The Physic Garden (15 page)

It was only a short while later that a certain occurrence
overshadowed
our friendship for a time, much as a poorly pruned tree may affect the tender growth beneath. It was a fine day. I remember that. I had been wandering all over the surrounding countryside the day before, in search of specimens for Thomas. And I had been hard at work in the garden when I returned. It was that time of the year with long light nights, warm and damp to boot, when things would grow so quickly that if you neglected the gardens for only a few days, they would be out of control and twice as hard to manage. I had worked with a will, and then, leaving James to finish off, I had cleaned myself up and gone to Thomas's house, to give myself a much-needed respite. The library seemed to me like an oasis of calm and cleanliness in the midst of the world full of mud and rampant, albeit not always healthy, growth, which I was always struggling to contain.

Usually I went to the shelves where Thomas kept his botanical books. Linnaeus was my bible in those days and I was working my way through his classification of plants, learning them as I went.
The Scots Gard'ner
I still kept at home, and had it almost off by heart, referring to it constantly in my day-to-day work about the college. But today, for some reason, I felt too weary for learning and instead found myself sifting through a heap of books, new acquisitions that
had just arrived and which were sitting neatly on the library table where the servant had placed them, awaiting Thomas's attention. Among them was a very large and unwieldy folio with a fine cover that proclaimed it to be an expensive volume.

The name caught my eye first. William, because it was my namesake. And Hunter, because that seemed familiar. William Hunter. My father had spoken of William Hunter and I knew that the museum that was in the process of stealing a large portion of my physic garden was being built to house the extensive collection which William Hunter had left to the college.

I also knew that Hunter had had an interest in natural history, among other things, so my attention was instantly captured. I thought it might be some illustrated volume of plants to rival Linnaeus. Well, it was a picture book. But it was like no picture book that you would ever want to see. I remember the title very well now. It is burned into my brain. It was called
The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus
. I saw it and realised that this must be one of Thomas's medical books, although I didn't understand the title at all, not at that time. I laid it flat on the blotter – it was a very large and unwieldy volume – and began to turn the pages, carefully but with simple curiosity, all unaware at first of exactly what I was seeing. Well, they say curiosity killed the cat, don't they?

I have to admit that the book was very beautiful. By which I mean that the pictures were quite astonishingly accomplished. I know more about it now. I know that it is a serious book, written by a serious man, with nothing at all frivolous about him. It was illustrated by a talented young Dutchman. His name was Rymsdyk and he was a man of genius. It was a great work of scholarship, which probably helped to save many lives. I know all that and am willing to acknowledge it. Time and experience have mellowed me to some extent. But I still cannot bear to think about that book, because useful and beautiful as it may have been, may still be, I find that the thought of the misery and tragedy lying behind it clouds all else. I cannot help myself.

It was words and not pictures that caught my eye first. Perhaps it was the oddness of them. ‘A woman died suddenly when very near the end of her pregnancy. The body was procured before any sensible putrefaction had begun. The season of the year was favourable to dissection.'

I turned over the page and saw, dear God, I saw such a picture as I hope never to see again. I never have and I have been a dealer in books for these many years past. But that day, there was a compulsion about it. Like Orpheus losing his Eurydice on a glance, like Lot's wife who could not prevent herself from looking, I was helpless to control my own impulse to see. I gazed and gazed and I think there was something in me that was turned to salt for ever after, some sweet innocence lost forever.

When the bird falls from the bough, it can never be made to fly again. My head went spinning and I saw the song birds falling, tumbling through the cold air. I felt physically sick. Never, never to fly again. I remember Thomas saying later, ‘An interesting book. Very. And Hunter was a difficult man by all accounts. Clever but difficult. He believed that anatomical illustration must be very precise. That one must touch as well as see.'

And I thought, ‘Touch? Dear God in Heaven!'

‘William, the book is a masterpiece,' he went on. ‘The illustrations are amazing.'

