by Alex Reeve
And then I remembered her face in the hospital, pallid and still. I had no right to be afraid. What did my well-being matter beside her suffering?
‘Shut up, will ye?’ The older man by the bars was scowling at me. His voice sounded like a coal scuttle being dragged across a concrete floor. ‘Ye keep sighing.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are ye ill?’
‘No, I’m just … nervous about all this.’
‘Then piss yourself in silence.’
I nodded, and rested my forehead on my arms. But he wasn’t wrong. I really did need to piss.
As darkness descended a young policeman came in and lit the lamp at the far end, creating a dim light, barely enough to see. He sat in the chair and within a few minutes his chin had sunk down to his chest. It was obvious I would be here for the night. I lay on the hard floor, wondering why I had ever complained about my saggy mattress – truly I was a pampered and self-indulgent man. I closed my eyes, desperate for sleep, just so I could leave this horror behind for a few hours.
But I still needed to piss. A couple of times one of the others had released a fulsome stream into the pail, more or less, and then gone back to his place without a word. I crossed my legs and squeezed my thighs together.
Once all was quiet, and my cell-mates seemed to be asleep, I stood up by the pail and started to remove my trousers. I got as far as pulling them down and turning to sit.
‘You’ll no shit in here or I’ll make ye eat it.’
The older man was just a silhouette, but I could see his jutting chin. I pulled my trousers back up and lay down again, praying I could hold on.
I woke with a jolt when the man with the cut face started whimpering, and his brother shouted out in a thick voice: ‘Hey, coppers! He’s bleeding again!’
‘Excuse me,’ I said, wishing I could mimic his way of speaking instead of sounding like a character in a play, the overeducated fop who never ends up with the girl. ‘I have some experience of surgical sewing. May I take a look at him?’
I had in my mind some idea of removing a thorn from the lion’s paw and making him a loyal friend for life, but his brother spat on the floor at my feet.
‘Touch him and I’ll break all your fingers.’
And that was that, until the two men finally slept, snoring and snorting.
When a dreary dawn was seeping into the room and I was certain they were all asleep, I crept to the pail and eased myself silently on to it, clenching my bladder and trickling out the merest drops. Even that seemed too loud, echoing off the brick walls, so I tipped the pail on to one edge, allowing my stream to slide silently down the inner side. It was ecstasy! I was almost done when I unbalanced slightly, and moved my foot back an inch to steady myself. The base of the pail slid away and fell with a crash, slopping a tide across the floor to where the older man was lying. For a moment I thought he might remain asleep, but as he felt the surge of wetness he leapt up, staring at the arm of his jacket, now soaked, and then at me, with my trousers round my ankles.
‘I apologise,’ I said hastily. ‘I can pay for any …’
‘Look what ye did, you bloody meater.’
He shoved me against the wall, his face right against mine, and then stepped back. I thought it would be all right, but he slammed his foot against my knee and the pain shot up my leg as I fell sideways. He kicked me in the stomach and I couldn’t breathe. I was dimly aware that I was rolling in the piss, but all that mattered was taking another breath. When it finally came, it hurt like hell.
He crouched down and raised his fist. I tried to squirm away, but to where? Where could I go, in this place? One thing would lead to another, and I would be found out and violated before the police could intervene. I didn’t think I would survive it and wasn’t sure I wanted to.
But the blow never landed.
There was a noise outside and a constable came in carrying a bucket and some bowls. I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life.
‘Porridge!’ he called out.
The older man stepped back, his fists clenched and eyes narrowed to cracks. I was able to stand, wet and sore, and pull up my trousers.
‘Excuse me,’ I said to the young policeman. ‘I need to see Detective Sergeant Ripley.’
‘He ain’t come in yet,’ he replied, with a tinge of disapproval.
I straightened my soaking jacket and squared my shoulders. I only had one option left. ‘I want to confess.’
