I turn left and continue along the busy road, passing the Whitechapel Gallery and then the mosque, a glorious beacon in this beautiful multicoloured and multicultured city. I don’t know why, but I feel light and glad about life, about the sky, about the cider, about the vibration in the air. This is the start of a new chapter, new beginnings. Everything is in the right place. Everything is going to be OK. Christmas lights flash and shine in the architecture above and glitter in the puddles in the dirty gutters. Distant church bells ring. London is all Christmas Eve and goodwill to all men and ho ho ho! I continue to walk down a bustling Commercial Road. Thick traffic, buses and taxis filled with passengers carrying shopping bags and consumed with panic and madness, they bite their nails and I can see them all thinking: Christmas will be ruined if we don’t get some figgy plum rum bakes! Don’t forget the reindeer brandy butter pies! Last minute! Shop! Last minute! Shop! How could we forget the artisan cream puff spangles! We have them every year! It’s not a proper Christmas without the deep-fried pork-whip nutmeg-balls! Quick! Shop! Consume!
I smirk to myself. I am so lucky. I am invisible, I’m not seen. I am not in a family. I have nobody at home waiting for me to sit and weep over socks and walnuts, mince pies and port.
I pass the Royal London Hospital and the ghost of John Merrick waves at me. I imagine the Elephant Man can see me and I stop and glance over at the building where he stayed. I imagine him there, watching me pass, and I wave. I stand and wave at the hospital for a while. Lovely kind man, wasn’t he, John Merrick, you know he was a good man, you believe he was, don’t you? I do. I believe he was. You never hear a bad word said about John Merrick, just that he suffered horribly and was humble and kind. He had a great intellect and was the kindest of humanitarian souls and we nod and we all know some of this deep down without ever knowing him. Funny that, funny how we feel like we know these things about people we never knew, isn’t it?
I march on through Whitechapel market. The incense burns, I smell pushkar rose and sweet sandalwood, the stalls sell silver rings and dangly earrings and bangles and a million colourful silks, leather bags and knock-off phones. Special price! Quick sale for Christmas Eve! A man shouts, Special price . . . special price! Everything so shiny shiny! Crackers and tinsel and fairy lights . . . flash flashing lights flash. People are in a mania of last-minute bargains, buy, buy, buying and selling.
I keep walking and I cross the Vallance Road, where the notorious Kray twins once lived, and then the Blind Beggar pub where George Cornell was said to have been shot by one of the Krays. The bullet holes are still in the pub walls to this day. Why do they keep the holes like that? Why is that a good memento to preserve? And what do we think of the Krays now? Lovely local lads that just loved their mum? Psycho killers? Glamorous gangsters? Violent murderers? Or just a bit of local colour? Was one of them bipolar? Was one of them a closet homosexual? And was the other a wife beater? Funny how we might have an opinion or feeling about the Krays too. Funny that, funny how we feel like we know these things about people we never knew, isn’t it? We are puppets, we are children, without thinking we so often mouth the words our lips are taught.
Sweat starts dripping down the centre of my back. My legs ache, reminding me of all the partying I’ve been doing. I did three days straight and I am feeling the hangover kicking in now. It comes with that thirst, that dryness, that odd bewilderment, this is followed by a cringe, the great doom, the longboat of guilt. A hangover is such a strange sensation, it is that of being haunted by yourself, your shame walks by your side. Memories, fragments of the three-day bender begin to flash through my mind. I don’t think I did anything odd or said anything wrong. I don’t remember. But my hangover tells me I did and my hangover tells me I am bad and in big trouble. Waves of paranoia. Cringe. Guilt. Quick. I swig more cider, quick, drain the can, gulp, gulp, burp, and then cross the canal and pass Mile End tube station and then Bow and then . . .
Well, this is the magic moment!
This is when I see the tiny antique shop off Commercial Road, tucked away, hidden off the main road. I’ve never noticed it before, but my eye is drawn to it, the freshly taped CLOSING DOWN sign. In the smudged dusty shop window there is a clutter of lamps and candlesticks, mirrors and rugs, odd furniture, and one old desk.
