by Kate Morton
‘Oh no,’ said Cassandra, the flash of blue metal still loud in her mind. ‘I couldn’t, it’s too much trouble.’ She began to relax her grip on the car door handle. ‘Besides, it’s too late to cancel my booking.’
‘Never too late. I’ll do it for you.’ Ruby turned to Cassandra again, seatbelt squeezing her large breast so that it almost leapt from her shirt. ‘And it’s no trouble. I’ve made up a bed and I’m looking forward to your visit.’ She grinned. ‘Dad’d skin me alive if he thought I’d sent you off to a hotel!’
When they reached South Kensington, Ruby reversed the car into a minuscule space and Cassandra held her breath, silenced by admiration of the other woman’s lusty confidence.
‘Here we are then.’ Ruby plucked the keys from the ignition and gestured towards a white terrace on the other side of the road. ‘Home sweet home.’
The flat was tiny. Tucked deep within the Edwardian house, up two flights of stairs and behind a yellow door. It had only one bedroom, a little shower recess and toilet, and a kitchenette attached to the sitting room. Ruby had set up the sofa bed for Cassandra.
‘Only three star, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it up to you at breakfast.’
Cassandra glanced uncertainly at the tiny kitchenette and Ruby laughed so that her lime green blouse shook. She wiped her eyes. ‘Oh Lord, no! I don’t mean to cook. Why put oneself through the agony when someone else can do it so much better? I’ll take you round the corner to a café instead.’ She flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Cuppa?’
Cassandra smiled weakly. What she really wanted to do was let her facial muscles relax out of this pleased-to-meet-you smile. It may have been the fact of having been so far above the earth’s surface for such a long time, or just her usual mildly antisocial tendencies, but she was using every ounce of energy to keep up a front of function. A cup of tea would mean at least another twenty minutes of smiling and nodding and, god help her, finding answers to Ruby’s constant questions. She thought briefly, with guilty longing, of the hotel room on the other side of town. Then she noticed Ruby was already dunking twin teabags into twin teacups. ‘Tea’d be great.’
‘Here you are then,’ said Ruby, handing Cassandra a steaming cup. She sat down on the other side of the sofa and beamed as a cloud of musk-scented air arranged itself around her. ‘Don’t be shy,’ she said, indicating the sugar pot. ‘And while you’re at it, you can tell me all about yourself. What a thrill, this house in Cornwall!’
After Ruby had finally gone to bed, Cassandra tried to sleep. She was tired. Colours, sounds, shapes, all blurred around her, but sleep was elusive. Images and conversations played rapidly across her brain, a never-ending stream of thoughts and feelings tied together by no theme more specific than that they were hers: Nell and Ben, the antiques stall, her mother, the plane trip, the airport, Ruby, Eliza Makepeace and her fairytales . . .
Finally she gave up on sleep. Pushed back the covers and climbed off the sofa. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark so she could make her way to the flat’s only window. Its wide ledge jutted out above the radiator and if Cassandra pushed aside the curtains she could just fit across it, back against one thick rendered wall, feet touching the other. She leaned forward onto her knees and looked outside, across the skinny Victorian gardens with their stone walls devoured by ivy, towards the street beyond. Moonlight hummed quietly on the ground below.
Although it was almost midnight, London wasn’t dark. Cities like London never were, she suspected, not any more. The modern world had killed night-time. Once it must have been very different, a city at the mercy of nature. A city where nightfall turned the streets to pitch and the air to fog: Jack the Ripper’s London.
That was the London of Eliza Makepeace, the London Cassandra had read about in Nell’s notebook, of mist-filled streets and looming horses, glowing lamps that materialised then vanished again into the fog-laden haze.
Looking down onto the narrow cobbled mews behind Ruby’s flat, she could imagine them now: ghostly horsemen coaxing their frightened beasts along busy lanes. Lantern men perched high atop the carriages. Street sellers and harlots, policemen and thieves . . .
