“Why have it if you don’t use it?” Katie’s words came short and fast.
“It’s a pretty thing and that’s all,” Catherine said, obviously trying to remain calm. “You were not to use the silver thimble and still you took it. Nothing good will come from such dishonesty. It is certainly not ladylike.”
Katie balked at the idea. “If I were a lady, I’d have plenty of silver thimbles as well as other riches.”
“You’re not a child anymore. Your temper will only bring trouble, and others will judge you harshly. Take caution from the example of your cousin, Charles. He is too young to be drinking and fighting the way he does. He has spent more than one night in jail. Life is not all cakes and ale. He’ll come to no good.”
Katie didn’t like to hear that. Despite Charles’s carousing and his bad reputation, he was her favorite cousin. He was three years older. She’d caught his eye and he hers, but their mothers had kept them apart and she resented it.
Katie frowned, took a tin thimble from the sewing kit and turned her chair so that she faced away from her mother before returning to her work.
“Life is hard on pretty girls, Katie. Pretty girls want things and have ways of getting them. Be careful what you do, to get what you want.”
Katie didn’t like the wistful tone in Catherine’s voice.
“Yes, still a girl, but then you’re also a young woman,” Catherine said.
Katie smiled, despite her foul mood, and was glad her mother couldn’t see it.
“We are two poor women,” Catherine said, “among many poor women, gathered in the dark corners of London. Like the coal soot that falls everywhere—you don’t mind it until it collects in your home, your kitchen, your bed. Then it’s a nuisance that must be swept away into the street. Don’t become a nuisance, Katie.”
She says I’m a woman, then spoils it calling me soot.
“One day,” Catherine said, “the silver thimble will be yours. You’ll wear all the pretty off the outside using it. I know you will. I hope it takes many years. Take care you don’t wear yourself out the way your poor mum has. But even so, if you do what you know to be right, like that thimble, there will always be a bit of pretty on the inside. That’s what keeps me going.”
The pretty? The silver? Something good and pure? Does she mean herself, me, or the thimble?
Catherine was so good, it was easy to imagine pretty white metal inside her, right beneath her skin. But no, silver was hard and rigid, and her mother would be incapable of movement with all that inside her.
Then Katie remembered quicksilver. That was the something swift about silver. Her brother, Christopher, had once brought home a small bottle of the shiny liquid when he worked at a percussion cap factory.
Now, her mother was good and pure, filled with the pretty metal, and could move again.
If I’m truly good, she told herself, that is what I should bleed and then I shall always have my Mum.
Catherine’s growling stomach interrupted Katie’s thoughts, reminding her of the ache in her own belly and that she was supposed to be angry. She turned to her mother. “If you’ll not use the thimble, then we should sell it.”
“That isn’t for you to decide. It was a gift from my sister.”
Katie didn’t really want it sold. She wanted to break her mother’s rigid thinking about it. The thimble was a wonder that helped work go faster and made it more pleasurable. “Perhaps you’re too proud to take good advice from a child.”
“Such impertinence!” Catherine raised her hand to slap Katie across the mouth, but a shade of misery darkened her face and she flew into another coughing fit. Katie winced to see her cough bright blood into her handkerchief.
Life in the old laundry room was suddenly fragile. Gone were Katie’s illusions that her efforts supported the family, that somehow the thimble would be the key to their success. A dread of the future welled up in her small frame, but she pushed it back down and held her mother. Finally Catherine leaned back and wiped her mouth and nose.
“I’m so sorry, Mum,” Katie said. “I am such a wicked—”
“No, child, you are just hungry—hungry in many ways.” She reached into the sewing kit and pulled out the thimble and set it on the table beside her handkerchief. “It’s for you.”
Katie’s eyes grew wide and she tried to look at it, but all she could see was the indelible red on the handkerchief.
Chapter 2: Two Skirts, One Green, One Blue with Red Flounce
The London Particular was so heavy the day Catherine died, the gas lamps on the streets were lit at midday. Katie chose to believe they were lit for her mother.
