by Tony Pollard
With Ockham still convinced that Russell was the cause of all our troubles, we rejoined the mourners to see the coffin carried from the hearse and placed above the grave, the casket covered by a flag I had last seen fluttering from the mast of the Great Eastern.
The coffin sank behind the wall of closely packed shoulders in front of us, between the sombre bonnets and bowed heads. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ proclaimed the disjointed voice of the presiding clergyman. With the formalities over, the mourners slowly drifted away, but Perry didn’t move; he stood as steady as a monument, watching me through stone-cold eyes.
31
I am in the heart of Isambard’s kingdom, where steam shrieks from open valves and blurs everything before me. Crawling through these narrow spaces I seek a way to the outside world.
The iron panels close around me, leaving no option but to crawl through the narrow, choking spaces. Here, serpents of steam atomize into vapour and hang in the air like a heavy London fog. There, coal fires throw out a patchwork of flickering light, casting my broken shadow across a weave of copper pipes. Everywhere, kettle-hot walls and floors blister fingers wrapped in strips of shirt-torn fabric. Eventually, an opening gives way to a great vaulted hall, where rising and falling pistons send heavy cranks knifing through the air, punching oil to the back of my throat.
That, in a nutshell, was the dream as it appeared to me the night after Brunel’s funeral. It recurred every night thereafter, leaving me soaked in a sea of sweat only when it finally sailed across the horizon of morning. It drained my strength with a voracity equal to that displayed by any of the parasitical worms I have ever encountered, lodged, fattened and gorged in the intestines of their victims. Like the parasite, it grew as it weakened me, forcing itself with ever-increasing vitality into the front of my mind and routing any semblance of reality. I was alone that first time, a solitary prisoner in a metal maze, but on other occasions there was someone else – a spectre lurking behind me.
Where this nightmare hid itself during the daylight hours I do not know, perhaps somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, refuelling itself in the shadows of morbidity. For even in my mind, which I have always considered to be open and enlightened, there must exist dusty nooks and crannies in which the more primitive sensations still hold sway. Although at first Brunel seemed to be the engineer of my nightmare it soon emerged to be of my own making, constructed as it was from the annealed heart of a broken promise.
Sleep brought no rest, and fatigue began to affect my work – so much so that one day my unsteady hand strayed through an exposed artery, causing the patient on the table to bleed to death. I had lost patients before, the suicidal Fisher’s wife being among them, but they had been outside my control. This time I had only myself to blame; I had once told Ockham that there were bad doctors, but now with this terrible mistake, it appeared that I had joined their ranks. Once more burdened with guilt, I resolved to take action.
While unknowingly sowing the seeds of my entrapment, Brunel had also provided me with enough rope to pull myself out of that hole but, equally, if I put a foot wrong the same rope would hang me.
At our very first meeting the inquisitive engineer had asked me if the hospital obtained its cadavers from grave robbers. I told him then that practice had ceased with the passing of the Anatomy Act in the 1830s.
Back then I had been a small boy, but William had been in his prime. And what’s more, it was common knowledge within the hospital that he had been active in the procurement of anatomical subjects – in short, he had been a grave robber. It was said that in days gone by he had been the leader of one of the many gangs of resurrection men that plundered hundreds of graves in and around London. The story was that, with the passing of the act, one of my predecessors – who may or may not have been Brodie himself – rewarded him for services rendered with a secure position as a porter in the hospital, though there was uncertainty as to whether this was an act of kindness or a bribe to secure his silence on the matter.
William remained cagey when I questioned him about the past, but whatever had happened back then he certainly displayed no compunction when it came to selling bodies misappropriated from the hospital – not quite grave robbing perhaps but not too far removed. Hoping that he felt beholden to me for not reporting his actions – he didn’t need to know that my reasons had nothing to do with saving his skin – I arranged to meet him in his local tavern in order to discuss what I described as a small business matter.