Well, they were amazing, but not in the way he meant. The pictures you see. I can hardly bring myself to describe the book even now, even though there was a terrible beauty about it all. They were, in the main, pictures of women, their legs spread wide, bones and bellies, with their insides laid out for inspection. And the weans, Christ, the weans, the wee babies, were there too. Not so wee either, for one woman had a full-grown infant nestled inside her. I can call it to my mind yet, although I do not choose to do so very often. It comes to me in nightmares. The baby lies with its face hidden, half covered. One surprisingly mature hand is tucked in by its face, the hair damp, the knees drawn up, so little space is left to contain it in the womb. The skin is soft, malleable,
with the bloom of life still on it. You could marvel at how the artist has captured the sheer beauty of these children, the shelly ear, the dimpled fingers, the limbs fully formed, plump and pliable.

There was such beauty about it that I was captivated by it, until I realised, until the thought struck me all of a sudden, that for a man to record it so lovingly and in such detail he must have seen it, and for a man to have seen it (and perhaps even to have touched it) both mother and child must have been stone cold dead. Not just dead either, but so lost, so cast out, that not a single soul cared enough to claim the bodies, to mourn them, to give them a proper burial. Instead some cold authority was content to consign them, like common murderers, to the anatomist's table. It was this dual perception of repugnance and beauty that made me tremble with emotion. I did not know how to deal with my feelings.

Fascinated, in spite of my revulsion, I turned the pages. One page was full of drawings that looked like so many hives or wasps' nests hanging there, and I realised that these were the wombs themselves. There were drawings of the exterior of the womb with what I realise now must have been blood vessels, but to my eyes they looked very like drawings of trees with trunks and branches, or of exotic plants clambering over rocks. There was something of the vegetable world about them. There was a whole series of bellies, laid open for inspection, and in some of them the child was grown, while in others it was a puny thing, as scrawny as a fledgling fallen from its nest, but still most recognisably an infant.

And there were other things I could not recognise at all, gatherings of tissue like mushrooms on a log, shapeless things, the stuff of nightmare, flesh and blood divorced from its human host.

I think I saw then that the minister who not only spoke of paradise, but also preached hell fire and damnation in the kirk on Sundays, telling us of invented horrors, of demons and suchlike creatures, was wrong. Because sometimes evil is entrancing. And sometimes it needs no perpetrators, no devil whispering
enticements
to this and that transgression. Sometimes evil is simply
present and takes your breath away with its bold and beautiful brutality.

There were no faces of course. Perhaps that would have been too personal. Or perhaps the artist didn't care. They were just torsos. Anonymous women's bodies, vessels without arms or legs or heads. But some of the infants had faces, for sure, dead infants inside dead women, looking as though they slept merely.

‘A woman, immediately after a natural labour, grew faint without apparent cause and died within the space of two hours,' Hunter had written, and ‘A woman who died of flooding in the ninth month of pregnancy.' Further on, he pointed out that everything had been examined in the most public manner, which was deemed to be a very good thing. He foresaw that in the course of some years he might procure in this great city (which was, I take it, London, not Glasgow) ‘so many opportunities of studying the gravid uterus as to be enabled to make up a tolerable system'. Finally, he observed that in a work that had already become too large and expensive, it was thought proper to omit the internal anatomy of the child.

I gazed and gazed. And felt, God help me, my body stirring in response to the nakedness that lay before me, that part of a grown woman which I had never seen before. I slammed the book shut and rushed out of the library, out of the house and down the street, home to my little gardener's house, which was always full of weans and the smell of smoke, bread baking and ale brewing and dust, my house which suddenly seemed cleaner and more congenial than anything Thomas had to offer, than anything Thomas or his ilk might ever have to offer me.

We did not talk of it for a little while. I didn't want Thomas asking me about the book, so I avoided him as far as I possibly could. Oh I still went out into the countryside, still gathered his specimens, because it was the right time of year for the work. And when I was doing it, I took refuge in Jenny's house, but I didn't tell her about the book either. How could I? It did not seem to be a fitting subject for a young woman. It was not even a fitting subject
for me! But I sent the plants to him by way of my brother James, which he must have thought odd, and I didn't go near his house, and eventually, a week or two later, he sought me out himself.

