The Ripper's Wife(94)

For supper at six, we stood at our cell doors, cups and bowls humbly outstretched for the greasy meat stew, tepid tea, and hard bread. After our meal, a prisoner, who had earned the ultimate privilege of working in the library, would roll a cart down the cell-lined corridors taking back the books we had finished and letting us select new ones.

We were allotted one hour of “leisure” before bed in which we might read, pray, or sit in quiet contemplation over a loved one’s letter or photograph. We were each allowed one small box in which to keep these precious paper treasures, subject to inspection, of course, to make sure we never came into possession of anything forbidden. All our letters were read before we ever laid eyes on them. Privacy was another one of those words my tongue could no longer form or fathom; it had lost all meaning to me.





32

I counted the stitches, stitches in time, sewn throughout the years, every instant feeling like a taffy-stretched eternity. I thought about my children growing up without me, and, in my woman’s heart, I dreamed of Alfred Brierley.

Those numerous sleepless nights were passed in foolish fantasies in which I was magically set free and he was waiting at the prison gate for me, to sweep me up in his arms and carry me away in a hot-air balloon. I imagined us swooping down and scooping my children up. Then away we’d all go to a new and happy life together. I hoped and prayed that he was thinking of me too, that he would wait for me. But a day came when Mama, during the precious half hour we got to spend together every three months, talking through a grille, with a matron standing by me, told me that he’d married.

I’m so glad it wasn’t me, a little part of my heart took me by surprise by saying. It took me a long time to realize that little voice was the voice of truth. We could never have really made each other happy. He was just a fantasy, a dream I tried to will into reality, and even when he was flesh and blood and throbbing manhood in my arms he was still just a dream. I was just too hurt and blind to see it at the time. But even when I knew that dream was also lost to me, I never did stop thinking of him lustfully; we all need someone to dream about. Why must loss, lust, and love be tangled up so?

I thought of the diary, and I thought about Jim and that whole impossibly tangled mess we’d both made of love and lust, resentment and revenge, passion and pain. So many, many times I felt Jack the Ripper’s knife twist in my heart. Jim’s confession could set me free . . . but at what cost! This sacrifice, this penance, this silence, this imprisonment for a crime I had briefly contemplated but never, thank God, committed! Would the reality for my children truly be as bad as I feared? Why was it so hard to know if I had done the right thing? Why did I keep torturing myself by traveling up and down that road? Why couldn’t I make peace with the decision I had made? Why couldn’t I be stalwart like a saint and stoically endure my fate, knowing that I had made a noble sacrifice? I was so weary of wrestling with my conscience, day after day, night after night, always wondering what was wrong and what was right. All I truly knew was that once black and white paint are mixed together they can never be pure and separate ever again, only some shade of gray.

Other books tormented me too. One day I impulsively took Mr. James’s Daisy Miller from the library cart. But that was a mistake. In its pages I found the ghost of the girl I used to be, the fun, foolish, flighty, and frivolous young madcap, and she came back to haunt me, bobbing bustle and ringlets, saucy manner, and vibrant, flirty smile, dancing through life with her head in the clouds and stars in her eyes. I also found shades of me in the prison’s illicit copy of Madame Bovary, that scandalous book stitched inside the cover of a book of sermons to be secretly savored by all of us who could read; there I was the discontented wife, racking up debts and recklessly running off to rendezvous with her lover. That story ends with poison too, only it’s the wanton wife who dies, not her ditch-water-dull doctor husband. Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter I found peculiarly comforting now that I wore an ineradicable invisible A upon my breast that could never be put off, not even in death—A for Arsenic, A for Adulteress. And Lady Audley’s Secret I could not suffer to have near me. Never would I take it into my cell, not even when it remained alone in the library cart the only volume I had not read. It reminded me that I also had a secret. East Lynne I likewise shunned. It made the unrelenting ache for my children even more unbearable; Lady Isabel was my sister in sorrow.

I became slothful and indifferent. It’s hard not to when all you have to wear is one baggy brown dress and you’re all but bald beneath your cap. I also became dispassionate and, in a sense, numb. When before the sight of a mouse or some ugly creepy-crawly insect would send me shrieking up onto the nearest stool, now I sat, in the stony gloom of my living tomb, and stared at the mice and black beetles scuttling across my cell, amazed that any life would come willingly here.

The ever-present chill crept into my bones, lodged there, and would never leave, bringing with it, uninvited, the most unwelcome and tenacious houseguests—fevers, chilblains, bronchitis, catarrh, rheumatism, burning throats, and hacking coughs.

And so the years crept past. Slowly, slowly, slowly. The old year dragging into the new one like the deadweight of a corpse being dragged from a river. Every New Year’s Eve I would stand on my toes, gazing out the window, seeing nothing but the dream of what might have been. Christmases spent with my children. Being spoiled and petted, kissed and lavished with gifts. Champagne and waltzes, a new gown, sparkling jewels, diamonds and pearls, and a man who loved and desired me taking me in his arms and kissing me at the midnight hour. Some years I imagined it was Jim; others I dreamed of Alfred Brierley. What did it really matter? They were both lost to me. My bare shoulders bundled in costly furs, a ride home through snow and moonlight, then falling into a bed of love, my body opening like a flower beneath my beloved’s kiss. Sometimes, in those dark hours, when the world I used to be a part of was embracing and celebrating, bidding the old year good-bye and welcoming the new one with champagne, and my fellow prisoners slumbered, dreaming their equally hopeless dreams, I dared lift my mud-hued skirt and in my stocking feet, humming just as softly as I could, waltzed across my cell in the arms of a phantom lover.