The Fiend in Human (28 page)

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Authors: John MacLachlan Gray

BOOK: The Fiend in Human
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A Room above Plant’s
Whitty has awakened in misery in his life, yet is in no doubt that something relatively serious has happened, a judgement rendered the more worrying by his body’s seeming paralysis; this state of incapacitation has not decreased during the normal waking process, when the soul rises from unknown depths to its daytime station behind the eyes and ears. He feels pinioned to a horizontal surface, upon which his inert body throbs and swells with each heartbeat.
Prudently, Whitty adjudges it not a propitious time to open his eyes for a look at the world. Better to turn inward, take stock of the present, and plan the future. Only then will he open his eyes …
He lies on a narrow bed, his head resting on a clean pillow, facing right. Both his eyes are blackened and shut. The bridge of his nose is swollen and inflamed, as are his lips and cheekbones. A film of oily sweat shines upon his forehead, indicating fever.
Thinks Mrs Plant, watching him: Please do not die.
Within his private, dark encasement, the correspondent takes stock: of bruising there can be no doubt; ribs cracked though not necessarily broken; possible torn shoulder muscle. Such is the utility of a neddy as an instrument of underworld chastisement that the injuries it inflicts never fail to impress the recipient with their variety and extent. Worryingly, his body still refuses to move.
Pray, not the spine. Pray
,
not the brain
. So thinks Whitty’s soul as it retreats to the region of the solar plexus.
Surely there is nothing more hilarious to God than a praying agnostic.
Whitty awakens. Therefore, he must have been asleep.
New pain! A stabbing, insupportable pain in his arm!
He opens his eyes and is blinded by the light from a window, pouring over the shoulder of a man whose face, albeit in shadow, appears slightly older than his own: a wide, bland face with the smug intensity of a medical practitioner. The man is stabbing him in the arm with a long instrument.
‘Sweet Jesus, Sir, what the devil do you think you are doing?’
‘Excellent!’ The bland face reveals a set of ivory dentures, which appear too large for the face and emit an odour of rotting meat. ‘Never fear, old chap, it is pure morphine and nothing more. You are experiencing the hypodermic syringe, the most recent thing. This one came directly from France. I have used it six times today, already.’
No good can come of any device made in France, thinks the correspondent. ‘Please remove it at once.’
‘By injecting morphine into the vein, we ensure that addiction will not result. This is scientifically proven fact. You may thank your stars that you have enjoyed the latest in modern medicine.’
So saying, the unknown gentleman removes the instrument, which resembles a pair of scissors but with a long darning needle where the blades should be.
A most sinister contraption.
The correspondent came by his suspicions of medical men long ago. As a child, he contracted fever and a physician nearly bled him to death. In a dream his soul escaped through his mouth for a time, to hover over the foot of the bed while the body slept, as though making up its mind.
One of the servants, an ancient Scottish crone who kept the poultry, clipped a lock of his hair, put it in a sandwich and fed it to the spaniel. The boy recovered the next day while the spaniel died. Of course, for Master Edmund’s cure the physician accepted a substantial sum from his father, though he had had nothing to do with it.
However, at present he possesses neither the will nor the means with which to dispute the administration of modern scientific methods, as he closes his eyes and the morphine wraps about him like the warm arms of a woman.
As a matter of fact, he senses a woman in the room.
Whitty awakens. Unlike his previous emergence he now experiences nausea worse than any morning sickness he has suffered of late, while breathing with difficulty – the result of a burning weight on his chest, whose protective cage-work stabs him with each beat of the heart. He opens his eyes, and now comprehends his sensation of nausea, for the familiar, bland face with ivory teeth looms directly above, exuding an odour of tobacco and ale-fart.
