Mrs Death Misses Death

by Salena Godden

  It is Christmas Eve, a foggy night, when Jack waits for Tilly down by the wharf. Jack has rum and gifts for Tilly. She is so excited. Jack produces a black velvet box and inside it a beautiful silver locket, with a rabbit engraved on the front, on a short thick silver chain. Tilly gasps and wears it proudly and asks Jack if it is pretty around her throat. Oh yes, says Jack, very pretty . . . Pretty as a princess! Tilly grins, Thank you, she is so pleased and so giddy. She plays with the locket in her fingers, feeling the engraving and the smooth silver edges.

  She drinks the thick rum in the thick fog, and she sings to Jack. They sit on the ledge and swing their legs in unison by the murky water. There is a pea soup fog, so thick you can hardly see your hand nor the other side of the river. Tilly drinks the rum fast and greedily. She is full of joy and song, she says she has dreams. She tells Jack that one day she’ll live in a big posh house, with servants and furs and everything her heart desires. She laughs gleefully, she drinks and sings, how happy she is, so merry. Merry Christmas, Jack, she sings, Merry Christmas.

  Merry Christmas, Tilly.

  Quite suddenly Jack reaches and grabs the locket and uses it to pull her to kiss her. One kiss, Jack pleads. One kiss, Jack begs. No. Tilly pushes Jack away. Don’t be so. But Jack has her by the chain around her throat. And again Jack pulls. Tilly pushes and wriggles and says, No need to be so, Jack, but Jack pulls harder and rougher and kisses and slobbers and overpowers her and Jack rolls and drags her down to the shore. Jack wants to have her, to have her, to have her. So sudden, a fever, so quick, a frenzy. Swiftly, Jack cuts Tilly’s throat. Then stab stab stab, Jack goes. Jack’s knife goes stab stab stab, stab, stab, stab . . . Jack wields the knife, bringing it down sharp and pointed. Jack slits her wide open, guts and slices her down the centre like an eel. Guts and blood, so much blood. Silence. The soft lapping of the tide. Jack pulls at her, hands all full of guts and intestines and stink. Jack rolls her poor lifeless body into the Thames. Her heat, her black hot blood and innards on Jack’s filthy hands, how it oozes and steams in the cold night air and the sight of it thrills Jack. Her blood now stains Jack forever. Jack runs away and disappears into the fog.

  As for Ma Willeford, well, she searches high and low for her girl. She stands on the docks wailing, calling into the wind. Customers come and go but with Tilly missing the bath hut is nothing but cold and empty. Men leave crude and clumsy messages on the hut walls. Someone leaves a posy of violets. Someone else a tuppence by the door.

  When Tilly finally washes up, all slashed and gutted and bloated and blue, Ma Willeford, well, she goes berserk with grief and mad with booze. She drinks herself into oblivion. She sits babbling in the gutter of the docks with the shit and the rats. Her heart broken, she drinks and drinks and loses her mind. Ma Willeford is eventually carted off to Bedlam – she dies there and that’s where she’s still buried now.

  Jack was only just fifteen then. It was over twenty years until Jack dressed up as Jack to kill again – but you never forget the first time. Tilly was the first time Jack the Ripper made a murder and sang for Mrs Death’s supper. Jack the Ripper? Jack’s real name was Mary: Mary Jackson of Shadwell. And well, no copper was out looking for a woman in camouflage, an invisible woman, a woman dressed as a man and a most prolific female serial killer. Eventually, Mary Jackson died alone in her bed of cholera, with everyone still searching, looking for a man and a killer they called Jack the Ripper and nobody none the wiser.

  If you stand on these docks on Christmas Eve, and the wind is blowing from the wrong direction, if you listen, you can still hear poor old Ma Willeford, Martha Willeford, wailing for her youngest daughter, a jangle of coins, singing her song: Tilly Tuppence, Tilly Tuppence, tuppence a peek.

  Mrs Death: I Know A Lot of Dead People Now

  I know a lot of dead people now. And I know your death is inevitable and necessary.

