The Resurrectionist

by James Bradley

  Much later, and I am unsteady on my feet. My purse is light, my money gone, and myself no better for its loss. Arabella plays late tonight, and I would go to her, though I am in no state for it. Tonight I heard my voice as I spoke to the other men, too loud and artificial in its tones, as if it were I who played a part, and one which did not fit.

  I GET TWO CROWNS for my books, a shilling each for my spare boots and shirts. Only when he reaches my Bible does the pawnbroker pause.

  ‘I have too many of these already,’ he says, sliding it across the table towards me. I push it back.

  ‘Surely you can take another?’ I ask. He looks at me impassively, then slides a ha’penny across the counter.

  I take the money quickly, slipping out the door again. Not much, perhaps, but enough to buy food for a week, and opium. Out in the streets I feel my spirits rise, free of the captivity of that little room with its rows of parcelled goods. I know this feeling, know the way it pulls. I move too fast, too carelessly, afraid somehow to be still, or at rest.

  Two nights past she pressed a guinea in my hand, bidding me take it. Opening my hand I looked at it sitting heavy in my palm.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘A gift,’ she said, but I shook my head.

  ‘I have money.’ Standing there I felt a fool in front of her, a sullen child.

  ‘Your watch,’ she said, ‘your books.’

  Angry, I pushed the coin back at her so it slipped and fell onto the floor.

  ‘And how was this money made?’ I demanded.

  Behind her Mary watching me, her sallow face expressionless.

  BY ST MARTIN’S he lunges out to catch my arm.

  ‘Which ones have the pox?’ he demands. A gentleman, at least in name. I shake my head and pull away. Letting go he takes a step back.

  ‘What, you mean you cannot vouch for them?’ His arms are held wide to indicate the women who line the streets hereabouts. Behind him his friends hoot with laughter.

  Shaking my head again I make to push past these five revellers.

  ‘I think he is a Methodist, gentlemen!’ he shouts, but I do not turn around.

  Cheeks flushed I take the corner at a rush – and then come face to face with a pair of women. They stand close, locked in argument, the fist of one raised threateningly. Perhaps I startle them, for they turn, faces already taut with rage.

  ‘Molly?’ I ask.

  At first I am not sure she knows me, but then she laughs.

  ‘A fine place for you to be,’ she says.

  With a last burst she shoves the other woman back down the street.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask. ‘Where is May?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Though she is still beautiful she looks older, and thinner too, the skin about her eyes and mouth bruised and drawn.

  ‘You have left him?’

  She laughs, the calculation visible in her face. ‘You think I did not come here anyway?’

  ‘You do him an injustice,’ I say. ‘He loved you, no doubt he loves you still.’

  ‘Here men give me sovereigns for that same love,’ she says, coming closer. I back away, and she curls her lip. ‘What? You do not care to know these things? Come, perhaps you would try what he found in me.’ Though she does not touch me, her closeness is unsettling. Her breath is foul, sweet with the scent of gin and opium.

  ‘No,’ she says then, stepping back and away from me. ‘You are no more a man than he.’ Some of the other girls have gathered to watch, and now they laugh and jeer amongst themselves. Shaking my head I take two steps back, then turn, and walk away into the night.

  That Molly should have deserted May should come as no surprise, yet it unsettles me. I linger on a corner, feeling powerless, repulsive to myself. Then, determined to find him, be the friend I know he would be to me, I set off for Marshall Street. Yet it is not May who answers my knocks but an older man. He stares at me as if I have offended him somehow.

  ‘The room is let,’ he says gruffly.

  Confused, I look past him. ‘Let?’ I ask. ‘To whom?’

  ‘Try Pizzey’s,’ he says, gesturing across the street, then starting to close the door.

  ‘No,’ I say, stepping forward, ‘wait. What of the former tenant?’

  ‘The painter?’ he asks, incredulous. ‘Gone, gone these last six weeks.’

  ‘Gone where?’ I persist.

  His face softens, but then he shakes his head.

  ‘You find him, you tell him he owes me two pounds six,’ he says, shoving the door closed.

  AND THEN MY OWN LANDLORD, Scarpi, at my door. Against his blows the door shaking in its frame, bowing at the bottom at his kicks and shouts.

