Elizabeth stared at her for a time, as she strained toward understanding.
“I’m sorry,” Lettie said, finally. “If you were in my place, you’d do the same to get by.” She got up, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and walked out the door. Elizabeth heard Lettie’s footsteps moving down the tenement stairs, and the door that led to the outside opening and closing.
And Elizabeth did understand. Survival took priority over all other considerations. Still, the two women had helped each other for so long, she couldn’t help seeing her twin’s choice as betrayal.
As she had done numerous times before, Elizabeth sat and watched the afternoon sunlight that came through the small window creep across the wall. Although the light and color in the yellow room were beautiful, the lateness of the hour and the melancholy of another day ending always conspired to give Elizabeth the sense that her chance at life had passed away with Jon. For a few days following his death, she’d felt something akin to hunger pangs, but of the heart, not the stomach. If she could hold him, kiss him, tell him that he was loved one more time, she would become full again. Unsatisfied, however, her heart seemed to wither and she felt hollow inside. At present, she feared that if she didn’t act, all that remained for her was the temporary warm sunset of memory, to be followed by a long night of regret. She had no time for such foolishness. She must do as Jon asked and find another man. Again, she must find something better.
She got up, packed her things, including her Swedish hymnal, and left.
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth stayed at a common lodging house at 32 Flower and Dean Street. She paid to have a few of her possessions, including the Swedish hymnal, stored under lock and key in the doss house.
On the Saturday evening after leaving the yellow room for the last time, she went to collect two shillings from Mary Malcolms. Afterward, as Elizabeth walked to the place where she would meet Lettie and split the take, she wondered if her twin would show up. She preferred not to see her twin and would be happy to have an excuse to keep the two shillings all to herself.
Since coming to Whitechapel, Elizabeth had met with Lettie at the corner of Commercial and Quaker Streets. Lettie was usually late, yet she stood waiting on the corner when Elizabeth got there.
“You should continue to see my sister each Saturday,” Lettie said, “if you would.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. Unwilling to offer anything more to the conversation, she turned and walked away.
At their subsequent meetings, Elizabeth often remained silent as she handed her estranged twin a shilling. With time, a sadness appeared in Lettie’s eyes. Elizabeth liked to believe she saw regret in the woman’s expression. She missed her friend, but pride kept her from speaking.
~ ~ ~
In her ongoing search for employment, Elizabeth found only sporadic, temporary work.
Out of necessity, she became much better at soliciting. For all her reasonable dread, she also found an unreasonable excitement in the pursuit.
You foolishly felt excitement over the risks of begging too, Liza said.
There are no opportunities without risk, Bess said.
Elizabeth considered the statement uncharacteristically mature for her innocent voice.
Perhaps, Liza said, but it’s unhealthy to seek danger.
Since Elizabeth intended to find a stable relationship with a man, one that would provide her with something better than nights in a doss house and days on the street, her approach to soliciting became more subtle. She offered sex for a price only if she thought a gentleman would not be offering anything better. Using that tactic, she found Mr. Kidney, a dockside laborer, and ended up in his bed in the summer of 1885. Since he seemed to have a bit of money, buying her drinks at a pub and a good meal at a tavern, she hadn’t proposed a fee for her services with the hope that becoming his lover might prove a more effective way of opening his wallet. They got drunk together, and he invited her to stay for several days in his room in a tenement in Dorset Street. The lodging seemed much nicer than what she might have expected a dockside laborer to have.
The chamber, accessed through a hallway entrance at the front of the tenement, had two windows that faced the street front of the building. Wall paper, incorporating burgundy-colored silk ribbons in its design, decorated the walls. A fine armoire and five-drawer set rested against the southwest wall and a bedside cupboard and small vanity sat against the northeast wall. The iron bed, painted blue, had a feather mattress. Elizabeth thought the room more suited for a woman. Mr. Kidney went away to work each day. When he returned from his labors in the evenings, their romps in bed continued. They seemed to get along together quite naturally.
