After I was hustled out onto the street by Dr Shivershev, I felt more terrified and confused than ever. My head hurt. I wanted to be at home in my locked bedroom. I wanted my drops and my bed, but when I looked at my arms, I was ashamed at how I had lost myself, scratched my own arms red raw and not even noticed.
I walked. My brain was a bursting mess, all the threads tangled with each other. I couldn’t identify an end to pick up and follow. How could that specimen have found its way from Thomas’s attic to Dr Shivershev’s office without the two of them having some sort of relationship?
I walked until I found myself outside Thomas’s rented office on Harley Street, further up from Dr Shivershev’s. I rang the doorbell and when a bespectacled young clerk answered, I asked if Dr Lancaster was at work today.
‘No, I’m afraid not. Are you a patient?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘Would you like to make an appointment with one of our doctors?’
‘Where is Dr Lancaster?’
‘I’m sorry, but he doesn’t work here any more. If it’s him you really must see, you might try the London. I hear he still works there – on occasion.’
All that fantastical talk of becoming the finest surgeon in England, and he couldn’t even master the discipline of turning up to work every day. I wanted to laugh out loud at my idiocy. I had believed every yarn Thomas had spun for me, taken everything at face value. He’d made sure to persuade me that he was ambitious and driven, but it was all an illusion, words crafted to impress. Thomas had neither the talent nor the work ethic to succeed. Putting in the hard graft required to become a surgeon was just too expensive an investment for him. Too dirty, too boring and too painful. The only sustainable advantage he had was family money, doled out in careful rations by his sister, Helen. Only now did I realise that this too was suspicious. Why would a sister play banker to her brother? The answer was obvious: because he could not be trusted. I began to wonder if he might be the black sheep, kept at a distance in London with his old nanny sent to keep an eye on him – or me. But Mrs Wiggs was too loyal to Thomas to be a spy; she worshipped him.
An hour later, I was standing opposite the London Hospital. The weather was mild but grey; it threatened to rain but was not cold. Whitechapel Road was heaving and groaning like an endless sea; heads were bobbing, and carts were jostling for space with omnibuses and cabs, none of them proceeding at a notable speed. I leaned against a lamppost and stared at the archways of the entrance to the hospital and the clock on its facade. Apart from the occasional scream from a hawker in my ear, and children trying to access the contents of my pockets, I was largely ignored.
I had stood there for what seemed like hours and had almost given up when I finally saw Thomas’s slim frame spring from the shadows like a gazelle. He danced down the steps with one hand on his hat, the other holding an umbrella under his arm. He skipped, carefree and gay. Men like him fished for idiots like me. What a desperate stench I must have given off.
He strode through the streets like a fucking dandy, and I followed him. We went down Whitechapel Road, Montague Street and Wentworth Street and came out on Commercial Street, whereupon he walked into the Princess Alice pub. The sight of the Alice made me unsteady. It was well known for trouble, and the Thomas I was familiar with was far too much the snob to rub shoulders with the dockers who drank there. Of much more significance, though, was that the man who took Aisling from me had been drinking in the Princess Alice before he landed in our emergency room. His name was Henry White. Merely thinking his name brings me a gloom I find difficult to shift.
*
Henry White had got into a huge fight that night in the Princess Alice. One of the men got stabbed in the thigh with some glass, another was beaten about the head with a chair leg, and Henry had his head cut open when a glass was smashed on it. They were all brought into the emergency room at the London, where Aisling and I were on shift.
I was wary as soon as I laid eyes on him. He had that hostile rage hopeless men at the bottom always have simmering inside them. He was loud, cursed endlessly and kept demanding attention, even though the minute he got it, he was abusive. His face was a reddened bloated mess, with blood running into his eyes and teeth. The duty manager had told him once already that if he didn’t stop his troublemaking, he’d be thrown out and left to bleed to death on the pavement.
Aisling knew how to talk to men like Henry White. She could withstand their vulgar language and intrusive hands, could flash a smile and with a quick tongue disarm them, charm them into docility, however rough. I, however, was always distant and aloof, and my priggish reserve antagonised brutes like him. I was more useful standing back and assessing the situation. Aisling didn’t mind being more involved, and she was a better nurse, cooing at the trickiest, dirtiest men that I cringed from. She was undoubtedly the braver one. I always feared one of them might lash out and hurt me, especially when the room was drenched in blood, noisy with patients writhing in discomfort and screaming obscenities, and frantic with doctors and dressers shouting instructions at each other. Patients could be unpredictable and, like any animal, when in pain, they tended to bite. Aisling said I could see danger where there was none. That makes me laugh now, because Thomas said the same, and I wanted to believe them both. But it turned out I was right.
