My puppyish schoolboy of April had grown into a debonair gentleman in June, but come September he was the middle-aged grump. Everything irritated him and he had little patience. I avoided him whenever I could, and approached with care when I could not, because he would hiss like a snake at any voice in earshot. Even Mrs Wiggs skirted around him.
Since Polly’s murder, he had become agitated and restless. He started to bite his fingernails, a habit I would never have associated with him. His jaw clenched and in the mornings he brushed his teeth too hard and spat blood in the basin. He overgroomed his whiskers and asked me, for the first time, if they were symmetrical. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve stared at them for so long, I cannot tell any more.’
This was not the Thomas who had made light of his burns and was confident about his place in the world. To see him nervous rattled my own nerves. I had married him for protection, traded my independence and freewill so that I would not have to hold down a job or bear the anxieties of the outside world.
His fermenting anger choked the air out of the house. The walls practically breathed a sigh of relief when he left for work or for one of his mystery night-time jaunts. I know I did. I had assumed that men were warriors, brave and fearless, but now I had experience of one so intimately, I understood them to be as weak as any woman. Weaker, perhaps, because Thomas still clung to the delusion that he was the strong and rational one. It could not be a strength to ignore one’s own flaws.
If I asked what was troubling him, he would talk casually of hospital politics or troublesome patients, or tell me it was the burden of his other work. He had been asked to assist a select group of prominent doctors in some pioneering sponsored study. They were all far more experienced than him, the potential for progression was huge, and the business was profitable, but it was undertaken at night. I knew his private practice was still lacking patients, but he seemed to think this other employment more worthy of his attention and energy.
He was further antagonised by some letters he’d received from his twin sister, Helen. She had apparently adopted an altogether inappropriate tone, was showing a distinct lack of respect and really did think herself queen of the castle. He complained that she was unrealistic about the amount of money required to live to a decent standard in London and how long it took to build up a private practice. She had accused him, he said, of not having a strong enough work ethic. That in particular set him ranting for hours.
‘As if Helen has ever understood what it is to work! Someone should tell her that barking orders at people is neither difficult nor tiring. How I should like to rub her nose in it, tell her all about my other job and how profitable it will be and who I am socialising with, but I won’t. She wouldn’t understand, and I certainly will not be explaining myself to her,’ he said.
His twin sister, once so highly spoken of was now referred to as a ‘vicious little bitch’ or the ‘bat-faced dumpling’.
He would not let me read those letters but rather shouted his commentaries at me. On one occasion I dared share an idea about how he might gain more patients at his private practice. I suggested he consider simply filling his books rather than acquiring prominent names, which I knew was his inclination. The look he gave me was as if I’d just asked him to walk naked through Chelsea and lick the boot of the first shitraker.
‘Is that what you think I should do? Fill my diary with the headaches and boils of civil servants, attend to the bellyaches of people of no significance?’ He threw down his cutlery with a loud clatter.
At least I no longer jumped at his little tantrums; I was perpetually braced for them. ‘Isn’t word of mouth a good endorsement?’ I replied. ‘Civil servants or not. The more people you treat, the more chance you have of receiving a recommendation to someone well connected. I’m sure this other work is enticing, but you cannot expect a quick path to success, Thomas. Look at Dr Shivershev: his books are full. I had to mention our relationship from my time at the hospital to get an appointment.’
As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. Men do not like their property to show admiration for other owners. I held my breath and froze. When I looked up at him, he was staring straight at me, still as a statue. Without saying anything, he tossed his plate in the air. It landed on my glass, shattering it and covering me in wine and shards of glass. He stood up, pushed back his chair and walked out as if nothing had happened. The man who continually accused me of being oversensitive and melodramatic disappeared up to his precious attic like a spoiled child retreating to his nursery, chased by the ever faithful Mrs Wiggs, flapping her hands to fan his fragile ego.
