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.’
‘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.
His next words confirmed these feelings.
‘I promise, William, that I will use the book with care. I promise I will consider those who gave their lives to illustrate it. I promise I will use it to save other lives. Will that content you and even persuade you just a little?’
‘You speak as if you are beholden to me in some way.’
‘More than you know,’ he said. ‘More than you will ever know.’
‘Then I am content.’
And so, we resumed our friendship. If anything, we were closer than before, knowing that we could disagree, might even quarrel like equals, but that it would never damage our regard for one another.