by Alex Reeve
‘What has to be done?’
He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing a plump back carpeted in hair. ‘What with one thing and another, funerals and missing money and what-not, I haven’t had any fun for a while.’ He nodded towards Rosie. ‘And Mrs Flowers here has a life of whoring ahead of her, so I have to make sure she’s fully prepared, don’t I?’
And with that, he removed his shoes and trousers.
21
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Don’t do this. What would Mercy think? What would your wife have said?’
He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. ‘She would hate it, and me as well, more than likely. She had a soft heart.’
He unlocked Rosie’s manacle. She watched while he fiddled with the key, no expression on her face. As soon as it was off, she sprang towards the door and almost made it, but he caught her ankle, dragging her to the floor. She clung to anything she could, hauling the blankets after her.
All this without saying a word. No wailing or shouting or screaming. It was happening almost in silence.
‘If you touch her, I will kill you,’ I said, and meant it.
She kicked out, but he caught her other ankle and pulled her legs apart so he could kneel between them. He did this without any ferocity or anger, more as if it were a task he felt compelled to perform.
Anchored to the bed, I couldn’t reach them. I heaved on the chain, jerked on it, tried to push my fingernails into the cracks between the floorboards, but I couldn’t get enough traction. The bed was too heavy and I was too light, too weak. I threw myself backwards and it moved perhaps half an inch. Then another. I had at least five feet to go.
Rosie was struggling, trying to punch Bentinck and spit at him, but he seized her wrists and forced her down by his sheer weight. She let out a noise, a formless lament.
I dragged the bed another half-inch with a kind of berserk anger, ignoring the burning pain. I would have sawn through my own arm and beaten him to death with it, joyfully, if I had only had the means.
‘Please lie still, Mrs Flowers,’ he said. ‘It’s better this way, honestly. This’ll be much pleasanter for both of us if you just let it happen.’
He fumbled in his drawers with his free hand and pulled out his cock.
And that was when I stopped.
All was quiet.
In that single second, between one tick and the next, between heartbeats, between her eyes being open and closing again, I was still. The last remnant of the chloral in my blood was making me fuzzy, but the black water wouldn’t come. I couldn’t sink and lose myself. I was here, now, in this room, as one second ticked on to the next. And the next.
‘Bentinck,’ I said, calmly enough to get his attention. ‘Listen to me. I’m not what I appear to be, not entirely. Underneath these clothes, I am female. A maiden. Leave her alone and take me instead.’
He stared at me.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I was born as a girl. I have a woman’s body.’
Rosie squirmed away from him towards the door, staring at me.
Run. Run, Rosie. You’re unchained! Run, run, run far from this place.
‘A woman’s body?’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you.’
I set back my shoulders and took a deep breath. My mind was empty. Consequences no longer mattered.
‘It’s the truth.’
He put his head on one side, as if he might know, just by looking, whether I was lying.
‘Prove it.’
‘First, let Mrs Flowers go.’
‘You’re in no position to bargain with me.’
I shuffled backwards, my wrist still chained, and he followed me, putting a hand against my chest, looking straight into my eyes. His mouth was just inches from mine. I didn’t even shiver.
Run, Rosie.
He very slowly pulled up my shirt and slid his hand inside. I could feel his fingers against my skin, reaching up. When he touched my cilice he frowned and licked his lips, and pushed his fingers underneath. He pinched my nipple hard and I bared my teeth. But I would not cry out.
He raised his eyebrows, and I crashed my forehead into his face.
‘Jesus!’ he shouted, covering his eyes with his hands. ‘Jesus! You’ve broken my blasted nose!’ He felt it gingerly, blinking as his eyes watered.
I tried to crawl away, under the bedstead where it was dark, thinking I could turn and claw at him, but he grabbed me and slapped me across the temple. The world went black, and I could feel his weight on me, my shirt being torn open. As my vision returned I noticed a button lying on the floorboard, a stub of cotton still attached. I reached for it, holding it tightly in my fist, thinking: I mustn’t lose this. I can sew it on again, even though I hate sewing buttons.
