Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion

by Howard, Jonathan L

  “I was on the bridge…” Falling, the icy wind striking her face, ripping at her skin, her stomach in her mouth, the briefest vision of Clifton swirling end-over-end, scattered like a box of child’s bricks, wind, darkness.

  “You’re very fortunate.” She blinked. She could see him now, this doctor who sounded so calm, so efficient. He was wearing a brown leather smock over his white coat, and he had a stethoscope slung around his neck and what looked like a hammer in one hand. He busied himself with the sheets that covered her, humming thoughtfully. “Oh yes, that’s good… The wind caught your skirts and they billowed out and slowed your descent. That saved your life. That and the fact that you hit mud at the bottom, rather than rocks. You’re a lucky woman.”

  “Lucky…” She thought of Charlotte, of Howard, and she squeezed her eyes tight against the tears that burned there.

  “We were able to save most of you.”

  “Most of me?” She struggled against the invisible bonds that held her, suddenly desperate to sit up, to see what was left of her under the sheet.

  “Yes.” The doctor coughed, rubbed his nose, apparently embarrassed. “You don’t have to worry about your other… little problem any more either, if you know what I mean. We’ve cured that too.”

  Angela felt the heat rush to her face, tightening the skin across her cheeks. “You know about that?”

  That had been the last straw, the thing that had finally sent her rushing out of the house that morning — this morning? A week ago? A month? — the letter from her doctor confirming that Howard had brought her an extra gift last time he came home from Rhodesia. The Frenchman’s Condition, they called it delicately, condemning her to years of discomfort, eventually insanity, and lingering death. She had had nothing to live for anyway, might as well make it quick. Then Howard would be free to live with his blackamoor molly-girl, and Angela would be with Charlotte.

  And now this doctor, with his kind blue eyes and amiable chuckle, he knew her shame, the scandal of it. If she could have moved, Angela would have crawled under the sheet to escape his sympathy. She managed to choke out her thanks.

  “Yes, well…” The doctor clapped his hands, suddenly all business once more. “It will take some time to get used to, I expect. The modifications… are you ready to see them?”

  “Modifications?”

  “There was a lot to fix.” He looked suitably humble. “I think we did the best job we were able to, under the circumstances. A lot of the procedure was experimental, so you must tell me if you feel any discomfort at all.”

  He slipped an arm around her shoulders, helping her to sit up, and she coloured at the intimacy. Only Howard had ever held her this close, cheek to cheek, breath against her neck. Did he hold his molly as tightly as he had once held her? The sheet still covered her from the neck down, tight as a shroud, and she could see the swollen humps of her arms and legs beneath it.

  The doctor withdrew, rummaged in the cupboard next to the bed, and poured Angela a snifter of brandy. She shook her head. “I never touch drink, doctor.”

  “I thought you might need it, for restorative purposes.” He set the glass on the side table, just within reach. He reached for the sheet at her throat, and Angela closed her eyes, not wanting to see the mangled ruin of her body, or what the doctors had done to it. She felt the sheet sliding down over her torso, and the cold air brushing across her skin.

  The doctor sounded proud. “You can look now, Mrs Porter.”

  She looked. She looked down at her arms and legs. Where her arms and legs had once been. Her body, clad in a white vest to protect what little dignity was left to her, was human from the waist upwards. They had saved that much. Below the mess of scar tissue around the bottom of her ribs her skin was smooth again, but with the smoothness and sheen of copper and brass, of rivets and steel plate.

  “Your legs should be perfectly functional. We tested them in the laboratory, on orphans…”

  Angela barely heard him. She groped for the glass by instinct, her fingers clumsy and awkward, knocking it to the floor where it shattered. She looked down, at the spreading puddle of brandy, at the hand that had knocked it flying. Bronzed, riveted, two fingers and a thumb horribly elongated, pinched together in a tight metal claw.

  It was then that Angela started screaming.

  “Mrs Porter? Your husband is here…”

  Angela had been staring out of the window. They had moved her from the hospital to a grand house in Hotwells. She could see the curve of the river from her barred window, but she couldn’t see the Suspension Bridge. She had been able to see it from the first room she was in, but her carers had moved her swiftly. They couldn’t stand the screaming.

  Now she could see the grey snake of the river, and the ships shuttling backwards and forwards, carrying sugar and slaves and rum to and from the port, blowing steam from their funnels, paddle-wheels churning. They were steel and brass, riveted, like her. Only strong, and free.

  “Tell him I don’t want to see him.”

  “He’s very insistent.” But the nurse bobbed her head and withdrew. She could never look Angela right in the eye.

  Howard would come up anyway, whether Angela wanted to see him or not. She sighed, smoothing her crinoline with her right claw, snagging the fabric and snipping a hole. The right claw was smaller than the left; they had done that last, when their technique was improving, but it was still clumsy, creaking and hissing when she opened and closed it, and it was hard to know how much pressure to apply to cups and glasses before they shattered.