William was in a snug, where I found him not only less than sober but also in company. He was laughing and drinking with a man I had never seen before. With my arrival their banter ceased and William introduced his companion, who from the lines on his face and the gaps in his blackened teeth seemed a near-contemporary.
‘Don’t worry about Bittern, sir, he’s an old mate,’ he said, nudging the man’s arm conspiratorially. ‘An’ if I’m right about the nature of the business you have in mind then he’s just the man you’re after. We were partners, see, back in the good old days.’
I began to wonder what sort of mess I was getting myself into and so to calm my nerves took a pull from the dirty glass into which the landlord had poured a large measure of evil-smelling brandy. The raw spirit took my breath away and for some moments denied me the ability of speech. ‘They don’t serve your posh Napoleon brandy in ‘ere, doc,’ said William gleefully.
As I struggled to regain my composure Bittern chipped in with what he may have thought was reassurance. ‘Don’t worry, guv, you’ll get used to it. After a couple of glasses you won’t know no difference.’
With the crisis passed I turned to business, having no desire to patronize this establishment any longer than was strictly necessary. ‘You seem to have gauged my intentions, William?’
‘It don’t exactly need a Pinkerton man to tell you’re after raising the dead. You’ve talked of nothing but resurrections for days on end. Now tell me you don’t want a liftin’ done.’
‘Yes, William, I’m afraid so,’ I admitted, shamed that my efforts at subtlety had been so entirely inept. ‘Unsavoury as the idea is, I find myself in a situation where I have to call on your particular expertise.’
Despite guessing my intentions the old porter looked somewhat puzzled. ‘But, sir, surely you get enough legal stiffs at the hospital. We’re up to our armpits in ’em.’ Then he checked himself. ‘Well, at least that is since… since the late unpleasantness.’
‘You mean, since you stopped stealing them?’
He just nodded. ‘But why take the chance of robbin’ a grave? It would cause one ’ell of a scandal if you was found with a nobbled corpse.’
I took a cautious sip of my drink, this time with only the slightest ill effect – Bittern had been right.
‘I can barely believe it myself, but my situation permits no other course of action. But you don’t need to know the details – not yet.’ I glanced dubiously at Bittern, and although he looked entirely disreputable decided that I had little choice but to bring him in on the job. ‘I can’t afford to pay you much. Let’s say five guineas apiece for the work, but only on the guarantee that you’ll both keep your mouths shut.’
‘You don’t ’ave to worry about paying me, sir,’ said William. ‘Let’s just say I owe you one. And as for keeping our mouths shut – you needn’t worry on that score either, sir; it’d go just as badly if not worse for us if we were caught returned to our old trade. We were lucky to escape the gallows last time around. As for Bittern’s five guineas – it’s fair, generous even.’ He turned to his old friend, ‘What do you say, Bit?’
‘For six guineas I’d provide me own mother’s mortals, so for five they’d better be someone else’s.’
William laughed. ‘Then let’s drink to it, shall we?’ He raised his glass to make a toast, but finding it empty he held it out to me in feigned surprise. I took both their glasses and fought my way to the bar through the stand of boisterous street-hawkers, labourers, dockers, cabbies
and sundry other labouring types drinking to the end of another long day. The floor was covered in sawdust caked with spillage and sputum, which congealed on my shoes and brought to mind the dissection theatre, as did the jaundiced, near-cadaverous faces of some among the crowd.
The landlord refilled my companions’ glasses with rum and mine with another brandy – I had one more request to make of the resurrection men and my nerves were still in need of a little bolstering.
William raised his refilled glass. ‘Here’s to it then, gentlemen, partners in crime.’
This time I drained half my glass. ‘I have one more stipulation about our activities.’
‘What’s that then?’ asked William.
‘I want to be there when you… when you do the job.’
Bittern laughed, ‘Well I never. The good doctor wants to go a-grave robbin’.
