People of Abandoned Character

by Clare Whitfield

  ‘We can go anywhere,’ said Aisling, leaping onto the bed with her legs crossed, wild eyed like a child. ‘Anywhere but rainy old England, which is no better than Ireland, only it has more buildings and more people, and less peat and less Church. We can go somewhere where no one knows who we are or where we’re from, where they’ve never heard of Ireland or Reading and don’t care what class we are. We’ll be the exotic ones, instead of just the plain old boring poor. And the freaks.’

  She lay down next to me and rolled over like she had that day in the field. I held my breath again.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I know…’ She pulled her blanket over our heads so it was dark underneath, then whispered, ‘Now shut your eyes. What you can’t see coming, you can’t be guilty of.’

  During those few months we had together in our little attic room, we fell into a rhythm, and I forgot to be shy. We used to have to remind ourselves that we were not a usual couple; it was easy to forget and not be as vigilant as we should about the little nuances that might give us away, but we were not the only pair, there were more than a few among us at the hospital. We made efforts to be discreet, and everyone else made efforts not to see. In the evening we would push the beds together, and in the morning we’d knock them apart as naturally as making them. My only regret is that the time we had was made so brief, and I wasted a huge sum of it, being full of self-doubt, so frightened of being wrong.

  I managed to keep a few things that belonged to Aisling in an old sewing box. Personal items that wouldn’t be missed. I had her textbook, Matron’s Lectures on Nursing, with her exotic winged loops in the margins. She’d written her name inside the cover. I used to tease her for her flamboyant writing with all its extravagant flourishes. It was my decision, she told me, if I chose to leave a dull mark on the world. My own handwriting was a rigid apology.

  When I moved into the Chelsea house, I wrapped the sewing box in a shawl and put it at the bottom of the wardrobe in my bedroom. I hadn’t sought it out for a while, but one morning I woke with a jolt from another dream about Aisling and had a desperate urge to go through the box and hold its treasured contents. The dream had upset me. I had felt her skin against my dry lips. I could smell her and, if I’d wanted to, I could have rolled over and kissed her shoulder, but when I woke I found I had forgotten her scent; the memory was missing. I was gripped by a terror that I had lost another part of her.

  I dashed out of bed and scoured my wardrobe for the box, but it wasn’t there. I found the shawl, which had been folded and was exactly where I expected it to be, but the box was gone. There was no possibility I could have mislaid it. I never lost or misplaced anything, and especially not that. I had intentionally, purposefully, put that box there, wrapped in the shawl. It contained my most precious mementoes, little pieces of Aisling.

  After what happened, most of Aisling’s things were scooped up and taken away, but I did manage to salvage her silver crucifix and her dark green kid gloves, both presents from me for the birthday and Christmas we had together. The thing I cared about most, though, was Aisling’s hairbrush, the one that still had her hair on it, the one I’d wound the strands of her hair around. I had not lost that sewing box. I did not lose things. It had been taken.

  I tore apart my room, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It had to be Mrs Wiggs. She was always nosing through my things, tampering, looking for any conceivable way to judge me. A second punch to the gut came when I remembered there was also the photograph of our graduation: Aisling in the row in front of me, Matron at the centre. Even Mabel was in there. I was devastated to think I’d lost these things for ever. I pored over every inch of that room, ripped out every item in every drawer, until I could no longer deny what was obvious: Mrs Wiggs had taken it.

  I flew downstairs. Trembling, barefoot, and still in my nightdress – the same one I’d been wearing for the last week – I shot into every room, opening and slamming every door, shaking the house like thunder. Eventually I found her on the narrow staircase that led to the pantry with the china cupboard. Sarah and Cook were at the large table in the kitchen behind her.

  ‘Where is it?’ I shouted.

  Mrs Wiggs looked startled. Then, as if she knew what was coming, she folded her arms across herself. Sarah, and Cook, whom I had very little to do with, both stared up at me open-mouthed, then when I glared straight at them, dropped their eyes to the table and carried on preparing dinner.

