‘What are you talking about?’
‘The painting of the dog. I copied it. I didn’t think the artist would ever find out.’
In some degree, I knew he was telling me momentous news, but my mind was too woolly to process it.
‘Are you . . . in trouble, Pa?’
He held up the bottle, as if that were an answer. Then he patted me on the head and left the room.
I was almost too tired to undress. I didn’t bother to tie my hair up in rags, but simply pulled off my gown and stockings and left them in a heap on the floor. My fingers strayed to the hooks at the front of my corset, ready to release them and feel my torso slowly inflate.
I couldn’t loosen it. The metal bit into my fingertips as I pulled and dug in with my nails. Still I couldn’t unfasten the hooks from the eyes.
‘Hang it.’
I collapsed on my bed, half-dressed as I was, and fell asleep.
10
Ruth
The smell: beef on the turn, dead flesh. I retched and bucked away. No use – the odour thickened until I could taste it. Rancid.
Where was it coming from? I couldn’t see; there was nothing before my eyes but suffocating black.
A squelch. Gingerly, I flexed the fingers of my left hand. They moved slowly, weighted with a thick, sticky liquid.
Drips. Scarlet splashed, vivid against the black. Another spot. Another. Faster.
Scarlet melded to red, then claret. Purple mixed in, blending gradually like colour on Pa’s palette. Only this wasn’t paint. Not with this warmth and density. It was another liquid, a liquid I knew.
It was in my ears, up my nose, running from my lips. Hot, sharp. Drowning me.
A knock fell on the front door. I jerked awake, spluttering. My room solidified around me, the same chips in the floorboards and blackened paper peeling from the walls. No blood stained my sheets. The liquid I’d sensed was only sweat, beading above my top lip and sticking my hair to the back of my neck.
Naomi woke up too. She screamed in a guttural way she’d never done before. The noise seemed to pierce through my skull.
Another knock on the door.
Floorboards thumped as Pa went downstairs – either to answer it or escape through the kitchen. I didn’t hear which. I was too busy peeling myself from the damp sheets and trying to pacify Naomi.
It wasn’t her baby face I saw in the crib but a malefic thing, full of rage. She must be starving – that was the only explanation. She’d gone all night and most of the morning without milk or pap. I swept her up, sniffing her bottom as I did so.
Naomi hadn’t passed a motion in her clout, but she smelt wrong. Her buttercream scent had soured. Veins stood out in her forehead as she bawled. Her nostrils bubbled; I wiped them with the corner of the blanket and brought away foul-smelling slime.
Ma was still asleep. Juggling Naomi into one arm, I poked her awake.
‘She needs milk.’
‘Hmmm?’
‘Naomi. You need to feed her.’
‘Oh.’ Scarcely opening her eyes, Ma fumbled at the neck of her nightgown. I handed the baby over and turned my face away.
Naomi snuffled, a pig at its trough.
‘She’s ravenous, poor soul,’ said Ma. ‘I don’t think I am producing enough milk for her. Are you still giving her the pap?’
‘Yes, but she eats less and less of it. Is there a way you can make more milk, Ma?’
‘Only by eating good food. Drinking wine.’
By doing all the things we could no longer afford to do. I thought for a moment. ‘Can’t you take in more work from Mrs Metyard? I’ll do it. Then maybe I can buy some proper food for you, not just baked potatoes off stalls.’
Before Ma could answer, Naomi spluttered and coughed.
It was no ordinary cough: deep-throated, more like a bark from a hound. I twisted around to look.
Something was wrong. Naomi looked wrong. Instinctively, my hands reached out and I transferred her to my left shoulder, where I administered three sharp taps to her back. Milky vomit trickled down my sleeve.
‘Is she all right?’ said Ma.
‘I think it just got stuck in her throat.’ I lifted Naomi off my shoulder and stared into her face. Her glassy eyes met mine. Then she coughed again.
I needed to change my shift, so I handed her back and left Ma vainly shushing her while I returned to my room.
