The Specimen (28 page)

Mr Tench became solemn. “You must feel liberated, Miss Jaspur, my dear. Liberated. Your Mister Blackwater, and believe me he is of the blackest, foulest, murkiest water what ever flowed
through this city. Blackwater, he thinks one thing of my paying for you, and well I know it to be another. You have your freedom, my dear. I will transform you. I will release you into a better
life with my razor and my scissors.”

“I see structures. I have studied the human skeleton in great detail both living and defleshed, and bleached in the anatomist’s cauldron. And I see beauty hid
behind your mask. If you will allow me, I will reveal you for the hidden beauty that you really are, my dear, my lovely, my precious, precious jewel.”

I heard Mr Tench move around lighting more candles, refreshing those that had almost burned to nothing. He brought out another lamp. Gradually, the room was filled with an amber hue; I could
sense shadows slinking back to the furthest recesses of the shop, and I opened my eyes.

Mr Tench smiled at me in the mirror. His sleeves were folded back meticulously to his elbows. He wrapped my face deftly, gently, without saying a word. He then took up a razor, its handle made
from a deep chestnut turtleshell, inlaid with delicate silverwork. He grasped the bottom end of the leather strop, as though he was restraining the beast the hide had come from and slowly began to
whisk the opened blade up and down the length of the hide. He laid the honed razor carefully down on a clean cotton cloth on the work shelf and walked the few paces across the room to the
pot-bellied stove. He moved softly across the room, carrying out his preparations as though he was performing a religious rite. I felt myself being tipped back in the chair and discerned his breath
again close by.

He worked quickly, finding the contours of my face, mapping the structure of my jaw through the round handle of the brush. Mr Tench curved around me, his hands splayed, making my skin taut as
the blade moved over, guided by his instinct. In a very few minutes he had finished with my jaw and neck and was engaged in marking a new hairline on my forehead. He separated my eyebrows with one
miniscule flick above the bridge of my nose. He rubbed something sweet-smelling into my skin.

“Almond oil,” he told me. “With something of my own. A little secret that I have been working on for just this moment.” He caressed my newly exposed face, my never seen
cheeks, my until now hidden chin. He pulled himself closer to me pushing his belly against the top of my head so that I could feel the heat of his blood through my hair. I heard him sigh again and
again. He moved around me fondling my face as though it was the first and last thing he might ever behold in this life. His hands on my face spoke of an aching desire I could not have imagined. I
thought that he was done. But he was not finished in his work yet. He spoke to me, his voice cracked and strained. “I must let you up, my dear,” he breathed in a tiny breath and held it
in his chest as if he felt a great pain. I was confronted by a strange girl in the mirror; a girl with pink cheeks, glistening with the sweet almond oil. Her eyes were wide and I watched them fill
with tears. Quickly, Mr Tench wiped my eyes with a pocket handkerchief.

“Now, my dear, what say you to this? You have seen my work. You have seen how I have the ability to transform you into a wondrous creature. Let me do more. Allow me to continue. And if
your modesty is likely to be offended I will practise my art on the rest of your body with a blindfold. You may even tie it to my eyes yourself.”

I felt my skin ripple in horrific anticipation and yet I knew that I would not be able to leave this man until I had allowed him to do what he proposed. I must expose my naked body in all the
truth of its condition in order to satisfy this man’s unfathomable desire to swipe his blade over my belly and breasts, over my arms and legs, even, as I was to discover that night, down to
the hairs which grow on my toes. He was not a man to be dissuaded once he had set his mind on something. I cowered at the thought of this man thinking of me in such a way; not for a fleeting
moment, something which might spark before the eyes and then be dismissed out of hand, but each day. Planning, mixing his special oil. Well, Isobel, what would you have done, if you had been so
unlucky as to have been me?

There was nothing I could say.

As I lay there, Isobel, I found myself slipping into a trance, being conscious only of the sensation of those hands moving the blade across my skin; the quick, sure rub of his thumb where the
hair had been removed and then moving on again, working around my arm in a spiral pattern from my shoulder down to my wrist. He wiped my arm slowly when he was satisfied that he had been thorough,
and then embarked upon the right arm, after covering my left side. At this moment, Mr Tench spoke to me. “Are you well enough, my dear? Do you feel the air too cold? I must keep you warm, you
see, for, if not, your skin will raise bumps like a plucked goose and I will not be able to continue.”

