The Resurrectionist

by James Bradley

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

  He does not reply, just takes a step towards me.

  ‘Have you some need of me?’

  In the light of the lamp his eyes seem without white, small and hard as those of the shark that sleeps in a tank next door. The way he moves frightens me, and without thinking I step back and aside as he approaches. Only when he is almost on me does he speak.

  ‘I know what you are, boy,’ he says, his voice low.

  Turning slowly I follow him with my eyes as he moves past me into the room, unwilling to let him out of my sight or to let him come too close. It is not me he reaches for though, but the dissection table, its surface hidden by the sheet which covers Caley’s last body, delivered the night before last. Mr Tyne pauses beside it, watching me, one hand extended to grip the sheet.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask again, but Mr Tyne only laughs, one hand drawing the sheet down, and away, so it slides and falls to the floor below, exposing a woman’s body. I look at her numbly for a moment, and then Mr Tyne lets the hand which drew the sheet aside stray to her face, moving as he does about the table’s end, so he stands at her head. There is something unpleasantly intimate in the touch of his hand, the way it lies upon her naked skin.

  ‘She is for dissection tomorrow,’ I say. He nods, his eyes moving up and down her naked form. I am ashamed for her suddenly, lying exposed before this man. I am uncomfortable with him even this close to me too, and gingerly I take another step back, but as I do his hand slips into his jacket, and emerges with a knife. With one fluid movement he steps forward, the tip of it coming to rest against my neck.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask, willing my voice not to tremble. In my chest I can feel my heart now tapping a quick, shivering beat. This close I see the powder on his face, smell the gin that lingers in his breath. Then with a slow movement he lets the knife slide over my collar and down my chest. As it drops he moves closer still, until we are almost face against face, the blade coming to rest beneath my ribs, the point pressed into my skin.

  ‘You have the airs of a gentleman, yet your father died a beggar.’

  ‘Have I offended you somehow?’ I ask, my voice trembling. Mr Tyne’s eyes narrow.

  ‘You want for manners, boy,’ he says. The knife slips away from my belly, and almost convulsively my breath escapes. Mr Tyne takes a step back, the knife hanging in his hand almost casually. It is a short, ugly thing, its sharpened sides tapering to a point. A knife for killing, nothing else.

  ‘I am sorry you think that.’

  ‘Perhaps it is time you had a lesson,’ he says. For a few seconds more he watches me, then he turns to the corpse again, lifting her head, and pressing the knife against her cheek. The skin gives, but does not break.

  ‘You must not mark her,’ I say, willing my voice to sound authoritative.

  ‘No?’ he asks. ‘What would you do if I did?’

  ‘I should be forced to tell our master.’

  ‘And if I were to deny it, who do you think he would believe?’

  I hesitate. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  A terrible stillness seems to have gripped him, all save his eyes, which he raises to mine.

  ‘Do not play me for a gull,’ he says. ‘For I am not.’ As he speaks he lets the knife snake across her face.

  ‘Mr Poll will want to know who is responsible if she is marked. He may not believe I did it without reason.’

  He nods, smiling, the knife loosening in his grasp. Relieved, I relax, my breath escaping again in a rush. Then in one quick movement he lifts his hand, takes her nose between his thumb and forefinger and cuts at it with a hard, hacking motion until it comes away in his grasp. Opening his hand he displays the severed nose to me, nestled in his palm. I stare back, unspeaking. Then, with a quick flick of his wrist he flings the ghastly thing at my feet.

  ‘Tell him it was me and I will kill you in your sleep.’

  ITIS MRS GUNN’S VOICE I hear first, laughing delightedly. Then Oates, and laughter once more, although this time stifled, as if they fear being overheard. To hear laughter from the kitchen in the day is not unusual. It is the habit of Oates to settle there when Mr Poll is in the house, and although I have heard Mrs Gunn complain of him, in truth I do not think she minds, for Oates is amusing in his way, and much given to all sorts of gossip.

  Wiping my hands upon a cloth I make my way towards the door. Both fall silent, turning their faces to me as one. Oates stands by the fireplace; seeing me he frowns and looks away to Mrs Gunn. Almost a month has passed since the discovery of the woman’s body, but the incident is not forgotten, least of all by Mrs Gunn. What she was told I do not know, all I see is that she treats me now not as she did, but as one might an uninvited guest.

  ‘What is this?’ I ask, looking from one of them to the other. ‘Has something happened?’

  Mrs Gunn purses her lips, but Oates answers for her, so full of the power of this thing he knows he seems to swell with it.

  ‘News,’ he says.

  ‘Of what variety?’

  Oates raises his eyebrows, as if to say he will not tell, although from experience I know he will.

  ‘A happy kind,’ he replies, but before he can continue we are interrupted by the sound of the door overhead. Grasping her apron in her hands Mrs Gunn hurries up the stairs, Oates behind her. Charles is in the hall, his hat still in his hand; seeing Mrs Gunn he smiles.

  ‘I see my announcement has preceded me,’ he says. Rushing forward Mrs Gunn reaches for his hands and presses them in hers. Charles laughs, no doubt as much at the impropriety of this as anything, for Mrs Gunn loves him as she might a favoured son, and he holds her in what seems a special affection.

  ‘Let me be the first to congratulate you, sir,’ says Oates, bobbing up and down in what is no doubt meant to be a bow.

  ‘My thanks,’ says Charles, giving Mrs Gunn’s hands another squeeze. Then he lifts his eyes to me.

  ‘What say you, Gabriel? Will you not give me your congratulations?’

  ‘Tell me first what has happened and then I shall,’ I say, although I already know what it must be.

  ‘I am to wed Miss Poll,’ he says. ‘A date is set.’

  Although his words are light I fancy his meaning is not as simple as it might seem. For a fraction of a second I hesitate. Then I step forward, thrusting out my hand in congratulation.

  Although there are no more celebrations that day, come Saturday we take Charles into Covent Garden. In a room above a tavern there is meat and gravy, wine and dancing. The evening is mild, and the streets outside are thronged with people, all boisterous with drink. There are a dozen of us, including Robert, some I know, some I do not, and together we make a merry party.

  By midnight we are drunk, the dozen we arrived with swollen to twenty or more. Two men I do not know, a pair of Irishmen with fiddles and a drum, several women and a pox-scarred man I take to be their bawd. Though the party is for Charles, as ever it is Chifley who is its master. Seated on a chair at the room’s centre he conducts the scene, one arm about a girl, the other clasped hard upon a glass, feeding on the scene’s disorder like some malefic thing. To me he does not speak, except to call once for me to sing, his face glinting with the challenge he knows I will not meet. Of us all, am I the only one who sees the way he watches Charles, and Charles watches him? – as if between them lay some secret hate, and Chifley sought to do him harm by the very fact of our delight. Charles, though, seems to have no heart for our games, even as he laughs and sings as one of us.

  For them to be like this is nothing new. But at one o’clock a girl appears amongst us. Approaching Charles she seats herself up on his lap, an act which provokes great delight among the rest of us, for she is very fat, and he winces beneath her weight. With her toothless mouth she kisses him, and good-humouredly Charles responds, a dreadful sight, then leaning back she pulls down upon her bodice so her breasts spill forth. They are huge and pale, the skin upon them almost transparent, and on o
ne a blue vein is visible, snaking towards the nipple, thick and pulsing like a worm. Leaning forward she presses them into Charles’s face, shaking her shoulders so they bounce and ripple against him. Trapped by her weight upon the chair Charles has little choice but to submit. On every side our companions whoop and holler, urging her to continue, and so she does, grasping Charles behind the head and pressing his face into her chest as if to give him suck. As the others cheer, flushed with drink and excitement, I find myself growing tense, afraid of what Charles might do.

