The Misbegotten (37 page)

‘Such oblivion is dangerously compelling, Mrs Weekes. For . . . for years I relied on tincture of opium to liberate me from this. It brings on a wonderful kind of living death . . . a release from all thought and care. At one time I lay near to death because if it. Only my mother saved me then, removing the stuff from me, and leaving me to suffer in its absence. She saved my life, I think, though I did not thank her for it at the time. I’m not sure I thank her for it now. It would be simpler to die, I sometimes think.’

‘Our lives are God-given,’ Rachel said softly. She shrugged. ‘It is not for us to decide when we relinquish them, and what would be simpler is not pertinent.’

‘Is that so?’ he said, his mouth twisting in disgust.

He stared blackly at her for a moment, and then erupted out of his chair. ‘You say it is for God to decide, then? Does God put guns in men’s hands? Does God make men rape young girls to death? Does he take aim with flying shrapnel and artillery fire? Does he place one fateful finger on each man on a battlefield and say “fever, gangrene, dysentery”? No!’ His voice had risen to a shout, and Rachel didn’t dare reply. He seemed to tower over her so she stood up, knotting her fingers in front of her to keep them still, and watched as Jonathan strode to the bookcase and fetched down one of the large glass jars he kept there. It took some effort to lift it; the liquid inside sloshed. Rachel could sense the weightiness of it, and inside was a wrinkled, knobbed thing, trailing tentacles from its underside. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he said.

‘No,’ Rachel whispered.

‘This is a man’s brain. He was a criminal – a murderer, in fact.’ Rachel stared at it in horror.

‘How . . . how came you to have such a thing?’

‘I befriended one of the doctors my mother sent to me. An anatomist. He thought he could cure the pains in my head by cutting a hole in my skull the size of a sovereign, to relieve the pressure. By exposing my brain to the sun and sky I would be cured, so he proclaimed. What do you think? Should I have let him?’

‘Sweet Lord, no, he would have killed you, surely?’ said Rachel. Inside the jar the brain was moving, the cords beneath it wafting like the sentient tendrils of some creature. She began to feel queasy.

‘He said not. He said he had experimented up in London, upon a woman who’d been driven quite insane by the deaths of her six children. He thought the procedure would let the ill humours out of her mind, and restore her reason.’

‘And did it?’ Rachel’s voice was near strangled.

‘Well, she raves no more. She speaks no more either, nor walks, nor eats. They feed her through a tube, and when they stop, she will die.’

‘Why do you tell me this?’

‘I would make you
see
, Mrs Weekes. I befriended this doctor, though I did not let him carve my skull. I went with him to watch the opening of cadavers brought down from the gallows; I . . . I wanted to learn how the body worked. I wanted to find the place inside a man where the soul resides; I wanted to be sure, again, of its existence. Because otherwise we are just machines, aren’t we? Like the digesting duck – like that copper mouse? So I watched, and I studied, and this is what I found out: we
are
just machines, Mrs Weekes! We eat and we sleep and we shit and then we do it all again, just like the other beasts that walk this earth. And when we die it is because another man has broken some part of us – removed some cog from the machine so that it may not run. And this,
this
—’ He shook the brain in its jar so that the fluid sloshed and the lid rattled; he took one slow step towards her, then another. ‘This is what decides it. Not God. Not fate. So I ask you, Mrs Weekes, if another man may decide when I should die, why then should I not decide it for myself?’

Jonathan Alleyn stood in front of her, eyes snapping; holding the jar out in front of him like some gruesome gift. His hands were white with the effort of gripping its smooth sides; shudders ran up his arms.

‘We are not mere machines, sir. I am sure of it. Man was made for a higher purpose . . . in God’s image . . .’ said Rachel, shakily, fighting the urge to run from him. She could not take her eyes from the greyish thing, the dead thing, in the jar.
Is that truly what I keep inside my skull?
It seemed desperately wrong that it should have been torn away from its owner and kept in such a hideous manner, for living eyes to look upon.
Such things are meant to stay hidden.

‘In God’s image?’ Jonathan laughed then – a mirthless sound. ‘Then God is a murderous bastard, Mrs Weekes, and you are a wilfully
stupid
woman.’ Rachel flinched, cut by the insult.

‘What then of love?’ she said desperately. ‘Where in that machine of blood and bone does love reside, Mr Alleyn?’

