by Clare Clark
William did not open his eyes again until he was certain they were in the kitchen. Di always jumped down the last three stairs, however many times Polly scolded him for it. The flimsy banisters rattled, then quietened. He wanted only to be alone, to lose himself in sleep. While he was awake his head crammed with questions and the ghosts of answers rose in a sweaty chill over his skin. There were certainties, he insisted to himself. Immutable certainties. He was in Lambeth. The war was over. He could not have walked the frozen trenches, it was impossible, however vivid their horrors. They were no more than dreams, fiery imaginings stoked by fever. He had a wife, a son, a modest but respectable position in the Metropolitan Board of Works. He was surveyor to the Commission of Sewers. Sewers. The word sent a terrible spasm of dread through his chest, dislodging fragments of memory: the rising tide, the weight of the water dragging at his trousers, the shape of the knife in his hand, the falling bodies of the soldiers ...
Reflexively his hand sought out his arm. It throbbed, although until that moment he had not noticed it. Beneath the sleeve of his nightgown a thick bandage ran from wrist to elbow. William's fingers stiffened. He faltered. It was best to leave the bandage in place, for if the wounds were open there was a considerable risk of infection. Perhaps though they were little more than scratches. It would mean something, would it not, if they were only scratches? It was possible.
Ripping roughly at the bandage William dragged it off. The fresh wounds were crusted with black scabs, jewelled with bright beads of fresh blood where William in his haste had torn at the edges. The skin, already tight and shiny with scars, had knit together awkwardly so that it puckered along the seams. The cuts were thickly clustered, so thickly that William could barely make out beneath them the fading pink of the letter W, and at least one of them was very deep, encircling the arm as if the knife had sought to wipe itself clean on fresh flesh. And between the slashes, clustered together in the middle, were perhaps twelve short cuts, each approximately an inch long. They were not healing well. The lips of the wounds were swollen and yellowed, weeping a thin pus. William winced as he ran a fingertip over them. They were deep, very deep. A knife held flat against the arm would not make a cut of this kind. It would be necessary instead to take the knife in one's fist and, with the point downwards, stab it and stab it and stab it...
William vomited on to the floor, so that splashes of the liquid caught in the wicker of the mending basket. There was nothing in his stomach but a little water but still he retched again and again, his abdomen clenched into a fist, the bile bitter on his tongue. When he heard Polly once again upon the stairs he dared not look at her. Instead he held out his damaged arm, his fingers extended in desperate supplication. The stained bandages lay in a jumbled heap upon the coverlet.
At the threshold of the bedroom Polly gasped and stopped abruptly, her wide skirts obscuring the doorway.
'Di, get downstairs.'
Startled by the sharpness of her tone the boy obeyed. They listened together to the thump as he leaped the last stairs into the narrow hallway. Then Polly closed the door, pouring water into the basin on the washstand.
'Bless me, what in heaven's name do you think you are doing?' she scolded her husband, snatching up the discarded bandages and twisting them tightly around his arm so that the tips of William's fingers tingled. When she was finished she crouched beside the bed, bent awkwardly over her swollen belly, and mopped at the floor with a wadded rag. There were strands of white in the rich chestnut-brown of her hair and a reddish freckle stood out in its pale parting. William fixed his eyes upon the freckle, holding himself steady.
'What happened?' he whispered.
'You've been sick, dear, that's all. Once I've got the mess cleared I'll bring you some broth to settle your stomach. That nice Mr Mitchell threw in a couple of decent bones for me yesterday when he heard you were taken poorly.'
She scrubbed briskly at the wooden boards. She did not look at him. William felt a dark dropping sensation in his stomach, as if he were falling and falling through a sewer shaft.
'But before that,' he made himself ask. 'When —? I —1 have been here, in bed here, for some time, I think?'
'You've not been well at all,' Polly said cheerfully, rinsing the rag in the basin. 'Ranting and raving with the fever and all sorts. Still, that's behind us now. Best to forget it and fix on righting yourself.'
'But —?'
