Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (31 page)

Katie and Mr. Kelly were living at Cooney’s common lodging, sharing a third floor room with twenty other individuals distributed among four beds. Assuming the role of husband and wife, they were signed in under the names Mary Ann Kelly and Jon Kelly. Katie had used the alias, Mary Ann, for the last two years, ever since causing a fire while drunk at Palmar’s common lodging one mile to the East. 

She occasionally helped in the kitchen at Cooney’s, earning a little extra food for her efforts. Hung over and barely holding her own, she was washing dishes when the deputy of the common lodging, Mr. Wilkinson, passed through carrying a sack of something to the pantry. “Good morning, Mary Jane,” he said, and then he was gone.

His wife, Carole, beside Katie, pulled bread from the oven. “He never knows the proper name of any woman.” She set the pans on a rack to cool, then straightened and turned to Katie. “He doesn’t really see us. Something wrong inside.” She tapped her head. “Caught a splinter when he served in the navy. He’s mistaken me for any number of women he’s known, and there are times I have to convince him who I am. He squints hard at me, then something happens inside and there I am—he knows me again.”

Katie wasn’t interested in pleasant conversation and remained silent. Her mouth, dry and filled with a sour, rotten taste, didn’t feel as if it could form words. Wet to the elbows in greasy dishwater, she continued to scour pans with a filthy, blackened scrub brush. Her head ached with a pounding pain that accompanied each pulse of blood through the vessels in her neck.

It wants to get out
. Katie looked at a knife among the items still to be washed.
I could use that to let the blood out and end the pain.
She picked up the blade and ran a finger along its edge. The knife was dangerously sharp, but the metal felt as if it had been sharpened with a file, nicks and burs all along its length. Scabs of flesh were stuck on it from the last joint it carved.

No, that would hurt. I’ll just finish up, get some food in my belly, then go find a drink before Mr. Kelly finds me.
He’d planned for them to leave London for migrant work in Kent.

“You come in at different times from Mr. Kelly,” Carole said.  “Aren’t you afraid of the Whitechapel Murderer?”

“No,” Katie said, surprised that it was the truth. Almost a week ago she’d read in the London Times about the victims and speculations about the killer. After what she had been through with her daughter yesterday, there hadn’t been room in her head for thoughts of murders. However, as she stumbled along the street last night, hurrying to get back to the common lodging before they locked the doors, Catherine, walking beside her, suggested she should find the Whitechapel Murderer.

What a strange thing for her to say. She didn’t say whether she wanted me to turn him in for the reward or make friends with him. Surely she doesn’t want me to become his next victim.

There is so much excitement over those wretched, hapless women in the newspapers. I
am
like them; just one of so many poor, castoff women.  

But nothing like that ever happens to me.  No one is ever excited about me.

“Are you all right, Mary?” Carole asked.

Katie didn’t respond. Finished with the dishes, she left the wash tub and sat at the table, her pounding head hung low.

Carole cut the crust off the end of one of the fresh bread loaves and gave it to her. “You don’t have much to say this morning,” she said.

John Kelly entered the kitchen, saving Katie from having to answer.

“Come, woman,” he said. “We’re off to Kent to go hopping. Our train leaves this afternoon. We must earn our keep. If we’re going to drink more than our share, the least we can do is help pick some of the stuff.”

Katie shook her head slowly, but he reached for her left arm and helped her to stand.

“It’ll be like a holiday. We’ll get out of London, breathe the fresh country air. It’s just what you need to rid yourself of the doldrums.”