On the positive, Mrs Wiggs and I had slipped into an unspoken agreement that we would ignore each other. I no longer tripped about the house, second-guessing myself, feeling anxious that I might be inhaling the wrong way. There would be no more lectures on candles or hairbrushes. I had come to the idea that it was perhaps Mrs Wiggs that was the cause of many of our problems. I dreamed of being able to hire a meek, pock-faced girl to replace her. Thomas and I would get along much better without Mrs Wiggs to squeeze between us like a jealous lapdog. If I could get rid of her, then it would truly become my house.
I still felt the outsider under her feet, so to amuse myself and drive Mrs Wiggs mad with frustration at not knowing where I was, I had taken to spending my days in the city, wandering aimlessly, sitting in the British Library, visiting museums and churches, or walking in the parks when the weather was dry. At least this way she couldn’t report back to Thomas that I lounged about the house all day in a laudanum-induced stupor, poisoning him still further with shrewdly selected words that tarnished his impression of me.
*
The papers were now full of the news that the police were hunting a man they called Leather Apron, so it was a relief to learn that my husband was not the Whitechapel murderer after all. For a while it had seemed plausible, especially at night, when I had the most vivid dreams. I took more drops to try and snuff out the visions, but that only made them more surreal. Come daylight it seemed laughable.
Leather Apron was a petty criminal from Whitechapel. He was a well-known bully of prostitutes, and so many local whores had named him freely to the police that everyone was convinced he was the man. He was a Jew of no known trade and rumoured to be so depraved and devoid of human decency that he’d been rejected by his own community. He had also been missing since the night of Polly Nichols’ murder. The police had torn apart more than two hundred houses looking for him. It was true that I didn’t know where Thomas had been on those nights, but how many wives honestly knew where their husbands were of an evening? That was marriage. This was what I had traded my freedom for. I might as well get on with it.
The police complained of the crowds that continued to gather at the murder spots and outside the mortuaries where the bodies had been taken. I decided I would go to Whitechapel myself. I had this feeling that if I knelt on the ground and sniffed the pavement like a bloodhound, I would be able to dismiss the idea once and for all that my husband with the symmetrical whiskers had ever stood there, let alone stuck a knife in a whore and slit her open.
I took the river taxi all the way from Chelsea to Tower Hill, then the omnibus to Aldgate. I started at St Botolph’s, known as ‘the prostitutes’ church’ on account of the constant stream of mangy old trollops who circled it day and night. They sauntered in a slow circuit to avoid being stopped by the police. It was a farcical circus. They pranced openly in their short skirts with their ankles on display, their coloured scarves flowing around them, and their craggy faces smeared with make-up they had made or stolen, which only made them look older and more haggard. They jeered at men, touted for business and conducted entire conversations with each other by shouting to the woman behind or in front, but as long as they kept moving, the police pretended not to notice. I could not imagine what unhygienic horrors lay beneath those skirts; it was a wonder they managed to trap any man for business. Surely only a blind or suicidal drunk would be tempted to part with actual money for their services.
This was the opening act to Whitechapel from the Aldgate end. I walked up Petticoat Lane until it turned into Sandy’s Row and the pavements went narrow and the shops too. Space was so expensive there that all things shrank to fit their means. Everything was stacked on top of something else and every crawl space was filled with tatty stock, cracked barrels or piles of old rubbish on broken bits of wood showered with smashed glass like glittering confetti. Shop goods spilled onto the pavement, and around them hovered gangly, grey-faced boys with the sunken chests of the malnourished and the shaved heads of the lice-ridden. Their bodies arced backwards like whittled bone. The boys enjoyed their purpose a little too much, marauding and staring at women. The stuff they guarded like the crown jewels was so laughably useless.
I had not been in Whitechapel since I married in June. I had thought that looking at the place with fresh eyes and the comfort of knowing I wasn’t trapped there would be fun, but it wasn’t, it was depressing, and I had more fear than I remembered. I had dressed in my dullest clothes, but being inconspicuous had always been difficult for me due to my height. I was an obvious outsider, felt only hostility and saw muck and filth. God knows what Mrs Wiggs would have made of it.