He seemed puzzled. He was evidently a little hurt by my neglect. He must have fancied me unwell again. Or perhaps merely occupied with Jenny. But the longer I left it, the more it must have worried him. I had avoided him out of embarrassment. I didn't know what to say to him and so I postponed any meeting with him.

He came to me before I relented and went to him. I was working in the garden, working – as I had been for these few days past – with a madness upon me. I had started building a wall and was hefting stones about and throwing them down at the risk of breaking my toes, in spite of the sturdy tackety boots protecting my feet. My wall was not a good wall, and I do not think it would stand the test of time, but the exercise seemed to help the feelings of acute disgust that threatened to overwhelm me when I thought about the book I had seen in Thomas’s library.

Thomas came to me and I carried on working. He stood watching me with his arms folded for a while, and then he said, ‘William, my friend, will you stop for a moment and talk to me?’

I stopped and wiped the sweat from my brow, glaring at him.

‘I have work to do. Can you not see?’

‘I can see that. But you can surely spare me a few moments from your busy day.’

He spoke so mildly, so patiently, that he made me feel clumsy and loutish. I stopped what I was doing and brushed the grit from my hands. He motioned to me to sit down and he perched opposite me on one of the boulders forming the foundations of my wall.

I said, ‘A woman died suddenly when very near the end of her pregnancy.’

He frowned. The day was fiercely hot and we were both perspiring.

‘What woman? I don’t understand you.’

I said, ‘You cannot see things the way I do. You never, never will. It’s nae use.’

‘Then explain them to me, my dear William. Let me at least try.’

He was shaking his head, puzzled, and I reflected that it was unfair of me to treat him like this, unfair of me not to explain. He obviously hadn’t the faintest idea what it was that had so upset me.

‘Your library. You gave me the use of your library.’

‘Aye. I did. And was very pleased to see you there. You seemed to be full of enthusiasm until a couple of weeks ago. You were looking at the work of Linnaeus were you not? And as far as I know you were learning a very great deal.’

‘I was.’

‘And believe me, I was happy to see you there. To see you so contented. Enjoying my books and my house. Such hospitality as I could give you. But now you seem to have had enough of books, and perhaps enough of me, and I am wondering what has happened to cause this.’

‘What do you think has happened?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll allow I was disappointed, although whether in you or in myself, I can’t tell. Perhaps you have become uncomfortable there?’

I shook my head. Speech seemed to have deserted me. There was a lump in my throat. I swallowed hard and looked away from him, trying to regain control of myself.

‘Have any of the servants made you uncomfortable? I know fine that our housekeeper can be difficult. She often forgets herself. Forgets her manners. I have spoken to Marion but she knows nothing about it, nothing that might have occurred. And I have thought long and hard about asking you, William, for fear of offending you still further. Sometimes you have more prickles than a thistle and I cannot for the life of me grasp you.’

‘No. No, they were most polite to me. They have aye been polite to me.’

‘Well I’m glad to hear it. So what in heaven’s name is wrong with you? What have I done or said to upset you?’

‘You have done nothing.’

‘Then in the name of God, tell me what ails you?’

‘But there is a book in your library.’

‘There are many books in my library.’

‘No. I mean one book in particular. It is a book with pictures. Christ, sic a book! It is called
The Anatomy of the Human
–’

I saw and heard him draw in his breath sharply. Understanding.

‘Ah. You saw that one, did you? It is a new acquisition for me. And it cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you, but I had to have it.’

‘So now you know what upset me.’

‘I had no idea you – or anyone – had come across it.’

‘I could not avoid it. It was on your table.’

‘The servant should not have unpacked it and left it out for all to see. The children might have come into the room.’

‘You’ll allow that it is a scandalous book?’

‘Not at all William. Not at all. I’ll allow no such thing.’ He looked at me severely and I felt a tremor of anxiety, like when the dominie used to gaze at me sternly for forgetting my work.

‘My dear William, I am a grown man and a doctor and I think that there is nothing scandalous about it,’ he went on. ‘But I would not have wanted any of the children or young servants to come upon it unawares. The housemaids, I mean. It is not a fit book for them, if only in that it might frighten and shock them.’