  Standing up, I pull on my boots and shirt, rubbing my eyes to give some impression of industry. When I took the room five weeks ago I told the Scarpis I meant to find employment for myself, and it was on this basis that they gave the tenancy to me. Glancing in the dirty mirror by the door I press down my errant hair, and leaning on the door turn the key quietly within the lock. Even through his angry shouts Scarpi notices, and his voice subsides. Still with my weight on it I open the door to look at him.

  ‘Do you mean to sleep the entire day?’ he demands as he sees me there.

  ‘My hours are no concern of yours,’ I reply, but he is not listening.

  ‘Your rent,’ he says, peering past me into the room. ‘You said two days ago you would have it soon.’ There is something calculating in the way he speaks which makes me realise he has some need himself.

  ‘I have money due,’ I say, ‘very soon.’

  Scarpi looks at me, then gives a laugh.

  ‘An uncle perhaps?’ he says mockingly. ‘You Englishmen always have an uncle.’

  When I do not reply he shakes his head.

  ‘I am told there are others you owe money to.’

  In my gut there is a twist of anger, but carefully I hold my tongue.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he says, ‘or you will be out of here.’ He walks away; at the head of the stairs he turns around.

  ‘An uncle,’ he says, then pleased with his witticism he laughs again.

  As I listen to him clatter down the stairs I seat myself upon the bed, rubbing at my face. Panic scratches in my chest. There is little left to pawn, no way of earning I can see. I need a plan, a way of finding my way out of this. Taking up my purse I look at the few coins there, trying to see some way to make them multiply. A few shillings, nothing more, the rest already spent. This time will be different, I tell myself, these coins will not be frittered away.

  Outside it is cold, the evening already drawing in. Before I go to her I need a drink, and so I find a little shop where wine is served and cards are played. The room is warm, and there is talk, and song, and though these men are strangers, I find some measure of calm in their company. Even with this money in my hand I feel a sort of wretchedness, as if I have erred somehow, and so I drink a glass of brandy, and then another. Meanwhile I watch a game, and thinking I have the measure of the dice I place a little bet and win. This provokes much cheer and so I have another bet, and win again. Three times, or four, the dice fall my way, and soon I have three times as much as I started with. But then I miss, and then again. Though I should stop, leave the game and save what of my money remains to me, I cannot. Instead I bet angrily, as if to force the dice to fall my way, but soon enough I have nothing but a shilling left to me.

  Angry at myself for my foolishness I place a wager on the dice at ten to one, thinking to win back all I have lost and more. Shaking them in my hand I feel my heart begin to skip, my stomach light and queasy with the thrill. They fly fast from my hand and skitter on the bench, and for the time it takes them to fall I am exultant, abandoned to their flight and its possibilities. Then, with one last turn, it is gone, and my excitement replaced by the numb certainty that I have erred again, and, like Icarus, must fall.

  In the street outside I feel sick with what I have done. My money spent, lost again to dice and drink. Looki
ng back towards the door I wish to undo these last hours, unpick the fabric of my act, but it is done and cannot be reversed. From a window voices come, a woman’s high and shrill, then a man’s brittle with rage. Thinking of my room I cannot bear to be alone. I want nothing more than to go to Arabella, to lose myself once more in her body. But I feel soiled by my foolishness.

  Alone in my room, I draw the locket from my bag and open it. Inside the painted image of my mother’s face behind its speckled glass, the awkward lines of her neck and throat rendered by some clumsy hand. How many times have I gazed on it, how many times tried to imagine her voice, her touch? Only seventeen, dead in some rented bed, and me the bawling cause of it. With my finger I stroke the glass, imagining it is her face. I feel a tightness in my throat. Our parents live in us, I sometimes think, like ghosts, or prophecy.

  THE HOUSE IS STILL, its grimy windows shuttered close, as if it were home only to ghosts and memories. At the door I knock, aware of the eyes of those passing by upon me here. For half a minute, maybe more, I wait, then I lift my hand again, but as I do the door opens a crack, a girl’s face appearing in the space.

  ‘I would see your master,’ I say. She is not pretty, or not quite, but in her face there is some quality I cannot define, some loneliness perhaps, which makes her silence give me pause.

  ‘I am known to him,’ I add, hearing the way my words sound somehow too loud or pressing, as if I need this thing more than I should. Yet even now she does not reply, just gives a nod, and steps aside so I may pass.