One place is as good as another. S
he picked up her crust and allowed herself to be led.

~~~

And one task was as good as another. Katie picked hops for a week. Every time her basket was full, she dumped it into the big burlap sacks held in wooden frameworks set at intervals along the rows of hops vines. Under different circumstances, it would have been pleasant. The long rows of posts and wires supporting the climbing plants created lovely green corridors in which to work. The sun felt good on her face and when she became too hot, plenty of shade provided relief. Occasionally a laborer on stilts passed along a corridor to pick the hop cones too high for those on the ground to reach or to repair the wire and string supports.

Katie and Mr. Kelly took their turn making their meals in the communal kitchen and waited in line to use the outdoor toilet facilities. With Katie’s urinary troubles, waiting for the toilet, and then being hurried while taking her turn by those waiting in line after her, was a dreadful purgatory. She and Mr. Kelly sat around the big outdoor fire pit in the evening with the other laborers. Although there was plenty to drink, Katie did not become drunk. She maintained herself with doses of beer that did not leave her incapacitated while working, but were sufficient to keep her numb to most of her feelings.  At night she and Mr. Kelly stayed in a hut with no furniture. They made a straw bed on the dirt floor and cuddled up close to keep warm in the night beneath blankets they had brought with them.

As the week progressed, her back began to ache and she experienced abdominal cramping. Her period, which had become inconsistent in recent years, chose that most inconvenient time to return. The cramps became unbearable and the discharge voluminous, a grim, dark red. She had no hope of finding silver in it.

Her mother, like so many, called it
the blessing
. But it mocked Katie. Why should she still be fertile?  She thought wistfully of her children, her early life, her mother. She wondered if she would ever see Thomas again. She thought of the spot of blood on her mother’s handkerchief the day she stole her thimble.

So much time had passed since her last period, she’d disposed of her menstruation needs. She asked the matron in charge of the communal kitchen if there was anything about that she could use to stanch the flow, and was directed to a hut with a bin full of white, wool rags.

The night before they were to return to London, Katie was unable to sleep because of her cramps. Mr. Kelly, having collected their earnings from the management and grumbling about having been cheated, had gone to bed early with a bottle. Katie stayed up late by the fire pit drinking wine long past the time when everyone else turned in for the night. She would have a smoke, but her coughing fits had been bad for the last few days and her throat was sore.

No longer tended, the fire died down, the half-burnt logs settling with graceful, rising sparks and embers breaking into jumbles of orange shapes. The warmth had been stored in the stones around the pit and continued to push back the chilly night air and provide soothing heat to Katie’s aching abdomen.

She found a single mitten lying in the dirt and put it on, and slipped her other hand into the pocket that held her thimble.

Catherine sat down next to her and stirred the hot coals with a stick.  “
The blessing
reminds you that you have children,” she said. “They love you.”

“I don’t even know Thomas, but I know Annie,” Katie said. “She
does not
love me.”

“When you go to ask her for money, she doesn’t see her mother. She sees what you’ve become. She sees what has taken her mother away from her. But her love for you endures.”

Katie wouldn’t argue with her mother, but didn’t share her sentiment.

“Do you see them in the embers?” Catherine said pointing. Beyond the tip of the burning stick, there was an orange view of Thomas consoling Annie as she wept. Thomas had grown to a man with broad shoulders and a handsome face. They stood graveside. A coffin, Katie somehow knew was her own, was lowered into a churchyard cemetery. She was being buried in hallowed ground.

“She’s heartbroken over the loss of her mother,” Catherine said. “Once you’re gone, she sees you again, she remembers the mother who loved her and filled her with fond memories, warmth, goodness.”

She thinks I’m better off dead!
Katie turned to throw harsh words at her mother, but found she was alone. Breath came in short gasps.
What does she know about it? Why should I listen to her? I have lived longer and am now her senior. I’ll show her she’s wrong.

Taking slower, deeper breaths restored calm.
Katie returned to the hut where Mr. Kelly slept, and lay awake beside him for some time, making decisions. She would become sober and go to Annie once again. She would promise to give up drinking and find proper work. She would ask Annie to open her heart and give her another chance to prove herself worthy of love.

Tomorrow would be a new start.

On September 27, Katie awoke smiling, despite a hangover and another throbbing pain in her head. A drink would help it go away, but instead she would live with it. The cramps had diminished in intensity.

With a renewed sense of purpose, she tried not to think too much about the future as she stepped forward into it.

As Katie and Mr. Kelly left the hops garden and entered the road that would take them to the train station, they fell in with another couple walking in the same direction. The female was about Katie’s age, tall, with thin pale blonde hair and a wide, smiling face. The man was also tall, rail-thin, somewhat stooped and reserved. 

“I’m Mary Ann Kelly,” she told the woman, smiling, “and this is my husband, Jon Kelly. We’re going home to London.”

“I am Emily and my husband is James Birrell. We’re from London too, but we’re going to Cheltenham to Mr. Birrell’s family.”

Mr. Kelly and Mr. Birrell greeted one another, but didn’t have much to say.

Katie asked Emily about her life in London, and Mr. Birrell’s family.

“My husband is a dustman,” Emily said, “and I have been charring. But it has become such occasional work that even with the households we service granting us pig wash, there’s never enough and the children remain hungry.”

Katie was used to eating food scraps that had been left behind on the tables of patrons of taverns, then rejected by the establishments’ staffs and put out for the dustman and bone-grubber to collect. She knew when several of the public houses in Whitechapel put out their refuse and she made the rounds, sometimes competing with others for the scraps. But she knew they were relatively fresh compared to pig wash. Most households only rejected a joint or stew when it was going bad.

“We’ll stay the winter with his family, and hope for better from London in the spring.” Emily said.

Katie told a story about herself that left out most of what caused her shame and suggested some stability in her life with Mr. Kelly in London. He gave her a questioning look a couple of times, but didn’t interrupt. The two women made small talk for the next hour on the road. Walking in the warm sun and talking to another mother was good. When they came to a fork in the road, the Birrells said their goodbyes and headed up the road to the right. Katie and Mr. Kelly moved to the left, but had not got far before Emily called out and ran back to Katie.

“Take these,” she said, handing her two pawn tickets. “They’re for a shirt and pair of boots. We won’t be back soon and it would be a waste. You should have them.”

“Thank you,” Katie said.

“Yes, thank you,” Mr. Kelly said. He waved to Mr. Birrell, who was waiting on his wife up the lane.

When she was gone and they resumed their trek to the train station, Mr. Kelly said, “I haven’t seen you so bright and happy for some time. It’s good to have you back.”

Katie’s face held a smile of hope and promise.

After paying for the train tickets and having a good meal at a tavern upon their return to London, Katie and Mr. Kelly had little more money than when they left to go hopping. Because they didn’t have enough to both stay at Cooney’s, Katie insisted that he stay there while she went to the Mile End Casual Ward.

The superintendent at the casual ward, who knew her quite well, but whose name could not be remembered, asked where she’d been. Katie responded that she’d been hopping, and then something strange came out of her mouth: “But I’ve come back to earn the reward for turning in the Whitechapel Murderer. I think I know him.”

Where did that come from? Was that Mum saying that?

“Mind he doesn’t murder you too,” the superintendent said, chuckling.

“Oh, no fear of that,” Katie said, troubled, but hiding it with feigned mirth.

“One of the girls died last night,” the superintendent said. “No family. Have a look in the clothes bin and see if there’s anything you want.”

Katie found a warm woolen petticoat, a chintz top skirt and an old jacket with fake fur collar and cuffs.