‘It is not a fit book for anyone.’

‘The book is a masterpiece. The illustrations are amazing.’

‘Aye, they are that alright. And I was truly amazed by them!’

When I recollect what I said to him that day, he must have thought me daft. Very young and very foolish in my high-minded outrage. Yet he did not say so. Instead he took me seriously, engaged me in the debate, hoping to persuade me that I was wrong. Was I wrong? Well perhaps so. Or perhaps not. I confess
that age has brought me no certainty whatsoever in this matter.

‘Did you not find them so?’ he pressed me. ‘The artist was a young Dutchman. Rymsdyk. The contribution it made to our knowledge was immense. You could almost have believed that some of those babies – that they were –’

I spat in the dust. He flinched.

‘Alive,’ I told him. ‘You were going to say alive.’

He shook his head, frowning, trying to see it from my point of view. ‘I see that the book has distressed you deeply.’

‘Distressed is not the word.’

‘I’m very sorry. I had no idea.’

‘I could not bear to look at it and yet I turned the pages and hated myself for doing it.’

He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Ah God, I didn’t realise how it would look to you. I should have had more understanding, more sensibility.’

‘But the pictures, man. Those poor women with their insides laid out for inspection. And the weans. It didnae distress me, man. But I’ll tell ye this much. It offended me. It offended the heart of me.’

‘All the same, William, it is a great work of scholarship. Can you at least allow that?’

‘But they were pictures of deid women, Thomas! Deid women and deid weans. “A lovely and bitter cold day, ideal for preparing the young lady that died last night.” That was what he wrote.’

‘They were already dead. I am truly sorry for their predicament but nothing could be done to save them.’

‘To save them? Could it no’? So how did they come there, I wonder? Were they cast out of their homes by good God-fearing men like us? How did they die? And how did Hunter and his artist come by the models for the work? Why did he do it, I wonder?’

‘It was his life’s work. And I happen to know that he lost money by it. He lost a fortune before he died.’

‘Aye well, he may have done that. But I think he lost his soul at the same time.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘I understand well enough. It was his passport to fame and fortune and patronage. Much like our esteemed Professor Jeffray.’

It may have been a consideration but I think he did the work for its own sake. I think the professor does too.’

‘But such work. And does none of that matter? Did naebody think to ask these questions? And if they didnae, what does that say about the hale damn lot of ye?’

I could feel the anger rising in me all over again. I was
hot-tempered
in those days. I had a handful of wee pebbles, chuckie stanes just, and I threw them at the wall, venomously. The wall was so badly built that I had a feeling of surprise when it did not come tumbling down at once, but stayed where it was, each boulder leaning precariously upon its neighbour.

‘He was a difficult man,’ Thomas remarked. ‘They say he could be a difficult man.’

‘He was a butcher. It was a violation. The women were violated. Every precious detail of them exposed for public viewing. And all in the name of progress. Jesus, and your professor accuses
me
of impropriety.’

‘I am so sorry, William. I had no idea you felt like this.’

‘But why would anyone not feel like this? That’s the wonder of it. Ach it’s plain to me you see things differently. We see things differently, the two of us.’

‘You have to try to understand that the knowledge he gained will help to save other women’s lives, now and in the future. Nothing could save those women then. But I can and do help those who come after. I bought the book as a work of scholarship merely. You must know that.’

He was right of course. My head told me that he was right, but my heart could not agree with him or forgive him. Not at that moment. I was still possessed by a sense of outrage at the book itself and the tragedies that lay behind it.

‘I know you do, and you are a good man. An honest man, that’s for sure. But I don’t believe your professor has quite such fine
motives. He’s nae fool, Thomas. I have small affection for him, and he certainly has nane for me, but even I can see that he is nae fool. He cannot possibly imagine that he will ever be able to reanimate a corpse and yet that is what he wishes to do.’

‘Where on earth did you hear such nonsense? I have never heard the like. Certainly Jeffray has never spoken of it.’

