The Underground Man (15 page)

‘How is that now?' he asked me.

‘That is much better, Conner. Thank you,' I replied.

He nodded and smiled so that his moustache extended another inch or so at either end. ‘In case you wondered,' he told me, ‘I have been blind since the day I was born.'

I was flabbergasted. ‘How in the world did you know what was on my mind?' I asked.

‘Well, to be fair, I should think this must be your first chance to have a good look at me. But, just now, you paused a moment before answering my question. And when you did answer there was a hint of hesitancy there.'

‘You're quite right, Conner,' I told him, ashamed of myself. ‘Please accept my apologies.'

‘Not at all, Your Grace.' He shook his head. ‘No need. No, not at all.'

I studied him for a second, as if the man had just appeared before me in a puff of smoke – how peculiar and intriguing
he was – before realizing I was staring at him as if he was some sort of circus freak. I had allowed a silence to grow between us, so I spoke up and brought it down.

‘Forgive me saying this, Conner, but you must notice all manner of sounds and noises which pass most people by.'

‘I may well do, Your Grace,' he replied. Then added, ‘But they're there for everyone to hear.'

‘Quite so,' I said. ‘Quite so.'

And I looked around that tiny room as if it too had just been brought into being. The door and the shelves and the spartan walls all came to me anew. I considered the contents, hidden in darkness and found by measured steps. The jars of oil, the water jug, the coal tongs – all had transformed themselves into a blind man's things. Had become suddenly weightier. More palpable somehow.

Conner helped me get my shirt back over my head and I watched as he reached my jacket off a hook. He returned and held it open for me, then led me gracefully through the cottage towards the door.

‘You must excuse my sudden silence, Conner. I have not come across a man such as yourself before.'

‘Well, I should say we all have our little qualities which are not apparent at first. But I assure you, Your Grace, I'm the same man as the one you met an hour ago.'

When he opened the front door Clement was already waiting there, ready to escort me back to the carriage. As I shook Conner's hand it seemed my own palm was newly-charged, and for the briefest moment I sensed something of a whole other world which was lost to me.

‘You have set me straight, Conner,' I said, ‘and I very much appreciate it.'

He smiled, then leaned towards me and whispered, ‘If this spirit of yours keeps pestering you you might do well to have words with him.'

‘I will, Conner,' I said. ‘Goodbye. And thanks again.'

‘Goodbye, Your Grace,' said Conner. Then, ‘Goodbye Clement,' though Clement had not said a word.

Since Conner's recent treatment I have had not the least inclination to eat, my body perhaps regarding a reconstituted backbone as quite enough on its plate without being troubled with digestion's stresses and strains. Around lunchtime yesterday I managed a sliver of toast spread with a mushroom pâté, but that has been about the only solid food to pass my lips.

Mrs Pledger, however, is adamant I should at least maintain my consumption of liquids and boiled up for me a big pot of camomile and lemon-balm tea. This, I was assured, would calm me down after the recent hectic days and encourage in me a more tranquil frame of mind. I must admit that, while the aroma (and indeed flavour) are reminiscent of some damp corner of the garden, I found I had soon developed quite a taste for it. A fondness which rapidly developed into a fierce, almost unquenchable thirst. It seemed the more I drank of the strange yellow brew the more desiccated I became. Perhaps I have recently misplaced some vital inner juice. Perhaps my body recognized in the tea some mineral which I currently lack. What ever, my original request for Mrs Pledger to boil up a second pot was swiftly followed by ever more frequent and desperate appeals. I felt thoroughly parched, like some poor wretch lost on a desert's sands and, like a human sponge, I soaked up every last sip.

By early evening, however, the prodigious tea-drinking
had caught up with me and the constant trips to the water closet were becoming tedious. I was awash with camomile and lemon-balm. If I shifted too quickly in my armchair I could feel pints of the stuff splashing around inside, so that when Mrs Pledger put her head round the door around seven she found me beached in my armchair, utterly (if naturally) intoxicated and having difficulty staying awake. At which point Clement was called to help put me to bed.

