The Map of Time (4 page)

As they made their way back towards the main streets, Andrew was wondering whether ejaculating between her thighs entitled him to put his arm around her shoulder. He had decided it did, and was about to do precisely that when they ran into another couple walking almost blindly the other way down the dim alleyway. Andrew mumbled an apology to the fellow he had bumped into, who, although scarcely more than a shadow in the darkness, seemed to him quite a burly sort. He was clinging onto a whore, whom Marie Kelly greeted with a smile.

“It’s all yours, Annie,” she said, referring to the backyard they had just left.

The woman called Annie thanked her with a raucous laugh and tugged her companion towards the passageway. Andrew watched them stagger into the pitch-blackness. “Would that burly fellow be satisfied with having his member trapped between her thighs?” he wondered, as he noticed how avidly the man clutched the whore to him.

“Didn’t I tell you it was a quiet spot,” Marie Kelly remarked matter-of-factly as they came out into Hanbury Street.

They said a laconic good-bye in front of the Britannia. Rather disheartened by the coldness she had shown after the act, Andrew tried to find his way back through the gloomy streets to his carriage. It was a good half hour before he found it. He avoided Harold’s eyes as he climbed back into the coach.

“Home, sir?” Harold enquired sardonically.

The following night he arrived at the Britannia determined to behave like a self-assured man instead of the fumbling, timid dandy of their previous encounter. He had to overcome his nerves and prove he could adapt to his surroundings if he was to display his true charms to the girl, that repertoire of smiles and flattery with which he habitually captivated the ladies of his own class.

He found Marie Kelly sitting at a corner table brooding over a pint of beer. Her demeanor unnerved him, but knowing he was not the sort to think up a new strategy as he went along, he decided to stick with his original plan. He ordered a beer at the bar, sat down at the girl’s table as naturally as he could, and told her he knew of a guaranteed way to wipe the worried expression from her face. Marie Kelly shot him a black look, confirming what he feared: his remark had been a tactless blunder. Following this reaction, Andrew thought she was going to tell him to clear off without even wasting her breath, with a simple wave of her hand, like someone shooing away an irritating fly. But in the end, she restrained herself and gazed at him quizzically for a few seconds until she must have decided he was as good a person as any to unburden herself to. She took a swig from her tankard, as if to clear her throat, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and told him that her friend Anne, the woman they had bumped into in Hanbury Street the night before, had been found that morning, murdered, in the same yard they had been in. The poor woman had been partially decapitated, sliced open, her intestines pulled out, and her womb removed. Andrew stammered that he was sorry, as shocked at the killer’s attention to detail as at having collided with him moments before the crime. Evidently that particular client had not been satisfied with the usual service. But Marie Kelly had other worries. According to her, Anne was the third prostitute to be murdered in Whitechapel in less than a month. Polly Nichols had been found dead with her throat slit in Bucks Road, opposite Essex pier, on August 31. And on the seventh of that same month, Martha Tabram had been found brutally stabbed to death with a penknife on the stairs of a rooming house. Marie Kelly laid the blame on the gang from Old Nichol Street, blackmailers who demanded a share of the whores” earnings.

“Those bastards will stop at nothing to get us working for them,” she said between gritted teeth.

This state of affairs disturbed Andrew, but it should have come as no surprise: after all, they were in Whitechapel—that putrid dung heap London had turned its back on, home to more than a thousand prostitutes living alongside German, Jewish, and French immigrants. Stabbings were a daily occurrence. Wiping away the tears that had finally flowed from her eyes, Marie Kelly sat head bowed in silence for a few moments as though in prayer, until, to Andrew’s surprise, she suddenly roused herself from her stupor, grasped his hand, and smiled lustfully at him.

Life went on. Whatever else happened, life went on. Was that what she had meant by her gesture? After all, she, Marie Kelly, had not been murdered. She had to go on living, dragging her skirts through those foul-smelling streets in search of money to pay for a bed. Andrew gazed with pity at her hand lying in his, her dirty nails poking through her frayed mitten. He too felt the need to concentrate for a moment in order to change masks, like an actor who needs some time in his dressing room to concentrate in order to become a different character when he goes back on stage. After all, life went on for him, too. Time did not stop just because a whore had been murdered. And so he stroked her hand tenderly, ready to resume his plan. As though wiping condensation from a windowpane, he freed his young lover’s smile from its veil of sadness and, looking her in the eye for the first time, he said: “I have enough money to buy you for the whole night, but I don’t want any fakery in a cold backyard.” This startled Marie Kelly, and she tensed in her seat, but Andrew’s smile soon put her at ease.

“I rent a room at Miller’s Court, but I don’t know if it’ll be good enough for the likes of you,” she remarked flirtatiously.

“I’m sure you’ll make me like it,” Andrew ventured to say, delighted at the bantering tone their conversation had finally taken, as this was a register at which he excelled.