William was equally taken aback. ‘You been out with me once of a night-time but that was different. No, sir, that’s not possible. We work as a team, me and Bittern. There’s a skill to it. Someone who doesn’t know what they’re about would bring the Peelers down on us before we were halfway through.’
His argument was a good one. I was no veteran at finding my way around burial grounds in the dead of night and the last thing I wanted was to become reacquainted with the police. But for what I had in mind there was no other option and I was going to insist when Bittern, having a keen eye for the main chance, saw opportunity in my predicament. ‘Well, sir, I’m afraid if you want to increase the risk of us getting caught by taking you along, then the price goes up two guineas. Let’s call it danger money.’
William looked at his colleague with some incredulity but said nothing.
Bittern had me over a barrel and knew it. Having told them as much as I had, there was no going back and I could hardly seek out a cheaper alternative – grave robbing wasn’t exactly a straightforward service to acquire. ‘Very well, seven guineas, three now and the remainder when the job’s done. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ said William, on Bittern’s behalf.
‘Good,’ I said without enthusiasm. ‘When can it be done?’
‘There’s no moon and we need all the cover we can get. How about tomorrow night, round eleven o’clock?’
‘Eleven o’clock exactly,’ I stipulated. As far as I was concerned, the sooner it was done, the better. The dreams were turning me into a wreck and it could only be a matter of time before my degenerating mental and physical condition was recognized by others.
‘Where’s it to be, this job?’ asked Bittern, by now displaying neither a hint of his earlier good humour nor the effects of drink.
‘Kensal Green cemetery,’ I replied, hoping this information wouldn’t bring on another increase in price.
‘Kensal Green, eh?’ mused William. ‘Some rich people in that ground – after a toff, are we?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say that, and in any case, I had always thought death was regarded as the great leveller. What does the subject’s standing in life matter to you?’
William sniffed. ‘No matter to us, just better-quality corpses than we’re used to, that’s all. But there’s a lot of posh family vaults and tombs in that place. Your corpse ain’t locked away in one of them, is it? If it is we might as well try breaking into the Bank of England, what with all the gates, locks and then a lead coffin at the end of it all.’
I had visited the cemetery more than once of late and had seen for myself the elaborately built tombs and vaults which were all the rage among the rich and famous, some of them even borrowing architectural details from Brunel’s beloved Ancient Egyptians. ‘No, not in a fancy vault – just a coffin six feet under.’
‘Eleven it is then. Meet us on the canal towpath behind the cemetery, opposite the gasometer. We’ll go in over the wall.’
I surrendered the down payment and left my new partners to what remained of their drinks. Back at my rooms, I lay on my bed pondering my fate. Which was it to be? Loss of position; struck off as a doctor; public disgrace; thrown into prison or even lynched by the mob – the possibilities seemed endless. I slept for only a short time and while I did so returned to the now all too familiar surroundings of the engine room.
*
There was a cold wind blowing across the cut and, standing on the towpath with my back to the cemetery wall, I checked my watch to find myself at the agreed meeting place a little earlier than planned. Even in the dark, I could make out the skeletal silhouette of the gasometer’s girders on the other side of the canal, its telescopic turret almost entirely depressed by the absence of gas inside. Putting down my sack, I blew into cupped hands to keep my circulation going.
Not long after, William and Bittern approached along the path, their arrival heralded by the sound of a chain rattling and the creak of metal against wood. Pushing an old two-wheeled market barrow before them, they drew up alongside me.
William’s face was almost entirely covered by a woollen balaclava while Bittern’s eyes were shielded beneath the peak of a bonnet pulled low over his head. A canvas sheet sat atop the barrow, partially covering a pair of shovels, a length of rope and some other hardware. An unlit storm lamp was suspended from a nail on the front of the contraption.
