The Cunning House

by Richard Marggraf Turley

  That more of these births did not end in disaster is a miracle, thinks Doctor Sweet-Lips, removing sweat from his forehead with a lint cloth. These days, thank God, men are permitted to get their hands wet. Midwifery, the science, or art, of tending to women in every aspect affecting the sexual system, has been taught as an optional component of Edinburgh University’s medical degree for decades. However, the present tableau is not staged within the safe walls of that institution, nor does Doctor Sweet-Lips count it as his alma mater.

  In fact, he has never read an obstetric report, and a professional looking in would surely tut, then shudder. But at the present moment, Doctor Sweet-Lips may be this labouring mother’s only hope.

  He knows it is whispered that his last delivery ended with an incomplete child, its face resembling an old man, with wide mouth and ears like membranes. The parts of the skull, it is said – though this may be mere spite – were moveable, and the lips of the mouth resembled bloody pieces of flesh. He has also been accused of giving life to monsters, both perfect (in the shape of a dog or ape), and imperfect (with defects in the head or genitals), that should have been allowed to die. But even a perfect monster must be considered a human being. So Sweet-Lips believes.

  Perhaps that’s it: this child is malformed in some way that impedes its progress through the canal.

  The mother screams. It begins as a long, low, animal sound, rising to a theatrical shriek that gives the lie to those who claim we have risen above our nature. Something here is not as it should be. The doctor scans Fielding’s Treatise once again. There has been no movement for some time, not since the head first emerged from under the arch of the pubes. He studies the child’s head. It is almost entirely freed; the cord is, to be sure, partially wrapped around the infant’s neck, but there is no strangulation and the doctor can easily hook his finger beneath the thread connecting mother and child. There is – astonishingly – no blood. Neither the lively and florid blood of the small arteries, nor the darker, viscous, pooling blood of the veins. No slow haemorrhaging. That, in any case, is encouraging.

  Reflection is the basis of all rational philosophy, and Doctor Sweet-Lips steps back to think. It may not be too late to resort to more conventional treatments. Perhaps the arm should be bled, and half a pound removed, as recommended by all the authorities. It might, indeed, relieve pressure. Should he fall back on orthodoxy?

  The woman gasps, the head falling limply to one side. She is cheered on by the audience. The long, dark curls that have escaped from her sarsenet hood are plastered across her hot cheek. Sweet-Lips takes her pulse, which he announces is weak and intermittent. It is clear to any observer she is sinking. With a flourish, he turns his attention to the infant, which protrudes obscenely, comically, from the mother. Its face is ruddy, almost as if painted, with no signs of the blackness or swelling associated with being too long delayed in the passage. Perhaps the child, at least, can be saved. He gazes on the creamy belly and wonders about the Caesarean operation. It is rarely performed on a living mother, but is permitted if the signs of life in the child are strong, and those of its dam dwindling. He considers the second, equally unpalatable, option that still remains to him: to divide the cartilage that binds together the bones surrounding the womb, and in that way enlarge the opening. He has heard of this being done with success.

  On a table, out of sight of the mother, is arranged an array of forceps and other metal instruments of various kinds, including sharp knives and hooks.

  Mistress Fox leaves the Treatise propped open and moves to the head of the bed to ease the mother, whose pains are reaching a new climax. She adjusts the woman’s hood, placing a cool hand on her forehead. Then she pulls the night-gown higher to give Doctor Sweet-Lips the clearest view of all. She bends to rub the woman with a little soft pomatum, and applies a cloth wrung out of warm water over the belly, still high and cushioned. In an effort to dilate the parts, she inserts her fingers below the child’s head and pushes in. She seems surprised to feel nothing but a soft, fleshy substance where she might have expected things hard and loaded. She communicates this to the doctor, then, while he consults Fielding, prepares a clyster of warm milk and water. Finally, she places the woman’s feet firmly against the bed-post, evidently hoping it will assist in expelling the child – however, the mother is too weak even to help Mistress Fox move her legs.