‘
Love?
’ he spat. He stared at her blankly as if he didn’t know the word, and then his eyes blazed anew. Anger disfigured his face, turned his lips bloodless and thin, put deep furrows between his brows. It made him look bestial indeed. ‘Love is an illusion. Love is a myth. Love is a story we tell ourselves to make living more bearable! And it is a
lie
!’ he roared, lifting the jar high above their heads.

Rachel froze. Jonathan’s sudden rage assaulted her like a flare of agony, so intense it slowed time, and made everything else hollow and unreal in comparison. In that moment, she glimpsed its black, ravaged heart; the look in Jonathan’s eyes chilled her.
He can’t even see me any more.
Then his arms came down abruptly, swinging with tremendous force. At the last second Rachel managed to take a step backwards, and so the jar exploded into shards at her feet, not over her head.

Silence rang in her ears. The reek of spirits rushed to fill the room, stinging her eyes and nose, bringing tears to blur her vision. There was a stinging from her leg, too – blood was welling from a cut above her ankle, a neat slice through stockings and skin. The murderer’s brain had come to rest on the toe of her right shoe. When Rachel moved her foot she felt its soggy weight. It rolled away sluggishly, shining wet and looking more alive than it should. Her gorge rose; she shuddered and clamped her hands over her mouth. Jonathan was breathing hard, staring straight ahead without blinking; his empty hands hung at his sides. A sliver of glass had flown up and nicked his cheekbone, and a thin line of blood ran straight down from it, looking like a scarlet tear. Gradually, Rachel saw some awareness return to his expression; he blinked, and then his eyes widened, and he swallowed. As if released by this, she stepped past him hurriedly, her heel grinding a fragment of broken glass into dust. Her walk became a run, and she left him there, standing in silence, as she pulled open the door and fled.

At the bottom of the stairs two figures were waiting for her – Starling rushing from the door in the panelling, and Josephine Alleyn coming from the front parlour. Rachel stopped and leant on the newel post to catch her breath.

‘Mrs Weekes! I heard a terrible noise, I feared . . .’ Mrs Alleyn chose not to say what she had feared. Her face had worn panic, but soon resettled itself.

‘He . . . the jar . . . I think . . .’ Rachel fought for words. ‘I am not injured,’ she said.

‘But, you are. Your ankle . . . come – come at once and sit down. Starling, why do you loiter? Send up some tea, and some warm water and cloths.’

‘Madam,’ Starling muttered, scowling as she vanished. Josephine led Rachel through to the parlour, and seated her on the couch.

‘I do hope my son has not . . . What is that dreadful stench?’ Mrs Alleyn recoiled, putting her fingers under her nose.

‘Oh, I can hardly tell you!’ Rachel cried. She felt the liquid sloshing around in her shoes, between her toes, and nausea washed through her again. ‘It was one of his . . . specimen jars. The h-human brain. He . . . dropped it.’ Mrs Alleyn leant away from Rachel, revolted.

‘Please,’ she muttered. ‘Take off your shoes and stockings immediately. Falmouth! Take these things away. Clean and dry the shoes, if you can, but do not bother with the stockings – burn them. And send Dorcas to my room to find a clean pair for Mrs Weekes.’

‘My thanks, Mrs Alleyn,’ said Rachel, wearily.

The stockings that Dorcas brought were knitted silk, far finer and softer than Rachel’s woollen ones. Josephine Alleyn watched her wash her feet and put them on with an expression that hovered between compassion and froideur.

‘Tell me, Mrs Weekes, was this a deliberate attack by my son?’ she asked, at last.

‘I do not think so. That is . . . he meant to smash the thing, in his anger . . . but I do not think he meant to injure me.’
But he would have, perhaps, had I not stepped back. Without even knowing he did so.
The thought sent her a shiver.

‘What had angered him so?’

‘I . . . it was my fault. I spoke of love. I thought to . . . soothe him, to reassure him, when he had grown agitated. But the effect was quite the opposite.’

‘Yes. It would have been,’ said Mrs Alleyn. When Rachel looked up she found the older woman studying her. ‘But you must know, Mrs Weekes – you who have also lost people – that love can be as cruel a thing as any under the sun.’

‘Yes, I suppose it can be.’

‘When I first invited you here to introduce you to Jonathan, I told you, did I not, that I sensed some strength in you?’

‘You did, Mrs Alleyn.’

