The Specimen (2 page)

Sometimes people get lost. She’d said it for something to fill the surprise of seeing him. But it hadn’t been the best thing to say. Now it was there again, going around in her head
as she mixed the darkest shade of Payne’s grey. The argument was two years old, but it was as raw as ever in her mind.

“People don’t get lost here,” she’d almost shouted at her sister Euphemia. “The sea is on one side and the land is on the other. There is a path, you walk along
it.”

Euphemia’s expression had been blank, her voice very calm. “Mother got lost.”

“She can’t have, Effie, she can’t have.”

And then Effie’s voices had started. Mrs Fernly, their aunt, had tolerated the voices for as long as she could. It was never said out loud. It was never mentioned in a very direct way, but
Mrs Fernly, it was widely known, couldn’t abide young creatures who made deliberate exhibitions of themselves. But much more than that, and more importantly, Mrs Fernly had no time under any
circumstances, for the jingling bells and rattling tables or anything else in a Spiritualist’s parlour, least of all the Spiritualist herself and most especially if the Spiritualist began to
talk in voices in Mrs Fernly’s own parlour without prior warning.

Gwen and her sister had been moved back into the empty Carrick House only three months after their mother’s funeral. It was fair, thought Gwen, that it should have been
decided—unilaterally, by Mrs Fernly, that it was time for Gwen and Effie to cut short their stay at the Fernly’s and manage at their own house. There were after all two of them and they
would have the maid, as well. Gwen had felt nothing but relief. She could put a door between herself and Effie at last. And not only at night. Gwen spent most daylight hours out of doors, away from
her sister. Euphemia did not exert herself at all during the day; she stayed inside the house, to preserve her complexion. If Euphemia wanted to look at a view for a moment, she made sure that it
was through a north-facing window. They embarrassed each other with their habits, but there existed between them a delicately preserved understanding.

Painting in the figure of Edward took much less time than she had asked for. When the time was up he picked up his stick and bag. His second approach was much more sure-footed.
He came deliberately, slowly. When he was a few feet away, she patted the shingle beside her and he sat down.

“I’m glad we have met like this,” she said. “Being outside makes you much freer. Here, I have your image immortalised on paper.” She handed him her sketchbook, and
watched his face as he looked at her work on his knee. “Would some Power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.”

He smiled. “You know Burns, then.”

“Burns? No, it’s just something, a saying. I didn’t know it was a quote.”

“It’s from the end of a poem: ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us—’”

She laughed. “I like that. From many a blunder free us. What’s the title of the poem? I shall have to find a copy.”

Edward coughed. “It is called, ‘To a Louse’, and its subtitle is, ‘On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church’.” He looked sideways at her. She was
smiling. He said, “I hope I haven’t offended you.”

“You haven’t. I’d like to hear the rest.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know it thoroughly. I wouldn’t want to murder it before you had read it for yourself. You needn’t search though. I’ll send you a copy if
you like.”

“That’s too kind of you.”

“It would be my pleasure.” Robert Burns would not have been his first choice of poet to send to a young woman, whether he had only just met her or not. He cringed inwardly at the
thought of her reading Burns’ more bawdy efforts.

She cut into his thoughts. “Your accent was very realistic to my untuned ear.”

“I spent a lot of time in Scotland as a boy. It’s not a genuine accent. Only gleaned, borrowed inexpertly from my playmates.” Edward felt suddenly perilously close to the edge
of the dark chasm he had so far been successful in avoiding. He studied the young woman’s profile with every bit of concentration he could gather. “To which address should I send the
poems?”

“I’ll write it down for you.” She took the sketchbook back from his knee and turned the page over. He watched her write her full name and address in soft pencil. She tore off
the page and handed it over. He looked at it. She also noticed that he looked at the paintings revealed by her tearing the top page out. Studies of bright red Cardinal beetles studded the glaring
white of the paper Gwen instinctively held to her chest.

“I will be pleased to send the poems to Miss Gwen Carrick. May I keep this? I shall pay the artist, naturally.”

