Then I was outside on the misty lane following after him. I didn’t remember leaving the bar—I was just there, cracking my stick down the cobblestones. I could see the old man’s rounded hat in perfect silhouette against the gas lamp’s halo ahead, his careful jerky gait. I could feel the brass knob of my stick moulded to my grasp, and the pricks of fine rain on my face. Yet the body’s impetus seemed beyond me, as if I had drifted off for a moment and was trying now to catch up. Against the greenish curtain of gaslight, the old man stopped and peered into the lane behind him, and I kept coming, smacking the brass cleat to the stones. My sternum was starting to vibrate. It felt like the centre of my momentum, surging forward as if to something magnetised—and I realised that Jekyll was no longer at the far reaches but now ringed intently around me. The old gent was making for Dean Street, which intersected our empty lane ahead, and as I closed in I could hear his wheezing and see his plumes of breath. He looked back at me again and tried to run. Then he clutched his leg, braced himself with a hand on the wall. He coughed, then straightened as I strolled up.
The edges of his moustache quivered as he gave me a firm, patrician stare. Evening, he said with a rough nod. I lifted my stick and pressed the brass cleat into his padded shoulder. Excuse me, he said, and I backed him up against the brick wall, with just enough pressure to pin him there. I could smell his sweet, powdered flesh, the old impostor. My molars were grinding together and blood was beating in my temples, spotting the edges of my sight. Where had this rage come from? It had taken hold of me like a fever. The old man swallowed and stammered, Wh-what do you want? Is it money you want? What do you want? I said, leaning into the stick. Cunny? Pretty young cunny? Is that what you’re after, old man? He shook his head, swinging the dewlap under his chin. His mouth flapped in protest. Oh yes, that’s what you want, old man like you, nice young cunny, fresh as cream. A fiery-haired, laughing phantom flickered across my mind just then, indistinct as a passing scent, and I looked off down the lane as if to catch it: burnished curls, a bare white throat, head thrown back in merriment . . . That name again, Georgiana. The old man was gripping the end of my stick, trying to dislodge it from his shoulder socket as he grunted and said, No, no, a drink is all I wanted, please. I swung my gaze back to him, blinking off the vision. Then drink where you belong. Not here. Don’t ever come here again. I see you here again and I’ll ram this stick into your arse and snap it off. You think you’re fooling anyone? Stay where you belong. You got that, dying old man?
I could hear myself snarling out these words; it was as if someone were speaking through me in a choked voice. The man was nodding vehemently. The stick twisted in my hand, then I pulled back and released him. He grabbed his shoulder, gasping. His eyes rolled up, and for a second I saw another phantom: Father in his wheelchair, ash-white hair hanging to his shoulders, holding that pen and watching us, a final moment. Then my stick leapt up and smacked the old man in the mouth. His head snapped back as something jumped from his face and clattered at my feet. Teeth. A row of teeth. The man was making muffled noises, covering his mouth as he cringed to the wall. I bent down and picked up the teeth, set into a mould of pale gums. I held them up and the old man goggled at me, bareheaded, his bowler now on the stones. He reached his bloody shaking hand from his mouth, now collapsed and dark, his moustache stained. I drew the teeth back. These are mine now. I jerked my head at Dean Street. Go. Go before something bad happens to you.
I watched him stagger off, then turned and went the other way. My knees felt shaky; I had to resist the woozy urge to hunker down on the stones. I was still pinching the man’s teeth, I realised, and I stuffed them disgustedly into my coat pocket. Why had I taken them? But I hadn’t. I hadn’t struck him; the stick—it’d just leapt up on its own. As if I were a puppet with someone’s hand inside. I hadn’t even decided to go after the old man to begin with, I had simply . . . How had I gotten from the barstool to the street outside? A sliver of time was missing. When had this happened before?
It had happened at Auntie Gorgon’s girlie shop. I see that now, of course. But as I wandered away into the drizzle that night, I could just dimly remember the other episode—that room with the Christ, the broken street outside, the white-brick house on Bedford Square. I did not want to remember. I didn’t want to start piecing things together, not when my new life had only just begun. I didn’t want to think anything might be amiss. Perhaps Jekyll had taken control of the body, scared the old man off our turf. The notion was perturbing, that he could reach through me, into me . . .
