A Rush of Blood Read online

  I’m not so lucky.

  I’m still somewhere in between.

  MOLLY

  Whitechapel. London.

  Then …

  This is the Polly Nicholls snug room; back bar of the Jolly Bonnet. It is a small, comfortable space that smells of meat pies and furniture polish. It is illuminated with oil lamps and candles. It contains a cosiness; an air of autumn. At the centre of the room is a table made from an old wine vat, its surface stained almost black by decades of spilled wine and beer. A trio of rickety leather chairs are positioned like points on a masonic star. In one sits a straight-backed, short-haired woman in her mid-thirties, dressed in a Victorian costume that speaks of steam engines, hair grips, gaslight and clockwork. She wears tight black trousers, knee-high boots and a lacy, high-throated white top with three-quarter sleeves, which she has pinned below her delicate jawline with a brooch embossed with a red skeleton. Her hair is a henna-brown that clashes with the ruby of her fingernails and the black of her fingerless gloves. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles hangs on a chain around her neck. She is dressed to complement her surroundings, which give off an air of the sophisticatedly shabby; that luxuriously threadbare quality so beloved of glossy magazines.

  The light flickers suddenly, as if a train has passed overhead. Black and gold, black and gold. A loose wire, perhaps.

  ‘Cut it out, Polly,’ says the woman under her breath. The instruction masks the sound of clumping footsteps. There is a fizzing sound and then the bulb flares bright white. The lamp pitches a golden blush on to the face of a young girl who is barging through from the main bar. She is a scowl of a thing; all wrinkled nose and bumpy brow. She’s tall. A bit squishy in places. She looks like an overgrown cherub, with her big mop of honey-coloured hair, round eyes and apple-blossom cheeks. She slumps down in one of the armchairs and throws her schoolbag on to the other.

  Molly looks up from her book. She looks tired. She has had to apply extra make-up to cover an outbreak of tiny pimples that has emerged in her hairline and on her chin. She suffers with stress-related eczema. She is working long hours and her tongue is stippled with tiny ulcers that betray her current poor health. There never seems enough time to eat proper meals any more.

  ‘Mum!’ says Hilda, looking at her expectantly. ‘You’re just sitting there. You’ve gone dead-eyed again. You look like a corpse.’

  They sit in silence for a moment. Molly’s eyes return to her book. Hilda folds herself deeper into her chair and looks up at the ceiling, where steam from her wet coat and sodden hair is vanishing into the darkness.

  ‘What’s wrong with Polly?’ asks Hilda at last.

  ‘In a grump. Sick of it. Not happy in the slightest.’

  Hilda nods, understanding. Neither of them has any real belief in ghosts or spirits but they have taken to referring to the Bonnet’s idiosyncrasies as being the work of ‘Polly’ – the understandably restless spirit of Jack the Ripper’s first victim. Molly has encouraged Hilda to remain silent about this fact during group discussions at school. She realizes that, out of context, it sounds a little odd. Much of Hilda’s life sounds odd on paper.

  ‘It’s probably the weather,’ says Hilda, wriggling herself upright. ‘Cats and dogs out there. Worse. Cows and zebras.’

  ‘Unicorns and porcupines,’ says Molly, playing along. They could do this for a while.

  Hilda gradually lets go of her bad mood. The apartment she and her mother share is two streets away, in an old pumping station transformed into stylishly shabby apartments. It is a nice place, and home to her fat-faced cat, Ripper, but it is this bar, where her mum is boss, that she thinks of as home. It is a gift for any child with a vivid imagination. Her mind has invented wonderful stories here. She keeps telling her English teacher that she should come in for a drink. Gushes with enthusiasm over the fixtures, fittings and finery. Gets her eras in a tangle from time to time. Mixes up the Tudor with the Victorian. Tells her teacher that the bar is the kind of place where Guy Fawkes might meet with his co-conspirators. The sort of place a working girl, a soiled dove, might down a final tot of rum before evaporating into the murk of Whitechapel for an assignation with a madman’s blade. A lot of effort and money has gone into the creation of such an illusion. Though this building on the corner of Brushfield Street is several hundred years old, it has only been a hostelry for a few years. When the Ripper was doing his bloody business, the premises was a print works. Its only real connection to the world’s most famous serial killer comes in the form of the posters that were printed on the presses during the panic which followed the third of the Ripper’s murders, when rich and well-meaning women began a campaign to provide greater comfort and safety for the unfortunates of the hellish neighbourhood where the murderer seemed able to strike with impunity. One such poster hangs above the fireplace in the main bar. It is the first thing that tourists see when they push open the creaking double doors and gaze at the shabby elegance of the Jolly Bonnet – Whitechapel’s premier Victorian gin bar.

