The Ripper's Wife

by Brandy Purdy

  I wept up a storm and went back to Liverpool on the very next train. I told the people who saw me crying that there’d been an unexpected death in my family.

  Aching with loss and longing, I returned to Battlecrease House, with leaden feet, to await the inevitable; the storm was bound to break soon. No one was expecting me, and when I walked heart-sore, travel weary, and tearstained into my bedroom I was astonished to find none other than Nanny Yapp, blind as a bat with her spectacles off, dancing and twirling before my mirror wearing my candy-striped satin corset and a flurry of pink and white ruffled petticoats trimmed with red satin bows and ribbon-threaded lace that also belonged to me. She lifted and shook them like a French dancer, displaying a pair of my frilly drawers and pink silk stockings. She even had her big flat feet crammed into a pair of my little red satin French heels, her toes bulging out at the sides in a way I supposed must be quite painful, and had my bracelets, a veritable fortune in icy-glistening diamonds, stacked up to her elbows over a pair of my pink satin opera gloves. She was singing in such an awful off-key manner I was suddenly immensely grateful that Jim and Mrs. Briggs had never seen fit to entrust her with the children’s musical education.

  “While strolling through the park one day,

  In the merry, merry month of May,

  I was taken by surprise by a pair of roguish eyes,

  In a moment my poor heart was stole away,

  Da da da da da da

  Da da da da da da. . . .”

  This was simply too much; I just had to walk away. Luckily she was singing so loudly and without her spectacles she was so blind that she never noticed me standing in the doorway. I went back downstairs and told May I was feeling right poorly and would she please be so good as to draw me a hot bath; that would surely give Nanny Yapp time to get back into her clothes and out of my room.

  While I was soaking in my bath, luxuriating in the rose-perfumed steam, I asked May to bring me any letters that had come for me during my absence.

  Much to my surprise, amongst the many bills I found a letter from Alfred Brierley. He said he feared he’d been “far too precipitate” and “egregiously mistaken.” He’d been feeling foolish and out of sorts and worried after several men he habitually did business with had recognized him in the lobby, and one must expect a certain amount of fear and trepidation when a man sees the end of his bachelor days upon the horizon. That fear had made him unkind and he fully deserved being called a “cad” as well as having the fruit medley dumped over his head. I was “the most exciting, intoxicating woman” he’d ever known, and he couldn’t bear to go on without me. We must reconcile at the first possible opportunity or else he would find himself sitting with a pistol in his hand one night contemplating self-destruction, and did I really want a man’s blood, his heart’s blood that pulsed only for me, staining my lovely lily-white hands?

  “Oh, Alfred, Alfred, Alfred,” I sighed. “Your love is just like a noose, always keeping me dangling!”

  I tried to tell myself to buck up and show some pride and not go running back the moment he beckoned. But I knew myself too well to lie to me; I knew I would soon be back in his arms and in his bed again.

  The warm, fragrant water lulled me into a doze, and I awakened with a start to a sudden splash. I was no longer alone. Edwin had crept in and disrobed, in such haste to join me in my perfumed bath that he had forgotten to remove his socks. I laughed until I cried, and then I laughed some more. Edwin laughed with me, pointing and braying at his sodden green socks. It was almost like old times except we were naked in the bathtub.

  When my laughter subsided, I tried to shove Edwin out, but he only laughed all the harder and pulled me onto his lap. He assured me that we were quite safe; Jim had gone up to London. My absence had put him in a fond and forgiving mood, and he had decided to surprise me by settling all my debts as the first step on the road to the new life we would be starting down together the moment he returned tomorrow evening. We were only a scant few months away from a new year, 1889, and he truly wanted this New Year to be a new start for us, devoid of all deception and lies.

  “He told me to tell you,” Edwin said, “when he takes you in his arms and kisses you at the stroke of midnight, he wants to kiss you that way every day for the rest of his life. I think he means like this. . . .” Edwin proceeded to illustrate until I succeeded in stopping him by shoving a cake of pink rose soap into his mouth.

