Yet that warm assurance glowed now in my limbs as I retrieved Father’s fountain pen, heavy and sleek, from Jekyll’s trousers hanging in the wardrobe. I had not so much as held a pen since the childhood, and the polished mahogany thing felt clumsy and sinister in my fingers. When I unscrewed the cap, baring the needle-sharp nib, for a flash I saw Father in his hospital wheelchair, the pen held loose in his withered hand. I transferred it to the fingers of my right hand as I bent over the cheque on the table and tentatively touched the nib’s point to the signature line. Instantly my hand scribbled out an elegant tangle of ink. Astounded, I drew back. A plausible autograph. Had I done that? I touched the nib to the cheque again and my hand dashed in the remaining lines, making it out to Bearer for ninety pounds.
I was back outside a minute later. By now the women had withdrawn, and just the three men waited on Castle Street, below the stoop: my captor, the girl’s da, and the old doctor with his black bag. I had the ten pounds in coins in my fist, and I held it out to my former captor. Don’t give it to me, he sneered, and he jerked his head at Da. A stocky, unshaven fellow with a brush moustache wearing braces and no collar, a common working bloke, trying his best to meet my eye. I tipped the coins into his hands. What’s this? my man said, peering at the pile. Ten pounds, I replied. Da was looking down at his fortune, and I placed the cheque atop the pile of coins. My erstwhile captor snapped it up and held it before him, inspecting the slim paper, for an agonisingly long time. Then he lowered it and looked at me. The arrogant bluster in his eyes slipped into uncertainty as he now studied my face. I did not like to be looked at directly. But I suffered the man’s scrutiny, trying to hide under the shade of my hat brim. Did he know Jekyll? I suddenly wondered. In my excursions I hadn’t yet met anyone who knew Jekyll.
Sir, the man said, what is your name?
My name. My name? I did not have a name. No one had ever asked me for one. I was just—me. My mind spun in search of some reply. Why do you ask? I said. Why? he repeated. Because I met Dr. Henry Jekyll some years ago. And you are not he.
Relief flashed in the heart of my panic: he didn’t know, he couldn’t see. He could see only me, a stunted, stark-eyed creature with a cringing grin in a bigger man’s suit. But a name! The hackles along my neck pricked up as if Father’s shadow were falling over us again, and the old protective impulse surged in my throat—
Hide, I whispered. Hide!
The man frowned. Mr. Hide?
I gaped at him. Yes, I said. Mr. Hide. And yours? He was inspecting the cheque again. I am Enfield, he answered. Enfield. The name sounded familiar. I could feel the immense complex of Jekyll’s memory absorb it.
Mr. Hide, Enfield said, how can you expect me to accept this cheque if it is not your own?
Mr. Hide. It had a certain ring to it.
The cheque is good. The bank will tell you so.
Enfield folded the paper in half and slipped it into his inner pocket. In that case, he said, you would not object to waiting with us until the bank opens? I had known he would say this. Wait where? Enfield glanced up at the limestone wall of the surgery block, windowless, splotched with lichen. A flicker of unease crossed his face, and he murmured, My rooms aren’t far. We’ll wait there. He glanced at the doctor and Da, as if he had forgotten they were still there. I’d most appreciate your company, gentlemen, he said. The doctor was watching me again, his mouth wrinkled sour with distaste. He gave a curt nod. No one waited for Da to answer. We set off, all together.
Enfield did live nearby, in a posh flat off St. Martin’s. His stooped manservant opened the curtains and built up the fire in the sitting room, and we settled down to wait for daylight. I chose a tall leather wingback and crossed my legs, letting one boot dangle in midair the way Jekyll would sit in the lounge at the Grampian Club. Enfield produced a cigar case and offered it to the doctor, who raised a hand and turned his face aside. Next to him on the voluptuous sofa sat Da, perched uncomfortably upright, hands on his knees. He hesitated at the cigar before darting forward and plucking one out. Enfield moved the case halfheartedly to me. I didn’t particularly like cigars, but I slid from the leather slot a slim tapering perfecto and rolled it between my finger and thumb like a connoisseur. Enfield snapped a silver lighter for Da and then offered the steady flame to me. I sucked the earthy end until the butt began to blossom, then sank back into the wing chair, recrossing my legs. A euphoric wave was cresting in my chest. I let a milky curl of smoke unfurl from my mouth, casting a languid eye at Da again. He was frowning at his cigar as if it weren’t drawing right, picking discreetly at the tip.