  Inside the house is deserted, rooms closed up, furniture covered with sheets. In the hall a pair of paintings stand facing the wall; on the wall above pale squares show where they once hung. Opposite is a clock stopped on a quarter after three who knows how long ago. And everywhere the sense of many years’ abandonment, the dust thick upon the floor.

  Without a word she leads me down a hall into a drawing room. Inside it is dim, the curtains drawn; opened, they would reveal the yard of St Ann’s across the street. Taking a few steps in I see candles burning in a great candelabrum on the mantel. Thinking to ask the girl where her master is I turn, but she has gone, as quietly as she came. All at once I wonder if she is mute, or simple, and if she is, what place she has here, with him. Alone I feel unmanned, unsure of whether I should wait or go, the echoing space of the house seeming to stretch hugely now on every side. And then from behind me a voice, low, and deep, so I jump, as a child might.

  ‘I had not thought to see you again,’ he says. He stands beside the fireplace, though it is cold and dark. To hide my nervousness I clear my throat and take a step closer to where he stands.

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘no doubt you had not.’

  ‘It is said you fought with Tyne.’

  Looking round I see no door where he may have entered; he must have been here when I came, invisible, or hidden somehow.

  ‘I did,’ I say.

  ‘You were lucky he did not kill you.’

  ‘It was not for want of trying on his part.’

  He nods. ‘I had thought you would return to the home of your guardian.’

  I shake my head. ‘You said once you might be a friend to me.’

  For a long moment there is silence. ‘And you said you had friends enough, as I recall.’

  I do not reply.

  ‘What is it you seek?’

  ‘Money,’ I say. ‘A bed I might call my own.’

  He laughs. ‘And what shall I have in return?’

  I shake my head. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘No?’ he asks, watching me. ‘You see this house? It once belonged to a man who placed himself in my debt.’

  As he speaks he comes closer to me, his heavy eyes on mine.

  I do not answer and so it falls to him to speak.

  ‘We understand each other then, I think.’

  THOUGH HE GIVES NO COMMAND I follow him, uncertainly at first, and then with more clarity. In the street his carriage waits. The day is drawing in, and about us people hurry and shove. As he moves ahead of me he draws a flask from his coat and lifts it to his lips. Raising an arm he beckons a man he calls Bridie closer, striking the carriage roof as he opens the door then passes the flask to me, his hand callused and rough where it touches mine.

  As he clambers up into the driver’s seat Bridie glances down at me, something in his manner enough to make me lift the bottle to my lips. The neck is wet and warm from Lucan’s mouth, and the brandy burns as I draw back on it.

  We ride eastwards into the gathering dusk, the carriage winding through High Holborn and up Snow Hill into less familiar streets. In the cabin Lucan and I are bucked and thrown as the carriage bounces on the stones, and yet I do not care, drinking the brandy that he passes me. Outside, fires burn in grates beside the roads, sellers of rags and other ruined things piling their merchandise upon the cobblestones alongside.

  In time the buildings give way to muddy fields and houses half-made, the rutted roads and unplanted gardens somehow suggesting not industry, but rather a place already in decline. Finally we come to a halt before a warehouse and clamber out, my face already flushed and foolish with the drink. About us men are gathering, women too.

  Inside there is a low-beamed space, the air in it thick with smoke, and everywhere men press and jostle, their faces alight with an edgy excitement, something heady, and quick. Some hold bottles which they pass from one to another, others laugh. In the room’s centre a chalk line marked out on the floor, a figure seated on a chair, arms folded and naked to the waist, square head shaved close.

  ‘What is this place?’ I ask, but Lucan merely presses a bottle in my hand and bids me drink. The noise and the heat and the mass of the bodies is overwhelming, exhilarating. Men are shouting, calling for it to begin. Bridie has a smile on his freckled face. He is a man who finds humour in everything, I think, and value in none.

  Then a shout goes up, the crowd surging forward, the spruiker for the man in the chalk ring circling, baiting the crowd. The man is Byrne, and as his spruiker bawls out his achievements he rises to his feet, bellowing an Irish song. On every side the crowd is shouting, screaming insults, waving betting chits and bottles and fists up in the air. For a minute, maybe two, this is all there is, and then a door at the back opens and through an opening in the crowd a second man enters the ring.

