The Heart Specialist Read Free Page B

candies.
    “And these students would dissect things under your father’s tutelage?”
    “Dissect and draw and mount things. It’s what morbid anatomists do.”
    “It obviously made quite an impression on you.”
    I couldn’t make out Miss Skerry’s expression, but I nodded anyway. It was true that I had been impressed, but it was also true that excised tissue had been as natural to me as gabardine would be to a tailor’s child, or leather to a cobbler’s. It was only after we moved to St. Andrews East that it began to seem otherwise.
    “These are all yours?” Miss Skerry asked, motioning to my collection of bugs and bones. She was not looking at me, but her face was dark and serious.
    “Yes,” I said. I had decided to deal with her straightforwardly. Perhaps honesty in this initial interrogation would lighten my punishment.
    Miss Skerry’s expression was still inscrutable. She did not look as though she liked my work, which I admit was improvised and rough, but at least she seemed interested. She approached my microscope and spent some time fiddling with it. She was not afraid of the instrument, handling it, I realized with a start, as if she knew what she was doing.
    “You know the derivation, I suppose?” she said, one cheek pressed against the eyepiece. When I failed to respond she continued. “It’s from the Greek, Agnes. Micros means ‘small.’ Scopos , ‘watcher.’ I don’t suppose you’ve picked up Greek out here in the barn as well as all this science?” She straightened up, and it was only then that I saw the smile in her eyes. Next thing I knew she was asking for slides.
    In St. Andrews East the only person who knew anything about microscopes was the apothecary. Ordinary people, and certainly the women in our town, knew nothing about them, nor did they wish to learn. I was an exception, and I knew I had to keep these leanings strictly to myself. It had not occurred to me that one day I might meet another person in St. Andrews East with whom I could share my interest. I knelt down in the straw and pulled out a small metal box containing my father’s collection of permanent plates.
    “Honoré Bourret,” said Miss Skerry, taking this box and reading the name printed on its cover.
    I nodded and blinked. It had been close to ten years since I had heard that name pronounced.
    “He left you quite a legacy.” She looked away from me then, gazing around the storage room. “And you have done him justice. In a sense, this is an homage.”
    Until she articulated it that day I had not been aware of it. But it was true. I had built a dissection room a lot like my father’s Montreal anatomy laboratory in this unlikely setting. Miss Skerry was scrutinizing me. “Your father was a man of science. Am I to presume, Agnes, that you wish to be one too?”
    I nodded again but then realized the mistake. “Not a man of science, Miss Skerry,” I corrected her. “After all, I am a girl.”
    She broke into laughter, making me start. For the first time since her arrival her face was clearly friendly. “A girl of science, then,” she said. “Of course. That’s it exactly.” She laughed again. “You are original, Agnes White. No one can deny you that.”
    Miss Skerry and I talked for some time that day. She explained that she, too, was the daughter of a man of learning. He had not been a scientist like my father but a school master at a private academy for boys. He had had a passion for natural history, which he’d shared with Miss Skerry as if she were one of his students. “He was constantly dragging me off to swamps and bogs to collect things,” she said, smiling at the memories. “And the school had a microscope, although I must confess it was primitive compared with yours.”
    At some point that afternoon she discovered my jar of butterflies. “This is Honoré Bourret’s work too, I suppose?” she said, rotating it in the light. They were monarchs, big and brightly coloured. Their wings were