Ingenious pain Andrew Miller (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📖

She stands and walks slowly out of the church. The Reverend moves as if to call her back. Dido touches his arm, says: 'She means us to follow her . . .'

They walk behind her along the path between clumps of daffodils, through the wicket-gate, along the lane by the churchyard wall and round the jammed and broken skeleton of a gate - a trellis now for weeds - into the orchard. The land here belongs to Makins, a widower, his sons gone to stretch their legs in the world, one halfwit daughter at home. Here the apples either rot or are taken by children. On summer evenings the place is visited by courting couples. Sometimes the Reverend hears their sighs on his way home from Vespers.

The grasses drag at Dido's skirts. A court of flies starts up angrily from a human turd. There is a sound of bees, a smell of wild garlic. For a moment they lose sight of Mary as she weaves between the crooked aisles, through the blue shadows, through cloudbursts of blossom. It would, thinks the Reverend, be quite her manner to disappear like a rabbit into a hole. But they find her, standing under a tree somewhat larger than the others, one hand, one finger pointing upward into the head of the tree, like a figure in an allegorical painting. Dido and the Reverend look up. A man's shoes, a man's legs, a grey shirt. A face, very thin, very white, garnished with the shapeless, peppery grizzle of a beard.

'Dr Dyer!' calls the Reverend. 'This is as happy as it is unexpected. I was afraid . . . that is, I had no news of you. Are you well, sir? Will you come down? The branches there are rather slender.'

The face looks down. The transformation is remarkable, ghastly. What manner of sickness does this to a man?

Says Dido: 'This is Dr Dyer?'

'Ay,' says the Reverend softly. 'What remains of him. Dr Dyer!

It is I, the Reverend Lestrade. Sure you have not forgotten me? Do you require some assistance?'

A voice, but barely the right side of sound, drops from the roof of the tree.

'. . . the finch . . . the sparrow and the lark . . . the plain song cuckoo grey . . . w^hose note ... a man doth mark . . . and dare not answ^er . . . nay . . .'

Says Dido: 'Is it a song?'

'. . . the ousel cock, so black of hue . . . with orange tawny bill . . . the throstle with his note so true . . .'

The Reverend catches sight of two young faces peeping round a trunk. One he knows for the sexton's boy, Sam Clarke.

'Sam! Here, child. Come, I am not angry with you.'

The boy comes, looking from the Reverend to the tree, from the tree to Mary.

'Are you a fast runner, Sam?'

'Middlin'.'

'Well, middling must do. Get to Caxton's place. You shall find George Pace there. Tell him to bring the ladder that is in the vestry here to the orchard. Tell him I wish for it now and not when he has finished his porter. Wait! Do not make a great kerfuffle, and do not say what you have seen. We do not require an audience. Go now.' They watch him race away, his feet clearing the points of grass. Mary squats by the roots of the tree. Says Dido: 'I am afraid he will fall. He shall kill himself for certain if he does. Could you not climb up to him, Julius?'

The Reverend says: 'Pray have the sense you were born with, Diddy. Even supposing I were able to reach him, what would it serve to have the pair of us trapped there. Are you not afraid for my neck?'

'You were a very neat climber of trees once.'

'Ay, once. Thirty years since. I remember you, sis, climbing that great elm at the back of Father's place.'

'I did too,' says Dido. 'But when girls become women they lose the freedom of their bodies. Custom requires it.'

'Not all of 'em.'

'You are being vulgar, Julius. It is your least attractive suit.'

They wait, watch shadows, hear the peace of Sunday. Now and then, from overhead fall snatches of croaked song, whispered verses.

Sam comes back, marching like a drummer boy, George Pace scowling behind him, the ladder on his shoulder.

'Well done, Sam! My thanks to you, George. I shall see you right for it. This one here. You see him. Steady now. His name is James Dyer.' The Reverend holds the ladder. 'Can you reach him? Have you got him?'

George Pace comes down, alone. He says: "E's crawlin'. I can see 'em in 'is beard. That an' he stinks worse than a laystall.'

The Reverend says: 'Should you like it better if we had him doused in bergamot? Heavens, George, I only wish you to carry him down. You do not need to wed him.'

'Wi' respect, sir, I'd rather not. 'E looks plaguey to me.'

'Plague? Have you perhaps made a study of the subject- between laying traps for Lord Hallam's birds?'

'Do not rant so, Julius,' says Dido. 'If he will not fetch him down, he will not.'

'Are you volunteering, sister?'

'George may be right,' she says. 'He may have a disease. Nothing more likely.'

'In which case we are to leave him in the tree? I see I must do it myself. It is ever thus.'

Still garbed in the robes of his office, the ladder bellying out beneath his weight, the Reverend ascends, hand over hand, his mouth dry as a stone. A branch rakes off his wig and drops it like a shot bird at Dido's feet.

'Dr Dyer?'

An ankle presents itself before his nose. He grasps it. 'Dr Dyer? We must get you down, sir. You cannot stay up here. Place your foot on my shoulder. No, like this . . . ooof . . . come come, sir . . . and the other