The Palace of Curiosities. Rosie Garland

forth.

      The meat grows darker, oozing with moisture. The ribs swell out, only to be sucked in. It is breathing; air whistling through the severed windpipe, the stump of its neck twisting from side to side, searching for its missing head. Then the forelegs start to twitch, straining to touch the floor; the hind legs kick out to free themselves from the meat-hook.

      Then they all begin: every dangling carcase dancing, thrashing back and forth on the hooks; fighting to free themselves, to find their scattered parts and knit themselves back together.

      I hack at the monster that began this vile waltz; but with each slash it grows ever more frantic, as it fights to be free. I do not know what to do – there is no throat to cut nor heart to slice out, these things having been done already – yet I strike and strike again at the dead thing for there is nothing else for me to do, but it will not lie still, and I weep with the ghastly hopelessness of it. A hand grips my shoulder and the axe falls from my hand.

      ‘You, man!’ shouts a voice, and I turn to see the face of my pay-master. ‘What are you doing?’ he bellows.

      I open and close my mouth.

      He presses his face close to mine. ‘I said, what in damnation are you doing?’

      My mouth is empty.

      ‘Look!’ he bawls, punching me so hard I stagger backwards. ‘Look, you bastard!’ he shouts again, and I do look: at shredded pieces of flesh and bone on the floor, the remains of the carcase hanging before me. All is still.

      ‘Waste my fucking meat, would you? You fucking lunatic. Get out of here and don’t come back.’

      I stare at the floor, at the quiet bones.

      ‘I said, sod off.’

      He thumps me again. I slip on a piece of fat and barely save myself from falling. He picks up my blade, brandishes it.

      ‘Now. Get out. Unless you want to replace the carcase you’ve just ruined. I always knew you were trouble.’

      I run. On the street I drag off my apron and let it fall into the gutter. I stare at it a long time. Alfred finds me there when he leaves work, for I have forgotten the way back to our lodgings. We walk in silence. When we arrive, I do not know what to do except lie down.

      I barely have time to close my eyes before the silt of my mind stirs and a picture floats up, urgent as a stream of bubbles from the bottom of a pond. I am scrambling over coiled rope, thick as a man’s thigh, headlong to the stern of a boat, its deck treacherous with oil and lurching from side to side in mountainous seas. I’m almost thrown off my feet as the hulk heels sharply.

      I grip the iron railing and peer into the dashing spume of the sea, far below. Jump, commands the voice of the waters. My arms await you. I haul myself up the rungs to sway on the topmost bar.

      ‘Wait for me: I am coming!’ I yelp into the filthy spray.

      The wind smacks the words back into my mouth.

       Hurry, I will not wait.

      Suddenly there are other voices: men approaching, screaming. I know the words mean Stop, come down, madman. I shall not be turned aside. This is not madness. This is escape. If falling on to land cannot kill me, then perhaps the death granted by water might.

      I jump, and am sucked down into a darkness cut into small flickering pieces; my jaw falls open at the hinge, mouth taking in a slow river of silt, filling my lungs with cold hard fists. Weed slops around my tongue like a woman’s hair; the water is a stone in my lungs but there is no pain, no fire.

      I move a piece of wood and it is my arm; I beat it against my face until the bridge of my nose swings towards my left eye. My arms do not break the surface; they stir the rusty mud and hide the broken window of the light, burrowing me deeper and deeper into the long night of the ocean.

      The mouths of fish flay me to the bone; as fast as they nibble the fruit of my flesh, it restores itself. They return to feed on me, over and over. I beg the sea to grind me into mulch, for I ache to lie still for ever. I shall not come out, I wail. But it pushes me away. Throws me out, on to earth. I surface from tea-brown water, flesh boggy from its long stewing, gasping for my first breath as the new air slaps life into my lungs. But I want to die, cries the voice of my soul.

      The heavy embrace of the river resolves into the hands of children searching through my pockets, fingers boring holes into my shoulders as they strip me. My ears unlock to their complaints.

       Not much here.

       Not so much as a bloody wipe.

       Waste of bloody time.

       He’s a dead one.

      I want to be a dead one for them. Blood settles in a slow night-fall into the pouches of my cheeks. The muscles of my face remember; begin to knit and heal and make me whole again, and they are never tired. I am already forgetting that I have done this. My body remembers, and keeps it secret. I go forward into darkness, into the fear. To find that light I saw and lost.

      EVE

       London, March–April 1857

      

      Mama and I thought the knock at the door was the man come for the collars I had sewn; but a stranger’s voice gusted down the passageway to my customary sheltering place in the crook of the door, out of sight of the street.

      ‘My dear madam, forgive this intrusion,’ said the voice.

      I could sense Mama’s eyes creasing at the corners, the marbles of her thoughts clacking together. Who is he? Do I owe him money? The air rippled as he raised his hat; the stitching in his coat creaked as he bowed politely. I heard him say, ‘Is your sister at home?’ And Mama’s surprised, ‘Sister? I have no sister,’ and only then halting, realising it was flattery.

      She brought him in, and he bloomed to the very edges of our meagre walls. He was of middling height, but held himself taller; of a middling girth, but bulged himself fatter. He pigeoned out his chin, which was shaved so close I wondered if he hated his own beard and moustaches. He looked at the small table and the sewing laid upon it; the truckle-bed huddled in the corner – everywhere but at me.

      Mama stared at his waistcoat, a gaudy affair of vermilion brocade before which I could have warmed my hands. He turned this way and that, the fabric gleaming, complimenting Mama on the tidy industry of the room, the delicate embroidery of the collars, and every sentence held an apology for having so intemperately disturbed the retirement of her afternoon. His hands peeped from the tight cuffs of his shirt, soft as a midwife’s; there was a shine on the seat of his trousers, a stain of sweat creeping around his hat-brim.

      Think of him peeled from his linen, his wool, his velvet, whispered Donkey-Skin.

      I shushed her, and the noise made him turn, as though he noticed me for the first time. He bowed, very slowly.

      ‘Dearest miss,’ he breathed.

      I dropped my eyes, tried to find a place to conceal my paws, and settled for behind my back.

      ‘Do not be alarmed, dear miss,’ he said. ‘I mean neither you nor your mother any mischief.’

      Don’t be alarmed, sneered Donkey-Skin through her nose. I giggled: she was a very good mimic.

      ‘Have some manners,’ hissed Mama, and I was quiet.

      ‘Do not scold her on my account,’ he said. ‘It is fitting for a young lady to be shy in the presence of a stranger. Therefore let me introduce myself, I entreat you.’

      He cleared his throat, and puffed himself out some more.

      ‘I