Not to murder, but to gender. Better to tell Ripley now than let these bastards have their sport with me, and end up being cut up and weighed by Mr Hurst. Even so, I knew what it meant: prosecution and humiliation, and Ripley would have even more reason to think I was guilty of the bigger crime. The lovelorn deviant was an obvious suspect.
Worst of all, someone out there would be laughing at their ridiculous luck.
At that moment the door opened and Ripley himself strode into the room. Judging by his face, he’d been woken early and wasn’t happy about it.
‘Stanhope,’ he said. ‘You’re free to go.’
‘What?’
Was this some trick he was playing? I wanted very much to leave, but I couldn’t understand why he was letting me. I expected him to slam the door in my face or grab me and throw me back inside, but he didn’t. He handed me my wallet without a word.
I followed him outside to the yard in a daze, gasping as the frigid air met my piss-sodden clothes.
A horse had collapsed on the cobblestones, and a group of policemen and stable hands were gathered round where it was panting. Ripley contemplated the scene. ‘They’ll have to shoot that, poor thing.’
‘Did you find Maria’s killer?’
‘They’ll be serving horse stew tomorrow. And no, as it happens, I still think you did it.’
‘Then why …?’
He drew deeply on the last stub of his cigarette. ‘I was told to let you go. The higher-ups have decided you’re not a suspect. Apparently they know better than I do.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’ve got some powerful friends, it seems, Mr Stanhope. Don’t worry, you’ll be back here soon enough. I’ll get you in the end.’ He dropped his cigarette and fished in his metal case for another, but it was empty. He patted his pockets and frowned. ‘Damn it, left my ciggies on my desk. They’ll be nicked for sure. Bunch of bloody thieves, policemen.’
I walked away just as the horse started to squeal.
I couldn’t understand it. What powerful friends could I possibly have? My few friends hadn’t even known I was incarcerated, and none of them could be described as powerful. The only remotely powerful person I knew was Mr Hurst, but the police would never release a prisoner on his say-so, and in any case he wouldn’t be bothered with me. I was a nobody.
Why had they let me go?
I awoke the next day at eleven o’clock with a griping pain in my guts, and realised the curse had come in the night. All those words for the monthly blood – the visit, the time, even the blessing, God help us – but the curse is what it was, at least for me. I always felt surprised by its arrival, every time, as if, by deliberately not anticipating it, I might fool it into overlooking me. And yet it came. For some reason I would never understand, God had put me into a female body with female secretions. Perhaps it was His idea of comedy, but like any joke it palled through repetition.
I cleaned myself and scrubbed my underclothes until the water was red. I hung them over a loop of string in the wardrobe to dry, and settled a clean flannel into place in my trousers. I told myself this was simply maintenance I had to perform, nothing more. My hands were red too, stained by my own blood, and yet it didn’t feel like mine.
I knew I should go back to work, but I’d missed three days already, and what was one extra? It didn’t seem to matter. As I left the shop and walked down towards Piccadilly, I could feel the moist, warm flannel commencing its customary abrasion of my skin.
The horses were stamping their hooves
and whickering at the cab rank, irritated by the haze of brick dust floating over from the workings on the Quadrant.
‘London Bridge,’ I called up to the driver. ‘North side, near the wharfs. I need to get down to the river.’
We set off just as raindrops started tapping on the tarp roof, taking a crooked route eastwards towards the Strand. As we went by the Opera Comique, I looked away, afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from searching for her face among the people waiting to go in. We drove on, passing within sight of St Paul’s Cathedral as it stared down at the busy streets like the stern schoolteacher of an unruly class, and then bore right and lurched off the road, pulling up at the entrance to a rutted track that led down between the wharfs. I’d only ever seen them from a distance before, shrouded in fog, lined up like mourners at a funeral. Up close they were vast and dark, eight storeys or more high, and sheer, with lofty windows shuttered against the weather. The rain was easing, but water was still pouring from the gutters, and I sloshed down to the dockside through a brook.
