With Clean Hands
A little bit of slashy Victorian deathbed melodrama, if that floats anybody's boat. Set at the end of the penultimate chapter to Bleak House. I'm proud of the title to this one – I want to see if anybody gets it!
The small room, squalid with papers and stifling with sorrow. On the sofa, a young man lies pale and motionless. His pretty wife bends over him awkwardly, burdened down by her pregnant belly, as pale as him but with tears starting in her eyes. Weeping bitterly, a scarred woman clings to a handsome doctor, who tries to disengage her hands in order to attend his patient. In the corner, an older man stands, his expression suggesting that he is being broken into pieces from the inside out. He is alone.
Ada clasps her husband to her bosom, as the dry, pitiful sobs escape her small frame.
'My darling Richard, O my darling, my love!' She suddenly gasps with pain, and the last vestiges of colour drain from her face as sweat beads on her brow and she clutches her stomach.
'Ada, my dear!' Esther's face is a portrait of consternation.
'The baby! Help me! O Richard, my darling, the baby!'
'Help me with her, Esther.' Allan's voice is calm and gentle, in the manner of all good doctors. Esther tenderly slips her arms around the waist of her dear friend and encourages her to rise. Allan leads the women from the room, leaving Jarndyce alone with Richard.
Jarndyce kneels before the sofa, and gently touches Richard's hair.
'O Rick, Rick, Rick! We have lost you, lost you forever!' The tears spring to his eyes and begin to trickle onto his cheeks.
He places a gentle kiss on Richard's warm forehead and sighs deeply, with the accumulated sorrows of many years.
'Your brow is smooth, Rick. Untroubled for the first time in so long. O Rick, you have left this world, I can confess and maybe your soul is now an angel who can absolve me.'
'I have loved you, Rick. Loved you since I first met you, a beautiful young man of nineteen. You shook both of my hands, and laughed, and to this crusty old crab of a man it was as if the sun had peeped out from behind the clouds, and the wind would never be Easterly again. I knew not what had happened to me at the time, but later – that night – it came to me that I loved you. Loved your beautiful body, your laughing spirit. And I knew – good God I knew – that it was unnatural, illegal, wrong. Of the three who shared my house and board, the one I loved was barred to me. And I knew that you could never love me in such a way. I kept my counsel of course, I could do no other. And if I wanted to weep and laugh and run and dance at the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand – I hope you never knew, and that my strange desires did not taint the amity that was then between us.' Jarndyce's index finger touches Richard's temple, traces the hairline and the whorls of an ear.
'And then the suit seduced you, entrapped you, snared you with feathers broken and claws slashing. Of course, it was me that you slashed at. Me, and there were times when I thought you must have known, thought that your hatred was revulsion at my love for you. So presumptuous is man – we always assume that the whole world has an interest in our most innermost thoughts and wants. How could it have been?'
'I wept then. And upbraided myself sternly, for thinking about such a thing at such a time. Smallpox in the house – almost losing Esther – such sad days, and me still wallowing in those hopeless fancies. But dear Dame Durden lived, and unworthy though I had proved myself, I asked her to be my wife. I had lost you, my love, but I could give her a home, a good name (as if she had not enough goodness!) and a future. I loved her, and thought we could be happy. A quiet tame happiness, but with its wings clipped so it cannot fly. No man can give more than he has, and in my heart I knew it was a poor gift. So when our excellent doctor offered her real happiness and perfect love, it was my greatest joy to see her accept. Our Dame Durden deserves no less.'
'But as for me, I will be alone. A bachelor again, although a graver and quieter one than before. When a light is brought into a dim room, and then as quickly taken away, does not the room seem darker than ever? I have lost you, Rick. Lost you – to filthy Chancery!' Jarndyce's words dissolve into sobs, and he draws closer to Richard, as if finally expecting the forbidden kiss.
But then as Jarndyce brushes his tear-streaked cheek against Richard's lips, he feels – could it be? – the faintest hint of breath.
'Rick?'
The lips, still plump in that wasted face, attempt to form words from the fragile thread of breath that remains in Richard's body.
'Cousin John?'
'My Rick? You heard me?'
'Do you love me – as you said?'
'O Rick, I love you and with all my heart.'
'Then will you kiss me again?'
With an expression of the ultimate gravity on his face, Jarndyce places a hand on each of Richard's temples and tenderly tilts the younger man's face up towards his own. An involuntary moan escapes him as he bestows on Richard the softest of kisses, and then runs a gentle tongue across Richard's lips. Richard opens his mouth, and in an ecstasy of acceptance kisses Jarndyce again and again, first delicately, now more passionately. Jarndyce, for his part, is melting – melting in the celestial sweet softness of love finally rewarded. His arms embrace Richard, and he holds him closely, not immediately noticing that Richard's lips are again shaping words against his own.
'John?'
'Rick?'
'I want you to kiss me. But all – all over. My – my body kissed.'