  In the two months since she left the hospital at Frenchay she had learned to do many things she thought would be impossible. Walking, swinging out her heavy jointed legs at the hips in a slow, straddling stride that left footprints three inches deep in the soft mud of the garden. Eating solid food, although she tried not to eat much because the disposal of waste through a series of tubes and bags was embarrassing and messy, and she had to have someone help her because her clawed hands tore through the sanitary linen like tissue paper. This morning she had managed to brush what was left of her hair, trying to conceal the metal plate that Doctor Charles told her was the only thing keeping her brains inside her skull.

  Actually, yes, let Howard see her like this. He had brought her to this low, and the scandal if he left her would blacken his name from here to Bath. She sat, carefully, in the reinforced chair by the window that groaned under the extra weight, making sure the sun was behind her so that he would have to squint, and waited for his footsteps on the stairs.

  The door swung open. He had lost weight, and hair, in the last six months, his tan skin drawn back over his cheekbones. He still wore his moustache in two pencil thin lines, one side, infuriatingly as ever, a trifle higher than the other. He twisted his top hat in his fingers, and cleared his throat. “Angela?”

  “Howard.” Her voice was metallic. Under the fresh scar on her throat was an artificial voicebox. She had lost hers six weeks ago, to infection, but it was remarkable what the doctors could do. They were pioneers, and she was their new frontier. That was what Doctor Charles kept telling her, anyway. When she spoke, puffs of steam issued from the sides of her mouth, the way they did from her joints when she moved. Charles assured her it was just compressed air, shifting the pistons in her limbs, but she always thought of it as steam.

  “My god! What have they done to you?” He swept into the room and dropped to his knees in front of her, reaching for a hand that wasn’t there. Behind him, in the doorway, Angela could see the nurse lurking with her hand pressed to her mouth. She glared, and the little woman vanished, closing the door behind her.

  “She’s gone. You don’t have to pretend to be solicitous any more, Howard.”

  He straightened at once, the false smile falling away to leave his habitual sneer. “You stupid woman! What did you jump off a bridge for?”

  “You gave me a sickness, from your… from your Rhodesian whore!”

  He stepped back, a wary look in hi
s eyes. She never defied him. Always quiet, always willing. Even after she had fallen down the stairs carrying Charlotte and he had flung a bandage at her as he stepped over her on his way to the Seven Stars. Even after Charlotte had died four months later in St Michaels, of scarlet fever. Even after the Frenchman’s Condition condemned her to slow death. But she was different now. A changed woman.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I can. I’m not going to win any races, but I can get about.”

  Howard came closer, his eyes widening as he digested the full horror of what his wife had become. Her claws twitched in her lap under the scrutiny, but she let him appraise her, touching the metal of her thighs through the cloth of her skirt, the steel plate that crowned the back left-quarter of her skull, the seams where her new arms met her old torso. He dropped back on his heels and let out a low whistle.

  “At least you kept most of your face, I suppose. When are you coming home?”

  “I’m not coming home.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Angela. You can’t live here for the rest of your life.”

  “I want a divorce.”

  Howard leapt to his feet with a snort of derision. “A divorce? Out of the question! Think of the scandal if I divorced you after you were crippled. Besides, I’ve decided to take a diplomatic post, and a divorce would ruin my chances.”

  “A diplomatic post? In Rhodesia?”

  “Of course.” He was pacing back and forth in front of her. Her neck was still stiff, so he passed in and out of her vision like an image on a zoetrope, almost flickering as he flung his hands about in agitation. “Though how the hell I’m going to ship you out by Zeppelin… You might have to go by sea, and overland from the Cape. If anyone will be willing to carry…”

  “…A freak like me? You can say it, Howard. Besides, wouldn’t I get in the way, in Rhodesia?”

  “I’d make sure you didn’t, believe me.” That was how it had always worked. She played the dutiful wife when he needed to look good, and stayed out of the way when he decided to play bad.

  “I’d hate to interrupt you and your pox-ridden molly, after all…”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Angela? Did you hit your head on the way down? Of course.” His fingers flicked off her skull-plate, a soft ting that sent a reverberation of anger through her body, “Brain damage. Poor dear doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “I want a divorce, Howard. I’m serious.”

  “So am I. You’re not getting one.” He turned on his heel as he headed for the door, speaking in a louder voice for the benefit of the nurse who was bound to be listening. “My poor love, we’ll have one of those pneumatic lifts installed at home, to help you get about. We’ll have you back as soon as possible, and packing for Rhodesia before you know it!”

  The pneumatic lift would cost a fortune, and to install it they would have to take out the servants’ staircase at the back of the house, to hoist Angela up and down like a hot meal in a dumb waiter. Howard decided publically that no expense would be spared for the benefit of his poor crippled wife, and privately that it wasn’t worth the bother as they would be off to Rhodesia as soon as his post came through. She was forced to lie in her ground-floor bedroom, once the drawing room, and listen at night to the procession of mollies going up and down the stairs, not bothering to conceal their amorous activities. In fact, she was sure Howard encouraged them to make as much noise as possible, to spite her.

