Part Four

The Colony

 

The island rose up out of the sea in the early dawn. Just as the steady, distant line which divided the smoky air from the darker blue began to appear, the symmetry of sea and sky broke open and an uneven humped shape reared up, far distant but perceptible. Barry leaned against the rail. Distances were difficult to judge in the lurching unsteadiness of dark blue air. The storm had blown itself to bits hours ago and his stomach, emptied early on, was responding well to a basin of strong green tea. None of his fellow passengers had dared the decks. In fact, the boat seemed curiously empty, unmanned. The slap and wash of a low swell made the timbers stretch and creak beneath him. Barry passed his hand over his eyes. At one point in the night he was convinced he had actually felt his body leave the bunk, hover in the air for a second, only to be slapped down again into the foetid sheets, insensible. He looked out at the pale horizon. The island was still there.

One of the ragged boys, who appeared to be entrusted with their very lives, trotted past. His feet were streaked with tar. Barry caught his sleeve.

‘Is that our destination?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy, indifferent.

‘And shall we arrive before evening?’

The boy looked up at the lightening sky.

‘Yes, sir, if wind. No, sir, if no wind.’

Barry gave up. There had been sufficient wind the previous night. He concentrated on steadying the green tea, which was slopping from side to side in rhythm with the ship. When he looked out again the island was fainter, but still there. It had receded even further down the horizon. No one else appeared on deck. Barry undid his tighter buttons and leaned unsteadily against the rail. The quality of the light began to thicken, despite the earliness of the season.

It was February. You could have counted upon the sunshine in the Cape. In England, at this time of day, if the murky air cleared at all, you could see every crystal of dew upon the leaves. But here, at sea, far south, in the Eastern Mediterranean, the transparent wind of dawn drew breath and immediately thickened into the opaque white light of the south. As he watched, the island vanished. Barry gave up hope. They might never reach land again.

The swell deepened. He staggered back down the polished steps to his cabin, clutching the ropes. One of his fellow passengers appeared briefly on the gangway. It was the elder Miss Haughton, a maiden lady accompanying her niece. Her blouse was in disarray and her shawl stained with unmentionable liquids. She held her handkerchief to her mouth.

‘Ohhhhh, Dr Barry,’ she murmured piteously.

‘Lie down at once, madam. And take a very little sweet tea.’ This was his first and last attempt to treat the common malady. He dived hastily into his berth. Psyche was a sad mass of limp and wretched fur under the wooden desk, which was attached to the floor with brass rivets. She whimpered as Barry locked the door.

‘Don’t worry, my love,’ said Barry to the dog, crawling back into the unsavoury sheets. ‘No one cuts a fine figure when they are seasick.’

The sun sent one terrible volley of light through the porthole. Barry pulled the sheet over his face and groaned.

 

*  *  *

 

The boat docked that evening. As the light was darkening again the sheds of the wharf became clearly visible. The Health Officers rowed out to greet them and came on board to inspect the ship’s papers and the log. They had last docked briefly in Italy so the quarantine period was probably unnecessary. All the officials wanted to meet Dr Barry. He spent some time shaking hands and dealing with openly inquisitive stares. All the lights on board the ship gleamed towards the answering lights on shore in the twilight. Port Health, a jolly red-faced man, bursting out of his uniform, waived the regulations for Psyche, who had permission to land with her master. Everyone was on deck now, gabbling with excitement. Barry had the younger Miss Haughton, still pale and interesting from the night’s exertions, firmly attached to one arm and his white poodle carefully stowed away under the other.

‘We shall see each other again, won’t we, Dr Barry?’ gushed the Misses Haughton. The ladies were fascinated by the courteous little doctor with his old-fashioned manners, his reputation for savagery and his irreligious opinions.

‘I shall call upon you as soon as I am at leisure to do so. Now, can you pick out anyone in uniform down there?’

But nothing suggesting a military presence was to be seen in the early dark. The wind was still balmy and warm. Everyone declared their pleasure and surprise, and England was declared to be the damp, unhealthy isle, with a winter climate that was really quite unacceptable. They all agreed on a round of clichés: sea voyages were vile and to be avoided at all costs, all that had saved them from hurling themselves overboard was the pleasant society into which they had so fortunately been thrown and the herbal potions administered by our esteemed Dr Barry, who had clearly, singlehandedly, saved all our lives.

A loud cheer went up from all the passengers as the first rope hit the great iron rings fixed into the wooden jetty. A fainter answering cry arose from the little crowd gathered round the sheds. They had arrived in the colony. The group on board fragmented, rushing to amass hat boxes, suitcases, coats, shawls and bags. Barry stayed at the rail for a moment, stroking Psyche to prevent her from barking. There was no one in uniform waiting in the crowd.

But as Barry descended the gangway with careful steps, for it was damp and unstable and his heels caught in the ropes, a tiny swarthy man with a thick mass of dark curls clutched at his coatsleeve.

‘Dr Barry, sir. I am Isaac. I am your servant, sir.’

Isaac’s statement of identity was accompanied by a deep bow. His assertion of servitude was probably meant literally, but was delivered with all the hauteur and austerity of a gentleman. And Barry took it that way.

‘I am honoured, Isaac.’

They shook hands in the flickering dark; two tiny men, both vibrant with self-conscious dignity.

Isaac described the vehicle which was to transport them up the hill to the hospital buildings as a curricle. He pronounced it ‘kurrikal’. The thing turned out to be a cart, whose construction was of uncertain date. There was one lantern, insecurely attached. But the horse was small, powerful, and sure-footed, the only element in the entire equipage which inspired any confidence. The lights of the port dropped away behind them as they jolted and swayed upwards into the unknown whistling dark.

Barry was too disorientated to do more than comfort Psyche with a portion of his own vegetable soup and bread before retiring. He hardly glanced at his surroundings, but he left Isaac with detailed instructions as to where his trunks were to be placed. They were to remain locked. Barry would not give his servant the keys and clearly intended to unpack his trunks himself. No other master had ever done this. The houseboys were too timid to greet the new master, but they peered around doors and from behind screens, anxious to steal a glance at the tiny toy soldier with his red hair and fine manners. Psyche growled whenever Isaac approached and was gently reproved by the exhausted doctor.

He called for hot water, retired to his bedroom and took the jug from Isaac at the door. Then he locked himself in. The key turned decisively against Isaac and the houseboys, who retreated through the chilly shadows to the warm, private glimmering of their kitchen lamps, and settled around their table to share their first impressions of the new master.

 

*  *  *

 

Reputations are like benign parasites. The carrier or the host is often unaware of their existence. Barry was cautiously open-minded when he encountered other people for the first time. He made no distinction between titled lords and naked Hottentots. His tone and manner never differed. Nor did he give any hint of his assumption that the naked Hottentot probably enjoyed better health than the titled lord and almost certainly had rather less to hide. But Isaac entertained no suspicion that the doctor was a democrat in the letter and the spirit. He greeted his new master with well-masked anxiety. Barry’s reputation had preceded him by many months and the colony was seething with gossip. It was a tiny tittle-tattle place, overflowing with the most turbulent conduits for rumour and speculation, that is, stuffy drawing rooms filled with bored English ladies.

Colonel Bird, on his way back to England, had wintered on the island. Colonel Bird had known Barry well. They had served together in the Cape. Colonel Bird let out a delighted roar.

‘So! You’re getting Barry, are you? Well, good luck to you. He’s a tartar and a tyrant. No quarter to anyone. He carried through a veritable revolution in the hospital service down there. And in his first year he established a leper colony for those poor disease-ridden fellows that you must be damned careful not to touch. Did well for himself, though. He was private physician to the Governor’s household. When he arrived he was nothing more than an assistant staff surgeon and by the time he left he was the Colonial Medical Inspector. Ordering people about like nobody’s business. And loved doing it!’

Colonel Bird qualified his views on Barry’s high-handedness with respect for his professional capabilities.

‘Mind you, he’s a damned fine doctor. He saved the Governor’s life back in 1818 when Sir Charles went down with typhus. We’d all given up the old boy for lost. He was yellow with fever. Harrowing affair. The wife ordered all the children out of the house. Nothing scares Barry, though. He’s got hands of ice, that man, and no nerves whatsoever. Or none that I’ve noticed. He’s a bit of a maverick. Follows his nose and is very sure of his own opinions. But you’ll never regret taking his advice. In fact, if you don’t, it’s probably the last thing you’ll do. And I’ve never seen a gentler chap when someone’s really ill. But you can’t work with him. You have to obey him. Or else. Give him his way and he’d have all the malingerers shot!’

Colonel Bird threw back his head and roared some more. Then he began a fantastic tale of the great trek to the interior of the country. The ladies trembled delightedly at the descriptions of savage elephants, trunks raised and roaring, the rhinoceros, shimmering, white, which had almost charged, a lion snaffling one of the black boys from the camp in the dead of night, but which was persuaded to part with its prey when Colonel Bird himself burst forth from his tent, brandishing pistols, so that the lad escaped with an insignificant mauling. Yes, yes, a little blood, but there’s no need to faint. The set piece of this predictably heroic tale of adventure was the moment when the Governor, attended by Colonel Bird, Captain Sheridan and the tiny Dr Barry, confronted Gaika, the Kaffir chieftain, with his guard of three hundred warriors, all stark naked apart from their feathers and tattoos, waving their assegais.

‘. . . everyone kept their nerve, but they were grim fellows, I don’t mind telling you, who could have run us through a dozen times if they’d had half a mind to do it. The Governor was very dignified. Polite, but unintimidated. Barry was his translator. I’d no idea that the chap could talk as fast and hard as the natives, even in their own lingo. He did all the negotiating. And he wouldn’t give way on any of the original terms. He seemed to feel that it was his duty not to yield. And he knew how to hit just the right tone of haughty inflexibility, even when he talked Kaffir. Our retinue looked magnificent. Well, we were all laden with metal and feathers: full dress uniform, never mind the heat. That was Barry’s doing. He wouldn’t have it otherwise. He maintained that it was a question of respect. He may be a black savage, that chap Gaika, but he’s every inch a king. That was Barry’s opinion.’

The fact that Bird did not like Barry, but was impressed by his performances, was not lost on the colonists. Two stories did the rounds: one about a quarrel in which Barry had sliced off his opponent’s finger at the dinner table with a fruit knife. The ladies listened, thrilled. Everyone looked forward to inviting the irascible little doctor to dine at their houses. The other story was ripe for embellishments. In December 1820, the Emperor of St Helena himself had fallen ill and Earl Bathurst suggested that help should be sent from the Cape, where the finest doctor in the colonies served under Sir Charles Somerset. Napoleon died before the reply could reach St Helena. But, as the tale spread towards the furthermost outposts of the colony, it became widely believed that, during the Emperor’s last illness, the famous Dr Barry had attended upon Napoleon.

Barry attracted attention wherever he went and this appeared to be deliberate. Mrs Lois Chance, who had known Barry in the Cape, on request, wrote a much-cited letter describing the good doctor, which also did the rounds of the stuffy drawing rooms, and was carefully scrutinised behind the fluttering of Japanese fans.

 

He is a perfect dancer, and I have had the pleasure many times. He won his way to many a heart with his impeccable bedroom manners. In fact, he is a flirt. He has such a winning way with women and he has the most beautiful small white hands.

 

This was the kind of detail that Colonel Bird did not provide, but was manna to the ladies.

No household keeps secrets from servants. Isaac received a version of the drawing-room excitements. He did not believe that Barry would have sliced off a fellow officer’s finger, even in a rage, simply because, in his official capacity as medical staff doctor, Barry would have been giving himself the trouble of stitching it on again. In any case, Isaac often polished the fruit knives at the residence, and they were barely effective for slicing through the flesh of a ripe apricot. But he firmly believed the story about Napoleon. Barry had closed the Emperor’s eyes, with his cold, pale hands. And what he did gather from the rumours was the fact that Barry was autocratic and opinionated. These are not good qualities in a master.

 

*  *  *

 

The first thing Barry heard in the cool dawn was the sound of bells passing outside. The jingling flood had surged over the white rocks and up the fragrant hills, covered with flowering rosemary and wild thyme. Barry flung open the shutters and looked out. The goats had long ears like floppy tongues and pert tails with white tufts. They tinkled effortlessly across the rim of a ravine and ascended the meadows, followed by a boy and two dogs. Barry watched them out of sight. He decided to order fresh goat’s milk, to be delivered every morning.

When Isaac reappeared, carrying a bowl of hot water, the doctor was already dressed and inspecting the premises, his poodle tucked under his arm. He gave orders concerning his meals and linen quietly and without emphasis. Isaac listened carefully. The doctor preferred fresh milk, from the passing goats, fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Then he asked a question.

‘Do you ever have frosts?’

‘Oh yes, sir. We have a frost every five years. And there is always snow on the high mountains.’

Isaac delivered this information in tones of reassurance, imagining that the English doctor was already missing the chill of his native land. He was so anxious to say the right thing that he did not notice the ironic curl of Barry’s lip. Barry turned away and looked out with satisfaction at the rough shapes of white rock protruding from the hillside above the colony. The house was surrounded by a small garden, which, from the smell of the red earth, had just been watered. Barry noticed that purple and deep-red bougainvillea was in bloom. He smiled at the sharp lines of colour: the cream walls and green roofs of the barracks, the thick blue of the sky in the early day. He was not thinking of England.

The army buildings were set apart on a little ridge above the town, occupying the view above the bay and far out to sea. The lights of the barracks were the only things clearly visible to passing ships, for the town was protected by a gentle curling finger of land which ended in a fat little Turkish fort, constructed in the fourteenth century. The bay was full of fishing boats, floating in shallow waters. Barry deduced that the wharf for the big ships must be on the other side of the hill, and invisible from his house. He liked the somewhat withdrawn situation of the Deputy Inspector’s quarters, which enabled him to look down upon the esplanade lined with palm trees, the smart houses and their fragrant, well-watered gardens. He could even pick out the eighteenth-century columns and noble pediment of the theatre, which was decorated with one or two celestial Muses, organised around the chariot of Apollo. When he looked at it more carefully, some days later, he discovered that the seagulls had stained the statues in suggestive places with yellowing excrement and taken to nesting peacefully beneath Apollo’s wheels.

The sun was already powerful. Barry sat on his verandah, very upright in the green cane furniture and cream cushions. He took his tea with sweet breads and fruit. Isaac watched over his silent master with cautious curiosity. The doctor’s manners were gentle and considerate. He never raised his voice. But every gesture, indeed his very posture among the cushions, indicated that he was acutely aware of Isaac’s presence and observation. The servant realised that he was no longer invisible, that he too was noticed and observed. This unusual fact alarmed him. He could no longer gather information with impunity. Master and servant negotiated their shared territory, circling one another, without a word spoken.

The white poodle, which had just wolfed down half a chicken without the bones, was not to be caressed. This creature, as delicate and fastidious as its master, was clearly vicious, and growled whenever he approached.

Then came the sound of several horses, taking the hill at a bracing trot. Isaac and Barry guarded the verandah, staring at the mounting cloud of dust. A few moments later, amidst a flurry of snorts and thuds, a very large man, formally but hastily dressed, loomed round the corner of the house, leaving a trail of slurred footsteps across the dew on the lawn.

‘Dr Barry,’ he bellowed, long before he could possibly have shaken the doctor’s hand, ‘I say, pardon me, won’t you? Grovelling apologies and all that. I was meant to meet you on the quay, with due pomp and circumstance. But you were a day early. And I had a little band, all rehearsed. What’s a fellow to do? I’ve been beaten by the wind, you might say. Never mind. I’ll get them to perform the whole thing on another occasion. We’re always getting up little ceremonies. How do you do, sir.’

He arrived at last within hand-shaking range.

‘To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?’ Barry stepped forward, forever insubstantial despite his padded shoulders and high heels.

‘Oh dammit, sorry. Walter Harris. I’m the Deputy Governor.’ Harris was never intentionally rude. He already knew so much about Barry that he treated the doctor like someone he had met many times.

Barry felt the sweating clamp taking possession of his cold hand. Harris looked like an unemployed privateer who had mislaid his brig. His hair needed cutting and his excessive jewellery suggested that he was not quite a gentleman. Barry liked him at once. Harris commented on the terrifying chill of Barry’s hands.

‘Bad trip, eh?’ he thundered sympathetically.

‘May I offer you some refreshment?’ Isaac was hovering in the doorway.

‘Don’t mind if I do. Good morning to you, Isaac.’ Harris landed in one of the cane chairs with an emphatic thump. He had decided that Barry could not possibly be the medical Ghengis Khan of the colonial service that everybody said he was. He looked a bit odd, but was clearly a good fellow, and an independent, unfussy sort of chap. Colonel Bird had compared him to Robespierre, incorruptibly decked out in a satin coat of the latest pea-green Hayne. To Harris, this now seemed rather scandalous, and certainly uncalled-for. Harris was perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation without any outside assistance and did so now.

‘But nothing cooked, if you don’t mind. Just tea, Isaac. I’ve breakfasted. I came up to present the Governor’s greetings. My own, of course, too. And everybody’s apologies. First wind we got of the boat’s arrival were the quarantine papers, delivered along with the Haughton girls. I say, you must have been out in that storm. Dreadful business. We lost a palm tree out by the fort. And a couple of roofs ripped off. No real damage. The fishermen were all home. And it didn’t touch the north side of the island. How on earth did Isaac know that you were coming? Must spend his time watching for ships. Mind you, we’ve all been ready for days. Dinner at the Governor’s on Friday? That’s your formal welcome do. He wants to see you before then. Soon as you can manage, in fact. He lost his wife last year. But I expect you heard. I’m at your service. Whaddayou want to do? See the sights? Pop past the club? All the ladies are agog with excitement at the prospect of meeting you.’

Here, Harris twinkled knowingly for a moment, creating a pause in his own bellowing flow. But it did cross his mind that, since Barry was clearly a delicate sort of a chap, he mightn’t like innuendoes, and so the Deputy Governor rattled on again.

‘The colony’s a small place. But we all rub along pretty well together. The roads are dreadful, of course, so the social life is pretty much concentrated in town. I’ve brought you a horse. Compliments of the Governor. He keeps his own stable. Given you one of his best. He’s a generous chap. Thanks, Isaac. Wonderful. There. I’ll have another cup.’

The horse was a gigantic bay mare with a fiery white streak down her face and four white socks. A terrific ride for a man with a strong seat and firm hands. She was clearly far too large for Barry, who would have looked odd on anything bigger than a child’s pony. For a moment Harris was baffled.

‘She’s a big filly, though,’ he said doubtfully, as if reconsidering an unfortunate marriage proposal.

‘That’s fine,’ said Barry, with a slight, ironic smile. He had followed Harris’s thoughts.

‘Oh well – you’ll manage. Gather you had a carriage and four greys in Cape Town.’

Barry raised one eyebrow. He suddenly realised that a hurricane of gossip, probably consisting of adventures more preposterous than those put to amorous use by Othello must have preceded his arrival.

‘Ah yes. All stallions,’ he remarked. ‘I put them out to stud for part of the winter season, and made a little income that way. Which helped pay for their upkeep.’

This was in fact true. But a man who has handled four stallions is a man to be reckoned with, in anybody’s book. The Deputy Governor was indeed winded for a moment, but he drew breath and then forged ahead. He let fly another inconsequential gust of gossip.

‘Colonel Bird was here last winter, you know. Told us all about you. So we’re forearmed!’

Barry decided that the conversation had gone far enough. He rose and indicated that he wished to visit the hospital immediately.

‘By all means. I’ll take you over there at once.’ The polished boards of the verandah shook as Harris achieved the vertical in two hefty jerks.

‘Word gets about a bit, you know,’ said Harris, not altogether tactfully. ‘The hospital staff are somewhat apprehensive. They’ve heard that you’re a little chap with a big punch.’

He was suddenly very embarrassed. Barry had an open, encouraging manner, but Harris feared that he had overstepped the mark in directly referring to the doctor’s proportions. He had no way to claw back his comments, and stood there biting his tongue. But Barry took no offence. He smiled up at the Deputy Governor, rightly detecting nothing but affable good will.

‘We found that in Cape Town the smallest snakes are the most deadly.’ This remark, not altogether comforting, was delivered with candour and sweetness. ‘Well, Harris, let’s have a look at this Trojan horse you’ve brought me.’

Barry was good at reading other people, men and women alike. This was what made him an excellent physician and gave him confidence in his own diagnoses. He sensed malice, hypocrisy and malingering immediately. He had a very short temper and was often alarmingly violent in his responses. But he never imagined insults where none were intended. He liked this gigantic buffoon of a man whose hearty simplicity was warm, attractive and genuine. Harris was clearly unobservant and uncomplicated. He patted Psyche without thinking and almost lost a finger.

‘I say, Barry, that creature’s not to be trusted, is she?’

‘My apologies, sir. She is still a little discomposed after our long voyage.’

A sea breeze caught them as they rounded the corner of the house. The horses stood in the yard, flicking the first flies of the year away with their tails as they nibbled the sparse bush. Barry was undaunted by the precipice of the bay’s long shoulder and simply led her over to the house steps, tightened her girth and used the steps as a mounting block. Once astride, he had to adjust the stirrups up to their highest notch, so that he looked like a jockey, perched on top of a prize racer. He noticed the glittering eyes of the house boys peering through the muslin screens. And so he leaned down into the rich-smelling, dim enclosure and called out with sinister authority, ‘I shall inspect the kitchens on my return. Be ready.’