  Without death you wouldn’t live; without knowing you die, this would be endless. That is why you need death. Without death this would be a never-ending conveyor belt of sensation. You would be nothing without death; you would be chubby pink toddlers consuming without remorse, bearded babies, big-breasted, hot-fisted infants, as destructive as children stamping on sandcastles; you would be worse than you already are. Each year you would smash your faces down into burning wax, your birthday cakes on fire: 246 years old! 246 candles! Still going strong! Hurrah!

  Death. To imagine your own death is to be living. To be friends, to be friendly with the knowledge, the knowing that death will come. This should make you try harder to be living, to be fully alive and lively. Surely you know you are all dying? You know – you all know – that you’re going to die. This should make you all want to be good, to be better. You know, since you are here and shit, you may as well give a shit.

  To imagine your own death is to imagine that this will all end. To visualise the death of your elders, your parents, your siblings, your children, your lover, your world – to imagine these disasters should make you try harder. In theory. It should make you try hard to be a better person. Now, this should be the death of the demanding chubby shit you were and the birth of the kind wise person you will become. What a glorious mess this living is.

  Do not run away from the inevitable, the beautiful and glorious ending, the proof you lived, the life you lived. To live tasting metal is blood. To live saving tokens is death. To die is to have been alive, that is why you must live: live free, live wild, live true and live love alive. Let the fire burn you and the light blind you. Let your belly get full and fat and embarrass you. Let your words fall out and tumble carelessly and honestly. Let your passions be unlimited. And do your lifetime all in your own life time. And let all your shits stink and all your roses bloom. May your every success be a threat. Fuck being scared and infected with fear and doubt. Own your rejections and own your failures; they are an excellent wall to smash and to kick against. Every morning may you rise to fight and to create yet again, this time with both fists, and not with one hand behind your back.

  And sex. May your sex be alive and good sex. Sex like fucking in a broken lift, hurtling down with the skyscraper in flames. May sex be like diving and may sex be like flying, may your sex be like breathing love’s name in a prayer; like finding home, dry land and earth. And kissing, so much kissing, the best kisses. Sex and food and drink and books. You really don’t need much else. Maybe a nice view of the sky. Some shoes that don’t hurt. A bed and roof that won’t leak. Some singing, some music and tempo. A heart full and a soul fed, a head full of dreams and possibilities, what more could you possibly want? What more is there?

  Some people never imagine their death. They rush and push and elbow through life, they use people like stepping stones or the rungs of a ladder. They use people and take what they need and move on, they consume and consume, constantly taking, reaching and grabbing. Where the fuck do they think they are hurrying to? Where do they think this road goes?

  I am Mrs Death and I am coming for you all. Accepting me is the first step, after that it gets easier, I promise you. Knowing me, knowing this, knowing that, that this all ends, is the best knowing you need to know. You will all go away one day, and what a relief. One day you all won’t be here and it will be over. Finished. Your input is over, you have no more content or comment, nothing more to share and to say. You don’t get the last word. Death gets the last word. I get the last word.

  When you die, it will not be how you think or when you expect. I do not come for you like a cleaner when it is handy and convenient for you. Let’s just hope you leave the world a better place than the one you were born into, a world fit for generations to come. Let’s hope I come when you are busy doing something you want to live for. Let us hope I come when you are doing something you would die for. And let’s hope that if you do kill yourself, you are well over forty years old, because to kill yourself before age forty is like murdering a stranger.

  So take today and blow its mind; take this today and suck it dry. Take tod
ay and fill it with the best of you. Take today and down it in one, take today like a shot of petrol and set your day alight. Take today and fuck it like the last fuck in Pompeii as burning lava covers your home. Like the last fuck before they switch off the light, shut the curtains. Like the last fuck before they shut down the machines, like the last fuck before they drop the fucking bomb. Fuck it. Once and for all. Fuck it tenderly and tell it you love it, fuck it and hold it, fuck it and look it in the eye, tell it you love it, but then fucking let it go.

  This is that rainy day. It is raining here and it is raining now. Look at the news, read any newspaper, listen to the radio, watch your TV: here I come, Death is coming for us all. And when I come, I come and I clean up. Death cleans up, Death takes all the glory, Death gets the last word. People will say you died. That’s it. And that is all. That’s the punchline, they will say your name and shake their heads and sigh.