It is . . . THE. DESK.
I can only just about see it, it is tucked away in a dark and dusty corner. I can see it though, I can feel it; I know it’s there, it calls me. It is a desk made of magic, of potential, and it is singing to me. It is more than a desk, more than polished wood with drawers and compartments. I cup my hand to the glass and peer in, eyeing it for a while. I can see the dusty red leather desk top. I begin wondering how I could have it, if I can have it, and how much it would be? Do I deserve such a desk? Yes. Maybe. Maybe I do and maybe they’re selling it off cheap? I want it, I want it suddenly and quite desperately. This is a life-changing moment. It is an odd moment. Odd because I have never bought an item of furniture before in my whole life. Buying furniture is something other people do. Buying furniture is not in my skill set. But then neither is having a real home or a job or staying in one place for too long. But this desk is mine, I just know it, this desk is my doorway, my possibility, my future.
I find a note taped inside the shop window: CLOSING DOWN PLEASE PHONE AND WE COME. There are two mobile phone numbers. I want to ring but my phone is dead. And I have no credit. And besides it is late and it is Christmas Eve, they won’t be able to sell me a desk now. I always have a Sharpie in my coat pocket and I write the numbers on the back of my hand and carry on walking homewards, thinking about that desk, even if it is too expensive, I’ll blag it. I’ll find a way. I just must have it!
Oh! And what a desk that would be! That is the desk that will change my luck. If I own that desk, I’ll finally write . . . something . . . wonderful. This is brilliant, oh yes, this is meant to be! This is a sign! And for a moment I hear the Gods applaud. The waves rise majestic and crash to the shore with applause. The world switches to a more flattering filter, with better angles. The spirits of the city and all the ghosts of London sing Hosanna! The universe is once more in synchronicity, the world is preparing to furnish me with my heart’s desire: a new desk. I crack open the second tin of cider and gulp down its fizzy contents. This is followed by a loud and triumphant burp. Making no moves to hide nor apologise for its volume, I burp again, and I laugh aloud, I laugh, I am laughing, burping and laughing, how funny it all is, how funny . . .
Wait, what was that?
I feel as though someone is there. In fact, I feel sure I am not alone. Suddenly it occurs to me it isn’t my hangover walking with me but someone. I am not alone at all. Something. Somebody is with me. I stop walking and listen again. I turn my head and hear something, it is like a buzzing, a vibration echoing back to me and itself. I put my hands out. Some cold air. Then a something, someone else is there.
Some thing? Someone touches me, cold air on my cheek, their fingers, a small hand brushes my hand, slight, light, the weight of a spider’s web, there and not there. I stand dead still and try to look normal and nod my head as though having a normal thought so nobody will see me holding hands with air or someone or something that is or isn’t there. London is carrying on being London. That part is normal. Nothing to see here. The traffic is being the traffic and the noise is the noise, but here I am by Bow Road tube station and I am frozen to the spot holding hands with a wind and with nothing that feels like it is here and it is everything. There is nothing to see, nobody there, but there is . . . here she is.
I know a lot of dead people now.
I hear her voice for the first time.
I know a lot of dead people now.
I hear her voice. Distinctive. A woman’s voice. I have stopped laughing. I hear her. It is a woman speaking so sure and clear.
My heart speeds up, dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum, thumping, banging in my chest. My ears are hot, I listen carefully, hoping to catch every word she says. Her voi
ce is playing as though it is in invisible headphones, the tone, the song, the words, it is not me, it is all her. And then she starts again, like a melody, like a poem, from the beginning, over again, she says:
I know a lot of dead people now.
And I know 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.
It is Mrs Death. She is here. She speaks to me, only to me, she narrates as I walk. It is here and now, it is Christmas Eve and the world is looking up to the sky for Santa and it is snowing gently. Except it isn’t snowing because this is real life and not a movie. And there is no Santa and there is no snow. There is just this still and starry night, this magic, this life and death and me. Mrs Death and me, we walk hand-in-hand down Bow Road. And as we walk it is as if Mrs Death is my tour guide. She changes the lens on the way I see this present moment, the here and now, this city, this universe.
