The Resurrectionist (9 page)

I
T IS A WEEK
before I go to her. Though noon has already passed, the drapes are drawn. Through the door my knock rings out, and soon the door is opened by a sallow-faced maid. She regards me coolly as I give my name and business. Though she is little more than a child, there is an unsettling frankness to her gaze. Perhaps to another man it might seem an invitation, but it seems to me it’s something closer to a bruise, for I have seen this look too many times upon the city’s streets, and know it for the look of girls who are women before their time and do not love the world for it.

Bidding me wait in the parlour she disappears upstairs. I am nervous, unsettled, and as Arabella enters, I start. She too pauses upon seeing me, her eyes meeting mine with that look of vulnerability I have glimpsed in her each time we have spoken, before she hardens herself and extends her hand for me to hold.

‘Mr Swift, you have caught us unawares.’

‘I had not thought to disturb you … If you would prefer me to leave –’

‘No,’ she says, then as if embarrassed by the urgency of her reply she corrects herself. ‘Please, stay. I will have Mary bring us some tea. Or would you rather brandy?’

‘Tea,’ I reply, and she nods, drawing the maid close as she gives some instruction. Straightening, Mary regards me with a look which is at once contemptuous and cautious, then is gone.

‘I am sorry if I have intruded,’ I say.

‘Please,’ she says, ‘do not apologise again.’ The terseness of this sets me off-balance, and lost now for words I wish I had not come.

She seats herself, stroking her gown to settle it. For several seconds we remain thus, then all at once we both begin to speak, she asking how I have been these last weeks, I for news of the play in which she is cast. I stop, asking her to continue, and she does the same, both of us speaking over the other before falling silent once more, this awkwardness between us overwhelming all.

And this is how we are when Amy comes bustling in. Unlike Arabella she seems to have only this minute risen, her curls loose and disarrayed, an effect which is at once girlish and curiously pleasing. Her face is filled with expectant glee, and as she enters her eyes alight on me. Thankful for her interruption I rise.

‘Have you come to take us somewhere in your carriage, Mr Swift?’ she asks as I take her proffered hand. ‘An outing would make a dull day so much more bearable.’ She gives me a teasing grin, and unable to help myself I smile.

‘Would that I could,’ I say. ‘But I am afraid I do not have a carriage.’

‘But you are a surgeon!’ she replies delightedly. ‘Surely you have a carriage.’

‘As a rule we apprentices do not tend to have carriages of our own.’

Behind her Arabella smiles, her face filled with indulgent love. Catching her eye I smile back, conspiratorially.

‘Perhaps we might walk then,’ Amy says. ‘It looks to be a fine day without.’ Turning to Arabella she gives her a pointed look.

‘You did say only yesterday it had been too long since you visited the park.’

Arabella shakes her head, but I see her resistance is already failing.

‘What of your performance?’ she asks Amy.

‘It is not until tonight.’

Arabella shakes her head, conceding. ‘Then let us go out,’ she says, ‘if you are so set on it.’

I am left alone while they dress, though they are not long, and it is with a sense of elation that I step into the street with them not half an hour later. Although the air is cold the day is fine, the sky a high, fragile blue. Amy is the first outside, turning back to face the two of us as she reaches the street, one hand raised to hold her hat upon her head. In the daylight she is little more than a girl, seventeen perhaps. By the corner a cab stands, an ageing hackney with two roan horses. I step forward to catch the attention of its driver but Arabella catches my arm.

‘Let us walk,’ she says. In her eyes there is a new solicitousness – she must know I could hardly afford the ride. Awkwardly I nod, thanking her, grateful for this small kindness, even as its shame makes me smart.