A small explosion of panic erupted in the wake of his departure.

 

*  *  *

 

The hospital staff were advisedly anxious at the advent of Dr James Miranda Barry. The doctor interfered with everything. Habitual systems were overthrown overnight. New régimes were instantly enforced. Sensibilities were understandably ruffled and, in private, tempers were well and truly lost. Long before the transmission of infectious and contagious diseases was fully understood, James Miranda Barry had grasped an essential necessity for every hospital: absolute cleanliness. This was his obsession, his religion. On the question of hygiene he was neither liberal nor tolerant. He was a fanatic.

Barry insisted on a daily change of linen for every patient, frequent dressing of wounds and the boiling of all surgical instruments. He ordered his staff to achieve a level of disinfective scrubbing that prepared the way for godliness. His assistants were forced to hold out their hands like little children, for the doctor’s inspection, before they trailed off behind him on the ward rounds. When he was called in for consultations he ordered all the previous doctor’s prescriptions to be removed without even looking at them. Such tactics did not endear him to his colleagues. He opened windows, even in the coldest weather, and insisted upon what one rival described as excessive ventilation. Barry swept into overheated sick rooms on a gust of cold, fresh air.

The colony’s hospital was fortunately placed, in view of Barry’s fresh-air methods. It was situated less than a mile away from his quarters and built on a little hill. There were two main wards, both designated for men only, and a small female ward in a house with a verandah, a hundred yards away. This tiny building also served as a lying-in hospital for difficult cases. But most of the colonial wives who did not trek home to England preferred to give birth at home, aided by the midwife. Soon everyone wished the delicate Dr Barry to be there too, in constant attendance. The women’s hospital was quiet and empty. A mountain spring that rose out of the earth a little higher up had been tapped to supply constant, fresh, ice-cold water from the belly of the earth. Barry had the water analysed in the first week of his command and found it to be rich in minerals that would do no one any harm. But he still insisted that all linen should be boiled, as should the water used for operations. Under Barry’s rule, bed bugs became a thing of the past.

But on that first day, early on a February morning, when Barry trotted up the uneven narrow road, much pitted by erosion and potholes, the hospital staff, patiently engaged upon their usual business, did not suspect that they were about to enter the vanguard of nineteenth-century medical reform. Barry had spent most of his life banning medical practices that were centuries old, and that day was to be no exception. No word of the doctor’s early arrival had reached the hospital and Barry caught them unawares.

The Deputy Governor abandoned him in the courtyard. ‘Well, here you are, old chap. I’ll pop back in a couple of hours to take you down to the Governor. You’ll have an office in Government House too, of course. And I must be there to make all the formal introductions.’

Harris bounded back onto his horse and made off as fast as possible. Despite the fact that the hospital never knowingly took in contagious or infectious cases if they could not be isolated, Harris was quite sure that he was in danger of catching something that was either disfiguring or fatal. He stuck to the old methods and purged himself regularly. He had never suffered a day’s illness in his life.

Barry was greeted on the step by the hospital’s Superintendent, who was a big, serious-minded and unsmiling Greek. The doctor introduced himself and shook hands, ignoring the look of horror fixed to his colleague’s face.

‘Your name, sir.’

‘George Washington Karageorghis. Sir!’ The Superintendent saluted. Barry peered at his armpits to see if his coat was clean.

‘And from that I may gather that your parents are friends to the Republic?’

Barry’s rare, warm smile appeared and the terrified Superintendent relaxed.

‘Yes, sir. My brother is Thomas Paine Karageorghis.’

Barry laughed. ‘I shall look forward to knowing him too. Let us proceed with our inspection. I want to see all the wards, kitchens, storerooms and offices. I want to meet all the staff and become acquainted with all your regular routines and procedures.’

Despite this promising beginning the initial round of the wards did not go off well. Barry discovered that most of his assistants were still gripped by medical philosophies which were, at best, a quarter of a century out of date. A fully fledged doctrine of bodily humours was current among the native population, and blood-letting, as a preventive measure, was commonly practised. In the early spring, dozens of patients, a crowd of whom Barry encountered at the dispensary door, presented themselves to be bled, in order to evacuate the bad blood that had accumulated over the winter. This tradition generated a modest income, which was pocketed by the establishment.

Barry lost his temper and scattered the crowd, who decamped, bitterly disappointed and muttering discontent.

‘Your namesake, George Washington, was bled to death by his doctors in 1799,’ snapped Barry. ‘This practice is to cease at once. On my authority, I will have neither venesection nor cupping practised in this hospital. I doubt that even the wealthiest inhabitant could procure leeches in this climate, but in any case, leeches are banned too. Listen to me, Mr Karageorghis, and remember this. Bloodletting has more to do with magic and quackery than medical science. And I will not have it.’

The spirit of the real George Washington had unfortunately prevailed, and the wretched Superintendent had revealed the full truth concerning the spring bleeding. Barry never succeeded in stamping out the practice entirely. But he did drive it back into the remoter corners of the colony. And no one, ever again, dared to demand the service from the hospital.

The doctor sat down in his office, with his senior staff before him, and began asking awkward questions.

All his initial enquiries concerned the general maladies endured by the military and colonial populations and shared by the island’s local inhabitants. Few diseases were common property. In the former case, they proved to be dyspepsia, boredom and sunstroke as a result of imprudent midday military parades. In the latter, the situation varied from general malnutrition, rotten teeth, numerous fevers, pleurisy, colic, diarrhoea, spots on the chest, a fluttering sensation in the lower body, consumption and plague. Barry at once arranged for a regular Friday afternoon clinic and dispensary, to be publicised among the townspeople and throughout the surrounding villages. No fees were to be charged.

Hospitals always attract the destitute and the mad. Barry’s establishment was no exception. But the numbers of retired prostitutes, beggars, orphans, vagrants and thieves who descended upon the clinic, intent on free food and charitable generosity, were slightly smaller than was common, indicating the relative wealth of the colony. The doctor set about dispensing medicines and advice with the brisk and uncompromising humanity for which he was famous. In Cape Town he had indeed been responsible for establishing the leper colony, thus removing the mass of begging wretches from the streets to a clean place where they were well cared for and regularly fed by a noble batch of nuns. Barry made friends with the nuns wherever he went. He counted upon God’s brides, rather than the Lord himself. Here, he found that the disease had not taken root and that, apart from one unfortunate creature whose face was half eaten away, there was no reason to set up another leper colony. But Barry was on the look-out for fresh needs to be met. The Friday clinic was always besieged.

It was Barry’s custom to examine every person who came, even if it was already dusk, before he would depart for his evening’s engagements. He knew that his patients had often walked miles to reach him, and would camp on the hospital steps if he did not see them on that day. Some of the villagers could speak rudimentary English, and within a few weeks Barry was barking advice in fledgling Greek. He had an uncanny aptitude for languages. George Washington Karageorghis sat firmly next to Barry as his assistant and translator. Thus, the Hospital Superintendent learned a great respect for his commanding officer. It was a measure of Barry’s quality that, despite his ruthless and high-handed manner, despite his impeccable standards and sudden tempers, he inspired a passionate loyalty in his servants and inferiors. He was disciplined, but never officious. He was exacting, but never unjust. He had high expectations of his staff and flew into screaming rages if any one of his orders was not fulfilled in every particular. George Washington Karageorghis declared that the Deputy Inspector-General was the first doctor he had ever seen who threw an almost daily tantrum. He was exceptionally savage with all ‘Pedlars, Quacks, and Pretenders to Medicine’. A good many self-styled Volpones found themselves out of a job, for it was Barry’s firm belief that it was better to be without any advice at all than to receive bad advice, ‘whether in Lay or Physic’. His manic cleanliness became an article of faith. The entire staff of the hospital cringed in helpless fright if Dr Barry detected ‘a stench’.

 

*  *  *

 

The English colonists were well satisfied with their fiery red-headed dwarf. He gave them lots to talk about. During that first week in the colony he scandalised – and delighted – the assembled company at the banquet given in his honour by partaking of a very frugal amount and yet downing several bottles of claret single-handed, without any trembling of the hands, reddening of the complexion or glazing of the eye. His reply to the Governor’s polite enquiry as to what, in his opinion, was the most usual source of disease, became legendary, largely because it was delivered across a magnificent decorated edifice of shellfish and lobsters.

‘The most common cause of disease in gentlemen of your class, sir, is lack of exercise and bad diet. Most of what you eat, I may assert with some certainty, is at best rubbish, and at worst poison.’

The sayings of Dr Barry, or at least the varnished truth, were repeated and embellished around tea tables and fireplaces, at picnics and on dance floors. Despite his abrasiveness, and his implied animadversions on the colony’s collective diet, he became a popular dinner guest and was much in demand. Some of the ladies even adopted his régime of fresh vegetables.

One episode on the esplanade was worth several dinner parties. Captain William Boaden of the Royal Worcesters was drilling his men in full dress uniform and in the morning heat. Dr James Miranda Barry, wearing a staw hat with a muslin curtain hanging round the brim, so that his mouth was visible but not his eyes, and wielding a vast parasol like an under-arm cannon, trotted straight up to him. There was a moment’s dreadful pause. Then Barry flourished his whip and screeched forth a volley of threats and attendant inevitable consequences if the parade were to continue in a temperature past ninety degrees. Boaden was about to fling Barry into the moat when some sixth sense intervened. He called off the parade and left the doctor yelling shrilly at the backs of his departing troops, who marched off with expressionless faces. Whenever he was asked to re-tell this episode, Boaden turned brick-red and tight-lipped. He would not be drawn. He avoided the doctor.

But the ladies sought him out. And the Governor’s daughter simply could not get enough of him. In those years the colony was overseen by Sir Edmund Walden, an amiable epicurean who had been recently widowed. His young wife had been carried off by the same bout of typhus that had almost removed Sir Edmund himself to a better place, some eighteen months before Barry’s arrival on the island. The Governor was unsuccessfully bringing up his seventeen-year-old daughter, Charlotte, and his fifteen-year-old son, Joseph, on his own, aided by much well-meaning and ineffective advice from the colonists’ wives. He was intending to return to England the following year, where he had dozens of useful female relatives, to find a husband for Charlotte and another wife for himself. ‘You must waltz for your supper, my dear,’ he told his daughter cheerfully, making no bones about his purpose in renting a town house for the season.

Charlotte could vaguely remember England and retained unpleasant recollections of muddy gardens, drizzle and draughts. She loved the island’s white rocks, the flaking red earth and the daily promise of cobalt-blue skies. She had no desire to leave the residence with its jasmine walks and Moorish arcades. But she also liked the idea of a husband who would give her status at the dinner table, the family jewels, and all his attention. He must be tall, very tall, but exactly like Dr Barry in every other particular.

Barry was often invited to dinner at the Governor’s residence for the simple reason that he was very good company. He was sharp, but never pompous, and he could read Shakespeare aloud in a manner that was always delightful and sometimes extraordinary. Charlotte’s favourite play was Othello, which, being filled with adult passions, made her feel breathtakingly complicated. Barry leaned against the mantelpiece, pluming up his will, warning against the green-eyed monster, jealousy, and grabbing the uncircumcizèd dog by the throat, night after night, in a variety of thrilling voices. When he became the outraged and abandoned father, he was especially stirring:

 

Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:

She hath deceiv’d her father, and may thee.

 

Charlotte’s one interesting flash of insight was to question Desdemona’s traditional innocence. In the elegant drawing room of the Governor’s residence, which sported some suitably Moorish archways, and fireplaces edged with tiles of pure Mediterranean blue, there was a genuine Venetian grandeur. Sensual possibility appeared to be lodged in the chandeliers. The decor was correct. The stage was set. Betrayal and adultery seemed all too likely, indeed temptingly possible.

‘I wonder if Cassio was exceedingly good-looking?’ Charlotte remarked dreamily. ‘She says he is a very proper man.’

Charlotte’s unspoken thought was that a black man would be daringly exotic as a lover, but not an undertaking for life. Barry regarded her with cynical interest. It would never have occurred to him to give his word and then go back upon a promise. Therefore, adultery was unthinkable. For heroines, at any rate. But Charlotte Walden clearly did not condemn women who organised their marriages according to a different set of rules.

 

*  *  *

 

It was mid-June. Barry had passed almost half a year upon the island. The heat began early that year and there was much talk of a premature departure to the hills. The little company which dined regularly at the Governor’s residence was still recovering from Troilus and Cressida, which had unfortunately been chosen for its Greek connections. One of the colony’s residents was a mad antiquarian, who claimed to have discovered the original site of Troy. Every so often, during the readings, he was seized with the urge to deliver an impassioned discourse on the authenticity of Shakespeare the historian. Charlotte was considered too young and too unchaperoned to read the part of Cressida, but read it she did, with Walter Harris as Troilus, whom he portrayed with such excessive gusto that the rôle ceased to be credible. Barry was slippery and convincing as the perfidious Diomed. When Charlotte proclaimed her lines

 

Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:

Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech.

 

she had looked straight at Barry, and the glance he gave her in return was generally considered to be rather shocking.

But the nights grew warmer and the ladies fanned themselves energetically in the late afternoons, inhaling the seductive scent of jasmine, leaning out over their balconies and watching for the first breath of evening and the sea wind. Shakespeare is well known for inflaming the passions, but this would not do for the sultry nights. And so they broached Macbeth, with their iced fruits and dessert wine, in hope of a change from the torrid aroma of adultery. Macbeth was a great success with the company of ladies, who all took turns at being witches. The events of the play had a military dimension and good battle scenes. This went down very well with the Governor, who had never been in a battle but liked to imagine that he had been.

Harris and Barry were reading the scenes where Macbeth and his lady work themselves into a frenzy, as a prelude to Duncan’s assassination. At last, the sun dissolved peacefully into a mass of molten rose and gold behind them, and the breeze pulled at their sleeves. The ladies sighed with relief. The light turned blue, then purple. Barry’s voice pierced the half-dark, decisive and uncanny, reading the lines quietly, as if they were a prayer.

 

                       Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here;

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty.

 

He paused, then called upon the elements of darkness, in a voice that thrilled the company. Charlotte, who had never taken her eyes off Barry, realised at once, that he was no longer looking at his book. He knew the words by heart.

 

                  . . . make thick my blood,

Stop up th’access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

Th’effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

 

Everyone gasped. Walter Harris gripped the cornice of the fireplace masterfully, to indicate his presence. He thundered his lines with bravado and panache, but Barry’s lowered, serpent tones were the more telling,

 

                  Only look up clear;

To alter favour ever is to fear.

Leave all the rest to me.

 

While they were waiting for iced sherbet and apricots in cooled liqueurs, the company dispersed into several rooms and scattered along the verandah. Charlotte cornered Barry and suggested a turn in the gardens. The Governor’s gardens were famous for their Arab fountains, constructed in the twelfth century and decorated with the original tiles. The strange blue and cream patterns shimmered beneath the broken surface of the falling water. Oranges gleamed like lanterns in the dark. They strolled down one of the shaded paths by the fish ponds and Charlotte insisted on taking Barry’s arm.

‘Miss Haughton admires you tremendously, you know’ was her opening salvo.

‘We shared a very uncomfortable voyage from Portsmouth,’ Barry replied, noncommittal. He was already questioning the wisdom of allowing himself to be carried off through darkened gardens by a silly girl with a pretty figure.

‘And you must know that I do too.’

Barry bowed in acknowledgement of the compliment, but said nothing.

‘When you were reading Lady Macbeth, I said to myself – it was very thrilling – but what understanding you bring to our Shakespeare! It is not only the excitement of the poetry. You know, just as he does, what it is like to be driven by ambition. To endure the frustration of your desires . . .’

Barry felt the ground cracking beneath him. Charlotte was rapidly departing from the high road of cliché. Her remarks, which should have been directed towards the coolness of the fountains and the beauty of the night, were about to become personal. He took evasive action.

‘I have no idea, however, what it is like to murder someone in cold blood. Or even to desire another man’s death, Miss Walden. I am a doctor.’

For a moment she was checked.

‘But you understood Lady Macbeth. You know what it is to be a woman.’

For one terrible second Barry feared that Cape Town gossip concerning his identity and origins had followed him east with the steady accuracy of a carrier pigeon returning home. But Charlotte Walden flung herself unhesitatingly into a speech not about his sex, but her feelings.

‘You must know how I feel – what I yearn for above all else. I cannot bear being a girl and having to wait, when I must speak.’

Shakespeare’s heroines were much given to speaking. Barry’s relief caused his mind to wander for a moment. He did not notice that Charlotte had tightened her grip on his arm and was clearly working up to something. He re-assumed his professional tone.

‘The reason why I can so well comprehend Shakespeare’s women, Miss Walden, is that those parts were written for boys to speak. Women’s lives were as limited then as they are now. Except, I imagine, among the higher classes, who have always enjoyed greater freedom of movement and had more opportunities to manage their property.’

‘I can bear it no longer. Forgive my frankness, Dr Barry. I beg you to kiss me.’

Barry stopped dead beneath a fig tree. Charlotte could not see his face, as the lights from the house were behind him. She bounced in front of him and seized both of his cold hands. With great presence of mind Dr James Miranda Barry raised her importunate fingers to his lips and gently kissed them all.

Then he said very firmly, ‘We shall return to the house at once, Miss Walden, and rejoin the company.’

Charlotte had no idea whether she had conquered or entirely missed the mark. But she knew that Barry was not to be crossed with whims or petulance. She took his arm again and they marched back past the pattering fountains.

‘You won’t tell Father that I asked you, will you?’ she whispered like a schoolgirl, not at all embarrassed, but anxious not to be caught out.

‘I am not in the habit of repeating private conversations’ was the frosty reply, with which Charlotte had to be content.

James Miranda Barry had a very conventional, masculine notion of honour. Charlotte Walden was engagingly pretty, plump and pink, with dimples in all the right places. Barry was charming to her in company, but took good care never again to be left alone with her upon the verandah or to accept her invitations to wander down the jasmine walks, to admire the Chinese carp, drifting in green water, and to listen to the fountains.

 

*  *  *

 

But Miss Charlotte Walden did get Dr James Miranda Barry into trouble, and this is how it happened.

The Governor’s daughter caught the eye of Captain James Loughlin while she was singing a duet by Rossini with one of his closest friends and fellow officers, Captain William Boaden of the Royal Worcesters.

Loughlin had been absent on leave in England for nearly a year, following his father’s death. He was a young man with a substantial inheritance. The estate was duly divided and settled, his sisters provided for and his mother comforted. Rather than buy himself out of the army, or resign his commission, as his mother had urged him to do, Captain Loughlin decided to continue his life of pleasure, adventure and fine clothes, on a significantly larger budget. And so he prepared to re-launch himself upon the social scene with all the éclat befitting a young man of twenty-two, who, all other things being equal, could hold his liquor with the best of them, and amply filled his trousers. He caught sight of Charlotte, singing away in a manner that was damnably attractive. It was not the singing itself that proved so irresistible, for her voice was middling indifferent and her style affected. No, it was the fact that she put her all into the high notes, which she just about managed to reach, and when she did reach them her bosom shook and trembled in a fashion that caught the eye and engaged the heart.

Miss Charlotte Walden’s bosom was always the first thing that any new acquaintance remarked about her. Inevitably so, for it was the nearest thing on view and placed firmly in their line of vision. It was pale pink and had always been carefully protected from the sun. It was interestingly proportioned: twin volcanoes with a deep cleft between. Pale slopes rose towards the hidden cones, simmering, dormant, awaiting the fortunate lover who could kindle their tips into eruption.

Captain William Boaden was not above peering down into this delightful landscape as he bowed and kissed his partner’s hand, complimenting her upon her singing as politely as he could without actually telling lies.

He caught James’s eye at once and, with another courteous bow, abandoned Miss Walden to the queue of officers forming behind him and picked his way through the gossips hugging the sofas and the flat green baize spaces of the whist players.

‘You lucky fellow,’ muttered James, as soon as they could hear one another above the chatter. ‘What a handsome girl.’

‘Tickle that fine tenor of yours into action with a few lessons and you too can get a close view of the treasures,’ said Boaden affably.

William Boaden did not much like Sir Edmund’s daughter. He suspected, on the basis of her singing, that she was ill-tempered and spoilt. He liked women who were honest and humorous and had no pretensions. He had carried on a very successful affair with a married woman, who had since left the colony, much to his regret. This had been an ideal arrangement, which had resulted in many pleasant afternoon picnics and musical evenings. The husband was a liberal chap, much older than his wife. They had both lived in Naples and regarded the arrangement as positively Italian. The spinsters of the colony had been less enamoured of the mores of the south, and, once the affair became a matter of public knowledge, they cut Boaden’s mistress dead in church. She pretended not to care. But she did. Boaden was irritated. He liked women who genuinely did not care.

‘Do you want to be introduced to her?’ he asked James, whose gaze was still fixed upon the Vesuvian landscape.

‘Yes. At once.’

