*
Henry White had got into a huge fight that night in the Princess Alice. One of the men got stabbed in the thigh with some glass, another was beaten about the head with a chair leg, and Henry had his head cut open when a glass was smashed on it. They were all brought into the emergency room at the London, where Aisling and I were on shift.
I was wary as soon as I laid eyes on him. He had that hostile rage hopeless men at the bottom always have simmering inside them. He was loud, cursed endlessly and kept demanding attention, even though the minute he got it, he was abusive. His face was a reddened bloated mess, with blood running into his eyes and teeth. The duty manager had told him once already that if he didn’t stop his troublemaking, he’d be thrown out and left to bleed to death on the pavement.
Aisling knew how to talk to men like Henry White. She could withstand their vulgar language and intrusive hands, could flash a smile and with a quick tongue disarm them, charm them into docility, however rough. I, however, was always distant and aloof, and my priggish reserve antagonised brutes like him. I was more useful standing back and assessing the situation. Aisling didn’t mind being more involved, and she was a better nurse, cooing at the trickiest, dirtiest men that I cringed from. She was undoubtedly the braver one. I always feared one of them might lash out and hurt me, especially when the room was drenched in blood, noisy with patients writhing in discomfort and screaming obscenities, and frantic with doctors and dressers shouting instructions at each other. Patients could be unpredictable and, like any animal, when in pain, they tended to bite. Aisling said I could see danger where there was none. That makes me laugh now, because Thomas said the same, and I wanted to believe them both. But it turned out I was right.
We were told to tidy him up quickly and get rid of him, because the duty manager didn’t like the look of him and wanted him out. When I tried to examine him, he waved his filthy hands around and knocked my cap off. He pushed a dresser away more than once, until he was threatened again, after which he sat mumbling to himself with blood streaming down his forehead and into his eyes.
Aisling could see I was afraid of him. ‘Why don’t you stay the other side,’ she whispered to me.
White managed to remain quiet for a minute or so, then began to rant that his wife was a ‘bitch’, that he’d been to the Americas and was sorry he’d come back to this shithole of a country now it was full of ‘coons, cunts and peelers’. He griped about someone having stolen his money, which was what had caused the fight, but it was safe to assume he had drunk it. It seemed a pity to waste good bandages and carbolic on him.
I had dipped the utensils in the carbolic and put them on the tray when White smacked it upwards on purpose, sending the instruments clattering to the floor and bouncing around the emergency room. The two dressers rushed to gather them up while I retreated to a corner.
Aisling, meanwhile, tried to subdue White and make him lie back. She put an arm across his chest. ‘Hey now, they’ll kick you out if you keep that up,’ she told him.
His head wobbled on his neck and he glared at her in a vile rage. His ugly, unfocused eyes tried to make sense of her defenceless face and then I saw a silver streak flash and rip Aisling on the underside of her chin. The metal sliced into her like a nail through paper.
She didn’t scream – it was more of a gasp and a yelp at the shock of it. She didn’t understand what had happened and she looked to me in disbelief as she stood there fumbling at her neck with her fingers. The look on her face, her hands at the wound, the blood gushing out… It was me who screamed at the desperate sight of her.
The dressers dragged Henry White to the floor and sat on him. Aisling collapsed to the ground, like a delicate marionette with its strings cut. On my knees, I tried to examine her neck with my hands, but she was bleeding so fast. The duty manager ran in, followed by doctors, porters, nurses. The other nurses pulled me away, and the last thing I saw was her body slumped against the wall, her head at an awkward angle, her uniform soaked in blood and a lake of it creeping across the floor. Her eyes were open and her arms were by her side, palms up. We can’t leave her head like that, I thought. Her neck will hurt.
*
The Princess Alice was wrapped around a corner and had windows on all sides. I inched my way along Commercial Street until I found a spot outside a window at the far end through which I could see the bar. Though the pub was busy, I had a clear view of Thomas as he weaved his way to a table in the corner. He sat down with a man who had his back to the window. The man wore a black billycock and the sight of it made my hair stand on end. They both got up, walked to the bar, leaned up against it and faced each other. I had yet to see the other man properly, but I already knew who it was.
