Anticipation

by Tanya Moir

  ‘Oh, I don’t make mistakes, sweetheart.’ Turning away, he begins to work his way along the bookcase towards her desk, one thick finger running across each spine. ‘You got a taste for strange flesh, is that it? Or maybe’ — he looks over his shoulder and into her eyes — ‘you just like the feel of a man’s trousers.’

  Babs drops her gaze to the floor. In all her investigations, this has never happened before. She thinks of calling the butler back. But there is only so far she trusts the man, and no telling what Porsham might overhear this too-sharp robber say.

  ‘And now,’ Boucher continues, arriving alongside her, ‘you want to feel my head.’ He leans in. ‘You think you can handle it, do you, love? I should warn you,’ he whispers, ‘it’s hard.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know your future?’ asks Babs sternly, pulling herself together at last.

  ‘My future?’ says Anthony Boucher. ‘What kind of a fool would want to know that?’

  ‘Then why did you accept my invitation?’

  She listens to his footsteps cross the floor behind her. He’s surprisingly light on his feet for such a solid man.

  ‘Curiosity, maybe.’ He pauses on the other side of her desk, resting his left hand on the head of the white china bust. ‘Let’s call it that. And your man said you’d give me a sovereign.’

  ‘A half sovereign. And only if you’ll shave your head.’

  ‘A sov,’ says Boucher softly. ‘And I’ve never been a razor man. Why don’t you do it for me, sweetheart? All nice and neat, now.’

  This is not the first time my great-aunt has held a man’s head in her hands. She can handle a blade in a way that would make her great-grandfather Tobias the fellmonger proud. The tingling detachment she feels as she watches Boucher’s naked scalp emerge does not unsteady her strokes. As the room begins to replicate, reality to split, Babs, like the expert she is, places the craniometer around his skull, notes down its breadth, begins her fingertip palpation.

  And even as Boucher’s hands reach up to take her wrists, there is a part of her mind that still sees this as science. A ground-breaking experiment. The power of the criminal animal observed first-hand, at courageously intimate quarters.

  The animal’s power, Babs discovers rapidly, is very great indeed. It speaks to her in a language she was unaware she knew. It explains things, shows her, right there on the Turkey carpet, what she’s been seeking for, oh, so very long.

  In that other Fournier Street — the one that hangs, crystalline and discrete, beside this, the one to which she will return when this is over — another Babs continues to take notes.

  Here, eyes open, the Fabrica of Vesalius digging into her spine, she recognises Anthony Boucher. He’s been inside her all along. She knows him, the way you know the shape of a long-lost friend, the way you can pick the back of an old lover’s head out of a crowd. And there is no other course — none at all — that their meeting could have taken.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he growls into her ear.

  ‘Barbara,’ she tells him, when she finds breath.

  ‘Babs, eh?’ he says. ‘You’re a naughty girl. I like it.’

  Anthony Boucher walks towards Whitechapel in the dark. He feels himself almost a gentleman tonight, a notch above the cabbage-choked gutters and piss-stinking alleys his feet pass, rough edges smoothed away between my great-aunt’s thighs. He doesn’t stop in at the Weaver’s Arms, or any other ale house. He wants to take this feeling home to his bed, to sleep in the scent of it while it’s fresh, to wake up with it in the morning.

  Cross Tony has nothing to fear in these streets he knows as well as his own strength. No one, male or female, invites him to accompany them to a darker yard, or offers to be his guide. His fellow parishioners do not petition him for tobacco or the time. From Fournier Street to his home in Black Lion Yard he is unapproached, the busy rookery, for him, a place of silent contemplation.

  He arrives to find the shutters of the oyster shop already fastened. Letting himself in, he wonders what Miss Babs Harding is doing now. He imagines her in her bed, a vast white island like those he saw when he worked the chimneys as a child. He feels in his pockets for a match, and strikes it. She will be thinking, surely, of him.

  The blow to the forehead catches him completely by surprise. Of all people, he should know better, but still he throws back his head. As he does so, something hard is pressed against his throat. For the second time tonight, he feels arms around him, squeezing him tight, holding on as if to life itself. The room, a blare of lights and voices now, begins to slip away.