  Time is running out. Sweet-Lips resolves to try one last procedure to save the woman. If he has misjudged the tautness and remaining length of the cord, the child will suffocate within minutes. He selects a metal instrument from the table, one with a suitably thin, short blade, and inserts it between the base of the child’s head and the mother’s anus. He gives every impression of making a sudden incision, and with a dramatic scream from the mother, the child’s whole body comes loose at once.

  The doctor seizes the motionless infant while Mistress Fox severs the skein of fine umbilical thread. Then he places the marvellous progeny flat at the foot of the bed. He removes any mucus that may be in its mouth, wiping as far as he can reach down the upper part of the trachea with his little finger and a piece of rag. There is still no movement. He crouches over the tiny figure and applies his mouth to its lips, holds the nostrils, breathes hard. He waits, repeats the procedure. Again. Again.

  From somewhere there is a sound like that of an infant bawling. He picks up the tiny body, his face creasing into a broad smile, and hands it over to Mistress Fox, who displays it in triumph to the bystanders. The men, tricked out in women’s clothes, close in, clapping and whooping.

  It is a perfect jointed baby; a perfect wooden child.

  21. Charlies

  “Let go of me, sir!” Aspinall was only dimly aware of entering the stifling chamber at the far end of the corridor, of being pushed onto a couch. A circle was forming. The attic’s solitary lamp cast only shadows. “Wait. Please – ” His voice seemed to be coming from a different room.

  ––––– Careful of that one, teeth in his arse.

  Thomas leaned over him, undoing his shirt. “We’re all sinners here, if tha’ believe there’s any crime in a man mekin’ what use he pleases of his own body.”

  Not like this . . .

  Thomas’s lips pressed down over his. Aspinall tasted metal.

  “Dost tha’ wish t’ live fer ever in the valley of dry bones?”

  Aspinall made to get up, but was shoved down again.

  “No harm – ” Thomas crooned, laying a firm hand on Aspinall’s neck. “Nowt here but love.” With his other hand he released his member from his breeches. It was long and heavy, hooded like an assassin.

  ––––– To be found guilty, the emission of seed –

  Frantically, Aspinall struggled to escape, but the muscular man forced his head down. Aspinall bucked and choked, till he felt the man’s melting period.

  ––––– I’m finding this ’ard t’ tug to

  Thomas gasped, spent, and fell back on the couch, leaving Aspinall to stagger to his feet and spit, drawing shrill laughter.

  Something dripped from Thomas’s yard, the colour of cataracts.

  ––––– “Ergo, salvabitur!” quoth he, and said no more Latin

  Brushing away scalding tears, the physician pushed through the onlookers, and rushed from the loft. In the corridor, he dropped to his knees and retched on the floorboards. Then, clambering to his feet, he moved unsteadily towards the landing, passing a packed chamber where someone in a black peaked hat was playing matron to a man on a couch, a seaweed-green tunic crimped up around his waist. Aspinall watched numbly as a doll was snatched from between the man’s – Jameson’s – legs. The oily-haired clergyman stepped forward, and sprinkled brandy over its head.

  What on earth was he to tell Miss Crawford? Aspinall turned towards the landing, to safety, as a musket tip rose from the stairwell, followed by a dun leather helmet. For a suspended moment, soldier and physician gazed at each other impassively. Then dozens of heavily armed men thundered up the
stairs, night sticks crooked.

  Alerted by the noise, V.S.C. members emerged blinking from the attics, scrabbling to fasten breeches, caught in the glare of the Watch’s bull-lamps. Some of the men rushed for the stairs, becoming a wave that crashed back into itself.

  ––––– Holloa, hold a light!

  ––––– Here’s a pretty nest of you!

  ––––– Don’t kill me, and I’ll tell you everything!

  Any remaining mollies were dragged out and beaten with cudgels. Men were being bashed and flattened, and battered where they stood. Aspinall’s heart leapt as he saw Amos crawl clear from the writhing mass. The Captain waved over four troopers, who pulled the customs man back in by his hair.

  “Lit me gang, ye open arses!” Amos cried out.

  The soldiers struck at his joints.

  “Don’t hang back, boys,” the Captain urged. “Give the crab cull a basting.”

