Ada nodded her drunken agreement. ‘Right good money.’
‘There must be something that can be done. I don’t mean about underthings, but about…’ Celia flapped her hand around, taking in the pub and everyone in it. ‘All this. All of it. It’s all very upsetting.’
‘Sorry, I’m sure,’ said Ada sarcastically. ‘But I’m afraid it’s our life, girl. And whether yer like it or not, there’s no other bugger gonna feed our kids, now is there?’
‘There’s no need to trouble yerself about it,’ said Florrie, glaring at Ada to warn her that she was going too far. ‘It’s just the way things are, see?’
‘Trouble herself? Her? Disgust her more like,’ said Ada. ‘Look at her, nose in the air. We ain’t throwing ourselves at the geezers, yer know. They come to us cos they wants us.’
Celia opened her mouth to speak, although she wasn’t sure what she was going to say. But she was saved from offending the women further by a bare-footed child rushing into the pub and yelling for help. He was followed by a wild-eyed, distressed man, who stood in the middle of the pub pleading with someone, anyone, to give him money to pay for a doctor to help his sister.
‘We told him, he won’t get no doctor to go down there without money up front,’ said a small, dumpy woman who followed them in.
‘Can I help?’ asked Celia standing up. ‘I have some medical knowledge.’
‘Yer don’t know where he wants yer to go, love, do yer?’ said Florrie, grimacing and holding her nose. ‘Their place is right dookie. I ain’t the fussiest one around, but it ain’t very nice where they’re from.’
But the man didn’t need a second chance – he saw the possibility of help for his sister and he grabbed it. He grasped Celia by the arm and dragged her frantically to the door. Never one to miss the opportunity of having a lark, Ada and Florrie rolled their eyes, gathered up the crying boy, and followed rapidly behind.
The man lead them into the maze of courts and alleyways similar to those with which Celia was already becoming familiar, but then he ducked into a low tunnel known only to the dwellers of the squalid hovels that had been built by the desperate inmates of the hellish inner sanctum of the rookery. Even the tenement and court dwellers thought twice about going into the jerry-built hutches and lean-tos constructed from old packing cases and other leavings of the more fortunate.
As Celia lost all sense of direction, and with it any semblance of normality or familiarity with the neighbourhood – if it could be called that – she became increasingly nervous, wondering what on earth she was doing following this strange man in the company of two prostitutes and a howling, filthy child. She pulled back from the man and stopped dead when they came to a dark archway between two quite solid-looking brick buildings.
‘Go on, yer all right. We’re behind yer.’ It was Ada, urging her on – they’d left the comfort of the pub and had come this far, she didn’t intend missing out on the last act of this little drama.
The man’s desperate expression beseeched Celia to follow him and, before she had the chance to reconsider, he was directing her over the doorstep and into a totally black passageway leading into one of the buildings.
Celia gasped. ‘God, what’s that smell?’ she gasped, gagging at the stink.
Ada spoke through her shawl that she held up to her mouth. ‘It’s the cesspits. The ones round here are open. Down in the cellars.’
‘Hold something up to yer face,’ mumbled Florrie from behind her sleeve.
‘She’s in here,’ said the man’s voice from the gloom.
Celia wanted to hold her breath, never to take another mouthful of that disgusting air, but she had to speak. ‘I need some light,’ she gasped.
A piece of candle was produced by one of the inquisitive bystanders who had gathered to see what the to-do was all about.
The pale glimmer of light was enough to show Celia that she was in an almost derelict room. In the shadows she could see that there was no furniture, save a market basket which had been up-ended to serve as a table, and a bundle of something by the empty hearth to serve as a bed. A small child, hollow-eyed from malnourishment, sat in the corner of the putrid chamber and stared. The object of its gaze was a woman, possibly its mother, but whoever she was she was almost lifeless, stretched out on a fetid pile of rags, a dark stain of blood spreading out beneath her, soaking into the already stinking bedding.
