by David Waine
CHAPTER 14
Life became an unreal cycle of mundane, but to her challenging, everyday tasks for Mary Jane Kelly as October 1888 gave way to November. Joseph spent the first four days with her, helping her to settle in and buying her fresh changes of clothing from the market, mostly second-hand, but always clean and with plenty of wear left in them. She had not worn a full outfit of completely clean clothes since her days as a high class courtesan, and had become accustomed to her shabbiness. Arrayed in her new finery, she could no longer bear the sight of her threadbare old rags and thought them increasingly coarse and dirty whenever she beheld them. After their little hiatus, he returned to work, reasoning that his employer was unlikely to tolerate more than a short absence, which could be explained away on the grounds of ill health.
She was unused to spending hours on her own indoors. Her old life as a maid in Cleveland Street, near Regents Park, had been largely domestic work, but she had been able to come and go as she pleased during her leisure hours and was often sent out on errands during the day. Now the lack of fresh air stifled her, not that the air in London's East End could be described as exactly 'fresh', but at least it carried breezes. Frequently she would find herself looking back wistfully to the days when her life was free of cares, to her plain, but cosy, little garret room in the roof of Madame’s fine house in Knightsbridge, from where she could watch the rich children playing in the park under the ripening cherry blossoms when she had finished her other ‘duties’.
Although she yearned for the freedom to roam, to feel the wind on her face again, she did not dare go out into the streets lest she were seen. He was still out there, waiting for her and, worse, she did not even know who he was. He had only to follow her discreetly and wait for his opportunity. Day after day she peered through the curtains, the bravado of her first morning having left her spirit utterly. Now she rued it as foolhardy although it had been an innocent enough mistake. Looking out of a first floor window, as she had, the chances of anyone seeing her would have been minimal, engaged as they were in setting up the market. If he had seen her, though, she would have been dead meat by now. Of that she was certain. Brick Lane was frequently full of men, any of whom could have been him. Occasionally she saw a familiar face, but reasoned that he was probably a punter for whom she had once bent over. Foolishness like that could never be repeated for she knew in her heart that she would not be so lucky again.
Joseph still had his work to do and was only there all day on Sundays. The daylight hours through the week were the worst times for her because it was then that her isolation really struck home. Too frightened to go out, she did not even venture beyond his door unless necessity, such as washing or a trip to the privy, demanded it. Even then she waited until all was quiet and slipped out with her head hidden beneath her shawl. She trusted no one, spoke to no one, and met no one, living in a self-imposed solitary confinement within her three-roomed prison. The other tenants and the landlady knew of her presence, Joseph having put it about that she was his cousin come to visit from up north, and that she was unwell and needed to rest. Even so, it had been noticed that no doctor ever called to see her. Occasionally they caught a fleeting glimpse of her trailing skirt as she vanished down the stairs or back into his room at a speed that suggested robust health. It was obvious to them that he was keeping company with a young lady, which was not to the landlady's liking, although she kept quiet about it for the time being because they made no trouble.
Mary Jane clung desperately to the notion that she might one day become Mrs. Joseph Barnet. To the best of her limited vision, that was the only possible course of events that offered her any future at all. Accordingly, she busied herself, day by day, attempting to do the work normally expected of a woman in her home. She did much of this quite well because, in truth, there was little to tidy up anyway. The landlady's daughter was grateful that her duties were correspondingly reduced by the girl's efforts. She had enough to do sweeping out all the other rooms. Whenever that young lady called, however, Mary Jane stayed in the bedroom and spoke through the closed door, making up a story about how a childhood illness had left her disfigured and she would rather not be seen. She had no idea whether her story was believed, although she doubted it, considering that it was patently obvious that the sofa was not being slept on. Nevertheless, they minded their own business and she was left alone to look after herself.
Isolation can play tricks with the mind. She was aware that the presence of a strange, unseen young woman in Mr. Barnet's rooms might excite gossip, and she could not ignore the possibility that word of her whereabouts would eventually reach the ears that she feared most. These thoughts only descended when she was alone and then the black horror would engulf her anew. At such times her doom would seem inescapable and she would spend hours curled up on the bed, tears trickling onto the bolster, the agony clawing at her heart. As day gave way to day, it became ever clearer to her that the end approached unavoidably, and that all the protection in the world was powerless to change it. She was beyond hope, beyond redemption, her tombstone already carved in her head and needing only the addition of a date. Always she turned the bolster over before he came home, lest he find it wet, as he had the first time, and ask why she had been crying.
Eventually, however, the desperate mood would pass and she would pull herself together. Then she would try to be a prospective housewife again and cook a meal for him. She was less successful at this. She had not actually done any cooking since helping her mother as a child. When working as a maid, she had eaten below stairs with the other servants, but had not actually cooked any of it. She had eaten well in Madame’s house — not as well as her and her prime girls above stairs — but far better than she ever had before or since, and she did not cook there either.
Following the scandal, however, those days had ended. Her decline had been as rapid as it was inevitable with her lack of references. The early days, before she began to learn the tricks of the trade, had been particularly terrible. Many a tearful night was passed huddled in a freezing, wet doorway, having first been all but raped and then beaten black and blue. What little money she could glean she spent on gin to dull the pain, cheap scraps and a moth-eaten bed for the night if she was lucky. As her 'skills', such as they were, developed, her income had improved marginally to the point where she could rent that squalid little flea pit in Miller's Court. Even then she fed herself on whatever she could lay her hands on, stealing it more often than buying it, and usually wolfing it down while running away. Even if she could buy food, she had no facility to cook it in her poky little room and there was no way that the witch of a landlady would ever allow her to use her kitchen.
She searched her memory as hard as she could to recall what her mother had taught her about cooking, what went with what and how long this should be left in for, but little of it came back to her. The result was that most of her efforts came out of the oven underdone or burnt to a crisp, sometimes both at once, and she had little idea of why. Joseph was kind about it when he came back to an unappetising plate, tired from his day's work, and even sent out for fresh food on occasions when he was really hungry. He assured her that she would get better in time. All it needed was a bit of practice. He even promised to buy her a cookbook next time he was at the market. She had gulped at this. Mary Jane Kelly, fluent in Welsh and capable of an Irish accent, smiled gratefully while her stomach turned over inside her. Reading English was a skill that she had never really mastered during her brief schooling before being sent out to work. She could do it, but she could swim across the River Thames fully clothed just about as easily.
Then there was the question of her condition. She was now utterly convinced that she was pregnant and still she had not told him. Her heart told her that he would not cast her out. He knew what she did before he took her in. Her head, however, told her that he would reject the child as the bastard spawn of some passing punter, cast it out and her with it. Straight into the monster's path.
The t
ediousness of her current existence fed her paranoia. Bizarrely, Mary Jane found herself beginning to miss the more memorable encounters with wealthier punters, the ones who took her into comfortable clean beds, paid more than the usual fourpence and did not beat her to a pulp for her trouble. A few had even doffed their hats to her afterwards and given her a lift back to Miller's Court for her trouble. One had even been so gallant that she treated him an additional free ride when they arrived. There had been few such occasions, isolated moments of pleasure in a morass of brutal, squalid assignations that left pain and blood, usually her own, in its wake. Joseph had lifted her beyond that existence and there was no going back, but that did not prevent her from reminiscing.