We wind our way towards the park observing how the weather has brought the city back to life. Everywhere are people released by the sudden sun into a sort of ease. Men and women stand conversing, servants go about their work,
children chase and run along the streets – a sort of gladness rising. Amy speaks for all of us, laughing and teasing, commenting loudly and unashamedly upon whatever takes her eye. Between Arabella and me there seems to grow something almost conspiratorial, as if to be cast thus as Amy’s foils presses us together. Whether this is Amy’s intention or not, I could not say, but outside a bookseller’s on Portland Street, I offer Arabella my arm. Whether she might accept it I am not to know, for it is Amy who takes it, laughing a wild, happy laugh. Nervously I glance at Arabella, but she smiles and shakes her head, not in reprimand but affectionately, and a glow starts within me, for I understand that though it is Amy who clings close to me, it is not she who walks beside me but Arabella.

Across the park the trees’ boughs rise naked against the sky, their trunks pale against the returning grass. The paths are crowded, a press of people, all primped and powdered for each other. In my sober suit I might have felt out of place, yet the admiring stares of passing men and jealous glances of the women banish such thoughts from my mind quickly enough.

The sun is bright upon the surface of the lake, the water throwing light into the air. Here and there swans move; as we reach the edge Amy kneels, whispering something as if to attract them to her. Arabella watches her lovingly, and I watch Arabella in turn, glad to see her so at ease. When the swans have come, and Amy has cupped her hands before their inquiring heads, she stands again, content, and her eye settles on a gentleman who has paused further along the path, staring back at the three of us. Arabella tenses, but if she means to avoid him Amy has no such intentions, for she greets him happily, curtsying and ushering him over, one arm thrust through his as it was through mine not half an hour since.

Brought before us, his greetings are amiable enough, although something in the way he presses his lips together shows that despite his manners he is not well pleased to have found Arabella and Amy here with me. He is thin-faced, only a few years older than myself, with a sour cast to his features, and though he is at once familiar it is not until I am told his name is Ash that I remember him as a friend of Chifley. That he remembers me as well is plain, but we say nothing of it.

Once the business of introductions is done we wander on, Ash and Amy walking ahead. At the lake’s end Arabella and I pause: high overhead, in the space above the lake, a flock of starlings has begun to mass, their tiny bodies streaming in like sand. A common sight, yet nonetheless we gaze up at this small wonder, as they wheel and turn as if directed by a single mind, a shifting cloud which pulls and grows, only to disperse again, all at once into the air.

Amy has paused meanwhile, with Ash, beside a fiddler. Ash takes a coin from his coat and hands it to Amy, who turns, holding it aloft for us to see before casting it into the musician’s hat.

‘You are a good friend to her,’ I say, but Arabella shakes her head.

‘Would that I were better.’

‘How so?’ I ask. Arabella hesitates. When she speaks again her voice is soft.

‘She was no more than a child when we met. She was a seamstress and I an actress already, playing little parts. Yet her heart is twice the size of mine.’ Together we watch Amy grip Ash’s arm tighter, pressing herself against him. I cannot imagine her upon the stage, for unlike Arabella she seems so utterly herself. To become another is to hide oneself, perhaps even to lose oneself, and it is a terrible thing, and the easiest.

‘He is kind to her?’ I ask.

‘He is a man,’ she says, her tone sharp. But then she continues, her voice softer again.

‘You know him, do you not?

I look at her in surprise. ‘Not well,’ I say.

She nods. ‘Then you know the sort of man he is.’

‘You think he does not mean to marry her?’

‘He is a gentleman, and gentlemen do not want girls like Amy for marrying.’

Although there is no anger in her voice, I am ashamed at this, but for which of us I am not sure.

‘Why did you wish to avoid me at the theatre?’ I ask after a time. She lets go my arm and turns on the bank. Two drakes are fighting, their wings throwing clouds of water all about them.

‘Arabella?’

She does not look at me. ‘You must not do this, Gabriel.’

‘I do not understand,’ I say.

Her arms are crossed before her when she turns, and again it is as if she thought I might mean her harm.

‘Look at Amy,’ she says, ‘and your Mr Ash. He is a gentleman, and for that reason will never marry her. Of course if the truth be known that is no great matter in itself, for Amy does not much care for Mr Ash. But what of the other Mr Ashes? She will not be young forever, nor so pretty either.’

