by Susan Hill
Rafe came in first, still carrying the glass phial, as if it contained a rare and precious oil. Walter was at his heels, pulling another trolley into the room, on which another figure lay. He locked the door behind him.
“What —?” He did not answer but stationed the trolley under the lamp.
“I need to call upon you again,” he said to me. “You are my witness.”
He drew down the sheet and I caught my breath. The body was that of a young woman of eighteen or twenty years, wearing a green cotton hospital gown. Her hair was a rich brown, with the reddish tinge of a chestnut fresh from its carapace. Her skin was flawless. She was beautiful.
“Again,” Walter said at my side, “as with our other body, we do not know her identity. She was brought into the hospital two days ago, found gravely ill with hypothermia on the river embankment. I attended to her and saw at once that here was the other half of the equation — if that does not put it too crudely. We made strenuous efforts to save her but when it became clear that we would not do so, I called Rafe. When I arrived here with you earlier, I hastened to find our old man and ascertain how much longer he had to live.”
All three of us looked down at the young woman. She was still breathing in a shallow and faltering rhythm. Walter felt her pulse.
“Weak and very slow.”
His voice dropped to a whisper so that I felt he was talking to himself. “If only she knew. If only…”
“I hope you do not intend to do her any injury or harm. Leave her to slip away peacefully, for God’s sake. Leave your shabby experiments at least to the old and hopeless.”
Walter simply shook his head and did not reply. All gazed silently at the dying girl. There was no harsh rattle this time, merely a few sounds in her throat, as if she was trying to cough. Walter turned urgently to Rafe, who held the phial containing the pulsating phosphorescence, and a fresh oxygen mask which he quickly attached to the girl’s face.
“Careful — wait — be very careful,” Walter said urgently. My mouth was dry, my eyes staring so that I scarcely blinked.
On the instant, and without further warning, the girl’s breathing stopped and at once the shadow of death, invisible yet almost tangible, crept over her face.
“Now!”
A split second and Rafe had started to squeeze the tube attached by one end to the phial and the other to the girl’s mouth beneath the mask. The liquid flared up and became radiant as it travelled at great speed out of the phial until the glass was empty. We all held our breath and then I felt as if the air in the whole room had somehow lightened and taken on a life of its own. I felt my heart leap, I felt jubilant, joyous, more alive than I had ever been, I felt new-born. When I looked at the others, I saw by a strange pearlescence on their skin and light in their eyes that they experienced it too. It all lasted only a thousandth of a second and yet it seemed to last for all eternity, and when it faded, I felt as if I had been let down from the air, to land softly, safely, on the ground by Rafe’s side. I did not dare to think, speculate, hope; I let my mind go blank. My body seemed held together by the finest of wires, which was taut but quite painless. And then I looked down.
The girl was breathing. Her pallor had the faintest colouring as the blood re-filled arteries, veins, capillaries, just below the skin. Her fingernails were flushed pink. She did not open her eyes, her body did not stir. Walter passed me the stethoscope and I could feel the trembling in his hand. I bent over the now living girl and listened to her heartbeat, heard the sound of air passing in and out of her lungs. I felt her pulse and lifted each eyelid in turn. The pupils were bright but unseeing. She was not conscious but as I removed the stethoscope, I said, “I have no doubt that she is alive.”
Walter grabbed Rafe’s hand in a grip so tight that the man winced. “You have succeeded!”
Rafe was deathly pale. “You have raised the dead!”
“No!” I said, and was startled to hear how loud and emphatic my voice sounded in the quiet room. “You go too far. Your claim is too immense — it is not credible. It defies everything I know, or I have been taught — it defies human experience.”
“Yes,” Walter said, “it does indeed. But now we must be practical. The young woman must be taken back to an acute ward and put under close observation. I will take her myself and instruct the nursing staff. Rafe must attend to the dead man. We will meet again at Printer’s Devil Court where my prescription is a glass each of good brandy.”
We watched Walter wheel away the still-breathing young woman. Our own work was quickly done. We left the old mortuary and locked the door. Rafe took possession of the key and we went, neither of us speaking, out of the hospital and up through the dark and deserted streets in the bitter cold to our lodgings.
4
“One thing I do not understand and that is ‘why’? What possible reason could you have for performing this whole charade?”
We were all three of us sitting round the fire, which in spite of our best efforts was smoking and sulking dismally in the grate. None of us was calm enough to sleep. I had said nothing on the way home, or for some time after we had all had our brandy and battled with the fire. But I had been thinking hard, my brain trying to produce a plausible explanation for what had happened, which had shocked and unnerved me, until, as if some piece finally clicked into place, I saw what should have been clear all along. Walter and Rafe had performed an elaborately staged series of clever conjuring tricks.
“You went to a good deal of trouble,” I said. “You prepared the way carefully and prepared me too for that matter and at some considerable risk. I see it all but I still do not see a reason, so perhaps before we retire please, Walter and Rafe, an explanation.”