It is then at that moment that I realise I have been asleep. I have been under cling film. I have been numbed and walking in a daze and she has come to wake me up. Up until this spectacular moment on Christmas Eve, I have looked but have not seen things as they really are. She lifts the veil to show me a timeless place, a multiverse, a dirty young London with a sooty, filthy face. I can see through the filter. I am behind the curtain. Now with her voice inside me, her energy vibrating in my blood, I can muster other worlds, the worlds before us. Sad and sorry tales of the once-was and dead laments. As she sings to me, I may glimpse the ghosts of London through Mrs Death’s murder ballads, stories and poems. We walk all night and all night I see the world anew and through her eyes. I feel it, the substance, grit and filth. I can smell the stench of festering sores, cholera and pox, the stink of it all, the hunger, the starvation, the poverty. There are uneven cobbled streets beneath my feet, then there is mud and straw and raw human waste and horse shit.
I hear horses, distinctly, gathering speed, the clop-clop clop-clop of horses’ hooves. I feel a whoosh as a hackney carriage hurries past me, the sound of a whip, it knocks me off my feet. I fly through the air and roll into the road, the crack of a whip and the horses’ hooves galloping as the rickety carriage wheels race away, speeding along the cobbles. I have rolled and find I am on all fours in the gutter. I see the carriage in the distance, disappearing into the darkness. I listen, and there it is – I’m not imagining it – the sound of galloping horses, horses, there, and there. I stand and turn and am entranced. It echoes, shimmers, and then it is gone. A black taxi cab swerves and beeps at me. ‘I am OK,’ I shout at the taxi. ‘I think that was a highwayman! I think that was Dick Turpin! Was that THE Dick Turpin?’ I ask Mrs Death, who is standing over on the pavement beckoning me to come with her.
We walk all night until, when it is almost dawn, I find we are down by the misty docks. I see the slosh of the brown and churning Thames. I recognise that I am somewhere near Limehouse. Mrs Death walks with me there. She tells me the river is one of her oldest friends. She says the Thames is filled with ghosts and old spirits. The floor of the River Thames is littered with engagement rings and the bones of dead babies. We stand together on the shore; we grow cold in the black shadow of the ghosts of slave ships, the clatter of the traders, the unloading of stolen goods and treasure, coffee, sugar and human cargo. Shadows of souls and the clatter of bones.
I am there and I am not there. I feel it all though. I bear witness and it is as though I have been here before. I feel like I remember some of this old life, the hum and throb of a dirty young London. The heat of life here. The glow of flaming music halls and all of old London’s worst nightmares: the poor and the hungry, the thieves and raconteurs, the whores and the scream of life, the rowdy markets. The taste of bathtub gin is on the tip of my tongue as I stare through the windows at the lascivious behaviours in the ale houses.
We walk for miles all along the water and the docks. I am walking with Mrs Death and she shows me a London of layered worlds, the many worlds of before, and I hear the cries of far away and long ago. It is all here; I am both in the present and in the past. Mrs Death is vivid and by my side, narrating my world. She sings murder ballads and tells me long tales, then we stop and sit side-by-side in silence by the river watching day break.
It is Christmas morning and a thick mist rises and smothers the Thames in a soft fog. Hints of grimy pink sunrise in the grey. The tide is out. We walk on the pebbles of the great river shore. Then Mrs Death bends down and picks up something glinting in the shingle. It is a silver locket with a rabbit engraved on the front. She wipes the muck off and holds it up to the early morning light. She sighs sadly and hands it to me and asks me if I have heard of Tilly Tuppence. I shake my head no. It is so strange – her voice has warped and changed; her tone was soft and eerie but now her accent is suddenly rough, brackish, cockney and hoarse. Her face changes, her eyes yellow, she changes and begins to sing to me:
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a peek! Tilly Tuppence, Tilly Tuppence, tuppence a peek.
