‘Me?’ I laughed, and slipped my coat back on. ‘You’d never believe it.’
At that moment there came a great banging from downstairs. I listened. I recognised that voice. Surely it wasn’t—
‘Thank you for your time, miss. And don’t forget to come for your herbs.’ I flung open the door and burst out onto the landing.
A familiar figure was standing at the top of the stairs. Her eyes were red rimmed; her hair and dress beaded with moisture from the fog. She looked about, staring at one door, and then another as though hoping she might see through them. Most unexpected of all, however, was the fact that in her hand she carried a heavy stick. I recognised it as the same stick Dr Catchpole had used earlier in the day to beat Dr Bain over the head. As I appeared before her she flinched and raised it as if to strike me too. Her expression was wild, and despite my singular appearance – there was no one else in London who looked quite the way I did – it was clear that, for a moment at least, she had no idea who I was.
Behind her, at the foot of the stairs, a commotion had broken out. I peeked past. Mr Jobber was stretched out before the front door like some monstrous draught excluder. He appeared to be quite insensible. I could hardly believe it – had the gigantic Mr Jobber been felled by the diminutive Mrs Catchpole? Mrs Roseplucker was crouched over Mr Jobber’s recumbent body, jabbering incoherently through her loose crimson lips, and fanning his face with her dog-eared copy of Crimes of Old London.
‘What did you do to him?’ I whispered.
‘Who? That fat man?’ Mrs Catchpole frowned. ‘He wouldn’t let me in. Said I had no business here. So I struck him on the jaw with my husband’s cudgel. Down he went.’ Mrs Catchpole giggled. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.’ She turned her empty blue eyes upon me, her expression suddenly appalled. ‘What place is this?’ she cried. ‘Is he here? Is Dr Bain here? You are keeping him against his will, he’d never come to a place like this himself. James!’ she cried suddenly. ‘James!’
‘You know exactly what sort of a place this is, madam,’ I said. ‘And you know that Dr Bain it quite capable of making his way here without my help.’
‘And where is he? I know he’s here somewhere. I followed him. I followed you all!’
‘Dr Bain is behind one of these doors,’ I said. I wondered whether to add the word ‘fornicating’ but decided against it. Instead, I said ‘Mrs Catchpole, are you sure you want to see him now?’
Mrs Catchpole crept closer. She licked her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘He loves me,’ she whispered. She giggled once more and her fingers flew to her mouth, as if she were a child who has uttered a secret. ‘He’s going to take me away with him. Somewhere far away. I have packed my trunk. It’s downstairs.’ She stared down at her arms in surprise. ‘Where’s my coat?’ She frowned. ‘Did I leave it at home?’
Downstairs I could hear shouting now. Mr Jobber had regained consciousness and was rising to his feet. Mrs Catchpole looked behind her as, goaded onwards by a jabbering Mrs Roseplucker, the gigantic Jobber began mounting the stairs. His breath gusted in and out like a labouring steam locomotive. Suddenly, there came the sound of something being thrown violently at the front door. The entire house seemed to shake beneath the blows, until all at once the door burst open. Outlined against the fog was a tall thin figure with a frothing white neckerchief. Dr Catchpole stalked into the house. He pushed past Mrs Roseplucker, and Mr Jobber, and bounded up the stairs.
‘Annabel,’ he said, approaching his wife. ‘Come home, my dear.’
‘You!’ Mrs Catchpole swiped her stick through the air. Her husband neatly side-stepped her (somehow managing to avoid falling back down the stairs) and seized her wrist. In a moment he had removed the stick. He tossed it aside, swept her up into his arms and began to carry her back down towards the open front door.
‘Get out of my way, you fool,’ he cried to Mr Jobber. There was a moment of burlesque upon the stairs, as Mr Jobber attempted the impossible and tried to flatten himself against the wall to allow Dr Catchpole to pass. Mrs Catchpole’s shoe became caught on Mr Jobber’s waistcoat and her head banged against the wall. Dr Catchpole swayed upon the stairs. There was a great creaking of aged treads and the banister groaned. One of the pornographic prints was swept aside by Mr Jobber’s massive shoulder, and sent crashing down the stairs. And all the while Mrs Catchpole was talking and talking, how much Dr Bain loved her, how they would go away together, how she had packed her trunk . . .
