The Map of Time

by Félix J Palma

  “I know what you want, mister, although you’re too shy to ask,” she said, her grin broadening as she gave his hand a fugitive caress that brought him out in goose pimples. “Thruppence and I can make your dreams come true. Tonight, at any rate.” Andrew gazed at her, shaken: she did not know how right she was. She had been his only dream those past few nights, his deepest longing, his most urgent desire, and now, although he was still scarcely able to believe it, finally he could have her. His whole body tingled with excitement at the mere thought of touching her, of caressing the slender body silhouetted beneath that shabby dress, of bringing forth deep moans from her lips as he was set alight before her eyes, those of a wild animal, a tormented indomitable creature. And yet that tremor of joy rapidly gave way to a profound sadness when he considered the unjust plight of that fallen angel, the ease with which any man could grope her, defile her in a filthy back alley, without anyone in the world uttering a single cry of protest. Was that what such a unique creature had been created for? He had no choice but to accept her invitation, a lump in his throat, distressed at being compelled to take her the same way as her other clients, as if his intentions were no different from theirs. Once he had accepted, Marie Kelly smiled with what looked to Andrew like forced enthusiasm and tilted her head for them to leave the pub.

  Andrew felt odd following the whore like that, walking behind her with birdlike steps as though Marie Kelly were leading him to the gallows instead of to plunge between her thighs.

  And yet, could their meeting have been any different? From the moment he came across his cousin’s painting he had been penetrating deeper into unknown territory, where he could not get his bearings because nothing around him looked familiar, everything was new, and, judging from the deserted streets, they were going through, quite possibly dangerous. Was he blithely walking into some sort of trap laid by the whore’s pimp? He wondered whether Harold would hear his shouts, and if so, would he bother coming to his aid, or use the opportunity to avenge himself for the offhand treatment he had received from his master all these years? After guiding him part of the way along Hanbury Street, a muddy alley dimly lit by a single oil lamp sputtering on a corner, Marie Kelly beckoned him down a narrow passageway leading into pitch-darkness. Andrew followed her, convinced he would meet his death, or at least be beaten to within an inch of his life by a couple of ruffians much bigger than him, who, having stolen everything including his socks, would spit contemptuously on his bloody remains. That was how they did things here, and his idiotic adventure richly deserved such an ending. But before fear had time to take hold, they came out into a filthy waterlogged backyard, where to his surprise no one was waiting for him. Andrew glanced warily about him. Yes: strange as it might seem, they were alone in that evil-smelling place. The world they had left behind was reduced to a muffled rumble in which a distant church bell’s chimes rang out. At his feet, the moon reflected in a puddle looked like a crumpled letter some unhappy lover had tossed on the ground.

  “We won’t be disturbed here, mister,” Marie Kelly reassured him, leaning back against the wall and drawing him to her.

  Before he knew it, she had unbuttoned his trousers and pulled out his penis. She did so with startling ease, without any of the provocative foreplay to which the Chelsea prostitutes had accustomed him. The matter-of-fact way she maneuvered his sex beneath her hiked-up skirts made it clear to Andrew that what to him was another magical moment for her was no more than simple routine.

  “It’s in,” she assured him.

  In? Andrew had enough experience to know the whore was lying. She was simply gripping his penis between her thighs. He assumed it was common practice among them, a trick to avoid penetration, which, if they were lucky and the client failed to notice or was too drunk, reduced the number of hasty intrusions they were forced to undergo each day, and with them the unwanted pregnancies such a flood of sperm could bring about.

  With this in mind, Andrew began thrusting energetically, prepared to go along with the charade, because in reality it was more than enough for him to rub his erect member against the silky skin of her inner thigh, to feel her body pressed against his for as long as the pretense lasted. What did it matter whether it was all a sham if this phantom penetration allowed him to cross the boundary imposed by good manners and force his way into that intimacy only lovers share. Feeling her hot sticky breath in his ear, inhaling the delicate odor from her neck, and clasping her to him until he felt the contours of her body merge with his was worth infinitely more than thruppence. And, as he soon discovered to his consternation when he ejaculated into her petticoats, it had the same effect on him as other greater undertakings.

