The Specimen (8 page)

Helford Passage. June, 1859.

There hadn’t been a single moment when Gwen had found herself thinking that she ought not to carry on. She did know, really, that this sort of encounter, might, in
certain circumstances be dangerous but she didn’t care. He was more than she could have ever hoped for. Better than that, he made her feel—without sliding into cliché, she
thought to herself, as she slipped on the steep path between the bamboo thicket and grabbed at the yielding green poles—alive. It made her laugh, to think of all the ridiculous introductions
she had been through under the gaze of the Fernly household. Pointless, all of them. Apart from the fact that she had used the money from the sale of her gowns to buy the microscope. Freddie would
never have understood her attraction to Edward, and she was glad that she hadn’t told Freddie about him, though there had been several times when Gwen had found herself almost on the point of
confessing her secret.

No one was watching her. No one knew. No third party expected anything, and nor could they disapprove. He wasn’t exactly any kind of romantic hero. For one thing he had the most peculiar
sticking out pale hair she had ever seen and his skin was pale: freckled under his shirt and blotchy where the sun had caught his forearms. She stopped where she was amongst the stands of bamboo.
This garden, she thought, we’re hardly managing to keep abreast of it. In fact, there were parts of the garden which were virtually impenetrable. Murray and his lad, they kept the paths down
to the beach clear; and they kept the top lawns well. But still, more than three quarters had run wild. She was trying an experiment with two goats, tethered under a massive magnolia. They looked
like stupid animals and by the end of each day they had managed to get themselves tied in knots under the tree but they did eat everything. There was a sort of scruffy clear patch now. This was
where she was heading, along a winding path which took her in a zigzag of steep gradients to the place where there had once been a lawn, nestled in the scoop of a valley. It was sheltered from the
wind but rather too much goat manure had spoiled the ground, so they couldn’t sit down.

Last time, they’d moved the goats away from the magnolia and tethered them in a very wild patch, so that they’d been hidden. Only the goats crashing about and their silly bleating
disturbed them for a while. They’d talked, exhaustively, about the stupidity of goats until the animals had settled.

He’d pinned her against the tree, because of the ground being so littered with the dark pellets. Well, not pinned exactly. More supported. He’d kept her there anyway (perhaps, yes,
she had been pinned, now she thought about it, because of her skirts being pushed up and to either side of her); and his head, she’d gripped his head to steady herself. None of it seemed
wrong. The thrusting and the panting and the wetness between her thighs afterwards. He explored her with his fingers, running them back and forth until she was slippery and pliant in his hands and
eager for anything that he would do, that he might think of doing; and then he would slip himself between her thighs. Make her keep them together, very tight, and he would delve there, and moan
words in her ears that she hadn’t heard before she’d met him, and still didn’t know the meaning of.

She didn’t like the smell. The runny then glutinous liquid which came out of him. It was too earthy. It caught in her throat like the smell of hanging poultry, and reminded her of certain
flowers which attracted flies.

As he tightened his grip on her, and breathed into her, Gwen remembered one of the young men she’d been introduced to. His own body odour had been strong. They had been dancing and even
out on the balcony in a stiff breeze she had smelled his sweat. The pressure of Edward’s body reminded her of how the young man at that Ball had leaned in close; his breathing had been almost
exactly like Edward’s was now. What hindsight was, indeed, she thought.

“I was sorry to hear about your mother,” he had said to her, and she had pretended not to hear, but he had carried on. “I had the good fortune to have been introduced,
once.” Still she had pretended not to hear, as the orchestra was very loud. “I am not one of those—” here she lost his words in the crescendo of the music “—you
know, Miss Carrick.” She had thanked him for his company and had never spoken to him again. She couldn’t even remember his name. Charles somebody. A nobody.

Edward clamped his mouth over a tender part of her neck near the collarbone and sucked hard. Gwen looked up into the branches of the tree as she tried to twist her neck out of his mouth.
Edward’s groans were muffled; he let go briefly and then clamped his mouth again onto her neck, at the same time thrusting between her legs more furiously. Gwen concentrated on the sharp
pinpricks of sunlight bursting through the leaves above her as they shifted in the breeze and made different patterns.