In fact, I was roasting under the cape and the towelling. It was one of those nights when the air never finds its coolness, and there is no relief from the smothering atmosphere. I felt trickles
of perspiration running down my sides, and I knew that my underarms were beginning to let loose the odour of stale sweat. But he was already employed in removing all the hair from under my
arms.

You are blonde, Isobel. I wonder if you can sympathise at all with the story I am relating to you. You perhaps have used a weak solution of arsenic to make your underarms silky
smooth, ready for your evening gown. Perhaps you have even used it on your long, slender legs. There is nothing I shall not tell you Isobel.

Your husband once told me that he liked the sensation of going from one extreme to the other. So, I assumed, as I still do, that your own body is as naturally hairless as mine is naturally
covered in (the words of your husband) “a thick luxurious mane, a sumptuous, luscious, glossy fur”. He would come to me after those tortured nights with you, in your enormous, bug-free
bedroom. He would leave your house while your servants were sleeping, perhaps one boy still awake, polishing your husband’s riding boots. He would carry his shoes and his clothes down the
hall and go into his room to change into different clothes.

Afterwards, he would wash himself carefully with his own soap and his own washing cloth, which he kept in his doctor’s bag along with the morphine and the smelling salts and the callipers
and the glass suction cups and the jars of leeches and the speculum and the tweezers and all the other instruments of his trade which he was to abandon in favour of rocks and fossilised forms. But
that was to come.

When Mr Tench came to that place between my legs he said, “This is a place where a woman should have hair aplenty. This is the place I vow I shall never ever touch with
my razor.” And he kept his promise. Do I shock you with these words, Isobel?

He smothered my entire body in the almond oil, the scent of which was overpowering now. Its cumulative effect and the lack of sleep made me very tired. I had not dared to fall asleep before, but
now all I wanted to do was curl up and let myself fall into a deep and intense slumber. I felt I could sleep for a whole day and not feel refreshed on waking. But the man had to be satisfied. He
worked his hands over my shaven body. His hands moved over the lubricated surface of my body in swirls and he began to knead my flesh like you must if you have suffered a cramp. His hands pummelled
my body; my muscles at first felt soothed by it, but as his hands continued their journey over my newly revealed form it became more and more uncomfortable. And as the discomfort turned into
something more sinister, Abalone Wilson Tench began to groan again. He squeezed and kneaded my skin and flesh as though it was dough on a baker’s table. He began to push his weight into my
shoulders. He lingered so long over this that he needed to apply more of the almond oil to my skin. The groans became longer and longer, more noisy and abandoned. The room was awash with his feral
grunting and I thought that I would faint from the pain, which had turned into such an agony that I barely knew that I was still alive. He began to slap my body; lightly at first, and only with
each new application of oil. I felt the palms of his hands burning into my unprotected skin and still I kept silent.

He stopped abruptly.

My body was sore. My muscles protested as I slowly moved away from Mr Tench. With my back to him, began to dress myself, pulling on my stockings and my underclothes which
clung to my bare skin. As I dressed, I listened to the room. I could not tell where he had gone. I had not been aware of his leaving the room. I did not try to look about me. I kept my eyes from
straying into the mirror, and attended to the rest of my clothes. The fabric felt unfamiliar on my skin. As the daylight began to filter through the blinds, and the noises of the streets outside
became more lively, what had happened to me seemed to become unreal. I allowed myself to look again in the mirror to fix up my bonnet, which was limp and bedraggled. I avoided my gaze,
concentrating only on the business of hiding my unruly hair under the bonnet as well as I could. There was a hairbrush, silver-backed, right by my hand, but I did not like to pick it up. I did not
want to touch anything connected with Abalone Wilson Tench. Whilst I looked in the mirror and tied the ribbons under my chin, my hands knowing the form but being surprised, all the time I did this
I let my eyes dart about the room behind me. As my body became used to its new state, in all its hurt, in all its injury and its shaven state I noticed that I was hungry again. I looked at the door
leading to the street. People’s shadows flitted past under the small gap where the blind on the door did not reach. I studied the door for some minutes, remaining with my back to the rest of
the room, unable yet to discover by listening whether I had been abandoned, even if only temporarily. My heart beat hard. I had only to walk three paces and turn the key, open the door and step out
onto the street. I hesitated, my head in a frenzy of indecision before I felt my hands fumbling with the key, the door swinging open and my feet on the pavement outside. I pulled the door shut,
leaving Abalone Wilson Tench inside, neither looking to see if he watched me depart nor waiting to wonder whether he might call me back or try to haul me back into his shop.