  Waking, Anthony Boucher lies still as a stunned rabbit, eyes squeezed shut, taking silent inventory of his limbs. His wrists are tied together. There is more rope around each ankle, and yet another loop around his tender neck. He recognises the filthy floor of the oyster shop beneath his cheek.

  ‘Watch it,’ a voice warns. ‘He’s starting to come round.’

  Lights move closer, orange through his eyelids.

  ‘That him?’

  He feels breath on his face, catches the scent of gin and eels.

  ‘It’s him all right.’

  Anthony Boucher opens his eyes.

  ‘The devil — !’

  He sees, recoiling from him with urgency but little co-ordination, a mightily whiskered gent of middle years. A stranger to him — and by the cut of the man’s coat, to London, too. In the background are two Peelers.

  ‘You never seen me before in your life,’ says Boucher, hoarsely.

  ‘Quiet, you,’ says a voice behind, and the toe of a boot nudges his kidneys.

  ‘I most certainly have,’ the whiskered gent says. ‘You stole a sovereign from me not two hours ago, you rascal.’

  ‘Check his pockets,’ one of the Peelers says.

  Rough hands comply. ‘Well, would you look at that?’ their owner says, in a heavy tone of wonder. ‘Who’d have thought? A sovereign!’

  ‘That’s mine.’

  ‘Yours, Boucher? And how would you have come by it, pray?’

  ‘I was paid it.’

  ‘Hark at that!’ The Peeler laughs. ‘Cross Tony earned his sov! Well, there’s a first time for everything, they say. What did you do, mate, take in washing?’

  ‘I did an experiment. Let a lady examine my head. You know, for science.’

  ‘You want your head examining all right.’

  ‘I was there all night. You go and ask her.’

  A hand slips under his arm, and his rope collar tightens. ‘C’mon, Boucher, up you get. You’ll be doing your bit for science soon enough, mate.’

  Over breakfast in the dining room, Babs makes a sketch, from memory, of Anthony Boucher’s head. The morning is warm and still, the sun filtering in through the fig leaves to pattern the cloth; beyond the open sash, a squirrel pauses in its testing of the fruit to cast an eye over the Spode.

  Boucher’s skull is a conundrum. It is concave where it ought to be convex, large where it should be small. His moral faculties are normal. He has the forehead of a philosopher, and the occipital bone of a hermit. Should a child with such a skull be brought to her for career advice, Babs might suggest he become a monk. The protuberance above his nose suggests a greed for knowledge; those along his superciliary arches denote extraordinary perception.

  These cannot be the bones that Anthony Boucher was born with. Violence, she is sure, has deformed their proper shape. But what, then, of the faculties beneath? Might they, too, have changed, expanded and contracted with their shell? Can a man be beaten into a better mind, as a convict is flogged to contrition?

  Science, in the form of Dr Gall, says no, and the evidence of Boucher’s life does not contradict it.

  There is other evidence, of course. Evidence of recent and empirical nature. My great-aunt might remember, if she chose, those things she saw in him last night. But the schism in 30 Fournier Street has closed, Babs’ worlds snicked back together neat as the halves of a Swiss watch, leaving no room between them — none at all —
for that other Anthony Boucher.

  Not that she is without feelings for him. Babs looks over the portrait she has made with not only scientific curiosity, but a certain proprietary revulsion. She has not the slightest intention of ever seeing him again.

  She is unprepared, therefore, for the visit she receives from a Mr Abraham just before noon.

  ‘I believe you are acquainted,’ he accuses her in the front parlour, ‘with Anthony Boucher.’

  Babs considers the extravagant bumps above Mr Abraham’s left ear, which his prematurely receding hairline does nothing to disguise. They betray a man accustomed to the art of insinuation, to swirling his thin fingers in others’ private affairs. She doesn’t invite him to sit down.

  ‘I think I must disappoint you, sir. I’m not familiar with that name.’

  ‘Perhaps you know him by another — Cross Tony, he’s sometimes called.’

  Babs thinks. ‘Yes,’ she feels it wiser to admit, ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘Heard of him?’ Abraham arches his brows like a veteran of the stage. ‘Was he not your guest in this house last night?’