It was Dr Shivershev, the man to whom only a few hours ago I had confessed all my fears. I flopped against the pub wall and felt the air leave my lungs. The betrayal stung, probably more so than my stupidity. I was lost. I had no one. The man I’d thought could be my last hope was drinking with my murderous husband. I now had to believe that the baby in the jar had come from Mabel and that my husband had given it to Dr Shivershev, who had likely reported back to him after each one of my consultations with him. They were in it together – whatever ‘it’ was.
I hurried on down Commercial Street and had walked only ten feet when I saw Dr Shivershev’s pretty whore from the Ten Bells and the man with the ginger whiskers coming towards me. In a panic, I dipped my head; it had started to rain and the wind was up. I pulled the edges of my bonnet down about my face and bowled straight between them – they even parted to let me through. I glanced back to see them push through the doors of the Princess Alice.
It must have been half past six by the time I arrived home, in a great rush, hurtled into the hallway, ignored Mrs Wiggs and nearly barged into Sarah on the stairs. Once inside my bedroom, I locked myself in.
The vow I had made earlier in the day to abstain from taking further drops was forgotten. I waited for the edges to blur and the angels to come. At any moment, Thomas would arrive like a hurricane, breaking down the door and storming into my room once he’d learned of everything I’d said to Dr Shivershev. Would Dr Shivershev come too? Would I be dragged down into the cellar, past Sarah and Mrs Wiggs, who would watch open-mouthed and blameless as I was murdered, my blood poured down the drains and my clothes burned and left out with the hot ashes. My husband and his friend would know all too well how to dissect me into convenient pieces small enough to smuggle out and drop into the Thames along the Chelsea Embankment.
I could run, but where would I go? I had the urge to go somewhere, but at the same time it was too tempting to remain. What would Aisling have done? She’d have left Thomas long ago. Better to be free and poor than a wealthy captive, she used to say. But I dithered on that still. I had memories of being cold and hungry and sometimes I was not sure which was better.
Elizabeth the Melody
A person can be many things, can they not? Most people are merely acting the parts they’ve been given anyway. Life is an instrument thrust into the hands of a small child; they play the violin because it’s the only one they’ve been shown how. She had been an Elizabeth before and would be again, soon, but for now she must make do with being this Liz. She didn’t much like it: Liz sounded hard, like a hiss or a grunt. The English had a million ways to reduce a person to nothing. ‘Eliz-a-beth’ had a melody. It rose and fell. It had a beginning, a middle and an end. The name was a story, and how Elizabeth loved stories. She would keep going until hers was a good one.
Elizabeth took care to avoid the mirror, a pointless square of blackened glass that hung from a nail driven into the wall made fat with damp. She had whitewashed the wall that morning and now she’d moved on to cleaning the men’s rooms. This being Elizabeth’s regular haunt, she had the benefit of the odd piece of casual work thrown her way.
Despite her best efforts, she caught her own eye in a small portion of the mirror and studied her complexion; the skin was dry, the
bones appeared a little too close to the surface and the line of her jaw had become slack. Her eyes had shrunk, and her lashes, which always used to be long, looked as if they’d been filed down. She slapped her cheeks hard to bring the life back into them, then yanked at her bodice and thrust her shoulders back.
‘I can always be another,’ said Elizabeth.
‘What was that?’ shouted Ann from the next room.
‘What?’ said Elizabeth.
‘You said something,’ Ann said as she marched into the room, wiping her hands on a cloth, shiny-eyed and half laughing. ‘You’re doing it again, Liz. Gabbling away to yourself. First sign of madness, that is.’ She tapped a finger to her temples, then waddled back to where she’d come from.
