The Resurrectionist

by James Bradley

  I wish at that moment that I might throw an accusation back at him, but to do so would only be to give up all hope of seeing her again.

  ‘I am a man of some substance,’ he says. ‘The errors of my sister’s past might yet be corrected by an appropriate union.’

  ‘I would think that should be a matter for her.’

  ‘Much is forgotten here.’

  ‘I do not think I understand.’

  At first he does not answer.

  ‘Why is it you live alone here, Mr May?’ he asks at last. ‘What is it you are hiding from?’

  ‘I do not grasp your meaning.’

  ‘It is only that we all have secrets, things we would rather were left in the past.’

  When I do not answer he takes up his hat and smiles.

  ‘We understand each other then.’

  He leaves me there, disappearing on his horse along the path into the dusk. Alone again I should feel released, but instead I am unsettled, my privacy and the refuge of my home somehow violated. Angry too, at him, at myself, though whether for her sake or for my own I am not entirely sure. Bound in cotton on the sill is a pair of honeyeaters, caught this morning just after dawn. Then they were warm; in the hours since they have turned cold, their bodies gone stiff, and wretched, their tiny legs bent back in the death grip of their kind. They must be cleaned, and quickly too or they will spoil, and so, hoping to put these feelings from my mind, I light a lamp.

  I work quickly, my hands moving with the knowledge of a task done so often it comes almost without thinking, calming me: the knife along the belly and around, the skin peeled away from the flesh, careful not to damage it, arsenic rubbed inside the skin to cure it. They are so small, these birds, so light, their twig-like legs so thin it can touch me like grief to see them caught thus in death.

  Outside darkness comes, and yet I do not stop, my hands moving on. Packing them away and then taking down pen and sheet I begin to draw, my eyes straining in the yellow light of the lamp. Ordinarily it brings me some measure of quiet, this work of mine, but tonight I work almost angrily, the pictures that I make jagged and filled with pain. Though the clock ticks and chimes on the mantel I do not notice the passing hours, and it is almost midnight when I stop, my hands and back knotted, the room shadowed. Outside the wind has risen, and on every side the bush moves with a sound like water, or waves. Though the knowledge that my home has been intruded on presses in, my mind is not drawn to that, but back to Miss Winter, her distress. What should I have said to her? That this life is so thin, so small, it might be lost in a moment without thought? That the worst prisons that we build are not of stone, or even space, but of our own making? That nothing done may ever be truly undone?

  I WOKE TO DARKNESS first. Later I would remember other things: the trickle of the earth against my face, the taste of my blood in my mouth. The clammy press of the bodies all about me. Now all I knew was fear, a sense of dread and panic which clamped upon my chest. Frantically I scratched and tore at the bodies above me, heads and bodies and tumbled limbs, tears choking me as I scrabbled upwards, seeking the surface as a drowning man might from deep beneath the water. Their weight and skin upon me. And then, quite suddenly, I was free – gasping up into the freezing air.

  My hands were bloodied, my nails ripped. About me fog, and falling rain.

  Dragging myself over the lip of the pit, I stumbled off seeking only to be away. Nothing about me seemed solid, my mind was blank, and all I desired was escape from that pressing dark.

  Of those first hours I remember little: flight, cold, a gnawing hunger in my chest and hands and throat. When I realised I did not know my own name, that where my self had been there was naught but emptiness, I am not sure; all I recall is the confusion of it, the way the unremembered seemed to tremble on my tongue.

  In the fog all seemed alike, as if the city were a waking dream without substance or depth. Carriages loomed like ships upon the shrouded sea, coming huge and all at once, the sound of the hooves and wheels made strange by its muffling veils. And then again the rain began to fall, soaking through my ruined shirt, and like some creeping filthy thing I sought the shelter of a doorway.

  An hour passed, maybe two, then from the dark there came a light, a hooded lamp, two muffled shapes. They took their time, coming close, pausing, then all at once they were in the door, their bodies close to mine. Though they made no threat I was afraid, as if some instinctive revulsion of them rose in me, some sense their interest was not kind.