But it wasn’t my function to question the existence I’d been granted. It seemed the easiest solution was to forget about the old impostor and his teeth. Which I did, especially after Jekyll’s encounter with Utterson at the Grampian several days later. Jekyll was crossing the cavernous granite lobby as Utterson descended the steps from above, tucking his muffler into his coat. Jekyll hadn’t seen the solicitor since his birthday party, and even then they hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words. Utterson stopped at the foot of the stairs. You’re leaving? Jekyll said. Bosh, come up and sit with me. But Utterson shook his head, still fussing with his muffler. Dining with a client. He glanced into Jekyll’s eyes, a rueful, guarded look. How are you, Harry? I’m well, how are you, John? Utterson held the glance from under his shaggy eyebrows. And Mr. Hyde? How is he?
The skin over Jekyll’s cheekbones tightened. Mr. Hyde is also well, last I saw of him. And when might I see him? Utterson asked. You’d like to meet him? Of course I’d like to meet him. Given the terms of your will, I should think it necessary that I meet him, don’t you agree? Perhaps, said Jekyll slowly. I’ll propose it to him, next I see him. I warn you, I doubt he’ll consent. He’s suspicious of new people. Our kind of people, especially. They intimidate him. Well, it’s only me. Just a brief chat, that’s all. Any place of his choosing. Yes, as I said, I’ll propose the idea. No promises, I’m afraid.
Utterson nodded, the shrewd old dog. No, he said. No promises.
It was out of the question, of course. There was no way I was showing my face to suspicious Utterson. That will—that stupid, insane will—I had almost managed to forget that Jekyll had actually sent the thing to the solicitor, that by now it was most likely locked in Utterson’s safe, festering at the back of his mind. What was Jekyll trying to do—did he want Utterson to find our secret out?
He seemed to have no intention of letting Utterson meet me; I could read that clearly enough, with some relief. Yet the encounter left him pensive in the days following. It was his friend Hastie Lanyon he was thinking of. I knew a little about Dr. Hastie Lanyon by now, absorbed from the general atmosphere of Jekyll’s mind. Something had happened in recent years between Jekyll and Lanyon; something had soured. Wisps of memory were adrift: I could see the two friends as young men, on a ferryboat chopping through northern seas, bellowing gloriously at the rail into the tearing wind as Lanyon’s pale hair whipped his happy, pretty face. But I also caught a glimpse of him years later, red in the face like an impotent despot, standing in some drawing room and shouting, I won’t have it, Harry, I won’t have you putting your hocus-pocus on her!
I wasn’t surprised when, about a week after his run-in with Utterson, Jekyll wrote Lanyon a letter asking his friend to dinner. It seemed an oblique but clever piece of strategy. Utterson could not be allowed to meet me, but at least Jekyll could see Hastie, as Utterson had been urging him to do. Perhaps the man would be mollified by that.
They met in a restaurant, low lit like a wine cellar, bottles slotted into the walls. Lanyon was already seated in a side room next to a fireplace, a slight man in a canary-yellow waistcoat gazing vaguely off into the air. He gave a start as Jekyll approached, then stood up and offered a shy smile and his strong little hand. He had a brick-red, elfin face, curly flaxen hair. Hesitantly, his faded blue eyes met Jekyll’s. Hullo, Harry, he said. Awkward silence after they sat down. Lanyon had been drinking. A soft, bifurcate vein stood under his eye. He considered for an unfocus
ed moment the crystal rim of his glass, then glanced up and waved his finger for the waiter. Some wine? You’ll have a glass with me, won’t you, Harry?
The waiter poured Lanyon a quarter of a glass, which he gave a swirl then sniffed above the rim before holding it up to the firelight. He tipped the burgundy back at a swallow, eyes briefly shut. Jekyll watched the performance with a tightness in his throat. When both glasses were full, Lanyon lifted his and said, Well, Harry, what to? Jekyll had not yet reached for his glass. Hastie. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.
Lanyon tried to smile but it broke, and his eyes went glassy—and all at once I knew, with a kind of ah, yes. Lanyon had lost his wife. Utterson had written to Jekyll in Paris. Suddenly I could see her, a plump woman with rich marmalade hair pinned up in a bun, sitting in Jekyll’s study before the fire, red-nosed and sniffing, twisting a handkerchief. Then Jekyll blinked and I saw Lanyon across the table still holding his wine with a wavering smile. Yes, Lanyon said, I’m sorry too. His gaze fell to Jekyll’s wine. He wagged his finger at it. Now, come on, then, don’t leave me in the lurch. What to, Harry? Jekyll looked at his glass, lifted it. To us, I suppose.