  I jumped out of the tub and threw on a robe. Foolish creature that I am, the words were scarcely out of Edwin’s mouth before my heart went leaping after Jim, leaving Alfred Brierley in the dust. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped and sank like a stone. By now Jim would have already inquired for me at Flatman’s and discovered that Mrs. and Mr. Maybrick had already checked out. The catastrophe I’d set the stage for could not be averted. The only hope I had was to pray for a miracle and, barring God’s intervention, to somehow brazen it out. If only I could persuade Jim to hold on to that spirit of forgiveness, then maybe, just maybe, there was some hope left for us after all. I suddenly wanted that new start more desperately than I had ever wanted anything in my life. I knew then, no matter how I might try to pretend, I still loved Jim. I wanted to be a wife, his wife, not any other man’s mistress.

  I dressed in green, the color of spring, and waited for Jim to come home. Someone had once told me that butterflies were a symbol of rebirth, so I put the lavender and mint jade butterfly comb in my hair and sank down on my knees and prayed with all my might that if God would help me disentangle myself from this foolish fix that was entirely of my own devising I would never look at another man again, that henceforth there would be no one but Jim. That’s the way it should have always been, but I’d made mistakes, out of anger and hurt pride, a spirit of revenge, and a longing for what was lacking, and now I wanted desperately to atone.

  I’d kept Mrs. Humphreys slaving in the kitchen all day. I ordered her to prepare, with especial care, a replica of our first meal as man and wife. Everything must be exactly right—the rosemary chicken, tender green asparagus, new potatoes seasoned with herbs and butter. I’d ordered the lemon custard cake from the bakery this time, Mrs. Humphreys not being so adept at fancywork as I would like, and asked that a dove with an olive branch in its beak be drawn in icing atop the dark chocolate frosting.

  I jumped up and ran downstairs the instant I heard Jim at the door. My foot hadn’t even left the final step before his fist felled me. As stars danced before my eyes blood streamed from my nose and my consciousness wavered like a dying candle. I fully expected to feel his hand in my hair dragging me upstairs, followed by the crushing power of his fingers around my throat, but he left me lying right where I fell. It was his way of telling me that he was done with me. I wanted to roll over on my stomach and drag myself up the stairs after him and find a way, some way, to win his love back, but I didn’t have the strength. I never wanted anything more until after I knew I had lost it. Tomorrow, I promised myself as the stars stopped dancing and everything went dark, tomorrow . . .

  21

  THE DIARY

  My life is a house of cards. It’s threatening to fall apart. I’m afraid that soon all will come a-tumbling down. Blinding headaches, bad dreams, and bellyaches, I do believe I’m done for; I’m afraid I am damned in this world as well as the next. Even my medicine’s strength seems to be flagging. I need so much now that every time I take it I know I am taking my life into my own hands . . . one grain too many and Death’s scythe will strike me down. I feel awed and enslaved by its power, yet I would not give up one precious grain of my white powder.

  The icy numbness that afflicts my hands is creeping down into my legs and feet. My fingers and toes are like nubs of ice. Sometimes I sit on the side of my bed and hold up my unfeeling hands and stare down at my bare feet. I wiggle my fingers and toes. Sometimes they tantalize me by tingling, but that’s all. It’s a queer sensation. I walk but cannot feel the floor beneath my feet. I stepped on one of Bobo’s lead soldiers
; his little sword broke through the skin and drew blood. Had I not stumbled and looked down, I never would have known it.

  Dead whores stalk my sleep, rattling their chains and pointing fingers of blame, alongside images of my wife-whore writhing naked on my bed with Alfred Brierley while I stand at the foot and watch, furiously jerking my cock, and our children’s woebegone faces float before my eyes, and something else—I’m haunted by the gentle man I used to be. Sweet and solicitous to my wife, kissing and caressing her, I liked to pretend she was my little girl with golden curls and no one could spoil her even half so well as me. “Kiss Papa,” I would whisper when I hung jewels around her slender white throat and pressed a kiss to the gently throbbing pulse.

  “The best father in the world!” Bobo and Gladys used to call me. I always took such pride in that!