Someone must be dying, I heard myself say, and he looked up with an alarmed little start. I nodded at the doctor. You sent the lassie for our good doctor here, dead of night. Someone must be dying. Your old man, maybe? Your lady’s old man? Yet here you are. Waiting for the bank to open.
Enough, Enfield broke in. Don’t tell him anything, he instructed Da. In fact, I propose we all cease speaking, for the present.
He was in a wingback like mine, one leg thrown over the other. For the first time I took in his odd attire. He wore a blue plaid suit and a preposterous, almost prismatic purple waistcoat buttoned snug over his belly. These two are accounted for, I said. We know why they were out and about in the middle of the night. But what about you, Enfield? What’ve you been up to? His expression was hard to read behind the sizzling ember of his cigar. Naughty boy, Enfield. What’s your fancy, then? He lifted a hand and waved the smoke aside. I’ll have you know, Mr. Hide, that I happen to be an informal member of the London Society for the Protection of Young Females. An informal member, I repeated. That sounds very impressive. You go about dressed like that protecting young females, do you?
His eyes were glittering points. A response seemed to play on his lips like a trace of smile. Then he sniffed and looked off at the ash of his cigar, and victorious, I let my gaze lift to the windows. Beyond the rise of black rooftops, the sky was suffused with fuchsia. Dawn. I had never held on to the body long enough to see the sun rise. I had never been exposed to the daylight. The skin on the back of my hands was shrinking with excitement. This was new. A change was coming, inevitable as the sun itself. I could feel Jekyll close inside, abuzz in my blood, as if this were exactly what he’d been craving all evening. This very adventure, upon which everything would pivot, as on a hinge.
We kept the rest of the vigil in silence broken only by the old doctor’s occasional snore. I was hoping I might see the sun ascend from the rooflines and hang in the window frame like the molten eye of God. But the flush gradually cooled to blue, and the room lightened until I could make out the gritty detail of Enfield’s cheek. He rubbed his jaw with a sandpapery rasp, then dipped into his waistcoat pocket for a gold watch. It sprang open at his touch. He snapped it shut, gave me a sidelong glance, and with a grunt pushed up from his wingback and left the room. When he returned, breakfast followed him on a trolley. Coffee, rolls, cold meat, and cheese. Da hungered at the fare, but he was obviously following Enfield’s lead, and Enfield just took coffee and then pretended to read some papers at his desk. I ripped open the rolls and packed beef and cheese inside and stood breathing through my nose as I chewed. I slurped down two cups of hot black coffee and was vibrating with vim. I was going outside into that cold clean morning for the first time. As we gathered together to leave, I clapped Da enthusiastically on the back, making him almost stumble. Now, sir, let’s go get you your hush money.
Stepping out into the sunshine, I braced myself, half expecting the light to sear my skin with a hiss of steam. But it greeted me like I was anyone else, its alien heat on my upturned face. I felt bleached by it, purified, as we strolled toward the Strand. It was a different city by daylight, crisply divided by shadows and sun, the stony lanes thick with rumbling carriages and bodies plodding to work. Shards of light winked off the shop windows and clopping cabs and nickel-headed walking sticks and made me squint. Soon we reached the great pillared façade of Coutts Bank, corniced
like a Greek temple. We trooped inside and stood blinking in the vaulted grandeur of its lobby, all of us red-eyed, unshaven. Enfield took off one floppy leather glove and gestured with it to a wooden bench. As if they were dogs, the old doctor and Da obediently sat down. Easing off his other glove a finger at a time, Enfield said quietly to me, I would prefer to handle this alone, if you don’t mind.
My mouth tasted of soot and earth, from the cigar. All at once I was nervous. I shrugged, lightheaded, but trying to seem dismissive, and Enfield was led away by a young flunky to one of the many huge mahogany desks beyond the barricade of the lobby. I tried not to watch the transaction. My shirt, Jekyll’s billowy shirt, was pasted nastily to my shoulder blades.
A hoarse voice spoke: And if it clears?
I turned and looked down at the doctor on the bench, baggy-eyed, his bristly dewlap dangling under the wrinkled chin. And if it clears? he repeated. Then what? This never happened, I suppose?
I glanced away, as if from something I had accidentally trodden upon and crushed. With relief I found that Enfield was walking back toward us already, and he was holding some papers in his hand. Sir, he said to Da, and handed the man the banknotes. Ninety pounds, as promised, Enfield pronounced, watching me curiously. Da puzzled dully down at the money, as if he didn’t know what it was for. The old doctor stood up, black bag in his rope-veined hand. Bah, he said to the floor, then turned and left. And that was that.