  ‘Homework?’ asks Molly. ‘Hot chocolate on the way?’

  ‘Julien is doing it,’ replies Hilda. ‘He said he didn’t mind.’

  ‘He’s sucking up,’ scowls Molly. ‘An hour late this morning. We were supposed to clean the lines and do a tasting for the new puddings. And he was still in the same shirt as yesterday.’

  ‘I like Julien,’ shrugs Hilda. ‘He’s funny.’

  ‘He’s not funny,’ says Molly, then concedes that perhaps she is being harsh. She likes her junior barman. He’s twenty-three, Croatian and is tattooed from his ankles to his neck. He has a moustache waxed into tips and looks splendid in his braces, bow tie and button-down shirt.

  ‘You used to give me a kiss when you got in,’ says Molly. ‘It was the best bit of my day. Too cool now, are you?’

  Hilda rolls her eyes but smiles as she rises from her chair. She rounds the table and gives her mum a cuddle, pressing their cheeks together. Molly smells of Cool Water perfume; of cake, tea and hairspray. Hilda is all wet clothing and outdoors.

  ‘Extra marshmallows,’ says Julien, arriving soundlessly from the main bar and placing a large, copper-coloured mug on the table. It contains steaming hot chocolate and seems to have been topped with most of the pick’n’mix in London.

  ‘I haven’t forgiven you,’ says Molly, giving him a harsh look. Julien mimes slapping his wrist. Molly, despite herself, sticks out her tongue.

  ‘Your friends are coming through,’ says Julien. ‘Lottie. Sheamus. The little fat one.’

  ‘That’s mean,’ says Hilda.

  ‘Christine’s not fat,’ says Molly, waving her hand. ‘She’s got a gland thing. It makes her puffy.’

  Hilda is considering her response when the staff from the pathology lab at the hospital troop into the snug. Lottie is leading. She is a small, curvy woman with olive skin and bright purple hair. She is wearing a long black leather jacket over a tight black hoodie – unzipped to show off the cleavage that is responsible for many of her thousands of followers on social media. Her chest is tattooed with an anatomically perfect sketch of the human heart and lungs. She is a pathologist by day and YouTube darling by night. She is also thoroughly filthy, a part-time burlesque dancer, and Molly’s best friend.

  ‘Wetter than a herring’s nostril out there,’ says Lottie, shaking her hair, rubbing Hilda’s head, pulling up a chair from the fireplace and taking a swig of her Gin Fizz in one fluid gesture. ‘I’ve been gagging for this …’

  Molly inclines her head to accept Lottie’s kiss on her cheek. She looks up as the other morticians make themselves comfortable. She stands and directs the peculiar-looking gentleman into her vacant seat. His name is Sheamus. He is all skin, bones and ill-fitting clothes. Christine pulls up the other chair. She is drinking Baileys and eating crisps. Shorter than Hilda, she has large, slightly wonky eyes and doesn’t say a lot.

  ‘The Gargoyle is asking about the scarificator again,’ says Lottie, sitting down and finishing her drink in one
slug. She puts the empty glass on top of her head. ‘You sell it to that abomination of a human being and I’ll stab you through the eye.’

  Molly sighs. The Jolly Bonnet has become a must-see destination for anybody with an interest in the murky world of morbid anatomy. Lottie has helped her friend source an enviable supply of specimen jars, death art and all manner of Victorian medical equipment. The bar is a paradise for women who wear black eye make-up and who used to draw skulls on their pencil cases at school. It is also popular with the die-hards, the fanatics who will travel thousands of miles to bid for eighteenth-century scalpels that were used to disembowel some notable asylum inmate in some experiment or another. Without really trying, Molly has amassed some decent exhibits and sometimes it is all she can do to stop some of the more rabid collectors from running off with her pickled spleens.

  ‘I’ll go be polite,’ says Molly. She turns to Hilda. ‘You’ve got an hour for homework and hot chocolate. If Auntie Lottie happens to do some of it for you then I’m not going to ask too many questions, okay? But there’s no Believerz if it’s not done and I know you want to see Meda. How’s all that going anyway?’

