Alasdair Gray - Poor Things

“Boo!” said Bella. “Do you feel better now?”

“A little better,” he murmured with an effort at a smile.

“Good,” said Bella, “because Candle and I are going to get married and you must be happy about that.”

Then came the most terrifying experience of my life. The only part of Baxter which moved was his mouth. It slowly and silently opened into a round hole bigger than the original size of his head then grew larger still until his head vanished behind it. His body seemed to support a black, expanding, tooth-fringed cavity in the scarlet sunset behind him. When the scream came the whole sky seemed screaming. 11I had clapped my hands to my ears before this happened so did not faint as Bella did, but the single high-pitched note sounded everywhere and pierced the brain like a dental drill piercing a tooth without anaesthetic. I lost most of my senses during that scream. They returned so slowly that I never saw how Baxter came to be kneeling beside Bella’s body, beating the sides of his head with his fists and quivering with human-sounding sobs as he moaned in a husky baritone voice, “Forgive me Bella, forgive me for making you like this.”

She opened her eyes and said faintly, “What’s that supposed to mean? You aren’t our father which art in Heaven, God. What a silly fuss to make about nothing. Still, your voice has broken, there’s that to be grateful for. Help me up both of you.”

As she walked briskly between us from the park, a hand on the arm of each, I knew her instant recovery of health and high spirits must seem callous to Baxter; but though he was the sincerest man I ever met his ordinary new voice made me feel he was putting on an act when he said, “It is agony to find you treating me like a wrecked ship and McCandless like a life-boat, Bell. Your romances on the world tour were bearable because I knew they were transient. For nearly three years I have lived with and for you and wished that never to end.”

“I am not deserting you, God,” she told him soothingly, “or not right away. Candle is very poor so we’ll both find it handy to live with you for a long time. Turn your father’s old operating-theatre into a drawing-room for us and you will be a welcome guest whenever you call. And of course we will eat with you. But I am a very romantic woman who needs a lot of sex but not from you because you cannot help treating me like a child, and I cannot CAN NOT treat you like one. I am marrying Candle because I can treat him how I like.”

Baxter looked at me enquiringly. In a slightly ashamed voice I told him that though I had always tried to be a dour, independent sort of man Bella was correct: I had worshipped and longed for her from the moment he introduced us — everything about her seemed to me the acme of womanly perfection — I would gladly endure the most horrible agonies to save her from the smallest inconvenience. I added that Bella would always be able to do whatever she wanted with me.

Said Bella, “And Candle’s kisses are almost as strong as your yells, God, and would make me faint too if I was not a grown-up woman.”

Baxter nodded his head rapidly for several seconds then said, “I will help you both to do whatever you want but first please grant me one favour, a favour which may save my life. Do not see each other for a fortnight. Give me fourteen days to strengthen myself for the loss of you, Bell. I know you mean to keep me as a friendly convenience but you cannot foresee how marriage may change you, Bell — nobody can. Please grant me this. Please!”

His lips trembled, his mouth seemed shaping for another outcry, so we hurriedly agreed. I doubted if he could have screamed a second time as loudly as the first, but I feared that another sudden enlargement of his oral cavity would disconnect his spine and cranium.

Baxter stood with his back to us as we said good-bye under a street lamp. Bell murmured, “A fortnight for me is years and years and years.”

I told her I would write to her every day, and taking a tiny pearl mounted on a pin from the knot of my necktie I told her it was the only pretty thing, and the most expensive thing, I owned, and asked if she would keep it with her for ever and ever and think of me whenever she saw or touched it. She nodded her head violently seven or eight times, so I stuck it into the lapel of her jacket and told her this meant we were engaged to be married. I then begged her to give me her glove or scarf or handkerchief, any token whose texture or scent had been close to her person, making it a sacred relic of the covenant between us. She frowned thoughtfully then gave me the poke of gobstoppers saying, “Take the lot.”

I saw that to her still developing brain this was a noble sacrifice so there were tears in my eyes as I pressed my lips to the kidskin sheaths on her fingertips. I nearly put my lips to her lips, then remembered that if my mouth on her naked fingers nearly made her faint it would be wiser to wait for total privacy before I grew more ardent. Yet I hurried away enraptured by the wonderful adventure of living. If Baxter’s scream had been my most terrifying experience this moment was my sweetest. I was already devising phrases for the love-letter I would write when I got to my lodgings. I knew Baxter hoped that a fortnight apart from me would change her mind, but I had no fear of losing her because I knew he would submit her to no unkind pressure, would do nothing sneaking or dishonest. I also believed he could protect her from other men.

I performed my hospital duties in an absent-minded way for nearly a week. My imagination had awakened. The imagination is, like the appendix, inherited from a primitive epoch when it aided the survival of our species, but in modern scientific industrial nations it is mainly a source of disease. I had prided myself on lacking one, but it had only lain dormant. I now did what people expected of me but without rigour or enthusiasm, because I was composing love-letters in my head when not scribbling them down and running out to post them. I discovered that I possessed a strong poetic faculty. All my memories and hopes of Bella became rhyming sentences so easily that I often felt I was not composing them but remembering them from a previous existence. Here is a specimen:

O Bella fair, without compare,

My memory sweetly lingers

By Kelvin’s side (my future bride!)

Where first I kissed your fingers .

I have been blithe with comrades dear,

I have been merry drinking,

I have been joyful gathering gear,

I have been happy thinking,

I have known glee by pond and sea,

And spate that cleaves the mountain,

But known no glee (my bride to be!)

No joy so great (my future mate!)

As by the Memorial Fountain .

The many other verses I posted to her were equally spontaneous and equally good, and ended with stronger and stronger requests that she reply to me. I give verbatim the only reply I at last received. I was overjoyed by the bulk of the envelope it came in, which contained nearly a dozen sheets of notepaper. However, her writing was so huge that there was only room for a few words on each, though like the ancient Hebrews and Babylonians she had saved space by dispensing with vowels:

DR CNDL,

Y WNT GT MCH FRM M THS WY. WRDS DNT SM RL 2 M WHN NT SPKN R HRD. YR LTTRS R VRY LK THR MNS LV LTTRS, SPCLLY DNCN WDDRBRNS .

YRS FTHFLLY,

BLL BXTR .

By murmuring these consonants aloud I gradually made sense of everything but SPCLLY DNCN WDDRBRNS , and what I understood alarmed and disturbed me, because the only words which fed my hopes were the second last two which declared she was mine faithfully. This is a conventional business phrase, but Bella was neither conventional nor in business. Even so, I decided to break my word to Baxter and visit her as soon as possible. On leaving the Royal Infirmary to do so that evening I was hailed by Mrs. Dinwiddie, Baxter’s housekeeper, who was waiting for me at the gate in a cab. She handed me the following note, asking me to read it at once: