Beloved Poison (28 page)

The basement was a dismal low-ceilinged corridor. There were no floor coverings, and beneath our feet were cold, stone slabs. My footsteps echoed, no matter how hard I tried to walk silently. Ahead of me, the attendant moved without a sound. The corridor was lined with heavy wooden doors, riveted with iron, each with a sturdy lock and a small sliding panel for viewing the occupant. No windows looked onto that subterranean passage, and the place seemed to stretch on and on into the dark bowels of the earth. From the other side of a door came the sound of low and rhythmic moaning. From behind another I could hear sobbing, and from behind a third a voice spoke over and over again: ‘Where’s Papa? Where’s Papa? Where’s Papa? . . .’

There came a sigh from somewhere deep in the shadows. I could see a glow in the darkness, up ahead around a bend in the passage. The sound of a dragging footstep, the rattle of keys, and a hollow cough spoke of the approach of the warden. He wore an old top coat, with wide lapels and a high shawl collar, of the kind that was fashionable some thirty years earlier. It was green with age, shining with greasiness and spotted here and there with mould. He looked to be about eighty years old, and a fine scattering of scalp flakes clung to the verdigris shoulders of his coat, as though he were desiccating before my eyes. I wondered how long it had been since he had climbed the flight of stairs out of that basement burrow, how long since he had felt the sun and wind on his face, though he was so old and dry I was not sure he would survive very much of either.

‘This gentleman’s come to see Macbeth.’ My guide addressed the warden.

‘Macbeth?’ I said, hopefully. ‘Is that really his name?’

The warden laughed – a sound like wind passing through the dried keys of a sycamore. ‘Naw,’ he said. ‘
That’s
not ’is real name. I just calls ’im that. I’m
edge-akayted
, see?’

‘“Macbeth doth murder sleep.”’ All at once I felt sick and dizzy. I closed my eyes. ‘Show me,’ I whispered. I heard the sound of the keys, the scrape of a lock, the scream of an ancient iron hinge. Inside, was darkness. Beside me, the warden held up his candle.

The room was small, no more than eight feet by twelve. It was upholstered in its entirety with tough cotton padding, riveted to the walls and floor. The door too was lined with the stuff. It had a waxy sheen in the candlelight, and an oily brownish patina. High in the wall, a small barred window, no more than eight inches square, allowed the moonlight in.

On the floor, sitting against the far wall, was a man. He was on his knees, and he rocked back and forth, his head in his hands, making a low moaning sound. I realised now that I had been listening to him even before the door was opened, so demented and pitiful was the sound. I could not see his face for his hands were held over it. White hair straggled over his fingers. He wore a tattered shirt and a filthy pair of navy blue britches. He rocked without stopping, as though the act and the sound had a rhythm and sonorousness than comforted him.

‘Does that all the time,’ said the warden. ‘Rocks and rocks like that. Never any bother. Poor devil.’ He shook his head. ‘Thought I’d seen everything, but I ain’t never seen this.’

‘And this is the man who never sleeps?’ I whispered.

‘Used to sleep, so I were told. But not now. Did sometimes when he first came. That were a while ago now, though. Can’t remember when he last slept, but then I’m not watchin’ ’im all the time. But the sound never stops. He hardly moves, just rocks. Hardly eats. Blind now too.’

The blind man’s shoulders were skeleton-thin, his clothes hanging off him. Beneath he was little more than a living corpse, the flesh and muscle worn away so that he was nothing but bones and sinew. I closed my eyes, hardly able to look. I could feel the blood thumping at my temples. I put my hand to my head, as a low groan escaped my lips. The man before us fell silent. He had not noticed the opening of the door, but now his head snapped round and he turned towards us. His eyes were red rimmed and glassy, and he stared at the light without blinking. His skin was grey, the flesh cleaving to the skull in a papery layer. He stared at me, his eyes, once sharp and sparkling and blue, now milky and pale.

When I awakened I was lying on the floor of the basement corridor, the attendant looking down at me. The door to Macbeth’s cell was closed, and I could hear once again that dreadful rhythmic moaning. I felt sick. My head ached from where I had struck it upon the floor and my guts churned within me, so that for a moment I wondered whether I had compounded the ignominy of passing out by soiling my own britches. I let out a great fart, and felt all the better for it.

‘There you are, sir,’ said the attendant, helping me to my feet. ‘It’s the shock, ain’t it? There’s not many that can look on Macbeth and not come over all queer. It ain’t nat’ral, a human ghost.’

I nodded, licking dry lips. He did not meet my gaze as he turned away. ‘Perhaps we’d better get you up to Dr Hawkins’s rooms now.’

My father lay on a leather-topped couch, the size and shape of an operating table. His upper body was angled so that he could sit up slightly, and his head rested on a pillow. His eyes were closed. In the dim light, with his eyes in shadow, his resemblance to ‘Macbeth’ was more striking than ever.

‘And you saw Mrs Catchpole?’ Dr Hawkins was standing at a table, the surface of which was littered with scientific equipment – rubber tubes, syringes of varying size, beakers, clamps. His shirt sleeves were rolled up.

‘Yes.’ I did not want to talk about Mrs Catchpole. ‘And then I saw someone else,’ I said. ‘In the basement. The attendant took me.’

For a moment, Dr Hawkins froze, a cannula and a large stoppered flask in his hands. My father’s eyes opened.

‘He had no business in the basement,’ muttered Dr Hawkins.

‘I’m glad he took me,’ I said. ‘As neither you nor my father saw fit to do so.’

