Chapter Twenty-Three
I remember the day so very clearly: it was a Thursday, the sun was striving to shine and there was a mellow breeze. I was contemplating whether to take a stroll when Bram burst into the house, shouting. It was a commanding echo that pierced the walls. ‘George! George,’ he boomed.
There was pounding on the stairs. I leapt up from where I was sitting in the drawing room, and wrenched the door open.
Bram had just reached the landing. He was barefoot, dripping wet, his jacket and shoes were missing. Draped over his shoulder was an unconscious man.
‘Bram!’ My stomach clenched. ‘What’s happened? Where’s the rest of your clothes? Your shoes? Who is that?’ Questions tumbled out of me.
‘Never mind that now. This man needs a doctor.’ Bram stormed into the dining room, crashing into the sideboard. ‘George!’ he shouted again.
He swept aside the place-settings on the table in the centre of the room with one arm, uncaring that candlesticks, a vase of flowers, plates and cutlery toppled on the rug, or that a porcelain figurine struck the wooden floor, shattering on impact.
The water from the vase soaked into the rug leaving a dark stain.
The flower stems snapped, an arrangement of broken necks.
I helped as Bram carefully laid the unconscious man atop the table, bunching one end of the tablecloth so it became a makeshift pillow.
‘For godsakes. Where’s George?’ he barked, wiping his arm across his forehead, his face devoid of colour, panting. He started to rearrange the man’s limbs.
Before I could fetch him, George charged into the room. He took one look at the strange scene, then started firing questions.
‘What happened?’
‘I hauled him out of the river,’ explained Bram. ‘He jumped in, trying to drown himself, I fear.’
‘How long was he in the water?’ George began pulling the man’s coat from his chest, ripping open his shirt. He searched for a pulse.
‘Maybe ten minutes,’ answered Bram as George’s hands moved with surety over the man’s body, prodding, poking, lifting an eyelid, an arm, banding a wrist, pressing an ear to his chest. ‘But he was under most of the time. Kept fighting me off.’
‘How long has he been unconscious?’
Bram glanced at the clock. ‘Since we reached the pier. About twenty minutes or so.’
‘Did you expel water from his lungs?’
‘I did. A gentleman on the ferry did, too. And again, at the pier. Without much success.’
George leaned over the man, grabbing his whiskered face in one hand, twisting it side to side, frowning. ‘Do you know who he is?’
‘Never seen him before,’ said Bram.
George stared at the stranger, then appeared to reach a decision. Much to my amazement, he pinched the man’s nose and, first taking a deep breath, opened the lips and began blowing in his mouth.
I’d never seen such a thing. It was shocking yet remarkable. As if George was kissing him. Only, he wasn’t. He was a pair of bellows, filling the man with air.
Bram remained beside his brother, checking the man’s chest as George blew and blew.
After a minute, he picked up the man’s hand, which had detritus from the river stuck to the palm, like hair, and cradled it in his own.
Such tenderness, such compassion. The man was old, his suit drenched and covered with grime from the Thames.
His shoes were scuffed, his bald pate covered with moles and liver spots, his beard bedraggled.
He wore a ring on one finger. He also had the letter ‘D’ branded into the left side of his chest. A deserter, then.
His eyes were partly open, suffused with a terrible red, as if filled with blood.
Stunned by what I was witnessing, it was a moment before I became aware we were no longer alone. Emma and Mrs Daw, drawn by the commotion, had entered, followed by two peelers.
Emma squealed in fright when she saw the man on the table, and George administering his very intimate therapy. She clutched Mrs Daw. They both stood behind me, wide-eyed, peering past my shoulders, whispering and clicking their tongues.
‘Sergeant Anthony Roberts, ma’am,’ said a tall fellow with long sideburns and a thick East End accent. He removed his helmet. ‘This is Constable John Jenkins. Forgive the intrusion. We followed your husband from the river. I take it you’re Mrs Stoker?’
‘I am.’
The sergeant squeezed in beside me, and we continued to watch George while Bram counted.
‘He’s a hero, your husband. Not many would do what he did.
’ The policeman passed me a bundle of clothes.
It was Bram’s hat, coat, jacket and vest. Poorly folded, they were mostly dry.
I clutched the clothes to my breast. Bram was soaking wet, his shirt clinging to his body.
The outline of his undershirt was visible, the defining lines of his chest. His nipples were dark and hard against the fabric.
His chest hair looked like coils of wire.