‘I hear the students talk. How can I not hear them? They pass me every day and treat me as if I were a tree, so little attention do they pay me. Even in your classes they do not talk to me, but regard me with suspicion, like the interlowper I am. Your man must know what they are saying, and yet he surely cannot believe it is desirable, or even possible.’

This was well before Jeffray’s experiments with galvanisation. They were all to come, and yet there was much speculation in the college about the man’s ambitions and already some crazy talk of bringing the dead to life. The scholars were, of course, very taken with the idea and talked about it in hushed tones, but with an underlying excitement that scandalised me.

‘No. I don’t think he does believe that,’ said Thomas. ‘But fame would be a kind of immortality and even the best of us may have thoughts about that. Oh, he will do it right enough. Sooner or later. Not resurrection, of course. But the imitation of it. Movement without breath. Animation without life. He will attempt it, by way of experimentation. If he can get his hands on the right body.’

‘Who would give the body of a loved one for sic a cause?’

‘He’s waiting for a criminal. He’s waiting for a hanging.’

‘But who would want to resurrect …’

‘A murderer? Who indeed? But then, you’ve said it yourself, it isn’t possible. He knows it isn’t possible. What he will put on is a show, like a puppet master, like a man playing God.’

‘Aye, a trick such as will make him famous for all time to come.’

‘Well, I’ll allow there is something distasteful about that. But it is a different class of thing altogether from Hunter’s book. That
was a work of true scholarship and is a different thing entirely! The two are not comparable in any way.’

‘Aye, but who is to say that we arenae puppets ourselves with our creator jerkin’ us this way and that at his will?’

He sighed and stood up. ‘You’re very angry, William, and it makes you unreasonable. I’m so sorry. I had no intention of upsetting you and I’m sorry for it.’

‘Deid weans. Women with their legs spread wide for an artist to pin down on the page. And us down here in the garden planting our trees for posterity with the blissful illusion of freedom.’

I have no idea where such ideas came to me at that moment, but the words came tumbling out of me, surprising me, surprising him. He just gazed at me and shook his head, shocked into silence.

‘You had better leave me,’ I muttered. ‘I must get on. I have work to do!’

He made a move away from me, but then turned, unwilling to leave me in anger. All of sudden, he held out his hand. He was half smiling, that rueful grin he sometimes had.

‘Oh, William!’ he said.

I could not resist him. There was something about him that was eminently persuasive, and besides I felt the ground shift under my feet and knew I had a fear of upsetting him, a fear that one day I would go too far, that he might really turn his back on me, withdraw his friendship altogether. I could not bear it.

I hesitated but only for a second or two and then put my hand in his. His palm was warm and dry and his grasp was strong. He shook hands with me and clapped me about the shoulders with his free hand.

‘William, I can’t quarrel with you,’ he said. ‘I simply cannot do it. I have such respect for you, for your strength of feeling. It’s the last thing in the world I would ever want to do. To cause you pain. If I thought it might repair our friendship, I would take the book and hurl it onto the back of the fire. Such is my regard for you that I would do it. I mean it. Just say the word and in it goes!’

‘No. You mustn’t do that. It is a valuable volume and I would feel guilty at your loss.’

‘Then you’ll just have to find it in your heart to forgive me. I had no intention in the world of upsetting you so much.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive. Are two friends not allowed a disagreement now and then?’

He seemed ridiculously relieved. It struck me that perhaps he did value my friendship as much as I valued his. I think now, with all the benefit of hindsight, that I was somewhat unreasonable. I don’t know if I really was as moral as I pretended to be, or if my shock at the sight of the book was some compound of pity and prurience that in turn made me feel guilty, good Presbyterian lad that I was.

Besides, I believed him when he said that he would cast the book into the flames on my say-so. In a curious way, it made me even more disposed to agree with him, made me wonder if perhaps he was right and I was wrong. My mind was all on the dreadful privations of the poor and the ways in which the fate of these unfortunate women was so hideously illuminated by the book. He was a doctor, a healer, and he would experiment with whatever methods might further his own learning, but it was all in a good cause. It struck me that his motives were of the purest form.