The Way of All Flesh

by Ambrose Parry

  ‘I hope he can stitch wounds better than that,’ she mused as she dropped the offensive item into a basket by the door. The notion brought to mind the nasty cut on Raven’s cheek, about which she suspected he was being less than truthful. He claimed he had been randomly set upon, but her instinct was that he must have played some part in precipitating the attack. She recognised something restless in him. Ambitious and driven, yes, but not at peace with himself.

  He struck her as impetuous, desperate to prove himself, though to whom would be an interesting question. Since he got here, he had been trying too hard to look like he was in control, over-compensating for the fear that he was in over his head. Recalling her own first steps and missteps as a housemaid, Sarah well understood how difficult it could be when you were new to a situation. However, her sympathy was limited by the fact that his was a privileged problem to have. She would have loved to be negotiating his new situation rather than that of a domestic servant, who could be cast out onto the street for speaking out of turn.

  Sarah had come into service here at Queen Street following the deaths of her parents, the local minister finding this position for her as he was an old friend of Dr Simpson. Her premature departure from the parish school had no doubt been a relief to her schoolmaster, who was becoming increasingly wearied by her arguments regarding her exclusion from subjects deemed suited only to boys, such as Classics and mathematics. He was convinced that her grasp of reading, writing and arithmetic was sufficient for a girl of her station, insisting that knitting and sewing would be of more use to her and would open up the possibility of industrial work in the future. As though a factory job or work in a mill should be the culmination of all her ambition. If one was capable of carrying out a task or learning a body of knowledge, then why should it matter whether one be male or female? Her fury at this injustice had cooled little since.

  She turned to take in the rest of the room, wondering what other horrors might be lurking there. To be fair it was not as messy as Mina’s chaotic fiefdom but it was far from tidy. Open books and papers were scattered across the small writing desk in one corner, spilling onto the floor in a wide circle. A black coat – mucky cuffs, threadbare around the collar – was hanging from the back of a chair and muddy boots had trailed clumps of dirt across the carpet from doorway to fireplace. Sarah sighed. This was going to take a bit of time to sort out.

  In order to see more of the carpet so that she could put some tea leaves down and sweep it, she decided to start at the desk, or at least the floor surrounding the desk. As she stooped to pick up some of the discarded papers she found herself next to the battered trunk that had followed Raven from his previous accommodation. It was open, some of the papers having landed inside. The trunk mostly contained books, presumably not deemed of immediate necessity, as there were plenty of those piled elsewhere.

  She recalled his high-handed conduct on the morning of his first clinic.

  Do you think a man has time to read fiction when he is training to be a doctor?

  Evidently, he had time to read fiction once, for there were several piled up inside the box. She picked up the topmost one, The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. Beneath it was The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, and below that three works by Walter Scott.

  Sarah turned the Thackeray book in her hand. She was sure Mina had a copy. She opened it, noting that the inside of the cover had been proprietorially inscribed with a handwritten name: Thomas Cunningham. A gift? A theft? Sarah examined the Cooper, noting the same name inside. Second-hand, then. A job lot, purchased from a fellow student.

  She gathered up the papers and attempted to order them. Some dealt with what looked like injuries sustained during childbirth, others concerning a procedure known as a craniotomy, the illustrations for which she was sure she must be misreading. Sarah winced and picked up another, which turned out to be a letter. Upon discovering this, she turned it over and put it back down, but not without observing that it was from Raven’s mother, and more intriguingly that she had addressed him neither as Will nor William.

  She smiled at this discovery, moving the letter to one side so that it did not get lost among the piles of notes. That was when she encountered an open journal, her eyes drawn by the contrast between two pages. On one side were dense paragraphs of Raven’s neat handwriting, a cursory glance at which revealed them to be detailing the procedure for administering ether. On the opposite folio, there were but two words in impatiently scrawled capitals:

  EVIE POISONED?

  Sarah heard the tread of footsteps too late. She had been seen.

  ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ Raven asked. He snatched the journal from where it lay upon the desk, slamming it closed with a force that caused several of the papers she had gathered to drift from their piles. He seemed disproportionate in his vehemence, making her wonder at the significance of whatever he feared she might have read.

  ‘There is no need for temper,’ she responded, keeping her voice even in the hope that it would calm his ire. A complaint from the professor’s apprentice would give Mrs Lyndsay all the reason she needed to curtail Sarah’s clinic duties. ‘I am merely attempting to tidy up.’

  ‘You were not merely tidying up, you were going through my private things, which I will not tolerate. There is nothing among these papers that concerns you, and still less that you would even understand.’

  Despite the precariousness of her situation, Sarah could not prevent Raven’s words from raising her hackles. She knew she should retreat, but an uncontainable instinct urged her to advance instead. She could just about tolerate bowing and scraping to the upstairs patients, but not to this scruffy youth.

  ‘Who is Evie?’ she asked.

  He seemed flabbergasted, which had the unintended effect of spiking his bluster by putting him on the back foot.

  ‘She is . . . no business of yours.’

  Sarah decided to press her advantage. ‘How did you really get that cut on your face, Wilberforce?’