To cap it all I slept remarkably well – without interruption or a single bad dream. The most satisfying sleep I have had in many a month. When I woke, a good fourteen hours after my head first hit the pillow, I felt myself thoroughly rested and quite a new man, although when I opened my mouth to let out a yawn found my breath still had about it the faint reek of scented grass.

I do not think I have left my rooms all day and I can't say I feel any the worse for it. When Clement had finished drying me after one of his soapier baths, I simply changed into a clean nightshirt and took my breakfast by the fire. Managed some coddled eggs and a cup or two of Assam but resolved to spend the whole day very quiet and give my bones a chance to settle themselves. Had Clement dig out my old satin skullcap and a pair of thick knee-socks, so that with my dressing gown pulled tight around me I was almost completely insulated against the outside world.

My session with blind Conner has given me a new perspective on my body and to consolidate some of the issues raised
by it I took my
Gray's Anatomy
down from the shrine and opened the old chap up.

Much of the day spent in my armchair with that weighty tome in my lap, idly picking over the pages and pausing only to heap more coal on the fire. Though I must have spent several hours in the book's learned company I cannot claim to have ‘read' it as such. It is much too crammed with technical terms for me to pick up any speed. Rather, I would pore over each pen and ink drawing which took my fancy, then move on to the next.

Many of the illustrations depict some specific visceral valve or bone-corner and, in truth, these are of little interest to me. I prefer the pictures with slightly broader scope, where one can more readily identify the whole locale as part of the human form (such as a sectioned arm or leg). Each time I turned the page to cast my eye over some new junction of muscle and bone I always sought out the hand or toe or eyeball which might help me get my bearings, but if, after half a minute, I could still not tell north from south, I would simply turn to the next page and begin the whole process again.

The ‘subject' of the drawings appears to be the same poor fellow throughout and it was not long before I found myself pitying him for having undergone such torture on my behalf – for assenting to be so thoroughly taken apart. His face, where it is visible, wears an attitude of weary resignation, which is commendable to say the least, considering that half his face has been crudely ripped away to show the network of nerves and veins beneath.

On one page the brave chap stands with outstretched arms, his bare back turned toward the reader and not a single scrap of flesh left on him. One looks upon a truly naked man. The only stuff covering his poor bones and organs are the ribbons
of muscle, wrapped around him in fibrous swaths … pulled tautly over the shoulders, under armpits and seeming to glisten on the page.

Amidst this sea of twisting muscle I noticed the bone causeway of the spine – an unhooked necklace of numbered pearls, beautifully bisecting his back. And as I peered at them I found myself moved a little, recognizing them as the same tiny bones which had so recently been checked and shifted by the knowing fingers of kind, blind Conner.

I studied every string of this body's bow and still he refused to flinch. In fact, so convincingly was his skinlessness mapped out for me that I had to suppress an urge to go in search of a blanket to cover up his sticky form.

On one page hand-bones were laid out like rows of flint, every knuckle and joint labelled and given its proper Latin name. How many small bones there are in one hand – as complicated an organization as the bones of a bird! – and so convincingly represented that when I next turned the page I found myself half-listening for their rattle.

The rack of ribs seemed not so much an aspect of the human form and more some butcher's shop window display. Or some bleached-out sheep-relic one stumbles across while walking upon a fell.

Then, at last, the skull! – that constant grinner – a likeness all faces gradually acquire. Each time I confront the mirror I see a little more of him peering through.

Once my cheeks were full of pie but they have slowly become hollowed-out and every year now my forehead has about it a greater determination.

Strange to think that we each carry inside us a functioning skeleton; that buried deep within the meat of me my own bone-tree patiently waits.

Not surprisingly, this morbid reading did nothing for my appetite so that when word came up that it was boiled gammon for lunch I called down and asked to skip straight to the pudding.

