Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (26 page)

She turned the thimble to look within it, to see the bright silver she knew must still line the inside. The thin light from the lamp didn’t provide enough illumination. She hadn’t looked inside for many years and wasn’t at all sure why it was important now.

Her shoulders sagged and she thought of the euphoric feeling she’d had the day Anne gave her a draft of her liquor. She looked to the shelf where Conway stored his bottles, but it was empty. The bottle she’d pushed far back behind the baseboard would still be in its hiding place. She moved to the corner behind the bed, removed the piece of baseboard, grabbed the bottle of gin and returned with it to the table.

She felt the years in her joints, her muscles, her head and heart. How wonderful it would be to let all that go, to feel the euphoria again, to be relieved of all her troubles and sink into that warm carefree embrace.

She opened the bottle and the liquor’s foul odor made her nose and eyes sting and water.

Katie imagined Conway walking in on her while she was drinking, the row they would have, ending in her being tossed out in the street. She revised it so that she got away with taking the drink, but then he smelled it on her breath. The quarrel and her eviction followed. In the next version, she went outside after dark to have her drink of gin. That happened in the alley behind her tenement, and, having become drunk, she was so free of concern, even for her own safety, that she fell prey to bludgers that roamed the alleys at night, looking for victims. Safer places could be found to have her drink, but none were safe when she began to picture herself the way she saw others who drank; stumbling about, saying and doing anything that came to mind, throwing caution to the wind. Each scenario ended with her children being left unprotected by their mother.

Catherine spoke to her again, “Take good care of your family and there will always be something of beauty in your life, something sterling. That’s what keeps me going.”

Annie is the one that is good and pure
.  She imagined quicksilver coursing through her daughter’s veins. Annie would keep her going.

Katie put the cork back in the bottle. She returned it to the shelf from which she’d taken it so long ago, and then set about to prepare the eel for supper.

In 1881, at the age of 39, Katie had become her mother. Stiffness and soreness visited the joints throughout her body, but particularly in her hands. She had lost several teeth. When standing, she moved slowly to prevent a periodic lightheadedness that could lead to becoming insensible. She frequently had difficulty catching her breath and had coughing spells. The spells weren’t nearly as severe as those of her mother, but were a reminder of what Catherine had experienced.  Memories of her impatience with her mother always gave her a chill.
It is the cold dirt of her grave I feel, and perhaps my own.

Katie sat at the table in her room putting the finishing touches on a dress bodice for Annie. The open door let in the warm, late-spring daylight. Her neck ached from holding her head just right to balance the partial spectacles on her head, but she needed them to do close work as her vision had suffered from working by lamplight in the windowless room for so many years. Annie was worth all the effort. She had grown to be a beautiful, confident young woman.

Although Parliament had not made education compulsory until 1880, and then only for ages five to twelve, Katie had succeeded in preventing Annie from having to seek employment as a laborer. Conway recently argued that since the girl was soon to become sixteen years old, she should start pulling her own weight, and he put her to work selling chapbooks with disastrous results. Currently she had few responsibilities, a situation that could not stand long without her father demanding she find work.

With the idea that out of sight, was out of mind, Katie insisted that Annie spend much of her time with Charlotte Neet. The elderly woman, with Katie’s help, had recently moved into the room directly above the one occupied by Katie and her family. Charlotte’s son, Richard, had prospered in recent years and sent her a small sum of money for food and rent each month.

Annie had recently met a possible suitor, renewing hope that her future would be bright. Katie needed to buy her a little more time.

Annie, returning from an errand, entered the room. When Katie saw the big smile on her face, all of her accumulated fatigue, thoughts of fading health and mortality, fled.

“James has made it plain that he’s not entertaining other women!” Annie said.

Referring to the man by his first name was extraordinary. He was such a formal fellow, she had always called him Mr. Phillips.

Annie shook Katie by the shoulder and her partial spectacles slipped. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Katie said, “but I am not surprised Mr. Phillips is devoted to you.”

“He wants to come here to meet you and Papa.”

“You mustn’t let him,” Katie said. “When the time is right, we will meet him out at a tavern for a meal or perhaps during an outing to Hyde Park.”

Annie’s smile faded. “We are
not
poor,” she said indignantly.

“No, but we cannot risk Mr. Phillips deciding you’re beneath his station.”

“He’s not that sort of man.”

“All in good time, Annie.” Katie tied off her thread, cut it and set aside her needle and tin thimble. “Look at this bodice. I’ve altered it to become a long polonaise with side poufs to compliment your blue linen skirt. I added fringe and dobbin that tore off a fine skirt damaged at the laundry. See how it matches the big bow over the bustle? Mr. Phillips will be most impressed.”

“It’s beautiful, Mum, but it’s not the way I dress. If you keep putting me in finer and finer clothes, I’ll lose him for the opposite reason—
he
will feel the upstart.”

“They’re just scraps from the laundry, clothes people forgot or no longer needed. It’s my needle and thread that brings them back to life. Any woman with my experience could do the same. It isn’t dishonest, but, even so, if it brings the two of you closer, so much the better.”

“You’ve always wanted to sing while wearing the fine clothes of an entertainer,” Annie said, clearly trying to change the subject. “Why don’t you create your own from such scraps?”

“I can alter a piece here or there, but I’m not a seamstress like your Great-Aunt Elizabeth. And I’d need fine cloth.”

