Elijah’s Mermaid (27 page)

From
Observations on Hysteria,
by Rufus W. Cruikshank

‘Further to our findings, it is an indisputable fact that a quarter of all women suffer from the ailment of hysteria, the name of which stems from the Greek word for uterus, which is
hystera
. The symptoms of advanced
Female Hysteria
or
Histeria Femenina
affect most civilised women whose dysfunctional or overactive reproductive organs are prone to experience the symptoms which manifest themselves as: faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, and irritability, all of which are due to emanations that seep up from the vaginal tract and overwhelm the fragility of the female body and mind. Delirium is a common symptom of hysteria, often constituting the final phases of a classic major attack during which the manifestations of muscular spasms and paroxysm betray a maniacal diathesis. Insanity is beyond any doubt, and the patient’s family and doctor will have observed at first hand what the asylum physician will go on to confirm. Many illustrative cases may be found, and only once was a misdiagnosis applied when the inmate, J.D., was later found to be suffering from typhoid. Nevertheless, we consider this a secondary infection, favoured by the condition of the patient, and in every case observed there were marked neurotic disturbances where the diagnosis of hysteria was entirely justified.’

From Aretaeus the Cappadocian:

Ancient Greek physician

‘In the middle of the flanks of women lies the womb, a female viscus, closely resembling an animal; for it is moved of itself hither and thither . . . also upwards in a direct line to below the cartilage of the thorax and also obliquely to the right or to the left, either to the liver or spleen; and it likewise is subject to falling downwards, and, in a word, it is altogether erratic. It delights, also, in fragrant smells, and advances towards them; and it has an aversion to fetid smells, and flees from them; and on the whole the womb is like an animal within an animal.’

PEARL

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death;

Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame
.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it:

if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned
.

Song of Solomon, Chapter 8:6–7,
King James Version

It keeps raining, like cats and dogs it is. I lie in my room and all I can hear is that continuous pattering sound. I think it is going to drive me mad, as mad as those ghosts in Chiswick House.

I know they exist. I saw them, on one of those last hot summer days. I lay on the grass with my feet dipped in water, my head wreathed in the trails of geranium that Osborne had picked from the gardens around. How he fussed over my pose, arranging the fall of the stems through my hair, not satisfied that I held my arms in quite the same way as the day before, each part of my flesh being placed just so, in just such a way, at just such a distance from the lake’s edge, at just such an angle to show the same view of the obelisk rising up from the pool and the temple, the little folly, that stands on the slope at its farthest edge.

When finally satisfied with me he turned to complain at Elijah’s work, the easel erected in quite the wrong place, as was the box with the brushes and paints, though Elijah refused to rise to the bait, lips pursed as he whistled some pretty tune
while erecting Osborne’s parasol, so that Osborne could work without being oppressed by the heat or the glare of the midday sun.

I presumed it was the weather that caused this fractious mood. It had changed, almost imperceptibly. There was no mist, but the sparkling clarity had gone. The air was heavy and humid, the sure sign of a storm on its way.

Of course, the English weather could never be predictable, which was why he wanted the photographs to keep an accurate reference, the true nuance of nature in all of its detail for when the leaves and the flowers were gone. But I think it is imagination that makes his work unique, those touches that Osborne always adds when a painting is very nearly done; the malevolent satyrs, the ogres and goblins – though it does seem a shame to me to infuse what appears as a paradise with those leering horned beings, those creatures half formed that crouch to peer out from the bushes and trees. Sometimes when posing, when half asleep, I could almost believe those demons are real, inch by slow inch creeping nearer, watching and waiting, biding their time.

Only once did I dare to tell him that I found them too clichéd, too crudely suggestive. He said he must give the connoisseurs the things they like to see the most: ‘
a sensual titillation wrapped up in the guise of classical art – to hang high upon the Academy walls
’.

