by Tony Pollard
Brunel, apparently unshaken by the prospect, luxuriated in the slow exhalation of a lungful of smoke. ‘Well, in that case, we had better make the first move.’ He winked knowingly at Ockham. ‘Show him.’
Florence and I were enjoying ourselves, leaning over the rail like children tossing sticks from a bridge. We watched as far below our fellow guests disgorged themselves from small boats. It was August and half an hour before I had stepped aboard Brunel’s great babe for the first time since my almost-fatal visit to Russell’s office. This time however I had taken great care with my wardrobe, brushing off my evening suit and investing in a new collar for the shirt I had no intention of removing before my return home. All of this was topped off by the first-class hat gifted by Brunel as replacement for my loss at the attempted launch. Florence too had pushed the boat out and stood resplendent in an emerald-green gown, a burgundy shawl draped low over her shoulders. For once, her hair was not hidden beneath a bonnet and, as if in competition with a gleaming ribbon of watered silk, reflected light like burnished ebony.
The flotilla of boats carried some of the most influential and best-dressed people in the city. They were gathered to mark the completion of the ship’s fitting out. Months of work had finally come to an end, at least officially – I did notice the odd labourer dash across the deck armed with tins of paint: no doubt they were still beavering away with last-minute jobs behind the scenes.
Brunel had handed me the invitation at our last meeting, and seeing his condition it came as no surprise that he would be too ill to attend himself. ‘Dr Phillips and companion,’ it said on the gold-embossed card. Of course, most respectable women would have baulked at the prospect of accompanying a confirmed bachelor unchaperoned. But Florence hadn’t given it a second thought. ‘Let them wag their fat tongues,’ she had laughed. ‘We are doctor and nurse – what more natural pairing could there be? And in any case, we shall be the most handsome couple there.’
We could barely contain our mirth as we watched our fellow guests struggle to negotiate the gap between their small boats and the boarding steps – cruel of us, I know, but it was not every day we got to see the movers and shakers stumbling about like hapless drunkards trying to step from a moving cab.
‘Come on, Florence. If one of them falls in we will only have to attend once they’re fished out. Why don’t we take a look inside?’
‘George, you could at least pretend to be a gentleman,’ she cried, before picking up her skirts and hurrying to catch up. She took hold of my arm just in time to walk through a door held open by a white-gloved porter, who raised an eyebrow at our high-spirited behaviour. Florence had also noticed his reaction. ‘We must behave, George,’ she said sternly as we made our way down the carpeted staircase. ‘Remember, I am keen to find more patrons tonight.’
How could I forget? She had talked of little else since I had first asked her to accompany me. The canny Miss Nightingale knew a golden opportunity when it landed in her lap. The new hospital still required political support, and as members from both Houses of Parliament would be present tonight she had made it her mission to charm as many as possible into supporting her enterprise. I also had an ulterior motive for coming along, as tonight Ockham and myself were to put into action the plan we had agreed with Brunel.
Descending two flights of stairs, we arrived at a set of double doors. The master of ceremonies carried a long stick, the silver head of which traced wide circles in the air as he approached us with the swagger of a dandy from a bygone age.
A silver tray flashed as he pulled it like a concealed knife from behind his back. ‘Your invitation, please, sir.’
I dropped the card on to the tray. ‘Good evening, Dr Phillips,’ he said after reading it.
‘And to you,’ I replied. ‘This is…’
‘It is very good to see you, Miss Nightingale,’ interrupted the man, rounding off his enthusiastic greeting with a bow. Florence smiled at me, looking a little embarrassed at her own celebrity.
After taking my coat the man turned on his heels and swaggered through the door, where at the top of a short flight of stairs he tapped the floor three times with his stick. ‘Dr George Phillips and Miss Florence Nightingale,’ he announced to the room, which did not yet appear to contain many people.
