‘I think I may have a personal connection with this individual.’
A gap-toothed leer.
‘I may be able to identify her.’
‘I reckon not.’
He wheezes again. Continues, enjoying Harry’s look of uncertainty.
‘Not much to identify. Couldn’t go by the colour of her eyes, for instance.’
A surface like soap. Emptiness where eyes should be.
Harry finds another note, which he folds between the fingers of his right hand and extends as if he were an animal-house keeper feeding a beast that bites.
‘I must see her,’ he says. ‘And my reasons are entirely honourable.’
‘Course they are. Always are,’ the man replies, taking the note then wiping his nose with the back of the same hand. ‘There’s no shortage of honourable men, many of whom end up here, all as silent as the cemetery.’
He turns and shuffles to a stone stairway near the corner of the room, carrying a smoking lantern. The steps are narrow and turn in upon themselves as they go down. Harry must put his hands out for balance: the rough walls are cold and moist. He counts twenty-three steps as he descends, and with every step the dank smell becomes more overpowering. His guide is waiting at the bottom. Harry cannot suppress a shudder.
‘It’s cold down here,’ he says.
‘Course it is. There’s ice piled in the vaults, and we’re close to river level. Below it, in fact, whenever it floods or there’s a king tide in the bay. Useful way to flush things out.’
Harry’s eyes have grown accustomed to the light from the single lantern. They confirm what his feet have sensed: the floor is made of uneven stones and slopes slightly from all sides towards the centre, where there is a zinc-topped table with surgical instruments arranged in rows at one end and, directly beneath it, a hole covered by a circular grating. The room itself resembles a cellar, with several thick timber uprights supporting the ceiling, but instead of barrels or bottles of wine stacked against the walls there are deep shelves, and on every one a shrouded shape. Harry knows at once what they are. Yet he is reminded of a school dormitory, iron bunk beds three and four high, and in each a child asleep. Yet no dormitory ever smelled like this: an animal stink as thick as a foul fog.
Harry presses his handkerchief to his face. His guide is amused by his discomfort, which he increases by crossing the room with the lantern.
‘They reckon we’ll get electrics before long,’ he says. ‘But there’s no hurry. I’ve had no complaints from the dead. Only from the surgeons who have to do their work under gaslight. I’d get one of them lights going, but I reckon you won’t be long. Mind out for rats – there’s hundreds down here.’
Harry follows his guide’s voice and the shadows cast by his lantern. Hears the fellow grunt with effort. He has stopped by one of the shelves, which must be on hinges or rollers of some kind, as he is able to move it out from the wall. Then he raises his arm, so that the weak yellow light falls on a prone shape, which appears to be covered one end to another with thick sacking. There is a scratching, scuttling sound from somewhere nearby.
‘Sorry to wake you. A gentleman caller for you, Lily.’ The attendant uses his left hand, the one not holding the lantern, to lift back the sacking.
A miasma is released – an essence of foetid water and river mud.
Yet still there is a sheet or cloth clinging to the top portion of the body. That’s what it seems like in the dancing light, for instead of something resembling a human face, there is only the shape of it. Resembling a waxwork model melted by fire. A single strand of long hair remains fixed to the skull, lending a pathetic semblance of humanity.
‘It’s not right,’ Harry says, turning away.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Her being abandoned. Left alone like this.’
‘Alone? Nah. She’s got plenty of company. All around. In neat rows.’
Shadows dance as he gestures with the lantern at the other shapes. In these shadows Harry sees Rabbi Weiss describing Jewish burial practices. Pressing his fingers together, the Rabbi stresses the importance of treating a deceased person with appropriate respect and in a timely manner.
This is why Harry has come.
He has to try to make his peace with this forsaken woman mouldering alone in darkness; with nobody observing shemira, watching over her. Is it the one he disturbed in the river? He cannot be sure. There were no witnesses. Nobody to confirm what he is convinced he experienced. But the unrest that has tormented him since the river leap, the discombobulating dreams, cannot be denied. And what he has found here, what he can smell here, is real. He could touch her with his own hands if he dared.
If he was the one who interrupted her slumber, it is understandable she has haunted him ever since. She has been clutching on to him with her limbs twisted like tree branches, holding him down. She is the one who will not let him sleep. The one who conjures elusive phantoms to unsettle him. The one who has stymied his plans for the flying machine. If he can just sit with her and recite such snippets of the Jewish prayers for the dead as he recalls, then perhaps she will leave him be …
He moves closer. Then recoils.
‘Her arms. What happened to her arms?’
His guide, who has been hoping that a rat might venture close enough for him to kick it, hears the hoarseness in Harry’s voice.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Weren’t her arms extended? These are lying flat.’
He cannot see the indifferent shrug.
‘Probably knocked down, mate. Or broken for ease of handling, and so she don’t take up too much space. Lily could have had some of her stems snapped. An axe-handle usually does the job.’ With his free hand he makes a violent, swinging motion. ‘Gotta be careful nothing comes clean off.’
Harry gags. He knows now he has made a dreadful mistake. He cannot stay. He turns and staggers off. But the attendant remains with the lantern. Harry’s left foot slips on something soft. He must extend both arms, one of which still clutches his handkerchief, to keep his balance as he lurches to the steps on the darker side of the room. From behind he hears a voice.
‘Leaving so soon?’
A derisive cackle.
‘Your gent has scarpered, Lily. No ball for you tonight.’
Stumbling up the steps, Harry scrapes the knuckles of his left hand on the wall, though he doesn’t notice. Once again he is rising up from the river bottom, holding his breath, trying to escape. But this time he is counting steps, not seconds.
