally father a son who would one day take over his affairs.

Well, for several months after these glad tidings Lord Galway was kept very busy and when the two of them next met up he straight away detected the most solemn attitude about his friend. Fearing his wife had perhaps lost the child,
he decided, as he put it, to ‘act the diplomat' and kept up his end of the conversation until his friend got around to saying what was on his mind. Apparently, he was very worried about his wife's mental state; indeed feared she had already gone some way down the road towards insanity. Lord Galway trod ever more carefully – the grave look on his friend's face told him this was wise – but, bit by bit, managed to draw the fellow out.

It transpired that the man's wife was a coal-eater … was always at the stuff. He first discovered her sucking a small chunk of it crouched under the desk in his study. Then, at lunch a few days later, he noticed a piece which she had hid in her napkin and was crumbling into her soup. As the weeks went by he found coal all over the house: tucked in her muffler, wrapped in silk handkerchiefs, even a piece in her very best bonnet. At night-time, after the light went out, he could hear her munching under the bedclothes, for she even kept a piece in her pillowcase to suck on till she fell asleep. In the morning, apparently, the sheets were filthy and her lips and teeth jet-black.

Well, all this upset her husband no end. He shouted at her and stamped about the place and confiscated every bit he could find. He forbade her from going near the stuff and made his staff act like prison guards but, of course, there was no way he could keep an eye on her all day long, and he knew full well that as soon as his back was turned she would sneak down to the cellar to get herself a fresh supply.

Now it was unfortunate for Galway's old friend that he had kept to himself for so long what he felt sure were the first signs of his wife's creeping lunacy, for if he had earlier shared out the information he might have been earlier put at ease. For Galway is very worldly-wise and had heard tell how a woman who is carrying a child becomes susceptible to a whole
dynasty of inner-change which, in some instances, may result in cravings of the most irrational kind. It has been suggested that the craving of coal – in fact, not at all uncommon – may be nothing more than the mother-to-be's need for iron.

Anyhow, Lord Galway swiftly passed all this information on to his friend, who went on his way with a terrific lightening of his load. A few months later his wife gave birth to a beautiful son, her passion for coal having passed just as quickly as it came about, and as the years went by her husband was relieved to note that it was a habit not inherited by their child.

I think this tale must have been lingering somewhere at the back of my mind as I walked around the grounds some months ago. It was a beautiful morning in June or July and the sun was pouring down. Mr Bird directed a gang of men in the construction of the new bridge across the lake and with the weather being so warm and humid some of the lads had stripped to the waist. I had already raised my hat to Mr Bird and was intent on quietly passing by when one of his men turned away to mop his brow and I noticed that he had on his back a huge tattoo of Ireland.

It was livid-red in colour and reached from his shoulders right down to his waist. Of course, the amateur-cartographer in me became most excited and I hurried over to get a better look. As I drew near I saw that the map-tattoo had been somehow effected in relief form, which really rather baffled me, and it was only when I was a couple of yards from the fellow that I realized that what I had taken to be the work of a tattooist was, in fact, a huge expanse of scab.

He must have seen me recoil a little for, without my having uttered a word, he announced, in a matter-of-fact way, ‘Psoriasis, sir.'

‘Psoriasis,' I echoed dumbly.

Fortunately, he was a bright chap and, seeing that I was in the dark, added, ‘It is a skin complaint, Your Grace.'

‘Aha,' I said and moved back in on him.

Well, I have to say, he was most accommodating and let me scrutinize the magnificent scab without seeming to mind a bit. It was all very much of a solid piece, with a surface like burnt jam. The shape of the scab, to my mind still very much like Ireland, was a little flaky round the coastline and had, here and there, come away from the skin. It occurred to me, I remember, that I should very much like to slide my fingernails under it and rip the whole thing up. Luckily, it was an urge I managed to keep reined in, for he was a broad fellow, used to heaving a pick and would, I'm sure, have been greatly upset by any interference with his scab.

I asked him if the scab always took the shape of Ireland or if it ever resembled other countries of the world and he replied that while the scab was constantly on the move – sometimes shrinking, sometimes spreading – the similarity between it and a map of any country had, frankly, never crossed his mind.

Still, I found our encounter most fascinating. I gave the good fellow sixpence and thanked him for his time and was in the process of taking my leave when another question popped into my head.

‘I was wondering …' I said, ‘how you treat it.'

And, again without the least inhibition, he told me how a physician had recently recommended exposing the scab to the sun's rays whenever possible, which is why he had his shirt off today.

I was still absorbing this information, when he added, ‘And coal tar, sir.'

Now, as I have already mentioned, I must have still had drifting at the back of my mind the wife of Lord Galway's acquaintance gorging herself on coal for, before I had properly got my thoughts in order, the words

‘You drink
coal tar,
man?' had popped out of me, in a voice so loud and clear that the fellows who had recently returned to their digging immediately stopped again and stared.