Mrs Death: The Tale of Tilly Tuppence
London, 1868
Ma Willeford took tuppence a peek from men who paid to watch her daughter about her bathroom through a hole in the wall. The hole was made for this purpose: it was just the same size as a boggling eyeball, a judge’s fat finger or a captain’s knob-end. It cost tuppence, always tuppence a peek. And soon many a fine gentleman, grand lord and other aristocracy came in cloak and secrecy, and took great pleasure to have a peek and a poke. Tilly was taught to act like she didn’t know what was what. Tilly would play innocent as all that, each time for a tuppence, tuppence a peek. Soon word spread and more men came, and Ma Willeford’s money pot got fat.
As Tilly filled out, she grew tall and more knowing. Ma Willeford told her to give them more, show a little something, to keep them coming. So Tilly did as she was told. She’d let her slip slip on purpose, slip slip she’d go. She’d sit and give a peek of her nipple painted red with a beetroot stain. Tilly and her red rosebud nipple popping into the hole. Peeping men loved that all the more; they’d be there, furiously wanking, dripping and sticky and licking and loving it, keen to peek a nipple through the hole. She grew accustomed to the grunts and moans. She knew how to tease them. Fat pink-faced voyeurs paid for this niche and specific treat. Word spread for this rare entertainment and they came and they came, watching her, peeking and sneaking and poking, gentlemen came, queuing each day to see just a bit more.
Ma Willeford had broken Tilly in good and proper. Trained her to be suggestive and ever so playful. More holes were drilled so more men could peek, all at once and from all angles of the toilet hut. I say toilet hut but it was more like a bath hut; there was a painted tin tub in the centre and it was decorated, lit up pretty with candles and posies, pearls and mirrors and dainty things. Ma Willeford even put one peep hole on the roof, so if he fancied it a man could climb a ladder and lie on his belly and watch her from above. He could put his cock in a hole so his cum could rain down on Tilly, and Ma told her if this happened to tilt her head as though catching snowflakes and stick her tongue out. To do that cost more, of course. The big fat judges and old perverts couldn’t quite get up the ladder, so they’d have to make do with the lower holes, watching her, her brown skin shining in the candlelight and the reflections in all the mirrors.
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a peek!
Ma Willeford would sing
Tilly Tuppence, Tilly Tuppence, tuppence a peek!
Oh it was popular! The customers loved it, they’d jeer and leer. Tilly come here, they’d say. Over here Tilly. Tilly come here. Tilly let me touch it. Ooh Tilly let me put a finger in your sweet treacle. Oh Tilly! Oh how they loved Tilly Tuppence, what a spectacle this rare sweet black cherry girl was. And what a delight. They’d poke their tongues and fingers and knob-ends though the holes. Waggling fingers and cocks would appear in the glory holes in all four walls of the ba
th hut. She’d learned to put on quite a show for these voyeuristic gentlemen. So slowly she’d undress and take her time. The pretty young girl would tantalise, she’d bend over and show all as they gazed on her.
Ma Willeford was also dark-skinned and she had sad and yellowy eyes. She’d been stolen and brought to London when she was but a slip of a girl herself but she knew her way around men and how to get them to spend their time and their money. She was savvy, she’d educated herself to read and write and do numbers. Mean she was though, and hard, life had made her that shape. Ma Willeford had no teeth, they were knocked out when she was a girl, she had not a tooth in her head. All manner of men paid very handsomely for a juicy wet suck off her. Together they ran a roaring trade, mother and daughter: notorious they were, Tilly Tuppence – the exotic sensation – and Ma Willeford of Limehouse. It was a voyeur’s delight.
Tilly Tuppence was Jack’s first love. It was Tilly Tuppence broke Jack the Ripper’s heart. Jack loved Tilly, adored her – obsessed Jack was – but Ma Willeford had other plans for her Tilly and forbid it flourish before it could begin. She always sent Jack away. She said something wasn’t right about Jack; she said there was something odd about the way Jack was. Whenever Jack came by, Ma Willeford would shoo Jack away and Jack’s tuppence burnt a hole in Jack’s pocket. But Tilly would meet Jack in secret. She liked talking with Jack, besides, Jack brought treats, ribbons, violets and rum, the good stuff.
Mrs Death Misses Death Page 4