by Clare Clark
The cut was shallow but it worked with the perfect predictability of a valve on a steam engine. The release was exquisite. As the blood flowed out so too did the terrible blackness. The rush of the blood soothed him, purged him. And it showed him that he was alive. He felt elated but at the same time quite calm. Tenderly, he pressed a clean rag against the wound. When he returned the razor to the inspector he was able to joke quite casually about his lack of practice, the clumsiness of his fingers. He obtained iodine and carefully cleaned the cut. For the first time in months he felt conscious and in control. He smiled. Smiling made the cut sting, which made him smile again. And when in time the numbness returned there was a new calm quality to it. It felt simple. Rawlinson commended him for the quickness and the accuracy of his work. William was a fast learner and he found himself increasingly involved in the engineering details of diameter, gradient and angle that grew, vital and solid, from the paper of his plans. One afternoon William even proffered his own tentative solution to a problem with the flushing apparatus on the west side of the Barrack Hospital, a solution that was agreed upon and duly implemented. For two long weeks William was absorbed in his work. Slowly, very slowly, he began to imagine himself once more, not as Private May, casualty of the Russian War, but as William Henry May, map-maker and surveyor. The future did not stretch far ahead of him, perhaps only as far as the concerns of the following day, but it was a future. There had not been one of those for many months.
Two weeks. And then once more the pressure began to rise. This time William cut his thigh with a meat knife. The wound was much deeper and afterwards William was unable to recollect even the faintest detail of the cutting. The lapse of memory troubled him but not nearly so much as the prospect of not cutting. The next time it was his other thigh, and then his arms. Each time there were blackouts. He learned not to fear them but to rejoice instead in that moment of perfect ecstasy when he came back to himself in a glorious scarlet scream of blood. After that it was always his arms. He was glad of that. The arms were easier to bind and they were quicker. He could cut by simply rolling up his sleeve. When he rolled it down again only he knew the precise shape of the pattern upon the underside of his arm, the thin pink ridges of scars laddering the crusted scabs and the split lips of the freshest cuts. It spread across his skin like a fishing-net, holding him in. He kept a knife in his pocket. Sometimes, when the pressure began to rise but before it became unbearable, he would stroke the pattern softly with the blunt side of the blade.
The weather grew warmer and then oppressively hot. The mud melted and then baked into high ruts. In July, Rawlinson gathered together his team. Their work, he informed them with quiet pride, was almost complete. Thanks almost entirely to the improvements in hygiene and sanitation made possible by their work, losses amongst patients had been reduced from one in two to no more than two in every one hundred. There was no longer any need for Rawlinson to remain in Turkey. He would be returning to England in due course but, before he did so, it was his intention to make a trip to the front line to see for himself the conflict that had brought so many men to Scutari's hospitals. He was due to sail for Balaclava within the week. Perhaps, he said, nodding gravely at the men, some of them would be cleared fit for a return to active service while he was still at the front. He hoped that, should duty and circumstances permit, they would do him the honour of paying him a call.
William cut more frequently after Rawlinson's departure and his sleep was more disturbed. His nightmares took on a particularly vivid quality. He dreamed he was in the basement room beneath the General Hospital where a colony of soldiers' wives had, until recently, lived on the beaten mud floor, their beds and bodies no more than heaps of filthy rags. One by one, by a rasping voice he recognized as his own, the women were ordered to line up against the wall. In the basement it was snowing. A man in the grey coat of a Russian soldier, his face obscured by a scrawl of beard, turned and, bowing slightly, asked in the unmistakably crisp accent of an English gentleman, 'Now?'
'Now!' the hidden voice barked. The Russian attached his bayonet and lifted it towards the first woman. The blade caught the light. The woman covered her face and shrank against the wall. Immediately her body shrivelled, her corpse as black as a sweep. The Russian turned towards the voice and smiled. The smile shifted his beard, curving it into a shallow spade striped with grey. His grave eyes twinkled.
The Russian was Rawlinson.
'You killed me,' he observed conversationally, his hand upon his breast. Blood ran in thick red ribbons between his fingers.
And then again, 'You killed me!' The second time the words were thick with fury and disgust.
William woke as Rawlinson fell. His shirt was soaked with sweat. For the rest of the night he sat bolt upright, his arms clutched around his knees. A few days later word was sent from the front. Rawlinson would not be returning to Scutari. He had been wounded by stray round shot in the trenches below Sebastopol. His injuries were significant but not severe; the doctor at the field hospital had recommended he be taken directly to England and for his personal belongings at the hospital to be sent on to an address in London. That night, William cut so deeply he severed a tendon. He was forced to seek assistance from a nurse who frowned and bit her lip as he explained how his razor had accidentally slipped in his hand. At the beginning of August William was given news of his own travel arrangements. He was deemed unfit for a return to active duty He was to be invalided out of the army with a small pension and sent home.
The ship that would take him home docked in Scutari on a sunny morning in September. It had brought out to Turkey a new draft of soldiers who would undertake maintenance work in the Scutari base before being moved up to the front line. Despite their long voyage they looked neat and bright and extraordinarily young as they disembarked and moved in smart columns up the hill towards the base. William avoided them, but on his last afternoon he found himself walking behind two of them as they made their way up the dusty track to the mess. As they walked they sang together, their arms swinging back and forth to mark the metre of the verse.