The front door banged, and there was silence.
Chapter Five
The morning was fair – clear and bright with a stiff breeze blowing. It came from the east, gathering with it the stench of the vinegar works and the brewery, though the yeasty acidic reek was better than what usually passed as fresh air. The sunlight streamed in through the apothecary windows. My father seemed stronger. I had made him drink plenty of water, and had dosed him with iron tonic. He was at the work bench, seated (his only concession to poor health) with the pestle and mortar before him. Mrs Speedicut was sitting beside the stove, her mug of coffee in her hand.
‘Out late were you, Mr Jem?’ she said.
‘Where’s Will? I mean Mr Quartermain?’
‘Oh, “Will”, is it?’ said Mrs Speedicut. ‘Very familiar, aren’t we? Very friendly with one o’ them what’s going to raze us to the ground.’
‘It’s not his idea, Mrs Speedicut,’ I said. How tedious she was.
‘He’s gone out,’ said my father. ‘Said he had something he wanted to speak to Dr Bain about, but Dr Bain’s not usually in today.’ He shrugged. ‘He went out anyway.’
‘Did he?’ I said. I wondered what was on Will’s mind. Last night, after we left Mrs Roseplucker’s, he had been very quiet. He had not spoken all the way back to St Saviour’s, and then had got into bed with barely a word. Despite my original resentment about him sleeping in my room, I had to confess to being rather disappointed. Had he not wanted to go over the events of the day? What we had found in the coffins? The dramatic appearance of Mrs Catchpole at the brothel? I had scrambled down the stairs and thrown open Mrs Roseplucker’s door just in time to see Dr Catchpole trying to stuff his wife into a carriage. But she had twisted out of his grasp and bounded off into the fog. Where had she gone? Had she been located? Where was she now? I found I was excited to be sharing, and had pushed back the screen in order to facilitate the anticipated whispered conversation. But Will had turned his face to the wall and said nothing.
‘I see Mrs Catchpole’s been taken to Angel Meadow Asylum,’ remarked Mrs Speedicut, as if reading my mind.
‘What?’ I gaped. ‘But I—’
‘Saw her meself this morning.’ Mrs Speedicut shook her head, and rammed a wad of baccy into her pipe. ‘Could hardly believe it. Her face at the window of that carriage, all wild and bloated, and her hair all over the place, and the screaming and crying and Dr Catchpole trying to keep her calm. They were driving that fast—’
‘Perhaps you were mistaken,’ I said. ‘If they went by so fast. Perhaps it was someone else—’
She looked at me strangely then. ‘I know who I saw.’
‘I’m afraid it’s true, Jem,’ said my father. ‘Dr Hawkins was in earlier. He confirmed it.’
‘Course it’s true,’ said Mrs Speedicut. ‘And you know who’s to blame, don’t you?’ She clamped her jaws about her pipe and drew in a cloud of smoke. The bowl gurgled. ‘The truth will out,’ she muttered. ‘Sooner or later. And then you’ll see.’
When I came back from the morning ward rounds Will was still not back. My father was still at his work bench, the leech tank and a series of glass jars before him. ‘Can’t you stop, Father, even for a minute?’ I asked.
‘No.’ He looked up at me over the rim of his glasses, a pair of leech tongs in his hand. ‘Gabriel has vanished. Have you seen him?’
‘Not since yesterday,’ I said.
‘Hm.’ He watched me for a moment. ‘Yo
u look tired,’ he said. ‘Are you? Did you sleep?’ His voice was sharp.
‘I have no trouble sleeping, Father,’ I replied, though, truth be told, I had had a restless night. ‘What was my mother like?’ I said suddenly. ‘You never speak of her.’
My father stared at me for a moment. ‘She was nothing like you, you may be sure of that.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know that.’
He plucked a leech from the tank and plopped it into a glass jar. ‘Then why did you ask?’
