Life after life

11 February 1910

THE PICCALILLI WAS the lurid colour of jaundice. Dr Fellowes ate at the kitchen table by the light of an annoyingly smoky oil lamp. He smeared the piccalilli on to buttered bread and topped it with a thick slice of fatty ham. He thought of the flitch of bacon resting coolly in his own pantry. He had chosen the pig himself, pointing it out to the farmer, seeing not a living creature but an anatomy lesson – an assembly of loin chops and hock, cheek and belly and huge joints of gammon for boiling. Flesh. He thought of the baby he had rescued from the jaws of death with a snip of his surgical scissors. ‘The miracle of life,’ he said dispassionately to the rough little Irish maid. (‘Bridget, sir.’) ‘I am to stay the rest of the night,’ he added. ‘On account of the snow.’

He could think of many places he would rather be than Fox Corner. Why was it called that? Why would you celebrate the habitation of such a wily beast? Dr Fellowes had ridden with the hunt, dashing in scarlet, when a young man. He wondered if the girl would skip into his room in the morning with a tray of tea and toast. Imagined her pouring hot water from the jug into the washbasin and soaping him down in front of the bedroom fire the way his mother had done, decades ago. Dr Fellowes was obstinately faithful to his wife but his thoughts roamed far and wide.

Bridget led him upstairs with a candle. The candle flared and flickered wildly as he followed the maid’s scrawny backside up to a chilly guest room. She lit him his own candle on top of the pot cupboard and then disappeared into the dark maw of the hall with a hasty ‘Good night, sir.’

He lay in the cold bed, the piccalilli repeating unpleasantly. He wished he was at home, next to the slack, warm body of Mrs Fellowes, a woman to whom nature had denied elegance and who always smelled vaguely of fried onions. Not necessarily a disagreeable thing.