I walked past the boys and they whispered to each other. The cobblestones were covered in grease, made slippery from the rain, and I lost my footing and nearly fell. I waved my arms around like windmills to stay standing and must have looked a clown. I marched off to the squawking laughter of the boys behind me and did not look back. I passed rows of dismal rag shops filled with stained and torn costumes tossed out from the theatres, along with ripped and mouldy military uniforms, broken bayonets and rusty helmets from old wars. Sullen-faced gangs of Jewesses stood clustered in doorways and sat on kerbs with their elbows on their knees, glowering up at me as I passed them. They blocked the thresholds of their precious shops with their bodies and black looks, disinviting me before I’d even considered entering.
I came out at the entrance to the Nichol, a rabbit warren of alleys and courtyards I didn’t dare go down. I often wished I could walk down Dorset Street and see the room I had lived in with my mother, see if it matched my memories, but there was no way I would go there on my own. I stood for a moment or two on the corner and then turned. A flash of eyes and a small pale face peeped up at me through the grate of a basement, then disappeared just as quick. It was a child or maybe a young girl in a sweatshop underground, hidden away, snatching a moment for themselves from the sweaters who run such dens of human misery. Men, women and children are sweated to death if not blindness first, working feverishly in the dark, trapped, they rattle their fingers to the bone for a pittance.
On Commercial Street the busy traffic and shrieking hawkers made me feel more relaxed. It had gas lamps too, whereas the smaller roads would be pitch black at night. It was a feat that Leather Apron had managed to see the women well enough to stab them.
The corner of Osborn Street was where Emma Smith had been attacked by what she’d said was a gang of three or four, though the papers made it clear they thought it was Leather Apron’s work. They said she’d been too frightened to name him, even in her last moments. Less than two minutes’ walk from there I reached the tenement building where Martha Tabram had been found. Women carrying children stood gossiping with their hair uncovered. I continued on towards the London to see Buck’s Row, the place where Polly Nichols died. I passed the stalls along Whitechapel Road hawking celery, comic books, hairbrushes, fish; ribbons and door keys together, cabbages with trousers. The crowds slowed me down, so I chose a quieter road that had once been full of French silk-weavers. They were long gone, their livings stolen by machines and their grand houses neglected and crumbling. The names above the shops were all Jewish now, engaged in artisanal trades: cobblers, tailors and furniture makers. Shops sold books in Hebrew, and Jewish restaurants were run from houses with strange ornaments on the windowsill, the glass covered by heavy muslin drapes to guard against nosy gawkers.
At Buck’s Row I cringed when I saw all the other ladies like myself, except they were in pairs. They clung to each other, giggling, and I felt terribly lonely and missed Aisling’s arm pulling on mine. I could feel her fingers from where she used to pinch me when she was bored or tired. I only let myself think like that for a minute and then I pushed her away.
The spot where Polly had been murdered was being sold by a young girl of around ten or eleven. She was charging a ha’penny to look. It was her pavement, she told the crowd. She gave a theatrical re-enactment of how Nichols had died, pretending that her guts were being ripped out, and wearing a scarf as a bonnet. She performed with such gusto that I laughed and threw a few pennies for her entrepreneurship. It was very close to the London, only two roads behind it; you could be there in one or two minutes, less with a long stride. All three murder spots were a close and comfortable distance from the hospital. It seemed obvious that the police should make enquiries there, but I had read nothing of this in the papers.
In no rush to get back, I made my way towards Spitalfields. I walked back up Commercial Street, past Christ Church and the Ten Bells pub. The yard at Christ Church was known as Itchy Park because of the vagrants who slept in piled-up heaps like puppies on the benches there, swapping lice with each other. A few lay face down on the wet grass as if killed in battle. There was a spread of ages, but it was mostly men. Very occasionally, there was a family: parents sleeping with their backs against each other and a baby or two in their arms, trying to avoid the workhouse, where they’d be separated. I think most people were so used to the sight, they became blind to it.