They sauntered back across the crowded drawing room towards the piano, carefully avoiding the trailing shawls and delicate hair arrangements, which presented themselves as obstacles at every turn. James flung out his chest and filled his red coat to good effect. He was sweating with anticipation.

No man likes to feel that he is being used to pass the time, before the real object of interest enters the room. But that was what James did feel and his irritation increased. Miss Walden laughed and smiled at all his jokes. But she was watching the door. The dancing had already begun and he was trying both to interest her in a mazurka, which would animate the bosom to delicious advantage, and to field the constant interruptions from other men trying to catch her eye, when he felt her body tense like a hound spotting the prey and her attention fix on the doorway.

‘Will you excuse me for a moment, Captain? I have my duties to fulfil as the hostess.’

She slid out of his grasp and vanished into the morass of fashionable silks and lace. When she resurfaced beside her father in the frame of the main doors to the drawing room, like a swimmer reaching land, her generous figure prevented him from discerning who it was that she was greeting so effusively. Boaden appeared at his elbow, out of breath from dancing.

‘Well, man? Where is she? Not lost to the opposition already? I was expecting you to persuade her to dance.’

James stretched up and peered through the crowd. He saw Charlotte Walden’s ample magnificence leaning towards a tiny, dwarf-like, red-haired creature with pursed lips, who was half her size. The mannikin was carefully groomed, impeccably dressed, and dainty in his manner, if somewhat tightly buttoned. He looked like a shrunken dandy, and a little ridiculous. He nodded at Charlotte’s animated queries and shook hands warmly with the giant Deputy Governor as if they were on cordial terms. One or two other ladies, perceiving his arrival, abandoned their sofas to greet him. There was a little stir around the room. His entrance had caused a mild, but enviable, sensation.

‘Who in God’s name is that?’ snapped James, already jealous.

‘Ah. The famous doctor,’ Boaden smiled. ‘He’s a great favourite with the ladies. That’s James Miranda Barry.’

And Boaden proceeded to inform his friend, in a surreptitious undertone, of the incident upon the esplanade. Something in Barry’s manner had made the redoubtable Boaden back down. He sketched this out for James.

‘Cross that fellow on something he cares about and you’re a dead man.’

And then, following his usual cautious procedures, Boaden abandoned the drawing room to the doctor and took refuge on the dance floor, leaving James Loughlin with matter for thought.

Nevertheless, in the weeks that followed, the young captain paid court to the Governor’s daughter. He was far from penniless and he knew that he looked terrific in his uniform. He was very tall. And this ensured that Charlotte’s tender glance would rest upon him. Indeed, she did find Captain James Loughlin to be a very proper man, and quite charming. Unfortunately, his hesitant tongue was nothing like as entertaining as that of the waspish and observant Dr Barry. Captain Loughlin made general comments. He saw the world as everybody else did. Dr Barry had an asperity and originality which made him teasing, piquant and desirable.

 

*  *  *

 

James Loughlin did everything in the correct order. First of all he flirted with Charlotte in so public a manner that the connection began to be generally remarked. They were placed side by side at dinner tables, so that their whispered giggles could be observed by her father and the spinsters with knowing indulgence. No one, certainly not Charlotte, told him to desist. Then he made a formal call upon the Governor during his office hours. Sir Edmund was excessively affable. He had a large desk, a mass of documents and a very imposing polished crystal paperweight, which he employed to keep his bureaucratic importance stable and in order. The sea breezes were encouraged to enter the room, but not to depart with confidential reports. The steps leading down from his French windows into his gardens were still fresh from their morning dousing with cold water. The world was exceedingly pleasant, the wars were a long way off, and if this young officer, who had inherited quite enough money to keep his daughter comfortable, was willing to take her off his hands, so that the projected trip to England could become a wedding journey and a triumph of visits, rather than a husband-hunting foray, then, well, so much the better all round.

‘Come in, my boy,’ boomed the Governor. And smiled.

Captain Loughlin was hesitant and embarrassed, which was as it should be. He presented a portfolio of credentials and assurances of high regard and filial duty. He exactly matched the Governor’s expectations of what his son-in-law should be. This young chap looked the part and here he was, saying all the right things. The Governor tried to look grave and thoughtful, but a cheerful smirk greeted the finale of Loughlin’s speech.

‘Well, my boy,’ the Governor’s approval illuminated the room, ‘if you have her consent, you have mine.’

He had seen Charlotte strolling down the esplanade, twirling her parasol, with Captain Loughlin in assiduous attendance and he therefore harboured no suspicions that his daughter might be of a mind different from his own.

But she was.

Captain Loughlin was not obtuse. He knew that Charlotte was fascinated by James Miranda Barry, but, he believed, no more so than half the ladies on the island. And he had observed Barry’s ironic, guarded distance whenever Charlotte flung herself into her flirtation with the doctor. The two men had hardly exchanged a word, but Loughlin had not missed Barry’s twinkle of amusement when, white-gloved, pale-cheeked, not a curl disturbed, the doctor handed the flushed and gleaming Charlotte into his arms for the next dance. It was obvious. Barry was leaving the way clear for him. A Mediterranean dance floor is a stifling and noisy place, upon which misunderstandings could easily be generated. But there was no misunderstanding in this case. The two men may not have discussed the matter, but they bowed to one another across Charlotte’s scented ringlets and came to a perfect agreement.

No sooner had he spoken to the Governor than James Loughlin leaped onto his horse and trotted the half-mile down the esplanade from Government House to the residence, on fire with sexual expectation. It never entered his head that she would refuse him.

When he was shown into the drawing room he found his lady strewn across a chaise-longue and giggling. She was in the company of one of her friends, a pert young woman, recently married, much given to flaunting her rings and boasting about her husband. She spewed forth an endless torrent of rumour and gossip and had earned the nickname ‘News of the Nation’. This lady, upon seeing a young man hell-bent on making love, scrambled to her feet and excused herself at once.

James remained standing. Charlotte turned pale and sat up straight, her little slippers firmly together and her knees tense, as if she were about to execute a sequence of pirouettes. James presented a hesitant string of clichés. He was alarmed at how much harder it was to ask her than to ask her father.

‘. . . in short, Miss Walden – Charlotte – I am asking you to make me the happiest of men, that is, I should be, if you would agree to become my wife.’

Charlotte bit her lip, raised her chin, and said, ‘I am very sensible of the honour you do me, Captain Loughlin, and I am very sorry. But I can never marry you.’

There was an awful silence. James went cold all over. He was unable to say anything. He knew that he should say something regretful and distressed, but he was unable to do so. Instead, he stood utterly still for a full two minutes, during which time Charlotte began to bite her nails in fright. Had he stood there any longer she would have begun sucking her thumb. James suddenly found that he was enraged.

‘There is someone else.’ He spoke in a very low voice, chilly with rejection.

She nodded, terrified.

‘Yes. There is.’

‘Dr James Barry.’

She was unable to say anything, or even to raise her eyes to his.

‘I beg your pardon for having intruded my feelings upon you,’ James snapped.

His anger was out now, the genie had escaped from the lamp. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, forgetting himself so far as to bang the door behind him. He almost knocked Charlotte’s friend down the short flight of steps in his hurry to leave the residence. She had been loitering in the hallway, behind one of the potted palms, as close to the doorway as she dared.

James snatched his horse from the servant in the stableyard and rode straight up to the hospital at a speed which was remarked from every window and shop doorway. Something was going on. Wasn’t that Captain Loughlin, leaving the residence and taking the hill at a pace that was certainly precipitate, if not actually dangerous? Where is he going? Up to the hospital? But he isn’t on especially friendly terms with Dr Barry, is he? Really rather the opposite. Has there been an accident? I must ask the Deputy Governor.

By the time James reached the crest of the windy white hills, he was sweating and trembling. This was the first time he had ever ventured to propose and he had been confident of his ground. He had no coherent plan. He simply wanted to hit someone. He wanted to vent his frustration by wrecking Dr James Barry’s immaculate toilette.

George Washington Karageorghis saw him coming and met him in the tiled hallway, which smelt of ammonia and alcohol.

‘Where’s Dr Barry?’ James found himself shouting.

George Washington Karageorghis was very taken aback.

‘He’s not here, sir.’

‘Then where the devil is he?’ roared the injured Captain Loughlin.

Fortunately, the doctor was, at that moment, many miles away, at the bottom of a ravine, setting a broken leg and dealing with a bloody gash across the forehead of a man who had suffered a serious fall and was already badly dehydrated, having lain for two hours in the morning sun before he was discovered by hysterical relatives. The wound was nasty and covered with flies. The man’s wife was screeching in the doctor’s ear and the neighbours were taking far too long to construct a makeshift stretcher from green boughs. The doctor’s careful red curls were damp with sweat, and upon his pale cheeks the freckles had become magnified by the heat. By the time he regained his quarters, exhausted, not having returned to the hospital, it was quite dark, and Captain James Loughlin was lying insensible with drink and rage on the floor of the officers’ mess.

 

*  *  *

 

‘You refused him? Have I heard you correctly, young lady? Are you telling me that you refused him?’

Silence.

‘Are you out of your mind? His elder brother is dead. He’s just inherited a fine estate in Berkshire and enough money to buy you every damned trinket that takes your fancy.’

Silence.

‘You may never get another offer like that. What can have been going on in your head, Charlotte?’

Silence.

‘And you gave him no hope whatsoever, you idiotic creature?’

Silence.

‘What can have possessed you? I gave my full accord. You’ve danced yourself out of slippers in that man’s arms. I had no idea that you wouldn’t welcome an appeal to your affections.’

Silence.

‘You’re seventeen, girl. You’ll be eighteen in October. I married your mother when she was years younger than you.’

Silence.

‘What the devil . . .’

Silence.

‘Oh no! Oh no, I don’t believe it. You haven’t set your cap at Barry, have you?’

Silence.

‘My God, Charlotte, if your mother was still alive I’d have her permission to put you over my knee and spank you till you bellowed. Heaven help us all. You really are a greater fool than I ever thought you were. Do you have any idea who Barry is? You’ve no idea, have you? Nobody has. He’s either the bastard son of old Lord Buchan or that crack-pot revolutionary general from Venezuela or Argentina or wherever. He has his salary to live on and damn all else, so far as I know. Barry has no family, land or relations. He’s as good as the Wandering Jew. You couldn’t possibly contemplate a life travelling the world with that man. You’d be dead in three years. Barry lives in climates where white men drop like flies. He only survives because he’s as cold as a lizard. Don’t get me wrong, my girl. I admire the man, of course I do. But he’s not the kind of man you marry. Anybody can see that. Or at least anybody who isn’t as silly as you are. He’s a loner. He’s . . . well, God knows what he is. But he will never marry anybody. Neither you nor any other woman. Men like that don’t marry. And I don’t believe that he’s given you the slightest encouragement. He never says anything that isn’t ironic. Charlotte, if you think that Barry will ever marry you, you’re a greater fool than I took you for. You’ve sent a handsome young man about his business, who had no greater ambition in life than to cut a fine figure and to make you damnably happy.’

Silence.

‘I simply cannot understand your stupidity.’

Charlotte burst into tears.

 

*  *  *

 

She was still a little red-rimmed when she greeted Barry on Friday night, and he kept an eye on her across the card tables. The gossip had already hurtled round the colony. Yes, made her a wonderful offer. And she refused him. Ah, but there’s another player in the game . . . I can’t believe he’s encouraged her. But she’s not the only person wild about him. She may well have missed her main chance, for I really can’t believe . . . The Governor and his colony were of one mind. Charlotte gazed pathetically at Barry from time to time, but she was also watching the door with slightly more anxiety than is generally considered suitable for a hostess to manifest if the evening is going well.

But in fact she missed Captain James Loughlin when he slunk through the door, too familar a figure to be announced. James had drunk more than was good for him and had puffed up his emotions so that they were all thoroughly out of proportion. The residence was full of laughing people, the dancing had begun and almost everyone had already served themselves at the supper tables. James was fortunate enough to find Barry on his own confronting the cold meats and savoury jellies.

The young officer appeared to be calm, but there were small beads of perspiration on his upper lip. Nevertheless, his hand was steady as he drew Barry aside from the supper table. The doctor was so small that once they were standing side by side James found himself gazing down onto Barry’s pale-red curls. He stepped closer so that their exchange would be inaudible to anyone else. He had heard the rumours, of course, but was inclined to think that the surgeon’s fine, elegant and carefully manicured hands were largely responsible, because the eyes which met his own were the eyes of a man who was unafraid and in control of himself and his world, a man who would never insult another idly or without deliberate intent. James felt his anger rising as he contemplated the insolent interrogatory stare of this mutant dwarf, a little pool of aggression, far below him. The waltz encircled the two men. But naturally, they were observed. Several people noticed their conversation. The doctor and the officer were the subject of immediate speculation.

‘I must speak with you, sir.’

‘Do you desire a private consultation?’ Barry realised at once that the man was drunk, and his tone of condescending irony became a shade more infuriating. James lost his temper.

‘Declare yourself to her, man – or leave the field clear for somebody else.’

The gossip had not reached the hospital, but Barry understood the situation in an instant. Loughlin must have proposed to Charlotte and the silly girl had refused him.

‘Carry on, Captain Loughlin. I can assure you that the field, as you put it, is quite empty of my presence.’

‘That’s not what Charlotte says.’

‘Then you may assume that Miss Walden is mistaken.’

‘How dare you trifle with a young lady’s feelings!’

James wanted to quarrel and set about it with energetic determination. His moustache quivered. Barry’s voice was calm and firm.

‘Captain Loughlin, Miss Walden is seventeen and if I am not in error you cannot be much more. Seventeen is an age when we are all quite capable of mistaking politeness for proposals. Now, sir, I wish you a good evening.’

And Barry turned aside to help himself to a bevy of cold meats, decorated with olives and tomatoes cut into serrated bowls, as if they had developed teeth. But Captain James Loughlin had passed well beyond the reach of reason and sensible argument. He had been insulted. Calmly and deliberately insulted. And so he presented his challenge as if he were an actor, dressed for his part in a comedy that was about to turn nasty in the fourth act.

‘Sir! I demand satisfaction. My colleagues will call upon you tomorrow morning.’

Barry acknowledged his words with the slightest of nods and a faint curl of the lip, closer to a sneer than a smile. Loughlin suddenly saw himself as the toy soldier, wound up and programmed to do silly things. He discovered that his fists were clenched and that he was sweating with anger and alarm. He almost hit the doctor in the face, but withdrew at once as the tiny man turned away to give his full attention to the ladle in the fruit punch bowl.

There was an odd scent left lingering in the officer’s nostrils, a strange, fragrant aroma that he could not identify, but which he had noticed in the hospital. This hallucinatory odour must have been present in the doctor’s hair. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the peculiar scent and the doctor’s cold glance. Then he stepped off the verandah onto the pebbled walkways. He was followed by dozens of curious eyes, from behind fans, curtains, ornamental palms, and over the elbows of their dancing partners. And Charlotte, with her head tucked against her friend’s shoulder, watched Captain Loughlin’s exit, her mouth stricken with regret and distress. You’ve sent a handsome young man about his business, who had no greater ambition in life than to cut a fine figure and to make you damnably happy.

The night was alive with the sounds of toads, squealing in the undergrowth. Lanterns hung in the trees. He could see the thick white shapes of women’s dresses, columns moving slowly up the gardens in the darkness. The darker shapes of the men were invisible. There was a warm night breeze from the sea. He could hear the waves breathing against the rocks. He looked back into the house. Every window was lit up; there was the music and the uneven beat of the dancing, excited cannonades of laughter and the chink of forks on empty plates. James was convinced that the momentous event had passed unnoticed. He had put his life on the line for the sake of a seventeen-year-old girl and nobody had noticed. The doctor had a formidable reputation for being both bad-tempered and a crack shot. Loughlin sobered up. He was no longer confident of the outcome. He began to wonder if he had put too high a price on his dignity and self-love. Then he began to feel very sorry for himself. He escaped from the luminous gardens and fled away down the beach.

 

*  *  *

 

Well after midnight Loughlin sat in Boaden’s rooms next to the barracks, explaining himself. William Boaden was very far from impressed.

‘Are you out of your mind, man? Barry’s a crack marksman. He’s known for it. Why in God’s name do you think he’s here? The Governor of Cape Town had to move him on. He’s already fought half a dozen duels and killed his man every time. Well, I know of two for certain. He’s a quarrelsome devil, but he doesn’t do it just for fun. You must have been excessively offensive.’

‘I was drunk,’ said James miserably.

Boaden leaped off his bed and circled the room like a bat.

‘You’re a fool, James. And you’ll soon be a dead fool. Barry can drink an entire regiment into a vat of malmsey without a curl out of place or his hand shaking. I’ll wake the others up. We’ll have to try for a reconciliation. My God, the things you do to me.’

Two giant moths battering the screen door came billowing in on the wave of his departure; one of them, hurtling down the glass funnel of the lamp, was immediately extinguished in the flames. James contemplated this sudden cremation. He was possessed by gruesome premonitions.

He slept fitfully, still wearing his boots, on a camp bed in Boaden’s dressing room. Despite the fear that crept around his body with eerie persistence, affecting first his feet, with a glacial chill, then his chest, with sharp, shooting pains, and finally his brain, with an explosive headache, James fell asleep and remained unconscious until the moment came, just after six, when the sun streamed into the barracks and Boaden’s servant stood over him, like a messenger from purgatory, with hot water and fresh towels.

Boaden himself, disturbingly awake and bubbling with irritation, slammed the screen door behind him as he came in, flinging his cap upon the unmade bed.

‘No good. I called on Barry at the hospital. He’s there every day from five a.m. onwards. He won’t hear of an apology. Pistols at dawn tomorrow, before the Governor gets to hear about it all. He hardly lifted his eyes to speak to me and he didn’t even offer to shake my hand. The man’s a midget with a mission to exterminate damn fools like you. And he gets all his formal conversation out of books. Please inform Captain Loughlin that I shall discharge my obligations to the letter. Who on earth talks like that nowadays? It’s as if he’s repeating lines that have already been written.’

Boaden flung himself flat on the bed, ignoring the servant, who was standing there, saucer-eyed, and who had of course taken everything in. James gazed at the ceiling, desperate.

‘I felt that. Last night. I was talking as if I was in a play.’

‘That’s because you’re stupid. And you don’t think. James, how could you be such an arse? You’ve got to go through with it now. The heat will be terrible today. For God’s sake, man. Get washed, shaved. The boy’s standing there, waiting.’

Boaden got up and paced the room, attacking flies with a thick swatter made of patterned palm leaves. Then he flung himself down again. James sat staring at the steaming vat of hot water and the scrubbed black child in immaculate whites with gold buttons, standing to attention before him. He put his head in his hands. He had the most appalling hangover.

The heat shimmered on the gravel and unleashed the rich, wet scents of the gardens outside: the acacias, frangipani and purple torrents of bougainvillea, pouring over the wall. James shaved carefully, noting every curve and dip on his cheek and jaw. The mirror returned a handsome face, hollow-eyed, perhaps, and a little drawn, but a face worth kissing and preserving. The fear of death surged through him with all the force of a burst dam. What mattered? James was not a philosopher and what mattered to him was well-cooked red meat and good wines, the smell of a woman’s warm skin close to his face, and winning at cards. All these things appeared before him, the temptations of Tantalus, shortly to be whisked away by a harpy with pale red curls, chilly hands, a peculiar aroma and the steady eye of a professional killer. James pitied his own fate from the bottom of his heart. He had not deserved this. He turned from the mirror and addressed Boaden’s gleaming boots with their gentle coat of white dust, which was all he could see through the dressing-room doorway.

‘I say, Will, is there really no chance of a reconciliation?’

‘None whatever,’ snapped Boaden, gazing upwards, unseeing, into empty space. The boy leaned forward, pouring more water into the basin. The pattern of vine leaves swirled among the bubbles, delirious in china. James wondered if he was shaving his jaw and washing the magnificent brush of black hair on his chest for the last time. Suddenly Boaden was standing in the doorway.

‘God dammit, James,’ shouted Boaden, terrifying them all, ‘I love you better than anyone else I know and tomorrow I shall have to bury you.’

 

*  *  *

 

Barry’s second was one of his assistants at the hospital, whose clothes didn’t fit. He looked nervous and embarrassed as he approached Boaden across the uneven clumps of grass, spangled with goat shit. The ungainly figure appeared to change shape in the mist slithering down the diminishing river. Sometimes he seemed to be small, shambling, at other times he was magnified, monstrous. It was an odd trick of the light. In a few weeks the water would have vanished and the mist would be gone in the dawn and the grass would grow among the rocks, flourishing at first, then browning into dead threads, until the winter rains came, and the river rose again.

Barry was almost invisible. Boaden thought he saw someone moving up and down, up and down, far away under the trees; but the bush was too dense for him to be certain. He was very upset. The entire affair was a mistake. Barry’s choice of a half-caste hospital orderly was an insult to his fellow officers. The doctor was so convinced of his success that he had not bothered to comply with the minimum standards of courtesy demanded by the situation. As the man approached, Boaden set about adjusting his expression into a haughty sneer. Then he thought of James and tried to look more conciliatory. His thick jaw and heavy jowls accordingly assumed a look of lopsided cantankerousness. At least this man was also a doctor. But if Barry’s reputation was deserved then an undertaker would have been more appropriate.