“No payment is necessary, Mr Scales, you are welcome to it. Well. Now my paints are dry and I’m finished for the afternoon. Will you come up to the house?”

Edward didn’t want to do that, for all kinds of reasons. He asked her if she would like to have a picnic with him. He felt himself becoming very nervous and he worried that she would see
how agitated he really was. How disconcerting. The more he worried the more he was certain that she could read his thoughts. But then the sun shone brighter on the water, and she had to shade her
eyes as he produced the food, so she probably did not see his reddened face after all.

Edward brought out of his knapsack two bottles of ale, a large piece of cheese wrapped in a cloth, and a small loaf of bread. He took a small knife from his pocket, and began to carve off chunks
of bread and cheese. He weighed the bottles against each other and gave Gwen the heaviest, having already begun to drink from the other. “I hope you like ale. It is quite a strong
one.”

“It looks like you have enough. At least I shan’t worry about depriving you.”

“I always take more than I think I’m going to need. Once, in Dorset, I met an old vagrant who asked me for something to eat. He looked so wretched, I gave him what I had but he
insisted on sharing the beer I had given him. I only had one bottle. I spent the next month convinced I’d contracted something.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I did not.”

“Dorset is a long way from here.”

Edward took the smooth pebble he had been carrying in his knapsack and laid it down by his side. Gwen Carrick did not notice, she was utterly absorbed in cutting more cheese and bread with her
own pocket knife. One edge of the grey stone partly revealed the ridged arc of an ammonite. Gwen held her bottle between her feet. Edward saw that she was not wearing the clumpy old boots from the
time before but fine brown leather shoes with a low heel and a strap, fastened by one button across the arch of her foot. It made him think of something Charles had once told him. But he could see
that the eroticism of the action was entirely unintentional.

“I couldn’t help noticing, Miss Carrick, those red beetles in your sketch book. To my eye, they looked quite delightful.”

“More so than the study I have just given you?”

“I wouldn’t say that. They startled my eye. They interest me in a different way, that is all.”

“When a young woman makes a picture of a pretty red beetle, Mr Scales, it is called ‘Delightful’, put into a frame and a husband is found for the artist. When a young man makes
an anatomical study of a Cardinal beetle, he is expected to know that it is the Pyrochroa serraticornis, and he is bundled off to university so that he can one day add to the body of scientific
knowledge on Coleoptera.”

“I see.”

“Do you though, Mr Scales? I don’t want you to admire my skills for the wrong reasons. My work is not bait; I am looking for the truth. In all things.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to disparage your gift.”

“Gift? My talent is not something handed down from God, Mr Scales. It is hard won.”

“Of course; I can see that you are very dedicated. My words were ill chosen. I meant no offence.”

“But you don’t offend me, Mr Scales. If I were a man, would you apologise, or would you debate the talent of an artist as divine gift, as opposed to something instilled by regular
practice?”

“I suppose I would do neither. I would have entered into a conversation about beetles without complimenting the rendition on paper.”

“In which case, I can tell you that I was surprised to find this particular beetle so early in the year, they are usually out in May, June and July. And it does startle the eye,
doesn’t it?”

“I’m sorry to have intruded, Miss Carrick. I think I have trespassed into a world in which I have no right to be. When I listen to you I see that my own existence is very dull
indeed.”

“I am sure it is not.”

“I can assure you it is.”

“Even though you may wish to see yourself as others do, it can never be done, and so I think that you may as well not try.”

“You seem, despite your talk, very content with your life, Miss Carrick.”

“I am content to be alive, Mr Scales, but I do not possess the quality I think you must see in me. I am quite discontent, in myself. It has been driven into me.”

He caught her gaze and held it for a moment with a question in his own, but Gwen would not elaborate further. “The last time I saw you, Miss Carrick, there was something I had intended to
say to you.”

“I beg your pardon? Mr Scales, have you been spying on me?”

“I—I
have
been here before.”

