Jackson goggled. Mary was steering him purposefully towards the stairs when they met another girl in the establishment, Maggie O’Hara, who was clad in a diaphanous kimono. She noticed the cut on Jackson’s forehead.
“Do ye have to clobber them in the street before ye can get a fellow now, Mary?” she asked.
“At least I can get them when they’re sober, dearie,” Mary answered sweetly.
She took the student up the rickety stairs, across a landing and into her room. It was dark.
“Sit on the bed,” she instructed. “I’ll be back in a moment. I’m just going to get a light.”
When she returned with a candle she held the flame up to examine Jackson’s cut. The blood trickled down over his cheek. She smiled.
“Och, it’s not too bad,” she said cheerfully. “We’ll soon see to that. I’ve had worse myself on a Friday night. Ye ought to have seen me after last New Year’s Eve; I was almost a hospital case!”
She crossed to a small wooden washstand and poured some cold water from an earthenware jug into a cracked bowl. Jackson stared around him. The room was tiny and squalid, with the brass-railed bed as its principal item of furniture. Realizing only too well the sort of room it was, he winced and rubbed his chin.
“Thanks for your help,” he said.
“It was the least I could do,” Mary replied. “Ye helped me.” She picked up a petticoat which was in her way on the washstand and threw it on to the bed, where it billowed down beside Jackson.
“Really,” he said, “there’s no need to make this fuss. I’m all right.”
He made as if to get up from the bed and leave, but Mary pushed him back firmly. She dipped a rag into the water, wrung it and bathed his cut.
“It’s no fuss,” she said.
Jackson relaxed at the soothing touch of the water. The nearness of Mary, though, was disturbing. He inched away from her.
“Been here before?” she asked casually.
Jackson blushed. “No … no, I haven’t.”
“I bet I know what ye are.”
“Do you?”
“Ye’re one o’ the medical students.”
“How did you guess?”
“Oh, we get a lot of your chaps comin’ in …”
Jackson was incredulous; this was a side to the private lives of his lecture theatre companions which he hadn’t suspected. “You do?”
“Aye,” said Mary. “We get the medical students—an’ the art students.” She smiled. “They’re interested in the human form. It’s what they call anatomy, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Jackson wryly, “but not quite as it’s taught at Dr. Knox’s Academy.”
Mary laughed. “Oh, I can teach them a lot more than they learn in college.”
She looked at Jackson, waiting for his response, but he was silent, thoughtful, watching her as she put the swab back into the bowl and carried it to the washstand. Then she turned, smiling at him and running her hands down the sides of her blouse and skirt.
“Don’t you think I could?”
“What?”
“Teach them a lot …”
Jackson had two conflicting voices inside him: one was the natural call to a youth of his age to linger and enjoy this tantalising woman’s caresses, to cross the threshold of manhood; the other was to leave at once, to put temptation behind him and retreat to the refuge of his room.
“I’d better be going,” he said.
“But why?”
“I must. I have a lecture in the morning. At nine.”
“But that’s eight hours away.” Her voice was low. “Eight hours can be a very long time.”
He sat bolt upright on the bed, but Mary moved swiftly across the room and sat down beside him, between him and the door. For Mary too, this encounter had a special significance. Over the years she had been obliged to befriend a large number of men, most of whom she thought revolting, but the shy student appealed to her. She wondered if, by some extraordinary chance, she was even a little in love with him.
“Did those villains get yer purse?” she asked.
Jackson felt in his pocket. “No. It’s still here.”
“Good.”
“Look, honestly, I ought to go. My landlady will be waiting up for me.”
He got to his feet, but Mary stood in front of him. “Don’t ye like me?” she pouted.
“Yes, of course.”
“Then stay a wee while …”
Her presence, the closeness of her firm, well-rounded body, provoked him beyond endurance. When she tilted up her face to his, inviting him to kiss her, he clasped his hands around her waist hungrily.