‘The old girl upstairs tried to help her out,’ explained a small thin woman who was standing, arms folded, watching in the doorway. ‘She’s had too many got rid of in the past, if yer ask me,’ she said, and bent forward to scratch at an ulcerated sore on her leg. ‘Her insides couldn’t take no more messing. And the state of this place.’ She looked round the dingy room. ‘Too much on-the-door nosing to bother to keep her room tidy, that one, if yer wanna know.’
Celia flashed a look of contempt at the woman and her uninvited comments, and then knelt down, unconcerned now about spoiling her fine dress on the bare, unwashed boards: her whole being was consumed by the sight and stink of the miserable soul before her.
‘Will someone take the children out of here?’ she said quietly.
‘Come with me, darling,’ said Florrie, and scooped up the little girl in the corner.
The older child, who had gone to the pub to ask for help, silently refused to leave. He knelt down next to Celia and watched as she held the woman’s hand while the life ebbed away from her.
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Celia through her tears. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do. I’m sorry.’
As she stood outside, Celia closed her eyes, but the sight of the man rocking the dead woman in his arms was burned into her soul. And the silence of the boy had been almost more terrible than the man’s sobs.
The little girl who Florrie had been minding looked up at Celia crying and pulled free of Florrie’s hand. She ran inside, crying out for her mother, who now lay dead in the hopeless depths of what the child knew as home.
‘This can’t carry on. I won’t let it,’ Celia vowed as she walked numbly along beside the now entirely sober Ada and Florrie. ‘I’ll find a way to do something useful round here. I swear I will.’
‘Yer wanna do something useful round here?’ said Ada, clinging on to Florrie’s arm for comfort. ‘Find a way of helping out poor cows like her. That’ll be doing something all right.’
Chapter 18
‘Watch her carefully. Pay attention to her every move. She has chosen to spend her everyday life without speech but, when the spirit moves her, she will speak directly to me.’ Jacob pressed the fingertips of both hands to his forehead. ‘Her words are appearing in here. She has the gift to transport her thoughts directly into my mind.’ With his arm at full stretch, he described a sweeping arc around the room. ‘Death itself has whispered in her ear.’
Jacob, with his usual calm pragmatism, had decided it would be better after all that, when they entered the homes of society ladies and their indulgent husbands, Ettie should be the enigmatically silent beauty. With her recent moods of dissatisfaction, he had concluded that it was too risky to allow her to speak: she might so easily, when in one of her ill-humours, show far too many rough corners. And he didn’t want to risk her snagging them on the sensibilities of the upper classes. She had to remain credible to her audience, and the reality of her background would be an immediate dampener to their belief.
In the faint red glow of a silk-draped lamp, the semi-circle of sitters watched, enthralled, as Jacob moved to the back of the room. He stopped by a tall wooden box standing on a small raised platform. Both box and dais were painted with arcane designs and mysterious cyphers in rich, jewel-like colours. The more imaginative among those present might have believed the cabinet to be an up-ended coffin.
Jacob raised his arm and, with a flourish, pulled back a flimsy veil of silky cloth; and there sat Ettie – eyes closed, chin high, hands resting lightly on her muslin-clad thighs, her chest rising and falling with deep, even breaths.
Murmurs of excitement drifted around the darkened room.
‘Please, I must insist. Absolute silence. She is communing with the old souls. The departed ones. The messages come through to me on planes of pure thought. To disturb her would be dangerous.’
Ettie began moaning sensuously. Several gentlemen who had come along to the meeting to pacify their wives were finding the proceedings far more interesting than they had expected, although they were also beginning to find that their collars had become excessively tight.
‘The messages are coming through,’ Jacob intoned in a loud stage whisper, the cue for Ettie to begin a slow, eel-like writhing, although still within the confines of her box.
‘Yes, I have the first message coming through. Someone in this room knows of a man called William. A man who suffered much but who suffers no longer. A man who has joined with the blessed spirits on the other side.’
Eager to be part of the proceedings, the sitters racked their brains for recently deceased acquaintances of that name.
