Searcher

by T J Alexander

  There is a faint gleam of reflected light deep within the recesses of the wall; it vanishes, and then is there again. She cannot tear her gaze away from that point in the wall. If she watches very intently, she sees the gleam again. Light is shining on a smooth, moist surface, a black surface that moves even as she watches it. It darts away into invisibility and then furtively reappears – a point of light focused in her direction. A gelatinous gleam of something that is alive.

  There is an eye on the other side of the crack, staring back at her: a dark eye staring out of the wall, like the eye of a frightened horse.

  Sarah turns her back to the cracked wall, and lies hunched over, arms wrapped around her knees. She can hear the sound of her own breathing, rasping and ragged. She listens for other sounds. No sounds come; but the eye is still there. It feels closer than ever. Thou, God, seest me. She can sense the disembodied eye’s unblinking gaze boring into the back of her head. She tries to turn and look again at the crack, but she cannot do it. The eye watches her. It knows her thoughts. But this is not the eye of God.

  This is the eye of mad Uncle Jonah, looking into the darkest corner of her soul …

  She hears the sounds of banging and the rattling and screaming before she knows that it is she who is making them. Her hands burn with pain as she hammers at the door of her cell.

  ‘Let me out! Let me out! It’s watching me!’

  Footsteps pound down the flagstones outside. The door bursts open, and she is seized and muffled by a great calloused hand that is clamped over her mouth. Two warders pinion her arms to her sides while a third stands just outside the door watching the struggle with an expression of faint amusement on his face.

  ‘In God’s name, what’s this racket?’ yells the man whose hand is covering her mouth. ‘What’s got into you, Sarah?’

  She struggles and scratches, wrenching one arm free.

  ‘The eye!’ she cries into the stifling hand. ‘The eye.’

  She waves her free arm towards the crack in the wall.

  ‘Criminy,’ exclaims the other warder who holds her, ‘just look at that, will you!’

  ‘It’s watching,’ cries Sarah. Her throat is so tight that she cannot breathe.

  ‘No-one’s watching you, you madwoman. It’s just this bloody building, cracking apart. They should never have built it on a bloody swamp. Calm down, will you.’

  As they drag her back towards the mattress, towards the crack and the all-seeing eye, she summons all her strength to break away, sinking her teeth into a fold of hard skin on the hand that covers her mouth. Her captor yells and clouts her across one ear.

  ‘Jesus Christ, she may be nothing but skin and bone, but she fights like a cat,’ he says.

  ‘All right, Sarah. We’ll take you to another cell,’ says the warder who still stands outside the door. He speaks in a perfectly calm, almost indifferent, voice. ‘No cracks in the wall. No eyes watching you. Bring her down to B Ward.’

  Still struggling and crying, though she no longer quite knows why, Sarah is pulled and pushed along the corridors and down spiral staircases until she finds herself suddenly flung through a doorway into the windowless space beyond. A door clangs shut, and she is alone, in complete silence and utter, impenetrable darkness.

  They are right. There is no watching eye here. Here there is nothing except a faint musty smell. No sounds. No air. Nothing but blackness. The darkness is so total that it seems to press in upon her from without. She closes her eyes to prevent the dense furry dark from seeping into her soul, and remembers the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale. Is the darkness inside a whale as black as this, she wonders, or is it veined with red? The ground beneath her is flagged stone, slightly gritty. When she cautiously reaches out a hand, she can feel nothing, above, below or in front of her.

  Because she can see and feel nothing, she is afraid to move, uncertain what might lie around her. She might be sitting on the very edge of a precipice. The slightest movement to right or left might plunge her into the abyss. The gnawing in her stomach has become overwhelming, like a rat biting through her gut. She sinks her head on her knees, and sits quite still, while long dark minutes, or hours or maybe days go by.