“Do you think you’d like to stay here?” he asked on their fourth evening together.
“I am already here,” she said happily, hoping he would offer more.
“I’m asking you to come here to live. I’ll keep you comfortable and well-fed.”
Elizabeth could not believe her luck. Strong, tall, handsome, ten years her junior, with a great curling mustache, and a head full of thick, wavy hair, Mr. Kidney cut a dashing figure. She’d told him she was thirty-five years old, six year younger than her true age, and he’d seemed to accept that.
He’s a cash— Liza began.
Resentfully, Elizabeth cut her off. “Yes,” she said quickly, throwing her arms around him and laughing as they rolled together in bed.
When her expression of delight had subsided, he propped himself up on a pillow and lit a cigarette. “My last twist,” he said, “she died rather sudden, run down in the road by a toff in his landau.”
Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of his statement.
“Working at the docks, I meet all sorts of men, fresh off their ships, asking for girls. I’m a good judge of character, no matter where they come from, and will provide you with only the best clients.”
All that she thought she’d known about the man fled in an instant as she looked at him. With a sudden disquieting sense that she faced Klaudio, she recoiled in shock, falling backwards out of the bed and striking her head on the floor.
Mr. Kidney helped her up. She wasn’t so addled by the blow that she didn’t know him and what had happened. He was not Klaudio, but perhaps he might as well be. While she was working on turning him into a lover, he’d been grooming her to become an employee.
Mr. Kidney had seen through her from the start, or at least had an intuition that she’d be receptive to engaging in prostitution. Is it that obvious? Elizabeth shrank inside from the knowledge that one could read her character so easily.
You don’t want to regret not hearing from me, Liza said.
Elizabeth begrudgingly accepted the truth presented by her cynical voice. Mr. Kidney was indeed a cash carrier.
Question him, Liza said.
“That was quite a tumble,” Mr. Kidney said, gently touching the back of her head. “Did you crack your tuppenny loaf?”
Elizabeth struggled not to recoil from his touch and relax. She shook her head slowly, trying to think. She had a decision to make. Once she’d composed herself, she asked, “How many girls do you have?”
“I keep one at a time,” he said. “Since she’s my Judy as well, I keep her safe. Clients come here only when I’m out.”
Elizabeth looked him in the eye and saw a vulnerability there, something she couldn’t quite name—a need, perhaps. No, he wasn’t the cold, scheming hector Klaudio had been.
For a ponce, Mr. Kidney wasn’t a bad sort, Elizabeth decided. He would introduce her to a lot of men over time. Possibly, the man who would provide for her in years to come would be aboard one of the ships he met at the docks.
When you meet that man in the future, Bess said, he’ll carry you away from London to his home abroad, perhaps to something better in a new place, like America.
“I can see that you didn’t understand,” Mr. Kidney said.
Elizabeth turned to him, looked him in the eyes, and shook her head dismissively. �
��Not at all,” she lied. “Yes, I would like to stay.”
Elizabeth assumed Liza would have something more to say, yet she remained strangely quiet.
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth moved her few possessions from the doss house in Flower and Dean Street to Mr. Kidney’s room. While with him, Elizabeth saw no more than one client per day. She required them to wear vulcanized rubber sheaths when having sexual intercourse with her. Preferring the “buttered bun,” as he referred to it, Mr. Kidney most often mounted her within an hour after she’d finished with a client. In lieu of payment for her services, she ate well and enjoyed the comfort of Mr. Kidney’s room. She did, however, occasionally receive a small gratuity from a client, which she hid away for future use. The days and weeks bled together.
Chapter 25: Arguments
“Do you want to find another girl?” Elizabeth asked Mr. Kidney defiantly.
Liza had coached her on what to say to the man. While she dreaded the words of her cynical voice, she knew she must hear them for her own protection.