Jacob stood with a dignified serenity, waiting for the first response. He did not have to wait long.
‘Yes. William. Yes. That’s right. It’s come to me.’ A fur-caped woman in the inner circle of sitters raised her hand like an eager schoolgirl who knew the correct answer to her tutor’s question. ‘The under-gardener. Frightful accident.’
Jacob smiled inwardly. Perfect. He had his mark. With that single raised hand, Ettie was launched on her career as a private clairvoyant.
Ever the showman, Jacob was careful not to have too long a period without a fresh sensation to titillate their audience. Giving out names and messages were all very well, but the hostess had paid dearly to have the seance conducted in her drawing room, and Jacob intended her to feel she had had value for money, as well as the prestige that staging such a private event brought to society ladies.
Mixed in with his effortless flow of patter, Jacob gave Ettie the secret code words, and within moments a series of waxy faces – spirits from beyond – had appeared on either side of her in the dim recesses of the box.
The sitters craned forward, trying to suppress their gasps of astonishment. Jacob had instructed them well: they knew that too much sound and the apparitions would dissolve like so many snowflakes on a lamp-warmed windowpane.
‘I hear you. I hear you,’ Jacob moaned, closing his eyes and drawing himself up to his full height. ‘The spirits want to move amongst you. I must ask that no one moves. The lights must be dimmed completely. Only the red lamp may burn above the cabinet.’
Jacob then made a melodramatic progress around the sumptuously appointed room, instructing the footman to turn down each gas-jet in turn. Then he directed the servant back to his post by the door with a hushed, That will be all,’ and hoped that Ettie had remembered the lay-out of the furniture.
As Ettie stepped out of the cabinet and wandered ethereally amongst the enraptured sitters, she left behind her the unmistakable smell of sweet roses, which she had sprayed liberally over her gown before leaving her seat. She brushed her hands near the heads of the sitters who felt both honoured and privileged to be touched by the spirits.
From the safety of the darkness, Jacob smiled to himself. Ettie was doing her work well, he thought, very well. He had been right about her from the first time he had seen her. He congratulated himself that his experienced eye had seen through the surface grime of the grubby little street urchin at the penny gaff to the beauty who was waiting there to be discovered.
He heard her return to the cabinet and take her seat.
The lights,’ he instructed the now terrified footman, who was more than keen to return the room to even the low level of illumination acceptable to the spirit world.
‘Are the spirits happy?’ Jacob asked.
He could barely suppress his desire to applaud her expertise as Ettie answered the question on behalf of the departed ones with some impressively loud raps, produced by the well-practised technique of striking her bare big toe against the hollow dais on which the cabinet stood.
‘Thank you for that sign. Can I now ask a final favour?’
Three resounding raps echoed around the otherwise silent room.
‘Give us a token, a sign, for the believers here gathered, from the other side.’
The hostess gave a whimper of pure pleasure. This was even better than she had hoped. Her friends would trample over one another to get an invitation to her next soiree.
Ettie stood up in her coffin-like confinement and deliberately ripped shreds from her muslin robe which she then handed to Jacob.
Unable to control himself, a puce-faced man at the front let out a strangulated, ‘Oh I say!’ at the thought of the silent beauty actually disrobing herself so passionately before his very eyes. He was to be disappointed, in that at least.
Jacob took the strips of muslin and handed them out to those he had correctly assessed as being the most important guests. The favoured few accepted the talismans with evident delight.
There was, however, to be a final treat for everyone. With a startling flap of her arms, Ettie stepped from the cabinet, her robe whole again, her head high, her breathing rapid and loud.
Obviously exhausted, Ettie staggered back and dropped down on to the seat in the tall chest.
‘We must finish now,’ said Jacob, as Ettie’s head flopped forward. He lowered the curtain across the front of the box, and indicated for the footman to dim the lights again.
‘Silence, please.’ Jacob reached out and extinguished even the red glow above the chest. ‘She is gone!’ he said simply.