‘I think we are unfashionably early,’ quipped Florence as she hooked her arm around mine and marched us in. The great saloon was a vast hall, bedecked with rows of cast-iron pillars, and chandeliers suspended from the high ceiling. The sense of space was enhanced by polished mirrors set into a pair of centrally positioned octagonal booths located at opposing ends of the long room. I first took them to be stairwells but later learned they were the housings for two of the tower-like funnels as they passed up from the bowels of the ship to the deck above us.
‘Oh, George!’ exclaimed Florence. ‘Are we on a ship or in a palace?’
Walking into one of the arcades running down the side of the hall, we looked up to see a balcony running its entire length. A series of skylights opened up on to the deck, the ceiling here being at least twice as high as that under which we had entered. The opulence was almost overwhelming, with every exposure of metal either gilded or painted blue and red, the walls covered with gold cloth and crimson drapes. It was hard to believe that this was just one of five saloons on the ship. This was no mere palace, I thought, it was a floating city.
Still few in number, our fellow guests stood chatting in small clusters or had taken seats on the lushly upholstered settees and chairs distributed throughout the saloon. But the master of ceremonies’ announcements were now coming thick and fast as people began to arrive in a steady stream. ‘Lord and Lady Wilmot,’ and then a moment or so later, ‘The Right Honourable William Llewellyn,’ and so it went on as the great and the good continued to gather.
I stopped a waiter and picked a couple of glasses of champagne from his tray, handing one of them to Florence. ‘We may as well have that long-overdue drink.’
‘To the new hospital,’ said Florence, raising her glass and clinking it gently against mine.
‘To the new hospital,’ I happily repeated.
We stood for a while and sipped champagne, continuing to admire our surroundings. All of a sudden Florence’s face pinched as though the champagne had turned to vinegar in her mouth. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she shrugged. ‘Just the last name to be called.’
‘Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. What was it?’
‘Benjamin Hawes.’
‘You know him?’ I asked, intrigued by her reaction.
‘He was in the Cabinet when I was in the Crimea,’ she said, her voice as bitter as her expression. ‘An old friend of Mr Brunel’s, I believe.’
‘Not your favourite person?’
‘That man did everything he could to have me discredited. He could not bring himself to deal with a woman as an equal and so blocked every request I made to the War Department, be it for improved hospitals, more food for patients or even warm clothes.’
‘I would never have thought him capable of such behaviour. He has never been anything but friendly to me.’
Florence’s eyes hardened, as though for a moment turned to the same crystal she held in her hand. ‘He would be, wouldn’t he? You’re a man.’ When I offered no comment on the accuracy of this observation she continued with her character assassination. ‘The man was a dictator, an autocrat, irresponsible to Parliament and definitely not to be trusted! After months of ignoring my pleas he finally commissioned Mr Brunel to design a new field hospital but deliberately kept me away from the project.’
‘You mean he tried to keep you away from the project,’ I said, recalling what Brunel had told me.
To my relief her mouth relaxed into a smile. ‘I did have a few suggestions to make on the matter and so went to Mr Brunel directly.’
‘I assume then, that you won’t be seeking support for the new hospital from that quarter?’
‘
I would rather set up a nursing school in the engine room of this ship than speak another word to that man.’
Another name was announced. ‘Who is Viscount Ockham?’ she asked as I turned towards the door.
‘A friend, only he doesn’t usually go to the trouble of using his full name.’ To call him a friend was perhaps an exaggeration but since that dreadful night at the windmill we had fallen into an uneasy alliance, which tonight would be put to the test as we tried to free ourselves once and for all from the attentions of those who, whatever the cost, sought to possess the mechanical heart.
It did not take him long to find us. He looked every inch the aristocrat, dressed in full evening attire and without a speck of oil to be seen anywhere on his face or hands. But he was clearly ill at ease. ‘I’d rather be down below eating with the rest of the lads,’ he grumbled when the dinner bell finally rang.