  After what seems an eternity Charles pushes her away into Chifley’s embrace, Chifley grasping her wrists and jigging her about so her naked breasts dance wildly for all to see, this obscenity provoking yet more applause, the woman shrieking like a banshee in his grip.

  Forgotten, Charles stands, makes his way towards the open window. While the woman shrieks and spins the fiddlers play a reel, but by the window Charles does not turn, just stays, staring out. I cross to him and see that in the street below, too, people push and cry, sing and dance, full of drink and a wild release. Through our haze of wine this is a scene of great colour, its players moving too quickly and its clamour rising to the window. Our bodies are close.

  ‘I have no taste for tonight,’ he says.

  ‘It was a vulgar trick,’ I say.

  Beneath us a couple embrace, their bodies pressed against each other, lost in a kiss. When at last he speaks again his voice is quieter, less certain.

  ‘I sometimes wish I might live as they do, heedless of the world and its demands.’

  I shake my head, uncomfortable. It seems awful to me, that one such as he should wish to unmake his life.

  ‘I do not understand,’ I say, although I fear I do.

  ‘No?’ he asks, turning to face me at last. I can smell his distinctive scent of fresh laundry and cologne. His eyes meet mine, searching, as if he thinks he shall find something there, the moment seeming to open with possibility. Then he gives a nod.

  ‘Then you are fortunate.’ He steps back and stares across at Chifley and the girl, and all at once his mood seems forgotten. Clasping my arm he turns me back towards the room.

  ‘Come now,’ he says. ‘I would have a song of Caswell.’ But though he wears a smile, in his eyes there is no joy.

  It is late before I find my way home again, my path winding through the darkened streets. Although I have had much to drink I am not drunk, rather lost in some leaden sobriety no amount of liquor will ever shift. On the step I pause. The darkness of the rooms within seems to open up, unfillable, and for a time I stand unmoving, unable to press on.

  Inside, the house is asleep, or so it seems until I pass by Robert’s open door. I do not know quite when he left the celebration, for he did not speak to me or say farewell. Now he sits before his desk, his body leaned into the candle’s light, forehead cradled on his hand. The window is open to the night, admitting the warm spring air, the sound of his pen’s scratch upon the paper audible above the distant sounds of the dark city. Although he must have heard my feet upon the stairs he does not turn, so absorbed is he in whatever it is he has before him. I stop, arrested by the stillness of the scene, its memory of an ease we shared which now seems gone.

  After a time he looks up, and regards me with an expression that is not unkind but which saddens me for the distance it contains.

  ‘Have you need of me?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. ‘I am only just returned.’ Then I stop, not knowing what next to say. Although a month has passed since my encounter with Mr Tyne in the cellar and all that came after it, things are still not right between us. Nothing has been said, yet both of us know a trust not easily mended has been broken, and lingering in his doorway I wish only to find a way to make it whole again.

  Perhaps he sees this, for he lays down his pen.

  ‘Are you unwell?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’ This is not entirely true. My moods are out of sorts, and I have not slept well these many nights.

  ‘It will be summer soon,’ he says. ‘My apprenticeship will be at its end.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, but in truth it is hard to imagine life here without his presence. ‘Have you decided what you will do?’

  ‘I am told there is business in the Indies for medical men.’

  I nod, although it had not occurred to me that Robert might consider such a course.

  ‘It seems very far to go,’ I say brokenly. What I wish to say is that he must not go, or that if he does he should take me. I wish fervently, for a moment, that I might go with him to somewhere warm.

  ‘I am tired of London,’ he says, ‘and of the company of the dead.’

  There is so much unsaid between us, and I do not see how we can find our way through it.

  ROBERT HAS GOOD REASON to be distant with me, for in the month that has passed since the day of Craven’s visit and my encounter with Mr Tyne, much has changed. The next morning I woke early, the knowledge of Mr Tyne’s act heavy in me. It would not be long, I knew, and indeed it was barely nine when Robert came to me in the dispensary.

  ‘Have you seen the body?’ he asked.

  I hesitated, tempted to lie. But something in his face made it easier for me to speak the truth.