We were told to tidy him up quickly and get rid of him, because the duty manager didn’t like the look of him and wanted him out. When I tried to examine him, he waved his filthy hands around and knocked my cap off. He pushed a dresser away more than once, until he was threatened again, after which he sat mumbling to himself with blood streaming down his forehead and into his eyes.
Aisling could see I was afraid of him. ‘Why don’t you stay the other side,’ she whispered to me.
White managed to remain quiet for a minute or so, then began to rant that his wife was a ‘bitch’, that he’d been to the Americas and was sorry he’d come back to this shithole of a country now it was full of ‘coons, cunts and peelers’. He griped about someone having stolen his money, which was what had caused the fight, but it was safe to assume he had drunk it. It seemed a pity to waste good bandages and carbolic on him.
I had dipped the utensils in the carbolic and put them on the tray when White smacked it upwards on purpose, sending the instruments clattering to the floor and bouncing around the emergency room. The two dressers rushed to gather them up while I retreated to a corner.
Aisling, meanwhile, tried to subdue White and make him lie back. She put an arm across his chest. ‘Hey now, they’ll kick you out if you keep that up,’ she told him.
His head wobbled on his neck and he glared at her in a vile rage. His ugly, unfocused eyes tried to make sense of her defenceless face and then I saw a silver streak flash and rip Aisling on the underside of her chin. The metal sliced into her like a nail through paper.
She didn’t scream – it was more of a gasp and a yelp at the shock of it. She didn’t understand what had happened and she looked to me in disbelief as she stood there fumbling at her neck with her fingers. The look on her face, her hands at the wound, the blood gushing out… It was me who screamed at the desperate sight of her.
The dressers dragged Henry White to the floor and sat on him. Aisling collapsed to the ground, like a delicate marionette with its strings cut. On my knees, I tried to examine her neck with my hands, but she was bleeding so fast. The duty manager ran in, followed by doctors, porters, nurses. The other nurses pulled me away, and the last thing I saw was her body slumped against the wall, her head at an awkward angle, her uniform soaked in blood and a lake of it creeping across the floor. Her eyes were open and her arms were by her side, palms up. We can’t leave her head like that, I thought. Her neck will hurt.
*
The Princess Alice was wrapped around a corner and had windows on all sides. I inched my way along Commercial Street until I found a spot outside a window at the far end through which I could see the bar. Though the pub was busy, I had a clear view of Thomas as he weaved his way to a table in the corner. He sat down with a man who had his back to the window. The man wore a black billycock and the sight of it made my hair stand on end. They both got up, walked to the bar, leaned up against it and faced each other. I had yet to see the other man properly, but I already knew who it was.
It was Dr Shivershev, the man to whom only a few hours ago I had confessed all my fears. I flopped against the pub wall and felt the air leave my lungs. The betrayal stung, probably more so than my stupidity. I was lost. I had no one. The man I’d thought could be my last hope was drinking with my murderous husband. I now had to believe that the baby in the jar had come from Mabel and that my husband had given it to Dr Shivershev, who had likely reported back to him after each one of my consultations with him. They were in it together – whatever ‘it’ was.
I hurried on down Commercial Street and had walked only ten feet when I saw Dr Shivershev’s pretty whore from the Ten Bells and the man with the ginger whiskers coming towards me. In a panic, I dipped my head; it had started to rain and the wind was up. I pulled the edges of my bonnet down about my face and bowled straight between them – they even parted to let me through. I glanced back to see them push through the doors of the Princess Alice.
It must have been half past six by the time I arrived home, in a great rush, hurtled into the hallway, ignored Mrs Wiggs and nearly barged into Sarah on the stairs. Once inside my bedroom, I locked myself in.
The vow I had made earlier in the day to abstain from taking further drops was forgotten. I waited for the edges to blur and the angels to come. At any moment, Thomas would arrive like a hurricane, breaking down the door and storming into my room once he’d learned of everything I’d said to Dr Shivershev. Would Dr Shivershev come too? Would I be dragged down into the cellar, past Sarah and Mrs Wiggs, who would watch open-mouthed and blameless as I was murdered, my blood poured down the drains and my clothes burned and left out with the hot ashes. My husband and his friend would know all too well how to dissect me into convenient pieces small enough to smuggle out and drop into the Thames along the Chelsea Embankment.
I could run, but where would I go? I had the urge to go somewhere, but at the same time it was too tempting to remain. What would Aisling have done? She’d have left Thomas long ago. Better to be free and poor than a wealthy captive, she used to say. But I dithered on that still. I had memories of being cold and hungry and sometimes I was not sure which was better.