“No,” he said, “but if you cause me more trouble, I’ll have to consider it.”
“You made the mistake of telling me about how long it took to find someone like me.”
“My need is particular.” Mr. Kidney’s frown was too awkward to read clearly.
He’d grown up in a whore house, and had a penchant for older women who were very much used. He did, in fact, prefer to have sexual intercourse with a woman who had been lubricated by copulation with another man.
“Therefore,” Elizabeth said, “if you want me to do your bidding, you’ll have to allow me to blow off steam from time to time.”
The night before, she’d had a sudden need to get away, and left the room to get drunk at the Blue Coat Boy Pub next door, instead of seeing one of Mr. Kidney’s clients. She’d exited the pub after several glasses of ale and become a nuisance on the street, accosting the men going in and out of the establishment. A constable arrested her for public drunkenness, and Mr. Kidney had to fetch her from the jail.
“Yet you must be reliable,” he said.
“Haven’t I been? I’ve been with you almost a year.”
“Until now, yes.”
“No matter how comfortable you make the cage, it’s still a cage unless I can get out when I please.”
“I understand your need, and only ask that you let me know when you want to be away so my reputation doesn’t suffer.”
“I will,” Elizabeth said, but she instantly knew she would not. Experiencing his disappointment and not suffering any consequences had just become an important test of her independence.
Mr. Kidney and Klaudio had few similarities. While the Swedish ponce had had few chinks in his armor, her current employer’s strange need left him vulnerable to her whims. After nearly a year of seeing the caliber of the men he sent to her, Elizabeth knew he would never find her a man who would do her any good. If she wanted to find one who would provide her with something better than the life she led, she’d have to discover him herself.
Elizabeth slipped out periodically to wander the streets of Whitechapel and carouse for days on end. Each time, she experienced the excitement of not knowing what she’d find; the good, the bad or the indifferent. Although she told herself she looked for a man, she spent most her time away drunk, and was occasionally jailed for public drunkenness. She used various ways to explain away her drunken behavior when required to answer for it. Her slurred speech resulted from damage to the roof of her mouth incurred during her struggle to survive the sinking of the Princess Alice. Once, she gained released from jail because she told the sergeant at the police station that she suffered epileptic fits.
“You may have all the fits you like,” the officer said.
Elizabeth put on a pitiful expression. “When I have a spell, if someone isn’t near to place something wooden in my mouth, I bite my tongue. I could bleed to death. It might happen very quickly.”
The sergeant thought about that for a moment, then gave her a warning and sent her on her way.
The length of her binges increased with time to several weeks, during which she stayed in the common lodging in Flower and Dean Street. To those she met, she was simply Long Liz, a woman who had lost her husband and children in the Princess Alice disaster. Her forays often ended because she spent her remaining funds feeding acquaintances from the doss house who were elderly and obviously undernourished. Since her experience with Jon, she had a soft spot for those growing old and infirm. She also owed a debt to the elderly for her treatment of Fru Andersdotter.
Bess’s notions of hope emerged most warmly and powerfully with drink. While the warnings of her cynical voice continued to help her avoid danger, Elizabeth often wanted to shut them out, especially during hangovers.
Besotted with ale, Liza warned, you’ll never find the man you seek.
During one roaring drunk, Bess and Liza became more for Elizabeth than mere voices. She had slipped and fallen in a refuse pile outside the kitchen door of the Beehive Tavern.
Get up, Liza said, before someone comes along and nobbles you.
Most of the customers coming and going through the entrance to the establishment, didn’t notice her.
Nobody would bother to harm me, she thought. Still, she felt a tugging at her left arm as if Liza were trying to pull her away. Looking in that direction, though, Elizabeth saw no one.
The warmth of a recently dumped pot of spoiled pease pottage amidst the refuse felt good against her backside.
You might as well enjoy the warmth until it’s gone, Bess said. Your skirts are caked with the refuse already. They cannot get any worse.