Cheer Boys Cheer
No more of idle sorrow
Courage, true hearts, shall bear us on our way
Hope points before and shows the bright tomorrow
Let us forget the darkness of today.
IV
The public house they called the Badger was to be found down the back end of a muddy alley, one of a straggle of lanes winding out of the lower corner of Broad-street. For all it was a long one, the lane'd always struck Tom as being of a weak-willed disposition, being unable to settle itself on going to the right or to the left, on being broad or narrow, straight or crooked. Aside from the sluggish ditch, a spine of sludge that dawdled along its length and lolled on patches of flatter ground, the only thing the lane could be depended on for was its unchanging stink, the sweetish reek of rotting refuse spattered here and there with the hot grease of fried fish and the fart smell of boiled cabbage stalks. Harsh blue curls of tobacco smoke rose from the dust-heaps as women picked them over for rags and bones, their short black clay pipes clamped between their teeth, their skirts hitched up over their bare feet. Crouched in doorways their husbands dozed, their faces palsied and swollen and blotched so purple with the gin they were almost black. Tom's nose caught a hint of fresh porter above the stale breath of the old just a moment before the two can-boys elbowed him to one side, the pots in their wooden harnesses heavy with refreshment for the navvies labouring on Dean-street. Tom guessed it was something close to four in the afternoon. Since dawn the boys would have shuttled back and forth on their course between tavern and construction site, regular as looms.
The Black Badger crouched low at a crook in the alley where, as if the lane were all of a sudden scared half to death by its own boldness, it narrowed so sharply that Tom and Joe could no longer walk side by side. The tavern must once have been painted white but for as long as Tom had known it its face had been poxed and peeling, black with so
ot. It scowled out from between the battered hat of its low roof and the beard of mud that bristled round its chin. The windows were grimy and dark. Several were broken and patched with scraps of wood and old slate. From the front you would have been hard-pushed to discover a way into the place. Where a door should have hung there was only a thick sheet of metal, speckled with rust, secured by a slat of stair-rail held in position by iron brackets and buried a foot deep in the muddy ground. If you didn't know better you might have reckoned it quite deserted.
All in all there was not a single feature in which the Badger did not differ completely from the splendid drinking-house that dazzled the eye at the eastern end of Broad-street. The glittering plate-glass windows of the Golden Hind were garlanded with stucco rosettes and lit by a mass of gas flames that blazed with such sumptuous lack of restraint in their rich gilt burners that they turned the windows to fire. The magnificence of such a palace: the lavish ornament of its parapet and the illuminated gilt clock that sounded out the quarter hours; the brilliant mirrors carved with bunches of fat grapes and bowers of jasmine; the polished mahogany of the counter and the gay sparkle of the glasses; together they shrilled out their high-pitched song of welcome to all who passed by, so that no one might suffer the burden of a coin in their pocket for a minute longer than necessary. And many was the man tempted, only to regret it after. The Black Badger, instead, skulked in the darkness and the mud, hands thrust deep into its pockets. It didn't whistle or clear its throat. It had no intention of calling attention to itself. Its customers knew full well where to find it and what it was they came for. Those who wished to trade with the Badger understood its plainness, they appreciated it. They fancied it was the way they did business themselves, when they weren't on the dodge at any rate.
And to the Black Badger they came, in their droves, from all manner of directions. When they were admitted through the slip of a door buried in the tavern's right flank they were impervious to the smoke-grimed paper of the parlour and the dullness of the dented pewter pots. They came to drink, naturally enough. Every evening their arms moved their pots of beer or their glasses of gin and hot water like the pistons of a steam engine, up to their mouths and down again. But here, their eyes and their interests weren't directed only towards the bottom of their mugs. These men, be they costers, soldiers, coachmen or tradesmen, came to the Black Badger with one purpose. These men were sporting men. They came for the fight. These men were the Fancy.
Tom and Joe entered through the side door without knocking, stacking the crates at the foot of the staircase. They used the smaller ones for carrying the animals about, they called less attention to themselves that way The narrow vestibule smelled strongly of dog, braided with the paler strands of dust, dry rot, tobacco and stale beer. Pushing and trampling over one another for a taste of it the rats squeaked and scrabbled behind the wire. Beyond the staircase was a closed door that led into the main parlour. The paintwork was scuffed and, at the bottom, scratched clean away. From behind it came a faint rumble of voices, like wheels over cobbles. Tom knocked, three short raps, as Joe settled himself on the bottom tread of the stairs, tipping his hat over his eyes and leaning back on his elbows. There were teeth marks in the newel post. Tom propped himself against the wall, watching the door. At precisely the moment he knew it would the door opened a crack and then closed again. Tom caught the familiar glimpse of crumpled cap. Joe yawned and stretched out his legs. His whiskers glowed copper in the gloom.