  She thinks that she is back in the darkness of childhood, in the bed where she slept with her two sisters, with the boys tossing and snoring in their sleep on their mattress beneath the shuttered window. Soon it will be dawn, and her mother will come in and fling open the shutters with a cry of ‘Rouse yourselves, sleepy-heads!’ Her sisters will be up first, hurrying to the kitchen to fill their bowls with porridge, but Sarah will burrow down under the counterpane, savouring the lingering warmth of the bed a little longer …

  And then she is no longer a child but an adult, on the ship with Ned. She is a mother with an infant in her arms. The wind blows off the flat shore across the deck of the ship, which lies at anchor near the mouth of the river. The other women on the ship want to peer at the baby and stroke its soft little head, but she and Ned slip away from them, down the companionway into the dark of the lower deck, where Ned pins her against the door of his cabin and begins to nuzzle at her neck, until she pushes him away, laughing fondly. ‘You great fool,’ she says, ‘you can’t do that here.’ And when Ned ignores her protests she pushes a little more firmly, saying, ‘Watch out, Father Ned, you’ll stifle poor baby!’ But the babe in her arms sleeps on unawares, while Ned places his hands on Sarah’s shoulders and pulls her towards him …

  Maybe she has slept and been wakened by the sound, or maybe she has been just sitting in the darkness for days, and it is the sound that has made her lift her head from her knees. It is coming from quite close by, a sound that she has not heard for so long that it takes her a moment to recognize what it is.

  A woman singing.

  The voice is soft; quite deep, but unmistakably a woman’s voice. The tune is one she has never heard before. It is a sad and lilting thing, soaring and falling. The unseen woman sings softly but persistently. She finishes her song, and then begins it all over again. At first Sarah cannot make out the words, but as the woman sings a second and then a third time, they begin to take shape in her mind. ‘Sleep, baby mine,’ the woman is singing.

  Sarah wants to join the singing, but she does not know the song. She passes her tongue over her dry cracked lips, and tries to swallow, but her throat seems half closed.

  The pain in her stomach is like the pain of childbirth. Something is pressing against her from within, trying to break out of her body.

  ‘Sleep, baby mine,’ sings the invisible woman in the darkness, ‘not long thou’lt have a mother, to lull thee fondly in her arms to rest …’

  Then the voice in the darkness falls silent. Sarah reaches down into her memory for a song of her own. Her throat is so dry that she cannot believe that it will produce a sound, and yet somehow a husky, faint sound comes out of her mouth. She sits perfectly still in the dark, singing. It is the only song that comes to mind. Uncle Jonah used to sing it to her, in the days before he was knocked down by the post-chaise.

  In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty,

  I once met a maid called sweet Molly Malone,

  And she wheeled her wheelbarrow,

  Through streets broad and narrow,

  Singing Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh!

  The woman in the adjoining cell has fallen silent, but Sarah can sense that she is listening to every note.

  She died of a fever, and no-one could save her (sings Sarah)

  And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.

  Now her ghost wheels a barrow, through streets broad and narrow,

  Crying Cockles and Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh!’

  When the last note dies away, there is silence from the other side of the cell wall, and then softly, the other woman begins again, singing the same song as before.

  Sleep, baby mine – to-morrow I must leave thee,

  And I would snatch an interval of rest.

  S
leep these last moments, ere the laws bereave thee,

  For never more thou’lt press a mother’s breast.

  The soft deep voice of the woman – a woman she will never see – is still singing its endless lullaby when Sarah slumps to one side, and quietly topples over into the bottomless abyss of darkness.

  Deliverance

  It is the kindness that takes her by surprise. She lies in a bed covered in white linen, and enveloped in unexpected and inexplicable gentleness. The faces of the women float above her, so that she can barely see them. What she sees are their plain grey gowns, the white cuffs of their sleeves, and their large practical hands, which lift her, straighten her sheets, and sponge her body.

  The pain in her stomach is still there, stronger than ever, but it has become so strong that it seems to have separated itself from her body, and to float above her as the faces of the women do. The voice that groans from time to time is her voice, but it sounds as though it is coming from outside. Sometimes she hears other cries and groans too, further away.

  ‘You’re in the infirmary, dear,’ says the woman to the right of her bed. ‘We’ll take care of you here.’