16
London, 1900
The fog was thick and yellow, the colour of pease pudding. It had crept in overnight, rolled down the surface of the river and spread heavily across the streets, around the houses, beneath the doorstops. Eliza watched from the crack between the bricks. Beneath its silent cloak, houses, gas lamps, walls were turned to monstrous shadows, lurching back and forth as the sulphurous clouds shifted around them.
Mrs Swindell had left her with a pile of laundry, but as far as Eliza could see, there was no point washing anything with the fog as it was—what was white would be grey by day’s end. It was just as well to hang the clothes out wet but unlaundered, which is what she’d done. It would save the bar of soap, not to mention Eliza’s time. For Eliza had much better things to do when the fog was thick, all the better to hide and all the better to sneak.
The Ripper was one of her best games. In the beginning she had played it by herself, but over time she’d taught Sammy the rules and now they took turns enacting the parts of Mother and the Ripper. Eliza could never decide which role she preferred. The Ripper, she sometimes thought, for his sheer power. It made her skin flush with guilty pleasure, creeping up behind Sammy, stifling a giggle as she prepared to catch him . . .
But there was something seductive in playing Mother, too. In walking quickly, cautiously, refusing to look over her shoulder, refusing to break into a run, trying to keep ahead of the footsteps behind her, as her heartbeat grew loud enough to drown them out and leave her without proper warning. The fear was delicious, it made her skin tingle.
Although the Swindells were both out scavenging (the fog was a gift for those river dwellers who scratched a living by unscrupulous means), Eliza nonetheless went quietly down the stairs, careful to avoid the squeak of the fourth tread. Sarah, the girl who looked after the Swindells’ daughter, Hatty, was the sort who liked to curry favour with her employers by making sly reports on Eliza’s failings.
At the bottom of the stairs Eliza stopped and scanned the shadowy lumps and bumps of the shop. The fingers of fog had found their way between the bricks and flattened out across the room, hovering heavily over the displays, clustering yellow around the flickering gas lamp. Sammy was in the back corner, sitting on a stool cleaning bottles. He was deep in thought: Eliza recognised the mask of daydream on his face.
With a glance to confirm that Sarah wasn’t lurking, Eliza crept towards him.
‘Sammy!’ she whispered as she made her approach.
Nothing, he hadn’t heard.
‘Sammy!’
His knee stopped jiggling and he leaned so that his head appeared around the shop counter. Straight hair fell to the side.
‘There’s a fog out.’
His blank expression reflected the self-evidence of this statement. He shrugged slightly.
‘Thick as the gutter muck, the street lamps have all but disappeared. Perfect for the Ripper.’
That got Sammy’s attention. He was still for a moment, considering, then he shook his head. Pointed at Mr Swindell’s chair with its stained cushion, stuck where the bones of his back pressed into it, night after night, when he returned from the tavern.
‘He won’t even know we’re gone. He’ll be ages yet and so will she.’
He shook his head again, with slightly less vigour this time.
‘They’ll be busy all afternoon, neither would pass up an opportunity to make some extra coin.’ Eliza could tell she was getting to him. He was part of her after all, she’d always been able to read his thoughts. ‘Come on, we won’t be long. We’ll go as far as the river and then we’ll turn back.’ Nearly, nearly. ‘You can choose who you want to be.’
That did it, as she’d known it would. Sammy’s sombre eyes met hers.
He lifted his hand, clenched it in a small, pale fist as if he clutched
a knife.
While Sammy stood by the door, waiting out the ten second head start always accorded to the person playing Mother, Eliza crept away. She ducked beneath Mrs Swindell’s laundry lines, around the ragman’s wagon, and started towards the river. Excitement had her heart hammering. It was delicious, this feeling of danger. Waves of thrilling fear crashed beneath her skin as she sneaked along, weaving her way around people, wagons, dogs, perambulators, hazy with fog. All the while her ears were pricked for the footsteps behind her, creeping, creeping, catching her up.
Unlike Sammy, Eliza loved the river. It made her feel close to her father. Mother hadn’t been one for volunteering information about the past but she’d told Eliza once that her father had grown up on a different bend of the same river. Had learned his sailor’s ropes on a collier before joining another crew and heading for the high seas. Eliza liked to think about all he must have seen on his riverbend, round near Execution Dock. Where pirates were hanged, their bodies left to sway from chains until three tides had washed over them. Dancing the hempen jig, the old-timers called it.
