The Poison Thread

by Laura Purcell

  ‘You do not know, Dorothea . . .’ he began. He raised a hand to stroke his moustache. ‘You were very young, when your mother died. You would not recall how . . . strange she became towards the end.’

  I recall everything: every line of her face, every word that she spoke. She was never strange to me.

  ‘The . . . ah, religious mania. You have to understand how it was, back then.’ He perched on the edge of my desk. ‘The Catholic Emancipation Bill was still years away. When she suddenly converted, like that . . . It was the end of good society for us.’

  I turned my eyes to the menus, for I could not conceal the scorn in my face. He spoke as if Mama should prefer good society to the sanctity of her own soul!

  ‘Looking back, I think it was the onset of the illness. Her behaviour . . . I do not like to tell you this, Dora. Perhaps it was not her fault, but she embarrassed me. In public. There was gossip.’

  A protective flare in my chest. I wrestled it down, determined to reply with composure. ‘As you say, sir, it was a long time ago. You cannot doubt your position in society today. Nobody thinks the less of you for having a – what shall we say? – eccentric daughter?’

  When his voice came, it was iron hard. ‘You do yourself no favours. What you call eccentricity, others will call bad blood. They will call you your mother’s daughter.’

  ‘What else would I be?’ He hesitated. I could read his thoughts, and for a moment I lost my control. ‘No! I do not care if she does accept you – I will never, never be the daughter of Mrs Pearce!’

  ‘That is sufficient, Dorothea!’ He surged to his feet, shaking my desk. A paper fluttered to the floor. ‘I mean it. You will behave at this party. You will be biddable, you will be feminine and you will talk to Sir Thomas about reasonable, everyday topics. Am I understood?’

  ‘Yes, Papa. Only—’

  His index finger pointed within an inch of my nose. ‘And whatever happens, whatever people say to you, there will be absolutely no talk of heads.’

  ‘But Papa, what if—’

  ‘You will behave!’ he roared, marching from the room and slamming the door behind him, to poor Wilkie’s considerable fright.

  Temper, temper. One of the seven deadly sins. Not that Papa would ever mind that.

  I was angry too; my heart thudding hard against my ribs, my tongue itching to upbraid him. But of course I took the time to compose myself and be reasonable about it.

  Now I am calmer, I reach into the bottom drawer and retrieve my secret skull. Smooth bone against my hands. A light thing, really, without all the flesh. I place its forehead on my own. The pressure, the cool touch, seems to ease my pounding nerves.

  Dark, cavernous holes gape where the eyes once were. Inside lies a white-grey cave. The thoughts and fears that echoed there are gone. No tumult, no strife remains, only bone. How trivial our mortal cares are, when all is said and done.

  Recovering from his little scare, Wilkie flutters back up to his perch and tries a wary chirp.

  ‘I know, dear boy. He does not understand me.’ I place the skull back in its drawer and retrieve my second treasure. Time has softened the folds in the paper and erased most of the print. In the corner are two pale splashes – I suppose she must have spilt tea upon it as she read. I trace the stains with my fingertips, longing for her.

  This was the first thing I found in Mama’s bundle of papers when I was tasked with sorting through them upon her death. Tied with a ribbon, it encased the letters from her friends and the silhouette sketches. It is a pamphlet on phrenology.

  If only Mama were here to help me defend the science I have learnt for her sake. We might study the guests at the party together. I should dearly like to compare findings with her.

  I should like to know if she looked at Papa’s skull, and saw the things that I see.

  8

  Ruth

  It was around midnight. A sickle moon hung in the sky above the deserted street outside. Its rays weren’t white or silvery but a sickly, phlegmy yellow.

  I sat on the cold floor by the window, leaning in close to my rushlight. It stank of fat. I feared it would spit on to my work, but I had little choice. I needed to see.

  My corset lay, stretching its wings over my lap, waiting for me to put the blood into its veins: the cords that would hold my body in place. It might cost me blood, I knew, to thread cords as unyielding as the ones I’d planned.

  So be it.