Edward released her. He said, “I have found a place in town. I mean to establish a practice.”

“A medical practice?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a
doctor
.”

“The idea disappoints you.”

“It surprises me.”

“Oh. I had hoped to be able to see you more often. I hope I soon shall.”

Gwen walked away and brushed down her skirt, buttoned up the collar of her blouse. She was upset that Edward had kept the secret of his life from her until this moment. How could he do this? One
instant to be spilling himself between her clamped thighs, the next to be discussing some business arrangement. She had once asked him for a secret and he had told her some
thing
about a
mayfly. He’s made himself out to be ignorant about science, she thought, and yet he must have spent years in his medical training. Edward came after her, tucking himself up.

“I should have introduced myself in the proper way. For that I am sorry. It has been on my conscience. I would like to make amends.”

“Why did you not?”

“I have never thought myself particularly worthy of the title. Call it self-doubt.”

“And now you are confident.”

“My mind and attitude have altered considerably since meeting you. You must know that you have had a great effect upon me.”

“I am disappointed by your secrecy, Edward.”

He slid an arm around her waist. “I am sorry to have hurt your feelings.” He kissed her while he grabbed at the fabric of her skirt and pulled it up, slipping a hand underneath. He
let his fingers rest, poised until he was sure of his impact through the kiss, and delicately drew her forgiveness from her as inevitably as the yolk in a blown egg must burst though the tiny
aperture made by the pin.

“We simply can’t afford anything so ridiculously extravagant. What on earth possessed you?” The irony of her own words were not lost on Gwen who looked at her
sister across the breakfast table with cool fury.

“He’s a gift.”

“What? Oh, that makes it so much better. For heaven’s sake. As if it wasn’t already—”

“Yes? You were going to say ‘bad enough’, weren’t you?” Euphemia’s lips were parched and cracked and as she pursed them into a thin line of satisfaction, Gwen
saw a beading thread of blood ooze over the papery skin.

“You are making us ridiculous, agreeing to have a pastry chef, of all things, in the house.”

“I’m sorry, Gwen, to arouse such passion in you, but I can promise you that Mr Harris will do his best not to appear to be ridiculous under this roof.”

“What kind of person, or mayn’t I ask, sends a, a
dwarf
pastry chef to a household such as this?”

“An appreciative client. I knew it was his size which irked you, and not his culinary expertise.”

“An appreciative—who exactly, which of them would—”

“I have not the faintest idea.”

“He’ll have to go back then; he’ll be poisoning us at the first opportunity. We simply can’t.”

Euphemia threw back her head and shrieked like a herring gull. Gwen leaned over the table to slap her cheek and felt the smarting of it in her palm. Euphemia straightened up, instantly silent,
glaring at her sister.

“He comes with the highest recommendation,” she said. “From the housekeeper of a very good address in London.”

Gwen regarded her sister in mute defeat for a few moments before telling her, “You appall me.” She left the table, snatching up the daily newspaper and stalked out with it, rolling
it into a baton as she went down the passage to the kitchen to inspect this new servant.

Helford Passage. July, 1859.

“Let us be clear from the outset, Mr Harris—” Euphemia had invited him into the morning room to compliment his pastry, but a fever had lodged in her mind
between the invitation being issued and her reading the letter Fergus Harris had given Susan for the post box that morning. It had been addressed to Mrs Isobel Scales in London. “Whilst you
live under my roof, you are part of my household. You do not answer to anyone living in the establishment at which you were previously employed. Do I make myself quite understood?”

“Ma’am.”

“You will not write letters of any kind to my clients.”

“No, ma’am.”

“And you will not make secret reports of any kind to any of my clients, nor to anyone else, about the private lives of people living in this house.”

Fergus Harris looked up from where he had been staring at the floor. Euphemia saw no register of change in his expression as he replied that indeed he would not.

