The Ripper's Wife(40)
I’d thought at first this thing with his hands was just a nervous habit. Jim was forever fidgeting and rubbing them, complaining about how cold and numb they were. Sometimes the skin sloughed off like a snake’s in long, ugly, flaky yellowish-white strips, and he took to slathering his hands with lotions until he had more bottles lined up in his bathroom than the vainest coquette. Sometimes he actually tried to engage me in conversation, like we were a pair of gossipy girls instead of husband and wife, about the merits of various lotions, soaps, and cold creams.
“Well, Bunny,” he’d begin, “I’ve tried Whitworth and Son’s Blue Lilies Lotion and Laird’s Bloom of Youth White Lilac Cream, and I really must say . . .” After comparing and contrasting those two, he’d be on about Hinds’ Honey and Almond Cream and Halloran’s Milk of Honey until I wanted to smash every bottle of lotion in the house, preferably right over his Indian Princess–blackened head.
He’d seen an advertisement of a giant frog springing out of some river reeds advising a startled baby to take a certain kind of nerve pills—as though the sight of a giant talking frog walking upright on its hind legs going around dispensing medical advice weren’t enough to unnerve anybody, let alone a toddler—and was now popping those like peppermints. He even had a poster of that silly frog hanging up in his study as though it were a Rembrandt.
Jim had confided to me several times that he had a deep abiding fear of paralysis and was afraid this numbness afflicting his hands might be the first sign of its encroachment. Sometimes his hands shook a little, sometimes they shook a lot, and I wondered, as drink will make a drunkard tremble and induce peculiar dreams and fancies, if it might not be due to all the drugs churning around in Jim’s belly and swimming through his veins. He’d made a perfect one-man walking drugstore of himself and it just couldn’t be good mixing it all up like that. He’d even started injecting himself; I’d seen the marks. He was actually quite proud of the nimble touch he’d acquired with the syringe, often bragging, “I daresay no doctor could have done better!” Jim had even shown me the beautiful syringe and needle set he’d bought and kept in an elegant silver case with his initials engraved upon it, accented by a dozen dainty diamonds. I feared my husband was courting disaster. And I was too, in my own fashion.
When I mentioned our plans for a London sojourn to Alfred Brierley he smiled and said what a coincidence it was; he was planning a trip up to London himself. He prevailed upon me to meet him, “for a discreet afternoon of delight.” I said yes without a moment’s hesitation. Sarah and Whitechapel were on my mind, and I just couldn’t stop seeing Jim’s hand cupping Christina Samuelson’s peachy-pink breast. Sometimes it felt like it was painted on the undersides of my eyelids, there to torment me every time I closed my eyes. So I proposed Whitechapel as the spot for our tryst. This time, I vowed, revenge, if it ever really could be, really would be sweet.
When I stepped out of the cab, I entered an alien world, one where sorrow towered over me like a giant and pressed its great weight down fully upon my shoulders. It staggered me. Tears pricked my eyes and caught in my throat. Everywhere I looked there was ugliness and squalor. I took it into my lungs every time I drew breath—raw sewage, rank flesh, rotten vegetables. Dirty, raggedy, stick-skinny children with hands outstretched and eyes full of need, and women with haunted eyes and haggard faces, some with blackened eyes or toting baskets full of sad, pathetic flowers or matchboxes they were hoping to sell, instantly surrounded me, hands thrust out, begging. I’d never known the world could be like this—so ugly and full of hunger and naked need for just the bare necessities. I couldn’t even imagine Jim living and loving here. How could he, how could anyone, bear it?
A shower of pennies hit the ground and they all dived down just as a hand closed around my arm, yanking me from their yearning midst, and I found myself walking hurriedly away beside Alfred Brierley. We fell seamlessly into step together, as though we had been walking together all our lives. To my shame, I instantly forgot all about those sad, hungry-eyed people.
He took me to a hotel, a drab little place, with a man who looked at us with knowing eyes as he snatched the coins up with fingers greasy from the fish-and-chips that he was loath to relinquish even long enough to pocket his fee. The smell of the grease and fish and his unwashed body almost made me gag. I hung back, feeling hot with shame, like I was glowing like a red-hot coal through my black veil as Alfred arranged about the room. I glanced down at my black silk dress, appliquéd and embroidered with scarlet silk poppies, and feared I had chosen rather brazenly, unwisely, and all too well. Jezebel! Harlot! I fancied those poppies screaming, pointing their embroidered foliage, which suddenly seemed to look, from this angle, more like Hell flames, up at me like accusing fingers. Some of the poppies on my bodice seemed to form themselves into the letter A like Hester Prynne’s elaborately embroidered badge of shame. Stop it, stop it now, Florie! I wanted to slap myself. You’re imagining things! It’s like seeing shapes in the clouds, nothing more!
I trembled and, suddenly shy, I hesitated, as Alfred led me up the well-worn, rickety stairs. I suddenly felt like I was mounting the steps of a scaffold. I kept thinking about Hester Prynne, standing in the marketplace, the scarlet letter flaming on her bodice, proclaiming her sin to all.
“Darling—” Just that one tender word and a gentle tug at my hand was enough to get my feet moving again. In that moment, I would have followed him anywhere.