“I must confess I have seen you before as well, Mr Scales. Don’t look so alarmed. I have seen you from afar, out walking once or twice, always walking away from here. I have since
then wondered who you were, where you live. I must admit I have wondered what you looked like, too. It struck me you had some kind of important intention to your walking.” She wanted to say
that she had thought he looked at first like a tourist who had no idea of where he was, but that after a while, she could see that he did possess some passion in his stride. That a stranger, seen
from a distance, could sometimes make an impression on the mind, and could work away to become something of an obsession; she had wanted to admit this to Mr Scales. There was something about his
manner that told her he would understand her meaning. The puzzle of the man had struck her from time to time, and she had wondered if an opportunity to talk to him would ever present itself.

Edward was outdone by her talk. He realised that it was useless to try and broach the subject which could not be touched or coloured by any choice of word. What he had begun was more complicated
than he had imagined, and as he listened to Gwen, and saw the uncomplicated manner of her evasion, he thought he understood her more completely than anything he had ever known.

He could see now that Miss Carrick was quite young; how young he couldn’t guess. He knew that he must move away, that he must leave her alone. If he felt he had made an indecent intrusion
previously, this seemed just as bad. Her tact, and the straightforward approach she seemed to have over something he had been unable to rationalise, made him cringe at his own rough attempts to
smooth over his indiscretions. And so he knew also that he would come back, in spite of what he had promised her before, in spite of his own conscience. He’d come back again, and he would not
hesitate, in his need to speak of everything, and plainly, to the creature who wished to keep her red beetle studies a secret.

Gwen came to a halt at the south wall of the kitchen garden. A bonfire had been lit and its smoke curled over the wall. She’d smelled it on her way back up from the
beach. It had none of the earth or wood tones of a garden fire. Now that she was very close, she could see flakes of black drifting in the air and coming back down, too heavy to be carried far. She
walked quickly now under the wall following it around the corner until she came to the gate. No one was there to watch over the fire. It hadn’t been banked down; flames leapt from the heap
and parts of its bulk fell away. Its position was odd; she couldn’t think why Murray would have told the lad to make a fire right under the south wall where the fruit trees were trained into
their tortured forms. While she was thinking about this, another part of the fire fell off the heap and her attention shot to it. Now that she could see how the fire had been constructed she lunged
towards it. Sandwiched in the middle of garden prunings were books; her father’s library. She saw her old friends, Bell’s
Anatomy
, Duncan’s
Beetles,
Mrs
Mantell’s engravings of Strata and Fossils, all turning back into their base element. She spun about looking for something to help her. A large spade had been left against the north wall.
Gwen ran to it, not caring to stay on the paths. She felt her chest tighten with anxiety and purpose as she hauled her skirts in her arms and made her loping strides more efficient.

She attacked the heap, letting out a yell, beating the burning books with the heavy spade, her striking unwieldy and misdirected. Pages and half-scorched volumes tumbled onto the soil and
continued to smoke as she turned to retrieve everything she could manage and then hurl clods of earth at the rest of the fire, still beating and yelling in between shovelling.

“What the bloody hell?”

Gwen didn’t stop when she heard Murray. He took the spade from her hands mid-swing and finished the job. “Well, you’ve put that one out, miss. You can have a rest.”

“Murray—” She had to bend over and cough.

“I’ll have to have words with the lad. I thought he was a good choice, but I was wrong.” Murray nudged the remains of a burned cover with his toe.

“It wasn’t his fault.” Gwen gasped, retching, and grabbed at Murray’s sleeve. “He wouldn’t know.”

“He’s a ruddy, half-witted goose is what he is, miss. You may as well take that as given.”

“It’s done, Murray. At least I found it.”

“You did. What’ll you want done with it?”

Gwen picked up one of the less charred volumes. The spine curved the wrong way and the now partially browned pages spewed forward and then curled in on themselves, as if they had known
themselves fey and beyond saving. The leather on the spine was brittle and had bubbled in places to form strange scabs; the gold leaf had burned away in places making the title illegible, but Gwen
knew the book by heart. The irreparable damage was sickening to see. She’d spent hours in the company of Lyell’s four volumes, poring over his maps and folding them carefully back into
place as she’d moved through his
Principles of Geology
.