No matter what, I kept hold of that button.
He pulled my trousers open and tugged them down with my drawers, ripping out the roll of cloth sewn into them and flinging it away. I tried to kick him, but he was too strong, and pinned me to the floor, his nails digging into my breast.
He stared down at my body and wiped his face with his hand, plastering his wet fringe across his brow. The veins on his neck were standing out.
‘Look at that. A maiden who thinks she’s a man. And I thought I’d seen everything.’
I held my button so tightly it hurt my fingers. I thought I might break it and then I’d have to buy another, and it wouldn’t be the same. They all have to be the same. Mummy insisted on replacing every single button on my pinafore dress even though I’d only lost one of them.
He wriggled his knees between mine, and reached down between his legs and pumped himself a few times, his lower jaw extended with the tension of it. A drop of his sweat dripped into my mouth and I tasted the salt. He took hold of his cock again and lunged forward into me, and lunged again, and again, and as he pushed in, all my insides were pushed out, until only my clothes and skin were left, lying beneath him on the floor, and nothing within. It was no longer me. It was no longer anyone.
And then there was another sound, a thump and jangle, and a final thump, and he collapsed on to me. I couldn’t breathe, but I twisted and wrenched myself away, and he rolled off me on to his back, gaping at me with wide eyes, blinking once and then ceasing.
Blood was pooling around him, soaking into the rug, dripping down the gaps between the floorboards.
And then I heard it again, that thump and jangle as Rosie swung her manacle over her head and crashed it down on him, and again, and again. His head was pouring blood.
She dropped the chain, panting, and tossed the keys towards me. ‘Get that thing off your wrist. We have to get out of here.’
I pulled my drawers and trousers back up and repositioned the cilice over my breasts with trembling fingers. In a daze, I struggled with the lock. It wouldn’t turn. Rosie snatched the keys and tried each one, but none of them worked. We stared at each other – if we couldn’t remove the manacle, I would have to remain here, to be found with Bentinck lying in a puddle of blood. I was shaking uncontrollably, but she took my hand.
‘I won’t leave you,’ she said. ‘I won’t. Wait, what about the other end?’
The other end of the chain was looped round the bedstead and fixed with a padlock. The first key I tried turned smoothly. I was free, although I would have to take the chain with me, still manacled to my wrist.
Rosie listened at the door. ‘It’s quiet,’ she whispered. ‘Are you ready?’
When I didn’t reply, she looked over at me and my ripped, bloody shirt, and sighed. She opened the wardrobe, and inside there were clothes hanging, women’s clothes. She fingered through them and tossed a white camisole over to me. ‘Put this on. You can do up your jacket over the top.’
I sat down on the bed, and couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
Rosie pushed her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s all right,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll do it.’
She helped me take off my jacket and peel away my shirt, threading the chain ou
t through the armholes. My skin was stained red and I was shivering in the cold. She eased the camisole on to me, covering my cilice, and lastly buttoned up my jacket.
‘There,’ she said, pulling the lapels tightly together. ‘No one will be any the wiser.’
For a moment, our hands touched.
Bentinck was sprawled on the floor in front of us. He wasn’t breathing. There was a lot of blood. We’d trodden it into the rug and it was soaking into the hem of Rosie’s skirt. The button I’d been holding was lying in a pool of it.
There was a sound on the stairs.
We were trapped.
‘We’ll have to go out over the roofs,’ she said.
She heaved open the window sash and we looked out into the night. There was a pitch of tiles and a valley where the house met the one next door. Rosie climbed out on to the sill, holding on tightly. Her fingers were white.
The door opened and Hugo’s face appeared. He gaped in mute disbelief. Rosie let go and slid away into the darkness as he lurched forward, but he slipped on Bentinck’s blood and fell. I climbed out after Rosie, skittering down the wet tiles, grateful to feel the lead flashing under my feet where the two roofs joined.