By the time the lights were turned up once more and the covering applause and excited chatter had died down, Ettie had indeed gone – out of the room, out of the front door, and out of the neighbourhood entirely; running as fast her trailing cape permitted.
* * *
‘Ettie, we are going to be the darlings of the drawing room.’ Jacob rushed into the room like a Dervish. ‘The celebrities of the salon.’ He had just arrived back from the seance, and was still buzzing with the excitement of their success.
‘I’m very pleased,’ she said flatly, pulling a shawl round her. ‘Shut that door, I’ll freeze here in my nightdress.’ She turned her back on him and began aimlessly examining the bookshelves.
‘Ettie, what’s wrong?’
She didn’t face him. ‘You’ve been long enough, haven’t you? I’ve been back for hours.’
‘I had to stay and talk. They expected it.’
‘So I noticed.’ She pulled the shawl round her more tightly. ‘I saw the way you played up to the women. It was bad enough when we met them before the sitting. You laughing at their stupid stories. But what I really hated was the way you kept sending all the men over to me.’
‘You didn’t have to say anything to them,’ said Jacob, resenting her spoiling his elated mood. ‘You have it easy.’ He smiled coldly. ‘You only need to converse with the spirits.’
‘Bloody lucky for them toffs,’ she said, and turned round to face him, her face pale with anger, ‘’cos I’d have told them their fortune good and proper if I had have spoken to them.’
Jacob unwound his long silk scarf and took off his cloak. ‘Ettie, it’s important for the audience to meet us, an important part of the act.’ He threw his things on to a chair. ‘It’s the way we ensure good donations and gifts.’
‘Hypocrite.’
‘What do you mean?’
She nodded towards the cloak. ‘If I do that you go barmy.’
Jacob smiled, more warmly this time, pleased at the easier atmosphere. He picked up his things and put them on the hall stand.
Ettie followed him into the little kitchen. Something was obviously still worrying her. ‘When I did my disappearing act, I watched you for a bit, you know. I opened the door, just a crack, and watched you.’
Jacob turned on her, the kettle in his hand. ‘That was absolutely stupid, and you know it. What if they had seen you?’
&nbs
p; ‘I ain’t stupid, and they didn’t see me. Anyway, it’s me who should be angry. You were all over them women.’
Jacob looked at her, puzzled. ‘Don’t get so upset, Ettie. I hate repeating myself, but it is part of the act.’
‘It’s different when you have no choice,’ she said, spitting the words out at him. ‘But it’s not right when you don’t have to do it.’
Jacob slammed down the kettle and strode back into the sitting room. He sat down in one of the armchairs by the hearth and indicated that Ettie should take the other one. ‘I know we’re both very tired, but I think we should talk about whatever it is that is making you so unhappy.’ He took the cigarette case from the side-table next to him and struck a match. He was being infuriatingly calm. ‘It would be unfortunate to ruin what would otherwise be a very successful collaboration between us.’
Ettie slumped back in the chair, watching him begin to smoke the cigarette. With her pouting lips, long bare legs stuck out in front of her, and thick dark hair falling loose about her shoulders, she looked every bit the sulky child.
‘The girls round Whitechapel don’t exactly like what they do, you know. They do it because they have to. Like I said, they have no choice.’ She said the words slowly, quietly, as though she was thinking carefully about what she was saying.
Jacob’s reply was a barely raised eyebrow.
‘When things are bad and there’s nothing coming in, what else can they do but go out walking?’
Jacob shifted in his chair and then leaned towards her. ‘Your mother?’
‘Don’t stare at me like that,’ she said. ‘She always said it wasn’t so bad. And it was honest.’ Ettie suddenly buried her head in her hands and began softly weeping. ‘Least it was better than what that dirty bastard of a lodger did to me.’
Once she had begun her story of abuse and deprivation, Ettie couldn’t stop herself. Out it all came, not just the parts she had told him when they first met at the gaff, but all of it – like a swollen river bursting its banks.
The Whitechapel Girl Page 21