Elizabeth sensed a comforting presence to her right, though, again, she saw no one.
You wallow in the London beast’s offal! Liza spat. Listening to that child, you’ll wind up at the morgue. What good has she ever done you? She helps you hide from the truth at every turn.
Elizabeth had never considered that her voices might not get along, let alone that one might bear resentment toward the other. How dare Liza lash out at Bess with outrageous anger? Elizabeth intended to defend the innocent child and scold her cynical voice, yet Bess beat her to it.
You want the truth? She might still have her Jon now, if you’d allowed her to share the truth with him from the start. The trouble in their marriage put him in an early grave!
Elizabeth had never heard Bess speak in anger, but apparently she held resentment as well.
None of it made any sense. “You’re not alive!” Elizabeth cried. “You have no opinion that’s not my own.”
In her highly drunken state, the words came out in a guttural ejaculation of drowned vowels and soggy consonants. At the tail end of her words, someone from the kitchen looked to be stepping out for a smoke. Elizabeth recognized her—a scourer named Margaret. When Elizabeth had worked at the Beehive Tavern, she’d known and liked the woman. Seeing Elizabeth wallowing in the filth, Margaret put away her pipe, retreated back inside, and shut the door.
While Liza and Bess both spoke the truth, Elizabeth held the most bitterness for her cynical voice “You kept me from the man I loved,” she slurred. “You told me to hide the truth from him. Think of the years of lost love, how much better it all could have been!”
A man in ragged clothes, an unfortunate, approached along the side of the building. Looking for food amongst the kitchen refuse, at first he paid little attention to her. Elizabeth ignored him.
How many of my warnings have you ignored? Liza asked. You kept the truth from Jon because you couldn’t face it.
The unfortunate had taken an interest in the warm food beneath Elizabeth, and began pulling her off the pease pottage. Elizabeth confused his grasp for that of the hateful Liza, and flailed to get loose.
Klaudio and his friend, Robert, would not have taken advantage of you if you’d listened to me, Liza spat. The ponce had already tricked you once when I warned you again. You thought you’d caught Robert’s eye. He was
going to carry you off to England and a new life. Hortense died because of your choice.
Elizabeth lashed out, trying to find Liza’s black tongue and tear it loose.
How much punishment do you deserve for that? the cynical voice cried. Must you treat yourself to more neglect than you gave the old woman? How much danger must you face now to assuage your guilt?
Elizabeth balled her fist and hurled it at Liza, but found herself striking the man hauling her out of the trash. She landed a blow to his face that stunned her hand.
He lifted his fist and swung at her head.
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth awoke in her bed. She didn’t know how long she’d been insensible. The last two teeth on the left side of her lower jaw were missing.
Mr. Kidney spent a week nursing her back to health before allowing her to see clients.
Her thoughts staggered uselessly through a morass of self-pity and shame for several days. When finally she climbed out of her emotional bog, she admitted to herself that if she’d done as Liza had suggested and got out of the refuse beside the Beehive Tavern kitchen, she would have avoided harm. Even so, she refused to accept the idea that she put herself in danger as a means of settling with her conscience over the death of the old woman.
Still, she remembered Liza’s words from the time when she accepted Mr. Kidney’s invitation to live with him: You don’t want to regret not hearing from me. Although she had come to hate her cynical voice, for Elizabeth’s own self preservation, she made a promise to herself: If Bess offers advice, I will also always listen to what Liza has to say about the matter before deciding what’s best.
~ ~ ~
Elizabeth and Mr. Kidney had many a row about her periodic escapes, one in April of 1887 coming to physical violence. He’d struck her in the face several times and ripped the earring from her left ear, tearing open the lobe. Elizabeth reported to the police at the Commercial Street station that Mr. Kidney had assaulted her, but when time for the hearing came, she was on another of her benders. Since she failed to show up at the Thames Magistrate Court, the charges against him were dropped.
Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event Page 17