Free Martha Peake by Patrick McGrath Page A

shouted for ardent spirits at such times, and Martha had brought him water. He haddashed the jug from her hands—again he had cried out for strong drink—and she had held him, she had held him until the spasms subsided and the poor exhausted man could fall away into sleep, to awaken, please God, in some relief from his agonies. Was he often in pain? Oh, he was.
    “At times I suffer it, my lord.”
    “No pain bites like that which has its source in the spine— nec mordat dolor hic spinus spinorum , eh, William?”
    “Indeed, my lord,” said William.
    “Can you cure him?” said Martha.
    “Dear girl, there are none can ‘cure’ a spine like this. But physic is not altogether derelict here. You are a scholar, sir, you sit late with your books, smoking your pipe in a closed room. Am I right?”
    “You are right,” said Harry.
    “You eat meat and you take strong drink. Am I right?”
    “I eat meat, my lord, but I take no drink.”
    “That is wise. Drink milk. Take the air. Live ascetic. Live as a monk. This is all I can tell you.”
    “Will it grow worse?”
    “You have consulted other surgeons?”
    “I have consulted nobody.”
    So they talked then of what a surgeon could and could not do; and a little later Lord Drogo and my uncle William took their leave. But before they did so, Drogo told Harry he would be pleased to see him again, to talk about his pain, and indicated that he intended to think further on the subject.

    Martha watched from the window as Drogo and William emerged from the back door of the Angel and crossed the courtyard to their carriage. The same spidery figure dressed in black—it was Clyte, of course—held the door for them, then scuttled up onto the cab and took the reins in one hand, the whip in the other. But before the carriagemoved off, he turned and stared straight up at the window. Martha did not step away, but held the creature’s gaze. A most peculiar sensation, I imagine, difficult to describe, precisely, although I believe I can guess the sentiments Clyte aroused in Martha’s heart: she felt the same shiver move up her spine that she had known when Lord Drogo touched her earlier. It was not her first glimpse of Clyte, but it was the first time I believe that she sensed the sheer evil rising off him like a gas. A moment later the carriage rumbled out of the courtyard and into the night. Harry resumed wiping his face clean of paint and powder, and soon was laughing quietly, as he remembered Martha’s fiery indignation toward Lord Drogo. Then he remembered being asked about Grace Foy, and at once he grew quiet.

7
    I t was past midnight by this time and my uncle showed no inclination to retire. It ocurred to me that over the years of his isolation here in Drogo Hall he had developed the habits of a nocturnal, and that his vitality was aroused only in the small hours when the rest of the world slept. I speculated now that he might be a user of opium. It was an established fact that within the medical profession the practice was a good deal more common even than in the artist class, largely as a function of availability and temperament: your doctor is a melancholy fellow, as a rule.
    Now I reviewed what facts I had. The rapid mood changes, the tendency to drift and dream, the coming to life in the hours of darkness—above all, the grandiosity of certain elements of his story and, at the same time, the minute knowledge he seemed to possess of events he had not witnessed—it all suggested a narcotic influence, and I believe it was at this point in the narrative that it first occurred to me that I could no longer altogether trust him. His story, it is true, had held together well enough, given the generous assistance of a sympathetic imagination like my own, but I had detected certain omissions, certain small inconsistencies, and anomalies, and all at once the old man’s cavalier references to the vagaries of a failing memory seemed suspect. For when I pressed him he simply threw