by Giles Ekins
The gap at the head of the grille, where the vertical bars reached up into the curve of the arch was about six inches. The bars were sharpened into a spike. If the gap at the bottom of the grill was the same – six inches – he was trapped. He could shout and wave at passing boats perhaps, but with the grille set so far back into the tunnel, and the limited size of the tunnel opening, no more than two feet high at the tallest point of the arch, it was unlikely he would be seen.
Using the bars of the grille like a ladder, Collingwood climbed down as far as he could, took a deep breath and pulled himself deeper into the freezing waters, searching with his feet for the bottom of the bars. Wriggling his foot around beneath the bars he felt a sudden stabbing pain as his ankle snagged on the pointed end of a bar. He rose to the surface again, gasping for breath. This time he duck dived headfirst, pulling himself down hand over hand down the length of the barrier, peering through the thick murk of the river, unable to see beyond the length of his arms. The bars came within six inches of the tunnel deck, but as Collingwood felt around one of the brick pavers from the tunnel floor slid away from his hands and fell away into the river. He surfaced again, gasping for breath as he clung to the bars, trying to assess what he had discovered.
It seemed as though the scour of the river tide and the action of the wash from passing vessels had eroded away the floor of the tunnel, eating away at the bedding of the paving bricks so that over time they had become loose, eventually sliding away into the depths of the river. If he could remove a few more bricks and scour away at the floor beneath he might be able to open up a gap sufficient for him to wriggle through.
Greatly encouraged, he dived down once again, finding the many of the pavers were already loose. He pushed them away or pulled them aside. On his next dive, Collingwood used one of the bricks to hammer and scrape away at the loose mortar that the pavers had been bedded onto, eventually creating a gap beneath the grille of about fourteen or fifteen inches at the deepest point. He tried to bend the bars to give him even more space, but they held firm, unyielding.
The moment of truth, he whispered as he clung to the bars, nerving himself to make the dive beneath the grille. He was chilled to the bone, exhausted to the point of collapse, freedom was so close – and yet so very far away. His heart pounded with tension, terrified of becoming trapped beneath the spikes and drowning. Of all the deaths he could imagine, drowning like a rat in a drainpipe was amongst the most fearful. Clothes, he thought, my clothes could easily snag upon the spikes. Once caught up on the spikes he would never be able to free himself. Thankful of a reason to delay the final plunge he swam back to shallower water and staggered out into the tunnel above the water line. Hurriedly he stripped of his wet clothing, shivering as the cold air swirled around his naked flesh, sending goose bumps rattling across his body in tidal waves.
He stripped completely, even removing his long johns and vest, certain that any clothing would snag on the spikes. He rolled on his wet clothing up into a ball and wrapped them tightly inside his jacket. He then crawled and swam back to the grille and pushed the ball of clothes through the gap between the bars and fastened them as high as he could above the water with his leather belt, tugging at it to make sure it was secure.
He closed his eyes, breathing heavily, and swam back a distance to give himself an angle as he dived for the bottom of the grille. His feet touched the tunnel floor. He was standing as deep as he could, the dirty waters of the river sloshing about his chin as he began to hyperventilate, recalling the pearl divers he had seen in the Persian Gulf when journeying back from the Crimean War. The divers would take a series of deep breaths to oxygenate their blood supply as much as possible, extending their capacity to remain underwater, before taking a heavy stone into their arms and plunging to the bottom of the clear warm waters of the Gulf to search for pearls in the rich oyster beds.
His heart thudding with tension, his stomach knotted tight, Collingwood fully emptied his lungs, forcing out every ounce of oxygen before taking one long deep breath, sucking in the foetid air until he thought his chest would burst. He leaned back and dived down to the floor of the tunnel, his arms outstretched before him, kicking powerfully with his legs. His groping hands found the spikes and the fearfully narrow gap beneath. He wriggled his way part through, his shoulders scraping to each side of the gap, slightly holding him back. Kicking as powerfully as he could, he forced himself further through the gap, but the delay had slowed his momentum and his natural buoyancy began to lift him up against the spikes.