  ‘Mrs Lancaster, you are not making sense,’ said Mrs Wiggs.

  She peered at me as if I were filthy: a rat she had been ordered to keep alive. She cast a knowing glance at Sarah and Cook, as if seeking validation regarding a previous conversation. No doubt they all gossiped about me. I thought about hitting her. I wondered if she’d ever been slapped across the face. Instead, I demanded she come with me to my bedroom. Again, she looked at Cook and Sarah, wanting them to share in her ridiculing of this inconvenience. I marched up the stairs. She followed behind at a glacial pace, I’m sure to antagonise me, just as Dykes had when she’d dragged her screaming bucket through the hospital on the day Emma Smith bled out.

  When we entered my bedroom, she stood and gasped in shock at the horrific mess.

  ‘Good Lord, Mrs Lancaster, what have you done?’

  ‘There is a box missing from my wardrobe. It’s a small wooden sewing box – where is it?’

  She didn’t answer, only stood with her hands pressed to her cheeks, looking about and shaking her head, as if it were a battlefield strewn with dead bodies and bloodied limbs.

  ‘Mrs Wiggs!’ I shouted. ‘Answer me! It was here, in my wardrobe! Why would you steal it?’

  My hands shook, my whole body trembled with rage and I wanted to tear the hair from her head, wrench each strand out of that tightly wound bun and make her squeal. She just stood there, staring at me as if I were mad, while I shrieked at her, tossing aside clothes I’d already thrown onto the bed, hurling them now onto the floor and trampling on them, screeching that she’d done it all on purpose, that she was trying to trick me into thinking myself mad. She denied ever taking anything, denied it over and over. Her reaction made me doubt myself. She begged me to see what I had done to the room. I did look. I saw the mess and heard myself screaming. Then I became overcome with a paralysing fear: what if we did find the box and what if she saw that inside was a collection of worthless things, strands of hair collected in memory of a dead woman? I would seem deranged, and she would tell Thomas.

  ‘I’m going to send for a doctor,’ she said, and moved to leave.

  I chased her as she made for the door. Her face turned back towards me as I pulled on her shoulder. Then she fractured into a million little mosaic pieces that broke apart and fell away, and everything went black.

  *

  When I woke up, I was still in my bedroom, in bed. The room had been tidied and everything was cleared away. I couldn’t remember if the episode had really happened or if it had been another one of my bizarre dreams. I looked under the bed to see if Mabel was there, or the pigs, or Aisling, but there was only the floor.

  ‘It’s not under the bed, Mrs Lancaster. I’ve looked,’ said Mrs Wiggs.

  Her voice gave me a start. I hadn’t even realised she was in the room.

  ‘I’m afraid I do not know where this box is. It is obviously very precious to you, so I shall have the house turned upside down to find it, rest assured. I’ve asked Sarah to draw you a bath.’

  As she came into focus, I began to understand what she was talking about.

  ‘Perhaps after that we should call a doctor,’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  ‘Mrs Lancaster, you fainted, do you remember? In the middle of attacking me.’

  ‘I did not attack you, Mrs Wiggs. I was trying to stop you from leaving, that is all, and there’s no need for a doctor, I am not ill. I merely fainted.’

  The windows had been opened. It was freezing. I pulled the bedclothes around me. Mrs Wiggs came and
sat on the edge of the bed, trapping my legs under the covers. I’d never been in such close proximity to her before. I could smell her: a sickly combination of vinegar and cloves. If a nurse had been caught sitting on a patient’s bed like that, they’d have been fired. I could see delicate little thread veins on the white skin of her face; the lines around her eyes were like marks made on clay. She had the smallest ears: round with no earlobes at all. Everything about the woman was definite and sharpened to a point, as if she’d been whittled away by so much. But she must have been quite attractive once.