  ‘Who’s this then?’ I heard the larger of them say, touching my face and turning it so they might see me by their light. I murmured something, and tried to writhe away, but too slow – the hands of the smaller one already slipping here and there beneath my shirt. If I had coins they took them then, though their hands were so light and quick I would not know. ‘Mad,’ said the smaller one, ‘or simple.’

  ‘No,’ the larger one replied, ‘not mad.’ Then, as if reaching some decision, he took my arm, and lifted me. ‘Here, take him,’ he said.

  Though I knew they meant me ill I did not fight. Instead I let them bear me off, to the lair they kept. Of it I saw little, save the room in which they kept me, which was a low place, too hot from the fire they kept stoked. My two companions set me down in a corner, a filthy nest of ancient straw and reeking blankets. Then from the fireplace there came a woman, fat, and cruel-looking. In one arm she held a baby, barely a month in age, and already drunk with the brandy on her finger. Reaching down she took hold of my hair and hoisted me up. Then she gave a little laugh.

  ‘He’ll do,’ she said, and left me there alone.

  How long I lay there I am not sure: an hour, a day, all was the same. Sometimes I slept, trying to find order in the chaos of my mind. It seemed without memory or substance, no more real than a shadow on a wall. What I had been was not forgotten, but unremembered, and I myself a thing of disorder and absence. And yet I could feel my past, my self within me still, though I could not reach it or hold it, for the act of holding seemed to burn it almost to nothing, like an insect caught in a child’s glass. Or a dream brought back into waking.

  In time I realised I must escape. And so I lay, feigning madness and insensibility, until I saw my moment: an open door, a back turned, and leaping up made a dash out into the dark. I knew not where I was, nor where to go, and so I ran, and ran, stumbling through the fog-choked streets, until at last I felt the darkness change about me, and heard water, and smelt the warmer scents of cows. Though I did not know it I had come as far as Hampstead Heath, where now I wandered. Half mad with hunger and with fear, at last I saw a house, and not knowing what else to do crawled in and found a place to sleep.

  I must have eaten first though, for the next thing I knew I was woken by a man who held a musket, and a pair of lads who swore they would have the law on me. It was their kitchen I had entered, their food I had eaten, their fire by which I had slept, and now, taking me for some vagabond, they dragged me to the magistrate, and sought that I be bound in irons and sent down.

  I HEAR THEIR VOICES from the library, first Winter’s, then Bourke’s, then another I do not recognise. Beside me Joshua looks up.

  ‘I did not know your father had company,’ I say.

  Joshua shrugs, but before he can answer Bourke appears in the door. Seeing him I rise.

  ‘Winter is here?’ I ask, and he nods, smiling then.

  ‘He is,’ he replies. ‘And he would speak with you.’

  I glance around at Joshua.

  ‘Leave the boy,’ Bourke says, ‘he does not need you watching him as he draws.’ Across the shining floor, Bourke stands aside so I may pass.

  Winter waits in the drawing room, his back to the french doors which are open to the garden. As I enter, his eyes meet mine for a moment before sliding off towards the right. Following them I turn, thinking to see Mrs Bourke, but instead a man stands there.

  ‘Robert Newsome,’ says Winter, ‘this is Thomas May, our artist.’

 
For several seconds there is silence. Opening his mouth to speak Newsome seems to catch himself, then shakes his head as if confused.

  ‘I do not understand …’ Winter begins. Newsome glances at him, then back at me.

  ‘Thomas May,’ he asks. ‘Your name is Thomas May?’

  I nod my head. ‘Yes,’ I say, regarding him steadily.

  ‘You are acquainted?’ Winter asks. Once more Newsome hesitates.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘My apologies. There has been a mistake.’

  Bourke and Winter glance at one another.

  ‘What sort of mistake?’ Bourke asks, but Newsome shakes his head.

  ‘This man is not the man I thought I knew,’ he says, looking first at Bourke and then at me. ‘I am sorry, sir, for any confusion I have caused.’

  I nod, uneasily aware of the way Winter observes us.

  ‘Please,’ says Newsome then, ‘it is nothing.’

