“To be sure,” the shrewd dollymop says softly, but her lips remain tense. “I only…it chips away at you, don’t it? Just when you think I’ll have a lucky streak tomorrow, or it won’t rain, or maybe that were the last one to die. None of it comes true. If I didn’t rag you dear silly geese, I’d be crying in my pudding. Ain’t this way better?”
“No, for we’ve no pudding this way,” the stout girl mutters, but she’s smiling, and all is forgiven as the three rock with laughter.
—
“Hello, Mary Jane,” Julia Kelly said to me tensely. I hadn’t seen her enter the pub, but there she stood, dressed much as I was, only her cotton frock were printed with green sprigs and mine were a plain but cheery blue I’d thought perfect for my coloring afore she appeared. “Christ, but you’re a sight for sore eyes. You’re thinner than I remember. When did we meet last? Cardiff?”
“Paris,” I managed, for once Julia had performed the miracle of actually tracking me there, which led to a dreadful row and afterwards a horrid telegram to my brothel madam back in England, sent by my fussy little swain. “Good God, what are you doing hereabouts?”
The Ten Bells, with its noisily chatting patrons and sultry gas lights, swam a little. I shifted on my tall barstool, my legs suddenly weak yet restless, like a colt’s. I had just fled from Brick Lane that morning, and now there was Joe to consider.
Can I flee Miller’s Court the same day? Have we even the chink? What if I—
“I know I just said you had thinned, but it suits you. I meant nothing spiteful by it. You look so well, sister.” Julia bit her lip when I held my tongue, as she does whenever being ingratiating. “I’ve surprised you—you needn’t fear I’ll be offended. I’ve got used to your independent streak by now, I hope. And you’ve surprised me too, this time.”
“How did you find me?” I questioned, lungs strapped tight in my chest.
“I didn’t!” Julia wore a rust-colored hat freshened with a few dried weeds matching her dress, and I could tell as she’d followed in my footsteps both figuratively and geographically, for never have I spied plainer marks of the London dollymop: her boots were fraying at the toe, ivory apron clean but not pressed, and her white bosoms at as full military attention as were mine. “It’s just a wonderful coincidence I thought to try my luck in the ’Chapel. I was over in Stepney for a while, and Rotherhithe, doing odd jobs, a little sewing and washing, but—oh, hullo! How do y’do?”
Setting the fresh ale he’d fetched down before me, Joe Barnett thrust out a calloused hand. We’d revived ourselves with a trip to a public bathhouse after depositing our things at Miller’s Court, after I’d put my flask away in the cupboard and vowed to join him in a pint later instead. He looked rugged but happy, the cleft in his chin jutting in a friendly way, his shirt open at the neck revealing a thatch of dark hair, his green eyes twinkling, and I knew disaster were about to strike. It hurt to see my sister’s small grip enter Joe’s large paw, hurt the way her cornflower eyes travelled from his face down to their fingers touching, all along the length of Joe’s strong arm, and Joe never noticing, never suspecting, only grinning like there was sure enough a spree to be had tonight.
I swallowed bile, a familiar flavor.
“Joe, this is my sister, Julia Kelly. Julia, this is my sweetheart, Joseph Barnett.”
Joe’s head swiveled in happy shock, for it weren’t common for me to call him pet names, even when we were sharing a lumpy bed in the endless black cave of the East End. He bowed and kissed my sister’s hand.
“Pleased to meet any kin o’ my Mary Jane’s, I’m sure!”
“Wherever did you find such a specimen, Mary Jane?” Julia breathed in her melodic way.
Joe shifted back to sling an arm about my waist, gesturing for Julia to take the stool I’d been saving for him.
“Oh, my sort are easy to find as blinking, Miss Kelly.”
“Do please call me Julia,” she cooed, sitting.
“Well, Miss Julia, then.” He ducked and planted a loud kiss on my shoulder where my shawl had slipped. “Mary Jane’s sister! Aren’t ye two like staring into a looking glass, at that! And here I thought my girl never wrote to her family.”
“I don’t,” I said under my breath, knowing Joe were too tickled over Julia’s unexpected arrival to hear me.
“What a sight! Does my heart glad to see the pair of ye together, and that’s gospel. D’ye live nearabouts?”
Julia’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “I was lodged over Rotherhithe way but lost my crib to a fire—no, no, everyone’s safe, thank the Lord. Only I’ve no home at the moment. I’ve not found anything yet today that suits. Worse luck. Came here in search of new digs and a clean slate, but now I’ve had a drop in, I’d not pass up Mary Jane’s floor just for tonight, if you can spare the space.”
She paused, raising a brow all contrite and abashed like, as if apologizing for the fire. And maybe it had been her fault, God knows—I didn’t fancy asking. But didn’t my stomach cramp, didn’t my heart crumble into dust and cinders there on the beer-sticky floor when I understood that, thanks to my own taste for max, she’d already won the day.
All Joe wanted was for me to prove kindly. How would I look turning away my own sister on the very day I was turned out myself like a whipped cur?
Just sometimes ye think ill yerself o’ perfectly decent folk, afore they’ve done aught to offend ye…and that always breaks my heart a little.
“You can kip with us till you get your bearings,” I said in a voice the texture of dried husks. “We’ll not mind, not for…a few days.”
Joe slapped us both on the arms, in sky-high spirits despite the row the night previous, despite my losing us yet another living situation. “That’s settled! Fer as long as ye like, Miss Julia, our room is yer room. I’d be proud to consider any family o’ Mary Jane’s dear as my own kin.”
Julia smiled wide enough to split her head clean open. So I pictured that, it really happening, her jaw cracked as far as possible, joints creaking, and then snap and a loud break as her spine went and then blood, blood enough for the world to drown in, with the split top half of her wretched pate rolling ever so slow along the floor where her carcass fell, the skull trailing meat and brains behind it.
—
I knew ’twouldn’t be a few days. I’d ne’er be rid of her.
Too much had passed between us, too many secrets and small wounds. Knives left in the flesh to fester there.
When Joe and Julia left Miller’s Court together arm in arm that night like old chums, happy as larks, to find some fried haddock and chips for the lot of us, I slipped out to a pub fast as thinking, but not afore draining my flask. When I dragged myself home hours later through Raven Row, when the Man with the Long Black Coat kept me from falling and said, You must be more careful after dark, my dear young lady, I kissed him instantly with soft lips, lover’s lips, kept kissing him until it was more than kissing, and he were in me with my skirts high and one leg hitched over his hip drawing him closer, little throaty gasps coming from the pair of us. His sweet-sounding and mine scorched.
When he moved to pay afterward, I said, I ain’t done it for the coin—I like you, and walked away staring him in the eye all the while, and he laughed like a man what’s spied an old friend in the road at a distance, and that’s when I knew for certain I had really gone bad.
Julia’s stay turned into a week, then a month. We pretended to talk together. Pretended to laugh. Pretended to play at cards. She got me stinking drunk every day when Joe were out working, passed me cup after cup of max whilst only taking half as much for herself. She sang about the house, sang incessantly, and Joe joined in harmonies with his gusty tenor. She comforted him when they cleaned my messes and did my share of the housekeeping. She slept with my sweetheart—I know she did, it weren’t mere suspicion, for I came home afore they expected me one afternoon, and her collar buttons were all awry, and Joe afterwards looked like a beaten pup.
She told Joe
I were a sorry excuse for a sister. She told him she loved him and wanted nothing save his happiness, in a letter what I found at the bottom of his shabby memento case. I said nothing. What could I say apart from get out? Thereby proving myself a villain to Joe? There’s some as would suggest I could have refused the gin, but only them as ne’er tried waking up every livelong morning in Whitechapel.
Finally, Joe left us both after a particular terrible row, one I felt in my neck and my chest for nigh a week after, and there we were—a matched set of sisterly dollymops with no choice but to walk the streets for our keep.
Exactly as I’d planned.
I like catching glimpses of you in the streets, I told the Man with the Long Black Coat the next time we both caught our breaths afterwards, leaning against the brick wall, panting as if we’d streaked across the night like a pair of doomsday comets. I like knowing you’re there, even when I can’t see you.
Why, that’s precisely what I like about you, he intoned, and that time he didn’t offer me coin, and I thought as that were much better, because it meant he understood.
—
The dollymops are through with their pies and the streets have quieted, nestling into the comfortable darkness of Southwark, settling like overwrought children. The men what are arriving now bang the door open a mite too hard, order pints a hair too loud. The raven-haired judy yawns and squints into her cup, frowning. I think as they might light out for their doss houses—or for more chink to be earned in the alleys, if any are short—and fear I’ve lost my entertainment for the night when the hatchet-faced one speaks low, as if she don’t want to be heard, and it’s all I can do to make out, “Any of us could’ve already had him, you know.”
“Who?” the plump one asks.
“Saucy Jack,” the other drawls under her breath.
The pox-scarred ladybird drops her cup, which is thankfully empty, and the thickset one gasps loud enough for one of the soldiers to dart a glance at the bench.
“Leather Apron,” she continues, smirking. “The Ripper. From hell, that bloke. The mad bugger ain’t ripping all the time. Sometimes he’s like as not sticking his cock someplace to take his mind off his work, same as they all do.”
“That’s disgusting.” The plump one indulges in a full-body shudder and I smirk at the sawdust-strewn floorboards in silence.
“You’re the one as said this one might have been a crime of passion. Who’s to say she didn’t have ’im against a water barrel one night, all unawares? What’s he like down there, is what I’m keen to know.”
“Stop it!”
“See, he can’t be the same in bed as he is with a shiv or he’d have been caught long since,” the cunning one explains, happily watching her mates squirm on the rough-hewn wood. “We could lay wagers—straight or crooked? Big or small? Rough or cries a bit afterwards? Wants a mouth or an arse or a—”
“I’m leaving this instant if you keep up this filth!” her friend practically shrieks, and then they all dissolve in helpless giggles once more.
“Truly though,” the canny one says when they’ve calmed, “I wonder. And you’re mighty squeamish for a pair o’ limp-tittied trulls. And I’m curious if Mary Kelly did him any service without knowing. So there.”
No, I think with a surge of triumph, I knew all along.
Twice I had him before Joe left us, and thrice afterwards, always when I were weaving like a storm-tossed ship back to shore and the Man with the Long Black Coat found me alone somewhere, and he’d tip his quiet black hat in his quiet way, and we’d find a corner where he thrust into me slow and sweet, in some dripping alcove or deep doorway or other, and I ne’er took so much as ha’pence from him.
We didn’t say much. But once he passed a thumb under my eye and said softly when it was over, If you’d let me pay you the first time, all would be different between us. Do you know that, my dear?
I laughed as I straightened my skirts, and blew him a kiss as I disappeared round the bend of the bitterly cold corridor.
For a moment, I’m seized with longing—I want to describe the Man with the Long Black Coat to the dollymops. How he turned us both into fireworks or darkness or both together maybe, yes that’s better, because how could you see the one without t’other? But I know I can ne’er explain how it was between us. They say in some parts as fairies still reside in the distant woodlands, and that lovemaking with them would be deadly in its pleasure, for a mortal couldn’t channel the magic coursing through ’em, and the fairy would survive the passion whilst the human fried to so much sparkling powder.
What I mean is, whatever the Man with the Long Black Coat is made of—I’m made of the same. Two of a kind. So I don’t need to fear him harming me, whilst the dollymops I’m sitting near would ne’er survive.
“We hope we haven’t troubled you,” the pretty one calls out from a few feet distant on the long community bench. When I glance up, she gives a wee wave, then smiles. “You seem one of our sort right enough, if I’m not being terrible forward, but there you are quiet as a mouse and we’ve been palavering over that dreadful Miller’s Court business. Apologies.”
Smiling back, I swallow the last of my fourth cup of gin, shaking my head. I count coins onto the rough grain of the tabletop. I’ve enough saved for a few days more in London, but I don’t want to be here any longer, so I’ll have to come by more tonight, in some back alley or another. They’re all one to me.
“I were that shaken over it, I’ve nary a word to say, but you’ve given no offense,” says I. “I promise. I’ve been quiet since I were a little lass.”
“There’s a great weight off my mind, then.” The shrewish one winks and this time, the wink is directed specially at me. “Take my advice, girls, and don’t badger the quiet ones, not if ye want to keep your skins—it’s always the quiet ones as win out in the end.”
—
When I last saw the Man with the Long Black Coat, he were striding the opposite way on Commercial Street as I, and I were being jostled by a woman with a basket piled with dirt-caked onions, and the sun had just barely begun to fade, like a skirt hung one too many times from a summer clothesline. We exchanged our usual wordless greeting, and I’d every reason to figure as that were the end of it, thrilling at the notion I might see him under starlight soon enough.
But he held up a hand and dodged across the thoroughfare, neatly proving he does exist after all, as a buggy reined its mount to avoid him and a newsboy’s eyes followed his progress. I could not help but smile when he reached the pavement before me, for he added a slight tip of his hat to the bow he’d already accomplished.
“My dear young lady, what luck I caught you, as I don’t know your name,” said he, a little out of breath.
“What’s it to you?” I laughed coquettishly. “I’ve not a clue as to yours either, and none the worse for it.”
“I quite see your point. Sometimes I think it a pity, and sometimes there is rather an air of romance to not knowing, wouldn’t you say?”
He half-smiled, and I saw in the daylight and up close that his eyes were amber, like a cat’s. That felt far more secret than t’other midnight acts we’d been about. Dangerous too, dangerous as the edge of a knife at your throat, and a thrill shot through me when I rasped, “Not knowing suits me right down to the ground.”
For an eyeblink he looked as if he might laugh. Then he were sucking in a quick breath, saying, “If a man wanted to visit your rooms for a longer appointment than the usual, would you consider it?”
My entire world froze. It were perfect—so much better than I had dared to hope, even. As if I’d just been handed a miracle nestled under spotless glass, aglow on its silver tray, all for me. Blinking, I did my best to focus.
Nearly there, Mary Jane. Nearly through.
“I couldn’t say,” I answered, deliberate-like. “Does this bloke want to pay me?”
“No,” the Man with the Long Black Coat breathed. “It so happens that he doesn’t.”
I stepped
into his space, shoppers and street arabs and immigrants and young mothers and dollymops and every sort of person parting ways around us, the blood pounding in my veins, and slit my eyes at him.
“In that case, I should tell him thirteen Miller’s Court at one o’clock tonight,” I whispered. “This chap, whoever he is, better be handsome.”
“Is that important to you?”
“It might be.”
“I am a very poor judge. He is ardent, at least, which I hope might make up for other deficiencies,” the Man with the Long Black Coat replied, nodding in his easy fashion as he stepped briskly to the side to resume his course. “I shall deliver the message at once, my dear young lady.”
“Thank you for the extra custom, sir.”
“Not at all! You have been most accommodating. Any special instructions?”
Half-turning, I flashed him a last quick grin, and it felt like losing a piece of my heart, a little. “Tell him he’d do best not to bring his name.”
—
It only remained for me to find Julia, but that proved laughably easy, as she were lying in wait for me, seated on the steps leading up to our rooms, both a shawl and a thin blanket about her shoulders, smoking a pipe. The smoke will do your voice no good, I had the mad urge to tell her.
But that would have served no purpose whatsoever. I dove straight for the heart of the matter.
“I don’t want you here anymore,” I said quietly.
Her perched on the staircase and me in the hallway, she were a head or so above me. Julia’s eyes had pinched at the edges over the years same as mine had, and they crinkled now as she glared. She took her time in answering, tapping her pipe in her hands, pushing a golden strand of hair away from her brow.
“I’m not going anyplace,” she announced, though she stood decisively. “Get used to me.”
“Why?” I cried.
For therein lay the crux—why should I, the only person in the world what hated Julia with an iron resolve, suffer the keeping of her?
My sister looked startled at my tone, but quickly smoothed her features. “Why not?”
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 39