  ‘Who said so?’

  ‘He did, not half an hour ago. I came directly to confirm it.’

  Babs wonders if Porsham is listening at the door. ‘What business is it of yours?’

  ‘I am representing Mr Boucher.’

  ‘To be what?’

  Abraham bows his head, as if awaiting applause. ‘I am his lawyer, madam.’

  There is a long pause, during which my great-aunt finds her breakfast has begun to disagree with her, and Abraham helps himself to a seat on the chaise.

  ‘I ask you again, Miss Harding, was my client here with you last night?’

  Babs turns her back on him, and continues to stand. ‘I don’t know what you can mean by such a question.’

  ‘What time did he leave?’

  ‘I haven’t said he was here.’

  ‘After ten o’clock? Is that correct?’

  Who else, apart from Porsham, witnessed Cross Tony enter and leave? Half of Spitalfields, for all Babs knows.

  ‘I must have an answer, madam.’

  ‘And I must understand, Mr Abraham, to what these uncivil questions tend.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I offend you,’ the lawyer says coldly. ‘The matter is simply this — if Boucher were here with you between eight and ten, he could not have been elsewhere at nine, when a certain crime is alleged to have been committed.’

  Babs turns. ‘What crime?’

  ‘A gentleman from Hatfield was robbed of his handkerchief and a sovereign.’

  ‘And he believes it was Boucher?’

  ‘He has sworn to it.’ Abraham watches her closely. ‘But I am right, am I not, in saying that the gentleman is mistaken?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, at length. ‘He is mistaken.’

  ‘Ah.’ The lawyer crosses his ankles and leans back, crushing her grandmother’s silk cushion against the arm of the chaise. ‘And the sovereign found on Boucher, it was given to him by you? For your — experiment, as he called it?’

  Babs nods.

  ‘And you will bear witness to this, in court?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘But you must.’ Abraham releases the cushion rapidly. ‘He’ll hang without you.’

  Babs considers the creased brocade, its delicate briar roses. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  ‘Madam!’ The lawyer looks really quite shocked. ‘Have you no regard for justice?’

  ‘It’s quite impossible. You must understand.’

  ‘You value your own reputation above the fate of an innocent man?’

  Babs wonders what kind of fool would not. She raises her eyebrows and stays silent. Seconds pass. A child squeals in the street.

  ‘Scandal,’ says Abraham, after a while, ‘is a curious thing.’

  The butcher’s boy trots past the window; they hear him tap on the door.

  ‘Sometimes it’s best to tell a story yourself,’ the lawyer continues. ‘Before others tell it for you.’

  Babs stares at him.

  ‘There must be other witnesses. If you will not testify to Boucher’s presence here, you will force me to make enquiries. Find someone else who will.’

  Babs walks to the window, inadvertently catching the eye of Mrs Mott in her sitting room across the street, who nods politely before returning to her sewing. The front door closes, and the butcher’s boy, the remains of his mutton over his shoulders, gives her a grin.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she says. ‘It would be — an injustice, if the court were not told the truth. If I did not speak.’

  ‘It would.’

  ‘I could not live with such a thing on my conscience.’

  ‘Indeed not.’

  Babs sits down, at last, opposite Abraham, on the edge of what was once Hal Hardynge’s favourite chair. She leans forward, holding her knees, and looks into the lawyer’s eyes. ‘You will write to let me know,’ she says, in a low voice, ‘the date of the trial?’

  ‘I will.’ His tone is soothing. ‘Be assured, madam — you’re making the right decision.’

  ‘Of course.’ She nods slowly. ‘Thank you, sir. For helping me to it, I mean. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘I knew you’d come to it. That you couldn’t send an innocent man to his death. You’ve a good heart, madam. I can tell.’

  Babs bows. She watches the lawyer’s black top hat recede down Fournier Street until it is swallowed up in the market crowd. She examines Abraham’s card once more before placing it in her notebook along with her drawing of Boucher’s skull. Then, carefully, she readjusts the lace curtain, leaving no gaps, and smooths the gold silk straight on the cushion.