  So it was a surprise to her when he came to her one night, slipping under the sheets, shivering at the cold touch of metal against his skin. He fumbled around, grunting and swearing to himself, until eventually she had had enough and turned up the gas light with her smaller claw.

  “Howard, what are you looking for?”

  “I wanted to try it with an automaton, just to see what it was like.” He looked petulant, like a schoolboy caught in wrongdoing. He glared down at her. “Nothing! Smooth as a doll and just as useless!”

  “You think I don’t know that! I wouldn’t allow it even if I was a whole woman!”

  “You wouldn’t allow it?” He spat, froth bubbling on the parquet floor beside the bed.

  “Go back to your mollies, Howard. Leave me alone.”

  He got up, pulling the sheet around him to conceal his nakedness, his fading ardour. “You’ve changed, Angela. And not for the better.”

  “I rose from the dead. As far as I’m aware that trick has only been pulled off once before. You want to be careful, Howard.”

  He slammed the drawing room door behind him with a curse. Angela left the gas-light burning, just in case he came back for another go.

  Howard was politeness itself at breakfast, pouring her a cup of tea and fetching her a straw to drink it through, to spare the china. He buttered her a slice of toast and she managed to eat half of it. He even oiled the stiff joints in her elbows, then took her arm and helped her to the front door.

  “Where are we going?” Angela asked.

  “I thought we’d take a walk.”

  She stiffened. She hadn’t taken the air in public since that day; all her walking had been behind high garden walls, and although the neighbours knew that Mrs Porter was a cripple, they had not seen her struggling up the steps to the front door as she had been returned home in a steam-carriage in the dead of night. Now Howard wanted to take her outside, expose her to pedestrians and twitching curtains.

  He was smiling now, infuriating. “I got my diplomatic papers yesterday, and this morning I had Travers book a Zeppelin seat for me, and passage on the Great Western for you. We leave for Rhodesia in three days; I thought you might like to say goodbye to the old neighbourhood. For old times’ sake.”

  She could see the strain in his jaw, and she felt a pang of sympathy. She had loved him once, after all, and the change in her was hard for both of them. “For old times’ sake, then.”

  She allowed him to drape a cape around her shoulders, for none of her walking-out coats fitted over the bulk of her new arms. The sweep of her dress concealed her legs, but not the awkward way they swung out when she walked, and a bonnet hid her skull plate. But no gloves could fit over the claws at the ends of her bronzed arms. All she could do was tuck them beneath the cape and hope that people wouldn’t look too closely.

  Some hope. Her metal feet, fashioned and painted into the shape of boots, but still outsized and clumsy, clanged against the pavement as they walked. Howard had to walk in the gutter to avoid being tripped by the clumsy swing of her legs, coughing in the fumes of the steam-carriages as they whizzed past, and cursing the drivers who leaned out to shout abuse at him. By the time they reached the end of the road, a crowd had gathered, and curtains were not just twitching, but being blatantly and openly drawn back, all the way along the street.

  Howard waved his cane at them, at the boys in their sailor suits and the girls in crinoline, and their parents who snatched them to their breasts, their mouths hanging open as the monster clumped her way down the road. “Get out of the way! Stop staring at her!” His shouting only brought more onlookers, ladies and gentlemen and their gawping staff, to their front doors to watch Angela’s sluggish progress.

  “Howard, be quiet! Don’t make a fuss!” But he would not be quieted. With the rush of steam that emerged from her mouth as she spoke, a little girl screamed and dived beneath her mother’s apron.

  “Why don’t you all come out and have a look?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’ll charge a penny a time to tap the metal plate in my wife’s head! What, no takers?” He gripped her arm, wincing as he barked his shin on her brass leg. “Let’s go onto the bridge. It won’t be so crowded there.”

  “The bridge?” She quailed inwardly. “Howard, I don’t think I can…”

  “Why not? That’s where I’m going. I can leave you here to play the circus sideshow, or you can come with me.” His face turned ugly again, and it was a long walk back to the house. Angela’s muscles burned with the effort of moving her heavy limbs.

&nbs
p; “Can’t we get a steam-cab?”

  “Can you climb up into one without a hoist?” She said nothing. “Come on. We’re supposed to be having a pleasant walk in the sunshine. Don’t ruin it.”

  The bridge was only a short walk from the Clifton house, down a narrow footpath between the houses, and across a wide avenue lined with beech saplings. Steam-cars whizzed up and down, steam hooting from the stove-pipes on their roofs, and Angela held up the traffic as she clanged her steady way across the road, and onto the bridge. It was empty, but as she stepped onto it Angela fancied it vibrated beneath her every step. The wind howling down the gorge snatched at her bonnet and whipped it from her head before her slow-moving claws could make a grab for it, and she uttered a little grating cry.

  “There it goes!” Howard pointed and, when she didn’t look immediately, he grabbed her shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Look, you stupid cow!”