‘And you?’ I ask.

She fixes her gaze on me, caught between anger and something else. ‘Do not be obtuse, Gabriel,’ she says at last, turning to walk on. ‘It does not suit you.’

At the gates Amy and Ash are waiting amongst the passing crowd. As we approach I cannot help but see his sourness, the space in him her youth will fill, and never be enough.

‘We would take lunch,’ he says, smiling at me as he speaks.

Knowing that he hopes I will decline I nod and we make our way out into Mayfair, where in a tavern we take a table and are fed. Amy, no doubt sensing something between us, speaks enough for everyone, eating all the while, oysters and bread and beer, her hand moving to cover her mouth each time she laughs. Arabella eats more slowly, joining in Amy’s laughter sometimes as an elder sister might. Ash though is silent, his body hard against Amy’s. Several times I catch him watching me, his dark eyes steady and unwelcoming.

By the time we are done the afternoon is fading, the sky overhead almost colourless, a sliver of moon visible above the rooftops. Amy is due at the theatre in an hour, and so she departs with Ash in a cab, leaving Arabella and me to make our way back on our own. We walk side by side, untouching, our conversation now we are alone together careful, guarded, although with a closeness that was not there before.

‘I do not think I like this Ash,’ I say.

Arabella looks at me. ‘No?’ she asks, then shakes her head and looks away once more. ‘He is not the worst of his kind.’

‘That is not what I mean,’ I say.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I know.’ Taking my arms she draws me closer, lets her small weight lean into me.

I
KNOW AT ONCE
something is wrong, for there is murder in the eyes of Mr Tyne. Behind him Oates, the coachman, shifts uneasily, his fat face caught somewhere between fear and self-righteousness. The two of them have been at St Bart’s to collect a corpse from old Crowley who teaches there.

‘Where is the body?’ Mr Poll asks, and Mr Tyne shoots a look at Oates whose mouth is opening and closing like a fish.

‘Stolen,’ replies Mr Tyne.

The room falls still.

‘Before or after you paid for it?’ asks Mr Poll.

‘After,’ Mr Tyne replies.

Mr Poll turns towards him.

‘How?’ he begins, then shakes his head. ‘No, do not tell me, let me guess. You left this prattling fool there to watch for you.’

Oates hangs his head in shame, but not before Mr Poll looks at him in a manner that makes it clear he has not heard the last of this.

Mr Tyne nods slowly and, though he holds himself carefully, the anger that eats at him to be so upbraided is plainly visible. I try to look away, but he catches me, and in that moment I see his hatred plain as day.

‘You thought he would not take every chance to torment us?’ asks Mr Poll angrily, and for an instant I think Mr Tyne will speak back, so violent is his rage. Then Mr Poll shakes his head, a look of disgust on his face.

‘Get out,’ he says. ‘I would not have to look upon you.’

Mr Tyne clatters away down the stairs and out into the street. No doubt he means to find Caley and have it out with him. In the hall Oates trembles, his fat face flushed with shame and indignation. Having no words of comfort I might offer I leave him there.

Though the afternoon is already half gone the house is quiet, Robert away and Charles not yet arrived. I am thankful for the quiet; these last weeks Mr Poll’s temper has grown worse with each passing day, and I have too often been on the receiving end of it. That we were forced to buy the body from St Bart’s is only the latest indignity Lucan has brought upon us. Again and again over the last weeks bodies sought by Caley and Walker on our behalf have vanished before they could retrieve them, their graves already pillaged or the coffins filled with stones, their contents stolen before they were even committed to the earth.

