* * *
Papa and John awakened her. She lay sprawled on their doorstep, her head leaning against the door jamb. Polly had only been to her father’s room in Maydwell Street once before, but somehow her body had remembered how to get there. The open door allowed warm and inviting light from within to reach her. John, a look of shocked concern on his face, tried to help her stand. With Papa’s help, they got her to her feet, led her inside to a bed, and lowered her onto a musty straw mattress. John tucked a light blanket around his mother. He and Papa moved to another bed—the one Bill had sent with their son when the boy took up the apprenticeship with his grandfather. Papa pinched out the lamp light and the room became dark. Polly returned to sleep.
* * *
“Wake up, Polly,” Papa said repeatedly.
Finally, against a pounding headache, she opened her eyes. Blinding light came through the rag curtain over the room’s single window.
“Your drunken ways have finally done you real harm, girl. I hate to see it, but you got what you deserve.”
Polly rose up in anger, despite the pain. “You’re so high and mighty! I’ve never been arrested. Don’t think I forgot about that strongbox you broke into, how worried we all were for your safety. I might be a drunk, but you’re a thief, a cracksman!”
Polly thought her words would get her a more satisfying reaction, but Papa merely bowed his head and shook it slowly. She still didn’t know the full story of the strongbox, and his silent response said that her assumptions were well off the mark.
“I didn’t deserve this,” she said pitifully, gesturing toward her face. “Bill beat me.”
“Before you drank or after?”
“Should it matter?”
“If he said you should not—well, he is your husband.” Papa looked as if he had trouble agreeing with his own words.
Polly opened her mouth to show the gaps in her teeth.
Papa drew back, waved his hand in front of his nose. “That is a potent stink, Polly girl,” he said. Then, he seemed to focus on her lower jaw. “He did that, did he?”
“Yes, before I drank.”
Papa’s face darkened with a fierce scowl. “I shall pay him a visit tonight.”
“No! He would have you jailed this time. Let me sort it out, please.”
Papa looked thoughtful, then nodded.
“I must work,” he said. “Are you staying or leaving? If you wish to stay, I’ll not put the padlock on the door. If you must leave, you’ll have to go now. I cannot afford to miss a day of trade. I can make do without John for a while should you need help getting home.”
“I must go.” She looked around for her eldest. “Where is John?”
“Gone to fetch the barrow. He’ll help you when he returns.”
“No, I’ll make my own way.” Polly told herself that for his own sake, John shouldn’t see her again before she left. She knew that was, in truth, her pride speaking.
“I should think you’ll need the privy,” Papa said, pointing toward a rear door.
Polly went out.
“You’ll need your strength,” he said when she returned from relieving herself. He offered her a healthy slice of bread and cup of water.
“Thank you, Papa.”
“You ought leave off with the drinking before that demon kills you.”
The Bonehill Ghost is a figment of fevers and bad dreams. She realized she didn’t believe in him or prayer any longer. God clearly did as He pleased without considering what mere mortals thought or felt.
Polly gripped her father’s hand and squeezed, then left his room to walk the two or more miles home.
* * *
Polly returned to the Heryfords in time to avoid suspicion. The couple had taken in Percy and Alice when the children returned from school. They were out playing when Polly arrived. Coming in some time later, they were frightened to see their mother.
“Will you always look like that?” Alice asked, her voice soft and timid. Polly noted that the hearing in her left ear had returned a little or she might not have heard the girl at all.
She saw that Percy wanted to give a clever response, but he held his tongue, a troubled look on his face as he waited for her answer. Earlier, she had looked in a mirror that Susan provided. Although Polly’s face remained swollen and bruised, she’d seen no permanent damage beyond the loss of teeth.
“No, dear,” she said. “I’ll heal up and look like your mum again.”
Alice smiled. Percy kept his troubled look.
While listening for Bill’s return, Polly and the children ate an early evening meal with the Heryfords, a joint of lamb with potatoes and peas. Not since she and Bill courted had Polly eaten so well. She wondered with a touch of shame if she’d never quite given her children enough as she watched them wolf down the meal.
“The peas come from a tin,” Mr. Heryford said.
The children looked surprised. Since Bill didn’t trust tinned food, the children had never had any. Mrs. Heryford fetched the empty vessel, removed its sharp lid, and gave it to the children to inspect.
When Bill was heard coming up the stairs, Paul opened the door. “Please join us,” he said. “We’ve eaten, but saved some of the joint.”
Bill stood indecisively for a moment, then entered with what appeared great reluctance. His eyes became large when he saw his family assembled at the table. Percy and Alice seemed unwilling to look at their father.
Bill sat, and Susan served him. He ate in silence while Susan and Paul tried to make small talk with Polly. The children played on the hardwood floor beside the table with the empty tin, rolling it back and forth to one another. The Heryfords asked Polly questions about her printing business. Toward the end of her description of processes she used in producing broadsheets and handbills, Bill set down his utensils and interupted her. “Stop that racket,” he told the children. Percy picked up the can and stood.