We were ushered towards the stairs and climbed to the upper saloon, where people were being seated at two long tables. The mezzanine, though much narrower, was very similar in appearance to the main saloon, with the funnels once again shielded behind mirror-clad cabinets. Although there seemed to be some prearrangement of places towards the head of our table the remaining seats were allocated on a first-come-first-served basis, which was convenient as it allowed the three of us to sit together.
The food was adequate but not quite up to the high standard set by our surroundings, an unavoidable result, no doubt, of having to cater for so many people at the same time. I made small talk with the gentleman next to me, who was, he informed me, the Member of Parliament for Stratford. Florence talked cheerfully to people seated on both sides of the table. She played them skilfully, entertaining with anecdotes about her experiences in the Crimea before bringing the conversation round to the urgent need for a teaching hospital. Ockham, seated opposite me, kept his head down and got on with the business of eating.
Whitworth was sitting just half a dozen people away from me, and as we were waiting to be seated I had spotted Perry taking his place on the far table. Then, over the top of my glass I noticed Brodie on the same table as him. Ockham had referred to my superior during our confrontation in the windmill and when I later asked him about his involvement in the affair he explained that he and Brunel had invited the surgeon to collaborate in their work on the mechanical heart, especially with regard to its practical application. He had refused point blank to have anything to do with the project, dismissing it as a fool’s errand which would destroy his reputation. To Ockham’s dismay Brunel himself had decided not to proceed with any form of experimentation, though he had been happy to go ahead and build the device. ‘It was nothing more than a diversion for him,’ he said bitterly. The engineer, it transpired, had been entirely ignorant of Ockham’s desire to resurrect his mother and so knew nothing of his nocturnal activities in the windmill. Our conversation, which had taken place after leaving the door man’s body in Clare’s capable hands, had shed light on various matters but perhaps most importantly had explained why Brodie had been so keen to keep me away from Brunel, and by association also Ockham. It now appeared that the old man was not merely jealous of his clients, as Brunel had suggested, but concerned about my reputation and well-being should I become embroiled in the scheme. After all, had he not made a promise to my father to look after me?
Ockham had also seen fit to elucidate one further aspect of his role in the affair of the heart. Not long after Mary Shelley’s celebrated book was published an event took place that was to go on and have an equally strong influence on the young man. In late 1813, immediately following his execution for murder, the lifeless corpse of a man called Matthew Clydesdale was deposited on the table of the anatomist Dr Andrew Ure in the dissection theatre of Glasgow University. Nothing unusual there, I thought, having dissected numerous executed criminals myself. What was different, however, was that Ure did not intend to dissect the corpse but to bring it back to life! The experiment, according to Ockham, had involved passing electricity, via rods attached to the man’s heels and the spine, through the dead tissue in an attempt to reanimate the body, or ‘galvanize it back into life’ as he put it.
Long after the event, one witness claimed that the corpse had indeed returned to life, and then, apparently eager to avenge the recent snuffing of its existence, proceeded to put its hands around the throat of the good doctor; an ungrateful Lazarus indeed. Ure’s neck was only released when one of his quick-thinking assistants took up a scalpel and cut Clydesdale’s throat, killing him for the second time that day.
Surely, I had insisted, Ockham did not believe this. Almost to my surprise he shook his head. No, he told me, he had spoken to others who had been there, and although it seemed that the shock of electricity had caused the body to flinch and limbs to extend violently, so much so that at least one member of the audience fainted at the fright of it, at no point did life return to the corpse.
Far from dissuading him from pursuing his ambitions, the failure of electricity had only served to stoke Ockham’s confidence in the use of mechanical means, though for a time he had considered inviting Michael Faraday, the celebrated advocate of electricity (and, as I recalled from the minutes, one-time guest of the Lazarus Club) to repeat the experiments.