Then I saw that Walter was angry. His mouth was tight, his eyes narrowed.
“You do not understand — you? Correct me, Hugh, but I think we are the ones owed an explanation and an apology.”
“How so?”
“Do you not believe the evidence of your own eyes? How can what you witnessed tonight be some kind of trick or charade? If it had been, then I agree you would be fully entitled to ask for a reason and an explanation, but credit us with more intelligence and maturity. What possible reason indeed could be behind such a trick? What a puerile game we would have been playing, what a waste of our time and energy — what an offence that would have been.”
“You cannot expect me to believe that it was anything other than a fraud.”
“I do expect it. What we witnessed was a triumphant success — the culmination of much work and strain over many months and many setbacks.”
I stood up. “So you refuse to give me your reason — so be it. I am horrified that you should have played such macabre games with the bodies of your patients. Shame on you. I want no more part of it. I will find new lodgings. I bid you both good night and God grant you forgiveness — which is better than you deserve.”
I did not go to bed, merely took off my jacket and shoes, loosened my collar and sat in my chair for the few hours that remained of the night, in a turmoil of confused and angry thoughts.
I could not forget the sight of the old vagrant dying before us, and the look of release and acceptance on his face. I could not forget the sight of the beautiful young woman in her coma, in that cold basement room. I intended to scour the hospital on the following day, to find her and discover what state she was in and whether she was expected to recover. About Walter and Rafe I could do nothing. I had, of course, no evidence of their nefarious activities. I wanted nothing more to do with them and prayed that whatever the reason for their dark and secret games, they would now cease to dabble in them and let the dead and the dying alone.
I wish now that I had taken James’s course. I could never un-know what I now knew or forget whatever it was that I had witnessed. James would be deeply troubled, not the least because, in his eyes, they had spoken blasphemously in their casual talk of “raising the dead” and even gone on to pretend that they had done so. I might almo
st have believed them, had the old man, who I had confidently pronounced dead, woken. He had not. He had remained dead. The young woman, of course, had never been dead at all.
Altogether, I was ashamed to have had the smallest part in it.
I felt unwell the next morning, weak and exhausted. I did not go into the hospital and on the day after that, being worse, I again took myself to Norfolk, where I became seriously ill, my nervous system shattered, and I spent many weeks recuperating. I suffered from appalling nightmares and waking terrors, so much so that our family physician questioned whether I was fit to return to the hospital and continue my medical career. This roused me, and I realised how badly my body, mind and spirits had been affected. But that was my turning point. I pulled myself up, determined to return to the practice of medicine.
A year later I left London for a hospital in the West Country. I worked hard, my interest and enthusiasm fully roused again and gradually I forgot Walter, Rafe and all their sinister trickeries.
James wrote to me to say that he had abandoned medicine, to study for the Ministry.
Of Walter and Rafe, I heard nothing.
PART THREE
1
I travelled to London rarely. In the past twenty years, I had visited no more than half a dozen times. I had a horror of the place and I had never again ventured to my old hospital nor set foot near Fleet Street and its environs. Many people enjoy revisiting old haunts but a shadow fell on me if I so much as thought about them.
I practiced as a country physician in a most beautiful and peaceful part of England for almost forty years and married a young widow, Eleanor Barnes, who brought me a splendid brace of stepsons. We did not produce any children of our own but that had never troubled me. Both Eleanor’s boys had grown up to be fine young men: Toby had gone into the army, Laurie had followed in my footsteps and I took a great deal of interest and pleasure in observing his progress through medical school and into his career as a doctor. He had no desire to be a family physician in a country parish — bury himself, as he put it— but went into medical research, made a pioneering study of certain genetic defects in children and became the country’s leading expert in their diagnosis and treatment. He spent some time travelling abroad. Earlier in the year of which I now write, he had finally returned and came down to see us. He was in his late thirties by then, the prime of life, a tall, handsome man with his mother’s deep brown eyes and sweetness of temperament.
We were only the three of us at dinner on that first night after his return, and when the beef had been set on the table Laurie said, “That looks a fine bottle of claret you have opened, Hugh.” (He and Toby had never called me by anything other than my Christian name since childhood, in accordance with our wishes and out of respect for their late father.) “Good enough for a toast.”
“It is indeed,” I said, touching the St Emilion from an especially fine year. “Tell us what news you have that deserves toasting.”
Eleanor looked at her son, a slight flush coming to her cheeks. “Are you going to be married, Laurie?”
He let out a shout of laughter. “Whenever have I had the chance to look around for a wife? No, no you will have to wait a long time before that happens. I have been appointed as consultant physician at St Luke’s — your own hospital, Hugh!”
In the midst of the general rejoicing and congratulations, a sudden chill descended on me, so that I had to force myself to remain full of laughter and good spirits, but it passed before long. I was proud of Laurie and delighted for him, but I never wanted to set foot in that hospital again.