‘George Washington Karageorghis. Your servant, sir,’ muttered the unfortunate subordinate.

Boaden let fly an indignant snort.

James stood to attention, virgin-pale but wonderfully dignified. He had spent hours dressing. For one indulgent second Boaden felt proud of him. Then he remembered his duty and stepped forward to propose a bloodless resolution to a futile dispute. This young lady’s honour was not worth a good man’s life. He bit his lip. Charlotte Walden was a bumptious little flirt who had probably allowed more than one officer to squeeze her pert little nipples and perhaps take even greater liberties. Her name was often accompanied by sly smiles and knowing chuckles. James was going to die for the sake of a cracked piece of pottery, not even a decent Coalbrookdale dinner service. What a waste. Boaden thought about the row of cheerful young prostitutes who looked forward to his arrival, entertained him heartily and had no honour to lose. But here was Barry’s disgraceful half-caste colleague, executing a formal salute. Captain William Boaden’s whiskers trembled with rage at his friend’s foolishness.

No, it was just as he had feared, Barry would not negotiate. His second snapped open a polished walnut case, with a trim blue velvet lining and a brace of engraved silver duelling pistols, custom-built by one of London’s finest gunsmiths, Cannon’s of Leicester Square. As he checked the weapons Boaden noticed the initials in elegant italics: F de M. The guns did not belong to Barry, but F de M presented no immediate clue as to the identity of their owner. He nodded curtly to the orderly, and was somewhat mollified to notice that the man was terrified and embarrassed.

Twenty paces. Turn and fire.

Point-blank range.

James was already a phantom of his usual self and as he cocked his pistol he was unable to speak. They marched towards Barry in complete silence through the croaking bush and the eerie half-light. Boaden was already imagining the court martial. He was determined to hound Barry out of the colony as a pitiless murderer. This doctor saved lives with one hand and slaughtered them with the other. He should have embraced his friend for the last time. Then suddenly they were standing in front of him.

It was beyond Boaden’s comprehension. They had all gone mad. His wonderful, handsome James with the gay laugh and the dark, bouncing curls, his friend, his beloved friend, was to be turned into worm’s food by a tiny beardless boy in a formal white collar and a coat that was too big for him. It was not natural. But something in Barry’s eye, for the second time, steadied Boaden’s hands. However bizarre this tiny man’s appearance and attire, he was not playing games.

The duel was played out like a formal piece of music. Every action was premeditated, deliberate. James, noble to the last, stepped away from Barry to Boaden’s clear count, like the soldier he was, as courageous as he should have been. A single shot sent hundreds of birds no one had noticed, squawking into the air, and started a thunderous, sudden rustling in the bush. A dozen invisible creatures vacated the spot in flight, wrenching the vegetation aside. Boaden blinked. Barry’s orderly had dropped the pistol case in fright. Far away the horses whinnied in alarm. The next moments stretched out into an eternity and a slight wind suddenly raised the dust into whirlpools at their feet. James stood, unmoving, his pistol raised and smoking in the cool air. Barry’s gun was still vertical. No one moved as the doctor’s arm levelled steadily towards his opponent. James leaned forward, all his weight on the balls of his feet, ready to take the bullet full in the chest, his face awash with tears.

There was a second shot.

James staggered back, his throat and left ear on fire. Barry had neatly sliced off one epaulette and a dark curl of hair. The shot had been careful and deliberate. Had he wished, Barry could have forged a channel directly into James’s heart or laid his brains waste in the wilderness, as he had supposedly done to other men on other occasions. But he had not done so now.

Without a word, and with no explanations, Barry nodded to Boaden and his colleague and turned away. He stuck the pistol in his pocket and strode off towards his horse in the strengthening day, leaving the others staring at one another, shocked and baffled by his abrupt departure.

 

*  *  *

 

Captain James Loughlin called upon Miss Charlotte Walden. He asked to see her alone. She was exceedingly pale and very excited. All pretence of formality was abandoned.

‘You can tell me the truth now, Charlotte. And I think you owe me the truth. No one is listening. What is said here will go no further. Did you ever permit Barry to make love to you?’

Brazen as a bitch on heat, she never even lowered her eyes. Modesty was clearly a thing of the past.

‘Yes’ was all she said.

James gazed at her, amazed. Barry was half her size. He couldn’t possibly have touched her. He would have disappeared between her breasts. Even Boaden, who was no friend to the Governor’s daughter, admitted that it would be like entering a tropical rainforest. James decided that he still wanted to cover her breasts with kisses. Barry obviously had. The unfortunate young officer was transfixed with jealousy and regret. Then he shook his head, disbelieving. This affair was too unlikely, incredible.

He knew that he should ask no more questions, but he could not help himself.

‘Where did you meet? Not here. It’s impossible.’

‘I visit regularly at the hospital. I think he’s an extraordinary man. I persuaded Father to invite him to dinner at least twice a week. He came. He talked brilliantly. Then, when Father was away in the north of the island, I invited him myself. I didn’t tell him that Father wasn’t here. Otherwise he wouldn’t have come. He’s desperately correct. But my brother was with us. Nobody else. It was all perfectly respectable. Dr Barry drank Joe under the table, and then put him – and me – to bed.’

She smiled cheekily up at James, like a naughty schoolgirl. But his face was blank, like an atheist faced with a miracle. He stood up and bowed, speechless. She sprang from her seat and clutched his arm, angry at his open incredulity.

‘I was in love with him, James. But he won’t have me. Don’t think I haven’t tried. I’ve even asked him outright. He has vowed never to marry.’

She was like a woman possessed. Her throat heaved and all her bracelets rattled. She was near to tears.

‘There is no one like him. Now you know. Go on, get out. I don’t care if you never speak to me again. Leave me, then. Go on.’

She turned away to the window, biting her lip. Yet here was something odd, unexplained. These were not the words of a woman who had been seduced and abandoned, but of a woman obsessed, unashamed, who had tasted something unheard of, unknown, a magic nectar, whose life was laid waste without it. She spoke with her back turned.

‘Oh, go away, James. Don’t start getting concerned for me. I’ll live. I’ll marry someone else eventually. But I won’t ever want anyone else. Other than him.’

He was dismissed. Very quietly, James backed away and closed the double doors behind him. He stood on the steps of the Governor’s residence, staring at his boots and at the gleaming hands of the man who was holding his horse. Now he faced a disciplinary action for fighting a duel with a fellow officer for the sake of a woman whose honour had never existed. She had admitted the whole thing. She had thrown herself at Barry, to whom he now owed not only his life, but the profoundest apology. He swung into the saddle and, despite the midday heat, rode straight up the hill to the hospital. Barry was not there. He had completed his morning rounds and departed homeward for his afternoon siesta. He was to be found at the green house, that one over there, with the mosquito mesh encircling the verandah. James was unable to look Dr George Washington Karageoghis in the eye.

Disconsolate, he waited until five o’clock and then presented himself at the door of Barry’s residence. It was a house without eyes. The gardens were extraordinary: carefully tended green edges enclosing foaming colours. He recognised hibiscus and jasmine, wisteria and arum lilies, their white trumpets dusted with pollen, the carefully tended roses, cut well back since Christmas. There were flowering vines he could not identify, with trunks growing as thick as your thigh. An eerie precision characterised the doctor’s garden. James stood upon the steps, staring at a lizard frozen in mid-flight down the wall and an army of red ants marching in step away to their lair under the house. Like all the military buildings in the colony, the house was raised up on little brick fortifications above the corrupting earth. James stood irresolute, certain in the knowledge of what he should do, but incapable of passing from intention to act.

Barry solved the problem by opening the frame door and appearing on the steps like the performing dwarf in the pantomime. He made a comic entrance, tiny, courteous and impeccably dressed, his collar stiffly white with golden pins.

‘Good evening to you, sir’ was all he said. And there he stood, calm, unwavering, rocking on his heels, with his hands clasped behind his back. James stared. The unbidden spectacle of this man mounting Charlotte rose into his head. He felt like Iago, a sexual psychopath whose mind revolved on nothing but obscenity. Barry waited patiently.

‘I . . . That is . . . Good evening, Doctor . . . I came . . .’ James tried to get it all out in one breath and ended up coughing into his gloves.

‘You came here to apologise.’ Barry glittered, looking up at him. ‘That would be the correct thing to do. But in this case there is no need.’

‘Well, I did . . . that is . . . I must reveal to you Doctor, that Miss Walden . . . I saw her this morning and she . . . well, she confessed everything to me. I owe you the deepest apologies for my behaviour, my insults, my . . .’

What precisely has she confessed to you?’ snapped Barry. He was like a terrier scenting a rabbit, every sense alert. This did not help James, who had turned scarlet and was inarticulate with embarrassment.

‘She . . . well, sir, I must admit that her frankness has quite startled me. She was very honest about her feelings for you.’

Barry stood, chilly and impassive, on the highest step above him. Even then his eyes were only just level with James’s collar.

‘Miss Walden,’ Barry barked, ‘is a lady deserving of every man’s courtesy and respect.’

The terrier had the rabbit of reputation by the throat. Barry was clearly quite prepared to fight the duel again. James was reduced to mumbling.

‘Indeed, sir . . . I had no idea . . . I am most deeply sorry . . .’

‘Speak up, man,’ Barry retorted.

James pulled himself together.

‘I beg your pardon. I was quite in the wrong and I make the most unreserved of apologies. I will of course take responsibility for the entire affair.’

Suddenly, the lizard, which had hung perpendicular on the wall throughout their exchange, flickered, shifted, and vanished into the shadow beneath the building. Barry leaned forward. His thin, pale face became warmer and more generous.

‘Come inside for a moment, Captain Loughlin,’ he said quietly. His welcome was still reserved, but the change in temperature was unmistakable.

James stepped cautiously into Barry’s still, dim rooms. He had the impression of a ruthless, spartan orderliness. A stack of reports lay on the desk. Only the blotter, spattered with ink, demonstrated that Barry did anything other than polish his furniture day and night. The same strange smell, musk, alcohol and the sharper, heavy, burning odour, which he had detected in the doctor’s curls, clung to the objects in the room and to the curtains that were made of French lace. James heard an unpleasant growl at his heels and almost stepped into a tiny mass of bristling white fur. Barry summoned the little dog directly and it pattered back across the boards towards him. No eyes or feet were clearly visible. The creature made one or two appalling noises and then sank at Barry’s feet. Both the dog and its master looked peculiar and ridiculous.

‘Please sit down.’

Barrry’s rooms were white and green. The floorboards glimmered in the half-light and the officer was forced to take small steps to avoid falling. By the fireplace a heavy green rug softened the effect. The evening sun was blocked by thick white lace across the blinds, so that the air within was murky and cool. James felt that he had been pulled underwater by the nymphs and was now lying, drugged and submerged, face upwards, in a stagnant pond. The doctor waited for him to sit down. The chair, with its upright, green-striped back, brought him to his senses. He stared at Barry, who was staring fixedly back at him. Barry rang a little bell on his desk. The sound hollowed out the green cavern. The heap of white fur stirred and growled again. The doctor now resembled an intelligent midget with a toy dog, about to perform in a circus. There he stood, holding a small silver bell. James realised that his stare had now continued well past the point of politeness.

‘I will order green tea,’ said the Doctor, as if administering a tincture. ‘You should drink something hot in this heat. The water is always boiled correctly. My boy sees to that. And Captain . . .’ here Barry smiled slightly ‘you should drink a great deal of tea to dilute the alcohol you are given to consuming in such abundance.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ James remembered his manners and that Barry was reputed to be cranky on diet. But he felt like a schoolboy, receiving a mild dressing-down from the headmaster.

Barry’s servant was tall, swarthy and ironic. He appeared in the doorway, glanced at James, then grinned broadly at Barry. He had a wonderful array of teeth, all extraordinarily straight, like a military cemetery.

‘Tea, sir?’ He grinned some more.

‘Indeed. And do you have any of those lemon cakes we made on Sunday? Or have we eaten them all?’

‘I’ll look, sir.’

With an easy bow, the man strolled off, followed at full gallop by the little dog, its nails clicking on the polished boards.

‘Psyche and Isaac are fond of those cakes,’ said Barry, sitting down at last. He vanished inside his chair. James had no idea whether the servants were called Psyche and Isaac, or if one of them was the dog. But he had noticed that Barry’s domestic arrangements were casual and good-natured. The man had no fear of his master and clearly knew all about the abortive duel.

There was a long silence. Far away, James heard the rattle of crockery and low voices, interrupted by laughter. He felt exceedingly uncomfortable.

‘You realise that I have already been sent for by the Governor himself?’ said Barry suddenly.

‘I didn’t know. I . . .’

‘I have an appointment to see him at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I believe that the Deputy Governor called upon you last night, but that you were – how shall we put it? – indisposed . . .’

‘I was disgustingly drunk.’

Barry smiled. James realised that it was the first time he had ever seen this smile, a wonderful, transforming smile, which lit up the pale grey eyes, and covered the doctor’s face with the cheerful glitter of a merry child. How old was Barry? He had no idea. How had he gained so much authority? No one knew. James smiled back, a little bewitched. He had entered the green domain of the Erl King.

‘Shall I tell the Governor that we are reconciled and both heartily apologise for the disruption occasioned by our quarrel?’

Barry’s actual words were still perfectly formal, but there was now an intimate complicity in his manner, which had never been there before. The doctor still had the whip hand, but the distance between them had narrowed abruptly. James could not fathom the register within which Barry conducted his conversations. The mixture of intimacy and menace was too much for him.

‘I shall call on the Governor tomorrow,’ James declared. ‘I am entirely to blame. I shall make that clear. And I will explain everything.’

‘Not everything, perhaps,’ said Barry mildly. James blushed scarlet once again. Even his ears went red.

‘No, sir. Of course not. But I shall say all that needs to be said.’

Barry bowed slightly. There was another long pause. Then he said, ‘This is a very small colony, Captain Loughlin. There has already been a good deal of unfounded gossip, and I would be grateful for a few judicious words from you in the right quarters on the question of Miss Walden. And it would be best, whatever your sentiments, if, in public at least, we were seen to be on excellent terms. May I count on your discretion?’

‘Of course, sir.’ James floundered at Barry’s candour. Then he spoke from the heart. ‘I trust that we shall indeed be on good terms. Whatever the circumstances.’

‘Thank you,’ Barry replied simply, but he smiled again. James gazed at him and then sank, hopelessly and without trace, into the spell of Barry’s green kingdom. He was excessively relieved when the servant reappeared with the tea.

The entire apparition on the tea tray was a miracle of elegance. Here were delicate bone-china cups, thin as rice paper, huge circles of lemon laid out like half moons on tiny saucers, one each, a gleaming pair of sugar tongs wrapped in a miniature lace napkin, with a hand-stitched design of two swallows flying in formation, wing tips outstretched, silver spoons with little claws and the familiar initials, F de M. James stared at this fastidious demonstration of good taste. The service would have graced the table of any well-bred lady in the empire.

‘Thank you, Isaac. I will pour it myself. Where are the cakes?’

Isaac leaned forward and lifted another fine linen cloth with a little flourish, like a matador, to reveal a charming array of biscuits.

‘Cakes all gone, sir.’

‘Wolfed down by you, Psyche and the boys, I suppose,’ said Barry cheerfully. Isaac stood there, ogling James and grinning, unabashed.

‘Run along then,’ said Barry to the dog, which trotted out of the room, with Isaac in her wake.

‘I assume that you live in the officer’s quarters?’ Barry handed James his cup and James found himself staring down at the tiny, steady hands, pale, scrubbed, unshaking, with a gold signet ring on the third finger of the right hand.

‘Umm . . . Yes. I do.’

‘I prefer my independence and my privacy.’

Barry’s voice was quiet and even, but the timbre was that of a boy, rather than a man. At that moment James wondered if the rumours were correct. Could Barry be some kind of hermaphrodite, with a spectacular intelligence? He was neither man nor woman, but partook of both. He had a woman’s delicacy and grace, but the courage and skill of a man. Barry’s courage was legendary. James tried to order his thoughts and was unable to do so. There were very few men in the army whose aim was as infallible and murderous as that of James Miranda Barry. He had both saved and taken lives. He was the lord and owner of every one of his gestures and expressions. He knew neither hesitation nor uncertainty. He gave rather than took orders. The Governor himself deferred to Barry’s judgement. But even so, he was not a man like other men.

James felt himself sinking down into the green tea, the green air and the green rooms, drugged by the pale oval of Barry’s face and the odd, heavy scent that lingered about the doctor. Barry talked easily and pleasantly. James let down his guard. He heard the multitude of insects battering against the mesh. At dusk, Barry rang the bell again to summon Isaac with the lamps. The dog pattered softly back into the room and leaped onto Barry’s lap.

‘. . . and so operating conditions have greatly improved.’ Barry stroked the dog. ‘I am not yet able to offer these facilities to the native populations. But we have begun basic training for some of the more able apprentices.’

James gazed spellbound as the doctor talked about his work and his plans for the hospital. The spell was cast not so much by his conversation, which was practical, even of a somewhat specialised nature, and well beyond James’s range of comprehension in all but the most general terms. There was something uncanny in the doctor’s manner, but James was unable to make sense of the source. What was so hypnotic, strange and intense about this man, which began to appear like a deliberate tactic to beguile and seduce? He urged James to imbibe more and more green tea, until the young officer feared for an explosion in his bladder. He was increasingly anxious to relieve himself, but did not dare beg permission to step further into Barry’s green kingdom or to take his leave.

Finally, when it was quite dark, Barry allowed him to go. As he rose to escape he ventured one personal question. He had no certain idea who Barry was, only rumours and gossip.

‘We share a Christian name, sir.’ James hesitated. ‘Am I right in thinking that the painter James Barry was one of your relations?’

‘He was. James Barry was my uncle.’

‘And forgive my impertinence, but I noticed that your silver was marked with the initials F de M. Is it indeed the case that you are connected to the famous Argentinian General, Francisco de Miranda?’

James did not dare to mention the pistols.

‘Venezuelan. General Miranda was born in Venezuela. And yes, he was my patron. He was like a father to me. He lives yet. He is an old man now. But his intelligence is undiminished. He is at present engaged in important research into the conditions of the unfortunate Negroes upon his West Indian estates. It is my greatest privilege to merit his continuing good opinion.’

This was delivered with uncharacteristic passion. For the first time, Barry flushed slightly. James bowed. He sincerely believed that his next observation was merely polite.

‘I did not, of course, give credence to the rumour, but I was told that General Miranda fought with the French.’

‘Then, in this case, Captain Loughlin, you should have believed what you were told. General Miranda was, and is, a true son of the Revolution. He supported Bonaparte with his sword and with his life on precisely those grounds. He believed, as I do, that Napoleon was a great general. Napoleon towered above the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserving all that was good in it – equality of citizenship, freedom of speech and of the press – and that was the only reason he possessed himself of power.’

Barry’s voice was low and his manner was intense. James turned pale.

‘The Revolution, sir, is the one grand event of our times. You and I are too young to remember that early blaze of enthusiasm, but we are fortunate enough to witness the first ripples of its aftermath in a changed world.’

James sat open-mouthed at this torrent of treason and subversion. Barry had a reputation for expressing himself with unnerving frankness, but here he had exceeded all expectations. James looked around in desperation for his cap. If he did not rapidly escape from this green lair of odd smells, bone china, fluffy dogs and revolutionary opinions, he was in grave danger of urinating on the rug. The dog sniffed the air and growled. Once outside, James staggered out of view and pissed at length, up against a menacing hibiscus. It took him nearly an hour to walk back to the town in the luminous, shimmering dark, with the great sky and Barry’s pale, oval face, vast and mysterious as eternity, hovering before him.

James pondered his namesake all the way home. The man was like quicksilver, fluid, indeterminate, yet utterly beautiful. He still could not understand the perversity of Charlotte’s passion. A woman should, after all, fall in love with a proper sort of fellow, not a creature outside the boundaries of this world. But he too had succumbed to Barry’s magic, and was, knowingly, a little in love with this man who had been tempted to kill him. And had resisted that temptation.

 

*  *  *

 

But what on earth had happened? What on earth could have happened on the night of that fateful dinner, during the Governer’s absence? How had it ended? Barry was a man of honour. He never lied. He had stated, without ambiguity or hesitation, that Miss Walden was a lady who deserved every man’s courtesy and respect, whose reputation was beyond reproach. He was so sure of himself and of her innocence that he had been prepared to barter words for bullets. No honourable man fought duels for whores. Either Charlotte Walden was lying, or Barry was. James abandoned the struggle to imagine a scene of passion that was, indeed, quite beyond the reach of his imagination. And gradually he forgot all about it. This is what actually happened.