There was a set of stairs built into the stonework of London Bridge. I climbed down, taking care on the slippery steps, clinging to the metal rail. The wind was swirling and my coat flapped against my legs. The smell got stronger as I went down, and I could see the green slime and flickering reflection on the arches. Water was being blown off the surface of the river, mixing with the rain, seeping into my collar and dripping down my neck.
At the bottom, a low-tide beach of heavy stones was exposed, slick with engine oil and littered with driftwood, tar and tangled fishing lines. We were below the level of the city, and the rattle of traffic was swamped by the rush of the wind and slap of the waves against the stanchions of the bridge. The river seemed wider from this low down. Clinker dinghies were being rowed just a few yards out, and in the deeper water there were barges and great ships with flags flying on their masts.
I picked my way across the stones, arms out for balance. The curve of the Thames and eddies from the bridge had caused a lagoon to form, shallow and rank, and the water was calmer there, sheltered and green with river-weed.
Such a beautiful person, lying here, dying here, in the margin of the Thames.
I crouched down, collecting a frond in my palm and letting it fall back. I didn’t know what I had expected to feel: some remembrance of her in the stones, some sense of her soul still lingering. I touched my finger to my lips and it tasted salty.
A seagull dropped down and started pulling at something, a crab or a barnacle, and then another joined it. They glared at me indignantly, and didn’t leave even when I stood up. She can’t have lain here long, I thought. She hadn’t been pecked.
I took off my bowler and slapped it against my coat a couple of times, shaking off the water and scaring the gulls back into flight.
I had believed I would want to stay longer. I had thought that being here would mean more. But there was nothing of Maria in this place. It was bleak and hard, fallen off the edge of the city, and she had been warm and gentle, and the kindest person I’d ever known.
The rain was getting stronger, splashing and glittering in the puddles. There were no cabs so I started walking home, winding between the quarrelling wharfs. The way was dark and convoluted, and I lost my bearings more than once, but I wasn’t afraid. I even enjoyed it. There was a freedom in not caring what happened next.
I remembered what Jacob had once told me, late at night over a glass of whisky, when Lilya and the children had long since gone to bed. Angling forward and waggling his finger with that wry expression he wore when about to say something he thought was clever, he said: ‘As long as you’re still on the board, Leo, you can still win the game. Even a pawn can become a queen in the end.’ And then he’d laughed, and I’d laughed along with him.
7
I discovered that my grief was inconstant. One minute it was engulfing me, closing over my head, vast and cold, and the next it was a dense core in my stomach, an unreachable certitude. Sometimes I laughed and even sang, and at other times I knew I couldn’t live without her, and had to pinch the skin on my wrists to keep myself from weeping.
I did not receive an invitation to the funeral. This was not unexpected; her profession hardly encouraged the circulation of black-bordered cards to every fellow who’d known her. For a little while I felt relieved; I was frightened of the casket and the knowledge that she was sealed up inside it. I couldn’t keep from my mind what she had become: the parts, the skin and bone and muscle and brain, all well on the downward slope of decay by now. I’d seen it before: nails rotting in their sockets, teeth falling from their gums, intestines turned to liquid, oozing and fetid. That was what was in the box, just the parts. Not Maria. All of what she really was, was gone.
I could guess what Jacob would have said, could hear his gruff voice in my ear: Bah! You don’t go to a whore’s funeral. It’s like eating a steak and then mourning the cow.
And yet I knew that if I stayed away I would never forgive myself. So I sent a note to little Audrey, including half a crown, and received a reply by return, written in a round, careful hand, providing the details. Maria’s remains would not be displayed at the house on Half Moon Street but would go directly to the West London cemetery.
I tossed the paper on the fire.
Constance had cooked breakfast with more zeal than skill, but I barely tasted it, which I might once have called a blessing. Alfie had risen early and was crawling around with a tape measure, making chalk crosses on the floor of the shop.