  Flattening the twine, I threaded it through the eye of a thick, blunt tapestry needle. Between the lining and the outer layer were the narrow channels I’d sewn and must fill. Gleaming fibres of peach sateen parted to make way for the very tip of the needle. I began to tug.

  It was like extracting a tooth. Slowly, slowly, the needle inched down its shaft. I pulled as hard as I could, working the material along the tail of twine. Only the tiniest movement rewarded each haul. My wrists shrieked with pain. Somehow I knew that was part of the magic; that if it didn’t cost me agony, it would be worth nothing. I bit my lip and kept on pulling. Strong, strong.

  After an hour, blood started to trickle from my cracked fingertips and stain my work. I wanted to give in, to cry. But that was what I always did. That was how I lost my corset in the first place. I couldn’t be that girl any more.

  Strong. I pictured the twine as a noose around Rosalind Oldacre’s neck. I pulled tight. Tighter.

  Then I heard the scream.

  I flinched, coming back to the cold, bare reality of my room. It wasn’t Rosalind crying out, not even the Rosalind of my dream. This was deeper, primal.

  I threw my sewing on to the bed, snatched up my rushlight and looked out of the window. Only fog wandered, ghostly, in the street.

  The cry soared again. It had come from inside my house.

  Shivering, I inched open my door and peered out on to the small landing. A light burnt beneath the door in my parents’ room. I heard Pa’s voice, low and urgent. Ma didn’t respond.

  My heart beat up in my temples. It couldn’t be . . .

  Ma screamed again.

  I darted across the landing, barrelling into the room.

  ‘Ma!’

  Pa stood at the foot of the bed, facing away from me. His damp nightshirt clung to the backs of his knees. For a foolish moment, I thought he’d made water in the bed. But he was speaking to Ma and there was no shame, no apology in his words, only fear.

  ‘What do I do? Jemima, tell me what to do.’

  I couldn’t see Ma.

  ‘Please, Pa, what’s happened?’

  He turned. The candle flame juddered. In a flash I saw it wasn’t urine sticking his nightshirt to his legs – it was fluid streaked with blood.

  ‘It’s coming? The baby?’

  ‘Yes, it’s coming all right.’

  I ran to the bed but instantly recoiled. A smell, animal and sharp, was all over Ma, all over the sheets with that yellow-red liquid.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she panted at me. ‘It’s too soon.’

  Pa began to pull on his trousers. ‘I’ll run for – for – who was it?’

  ‘No, it’s the middle of the night!’

  ‘They must have known that might happen when they agreed to come! Mrs Simmons, wasn’t it?’

  Ma gritted her teeth and winced before responding. ‘Mrs Simmons is in Dorset with her daughter. She thought we had weeks yet—’

  ‘The other one. The tall lady.’

  ‘Mrs Winter.’

  ‘Where does she live? No, never mind, I recall. Here, here.’ He thrust the candle into my trembling hand.

  I couldn’t keep up with their conversation. Pa began to change his shirt but I kept my eyes on Ma, horrified. She looked grotesque, indecent, a thing that shouldn’t be seen. Each time she groaned her swollen breasts wobbled beneath her nightgown.

  ‘You’ll be a good gi
rl and look after Ma,’ Pa said. It wasn’t a question. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  He ran a hand through his chaotic hair and then he was gone.

  A choir started up inside my head.

  ‘Don’t be – don’t be scared, Ruth,’ Ma gasped. Her words only made me more afraid. She looked ghastly as she said them. ‘We’ll get through it, you and I. We did before. Only . . . it wasn’t this bad with you, Ruth. It was slower. There were big gaps between the pains but now – oh!’

  Screwing up all my courage, I forced my legs forwards and went over to her. I knelt on the floorboards and took her perspiring hand in my own. Her grip was like a vise.

  I had no words of comfort to reassure her. All I could do was stare dumbly, watching her pant. She didn’t talk to me. All the air she sucked into her lungs was blown straight out again, as if she were trying to puff the pain away. Time stretched to twice its normal length. I tired of holding the candle so I threw it into the grate, where it caught a pile of cinder and simmered.