Hugo was yelling from the window and I could hear the grief and fury in his voice. I recognised it. He seemed as if he might try to follow us, heaving his bulk on to the sill and glaring down, but then he ducked back inside, and we were alone.
I crept along to the edge, where Rosie was peering over at the balcony of the house next door. The ground was a long way down. We were above the height of the tallest trees in the gardens.
‘We have to,’ she said. ‘We’ll be dead anyway if we don’t.’
She went first, holding on to the drainpipe and clambering over the side. She slithered down and found the railing with her feet, steadied herself and dropped neatly on to the flat of the balcony.
‘Come on,’ she called, reaching up to me.
The drainpipe was cold and slippery in the drizzle. I clung on, not looking down, grazing my knuckles on the bricks, and then felt Rosie’s hand on my ankle, guiding my foot on to the railing. I let go of the drainpipe and pushed away from it, and for one moment I was precisely balanced, standing on the railing. Then I felt my weight tip forward and was able to jump down on to the balcony next to Rosie.
‘Mother of God,’ she muttered, blowing out her cheeks.
She tried the glass door and it was unlocked. We slipped into the house as quietly as shadows, creeping through an empty bedroom and on to the landing, down two flights of stairs and along the hallway just as faces appeared from the lounge, a woman and an aged fellow in a dressing gown, mouths open. But we were out of the front door and running along the pavement, and we didn’t stop running until we reached the junction with the main road. Rosie pulled me across by the hand, dodging between angry carts and carriages in the rain, and we ran on until we reached a little park and threw ourselves down on to the grass.
We lay there for some minutes, gasping for breath. I began to claw at my belly, trying to tear off my skin. I didn’t want it any more. I wanted to take it off like my cilice, and leave it behind.
‘Stop,’ said Rosie. ‘Please, Leo, you have to stop.’ Her hat and spectacles were gone and her wet hair was plastered to her head. She was shivering. ‘What you did, it was … Leo? Are you listening to me? Leo?’
I stood up. All around me the traffic was deafening, wheels and hooves, voices calling and the rattling of a train. Despite the damp grass under my feet, this was a city, swollen with sounds and people.
Rosie put out her hand as if to grasp me, but I flinched away, and having started moving, I couldn’t stop. I was running again, carrying the chain in my two hands, and for a few seconds I thought Rosie was running after me, calling my name. But her voice got fainter and then I couldn’t hear her at all.
I slowed to a walk, breathing hard, and stumbled into St James’s Park where I’d once met with Augustus Thorpe. I skirted along the south side, past the tea shop, just another man lost amongst all the other men, on their way somewhere, going home or walking the dog, men in hats and raincoats, carrying canes, men with beards and moustaches and holly-bush eyebrows.
I passed the hospital without a glance, and then I could smell it: a rank, oily stink, the unmistakeable sewer of London, the Thames, long and dark, a wound across the city. It filled my nostrils as the bridge came into view.
The water was calling.
22
The slats of the bridge were wet and slippery, so I held on to the railing as I looked out at the fields stretching away on either side, tall grass and yellow crops made liquid by the wind flowing over them. It was a rare rainy day after a long, dry August, and the clouds were boiling across the sky, storing up more bad weather.
It was our first day back from holiday and we still had sand between our toes. Oliver was already in the army, but the rest of the family had had three unforgettable days in Margate, walking on the beach in bare feet and writing our names with stones. We bought ice creams from a stall, and my father took us to a cavern covered in seashells while Mummy rested in their room. We stayed at the Ship Hotel, which had a picture of a sailing boat on the sign and flower baskets on the porch. It was so warm that Jane and I kept our bedroom window open all night, and fell asleep to the weeping of the seagulls and the music of the bandstand by the pier.
It was Sunday tomorrow. My father had insisted on being back home in time to prepare his sermon, as he hated the thought of anyone else doing it. Who knew how his flock might be led astray, without his weekly guidance? While Mummy and Jane were unpacking, I put on my pinafore dress and my stoutest shoes, and took my old schoolbag with four heavy stones from the beach, a rope and my copy of Barnaby Rudge, and walked through the town and across the farmland to the bridge over the New River. I stood upon it with the wind in my hair and the frayed handle of the bag cutting into my fingers.