He could feel them digging into his back as he tried to wriggle on, the sudden fierce scrape against his flesh causing him to scream in silence, involuntarily expelling precious oxygen. Held fast now, his panic began to rise, threatening to overwhelm him as more precious air was lost. He felt himself growing fainter, he was drowning, all air gone, foul river water in his mouth. He kicked on again, a last despairing surge, the cruel spikes ripped savagely at his back and buttocks, raking at his thighs, but he was pushing through. Briefly a spike hooked at his ankle in one last embrace, another thrust; more screaming pain as his flesh shredded on the spike and he was through, reaching for the free air above.
Gasping and retching he burst out through the surface, coughing and heaving, panting, dragging in precious air into his aching lungs. He clung to the grille again, clung to it as though it were a life jacket, hooking his arms tightly around the frame to prevent himself from sliding back into the gelid embrace of the Thames. He knew he would never have the strength to rise again should he sink.
His heart still pounded, he retched and coughed up the foul tasting river water, his lungs burned as though filled with toxic gas, the pain from the deep incised scrapes down his back temporarily numbed by the cold. No matter, he was free.
He started to reach for his clothes – only to find them no longer there, his belt hung in forlorn solitude, somehow the sodden clothes had worked free; perhaps the wash from a passing vessel had dislodged them. Or his own frantic thrashing as he reached the surface had knocked them free. He frantically looked around, there, some fifty yards or so downstream, he could see a bundle of floating cloth, far too far away for him to reach in his exhausted state.
He laughed bitterly to himself, he was as naked as the day he had been born, not even a pair of socks. He was also desperately cold, hypothermia eating through his bones and flesh like acid, he had to get out of the freezing waters and into warmth – or else he would die as surely as if he were still entombed within the crypt of Blackwater House.
Slowly he swam out from under the overhang of the embankment into which the tunnel descended. The stonewalls of the embankment were slimy and difficult to grasp, all he could do was float and paddle downstream, hopeful he would reach some stairs or be able to attract the attention of a passing boat. But night had fallen, darkening about him like a shroud. Heavy rain spattered across the surface of the river like shotgun pellets.
Thin sparks of light from across the river shivered across the black waters of the Thames. The gas lamps on the embankment above were lit but cast little light into the heavy shadow of the riverbank. Clinging close to the wall he eased on downstream. Ahead of him, he could now see the darkened outline of a bridge under construction. It must be the new bridge by Cheney Walk – to be called Battersea Bridge. A rusting steel pontoon pushed out into the stream like a tethered corpse, and he was able to wriggle himself, not without difficulty, onto the dripping deck. He lay exhausted on the chill steel, the effort of hauling himself from the water draining what little strength he had left.
Groggily he eventually got to his feet and staggered across the slippery steel deck to where a flight of steps, buried deep in the shadow of the new bridge works led to the street above. Before crawling up the steps he looked briefly about, looking for something to cover himself and found a thin scrap of dirty sacking, windblown into a corner, the remnants of a bag of cement. Holding it about his genitals like a shrivelled autumn fig leaf, he slowly cra
wled and slithered his way up to street level. The rain pounded down in ever-heavier fury, but as he could hardly be any wetter or colder, it made little difference. Except that is unless he got to warmth and shelter very soon he was going to die from hypothermia – freed from the crypt or not.
The street was deserted, which because of his naked state, he was profoundly grateful –but he still had to get to warmth and shelter. He was shivering uncontrollably and the temptation to lie down and go to sleep almost irresistible, but he forced himself to keep going, staggering along the street like a drunkard trying to find his way home. He felt disorientated, he knew where he was, he thought, but he could not find his bearings, he staggered first one way, and then back the other, tearing at imaginary clothes as the symptomatic confusion of hypothermia began to take hold. The sudden urge to urinate swept over him and unable to control himself further he ducked into the shadow of a tree. The stream of acrid smelling urine was prolific, considering how little water he had drunk over the past days, he could not believe the amount of water he was passing. The stream seemed endless, burning through his penis like hot caustic soda.2 At last, he finished and he staggered on, with little sense of direction now. Fatigue was almost overwhelming; the urge to simply lie down and sleep was so seductive. Seductively fatal.