  Hilda coughs, theatrically. ‘Sveiki. Esu Hilda, nors aš kartais norèčiau buvo vadinamas kažkas. Sveiki atvykę į Jolly Bonnet. Aš tikiuosi, kad jūs neprieštaraujate mano Muma yra taip keista.’

  ‘Impressive,’ says Lottie. ‘I can ask for a threesome in Danish if that’s any help.’

  Hilda joins in the laughter and Molly hopes to goodness that she is only pretending to understand. Leaving the cosiness of the Polly Nicholls behind her, Molly makes her way down the dark, lamp-lit corridor to the front bar. There’s a decent crowd in tonight. Half a dozen men in nice shirts and loosened ties, drinking pints of real ale and playing with their mobile phones. A man and a woman, sitting in the window, arguing about something unfathomable as they share a triple burger, taking their bites in turn. A French girl, drinking white wine and typing ideas into her laptop. The old boy, hand over his face like he’s got the worst migraine in the world. And him. The collector. The one Lottie calls the Gargoyle. Back for more.

  ‘Your Grace,’ says Brendan, effusively. He has thinning hair swept back into a nasty little rat tail and there is a mottling of grog-blossoms on his nose and jowls.

  ‘Brendan,’ says Molly. She allows him to bow and press his damp lips to the back of her hand. She manages a smile, which turns to horror as she sees what he has brought with him. ‘Oh, you dickhead, there’s eyeballs on the bar!’

  A wooden case sits on the bar in front of Brendan in the sort of position most people would deposit a laptop. Inside are fifty glass eyes, carefully arranged into beautifully crafted wooden squares. They are a variety of different colours and are staring out in all directions.

  ‘Are they not beautiful? They arrived today.’ He looks at the eyeballs as if they are children and they stare back without expression. He preens a little. ‘Nine hundred and eighty pounds at auction, but it was worth it to defeat Autolycus. Manufactured by the wonderful Lemoine Flizet Peigné in Paris a century ago. Only one tiny chip to one specimen. I find myself utterly transfixed. I have not yet utilized them for their original purpose as prostheses, but perhaps if my lady commands …’

  Molly pulls a face, exasperated. Brendan is constantly bringing in his specimens and regaling the staff about his ongoing feud with a rival collector by the name of Autolycus. Molly has got very good at saying ‘that’s awful’ while not really listening.

  ‘You are so frigging weird, Brendan. What do you do with all this stuff? I mean, I used to collect teapots. I like oil lamps. All this medical stuff – it’s a bit creepy.’

  A whiff of strong perfume and damp clothes trickles into Molly’s nostrils and a moment later she feels Lottie take her in a hug from behind. She peers over her shoulder and looks at the eyeballs. ‘Nice,’ she says, begrudgingly. ‘Parisian?’

  ‘Of course!’ says Brendan, delighted.

  ‘And they’ll be going to a museum, will they?’ she asks, sounding disapproving. ‘You’ll allow people to enjoy the craftsmanship …’

  ‘I am a private collector. It is a long and noble calling. They will fit in at my private museum. My own Aladdin’s cave. My palace of oddments and peculiarities …’

  Molly rubs her forehead. She could do without this. ‘You were trying to buy it,’ she says, flatly. ‘Again. You were offering money to Julien to turn a blind eye while you took it. And don’t say you weren’t. Or show me your blind eyes. Now, are we going to have to go through this again?’

  Brendan has his heart set on a scarificator. It is a small device and currently shielded from dirty fingers within a tall glass case behind the bar. The Mallam scarificator allowed for vaccination against smallpox. All its user had to do was dip its four lethal-looking blades into the pustules of a person already infected, then flip the lever to stab the blades into their arm. It was one of the more brutally ingenious devices of the eighteenth century and looks to Molly about as appealing a concept as a French kiss with a shark.

  ‘I am in funds, Duchess,’ says Brendan. He is holding a brandy glass containing enough Courvoisier to house a goldfish. ‘I know you to be a fine specimen of womanhood. You are a collector, as am I. You strike a hard bargain and I applaud you for it. But if I do not have the item then I declare I shall be of miserable cheer for the rest of my days. I implore you, name your price.’