  That Newsome is discomfited by me is clear enough: though he seeks to hide it, he is confused, and injured too, I think. Winter is eager for him to sample some of the pleasures of the colony, and to that end has suggested he inspect my collections. Yet our conversation about the birds is strained and uncomfortable, a fact that does not go unnoticed by Winter and Bourke. In the end I make my excuses and leave.

  But in the hall outside he comes after me, catching me by the arm.

  ‘Gabriel,’ he hisses, ‘do you not know me?’ His voice is not pleading, but almost angry.

  Lifting a hand I step away from him.

  ‘Do not do this,’ he says. ‘It is I, Robert, your friend.’

  ‘My name is Thomas May,’ I say, as slowly and emphatically as I can.

  Then, with a look of betrayal in his face, he lets go my arm, and backs away.

  ‘Very well,’ he says, ‘let that be how it is.’

  Back in my house I take down my gun, and pack my bag. I must have specimens I think, making my way eastwards, seeking out the shelter of the blackbutt trees, the foliage beneath them where the smaller birds dwell. I move quickly and quietly, watching the birds as they shoot and spring and fly. I have no orders I must fill, no specimens that I need, yet still I go, letting my gun follow them upon the air. My shots are not careless, but there is a wildness to them, as if I do not care what I hit, the sound of my shots echoing through silences which last a moment and then are replaced by the frantic calling and crashing of the birds. The first I take is a figbird, then a pair of pardalotes, then at last a little wren, her tiny body falling to the leaves on the forest floor with a sound so soft it is almost inaudible. When I reach her I realise that she lives yet, her breast stained with blood and her wing hanging helplessly. Yet as I reach for her she flutters and cheeps, seeking to avoid my grasp. Twice I must grab, and then a third time, until at last I have her in my hand, and even then she still beats her wing. I know what I must do, but as I stand holding her I find that I cannot. Despite her suffering I am unable to make it happen, unable to do the thing which will take this to its end. Standing there I feel a sort of hopelessness, a loathing for this thing I am, this half-thing of lies and circumstance.

  THOUGH I AM SICK with it come the next morning I rise and dress, so I may go to her. I know not how to do anything else – almost as if in her I see some way of holding on to what I am.

  The hour is early, yet it is she who answers the door.

  ‘Mr May,’ she says hesitantly.

  ‘Miss Winter…’ I begin, but then Mrs Blackstable appears behind her.

  ‘Come,’ Miss Winter says, ‘let us walk.’

  Together we cross the lawn. When at last I find words to speak my voice is ragged.

  ‘There is something you should know of me,’ I say, but she has anticipated my words, her face seeming to beg that I unmake what she has already guessed.

  ‘This Mr Newsome,’ she says, ‘he is known to you?’

  I hesitate. ‘He has said this himself?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, he has said nothing of the sort. But my brother says his manner made liars out of both of you.’

  I do not reply. She looks at me. ‘You are acquainted, are you not?’

  ‘Once,’ I say, ‘long ago.’

  ‘Yet you denied it before my brother and Bourke.’

  I nod.

  ‘And Newsome too.’ She pauses, watching me. ‘What lies between the two of you?’

  ‘He has done nothing wrong,’ I say.

  ‘He was surprised that you were not the man he thought you were,’ she replies, looking away.

  ‘He was,’ I agree.

  ‘And yet he knew you. How? By some other name? Someone else’s name?’ For a second or two she hesitates. ‘Why? Why take another’s name? Why should you choose to disappear like that?’

  I open my mouth to speak but can find no words, and then I see some knowledge dawn in her.

  ‘No,’ she says, quietly. ‘Not that.’

  I can see the way she strains against this sour knowledge.

  Eventually, ‘What was it that you thought to say to me today?’

  ‘Only this,’ I say, ‘so it should not be from another’s lips that it comes to you.’

  For a long time we stand, and then at last I bow my head, and turn away.

  ‘I would see these paintings of yours,’ she says.

  I turn back, shake my head. ‘Why?’

  ‘For then I feel I might know you as I cannot now.’

  I laugh, more bitterly than I mean to. ‘There is naught of me to know.’

  ‘No, I do not believe that. There is kindness in you.’