Even by the light of day, I couldn’t unfasten my corset. The hooks felt solid, as though they’d rusted into the metal eyes. Contorting myself, I loosened the laces and spent painful minutes half-strangled by my shift as I tugged my arms out of their sleeves. Now the corset was against my skin: breathing with me, moving with me.
Naomi’s cries swelled. They held all the static charge of a thunderstorm, massing at my temples.
As soon as I was dressed, I went back for Naomi. She cried less when I held her, but she didn’t stop coughing. More of that dark brown slime crusted her little nostrils.
Ma touched her forehead. ‘She must have a cold. Feel how warm she is.’
‘I’ll run for the doctor.’
She caught my arm. ‘Easy, Ruth. It’s only a cold. You had plenty of them when you were a baby.’
‘What can I do for her?’
‘Not much. We’ll give her some Godfrey’s Cordial and keep her warm – that’s right, tuck the blanket up under her chin. If she isn’t better by tomorrow, we’ll purge her with rhubarb and castor oil.’
But she wasn’t better by the next day. She was worse; feverish and fretful. Ma’s rhubarb and castor oil moved her bowels, but she didn’t suffer any less. After I juggled her into a fresh clout and wiped her eyes, nose and mouth, I stood back to inspect her.
It was bad. At first I thought she was hunching up her shoulders, but on closer examination I saw she had a bull neck, swollen to twice its usual size. The inside of her mouth looked grey. On the surface of the skin around her throat I saw small circles, like pressure points. There was an unpleasant movement in my chest. ‘Can you breathe, Naomi?’
She barked at me.
I gave her some more cordial, three drops on to her tongue. It smelt like treacle and sassafras. Naomi took it, uncomplaining, from my treacherous hands, trusting me to make her better.
Neither of us realised what those hands had already done.
* * *
She stopped crying. All she wanted to do was sleep. Ma thought it heralded an improvement, but that brassy cough remained, waking me throughout the night.
Sewing was impossible. Every time I picked up a needle my stomach soured with worry. Ma tackled the Metyard work alone, squinting by the light of Pa’s oil lamp. Every few hours, I ferried Naomi to her for another attempt at nursing.
‘She won’t suck,’ Ma told me. ‘It’s getting worse every day.’
I looked into Naomi’s wizened face with its dilated pupils and willed her to drink. All she did was cough.
Tears gathered in Ma’s eyes. ‘She’s thin, Ruth. I don’t know what to do.’
My heart stumbled. I knew, as all children do, that when an adult cries all hope is lost.
‘We must send for the doctor,’ I said. That was all I said, in those days, when I still held faith in medicine, in natural philosophy.
‘Run for Mrs Simmons. Her husband was a physician, God rest him. She’ll know what to do.’
I sped there and back like the hounds of hell were at my heels. Mrs Simmons came willingly. She was a good woman; matronly in a plump, lace-collar fashion.
We ran straight to Pa’s studio. Mrs Simmons removed her glove and pressed her fingertips to Naomi’s damp forehead. Then she looked in her mouth. ‘God help us.’
Ma gripped Mrs Simmons’s arm. ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘Yes. I’ve seen it before.’
Silence.
I asked the question Ma couldn’t. ‘What is it, Mrs Simmons?’
She hesitated.
‘What?’
‘I’m so sorry, my dears. It’s . . . it’s the strangling angel.’
Ma screamed.
‘The . . . what?’
Mrs Simmons placed a hand on my shoulder. It felt unbearably heavy. ‘The strangling angel has visited your sister.’
It couldn’t be possible. Could it?
I tore out of the studio, almost knocking Pa back down the stairs. ‘What is it?’ he cried. ‘Ruth, what’s happened?’
Ignoring him, I darted into my room and slammed the door behind me. I made it as far as the crib before my knees buckled. Naomi’s blanket lay on the bottom, its silver angel winking. I took it in my shaking hands. Then I began to rip.
The fabric gave way like water. Faster, faster. Seams unravelled. White shreds flew into the air. My nails tore but I couldn’t stop until every last piece was obliterated. I had to unpick every stitch.
‘Ruth!’ My mother’s voice.