Bill turned to Polly. “You’ll introduce me to your childminder girl and her brother,” he said.
“Give her a chance to heal up,” Paul said.
“I don’t see as any of this is your business,” Bill said coldly.
Alice ducked under the table. Percy gripped the edge of the table top as if steadying himself to bolt if need be. Susan placed a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Children,” Polly said, “go to our flat and play. The door is unlocked.”
“Leave the tin here,” Bill said.
Percy set the tin on the table, then he and Alice left the flat.
“We should go home too, Polly,” Bill said, standing.
“Please stay the night here,” Susan said to her.
Bill’s head tilted to one side and his features hardened.
“No, we should go,” Polly said, trying to calm him. She got up from the table.
“We fear for your safety,” Paul said, getting to his feet. “Susan and I discussed that before you came back this afternoon. You don’t have to go with him tonight. You can stay here.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Bill said. He turned toward the door.
“You would do well to listen,” Susan said. “What we have to say involves legal proceedings.”
Bill blustered, his brows knitting furiously and his mouth working to make the cruelest arching scowl, yet a shade of concern trembled in his eyes.
“I learned something of the law today,” Susan said. She stood and walked to a cabinet, opened a drawer, and pulled out leaves of paper folded together. “It so happens that Parliament amended the Matrimonial Causes Act earlier this year. If Paul and I provided testimony that you severely beat your wife, you might be convicted of the crime. If that came to pass, Polly would be within her rights to leave you, and you’d be required to provide a monetary maintenance to her for the rest of her life. The new law also allows for her to take the children.”
Bill’s eyes had become great angry orbs bulging from his red face. “You learned nothing of the kind! You are a wretch
ed, meddling hay—” He glanced at Paul uneasily as the man took a step toward him. Mr. Heryford’s face became as hard and determined as any Polly had ever seen.
He’s looking for an excuse to strike Bill. While excited to have champions defending her, Polly feared further reprisals for her husband’s shaming.
“The company what employs you,” Paul said, “was among those the House of Commons tasked with printing and distributing the amendment.”
Susan held forth the publication.
Bill approached her slowly, then snatched the pages from her hand and tore them up.
“You might tear the paper, Mr. Nichols,” Susan said, maintaining her calm, “but the law remains, and now you cannot claim ignorance of it.”
“Now, as your boys are gone,” Bill said, sneering, “leading your husband around by the nose isn’t good enough? You’ve got to mind somebody else’s business. There’s little more despicable than a neighbor who listens through the walls for advantage.”
“There’s no call for you to mistreat my wife too,” Paul said. “You are no great specimen, sir. I could easily defend both women.”
“I can see you’d like to try.”
“Yes, sir, I would.”
Bill spun on his heels to face his wife. “Come, Polly, we’ll go home.”
“Take great care in how you treat your wife, Mr. Nichols,” Susan said.
Polly didn’t want to go with him. She was afraid. But she’d only delay the inevitable if she stayed, and to go seemed the best way to reduce his anger at the moment. He had been shamed and threatened. Although she found that satisfying, she feared that the Heryfords had fed his anger.
Bill took her by the wrist and led her to the door to exit the Heryfords’ flat.
“We will be looking out for her,” Paul said. “If we believe you’ve mistreated her further, we’ll go to the police.”
Bill pushed Polly through the threshold and followed her, slamming the door behind him.
She knew she must become small and nonthreatening. Polly kept her head down and didn’t meet Bill’s gaze. She would speak only when spoken to. If she made it through the night without another beating, she’d be fortunate.
26
Routine Reestablished
Over the next three weeks, Bill didn’t speak to Polly.
Nor did he beat her.
Polly found a copy of the Matrimonial Causes Acts Amendment in a pocket of his trousers.
During the three weeks, he spent extra hours at his job, helping to implement a new die cutting process. When home, he said little to the children, as well. Polly suspected that he was relieved to have an excuse to be away from home.
Thinking about how the Heryfords had treated her, how they had seen only the best in her and responded to that, Polly saw herself as churlish and ungrateful for having lied and fled into drunkenness while allowing them to believe they protected her. Since she had run into fewer problems with Bill when sober, she decided her best course was to abstain from drink, at least until the high emotions of recent life had settled down again.
Morning sickness told her she was pregnant again. She hoped that wasn’t true.
If it is, let it be Tom’s child.
Since Bill seemed to treat her with perfect indifference, she had plenty of opportunity to slip away to visit her lover. Instead she waited several weeks for her face to heal.
In Polly’s fourth week of healing, Bill began to grunt a yes or no to a question. If the communication required more, he allowed nothing but an awkward silence. Then, out of the blue, as if talking to himself, he said things aloud that he obviously wanted her to hear, such as his intention of finding a new home.