  Suddenly my grand scheme, to make all the little whores pay for the Great Whore’s sins, seems so futile, so pointless! I don’t want to be Jack the Ripper anymore! My God, what was I thinking? I MUST have been mad! Why did I ever stray from the path of righteousness? I want to be the man I used to be, the one who won Bunny’s heart; I want to forget the crimes I committed when I was consumed and transfigured by rage, lust, and madness. I want absolution and to make amends.

  I went to visit my parents’ graves today. It was my fiftieth birthday. I can scarcely believe I’ve lived half a century. I didn’t sleep at all last night. I dreamed I cut my darling Bunny up instead of a birthday cake and, with a devilish smile and a mad gleam in my eyes, served pieces of her—heart, cunt, kidneys, liver—to the children and guests. I woke up screaming. I flung off the covers and ran and woke Bunny up, hugging and kissing her a thousand times. I was so very glad that she was still alive and all in one piece, that I hadn’t risen from my bed in a trance and hacked her to bits. We made love, really made love, for the first time since this horrid business began. She gave freely and willingly; I didn’t just take. Warm and welcoming, she took me into her body, into her sweet arms, comforted me, and told me that she still loved me and always had. I want so much to believe her! “I never stopped loving you, Jim!” she cried as she clung to me. “It was just that I was so hurt and mad!” Hurt and mad, we both had been hurt and mad, but in my pain and madness I had become the Devil’s tool. God help me! I was a mad FOOL!

  I stood for a long time gazing down at my parents’ graves, slumbering serenely in perpetual peace in the shadow of a stone cross. I prayed for tranquility and guidance, for God to shine a beacon on the path to absolution to help me find my way back. How I wished that they had loved me! Sometimes I think that’s why I love my own children so much, because I know what it is like to grow up lonely and unloved. When Mother died, her hand in mine, not Michael’s—mine, Mine, MINE!—her last words to me were a plea that I endeavor to be more like Michael. When I remembered that, I kicked the cross and trampled the violets I had brought my parents, CRUSHING them, PULVERIZING them with my heel, GRINDING them, leaving a pulpy purple, green, and brown dent in the sacred ground.

  I get no rest. I toss and thrash and talk in my sleep. Fever burns my brain. Pain gnaws my belly. There are hours when my limbs are locked and useless as iron bars. Sometimes I rise and walk without waking. Damn Edwin for telling Michael! I am writing this from his house in Regent’s Park. Michael insists I see another specialist. He’s taken to locking me in at night so I don’t fall down the stairs and break my neck.

  The doctors are useless, Useless, USELESS; I see that now. Were they not necessary to procure prescriptions I would be done with the lot of them altogether. I’m more down on doctors now than I am on whores, but I lack the energy to start a new regime of ripping. They use words like hypochondria, melancholia, gross indulgence, and dyspepsia and dose me with harmless tonics that might as well be sugar-water for all the good that they do me. Liver pills! Digestive lozenges! That fool Hopper actually had the gall to caution me against trebling the doses of his prescriptions, as though one spoonful of anything ever did anyone any good, and mixing them with other drugs. He said if I continued to do so I might do myself a grave injury! That’s his polite and careful physician’s way of saying I might kill myself. If I didn’t take matters into my own hands and dose myself with arsenic and strychnine I would be dead already!

  None of them understands how sick I am! They call me a hypochondriac, ignoring the obvious fact that I am sick all the time! Dr. Humphreys even gently alluded to the tale of the boy who cried wolf as though I were a child in the nursery! Of all the impertinences and absurdities! Drysdale actually had the gall to roll his eyes when I told him our neighbor had just been diagnosed with diabetes and I was afraid to have him over for dinner and cards lest I catch it. The doctors think I just want attention, to be coddled, that I like being sick! That IDIOT Drysdale thinks my condition is due to “suicidal self-indulgence at the dinner table,” nothing more! Haven’t I just reason to be afraid? The coldness and numbness continues creeping over my limbs. I fear I will wake up one morning and find myself paralyzed and not able to move at all, not even an eyelash; it almost makes me afraid to go to sleep. The pains in my belly bend me double; the doctors think I’m just being dramatic when I say it’s like rats gnawing or a blazing fireball burning me from gullet to bladder. One quack suggested I try cold cream enemas and pills of powdered rhubarb and a healthful and replenishing tonic of celery! COLD CREAM ENEMAS! RHUBARB! CELERY!

