of the gutter muck. Dirt, she knows. Dirt, she understands. But just now she needs something more than dirt, something to swill away this new pain I am causing her. She crawls into a side-alley and hugs the wall, panting.
Bert appears, towering above her. She looks up, wondering how he found her, for it seems a very long time since she saw him last. There is such an uproar at the bottom of her belly, such a storm. He pats her on the back, very gently.
‘Here, girl, here,’ he says. ‘You all right?’
She lurches to her feet, grabs his wrist, pulls him towards her. Now she understands why he is there: she needs him to flush me out.
‘Bert,’ she says. ‘Now, Bert. Do me now.’
He makes a show of pulling away, but his heart quivers. He flicks his eyes left, right, but the alley is empty enough for no-one to take notice.
‘Oh Bert. Help me, Bert.’
She drags his hand up her skirt, points the way up the road he didn’t think to find so easy; she pulls at his buttons and he’s hard already, for doesn’t he know women change their minds in a second? He pokes between her legs and finds the soft ready core of her. They rock me in the cradle of their rutting.
Not that I need the swim of his seed: I am already made. I am nothing to do with him and everything to do with snips and snails and lion’s tails. I hunker down for my nine-month wait. He’s done quickly; looks to see if he read this right but she’s smiling, wider than she’s ever smiled.
‘Oh Bert,’ she says, and will not let go of his hand. Her eyes are inky with pleasure.
‘You all right, Maggie love?’ he says.
‘It was wonderful,’ she sighs, unsure if she means what he has just done to her, or the lion.
ABEL
London, October 1854
Eyes closed. Waking. Hands upon me. Voices swarming into my ears. They start with my pockets, ferreting their fingers deeper and deeper into the ruins of my clothing.
‘Not much here,’ whines the voice of a boy. ‘Not so much as a bloody wipe.’
‘Nothing.’ This sounds like a woman.
‘No use.’ And this, a girl.
‘It was nice, his jacket, but it’s finished.’
‘Waste of bloody time.’ This, another child.
‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ says a deeper voice, a man. ‘There’s a good doctor at the hospital as will give a few shillings.’
It seems there is a crowd gathered. I can hear the gentle prowl of the river draining towards the sea. Fingers lift my wrist, let it fall.
‘Doctor? Too late for quacks. He’s stone cold.’
‘He’s not breathing.’
‘He’s a dead one.’
I wonder if I am the dead man they are talking of so freely. My eyes are sticky with some insistent glue, my mouth also. Neither will open.
‘The doctor I know will take a gentleman in any condition, if you get my meaning.’
‘Ooh, that’s not right, George. Not decent.’
‘What’s he to you, all of a sudden?’
At that moment my body chooses to unseal itself: eyes crack open, mouth gapes and I cough black water. They spring away: the corpse they thought I was is suddenly too lively for comfort.
‘He’s alive!’
I vomit again, to prove the truth of it. My vision is unsteady. I am surrounded by vole-faced creatures with yellow teeth, breath hanging before them, the bones of their faces harsh. They are the colour of the mud in which they stand.
‘Not a chance.’
‘Got half the river in him, George.’
‘Enough to fill the Fleet ditch.’
‘He’ll be a stiff soon enough if he’s swallowed any of that.’
‘He’s coming round.’
The man they call George detaches himself from the pack; lowers himself to my side.
‘Give this man his boots back,’ he says.
‘They’re mine,’ whines a skinny boy.
‘Give him his trousers, at least. Can’t have him walking around with his crown jewels up for grabs.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘And your sister.’
Small hands lift me out of the peaceful cushion of slime. I retch with the movement.
‘He stinks.’
‘So do you.’
‘What’s your name, man?’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Pissed, were you?’
My head swims with the need for words, for a mouth to form them, lungs to squeeze air, a tongue to shape the sound. There are so many tasks to perform and it is too much for me. I try a word, drawn up from deep inside the well: it meant a greeting when I used it before. They look from one to the other, raising bony shoulders.
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Don’t ask me. Some wop nonsense,’ says George.
‘What are you trying to say? Say it again.’
I choose a different word. Their eyes remain blank.
‘Still a load of codswallop.’
‘Here. He’s that Italian fellow. That nob as went missing.’
‘Yeah. Look at his eyes.’
‘Jumped off Blackfriars Bridge.’
‘They said he was shouting, raving. Ladies were screaming.’
‘Sank like a stone.’
‘But it was a week ago. A week, in that shit? Can’t be him. Can it?’
‘Rich bloke, I heard. A real swell.’
‘I told you his jacket was nice.’
‘Rich?