Oh yes! He must hang high. But is he selling his soul to the devil, to be exalted above other artists who may at one time have spurned his work, just as he now derides most of them? He holds a grudge as close as a love. For Osborne, any slight is a wound. It never heals, but festers and rots, eating its way into his heart.

Does Osborne have a heart? I am not sure he does. He works me harder and harder these days. In Chiswick House gardens I was used up, posing from morning until the dusk, legs heavy and aching when walking back home, and Osborne striding on ahead while Elijah followed a way behind with his camera and
all of Osbourne’s equipment, and the painting secured on top of that below an oilcloth canopy. But it wasn’t so very far to go, and pleasant enough by the river path where we passed by the quaint little cottages where donkeys and cows were tethered in yards, and almost a tunnel in places it was, overhung with branches of dripping green where we breathed in the malt from the breweries around, and below us the Thames encroached on mud shores, rising up around the green isles in its midst where nothing ever seems to live, apart from ducks and herons and coots.

‘Do those islands have a name?’ One evening I spoke my thoughts aloud. ‘They look like miniature fairy worlds, with the mists rising up from the river like that.’

‘One of them . . .’ Osborne stopped. He lifted his arm to point, ‘That eyot over there . . . they call that one Oyster Pie Island.’

‘Oyster Pie Island!’ Elijah chuckled, his mirth so infectious that soon we were all of us laughing at the incongruity of the name – and so seldom does Osborne even smile that I felt the swelling of my heart. But all too soon the mood dissolved, the three of us growing silent again when we came to the house, like an isle of its own, with its walls of high hedging, and the new stuccoed walls, and the new painted door – every ounce of levity sucked away by the dingy gloom of Dolphin House.

However much work Osborne’s builders have done, as soon as you walk into the hall the stench of the damp is waiting to greet you, still lingering from the previous year when, by all accounts, there was a flood when the river rose up and broke its banks. There is nothing – no flowers, no scented oils, no fresh air coming in through the windows and doors – that can mask that odour very long. No amount of new plaster and whitewash paint can stop the moisture bubbling up, the salts growing out like wormy threads.

Even worse is the air in his grotto. Sometimes I can barely breathe down there, and yet his obsession with darkness endures, even now, even after all of these years. Goodness
knows what it cost to create such a world, and all of those precious artefacts that he had shipped back from Italy, only to hide them away in that dungeon. I begin to think he is a troll, gloating over his treasure hoard while burners hiss and candles dip, gilding his sunless temple while he creates pictures of shadow and light. But none of
those
canvases will he sell. He insists they are ‘
the Truth of my art, created for posterity
’.

How I prefer to be out in the light. And the Chiswick House gardens were lovely, though Osborne was not so happy there. As the sun arced higher in the sky the perspiration stained his shirt, the linen clung damp like a second skin. His face was flushed. Sweat ran from his brow and into his eyes, which were constantly rubbed with the heels of his hands. The hairs of his chest were matted dark, stuck with sweat to the linen cloth. I thought again of Margate beach.

The heat did not bother Elijah. I watched him through my half-closed eyes and saw his smoothly shaven face, not red, but tanned to an olive brown. The same with his arms where the shirtsleeves were rolled to show the roping lines of veins. How I desired to touch them, to follow the patterns they made on his skin. It seemed that my soul was trapped in a spell, and when he removed the camera cap or gazed at me through his secret lens, or counted the seconds out aloud until the exposure time was done – every one and two and three and four – every beat was a stolen thud of my heart. He captured my image so many times, taking so many pictures from so many angles, in every degree of light and shade. He stared at me because he could, because that was what Osborne had asked him to do. Elijah stared, and Elijah smiled, and who would not want to kiss that mouth, and who would not want to brush their fingers through those curling knots of hair, like the prettiest boys in Italian paintings, like a work of art that has come to life, like—

Where has Elijah gone? What has Osborne done with him? Has he harmed him, just like my sweet Angelo? I dream of that child. Such guilt. Such loss. When the rain trickles over my windowpanes, it mocks me, it hisses, it whispers its song
through the new iron bars Osborne screwed to the frames.
You are here. They are gone. They are gone away
.