  The cloth with which they sponge her body is soft, and the water is delightfully cool. There is a sweet smell in the air, like rose petals. While they are sponging her stomach, one of the women suddenly stops.

  ‘Will you look at this mark, Mary?’ she says to the other. ‘Do you think we should tell them?’

  ‘There’s little point,’ replies Mary, ‘they’d have seen it already, if they’d wanted to. She was looked at by the doctor when they brought her here, like all the rest of them, but there’s things they’d rather not see. Besides, it is too late now.’

  And then the delightful cooling movement of their hands begins again, and the fire in her body abates a little.

  The pain comes in waves, sometimes seeming to lift her body out of the bed with its violent force, and then subsiding again, to leave her for a moment feeling relaxed and empty, as though floating on the surface of a vast warm sea.

  She starts to imagine again that there is something inside her, trying to force its way out. She sees herself lying on a floor, looking up at a strange ceiling, where rows of garments are hung to dry. She looks up into the folds of lace and linen, and above them there is no ceiling, but only clear blue sky. Staring at the radiant sky, she imagines that she is waiting for the midwife to come, but the child inside her refuses to wait. A cry bursts from her lips as the pain seizes her again.

  The woman on the left hand side of her bed touches her head gently, like a mother stroking the head of a sick child.

  ‘There, there, you poor dear,’ she says softly.

  The woman on the right hand side of the bed takes her hand, and begins to stroke her fingers, one by one.

  ‘I think it won’t be long now,’ she says.

  PART THREE

  FOUND

  Adah’s Story

  May 1822

  Spitalfields

  ON THE MORNING WHEN Annie is due to leave for Fulham, Adah wakes to find that young Will has stayed out all night again. It’s the third time he has done this in two weeks, and for a moment Adah is so full of anger that she wishes she could take her son by the scruff of the neck, as she used to do when he was six or seven, and slap him on the bottom with one of her slippers. The idea is absurd, of course, since Will is now head and shoulders taller than her, and must weigh at least twice as much. She was counting on him to help her in this moment of crisis, but now they will just have to manage without him.

  ‘Don’t fret, Mammy,’ says Annie, when she sees the expression on Adah’s face, ‘Will’s still trying to find his own way of becoming a grown man. He’ll settle down soon enough.’

  They stand in the dark bedroom of the Blossom Street tenement, Annie folding the clothes that she will take with her, while Adah looks on, trying to make sure that nothing important is forgotten, and suppressing a surprising urge to weep.

  When the message about her father arrived two days ago, Adah’s first instinct was to rush to Fulham to care for him herself. At seventy-eight, her father is too old to live on his own. His chest is bad, and his knees have been full of rheumatics for years. Even at the best of times, it’s as much as he can do to manage a little slow work in the gardens of the big house, and now he has fallen off a ladder and is confined to bed. There is no immediate danger, or so they say, but the old man is dazed and shaken, and seems to have hurt his hip. He needs someone to nurse him, but there will be no-one to care for the children if Adah leaves them here in Norton Folgate, and she can hardly take them all with her to stay in her father’s cramped garden cottage. So Annie – who has always loved her grandfather’s cottage, and the great expanses of lawn and the cedar trees, herb beds and rose gardens that surround it – has offered to go in her place.

  Annie pauses in the midst of her packing, her face turned away from the window, so Adah can barely see the expression on her face.

  ‘I forgot to tell you,’ she says. ‘Mrs Holloway who brought the message from Fulham says they have a place for a parlour maid at the big house. Perhaps they might take me on there. That way I could stay in Grandpa’s cottage and take care of him if he needs me. And earn my own keep too.’

  Adah, bending down to pick up a stray stocking that has slipped out of Annie’s bag, feels the breath catch in her throat for a moment. She has tried to keep her money worries to herself, but clearly she has failed. It is proving harder than she expected to feed seven mouths and pay the rent from the sixteen shillings a week she receives for her work as Searcher. Annie must have heard her sighs as she counts the money in her purse every evening. They need another wage, but Will, who is best placed to provide it, seems to drink every penny he earns. Annie is right, of course. If she could find a job at the big house it would solve two problems at once. But no, no, thinks Adah, please not that. How will I ever manage without Annie’s calm and comforting presence?