‘That was the strength I sensed, for it is in me too. It is the strength that comes from suffering, and surviving it. My son does not have it, and so his wounds do not heal.’

‘You speak of your own grief at losing your husband, and your father?’ At this, Mrs Alleyn’s face fell out of its steady composure for once. Her eyelids flickered down, her lower lip shook, just for a moment.

‘I had but two years of marriage to Mr Robert Alleyn, before his untimely death forced me to return to my father. They were the happiest two years of my life,’ she said, words weighty and cold with sorrow. In that moment, Rachel saw Mrs Alleyn differently. She saw a woman, alone and afraid, rather than a grand and powerful lady. Impulsively, she took the other woman’s hand in both of hers and held it tightly, as much for her own comfort as for Mrs Alleyn’s.

‘I do fear that I shall never be that happy,’ Rachel said, with quiet yearning. ‘For such love – passionate love – I have never known.’

As though a door had closed, Josephine Alleyn retreated from her.

‘Do not wish for it,’ she said. ‘Such love will use you ill, like as not. It used me ill. It used my son ill.’ She stared down at their clasped hands so pointedly that Rachel released her hold, confused.

‘But you would not wish to have never felt it at all, surely?’ she said. Mrs Alleyn did not answer at once, and thoughts paraded behind her eyes.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps I value the lessons it taught me, more than anything. The strength that losing it gave me. A woman needs that strength, to survive the ordeals this world will devise for us. The ordeals men will devise for us.’ She said this so grimly that Rachel did not know how to answer.

When Falmouth returned her shoes Rachel immediately smelt the preserving spirits still on them. She didn’t ever want to put them back on her feet, but saw little option. Mrs Alleyn wrinkled her nose and scowled.

‘Well. You will have to wear them to go home, Mrs Weekes, I cannot lend you any of mine. I have always had very dainty feet, but yours . . . But then do burn them, and find yourself another pair. This should cover your expenses, and you may keep the stockings.’ She fetched coins from a nearby drawer and handed them over.

‘You are very kind, Mrs Alleyn.’

‘But are you, Mrs Weekes? And are you kind enough?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Will you come again to my son, in spite of this . . . latest mishap?’ She asked it abruptly, almost impatiently.
If I say no, she will waste no more time with me.

‘I . . . I must have a chance to rest, and to think, Mrs Alleyn.’

‘To think?’ she echoed, and then waved her hand. ‘Very well. Take your time, Mrs Weekes.’

When Rachel got home she gave her shoes to a pauper, and found that the foul smell had got into the stockings Mrs Alleyn had given her. She dropped them, pinched between thumb and finger, into a pail of soapy water; then sat near the front window and waited for Richard, lost in thought. Jonathan Alleyn filled her mind: the things he had told her about the war; the way he had lost control in his anger.
Is Starling right about him? Could he have done Alice harm, even if he didn’t intend it, and doesn’t remember it?
The thought was somehow more troubling to her now than it had been in the beginning.
But not killed her
, said the echo, in hope.
Not that.
If there truly had been a letter for Alice from some unknown other person . . . could that person not also have made her disappear? Or helped her to?
She could be alive.

A knock at the door startled her up. It was a smut-faced boy with a note for her; she gave him a farthing and he scampered away. The note was written on a small scrap of paper, the torn corner of a bigger sheet. The ink was as black as soot, the writing well slanted and done with extravagant loops, untidily, as if hurried. The note contained few words, but those were enough to still her.
Forgive me. Jon.
^a
Alleyn.
Rachel folded this tiny note into her palm and held it until the paper turned as warm and soft as skin.
The other note is the key to this – the note to Alice from the lovers’ tree. Did she betray him for another? Is it the war that plagues him, or his secret guilt? I must know.

For several days, she did not return to Lansdown Crescent. She needed to let herself settle, to take a breath, to understand what she thought and felt a little better. To understand why she kept Jonathan Alleyn’s note tucked into her trinket box, and reread it as if it contained some important and complicated instruction that she needed to learn by heart. It had been too long since she’d visited Duncan Weekes, so she took him a beef pie, still warm from the oven. They sat to either side of his mean hearth and ate it from plates on their laps, with a mug of hot watered brandy each, talking about small things and pleasant memories. The old man seemed in good spirits, and Rachel was keen to clear her thoughts for a while, so she mentioned nothing of the Alleyns, or her difficult involvement with them.