  His eyes flashed, but she could see a hint of anxiety beneath the outrage. Raven had secrets, and that was the real reason for this display of indignation.

  ‘You read a letter from my mother?’

  ‘I would not so intrude. I merely saw the addressee. I have heard Mrs Simpson address you as William several times and you’ve never corrected her. Why would that be? Does Dr Simpson know your real name is Wilberforce?’

  Raven’s face flushed. ‘You would do well to remember your position. You seem to forget that you are a servant. What kind of house is this where such behaviour is not reined in?’

  Sarah gazed down at the trunk and then to her basket. ‘Are you used to greater deference from those below stairs, sir?’ she enquired.

  He did not answer. He looked worried now more than angry. He was afraid of what she might know, and he was right to be. It appeared there was someone in the household with an even more tenuous grip upon his position than she had.

  ‘Who is Thomas Cunningham?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. He was the previous owner of the second-hand books in your trunk. Mrs Simpson said your late father was a lawyer in St Andrews, but I’d wager you’re no higher born than I am.’

  She lifted up the soiled and threadbare shirt from the laundry basket.

  ‘There is little you can conceal from the woman who does your laundry.’

  Raven looked at the shirt, his indignation spent, his demeanour meek, even vulnerable. It was as though her seeing the state of the garment was a greater trespass than the reading of his notes.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ he asked meekly.

  ‘Your shirt is soiled. It needs to be cleaned and is in sorry need of repair. I was going to soak the stains out of it and stitch the hole in the shoulder seam.’

  Raven took a step towards her, fire returning to his eyes.

  ‘I will thank you not to touch my things,’ he said.

/>   Sarah held his gaze.

  ‘As you wish.’

  She dropped the shirt onto the floor, turned on her heel and left the room.

  Seventeen

  The brougham was fairly bouncing on its springs as it raced down the hill past Gayfield Square. The day was young but not bright, relentless fine drizzle falling from low skies. Raven was grateful for the early hour and the shelter of the carriage. From his schooldays he recalled a classmate remarking that the further one traversed down Leith Walk on foot after dark, the more likely one was to end up with, as this boy had put it, ‘a burst mooth’.

  ‘I used to have this two-wheeled claret curricle,’ Simpson told him. ‘If you think this swift, you ought to have seen how that contraption clattered over the cobbles. Mrs Simpson insisted that I change it for something more weatherproof.’

  There was a joyous twinkle in his eye as he spoke, but the professor’s enthusiasm proved less infectious than usual because Raven could not help recalling Mina’s conversation with Jessie the night before. Who was this woman Simpson was paying money to, and for what? Raven knew that Mina could be wrong, and equally that without the full context he might have misunderstood the brief exchange he had overheard. Nonetheless, the scars left by his father ran deeper than the one upon his cheek, and therefore he could not look upon the professor without suspicion.

  He attempted to put it from his thoughts, but the other matters he turned to offered little respite. The sad fate of Evie was seldom far from his mind, but was all the more prominent since his conversation with the evasive Mrs Peake. And then there was his most recent encounter with Sarah.

  The girl had seen through him, her gifts of deduction as sharp as her inquisitiveness was impertinent. And though nobody else in the house was likely to reach the same conclusions, it was in her power to help them see the truth too. He just hoped that her appetite for novels had not led her to read the Thackeray she had spied, for it was about someone from a fallen family attempting to pass as a member of the upper orders.

  He had felt such a stab of fear when she asked him about Thomas Cunningham. Fortunately she had wrongly inferred the significance of finding his name written inside Raven’s books, so she maybe wasn’t quite as clever as she imagined. Nonetheless, clever she undoubtedly was, and he appeared to have made an enemy of her.

  Why did she despise him so? He hadn’t done anything to harm her. Obviously there had been that incident at the first clinic, but she had shown disdain for him before that – almost from the moment he walked in the door.

  He would simply have to endure it. His time at Heriot’s had taught him that sometimes people could take an instinctive or irrational dislike to you, as you could to them. In such instances, there was nothing you could do to change that, and it proved a fool’s errand to try.

  Similar difficulty attended his relationship with James Duncan, although in that case the cause of dislike wasn’t instinctive or irrational. Duncan seemed to regard him not so much as a subordinate as an affront, a burden Dr Simpson had foisted upon him rather than a potentially valuable assistant. Although Duncan was content enough to assign him menial and unpleasant tasks, he behaved as though he resented Raven working alongside him even in the capacity of dogsbody. Raven suspected that this was because he did not wish anyone to have even a partial claim of contribution to anything that he was to discover. The young doctor was brilliant no doubt, but at the same time lacking in any grace, humour or humility.

  The carriage swung around, Raven sliding in his seat as it turned at speed onto Great Junction Street, heading for the port. The professor had not said what it was they were rushing to attend. Someone had come to the house, as was often the case, requesting his urgent presence. As always, a part of Raven was surprised and admiring that someone of Simpson’s stature should answer these calls with no promise of a commensurate payment, far less a guarantee that it was worth the time of one so eminent. He suspected the professor enjoyed the thrill of the urgency, and of being needed. For who would not?