Eliza shivered, imagining the lifeless bodies, wondering what it might feel like to have a final breath squeezed from her own neck, then scolded herself for becoming distracted. It was the sort of lapse to which Sammy usually fell victim. And it was all very well for Sammy: Eliza knew she had to be more careful than that.
Now where were Sammy’s footsteps? She strained to hear, concentrated her mind. Listened . . . Gulls by the river, mast ropes creaking, hull timber stretching, a trolley trundling by, the fly-paper man calling, ‘Catch ’em alive-oh’, the quick steps of a hurried woman, a paper boy singing out the price of his rag . . .
Suddenly, behind her, a crash. A horse whinnying. A man’s voice hollering.
Eliza’s heart thumped, she nearly turned. Ached to see what had happened. Stopped herself just in time. It wasn’t easy. She was curious by nature, Mother had always said so. She’d shaken her head and clicked her tongue, and told Eliza that if she didn’t learn to stop her mind racing on ahead of her she’d end up running into a mountain made of her own imaginings. But if Sammy chanced to be near and saw her peeking she would have to forfeit, and she was almost at the river. The smell of Thames mud mixed with the fog’s sulphurous odour. She had almost won, she only had to make it a little further.
There was a hullabaloo of voices now, clattering away behind her, and the jangling of a bell drawing near. Silly horse had probably run into the knife grinder’s wagon, the horses always went a little mad in the fog. But what a pest! What chance had she of hearing Sammy if he chose to attack her now?
The rock wall at the river’s edge appeared, floating faintly in the haze.
Eliza grinned and broke into a run for the last few yards.
Strictly, to run at all was against the rules, but she couldn’t help herself. Her hands hit the slimy rocks and she squealed in delight. She’d made it, she’d won, outwitted the Ripper once again.
Eliza hoisted herself onto the wall and perched triumphantly, facing the street from which she’d come. She drummed her heels against the rock and scanned the sheet of fog for Sammy’s creeping shape. Poor Sammy. He’d never been as good at games as she was. He took longer to learn the rules, was less able to adopt the role in which he’d been cast. Pretending didn’t come naturally to Sammy, as it did to Eliza.
As she sat, the smells and sounds of the street rushed back upon her. With each breath she tasted the oiliness of the fog, and the bell she’d heard was loud now, coming closer. The people around her seemed excited, all rushing in the one direction the way they did when the ragman’s son had one of his epileptic fits, or when the hurdy-gurdy man came to visit.
Of course! The hurdy-gurdy man, that explained where Sammy was.
Eliza jumped from the wall, scraping her boot on a rock that jutted out at its base.
Sammy never could resist music. He was no doubt standing by the hurdy-gurdy man, mouth slightly open as he gazed up at the organ, all thought of the Ripper and the game evaporated.
She followed the people who were massing, kept apace past the tobacconist’s shop, the bootmaker, the pawnbroker. But as the crowd thickened, the bell faded, and still no organ music could be heard, Eliza moved faster.
A nameless dread had settled in her stomach, and she used her elbows to force her way past other people—fancy ladies in their walking skirts, gentlemen in morning coats, street boys, washerwomen, clerks—as all the while she scanned for Sammy.
Reports were beginning to ripple back from the centre of the gathering and Eliza caught bits and pieces being exchanged in excited whispers above her head: a black horse that had loomed out of nowhere; a small boy who didn’t see him coming; the terrible fog . . .
Not Sammy, she told herself, it couldn’t be Sammy. He’d been right behind her, she’d been listening for him . . .
She was close now, had nearly reached the clearing. Could almost see through the fog. Holding her breath she pushed to the front of the band of onlookers and the gruesome scene was before her.
She took it in all at once, understood immediately. The black horse, the frail body of the boy lying by the entrance to the butcher’s shop. Strawberry hair matted deep red where it lay upon the cobblestones. Chest opened by a horse’s hoof, blue eyes blank.
