Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion (12 page)

“A diplomatic post? In Rhodesia?”

“Of course.” He was pacing back and forth in front of her. Her neck was still stiff, so he passed in and out of her vision like an image on a zoetrope, almost flickering as he flung his hands about in agitation. “Though how the hell I’m going to ship you out by Zeppelin… You might have to go by sea, and overland from the Cape. If anyone will be willing to carry…”

“…A freak like me? You can say it, Howard. Besides, wouldn’t I get in the way, in Rhodesia?”

“I’d make sure you didn’t, believe me.” That was how it had always worked. She played the dutiful wife when he needed to look good, and stayed out of the way when he decided to play bad.

“I’d hate to interrupt you and your pox-ridden molly, after all…”

“What the hell is wrong with you, Angela? Did you hit your head on the way down? Of course.” His fingers flicked off her skull-plate, a soft ting that sent a reverberation of anger through her body, “Brain damage. Poor dear doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“I want a divorce, Howard. I’m serious.”

“So am I. You’re not getting one.” He turned on his heel as he headed for the door, speaking in a louder voice for the benefit of the nurse who was bound to be listening. “My poor love, we’ll have one of those pneumatic lifts installed at home, to help you get about. We’ll have you back as soon as possible, and packing for Rhodesia before you know it!”

The pneumatic lift would cost a fortune, and to install it they would have to take out the servants’ staircase at the back of the house, to hoist Angela up and down like a hot meal in a dumb waiter. Howard decided publically that no expense would be spared for the benefit of his poor crippled wife, and privately that it wasn’t worth the bother as they would be off to Rhodesia as soon as his post came through. She was forced to lie in her ground-floor bedroom, once the drawing room, and listen at night to the procession of mollies going up and down the stairs, not bothering to conceal their amorous activities. In fact, she was sure Howard encouraged them to make as much noise as possible, to spite her.

So it was a surprise to her when he came to her one night, slipping under the sheets, shivering at the cold touch of metal against his skin. He fumbled around, grunting and swearing to himself, until eventually she had had enough and turned up the gas light with her smaller claw.

“Howard, what
are
you looking for?”

“I wanted to try it with an automaton, just to see what it was like.” He looked petulant, like a schoolboy caught in wrongdoing. He glared down at her. “Nothing! Smooth as a doll and just as useless!”

“You think I don’t know that! I wouldn’t allow it even if I was a whole woman!”

“You wouldn’t
allow
it?” He spat, froth bubbling on the parquet floor beside the bed.

“Go back to your mollies, Howard. Leave me alone.”

He got up, pulling the sheet around him to conceal his nakedness, his fading ardour. “You’ve changed, Angela. And not for the better.”

“I rose from the dead. As far as I’m aware that trick has only been pulled off once before. You want to be careful, Howard.”

He slammed the drawing room door behind him with a curse. Angela left the gas-light burning, just in case he came back for another go.

Howard was politeness itself at breakfast, pouring her a cup of tea and fetching her a straw to drink it through, to spare the china. He buttered her a slice of toast and she managed to eat half of it. He even oiled the stiff joints in her elbows, then took her arm and helped her to the front door.

“Where are we going?” Angela asked.

“I thought we’d take a walk.”

She stiffened. She hadn’t taken the air in public since that day; all her walking had been behind high garden walls, and although the neighbours knew that Mrs Porter was a cripple, they had not seen her struggling up the steps to the front door as she had been returned home in a steam-carriage in the dead of night. Now Howard wanted to take her outside, expose her to pedestrians and twitching curtains.

He was smiling now, infuriating. “I got my diplomatic papers yesterday, and this morning I had Travers book a Zeppelin seat for me, and passage on the
Great Western
for you. We leave for Rhodesia in three days; I thought you might like to say goodbye to the old neighbourhood. For old times’ sake.”

She could see the strain in his jaw, and she felt a pang of sympathy. She had loved him once, after all, and the change in her was hard for both of them. “For old times’ sake, then.”

She allowed him to drape a cape around her shoulders, for none of her walking-out coats fitted over the bulk of her new arms. The sweep of her dress concealed her legs, but not the awkward way they swung out when she walked, and a bonnet hid her skull plate. But no gloves could fit over the claws at the ends of her bronzed arms. All she could do was tuck them beneath the cape and hope that people wouldn’t look too closely.

Some hope. Her metal feet, fashioned and painted into the shape of boots, but still outsized and clumsy, clanged against the pavement as they walked. Howard had to walk in the gutter to avoid being tripped by the clumsy swing of her legs, coughing in the fumes of the steam-carriages as they whizzed past, and cursing the drivers who leaned out to shout abuse at him. By the time they reached the end of the road, a crowd had gathered, and curtains were not just twitching, but being blatantly and openly drawn back, all the way along the street.