Panting, I looked down and saw what I’d done. The crib was a rat’s nest of frayed cotton and snapped threads. There was no silver, no trace of the angel.
‘Ruth, come quick!’
I thought destroying the blanket would cure her. But as I entered the studio, I saw the desk cleared and Naomi laid upon it, the adults gathered around her. Her lips were dark. Between them her tongue protruded, shockingly pink.
‘I’m sorry, Naomi, I’m so sorry.’ Apologies tumbled from my mouth. ‘I never meant . . .’
Naomi’s eyes rolled back. White filled the space beneath her lashes. There was a prolonged, rattling wheeze. Then she went still.
Ma’s sob ripped through the house. The adults moved around me, crying, praying, trying to restore life, but they fell into the background.
All I could see was the side of Naomi’s neck, the marks resembling fingerprints. They changed colour, became bloodless and grey. Trembling, I stretched out my hand.
My fingertips fitted exactly.
11
Dorothea
Spring is in full force! I do so love this season with its gentle, lemon light and the sense that all the world is awakening from a bad dream. The winter slush is gone, and it is too early for summer dust. One can actually walk, actually breathe.
Pink blossom rains down as Tilda and I stroll through the botanical gardens towards our usual bench. No snowdrops or crocuses line the paths, but a host of daffodils, as Mr Wordsworth would have it, sway in the breeze. Deftly, I reach down and pluck a bloom from the grass. Its petals resemble butter.
‘You’re not meant to do that, miss,’ Tilda tuts.
‘Oh, hush. It is not for me.’
I am thinking of my poor women, locked away from the soft pastel colours of nature and the trill of the birds. They have an exercise yard, certainly, but it will be a number of years before the saplings planted around the walls peek their heads over the top. For now it is eternal winter.
Tilda and I sit down on the white iron bench. The sun has failed utterly to warm it; cold bars press through my skirts against my thighs.
‘It won’t be good for you, miss,’ Tilda says, with her usual expression of doom. ‘It’s not warm enough to sit out for long periods yet.’
She is correct – now I have stopped moving, I do feel a chill in the air. The sun, though bright, is weak and watery. But you cannot give in to Tilda, so I simply reply, ‘Bosh.’
A nursemaid and three different spaniels pass us by the time David finally arrives, short of breath. He does not wear his uniform on a Sunday – although I understand that, in London, some unfortunate policemen must.
‘Constable Hodges. What a pleasant surprise.’
He wears a dun-coloured suit, the waistcoat checked through with lines of green and red. It freshens his face. Without the tall police-hat he appears shorter, less stern.
‘Miss Truelove!’ He raises a brown bowler, gifting me with a brief glimpse of the hair beneath; not oiled and greased like so many of our young men, but natural with a light wave. The colour is unremarkable – I would liken it to the coat of a hedge mouse – yet it suits his complexion. ‘Fancy a young lady like you sitting about on a damp spring day! I wonder your maid doesn’t scold you for it.’
Tilda looks very much as if she might scold him.
‘Oh, the scolds have been plentiful, sir. You have missed them, I am afraid.’ I smile up at him. Sunlight touches his cheek and he looks quite heavenly standing there, beneath the blossom. I do not mind these little charades that have become indispensable to our meetings: the affected surprise and fictions concocted to place us at the scene together. It grants me time to simply look and feel how superior he is to other men. Of all those prominent in my life, he is the only one I can truly esteem. That is of the utmost importance in a husband. I know only too well how it smarts to be under the dominion of a man I cannot fully respect.
‘Have I? Well, I hope you’ll grant me the liberty of scolding along with her. Look at that sky!’ It does appear to be turning; the pale blue colour has bled out, leaving a remnant like milk. ‘At least allow me to escort you to the temperate house. What would I do if you caught cold? Your father should never forgive me.’
Tilda sniffs and I swallow a chuckle. A cold is the very least thing Papa has to forgive.
With my hand placed lightly upon David’s arm, we walk side by side to the great glass structure at the centre of the botanical gardens, Tilda trailing at our heels. Dirt from the path marks the hem of my new printed-cotton dress. Petals settle in the brim of David’s hat. We do not mind a jot. All that matters are his muscles, hot and tight beneath my palm, and the way our steps match, left and right, left and right, the same stride, a pair born in time with one another.