I trudged through the stabbingly bright morning back to Castle Street, all at once exhausted, one eye squinched against an impending headache. Upstairs, I bolted the rear cabinet door behind me and went around the table to the cherrywood glazed press, the antique bureau in which Jekyll kept his magic. One of its twin glass-paned doors stood ajar, as he had left it. The slim jewellery-box drawers inside were lettered from A down to H on the left side, from I down to P on the right. From E drawer, I removed the coil of black rubber tubing and the black Milward box.
Within, the two syringes lay nestled in their beds of red baize, pointing in opposite directions. The upper, empty syringe pointing right was Jekyll’s. The lower one pointing left was mine, the barrel loaded with the pale transparent green serum. I stripped off my sticky clothes, tied the tourniquet round my left biceps, and pulled it tight with my teeth as I flexed up the vein in the crook of my arm. I took the syringe by its steel loops. Down the room, on the wall, hung Father’s portrait. A young man, he sat on a stool with his beloved violin perched on one knee, his long deft fingers cradling the scrolled pegboard. The eyes watched me askance, wide set and grey, so exact, so alive.
Mr. Hide.
I eased the needle into the vein and pressed the plunger.
Here I sit in my chair by the cabinet windows, staring into the past, squeezing the vein below the abscess, which contains the pulsing pain. But the pain is merely a background nuisance as I nod in quiet triumph. That night of the little girl was the true beginning. A pivotal point, upon which everything would turn. There was the bank cheque, of course. That would be part of the trouble later on. But much more than the cheque, it was the name. It was the name that shifted our double life in a new, irreversible direction.
Later that morning, after I had given the body back to Jekyll, he slipped from the surgery block and crossed the gravel courtyard to the handsome brick back of Big House, entering by the glass conservatory door. Upstairs in his bedroom, he bathed and shaved, humming tunelessly between his pressed lips. He splashed some bay rum into his palm and patted it lightly over his cheeks and throat, and I could feel its exotic sting as it set his face in place. Mornings were ritualistic for Jekyll. After his bath and meticulous blade work, he would hang his dressing gown on its hook and cross, naked, to the bureau, keeping his eyes off the long oval swinging mirror, always tilted up in its frame. Only when he had his drawers on did he tilt it down and regard himself. He could not look at his nakedness, the hair and the dangling thing. Even when he urinated, I’d noticed, he did not quite touch or look at it, as if it were a scarred-over wound he didn’t want to remember. But he was proud of the rest of his body. A large, heavy-boned, athletic body, so opposite my own stunted essence, his torso robust, shoulders broad, quadriceps braided with muscle. I had been amazed when I’d awoken that summer of 1884, after thirty-six years of hibernation in the mind wherein I had nested during the whole of his adult life. The years between thirteen and forty-nine were a black smear across the span of my memory. I had left Jekyll a hollow-eyed, skinny, cropped-headed boy and returned to find a giant blond god. His clothes enhanced the effect. His ivory linen was tailored precisely to his chest and wrists. Each of his numerous waistcoats bore some subtle, unique stamp of fashion—lavender stitching along the pockets, or a paisley design to the inner silk lining. And when he drew his jacket snug by the satin lapels and shot his silver-linked cuffs and posed with his handcrafted shoes parted like a dancer’s, his transformation into the character he had forged was complete.
I thought he was merely going for a walk when he set out from Leicester Square. But ten minutes later he stopped before a drab stone building on a busy street and went inside. The Blackhaven Banking Company consisted of a large dingy room with musty drapes and threadbare carpeting, and the clerk who led Jekyll back to his desk was a spectacled imp with a wisp of fair hair swept over his shiny pate. Jekyll sat, crossed his legs, brushed something from his knee, and said he wanted to open an account for a second party. The clerk was unscrewing his fountain pen. The name of the second party? Jekyll’s heartbeat was quickening. Hyde, he said, Edward Hyde. H-y-d-e.
Edward? What was this? Yet the clerk was writing the name on his papers as if it belonged to a real person. Jekyll’s foot wagged up and down as he watched the clerk’s pen transmute my anonymity into official existence. Mr. Hyde’s residence? the clerk asked. Jekyll said that Mr. Hyde had recently moved to the city and was staying at the Donne Hotel until he found more permanent accommodations. He dipped a hand into his inner breast pocket and drew out a slip of paper. The clerk unfolded it as I recognised the pale green colour. It was another of Jekyll’s cheques from Coutts. The clerk stared for a moment. Five thousand pounds, he said. He looked up. Of course, Doctor, he said, and bent eagerly over his papers again.