Howard waved his cane at them, at the boys in their sailor suits and the girls in crinoline, and their parents who snatched them to their breasts, their mouths hanging open as the monster clumped her way down the road. “Get out of the way! Stop staring at her!” His shouting only brought more onlookers, ladies and gentlemen and their gawping staff, to their front doors to watch Angela’s sluggish progress.

“Howard, be quiet! Don’t make a fuss!” But he would not be quieted. With the rush of steam that emerged from her mouth as she spoke, a little girl screamed and dived beneath her mother’s apron.

“Why don’t you all come out and have a look?” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’ll charge a penny a time to tap the metal plate in my wife’s head! What, no takers?” He gripped her arm, wincing as he barked his shin on her brass leg. “Let’s go onto the bridge. It won’t be so crowded there.”

“The bridge?” She quailed inwardly. “Howard, I don’t think I can…”

“Why not? That’s where I’m going. I can leave you here to play the circus sideshow, or you can come with me.” His face turned ugly again, and it was a long walk back to the house. Angela’s muscles burned with the effort of moving her heavy limbs.

“Can’t we get a steam-cab?”

“Can you climb up into one without a hoist?” She said nothing. “Come on. We’re supposed to be having a pleasant walk in the sunshine. Don’t ruin it.”

The bridge was only a short walk from the Clifton house, down a narrow footpath between the houses, and across a wide avenue lined with beech saplings. Steam-cars whizzed up and down, steam hooting from the stove-pipes on their roofs, and Angela held up the traffic as she clanged her steady way across the road, and onto the bridge. It was empty, but as she stepped onto it Angela fancied it vibrated beneath her every step. The wind howling down the gorge snatched at her bonnet and whipped it from her head before her slow-moving claws could make a grab for it, and she uttered a little grating cry.

“There it goes!” Howard pointed and, when she didn’t look immediately, he grabbed her shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Look, you stupid cow!”

The bonnet, ribbons flying, whirled along the gorge and dashed against the rocks on the Downs side of the river. The swirling speck was quickly lost to sight, and Angela’s head was cold without it. Howard had his arm around her shoulders, steering her into the barrier at the side of the bridge.

“That could have been your head. I wish it had been. What sort of woman can’t even kill herself properly?”

“Leave me alone, Howard!” But now there was metal pressed against her side that hadn’t been there before. The cold, circular barrel of a Cutler-Delnaja service revolver, and Howard’s finger tight against the trigger.

“Howard, what are you doing?”

“Threaten me with divorce, will you? Do you have any idea how much it costs to ship a cripple to Rhodesia? You see,” he jammed the barrel tighter against her ribs, lifting his voice against the rising wind, “I did check the prices. I’m not wholly inconsiderate. But I got to thinking, a woman who has tried suicide once, and ended up crippled, what does she have to live for? Even with a devoted husband. People are still going to mock her everywhere she goes. You saw that today, and that little display cost me far less than a boat to the Cape.”

“You — you set that up?”

“I set
you
up, Angela. You’ll fall. With a bit of luck your freakish legs will drag you down and you’ll drown, with my service revolver falling after you, for insurance. If they find you, they’ll find the bullet hole, and they’ll find the gun. How desperate you must have been, to shoot yourself on the Suspension Bridge, and how desperate I was that I couldn’t stop you! Of course, if the Peelers do have any questions, in four days’ time I’ll be in Rhodesia, and far beyond their jurisdiction.”

“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you. You —” she floundered for something damning enough to say to him, “You
weasel!
”

Howard roared with laughter at this. “I’ve been called worse, but never by you, my dear!” He shifted his grip on the gun, pressing it to her left temple. “Goodbye Angela.”

She flung up her arm to throw him off, moving with a speed and strength she didn’t realise she possessed, great left claw flashing in the sunlight that sliced through the suspension cables of the bridge.

Howard screamed as the gun flew out of his hand and clattered to the deck of the bridge. No, not out of his hand. Angela stared in horror at his fingers, still twitching around the trigger, the butt of the gun nestled in his bloodied, truncated palm.

“You bitch! You bloody automaton bitch! What have you done to me?” Howard lunged towards her, waving the stump of his wrist. As his remaining hand fumbled for her throat, she pushed him back with both arms, a shove so powerful it lifted him from his feet. He fell back, arms windmilling uselessly, and caught her by the metal wrist as his feet scrabbled for purchase over empty air. She felt the tug, through metal and living flesh, dragging her forward. Forward and down.

Locked in a struggling tangle of flesh and brass, no buoyant skirt to save them now, Angela and Howard plunged towards the bottom of the gorge.