  V.S.C. men were falling like wheat before flails. With a yell of “Boney!”, Francis mounted a lone charge, and was felled by a rifle butt that split his nose. A crimson arc slopped against the wall.

  At the other end of the corridor came cries of Stand! Stand! A sucking darkness resolved itself into the Inspector of Hides. The giant began to advance at a steady trot, shucking off officers like stricken toreros. Aspinall gazed in disbelief: two sets of lips grinned at him along the passageway, as if the Inspector were now some two-headed ogre from a child’s storybook. It took a dislocating moment till he realized someone was hanging from the Inspector’s back. Silk Visor from the saloon . . . The Country Gentleman!

  As Kitson’s thundering strides brought the pair level with Aspinall, the dandy’s mask rode up. Their eyes locked: it was like peering at all the world’s fires in one place. To add to the horror, Aspinall realized he knew the face – and not just from engravings in a print-seller’s window. He’d actually met the man. It had been in Wood’s Close.

  With the noise of pitched battle around him, he pictured the Country Gentleman in the asylum drawing room, standing imperiously at the tall windows (Aspinall couldn’t bring himself to speak the man’s real name, even in his thoughts). He hadn’t arrived alone, but brought a disturbed young charge with him in his clandestine barouche. Professor Ashcroft had summoned Ellesmere and Aspinall, and together the two physicians had examined the mental sufferer whom they were told to address as Mr Parlez-Vous.

  Ellesmere, the senior man, broke the news that it would be advisable – strongly advisable – to detain the patient, but it had been Aspinall who ventured the diagnosis: congenital misdevelopment of the brain. It had not gone down well. As the haughty gentleman left the drawing-room to discuss terms of treatment with Professor Ashcroft, a stout, grey-haired man in a blue hat had entered. In a perfectly even voice he’d instructed the physicians never to speak, publicly or privately, of the visit. There was no need for an “or”.

  Parlez-Vous’ therapeutic regime had fallen to Aspinall. Within a few days, his new patient had become the patient.

  A loud crash brought Aspinall back to the present . . . With a bat of a vast arm, the Inspector had sent two Charlies skittling. Then the gargantuan charged for the stairs. He stumbled once, recovered, surged forward again, was at the threshold, when an olive-skinned soldier, an assortment of daggers, throwing-blades and short-barrelled fire-pieces hanging from his white cross-belt, stepped out behind him and took deliberate aim with a stubby pistol.

  The Captain of the Watch lunged, pushing the barrel down. There was a thunderous crack as the weapon discharged into the floorboards, sending splinters of wood in all directions, then a great choking belch of smoke.

  A molly standing nearby shrieked and clutched at his calf, scarlet blood welling under his cream satin stockings.

  Through the pall, Aspinall watched the Inspector leap down to the half-landing, the flapping jack dangling from his back, visor back in place. Then gentleman and his giant were gone.

  A stunned space of unfaith, then mayhem resumed on the upper landing. The revolt was short-lived; within minutes, all offenders still able to stand were under armed guard. The others were pulled into a groaning heap.

  Aspinall stood with his back against the crumbling brick wall. Personal searches were being conducted further along the corridor. He thought of his medical notebook – everything was in it: observations, conversations, speculations on the precise nature of Parlez-Vous’ mental lesions. Everything. He thought, too, of the Country Gentleman’s grey-haired retainer. He’d have to act fast. Wiping sweat from his eyes, he looked around, alighting on the recessed wall lanterns. The nearest one had been smashed in the mêlée, its flame extinguished, shards clinging to the lead work. In a hot fit, heart catching on his ribs, he fished out his notebook, slid it up the wall, and dropped it in.

  Barricaded in the attic bog-house, the agent known in The White Swan as Thomas cursed savagely. The Charlies were securing lofts one by one, obviously intent on making an example of the whole fucking den. Just as long as they got the queen eel . . .

  As for himself, he should have been long gone. He hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret that gob-stopper with Aspinall. As if he weren’t already running enough risks! A molly to mollies, Runner to Runners, and beneath it all – Merde! Why the fuck had the Watch arrived so early?