  Catching sight of the expression on her mother’s face, Annie gives a little laugh and reaches out to give Adah’s arm a squeeze.

  ‘Don’t look like that, Mammy. You’re making me sad, too. Anyone would think I was going to America. I’ll only be a few miles away.’

  Sally trots in through the open bedroom door, bearing a gift of her almost favourite rag doll, which she is determined to add to her older sister’s luggage. Annie removes the limp grey creature with its moulting woollen hair, and hands it solemnly back to Sally.

  ‘No, Sal, my love, dolly doesn’t want to go in my bag. It’s dark and cramped in there. She’d be squashed to death.’

  Adah has spent most of the past two days boiling up jars of calves-foot jelly to send to her father. It’s the jars that make the bag so heavy. In normal times it only takes five minutes to walk to the Four Swans on Bishopsgate Street, but today, weighed down with luggage, they take twice as long, and by the time they reach the inn, all the other passengers have already boarded the coach. Adah just has time to give her eldest daughter a quick hug and press a shilling into her hand before they heave the bag onto the roof and Annie scrambles up into the one remaining seat.

  Then the scowling, red-faced coachman cracks his whip over the heads of his team of black horses who, startled into movement, clatter at high speed out through the archway of the inn and down the crowded thoroughfare beyond. Adah stands watching for a moment, as the coach disappears in a cloud of dust round the street corner towards London Wall. Her head is still full of the final words of wise advice she meant, and failed, to give her daughter.

  It is a clear sunlit spring day, with just a soft breeze in the air. Even here in the city streets, the sky above is blue, dotted with small puffs of white cloud. In the Fulham garden, the cornflowers and sweet peas will be in flower, and the buds will already be appearing on the wisteria that covers the walls of her father’s cottage… Adah is seized by an aching wish that she could be on her way there with Annie, to hold her father’s gnarled b
rown hands in her own again, and walk with her daughter through the woods and lanes that she loved when she was young.

  But instead she slips quickly into the dank and smoky interior of the Four Swans to check whether young Will might be sitting at the bar, and then, seeing no familiar faces, turns down the lane into Spitalfields in search of the liquorice she needs to make a posset for Richard’s cough. It is a recipe given to her by the silversmith’s wife, who swears that it works miracles.

  The bright weather has brought out the crowds, and the lanes around Spitalfields Market are filled with people dressed in spring muslins and straw bonnets. A halfpenny showman has put up an elaborate booth, shaped like some oriental temple, on the fringes of the market, and a clamorous mob of small boys are pushing and shoving around the booth in a desperate effort to be next to peer through the peephole and witness the marvels within. Adah knows that she should hurry home to Richard and the little ones, but this moment by herself in the swirling multi-coloured crowds of the market is too precious to miss. It reminds her of the days when she was newly-wed, before young Will was born, and used to wander through these markets, her eyes wide with wonder at the endless treasures on sale, and at the multitude of faces, clothes and accents of the people who sold them.

  On the corner of South Street stands the flower seller, her barrow full of sheaves of golden tulips. The bird man has hung up his array of bamboo cages on a rickety stretch of fencing, filling the air with the sweet warbling of goldfinches and canaries. Beyond, in the market square, Adah’s senses are assailed by the smells of onions and cauliflower, lemons and leeks. One table is piled high with an elaborate and perilous array of eggs; another, mountains of cheese in every shape and size.

  ‘Buy my onions! Two shillings a bushel! You won’t find them cheaper! Come on, ladies! First new potatoes! Best you’ll see all year!’

  But the deafening cries of the costermongers are almost drowned out by the raucous clamour of the hurdy-gurdy man, playing a discordant version of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, while a pathetic shrunken child, whom he has brought along in place of a monkey, performs tumbling tricks in the dust next to the organ.