 

*  *  *

 

There was something too knowing, too well informed, about the boy’s glance. Barry was an acute observer of every gesture, every glance, even of the tension in another man’s back or the muscles in his neck. He was very quick to sense change. And here, from the flicker of a lash, the rapidity of the boy’s gesture as he opened the door, his smothered grin, Barry knew at once that this was no ordinary dinner engagement and that something was wrong. He stepped inside the cool, tiled hallway with the tiny fountain exploding in intermittent bursts and the stairs curling away into the darkened storeys above. Nothing was out of place: the sound of a piano and Charlotte’s laughter, uncoiling in the distance, were nothing out of the ordinary, but as Barry stepped into the bright, fashionable drawing room, already dominated by slightly too many china ornaments, hunting portraits and Chinese vases for his taste, he saw at once what was wrong. There was nobody there.

Lotte sat gorgeous at the piano, her famous bosom unaccountably revealed to great advantage. Her brother, handsome and gauche, barely sixteen, with still fewer hairs upon his chin, was mixing up her music for her and making a mess of things. He was dressed in a formal black coat, but giggling like a schoolboy. Neither of them had heard the cloche. When they saw Barry standing warily at the other end of the carpet, they both jumped up, excited and embarrassed, like two children meeting one of their parent’s friends for the first time. Charlotte gambolled down the room, calling out long before she got within range of polite greetings, ‘Dr Barry! I’m so sorry that we didn’t hear you come in. We were only fooling. How kind of you to come. It is wonderful to see you this evening.’

She gabbled all this far too quickly. Then she cantered round him like a lively pony, as if she was trying to absorb him from all angles at once. Barry raised one eyebrow. Charlotte was being too silly and too gushing to be affected. On the other hand, she had never looked so pretty nor so young.

‘Father’s not here. It’s just us. He had to go off to the other side of the island at short notice. He suggested that I should put you off until Friday. I told him I would. But then I didn’t want to. We’re so dull with nobody here.’

The unfortunate brother, a head taller than the doctor but just as fresh-faced and pale, stood stifling giggles and scuffing his shoe.

‘Lotte’s an awful hostess, Dr Barry. Would you like a drink? We’ve made some terrific fruit cup. Enough for forty people.’

Lotte pinched him, her face all puckered up and cross.

‘Oh, Joe, don’t say I’m no good at entertaining. I’ve only just got started. He’s always teasing me and making me embarrassed. Please sit down, Dr Barry. Don’t mind us.’

She dragged Barry into the full glare of the candles and revealed the fruit cup in its vast silver bowl. There were apricots and cucumbers floating on its surface, and the entire thing had been excessively chilled.

Lotte was overdressed. She was wearing too many trinkets and looked like a saint’s shrine in the aftermath of a miracle. She had the sense to allow the opals in gold that hung from her ears to set off a plain miniature on a red velvet ribbon tied tight in the French style, like a knife-cut round her throat. But she had gone quite mad with the bracelets and rings. Barry gazed at this child, this thoughtless, silly girl, and remarked the bizarre figure that she cut, aping her elders, and, no longer supervised by older hands, getting it all wrong.

‘Did your father send a message to the hospital to inform me of his absence?’ asked Barry curtly. He refused to sit down. These were the first words he had spoken. Lotte was beyond shame.

‘Of course he did. I intercepted the messenger. You had been invited and I wanted you to come. I didn’t see why you shouldn’t. I wanted to see you.’

Her brother exploded into giggles.

‘Fruit cup, doctor?’

Barry nodded and peeled off his gloves. The fruit cup was laced with brandy and very strong. It was also very refreshing in the hot night. Barry drained two glasses and sat back. He could either dis­­appoint her mightily by gathering up his dignity with his coattails and gloves, and taking his leave at once. Or he could give them both a run for their money.

‘Dinner is served.’

The servants in the Governor’s household were Portuguese. They were clearly all vibrating with laughter in the kitchen. They couldn’t wait for the second act, which, as they were serving at table, they would observe at close quarters.

Barry was taciturn over supper. The fish was well cooked with capers in a pepper sauce. Lotte chattered on, repeating all the gossip she had heard. She ordered up expensive imported wines from her father’s cellar, about which she knew nothing. It was considered correct in good colonial society for a young woman to put her handkerchief in her glass to indicate that she did not take wine. All the young ladies in the colony followed the practice. Not Lotte. She sat at her brother’s left hand and served herself with gusto. Had her father been present she would never have dared. And Barry did not try to stop her. By the time they arrived at the dessert, a lavish glass dish filled with dates, apricots and sweet peaches, she was wielding her fruit knife like a rapier. Her cheeks were deep pink and covered with tiny drops of perspiration. Her brother was slurring his words and asking impertinent questions about officers who were suspected of private visits to Barry’s clinic after sorties to that part of town known as The Middens, a network of streets notorious for gaiety and disease.

‘You must see very many members of our little world, Dr Barry,’ he guffawed, ‘in fact quite a cross-section!’ He then sank into a jolly heap, quite overcome by his own vulgarity.

Barry insisted that Charlotte withdraw into the drawing room while he set the Governor’s son straight on one or two points of unpardonable bad manners. Joe Walden was as contrite as a young man can be when impossibly, uncontrollably drunk. Barry finished the port, which was excellent and almost certainly taboo for general consumption. Joe joined him in a glass or two, then passed out, and collapsed over the table. Barry could hear Charlotte’s polkas becoming ever more frenzied and inaccurate. Then, suddenly, the music stopped altogether and she appeared in the dining-room doorway, pink and white at the extremities, like a vampire’s victim.

‘Call one of the servants to help me carry your brother upstairs,’ said Barry quietly. He stood up. He was slightly paler than usual, but neither his voice nor his hands betrayed the slightest tremor. His collar was still stiff, white and straight, his cufflinks firmly fastened. Lotte’s jaw dropped a little. She was unsteady on her feet as she crossed to the kitchen door.

‘Antonio,’ she bellowed, far too loudly as it happened, for Antonio was bent double on the other side of the door, his eye fixed to the keyhole.

The debauched scene of the completed feast with the young master slumped beside his plate was not unknown in the Governor’s house, but it was rare enough for Antonio and the other servants to be scandalised and delighted. Charlotte staggered on ahead with a lamp raised above her head, like the Bleeding Nun. She wobbled dangerously as she circumnavigated the landing. Barry caught the young man under the armpits while Antonio steered his feet up the curling staircase. They laid him out magnificently on his small cot bed, clearly left over from childhood. He was already snoring. Barry ordered a bucket, just in case he should be sick, and left him carefully propped upon his side, all his buttons undone, with a mass of pillows behind him. He ordered Antonio to check on the young master at hourly intervals.

The doctor then prepared to say his farewells to his hostess, who was teetering about in her brother’s bedroom. As he raised his face to hers, she pounced. Seized with an excess of tact, Antonio scampered off down the dark stairs. Lotte abandoned her lamp in her haste to embrace the diminutive Dr Barry.

‘Which room is yours?’ snapped Barry, disentangling himself from Lotte’s fragrant and abandoned grasp. Lotte was by now well beyond any form of rational discouragement and thrilled to the tips of her nipples by the doctor’s authoritative approach to seduction. She indicated the room at the end of the corridor and then threw her full weight rhapsodically into the doctor’s arms. She was far heavier than her brother. He half carried the drunken girl down the passage, bumping into invisible chairs and ornamental tables with a sequence of theatrical crashes. The door fell open and Barry threw Lotte down into a gleaming pool of white linen, simply because he was unable to carry her one step further. Lotte, dizzy with expectation, lost her satin slippers in the process. She closed her eyes in rapture. It was all exactly as she had dreamed it would be.

Barry looked round the room, vaguely expecting to see a rocking horse and a pile of china dolls. But no, Charlotte had begun to accumulate the symbols of young womanhood. Here was a dressing table, overflowing with pots of powder, brushes and ribbons, and numerous phials of perfume. Here was a pelisse draped over a chair and a smelly little pile of dancing shoes, with the left heels all worn out.

Barry shrugged in exasperation. Yet he had never seen Lotte looking so presentable. For once she was not trying to entice the doctor into ogling her bosom. She was natural, at last. And completely drunk. He imagined her headache in the morning. The fruit cup alone, which she had clearly been sampling well before his arrival, would ensure a darkened room for the entire day. He chuckled to himself and bent down to kiss her forehead before departing into the night. But Lotte was not as comatose as she appeared. Nothing stops a virgin hell bent on pleasure. Her bare arms flew up and encircled his neck. Then, demonstrating considerable strength and presence of mind, she capsized James Barry into her feather pillows. The buttons on his jacket were tangled up in silky ribbons and the soft white folds of her petticoats, which were strewn all across the bed. There was no escaping her now.

Barry’s first thought was that he was still wearing his boots. Meanwhile, Charlotte was intent on stripping off all her clothes. She heaved in the dim bed like a porpoise. Barry pinned her down before she could lose every last shred of her remaining modesty. There was only one way to end this. He pulled her face round towards him and kissed her ferociously on the lips. Lotte sank back with a gasp.

Never before. No, not ever. Et cetera.

She was overwhelmed, intoxicated. She flung herself against him. He kissed her again, harder this time.

Lotte let out a ravished sigh, which turned into a somewhat less romantic whistle. She had all her desires at last. She had captured the alluring, the enticing, the mysterious Dr Barry.

Not quite.

With his left hand Barry pulled her skirts right up to her thighs and beyond, then reached down into her most secret places. She cried out, startled and amazed. The doctor’s expert knowledge of anatomy came into play. She was soaking wet with involuntary excitement. He found out the source of her pleasure and rubbed her gently into ecstasy, his mouth hard against hers, stifling the little screams which poured forth, one after another. He waited until the soft electric shocks subsided, then began to liberate himself, with some difficulty, from her octopus petticoats. Lotte’s breathing steadied. The alcohol was now racing frenziedly through her system, and she was almost unconscious. Barry found a little water in her floral pitcher that was not too stale. He soaked one of her handkerchiefs and wiped her face gently. Then he covered up her pretty, vulnerable form that was on display for all the night to see.

‘Lotte, can you hear me?’

‘Mmmmmmm . . .’

‘Listen to me, Lotte. Don’t ever get so drunk again with a man you don’t know. Someone will take advantage of you. And you make it shockingly easy for them to do so.’

Pause. Long drowsy breaths rose peacefully from the bed.

‘Lotte, are you listening?’

‘Mmmmmmm . . .’

‘You may get away with it. But then again, you may not.’

Pause.

‘Goodnight, my dear.’

She did and did not hear him. She failed to understand. She did feel the fatherly kiss, which he at last bestowed on her damp curls. But she no longer had any idea who he was. The entire affair had lasted somewhat less than seven minutes. Charlotte’s magnificent bosom never did form part of the picture. Yet this young woman fell asleep feeling nothing but the warmth and dizziness of satisfied and completed love.

Barry let himself out through the front door, well aware that he was observed by dozens of admiring eyes, and strolled home beneath an aureole of stars.

 

*  *  *

 

Speculation about Barry’s sexual past was as dense as the mosquitoes outside the screens at every dinner party in the colony; indeed, at every social gathering where he was not present and at many where he was. Inevitably, his connection with the famous Mrs Jones leaked forth into the stream. Barry had been seen at many of her London performances. He had even once accompanied her on a tour of Ireland and the northern provinces. He had been a frequent visitor at her London house. During a year he had spent in England between his foreign tours he had begged her to abandon the stage and follow him through all the world. Are you sure? The very idea! Everyone was titillated by the piquancy of the attachment, the famous doctor, nephew to Mr B, the painter, and a very close relation to Lord Buchan, in love with the actress of humble origins who had taken London by storm. It was shocking, delightful, perfectly delicious. And quite charming to talk about. But the incongruities were also unavoidable. They were a most peculiar couple: the statuesque Mrs Jones, on the one hand, with her magnificent figure and breathtaking legs, her comic charm and saucy jokes with her devoted audiences, and, on the other hand, the tiny, serious, ice-cold doctor with his sharp tongue and exaggerated dignity. No, the colonial wives, delighted as they were by the oddness of this picture, simply could not see it at all. Mrs Harris, who had wintered in London, attempted direct and provocative action in a bid to ascertain the truth. She took up her position behind the teapot and fired all her guns at once.

‘Our visit to town was quite wonderful. We were invited everywhere. And I had the pleasure of hearing Mrs Jones as Rosalind. I assure you, she was every bit as astonishing as the reputation which precedes her, quite glowing, one would even say radiant, with a very pleasant singing voice. She seems to take charge of everyone on the stage. Even when she is silent, she is somehow at the centre of every scene. The slightest shifts in her emotions are so pretty and convincing. When she appeared in the forest dressed as a rustic gentleman she was quite transformed. And her second metamorphosis from a saucy page boy into a perfect lady was bewitching indeed. As for her performance in the pantomime, I have not laughed so much for many years.’

She paused, expanding her bosom with predatory significance.

‘I gather that you had known Mrs Jones, Dr Barry. When she first began her career . . .’

‘I did.’

‘How interesting this is! Do tell us, Dr Barry – for you will certainly be able to do so – what sort of a person is she in private life?’

The company leaned forwards with a little crescendo of cups, agog to hear what Dr Barry would tell them about the famous actress, the woman who was reputed to have caught the eye of the King himself, if these wicked cartoonists were to be believed. And gossip is never without foundation. No, never.

‘Mrs Jones is a clever, astute and unscrupulous woman,’ said Barry flatly.

The ladies clamoured for more.

‘But she has real talent . . .’

‘I am told that she is very witty and well read . . .’

‘She is our greatest comic actress . . .’

‘But she bests Mrs Siddons in many of the tragic roles . . .’

‘She played Desdemona, with Kean as the Moor. All London was talking of it . . .’

‘Mrs Jones is excellent at portraying injured innocence,’ said Barry bitterly, turning away.

The ladies redoubled their attack.

‘But Dr Barry, she is a great artist . . .’

‘She must have suffered when she was young . . .’

‘Yet she is believed to be quite rich . . .’

‘She was raised in Lord Buchan’s household . . .’

‘Am I correct in asserting that you, Dr Barry, are an intimate of that family?’

‘She has a house on the river in a most fashionable district . . .’

‘And her own carriage . . .’

‘Her costumes alone are worth thousands . . .’

‘Her breeches were quite daringly tight . . .’

But, not even upon the interesting subject of Mrs Jones’s breeches could they draw Dr James Miranda Barry back into their conversation. He refused to play their game. They were not satisfied.

 

*  *  *

 

Captain James Loughlin began to make formal calls upon Dr James Miranda Barry. This fact, like every other event in the colony, was much commented upon. James Loughlin was an impulsive, unreflective man. He had no idea how he should behave towards someone to whom he owed his life, but he had acquired a peculiar sense of intimacy with and admiration for the doctor, who had so generously spared him. They never referred to the incident again. But Barry’s bullet continued to slice the air between them. James moved cautiously towards the pale, cold doctor. He befriended Isaac and sent any game he had shot, usually the best cut of the wild boar, round to Barry’s kitchen. He tried to beguile the beast, Psyche, and was bitten for his pains. Barry apologised on the poodle’s behalf. He explained that he had always had a small white poodle called Psyche, but that the last one had been very friendly and gentle, and had loved being kissed and caressed, settled on the ladies’ laps. The present occupant of the post was altogether more cantankerous. James wondered about this. It was a little odd to harbour generations of identical dogs called Psyche. He finally decided that the doctor had so loved the first one that he could not bear to lose the creature, and had therefore settled upon a system of eternal replacement.

‘Nonsense,’ said William Boaden. ‘Dogs all have utterly different characters. He just can’t think of another name.’

In fact, the reason was far more existential than either of the two men could ever have supposed. Barry had no constant markers in his life. He moved onwards from land to land. He had no close friends. He was a public figure in every place where he had lived. He was rarely alone. The first Psyche had been his only unquestioning, loyal confidante. He could not afford to lose her. And so there began the sequence of white poodles, trotting briskly behind him, waiting patiently at doors, on verandahs, under awnings, snapping at flies, gazing suspiciously at ladies who revealed their petticoats, growling on steps in the dark.

James Loughlin sent Barry’s household regular gifts of a sensible, practical nature. But, at the beginning of the hot months, when the ladies had already departed for their summer residences high in the hills, James sent Barry a huge cluster of wild orchids, which he had gathered in the mountain gorges. Barry sent Isaac with a formal note of thanks. Loughlin understood this as permission to visit and called on the doctor at once, despite the oddness of the hour, following Isaac back up the hot rocky hill to the green verandah overlooking the sea. The light was painted into the air, like a breathable cream glaze. The path simmered under his feet and the shrivelled vegetation hung limp under the congealing heat. Isaac walked slowly. James realised that his impulsive visit was very ill-advised. He stood, sweating and wilted, at Barry’s green door.

The doctor wore white shirt sleeves and was sitting smoking in a draught.

‘You’re a very imprudent young man,’ he said, offering James an ice-cold hand. ‘You shouldn’t move at all between twelve and five. As your Chief Medical Officer, I may well order you onto the sofa for the rest of the afternoon.’

The room was disturbed with the heavy purple of the orchids. James looked again into their deep streaks of yellowish white, which addressed the antique lace of Barry’s gently stirring curtains. They had no scent, but they dominated the deep green rooms.

‘Thank you. I love flowers,’ said Barry quietly, uneffusive.

James sank onto the sofa. Barry ordered a tumbler of cold water for them both and Isaac vanished. They spent the afternoon smoking and exchanging occasional comments. James dropped off for nearly an hour, and awoke to find Barry gazing at his face, concentrated, unsmiling, intent. James apologised for his bad manners, and sat up, dizzy and embarrassed.

‘I am told that you spend the nights dancing, drinking and gambling, Captain, rather than sleeping. It is therefore perfectly suitable that you should spend the afternoons asleep.’

‘I say, Barry, don’t you think . . . I mean . . . I wanted to ask whether you’d like to go up to the mountains . . . for a week or so, or even ten days. Just us, and Psyche, of course. My shout, although I can’t think it would cost us very much. But, you know . . . We’d have a terrific ride. There’s plenty to see and you haven’t got much on at the hospital. You could be back in time for your Friday clinic. That’s if you wanted to go . . .’

James trailed off. He had kept on talking because he was too frightened to give Barry the opportunity to say no. Barry was still staring at him, unabashed.

‘Thank you, James, for a very kind invitation. I should be delighted.’

It was the first time that Barry had used their common Christian name. James leaped off the sofa and shook Barry’s hand. Psyche set up a frenzied barking.

‘Terrific. That’s all settled then. When shall we start? We must get out of this heat.’

Barry went on staring, but he added a very small, ironic smile.

‘At dawn tomorrow. If you don’t burn the candles at both ends tonight.’

 

*  *  *

 

They spent most of the first day marvelling at the views. In the dull chill before dawn they crossed the irrigated plain beyond the town, trotting briskly down the soft sandy tracks between the green maize fields. Psyche wobbled unsteadily inside Barry’s coat, her nose black and wet, raised to the cool air. By the time they began climbing slowly on the rougher paths through the white rocks, the sun was upon them, baking their backs and heads. But they were already a long way above the bay, turning inland along the ribbon cliffs. Far below they could pick out the aquamarine thread close to the shore, outlining the port and the promenade, which anchored the island into the darker wash of blue. The air shifted its weight, exhaling hot breath against their faces. They dismounted and picked their way carefully up the uneven track towards a huge head of rock, cracked, jagged and stained with giant stripes of yellow ochre, buried in the rifts. The rock cast a twisted shadow across the rough scrub beneath. As they crushed the vegetation beneath their boots and the horses’ hooves, the green threw up the sudden smell of rosemary and wild thyme. Barry rubbed a twist of herb between his gloved fingers and sighed. In the rock’s shadow the air changed and drew away, but there was no water.

Barry had a map.

‘There’s a spring about four miles further on and the path should get easier. Do you think we can climb up there by midday?’

‘Easily.’

Psyche flopped down beside James. She was too hot to negotiate anything other than a truce with the handsome soldier, of whom she was intensely jealous. James looked at her warily.

‘Do you clip her nails?’

Barry nodded.

They sat silent, side by side, puffing with the horses, gazing at the empty vanishing line of blue.

‘Beats England, doesn’t it?’ said James.

‘Not for beauty,’ Barry replied. ‘Nothing could ever do that.’

James laughed.

‘Never had you down as a patriot. You’re always so sharp about our fellow countrymen.’

‘That’s because their idiocies are magnified abroad. I don’t think that you will ever have heard me criticise the country itself.’

‘But what is the country other than the people and what they’ve made of it?’

James was a little puzzled. He was attached to people rather than to places. He never did understand why he should venerate the flag. His regimental world was one in which honour and tradition were things about which you ranted with vehemence when magnificently drunk. He entertained no abstract ideas of England as a psychic entity which could be the object of nostalgia. But as it happened, neither did Barry. He was remembering somewhere quite specific. The doctor sat prim and serious, perched on a rock, smoking a thin cigar.