Suddenly he was aware of the clatter of iron horseshoes on cobbles and saw distant coach lights heading towards him. ‘If it is a hansom cab,’ he will hail it, but it was not – a coach and four clattered past and Collingwood hid behind an elm tree until it had passed, so confused he did not realise that the coach might well have stopped for him and taken him to safety.
Another ringing echo of horse’s hooves – this time it was a hansom cab! As it approaches him, Collingwood stepped out from behind his tree to flag it down. The hansom slows, and then the cabby sees a dishevelled naked man waving wildly, his pallid white flesh ghostly in the dim sheen of gaslight. With a curse of panic, he flicks his whip, reins, and hurries the cab on past – that looked like trouble he could well do without, for all he knew the wild eyed creature could be a dangerous lunatic escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane.
Another cab approaches from the other direction. As it nears, Collingwood again steps out, covering himself as best he can, his movements slower, much less threatening. The cab pulls up before him, the cabby wary and suspicious, his whip raised if Collingwood should appear threatening.
‘Please,’ Collingwood croaked, barely above a whisper, suddenly lucid. ‘I’ve been attacked. Robbed. My clothing taken.’
‘Gave me a bit of a start there, my friend, I thought you was the Ghost of Christmas Past. Where’d you be wanting to go?’
‘St John’s Wood. Fletcher Crescent, number 22A.’
The cabbie considered briefly; it was a good safe address, a quality address. ‘Can you pay, when we get there?’
Collingwood nodded, yes.
‘Best be getting aboard, sir, afore you get wet.’ He chuckled to himself. Slowly Collingwood climbed into the cab, the effort to do almost too much. He shivered and shook as though afflicted with the ague, his heart quivering violently. ‘Just a minute, sir,’ and the cab lurched as the cabbie dismounted from his high perch. ‘Here sir,’ he said, passing Collingwood a rough textured blanket, heavily redolent with the stink of horse.’ It’s just the bit a blanket I uses to cover Barney up wiv, Barney’s the horse, sir, but it’ll get the chill off for the moment ‘til we gets you home and dry. Attacked you say, you ought to be reporting that the police. Not that’ll they’ll do much, the idle sods.’ The cab lurched again as the cabbie swung himself up onto his seat.
Shivering in his misery, Collingwood took no note of his journey, bitter cold was eating through him, and he felt as though every ounce of his flesh were numb with cold that his very bones had turned to ice. His teeth chattered so hard his jaw ached with the effort, he had bitten his tongue following one violent outburst of chattering and he had to feeling left in his feet. For all he could tell his feet might have amputated. He wrapped his arms about him, huddling into the horse blanket, thankful for even that small shred of comfort. The rain still battered down, bouncing off the hood of the coach in a demented spattering dance. For several minutes, he could not understand where he was or where he was going, why he was in the cab at all. He swam in and out of lucidity, perilously close the hypothermia induced dementia.
‘Here we go, sir, ’ome at last. You get yourself inside now and get sat by the fire, this cold and rain can rightly get through to the bones, and don’t I know so, sitting up here day and night in all sorts of weather. Nice warm fire and spot or two of brandy’ll soon put you to rights.’
‘Please,’ Collingwood looked around in confusion, before coherence briefly reappeared. Swallowing hard against the raw pain in his throat, he was finally able to hoarsely whisper. ‘Can you please, go the door, get Jenkins, my butler, and Maitland the footman to come and carry me? Best they bring a coat or cloak to cover me.’
‘Aye, right enough it is.’
As it was, Jenkins the butler thought it rather beneath his dignity to carry a naked man through the front door and it was left to the cabby and Maitland to lift Collingwood from the cab and carry him indoors.
