The Ripper's Wife(50)
She leaned close and her tongue darted out to tease my ear. “I know how to please a man; I can lick his cock like a little girl does a peppermint stick. My gents always go away smilin’ an’ they always come back for more!”
We walked on, newsboys darting in and out of our path, brandishing their papers and shouting, “ ‘Murder—’Orrible Murder!’ ”
“Poor Polly, God rest her!” Mary Jane sighed and crossed herself—A Catholic whore, well, well!
“Did you know her?” I asked idly.
“Aye, ’tis a sad, sad story, it is! Polly met her Bill in the Old Kent Road. That was why she was always a-singin’ that song; it was their song.” Mary Jane sang the familiar chorus:
“ ‘Wot cheer!’ all the neighbors cried,
‘Who’re yer goin’ to meet, Bill?
Have yer bought the street, Bill?’
Laugh? I thought I should ’ave died!
Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road!”
The whore had called me Bill last night; was he on her mind even at the last?
“He had his printin’ shop there, an’ in the room upstairs all five of their bairns was born. It was a good life! But then Bill went an’ ruined it all; he fell in love with the midwife that delivered their last—Little Liza. Polly took to tryin’ to drown her sorrows. She couldn’t bear to stay, she was just too proud to sit there an’ watch another woman take her place, an’ she left him, an’ their brood. That was the hardest part. She used to cry for them when the horrors o’ the drink were upon her, an’, when she was far gone enough, for her Bill an’ to sing their song. But she was in a terrible way, she was, not fit to take care o’ herself, much less a passel o’ bairns. She went to London an’ fell into the life. Can’t keep body an’ soul together sellin’ matchsticks, don’tcha know.
“One day she woke up an’ took a long hard look at herself an’ what she had become. Made her right sick, it did. She tried to get herself right. Some missionaries, a right pair o’ teetotalers they was, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, a preacher an’ his missus, gave her a job in their house as a skivvy. She tried real hard, she did, but she just couldn’t stand it, all that preachin’, all that talk of repentance, hellfire, an’ damnation, an’ her with the shakes wantin’ a drink so bad she felt like she was goin’ to scream the house down, an’ she fell back into her old ways, stole all the missus’s clothes while she was in the bath, left her stark naked, she did, an’ pawned the lot o’ them an’ spent every penny on gin.
“Some time after that, she met a nice bloke, a blacksmith name o’ Drew. He got her off the streets for a time, he did. She tried hard to make a go of it doin’ needlework an’ hawkin’ matches an’ flowers, but it didn’t last; she just couldn’t give up the drink, an’ in the end Drew left her too. Said he couldn’t fight a ghost, an’ when the horrors o’ the drink was upon her all she talked about was her Bill an’ how much she missed him, an’ sang that song until you wanted to bang your head against the wall or hers, God love her! Her son, Will, gave her a few pence whenever he could, but he died a few years back, burned to death, he did, when a paraffin lamp exploded in his face, poor lad.” She crossed herself again.
“Poor Polly, God rest her!” Mary Jane wiped away a tear. “ ‘An’ God shall wipe away all the tears; an’ there shall be no more death; or pain, or sorrow, or cryin’; these former things have passed away.’ No one can hurt her now!”
I stopped and stood and stared deep into those green eyes. It almost ended there. I wanted to strangle her; my hands shook with the urge to reach out, right there on the street, and squeeze the life out of her in broad daylight.
That bedraggled, gin-soaked drab I had ripped open wide and left lying like horse apples on the cobblestones was nothing, a worthless nobody, yet this trumped-up Irish strumpet made me see her as someone real, someone who had mattered to someone once and still did, even if it were only her own downtrodden ilk.
It was as though Mary Jane Kelly sat me down on the sofa next to her and opened an album of photographs. I saw the story of a life, a woman who had once been a happy wife. She’d had a husband named Bill—she had called me Bill last night!—little children had loved her and called her “Mother.” She’d had a son who sympathized and gave her money, a son who had died horribly. She’d loved and lost and been betrayed, she’d had her pride, cried, and fought a powerful weakness, and she had a song she still sang because it reminded her of the happiest time in her life, before everything went wrong. She had even tried to catch herself and stop herself from falling further, and deeper, down into the cesspool. Through the window of Mary Jane Kelly’s words, I saw why Polly had become that dirty, stinking, gin-belching hag, and I hated Mary Jane for it!
My trembling hands reached out for Mary Jane’s throat. At the last moment they changed course. I don’t know why. I cupped her face. I kissed her hard. I bruised her lips with mine. I tasted rum, sugar, and orange juice, not blood but Shrub, a drink the harlots fancied, a cheap, sweet indulgence they persuaded men to buy them by claiming “it makes a body right randy.” I wanted her as I had never wanted any woman before. I wanted to hike up her skirts and f-uck her right there in front of the newsboys. Lust, not rage or bloodlust, just plain, ordinary, pulsing, powerful lust, was hot upon me. Mary Jane knew it and she knew what to do.