This would be bad enough, but a half a dozen times these bodies have reappeared almost at once upon the table of some other surgeon, delivered there by Lucan’s hand. Twice we have bought ones particularly needed back, once from van Hooch, once from Guy’s, paying a premium for the privilege. The body stolen from Mr Tyne and Oates was another
thus, a man called Polkinghorne dead of a swelling of the brain, on whose examination Mr Poll was placing great stock, and yet this time Lucan has contrived to make us pay a premium and then spirited it away once more, so both the subject and the money are lost to us, fifteen guineas gone on a body we no longer have.

I close the door of the library behind me, arranging my books upon the table. Outside the day is still, cloud lying flat and low and featureless, diffusing the light, soft grey without register or source. On the table lies the arm of a woman Caley brought two nights ago, its skin pinned back so I may draw it, and taking up my pen I begin. A few minutes pass, then on the sill a sparrow alights, its body stilled for an instant or two. In my hand my pen stops, poised above the paper. Careful lest it see my movement and flit away once more, I turn the page of my book, letting my hand run over it, tracing out the shape of its head, its back’s fat line, drawing as quickly as I can, my eyes shifting between page and subject, trying to fix it in my mind, to catch the essence of it. It can only be a matter of seconds, but it feels more like an hour or a day, my heart beating fast, my body lost to this moment. And then I lift my eyes again to find it has turned and is looking in. In my hand the pen falls still, the black eyes meeting mine, full of being, aware in some unknowable way. The moment stretches on, my heart seeming to slow, and then as suddenly as it came it turns its head and is gone, its body thrown in a blur of wings into the air.

In the space of its leaving I sit, staring outwards, into the light, and so I do not hear him enter. It is only when he stops behind me that I realise I am no longer alone and turn, one hand falling across the page, the other raised towards my face as if I might wipe away the light.

‘That does not look like the task that you were set,’ he says, and though his tone is stern the anger of before seems
to have gone. Something awkward too, as if he sought to be friendly, and the manner of it came not easily.

‘No, sir,’ I say, standing clumsily.

‘No,’ he says, ‘sit.’ He places a hand upon the drawing. Knowing I must, I lift my arm, relinquish it.

‘It is a sparrow,’ I say weakly, and he darts a look across the page’s top at me.

‘You think me blind?’ he asks.

He is not an easy man, and I am afraid of him. Reaching out again he shifts the papers that lie upon the desk. This reveals not notes and drawings of my work, but sketches I have made, day by day: a profile of Charles, a washerwoman, two cats, Blackfriars Bridge. One by one he examines them, studying carefully, until eventually the last is reached.

‘You have some skill with a pen,’ he says, as if surprised. I nod uncertainly: it is his belief that drawing is a vital part of our education, for only through the reproduction of a thing will its image be truly fixed within the mind, and so at his direction we are made to draw, but I know, as he must know, that it is the only part of my training I have any aptitude for.

‘Thank you,’ I say. All at once he turns away, leafing through the pages of a book that lies upon the bench nearby.

‘Charles tells me you have seen a little of the city in his company.’

I shift, uneasy. These last weeks have seen a change in the relations between him and Charles, as Mr Poll’s temper has grown more troublesome Charles has become more solicitous towards the older man, but with a solicitousness that seems designed to disguise a growing distance between the two of them. Perhaps an outsider would not see it, and indeed it is not always there: when they are engaged in the business of dissection and surgery, they are as they ever were, two bodies possessed of one mind, lost to the work. But it is there nonetheless.

‘A little,’ I say.

‘And how do you find him?’

I do not answer. Mr Poll watches me, then nods slowly.

‘You are loyal, I see. And he is a man who inspires loyalty, is he not?’

‘He is,’ I say.

‘Would you call him a friend?’

‘I hope he would see me as such.’

Mr Poll considers, then, quite suddenly, he thrusts a drawing into my grasp.

‘What gives strength to the muscle?’ he asks, prodding the woman’s arm.

‘Exercise,’ I say cautiously.

‘Then do not let this facility of yours become an end in itself. To do what is easy does not exercise the moral faculties of the brain. There is a weakness inherent in those who are easy with themselves, a weakness you would do well to avoid.’