  This time she looks away. ‘We should say goodbye now,’ she says, ‘for I think we shall not see each other like this again.’

  ROBERT COMES IN SEARCH of me that afternoon. I have been by the creek, filling my water bag, and return to the cottage to find him seated on the step. Only when I stand before him does he rise, dusting his trousers.

  ‘I suppose I should not be surprised,’ I say, and he shakes his head. His anger of the night before seems gone, replaced by something else, something kinder.

  ‘We parted ill,’ he says. ‘For that I am sorry.’

  For a second or two I do not reply, then with one hand indicate the clearing.

  ‘What would you see?’

  ‘Only you,’ he says.

  ‘Then come,’ I reply, ‘walk with me.’

  We go down, past the creek and towards the beach. He walks quietly.

  ‘How come you here?’ I ask at last.

  An expedition, he says, into the Pacific. ‘I am to be their surgeon and naturalist.’ I nod. ‘That is how I heard of your work, of your drawings,’ he continues, watching me. ‘It was always a talent with you, your skill with a pen.’ He shrugs. ‘I had nothing of the artist in me.’

  We come to a halt. For a moment I see the kindness in him. But then a wallaby springs from the bushes, the sudden sound making me jump.

  ‘What do you guard against?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. He knows I am lying.

  ‘Miss Winter…’ he begins, but I shake my head. ‘She is dear to you, is she not?’

  I nod.

  ‘Yet you know something of her past?’

  ‘She has suffered for her mistakes,’ I say, too hotly.

  ‘That was not my meaning,’ Robert replies. ‘Merely that she should not suffer twice.’

  ‘What have you said to Bourke and Winter?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replies. ‘Though they guess enough of it to come to the truth soon enough, I think.’

  I cannot look at him.

  ‘You will be gone soon, then?’

  He pauses. ‘I am not your enemy, Gabriel,’ he says. At the sound of the name I stiffen, despite myself. ‘Or would you rather I called you Thomas?’

  ‘Call me what you will,’ I say. ‘It is all the same.’

  Almost immediately I regret my tone. But when he speaks again his voice is not angry.

  ‘To become another man,
it is a dreadful thing.’ When I do not reply he continues. ‘What is it that frightens you, Gabriel? What are you hiding from?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, too hotly, ‘nothing at all.’

  FROM WHERE THE NAME CAME I could not say. The fabric of my mind was still unstitched, a jumble of half-comprehended memories which unravelled even as I reached for them. But as I spoke I felt something begin to form inside of me.

  At first I thought the bailiff would object, or some other raise their voice, but the magistrate merely raised a hand, glancing to the clerk to indicate the name should be entered in the book.

  I am not sure it was a lie, not then, for my own name still seemed as if it were another’s, but as I stood and listened to the bailiff read the charges out, I began to understand what I had done, the realisation not horrible, but almost liberating, as if some part of me were left behind by my words.

  Only later, as I was led back to my cell, did I feel the lie of it clotting on my tongue. Not my name, but another’s. But there was something else as well, less easy to describe, some sense in which it had altered me. What I had been, what I had done, made different, part of some other self. Not gone, never that, but somehow easier to accept.

  I had lain a week in that cell, my body consumed with fevers and visions. Perhaps I might have died, what little remained of my mind and body burnt away in that animal pain, indeed sometimes I fancied I had. I dreamt of boring things that dug their way beneath my flesh, of shit and bile and fire in my belly, of nameless horrors which crawled upon the roof and upon the floor, weeping and gibbering and clawing at the walls and door. Now though, on that icy stone, I was removed from myself, the horrors of those last days witnessed in a dream.

  There were others in that cell with me. It was one who had been with me before the magistrate who first used the name. ‘Who’s this?’ asked a newcomer. ‘May,’ he said.

  There was time to reflect upon my lie in the days and weeks that came after. At first the name fitted me uneasily, a thing ill-made, and my mind seemed weak still, the fabric of my self grown thin and flat. I spoke little to the others in that place, and they in turn kept their faces from my own. But as the weeks passed I found the name grew more easy on my tongue, and then the past began to slip away.