  ‘I have,’ I said.

  ‘What do you know of it?’

  A moment slipped by, a heartbeat, nothing more.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘It was intact when we washed her two nights ago.’

  ‘I saw what had been done this morning.’

  ‘Why did you not come and tell me of it then?’ Robert was searching for a way he might believe me.

  ‘I was afraid you would think me responsible.’

  ‘If you had come to me then I should have thought no such thing.’

  Something clenched in my stomach, knotting it tight.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I will have to report this to Mr Poll. But it would be better if this thing were clear between us before he learns of it.’

  Briefly I hesitated, wanting to tell him all. But when I lifted my eyes I knew I would not.

  ‘I can tell you nothing more,’ I said.

  Once Robert was gone I sat blindly in the dispensary. I was sick with this thing, not just for fear of what Mr Poll might say, but for having lied to Robert. Some minutes passed, and in the hall outside then there were feet upon the stairs, the murmur of voices. A door opened, and closed; Robert was back.

  ‘Mr Poll has need of you,’ he said.

  Mr Poll stood by the high window in his study, papers spread on the table as if he had been interrupted in his work. Charles was beside him, and as I entered his eyes met mine. In shame I looked away. Robert closed the door behind us. At last Mr Poll turned to me.

  ‘You have seen the corpse?’ His voice was soft, but tight.

  ‘I have,’ I said.

  ‘And you say you know nothing of it?’

  ‘Only that I saw it this morning and did not report it.’

  ‘Because you were afraid of becoming the object of suspicion?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Yet you see the difficulty here. To be done the act must have an author.’

  Opposite me Charles’s face had closed. All at once I understood – he had guessed the shape of what had occurred, if not its detail. Yet he would not intervene.

  ‘And you tell me this author was not you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I know no more of it than you.’

  Mr Poll paused, one finger tapping a slow beat upon the other arm.

  ‘It is hard to credit, you understand?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, my words clear in the quiet of the room.

  There was something I had not seen before mingled with Mr Poll’s anger, something that stilled the anger I had in me. For a long time he examined my face.

  ‘I have your word?’ he asked at last. ‘That it was not you who did this thing?’

  ‘You have.’

  With what seemed very like disgust he sai
d, ‘Then go. I have nothing more to say to you.’

  EACH SUNDAY, when my work is done, I take paper and pen and write to my guardian. That I should do so was never agreed, but I do it anyway, giving him a catalogue of patients seen and places visited, omitting those details I think it best he not know. My letters are careful, dutiful, all that the letters of one such as I to his guardian should be. And yet they are poor things, their words lying dead upon the page, made stale by repetition, and I am sure they must bring as little joy to read as they do to write.

  That this should be is doubly painful to me. For seven years my guardian has treated me as he might his own son. I should be grateful, and so I am, but where I should feel more, I do not; rather I feel only clumsiness, a tangled wound inside that I cannot unpick.

  In my letters there is little of any consequence – simply the friends I have made, my affection for Charles and Robert, my admiration for my master’s skill. Of the world to be found here in Charles’s company I say nothing.

  Perhaps it would be better to give these evenings to my books, but I have little taste for them. As the weeks have passed I have found no joy in my studies, no concentration or ease, the things I learn of little use. Something is lost to me, some aptitude.

  Those hours I would once have spent with Charles are now spent on my own, walking here and there through the city, searching for diversion, and for something else I cannot find.

  By Seven Dials I hear my name and, turning, find May standing there. He looks thinner than when I saw him last, his frame in the black suit more spiderlike.

  ‘May,’ I begin, taking a step back as he approaches, ‘what are you doing here?’

  He smiles, and though the expression is genuine it is shot through with shame.

  ‘I have business,’ he says, gesturing carelessly. I follow the gesture with my eyes, uncomprehending, until suddenly May laughs his old laugh.

  ‘The Jews,’ he says, as if admitting to some foible for which he seeks sympathy, ‘I come to see the Jews.’