  By the time Pa hurtled back into the room I couldn’t feel my hand. Ma’s fingers had drained the blood from it. But that paled to nothing when he said, ‘She can’t come.’

  ‘What?’ It was me, not Ma, who cried out.

  ‘Her girl has the measles. She can’t leave her and she can’t come here, it would be too dangerous for the baby.’

  ‘But she has to come.’

  Pa and I regarded each other for a long time – longer than we ever had before. He looked younger than I remembered; young and terrified.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, crossing the floor and kicking off his shoes. ‘Jemmy, it’s all right. We can do this. We didn’t need anyone for Ruth, did we?’

  She must have recognised the tone – it was the same artificial, cheerful one they used on me. But she didn’t respond. She seemed cut off from us now, submerged under waves of pain.

  ‘I’m going to check you.’ Pa’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. ‘I’m going to see if it’s on its way out.’

  He threw the sheets off her legs and pulled up her stained nightgown. I caught a glimpse of angry, purple flesh straining over a misshapen lump.

  I tried to jerk away, but she wouldn’t release my hand.

  ‘It’s the head,’ Pa declared, as if that awful sight pleased him. ‘Baby’s the right way around, at least.’ Then he must have seen how pale I was, how deadly sick. ‘I’m sorry about all this, Ruth. Perhaps it’s not quite the thing for a girl your age but . . . I’m going to need your help.’

  ‘Send for the doctor,’ I begged him. ‘If the baby’s early, something might go wrong.’

  ‘I can’t. I wish I could.’

  ‘You must! I’ll go first thing in the morning and pawn everything I own, I promise. Just save Ma!’

  ‘I can’t, Ruth. Old Dr Barber saw me in a tussle with the wine merchant last week. He’ll never give me credit, he knows I’m no good for it.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  He waved a hand at me. ‘Go, quickly, and boil some water. Then see what you can find for your mother to drink. Heat wine if there’s any left. I might have a drop of whisky.’

  ‘I can’t go.’

  We both looked down at my hand, blue in Ma’s grasp. She wasn’t screaming now. Her lips moved but they didn’t form words, it was all gibberish.

  ‘I’ll take over,’ Pa said and struggled to wrench me free.

  I stumbled out of the room without looking back. My knees wouldn’t stop shaking. Not trusting myself on the stairs, I turned into my own room, fell into a pile beside my bed and threw up in the chamber pot.

  I felt a bit steadier after that. I hurriedly dressed in the gown I’d discarded that evening and drew a shawl over my shoulders.

  Nothing was real: not the deserted, black room downstairs, nor the sleeping street. I wasn’t real, walking to the pump with my creaking bucket. I worked the lever. It gurgled and groaned at me as if awaking from a slumber. I carried the bucket back, intensely aware of the sound of my footsteps. Sloshing water, I staggered into the house and heaved my bucket through to the kitchen.

  It was no quick task to re-lay the range, light it and bring the water to the boil. I was glad of it. Far better to be occupied than dwell upon my thoughts. I tried not to imagine what was occurring upstairs, and to block out any noise with the crackle of the fire. The cupboards didn’t hold any wine but I found Pa’s whisky. A quarter of the bottle was left. I decided to take it all.

  My legs shook even harder on the way upstairs. My shoulders quivered too – not from cold, but from fear of what I’d find.

  It was worse than I expected: Ma on all fours in the middle of the floor lowing like an animal at market. Tangled hair covered her face but I caught a disgusting flash of her rear end, matted with blood.

  Pa snatched the bottle from my hand. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and took a swig before pressing it to Ma’s lips. She tried to drink, but spluttered. I set the hot water down on the floor.

  ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Pa cried. ‘Get some linen, change the bed. And find something to wash your mother.’

  Ma howled.

  He patted her back, looking tentatively round to her parted legs. His face puckered. ‘Ruth, how long were you gone?’

  ‘I don’t know. An hour?’

  ‘More than that, I think. And the baby is no further along.’

