The Ripper's Wife(53)
By then a new girl, Clara, a sweet little Swedish girl, a genuine virgin, with blond hair almost fair as snow, newly ripening b-reasts like little pears, and not a hair on her cunt, was poised to replace Mary Jane as the reigning favorite and in Madame’s bed. It didn’t help when Mary Jane, drunk and sulking upstairs, dozed off and left the water in Madame’s pink marble tub running. A cascade of water suddenly crashed down through the lewdly lolling nudes painted on the ceiling and drenched the gents downstairs having a party celebrating Clara’s first blood. The cake was ruined, and Clara, who had never had a fancy cake in her life, cried for hours. Madame was furious and Mary Jane wisely decided it was time to move on.
She accepted the gentleman’s offer. In a high drunken temper, she vowed she wanted, and would take nothing, from this house, and clad only in a pair of black silk stockings, red satin garters, and black leather high-heeled boots, she set a black velvet hat “à la Empress Eugenie” with a curling white ostrich plume flowing back over the brim held in place by a cameo jauntily atop her ginger-gold curls, pulled on a pair of long black lace gloves and her diamond bracelet—“I couldn’t think o’ leaving that behind!”—and walked down the grand staircase “regal as a queen.” Out the front door she went, held open for her by a pair of astonished, gape-mouthed, white-wigged Negro footmen who thought that, after years of employment in this establishment, they had seen everything, and straight into the delighted, but mortified, gentleman’s carriage and arms.
But it didn’t last long. Her drunken antics and the loud, quarrelsome nature she exhibited when she was deep in her cups, coupled with her startling habit of walking around “starkers” even in the public rooms of the house in full view of the servants and any guests, and the women she sometimes brought home “for a little frolic” in her big bed, explaining that she sometimes needed “a holiday from the men pokin’ their pickles inta me,” soon exhausted her genteel lover’s patience, and Mary Jane found herself out on the streets.
A mannish spinster lady who preached zealously against the evils of “the demon rum” took Mary Jane in, wanting to save her, but that ended after a fortnight when she staggered in starkers to have tea with the Temperance Society, singing her favorite song, “Only a Violet I Pluck’d from My Mother’s Grave,” and brandishing a near-empty gin bottle, and plopped herself down on the reverend’s lap.
“So much for Christian Charity,” Mary Jane sneered. “She cast me out onto the streets, to fend for meself any way I could, said she didn’t care what happened to me, she did. An’ her servants did me out o’ a lot o’ me finery; they was supposed to pack it all up, but when I opened me bags I found they’d raided the rag bin to fill ’em, an’ the rest I had to pawn until there was nothin’ left. I remember I stood out there, weepin’ in the pourin’ rain, arms stretched out, beggin’ her to take me back. When she opened the window, I thought she was goin’ to have pity, but she only tossed down a penny—a penny for all the joy I gave her, the sour old cunt!—then she cut me dead, she did, closed the curtains an’ turned her back on me. I remember, for a long time I stood there starin’ down at that penny, dirty money bein’ washed clean by the rain. I wanted so bad to be too proud to pick it up, I did, I wanted to make the grand gesture, but in the end . . . money is money, so I picked it up, though I’ve regretted it ever since.”
It was all downhill after that. How hard it must have been for her when every poor, deluded fool in the East End dreamed of the West End as a place where the streets were paved with gold and the people stuffed themselves on cream-filled pastries and Christmas goose every day of the week and didn’t know what want and need meant. In their eyes, Mary Jane Kelly had had it all—the West End dream—and lost it through her own bad habits and caprice. She lived with a quick succession of lovers, each one a rung lower down upon the social ladder and occupying an even worse address, until she ended up in Whitechapel, a common whore pounding the pavements looking for trade and living, on her uncle’s sufferance, in a rented room in Miller’s Court with Fishmonger Joe, and them quarreling all the time because he wanted a wife, not a whore, to warm his bed at night but couldn’t earn enough at his stinky labors to support either.
I’m thoroughly delighted with my spicy ginger tart! What a treat she is! So succulent, so bawdy! I’ve never enjoyed a whore more! I will visit her again when I am next in London. Next time I will bring her some candy sticks, to thank her for the pleasurable sensations she provoked in my prick when she went down on her knees and pretended it was one. It will be nice to have someone bawdy and fun, someone who knows how to forget herself in bed, not like those two outwardly respectable Mrs. Maybricks I’ve had the misfortune to acquire. Maybe I’ll make Mary Jane the third Mrs. Maybrick, ha ha!
I left Mary Jane lying back in bed, cradling the gin bottle against her bare b-reasts and singing “Only a Violet I Pluck’d from My Mother’s Grave.” I wonder if she knows any of Michael’s songs? If only he could see this bold as brass little hussy hugging the gin bottle and diddling her cunny while singing one of his sweet ballads, like “True Blue” or “Your Dear Brown Eyes”—yes, that’s the very one!—oh, what I would give to see his face.