By the end of the afternoon I was still happily reading and jotting down the odd note, when I felt a dismal and lethargic cloud begin to slowly settle all around. This is not in itself unusual, for when the light first fails on a winter's day I often experience a corresponding dwindling of spirit, which can tend towards melancholy. On this occasion, however, I decided to try and counteract it with a quick bout of standing-on-my-head. As a boy, this was a favourite pastime and could be more or less relied upon to induce an agreeable light-headedness. Fortunately, I took the precaution of locking the bedroom door, for no sooner were my legs up against the wall than my nightshirt fell down around my ears.

With a thick cushion on the floor to protect my head I managed to maintain the position for several minutes, feeling refreshed and then reflective and finally a little faint. When I was upright again I could feel blood cascading through me like so many mountain streams. I was altogether much invigorated and promised myself from now on to spend at least five minutes a day upside-down.

Some time ago I found a small briar pipe at the back of a desk drawer which had once belonged to my father. It is carved in the shape of a Dutch clog and fits snugly in the fist of my hand. When I came upon it I saw how it had in the bottom of its bowl a scrap of ancient tobacco and it seemed not unreasonable to suppose that this tiny strand helped make up my father's last smoke.

Sometimes I think I am nothing but a foolish old man, for tonight when it was dark and the fire roared in the grate I
took a twist of some new tobacco mixture (which claims to be beneficial for the heart and lungs) and filled up that briar pipe. I took care to keep in place the ancient string of tobacco and, after tamping and tucking the bowl of the pipe in the way I fancied a smoker might, I lit her up.

With an old coat around my shoulders I went out on to the balcony and in the cold night air allowed myself to imagine I inhaled the same smoke my father drew into his lungs all those years ago. I pictured it slowly wafting through my innermost caverns and felt myself much calmed. I stared up at the stars, scattered between the horizons, and added the modest glow of my pipe to their sombre display.

While I stood there in my own small cloud of smoke, thinking all manner of dreamy thoughts, I became aware how, not more than a couple of yards over my shoulder, there floated the mysterious boy. If I had reached out I could have touched him. But he would not have liked that and most likely would have disappeared. So I continued to puff quietly on my father's Dutch clog pipe and gaze up at the stars, while the floating boy kept me company in the vast, near-silent night.

Lassitude continues. Perhaps I have drunk too much of the camomile. The whole day amounted to little more than a series of yawns and stretching of arms. Strange to report that at each yawn's peak I hear the sound of church bells ringing. Have never noticed them before.

Mrs Pledger continues her herbal assault on me. No plant on the estate is safe. Now I am quite happy to drink a little
sarsaparilla to purify my blood. But one minute she is bringing me crushed mugwort (to stimulate the appetite) and the next it is elderflower and peppercorn (to clear my cloudy head). I only wish I had it in me to tell her that my head might not be so cloudy in the second place if it hadn't been for the mugwort in the first. But such talk would not go down well with her and I shudder to think how she might react. All the same, I would get along much better with all these concoctions if they didn't taste and smell like so much boiled-up bark and root. There must be a limit to how much folk-medicine a man's constitution can take. At times it is like taking a swig from a stagnant pool.

All day it has been Mrs Pledger's objective to get my appetite up so at midday, in order to show willing, I announced how I quite fancied an apple (something we are never short of in this house) and made a show of smacking my lips. Ten minutes later I was presented with a platter stacked with half a dozen varieties, from which I picked my favourite, a beautiful Russet – coarse, tanned skin; tender, creamy flesh with a rich and smoky flavour.

I rolled its lovely roughness in my palm before cutting it cleanly in half, the knife ringing out as it struck the plate. The two halves separated perfectly, flat and white, and as I took one up and bit into it watched a single pip, which had leapt from the apple's split core, gently spinning on the plate.

Such colossal potential in the humble pip! How pleasing that locked away in the very heart of the fruit there nestles a tight cluster of its eager seed. And that in each dark little teardrop is the makings of a tree.