'It was Tuesday morning when the constables brought you home, around five o'clock I suppose it would have been. Woke Di with the commotion, not to mention half the street likely enough with you all afire and jabbering on fit to bust.' Polly paused, the rag twisted in a fierce rope between her hands. Then she began mopping again with renewed vigour. 'Today's Saturday.'
Four days. He had lain here for four days. His disquiet eased a little, although he could not have said why.
'We have a great deal to be grateful for, all the same,' Polly went on in the same bright tone. 'Goodness knows what would have become of you if they hadn't happened along. Found you half-frozen to death by the river, they did, your clothes all torn and filthy and your face as white as a sheet. Not to mention your best studs ripped clean from your shirt.' Polly broke off from her mopping to shake her head. Her bark of laughter bristled like a mouthful of pins. 'What for the love of the Almighty were you thinking of, my pet, out like that and on such a bitter night? You're lucky you're alive!'
'Am I?'
He had not intended to ask the question aloud but somehow the words became entangled with a sigh and escaped him. At once Polly flung her rag on to the floor and snatched his wrists, her fingers digging painfully into the damaged flesh. Her pink mouth was pressed into a hard white line and the golden flecks in her eyes flashed with fury.
'You stop that this instant, do you hear me? I won't have talk like that, I won't, not while I'm alive in this house. I won't have you ruin us, you understand? I won't have it. I don't care if you've struck a pact with the Devil himself, I'm not going to stand by and watch while you get us throwed out into the gutter. What do you think will happen to us if you go and get yourself froze to death? If you keep on — you know, with that — that business you do to yourself?' Her voice cracked as she raised her head to stare towards the window. 'You think your precious Board's going to concern itself over whether we've a place to go or food in our mouths? Or trouble themselves with what's going to become of Di or the baby when it comes? Do you think there aren't one hundred men out there lining up to take up your position soon as look at you? You think they aren't there now, making up to your Mr Lovage while you lie here whimpering? Well, do you?'
She turned back and gazed into his face. Distress crumpled the smooth skin between her brows and, as she pleated the stuff of her apron roughly between her fingers, he saw the tears shining in her eyes. It blurred the hard golden flecks in her eyes to the colour of watery tea. Something clutched at the pit of William's stomach.
'Why, William?' she asked. Quite suddenly the fire had gone out in her and her voice was as soft and grey as ash. A single tear slipped down her cheek. 'We're happy. Aren't we happy?'
William gazed back at her hopelessly. He wanted to comfort her but his heart was hollow. There was not a scrap of comfort in him. Even his bones felt hollow, so brittle they might be snapped in two. At the base of his skull, like the scrabblings of a mouse behind the skirting board, the cravings stirred and stretched.
Polly squeezed her eyes closed. Then, scrubbing at her damp cheek with her apron, she swept up the basin of dirty water and pressed her face into a smile.
'Well, you've got some colour back in your cheeks, I'm glad to see. That'll be the sickness passing. I'll bring you up some soup and then it's time we got you up and about. I've pressed and patched your trousers though I'm afraid they'll never be as good as they was. Still, you'll be wanting to get yourself back to the Board on Monday, I'm sure. Not a moment to lose, isn't that what Mr Lovage always says? Besides, we'd like to see your face of an evening
. Di and I have been quite dull without you.'
Without waiting for a reply she hurried out of the room. William closed his eyes. He heard her calling for Di from the top of the stairs and the muffled hiccup of his answering shout. He followed the complaints of the stairs as she descended to the kitchen. He felt nothing. His wife's harsh words struck at him but feebly, without conviction, and they faded like smoke as the black rush of the cravings surged at him and through him, packing his chest and his throat and each and every one of his brittle scraped-out bones with their voracious black heat. They scalded the soles of his feet and set the roots of his hair alight. His skin burned.