He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘I spent a significant part of my childhood in the country. My family and I were frequent visitors to Lord Buchan’s estate in Shropshire. After I had begun my studies I returned there every summer. From May to September I lived on the farm, in the kitchens, in the fields. Look out at those dry white rocks, James, where nothing grows, and think of the fresh dew on cow parsley, lacing the hedgerows. Think of purple foxgloves on the woodland floor. Imagine the squirrels racing across your lawns. Breathe the smell of cut grass. Remember the candles of the horse chestnuts, pink and white, jaunty and elegant, swaying above the green, this year’s green, the new spring leaves, folded like napkins, high above you. Think of that fine, soft rain, delicate as a woman’s silk sleeve, touching your face. Remember the late white frosts? Just a faint crust of white among the daisies. Hear the birds chanting the dawn. Remember those long summer evenings, of blue shadows and thick gold, that long, evening sun you only see in the north. See the hills, those soft, swollen, rounded bellies of green. And smell the water, clear water, spring water, ice-cold, battering the stream stones, the irises yellow against the green and the cows browsing in the shallows.’

James sat up astonished.

‘Good Lord, Barry, you’re a poet, not a doctor! But I could certainly do with a drink.’

Barry laughed. He seemed surprised by his own oratory. He went to pull the water flask from his saddle-bag. The huge bay snorted hopefully and dipped her head down towards her master. He peeled off his gloves, poured a little water into his bare hand and wetted her nostrils. She blew a damp blast of heat into his ear and stamped twice. He rubbed her head gently. James stared at him. The doctor had to climb rocks to mount the creature, which he did a little self-consciously but with aggressive dignity. Yet the animal, which Harris had described as hell on four legs, trotted out for Barry like a seaside donkey. All Barry’s animals appeared enchanted. They bit anyone else who approached. It was very peculiar.

‘The mare goes well for you,’ said James, puzzled. There had been some merriment in the colony at Barry’s expense when the Governor had first proposed the gift. The bay had been intended to take the doctor down a peg or two.

‘Yes, she’s a good horse,’ Barry answered absently. He looked out at the sea. ‘Don’t you miss England, James?’

‘Not at all. Or at least I’ve never thought about it. I grew up in Berkshire. But I can’t say that I thought about the country like you do. I just remember flies and mud. And Father shouting. I couldn’t wait to get to town. See the world. I hated school. Didn’t you hate school?’

‘Never went. I had tutors at home.’

‘Lucky you, like my sister.’

Barry looked down sharply at the soldier sprawled beneath the shadow of a great white rock. But there was nothing more than idle chat behind the remark. Barry handed over the flask.

‘I didn’t know that you had a sister. Here, drink up. Let’s move.’

The water ran over James’s fine moustache and gleamed on his red underlip. Barry watched a drop fall onto the front of his uniform. James flopped back against the rock, groaning. Barry was fitter than he was. The soldier looked like a marionette with the strings sheared.

‘My God, Barry. Pull me up.’

‘Consider which one of us is likely to win a tug of war,’ laughed Barry, suddenly dapper, merry, game for anything. They grasped each other’s wrists and pulled like children, James winning easily against Barry’s slender weightlessness. He noticed once more the doctor’s fine, cold hands, each nail cut short, each oval cuticle pale, perfect, unbroken. He understood why all his patients spoke of the doctor’s light, tender touch and the gentleness of his authority. He gazed down at the other man’s hand, resting in his own. Cautiously and slowly, Barry withdrew his hand.

‘Shall we go on?’ he asked quietly, looking up into the young soldier’s confused and bewildered face.

 

*  *  *

 

At sunset they stopped to watch the giant glowing ball, illuminated like a Chinese lantern, sink with all theatrical splendour into the black pit of the orchestra. The heat was sucked out of the air. They found the mountain hut easily enough. It stood directly in their path and they would have had to struggle round it to go on upwards in the closing dark. The distances between the hut and two of the local monasteries were written in Greek on the wooden wall, but with no indication of directions. James found the stones where the last visitors had lit their fire and began to grub about in the dark bush for sticks. There was nothing to hand, so he set off over the rocks. When he returned, bitten by mosquitoes, scratched and cursing, Barry had already lit the fire from the neat little pile of brushwood stacked inside the door of the hut. He was sitting on a rock, calmly slicing a sinister sausage.

‘You try my patience, sir,’ said James, laughing at himself and flinging down the hard-won sticks.

‘Regard it as one more piece of evidence that James I was more successful than James II,’ smiled Barry.

‘And had more luck. Both the doctor and the king.’

James flung himself down beside the fire, almost crushing Psyche, who was too exhausted either to growl or to move.

‘And you’ve no doubt hobbled and fed the horses, discovered a pile of hay and refilled the bucket from the spring.’

‘Indeed. But the spring is merely a trickle. It’s fifty yards away up a rather dangerous track and I would not advise it in the dark. I propose that we put up with each other’s stench tonight and wash in the morning.’

‘A vos ordres, mon général,’ murmured James, stretching out. ‘And are you as competent at cooking?’

 

*  *  *

 

The doctor slept close to the door, wrapped in his cape, with Psyche tucked against his shoulder, like a warm, curled cushion. James got up to relieve himself in the middle of the night. He had to step over the doctor’s legs. As he did so he heard the sudden unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked, and the poodle’s low growl.

‘It’s all right, Barry,’ he whispered, a little dazed, ‘it’s me.’

When he came back into the dark space, which reeked of goats, he was wide awake from the night cold and the apprehension of being shot. Barry’s accuracy was no doubt still invincible, even in the luminous dark.

‘I say, Barry, are you asleep?’

‘Not now, my dear, I’m talking to you.’

‘Sorry.’

James lay down again.

‘I wasn’t asleep.’

There was a comfortable pause.

‘Barry?’

‘Yes?’

‘So far as I know we aren’t surrounded by brigands and we haven’t been followed. Do you always sleep with a loaded pistol on your chest?’

Barry chuckled.

‘I do indeed, sir. I have my honour to defend.’

Then they both fell asleep.

 

*  *  *

 

The monastery was attached like a leech to the upper edge of a perpendicular precipice. They could see the stone walls growing out of the rock: οικος αγιος Πνευµατικος, The House of the Holy Ghost. It was a fortress against all comers, pilgrims and pillagers alike. Everyone was equally unwelcome, both the terrestrial invaders and the heavenly hosts. The doctor and the soldier were descending from the north through the pine woods. They had seen no one for days. But now, as they looked out towards the hotter, dryer peaks of the southern range, they could pick out a steady trail of pilgrims, some on donkeys, others on foot, creeping up towards the Holy Mountain. This was not in itself an unusual sight; but the numbers were astonishing. A long caravan, seemingly without end, toiled onwards and was lost to sight around the rising curve of the crag. It was still early in the day.

‘Looks like they’ve got visitors.’ James wondered aloud, ‘Do you think they’ve got space for us?’

Barry stared at the endless trail of veiled women and bare-headed children far below them. Some of the wanderers were old, poor, crippled. Some were being carried on makeshift stretchers. There were wealthy men on fine horses, surrounded by attendants. Bearded priests mingled with the flock. As they came closer they could make out camps and groups of pilgrims, clustered in tiny pockets of woodland or secreted in ravines. Some had lit fires. They saw the pale blue smoke rising in the early light. Others were simply resting before beginning again the long climb upwards in search of holiness. Barry picked out a bishop in full array, surmounted by a parasol, and entire families, calling to each other, accompanied by a Noah’s ark of animals, scuttled over the rocks, up the slithering paths. It was like the last pilgrimage, the medieval dance of death, strung out across the mountains.

The first person they passed was a ragged herdsman, seated on a rock, surrounded by a dozen goats. Barry addressed him in Greek. The old man gurgled out his reply from a toothless mouth.

‘What’d he say?’ demanded James, who, despite three years’ residence on the island, had never learned a word of the language.

‘He says there’s been a miracle.’

‘A what?’

‘A miracle.’

‘What sort of miracle? One worked by God?’

‘I wasn’t aware that there were any other kinds of miracle.’

‘Dammit, Barry. Explain.’

‘An icon of the Virgin is shedding tears for the world on a regular basis.’

‘Oh, come off it, Barry. All these people can’t be climbing three days’ worth of mountain on the off-chance of seeing a damp piece of painted wood.’

The herdsman peered into their faces, trying to decipher their words and ascertain whether they were quarrelling.

Barry smiled faintly and offered the man a few coins.

‘Spoken like an Englishman, my dear James. I’m proud of you. But these people have the kind of faith that makes three days’ journey up a precipice a mere step towards heaven.’

James shrugged. He was not in fact an unbeliever, which would have required an intellectual effort of which he was quite incapable. His God was a decent sort of chap with inexplicable preferences, who did not operate abroad and who certainly never interfered with the world. He should be invoked on the occasion of births, sicknesses, marriages and deaths. Not otherwise. The icons at the House of the Holy Ghost were very famous indeed. The sanctity of the monastery had been preserved for centuries. No woman had ever seen them. All these veiled creatures carrying their sons to be blessed would be left, derelict of benedictions, waiting at the gates. Books had been written about the icons by travellers James had heard of and he had expected to enjoy their beauty and antiquity without being surrounded by a mass of illiterate and smelly peasants, weeping with devotion. He said as much to Barry.

‘I don’t expect it will come to that,’ replied Barry ironically, ‘but we shall have to join the flow.’

Their uniforms guaranteed that the crowd parted before them like the Red Sea, but, to James’s amusement and surprise, Barry was frequently hailed by his regular patients. The doctor was well known, both to the people he had actually treated, and by reputation, among the native populations. His healing skills were, in any case, regarded as little short of miraculous. So it was considered entirely suitable that one miracle worker should pay homage to another and that the doctor had come to call upon the Virgin.

The monks had not yet opened the church for the evening’s viewing of the miracle when the two dusty soldiers trotted through the gates. Obsequious and sinister, the black figures poured forth a smooth welcoming patter in Greek. Barry nodded, but said very little. James handed his horse to a small boy who was already clutching the bridle with one hand and holding out the other for payment. One of the monks slapped the outstretched hand.

‘Let’s take a look at the bloody Virgin,’ James snapped irritably, ‘and then see if they’ve got anything that we can eat, rather than worship.’

The interior of the church smelt of incense and damp. It was like entering a decorated egg. There was a wooden screen, smothered in icons, which divided the space in half. James stumbled over the clawed feet of a huge lectern, surmounted by a mass of intricate gold turrets on the corners with a huge leather Bible laid out upon it. The scriptures were locked with ornate gold clasps, as if they were a box of jewels, and bound to the lectern by two solid golden chains. Everything was locked, shut or kept behind bars, as if the monastery was perpetually expecting an incursion of raiders from the valleys below. James tweaked the golden chains with his riding whip and they clattered against the wood. One of the monks twittered in Greek. Barry peered at the dusky icons littering every surface. There was one representing the Virgin that was supposedly painted by St Luke himself, and was so holy and efficacious that it had to be covered with a curtain. James bent down to read the text beneath the magic icon, then caught Barry’s sleeve flirtatiously.

‘It says here that St Luke, being a master physician, put all his healing powers into the icon and that it has cured many men of rattling in the body, fits of the evil thing and the bloody flux. I thought only women suffered from the bloody flux. You should prescribe icons, Barry.’

‘It says nothing of the sort! You can’t read Greek. And I do prescribe icons. Frequently. They are exceedingly effective with the malades imaginaires.’

Barry wandered off round the dusty interior of the church with its oppressive blackened pictures leering through braided pearls and coloured stones. He loathed all the paraphernalia of religion, and could not understand why they were tourist attractions. So far as he was concerned, religion transmitted nothing but fear and ignorance, like a contagious disease. The miasma of superstition rising from the smoking icons was palpably visible, smouldering with medieval prejudice and the spectral presence of the Holy Ghost itself. Barry never underestimated the power of religion to heal bodies, arm nations, destroy lives. He simply longed to see it abolished in his lifetime.

A tiny priest with arthritic, freckled hands stood at the back of the church making fluttering gestures towards the wall of icons, one of which was supposedly weeping with contrition. This was the miracle! James strode over to look, curious to see how it was done. Barry hesitated, peering at the other icons, which rested propped against the walls. Outside he could hear the indignant murmur of the crowd, who had been excluded while the colonial rulers took their time. The locked doors, old wood shot through with nails like the body of St Sebastian, shook slightly with the presence of accumulating bodies.

Barry stood staring at the icons.

Some of them were in poor condition. The paint was cracked and flaking, the colours obscured by smoke from the devotional candles. Some were clearly being consumed by woodworm, others buckled with damp. Yet there they had stood for almost a thousand years, a rogues’ gallery of saints and bishops, some of whom he recognised easily: St Catherine clutching a tiny wheel, St Agnes presenting a plate with two breasts, St George, ubiquitous on a geometrical horse, with the dragon indignant beneath his hooves, laid out flat, without any perspective. Some saints had bishops’ mitres. The faces gleamed, contented with power, from behind their ornate, grey, curling beards. Barry’s upper lip curled slightly with contempt.

He peered at the numerous representations of the Virgin. And, even in the eerie thickening half-light of the blackened basilica, he began to notice something peculiar about the icons. Each painting of the Madonna was subtly different from every other one. The Virgin’s face was a disturbing, pale nuanced green, but her expression, by no means uniform, became subtly attractive to James Miranda Barry. The woman gazed outwards, unblinking, unafraid. Her identity was self-contained, remote. She received all comers with indifference. Barry had seen that peculiar, insouciant detachment on the faces of prostitutes dying of consumption. He stared at face after face after face. The Madonna stared back, her pure indifference now bordering on transcendent grace. James Barry stood transfixed before the incorruptible, eternal body of the woman whose mystery saturated the dark.

‘I say, Barry, come on.’ James was at his elbow. ‘Let’s view the miracle. This chap running the show wants to let in the mob.’

Barry nodded, taking the other man’s arm, and they stepped into a tiny chapel, a mere indentation in the wall, which contained the miraculous icon.

Here was yet another green-faced Madonna. But she was not like the other icons in the squat medieval church. She was unsmiling, but bolder in her glance than the more secretive Virgins. The child, a dwarf, painted out of scale, sat ignored in her lap. She had a round chin with a festive dimple and huge dark eyes. There was something about the set of her shoulders inside the jewelled robes that was determined and fierce. Barry peered up at her. The icon was unusual. This was not the hieratic, remote face of the saint, but a woman larger than life, larger than any man who looked at her. As he watched, the painted wood glistened strangely, and then, uncanny yet undeniable, two huge tears rolled down her inflexible face. A woman who cared so little for the daily griefs of this world would never weep, never pray for us sinners, neither now, nor at the hour of our death. She reminded him of another woman whose gaze was as deliberate and unashamed. She reminded him of Alice Jones.

Barry’s eyes were barely level with the Virgin’s calmly folded hands. On the shelf beneath the icon a communion plate overflowed with coins. Barry touched the money, which was surely the point of the exercise, and the hovering priest lunged forwards. James gazed up at the damp face, impressed. The priest began clucking gently. He indicated that the soldiers should kiss the icon. His long grey beard was yellowed round his lips and his black robes white with dust. Barry surveyed him from head to toe. His feet were bare and purple with ingrained dirt. His body smelt stale, unwashed. Barry wrinkled his nose in disgust.

‘Give these creatures some money, James. I wish to leave.’

Barry’s imperious manner amused rather than offended the younger man. James grappled in his pockets for some loose coins while Barry strode out of the basilica. The side door was very low and narrow, but he did not stoop and he cast not another glance at the weeping icon.

When James caught up with him, Barry was standing smoking in the cloisters. He looked tired and two fluid spots of red illuminated his pale face. James knew the signs. Barry was very angry.

‘Good show, eh?’

‘That weeping piece of painted board is quite clearly a theatrical fabrication on the part of these foul-smelling monks to delude and rob the innocent and credulous,’ Barry snapped. ‘Come on James, we’re not staying here.’

Barry delivered his opinion as if he were giving an order, but what he did not say, even to himself, was that the icon had disturbed him because her face had reminded him of a woman he used to know.

 

*  *  *

 

In April of the following year, when the acacias were already blooming with honey blossom, and James Barry was walking among his lemon trees in the sun, wondering at the precocious heat of the season, he noticed a figure in black toiling up the rocky track towards his house. There were two ways up to Barry’s residence, either the longer winding dust road which circled easily up the hill, where each visitor paused to look up at the white mountains and then down to the sea far below, or the far steeper eroded rock path, which became an informal and impassable torrent during thunderstorms. This route was the more direct, but the more exhausting. The figure was an old woman, veiled, but as sure-footed as her own goats. Barry recognised her at once. The witch woman was coming to call upon the doctor. It was a very unusual hour to visit anyone.

Barry’s high-handed arrogance in medical matters did not extend to shamans, faith-healers, herbalists, sorcerers or the keepers of cauldrons. Upon his arrival in the island he had immediately demanded the identity and address of the local witch. The Deputy Governor was taken aback. The witch had no official existence and could not therefore easily be traced. Barry called in his servants. They were too frightened to give him a direct answer. Barry went down to the village and sat on the low wall that surrounded the spring, by the recently installed and therefore suspect pump, and there he waited for her to come to him. And sure enough, before many minutes had passed the little square had emptied, and here she came, very graceful and steady, like a black ship in full sail, all flags hoisted, festive in the rigging and atop the mast.

The witch was an elderly widow, wealthy and respectable, cocooned in swathes of handsome black lace. She lived in a grand house with copious plantations masking the verandah. Her vines stretched up the hill behind her. She employed three workers, full-time. She boasted a weird collection of china dolls. She had a sense of the literary, could read English perfectly well, and possessed not one black cat but two. She was very honoured to meet the famous Dr Barry. The entire village watched through the cracks in their shutters as Madame Diaconou welcomed Dr Barry into her house.

Barry asked about the weather. What climatic changes and seasonal variations affected the patterns of illness among both populations on the island? He took careful notes concerning the location and efficacy of particular icons. He asked which local saints concerned themselves with childbirth, wounds, the shakes, infectious diseases, putrid fevers and general paralysis. He enquired after the herbs which were easily available and possessed powerful healing properties. He reported his suspicions concerning some of the unappetising local fish, which were nevertheless considered delicacies, and asked for her opinion. He was informed, affable and courteous. Madame Diaconou was disposed to reveal that she put a great deal of faith in the antiseptic qualities of wild thyme and had had great success with sore throats and bronchitis. She spoke an intriguing mixture of Greek and English. Her husband, God rest his soul, had been a converted Turk, who had seen Venice once and who, to her relief and the personal desperation of her mother-in-law, had died in the arms of Holy Church. He had been particularly susceptible, poor man, to violent inflammations of the lungs. Barry revealed that he too was a great believer in infusions. They were both very small people who sat eyeball to eyeball, and as the conversation continued, the red curls and the lofty coronet of black lace drew closer and closer together. The omens were favourable.

The witch was perfectly clear in her own mind that Barry had come to do a deal, preferably cash on the table and all above board. She was waiting for him to reveal his hand. And so, to gain the advantage, she moved into areas where Barry’s expertise was bound to be unequal to her own. She was an expert on all forms of possession, either by evil spirits, the unquiet dead, passing malfaisances, or the devil himself. Her charms, which took a day or two to concoct, had caused many a ghoul to depart, consumed with a white-hot burning rage, gnashing his fangs in frustration. Upon the departure of his satanic majesty, the victim always reported an agreeable sense of freshness and restful cool. Her love potions were expensive, but much sought after. Barry confessed that he had never mixed one and the witch raised her eyebrows in feigned amazement. She also had the power to cause spontaneous abortions in sheep and goats, but she was too amiable to market this considerable facility. She preferred to avoid village disputes about land.

Matters became tricky when the subject of fees was broached. It was Barry’s practice never to charge the indigenous populations. The Friday clinics were therefore subsidised by the hospital and at times out of Barry’s own pocket. The witch was, in terms of the average fisherman’s income, very expensive. Barry had hoped to draw a clear demarcation line between their separate areas of professional concern. He had no knowledge of love potions, which was the most lucrative side of Madame Diaconou’s business, and, listening to her confident pronouncements, he was unworried about her expertise in childbirth. The fluids she dispensed to ensure the birth of sons were a little alarming, and would have dramatic consequences for the digestive tract, but they were not dangerous. Her advice on sexual technique – how, for example, can a young bride be cured of frigidity? – was flawless. But there remained the difficult issue of demonic possession. Barry had come across many demons in Africa, but in the worst case he had seen of agony sent by the evil spirit, the man had also suffered from stomach ulcers and gallstones. Demonic possession had occasionally been proved to coexist with a wandering pregnancy and an inoperable cancer where, when he peered into the interior, he saw the tumours wonderfully intertwined like a lush black vine throughout the dying body.

Barry looked speculatively at the mass of china dolls, hoping that one of them would wink to him with some knowledgeable advice on how to handle the witch. But they sat, rigid and unblinking, all along the dresser in the dim rooms, ranked according to size, taking up the usual place of household plates. The doctor was relieved to hear, upon further enquiry, that cases of demonic possession were increasingly rare and that the local priest, a close friend of Madame Diaconou, was a noted exorcist.

But they could not agree upon fees.

For the first year of Barry’s tenure in the post of Deputy Inspector General, there was an uneasy truce established between the doctor and the witch. Their first clash came over the spring blood-letting. When Barry forbade the general release of bad humours from the blood of the village population, the people gathered before the witch’s house in droves and often came down with infections or anaemia, and were carried back up to the hospital. Within a year or two Barry had put a stop to the practice, but he could only do so by buying off the witch with an enormous sum, and giving his official blessing to her nettle tonic, which purified the blood by other means. Nettles were good for the blood, as Barry well knew, but the witch’s clients could have brewed up the potions themselves, far more cheaply, with the same results. Barry could not grasp that this terrible spending of money on a prophylactic they could not afford was, in fact, part of the cure.