I cleared my throat. Should I tell him that I had found her name, and the date of my birth, written inside a model of a coffin? Should I say that I feared he might die, and then the only person who knew her, the only person who could tell me who she was, would be gone and I would never know? I shrugged, feeling my father’s gaze resting upon me. Should I ask how she died? Whether she had known she’d had a daughter? I had so many questions, and yet I had never asked them. I felt the blood beating in my face. Before me, my father seized another leech. It writhed, black and shining in the sunlight, caught between the dull metal tips of the tongs.
Once, some years ago, I had crept into my father’s room. The bed he had shared with my mother, the bed I had been born in, was against one wall. He had few clothes, other than a weakness for silk neck ties, and there was little else there but a marble-topped washstand set out with soap and razor, ewer and basin; a chest of drawers and a tall mahogany-framed dressing mirror. Beneath the window was an oak trunk. Inside it, folded neatly on a bed of lavender, was a dress. It was made of a heavy cotton fabric, olive green in colour, sprigged with cream and red and flecks of blue. In the drab, comfortless walls of my father’s room the colours of that dress had glowed like springtime. It had belonged to my mother; the only thing of hers that he’d kept. Her locket, and wedding ring, had been buried with her.
My father never mentioned the dress. I never mentioned it, but I had always known it was there. The purple bracts of lavender had scattered about the floor as I lifted it out of its hiding place. The dress had smelled of flowers, and slightly of mildew, and I held it against myself and stood before the mirror. How small she had been – no bigger than Eliza. No wonder the act of giving birth to one so tall and spindly as I had ripped her insides apart.
I had pressed the fabric to my face. Could I smell her? Could I imagine her arms about me? Would she have loved me for what I was – her daughter, no matter how disfigured, no matter how ugly, how blemished beyond repair by that hideous scarlet mask? But what purpose was there in such thoughts? I had taken her life – and perhaps my brother’s too. My father had decided on the punishment: I must live out my life as a man in a woman’s body.
I sat on my father’s bed then, the dress crumpled in my lap, staring at my own reflection in the mirror. Who was I? I was no woman, with my short hair and long stride, but I was no man either. What joys were denied me? Childbirth and motherhood? The care and comfort of a man? But childbirth brought with it the risk of death. And as for a husband – who would have me, so unsightly as I was, and so schooled in the freedoms and sovereignty of men? Nor could I be a husband, that much was clear. But there was one person whom I loved with the strength of man and woman combined. I knew I would never be able to tell her. I folded the dress as neatly as I could, and put it back in the chest.
My father still watched me, his face stony, the leech in his hand squirming from side to side. Was she anything like me, Father? Would she have been proud of me? Did she hold me in her arms? But I said nothing.
He plopped the leech into another glass jar and turned back to the tank. ‘Go out, Jem,’ he said, his voice expressionless. ‘Go out and find your Mr Quartermain and leave the past where it is.’
I found Will sitting on the roof of the brewhouse, looking out across the churchyard. The brewhouse was a low, single-storey building that backed onto St Saviour’s churchyard. The roof was flat, and the chimney provided protection from the wind. I often went up there myself when I wanted to get away from the hospital but still be in the midst of everything. The mounded greensward of the churchyard gave the illusion of countryside, as long as one did not turn one’s head very much.
‘You were out early,’ I said.
‘I wanted to speak to Dr Bain.’ His back was against the chimney stack so that he was sheltered from the wind, his face towards the graveyard. On his lap, he had a sketch book. He had drawn the church – a low-slung building whose porch and nave appeared to have sunk into the earth. The place had once sat proud of its surroundings, but over the centuries the ground had gradually risen up; packed with the numberless dead, until it was no more than twelve inches below the windows. These days, parishioners entered the church by descending a short flight of steps, cut into the corpse-filled earth.
‘I thought I should make a sketch before the job begins,’ he said.
I sat down beside him. ‘There are fewer bodies in there than you might think,’ I said. I told him about the rains and the terrible tangle of bones caught at the gates. ‘They were taken away. More have been added since, but not so many as there were.’