The butcher had come out and was kneeling by the body. ‘’E’s gone all right. No chance, the little fellow.’
Eliza looked back at the horse. He was frisky, frightened by the haze, the crowd, the noise. Sighing great huffs of hot breath, visible as they displaced the fog a little.
‘Anyone know the name of this here boy?’
The crowd moved about, jostling as a whole while individuals turned to one another, lifted their shoulders, shook their heads.
‘I mighta seen him round,’ came one uncertain voice.
Eliza met the horse’s shiny black eye. As the world and all its noises seemed to spin around her, the horse stood still. They regarded one another and in that moment she felt as if he saw inside her. Glimpsed the void that had opened so quickly she would spend the rest of her life trying to fill it.
‘Someone must know him,’ said the butcher.
The crowd was quiet, the atmosphere all the more eerie for it.
Eliza knew she should feel hatred towards the black beast, should despise his strong legs and smooth, hard thighs, but she didn’t. Eyes locked with his she felt almost recognition, as if the horse understood, as no one else could, the emptiness inside her.
‘Righto,’ said the butcher. He whistled and a young apprentice appeared. ‘Fetch the cart and clear the lad away.’ The apprentice hurried back inside then returned with a wooden cart. While he loaded the boy’s broken body, the crossing sweeper started brooming the bloodied road.
‘I believe he lives on Battersea Church Road,’ came a slow, steady voice. It sounded like one of the men at the law firm where Mother had worked, not a toff’s voice exactly, but more plummy than those of the other river dwellers.
The butcher looked up to see where it had come from.
A tall man with a pince-nez and a neat but worn coat stepped forward, out of the fog. ‘I saw him there just the other day.’
There was a murmur as the crowd digested this information. Looked anew at the small boy’s ruined body.
‘Any idea which house, gov’nor?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know that.’
The butcher signalled to his lad. ‘Take him to Battersea Church Road and ask around. Someone ought to know him.’
The horse nodded at Eliza, ducked his head three times, then sighed and looked away.
Eliza blinked. ‘Wait,’ she said, almost a whisper.
The butcher looked at her. ‘Eh?’
All eyes turned to take her in, this speck of a girl with a long plait of rose gold hair. Eliza glanced at the man with the pince-nez. The lenses were shiny and white so that she couldn’t see his eyes.
The butcher held up his han
d to silence the crowd. ‘Well then, child. Do you know the name of this unfortunate lad?’
‘His name is Sammy Makepeace,’ Eliza said. ‘And he’s my brother.’
Mother had set coin aside for her own burial, but no such provision had been made for her children. Naturally enough, for what parent ever allowed that such a thing might be necessary?
‘He’ll have a pauper’s funeral out at St Bride’s,’ said Mrs Swindell, later that same afternoon. She sucked some soup from her spoon then pointed it at Eliza, who was sitting on the floor. ‘They’ll be opening the pit again Wednesday. Till then, I expect we’ll have to keep him here.’ She chewed the inside of her cheek, bottom lip pouting. ‘Upstairs, of course. Can’t have the stink keeping customers away.’
Eliza had heard of the paupers’ funerals at St Bride’s. The large pit, reopened every week, the pile of bodies, the clergyman gabbling a quick service so that he might rescue himself from the dreadful neighbourhood stench as soon as possible. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not St Bride’s.’
Little Hatty stopped chewing her bread. She let the lump rest behind her right cheek while she looked, wide-eyed, from her mother to Eliza.
‘No?’ Mrs Swindell’s thin fingers tightened on her spoon.
‘Please, Mrs Swindell,’ Eliza said. ‘Let him have a proper burial. Like Mother’s.’ She bit her tongue to save from crying. ‘I want him to be with Mother.’
‘Oh you do now, do you? A horse-drawn hearse perhaps? Couple of professional mourners? And I s’pose you think Mr Swindell and me should be paying for your fancy funeral.’ She sniffed hungrily, enjoying the sour rant. ‘Contrary to popular belief, missy, we ain’t a charity, so unless you’ve got yourself the coin, that boy’s going to spend his after at St Bride’s. Good enough for the likes of him it is, too.’