Rather to his surprise, Jackson felt no shame. He experienced a physical gratification more exhilarating than any he had known before. He abandoned his senses utterly to love for this young creature who was suddenly the most desirable woman ever created.
CHAPTER III
Messrs. Burke and Hare in Business
Jackson awoke to hear the clock in a nearby kirk chime a half-hour. He pulled aside the bedroom curtains and opened the window. The morning was gloriously clean and fresh. The sky had been washed a clear blue by the night’s rain and a few small clouds, very round, white and soft, scudded in procession high above the Castle battlements. Were it not for the paleness of the sunlight and a sweet heaviness in the air, which makes November the most melancholy of months, Jackson could have mistaken the season for spring.
He breathed deeply, then looked out of the window at the clock face. It was half-past eight.
“Heavens,” he said. “I’ll have to hurry!”
Mary turned over in bed sleepily and sat up, holding the blankets round her naked shoulders.
“Is it late?” she asked.
“I’ll say it is!” He quickly tucked his shirt into his trousers.
“Dinna ye want no breakfast? I’m sure there’s a bit of Finnan haddie or somethin’.”
“You needn’t worry. I can buy some apples in the Market on the way.”
He sat on the bed, took her tenderly in his arms and kissed her. “When can I see you again?” he asked.
Mary ran her fingers through his hair, trying to tidy it. “I’m here all the time,” she said.
“I mean really see you—take you out.”
She stared at him incredulously. “Take me out!” she laughed. “Oh, that’s good. An’ what would yer friends think of me?”
She went on laughing, her head thrown back, until Jackson was suddenly angry. “I’m serious,” he said. “When, Mary, when?”
Mary didn’t know what to say. Usually, her friendships with clients ended promptly at sunrise. She turned her head from Jackson and replied: “Tomorrow, maybe …”
Jackson grasped her hands, looking at her intently and making her look at him. “Yes, tomorrow. Promise?”
“I promise.”
He kissed her again. She threw her arms around his neck, returning his kiss passionately.
“Ye’re not hurryin’!” she reminded him.
He got up and tried to tie his cravat by peering into a jagged fragment of mirror propped on a ledge above the washstand, but it was too small for him to see what he was doing.
“Tie this wretched thing for me, please!” he asked her.
Mary was used to the job. She tied the cravat expertly, though interrupted by further kisses. “That’ll do,” she said.
He bobbed down for a glance in the mirror and exclaimed: “Fine!”
“If ye’re not careful,” she said, “Doctor Knox will be askin’ questions—an’ what about yer landlady?”
Jackson was appalled. “My landlady! I’d forgotten all about her. Supposing she’s been up all night!” They both laughed. “Oh, well, I’ve got a good excuse. After all, I was attacked. And you saved me …”
“Get along wi’ ye,” she said. “All I did was yell like a fisherwoman!”
He blew a kiss to her, and was gone. Half-way down the stairs he stopped, turned, ran back up again and
put his head round the door. “Don’t forget your promise!”
“I won’t,” said Mary.
When she heard his footsteps in the street outside, hurrying off towards Surgeons’ Square, she stretched herself out on the bed luxuriously, sighing with contentment, like a large sleek cat that had been at the cream.
Burke and Hare also spent a convivial night despite its unrewarding start. After running up the street away from Jackson they found themselves in a better part of the city. A ball in one of the large houses was just ending; guests were coming out.
The villains watched with awe as the richly-dressed company came down the front steps and were promptly taken off in their carriages. One man, however, who lived not far away, dismissed his driver saying: “I’ll walk home!” The rain had stopped for a moment and the coolness of the street made a welcome change from the stuffy overcrowded dance floor. Burke and Hare eagerly followed him into the shadows. So, while the gentleman took the air, Burke and Hare took his gold watch, a ruby ring and two guinea pieces.
Thus financed, and knowing that no one had recognized them attacking Jackson except perhaps their friend the tavern keeper and Mary, who was sure to be in her room by now, they strolled back to the Merry Duke with expressions of perfect innocence.
