Beloved Poison (39 page)

The day was warm, for the time of year, the air still and close. The smell of brine and shellfish mixed with the stink of drains and horse dung. Beside a lamp-post a scruffy Italian boy exhibited a tortoise in a box for a penny-a-look. A fat woman in a tattered black dress squatted on the pavement, like a gigantic crow, selling flowers from a hand cart. A man lay drunk in the gutter at the head of an alleyway and a girl with a basket of watercress in each hand stood wearily against the railings on the opposite side of the street. I saw a pair of students, medical men from St Saviour’s, strolling arm in arm towards the chop house on the corner of Prior’s Lane. Cabs and carts rattled past and a boy herded a pair of bullocks down the street, his left eye showing the first purple marks of a black eye. He was a long way from Smithfield and the animals looked exhausted, their haunches dripping blood from the goad he had used mercilessly upon them. I stood back, so that I was half hidden by the whelk stall, and looked towards the infirmary, its clock tower still visible at the far end of St Saviour’s Street.

And then I saw him. Dr Magorian! I drew back. Had he seen me? He was striding towards me, though he was still some distance away. My first instinct was to vanish, before he noticed me, into the physic garden. And yet, I could not. I could not wait for another opportunity, another chance to discover the truth. I had to continue what I had started. But how could I? How could I slip into Dr Magorian’s house while Dr Magorian himself approached? Eliza had to open the door, or all would be lost. I saw Dr Magorian pull out his silver pocket watch and squint at its pale dial.
Now!
I thought.
It has to be now—

At that moment the door to Dr Magorian’s house opened, and I bounded up the steps.

I was unused to such fashionable surroundings. The thick carpet on the polished wooden floor, the smooth white plaster of the cornice, the rich, gold-framed landscapes on the walls – how different Eliza’s world was to mine. How warm and stultifying it seemed, hemmed in with overstuffed chairs, stifled by curtains and cushions as soundly as any padded cell at Angel Meadow. The rooms my father and I inhabited above the apothecary were simply furnished – if he was happy with an iron bedstead, an oaken bench and a ewer and pitcher, then so was I, and the only colours that brightened the drab palette of my daily life were found in the bottles upon the apothecary shelves and the neatly tended beds of the physic garden. I took a deep breath. How I longed for that place now, with its clean, sweet scents. In the corner of Dr Magorian’s hall, on a tall spindly-legged mahogany table, a large bunch of white, flawless lilies burst from a Chinese vase. Their stamens had been neatly clipped, and their heavy aroma was clogging the air as thick as honey.

‘Where’s your mother?’ I said. From the yard at the back of the house came the steady
‘thwack . . . thwack . . . thwack’
of a carpet being beaten. The rattle of a coal scuttle echoed from the direction of the parlour.

‘My father is at Dr Graves’s,’ she replied. ‘My mother is upstairs, asleep.’

‘And your mother’s mementoes?’ I did not tell her that her father was no longer at Dr Graves’s, but was, in fact, approaching the house.

‘They are in her room,’ whispered Eliza.

‘Where she is sleeping?’ I heard the maid in the parlour pause in her labours with the coal scuttle. Eliza’s face took on a pinched and hunted look. Her nostrils flared as if scenting danger. ‘Quickly!’ She put out her hand to me. ‘You wanted to see them, did you not?’

‘But your mother—’

‘Is insensible with laudanum,’ she hissed. ‘You might dance a hornpipe on her washstand and she’d not wake.’ Behind me, at the front door, there came the sound of footsteps, the rasp of boots being scraped clean. ‘My father!’ Eliza gripped my arm, her face set in an expression of terror. We heard the maid cross to the parlour door. Eliza vanished up the stairs. I bounded after her as, at my back, the door opened.

Mrs Magorian’s room was dark and stuffy. The curtains were drawn and the shutters closed. There was no light other than that given off by a pair of candles – one on the mantel, the other at Mrs Magorian’s bedside. The embers glowed through the bars of the grate like a dragon’s eye.

‘She sleeps every afternoon until three,’ whispered Eliza.

‘What about the maid?’

‘Dilys?’ Eliza grinned, her teeth white in the gloom. ‘She’s gone out. She fancies herself a cut above now that she’s a lady’s maid. She takes a walk with one of the medical students while Mother sleeps.’

The ambitions of medical students were generally set high above anything a lady’s maid might have to offer. ‘No doubt I’ll see her in the Magdalene ward before long,’ I muttered.

We crept across the room. The air was heavy with the musty, sweetish smell of camphor. Beneath this, I could detect Roman camomile, rose water and citrus. But none of it could mask the thick, stale reek of exhaled laudanum. On the far side of the room Mrs Magorian’s bed loomed. The sheets glimmered white in the glow of the bedside candle, the counterpane a rich midnight-coloured damask. Mrs Magorian herself was lying on the bed. For some reason, I had expected her to be inside it, trapped within the starched white sheets like a fold of paper in an envelope. To see her fully clothed, lying on her back as if laid out, her face a white mask in the sepulchral darkness – I drew back. Had her eyelids flickered? Had her hands, resting on her abdomen, trembled? Perhaps she had decided not to take her laudanum that afternoon and was not asleep at all. I recoiled into the shadows.

Eliza glided forward and took up the bedside candle. ‘Mother?’ she whispered. ‘Mother?’ There was no reply. Perhaps it had simply been the dark jumping as the coals shifted and flickered in the grate.

Eliza moved silently. She skirted a small table laden with medicine bottles and pulled open a door adjacent to the bed – a dressing room, no doubt. It brushed against the thick Persian carpet with a deep sigh. Behind the door the void was filled with dark shapes – a dress mannequin, a large wardrobe, a tower of boxes. I thought I detected a sudden movement, a tall thin shadow shifting warily in the darkness, and all at once I saw a face staring out at me – horrible, darkly disfigured, blinking in the gloom. He looked straight into my eyes, his mouth opening to shout out – and then I realised that I was staring at my own reflection in a tall dressing mirror. My cry choked in my throat.