  Slightly ashamed at his lack of endurance, he finished emptying himself in quiet contemplation, still pressed against her, until he felt her stir impatiently. He stepped back, embarrassed. Oblivious to his unease, the whore straightened her skirts and thrust out a hand to be paid. Trying to regain his composure, Andrew hurriedly gave her the agreed sum. He had enough money left in his pockets to buy her for the whole night, but he preferred to savor what he had just experienced in the privacy of his own bed, and to get her to meet him the next night.

  “My name’s Andrew,” he introduced himself, his voice high-pitched from emotion. She raised an eyebrow, amused. “And I’d like to see you again tomorrow.” “Certainly, mister. You know where to find me,” the whore said, leading him back along the gloomy passageway she had brought him down.

  As they made their way back towards the main streets, Andrew was wondering whether ejaculating between her thighs entitled him to put his arm around her shoulder. He had decided it did, and was about to do precisely that when they ran into another couple walking almost blindly the other way down the dim alleyway. Andrew mumbled an apology to the fellow he had bumped into, who, although scarcely more than a shadow in the darkness, seemed to him quite a burly sort. He was clinging onto a whore, whom Marie Kelly greeted with a smile.

  “It’s all yours, Annie,” she said, referring to the backyard they had just left.

  The woman called Annie thanked her with a raucous laugh and tugged her companion towards the passageway. Andrew watched them stagger into the pitch-blackness. “Would that burly fellow be satisfied with having his member trapped between her thighs?” he wondered, as he noticed how avidly the man clutched the whore to him.

  “Didn’t I tell you it was a quiet spot,” Marie Kelly remarked matter-of-factly as they came out into Hanbury Street.

  They said a laconic good-bye in front of the Britannia. Rather disheartened by the coldness she had shown after the act, Andrew tried to find his way back through the gloomy streets to his carriage. It was a good half hour before he found it. He avoided Harold’s eyes as he climbed back into the coach.

  “Home, sir?” Harold enquired sardonically.

  The following night he arrived at the Britannia determined to behave like a self-assured man instead of the fumbling, timid dandy of their previous encounter. He had to overcome his nerves and prove he could adapt to his surroundings if he was to display his true charms to the girl, that repertoire of smiles and flattery with which he habitually captivated the ladies of his own class.

  He found Marie Kelly sitting at a corner table brooding over a pint of beer. Her demeanor unnerved him, but knowing he was not the sort to think up a new strategy as he went along, he decided to stick with his original plan. He ordered a beer at the bar, sat down at the girl’s table as naturally as he could, and told her he knew of a guaranteed way to wipe the worried expression from her face. Marie Kelly shot him a black look, confirming what he feared: his remark had been a tactless blunder. Following this reaction, Andrew thought she was going to tell him to clear off without even wasting her breath, with a simple wave of her hand, like someone shooing away an irritating fly. But in the end, she restrained herself and gazed at him quizzically for a few seconds until she must have decided he was as good a person as any to unburden herself to. She took a swig from h
er tankard, as if to clear her throat, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and told him that her friend Anne, the woman they had bumped into in Hanbury Street the night before, had been found that morning, murdered, in the same yard they had been in. The poor woman had been partially decapitated, sliced open, her intestines pulled out, and her womb removed. Andrew stammered that he was sorry, as shocked at the killer’s attention to detail as at having collided with him moments before the crime. Evidently that particular client had not been satisfied with the usual service. But Marie Kelly had other worries. According to her, Anne was the third prostitute to be murdered in Whitechapel in less than a month. Polly Nichols had been found dead with her throat slit in Bucks Road, opposite Essex pier, on August 31. And on the seventh of that same month, Martha Tabram had been found brutally stabbed to death with a penknife on the stairs of a rooming house. Marie Kelly laid the blame on the gang from Old Nichol Street, blackmailers who demanded a share of the whores” earnings.

  “Those bastards will stop at nothing to get us working for them,” she said between gritted teeth.