“But first I’ll have to turn out my good-for-nothing husband,” she replied. “He doesn’t like me bringing work home.” This remark came as yet another shock to Andrew on this extraordinary night over which he clearly had no control. He tried not to let his disappointment show.

“Still, I’m sure your money will make up his mind for him, Marie concluded, amused at his reaction.

So it was that Andrew found paradise in the dismal little room where he was now sitting. That night, everything changed between them. When at last she lay naked, Andrew made love to her so respectfully, caressed her body with such tenderness that Marie Kelly could feel the hard shell she had carefully built to protect her soul begin to crack, that layer of ice preventing anything from seeping into her skin, keeping everything locked behind the door, out there where it could not hurt her. To her surprise, Andrew’s kisses marking her body like a pleasurable itch made her own caresses less and less mechanical, and she quickly discovered it was no longer a whore lying on the bed, but the woman crying out for affection that she had always been. Andrew also sensed his lovemaking was freeing the real Marie Kelly, as though he were rescuing her from the bottom of one of those water tanks stage magicians immersed their beautiful assistants in, bound hand and foot, or as though his sense of direction were so good it saved him from getting lost in the maze like her other lovers, allowing him to reach the place no one else could, a sort of secret corner where the girl’s real nature survived intact. They burned with a single flame, and when it waned and Marie Kelly, staring dreamily up at the ceiling, began talking about springtime in Paris, where she had worked as an artist’s model some years before, and about her childhood in Wales and in Ratcliffe Highway in London, Andrew understood that this strange sensation in his chest must be the pangs of love, because without meaning to, he was experiencing all the emotions of which the poets spoke. Andrew was touched by the emotive tone her voice took on when she described the Parisian squares with their riot of gladioli and petunias, and how on her return to London she had insisted everybody say her name in French, the only way she had found of preserving intact that distant fragrance which softened life’s sharp edges; but he was equally moved by the hint of sadness in her voice as she described how they hung pirates from the Ratcliffe Highway Bridge until they drowned in the rising waters of the Thames. For this was the real Marie Kelly, this bittersweet fruit, nature’s flawed perfection, one of God’s contradictions. When she asked what sort of work he did that could apparently allow him to buy her for the rest of his life if he wanted, he decided to run the risk and tell her the truth. Because if their love were to exist it must be nurtured in truth or not at all, and the truth (of how her portrait had captivated him, sending him off on this foolish quest to find her in a neighborhood so different from his own, and of how he had found her) seemed as beautiful and miraculous to him as those stories about impossible love you read in books. When their bodies came together again, he realized that far from being an act of madness, falling in love with her was possibly the most reasonable thing he had ever done. And when he left the room, with the memory of her skin on his lips, he tried not to look at her husband Joe, who was leaning against the wall shivering with cold.

It was nearly daylight by the time Harold delivered him home.

Too excited to go to bed, if only to relish the moments he had spent with Marie Kelly, Andrew went to the stables and saddled a horse. It was a long time since he had woken at dawn to go riding in Hyde Park. This was his favorite time of day, when the grass was still dewy and everything appeared untouched. How could he waste such an opportunity? Within minutes, Andrew was galloping through the trees opposite the Harrington mansion, laughing to himself and occasionally letting out a cry of joy, like a soldier celebrating victory, because that is what he felt like as he remembered the loving look Marie Kelly had given him before they said good-bye until the following night. As though she could see in his eyes that without realizing it, he had been searching for her for years. And perhaps I should take this opportunity to apologize for my earlier skepticism and confess that there is nothing that cannot be expressed in a look. A look, it seems, is a bottomless well of possibilities. And so Andrew rode on, seized by a wild impulse, overwhelmed for the first time by a burning, pulsating sensation, which might reasonably be described as happiness.

And, prey to the effects of such a violent infatuation, everything in the universe he rode past appeared to sparkle, as though each of its elements—the paths strewn with dead leaves, the rocks, the trees, even the squirrels leaping from branch to branch—were lit up by an inner glow. But have no fear, I shall not become bogged down in lengthy descriptions of acres of impassioned, practically luminous parkland because, not only do I have no taste for it, but it would be untrue, for despite Andrew’s altered vision, the landscape clearly did not undergo any real transformation, not even the squirrels, which are well known as creatures who pursue their own interests.

After more than an hour of strenuous, exhilarating riding, Andrew realized he still had a whole day to get through before he could return to Marie Kelly’s humble bed, and so he must find some way of distracting himself from the dreadful feeling that would no doubt assail him when he realized that irrespective of circumstances, or probably because of them, the hands of the clock were not turning at their usual speed, but were actually slowing down on purpose. He decided to drop in on his cousin Charles, which he usually did when he wanted him to share in his joy, even though this time he had no intention of telling him anything. Perhaps he was simply curious to see what Charles would look like to his feverish gaze which had the power to enhance everything, to see whether he would also glow like the squirrels in the park.

