Belle Moral: A Natural History (13 page)

D
R
R
EID
. She was born like that.

V
ICTOR
. No, why doesn’t she wake up? You’ve drugged her, why?

D
R
R
EID
. Would you rather see her in a strait-jacket?

P
EARL
. Did Mother … see her?

D
R
R
EID
. Your mother wanted to keep the child. Régine was … tender-hearted. I tried to convince Ramsay. I thought I could heal the poor thing – or at least remove the deformity. And I made a start. But Ramsay changed his mind before I could finish.

P
EARL
. She was an infant, then, when you operated?

D
R
R
EID
. Of course; infants, like animals, feel no pain, but Ramsay took it into his head that the creature was suffering. Then your mother passed away and … 
[struggling; it is difficult for him to talk about Régine, and the painful events of those days]
. I hadn’t the heart to continue even if your father had permitted it, so I … laid my research to rest, along with Régine’s dear … dear memory. But Pearl, your passion has rekindled my own. And I’m glad I did not proceed with the crude methods of my youth, for I realize now that her anatomy conceals treasures beyond the reach of a mere scalpel. You were right: she is an original; a real-life chimera; a brave new world, undiscovered, unclaimed. Oh Pearl, she has so much to teach us: about what we are; where we come from; where we are going and where we must not go. We stand poised to breach Nature’s last
frontier. Within our grasp is the knowledge and the power: to select the best of Earth’s bounty; to combine what is there, to create what is not, to make a heaven of this hell. To chart Utopia in our time. The work begins here. With her offspring.

V
ICTOR
. Her “offspring”?

D
R
R
EID
. What I propose is standard laboratory procedure. Painless, humane –

V
ICTOR
. Hers and who else’s? Yours? The puppy’s?

D
R
R
EID
. You’re a disgrace.

F
LORA
. You’re a disgrace! And so am I, we’ve had no right –

D
R
R
EID
. I have a duty! Pearl, I would not harm her in any way, why should I wish to? She is a gift.

F
LORA
. Ramsay forbade you to touch another hair on her head.

D
R
R
EID
[furious]
. Ramsay wanted to drown it!

F
LORA
. If that’s true, it only shows he didna want the poor creature to suffer.

D
R
R
EID
. He didn’t want his
pride
to suffer! Ask Young Farleigh. Ramsay told him to put it in a sack and throw it into the sea.
[blazing]
I saved it! It’s mine!

P
EARL
. What is your name?

D
R
R
EID
. It doesn’t have a name.

P
EARL
. Speak, child.

F
LORA
. She canna speak, pet.

P
EARL
. What is your name?

A beat
.

Y
OUNG
W
OMAN
. Claire.

A beat
.

P
EARL
. I think you’d better leave now, Doctor.

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl –

P
EARL
[calm]. Get out of my house.

F
LORA
. No, pet. She was just terribly, terribly sad. She walked into the sea.

Four months later
. M
R
A
BBOTT
waits, briefcase in hand
. Y
OUNG
F
ARLEIGH
is asleep in the chair under the worn tartan shawl
, P
UPPY
tucked by his side. The family portrait hangs once more over the mantle piece, the space between
P
EARL
and
V
ICTOR
now revealed to contain an infant with the ears of a puppy
. A
BBOTT
squints at the portrait
. P
EARL
enters. Her hair is down, her flowing garments anticipate Vanessa Bell, and are particularly generous about the midriff
.

P
EARL
. Ah, Mr Abbott.

A
BBOTT
. Good afternoon, Miss MacIsaac.

P
EARL
. Have you brought the documents?

A
BBOTT
. I have, Miss.
[a beat]
If you will permit me to say so, Miss MacIsaac, you are looking particularly well this afternoon.

P
EARL
. Thank you, Mr Abbott, I’m feeling particularly well.

A
BBOTT
. I had the good luck to attend a lecture yesterday evening, and have taken the liberty of bringing you a transcript which I venture to hope may excite your interest.
[Hands her a sheaf of paper.]

P
EARL
[reading]. “Fossils of All Kinds, Digested into a Method Suitable to Their Mutual Relation and Affinity”.

A
BBOTT
[speechless]
.

P
EARL
. Good. Please join Auntie Flora in the conservatory.

D
R
R
EID
. Hello, Pearl.

P
EARL
. Hello, Doctor. Thank you for coming.

D
R
R
EID
[slight bow]
.