Jarndyce's face is that of a man unveiling an infinitely precious artefact, as button by button he loosens Richard's clothing. Such pathos in that poor languishing body, with its pallid skin stretched over the sharp ribs! Yet to Jarndyce it is beautiful, and he kisses Richard's soft skin, kisses his mouth and neck and arms and chest with an ardour distilled and purified by the years of longing. Jarndyce's hands caress Richard's hips and smooth belly, and he kisses the margin of the dark hair that lies beneath. He stops and looks up to meet Richard's eyes, glowing with something that Jarndyce cannot name, and which both touches and frightens him.
'Please, John. That too. Touch me. Make me strong again.'
Jarndyce, consumed with lust himself, cannot deny this to Richard. He touches the younger man's body again, kissing, kissing, stroking and smoothing his belly and legs, but inevitably returning to the secret parts of Richard, the parts legally dedicated to Ada. But Jarndyce has never cared for the prescriptions of the law!
As Jarndyce works his will, his hands and mouth seem to ask questions, which Richard confirms in little tremblings and moans. Jarndyce himself knows not what he feels. Pity and passion, but above all an overwhelming rightness, as though without knowing it, they had practised and prepared to play this part, this scene, for years. Now Jarndyce knows nothing of Chancery, or marriage, or motherhood. Knows nothing but Richard, the immeasurable sweetness of Richard-smell, Richard-taste, Richard-hair, Richard-skin. Until – and how could it have been any other way? – Richard's entire body clenches and spasms as if palsied. He gasps and grips Jarndyce's shoulders, but at the moment of crisis makes no sound beyond a ragged, shuddering breath. White and spent, Richard falls back on the sofa.
Still kneeling before the sofa, Jarndyce kisses Richard's lips again, his nose, his chin, his closed eyelids.
'Oh Rick my darling, you are beautiful, I love you, you will be saved. You will live, I swear it.' He takes Richard's hands in his own, and holds them to his heart. 'You shall be strong, and shall once more begin the world.'
A single scream from elsewhere in the house pierces the room, and with the inevitable resignation of awakening from a pleasant dream, Jarndyce realises that he is not the only one to lay claim to Richard's love. When he next speaks, it is in the voice of the old Jarndyce, and as if nothing had just passed between them.
'Do not fear for Ada, Rick. She loves you, and she will live for you. And when the child comes, the three of you will strengthen together. I rather think that I will be fighting it out with Allan, as to which Bleak House you are to have the use of, to raise your child!'
'I will never speak of what passed between us to anyone, Rick. But nor will I ever forget it. Rick, I have longed for you in all this time we have been estranged, I have loved you and now you are restored to me…Rick?'
For while he has been speaking, Jarndyce holds Richard's hands against his own beating heart, squeezing them with every sentence, until at this moment he realises that Richard has not squeezed back. With a sudden trickling chill of horror, Jarndyce realises that Richard's fingers are limp and flaccid, the flesh yielding.
'Rick? Rick!'
Jarndyce seizes Richard by the shoulders and violently shakes him. Richard's head lolls, but there is no response.
Jarndyce places the fingers on one hand against the great veins in Richard's neck, and the fingers of the other against Richard's open mouth. No pulse. No breath. High gibbering panic intertwines with thudding inevitable despair.
'Rick – Rick! Come on now – speak to me – you will be alright – you can live – you've got to live – oh please, Rick!' Jarndyce's voice breaks into a wail.
'I love you, Rick, oh Rick, I love you, I love you so very much and with all my heart…' And as Jarndyce speaks and the tears flow down his face – and how that face has aged in so short a time! – he kisses the lips and cheeks of Richard again and again, an insane hopeful part of his mind knowing that this has happened before, he believed Richard was dead, and he kissed Richard, in agonised shame had told Richard how much he, Jarndyce, loved him, and Richard hadn't really been dead at all…
But though Jarndyce has made a life's work of keeping painful truths from those who would be injured by them, he cannot keep from himself the truth he already knows. Richard will never breathe or laugh or kiss again. Jarndyce takes one last look at Richard's frail body before, with infinite care and solicitude, he buttons Richard's clothing and smoothes his dark hair. With a long, shuddering sigh – a sigh like a wind blown all the way through Purgatory – Jarndyce slips one arm under Richard's neck, and one under his knees. Picking Richard up, he cradles the younger man in his arms.
'Oh Rick, my love, my darling, I have lost you again and for the last time. You are in a better place now, but me, oh my Rick, I am left here in this sad world without you. Holding just the shell of you, and to know that I will never hear your voice again, not even to renounce and curse me…oh Rick, I cannot bear it!'
But as another shriek from Ada filters through the walls of the small room, Jarndyce knows that he can bear it, and will. Knows that tomorrow he will be the estimable and worthy John Jarndyce, bachelor-philanthropist, beloved guardian.
Tomorrow, that is. For now, as he holds Richard's lifeless body against his heart, he weeps freely, for the bitterness of all that he has lost, and all that Richard has lost. The tears splash onto Richard's cold face, and Jarndyce, still tasting the aniseed-salt of Richard's semen in his mouth, makes no attempt to wipe them away.
In the nights of the months to come, Esther will sleep protected by her handsome husband, and Ada will sleep with a little son at her breast. But those sober and forward-looking sisters Prudence and Providence have decreed that John Jarndyce sleep alone in a narrow bed, to wake with tears in his eyes and a ghostly kiss still on his lips.