The Ripper's Wife(76)
I bit my tongue, to keep from saying, Darling, do you really think that’s the right costume for you? Though he was ailing, Jim’s paunch was still as prominent as a watermelon. In fact, he complained more than ever of “bloating pains” in his belly, so I just couldn’t quite picture him striding boldly into a bullring in a pair of skintight trousers that betrayed every bulge. But he was so like a little boy in his newfound enthusiasm, smiling and sitting up and taking an interest for once in something besides his health, that I just couldn’t bear to spoil it. So I just smiled and said I thought that was a “grand idea.” And for a few—too few!—heavenly days he was once again the man I had fallen in love with aboard the Baltic, the same charming overgrown boy whose smile lit up a room. My heart and arms reached out to hug him, and I just couldn’t help but love him.
“You know, Bunny,” he said to me, “this costume has filled my mind with thoughts of sunny Spain. I’m sure if there’s any place in the world where I could recover my health it’s there. Just think of it, Bunny. We could rent a place by the sea, with a garden filled with orange trees, and I could sit and soak up the sun like a lizard and glut myself on oranges! What say you?” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “Shall we take a trip? We’ve not had one since our honeymoon.”
“Oh yes, Jim, yes!” I cried, and let myself be caught up in the fantasy of “one more chance” one more time.
My emotions were such an excited bundle, it was no wonder my face broke out in blemishes. I looked everywhere I could think of, but I simply could not find the prescription Dr. Greggs had given me ages ago in New York. Despite my initial fear of it, that facial wash had worked better than anything I had tried before or since to eradicate those unsightly pimples.
I have always had a good memory and I thought I remembered the ingredients well enough to attempt to replicate it, so I sent to the druggist for the necessary ingredients—elderflower water and tincture of benzoin. Of course there was arsenic aplenty in Jim’s medicine cabinet, but the very thought of it made my skin crawl. Even though I had pilfered a pinch for my attempt at abortion, I was still scared of the stuff. I was afraid that what seemed a small pinch to me might in reality be too much and I might end by ruining my skin. I had horrible visions of the stuff burning like acid, gnawing my face away down to the pearly white bones. And I didn’t like to ask the druggist, fearing his smirk and knowing eyes or a flip comment that Mr. Maybrick should know better than anyone. So I decided to improvise. I remembered a trick I had seen young girls in Germany and Switzerland employ to create similar concoctions. So I ordered some flypapers and soaked them in a basin of water to release a mild and much-diluted dose of arsenic that I could then add the benzoin and elderflower to.
I thought I had done the right thing until I walked in one day after a fitting with Mrs. Osborne for my costume, a lovely recreation of the billowing peach gown and shepherdess straw hat worn by the lady on the swing in the famous Fragonard painting, and caught Nanny Yapp in my room peeping under the towel that I had draped over the basin to prevent the solution from evaporating. I was in no mood to be trifled with. I stamped my foot and ordered her out. The next thing I knew she was downstairs in the kitchen, gossiping with the maids, their heads together like criminals plotting over their teacups.
By the evening of the ball, Jim was too ill to accompany me after all. When I said I would stay home and nurse him he wouldn’t hear of it and insisted that Edwin go in his stead and the tailor was hastily summoned to take in the green and gold Suit of Lights to fit the still slender Edwin. I must say it suited him splendidly! But the way he looked at me with that devilish grin and matching gleam in his eyes and that unmistakable velvet-covered bulge in his breeches pointing at me, I knew what was coming.
But I was so angry at Jim for disappointing me, and even though he was lying there with a grayish-green tinge to his face, moaning like a cat in heat, I stamped my foot and pouted and cried and then I grabbed Edwin by the arm and yanked him out the door, shouting back at Jim, “All right, I’m going to the ball. I’m going to drink champagne, dance, and enjoy myself, and not spare a single thought for you, just like you told me to. I’m going to have such a good time that I wouldn’t mind dancing with Jack the Ripper himself, much less Edwin!”
“Why, Florie, I’m flattered!” Edwin smiled and sidled closer.
“Don’t be!” I snapped. “I didn’t intend it as a compliment!”
On the way to the Wellington Ballroom, the fool actually tried to make love to me in the carriage. He flung my full, billowy skirts up over my head and wrested off my frilly pink-beribboned drawers and tossed them out the window. I slapped his face and shoved him off me, stuffed my b-reasts back into my bodice—it was cut so low that they had popped out during our tussle—and snatched off one of my peach satin slippers and brandished it at him like a weapon, threatening to knock a hole right in the center of his forehead with the heel if he dared touch me again. Edwin just sat and stared at me, then flung himself back against the seat cushions laughing to such a degree I feared—and almost hoped, as then we really would have to turn back—that he would burst the back seam of his skintight breeches.
In spite of my boastful words, I did not have a good time at the ball. It was dreadful! The whole time I was there all I wanted to do was go home. Alfred was cooling toward me again and doling out his attention freely, like a king dispensing alms, amongst the Currant Jelly belles. He seemed not to have one smile to spare for me and, try as I might, I just could not get him alone, nor could I shake off Edwin. The fool should have come dressed as an octopus instead of a matador—he really was all arms that night, and back in the carriage it was more of the same thing. Finally I just gave up struggling and let him have me. It really wasn’t worth fighting about. I knew that just as soon as he had spent his lust he would stop pestering me. “Have your way and be done with it!” I cried. And he did, rutting and grunting like a wild animal as the wheels of the coach rolled on, bearing us back to unbearable Battlecrease House.