I passed the iron railings and looked into the barren yard. There were no flowers or plants, only thick rye grass – the bulbs had been dug up and eaten by the starving years ago – but my eye was caught by a gentleman roaming amongst the vagrants like Jesus at a leper colony. He was upright and open, bumbling almost, his gait quite different from the hunched and angry stoop of the unfortunate and desperate. I approached the railings to look more closely and was taken aback to see that it was none other than my newly appointed physician: Dr Shivershev. He was wearing a black billycock and a long black frock coat at least two sizes too large. His face was still unshaven. He walked from group to group, crouched down and talked to the bobbing heads. He must have felt my eyes on him because he suddenly swivelled in my direction, searching for something among the iron bars. I shrank away, pulled my bonnet down and scurried off in the direction of the Ten Bells.
I took an omnibus to St James’s Street and drifted into a milliner’s. Seeing Dr Shivershev had reminded me about my glove with the hole in the finger. I pushed past a gaggle of brightly feathered ladies yipping at a shop assistant and found myself overwhelmed by the rows of beads, ribbons, feathers and flowers in all colours. The bleary-eyed ghost I’d glimpsed earlier in her underground prison could very likely have been the one to cut and stitch and piece together some of those pretty fripperies. If the ladies had known the provenance of the pretty feathers and flowers they were posing with so delightedly in front of the mirror, they’d have run screaming.
I made my way to the back of the shop, mostly to get some space, and for the second time that day I saw someone in what I understood to be their wrong place. The scrunched-up figure had her face turned away, but the tiny waist and bouncing red ringlets could only belong to one person: beautiful, pert, little Nurse Mabel Mullens. For some reason I had the urge to rush over, tap her on the shoulder and say hello, as if, being outside the hospital, all our old gripes would be forgotten. But before I reached her, she scurried off.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, and we locked eyes for a second. I smiled at her, but she disappeared around the corner. Of course, it was obvious: we had never been friends, so why would she speak to me now? I exited the shop feeling lonely and rejected. I cursed Aisling. I wanted to blame her for everything at that moment.
I had only walked down the road for a few minutes when I felt a sharp tug on one of the wide sleeves of my dolman. When I turned around, there was Mabel, out of breath, panting on the pavement and wearing neither coat nor bonnet.
‘Su-san-nah…’ she said, as if trying out the sound of my name for the first time. ‘I can call you that now. No need for “Sister” any more, is there?’
We were blocking the pavement and the crowds tutted and brushed past us, but we didn’t move. I didn’t know what to say. Mabel was still small and pretty, maybe smaller than I remembered. She looked delicate, as if I could scoop her up in my hands. Her apple cheeks were hollow and she had a fading yellow bruise under her left eye.
‘Mabel, how are you?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’ she said.
‘What am I meant to have heard?’
‘It is good to see you. You look well,’ she said.
She kept glancing behind her as if something might jump on her back, and shuffling from one foot to the other, her arms crossed over her chest against the cold.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘I can’t talk now. He watches us – the man who owns the shop. I can get away tomorrow, maybe for an hour or two. It would be good to speak properly. Shall I call on you?’
I realised what I had been too stupid to see: that Mabel was working in the milliner’s. For a girl to go from a nurse to a shop assistant was a considerable fall. I looked at her dress. It was clean but old and worn. She saw me looking and folded her arms tighter across herself.
‘I had to sell most of my clothes,’ she said, and I felt my face flush.
‘Yes, please come,’ I said, not sure I believed the words even as they left my lips. ‘If I tell you my address, will you remember it?’
Mabel laughed. ‘I only need the number,’ she said. ‘I know where you live, Susannah. All the nurses know where you live – we all gossip, you know this, we all know you married the handsome young surgeon from Chelsea.’