Then there was a breakthrough. Somewhat to the doctor’s surprise, the widow appeared at the head of the queue during his Friday clinic. Everyone else stood aside, murmuring, as her prodigious bosom breasted the crowd.

Barry saw each patient separately with his interpreter, George Washington Karageorghis, resplendent in uniform, standing to attention behind him, and delivering the translation, if necessary, with a military bark. ‘He says he has pains everywhere, sir!’ was a common description of the symptoms. And it took Barry a few weeks to realise that this was often simply an opening gambit to impress the gravity of the case upon the doctor. But it was not easy to see each patient separately. Illness was a family affair. And the entire family usually came too, each brandishing a medical opinion and years of experience of all known diseases. Barry systematically separated wives from their husbands and mothers-in-law, thus generating a lot of scandalous gossip and bruised feelings. He insisted on subjecting the unfortunate sufferers to an interrogation in tongue-tied privacy and sometimes ended up shouting at the patients. Very few were malingerers. But the psychological labyrinths from which these narratives of illness emerged often defeated the doctor. Some diseases were hereditary and some were obligatory. Particularly intractable were sodomy and incest, both of which produced alarming, incurable symptoms. Some illnesses proved to be the guilt caused by not being ill, like my mother, my father, my aunt. He confronted women stricken with marital breakdown. He could not prescribe divorce. He never knew how to help them.

Barry became grateful for running sores, venereal seepages, varicella, dengue fever, measles, trachoma and hookworm. He knew what he was looking at and what to do.

But here was the witch, Madame Diaconou, in his clinic for the first time, beaming.

‘Good day, Doctor,’ she said, in English, majestically.

Barry rose, bowed, kissed her hand. Everyone in the waiting room peered round the door. The witch had not shut it and Barry did not either, realising that their conversation was intended to be public.

The widow sat down.

She bent forward, black drapes crackling, and unbuckled her shoes with some difficulty. Then she presented him with a magnificent smelly yellow corn, upon which her charms had proved fruitless. The doctor’s first look of surprise blossomed into a merry smile as he reached for his scalpel and his antiseptic swabs, reeking of alcohol.

After that, the witch and the doctor became not only colleagues but friends.

And now here she came once more, picking her way up the hill by the shortest route, the witch woman coming to call upon the doctor, at a most unusual hour.

Barry met her in the shadow of a gigantic grapefruit tree, hung with gleaming yellow balls. She was a fat woman, and a little out of breath. The doctor took her arm, smelling the sinister kindling of the sun impregnating her fronds of old black lace. At first she did not speak. She gazed out to sea.

‘I have come to report a death, Doctor,’ she said in Greek. ‘But this is not an ordinary death. The man was brought to my house early this morning from another house in the village, where he had lain, without my knowledge, for two days. He was terribly emaciated. He vomited even the clear water we gave him and his faeces were black and putrefying. He had a high fever. An hour ago he expired. I could count his ribs. He was not yet thirty years old. He had been a fine strong fisherman, from the outer isles.’

‘Not dysentery?’

‘No. He sicked up the black bile.’

The doctor’s hands were cold. He said nothing. The witch read his silence.

‘The visitation is upon us, then,’ she murmured quietly.

Barry nodded.

Cholera.

 

*  *  *

 

The year was 1817.

The disease rose up in the hot swamps of Bengal and set forth upon its journey down the rivers, devastating the villages through which it passed, leaving in its wake the bonfires of damp wood, the incense-ridden pyres, and the sound of weeping behind locked doors. Gathering up its dark cloak of heat, the stench of vomit and bile, the hectic cheek of fever, and the sweat of superstition and fear, the pestilence moved steadily east towards China, dividing its force, turning back to Persia and Egypt in the west. The slum quarters of Cairo were the first to be attacked, but the disease did not rest among the poor. Remembering the first plagues, it crossed the well-swept tiled thresholds and fountained gardens of the rich, crept through the ornamental patterns on their alabaster screens, swept past the doors of mosques and cathedrals, climbed up from the servants’ quarters, every step up, up, up to the well-fed tables of each reigning class to become a member of the feast.

All climates, all lands, fell victim to its passage. The pestilence moved northwards, adapting swiftly to the dead wastes of ice and snow. After 1824 it circled towards the great steppes, hurried across the mountains and the wheatfields of Russia, traversed the vast expanses of deserts and the rich black earth, softly awaiting the plough’s touch, rushed onwards beneath the great skies. By 1831 the pestilence had reached England.

Its spread was attributed to miasmatics, or bad air. Bonfires were supposed to have powerful disinfective properties. Their purifying, guttering breath was like a beacon, marking the passage of evil. But in fact no one knew how the disease was transmitted or spread from the outlying villages into the cities, how it clambered up from the poor man’s hovel to the beds of the rich, crossed empty tracts of barren land, leaped oceans with one giant stride. Nothing was safe from its touch. No one knew why one person was taken and another spared. The disease was a judgement, a warning, the herald of a prophecy, a message from those heavenly powers, now clearly displeased, who destroyed the peasant, the burgher, the bishop and the king alike, without hesitation, without pity, without compassion. Whole families were wiped out, both the decrepit and the newborn.

The pestilence could not be held at bay, neither by penitence nor by supplication. Clusters of candles weathered the icons, to no effect. The strictest quarantine enforced by the army proved useless. Whole sectors of cities were cordoned off, streets disinfected like firebreaks in a forest. But the scourge stepped effortlessly over the barriers, evaded the guards, rode with the death carts out to the perimeters of every zone. Then swept on. The disease stole past the watch at the gates, at the doors, by the ports, its paw marks silent on the roadways, invisible in the dust. This eyeless enemy moved in a thousand forms, ignoring the Passover marks on every door.

Cholera.

Barry stood for a few minutes, alone among his lemon trees, watching the witch renegotiate the uneven descent. Then he called Isaac and ordered him to saddle the bay. He was going to call upon the Governor at once. No, he would eat nothing.

 

*  *  *

 

The Governor was taking a siesta. He lay peacefully asleep in his oriental suite, overlooking the sea. He was still red-eyed and confused when Barry was shown into his private rooms. But it was not his midday somnolence which accounted for his difficulty in understanding Barry’s alarms and demands. It was the seductive colours of his gardens and the pure, tideless blue of the Mediterranean in the spring. It is impossible to believe in impending catastrophe when you have taken up residence in an earthly paradise. Barry’s talk of blockading the port, severe quarantine restrictions on all shipping, suspension of the fishing industry between the islands, and the possible destruction of The Middens, fell not so much upon deaf as upon uncomprehending ears. He also demanded a vastly increased budget for the hospital, permission to transform the maternity ward into an isolation unit, and money for more staff.

The Governor sat shaking his head. He had enormous respect for Dr James Barry. But surely the doctor was exaggerating. After all, there had been only one isolated death. The disease was not confirmed. The fisherman was not even a native of the island.

‘I say, Barry, aren’t you being a bit premature?’ The Governor splashed his face with cold water from a pale white bowl.

Barry lost his temper.

‘Sir. I am your Chief Medical Officer, responsible for the health and well-being of every inhabitant in this colony. I am giving you early warning not of the possible advent of a serious epidemic, but of its presence among us. There may well be thousands of deaths. We have no idea how this disease is spread, and so far there is no treatment and no cure. Our only hope lies in prevention. And the measures to be taken will be unpopular and expensive. I am not offering you my candid advice, sir. I am telling you what has to be done.’

There was a terrible pause. The Governor was dumbfounded.

‘I wish you a good day, sir,’ snapped Barry contemptuously. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the Governor’s private chambers, his boots ringing on the tiles as he strode away.

 

*  *  *

 

As expected, the first deaths came among the native populations. At the edge of the town there was an unsightly agglomeration of makeshift huts inhabited by the dissolute and the depraved. The Middens was a sort of growth protruding from the smooth white walls, neatly painted porches and brilliant gardens belonging to the richer residents. There could have been no greater contrast with the fragrant enclosures filled with jasmine, oleanders and arum lilies. The Middens was constructed from discarded bricks, driftwood washed up on the beach and old sailcloth abandoned by the fishermen. It looked like the last camp of a defeated army. A foul gutter ran down the central street into which the inhabitants poured waste water mixed with raw excrement and old food. In hot weather the stench was appalling.

Barry had ordered a pump to be installed at a little distance from this heap of disreputable dwellings to provide the inhabitants with clean water. This was a popular move, but did little to alleviate conditions inside the slum itself. A grog shop in the middle of the mass was a popular haunt of visiting sailors, fishermen and prostitutes. It formed the rotten heart of The Middens and there was much coming and going at all hours of the night.

The Governor had not been inclined to leniency when he first took office and was quite of the opinion that The Middens should be razed to the ground, the rat-infested dwellings burned and the populations dispersed. Barry had argued against this policy on the grounds that the pustule would simply re-form elsewhere. He proposed improvements in the housing provision and a proper sewage system. But the Finance Committee was unwilling to subsidise the evidently criminal inhabitants and regarded Barry’s ideas as a dangerous method of rewarding vice, which smacked of Jacobinism. Barry now wondered whether he should have supported the proposed burning as he entered The Middens some weeks later to inspect the first cadavers consumed by the pestilence.

Here lay a mother and child, browned and fleshless creatures, already frail from immoderate alcohol, venereal infections and persistent hunger. The woman’s breasts were shrivelled and lined like old limes, hanging down from her body, the nipples puckered and enlarged. No one had helped her to die. The child lay in a bundle at her side. Barry had the impression that putrefaction must have set in well before death had occurred. An old man hovered in the doorway. He was too fearful to enter.

‘Mother of God, have mercy upon us,’ he droned.

‘How long have they been dead?’ demanded Barry.

‘A day and a night,’ squeaked the elderly prophet. ‘May God spare us, spare us. Our sins are counted. The day of His Coming is upon us. The night of our souls has begun.’

‘Bring me two men. Tell them to wear masks over their faces and that they will be well paid. Go! Do it!’ shouted the doctor, enraged. The old man hovered for a second, then disappeared. Barry sat down beside the dead.

Her mouth hung open, revealing many lost teeth; a result of malnutrition since childhood, Barry guessed. Her eyes were already covered in flies. Barry brushed them aside with a gloved hand. As he did so he noticed a marching line of ants entering the bundle and knew that they were already excavating the corpse before him. She was young, younger than he, pitiful, vulnerable, exposed in death, her fingers crisped, emaciated, clutching at nothing. She lay alone. No candle burned in the wretched semi-dark of the shack. The hovel was empty of possessions. Either she had nothing, or, more likely, the vultures had already passed as she lay dying. Outside, the heat shimmered in the stagnant gutters. The stench of rotting flesh was overwhelming. Barry waited in the silence. Far away he could hear the sound of dogs barking and barking.

At last two desperate-looking men appeared in the doorway, carrying an old blanket. One of them wore a large earring and had a black hat pulled low over his eyes. Barry gave the other his own handkerchief as a mask.

‘Wrap the baby together with the mother. Don’t touch them. Then follow me.’

All the doors of The Middens remained closed as the bizarre cortège passed by. There was no cry of grief or formal orchestrated weeping, no followers, no family to mourn the young lives lost to the first kiss of the pestilence. Barry learned later that she had been the dead fisherman’s mistress, and that she had worked as a prostitute in the grog shop. They carried her out beyond The Middens through the rim of bush surrounding the town and into a deserted vineyard. The old roots were still flushed with fresh green, but unpruned, struggling, smothered in bright weeds. And it was here that they dug the first pits consecrated to the disease. Barry ordered lime to be thrown upon the bodies. There was no priest, no prayers. Barry stood above the grave, gazing past the burning hills to the dark sea beyond.

Late that night he called upon the Governor again. The Middens were burnt to the ground.

Despite this terrible step, the disease would not be checked. Like a dog who has had the pleasure of the first kill, the pestilence set off through the dark streets, hungry for the slow slaughter by black vomit and liquid excrement. Barry’s usual hygiene precautions had improved the level of public health in the poorer quarters of the town. The regular burning of the rubbish piles, once picked over by stray hounds and cats, had reduced the usual levels of dysentery. The morning passage of the closed wagons, emptying the privies, became a popular sanitary improvement, and the education sessions at the maternity clinic had made a little difference to the rates of infant mortality. But the pestilence, certain of its ground, tenacious, enterprising, stepped casually past all his barricades, evading the bonfires, which became a regular and dangerous sight on the streets. During the first few weeks of May the early summer heat increased and the number of deaths rose alarmingly. Barry ordered the immediate cremation of the bodies and a total blockade of the port. The English inhabitants retreated to their summer mountain homes in panic. The economy was paralysed; the Governor’s nerves were in shreds.

No one knew how the disease was transmitted, but Barry suspected that the water supply was contaminated. He became even more fanatical on the subject of cleanliness and gave emphatic commands concerning the spring source above the hospital. All water was to be boiled. No matter what its provenance. Official notices concerning the new sanitary regulations were posted on walls all over the town. The hospital incinerator worked overtime. The danger of fire increased. Their stock of sheets and dressings was almost exhausted. Some of the colonial ladies donated their silk petticoats and fine curtains, which were duly shredded and restitched. Mrs Harris set up a committee, The Ladies’ Health Defence League, which met to discuss fund-raising for widows and orphans and pronounced freely on all subjects. The loose morals of the islanders were responsible for bringing the pestilence down upon them all. Significant changes would have to be made. The Ladies set about the process of moral rearmament with zeal and gusto.

Stray animals were killed on sight. The schools were closed. A curfew was put into effect, which curtailed the activities of the taverns and the grog shops. The usual pilgrimages up to the monasteries on particular saints’ days were cancelled by order of the Governor. Against this order there was much murmuring and dissent. If ever the island needed the intercession of the saints it was now, in the time of judgement and despair. Some of the people made the journey anyway, only to find the monastery doors locked against them by the terrified monks.

Barry hardly slept. From his office at the hospital he kept track of the disease on a great blackboard to which he pinned a detailed map of the island. He calculated the number of deaths, the locations of fresh outbreaks. He feared that it looked like the cricket scores. He could chart the progress of the pestilence, but he was powerless to stop it. The disease, indifferent, arrogant, mocked him with its success. The blockade of the port was complete. The island was solitary, adrift.

 

*  *  *

 

When the first deaths came in the barracks Barry evacuated the camp. Isaac was the bringer of bad news. He came to the hospital in the first cool of the evening. Barry was completing his ward rounds, exhausted. Two more of the villagers in St Helen’s had been found dead in their beds that morning. His staff, who had, miraculously, been spared until then, were no longer reliable. One of the nurses had fled back to his relatives on the other side of the island, leaving them short-handed. Isaac rattled the screen door, but did not wait for Barry’s voice. He entered at once.

‘Corporal Jarret, the trumpeter, is dead,’ said Isaac flatly in Greek, knowing that Barry would understand him all too well. ‘He complained of pains, a burning mouth and the fever. He vomited at four yesterday afternoon and died at six this morning.’

Barry looked at him steadily. Isaac returned to English.

‘Master, what is to be done?’

Barry passed a hand over his eyes.

‘Well, there is no one left to blow the last post,’ he said gloomily. Then he turned to Isaac.

‘The plans are laid. We are ready for this. Tell the Deputy Governor that we must evacuate the barracks now. Today. Start this minute. Leave only a minimum force to protect property and prevent looting. Call for volunteers. I want the rest of the regiment to take up their summer quarters in the mountains.’

Barry gazed at the blackboard with its map and lengthening list of the dead, the stack of hospital reports, his great leather account books, untouched for weeks. His usually tidy office was now dusty and cluttered.

Isaac stood close to his master, waiting. Barry patted his arm affectionately.

‘Go now. Tell Walter Harris to act quickly.’

‘Sir. Come home. Sleep,’ said Isaac firmly in English. Barry looked up, surprised. Then he said, ‘Thank you, Isaac. I believe I will.’

Barry had been interred in a terrible dreamless slumber when Psyche’s growling pulled him back into the unyielding heat and the brutal consciousness of the epidemic pushing westwards, into the tiled courtyards and papered salons of the colony’s heart. He sat upright abruptly, alarmed by the implications of the young corporal’s death. You are here to heal the world, to bind up wounds, to cure fevers and putrefactions, to greet the newborn and alleviate the moment of departing, you are here to cut out the diseased flesh, so that the body may possess itself again. You are here to wipe the tears from their eyes. Barry was ruled by the desire to control all the world he touched. He was not a man who found it easy to delegate. He hated the uncontrollable and the unknown. Yet this pestilence was always ahead of him. He had been outwitted.

Someone was knocking at his locked door.

Barry pulled on his jacket. His red curls stuck to his forehead. The room smelt of sweat and eau de cologne. He opened the door. Captain James Loughlin stood over him, red-faced, impatient and anxious.

‘I say, Barry. Sorry to barge in. Isaac didn’t want me to wake you. But we’re leaving. Now. I know it’s on your orders. But I couldn’t go without saying goodbye.’

Loughlin took his leave with the suppressed emotion and iron control expected of a soldier. But he was unable to leave unsaid the very things that were still simmering in the air between them.

They stood facing one another in the half dark. James lost the thread at once.

‘Listen, Barry, I know that you’re in the front line, as it were. And you know how much your friendship means to me. Well, it’s just that, you know, we’re both called James. And I’ve always felt, you being older and all that, well, you’ve got such authority and know so much, I never studied like you did . . . By God, James, you’re the man I could have been.’

‘I hardly think so, my dear,’ said Barry and Loughlin could hear both his affection and his smile. ‘Now off with you. I want the regiment gone before midnight.’

James made one more effort to tell Barry how much he loved him and how terrified he was that he would return to find that the tiny, heroic doctor was dead.

‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he mumbled.

‘Then don’t.’

‘It’s just that – I mean – I might never see you again to say it . . .’

A look of exquisite pain passed over the doctor’s face. Suddenly he reached up to James and embraced him tightly.

‘I know. But don’t say it. You’ll bring bad luck upon us. I’ll miss you too. Take care. Boil all your water. Don’t forget that. Don’t do silly things. Keep William company.’

Having delivered this motherly advice in so intimate a way, Dr Barry executed a brisk salute and sent Captain Loughlin off down the steps, away down the dark roads, on the first stage of his journey to the cool safety of the mountains. James looked back and saw the small, tense figure of the doctor, holding up the lantern, back straight, head up, peering out into the night.

 

*  *  *

 

By September the hottest part of the season was over and the daily tally of victims began to drop. Barry’s scoreboard registered the retreat of the disease. Gorged, satiated, the pestilence gathered itself up and withdrew from their gates. The cremation fires no longer blackened the eastern aspect of the vineyard. The lime pits were marked and sealed. By October the churches, freshly painted, were reopened and the thanksgiving mass shook the brilliant, coloured domes. The icons were carried gleaming through the streets and then replaced in their ranks before the screens on beds of fresh, scented pine. Like a summer storm, the visitation had passed over the island, then blown itself out beyond the seamed white cliffs in the great expanse of blue.

Out of a population of roughly fifteen thousand, nearly three thousand were dead. The English colony had escaped largely unharmed, as had the rural poor, the solitary shepherds and their families, lost in the mountains. Some never even heard of the epidemic until the danger was long past. But the town itself and the fishermen’s habitations had been mercilessly liquidated. The people regarded the pestilence as a judgement, paid over their fortunes to the churches and wept for their sins. Barry attributed the rapid spread of the contagion to poor hygiene, bad housing and inadequate sanitation. The Governor shook his head sadly. His daughter had prayed for the doctor’s safety, with increasing fervour, every night in the mountains. It was high time that she was removed to England.

The blockade of the port was maintained three weeks into November. When no fresh case had been reported for over twelve weeks, Barry lifted the quarantine regulations and the boats which had been stranded, bobbing all summer in the blue water, could finally enter the harbour or depart. Sometimes the owners were dead and lengthy histories of insurance and inheritance were told in the refurbished grog houses and taverns on the wharf. Some of the sloops lay rotting, subsiding gently at their moorings until they were dragged ashore and dismembered to rebuild The Middens. For the pustular swelling on the cheek of the town was regrouping its forces and preparing to rise, like an already putrefying Phoenix, from its own ashes. Barry watched over its corpulent swelling, helpless and depressed. He could not simply order the people not to be homeless, drunk and poor. But when the first winter rains came, tender, grey and misty in the mountains, the streets smelt fresh and clean, as if the earth wept for the lost and promised a gentle restoration. The redcoats marched back into town with a spring in their steps, returning victorious to retake the territory once the enemy had long since departed.

The first boat from England sailed into the harbour, carrying a six-month mountain of outdated newspapers and longed-for rolls of cloth, with new patterns and fashions from the best haberdashers and outfitters in London and in Paris, to be greeted by a makeshift band and a cheering crowd. The port health authorities and the customs officers were jostled by the excited colonists as they climbed aboard. Barry watched the arrival through his telescope from the eyrie on the hospital verandah. George Washington Karageorghis was somewhere among the mass, searching the cargo hold for the hospital stores. The doctor left instructions at the hospital for their unloading and then returned to his house and his studies.