For what they could afford, Polly knew he would never find a place to live as fine as what they had in the Peabody building, and that Bill’s pride in their home would further discourage him from making a change. She saw him speaking with the superintendent when other tenants were packing up their households to leave, and she assumed he hoped to take rooms within the Peabody buildings farther away from the Heryfords. Nothing came of his efforts.
“I’m pregnant,” Polly told Bill one evening, unable to deny the reality of her changing body any longer.
His response to her was the first of any length since the confrontation with the Heryfords. “You shall introduce me to your childminder girl and her brother.”
* * *
“You’ve treated Tom most cruelly,” Estell said. “He’s not here. He doesn’t want to see you.”
Polly knew that staying away from her lover with no explanation would be harmful. She had not thought that he and his sister would turn against her. “I need your help.”
“No, you don’t,” Estell said loudly. She tried to shut the door, but Polly had put her boot into the opening.
Eliza stirred in her sling. The rocking on the walk to Jane Street had put her to sleep. Polly hoped she would not awaken.
She spoke quietly, urgently. “Yes, I do. My husband beat me because a neighbor saw me leaving here. I’ve been healing up since then so Tom won’t see what happened to me and become angry enough to harm my husband.”
Estell sneered, and Polly clarified her words. “I were afraid Tom would go to prison should he give Bill a dewskitch.” Polly opened her mouth to show the gaps in her teeth. “Look here.”
The young woman grimaced, and then her features softened some. “He’d have done him a good nobbling, at that.”
“I told Bill you’re my childminder, what you lived with your brother, and that’s why I come here.”
“Yes,” Estell said impatiently, “all as true.”
“He doesn’t have to know about Tom and me.”
“As for you to worry about. Tom doesn’t want to see you anymore.”
Polly felt defeated, but then had an idea. She leaned forward and pulled the swaddling from Eliza’s face. “She’s really growing. Don’t you want to hold her?”
“Will you do anything to get what you want?”
“Yes.”
Estell seemed to have some grudging respect for her answer, yet remained unmoved. “No, I don’t want to see her. You cannot come in. Tom’s not here. If you must see him, go to the smithy. You shouldn’t like what you’ll find.”
As Estell tried to crush the foot in the door, Polly had another idea. “How’s your reading and writing?”
The painful pressure on her foot let up some. A slight crooked smile took hold of Estell’s face.
“I’ll give you more lessons if you’ll meet Bill and tell him you keep Eliza when I go to Farringdon Market.”
“I shan’t meet your husband.”
“But you do want more lessons,” Polly said with confidence. “Should you do as I ask, I’ll help you learn more.”
Estell seemed to ponder that for a moment, then the door opened.
* * *
Tom came home about half past three o’clock in the afternoon while Polly and Estell were in the midst of their lesson. He didn’t seem pleased to see Polly.
“I didn’t think I should see you again.” he said, taking his hammer out of his belt and placing the tool on the table. “Had you no thought of how I’d worry? I knew better than to come looking for you. But for your husband, I might have done. What became of you?”
“I fell in the courtyard at the Peabody buildings,” Polly said, “and struck one of the benches with my mouth.”
Tom frowned, his slight anger turned to concern.
“The pain was more than I could bear,” Polly continued, trying to remember all the parts of the story she had come up with and refined with Estell’s help. “I became feverish and was in bed for several days.”
Polly glanced at Estell who nodded encouragement.
“I thought I had a contagion and decided it best not to come here. Within a few days, I lost a tooth and my mouth got worse. A week later, I lost another tooth.”
“Show him,” Estell said.
Polly demurely opened her mouth to show
the gap in her smile.
Tom looked down. He paced back and forth across the floor. Polly couldn’t tell if he would swallow the lie.
“Please, say something,” she said.
“And all this time,” he said, “I thought I had hurt you in some way, though I couldn’t think what I’d done.” He looked at Polly, and though his affection for her remained in his gaze, the haunted look he sometimes carried had returned.
Polly didn’t question the look. She hurried to him and he embraced her.
“I’m sorry you lost your teeth,” he said.
“I am too,” she said, relieved that he seemed to have taken the lie as truth. “I hope you don’t mind too much.”
“You’re just as lovely as ever.”
“That’s not the same as saying you’re lovely,” Estell said. She screwed up her face to mock them.
* * *
Polly took Bill with her to Jane Street at a time when Estell would be there taking care of Nancy while Tom was out. The young woman explained everything to Bill’s satisfaction, as she and Polly had planned.
“When may I meet your brother—Tom, is it?”
“Yes, sir,” Estell said. “You can see him at the Salvation Smithy until seven o’clock in the evening every day of the week but Sunday. It’s just by the sawmill.”
“I know where,” Bill said. He turned to Polly. “I’ve got my answer.”
A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper Page 14