  ‘Mrs Lancaster, I hope you understand. I know I am not… I don’t set out to offend you, Mrs Lancaster, I really don’t… May I ask a question? And of course, please do not feel obliged to answer it.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When you fainted, I thought… Could it be what I think it could be?’

  ‘Please don’t tell Thomas, Mrs Wiggs – you know how disappointed he was last time.’

  I hadn’t planned to lie, but I was interested to see if she would act differently towards me. I didn’t think I was pregnant. I doubted anything could survive in my body the way I’d been treating it.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said.

  Though she smiled, it was hard to glean anything from her expression. She didn’t appear happy or excited, but then why would she? She was just a servant. A baby would only mean more work for Mrs Wiggs. She remained quiet, gazed past the walls of the room. A dark thought appeared to cast a shadow over her face before she swiftly whipped back on her servant’s mask.

  ‘Of course, I won’t say a word to Dr Lancaster. It is not my place, after all, and he will return shortly.’

  ‘You know where he is?’

  ‘I only know he was called away on business.’

  ‘He’s been called away?’

  ‘Yes. He has these other interests he pursues. I’m sure he’ll be home shortly.’

  ‘Mrs Wiggs, I must ask you something, and I want you to tell me the truth. I will not be angry.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Did you take the wooden sewing box from my wardrobe?’

  I fixed her dead in the eyes. If I could discern the tiniest flicker across her owl-like glare, I would know she was lying.

  ‘Mrs Lancaster, I promise you, I would never remove anything without your permission.’

  I didn’t discern a thing.

  26

  ‘Susannah, let me in.’

  Pale light lined the gaps around the curtains.

  ‘Susannah!’

  It was early morning. A yellow flash bounced off the brass door handle and came into focus. Someone was trying to turn it from the other side.

  I sat up in bed and stared at the glinting metal, wondering if I’d imagined the voice. A child appeared to be whimpering outside the door.

  ‘Susannah! I’m sorry…’

  It was Thomas.

  My stomach sank. He hadn’t fallen in the Thames and drowned, nor had he been murdered in a fight. He had in fact come back safe and sound and was now scratching at my bedroom door like a mangy old cat. Was he trying to trick me with his sobbing? If he thought I would feel sympathy for him, he was very much mistaken.

  I crept over and put my ear to the door. The sound came from low down; he was sitting on the floor on the landing. I crouched down so only inches of wood separated us. He was talking to himself, muttering. He sounded drunk and God knows what else. I considered ignoring him but knew that would only sustain the bad blood between us. Ultimately, he would win whatever fight I started.

  He fell through the door as soon as I opened it. Tumbled through in a sweaty mess and wearing neither a jacket nor a coat. Perhaps he’d part undressed on his way up the stairs – entirely possible in his state. As I stood looking down on him, he rolled onto his back like a beetle and tried to focus his glassy eyes on me. He grabbed the hem of my nightdress, balled the fabric into a tight fist, and with his other hand flailed around as if to steady himself.

  ‘Chapman… will you…? You have to help me…’ he said.

  I pulled him up onto his knees. I could smell as well as feel the cold sweat from his damp body. It was disgusting. I struggled to assist him onto the bed. His usually angular face was swollen and puffy, eyes red from crying. He clearly hadn’t shaved, and his whiskers looked as if they’d broken out of their meticulous borders days ago. When I asked him where he’d been for the past week and more, he wouldn’t say.

  I sat next to him on the edge of the bed and sighed. I would have to suffer his stupefied presence for the night, and no doubt his pig-like snoring too. I could smell urine. I touched his trousers and he’d wet himself. I yanked my hand away and then shook him by the shoulders, but it did nothing, he only stirred a little. I was reminded of my grandmother, how she used to soil herself near the very end. I would clean up after her and change the bedclothes only for her to do it all over again. Now I’d be doing the same for my young husband. Aisling would have found the humour in this somehow.