  ‘Porsham,’ she says, when the butler brings her lunch, ‘if that man Abraham calls again, you’re to tell him I’m not at home.’

  THREE

  Innocence, thinks Babs as she watches Anthony Boucher hang, is a coy little bird. It has all the greys of a market sparrow.

  Of course, her attendance at Newgate today is not without risk. But in this elevated grandstand seat — a second-floor window above a pie shop — and dressed as Jones, she considers it a small one. The only man who might recognise her for who she really is has a bag on his head, and is surely, by now, no longer seeing even its inside.

  While the reporters write up their accounts of the condemned’s final moments, already the bulk of the crowd is drifting away, leaving the apprentice anatomists to complete negotiations and drink away the regulation hour before their purchase can be cut down. From the high spirits of its students, it appears that Mr Guise’s School has prevailed.

  Babs sips her black tea. The smell of fatty mutton sidling up the stairs is making her nauseous.

  At last, the bell of St Sepulchre begins to strike nine. The three dead men are drawn back up onto the platform. Around the scaffold, small groups — an old woman in a jaunty yellow dress, a broad-shouldered boy ready with his barrow — gather to reclaim them. But none is as eager, as impatient with formality, as the band awaiting Anthony Boucher.

  Once Babs has seen his body safely delivered onto Guise’s dog-cart, she descends to the street, and making her way up to Holborn, hails a cab to Golden Square.

  ‘You’re just in time, Mr Jones,’ says Mrs Guise at the door. ‘We’ve a space or two left. One pound sixpence a ticket.’

  The smell in the lecture room is worse than the pie shop. It is not so much the corpse, which has been decently washed, as the students, packed shoulder to shoulder and giving off a tavern reek of tobacco, cheap sausage, sweat and beer. Below that, there is the room’s usual smell, the faint but indelible butcher’s stall mixture of old blood and fat and sawdust.

  The anatomist pulls back the sheet, and for the first time, Babs looks down on Boucher’s naked body, soft and vulnerable as a sleeping child’s, unconscious of watching eyes. Below the furrowed neck and blueing face, the slabs of deltoidei and pectoralis major, is the swell of
a little paunch, a cherub penis curled in a thicket of fur. Ankles oddly delicate, flimsy almost, beneath the white width of calf and thigh.

  Guise begins with the usual reanimation tricks, his electrical currents adding a delicate hint of burning meat to the general miasma. The newer students watch with appropriate awe as the dead man’s muscles dance. But this is not what Babs has paid to see.

  Next, the heart is extracted and made to beat again, its movements minutely observed before its chambers are dissected. When Guise opens the stomach, Babs’ own revolts. She turns her head away, pressing her nose and mouth into the cloth of her cloak, clean and cologne-sprinkled.

  ‘Looks like we paid for a fine last supper!’ she hears Guise say, and the students laugh.

  ‘Oi, get out if you’re going to throw up,’ her neighbour hisses. ‘You spew on me and I’ll nob you, I swear.’

  Eventually, the demonstration reaches its climax. The saw finishes its work, and there they are, laid bare at last — all the glistening secrets inside Anthony Boucher’s head.

  The extracted organ of his mind does not appear deformed by his adventures — Babs can see no scars, no signs of violence before this morning’s. She pays an extra six shillings to hold what remains of it afterwards, turn the parts of the brain to the light. Study the inside of its empty case, the fossae it has sculpted. To trace, with her own fingers, the shapes of Boucher’s thoughts, the passages they wore into his bones.

  My disappointed aunt feels nothing to surprise her.

  Of course, I have no real proof of any of this. I know, for sure, no more than Maggie found out, one dry fact at a time, as Christmases came and went and the 1980s rolled by. The skeleton of a story — odorous, yes, redolent of Harding DNA, but far from being certain.

  So what, if Babs’ notebook details her examination of Anthony Boucher on the night of the crime for which he was convicted? So what, if she sketched his head? So what, if the Old Bailey’s records show she was called — and failed to appear — as a witness in Boucher’s defence? Babs was a busy woman, after all. (Though two weeks after the trial, her notes reveal, she did find time to attend his dissection in Golden Square.)