‘Capital,’ remarks the unwelcome
pater patriae
to someone else in the room. ‘Do you see? His constitution is coming around.’ The self-satisfaction pours out like honey, as does the stench. The latter alarms the correspondent, who is of the firm opinion that disease is
miasmic: that the various odours that emanate from the human body constitute nothing less than a continuous volley of infection, like a malignant firing squad, one malady to strike should the others miss their mark.
‘Damn me to Hell, Sir, what the devil are you doing now?’
‘I am administering a cataplasm on top of a tisane, Sir. The blistering effect of the decoction will draw out toxins in the kidneys and bowels, and prevent an ague.’
‘I don’t agree. Leave me alone at once.’
A familiar voice emanates from before the window: ‘It’s a poultice, Mr Whitty. This is the physician Dr Gough. Now shut your gob and lie still.’
With difficulty the correspondent turns his gaze in the direction of that exquisite voice.
‘Mrs Plant. Dear Mrs Plant.’
‘Enough of your malarkey, Sir. Although you seem to be recovering.’
‘Truthfully, Madam, what is my present condition, in your view?’
‘As though you jammed your face in death’s door, you bloody fool. Is that not like you, vanity from start to finish …’ She turns away from the light, not to let him see how worried she has been.
Happily calculating the enormous fee to come, the physician removes his spectacles, dons his filthy coat and bows, like a seedy magician who has performed sleight-of-hand. Whitty shudders at a fresh stain on the doctor’s waistcoat, an ominous, dark fluid.
‘The fractures and contusions will restore themselves once the patient has a good blistering. The broken finger, which is very bad, has been strapped to its neighbour and, barring an influx of poison, may be saved. We have administered a herbal purge to treat the fever, which condition – of this there is not the slightest doubt – has been brought about by morbid excitement of the organs occasioned by the shock of the fall from a moving vehicle, and inflamed by unhealthy exposure to the night air. In short, Madam, the patient’s condition remains serious but not critical. It was a very near thing – indeed, I have just this morning come from performing an autopsy on a man who died from a similar complaint.’
Thinks Whitty: Hence, the splatter on the waistcoat, which, at more than one point in the proceedings, stood within an inch of his nose.
As the physician’s footsteps recede down the stairs and out the door, Whitty examines his hand, whose fingers have been strapped together as described.
Never mind: to have survived an English physician is a miracle in itself.
Whitty awakes. Therefore, he must have been asleep.
Collecting his senses one by one, he determines himself to be situated in a small bedroom above the main drinking-room at Plant’s. A steady rumble of discussion filters through the floor in tantalizing vowels, as though the gentlemen were holding pillows to their faces; and he recognizes the familiar hollow echo outside – of horseshoes, boots, iron wheels rasping on the cobbles below.
As well, he recognizes what he takes to be Mrs Plant’s personal taste in home furnishings – spotless lace curtains, walls the same green as the snug downstairs (thus saving the cost of paint); he notes the picture beside the mirror above the wash-table, depicting an Irish castle in a sentimental landscape of rocks, heather and sea.
Clearly the assailants returned him to whence he came. How nice of them – but if so, how did they know it would be, for him, a circular journey? For it was not from Plant’s that he was abducted, but from several streets hence. Therefore he must have been followed from Plant’s. Was he followed by the black carriage (or perhaps dark blue), or did accomplices proceed afoot? (In all probability the one signalled the other according to the drill favoured by teams of garrotters on the Ratcliffe Highway.) Hence, the enemy was present while he drank gin downstairs. Yet there were no strangers there whom he can recall, Plant’s being not the sort of place in which a stranger goes unnoticed, particularly one whose clothes, aspect, smell, accent, race or vocabulary are suspect.
Therefore his assailants had the co-operation of somebody known to the correspondent.
Fraser? Salmon? Dinsmore? The Captain? Mrs Quigley? Dear Heaven, the enemies accumulate like lint!
His chest burns painfully, which puts him in mind of the medical practitioner, whose memory draws his attention to the evil-smelling poultice applied to his chest; which, in turn, puts him in mind of … the pain! Sweet Jesus, the scalding pain! With a cry, he sits bolt upright, and instantly regrets his haste with another roar: the ribs!