Shakily, William pushed back the coverlet. As he struggled to sit upright the room dipped and swayed around him, and he clutched the mattress to steady himself. Then, holding tightly to the iron bedstead, he swung his feet to the floor and stood, his legs trembling. The cravings tore through his body like a blaze of burning gas. His entire body was on fire now, every blackened fibre screaming for release. The coarse stuff of the bandage tormented his blistering skin. He ripped at his sleeve as he staggered across the room. The kitchen. There were knives in the kitchen. And then out of the fog of his memory came an image, perfectly sharp. The dark tunnel. The body. The splash of footsteps. His hand around the handle of his knife as he sheathed it in his trouser pocket. William wheeled around. But his trousers were not laid over the back of the chair as they always were. He had to find them. He had to find the knife. He flung open the door of the bedroom, lurching across the narrow landing. Before him the flight of stairs reeled and swam, dropping away from him in treacherous swoops. His legs buckled. The cravings made it hard to breathe.
Clasping the flimsy banister with both hands he dragged himself downwards. At the foot of the stairs he missed his footing and fell, striking his head against the sharp corner of the wall. A shaft of sunlight sliced through the coloured glass panel in the door, dripping spots of red and purple on to the scrubbed flags, on to the backs of his hands. He could feel the blood leaking into his hair. Blood. Its warm stickiness inflamed him. He pressed his fingers into the wound and licked them. The hunger exploded within him, the screams rising and rising, pressing up beneath his diaphragm, forcing his lungs into his throat. He tried to get up but his legs would not obey him.
So he crawled. When his nightgown caught around his knees he tore at it so viciously that the thin cotton ripped to his waist. His damp palms left grey shadows on the flags and his breath came in rapid pants, like a dog. He had only to make it to the kitchen. There were knives in the kitchen. Their blades flashed cool and silver as water. He fell against the kitchen door, his fingers scrabbling the raw pine, his wild eyes raking the dresser for the knife, for any knife. The dresser had a glass panel, he could break that if he had to, or there was the shattered edge of a plate, a dish. Something sharp, anything sharp. A cleaver glinted on the scrubbed table. A cleaver! He flung himself at the table, hauling himself up with his undamaged arm and stretching, stretching out with each of his fingers until at last they touched the cool, smooth metal of the blade. William could feel the certainty of ecstasy opening up within him, a brilliant pinprick of perfect light. Triumphantly he snatched up the heavy knife, holding it aloft. Each of his fingers pressed themselves ardently against its handle as he slid down against the table leg and pressed his lips to the blade. His breath bloomed in a brief cloud on the cold metal. Then, with delicate precision, he brought it down and sliced open the flesh of his naked thigh.
'Oh, sweet Jesus!'
Polly stood in the doorway, her hands clapped over her mouth as the wooden clothes pins clattered from her looped-up apron on to the stone floor. Her eyes were round with horror. In front of her, his head thrown back against the leg of the kitchen table, William slumped in a puddle of blood, his torn nightgown raised to his waist. A single deep gash ran across the ghost-white skin of his thigh. The blood had begun to clot, although a sticky stream still ran dreamily down the curve of his leg and on to the soft coil of his exposed penis. The dressing trailed from his arm, exposing the wrecked flesh, the curled underside of the bandage patterned with stiff dark stains set off with splatters of fresh scarlet. Where the skin was not scarred or scabbed it was marked with a twisted barley sugar pattern of faint pink lines where the too-tight dressing had pressed into his skin. His arms were flung out at his side and in his right hand, cradled loosely in his fingers, he held the meat cleaver. A curl of sandy hair clung to its bloodstained blade. His eyes were closed, his mouth slack, but his face shone like an angel's, flooded with joy.
The rage drained the blood from her veins, leaving her white and stiff and perfectly cold.
'Get up!' she snarled. 'Get up, do you hear me?'
Grabbing his ruined arm she twisted it painfully, kicking a stout boot into his side. William gasped and fell backwards, striking his shoulder against the table.
'Get up!'
She kicked him again, harder this time. The wound on his leg issued a startled spurt of blood. William opened his eyes and frowned at her, blinking, struggling to place her, to bring her into focus. Somewhere beyond him he could sense agitation, someone shouting, but it could not reach him. He was perfectly composed.
Polly snatched the cleaver from his hand.
'You want your son to see you like this?' she screamed, shaking the blade in his face. 'Well, do you?'