P
EARL
. Dr Reid, I have something of a delicate nature to tell you; and something of vital import, for which I must ask –

D
R
R
EID
. Don’t ask. There is no need. My dear, I have already forgiven you. I am a doctor; I, of all men, ought to have been unsurprised by your reaction that fearful night. It is I who am at fault for having allowed these several months to pass in silence, but I have been much in demand abroad – nay, ‘tisn’t only that; I confess my pride was wounded. Still, when I received your invitation to call today, any trace of rancour melted away, so let us speak no more of it.

P
EARL
. I’m pregnant.

D
R
R
EID
. I beg your pardon?

P
EARL
. Father’s will. Bars me from bearing children.

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl, dearest. Do you not recall, you yourself had the presence of mind to diagnose your condition. I sought, mistakenly I now see, to shield you from the truth, but the fact is, the power of repressed emotions has exacted a psychosomatic toll –

P
EARL. –
my womb is in revolt against the proviso of my father’s will –

D
R
R
EID
. – such that your pregnancy is, in reality–

P
EARL
. Hysterical.

D
R
R
EID
. Yes.

P
EARL
. No. At least not any more. Whatever was ailing me – hysterical, fantastical, or perfectly logical – it was certainly a conception of my mind, but I can assure you such is no longer the case.

D
R
R
EID
. You mean to say …? Victor, at this juncture it would behoove a gentleman to leave a lady alone with her physician.

V
ICTOR
. Ay, it would.

D
R
R
EID
. My dear, who has done this to you? I’ll have him clapped in irons.

P
EARL
. I really can’t say, Doctor.

D
R
R
EID
. How many men have there been?

P
EARL
. Need there have been any?

D
R
R
EID
. Well how, otherwise, do you explain your pregnancy?

V
ICTOR
. A lady needn’t explain.

P
EARL
. No, but I shall. Perhaps it is parthenogenic.

D
R
R
EID
. Human asexual reproduction? Impossible.

P
EARL
. “Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.”

V
ICTOR
. Who said that? The pope?

P
EARL
. Oscar Wilde.

D
R
R
EID
. Apart from a rare species of lizard, parthenogenic reproduction in multi-celled creatures is confined to the class of worms and religious myth.

P
EARL
. Perhaps I have diversified successfully.

V
ICTOR
. She was down winkling on the shore when she met a fellow with great tall ears and a long snout. Loaded with baked goods, he was.

P
EARL
. Victor dreamt I was impregnated by a psychopomp.

D
R
R
EID
. You claim to have had congress with the Egyptian God of the underworld?

V
ICTOR
. Not only that, she cured my phobia.

P
EARL
. I merely ventured that Victor, via his fits, may have subconsciously registered a warning: to wit, if we refuse to acknowledge kinship, not only with the mythic dog, but with all matter; if we resist the central truth of evolution –

D
R
R
EID
. I am a child of the Enlightenment, I resist nothing that is rational, I believe in evolution, along with the rest of the civilized world.

P
EARL
. The civilized world behaves least as if it did believe. For all our scientific pieties, we still organize our societies as though we alone had been created in the image of a god in whom we profess no longer to believe. We have slain our brother, Abel, and who was he? Did he walk on two legs, or four? Did he creep, or swim, or fly? If we fail to recognize our true nature, we shall conduct our lives according to criteria that are divorced from matter – from our mother – Earth. If we behave as gods – warring, feasting and plundering – then, like gods, are we doomed to disappear in a twilight of our own making? Perhaps Victor was no more “hysterical” than Cassandra when she prophesied the fall of Troy. Lucky for her she didn’t live today, she’d be walking about short of a uterus by now.

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl, I understand your reluctance to confess … multiple indiscretions. But I fear you may be suffering from a more serious malady.

P
EARL
. What is that?

D
R
R
EID
. I cannot, in all decency, speak the word. Be assured there is hope that, with timely surgical intervention –

V
ICTOR
. He thinks you’re a nymphomaniac.

P
EARL
. Really, Doctor? I’ve always wondered what they looked like.

V
ICTOR
. Just my luck I’d finally meet a nympho and she’d turn out to be me sister.

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl, I’m still willing to marry you.

A
BBOTT
. Good afternoon, Doctor.

D
R
R
EID
[to P
EARL]
. Is this the man?

V
ICTOR
. “Crucify him!”

P
EARL
. Mr Abbott, the documents, please.

V
ICTOR
. Look lively, Lorenzo, we’re due at the asylum at half six.