What Brodie might have thought of Ure’s experiment was uncertain but there could be little doubt that he was currently being bored to tears by the woman sitting next to him, who was talking incessantly while he tried to concentrate on his meal. Her monologue was interrupted by the sound of a knife being repeatedly tapped against a glass after which a man near the head of our table rose to his feet. It was Russell.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he boomed. ‘It gives me great pleasure to see you here tonight in the spectacular grand saloon of the Great Eastern. Before I go any further I would like to invite the chairman of the Great Steam Ship Company to say a few words.’
Russell sat down and was replaced by the man sitting opposite him. What followed was a vote of thanks to Russell for the hard work he had put into the construction of the ship. ‘Other than Mr Russell, no other man in the kingdom could have fitted the vessel out in the same time and there were not a few who believed the task too much even for his energies.’
There was not a single mention of Brunel and his contribution to the work. An outburst of enthusiastic applause accompanied the chairman’s return to his seat, at which point Russell stood up again. After the praise heaped upon him the tall Scotsman, to his credit, took it upon himself to redirect some of it towards his absent partner in the project.
‘It is a source of great regret that Mr Brunel cannot be with us tonight and I am sure you will all join with me in wishing him a speedy recovery from his present illness. It obviously goes without saying that without his genius none of us would be sitting here tonight and so I would like you all to raise your glasses to the great engineer.’ Russell picked up his glass and everyone followed suit. ‘To Mr Brunel,’ he chimed, the toast instantly returned by nearly two hundred voices.
Once dinner was finished, rather than have the ladies retire and leave the gentlemen to enjoy their port and cigars it was the gentlemen who left, going back downstairs while the women remained at table. Taking their leave, the men dropped their napkins and made their way along the balcony to the stairs. Conversations commenced over dinner were continued in transit, but in the saloon many people took the opportunity to seek out fresh company. Ockham and I stood at the foot of the stairs for a while and watched as the crowd shook itself out into smaller groups. After a minute or two he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed towards the funnel cabinet closest to the entrance.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Babbage and Hawes.’
‘And there is Sir Benjamin,’ I observed, seeing Brodie standing alone. ‘Come on, we’ll collect him on the way.’
‘We need Russell,’ noted Ockham as we made our way towards Brodie.
‘Don’t worry, he’ll come to us.’
‘I hope so.’
&n
bsp; ‘Sir Benjamin, good evening. I trust you enjoyed your dinner?’
Brodie looked quite drained. ‘I did not, sir. The woman next to me did not let up with her chatter even when her mouth was full of food. I made the mistake of telling her I was a doctor, after which she spent the next hour regaling me with her various ailments. I was very close to prescribing hemlock, let me tell you.’
It was difficult not to feel some sympathy for him, especially as I had more than once suffered a similar fate with Darwin. ‘I am sorry to hear that. Won’t you join us? We spotted a couple of our old friends over there.’
‘Lead on, gentlemen.’
There was a flurry of handshaking as our little group came together. The conversation was free and easy but Ockham and I kept a wary eye out for any other members of our circle, and for Russell in particular. ‘Here comes Bazalgette,’ said Ockham. With his arrival the conversation immediately turned to the new sewer system, which according to our burrowing colleague was going very well.
Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, the general mood of excitement no doubt inspired by our unusual surroundings. But then I noticed that Brodie, who had previously seemed to be recovering from his trial by dinner, had dropped his jaw in an unmistakable expression of horror.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Florence, who had refused to be left behind with the other members of her sex. Her disregard for convention did not worry me one iota, but I did feel a little awkward at her finding me in the company of the man for whom she had earlier expressed open contempt. Florence’s eyes narrowed when she realized Hawes was among us, and I am sure that if she had not felt it would be construed as a sign of weakness she would gladly have walked away without saying another word.
However, it was Hawes himself who denied any chance of escape, as the movement of his jaw served to hold her as effectively as any gin trap. ‘Miss Nightingale,’ he said. ‘It must be four, no, more like five years since our paths last crossed.’ There was no warmth in his voice; the man was simply making a statement of fact.