  You are dead.

  Bowie. Dead. Prince. Dead.

  They’ll see a photograph of you and say the word: dead.

  Gone. Past tense. Done and dusted.

  But your spirit lives on. It enters the room now as I say this; it enters the room every time somebody remembers you and says your name. All of my dead are here, in this room now, as I speak, I can feel them as I write this and think of their names. And it’s pretty crowded in here right now, because I know a lot of dead people now. You know a lot of dead people now. We know a lot of dead people now; we all know a lot of dead people.

  And it hurts to erase you. I cannot seem to do it. My phone is filled with dead people. I never unfriend my dead people – brilliant and vibrant and colourful people who are now bone and stone-cold dead. People who aren’t even here to see what you became, to see what they left behind, to see plump pink children stamping on sandcastles, killing and consuming everything. To see the death of the demanding chubby shit you were and the birth of the kind wise person you will become. To see the photographs and share the memories. To gasp at how fat you got or how bald you are, how you wear spectacles now, your laughter lines, the laughs and the love, love. The love, the love, the love.

  That’s the stuff, darling, the love.

  Love, the love, the love.

  LOVE.

  That’s what living was always about.

  Wolf: Nothing Lasts, Nothing Is Finished and Nothing Is Perfect

  I sit here at my new desk for the first time. This desk is so beautiful and weathered. I have found a new word for this in a book, it is a Japanese phrase: Wabi Sabi. This desk is this word and my time in this room with this desk will be Wabi Sabi. Simple and aged and weathered and perfectly flawed.

  I will be nothing more than a servant to this desk. I am a poetry monk. I am a writing slave to The Desk. I will write everything The Desk tells me to write. The red leathery surface is like a worn armchair, I want to sit with it to hear tales by a fire. There are hidden drawers and compartments and old keys. The inside of these empty compartments and drawers smell of sandalwood, rose oil, musk and old newspapers. When I sit at The Desk I feel I am opening the doors to great rooms with their stories like furniture under white dust sheets. I am dancing, swirling in an empty ballroom, unravelling those white sheets, dancing and spinning in circles of stories.

  When I type at The Desk I am travelling:

  One moment I am on a ship, it is a slave ship in flames; there are screaming slaves locked in the hold. The ship is being sunk on purpose, it is a scam for the insurance. The white men in the distance row a little rowboat to safety, the stolen cargo, the stolen people, trapped people, their souls scream, the flames lick and topple the masts, fire on water.

  Next, I am walking through a summer field of yellow wheat. I am on the edge of a beautiful lake. I hear screams and again I can smell a fire and can see the flames and the execution of a woman suspected of witchcraft. I am in seventeenth-century Norway. I hear her curdling screams and her tormentors’ laughter.

  I am on death row. Present day. I look through glass and watch the needle go into his black and muscular and tattooed arm and it’s all over so soon. I hear his last words: I didn’t fucking do it . . . motherfuckers. I shout through glass STOP! I believe him.

  Spain. I am high up on a cliff. There is a castle, a tower with red walls. There are dark red skies above us. They throw writhing bodies from the turrets into the sea and onto the rocks. They throw bodies down a well. Birds of prey circle. I feel ashamed. This is a massacre and somehow it is my fault. Oh, the grief washes over me like a tide. Please. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to be here. Let me go. Please. Let me get out of here . . .

  Cameroon. How do I know I am in Cameroon? A bell tolls, a smell of smoke, a burning church.

  I am in a barn. The stench of shit and whiskey. Distant laughter. Above me a woman swings and twitches. Chicken feathers and chicken blood soak the floor of the barn. Her feet are twitching; I see the white soles of her black feet, hard feet. I stare at the feet. I don’t want to look up into the hung woman’s face.

  Prohibition. The roaring twenties. We’ll teach you a jazz lesson you won’t forget! laughs a policeman as they all kick and pummel the black boy to death. His trumpet is left broken in the gutter.

  I see a bearded man at a desk. He writes: No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming . . . Relax – This won’t hurt. He puts the pen down. Oh, the author, Hunter S. Thompson, he holds a loaded gun to his temple. Bang!