A policeman, in a tall stovepipe hat and a black tunic with large silver buttons, was standing outside the tavern door.
“What’s up, officer?” asked Hare.
“None of yer business,” growled the policeman.
“Oh, it might be, ye never know,” said Hare impudently. “If it’s some of those robbers ye are after, it worries us a great deal. Ye can’t go out for a walk in Edinburgh these nights without mortal danger to life and limb!”
With a nudge at Burke, he led the way into the bar-room where they drank steadily until morning, buying drinks for their friends and becoming the centre of a circle that rivalled Baxter’s for hilarity and high spirits.
They left the Merry Duke just after half-past eight and wandered into the Market Place at the same time that Jackson hurried through it on the way to his class. The student paused to buy three apples, two of which he thrust into his pockets; the third he started to eat, saying gaily to the woman who owned the stall: “Keep the change!”
The Market, surrounded by tall houses, was already busy at this early hour, filled with townspeople and with farmers and housewives from outlying villages who had driven in with their covered horse-drawn carts to sell produce; they hoped to finish their trade as soon as possible, leaving them the afternoon in which to enjoy the rest of the city. Amid the shouts of the stallholders—“Get your lovely butter!”; “Fish, buy your fish!”—a swarthy gypsy holding a crystal ball aloft could be heard calling: “I’ll tell your fortune!”
The loudest and most insistent noise though, came from a ragged “bones” player. He was blind, tall and gaunt, but his clacking rhythm was as lively and infectious as castinets. He played to a bunch of urchins who chanted:
“Nick-nack, paddywack—gie a dog a bone,
Our old Man came rollin’ home …”
In the middle of this group danced the gangling figure of James Wilson. He was thin and undernourished, and wore a pale red woollen cap on his straggling dark hair. November 27, two days previously, had been his eighteenth birthday, but there were no celebrations. His father died when Jamie was twelve, and his mother had to earn a living by selling cheap trinkets and jewellery. One summer evening young Jamie wandered off with some friends and did not return when it was dark. His mother was so worried that she locked the house and went out in search of him. But in the meantime he came back, forced an entry, and in his eagerness to get food, because he was hungry, he overturned a cupboard containing all his mother’s precious crockery. When she saw the wreckage she took out the leather strap which she kept for punishing him and gave him such a brutal thrashing that he refused to stay under the same roof as her for another night.
He just wandered the city, sleeping in doorways. Occasionally, hospitable people gave him shelter by taking him into their homes, for he soon became a well-known local character. He was easily pleased, liked nothing better than a simple riddle which the hearer had to pretend to be unable to answer. The gift of a pinch of snuff, a pipe of tobacco or a dram of whisky would make his day.
He couldn’t get a job of any sort; the growth of his mind hadn’t kept pace with his body. Today, he would be termed “mentally retarded”, but in the Edinburgh of 1827 he was known to everyone as “Daft Jamie”.
The name often puzzled him. “Why do ye ca’ me daft?” he used to plead with the urchins.
“Because ye are!” they retorted.
And Daft Jamie would go on wandering until another kindly soul took pity on him.
He enjoyed dancing to the “bones”, but the flagstones in the Market were uneven; he stumbled and fell. The urchins guffawed. A stallholder threw him an apple for his breakfast.
“Catch, Jamie!”
Jamie caught the apple and laughed inanely. The urchins pressed around him.
“Dance some more, Jamie,” they said. “You’re awfu’ guid!”
Jamie wasn’t listening. He tossed the apple into the air like a ball and caught it. The next time he threw it, Hare stretched out a hand and did the catching.
“Hello,” said Jamie with a grin.
Hare inspected the apple carefully, polished it on his grimy lapel and remarked: “What a lovely rosy apple, Jamie!”
“Yes,” said Jamie, “It’s mine.”
Hare took an enormous bite out of it; then another and another, until he was munching away.