Elizabeth bristled at the joke. She did not find it funny. She hadn’t been able to rely upon her mind of late. It was the strain of remembering all the details. If she wasn’t the tragic sailor’s widow from the Princess Alice, or Long Liz, she might be the farmer’s daughter, the musician’s maid, or any number of other parts she’d played. The one thing she did know was that she was not English, even if it had been two decades since she’d come from Sweden, hounded out for whoring, which did not bother this part of London so much. All these stories were jumbled up in her mind and tended to leapfrog each other. It was the thoughts that raced too fast and tried to escape her lips; she must take care to keep her lips still, else people think her mad.
It was gone six when she returned to Flower and Dean Street and paid for her bed. She stopped by Catherine and asked her to take care of some green velvet as she was going out. Then Elizabeth brushed down her clothes, taking care to pull the velveteen bodice of her black dress this way and that before donning the jacket with the fur trim. She discreetly slipped a packet of cachous to freshen her breath into her pocket.
‘You’re a bit quiet. Nervy, even – that’s not like you,’ said Catherine. ‘Where you off to? Or rather, who you off to see all dressed up like that?’
For her age, Liz was quite attractive. Considering the way she lived and how much she drank, this made her something of an enigma. She wasn’t in the habit of wearing a bonnet, and yet here she was stuffing newspaper into the back of one – newly acquired, it would appear.
‘Never you mind,’ Liz snapped, taking off the bonnet again and then fussing first with her nosegay and then with the red rose on her lapel.
Catherine didn’t mind the snapping; they were all getting on a bit. Life was a little easier if one had a fella to partner with and since Liz was faring better than others her age, why shouldn’t she try and fix herself up with a better type. Catherine would have done the same herself if she’d had the teeth or the inclination.
There was no point asking Liz what she was up to. One thing Catherine had learned about her was that you couldn’t trust a word that fell out of the woman’s mouth, and she often forgot the finer detail of her own lies. They weren’t bad lies. Not really. Catherine had known girls like Liz before. Sometimes a little embellishment made life easier to bear. Liz wasn’t a bad sort. Unlucky maybe, and not the wisest, but not bad. Whatever she was up to, Catherine hoped she would get away with it.
*
Israel kept his head down, careful not to catch anyone’s eye on his way home from the synagogue. He had stayed too long, he knew that. With each minute spent in the familiar company and comfort of his own kind, he was at greater risk on his walk home. But it was a wrench to leave the friendly faces, the warmth, the conversation that came so easily, all so welcome after having given oneself a headache trying to understand the strange sounds from the strange mouths. London was a desolate place, considering it was so crowded.
It was well beyond midnight when he took himself off down Commercial Street. A wide, clear road, and with that the relative safety of other people, but also the likelihood that they were not his own. It was not easy to blend in. His curls, his features, his clothes… All signposts, clues to those who hated his kind. They had never met him, they could not know that Israel was anything but a threat, but the hostility and anger he felt from them as he struggled to understand their words always felt so personal, so specific to him, that he often questioned whether he might have been mistaken for someone who had done something terrible. These days he avoided such interactions. The language was odd, and the words changed from one person to the next.
His breath quickened; lungs left behind because of the pace his nervous legs insisted on keeping. He hustled with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the pavement. He turned into Berner Street in the pitch black. It was really too late; he should have left a lot earlier. He would be stricter with himself in future. This was too dark, too dangerous.
Up ahead, he could see the black shapes of what he thought were a man and woman. His chest loosened when he saw it was a couple; the presence of a woman made the pair less threatening. As he approached, the man suddenly lunged at the woman, grabbed her by the arm and threw her across what would be his path and down onto the pavement. The woman screamed, three times in all. A shrill, piercing sound. No one else came. It was only them and Israel and he was stuck to the spot. His pulse started to thump between his ears, everything screamed inside his head that he should run, but his legs would not move. When eventually he managed to cross the road, he felt bad. He should be going to the aid of the woman, but he’d always been told never to become involved in such disputes because invariably he would find himself the outsider.