‘Jenkins, be so good as to pay this good man, give him a good five guineas or more as a consideration.’ Collingwood gasped; the last conscious effort he could make before he tumbled to the floor in an exhausted blackout on the floor of the hallway.
‘Papa! Papa!’ cried his daughter Lucy, who having heard the commotion came rushing down the stairs. She rushed to his side and cradled his sopping head to her lap, horrified at the haggard state he in, barely breathing, his lips blue and cold. His skin was an angry red in colour, like sunburn, spattered with blebs of fluid, like tiny maggots under the surface. His skin so cold it was like that of a plucked chicken taken from an icebox. His eyes were swollen and puffy, reduced to blood red slits.
Jenkins hovered around, wringing his hands, unsure what to do, nothing in his years as a butler to gentlefolk had ever equipped him for this sort of situation. Lucy lifted her father’s brittle-cold hand and pressed it to her lips, the tears streaming down her face.
‘He’s so cold,’ she whispered, ‘Cold as death.’ She looked up at the assembled servants gathered about their stricken master. Jenkins the butler dithering with indecision, Maitland the footman, tense and eager as a retriever dog but unable to act without instructions from Jenkins, Mrs. Cope the housekeeper and cook, Mary and Tillie, the parlour maids. Collingwood did not keep a large establishment, a widower, he rarely entertained and the servants he employed mostly to cater to the needs of the seventeen, soon to be eighteen year old Lucy. Her mother had died many years ago, so long ago that Lucy could barely recall the look of her face or the sound of her voice, her father all that she now had.
Lucy straightened up and took charge. She knew she had to raise her father’s body temperature but instinctively knew that it was dangerous to raise it too quickly.
‘Mrs Cope, would you make up lots and lots of strong hot tea, the breakfast tea will be best. With plenty of sugar.’
‘A sip or two of brandy’ll be more use than tea’ said Jenkins, suddenly unwilling to let Lucy take charge, ‘I’ll fetch the cognac and a snifter.’
‘No, Jenkins,’ Lucy answered firmly, ‘Brandy is not at all good in this situation.’ Quite how she knew that alcohol was dangerous in such circumstances, she could not say, only knowing with a deep conviction that it was so.
‘Beg pardon Miss Lucy, but I believe I know best.’
‘I do not intend to sit here arguing Jenkins, my Father is in danger and you will do exactly as I say or else you had better start seeking another position. Mrs Cope, where is the tea?’
‘Won’t be a moment, Miss Lucy.’
‘Mary?’
‘Yes Miss?’
‘Heat the bed warmer and place it in the master’s bed.’ ‘Yes Miss?’
‘Go upstairs and fin
d as many blankets and covers that you can find, from the linen cupboard in the Master’s room, from my room, from anywhere.’
‘Yes Miss.’
‘Maitland and Jenkins carry my Father upstairs and lay him on my bed.’
Jenkins thought about complaining or arguing, saw the look on Lucy’s face and thought better of it. Muttering to himself about the indignity of the task, he took his master legs and helped the footman get him upstairs. Lucy’s room was the warmest. They laid Collingwood onto her bed and covered him with every blanket, cover cloak, coat that Tillie could find. Maitland meanwhile was dispatched to fetch the family doctor, Doctor Joseph Knott-Dyson. As soon as Collingwood’s own bed had been warmed, Jenkins, Lucy and the two parlour maids carried him and laid him between the warm bedclothes, Lucy, Tillie and Mary trying hard not to notice the nakedness of him. Jenkins mumbled something about the fact that the sheets would get dirty before a look from Mrs Cope silenced him. Mrs Cope then scurried up to her room in the servant’s quarters and returned with a red woollen nightcap, resplendent with yellow tassels, which she solemnly placed on Collingwood’s head to prevent further heat loss. Then she helped Lucy dribble hot tea into Collingwood’s mouth, but most of went down his front.
‘I know miss,’ Mrs Cope cried and scurried of below stairs to return with a copper funnel that she used for pouring liquids into kilner jars or other containers. ‘It is clean miss, but I rinsed it out in any case with boiling water.’