She and her siblings were the only persons in attendance at Catherine’s funeral. The stretch of marsh near St. Bride’s Church that held her mother’s grave emitted an odor like rotten eggs. The heavy fog, still present, created a wall around the burial party that was too close and contained too little air. Katie turned away in shame as Catherine’s body was dumped, along with the corpses of three others, into a pauper’s grave. The clergyman mumbled prayers and raggedy gravediggers shoveled clotted soil back into the deep, wet hole.
“We should save what money we can to have her taken from here and buried properly in hallowed ground,” Katie said, her voice unsteady and cracking with emotion.
Christopher frowned, looked at his feet, shifted from foot to foot.
“The minister says we have six months,” Emma said. “After that, they will not open the grave.”
“We have little now and in six months we may have less,” Christopher said in a hurried way, sounding too practical for a sixteen-year-old. He still had the pink cheeks and thin blonde hair of a child. “You know how she likes people. She has company here. I’m sure they’ll get along famously.”
Perhaps he talked about their mother as if she were still alive to soften the blow of their loss. His way was to joke when things were hard.
“You could agree to try,” Margaret said, holding tears back.
“Very well.” Christopher nodded a little too vigorously to be believed, but they all let it go.
~~~
Katie and her older siblings were evicted from their dwelling. Christopher left for the industrial school to become a cobbler and Emma and Margaret found themselves in the workhouse. Katie went to live with her Aunt Elizabeth.
Choosing among her mother’s possessions to carry away with her, Katie favored those items that held her mother’s scent; a green alpaca skirt, a blue cotton skirt with a red flounce, bedclothes and a pillow.
A week after Catherine’s death, on a chill, damp Tuesday night in the winter of 1855, carrying everything she owned in her mother’s old leather travel bag, Katie crossed the threshold and entered for the first time her Aunt Elizabeth’s house in South Bermondsey. Although a much finer home than she’d ever hoped to live in, the quality of it made little impression. Katie moved in a daze, hugging the pillow, the bag slung over her shoulder and wearing the bedclothes like an outer garment. Her friend, her teacher, her confidant, her love was gone. Abandoned and alone in the world, she was greeted by her aunt and uncle without ceremony.
“I’ll not make sacrifices to see that she’s fed,” Uncle William said, eyeing her curiously.
“We’ll manage somehow,” Aunt Elizabeth said, leading Katie to a small room with shelves of textile supplies on either side of a small, makeshift bed. “I’ve needed help for some time.”
She looked Katie in the eye. “You’ll do your part, won’t you?”
Katie could only nod her head.
“When I address you,” Elizabeth said, “you will respond with words and use my name.”
“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth,” Katie said mechanically.
Her aunt’s expression was severe. She took Katie’s travel bag and placed it on the floor beside the door. “Now give me those filthy bedclothes and that wretched pillow.”
Suddenly alert, Katie said, “No, please, Aunt Elizabeth. They are my Mum, my home.”
&
nbsp; “Catherine is gone, girl. This is your new home.” Aunt Elizabeth snatched the items from her and hurried from the room.
Katie would have chased after her, but Uncle William stood in the doorway staring. Confused and numb, Katie merely stood, looking at her feet and the rough floorboards. He lingered, his eyes moving up and down her length, then he abruptly left, shutting the door behind him.
Katie climbed in the bed, put her head on the unfamiliar pillow and pulled the covers up around her slight form. She had never been in such a warm, clean bed. Why can’t I feel it? Strange and unwelcoming, she would trade it in an instant for another night in her own bed and one more goodnight kiss from her mother. She tossed off the covers, fetched her mother’s alpaca skirt from her travel bag and curled up with it on the floor, breathing in Catherine’s scent.
Not my home. I may have to stay a while, but I’ll find my own home one day and start a new life.
At some point in the night she awoke, cold and sore from the rough floorboards biting into her. Katie tossed the skirt into the bed and climbed up after it. She hid it under the pillow, pulled the covers up over herself and went back to sleep.