  His name is Levi, and where Byrne made his way about the ring, arms raised and bellowing his song, this one seems oblivious to the crowd. Even as Byrne shouts at him, and beats his chest, Levi barely seems to notice him, standing instead by the edge of the ring and quietly removing the shirt he wears, unbuttoning it and folding it as carefully as he might were he undressing for his bed. Though he is a man of no great size, there is a delicacy in the way he holds himself, something sharp and dangerous. Placing his shirt in the hand of one of the men who followed him out he binds his hands, pausing every now and then to pull at the cloths and straighten them. On the other side Byrne is still bellowing and pacing up and down, but Levi will not look at him, and it is clear even as Byrne raises his fists once more so the crowd will cheer for him, that he seeks from Levi something he might fix upon. The bindings done, Levi extends his arms to his second so they may be knotted off, and only then, when that is done, does he turn and face Byrne across the ring.

  Like some conjuror the spruiker lifts his hands into the air and sweeps himself down and away, the gesture huge and theatrical, drawing a great cry from the crowd gathered about the ring. Overhead the lamps flicker and burn, casting smoky light on everything. Not bright, but bright enough to see Byrne wears a grin. Opening his mouth he calls to Levi, taunting him, calling him Christkiller and usurer. Between each insult he twists his tongue into his teeth as a child might. But Levi does not reply, simply tilts his head from side to side, and shakes his arms as if to loosen them, moving out and round the circle’s edge, so Byrne must follow him. Byrne has a head and a half on him, but Levi does not look afraid or uncertain, just businesslike. Facing each ot
her thus they turn once around the ring, and then back again, neither coming closer, neither backing off. On every side the crowd are crying out, urging them to strike now and strike hard, to win for them – but they take their time and watch each other, seeming to seek out a moment, a sliver in the other’s guard through which they might enter a blow. Byrne has the advantage, for his reach is longer, and Levi may not come close to him without being struck. And so it is no surprise when he steps in and jabs a fist at Levi. But Levi dodges down and around, rolling under the blow, catching Byrne in the side with his elbow while the bigger man’s flank is exposed. The blow is hard, and even the audience feels it, and Byrne grunts as if it has hurt. Turning then he jabs again, and once more Levi slips under him and strikes him in the side, so this time Byrne stumbles a bit, and then again. This third time Byrne is ready for him, and as Levi slips under his guard he catches him a glancing blow across the head, the strength of it taking Levi off-balance so Byrne follows him with another, landing this with the full weight of his strength, and sending Levi stumbling back. Lucan stiffens, his hand closing tighter as he follows the smaller man’s every move about the ring.

  Now Byrne’s greater strength denies Levi any respite. Though he is quick, weaving and dodging and avoiding most of Byrne’s blows as he did the first two, countering each time with his short, hard jabs to rib and kidney, with each successive punch that Byrne lands he grunts and falters, until his nose and lips are bleeding, and the skin upon his forehead contused and split. A change grows in the crowd’s mood, excitement turning into something closer, more attentive, as if the spectacle of Levi’s besting swells within their chests. Blow by blow Byrne wears away at him, countering each of Levi’s blows with two of his own, until the moment comes when Levi stumbles. At this signal the crowd begins to growl in its throat, their voices rising one by one, calling to Byrne to finish him. But Lucan does not speak, just stands watching as Levi reels and falters, his efforts directed more and more at simply avoiding the fists of the larger man. Byrne wears a look of concentration as he follows him, striking and jabbing and forcing him back against the circle’s edge. Faces press close everywhere, their features contorted in the reddish light, the air heavy with the smell of sweat and smoke and beer and blood. And then quite suddenly Byrne swings again, and Levi rolls past the blow and under it, coming up to strike Byrne in the kidney from behind. Byrne arcs his back, his balance lost, and Levi strikes again, hard in the side, the blow throwing Byrne off-balance and letting Levi land a fist against Byrne’s unprotected cheek, the force of it sending Byrne’s head flicking back. Levi himself is unsteady on his feet, and yet he follows Byrne as he stumbles back, striking him again and then again, hard cuts into his face and side and back and gut. The crowd are angry now, and confused, and where before they watched with horrid satisfaction, now they shift and strain. Byrne no longer swings at Levi, it is Byrne now whose arms are raised in defence, as he swings here and there like a bull worried at by a gnat. Once and again Levi strikes at him, the larger man reeling back, fighting to recover himself, until at last with one more blow Levi sends him crashing to the ground. Standing over him Levi sways, twitching and trembling, as if he thinks Byrne may rise again, but Byrne only turns upon his side.