  ‘The woman in the attic,’ he mumbled. ‘She won’t leave me. Help me! Tell her to stop talking! It’s the talking… All the time…’ he said, or at least that’s what it sounded like.

  ‘What woman, Thomas?’ I whispered close to his ear. I put my hand, still wet with his urine, on his bare chest and shook him. ‘Tell me about the woman. Who is she?’

  For a moment I thought he might confess to the Whitechapel murders, if I could only get him to talk.

  He repeated those same words – and other words, equally unintelligible.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Do you mean women, Thomas? Do you mean the women? What happened to them? What did you do?’

  I gripped his head between my hands, but it still flopped about. His eyes were a sliver of white and his mouth was loose and dribbling. I tapped his cheek to stir him, but he just rolled over and started to snore.

  I pulled his legs straight, took his shoes off and deliberately dropped first one then the other to the floor, noisily, from a height, to try and wake him, but he was dead to the world. I thought about smothering him. I really did. Surely God had sent him to me in this state for me to do something? I could blame it on the alcohol, or whatever else he’d taken. He could have just stopped breathing, couldn’t he? Like so many people.

  But I didn’t. I simply unbuckled his damp, stinking trousers and tugged them off. As I folded them, a gold key fell out of the pocket and bounced across the floor. By the time it had settled flat, I knew what room it was for and what I was going to do with it.

  I made my way up the narrow steps to the attic, clutching the key so tight it hurt my hand. At the door I turned back and held up my candle, but all I could see was a few feet behind me. Anything could have been there in the dark watching me. The only noise was the sound of my breathing. The lock made a click and turned first time. I wrapped the key in the palm of my hand again and pushed open the door.

  I didn’t know what I was looking for. I imagined a knife, a stained bayonet, something incriminating and dripping with blood. I had never been in his precious attic and didn’t know where any of the furniture was. It was windowless and pitch black except for me, hovering in a yellow bubble with my candle. I could see bare floorboards beneath my blue feet – the temperature was arctic. I had no idea how Thomas could have spent so many hours holed up there without freezing to death. The air was thick and musty with dust and mouse droppings. From the little I could see, one half of the room was a huddled mass of old furniture: tables and chairs pushed together, the finials of a brass headboard, a scratched chest of drawers with missing handles, armchairs with broken backs and threadbare, moth-eaten upholstery.

  I inched towards a slightly better desk and chair, which was where, I assumed, he spent his hours ‘working’. I was only a few feet inside the door when I heard a rustle above my head. Something hit the floor beside me and I froze. My heart raced as I peered down. Fresh bird droppings! I looked up and listened. Pigeons were roosting in
the rafters and I could now see splatters of bird faeces all over the floor. Were there rats too? My bare feet curled at the thought and I shivered.

  I searched the desk, but all I found were a few metal instruments and some medical texts lying open. One page was plastered with dried bird droppings and another showed drawings of the female anatomy. None of this was remarkable or sinister for a doctor to have in his possession. My eyes drifted up again and this time I very nearly screamed. A pair of shining eyes were staring back at me – from the face of a stuffed owl on a wooden stand. I had to laugh, because the owl wore the exact same supercilious expression as Mrs Wiggs.

  I blew on it and as years of dust flew out of its feathers and back in my face I sneezed and waved the cloud away. Which was when I caught sight of the glass specimen jar on Thomas’s desk. It was clearly a recent arrival, because it was the only thing that was clean.

  The specimen was cream and pink in places, and solid, as if it had been carved out of yellow limestone. It was the size of a man’s fist and looked much like a peach that had been halved and had the stone removed. In the hollow, encircled by sediment and other matter, was what looked like a tiny foetus. It had an oversized head, barely formed arms that shone white like marble, unformed hands crossed over the front of its body, the faintest shape of a nose and ear, and a dark line where the eye would have been. A human foetus in a womb. I shuddered. I’d never seen anything like it before.