Behind us, Mrs Magorian let out a sigh and shifted on the counterpane. ‘No,’ she murmured. Eliza licked her fingers and pinched out the candle flame. We stood without moving in the oily darkness. ‘Please!’ Mrs Magorian moved her head on the pillow. ‘No more,’ she said. ‘No more.’ Then, she was silent. Somehow, I knew she had woken.

We heard the rustle of her silks as she moved on the bed. ‘Dilys?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’ There was a sigh. ‘Another candle, Dilys.’ Her voice was sleepy again now. Her breathing deepened. Eliza relit the candle.

The walls of the dressing room were lined with shelves crammed with hats, muffs, scarves and furs. Eliza went directly to a small chest of drawers set against the far wall underneath a tower of hat boxes. She pulled open the bottom drawer and drew out a cotton bag, rather like a pillow case in size and shape. My heart struck hammer blows against my ribs, my eyes seeming to stretch in my head as I peered into the gloom. What relic would be revealed? Into my mind’s eye rose the image of a coffin-shaped box, inside it that familiar kidney-shaped package, the rust-coloured rags, the handful of dried flowers.
These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him
. . . Eliza unfolded the end of the bag and pulled out – a shirt. There followed a pair of ‘hussar’ pantaloons, a pair of stockings, a short jacket of boiled wool, a cap, a pair of boots.

I stared down at the costume in surprise. What was this? ‘She kept his clothes?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ whispered Eliza.

I cursed myself for my fanciful imaginings. Nevertheless, the choice seemed an odd one – would it not have been more orthodox to have kept a lock of hair? A favourite toy? A photograph or miniature? I held up the shirt. It was made of fine linen, with ruffles; but small, as though made for a lad of twelve or thirteen. The trousers were the same. ‘How peculiar,’ I whispered. ‘And yet no one ever mentions the boy. Not even Mrs Speedicut.’ I held up the jacket. It was well made with silver buttons in the short ‘Spencer’ style that had not been fashionable for some twenty years or more. I picked up the boots. It was not possible to see much in the light of the candle, but I held one up all the same, squinting at it in the half dark. Brown. Laced. Hardly worn. And yet, there was something else about it—

From the bedroom, all at once there came a faint knocking sound. Eliza blew out the candle and put her hand on my arm. ‘It’s Dilys,’ she whispered.

‘Mrs Magorian?’ The voice was gentle, apologetic. ‘Mrs Magorian, ma’am?’

Eliza put her lips to my ear. Her words were no more than breath. ‘She’ll open the curtains and then bring my mother a cup of tea.’

Sure enough, we heard soft footsteps cross the room. Metal hooks rattled like chains as one of the curtains was flung aside. The maid opened the shutters a few inches and the light split the darkness from top to bottom, illuminating a whirling cosmos of dust motes and smoke particles. ‘Now, then, Mrs Magorian, ma’am,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll just get your tea.’

‘Thank you, Dilys.’ Mrs Magorian’s voice was heavy, drugged. The bedroom door closed softly as the girl went out.

Beside me, Eliza quickly stuffed the clothes back into the pillow case. I pushed one of the boots in on top, but the other, I rammed into my jacket pocket. If I were caught with it by anyone in that house, then all would be lost. And yet if I left it behind I would never know . . . I
had
to examine it properly. I did not think twice.

‘Stay here,’ Eliza whispered. She strode into her mother’s room and went straight to the window, where she opened the shutters further. ‘How are you, Mother?’ she said.

‘Oh!’ Mrs Magorian gasped. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘I came in with Dilys,’ said Eliza. I heard the mattress creak as she sat beside her mother. ‘It’s the annual meeting of St Saviour’s ladies’ committee at three.’

‘Oh, so it is,’ Mrs Magorian sounded weary. ‘Is your father home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ Mrs Magorian sat up. ‘I must change.’

‘Shall I help you?’

‘But Dilys will be here in a moment. She can help me.’

‘I’ll get your dress. Which is it?’

‘The navy silk. It’s on a chair in the dressing room.’

Eliza appeared again in the dressing room. She pulled open the shutters that covered the window and flung up the sash. ‘It’s so stuffy in here, Mother,’ she said loudly. ‘I think Dilys has been rather heavy-handed with the camphor.’

‘But the moths are so trying.’ Mrs Magorian sighed.

Eliza pushed me towards the open window. ‘Climb,’ she hissed.

‘I beg your pardon, dear?’ said Mrs Magorian

‘I said “fine”, Mother,’ cried Eliza. ‘But spike lavender would do just as well, and would smell much better.’

I stared out of the window. The ground looked far away. We were only on the first floor, but there was no drainpipe to assist my descent, no balcony to swing down from. Did she really think I was going to jump? I would surely break my neck! Eliza rustled the dress to mask the sound of my movements and gestured impatiently at the open window. I began to ease myself out of it, like a crane fly emerging from a crack in a garden wall. I looked left and right. Up and down. There was no means of escape at all. I clung to the sill. Eliza’s face was at the window now, furious to see me still squatting there like some giant spindly pigeon. She flapped the dress at me. Perhaps if I eased myself down, I thought, I might hang from the sill by my hands and drop the last twenty feet. I might land in the middle of the large mound of grass cuttings, sticks and nettles the gardener had left against the side of the house in readiness for burning. Somehow I twisted round. I rested my buttocks on the sill, my legs dangling over the abyss. Perhaps it would be better to face forward and just
leap
. . . The easterly wind brought with it the smell of Smithfield – dung, and rotten meat.