‘If you would be so kind. Good girl. Now this –’ he took off the lid and shook most of the contents out onto a large piece of paper ‘– is something that is almost magical. Do you like magic?’
She nodded, as he tipped the rest into his palm.
‘And can you count to twenty?’
‘Yes I can. One – two –’
‘Excellent. You must count out twenty grains – like this – and you may mix them in some water first, or eat them off your palm.’
‘What will they do to me?’
‘Nothing. Not a thing. For that is their magic, Lucinda: they will simply act as a preventative. You will not feel quite as strange as you used to; you will be safer and less tired. But you will not know that, unless you remember how you used to be.’ He folded up the paper and gave it to Lucinda. ‘Give this to your mother to keep safe for you.’
‘Thank you, Lou,’ I said as she handed it to me. ‘What is it?’ I asked Sir Jocelyn. But something most strange was happening to him. For all his athleticism, he was struggling to pull himself up to standing from where he had been kneeling on the floor. He held on to the side of the bench, and he grimaced, just as Peter did whenever he made the slightest movement. He reached for his side, and pressed it in as he hauled himself up.
‘I was attacked in the Kalahari,’ he puffed, by way of explanation. ‘Got a spear in the ribs, and some residual damage to the intercostals.’ He was tugging at something on his person: at first I thought that he was trying to get his watch out of his pocket, but then his waistcoat rose up with the movement of his arms, and he was pulling at his crisp white shirt underneath, which came clean out of the waistband of his trousers, and I realised to my utter horror that I could see his woollen undershirt, and that he was unfastening the buttons about his middle.
‘Sir Jocelyn,’ I started. ‘No . . . !’ I clutched Lucinda to me with the hand holding the paper of grains, and buried her head in my skirts so she should not be victim to the horrid sight. Jack moved closer to us, but clearly did not know what to do either.
But the man continued, as if this were the most normal practice in medical, scientific, epileptic, what-have-you circles, and soon he had peeled apart his undershirt, and I caught a degrading glimpse of his navel, all curly hairs and bronzed skin. I covered my face with the hand that was not holding Lucinda, and whimpered.
‘Mrs Damage, do I alarm you? Come now, permit yourself a moment’s viewing.’
‘But my modesty, Sir Jocelyn!’
‘Your modesty, my good woman? Your modesty will not be compromised by a look! Come, Mrs Damage. Come, Dora, if I may. Dora, you may look, and still be virtuous. You, why, you have a scrutinising gaze that belies your inner wisdom. Look, I entreat you, so you may better understand me.’
I did not remove my hand from my face, but separated my fingers somewhat, and turned my head back towards him. I lowered my gaze, all the while partially obscured by the Vs of my fingers, but kept Lucinda’s face pressed into my legs. And where his fingers were pulling apart the fabric of his undergarment, I saw a fuzzy blue shape, like the spokes of a wheel radiating around his navel.
‘What – what is it?’ I asked, despite myself.
‘The sun. A tattoo of the sun.’ He was already buttoning himself up again, tucking his shirt back into his trousers, pulling his waistcoat neatly down over his waist again. ‘A minor deity, I must have seemed to them, I’ll warrant, or how else was I to have survived their vicious assaults? The Sun-God, I fancied. I had myself marked accordingly by a sailor on the return boat.’
I released Lucinda, but could not remove the image of the blue sun staining the skin around the dark hole of his umbilicus. I heard Jack exhale heavily, busying himself in his work once more.
‘I have left instructions in my will to bind my complete works with the skin from my torso, with the scar left by the spear resplendent across the back panel, and the tattoo round my navel on the front. What do you think of that, Dora?’ But he pursued beyond my dumbstruck silence. ‘I shall call my memoirs, Afric’s Apollo: Helios in the Bushveld, or Travels of a Latter Day Sun-God. Is it not a fine way to achieve immortality?’
There was no answer to that. The paper of grains he had given Lucinda offered me a diversion.
‘But the grains, Sir Jocelyn? Tell me about the grains, please.’
‘Potassium bromide,’ he said, as he arranged the tails of his coat. ‘It will significantly reduce the incidence of her convulsions, but it may increase her appetite and urination, and affect her co-ordination somewhat.’