  Raven became conscious of a growing hubbub beneath the constant ululation of seagulls, the sound increasing as they drew nearer its source. He leaned out of the window to see a crowd gathered at the edge of the Water of Leith, the numbers thick enough that should someone trip, he might send a dozen of them tumbling over the edge. Over their heads he could see a forest of masts stretching into the middle distance, as though the ships in the dock were also craning to see whatever had attracted this gathering.

  A cry went up as soon as Simpson stuck his head out of the carriage.

  ‘It is Dr Simpson. Clear a way, clear a way.’

  The sea of people parted before him as Simpson stepped down into the street, Raven tight in his wake lest the crowd close before him again. At the end of this human channel there were three policemen, two standing to the left of a smartly dressed fellow Raven took to be their superior. This was confirmed when Simpson hailed him.

  ‘Mr McLevy, sir. May I be of assistance?’

  Raven felt an involuntary tightening in his chest, reminiscent of those times at George Heriot’s when the headmaster would enter his classroom unannounced. The policeman in charge was no less than the famous James McLevy. Raven had never seen the man in person but knew him by his reputation – the nature of which tended to alter depending on which side of Princes Street you stood. Among the respectable citizens of the New Town, he was a dogged and resourceful detective, peerless in his recovery of stolen property and indefatigable in the lengths to which he would go to get his man. Over in the Old Town, however, he was feared for the brutality and ruthlessness of his methods, and while legendary for always closing his cases, rumour was that this didn’t necessarily mean the true perpetrator was the one brought to justice.

  He did not look so fearsome right then, for there was a look of sorrow and regret upon his face.

  ‘It’s too late for even your skilled hands, Dr Simpson,’ he replied, his accent pegging him from the north of Ireland.

  At McLevy’s prompting, the other officers stood aside and Raven was able to see a sheet upon the flagstones, damp soaking through it from the rain.

  ‘Drowned?’ Simpson asked.

  ‘I suspect so. But I think she may have had some kind of seizure that caused her to fall in.’

  McLevy briefly tugged the sheet back and a chill engulfed Raven as though he had been plunged into the cold, black waters below. Beneath the sheet was a young woman, blue-lipped and grey of skin. She had been dead in the water for some time. But what gripped Raven was her twisted expression and the contorted posture of her body.

  He only glimpsed her for a moment, and then the sheet was replaced.

  ‘May I see?’ Raven asked.

  Simpson put an arm on his shoulder. ‘No, we must away. This is not what we were summoned for and time is of the essence. There is another young woman whose life we may yet be able to save.’

  The patient turned out to be the labouring wife of a mariner, her husband having recently left the port of Leith on a voyage to Stromness. She was in a state of visible distress and exhaustion, to Raven’s eyes resembling a wrung-out cloth as she lay almost lifeless upon the bed.

  ‘Mrs Alford has an extremely contracted pelvis,’ said the worried-looking gentleman who was her usual medical attendant, a Mr Angus Figg. He was a grey-whiskered and fidgety old soul who introduced himself with great deference to Dr Simpson. He spoke to them in hushed tones, away from the bed.

  ‘This led to a previous confinement lasting four days. In that instance, delivery by forceps was unsuccessful and eventually the infant had to be drawn out in pieces.’

  He glanced back at the patient.

  ‘She was advised about the hazards of risking another pregnancy,’ he went on. ‘I was not made aware of her condition until earlier today when she was already at full term and in labour.’

  Raven looked to Mrs Alford and found her gazing back, weak but anxiously awaiting the results of their council. He understood
that her torment was not merely from the pain she was experiencing but in anticipation of what was to come.

  Simpson examined her, Mrs Alford’s eyes permanently upon him.

  ‘Am I going to die?’ she asked rather matter-of-factly, as though she had been preparing herself for such an outcome.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Simpson replied.

  He announced that he would attempt podalic version, or turning, and instructed Raven to administer ether.

  ‘That is if you have no objection to it?’ Raven asked her, dousing the sponge in readiness.

  Mrs Alford looked at him as though she didn’t understand the question, which struck him as the correct answer.

  She breathed in the vapour with some alacrity and soon slipped into a state of unconsciousness. Raven found the rapidity of the transition somewhat alarming but her breathing remained regular and her pulse rate, which had been elevated, began to decline to a more acceptable level.

  With the patient in this relaxed state, the child was turned easily, the feet, legs and trunk pulled down without much effort. The extraction of the head proved to be more difficult. Simpson applied the forceps and some considerable exertion was required on his part before the infant’s head would pass through the woman’s misshapen pelvis. Difficult as it was, the delivery was completed in less than twenty minutes.

  The infant was handed to Raven while the afterbirth was delivered. It gasped several times but would not breathe, its head having been flattened and compressed, the parietal bone indented on one side. He wrapped the child in the blanket which had been laid out for this purpose and looked around the small room for a place to put it. There were several tallow candles lit around the bed and Mr Figg held an oil lamp, but the corners of the room remained in darkness. As no appropriate receptacle presented itself, he placed the small, pale, lifeless bundle beside the still sleeping mother. The child was pale, tinged with blue.