A bumping sound came from behind the open door. Katie put her finger to her lips and made a quite shushing. Annie nodded and dropped the bodice on the bed and threw a blanket over it. Katie stepped forward and opened the door a little further, revealing her ten-year-old son. He was filthy from scavenging the river. “What is my little mudlark doing?” she asked. “Are you eavesdropping, Thomas?”

“No, Mum,” he said without looking up. “I was knocking the clods off my shoes before coming in.”

The boy’s shoes were caked and his clothes and bare skin smeared with mud. He held in his arms the reeking canvas sack in which he carried the things he found at the river. The sack bulged with numerous short lengths of rope, scraps of sodden leather and what looked like the top of an old, ragged boot. The family didn’t earn much for what he gathered, but it did amount to something.

“Well, take them off and come in.”

Thomas kicked his shoes off, entered and made his way carefully past his mother and sister. He passed through the makeshift door Conway had recently put in to the rear wall to give access to a storage room the landlord had cleared out for their use. The new room was Annie’s and Thomas’s room and made life in the small dwelling so much easier for them all. Conway had gained the room for the price of mucking out the building’s cesspit. He and Thomas had done all the work themselves.

Katie waited until the door was shut behind him before she spoke. “I hope he didn’t understand what he heard. If fortune shines upon you and Mr. Phillips wants you for his wife, your father won’t be pleased. If he thinks Mr. Phillips might take you away, he’ll want to have a talk with him. It could spoil everything. Your father wants to depend on you to sell chapbooks with him, but we’ve had enough of that.”

“I don’t mind, really,” Annie said. “It was not so frightening, and I am all right now.” She lightly rubbed the nearly healed six inch gash on her upper arm.

A month ago Conway had insisted that Annie take Katie’s place selling chapbooks with him at a hanging at Newgate prison. “You are not young and attractive anymore,” he told Katie. “Annie cannot sing, but she’ll turn heads. You know that’s what we need. She’ll do fine.”

Conway’s slight still stung a little.

“I was attacked the first time I went with him, but the bludger didn’t cut me so deeply.” She showed the old scar on her wrist, then delicately caressed the wound on her daughter’s arm. “I’m so sorry for this.”

“I shouldn’t have held onto the coins,” Annie said, a troubled look in her eyes. “I’m sure he thought I had more.”

“You’ll not go with your father again.
I’ll
go.”

“Until Mr. Phillips decides, there’s no reason not to help Papa.”

“You will honor my wishes. We won’t argue about it.” Katie gathered the dress bodice in the blanket and handed it to Annie. “Take this to Charlotte. She’ll hide it away for you until you want to wear it. Bring the blanket back right away.”

“Yes, mum.” Annie went through the door to the outside and moved to the right to take the stairs up to Charlotte’s room.

Katie set about to warm water.

Carrying a bundle of fresh clothes, Thomas emerged from the new room nearly naked and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I found something for you,” he said, gazing sleepily out the door. “I’ll wash it up this time.”

Katie and Thomas had never been close, but as he got older, he seemed to understand it wasn’t natural. Lately, he made small, awkward efforts to be sweet to Katie, bringing her things from the befouled banks of the River Thames.

He’s learned from Conway to win hearts by giving gifts
.

Last week Thomas brought home a piece of driftwood. “It’s shaped like a dragon,” he said, presenting it to Katie with a smile.

Even his smile is borrowed from Conway.

The driftwood reeked of the river and the small creatures that had bored holes in it, but to save his feelings, Katie kept it for a while.

Three days passed before Conway had had enough of the smell. “This has got to go,” he told Thomas. “It is such a wonderful dragon, it smells like one.” He made a funny face, wrinkling up his brow and nose, and Thomas smiled uncertainly. “Come, let’s throw it in the stove and see if it breathes fire from nose and mouth.”

Thomas’s smile grew larger and he looked to his mother to see if she approved. Katie nodded her head. Conway spent nearly an hour watching the wood go up in flames in the old Soyer stove, making up stories about the dragon and sharing them with the giggling boy.

He can be such a warm father, yet he charms Thomas into scavenging on the river.

As Thomas sat on the bed now, fresh cuts were evident on his legs from his “adventures,” along with the large scars from those cuts that had festered before healing up. He had suffered numerous intestinal and digestive ailments since beginning his activities on the river a year ago.

Conway had referred to the scavenging as
adventure
. He told tales, tall tales no doubt, of exotic cargos spilled from ships returning from the Orient, Africa and the West Indies.

“There was a boy, another Thomas,” Conway told his son one evening, “who, with his friends, discovered gold and silver coins washed up on the bank of the river in a load of silk from India. The boys secretly invested their find. By the time they were grown, their investment had earned a great fortune. They used it to buy their own ship. Then they assembled a crew of their best friends and sailed the world.”

Thomas liked the story. On his days off from school, he went to the river, at first alone, and later with a few friends.

Katie was afraid for the boy, but Conway said, “You must let him learn to be an enterprising young man.”

The water warm, Katie helped Thomas bathe in the wash tub. When he was nearly finished, he reached for something in the bundle of fresh clothes he’d set beside the tub. “I found this for you,” he said and showed her a small metal box with a hinged lid. “It’s hardly rusted.” He dipped it in the water. Using soap, he cleaned it inside and out and gave it to Katie. The gift was a mustard tin with pictures of cows standing in water painted on the side. Indeed, little rust marred its surface.

“It’s beautiful, Thomas. Thank you.”

His smile was large and definitely his own—an enduring image.