Were I now to glimpse that vagrant, the one who took off with my reticule, I would bless him. Without his crime, my love and I should never have met.
Magnolia buds tremble on the trees flanking the approach to the temperate house. With a few more days of sun, I wager they will blow. The purple tulips in the parterre are still pursed and tight-lipped – they shall take more coaxing yet. Behind the parterre gleams the house itself, shaped like the upturned hull of a ship. Wood and copper do not hold it together; the materials are lighter: panes of glass and white iron. What with the clouded windows, one could almost fancy it a ghost ship.
David opens the door with his free arm. Steam rushes out to touch me, warmer than flesh.
Inside, all lies green and enchanted. Palms tower up to the iron arches of the ceiling. I smell them, moist and wonderfully fresh. Shorter specimens squat in clay pots, these darker in colour with a strange, chipped sort of trunk that puts me in mind of a pineapple.
About half a dozen couples dawdle in our jungle: some sweethearts with a chaperone, others ladies conversing with friends. None of my acquaintance. I note with pleasure that not one amongst the walkers regards our entrance with any interest. This is our world, apart from society, a place warm and secret.
We take the path to the right, where the broad leaves of what I believe is a banana plant brush over our shoulders as we walk. Once or twice, I detect a short exhalation of breath at my back; I can only imagine the vegetation flipped off me, straight into Tilda’s face.
‘How are you keeping?’ David asks me. ‘It feels an age since I saw you last.’
‘It has been an age. And not the Golden Age, either.’
Concern in his deep blue eyes. ‘Trouble?’
‘Not trouble precisely. Only . . . vexations. I have been to the prison but rarely, and I do not progress in my studies at all.’
‘Really? I thought the girl, that Butterham, would keep you occupied for months.’
Months? Lord, I believe I would need years to untangle her soul to my satisfaction. When I think of Ruth, my mind is a
s knotted and thick as that tarred rope I found her picking the very first day. ‘She does interest me, without a doubt. But I had hoped to meet with a child a little less . . . mad.’
He laughs. ‘You did? Dotty, I don’t think a person can commit a crime like hers without being a trifle mad.’
‘I had not thought of that. Perhaps you are right. But I have mapped the heads of such prisoners before. Mrs Smith, Mrs Wren . . . I expected, after reading your papers, the opportunity to measure the skull of someone truly . . . evil. Evil in its infant state.’
David blows out his breath. ‘Well, I would say it is a blessing that you didn’t find it.’
‘Not so! Imagine if we could devise a system to detect, scientifically, without a doubt, all evil propensities in the young. What steps we might take, what work you might be saved.’
He muses on this. Somewhere in the depths of the temperate house, moisture drips. ‘You know me, Dotty, I’m not a man of natural philosophy. I don’t like the idea of our character being written in our skulls. Somehow, it takes away the notion that we might have a choice.’ He clears his throat. ‘But tell me, what do you find in the Butterham girl, if not evil? Is she truly mad?’
Perhaps mad is unfair. ‘Hopelessly ignorant,’ I amend. ‘Do you know, she told me that she killed her sister with the strangling angel?’
He blinks. ‘You mean diphtheria?’
‘Yes! A well-known disease. Plenty of babies succumb to it. But Ruth’s neighbour called it by the common parlance of “the strangling angel” and the foolish girl thinks – she truly believes – that she summoned this angel to kill her sister.’
I see him trying not to smile. ‘Oh dear. Whatever did she summon it with? Magic words?’
‘A needle and thread.’
This time he cannot help it, he really does grin. ‘Good lord. Maybe you’ll be moving her to Bedlam, after all.’
‘If I am not institutionalised first, myself! This week has sent me half-distracted with flower orders and matching napery. We are entertaining, you see, for my birthday.’ His mouth tightens. ‘Oh my dearest, do not look cross. You know I shall not enjoy it, not a straw, without you there.’
The Poison Thread Page 8