~~~

On September 28, when she went to Holborn to Annie’s home, Katie was still sober, despite craving a drink for every waking hour since leaving the hops garden. Suffering the shakes and her abdomen cramping in withdrawal, she kept her desire at bay by practicing what she would say to Annie and imagining her daughter’s positive response to her words. Having washed herself and her new clothes and donned them, she was quite presentable for the visit. She would knock on Annie’s door this time. She would beg to be heard and then make the best case for herself she could. She wouldn’t ask for money, merely patience.

As Katie was about to take the steps to the door of their house, Mr. Phillips came out, followed by Annie. No doubt they had seen her approach.

Mr. Phillips hurried menacingly down the stairs. The impulse was to run, but Katie held her ground.

He came too close and leaned over her with an angry, beetling brow and balled fists. “You will not come here again.” 

“I will go away, if you’ll hear me out.” Katie said, looking at Annie and maintaining her calm.

Her daughter remained by the door. She folded her arms before her and stared coldly.

“There is nothing you have to say we want to hear,” Mr. Phillips said.

The conversation wasn’t anything like what she imagined. Katie panicked. “I’ve stopped drinking,” she blurted.

Annie’s lips became pinched, she shook her head slowly, her eyes filled with disbelief.

“How many times have you told us that?” Mr. Phillips shouted. “We
cannot
believe you. Even if it were true, we know what you do to earn your crust. We
cannot
keep company with such as you.”

How can they know about the prostitution?
The shame took the strength from her legs and back and she sagged a little, her head hung low. 
There is no way out of this life. Annie’s love
is
no more.

She pulled herself back upright, trying to look proud. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Please,” Katie cried, “you must listen to me.” She looked again to Annie, but her daughter remained immobile, her eyes glistening with moisture, but still hard and impenetrable.

Windows opened along the street. People leaned out to get a better look at what was happening. Annie glanced up and around at her neighbors, her expression bearing the unmistakable mark of shame.

Mr. Phillips violently pulled a purse from his waistcoat, ripping the pocket as he did so. He emptied it into his right hand. He dropped the purse, grabbed Katie’s hand and hastily spilled the coins into it. “Take this and go,” he said through gritted teeth. “Don’t ever darken our door again.” Several of the coins fell to the pavement and Katie’s tear-blurred eyes reached for each and every one of them. 

She pulled her eyes away from them to look at her daughter.

“I don’t leave the house anymore for fear of meeting you,” Annie said with bitterness, tears finally flowing over her cheeks. “You’ve killed my mother.”

With that, she turned and crossed over the threshold into the house. Mr. Phillips followed her, but stopped just inside. His back still to Katie, he said, “Don’t come back or you’ll be sorry you did.” Then he shut the door.

Katie stood alone on the street for a time weeping, periodically breaking into a great hacking cough.

She can’t know what I’ve suffered and what it’s done. Annie has nothing left for me.

The desire for drink became overpowering.

There’s no way out. I can’t be anyone but this drunken whore.

While the neighbors watched, she got down on her hands and knees. Mucous dripping from her mouth and nose onto the paving stones as she wept, Katie scrambled after each of the fallen coins. When she’d found them all, an amount totaling nearly two crown, she got to her feet and fled toward the East.