The big chap looked me over very coolly, his eyes narrowing to two tiny slits. When he spoke it was as if he was addressing a backward child.

‘Not
drinks
it, sir. Wipes it on.'

In the circumstances it seemed like an easy mistake to make, but would have been impossible to explain.

‘Of course, of course,' I said. Then I bade him good day and left the scene just as fast as my legs would carry me away.

It is one of those awful moments that I know will haunt me for many years to come. (When I was a child I used the seeds of dried rose-hip as ‘itching powder' and, for want of some other child to ‘itch', would put them down my own back. I mention this because it seems to me that the two sensations are somehow similar.)

No doubt while I sit here recording the embarrassing event that same labourer holds court in some nearby alehouse, telling anyone who cares to listen all about the mad old Duke who suggested drinking coal tar to cure his psoriatic scabs.

Taking to heart the advice of the Oakley sisters I have ordered that, henceforth, no beef be included in my meals. Mrs Pledger has risen to the occasion and presented me this lunchtime with a delicious croquette of Stilton and asparagus which fairly sent my tongue into raptures. The croquette – about six inches in length and beautifully breadcrumbed –
was accompanied by honeyed carrots and a light, spicy gravy. Tonight, I am told, we are to have devilled lobster. At this rate I think it will be no great effort to forgo the dreaded beef. I only hope the benefits will soon make themselves felt.

The repairwork required by my damaged ‘aura', however, may not be so easily carried out. The sisters' description left me with the impression of something like a warm glow around a lamp. That picture, I think, is a good one. A warm glow will do very well. But when I try to imagine this glow as ‘incomplete' or broken, I run immediately into problems. If I had been asked to imagine the aura as a cloak, for example, I would be as right as rain. The cloak – let us say, a large tweed redingote – has a small rip in it somewhere. Perhaps I snagged it on a nail. Clearly then, what is needed is for me to lay my hands on a needle and thread and stitch it up where it has been rent. But a
glow
– how does one go about mending a hole in a glow?

I repeatedly put my mind to the problem but end up neither here nor there, wavering constantly between a warm glow in the one hand and a redingote in the other.

I am certain the little fist of malevolence last located below my ribcage is on the move again. It is higher up in me than it has been and seems inclined towards my spine. As my lungs are always susceptible to infection I worry it might get at them and give me a nasty cough, so last night I had Clement light a camphor candle to keep the blasted thing at bay and when I woke I felt sure it had smelt the camphor and promptly doubled back. I conclude that it is shrewd and conniving but also cowardly; still heading in a northerly direction, but by some different route.

Received another remedy this afternoon – this one from the Reverend Mellor. Convinced that I suffer from ‘rheumatics', his note contained a recipe which he insists I should have made up. It came to him from a sister-in-law in Whitby where, apparently, the trawlermen take it right through the winter months. The recipe is as follows …

Well, I must say the ingredients put me more in mind of gunpowder than any medicine, but I duly sent a boy off to mix the concoction up. When he returned, proudly showing the pills off on a plate, they looked very much like tiny cannonballs – all pocked and dangerous. I had him put them on my bedside table. If I am feeling especially brave tonight I might fire a couple into me.

I might admit to being old and creaky, my body racked with innumerable twitches and unnameable pains, but I feel sure it is not plain rheumatism that I suffer from. The word simply doesn't fit.

As I sat at my bureau this afternoon, keeping warm by a well-stacked fire, I came around to wondering how the news of my ill health had reached the Reverend Mellor. Certainly, I did not mention it in my letter and, as far as I know, he hasn't called round to the house.

It is fascinating to speculate, is it not, on how the word generally gets about. Miss Whittle at the Post Office may, on occasion, dispense a little more than postage stamps but one would never seriously accuse her of being the village gossip.

And yet between Miss Whittle and the Reverend Mellor I'll wager there exists an intricate web, along which the news of my unstable health has merrily worked its way. Perhaps I am mistaken. Could be that the Reverend was in the Post Office and happened to mention me. Then Miss Whittle might have countered by saying how she sent a tin of beef essence up to the house, upon hearing I was unwell. But then I turn up another question. How was it Miss Whittle first came by that information? How did word get to her?

Well now, I have dozens of employees spread all over the estate. On a slow day I suppose it not inconceivable for two of them to exchange news which, at a pinch, might include their master's health. There need be no malice in it; just the common verbal barter of one man with the next. And if the result of that chain is that one or two acquaintances show their concern by sending me remedies, then I'm sure I should be nothing but flattered and pleased. But once or twice I have overheard men talking, where the exchange of information has been driven not by benevolence but the profoundest spite. Nothing in the world moves at half the speed as a rumour with the scent of scandal to it. Have we not all been guilty, at one time or another, of repeating the words a better man would have kept to himself? Yet, to some people news of another's misfortune – whether true or purely speculative – is their bread and butter, and they like nothing more than to squander their days whipping that wheel on its way.