  I wept as I changed the bed. No one observed me. I thought I’d feel better after a cry but my head ached. Perhaps that was when I started to realise how futile tears really are.

  Dawn inched up the horizon. It didn’t bring light, only turned the sky from black to grey. Everything in the room had a washed-out, sickly look.

  Ma had stopped her frightful cow impression. That was no comfort. Instead she grew listless and dreamy. We had no trouble putting her back in the freshly made bed; she flopped on to it like a rag doll, her face chalky against the pillow. I put a hand to her forehead – it was burning.

  Pa was beside himself. ‘She’s getting weak. Much more of this and she won’t even have the strength to push the baby out.’

  I opened the window for air. Black-suited clerks dashed by our house, heading off to their employment. The river folk went the other way.

  Pa leapt up. ‘It’s no good. I have to cut her.’

  ‘Cut her!’

  ‘Look, look.’ He gestured. Reluctantly, I peeked again at that scrap of head and Ma’s stretched, tortured flesh. ‘She can’t open wide enough. The only way to get the baby out is to cut her.’

  I clenched my thighs together. ‘You can’t!’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘She’ll bleed to death.’

  He put both his damp hands on my shoulders. ‘Ruth,’ he said, more serious than I’d ever heard him. ‘Ruth, you need to be very brave. After I cut her and pull the baby out, you will have to stitch her up.’

  Only his grasp on my shoulders held me upright. ‘Stitch her skin? Down there!’

  ‘Yes. It’s the only way.’

  ‘I can’t. Pa, please, I can’t—’

  ‘You have to. If we don’t act now, both Ma and the baby will die.’

  I hated him. I hated Ma; the gory wreck she’d become.

  Pa went to his studio for a penknife and I returned to my bedroom. My needle holder looked abhorrent now, a cloth book perforated with lines of torture. I selected my thickest, sharpest tool and picked up a reel of cotton, saliva filling my mouth, urging me to throw up at the very thought of what I must do.

  Could I do it? My eyes were so heavy, my hands shook from lack of sleep. I’d never felt less able to complete a task in my life. And this was worse than the Metyard work. A mistake didn’t mean a fine, it meant – I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

  Pa and I returned to Ma and stood either side of the bed. We look
ed like people about to commit a terrible crime. The light in the room wasn’t strong, but still it glinted on the edge of the knife.

  ‘We must make them clean,’ Pa said. ‘Heat it in the fire then plunge it into the whisky.’

  I watched him and copied his actions. My needle flashed, molten for a moment, before it sizzled and steamed in Pa’s whisky. It smelt sharp, heady.

  ‘Right.’ He pushed his shirtsleeves farther up his arms. They were trembling. ‘Let me show you what I’m going to do.’

  Together, we bent over Ma. She lay supine, uncomprehending as he lifted her nightgown and rolled it up as far as her breasts. Against her vivid flesh, the half-moon of the baby’s scalp glowed.

  ‘Here.’ His quivering finger drew lines above and below the protrusion. ‘The top first, then the bottom. I’ll reach in and pull the baby out. The moment I move away, you must start to stitch. There will be a quantity of blood. The afterbirth may come out while you’re working. Don’t worry about that.’

  I had no conception what an afterbirth was, but I didn’t want to ask.

  ‘What if you nick the baby’s head?’

  He paled, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. ‘I won’t.’

  I glanced at the folds of skin, the fat veins throbbing between them. Suppose he caught one? What would we do?

  My needle retained heat from the fire. I pinched it between my fingers until they hummed.

  ‘Ready?’

  I didn’t see Pa’s expression as he braced himself. Every nerve was concentrated in the tip of his knife, hovering over the baby’s squashed head. For a moment it seemed absurd that we’d even thought of such a thing. He wasn’t really going to cut that taut skin. But then his wrist flicked and it was all too real.

  Ma screamed.

  Blood pulsed out and splashed on the knife. Crimson, brighter than I imagined. Another flick, another scream. I was glad Ma cried so loud – it covered the sickening sound of her tearing flesh.