  He’d wager the blame lay with those fanatical culs down at St Clements Watchhouse. ‘Southcott’s army’, the fools styled themselves. Death to all mollies! It was a simple motto, no room for ambiguities. Well, if this was the opening salvo in their holy war, the fuck-wits couldn’t have picked a worse time.

  His thoughts returned to his own predicament. It was sticky. In all senses of the word. No shortage of witnesses, either. The best course was to lay low for a stretch. Wait to see who came up trumps. He’d work with what was left, as he always did.

  The sound of heavy boots at the door . . . Untangling his heel from his skirts, he clambered onto the privy seat and pushed himself up into the window recess. Levering open the stiff casement, he manoeuvred himself over the ledge, and down onto the thatch. He managed a few steps before his heel caught again in the eyelets of his hems, pitching him forward. He tumbled over the stooks, arriving at the precipice head first, was halfway over, when his fingers found a tarred under-rope.

  It creaked as he swayed, but held his weight.

  Above him, a splintering thud. That would be the privy door going. Allez vite! He dropped the remaining ten feet to the dust. F-u-c-k, his ankle! No time for that. The Charlies would be at the window, looking for the shot.

  He gathered his hems in both fists. Using the overhanging roofs for cover, the triple agent hobbled off into the undarkening night.

  2.

  CRYING SINS

  22. Etchings

  The corpulent printer stood, leaning back, arms flung wide, on his porch in South Molton Street. Thicker round the middle, a little greyer, but still extravagantly, still inimitably, William. Which was was precisely why Wyre had called. In truth, he doubted his warning would make an atom of difference.

  Wyre followed his erstwhile client through to the cramped first-floor parlour dominated by a large round table piled with sketches and proofs. Pencil drawings fought for space with copper blocks, curious twists of cloth, broken nibs and dirty quills. The printer pulled out a mismatched chair with a scuffed leather back.

  As Wyre waited for William to fetch wine, he glanced at the drawings. Slender women in suggestive poses. The usual, then.

  “They deceive, men – ” William’s airy voice floated over from the drinks cabinet “ – who claim the spiritual principle is like a bird flying above the air in the ether, where the eyes can’t reach. They’d have God exist in the midst of a cloud.” He returned with a bottle of dark claret and two small fine china cups. Tongue pinched between teeth, he poured the liquid, crouching so as to dispense it right up to the cups’ thin lips. “I say the spiritual principle is perfectly visible to those with enough courage to break fre
e of the church’s manacles.” He pushed one bushy eyebrow up with his finger, making his eye big. “There’s a world of difference between not knowing how to see things and any actual deficiency in the organ of vision itself.” He shot the lawyer a conspiratorial look. “I saw a tree full of angels at Peckham Rye – ”

  “ – and the devil in South Molton Street. I know.” Wyre smiled despite himself. “But there are those who regard your credos as dark fanaticism. These are watchful times.”

  “Fanaticism?” The printer made a clucking sound. “I desire only a celestial Jerusalem, the purifying fire.” He sipped at his claret. “The tongue, Wyre!” He hoisted his cup. “Effortlessly capable of distinguishing the moelleux from the rancio. Would that the brain were so dextrous in its own distinctions.”

  “Some men fear conflagrations of any kind,” Wyre said in a low voice. “The millennium’s been and gone, William.”

  “Not really,” came the response. “It’s available to us here, now, in this room, if you could only put by your philosophy of the five senses. Not everything can be measured, Wyre, with a pair of compasses.”

  “You see, that’s exactly what I mean. People won’t understand. What’s all this I hear about you advocating concubines?”

  “Rather that than the hearse of marriage, eh?”

  Wyre reached for his own cup. If the allusion was to Rose, he refused to be drawn. “That’s the cant of Hindoos.”

  “Sexual love can be holy,” the rotund man insisted, hinging his weight forward on his elbows. “Isn’t the carnal body both spirit and flesh? By breaching sexual custom we trample the stony law to dust.” He lifted his gaze as the door opened and his wife arrived with a side of ham.

  “Why such scepticism towards the law?” Wyre asked. He tasted the wine. It always seemed to be thicker and stronger at William’s. “The country would collapse without it. The Tyrant’s henchmen would pour in like rats.”