Cracked as neatly as stonework: there’s a neddy for you.
Remaining upright for the moment, thus minimizing movement, Whitty lowers the bedclothes – slowly – in order to expose the poultice in its unwholesome ugliness, sticky and pungent, the colour of iodine – which
abomination he slowly peels downward. Unhappily, the action tears the hairs from his chest, individually and to excruciating effect, inflicting further damage upon a skin already inflamed by quackery. Choosing swift, cruel punishment over slow torture, and with an additional, emphatic imprecation to Jesus, he rips the poultice from his body in one excruciating stroke and casts it aside, where it lands on the floor with a damp, heavy thud.
‘Mr Whitty, if you must take the Saviour’s name in vain, will you pipe down? You can be heard as far as the scullery.’
‘The Saviour and I have reached an understanding, Mrs Plant. We call upon one another when needed.’
‘I doubt that you’re first on His address book.’
‘Nor last, Madam.’
Gingerly he places himself back on his elbows, the better to take a good look at Mrs Plant, who once again (or possibly still) stands before the window. Daylight illuminates the copper in her hair, leaving her lovely face in shadow. Even in his reduced condition he cannot but notice that she is not wearing a corset. It comes as a mild shock to him, that a woman, in private, might choose not to wear that healthful garment. Which inspires Whitty to a remembrance of Mrs Marlowe, who likewise assumed such
dishabille
about the house …
No doubt he has been blackened with denunciations from his competitors – Fraser, huffing and puffing over Press Ethics, an oxymoronic proposition not unlike Police Protection … Beyond this room, Whitty has no doubt, his colleagues have judged his career to be at an ignominious end with the workhouse in sight – hence the easy laughter from below.
And yet, thinks Whitty, the story continues. Or, as goes the Hebrew maxim, look for the ending after the ending. In which one’s bespoke narrative takes an unanticipated turn …
Whitty peers out at the world like a knight through a visor. Mrs Plant stands in front of the window – still or again, as the case may be. The light from the window has changed its direction since his last awakening. And she wears a different dress, the sort of dress in which she customarily appears while working downstairs – corseted, thankfully.
‘Mrs Plant. It is indeed a pleasure to see you again. I seem to have nodded off a moment.’
‘Three days, Mr Whitty.’
Three days?
‘Madam, surely you exaggerate.’
‘You bugger, you nearly died, you had me so scared …’ She holds back the tears, not to give him the satisfaction. ‘Hit your head, you did, in the fall from the carriage. Might do you good, a few less brains – think of it as a form of pruning.’
Whitty, in the meanwhile, makes a collection of remembrances from the last day he had his health: the pathetic little bunter and her startling gift of a flask – which, as it transpired, belonged to Harewood; the prediction of a spoiler from Fraser, with others inevitably to join, like baboons in heat. What must Sala be thinking in his absence? He remembers having taken notes at one point … His sense of time seems to have deserted him. For all he knows he might now be an elderly man.
Three days?
‘Mrs Plant!’
‘Whitty, quiet down or the street will hear you.’
‘I beg you, I must be away now on urgent business. Please fetch my coat.’
So saying, he sits upright, slowly, bracing himself against the pain.
‘Mr Whitty, you misunderstand the situation. This isn’t a hotel. You’re an invalid. As such you are my responsibility, and you shall leave when I decide you are fit.’
Whereupon, to his horror, it comes to his attention that, underneath the bedclothes (presently draped around his waist), he is utterly naked, not so much as a pair of drawers to cover his most private organ. He falls back onto the pillow, groaning with the pain of sudden movement, and pulls the bedclothes over his reddened chest, for it has become clear that he and Mrs Plant occupy a most indecent situation – which, if it were known, could do serious harm to both their reputations.

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