  ‘Brendan, I’m tired, mate. I haven’t got the energy tonight. Get your balls off the bar.’

  ‘Wednesday, yes?’ says Brendan, unexpectedly. ‘Dance class. You and the enfanta. I would not dream of standing in your way. But please, I implore you – give me an indication that all is not lost.’

  ‘Brendan, there are only so many ways I can say the same thing,’ she says. ‘The exhibits are on loan. If I sell one, or lose one, it will go to court. I only work here. I own nothing. And if you tell me I own your heart, I promise, I will glass you.’

  Molly looks up as the man at the end of the bar gives a polite laugh. She hadn’t noticed him before. He’s not a big guy but he has broad shoulders and his big arms strain at the fabric of his brown leather coat. His hair has been trimmed down close to his skull and there is a map of scars upon his left temple. His stubble is a day away from becoming a dark beard and he is looking at Molly with eyes that suggest he is reading an invisible inscription on the inside of her skull.

  ‘My dear, I would implore you to name your price,’ says Brendan. ‘I will make the cheque out to whomsoever you decree. Or perhaps I might pay cash …’

  ‘Seriously, Brendan, have your drink and toddle off home. I’m not in the mood. Could I be clearer? Hilda gets this concept and she’s only fucking ten!’

  Brendan starts laughing, showing badly capped teeth. He seems about to return with a counter-offer when the mobile phone tucked into Molly’s bra starts to vibrate. It’s her alarm, telling her she needs to get her daughter home and changed for Believerz and try to feed her something halfway nutritious along the way.

  ‘Mum, are we going? I really want to see Meda. And you know how Sylvie can be when we’re late. Can we run?’

  ‘We’re going, we’re going,’ Molly mutters, looking through the darkened window at the diagonal rain beyond the glass. ‘Can you keep up the pace?’

  Hilda grins. ‘Ready …’

  ‘Steady …’ says Molly.

  They both cheat, and set off early.

  Several pairs of eyes turn and watch them go.

  An overview of Medical Cannibalism and the Benefits of Vampirism

  An article by Goldsmith’s research fellow Eve Burrell

  February 11, 2013

  For many centuries, it was not uncommon for people in the western world to consume flesh and drink blood. These people were not vampires or cannibals in the sense that we would know them today. They were people seeking strength, sustenance and an extended life. Gruesome as it might seem today, the drinking of human blood, the smearing of
human fat, and the distilling of human bones into a much-prized spirit, were done with the intention of healing.

  Today, lifeless corpses are viewed as something unpleasant. They are something that inspires fear and revulsion. But for a long time the corpse was a veritable supermarket of ingredients for healing potions. The scientists of the time were somewhat literal in their prescriptions. Powdered blood was said to help bleeding; human fat helped bruising; ground-up skulls helped with migraines or dizziness. What’s more, physicians and patients believed that ingredients obtained from corpses were most potent if they had died violently. The physician Paracelsus wrote that after a man was hanged, his ‘vital spirits’ would ‘burst forth to the circumference of the bone’. It was thought that when death came suddenly, a person’s spirit could stay trapped for at least enough time that the living might benefit from its power.

  Epileptics of ancient Rome drank the blood of slain gladiators and the practice gained renewed favour as a health tonic during the Renaissance. The blood was typically harvested from the freshly dead, but could also be taken from the living. Marsilio Ficino, a highly respected fifteenth-century Italian scholar and priest, said that elderly people hoping to regain the spring in their step should ‘suck the blood of an adolescent’. By the 1650s there was a general belief that drinking fresh, hot blood from the recently deceased would cure epilepsy, as well as help with consumption. Meanwhile, dried and powdered blood was recommended for nosebleeds or sprinkled on wounds to stop bleeding.

  Skulls were another commodity prized for their healing powers. The seventeenth-century English physician John French offered at least two recipes for distilling skulls into spirits, one of which he said not only ‘helps the falling sickness, gout, dropsy’ and stomach troubles but also was ‘a kind of panacea’. (The other recipe was better for ‘epilepsy, convulsions, all fevers putrid or pestilential, passions of the heart’.) English King Charles II, an enthusiastic chemist with his own laboratory, is reported to have paid six thousand pounds to a professor at a local college for a recipe for distilled powdered skull, which thereafter became known as ‘the King’s drops’. The remedy was popular for a variety of complaints and seems to have often been mixed into wine or chocolate …