Israel quickened his pace as the woman struggled to her feet. All his senses were trained on the two of them. When another man appeared from the shadows, his heart nearly burst and he leapt off the pavement and onto the road. The man had emerged from the darkness to light his pipe and Israel was sure he was looking at him. Israel was half running now, and when he turned to check, his stomach lurched. The man was chasing him now, shouting something. Israel couldn’t be sure, but he thought it sounded like ‘Lipski’. The name of the alien Jew they hung for murder only last year. That was all he needed to hear. He fired up his legs, and he ran and ran. He didn’t stop running, even when his lungs seemed about to burst into flames and his legs grew too tired to carry his body. He tripped and he stumbled, but he kept running until he fell upon the door of his home.
Kate of All or Nothing
‘What’s your name?’ the man at the desk asked the swaying woman.
She was like a badly stuffed scarecrow, held up between two officers. PC Robinson had struggled to get her to her feet. She’d already slipped through his arms once, landed in a heap on the pavement and burst out laughing. He’d had to enlist the help of PC Simmons and they’d half dragged her back to Bishopsgate Police Station.
A haggard old sparrow, the woman must have been in her forties. She was skinny, and her face had a misshapen slant to it, as if one too many beatings had shifted the bone structure. The shadows under her eyes were dark, but her features were small and fair. She’d probably been pretty once. A shame, really, what these women did to themselves through drink and bad choices, thought the teetotal PC Robinson.
‘I said, what’s your name?’ the man asked again, a little louder.
This time it looked like the woman had at least tried to focus on him. She bent her wobbling head forward, fixed him with an intense stare and narrowed her eyes as if trying to make them work. Either that or she was going to be sick.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
PC Simmons and PC Robinson rolled their eyes.
‘Did no one out there know who she is? Do either of you recognise her?’
‘No one said a word, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t know her. I don’t recognise her. There’s thousands of them – we can’t remember them all. They all look the same,’ said PC Robinson.
‘Can we put her in the cells, she ain’t ’arf kicking up,’ said PC Simmons.
‘Suit yourself. Go on then.’
*
The slight woman hiccupped and giggled her way along the echoing passageway. Bishopsg
ate Police Station wasn’t that busy tonight. Just a few drunks, all men, taking up the other cells.
Of course she knew her own name! Her name was Catherine Eddowes. Kate for short. Other names came and went, like the men they were attached to, or the reasons they were needed. Kate had lived a life of contradictions, of highs and lows, but never in the middle. Consistency had not been a gift bestowed on Kate, same as money, same as work and love. It had either been a barren land of want or flooding over with plenty, but never in between; never steady.
She was already feeling a little more sober, but the prospect of a kip in a nice, warm, dry cell didn’t seem such a bad way to spend a few hours. She wasn’t sure what had happened earlier that had made her so drunk. She was tired – she’d had to spend the night before in a shed on Thrawl Street. Truth was, she slept better under the stars, but not at the moment, not with the way they’d all been banging on about the murderer. That had got into her head.
She lay down on her back in the cell and was soon snoring. In a couple of hours she’d get fidgety anyway. Being hemmed in by solid walls always made her feel bad. It brought back memories, the worst kind of memories, from her time at the tinworks in Black Country hell, where the vats of acid had made her eyes burn and her throat itch. Even now, she could still hear the clank and grind of the chain makers, still felt herself choking on the poisonous smoke that billowed out of the brickmakers’ chimneys, still remembered the hammering as the men dragged the sheets of steel across the ground, the continuous churn of the pit wheels. No question she’d been right to take her chances in the freezing London outdoors, with its freedom and its music and its dancing. Anything was preferable to spending one more night trapped in the belly of the empire’s hell pit, however warm. No thank you.
*
At ten, Mr Hull, the gaoler of Bishopsgate, had checked on ‘Mrs Nothing’ and seen her flat on her back, her feet pointing straight up to the ceiling, snoring like a pig. He glanced through the door flap at regular intervals until, much later, he heard her singing to herself in her cell. She didn’t have a bad voice, he was surprised to note. He consulted the clock: it was quarter past midnight.
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