– male or female, it is hard to say for its hair is a felted mat obscuring the face – raises its paw to touch my face, only to be clouted away. It whimpers, but almost instantly reaches out again, to be smacked off as fiercely.
‘Grateful to them as found him.’
‘Them as saved him,’ corrects George.
I want them to go away and leave me here. I want to worm myself back into the mud and pull its blanket up over my chin. I am filled with the feeling that I have not been dead long enough. I do not know why, but I want to be dead a good while longer.
‘Come on, sir. Say something else.’
I search for sounds to please them. ‘I am drowned,’ I say.
‘What’s he on about?’
‘He says he’s drowned.’
‘That’s English. Doesn’t sound wop to me,’ says George.
‘Well, he looks Italian.’
‘Maybe that’s just dirt.’
‘He’s got to be that rich dago. There’s no money in it if he’s just some English bastard.’
‘Can’t we just say he’s that Italian, George?’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’ The man puts his face close to mine. ‘Who are you, then? Eh?’
‘I don’t know,’ I reply.
‘What’s your name?’
I scrabble for the answer, paddling in the gutter of my mind, turning up nothing. I try harder. It is not a blank wall I come up against: there is no wall, no structure of any kind. I am void, featureless as the thick stew of human waste in which I am lying. They look at each other across my body.
‘He ought to be a goner.’
George snorts, placing his hand upon me. I see a bird made of blue ink flap its wings in the space between his thumb and forefinger.
‘Bird,’ I whisper.
‘He’s a nutter,’ someone laughs.
‘He’s not right,’ is the opinion of another.
‘No one could last a minute in that, let alone a day.’
‘He looks like he’s coming out of the mud.’
‘Like he was buried in it.’
‘He ought to be dead. Why ain’t he?’
‘Something’s not right.’
They begin to shrink back, all but the tattooed man, who regards me with thoughtfulness rather than fear.
‘Come on, George. Leave the likes of him be.’
One of the women throws my trousers back at me; spits.
‘I don’t want nothing of him. Ooh,’ she whinnies. ‘I touched him.’
She wipes a hand on her greasy skirt. The boy holding my boots shifts from sticky foot to sticky foot.
‘I’m keeping these,’ he mutters defiantly.
George grins. ‘Up to you, mate, but I’d not walk one inch in this man’s shoes. He’s not got the decency to die when he should.’
The lad chews the inside of his mouth awhile, and then hurls my boots into the muck.
‘Fuck you, George.’
‘And your sister. Your mother and all. And when I did, they didn’t charge me, neither. Which is not like them in the least.’
George places his mouth close to my ear.
‘Now. You tell George here your little secret. I can spot a queer one when I see it. How come you’re not dead?’
‘I do not know.’
Again, it is the truth. I cough up another mouthful of the river and it dribbles down my chin.
‘Could be worth your while. And mine.’ His eyes gleam like sovereigns. ‘I think you’ll be coming with me, Lazarus.’
He grasps my hand, winches me into a sitting position. I heave, spill more oily slops down my chest. It seems I cannot stop leaking.
‘Ooh,’ squeals a girl from her safe distance. ‘George is touching him.’
The words do not make George let go. I look at the way his fingers clasp mine, the ruddy glow of them against the bleached grey of my sodden flesh.
‘I should be dead,’ I whisper. ‘Why am I not so?’
‘That’s what I’m going to find out, Mr Lazarus,’ says George, showing me two rows of even teeth.
‘What’s he saying?’ calls out one of the mudlarks.
‘Nothing you lot need to know. This is man’s business.’
‘Talking up horrors, that’s what they’re doing,’ wails a female voice.
The clacking of a rattle winds its way into the space between my ears.
‘Fuck me, it’s the Peelers.’
‘Stay where you are,’ yells George. ‘We’re breaking no bloody laws.’
‘When did they ever care about the law?’
‘Stay if you want. I’m legging it,’ says the boy who gave up my boots.
I hear the suck and slather of mud as they hurry off. George looks from me to their retreating backs to me again. The rattling grows louder. He chews his lips.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck the Queen and her fucking consort too.’
He lets go of my hand and I fall back. I stare at the sky. My thumbs dig into the soft quilt of the filthy ooze, and I let myself slide into the comfort of its tight wet mouth. I am lullabied into a drowse by the slurp of their footsteps retreating, the moist tread of other men approaching.
EVE
London, November 1845
They say when I was born I didn’t cry; I meowed and licked my paws. They say that the midwife dropped dead of fright. They told a lot of tall stories but none of them were as tall as the ones I told myself when I looked in the mirror. Mama said I shouldn’t look in mirrors: it would upset me. What she meant was, it upset her.
Other