‘I fear your childish memory deceives you,’ he replied. ‘What seemed like a multitude was, in fact, no more than a dozen or so, so the sexton told me. How many might be left beneath the earth? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand? Perhaps even more than that. The dead have been shoved into that patch of ground for seven hundred years.’ He shook his head. ‘I can think of no worse undertaking than this. And the ground is largely clay. That alone leads me to suspect the worst. Thank you for your attempts to make the task seem more . . . agreeable, but it’s still a ghastly job.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, I went to see Dr Bain, and then I came here to take a look at the place.’ He put his face up to the sun. ‘It’s warm on this roof, and quiet. I got up by climbing on the churchyard wall.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s my place too. Why did you want Dr Bain?’ I added. I knew I was intruding, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Is it about last night?’
Will blushed. He rubbed his inky fingers on his lapel.
‘You went with that girl, didn’t you? The red-haired one who looked like a consumptive?’
He nodded. ‘But I couldn’t—’ He closed his eyes. ‘I don’t know why. I felt nothing at all. Nothing. I was . . . repelled. Is that . . . is that usual?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I spent twenty minutes looking out at the fog and advising mine how to avoid the pox. What do you make of that?’
Will laughed. He sounded relieved. ‘I ended up showing mine card tricks,’ he said.
‘Did she enjoy it?’
‘She seemed to.’
‘I believe they always do,’ I said. ‘It’s part of the job, to seem to enjoy anything.’
‘Oh, this one really did enjoy it,’ said Will.
‘There!’ I laughed. ‘You sound just like a man now!’
Will’s smile wavered. ‘But I still couldn’t bear to . . . So I thought I might ask Dr Bain. He seems very experienced, and he’s a doctor. He might know what’s wrong.’
‘There’s nothing wrong,’ I said. ‘Not everyone’s like Dr Bain, you know.’
‘You, for instance?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But no one’s quite like you though, are they?’
I said nothing. Then, ‘So, did you see the doctor?’
Will turned back to his sketch. ‘He wasn’t in. The housekeeper said his bed hadn’t been slept in either. She said he was probably out seeing a patient.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘perhaps he’s back now.’ I sprang to my feet and held out my hand to him. ‘It’s almost midday. Let’s find out.’
The clear skies and sharp wind were a relief after the thick brown fog. But whereas the fog concealed everything, the sunlight and the wind served to draw attention to the dilapidation of St Saviour’s Street. Straw, grit, rags, dust, all blew from west to east past the infirmary gates and along the thoroughfare. The stuff that was too heavy
to blow away – offal, vegetable matter, ordure – clogged the street, churned into ridges of putrescence by the wheels of passing vehicles. Each ridge was home to a fizzing cloud of flies, which rose when disturbed by the traffic. Maggots crawled lazily amongst the debris, and I was forever finding them on my boots. Still, I thought, at least the wind meant that the flies were less bothersome that day.
Dr Bain’s house faced north. Even in the midday sun the building was a tall, dark cliff face. I pulled the bell and waited. The room we had been in last night looked out at St Saviour’s Street, the tiny rectangle of grass beneath its window a tangled patch of dandelions and plantain. The weeds were crushed: the plantain leaves hanging by their threads, the hollow stalks of the dandelions snapped and broken.
The door jerked open. The housekeeper was as tall as a man, and thickset like a prizefighter. She folded her wrestler’s arms across her broad bosom. ‘Doctor Bain’s not in, sir. He sent me out last night and I’ve not seen him since.’
‘Oh,’ I said. And yet, if the doctor was not in then we might as well pick up the coffins and take them back to the apothecary. ‘Well, might we come in, please? Mr Quartermain and I left something important in Dr Bain’s front room last night.’
‘That front room’s locked,’ said the housekeeper.
‘I have a key. I would be grateful if you would let us through.’
The woman stared at me. I knew she wanted to say ‘no’. She had never liked me – my birthmark unsettled her, I could tell. She looked at it continually, her face set in an expression of pity, disgust and horror. But I could also see that she was curious. Perhaps she might get to see what was in that locked room, with its shuttered windows and its strange sounds and smells. ‘Well, Mr Flockhart, since it’s you.’
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