  This state of affairs disturbed Andrew, but it should have come as no surprise: after all, they were in Whitechapel—that putrid dung heap London had turned its back on, home to more than a thousand prostitutes living alongside German, Jewish, and French immigrants. Stabbings were a daily occurrence. Wiping away the tears that had finally flowed from her eyes, Marie Kelly sat head bowed in silence for a few moments as though in prayer, until, to Andrew’s surprise, she suddenly roused herself from her stupor, grasped his hand, and smiled lustfully at him.

  Life went on. Whatever else happened, life went on. Was that what she had meant by her gesture? After all, she, Marie Kelly, had not been murdered. She had to go on living, dragging her skirts through those foul-smelling streets in search of money to pay for a bed. Andrew gazed with pity at her hand lying in his, her dirty nails poking through her frayed mitten. He too felt the need to concentrate for a moment in order to change masks, like an actor who needs some time in his dressing room to concentrate in order to become a different character when he goes back on stage. After all, life went on for him, too. Time did not stop just because a whore had been murdered. And so he stroked her hand tenderly, ready to resume his plan. As though wiping condensation from a windowpane, he freed his young lover’s smile from its veil of sadness and, looking her in the eye for the first time, he said: “I have enough money to buy you for the whole night, but I don’t want any fakery in a cold backyard.” This startled Marie Kelly, and she tensed in her seat, but Andrew’s smile soon put her at ease.

  “I rent a room at Miller’s Court, but I don’t know if it’ll be good enough for the likes of you,” she remarked flirtatiously.

  “I’m sure you’ll make me like it,” Andrew ventured to say, delighted at the bantering tone their conversation had finally taken, as this was a register at which he excelled.

  “But first I’ll have to turn out my good-for-nothing husband,” she replied. “He doesn’t like me bringing work home.” This remark came as yet another shock to Andrew on this extraordinary night over which he clearly had no control. He tried not to let his disappointment show.

  “Still, I’m sure your money will make up his mind for him, Marie concluded, amused at his reaction.

  So it was that Andrew found paradise in the dismal little room where he was now sitting. That night, everything changed between them. When at last she lay naked, Andrew made love to her so respectfully, caressed her body with such tenderness that Marie Kelly could feel the hard shell she had carefully built to protect her soul begin to crack, that layer of ice preventing anything from seeping into her skin, keeping everything locked behind the door, out there where it could not hurt her. To her surprise, Andrew’s kisses marking her body like a pleasurable itch made her own caresses less and less mechanical, and she quickly discovered it was no longer a whore lying on the bed, but the woman crying out for affection that she had always been. Andrew also sensed his lovemaking was freeing the real Marie Kelly, as though he were rescuing her from the bottom of one of those water tanks stage magicians immersed their beautiful assistants in, bound hand and foot, or as though his sense of direction were so good it saved him from getting lost in the maze like her other lovers, allowing him to reach the place no one else could, a sort of secret corner where the girl’s real nature survived intact. They burned with a single flame, and when it waned and Marie Kelly, staring dreamily up at the ceiling, began talking about springtime in Paris, where she had worked as an artist’s model some years before, and about her childhood in Wales and in Ratcliffe Highway in London, Andrew understood that this strange sensation in his chest must be the pangs of love, because without meaning to, he was experiencing all the emotions of which the poets spoke. Andrew was touched by the emotive tone her voice took on when she described the Parisian squares with their riot of gladioli and petunias, and how on her return to London she had insisted everybody say her name in French, the only way she had found of preserving intact that distant fragrance which softened life’s sharp edges; but he was equally moved by the hint of sadness in her voice as she described how they hung pirates from the Ratcliffe Highway Bridge until they drowned in the rising waters of the Thames. For this was the real Marie Kelly, this bittersweet fruit, nature’s flawed perfection, one of God’s contradictions. When she asked what sort of work he did that could apparently allow him to buy her for the rest of his life if he wanted, he decided to run the risk and tell her the truth. Because if their love were to exist it must be nurtured in truth or not at all, and the truth (of how her portrait had captivated him, sending him off on this foolish quest to find her in a neighborhood so different from his own, and of how he had found her) seemed as beautiful and miraculous to him as those stories about impossible love you read in books. When their bodies came together again, he realized that far from being an act of madness, falling in love with her was possibly the most reasonable thing he had ever done. And when he left the room, with the memory of her skin on his lips, he tried not to look at her husband Joe, who was leaning against the wall shivering with cold.