However, some six months after he had taken up his appointment, I was obliged to do so. Laurie was presenting a paper to a learned medical Society, a great honour, and of course I must attend. Eleanor was away on a visit to her aged mother, so I went up to London alone. Laurie booked me a room in St Luke’s Club — for past and present members of the hospital. It was well-appointed, the public rooms were delightfully comfortable in an old-fashioned way, and I went off to hear the lecture wondering why I did not come to London more often, country bumpkin that I had become.
After the event we enjoyed a celebratory dinner and then, as Laurie wanted to stay up into the small hours talking to his colleagues, I left them to it, and just before midnight I set off to walk back to the Club. My route was the old one, but this corner of London had changed a good deal. Fleet Street no longer housed the hot-metal presses and many of the old alleys and courts had long gone, most of them bombed to smithereens by the Blitz. Once or twice I took a wrong turn and ended up among new buildings I didn’t recognise. At one point, I retraced my steps for a hundred yards and suddenly I was thrown back in time. I realised that the old Printer’s Devil Court, where I had lodged, had been laid waste and that the hospital Club was now sited on part of the same ground. I thought little of it — Printer’s Devil Court held no special memories for me, other than those last peculiar and unpleasant ones.
I was about to turn into the Club when I noticed that there was still a passageway to one side and saw the tower of St-Luke’s-at-the-Gate rising up ahead of me in the fitful moonlight. I stood stock still. London churches are always a fine sight and I was glad that this one, with a surprising number of others, had escaped destruction. The passageway ended at the back of the old graveyard, as before, and that seemed unchanged, the tombstones still leaning this way and that and even more thickly covered in moss.
And then I saw her. She was a few yards away from me, moving among the graves, pausing here and there to bend over and peer, as if trying to make out the inscriptions, before moving on again. She wore a garment of a pale silvery grey that seemed strangely gauze-like and her long hair was loose and free. She had her back to me. I was troubled to see a young woman wandering here at this time of night and started towards her, to offer to escort her away. She must have heard me because she turned and I was startled by her beauty, her pallor and even more, by the expression of distress on her face.
She came towards me quickly, holding out her hand and seeming about to plead with me, but as she drew near, I noticed a curious blank and glassy look in her eyes and a coldness increased around me, more intense than that of the night alone. I waited. The nearer she came the greater the cold, but I did not — why should I? — link it in any way to the young woman, but simply to the effects of standing still in this place where sunlight rarely penetrated and which had a dankness that came from the very stones and from the cold ground.
“Are you unwell?” I asked. “You should not be here alone at this time of night — let me see you safely to your home.”
She appeared puzzled by my voice and her body trembled beneath the pale clothes.
“You will catch your death of cold.”
She stretched out both her hands to me then but I shrank back, unaccountably loathe to take them. Her eyes had the same staring and yet vacant look now that she was close to me. But she was fully alive and breathing and I had no reason to fear.
“Please tell me what is wrong?”
There was a second only during which we both stood facing one another silently in that bleak and deserted place and something seemed to happen to the passing of time, which was now frozen still, now hurtling backwards, now propelling us into the present again, but then on, and forwards, faster and faster, so that the ground appeared to shift beneath my feet, yet nothing moved and when the church clock struck, it was only half past midnight.
“Please help me. I need someone to help me.”
I would have replied again to ask her how I could help but I was silenced, not by her words, but by her voice, which was not that of a girl of no more than eighteen or twenty, but of an old man, a deep, hoarse voice, cracked and wavering. It was like hearing a puppet-master accidentally speaking in the voice of one doll while pulling the strings of another. I recoiled but I also went on staring at the girl not only because of the voice, but because now I knew that I had seen her before — in the basement room of the hospital some for
ty years earlier, lying on a trolley and subject to the vile tricks played by Walter and Rafe.
“Sir? I have been searching for so long. Please help me.”
She was walking away from me and now began to move in and out between the graves again, going to first one and then another, quickening her pace, faster and faster, so that she seemed to be floating just above the ground. At each stone she bent and peered briefly at the inscription, though most of them were so worn away by the weather and overgrown, that few were legible. I followed her every step. I could not help myself. But at each grave, she let out a low, harsh cry of disappointment.
“Tell me,” I said, “I will try to help you. Are you looking for a particular grave? That of a parent perhaps? A loved one? Let us look together, though we had really better do it in the daylight.”
She sank to the ground then and bent her head. “My own…” she said.
“Your own family? Or perhaps even your own child?”
She shook her head violently, as if she was angry that I did not understand.
“Taken…” She seemed to have greater difficulty in forming the words now, as if she had little breath left and her voice sounded even older.
“The… wrong… life…”
My blood felt as if it flowed more and more slowly through my veins and I felt the chill tighten around me again. I looked in horror at the young woman and as I did so, one moment she was there, kneeling on the cold ground, trying desperately to speak, and the next she seemed to be dissolving, to become absorbed, like the damp, into the rough earth in front of the grave. I closed my eyes in terror of what I was seeing and when I opened them again she had gone. She was simply no longer there, before me. Nothing was there. Nothing at all.