He brought the glass to his lips but did not let the warm sweet wine enter his mouth. He never swallowed alcohol. Just took these careful, feigned sips in company when required.
After they had ordered, another silence fell. Everything seemed sensitive ground. How’s the practise? Jekyll asked eventually, and Lanyon shrugged. It’s been better. Been a difficult year, of course. I’ve been paying some house calls, though. They keep me out and about. That’s good. What are people ailing of, these days? Oh, the usual. Rheumatism, gout, tuberculosis. Breast cancer, quite a few cases of breast cancer, actually. Nothing I can do for them, of course, except prescribe laudanum and a good surgeon. Lanyon frowned, shrugged his shoulders again. My mother, Jekyll said after a long pause. Breast cancer for her as well.
Goodness. I didn’t know that, Harry.
I was very young. Five or six. Nothing the surgeons could do either. My father made me drink a big glass of whisky, and when I came to, the butchers had gone. They had a sheet over her, upstairs, but my father drew it down for me. Held the back of my neck, so I could see. Both breasts, it was.
Goodness, Lanyon said again, Harry! He looked down into his wine, translucent in the firelight. John told me, he began tentatively. John told me about your father. His passing. Jekyll nodded. Lanyon cleared his throat. John told me that you were in the room, his hospital room, when it happened.
I was. Except it didn’t merely happen. Did John tell you that too? Lanyon was silent. His fountain pen was lying on the table near the windows. He asked me to bring it to him. Said he had something for me, something to sign over to me.
I could see it again: the gleaming wooden pen on the table. I could see Father’s hand, yellow-nailed and palsied, as he reached to take it from us. Father unscrewed the cap, beheld the steel nib. Then he looked up at us, from his wheelchair, with his overgrown hair and naked, moustacheless mouth, a stranger except for the eyes. Henry, he whispered.
He took the pen from me, Jekyll said. And he—Jekyll lifted his chin and jerked his fist at his throat. He held Lanyon’s horrified gaze, head tipped back, as a geyser of blood hissed through our mind, Father blinking, gurgling. Good Lord! Lanyon said, eyes wide, as if seeing it too. Good Lord, Harry, he—he must’ve been utterly senile. Jekyll shook his head. I don’t think so. His doctor had written to me, said my father had been asking repeatedly to see me. He had planned it out. He had set the pen on that table so that I could carry it to him.
But, Lanyon said, but why?
Jekyll gazed at him. Atonement.
At that moment, the waiter arrived with the first course, cold prawns in aspic. Both of them considered the scalloped mounds, still aquiver. Well, I’m just famished, Jekyll announced, and Lanyon let out a snort of laughter. Look, Jekyll said, leaning forward, why don’t we knock off the morbid talk. What do you say, Old Gooseberry? Lanyon looked puzzled for a moment, then his face lit up and he roared out a laugh. Old Gooseberry! I’d forgotten all about Old Gooseberry! And who was his wife, Old Gooseberry and—ah, don’t tell me—who was it again? Lady Halibut, Jekyll said, and Lanyon threw his head back in laughter and banged the table with his hand. Holding his tiny fork, Jekyll watched him, that ache swelling again in his throat. Poor old Lanyon. He sniffed and wiped his sparkling eyes with his linen. This one we can handle, I remember thinking. This one is no Utterson.
Lanyon had port instead of coffee. The talk had turned to their schooldays, more silly nicknames, a story about their anatomy professor, Utterson in his nightshirt and slippers demanding quiet. At one point Lanyon was gasping with laughter and waving his hands. No more, he pleaded, ah, no more! The tablecloth had somehow gotten tucked into his waistcoat, and when they stood up at last, he nearly dragged all the plates and glasses off. Jekyll steered him through the restaurant and helped him into his coat at the door. The maître d’ was wishing them good evening and Lanyon was pumping his hand and then came her voice from behind—Henry.
