A Man of Genius Read Free Page A

in whatever direction he pleased.
    Ann and Robert, she thought, not bad in a romance.
    So it began.

2
    H e cared about clothes. He wanted them to seem negligent but he took trouble. She didn’t much mind for herself. She’d disliked Caroline’s finery, her turbans and garish coloured shawls. But she loved to see him well dressed.
    Now he wanted to dress her. She demurred. She was not beautiful. He didn’t disagree. Instead he said that beauty could go rotten and become ‘loathsome’, more than ugliness. More than adders and toads.
    He had a family allowance, not large – she rather surmised than knew this – or maybe Richard Perry said something. But he went off and bought expensive material for her, pea-green, striped and shiny. He let the material slither through his fingers while he closed his eyes.
    He came with her to a dressmaker to have it made up so that for once – so he said – for once she would have clothes that fitted well and were stylish. She could be smart, she had the figure for it. Why did she not take more trouble? He sounded like a mother, she thought, and giggled.
    Then he became the dressmaker and was amusing, just for her. Later he bought her an intricately sewn blue silk scarf. It suited her colouring, he said.
    She would try to take trouble and did so for a while. His admiration mattered.
    She had told him – why, for she’d not before spoken much of her past? – that father Gilbert had loved material things, the cabinets of curiosities. He knew the names of shells: the magician’s cone, the glory-of-the-seas, the precious wentletrap, the nutmeg snail – the listhad gone on but she remembered no more now, the words had come with no images attached. He had carried her mother – with difficulty she said Mother instead of Caroline, sensing a social conservatism below the radical talk – to Montagu House for the purpose. Caroline could still remember those shells. It was part of her tribute to the dead. ‘Name them to me, child, those curiosities,’ she’d demanded after her relating.
    â€˜I will show you the curiosities of the mind,’ said Robert James.
    When she had a toothache and found the cloves no help, she was about to consult a dentist. He threw up his hands in protest. ‘Medical men know nothing. Keep away. They are all quacks.’
    Perhaps. Often her mother had consulted Buchan’s Domestic Medicine while Martha, her old Putney nurse, had provided more homely remedies that almost always worked – in time.
    Robert was scornful. ‘Poor little hen,’ he said. ‘Martha indeed. There is only one sure treatment for any body part: electric shock. It shakes the frame and jostles the teeth. What could be more healthy than a jostling? Or would you rather place roasted turnips behind the ear as my great aunt did in County Cork? Maybe a toasted fig between the gum and cheek?’
    He was off, for he had become the dentist and was unstoppable. ‘Perhaps some vomiting, a purging of what is unwholesome, some leeching might help, Madam. Or perhaps a hot iron on the tooth which I personally, Madam, would apply. Or maybe something a little less common, more unusual and special for a special patient: might I insert three drops of juice into the ear on the side the tooth aches? They could remain there an hour or two, while I, Madam, would stroke your hand for comfort. If all this fails, we will gently pull it out without disturbing a single nerve. Personally I always think a little excellent wine shared with your physician is much to be recommended, though taken without advice one might, I admit it’ – he clapped his hands and then stroked his hair, ‘one might become plethoric. Madam, I abhor home doctoring. Leave it to the professionals. There are so many injurious effects by people using theircommon sense and calling things by simple names. It will not do, Madam, it will not do. Not a