‘Dived right into the river, he did,’ added the constable, handing me Bram’s shoes, then sidling in next to his colleague. ‘Saved that man’s life.’ Emma and Mrs Daw made noises of appreciation.
‘He did?’ I regarded Bram with a mixture of admiration and astonishment, then passed his clothes to Emma and the shoes to Mrs Daw.
‘Never seen the like,’ said Sergeant Roberts.
‘We were waiting on the Embankment for the ferry to dock, when we saw that cove there jump right off the passing steamboat into the water. Climbed over the rails before anyone could’ve stopped him.
Thought he was done for. Your man, well, he tried to hoist him out of the water as the ferry went by, but the cove fought him off. ’
Constable Jenkins shook his head in disbelief.
‘Your husband stripped off them clothes and shoes —’ he nodded towards the items, ‘and without a thought for his safety, dived right into the blood — ’scuse me, ma’am – dived right into the river and swam after him.
Caught him, then towed him to shore. That takes some strength, that does. ’
‘Should have heard the cheers and the like,’ continued the sergeant. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emma and Mrs Daw gazing at Bram adoringly. Mrs Daw was wiping tears away.
‘Mind you,’ he added. ‘We thought the old geeza done for until your husband said he wasn’t and he was taking him to a doctor.’
‘His brother.’ I gestured to George, needing to say something, do something. I was thrown off guard – not by Bram’s heroism, that didn’t surprise me at all – but by the risk he took. All for a stranger.
I was willing the old man to breathe, for George’s efforts to be rewarded. As we watched, men I’d never seen before entered the room. Some stood back, others, with a boldness that stunned me, walked right up to the table. A few began asking questions, notepads and pens in hand.
The press.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of the situation. My house, my beautiful home, filled with outsiders who, without a by-your-leave, burst in – the half-drowned, the curious, the awe-struck, the gossip-mongers.
I approached the newcomers, speaking to the oldest of them, a bespectacled man in a long coat and a worn waistcoat too small for him. ‘Who admitted you?’
‘Door was open, ma’am,’ he answered, without looking up from the page he was jotting on.
‘Can you tell me whose house this is, ma’am?’ asked another, tapping my arm to get my attention.
‘Who’s the gent over there in the wet shirt?’ demanded a corpulent, untidy fellow.
I didn’t answer. Bram ignored them all.
‘Emma,’ I said firmly. ‘Pass me the master’s clothes. Thank you. Now, would you be so kind as to escort all these gentlemen from the house and make sure no-one else comes in. Perhaps you’d be so good as to help her, Mrs Daw? You too, Constable Jenkins?’
‘Right away, ma’am,’ said Mrs Daw. Before he could protest, she took one journalist by the elbow, the bespectacled one by his, and with the peelers’ assistance, steered them out. Emma took up the rear, flapping her apron when they tried to object.
One moment George was puffing, the peelers (who’d come back in) were whispering and writing in their notebooks, Bram was counting, in the next, George stopped. He stood straight, looked at each of us in turn, and shook his head sorrowfully.
Mrs Daw and Emma gasped. The policemen slid their helmets off again.
Voices from outside competed with the screech of carriage wheels, the whistles and shouts of vendors, the barking of dogs. The clock on the mantelpiece marked time.
I’d never seen someone die, though I’d attended plenty of funerals.
It was disconcerting to think that the man who’d been struggling for life one moment had expired not simply in my house, but right before my eyes.
Almost immediately, his pallor changed, a yellowish-grey suffused his face.
Colour fled his lips, which opened revealing long grey teeth.
What had driven the poor man to such despair? What restless darkness lurked within him? Did snaggle-toothed demons gnaw at his peace, convincing him to take his own life? Or was it an accident? What if he blamed Bram for not acting sooner and sought vengeance from beyond the grave?
I shuddered, suddenly cold, and wondered if his spirit was even now rising from his body to its eternal resting place. Or would it linger here, in my home? Would he go to hell? Or would Bram’s intervention allow him to enter heaven? Please, God, I silently prayed. Don’t let his spirit remain here.
First closing the dead man’s eyes, George found a napkin on the sideboard and wiped his own hands, his mouth. He found another, and gently draped it over the dead man’s face. ‘There’s no more can be done. I for one need a drink.’
Without waiting to see how anyone else felt, he went to the drawing room. We all followed – the policemen, too. We stood dazed in the light-filled room. George poured whiskies, the peelers taking theirs gratefully.