The Ripper's Wife(52)
Remembering that change is always good after heartbreak, Mary Jane decided to move on, to make a new life for herself in London. “I had to leave all that sorrow behind me or perish of it. ’Twas like an anchor, it was, weighin’ me heart down, an’ I thought I was too young to drown. I wanted gaiety an’ excitement, an’ to live while I was young an’ alive, not to be tied down an’ dying o’ woe. The only thing for it was to start new.”
When she first set foot in London—“green as a shamrock, that’s how ignorant I was!”—a velvet-and-lace-gowned lady in a fine carriage driven by a Negro coachman in tight white breeches, a red tail coat, and a tall silk hat, engaged Mary Jane on the spot to be a maid in her house.
But her house was no ordinary house. It was “a gay sportin’ house in the West End, it was, one o’ the grandest where all the gents an’ swells an’ even His Highness the Prince o’ Wales went.
“All pink satin an’ red velvet, lace sewn with little beads that twinkled like stars, real crystal chandeliers, an’ mirrors an’ gilt everywhere they could think to put one an’ paint t’other. There was even globes o’ rose-colored glass on the gaslights. Aye, I used to lie naked as a baby in me big bed o’ pink satin an’ stare at meself in that gold-framed mirror an’ think I looked just like one o’ the ladies in those French paintin’s Madame had hangin’ everywhere.”
Though she was hired to be a servant, Mary Jane soon made up her mind to be the gayest and most popular girl in the house. “Fuckin’ beats skivvyin’ any day o’ the week, me boyo, an’ I’d sooner be paid for lyin’ flat on me back on satin than down on me knees scrubbin’ floors!” At that time the reigning favorite was a novelty, a Negress known as “The Black Venus” who did a series of increasingly lewd poses plastiques draped—“for the first few o’ ’em anyway”—in cloth-of-gold. In the grand ballroom, with the floor cleared and lit by torches held by nearly naked Negro footmen in red loincloths, she performed a wild voodoo dance with a turban on her head, gold bangles on her wrists and ankles, and a real-live snake wrapped around her shoulders and a “skimpy little scrap” of gold cloth covering her cunt, which she ripped off at the end of her dance. “All the toffs were wild for it . . . an’ her,” Mary Jane added, a tad ungraciously.
On the night of the favorite’s birthday, Mary Jane, simmering with resentment, drank more than she should have of the champagne she was supposed to be serving to the guests and decided that enough was enough. She dropped her tray, full of crystal glasses, right on the floor and in her smart uniform of black dress and ruffled white apron and cap flounced into the rose-lit dining room, flipped up her skirts, and sat her bare bum right down on “that big lovely pink an’ white birthday cake with a great lovely splat, frosting flyin’ everywhere. After that, they all fell in love with me. Lined up to lick me clean, they did!”
I could tell she was quite proud of that memory. Soon she was being carried into the dining room every night stretched out on a big silver platter with her naked body decorated with icing roses, bows, and garlands, just like a fancy cake for the gents to devour. One night, she swore “on me mother’s grave it’s true!,” they served her up to “good ol’ Bertie, the Prince o’ Pleasure, our future king, himself, Lord love an’ save him!” decorated with his royal crest in icing and a regal lion and unicorn paw to hoof in icing over her clean-shaven cunt.
Another night, upon a dare for a diamond bracelet, she took a bath in a tub filled with a crate of champagne new come from Paris, “but ne’er again! I nearly burned me insides out, I did. Luckily there was a doctor in the house; he stuffed me snatch full o’ cold sweet cream from the kitchen to cool the burn, an’ all me gents were eager to comfort an’ pet me, an’ give me presents, an’ tell me what a brave little girl I was.”
True to her word, she became the gayest and most popular girl. And, more than that, she became the Madame’s favorite. “Her little pet, I slept in her bed most ev’ry night” and even traveled with her “a time or two” across the Channel to Paris, where Mary Jane worked for a time as an artists’ model and posed for a few naughty photographs. But pride got the better of her, and she began putting on airs and calling herself “Marie Jeanette.” “All the girls hated me,” she said, and I could well imagine her giving orders and strutting about all high-and-mighty as though she owned the place.
But drink was her bête noire: “Me black beastie what sunk his claws in me good, it was.” Gin, rum, wine, whiskey, champagne, what have you, Mary Jane couldn’t do without it and didn’t want to. And when the horrors of drink were upon her, she was herself a horror and “a right misery an’ terror to deal with,” she admitted. “Worse than the Magdalene possessed by her seven demons, I was!”
A rich man became enamored of Mary Jane and begged her to quit the brothel and be his own. He promised that as his mistress she would “lead the life of a lady” and “want for nothing.”
He also promised to use his influence to help her fulfill her ambition of going on the stage. Though, having a brother who is a star in the music halls, I think I speak with some authority when I say that this was just a pipe dream. Mary Jane was only a fair warbler at best and would never have made even a modest success of it. And as she did not have a modest bone in her body, a “modest success” would never have satisfied Mary Jane. She was too temperamental to get on with the stage managers and other performers, drink made her unreliable, and her brogue was too thick and herself too lazy to dedicate herself to the hard work necessary to completely transform herself in order to have even a fighting chance upon the stage.