He was reading Pierre Louis’s Essay on Clinical Instruction, a volume which exactly corresponded to his own views on scientific hospital medicine. Barry believed not only in diagnosis based on the patient’s symptoms, but also in the importance of each patient’s individual and family history. Observation, watchfulness, intuition were the hallmarks of Barry’s methods. He kept abreast of all the latest developments. He now owned a wooden box containing three mono-aural stethoscopes, each handsomely polished, and, being Chief Medical Officer with a licence to terrify the sick, he now used them openly, spreading consternation and relief in equal measure among his patients, who were convinced that he possessed infallible methods of detection. He listened to their bodies, bubbling and rasping at the other end of his long tube. He did not believe that Nature was implacably opposed to him. Indeed, he sought to understand the elements in her struggle with disease and to fight alongside her. He was impressed by the Paris school. He wished he had studied in Paris.

James Barry was completely absorbed by Louis’s quantitative categorisations of symptoms. The first chill of evening had descended when he heard footsteps, which disturbed him strangely, advancing up the dusty roadway. He stood up and looked out at the two figures approaching in the faint light of a lantern attached to the pack on the side of a donkey. He knew Isaac at once, here he came, bringing the doctor’s new books, equipment and tailored clothes, ordered direct from Bond Street, carefully cut according to his diminutive specifications. And he knew the figure who strode alongside Isaac’s stooping lurch. At first just an outline in darkness, the hangman’s wide shoulders, the mane of white hair falling onto the collar, the mass of white whiskers, which would have looked pretentious and ridiculous on a younger or a smaller man. But above all, Barry recognised the proud turn of the head, the sure stride, still there in a man of sixty, the curve of his shoulder as he turned to look back at the town, lit like a chain of glittering trinkets, a necklace around a faceless black void.

Barry flung himself down the steps and into the old man’s arms.

‘Hello, soldier!’

Francisco took Barry’s small form into his embrace with a father’s tenderness. Barry leaned into that gigantic warm strength, still there after all the years travelling the world. The tears he had not let fall for over a decade washed down the doctor’s cheeks. But he spoke quite clearly, and without hesitation or fear.

‘You must tell me every detail, Francisco. I want to hear everything. But there is no need to speak the main news. If it were not so, you would not be here. My mother is dead.’

 

*  *  *

 

This is the story told by General Francisco de Miranda.

‘The guava has an intense musky, sweetish smell. Here. This confiture has been made from the fruit. No sugar has been added. Taste it. There. Exceptional, isn’t it? I remembered that you used to like sweet things. Even when you were a baby, you used to dip your finger into the apricot preserves. The flesh of the fruit contains dozens of tiny seeds. I remove them when making the jam. The taste is especially distinctive in my planter’s punch. Here is the rule of proportions: one of sour and two of sweet, three of strong and four of weak. For sour I use squeezed limes, for sweet I take the cane molasses which darkens the mixture, for strong the island’s rum. And for the fourth measure I use the juice of oranges, grapefruit, mangoes, and guavas. Some of the colonists drink this for breakfast! We served it later in the morning, and then slept well during our siestas.

‘Mary Ann loved the tropics. She was like you. She thrived in the heat and never suffered from the insects. She wasn’t like the other white women, who wilted into the mountains. We intended to sail on to Venezuela next spring. I wanted her to see my country. I had no fears for her health. She was full of good spirits, ideas, adventures. She armed herself with loose white shawls and parasols. She hired a guide with a mule. She learned Spanish. She had the soul of an explorer. You should be proud of her. The colonial wives received her well enough. The place is rather like it is here, I imagine – too small to support old scandals. Or at least nothing bad enough to ostracise someone blown in upon the fresh wind of curiosity. We installed ourselves in a very handsome residence, where the biggest slave market on the island used to be held. You could have watched the sales from our front verandah. The slaves have some rights now, some channels of justice to which they can appeal. They cannot, without their consent, be sold on to other masters. But it still happens. As for the freed slaves, after seven years as indentured labourers they are free to work where they can. But I feel dreadful pity for the offspring of the two races, whose numbers are increasing. Often they belong nowhere, and to no one.

‘I cannot imagine being owned. All my life I have fought for the freedom of men to lift up their heads and look the next man in the eye, proudly and without fear. God created all men in His own image. But I suppose this is a man’s view. For when I said as much to Mary Ann she declared that women’s bodies are always for sale, to the highest bidder. But that only harlots manage to keep the cash. Condorcet was of the same opinion. He was a great advocate of the rights of women. I knew him when I was in Paris. Poor fellow. He died an unjust death.

‘Well, we lived within sight of the docks where the slave traders were unloaded. Our own servant, Immaculata, witnessed these things, for she has been on the island for over twenty years. The slaves were made to stand upon blocks to be sold. They were sold a day or two after their arrival, so that the planters could be given due notice of the sale. On the day of the sales the captains of the slave ships used to raise their ensigns and fire off a gun to give notice of the event. The indentured servants were sold on the wharf, but some of the plantation slaves were sold on board ship and then deposited directly into the waiting wherries. Many of them died of infections, or the bloody flux. Some were found dead in the hold. The planters were prepared to pay substantial amounts for a healthy slave. Many of the townsfolk, especially the women, took pity on these poor people and rushed to give them food and clean water. Immaculata used to prepare fresh fried fish for them as soon as she heard that the slavers were in dock. The general outrage at seeing these half-starved, maddened creatures emerging into daylight sometimes caused trouble in the port. One of the captains, known to be a cruel man, was mobbed and beaten. Immaculata told us proudly of her part in this riot. Like Simon Peter, she was personally responsible for slicing off the tyrant’s ear. I think this is why so many of the sales were conducted on board ship. For my part I am glad to hear a tale of such simple humanity.

‘For the freed slaves they now hold hiring fairs, as they did in the stableyard at David’s house when you were a child. Sometimes I think it is much the same. But at least the Negroes negotiate their own terms.

‘Here is your mother’s first drawing of our house. She has signed and dated this one. We had tiled floors and a handsome verandah circling the house on the first floor. There was always a sea breeze at Port Royal, so that the heat was never oppressive. We enjoyed the daily excitement when the ships came in. The dockyards are on the sheltered harbour side. You can see them clearly here, these wooden buildings, capped like pagodas. Most of the buildings are in the Spanish style, raised on stakes, with walls of wood. These resist earthquakes far better than the British-built brick buildings do. Earthquakes are terrifying, but what are they but old mother earth yawning and stretching out her bones. Did you read of the earthquake, soldier? No, the famous one that happened long before the Lisbon catastrophe. Port Royal used to be a wealthy place. Some of the ruined buildings are still there. Look, this is the graveyard. While I was a resident in Port Royal, I witnessed the pious burial of many of those unfortunate, unwilling travellers from the slave ships. Not only the slaves but convicts and dissenters from their own nations, are laid to rest here, outside Palisadoes Gate. This is the same graveyard which split apart in the earthquake of 1692, yielding up its dead somewhat before the appointed Resurrection Day. People still tell stories of that day. Here are your mother’s sketches of the graveyard. All the shattered and cracked stones date from that time. Look at this one. dieu sur tout. With the skull and crossbones beneath. It is the tombstone of Lewis Galdy, who survived the earthquake. And here on the other side she has copied the inscription.’

 

HERE LYES THE BODY OF

 

LEWIS GALDY

 

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT

PORT ROYAL

THE 22d DECEMBER 1739 AGED 80

 

HE WAS BORN AT MONTPELIER IN FRANCE BUT LEFT THAT COUNTRY FOR HIS RELIGION AND CAME TO SETTLE IN THIS ISLAND WHERE HE WAS SWALLOWED UP IN THE GREAT EARTH-QUAKE IN THE YEAR 1692 AND BY THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD WAS BY ANOTHER SHAKE THROWN INTO THE SEA AND MIRACULOUSLY SAVED BY SWIMMING UNTIL A BOAT TOOK HIM UP. HE LIVED MANY YEARS AFTER IN GREAT REPUTATION BELOVED BY ALL THAT KNEW HIM AND MUCH LAMENTED AT HIS DEATH

‘A curiosity, isn’t it? I smiled too when I saw her sketches. A strange history. Lewis Galdy’s life was remarkable not for his own efforts but for the miracle which preserved him. What will they write upon our graves, soldier? What will they say of our lives?

‘Mary Ann enjoyed the markets. We inherited two domestic servants. The passionate Immaculata, who assaulted the captain, and an indentured black called True Repose. She was on excellent terms with both of them because she was strict, but fair-minded. They marched off three times a week in a convoy of rippling baskets to the central market on High Street, which was the source of all our fruit, herbs and poultry. Mary Ann purchased a grotesque brace of live turtles and turned them into delicacies. The fish market was on the wharf near the wherry bridge. She always bought her fish from one man, whom she befriended, a giant freed slave. He never worked for whites again, but earned his living as a fisherman. No one knows how he purchased the boat. His two front teeth were missing and he whistled when he spoke. A peculiar mixture of Spanish and Creole. I couldn’t understand him, but she could. They stared at one another as if in recognition, and I thought that this was a silent form of haggling. And then she would choose fine crabs, great flat fish with a marline spike for a nose and lobsters moving slowly in a damp straw-lined crate. But only from this man, no matter how importunate the other piscadores became, pressing their wares upon her. True Repose was very frightened of the black fisherman and said that he was a maraboutier. If for some reason Mary Ann did not buy the fish, our boy went elsewhere.

‘Your mother knew what everything cost, soldier. She never overspent. Your mother was a canny, thrifty woman. It was a quality I always admired.

‘Our residence fronted the western end of Queen Street, and we had a handsome row of palms lining the walkway. Our salon faced away from the dockyards towards the public gardens and the fortress. There was a brick yard at the back, with the cookhouse, storerooms and access to a fine vaulted cellar, built after the earthquake with bricks from the old house. The wood warps and fades with the sea storms. We painted the façade every year in the calm, cooler weather before the spring rains.

‘There’s a well here to the left, with a pump behind it. We never used that water. In fact we had our water imported from the mineral springs at the Rock. But even then I took your advice and had it all boiled. Even for domestic purposes. But we drank fine wines from Maderia, which I bought from the importers at a good price. And Mary Ann enjoyed the punch I made. She could hold her liquor as well as any man. As well as you do. But of course she never touched a drop in public.

‘These are the red clay pipes which the local craftsmen made. Only two appear to have snapped during my voyage. Look at this geometric design, here, on the top of the stem, where it meets the bowl. This is typical of the West Indian pipes. All the Negroes use them. The whites still use the kaolin clay imports from Bristol. It’s a form of snobbery. The red ones are just as good. Here, I’ll make one up for you. And we can enjoy a tropical smoke together. Mary Ann used to joke with the rough women down by the fishing port. They sit, bare-footed and half-dressed, smoking pipes like these on their front steps, and shouting advice at anyone who passes by.

‘All the cooking was done outside. We imported wood and charcoal from the mainland. Mary Ann meddled with the cooks, but they grew to respect her. She rationed out all the meat and fish for the household and was never parted from her keys. But she learned to master the oven and the chimney. Her hands were sunburnt and hard by the end of the first year. She used to complain about that, but never gave up her policy of domestic interference. Salvatore soon spoke Creole as fluently as Spanish, and they both operated like unpaid spies on the yard workers.

‘Ah, Rupert! Did Mary Ann never tell you? No, Rupert was dead by then. We lost him on the voyage out. We were on board HMS Hercules. There was a good deal of sickness during the trip. He died from a screaming fever, which he had caught during our time in the Azores, and which returned some weeks later as we entered the tropics. I nursed him myself during the last days. I wouldn’t have Mary Ann in the cabin for fear of her health. How he clutched the crucifix in which he had no faith. I miss him still. He was not an old man. I could have expected to die before him. We buried him at sea. And despite the weights the body did not at once vanish. The thing floated, beautiful in the green Atlantic, and set sail, cresting the waves, carried on a fair wind, choosing its way back, back to the cold north. We watched him bobbing away, his shroud white against the grey waves. Then the feet pitched downwards and he sank down into the dark. We turned once more in the direction of the islands. Rupert turned back, taking the way we had already come.

‘Mary Ann wept many days for him. I am very surprised that she said nothing about it. I find that most odd.

‘Ah, that is not one of the drawings I can let you have, soldier. That one I must keep with me always. It is the outline of her stockinged left foot. Almost as small as yours. The cobbler at Port Royal was a young Portuguese man, originally a fine-tooled leather worker, fallen on hard times. She ordered some tough riding boots for her forays into the interior. There are snakes, not, on the whole, dangerous, but many insects and jiggers in the wet earth. She needed a strong pair of boots. In the hills we saw dozens of peenie-wallies, which is what they call the fireflies, shining numinous green in the dark. The Negroes in the kitchen yards collect them in glass jars and use them as lanterns. I remember the fireflies in the evenings, caught in the folds of her white shawls as she walked in the warm nights. We stayed here, in this house, The Heights, at Silver Hill. She has used watercolours for the ferns, but the house was sketched first, in ink. It was very plain inside. Polished hardwood floors, with scuttling cockroaches. The smell is repulsive if you have the misfortune to tread upon them. The beds were giant fourposters with moth-eaten drapes. The day of the great houses is already past. We saw mansions ruined, overgrown with vines and guinea grass, their slatted shutters grey and buckled, like driftwood parched and bleached by the damp heat and the great rains.

‘I was there to investigate the conditions of the slaves. Not only on my estates. It was very difficult to find blacks who were willing to talk to me. This was why we made numerous journeys into the interior. I found that the prospect of emancipation made little difference to the wretched conditions of these disinherited people. I found whole families living in insanitary huts on the brink of famine. Those whose old masters had been declared bankrupt were the most unfortunate. I was shown empty, derelict houses where the people had perished of starvation and disease. Sometimes they fled, looting the great houses for anything they could find, and lived, half savage, in the wastelands and smoking bushes. Sometimes their hovels were adorned with porcelain plates and candlesticks stolen from the plantation residences, but they had no candles and no food. Mary Ann was unable to draw the people who lived here, in this shack. They were too afraid to sit for her. And too ashamed.

‘Here is their church. See, the porch is neatly repaired, and the stone steps swept clean. I have rarely seen such courage and such faith among any people. A group of rebels formed on one of the Trelawney estates. I tried to make contact with them. They lived together like the early Christians, and held all things in common. They had decided to draw up a proclamation setting out their grievances, but none of them knew how to write. A people that cannot read and write can never be free. Eventually the rebels were tracked down, rounded up and shot. They had no weapons, only their sickles and hoes. The master’s tools are the only ones we can ever use to pull his house down. Sometimes I think that I should have been a schoolmaster, not a soldier, my dearest child. The most precious thing that I gave you was your education. All those hours that we spent together in the library. They are dear memories for me now. We were very happy then, were we not? The three of us, with Rupert and Salvatore robbing me blind downstairs. Sometimes you have a look of her. Just a hint of her beauty. You have the same pale skin, and ah, it hurts a little, even now, you have the same smile.

‘She gave up the parasols and hats when she took to going out fishing in the little boats, and her arms and nose were spangled with small brown freckles. Just like the ones you are sporting now, soldier. I thought that she had never looked more beautiful.

‘She could swim, my dear. Your mother could swim. She wasn’t afraid of that eerie blue-green water, where you could see clear to the bottom. I don’t know what happened. No one will ever know. She went out early in the evening. I heard her voice below, in the yard. She left by the back door. I always looked out when I heard her voice. From the balcony I saw her hair and ribbons, jaunty as a ship in full trim, under way, taking the corner of Queen Street, avoiding the docks and going straight on past the fortress walls. She often went out alone. There was no danger. It was still bright at five-thirty, but the night hour was approaching. When she did not return at the usual time, I went out calling for her. Salvatore and True Repose came with me. I wasn’t alarmed. Even when we saw that the skiff was still missing. There was a fair breeze and a rocking sea, but the air was gentle and tender. It was a peaceful evening. I expected to see her, far out, her lines set, waving from the cradle of the sea. We went out among the cacti and the scrub grass along the inner arm of the Palisadoes spit, looking out at the steady waves, the brisk white tips, appearing, vanishing, again and again. We called and called along the shore, Mary Ann, Mary Ann. And there was nothing there, only the windswept sand against our boots and the last light, naked and red on the sloping stone walls and the bobbing masts.

‘I sounded the alarm. We gathered men, boats, horses. Every inch of the shoreline was searched that night. The sand was a mass of shouts and torches. As the hours drew on I became desperate. But I could not believe that she would not be found, sunburnt and chiding, barefoot on the roadways. I heard her voice, soldier, in the night birds, in the lapping waves, in the gull’s cry over the spit in the early dawn.

‘They came to me at first light. The priest’s eyes were terrible with the news.

‘We hurried to the little port at the far end of the docks where the fishermen’s boats come in. It was the giant black fisherman she had always chosen, the man she had singled out, his huge frame bent over her in the bottom of his boat. As I looked down from the dock, he made space for her body among his lobster pots and the stirring claws of his creatures on the damp planks. His huge black arm was around her shoulders. He pushed the wet hair back from her face and gazed into her cloudy, drowned eyes.

‘ “Yoh woman, Massa?”

‘He looked up at me, the words whistling through his lost teeth, the gums skinned and pale in the fresh light.

‘ “Pretty-pretty woman.”

‘Her face was still hers, for it had been masked and covered by her full skirts, but her hands and arms were almost gone, eaten away to the bone. How long does it take to drown, soldier? How quickly would she have perished in that clear mass of translucent green? The boat was never found. The verdict was accidental death, based on the fisherman’s testimony. He said that he had pulled her up in his nets just as dawn was breaking. I believed him. He loved Mary Ann. He was telling the truth. I saw how gently he touched her dead body, his giant hands tender on her cold, white skin.

‘What was left to me then?

‘I knew that I would go back to Venezuela to end my life there. But first, I had to find you.

‘Turn over the drawing she made of Lewis Galdy’s tomb. Look at the back. That is the inscription I chose to be carved on her gravestone. She is buried in the cemetery at Port Royal, within hearing of the shouts from the port, the quiet rocking of the boats and the fresh sea wind.

‘On the last night we were together she talked about you. We sat there on the verandah in the coming dark and she talked about you. I know that she wrote to you, soldier, almost every day. But she hardly ever spoke about you, except to share her letters. And she never spoke about the past. That’s why I noticed the occasion. It was out of the ordinary. There is hardly any twilight in the tropics. Maybe ten minutes of dusk. Then the rush of darkness, with Tarquin’s ravishing strides. It is very sudden. When we were inland we drew the blinds at once, for the mosquitoes are drawn to the light. But there are fewer insects down by the sea. There is a fresh wind. There, we used to watch the night come. From our perch we could hear the creeping rise and slap of the sea. At first light we would sometimes go down to watch the fishermen unloading the night’s catch. We lived by the rhythm of the sea. It is eternal there. There are no great tides. There are no markers, no seasons, just the May rains and the October hurricanes to map out the year. I was afraid that she would miss the northern spring. But she never did. That was our last night together. And she talked to me about you.

‘ “I have had so little satisfaction in my life, Francisco. I think that, until now, I have never been completely happy. I have always wanted something other than what I had. I was never accepted, never acknowledged. What was I? A rich man’s wife, a drunkard’s poor widow, another rich man’s mistress. Always a man’s possession. No, don’t say anything. It’s true. I was always a man’s possession. Even yours. That’s why I asked you to do it. You were the three men I had every right to command. I asked you to give my child the life I never had. My child has a position in the world. She will be respected, remembered. My child will have the freedom I never enjoyed. My child will be a gentleman, well-educated, well-travelled. My child will see the countries of which I dreamed, but never saw, will eat foods I have heard of, but never tasted. What else can a woman desire for her child, but a larger, wider life than the one she has inherited? Oh yes, I wanted to give her happiness and joy, but more than that, I wanted her to have the power to choose. There was no other way to manage the affair.

‘ “You said it was a masquerade, a lie. How could anyone think that, Francisco? I have acted a part every moment of my existence. Even now. Even with you. No, don’t speak. For once, let me have my say. What is my role here? I am the famous general’s pretty mistress. Even you – with all your radical opinions – you couldn’t change what people think of a young widow woman who lives with an older man. Of course they are polite to me. They wouldn’t dare to behave otherwise. But out of respect for you, fear of you, not out of regard for me. It was always so. My life has been made safe by your money, and your fame. My child has protected herself, fought for herself, made her own life, earned her own name. And that was my doing. I set her free.”

‘I think that she was more honest with me then than she had ever been. There was love in her eyes, and passion in her face, in her gestures. She was thinking of you. Her whole heart was with you. She sent you to us on that damp midsummer night. She was the source of the plot, soldier. It was her idea. We all loved her so much. What was she asking of us? To give you the chance to live something other than a woman’s life. She gave you up to us, my dearest child, because she loved you more than anyone else in the world. More than she loved me, more than she loved any one of us. She was the woman who held all the cards and the dice. She set the rules of the game. It was a game worth playing, don’t you think so, soldier?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Barry.