“Furthermore, you will not accept gratuities from any of my clients nor from anyone else, for any such undertakings. As you have so far surmised, we lead ordinary lives here, and there is
nothing so remarkable about us bar that which is already known and appreciated by my clients.”

Fergus Harris said, “No, ma’am. But is this you telling me to pack up and go?” Euphemia set her jaw and drew out the document she had prepared. “This is a new contract of
employment, which you may read now and choose to sign. If you sign your name there, you will abide, absolutely, by everything which is set out, in plain English on that paper.”

Fergus took the contract from where she had placed it on an occasional table beside her. She watched his eyes run over her tidy script. Here and there in his concentration he raised an eyebrow.
When he came to the end he said that he would sign. Euphemia stood up and asked him to follow her through into the library where the ink and blotter were ready at the desk. Fergus Harris signed his
name with the same flourish he had used to sign his letter to Isobel Scales. He rocked the blotter over his wet ink and handed the paper back to Euphemia.

“Thank you, Mr Harris. You are a most valued addition. Remember where your loyalties now rest and we shall all enjoy a peaceful, harmonious existence in this house. And, I almost forgot,
your pastries are indeed quite excellent. That will be all for now, Mr Harris.”

Married. Of course, he was married. His hand was practised; his touch was sure. Bella. The exceptionally quiet one. She could not credit the woman with such an extravagant habit. But there it
was. She turned her attention to the pile of letters brought in from the table in the hall. The usual drift of thank-you notes and exclamations of gratitude. Among them a letter to Gwen in a hand
she did not recognise. She put it to the side, and attended to things in an orderly fashion. Every now and then, between replying to her own letters, Euphemia’s hand went out to touch the
envelope addressed to Gwen. She picked it up, and turned it over and put it back down again just as her sister came into the room. She jammed the door wide open with a wedge. She brought the
outside into the room with her.

“Effie, Susan tells me there is a letter for me this morning.” Her whole self smelled of the hot weather. Of dust and pollen. And wine. Gwen came over to the desk. “Have you
got it? Yes, there it is.”

“A commission?”

“Perhaps.”

“You were expecting it.” Euphemia smelled the gritty earth on Gwen’s hem as she swept around the back of Euphemia’s chair.

“Hope for everything, and expect nothing, Effie. Isn’t that the best way?”

“You have been taking our wine into the garden.”

Gwen had been about to leave but she turned back again. “Honestly, Effie. It is such a glorious day, please don’t try to spoil it for me.”

“I hope the commission is a good one.” Euphemia thought, I despise this buoyancy of yours. Please leave.

“If that is what it is, then so do I. It’s very stuffy in here, Effie. You should go outside once in a while. More often than when nature calls. You go to bed too late and get up too
late. You miss half the day. In fact, you have missed the entire summer. We may not have many more days like these.”

“I miss nothing I do not wish to miss, much less than you might imagine.”

Gwen went into the dining room to find the carafe, picking it up and then replacing it before going to the cellar instead. On the way down the path past the top lawn, she wiped
the dust from the bottle on her skirt, holding the letter from Edward in her teeth. Edward, not Susan, had told her that there would be a letter waiting for her that morning. He had begged her not
to rush off and fetch it but to read it after his visit. Seeing Euphemia with that pile of dull letters from her clients and her own placed there beside them had made Gwen suddenly sick. What if
Edward one day forgot to put her full name on the envelope as he addressed it in a hurry. Miss G. Carrick. In a hurry, a “G” could be scrawled badly by Edward to look like an
“E”. The eleven o’clock sun was fierce out of the shade, and Gwen hurried back along the paths, under the wall of the kitchen garden and under the beech trees where she continued
along one of the higher paths, past a wasps’ nest and on to the boundary of the Carrick estate where she could look out over the fields if she chose, or out over the water where tall ships
cut across the horizon of the glinting sea. Gwen opened the bottle; bending over, holding it between her feet. The noise of the cork coming out of the neck was satisfying in her solitude. She
twisted the cork slowly from the screw with the letter laid across her skirts.