I whisper back. I tell the rain those things of which I grow surer each day, the truth that I wrapped around a stone when Frederick Hall came to knock on the door, when I found some paper and scribbled my words and flung them down to land at his feet.
He knows. He lies. He is here
.

I meant Osborne, not Elijah. Osborne, who was unaware of what was forming beneath his eyes, immersed in his other painted worlds, at night drinking chloral until in a stupor, collapsing and lying as still as the dead. Now, I wonder – did he only pretend?

I know he lied to the visitors . . . to Elijah’s sister, Lily Lamb. I hope she reads those papers – what I found when I went to the attic room and saw Elijah’s possessions there. Why would he leave them behind? Why was his work still spread on the table? And that bundle of sketches, such private things with his sister’s letters placed on top concealing the secrets underneath, when he wrote about that blessed night, when he climbed through the window and came to my bed – before Osborne fixed the bars in place.

Now I lie here alone. My sheets are cold. The room is furred with layers of dust. Sometimes I write through that dust with a finger. I write on the mirror placed over the mantel,
Where is Elijah Lamb?
I stoop down and throw a log on the fire, and when the flames roar up again I imagine that heat to be the sun, and the sun is shining clean and hot, just as it shone in Chiswick House gardens, every day during August, and all through September, a St Martin’s summer, an Indian summer. Summer of Elijah . . . Elijah . . . Elijah . . .

A fly has landed on one of my arms. I don’t even try to push it off. It reminds me of the sweet green grass, and the insects that zithered around us then, and the shimmering oily perfection in the turquoise blue wings of a dragonfly. I think I’d been entranced with that before looking up to see the ghosts.

All dressed in grey gowns, they came floating towards us, and
how peculiar they looked, every woman with her hair shorn off; reduced to something asexual. Some of them twittered and squabbled like birds. Others were mute, staring blankly around. They all gathered there on the opposite bank, gawping and pointing, staring at me. But then, like bored children, they turned to move on, heading towards an arched stone bridge across which the man was approaching, the man with his ginger-bristled moustache, his stiffly old-fashioned black frock coat, and that cane with its silver hooked handle – what they call a ‘life preserver’ – its end tip-tapping along the path.

Until then, Osborne had been oblivious, entirely engrossed in his work. When he noticed he stood so abruptly that his stool was sent rolling across the grass, his brushes following after as he threw them down and started to rant, ‘For God’s sake . . . has Cruikshank let them out?’

‘Who are they?’ Elijah calmly enquired, having withdrawn from his camera tent; now also observing that little crowd.

‘The lunatics!’ Osborne growled his response. ‘The women who live in Chiswick House!’ He motioned towards the red-haired man. ‘Elijah . . . Go and speak with him . . . the asylum super-inspector. Tell him to take his fools away. He guaranteed my privacy. Damn him!’ Osborne cursed again, stamping his foot like a petulant child. ‘I told that doctor . . . I
must
have peace . . . I cannot be disturbed when I work.’

While Elijah went off to convey such a message, hardly able to conceal my own disbelief, I asked, ‘Osborne . . . is this place an asylum? You told me that no one lived here. Why didn’t you tell the truth?’

‘What need was there? I had not expected to be disturbed. And back in my youth it was a resort, an exclusive idyll for the rich. There was even a menagerie, with elephants, emus and giraffes, all wondering free in these very grounds. Now, the rich place their embarrassments here, those family members they need to cage.’

‘Locked up like creatures in a zoo.’ As I murmured my answer Elijah returned, followed by the Cruikshank man, who
extended his hand to Osborne, a gesture that Osborne rudely ignored while the doctor made his apologies. ‘Mr Black, I most heartily regret that you have been disturbed today. The patients were due for their airing, which they normally take on the eastern lawns. But we have a new nurse, and . . .’

‘You have broken your side of the bargain. Have I not bequeathed enough to your blessed medical charity?’