“Save us yer core, Mister Hare,” Jamie pleaded.
Hare burst out laughing and turned to Burke. “Do ye hear that, Willy? ‘Save us yer core,’ he says. It’s a great wit the boy has!”
“Indeed I’ll save ye my core,” Hare went on, holding it up and dropping it into Jamie’s hand. Then suddenly the boy realized that the apple belonged to him in the first place. His forehead puckered into a frown.
“It’s all gone, Mister Hare,” he said.
Hare clapped him on the shoulder. “Jamie,” he said, “there’s one thing you’ll have to learn. It’s a hard life for an idiot!”
He was laughing loudly at his own joke, with Burke and the urchins joining in, and Jamie looked bewildered, when a six-year-old girl named Jennie, of the John Connoway family, Burke’s neighbours, came running up. Breathless and excited, she pushed through the crowd and tugged at Burke’s coat.
“Mister Burke! Mister Burke!” she cried shrilly.
“What now, Jennie?” he asked.
“Ye’re to come awa’ to yer home,” she said. “It’s terrible news.”
“What’s happened?”
“Ye’ll see when ye get home.”
Before he could ask her again, she had darted away, back in the direction of Tanner’s Close.
“I suppose I’d better go,” said Burke. “Are ye comin’?”
“Might as well.”
“I wonder what it is. Could it be that the old woman has broken her neck?”
“Stop yer wishful thinkin’, man,” said his friend.
They were walking across the yard at the back of Burke’s house when Helen M’Dougal came out round the pig-sty to meet them.
“Will ye guess the news, Willy?” she said.
“Surprise me,” said Burke sourly, trudging through the mud.
“Old Johnnie’s been an’ croaked on us.”
Burke was shocked; so was Hare. They stopped.
“No!” said Burke.
“He must have died in his sleep,” said Helen, “an’ not a word o’ warnin’!”
“Do ye hear that?” said Burke, indignantly to Hare. “The lodger’s died, owin’ me all that money.”
Hare sympathised: “Now what kind of man is it would do a thing like that?”
“Ye might trust Johnnie to find the easy way out, leaving the burden of livin’ to honest citizens,” sa
id Helen sharply. She turned and went back into the house.
The parish undertaker, a spry little man, was nailing on the coffin lid and whistling cheerfully. “Poor old Johnnie,” he said. “Just a mickle o’ bones he was, so it’s no small wonder he passed away on ye.”
Helen sniffed irritably and gazed out of the window.
The undertaker was hammering in the last nails when Burke and Hare entered. They scowled at the coffin, but automatically doffed their hats.
“The job’s nearly finished,” Burke observed.
“Aye,” said the undertaker. “He’s nice and snug.”
“Can ye get him out now?” asked Helen impatiently.
“I’ll have to go away for some help, Mrs. Burke. Even a little ’un like Johnnie can make heavy carryin’. But he’ll be gone sooner than the wag o’ a dog’s tail.”
“He’d better be!”
As the undertaker left with a bright: “Good mornin’ all!” she added: “I suppose that ‘sooner than the wag o’ a dog’s tail’ means tomorrow!”
She turned belligerently to her husband, who was looking at the coffin. “Well, don’t stand there. Go an’ put the sign out!”
Grumbling, Burke searched behind the table for a piece of board on which was painted BED TO LET. Then he went to hang it beside the front door.
Helen bustled around, stacking the dirty crockery, while Hare sat down on the coffin and took a pinch of snuff.
“Ye’ll be here for lunch?” asked Helen.
“I think so. What is there?”
“Kippers.”
“I can make do wi’ the ones ye gave me yesterday. They’re still repeatin’!”
Burke came back, only to receive another blast from Helen. “If ye’d stir your lazy bones and earn a copper,” she told him, “ye could have Finnan haddie. There’s one in the cupboard now, but I think it’s gone bad.”
“An’ to think,” said Burke reflectively, “it might have done for Johnnie.”
The Flesh and the Fiends Page 4