  Japan. I am in a forest. I see her. She is alone. She is miles and miles from anyone and anywhere. Oh, the forest is so lush and green and peaceful. She holds a knife to her wrist.

  Someone is screaming. Snow. A camp in the snow. Why would a tent be ripped open from the inside? A predator wasn’t trying to get in, they were screaming and fighting to get out. When the bodies are found they have missing tongues.

  I’m on the front row of Her Majesty’s Theatre, St James. Raucous laughter, why is everyone laughing? Tommy Cooper keels over on stage. LAUGHTER. London, April 1984.

  Look what you make me do, he shouts and she screams. Look how angry you make me, why do you make me do this? A man is yelling and punching his wife repeatedly in the face.

  Strangers are huddled in a shipping container. They are treated like cattle. They don’t know each other’s names. They fight each other. They panic. They fight to breathe.

  Flickering images. Echoes and voices. Last moments.

  Sand found in the stomach. To have sand in the stomach you’d have to have been alive and gulping, gulping. Look at her, see her struggle: she gulps, he holds her down, she is fighting and inhaling sand and sea water.

  Last breaths and last moments smash into my brain, death traffic colliding second by second. Death comes, she is seeping through into my mind. Random deaths and sudden deaths, deliberate deaths and violent deaths, images of the end of life and life endings. These dreadful scenes and horrific feelings crawl like ivy through The Desk and through my fingertips, into my veins, my emotions and into my thoughts. Cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. My father is walking into the sea. He cannot breathe. My mother is trapped in a burning building. She cannot breathe. Oh no. I cannot breathe. I have stopped breathing. Breathe, breathe, damn it, breathe. I jolt and I am back in the room. A million coloured spots before my eyes. I’m exhausted. I am weeping. I am gasping for air. Breathe slowly, slower, slow down. I hold myself steady and place my face flat against the cool wood. I slow down my breathing and stroke the desk top. My heart is slowing down again. Breathe. Just breathe. I have been somewhere else, everywhere else, but I am here again. Oh, I have been travelling. I time travel. I am a death tourist. I am witness. I am permitted. I can see every end, I go everywhere that Mrs Death goes and the places only Mrs Death can go when I am here and when I listen to The Desk.

  Hang on, I remember something . . .

  I open the top left drawer of the desk and find the silver locket. There it is. See! Tilly Tuppence, she was real, wasn’t she? I google Tilly Tuppence a
nd Jack the Ripper and cannot find this story anywhere. Who was she? And Martha Willeford? I know Jack was real, Jack the Ripper, we have all heard of Jack the Ripper, but there is no mention of a Tilly Tuppence anywhere. What is real and what is story and what is dream?

  The locket is here and it is real and cold and silver in my hand and it makes it all real to me. As real to me as an object in my hand. Here it is, a silver locket with a rabbit engraved on the front. Or maybe it is a hare. No. That’s a rabbit. A rabbit with long eyelashes. A rabbit with long ears and a big foot for thumping the ground. Warning, warning. Inside the locket I find a lock of curly hair exactly like mine. No, inside the locket there is nothing . . . I made it up about the hair. I must be careful, I must stop getting carried away. I am not the storyteller here, I am the listener, the messenger, the passenger. This is no time for my storytelling. No time to embellish the truth. I must stick to the facts, to what is really real. The locket is a fact and an actual object cold in my hand.

  I write all of this down. I must make careful notes whilst writing this book of the writing of this book. I must write about the locket. I examine the dirt and sand and silt, the Thames debris in its cracks and hinges. I take a cotton bud and wipe the hinges and go to the window to examine it in the daylight. I look for traces of Tilly’s blood in the cracks. I make a detailed map of where it was found – there in Limehouse on the river shore, when the tide was out, down by the docks. I note the way Mrs Death gave me this locket the first time we met. Mrs Death wants me to write about it all, she wants me to write about her. It is a signal. A light in the darkness. I write my new title for this body of work, erase it and write it again. I sit silently, taking deep breaths, re-reading my title line several times and then several times more, then repeating and changing the line out loud: