The Ripper's Wife(24)

Sometimes I felt like Edwin was my only friend, and having lost my own brother, I valued him all the more. We spent a great deal of time together, probably, in hindsight, more than was wise.

I never knew when he’d burst in on me, shake me out of my doldrums, shouting, “Devil take the office!” when I asked why he was not at work, and slap a hat on my head and a cloak around my shoulders and drag me off to the dime museum or an afternoon matinée. “Nothing’s better than a penny dreadful brought to life!” he always said. Any sideshow featuring freaks or magicians was sure to attract Edwin. He’d readily volunteer to let the strongman lift him over his head or to step forward and tug the bearded lady’s whiskers, daring to let his eyes drift down to her bosom as he did so, and he’d pay to kiss the fat lady, and he never tired of telling about the day he had shaken the Elephant Man’s hand. The instant any magician asked for a volunteer from the audience Edwin was on his feet with his hands waving.

He was forever trying to perform magic tricks, dreaming of the day when he could abandon the office forever, he hated cotton and bookkeeping so, and take to the stage as “Edwin the Extraordinary.” But he was the most inept magician I ever saw. His tricks always went hilariously wrong.

I remember once when I was hosting a ladies’ luncheon and he attempted to entertain us with a trick involving a handkerchief and the contents of a pepper shaker; poor Edwin made the mistake of standing next to an open window on a windy day and pepper went flying everywhere. We were convulsed with sneezes and our eyes were streaming and stinging, and one poor lady’s sneezing brought about similar eruptions from the other end that mortified her so completely that she would never come to our house again.

Another time Edwin lost the tame white dove he had been practicing with for months and thought it had landed on Mrs. Hammersmith’s hat, but when he went to catch it he discovered it was only a stuffed bird nesting amidst the silk cabbage roses and he had quite ruined her new hat, mangling it with his big, clumsy man’s hands when he snatched the dove off. She sobbed hysterically when Edwin offered her a handkerchief only to have a dozen rainbow-colored ones all sewn together come rushing out of his pocket and proceeded to beat him about the head with her handbag several times, all the while calling him a dunce, a mutton-headed dolt, a nincompoop, and an absolute fiend—I personally thought the last was rather strong. After all it was only a hat, and not a very pretty one at that. Afterward, when I put a piece of steak on the swollen lump on his forehead, he tried to make a joke of it, wondering if the brick she was carrying in her purse was solid gold.

A month rarely passed without him dragging me off to the Anatomy Museum, which I daresay sounds a tad improper, on the select afternoons when ladies were admitted. They boasted over 750 wax models that were authentic replicas of all the human organs and even had displays depicting the birthing process and various surgical procedures to “advance science and learning,” and Edwin insisted we had to see them all. He’d stand before the exhibit about “self-pollution” eating his toffee corn and joke that the placard that described it as “the most pernicious evil practiced by man upon himself” contradicted the sign over the front door that shouted in huge gilt-edged black letters: MAN KNOW THYSELF! and have me laughing so hard I almost burst my stays.

Sometimes we even attended séances together, which were then still quite fashionable. We’d sit in the darkness, part of a circle of joined hands, while the medium went into her trance. Spirit hands rattled tambourines, tilted the table, and wrote messages on sealed slates. Cloaked by darkness, Edwin would sometimes lean over and let his lips graze my neck or cheek, nip my ear, or blow on my face, and beneath the table his thigh always pressed against mine, and I could not evade these attentions without breaking the circle. I tried not to let it trouble me too much. We were having so much fun; I was never bored with Edwin, and I didn’t want to spoil it.

Worst of all were the days I spent alone. I’d get so bored I could scream. Bobo would be napping, I couldn’t abide Mrs. Briggs, my friendly overtures only made the servants colder, no book or fancywork could hold my attention, and I would just sit there feeling sorry for myself. So I’d dress myself up in a fine frock and feathered hat, intending just to go for a walk, and find myself drawn like iron filings to a magnet straight to Woollright’s Department Store.

It was the grandest store in Liverpool, a great big glossy new department store crammed with every conceivable luxury. I’d buy ready-made dresses, or fine fabrics I’d send straight to Mrs. Osborne, my dressmaker, furs, shoes, handbags, hats, fans, gloves, and jewelry, corsets and other undergarments, silk stockings, robes and nightgowns, parasols, perfumes, scented soaps, pretty little knickknacks like china pug dogs and soapstone Chinese dragons, vases, books, candy, pastries, sheet music, furniture, curtains, carpets, lamps, picture frames, fine china, crystal, newfangled gadgets for the kitchen to bewilder the cook, and clothes and toys for Bobo, even when he was far too young for them. I would find myself buying him marbles when I knew perfectly well that a baby that age would surely swallow them, and hoops to run after when he was barely walking, hobbyhorses he couldn’t yet straddle, and plaid knickerbocker, Zouave, and velvet suits à la Little Lord Fauntleroy, and wide-brimmed straw hats with grosgrain streamers to set off the long curls I planned to cultivate like prize-winning roses on his dear little head when he was still in the cradle. And, if that doesn’t beat all, one day I even bought a fully equipped dollhouse and not one but three gilt-edged porcelain tea sets painted with cabbage roses—the toy department had it with the roses done in pink, blue, or yellow and I just couldn’t decide which—for a daughter I didn’t even have and, as far as I knew then, might never have. I bought silk and velvet neckties and dressing gowns for Jim and Edwin, and even Michael in my never-ending quest to make him like me. Once I even bought him an elephant foot umbrella stand and a stuffed aardvark (I was trying to make him smile).