‘Macbeth,’ said my father. ‘That’s what they call him, isn’t it?’ His lips curved in the faintest of smiles. ‘But you and I know better, don’t we, Jem? You and I know exactly who he is.’

‘He is my uncle,’ I said. ‘Your brother, Nathaniel.’

Mr father nodded. ‘I thought he was dead,’ he said. ‘We went our separate ways a long time ago. You met him, Jem, remember? When you were a child? I never saw him again after that, until Dr Hawkins told me—’ He closed his eyes. The only sound came from the ticking of the clock, a reminder that every second that passed was a second closer to insanity, a second that advanced my father’s illness and took him further from cure. Tick. Tick. Tick. Unceasing. Relentless. Inevitable.

Then, ‘There was always talk of bad blood, tainted blood, running through the family. Our father’s brother. A grandfather. A great-aunt as mad as King George. We vowed never to speak of it. But it was a constant shadow in our lives, like a storm on the horizon, and Nathan and I watching it, waiting for the wind to change direction and bring it home. There was always hope, always a possibility that the illness, the affliction, whatever it was, would pass us by – one of us at least, perhaps both, might be spared.’ He shook his head, his grey hair straggling across the pillow like the ragged seeds of the fire-flower. How thin it had become and how old he looked; how tired and without hope. He turned his eyes upon me. ‘Nathaniel, as you saw him, is what I shall become. Blind, insane, demented with exhaustion, my mind and body eroded from within by the very life force that sustains us all. It never stops, nor rests, nor leaves us be. It eats away at us, consuming us the way an engine consumes coal, faster and faster the less and less there is to take. And you? You can only wait, and hope. And pray. For my brother, and for me. And then, when I am gone, you must pray for yourself.’

It was no more than I had expected. The moment I heard mention of the man who never slept, I knew. When I saw him, I became certain. And yet the knowledge, somehow, seemed alien to me. I could not comprehend it. My father was to die, blind and raving? I was to live my life without him, hostage to a similar fate? I could not,
would
not believe it, even though I knew it to be the truth.

‘Jem.’ My father held out a hand. His fingers, always so strong, looked like the fingers of an old man. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. Seeing Nathaniel. I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t – I couldn’t bear for you to live with the knowledge of what may happen, the possibility of madness, as I have done—’

‘I know, Father,’ I said.

‘I was just a boy when my own uncle fell ill. We watched, Nathan and I, watched him slowly change. And then one day he was gone. He took his own life.’ My father took a deep breath. ‘He chose eternal damnation,’ he whispered. ‘At the time I could not understand how he could make such a choice, but now . . . now I pray that I will find the strength—’

And so, at last, I understood his loneliness and dread, his taciturn nature. He had been waiting, in fear, all his life. And now? Now he was more afraid than ever. ‘There must be a chance,’ I whispered. ‘A hope.’

‘My only chance lies with Dr Hawkins. We tried bleeding, tried weakening the whole bodily economy in the hope that new blood would be manufactured to replace the old, and that sleep would come.’

It had not worked, I knew that much. ‘What happens now?’

‘Dr Hawkins will remove my blood, and replace it with his own.’

‘And you are here, Jem, because you must put your father’s blood into my veins.’ Dr Hawkins was standing with his back to the candlelight. His face was in darkness, but I knew there would be a gleam in his eyes. I had seen that light in Dr Bain’s eyes many times. ‘I know you understand,’ he continued, as though reading my thoughts. ‘Your work with Dr Bain – he told me what took place on those evenings you spent together. You understand the need to test, to experiment, to try for ourselves. It is only then that we can draw conclusions.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said. I had heard it all before. If it was Dr Hawkins’s wish to fill his own veins with my father’s tainted blood, then I was not about to dissuade him.

‘And how did Nathaniel find his way here?’ I said.

‘Your uncle was brought to me not four weeks ago,’ said Dr Hawkins. ‘But it was not the first time I had come across him. We had met in India, years ago, when I worked at the Calcutta hospital and he was surgeon aboard the
Admiral Greystoke
. The details are irrelevant, but we became friends. One day Nathan told me of his fear: the hereditary blood of the Flockharts. He was quite well at the time, and showed no sign of the illness that was later to leave him the wrecked and blinded wretch you saw.

‘Sometime later I returned to London, but I told Nathan to look me up in that city if ever he was there, and to be certain to do so if the malady came upon him. Of course, once I met your father, Jem, it was quite clear to me that he was Nathaniel Flockhart’s brother, and that he too might one day suffer from the same sickness. But it was not for me to break Nathaniel’s confidence, and I said nothing of the matter. In time, I discovered that your father suffered from insomnia. Was it a mild form of the same condition? I could not be sure, but I watched, and listened, and waited.

‘Eventually, though I had hoped it might take place in happier circumstances, one day Nathan Flockhart sought me out. He was already deep within the grip of that terrible illness – his eyesight was failing, and he was hardly able to speak. At first, he stayed with me, in my home. But he deteriorated quickly, and it soon became impossible to keep him there. It was then that he was brought to Angel Meadow, and here, eventually, he met your father once more.

‘It appeared at first that your father remained free of the disease. I wondered whether there had been exciting causes that, for Nathan, had precipitated the illness, whereas for your father those stimuli had been avoided. The question was soon answered, as it became apparent that your father too was afflicted.

‘Nathan is now blind, and quite mad. But your father? Your father is in the early stages, and perhaps there is some hope, even if it is just a little. These past weeks he has watched his own brother turn mad, and all the while he knows that he too will end up that way, unless we find a way to intervene.’