  It was nearly daylight by the time Harold delivered him home.

  Too excited to go to bed, if only to relish the moments he had spent with Marie Kelly, Andrew went to the stables and saddled a horse. It was a long time since he had woken at dawn to go riding in Hyde Park. This was his favorite time of day, when the grass was still dewy and everything appeared untouched. How could he waste such an opportunity? Within minutes, Andrew was galloping through the trees opposite the Harrington mansion, laughing to himself and occasionally letting out a cry of joy, like a soldier celebrating victory, because that is what he felt like as he remembered the loving look Marie Kelly had given him before they said good-bye until the following night. As though she could see in his eyes that without realizing it, he had been searching for her for years. And perhaps I should take this opportunity to apologize for my earlier skepticism and confess that there is nothing that cannot be expressed in a look. A look, it seems, is a bottomless well of possibilities. And so Andrew rode on, seized by a wild impulse, overwhelmed for the first time by a burning, pulsating sensation, which might reasonably be described as happiness.

  And, prey to the effects of such a violent infatuation, everything in the universe he rode past appeared to sparkle, as though each of its elements—the paths strewn with dead leaves, the rocks, the trees, even the squirrels leaping from branch to branch—were lit up by an inner glow. But have no fear, I shall not become bogged down in lengthy descriptions of acres of impassioned, practically luminous parkland because, not only do I have no taste for it, but it would be untrue, for despite Andrew’s altered vision, the landscape clearly did not undergo any real transformation, not even the squirrels, which are well known as creatures who pursue their own interests.

  After more than an hour of strenuous, exhilarating riding, Andrew realized he still had a whole day to get through before he could re
turn to Marie Kelly’s humble bed, and so he must find some way of distracting himself from the dreadful feeling that would no doubt assail him when he realized that irrespective of circumstances, or probably because of them, the hands of the clock were not turning at their usual speed, but were actually slowing down on purpose. He decided to drop in on his cousin Charles, which he usually did when he wanted him to share in his joy, even though this time he had no intention of telling him anything. Perhaps he was simply curious to see what Charles would look like to his feverish gaze which had the power to enhance everything, to see whether he would also glow like the squirrels in the park.

  4

  Breakfast had been laid out in the Winslow dining room for young Charles, who was doubtless still lazing in bed. On a table next to one of the French windows, the servants had set out a dozen covered platters, bread rolls, jams and marmalades, and several jugs brimming with grapefruit juice and milk. Most of it would be thrown away because, contrary to all appearance, they were not expecting a regiment, only his cousin, who, given his famous lack of appetite in the mornings would almost certainly be content to nibble on a roll, ignoring the extravagant spread displayed in his honor. Andrew was surprised by the sudden concern he felt at such waste, for he had spent years contemplating tables like this, here as well as at his own house, creaking under the weight of food no one would eat. He realized this curious response was the first of many that would result from his forays into Whitechapel, that dung heap inhabited by people capable of killing one another for his cousin’s half-eaten roll. Would his experiences there stir his social conscience in the same way it had his emotions? He was the type of person whose cultivation of his inner life left little time for worrying about the outside world of the street. He was above all devoted to resolving the mystery that was Andrew, to studying his feelings and responses: all his time was taken up in attempting to fine-tune the instrument that was his spirit until he felt satisfied with the sound it produced. There were times, owing to the constantly changing and rather unpredictable nature of his thought patterns, when this task appeared as impossible to him as lining up the goldfish in their bowl, but until he succeeded he sensed it would be impossible for him to worry about what went on in the world, which for him started where his own pleasant, carefully scrutinized private concerns ended. In any case, he thought, it would be interesting to observe in himself how hitherto unknown preoccupations emerged through simple exposure. Who could tell: perhaps his response to these new worries might hold the key to the mystery of who the real Andrew Harrington was.