She grabbed him by the collar of his nightgown and shook him, jolting his head. William barely noticed. But the rough movement dislodged something in his head and, as clear as if he stood before him, William saw a man. The shadowed crown of his hat obscured his features but his face was white and his eyes burned with the reflected flame of his lantern. In his hand he held a knife.
'There was someone else,' William said suddenly. 'In the tunnels. I saw him.'
Polly's face twisted and her hands fell slackly to her sides.
'Get out of here!' she implored him, her voice worn thin with desperation. The tears streamed down her white cheeks.
'Only for a moment. But I saw him.'
'William, listen to me, I beg you!'
William closed his eyes and listened. Amplified but impeccably crisp, a fragment of that lost night echoed through his head like the peals of the Sunday bells, part of a pattern but at the same time all separate, each chime true to itself. The scrape of brick, the squelch of mud and the slap of water, the sucked-in gasp and the grunt of effort, the mewling of a drowning kitten, the choked liquid gurgles, the dull thud of a boot against flesh, the flat plummeting splash of a heavy sack pitched into the stream, all returned to William in perfect formation like a sweet snatch of melody. He could even feel the slimed chill of the tunnel wall against the palms of his hands as he pressed himself back against it, the pitch of his covert breath in his chest, the uneasy stiffness of his legs against the pull of the stream. He had been anxious, afraid of being seen, of being heard. He had seen nothing, no more than the glimpse of a face snatched in lamplight. But he had heard. He heard it again now. The last desperate moan of a dying man.
He gasped, reaching out to clasp Polly's hands.
'He murdered someone,' he whispered, his eyes bright with certainty. 'Down there. I know it. He murdered someone.'
Polly crumpled. Her head fell forward so that her hair sagged in its pins, and her shoulders shook. Her hands in William's were cold and slack. William stared at her for a moment, his expression puzzled, before lifting her chin with his finger. She stared at him with her drowned red eyes. Gently, William stroked sticky strands of hair away from her wet face.
'Don't be afraid, my little milkwort,' William said tenderly. 'We are quite safe here.'
From Polly's mouth there escaped a strange strangulated sob of laughter. Then, pressing one hand over her mouth and clutching the other hard against the curve of her swollen belly, she fled from the room, slamming the door behind her.
William sat for a long time on the cold stone floor, thinking. Through the open window there drifted
the high chirrups of his son's laughter and the softer echo of his wife. Then, with his habitual meticulousness, he cleaned and dressed the wound on his leg and mopped the blood from the kitchen floor. The fever had weakened him so he had often to pause and rest. The wound in his leg throbbed. When at last he tipped away the dirtied water his whole body ached for sleep. Very slowly he made his way towards the stairs. At the doorway he paused, his hand on the porcelain knob, and looked back. The flags were still not quite clean. In places the blood had seeped into the grey mortar between the slabs, staining it brown. Tomorrow he would try again. Moving stiffly, bent over like an old man, he shuffled along the passageway to the stairs.
On several occasions during the week of his convalescence William tried again to speak to Polly of the murder he had witnessed but Polly remained perfectly deaf on the subject. She sang over his words with a vicious kind of gaiety or she called out to Di to bring her her sewing basket. Once or twice, when she was on her feet and thus able to manage her increasingly clumsy body with sufficient haste, she left the room. It was as though he had never spoken. With Di she was cheerful and loving as always, although the advanced state of her confinement left her tired and breathless. To William she spoke only when absolutely necessary and then only in a tone of brittle politeness that he did not recognize as hers. She was a dutiful nurse, straightening his sheets, bringing him soups and infusions of herbs, even reading to him when his eyes were too tired to follow the words. But she could barely bring herself to look at him. The golden flecks in her eyes were hard and dull, like tarnished brass. She locked the kitchen knives in a high cabinet along with William's razor and the paperknife. The iron key jangled from her belt like a jailer's. When Di tried to play with it she smacked away his fingers so sharply that he cried. Afterwards, when the boy crept into what remained of her lap and closed his eyes, she stroked his hair and the tears gathered in the corners of her caramel eyes. At night she slept with the key concealed beneath her pillow.