Tony Pollard - The Minutes of the Lazarus Club

I am very grateful to the executors of Dr George Phillips for granting permission to fictionalize his journals. The staff of the I. K. Brunel archive at Bristol University were equally helpful during my visits to their incredibly rich resource. Many thanks also to Maria Heffernan of the Instituto de Taquari in Asuncion, Paraguay, for doing so much to facilitate access to the recently rediscovered minutes of the Lazarus Club. While every effort has been made to portray the events documented in these various sources accurately, any errors in fact or interpretation are the responsibility of the author alone.

For the first time in months, I woke feeling refreshed and ready to face the day. To my everlasting relief the dream was never again to haunt my sleep, though at times I did find myself on the deck of the great ship, taking the sea air and stretching my legs on its expansive promenade.

I should perhaps regard this as a happy ending to my story, but not everything worked out the way I would have liked. It would be nice to say that my love for Florence blossomed but, alas, I knew all along that this could never be. Though I do not doubt that she loved me also, and perhaps loves me still, her devotion to her work was marriage enough for her. A year on from its opening, her nursing school is a great success and she is mother in kind to all of her students.

I did see Tarlow once more. The dog was indeed grateful for his bone and he sought me out to thank me for the tip-off about Catchpole and to tell me hed been made a chief inspector for his part in the affair. After our brief conversation I remained none the wiser as to how much he really knew about my role in the River Angels case, though it was undoubtedly more than the newspaper which had coined the term when the story of the bodies in the Thames finally broke. Of course he took the credit for solving that one as well, the sly dog.

My own career did not weather the storm so well. There was no question of my return to the hospital, not after all that had happened. Perhaps if I had thrown myself on Brodies mercy he would have accepted me, like the prodigal son, back into the fold, but the place carried with it too many associations, too many ghosts.

And so I returned to my fathers house and took over his practice, staying long enough to deliver my sisters child, whom she named after me. But the pace of life was far too slow and I soon found myself yearning for pastures new. At first I tried to ignore these urges but in time they overwhelmed me.

To Lilys great distress, but eventually with her blessing, I sailed for this country aboard the Great Eastern, leaving Liverpool docks and arriving in New York ten days later. There were times during the crossing when I would catch a glimpse of Ockham, taking a break from the engine room, where his role as a ships engineer kept him voluntarily confined for much of the time. On these rare occasions words for some reason seemed superfluous and so we would simply exchange a nod before going about our business.

Not much more than a year has passed since my arrival in the New World and my skills have ensured that making a living has not been a problem. Quickly tiring of a metropolis which perhaps reminded me too much of London, I took to travel, dispensing my services in small towns which at times made my native village seem like a city in comparison.

Then, not long after, the war that Catchpole had predicted broke out and turned the nation against itself. Soldiers dressed in grey fought those dressed in blue; neighbours called one another enemy and the storm of battle swallowed all in its path.

Although Catchpole wasnt around to see it, having committed suicide just days before his trial, the North did impose a naval blockade on Confederate ports and, despite the stubborn efforts of blockade runners, some of them sailing out of Liverpool, the export of cotton has all but ceased. Whether Russells torpedo, powered by Brunels device, would have made any difference is a matter of speculation and perhaps best left to future historians, but what is certain is that there will be a lot more suffering before this war is over.

For a time I tried to avoid the war, but I am my fathers son and so here I am, dressed in the uniform of a Union army surgeon, operating on yet another poor victim of the dreadful slaughter which yesterday took place on the banks of the Bull Run, near a small railway junction called Manassas. The battle went badly for us and the army, along with those civilians foolish enough to think battle a spectator sport, were chased most of the way back to Washington, DC.

But this is not just anyone lying before me, with a bullet lodged in his side. His is a face I know. His fellows-in-arms tell me that Nate had been among the first to enlist in their rifle company, his thirst for adventure entirely unquenched by his experiences back in England.

Removal of the ball should not be too much of a problem, but whether he survives the infection, which takes away so many of these young men, and makes it to the end of the week, will be entirely in the lap of the gods. Taking a respite from my labours, I take up a week-old copy of the New York Times, which in the absence of its longer-established namesake I have taken to reading whenever I can get hold of it. Among the war news, which bears little resemblance to the terrible reality, another story has caught my eye: Body of woman pulled from Hudson. I probably wouldnt give it a second thought were it not for the next line: Organs removed police hunt lunatic.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles to the east, Brunels great ship plies her course, straight and true, with all her engines pounding. I know I can feel them in my heart.

Hard used, the cadaver was reduced to little more than a tattered shell and would last no longer than one more dissection. Apart from the brain, which I would remove tomorrow, all of the internal organs had been decanted into buckets sitting on the sawdust-covered floor. In one of them was the heart, along with the liver, kidneys and lungs, while in the other coiled entrails glistened like so many freshly caught fish.

William fetched a bowl of warm water and took away the buckets while I washed the gore from my hands. The boisterous press of students had departed with its usual rapidity, and believing myself to be alone, it came as a surprise to hear a bench creak as a weight shifted upon it. I looked up to catch sight of someone moving in the gloom of the gallery. Reaching the aisle, he walked down the steps towards me a short man, shoulders hunched beneath a head perhaps too heavy for them to bear.

He stepped into the winter sunlight shafting down through the skylight. His face was round and pale, with eyes set back in caves of tired flesh. Whiskered jowls sank below the rim of his collar and only the well-defined lines of his lips, which were clamped tightly around the stub of a cigar, suggested good looks only recently worn away. His clothes were well cut but crumpled, as though he had given up taking care of his appearance. He stopped beside the operating table and looked for some moments into the yellow face of the cadaver. This man was clearly no medical student, but nonetheless there was something familiar about him.

It comes to us all, I said, wiping my instruments clean before packing them away. The stranger continued to study the cadaver, his eyes travelling down the length of the gaping torso.

Death perhaps, but surely not this, he said, without removing the cigar from his mouth nor his gaze from the corpse.