We nodded in greeting and William manceuvred the barrow into position with one side sitting flush against the wall. Bittern climbed up on to it and then pulled himself on to the top of the wall. William handed up the shovels, which Bittern dropped over the other side, and then the lamp, which he gently lowered down on the rope. Then, after gesturing for me to follow, Bittern watched with some amusement as I scrambled up. In the meantime William took the barrow and pushed it around the corner of the wall, hiding it from anyone who happened along the path. I was the first to drop down over the side, while Bittern assisted William, who had to climb without the benefit of the barrow. It was even darker beyond the wall, and it took some time for my eyes to readjust before the tombs and gravestones began to appear out of the gloom. The cemetery seemed very different at night but I hoped that once we arrived at the main thoroughfare it would be an easy enough task to find our way.
It felt better to be over the wall, sheltered from the wind and away from the path, which had seemed dangerously exposed. William bent and lit the lamp, covering it with a shroud to restrict the light to a beam just wide enough to illuminate our progress. Dividing the equipment, which included a strange hook-like device, we set off into the city of the dead.
William handed me the lamp. ‘Off you go,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll follow.’ The two old men moved with a stealth of which I would never have thought them capable, dispelling my previous concerns about them arriving drunk.
Small, quite modest gravestones and plinth-like memorials inhabited this part of the cemetery, some of them topped by stone urns or carved angels. But as we approached the carriageway, along which the funeral processions travelled, the monuments took on a much grander character, with tall obelisks sitting alongside large family vaults and ornate tombs. Rather than step on to the noisy gravel we kept to the grass and followed the edge of the path, heading away from the main gates and the sexton’s office, towards the far end of the cemetery. We continued in this fashion until a yew tree much in need of a prune barred our advance. As I had hoped, a narrower path turned off to the right just behind the tree.
Like sleep-walking mourners we gathered around a low mound of freshly turned earth. The naked soil was hidden beneath a litter of decaying wreaths and withered flowers. ‘This is it,’ I said, casting the beam from the lamp over a small wooden cross at the head of the mound. This simple marker was just a temporary measure, to be replaced by a grander stone memorial when the earth had settled. A metal plaque was attached to the cross and after taking the lamp from me William bent forward to read the inscription out loud.
ISAMBARD KINGDOM BRUNEL,
9th April 1806 – 15th September 1859
‘Well I never, it’s your engineer friend. Why in heaven’s name do you w
ant to dig him up?’
This was neither the time nor place for me to explain my motives – who would believe me anyway?
‘I have my reasons. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
‘Well, it’s your funeral,’ said William. ‘Lord knows what sort of a state he’s going to be in now – must have been buried for the best part of a month. Our previous clients always preferred their subjects a little fresher.’
‘That’s not going to be a problem,’ I replied curtly, impatient to get started.
‘Not goin’ to be a problem!’ exclaimed William. ‘It’s not a barrow that’s needed to take ’im away, it’s a bloody barrel!’
‘We’re not taking him anywhere,’ I insisted, trying hard to keep my voice down. ‘I just need to get into the coffin, that’s all. Five minutes’ access and then we can close the lid, backfill the grave and get out of here. But before we can do that we’ve got a hole to dig.’
‘I get it,’ said Bittern, pushing the old wreaths aside with his foot. ‘There’s something in there that you want.’ Having spread out the canvas sheet, he set to work with the shovel, digging into the mound and dumping the spoil on the sheet. ‘What is it? Jewellery, rings maybe, gold? What’s down there?’
‘There’s nothing in there. I’m not taking anything out. If you must know, I’m putting something in. Now can we get on with it? Surely we shouldn’t be making so much noise?’
‘Don’t fret about the noise,’ said William, picking up the other shovel and taking position at the far end of the mound. ‘There’s not been a grave robbed here for nearly thirty years; like as not the gatehouse isn’t even manned at night these days. But let’s get weaving. This is going to be a much longer job than we planned for.’
‘What do you mean longer?’ I asked, somewhat vexed to discover that Bittern had previously exaggerated the dangers involved so as to secure a bigger fee.