The sunlight was bright in my eyes. The stench of the night still hung on the air but it was as a sweet reality to me, then. I did not care to smell anything properly perfumed. I started
walking, trying to find my way by keeping the sun on my right. My slippers had worn right through before I found a cab.

And so, as I sat in my room, scrubbing my skin which plagued me with the discomfort of the re-emergence of my hair, I thought of myself as a ghost who was no ghost. And yet
unremarkable, Isobel. You will know this feeling. You, too, have harboured the desire to stare and take in your fill. I spent a long night contemplating my future, and with the first light on a
chilly September morning I knew that I would have to turn to Leicester Square, not as a sightseer, but to investigate the place as a means to my survival. So, Isobel, I come to the question to
which I already have the answer; and it is not so out of the ordinary that one might be shocked. Yes, if I were to ask you, you would admit, perhaps after a little hesitation that you believe that
the spirits of the deceased can manifest themselves in this world. I have not been entirely honest with you.

How did you feel when you faced the mirror image of your husband’s newest mistress? You went there to Carrick House in search of your dead children, and you sat in the parlour, in its
darkened state, waiting for Euphemia Carrick to drift into her trance. What were you hoping to see? What were you thinking? I could have told you that Euphemia was nothing like her sister. That you
would not find Gwen. For what is the mirror image but the opposite of that object which you seek?

How can I know these things, if I was never there to see them myself? How can I know that Euphemia Carrick spoke in many tongues—incomprehensible gibberish which the newly bereaved allowed
themselves to believe were the tangled thoughts and messages of those struggling to contact them from the other side.

And you fainted, Isobel. The spell worked on you. No bells tinkling, no table rattling, no pointer on a board twirling magnetically, no glass tumbler of water tipping over. No gifts dropped into
your lap from the other side. Only Euphemia, Gwen’s sister, babbling and burbling like the babies you once held in your arms whose lives were the briefest of flames, their sickliness only the
fault of your loneliness.

You were never your husband’s wife, Isobel, and neither I. The impossibility of perfection festers and cripples his mind. You hoped in the end that your presence at the table would be
enough to stay the cycle of disaster. But, faced with those sisters, your efforts came adrift. Let a different wind fill your sails, Isobel, as you make that final journey. Not an abrupt end for
you, Isobel. I cannot imagine that you would follow the cowardice of your
closest
friend, Dr Charles Jeffreye.

Forgive me, Isobel, for I get ahead of myself.

Should I go straight to the part now where I met your husband? Shall I describe what he did, or would that be too distasteful?

He came to Saville House one evening. The place was thick with tobacco smoke. People were leaving. It had been my first week there as the Mysterious Lady, though there was not much mysterious
about me it seemed—other than whether or not it was me singing and whether or not I was a lady at all.

That night, I would not consent to see him. He gave me his card, or rather he sent it up to me, telling me that he was an admirer. I did not want to see another admirer. I fancied there was
another Abalone Wilson Tench down at the grand entrance to that Den of Iniquity. No. That night, I took the advice of a little man called Fergus Harris. I think the name may be familiar to you, if
you are the sort of woman who keeps track of her servants’ names. Certainly, you will have remarked him; his size set him apart. I liked him instantly. He was direct; the only person in that
stinking, louse-infested room who had come to listen to my singing. My voice captivated him, and he was persistent. I did not think that he would prove very troublesome if I invited him to dine
with me—people like us, we cannot stand on ceremony, we must behave all as equals and not simper behind Japanese silk fans and parasols. I do not believe in a second sense; I never have
thought that one human being may read the mind or thoughts of another, but there was something uncanny about that evening. A prickle shivered down my neck when I spoke to Mr Fergus Harris. It was I
for once who felt that I must not let another out of my sight—and it was invigorating. I was exhausted after my long performance, but a new energy came over me.