Newton’s Niece. Derek Beaven
nightmare bite on that hateful tongue poking, poking out of and into its hole.
The room erupted in blue light and fire. I screamed.
A Shift
A blurred rectangle of sky. By degrees it assembled itself into its panes of glass, held in the lattice of their joinery: the casement window of my uncle’s chamber. The moth window. And I lay on a horsehair couch, hardly conscious of anything else; adrift, in fact, on the impulselessness of my body. The window filled my whole attention. Pale clouds, crinkled here and there through irregularities in the glass, were tinged by a weak, filtered sunshine.
A face next to me. It was my uncle’s. He looked reverential, somehow, and worried. A sense of dusk. A pewter vessel with a spout that jutted towards me was raised in his hand near my face.
‘Do not try to move. This is to drink.’ I sipped from the spout. It was something slightly bitter but warming, some herbal concoction. Of course I did try to move. I lifted my head.
‘I can lift my head,’ I said, in a high tone of absolute amazement. And what I meant to be amazed by was not the movement but the voice. I had spoken. How strange and different my body felt, before sleep overcame me again.
A doctor in a wide coat – a full man with a full wig. But not the man.
My mother. The window. The doctor said of me: ‘She is out of danger in my opinion. Of course there will be a need for rest, and I suggest a … change of lodging? Not equipped for … young woman … impressionable age. Family of course. Still … ’ And he was gone.
I levered myself up on the couch and found myself wrapped in a rush of linen which laced at the front. I wondered if I had died. ‘Mother.’ My voice came out again with that breathy high sound. She looked at me. I don’t know what there was in her face. Distance? Discomfort? Dislike?
‘Aye, it’s my child alright,’ I heard her say, ‘but bewitched or unbewitched I don’t know.’ My uncle came into view. ‘What am I to do, Isaac? What am I to say? I came up from Robert’s rectory with a manchild, though I grant you a knotted one, and now must take him back in skirts.’ She looked at him and then at me. ‘What am I to do? A girl! It’s a miracle, but a damned one. A cranky one, Isaac, and I can’t take it in.’ She began to breathe too quickly and sat herself down on one of his bleak chairs, while he hovered behind her, wearing his wig for protection, perhaps, but uncertain whether to touch her shoulders by way of comfort. ‘I can’t take it in. Should I cry and praise the Lord. Should I throw my arms about him … her, and weep on … her bosom.’ I saw her wince as if with disgust. ‘It’s too much, Isaac. You’ve gone too far. Too far. How can this be God’s work?’ And she did begin to snivel, and to shake a bit. ‘What shall I tell people? Robert? Family? People in Bridgstock? Oh, I shall be hanged, Brother. Do you realise? It’s me they’ll hang. Godfearing folk like they. They won’t like this. They’ll find a way. Or drowning! I shall be drowned!’
My uncle turned to the window as if to escape this imminent flood of disaster. On the window-ledge, I noticed there now stood a human skull.
‘My dear Madam;’ he said, trying for a mode of address which would cover the deep awkwardness he felt in the presence of female feeling. ‘Sister Barton,’ he said. ‘Hannah. Need anyone know?’
She stopped her cramped crying and looked up, licking her lips. Two tears left their traces down her cheeks. Then she looked at me. ‘Can you hear me, child?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ came out my little breathy voice. ‘Yes. I can hear you, Mother.’
‘You’ve changed, boy. Or been changed. Do you know that?’
‘Yes, Mother. I can speak, God be praised.’
‘Now don’t give me any of that. Get up. Get up and look at yourself, boy’ But she recollected herself: ‘That is, I’m sorry, if you can indeed get up, child. I would steady you, but I … I … would rather you tried on your own.’
How different I felt, swivelling my legs in their linen until I could place my feet on the floor. How curiously released. My uncle ostentatiously kept himself turned away, and coughed slightly to inform us of his propriety. Nick was not about.
I pushed down with my left hand on to the head of the couch. Yes, I could stand for a moment or two. All different. The same. Yet all different. Loose, soft.
I had escaped, I thought.
You will not understand me when I say this. You will especially not understand me if you are a woman. There is surely no woman alive today who is not aware that in all the authorities women’s condition is generally held to be more exploited than that of men. Now. And worse in the past. But in my particular set of circumstances – unusual, I grant – and among those with whom I lived, I believed that to be suddenly female was to be suddenly delivered from, I hazard, unwelcome attentions.
And so it was that, having been miraculously changed by the projection experiment, I entered on a phase of life which seemed to promise better things. Yes, I began my new season.
Somehow, perhaps, it’s our musculature which holds memories. By a change of my outward flesh the record of my darkest past was switched off, suspended. It was a blank. As blank a sheet as the linen I wore. Well, blankish – bearing only the painful trace of the week of the projection. Thus I began life as a female. There only remained a shadowy knowledge of the rape – of someone I no longer quite was – and a plan of revenge. Enough to bear, but too little to render me a wolf-girl. So the awkwardnesses were all gone, the stiffness and cramps in the legs, the heavy entrapment of my heart within its ribcage, the wily animality of my neck. This particularly I noticed: my head ached, but seemed to float above my shoulders without effort of mine. It was liberating to my thoughts and feelings. I was light. I felt cleaner. Innocent.
Then I sat down again, being still weak from the shock of the explosion in the laboratory. I had no recollection of how I was borne from there to here, nor of how long I’d taken to recover and ‘develop’ into my new shape. I had no knowledge of whether my uncle saw the experiment as a success – whether this had been the intended outcome, or some incredible catastrophe. I could vaguely remember a blinding flash.
I put my hand to my head, as one does just on to the hairline above the brow, because, with the dull ache throughout, this seemed to be the place to smooth it out. I disturbed an itch, and found a small bump, as if from a blow right to the centre, midway between hairline and crown. The itch was the remains of a scab on the bump. Its pieces flipped down in front of my eyes as I scratched; one landed on my nose. The bump was hard and painful to the touch, but in spite of this there was a compulsion to poke at it as I worried the scab – until I felt drowsy again and organised myself to lie back.
As I did so there was a knock at the outer door, which was opened without pause for reply. I heard my uncle’s voice: ‘Charles. How glad I am to see you. Come in.’
‘Returning to London. Today, Isaac. I shall see you soon? Madam,’ he acknowledged my mother.
Isaac made a hesitating sound in his throat. ‘Going back already? It seems you have only just arrived.’
‘This politicking,’ Charles laughed. ‘It takes up all a man’s time. And to make a final survey of your tender patient’s condition.’ He came into my view, the man in the garden on whose wide dark hat the first few drops had spattered as on the opium poppies. Hatless now, not tall; urbane and smiling, dressed soberly in very good cloth, he moved between me and the window. As I looked back at him I felt the burning embarrassment of the piece of scab sticking to my nose, and dashed it away with my hand.
‘Her eyes are open. There’s hope;’ he said. ‘Your servant, Madam,’ to me. My gaze stretched in astonishment. He looked searchingly back before turning his attention once again to my uncle. Very searchingly. To Isaac, he said: ‘You’ll be most welcome, my dear fellow. I look for you