I’d been here before. Jane and I had stolen away a couple of times on hot days, cooling our toes in the water and watching the silvery fish dart to and fro. We’d never dared go deeper, although we were both competent swimmers.
I knew my instinct would be to struggle, so I cinched the bag of stones tightly around my waist with the rope, and climbed up on to the wall, my back to the water. No time to waste, no pause for second thoughts.
Eyes open, I thought. I want to see.
For some reason, I clutched the rope as I tipped backwards. I was in the air for a heartbeat before the freezing water closed over me, so shockingly cold I almost gasped it in. Weed reached out for my limbs and I tried to swim, as I’d known I would, my hands shoving the water downwards, increasingly frantic. But the stones and my saturated dress were dragging me down. My fingers touched the soft mud at the bottom, and my hand sank into it.
The light above me was growing dim and my lungs were starting to ache. I clawed at the weeds and the mud, kicking out, tearing at the cloth of the bag and digging my nails into the knot in the rope. No matter that I had done this to myself, no matter my reasons and justifications, my whole world had become my lungs. They were shouting at me, and then screaming, to reach the air and take a precious breath. Please, God, just one last breath before dying. But I could not.
And then there was a hand. Strong fingers tugged me upwards, and as I broke the surface I inhaled deeply, and was shamefully grateful. He pulled me to the side while his dog ran up and down on the bank, barking madly.
I crawled on to the grass and lay there, curled up, shaking and coughing. My rescuer, a farm labourer, not even twenty years old, swore at me richly and threatened, his eyes pink from the water, to drag me by my collar to the police station unless I promised never to try such a stupid thing again. I promised, covering my face. He probably thought I was weeping, but I simply wanted him to go away. He hurled my stones into the river and stuffed my rope into his pocket, and made me repeat my promise, hand on heart, before he would leave me.
I had lost the coura
ge anyway. Drowning had hurt more than I’d thought it would, and I was frightened of the water, the first inhalation of it, that bitter penetration. I started walking home when the rain set in, ashamed of my failure.
But that night, when the bedroom was dark and all I could hear was Jane’s breathing, I knew that my life could not continue as it had been. I couldn’t keep performing the part of a girl, giggling at my father’s jokes and lifting up my sheepish skirts to paddle in the sea. I couldn’t keep pretending I was normal when I knew to my very core that I wasn’t. And I couldn’t carry on living in a state of utter hopelessness, looking in the mirror every morning at someone who wasn’t me. Not any more.
I’d rather be dead than be Lottie Pritchard.
The wind was whistling across Westminster Bridge, blowing through my hair, flapping around my clothing, driving the rain against my cheeks. I could barely stand against it, and without shoes I was losing all feeling in my feet. In this weather even the occasional late-night cart and carriage seemed anxious and harried, impatient to get home.
The manacle was still locked to my wrist, and I was holding the chain in my hand. I stopped next to one of the trident streetlamps and leaned on the stone plinth, facing Lambeth Bridge, almost due south as the bends of the Thames wormed through London. Underneath me, a drop of forty or more feet, a chugging tugboat crept through the arch, its smoke billowing up and stinging my eyes.
I climbed up on the stone plinth and sat with my back to the streetlamp, the pavement on my left and the drop on my right, the chain hanging down. If I moved just a little, I would fall. My body might be caught against the stanchion of the bridge, turned over and over by the force of the flow, grinding against the brickwork until all my features were worn away: my clothes, my face, my skin. But more likely I would survive the drop, and bump through the arch as hypothermia took hold, sliding away downstream to be washed up near Blackfriars or Limehouse, bloated and grey. I would be wearing a manacle and whatever of my clothes had withstood the water. Back at the pharmacy, Alfie and Constance would wonder where I was. Eventually they would tell the police, and search through my possessions, finding my cilices and sanitary cloths, and wonder what kind of person they had welcomed into their home.