It was another ten minutes before the proprietor emerged from the parlour to greet them. Frank Brassey was a barrel-chested man with a flattened nose and a head that seemed to sprout directly from his shoulders without bothering itself with the trouble of a neck, but his legs were slender and he walked with a curiously dainty gait, bouncing on the balls of his tiny pointed feet as though he were Monsieur Blondin himself treading the high wire. Brassey took great pride in his feet. While his black coat was turning greenish and the elbows had an oily shine, on his feet he wore only delicate slippers that he had had hand-made in the finest Italian leather. A plank propped against the wall of the hallway served as a pontoon across the mud so they might not be soiled should he have to venture out. He scowled at Joe.
'You better've got the lot,' he barked, jabbing at the bottom crate with a pointed toe. His wide mouth was notably short of the natural allowance of teeth.
'One hundred and fifty on the nose,' Tom assured him quietly.
'Some right big 'uns too,' Joe added from his sprawled position on the stair. 'Them dogs'll have their work cut out.'
'They better had,' the publican threatened. 'The Fancy's expecting something singular here tonight.'
Joe jerked his hat at the large notice displayed on the wall and his eyes glowed with mischief.
'You sure they ain't going to be disappointed, Mr B?' he drawled. 'Word is your so-called gent's already gone and stowed his precious watch over at Uncle's.'
The watch Joe reckoned pawned was a gold repeater, a drawing of which was provided on the notice for the number amongst the Fancy whose schooling hadn't stretched to letters. To those who could make them out the words on the poster, assembled in a mix of slanting hand and bold capitals, confided this reward to the first dog under eight pounds in weight to kill more than fifteen rats within a single minute. The generous benefactor of the timepiece called himself A SPORTING GENTLEMAN, Who is a Staunch Supporter of the destruction of these VERMIN. Dogs were TO GO TO SCALE AT Half past nine KILLING TO COMMENCE At Half past ten PRECISELY.
To Tom it was nothing but a jumble of lines.
'Don't you fret, Mr Brassey,' Joe went on. 'I hear business is booming over the King's Head. We'll just take this little lot on there directly, will we, Tom?'
Languidly, Joe pulled himself up by the splintered newel post and placed a hand on the top crate. Squealing, the rats pressed their noses against the wire, paring their lips back from their yellow teeth. Tom looked away.
Brassey glowered at Joe and his tiny foot flexed in its slipper.
'That watch ain't in hock,' he snapped angrily. 'And even if it was it wouldn't be of no consequence. No more than a taster, that is. Them over the King's Head might consider it something special but the Fancy what frequents this establishment don't set their sights near so low.'
'Is that right? So it's a high-class lot you get in here?'
'The finest.' Brassey puffed out his chest.
'Right gentlemen, are they?'
Tom put out his hand. Experience told him, whatever direction Joe meant to take the publican, it weren't likely to be a journey that'd flatter Brassey's vanity. Tom had no wish to lose a customer.
'You pay us, we'll be off,' he said, disinclined as ever to say more than what was necessary.
Brassey glared at Joe and dug into his pocket.
'There,' he said, counting out money with considerable ceremony on to Tom's outstretched palm. 'A penny a pair.'
Tom took the money, stowing it in a hidden pocket within his canvas coat, and then held his hand out once again.
'A penny a beast. As agreed.'
'For that mangy lot?' Brassey flapped Tom's hand away. 'Ha'pence is generous.'
Tom shrugged. He nodded at Joe, who hoisted the first of the crates on to his shoulder.
'You won't get more than ha'pence over the King's Head, I can tell you,' the publican blustered.
Joe lifted the second crate. Brassey didn't move but his slippered feet flexed in agitation. Nodding towards the two cages that were left, Tom moved towards the door. Inside the flaps of his pockets Brassey's fingers clattered his remaining coins as though they were red-hot coals in a brazier.
'All right, all right,' Brassey burst out at last. 'A penny a beast, though it's out-and-out thievery. You'll have to come back for it, though. I ain't got sufficient right now.'
Tom paused in the doorway, his eyes narrow.
'I'll have it tonight,' Brassey promised him. 'Come back then. After nine. You got any nose for profit you'll put
it on the fight.'
Tom thought for a moment and then nodded.
'Tonight, then.'
'Well, go on. Put them down,' Brassey demanded of Joe. Joe smiled but he made no move to put down the crates. They shifted a little on his shoulders as the rats scrabbled and jostled for position.
'Tonight. They's yours when they's paid for,' Tom said quietly and pushed open the door.
Brassey hesitated. Upstairs wood scraped on wood as, in what had once been the drawing-room, his boy dragged chairs across the floor. Although he was accustomed to provide tables and forms for most of his customers, Brassey had that morning ordered the boy to construct a low wooden fence around a small recess in the wall. Within its confines Brassey intended to offer the Captain and his associates all the comforts of a private box. The Captain was a gentleman of considerable refinement. On his last visit he had vowed one hundred guineas for a dog if it could kill twenty rats within a minute. There was no telling if he would have remembered so lavish a claim in the greyer, colder light of morning. Brassey licked his lips. Beyond the billow of his stomach he could just glimpse the polished curve of his slippers. Outside in the alley the mud was worse than ever. Raising himself on to the tips of his toes, he extended his shoulders out of the door and called to the men to come back.