Chapter 3: A Piece of White Coarse Linen
When Catherine’s bedclothes and pillow were returned to Katie cleaned, her mother’s scent was all but gone from them. She hid her mother’s skirts by day so her aunt wouldn’t clean them, and at night she retrieved and slept with them both.
Aunt Elizabeth, a seamstress, was a strict disciplinarian and taskmistress, clearly in charge of the household. Nothing was given to Katie that she didn’t earn through hard work. She had little time for herself, but was allowed to finish her final year of education at the Bermondsey United Charity School for Girls. She was grateful even though Aunt Elizabeth required her to compensate for the time lost by working whatever hours were left to her after her lessons, mostly at night. Her duties included mending, alterations, stain removal, and garment dyeing for Aunt Elizabeth’s customers.
Bent over a wash tub, Katie was cleaning a stained dress bodice the first time Uncle William lifted her skirts to touch her backside. She stood and turned quickly to defend herself, nearly upsetting the tub. Uncle William, a crooked smile on his leering face, backed away swiftly and left the room. Too embarrassed to say anything about it, Katie kept her shock and dismay to herself.
This is what Mum wouldn’t tell me about him.
Over time, his pawing became a habit. He took advantage of the times when she was absorbed in her work to grab at her budding breasts or reach under her skirts. She endured the indignity with as much grace as possible and became ever watchful while working alone. Sticking close to Aunt Elizabeth during waking hours prevented the worst of his abuses.
~~~
Katie had been with her aunt and uncle for a year when she saw through the front windows gaunt figures walking in the lane toward the house in the hazy-bright, midday sun. Recognizing her sisters, she ran out the front door to hug them, but stopped short when she was close, overcome by their smell. Thin and dirty, they had aged ten years in the span of only one. Clearly they were her sisters, for they still had the dark, almost black hair of their mother, and they wore the same clothes they’d worn a year ago, Emma in a worn brown linsey-woolsey skirt and bodice, Margaret in grey and blue wool. Even so, there was a frightful madness about their appearance, as if she were facing dangerous, savage strangers, for who would willingly allow themselves to fall into such a state? They were mottled with sores and abrasions, and a weary animal vigilance haunted their eyes. Katie wanted to reject the reality of what she saw; she looked instead for evidence that her sisters were actors wearing costumes.
The three stood for a moment regarding each other silently, then Katie overcame her fear and hurried to hug them. With each embrace, she worried she might catch lice and disease.
“It’s good to see you,” Katie lied, with a grim smile and furrowed brow.
“Thank you,” Emma said. “I’m sorry we didn’t come to visit sooner. A leave of absence is a misery of documents and we must give up our uniforms and don our old clothes.”
“Come say hello to your aunt and uncle.”
Aunt Elizabeth stood in the front doorway, arms crossed, barring passage. “We’re expecting a customer,” she said.
Katie, who commonly knew the day’s schedule, was unaware of that.
“You two are too filthy to come in,” Elizabeth continued. “If you’ll go to the rear, I’ll bring you something to eat.”
Emma and Margaret made no response to the rudeness.
Katie led them to the back of the house. “I’m sorry,” she said when they were out of earshot of their aunt. They sat in the sun, amidst barrels and crates at the back doorstep. Elizabeth provided them with a midday meal of boiled cabbage, potatoes and bacon. Katie pretended she was not hungry and offered up her portion to her sisters. They ate what was on their plates with a slow determination, then scrupulously divided and ate what was on hers.
Margaret had temporarily lost her voice due to a case of influenza. She communicated only with smiles and nods. Sneezing repeatedly, she blew her nose into a piece of coarse linen.
Emma was reluctant to talk about the workhouse, but Katie’s plied her with questions. “We are clothed and kept warm,” Emma said, finally opening up, “but are rarely fed more than a thin gruel. The staff is corrupt and abusive and must be paid in some way for any advantage. We must share beds with many different strangers. That means sharing their illnesses. The work is hard and the hours long. Look at my hands.” She held up cracked and bleeding fingers. “Courtesy of the Lump Hotel. Most of the work is picking oakum for the ship builders.”
