Chained in Time

by David Waine

  *

  Saturday, 8th September, 1888

  Annie Chapman fell flat on her face in the gutter outside the Princess Alice, missing a fresh, steamy mound of horse droppings by inches, the raucous laughter of the publican who had just ejected her still ringing in her ears.

  “Take yer whorin’ elsewhere, Annie!” he cried, “Come back when yer respectable, and not before!”

  “Bastard!” she shrieked back at him from the cobbles, wiping the filth from her face with the back of her hand. “You can’t turn me out. I’m short for me lodgin’s!”

  He wiped his hands on his apron, as if to remove any evidence of having touched her, and fixed her with a cold eye. “Should’ve spent yer money on yer billet, and not on gin, then, you stupid little slut!” he replied with a sneer. “Try the docks. Might find a sailor too pissed to see straight, then he won’t have to look at yer face!”

  He went back inside, slamming the door behind him. The encompassing racket of gruff masculine laughter diminished in the instant and the flood of flickering smoky light from within was extinguished, leaving poor Annie, a pathetic heap huddled in the slime, shoulders heaving, fighting back the tears yet again.

  She lay in Commercial Street, a long, winding, gloomy way between high warehouses and dingy yards. Gas lamps were as rare here as they were anywhere, islands of dull yellow refuge in an ocean of ink.

  Several lengthy moments passed before she dragged herself painfully to her feet, gathering her tattered skirts and muttering oaths under her breath at the vanished publican. What she had told him was the God’s honest truth. She was short for her lodging, having spent the necessary fourpence, the entire contents of her threadbare purse, on sequential glasses of mother’s ruin. That made what he had said to her equally true, of course, but her simple, sozzled mind stubbornly refused to accept that. He had agreed to serve her, had he not, and he had only thrown her out when she had no money left, so it was his fault? ‘No tick!’ he had said. He was so spiteful! He’d given her tick before and she had always paid him back. Well, nearly always. Besides, she hadn’t been whoring. She was only talking to that nice geezer what seemed to have a bit of coin. She might have made a friend that night. Lord knew she could do with a friend — a real friend, not like or Liz or Mary Jane. They were as forlorn and as desolate as she was. Well, maybe not Mary Jane. She was still young and might get out if she ever cheered herself up. She was proper down all the time these days. Maybe she was up the duff. Now, Polly had been a friend. But where was Polly now? Polly was dead, cut up, sewn up and buried in a pauper's grave. Gone forever.

  Her long experience of the streets had taught her one thing. There were only two types of men in the world: those who paid and those who didn’t, and either was as likely to beat you up afterwards. All men were bastards, bastards to the bottoms of their black hearts.

  “Arsehole!” she shrieked at the closed pub door. “I know yer put salt in yer beer, so the more they drink the thirstier they get!” This was also true, but it fell on deaf ears. The general hubbub of coarse laughter and rough banter from within continued unabated.

  Hobbling, her knee grazed from her fall, she made her way into the gloom along Commercial Street, the ripped hem of her shabby skirt trailing in the mud behind her.

  “Hello, darlin’. Yer ‘aven’t got fourpence, ‘ave yer? I’m short for me lodgin's.”

  The man hunched his shoulders and shuffled on in the direction of the Ten Bells with a curt shake of his head.

  “Tight bastard!” she called after him, but without any real conviction. She was aware of the hour and the fact that her chances of a warm bed were fading. Gone were the days when she could stay out working all night without creaking in every joint the following morning, when a suggestive sway of her hips and a wink would have set well-heeled young squires racing to hire her. Winter could be cruel on the likes of her, and her fading fortunes on the streets meant that she spent more and more nights wandering round like a lost waif. She really did not know what she would do when the frozen nights came.

  Twenty-five years of whoring had gouged away her looks and crushed her spirit. And what did she have to show for it? She was as poor as she had ever been and less able than ever to drag herself out of it.

  Oh, she had her dreams, they all did. What was a harlot’s life without her dreams? One day she would find her ideal punter who would be so smitten with her that he would carry her off to his mansion in Chelsea and marry her. Or she would have a run of good fortune and open her own pub and put salt in her own beer. Hers would be the finest inn in all London Town. That was what gin was for. The dreams were easier to believe when her mind was woolly with drink and the awful truth that none of them would ever come true could be put off for another day.

  Dispiritedly, she trudged after the man who had just spurned her, past the Ten Bells, and turned the corner into Hanbury Street, where darkness engulfed her. At least the lamplighter had already passed this way for a wick flickered feebly ahead in the gloom and she saw the figure of a man pass through its dull glow. “Hello, darlin’, you feelin’ lonely?” she asked the murk as his black figure loomed up out of it. “Yer want a nice girl to keep yer company?”

  Although she could not distinguish his features, as he was silhouetted against the ochre-coloured cone of gaslight, she could sense his disdain.

  “I vould love a nice girl to keep me company,” he replied, his voice thick with a foreign accent. Polish, she thought. Whitechapel was crawling with Poles. “But you are not a nice girl, yes?” Like his predecessor, he hunched his shoulders and sloped off into the darkness, leaving her.

  She stared after him, too wrong-footed to retort and too humiliated to try. She wondered why a Pole would come here. They arrived on the ships, of course, but they often stayed. Poland must be a terrible place if they liked Whitechapel better. Despair welled up within her breast, just as it had the previous night and the one before that. Two offers made and both rejected. So it would go on until she struck lucky or, more likely, she would give up out of sheer exhaustion and spend the small hours huddled in some doorway waiting pathetically for the returning sun.

  Despair welled up more nights than not these days now that younger girls could plunder the richer punters and leave the old lags like her to fight over the dregs.

  Hanbury Street was dark. Despite its length, it was not a major traffic route and was poorly lit. She screwed up her eyes and pricked her ears for any sign of a fellow human being, but found none. The flotsam and jetsam of the East End were all elsewhere, filling their stomachs with drink or making use of other girls, and she would have to move on if she were to work that night. That would mean moving onto another girl’s patch, which would also mean a fight. She didn’t think she could face another one. She had had her fair share and won more than her share. Not all of her black eyes had been inflicted by punters by any means, but now she was too tired, too worn out and too old. All she wanted was a blessed night’s sleep in a moth-eaten bed, and even that was denied her most nights.

  She paused, leaning wearily against a cold wall, her shawl pulled tight around her shoulders against the gathering chill of the night. It was then that she heard the clop, clop of the approaching horse and carriage.