Five thousand pounds? When had Jekyll written that cheque? I had no memory of him doing so. Jekyll just watched the clerk’s scritching pen. He could shut me utterly out of his thinking, back in these early days. The mind was a complex asylum in which I had my nestled residence, with a front window onto his world. But the majority of the mind, vast regions of cells in the wings and rear, remained sealed off from me, and back then I didn’t try to pry into the inaccessible corridors. Though some things, I suppose, I knew innately. That summer when I first awoke, almost immediately I knew that we were living in London and that Jekyll had returned to Big House after two years at the Paris hospital where he had been treating a French patient, Emile Verlaine. Jekyll was in the surgical theatre below the cabinet when I first blinked to the surface. He was prying open some wooden crates with a jimmy bar, taking out the bottles inside, and placing them on the dissecting table. When the crates were empty, he set them upright and shattered them to slats with an axe. I knew that it was June or July of 1884. I knew I had awoken because Jekyll needed me. But I didn’t know why. I did not know his plans. I found I didn’t know what Jekyll was going to do until he did it.
After the Blackhaven Banking Company, Jekyll went to his fencing club and then to the Grampian, as was his routine. Sometimes he ate dinner at the Grampian, but usually he just sat in the baroquely chambered bar and lounge drinking his soda water with a handful of the old boys whom I didn’t really try to tell apart. That evening, John Utterson was sitting across the room with a few of the boys when Jekyll came in. Utterson lifted his hand and Jekyll threaded through the labyrinth of ponderous furniture to join his circle. He met the solicitor’s eyes, milky grey and steady under overgrown iron eyebrows, and gave his friend a private nod. Twenty minutes later
Jekyll met Utterson’s gaze again and inclined his head toward the door. They stood up simultaneously and made their apologies. Come on, old man, Jekyll said as they crossed the lounge together, I’ll escort you home.
A block from the Grampian they encountered a dapper, elderly man in a tall stovepipe sauntering down the sidewalk. Utterson stopped to greet him. I did not notice much about Sir Danvers Carew on this first incidental meeting. Except perhaps for his silky white hair, spilling from under his topper, and his colourless, crystal eyes. Sir Danvers Carew, Utterson said, this is Dr. Henry Jekyll. They shook hands. Carew knew Jekyll’s name. He said he had attended one of Jekyll’s lectures many years ago in Vienna. The rest of the conversation is blurred, for I was focused on figuring out what Jekyll was up to. He had sought Utterson out, it seemed, for some special purpose. The three men stood talking on the sidewalk for several minutes, then parted ways. But there it was. That was the moment Carew entered our lives, that narrow window of time on the sidewalk. Had Jekyll ushered Utterson out of the club even a minute later, we might have missed the man, and then who knows where we’d be now? And yet, that is faulty thinking. Because it wasn’t incidental, of course, it wasn’t merely coincidence. There are no coincidences, not in this story.
Sir Danvers, eh? Jekyll remarked afterward. Rather high company you keep, old man. Utterson replied that he had handled some business for Carew, and Jekyll said, A client? Good gracious, John, I wonder if your roster is becoming too eminent for the likes of me.
But there was something forced in his jovial tone. I could sense his inscrutable design as they entered Utterson’s dreary house and climbed to his study. A dark room with carved rafters reaching to a domed wooden ceiling shuddering with gargoylesque shadows from the fire. It might have been transplanted from some baronial hunting lodge in the Black Forest, this lair. Utterson sat low in his wingback, long legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles, fingers interlaced on his chest, a brooding pout to his glistening lips. Yes, I was watchful of the solicitor, even this early in the game. He had known Jekyll longer than anyone alive, aside from Hastie Lanyon. The three of them had gone to school together back in Edinburgh, and I could sense the depth of the friendship when Jekyll sat alone with Utterson, their history yawning below me like bottomless water. Jekyll watched his friend too, even as he feigned absent-minded reflection while gazing into the fire. At last he lifted his eyes to the portrait glooming over the mantel. An older, thicker, fiercer Utterson glowered down: John Utterson Senior, no doubt. Jekyll said with a small laugh, Just imagine, John, the psychological damage we’ve endured, sitting under those eyes all these years.
Hyde Page 2