Regretting her persistence, Katie frowned and turned away, looking for a way to change the subject. “Have you heard anything from Christopher?” Katie asked.
“No, we haven’t.” Emma said sadly. “I don’t know if he is earning his keep yet, but he was right about us.” Her words came out thick and slurred.
“What do you mean?” Katie asked.
“That we would not earn enough to have Mother placed in hallowed ground. It’s too late now. I hope she enjoys her companions.” Emma chuckled dryly and Margaret bowed her head and closed her eyes as if nodding off. Katie thought Emma was being disrespectful, but then had a brief, pleasing image of Catherine playing Grandmother’s Trunk with her grave companions. The game was Katie’s favorite to play with her mother while they replaced buttons in the evening. A pleasant way for her to while away eternity.
“I met a man, Joseph Matthews, in the workhouse,” Emma said slowly, a faraway look in her eyes. “He found work as a lumper and has left us…for a time. We’re to be married…soon as he’s earned enough to find suitable lodgings. I’ll take Margaret with me.”
Margaret glanced up briefly with a flicker of a smile, but otherwise remained motionless.
“I’m pleased to hear of the hope Mr. Matthews brings,” Katie said.
The food must have put her sisters in a stupor, for they didn’t offer anything more to the immediate conversation.
Katie tried unsuccessfully to think of something else to say. She was uncomfortable and wanted their visit to end, and was ashamed of that desire. Still, she was in sympathy with her aunt; as long as her sisters were living in the workhouse—Emma had called it the Lump Hotel—she wanted nothing to do with them either.
Katie flinched and drew her hand back when she felt Margaret’s touch. Her silent sister had reached for her so quietly.
“She wants to hold your hand,” Emma said.
Katie had the absurd fear that the workhouse might rub off on her.
Margaret’s eyes expressed hurt.
“You startled me is all,” Katie said, and grasped her sister’s rough, scabby fingers in her own.
She was relieved when they left in the late afternoon to return to the workhouse. Her sisters were mere ghosts of the young women they had been, particularly the silent Margaret.
Katie f
ell into a state of mourning while cleaning up after their meal. Finding the piece of linen Margaret had used as a handkerchief, she could not throw it away. She washed it and added it to her possessions.
Chapter 4: A White Handle Table Knife, a Ticking Pocket and a Cork
With time Katie became resigned to William reaching under her skirts because she always managed to keep her drawers on. But when she was sixteen years old, he became more insistent. To insure her safety, she took a sharp table knife from the kitchen and then made a pocket to hide it in. The pocket was made from a section of the blue striped bed ticking from her mother’s pillow with strings added to cinch the opening around the handle of the knife. She sewed a band to the pocket so it could be fastened around her waist out of sight, under her top skirt. A cork stuck on the end of the knife prevented it from cutting through the bottom of the pocket. Although difficult to get to in a hurry, it made her feel a little bit better.
One day, nearly sober, Uncle William came to her while she stood at work a table, preparing a cochineal dye bath for a customer’s faded red jacket. He reached for her. Katie dodged and upset the bath, spilling bright crimson dye over several bolts of cloth.
“Your aunt will be unhappy you’ve wasted her dyestuffs and damaged her valuable goods,” Uncle William said. “I might agree with her that you should be turn out of our home. However, if you will be good to me, I would tell her I upset the dye bath.”
Cast out on the street with no where to go but the workhouse, the grueling life under conditions of hard labor, malnourishment and chronic disease—it was too much to face.
Katie allowed Uncle William to have his way. In his excitement, he ejaculated too soon, merely staining her drawers.
She pushed her skirts back down and started cleaning up the spilled dye. Uncle William was straightening his clothing when Aunt Elizabeth came in. She looked at him, her brow furrowed and mouth open with an unspoken question. Then she saw the spilled dye on the table and her eyes turned on Katie.
Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event Page 20