‘How did it go with the bank?’ I asked.
His expression darkened. ‘Bit of a setback. You know how it is.’
‘My offer still stands, you know.’
‘Thank you, Leo, but we’ll be all right. I have a plan.’ He pointed at my smart clothes. ‘What’s the occasion?’
‘I’m going to a funeral. Just an acquaintance.’
The little betrayal snatched at me, but I couldn’t face a more complete explanation. I gave him my best sad-but-there-we-are smile and set out, feeling as if every soft part of me had been removed, like one of the bodies on Mr Hurst’s slab, and I was nothing but a skeleton covered with skin.
The cab made slow progress. I would have preferred the journey to take for ever, but eventually we arrived. The cemetery sprawled along the Old Brompton Road, with great shoulders of limestone and a grim, gated entrance that loomed over the pavement with a frowning lintel, jawbone columns and a gaping, voracious arch.
A small group was huddled on the pavement. Mrs Brafton was resplendent in her black funeral weeds: a bombazine gown constructed around her formidable frame, and a huge bonnet mounted on her head like a cannon. She was standing with the Colonel, who was sporting a dress uniform far too big for him. Behind them, the girls were clustered together, but I only knew Audrey by name.
Is this everyone? I thought. Is this all she’s worth?
Mrs Brafton turned to me with a blank expression. ‘Mr Stanhope. I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘I know I don’t have an invitation, but I had to come.’
‘I thought you were with the police.’
‘They talked to me, yes.’
‘Why did they let you go?’ She pursed her lips and I realised she didn’t want me there.
‘You can’t think … it had nothing to do with me. Maria and I loved each other.’
‘That’s absurd.’
I was in no mood for scorn. ‘I cared for her more than you did. You wouldn’t even have her casket displayed at the house.’
‘Out of respect for our customers.’
‘Out of respect for their money.’
She raised herself to reply, but before she got the chance, the Colonel piped up. ‘Now listen here, young man, you keep a civil tongue or I’ll make sure you do.’
It was an empty threat: the only thing keeping him upright was the stiffness of his uniform, and I was far more frightened of Mrs Brafton, who was twice his size. But it had the effect of breaking the
tension, and she turned away.
It seemed that I would be admitted.
I stood on my own for a while, eyes stinging, until I felt a touch at my elbow, and there was Audrey. She was truly tiny, and could easily be mistaken for a twelve-year-old. She was neither pretty nor plain, but had an odd self-possession, perhaps necessary for her regular employment.
‘You mustn’t blame Mrs Brafton,’ she said. ‘She feels the burden if any of us comes to harm.’
‘What she said isn’t true –’
‘It’s all right, I know it weren’t you. This weren’t a woman’s crime. Takes a man to do something like that, and you’re a woman underneath.’
I sighed. It was hardly worth correcting her, and at least there was one person in the world who didn’t suspect me, even if her logic was flawed.
Up the road, a carriage was approaching, rocking its way over the cobbles. It pulled up beside us, and half a dozen ladies disembarked, staring up at the wintry sunshine and raising parasols or shielding their eyes. After them, a reverend emerged. He was clearly as deaf as a stump, and held up an ear trumpet quizzically whenever they spoke to him.
‘Who are they?’ I whispered to Audrey.
‘Church people. It brings out all sorts, a bit of murder. They only care about girls like us when we’re dead. Before that we’re the devil’s work. Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Jesuits, all the same. Even the Sally Army once with placards and singing songs right outside our door. And often as not the gentlemen come back after dark.’
An older woman lurched out in faded weeds, a toothless smile on her face. I realised from her delirious expression that she was simple, not really aware of what was happening. She had watery eyes and the ruddy, veiny skin of a heavy drinker, but her lips were full and red. I was sure I had seen her somewhere before.
‘Who’s she?’
‘Maria’s mother, or what’s left of her.’