Instant recognition. Jekyll turned and there she was at last, just outside the archway to the main dining room. Georgiana. A dainty bird in pink silk with a white-blond bun and blue eyes, her quick lively face tilted up with an amused little smile. Henry, she said, I knew it was you. Jekyll stood there, coat over his arm, pulse slamming against his cool outer shell. He crossed the foyer and took the hand she offered, fragile-boned and cold. Georgiana. She gazed up at him with that amused, half-sad little smile. Up close, we could see that fine age lines touched the edges of her eyes, the wings of her mouth. Listen, she said, patting his hand, I’m with people, back in there, but I saw you and—and that’s Hastie Lanyon, isn’t it? She leant to look behind Jekyll, and then she straightened, said quietly, Henry, I’ve been, it’s funny, I’ve been—could I come to see you, do you think?
It came out in a rush, and she made a hesitant, wincing face. See me? Of course. When? When I can get away, in a week, perhaps. I’ll write to let you know. Is that—is this horribly inappropriate? No, not at all. I’d be delighted. Georgiana raised a hand as if to press it to his chest. Thank you. Her brow creased in slight pain, and she said softly, Henry. Then she turned and swished back into the dining room.
Was that not Miss Floris? Lanyon said slyly when they were outside. Jekyll stood rigid looking across the road at nothing. It’s Waller now. Lanyon said, Right, right. There was silence. Well, he said brightly, what does the evening hold in store for a pair of old bachelors? Jekyll looked down at Lanyon. Hastie, forgive me, but home.
Back at Big House Jekyll wandered into the parlour and pretended to browse through a book he picked off the shelf. He listened for Poole, then snapped the book shut and crossed the room to the far doorway that led into the powder-blue side parlour, which never seemed to be used. He went to the wall and found the faint vertical line running from ceiling to floor, where the secret panel was, and gave the wall a push. There was a click and the panel fell open, and he slipped through the gap into the servants’ pantry. Dim shelving, smell of silver polish and sawdust. I knew the smell. I’d been in here before, on the first night. I had crept across the courtyard and entered Big House by the servants’ door, the tall black door down the corridor to our left. I could see it through the slim doorway now, as Jekyll stood in the pantry. He went down the servants’ corridor, with its many doors on either side, to the black door at the end and the foggy courtyard beyond.
Why didn’t he leave through the conservatory as usual? It seems significant to me now, that he should go in there, into the servants’ corridor, on this particular night, the night he sent me out to find Jeannie.
It was the clearest impulse I had ever received. The moment I lurched into the body I knew what he wanted me to do. That girl we had seen in the Toad, weeks and weeks ago, the girl who had flashed through my mind just the other night—laughing, shaking her burnished head. I wanted to find her, to see her
again. It was as if I had walked past a tiny silver key in the road miles back and suddenly realised what lock it might fit.
At the Toad I stood crushed to the bustling, sticky bar, peering about. When the barman passed, I snagged his sleeve and shouted, There’s a girl, little redheaded thing with a big laugh. Know her? The barman had pig eyes embedded in his baby face. What, he said, Jeannie? I don’t know, I shouted, little redheaded thing with the laugh? The barman just gave me his squalid gaze, eyebrows lifted. I put a quid on the bar. He told me to try the Gullet. And there she was.
The Gullet was the proper name. The place was dark and narrow and at the back fell down a steep staircase to a basement room. She was down in that candlelit grotto, leaning on the bar talking to the barman, gesturing expressively. One of her feet was curled round her other ankle. The barman was cleaning a glass with a filthy rag as he half listened to the girl. He glanced at me as I approached. Gin, I said. And one more for the lady. He sniffed a laugh, poured a gin for me in the glass he’d been cleaning. The girl held out her glass and he splashed some in there. One more for the lady—where had that come from? The girl looked at me and slit her eyes, and I saw the resemblance at once: Georgiana’s quick sharp face, the disconcertingly direct blue eyes. The girl’s hair was dyed deep vermilion and her front teeth were gapped, but the way she was looking at me was strikingly familiar, a kind of mock-sceptical appraisal. How does you know I’s a lady? she said with an exaggerated accent. She was having me on. I couldn’t think what to say. I knocked off my gin at a swallow. She took a sip from her glass then tipped her chin back and gargled it, almost spitting it back out and then covering her mouth and coughing. You’re a funny girl. No, I’m not, she said, I’m very, very sad, if you must know. Tragic story, mine is. Her voice skipped drunkenly along, picking up accents and putting them down. She leant on the bar, head propped on her hand. Slit her eyes at me again. You don’t talk much, do you? I grinned down at the floor. I lack practise. Oh dear, she said. She yawned hugely, and sighed. Do you have a tragic story too?
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