  I’m so afraid of dying! I’m afraid of going to Hell and of who will be waiting for me at the portal. I’m afraid of phantom whores rattling chains, waiting for me on the other side of Heaven to drag me down to Hell, where even I know I belong. God help me; no one else can!

  I’ve been beastly to the children! I DESERVE death for scaring them! What has become of the father I used to be? So loving, so kind! When they prattle on about Christmas—more than a month away! Will I even live to see it?—and try to coax me into revealing what presents I will give them, I lose my temper and snap, “A nice sharp knife like Jack the Ripper’s!” and watch their little eyes fill with tears and terror before they run away from me, the man who used to play for hours with them on the nursery floor and buy them licorice and toffee apples. My God, how I have changed! I don’t know myself anymore! God help me, even I am afraid of me!

  I keep telling myself I will be better in the spring—the season of rebirth will replenish, renew, and restore me. I will be born again in the spring. It has always been my favorite season. I will feel better when the flowers bloom and the robins sing outside my window. By the time spring comes, I will have made all the wrongs right. We will be a happy family again and lead a happy life.

  The wife-whore has sent me a letter, a long and lovely letter that brought tears to my eyes. She begs my forgiveness for all her mistakes, the debts and Alfred Brierley; more than anything she wants us to make a new start. We’ve said the same things so many times before, dare we make one more attempt? That’s what I want too—a new start! New Life, New Love, Love Renewed! Oh, Bunny, my dear, precious Bunny, you’ve awakened springtime in my heart!

  I will give up Mary Jane, fond of my ginger tart though I am. I hate to leave her in the lurch, but we must part. Fishmonger Joe has already walked out on her and the rent is nearly thirty shillings in arrears, and Uncle John is losing his patience.

  Fishmonger Joe caught her in bed with another whore, her friend Julia, “havin’ a harmless little frolic, not hurtin’ a soul,” Mary Jane protested. They’d even offered to let him join in, moving over to make room between their naked bodies, stroking their nipples and spreading their thighs wide to entice him, but he demurred. “He’s such a prude, Joe is!” Mary Jane snorted with contempt as she related the details of their parting. He’d been so angry he’d punched his fist through one of the windowpanes to keep himself from striking her and wouldn’t even linger long enough for her to bind his wounds.

  I want to do something for my spicy ginger tart. I have destroyed four whores; let me now save one. I think I shall see if I can
find the money to pay her passage back to Ireland, to give her a fresh start too in a land of green that reminds me of spring. I’ve heard her more than once before warning young girls, “Whatever you do, don’t you do wrong, an’ end up like me.” She’s only twenty-six; it’s not too late for her to change her life. She’s clever enough to crawl out of the gutter and stay out!

  I’M GOING TO MAKE EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT!!!

  I WILL ATONE FOR ALL MY SINS!!!

  I’m tired of being Jack the Ripper. I want to throw my knife in the Thames and vanish into the fog as suddenly as I appeared.

  I’m tired of being James Maybrick too. I’m just tired. TIRED, TIRED, TIRED! I can’t STAND the strain or the pain anymore! God help me! IT’S KILLING ME! Lightning bolts stab my brain, the rats gnaw, and my bowels and belly churn and burn like Hell is already inside me! I feel the demons’ pitchforks stabbing; they spin my innards around like noodles upon a fork! GOD HELP ME!

  I JUST WANT IT TO STOP!!!

  MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

  WHAT HAVE I DONE?

  OH GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?

  When I opened my eyes, I thought I had lost my mind. I thought I was lying naked in a slaughterhouse, embracing a hunk of dead meat, a freshly slaughtered cow, but, God help me, it was Mary Jane. Blood gummed my lashes and flies buzzed in my ears. Sticky redness blinded me; I could hardly see. Blood was in my nose, in my mouth, in my hair, covering my whole body as though I had bathed in it. All was red in Mary’s Jane room. The walls ran red with gore.