huge, sun-filled rooms, and schoolrooms where people talked a bit noisily about lessons, or places like cinemas or swimming pools where everyone shrieked and laughed, you might think that Mortmain was pretty good.
But gloomy old places could be splendid for games, and one of the games that the little girl told Simone about was a game called the dance of the hanged man. There was a song that went with it: Simone was not sure if she had understood it properly, but it was something about, ‘The morning clocks will ring/And a neck God made for other use/Than strangling in a string.’ Then came the chorus that everybody had to join in, which was about the gallows-maker building the frame and then the hangman leading the dance, and everyone had to do all the movements about building the gallows and hammering in the nails and fashioning the gibbet. Then they had to jig round the yard in a line for the dance. Simone thought she understood that that by ‘the yard’, the little girl meant a sort of playground.
She did not properly understand about the hanging game and she did not properly understand about the other children who seemed to be part of the game, but she thought it sounded hateful, and the little girl sounded hateful as well when she talked about it. Sly and giggly and as if somebody was being hurt in the game, and as if she found this exciting. Simone was not absolutely sure what a hanged man was, except that it had something to do with murdering people.
She was not sure who was being murdered or whether it was only a game anyway, but she thought it might all have something to do with the men who came to inspect the children, and who were so extremely bad and cruel, even though they looked normal and ordinary.
‘Think of them as normal and ordinary,’ said Martin Brannan on Mel’s next visit. ‘It’s what they are, you know. You’ll see that when they’re born. It’ll be a C-section, of course. You’re all right with that, are you?’
‘If that’s the best way.’ Mel did not mind how the babies were born providing they could be born safely and with the best possible chance of surviving.
‘It is the best way. We’ll probably do it at thirty-seven weeks. Full anaesthetic as well, I think, rather than just a spinal epidural. You’ll go to sleep quite comfortably, and when you wake up it’ll all be over, and a cup of tea waiting at your bedside.’
‘You can’t make it a gin and tonic, I suppose?’
‘That’ll come later.’
‘In a minute you’ll pat my hand and say, Trust me .’
He gave her the smile that seemed to hold such intimacy and liking, but that he probably used on all his patients. ‘I don’t need to. You do trust me. You’ll have to come into St Luke’s a few days before the procedure. That means everything will all be calm, and nicely planned ahead. It’s a very civilized way of giving birth. I wonder now—’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if it would help you to know a bit more about other cases of conjoining,’ he said, speaking slowly as if he was considering the idea for her.
‘You mean, like the real Siamese twins?’ Mel had been trying not to use this word, but she used it now. ‘The first ones?’
‘Chang and Eng. Yes. They led an odd life, those two, but they were quite separate personalities and they achieved a degree of normality, even in their time. That was the early eighteen-hundreds. They died in eighteen seventy-something, as far as I can remember it. They were never separated, but they both married and fathered several children.’
Mel said cautiously that this must have been a bit bizarre for all parties, and Martin Brannan said, Yes, and bizarre was hardly the word was it. This time the smile was more of a mischievous grin, sharing the small joke with her. It was remarkable to think that this man already knew her body more intimately than anyone else ever had or ever would, and that in a few weeks’ time his hands would be inside her womb, cutting
But gloomy old places could be splendid for games, and one of the games that the little girl told Simone about was a game called the dance of the hanged man. There was a song that went with it: Simone was not sure if she had understood it properly, but it was something about, ‘The morning clocks will ring/And a neck God made for other use/Than strangling in a string.’ Then came the chorus that everybody had to join in, which was about the gallows-maker building the frame and then the hangman leading the dance, and everyone had to do all the movements about building the gallows and hammering in the nails and fashioning the gibbet. Then they had to jig round the yard in a line for the dance. Simone thought she understood that that by ‘the yard’, the little girl meant a sort of playground.
She did not properly understand about the hanging game and she did not properly understand about the other children who seemed to be part of the game, but she thought it sounded hateful, and the little girl sounded hateful as well when she talked about it. Sly and giggly and as if somebody was being hurt in the game, and as if she found this exciting. Simone was not absolutely sure what a hanged man was, except that it had something to do with murdering people.
She was not sure who was being murdered or whether it was only a game anyway, but she thought it might all have something to do with the men who came to inspect the children, and who were so extremely bad and cruel, even though they looked normal and ordinary.
‘Think of them as normal and ordinary,’ said Martin Brannan on Mel’s next visit. ‘It’s what they are, you know. You’ll see that when they’re born. It’ll be a C-section, of course. You’re all right with that, are you?’
‘If that’s the best way.’ Mel did not mind how the babies were born providing they could be born safely and with the best possible chance of surviving.
‘It is the best way. We’ll probably do it at thirty-seven weeks. Full anaesthetic as well, I think, rather than just a spinal epidural. You’ll go to sleep quite comfortably, and when you wake up it’ll all be over, and a cup of tea waiting at your bedside.’
‘You can’t make it a gin and tonic, I suppose?’
‘That’ll come later.’
‘In a minute you’ll pat my hand and say, Trust me .’
He gave her the smile that seemed to hold such intimacy and liking, but that he probably used on all his patients. ‘I don’t need to. You do trust me. You’ll have to come into St Luke’s a few days before the procedure. That means everything will all be calm, and nicely planned ahead. It’s a very civilized way of giving birth. I wonder now—’
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if it would help you to know a bit more about other cases of conjoining,’ he said, speaking slowly as if he was considering the idea for her.
‘You mean, like the real Siamese twins?’ Mel had been trying not to use this word, but she used it now. ‘The first ones?’
‘Chang and Eng. Yes. They led an odd life, those two, but they were quite separate personalities and they achieved a degree of normality, even in their time. That was the early eighteen-hundreds. They died in eighteen seventy-something, as far as I can remember it. They were never separated, but they both married and fathered several children.’
Mel said cautiously that this must have been a bit bizarre for all parties, and Martin Brannan said, Yes, and bizarre was hardly the word was it. This time the smile was more of a mischievous grin, sharing the small joke with her. It was remarkable to think that this man already knew her body more intimately than anyone else ever had or ever would, and that in a few weeks’ time his hands would be inside her womb, cutting
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