4

Breakfast had been laid out in the Winslow dining room for young Charles, who was doubtless still lazing in bed. On a table next to one of the French windows, the servants had set out a dozen covered platters, bread rolls, jams and marmalades, and several jugs brimming with grapefruit juice and milk. Most of it would be thrown away because, contrary to all appearance, they were not expecting a regiment, only his cousin, who, given his famous lack of appetite in the mornings would almost certainly be content to nibble on a roll, ignoring the extravagant spread displayed in his honor. Andrew was surprised by the sudden concern he felt at such waste, for he had spent years contemplating tables like this, here as well as at his own house, creaking under the weight of food no one would eat. He realized this curious response was the first of many that would result from his forays into Whitechapel, that dung heap inhabited by people capable of killing one another for his cousin’s half-eaten roll. Would his experiences there stir his social conscience in the same way it had his emotions? He was the type of person whose cultivation of his inner life left little time for worrying about the outside world of the street. He was above all devoted to resolving the mystery that was Andrew, to studying his feelings and responses: all his time was taken up in attempting to fine-tune the instrument that was his spirit until he felt satisfied with the sound it produced. There were times, owing to the constantly changing and rather unpredictable nature of his thought patterns, when this task appeared as impossible to him as lining up the goldfish in their bowl, but until he succeeded he sensed it would be impossible for him to worry about what went on in the world, which for him started where his own pleasant, carefully scrutinized private concerns ended. In any case, he thought, it would be interesting to observe in himself how hitherto unknown preoccupations emerged through simple exposure. Who could tell: perhaps his response to these new worries might hold the key to the mystery of who the real Andrew Harrington was.

He took an apple from the fruit bowl and settled into an armchair to wait yet again for his cousin to return to the land of the living. He had rested his muddy boots on a footstool and was munching on his apple, smiling as he remembered Marie Kelly’s kisses and how they had both, gently but completely, made up for all the years starved of affection, when his eye alighted on the newspaper lying on the table. It was the morning edition of The Star, announcing in bold print the murder of a Whitechapel prostitute called Anne Chapman. The news item gave details of the horrific mutilation she had suffered: besides her uterus, which he had already learned about from Marie Kelly, her bladder and vagina had also been removed. Among other things, the newspaper also mentioned a couple of cheap rings missing from one of her fingers. It appeared the police had no real clues as to the murderer’s identity, although after questioning other East End whores, the name of a possible suspect had emerged: a Jewish cobbler nicknamed Leather Apron, who was in the habit of robbing the prostitutes at knifepoint. The article came with a macabre illustration of a policeman dangling a lamp over the bloody corpse of a woman sprawled on the pavement. Andrew shook his head. He had forgotten that his paradise was surrounded by hell itself, and that the woman he loved was an angel trapped in a world full of demons. He closely read the three-page report on the Whitechapel crimes committed to date, feeling worlds away from it all in this luxurious dining room, where man’s capacity for baseness and aberration was kept at bay as surely as the dust tirelessly polished away by servants. He had thought of giving Marie Kelly the money to pay off the gang of blackmailers she thought were responsible for the crimes, but the report did not seem to be pointing in that direction. The precise incisions on the bodies suggested that the killer had surgical knowledge, which implicated the entire medical profession, although the police had not ruled out furriers, cooks, and barbers—anyone, in short, whose job brought them into contact with knives. Queen Victoria’s medium was also reported to have seen the killer’s face in a dream.

Andrew sighed. The medium knew more about the killer than he, even though he had bumped into the fellow moments before he committed the crime.

“Since when did you develop an interest in the affairs of Empire, cousin?” asked a beaming Charles behind him. “Ah no, I see you are reading the crime pages.” “Good morning, Charles,” said Andrew, tossing the paper onto the table as though he had been idly leafing through it.

“The coverage given to the murders of those wretched tarts is incredible,” his cousin remarked, plucking a cluster of shiny grapes from the fruit bowl and sitting in the opposite armchair.

“Although, I confess to being intrigued by the importance they’re attaching to this sordid affair: they’ve put Scotland Yard’s finest detective Fred Abberline in charge of the investigation. Clearly the Metropolitan Police are out of their depth in a case like this.” Andrew pretended to agree, nodding abstractedly as he gazed out of the window watching the wind scatter an air-balloon shaped cloud. He did not want to arouse his cousin’s attention by showing too much interest in the affair, but the truth was he longed to know every detail of the crimes, apparently confined to the area where his beloved lived. How would his cousin react if he told him he had bumped into that brutal murderer in a murky Whitechapel alleyway the night before? The sad fact was that, even so, he was unable to describe the fellow except to say he was enormous and evil smelling.

“In any case, regardless of Scotland Yard’s involvement, for the moment all they have are suspicions, some of them quite preposterous,” his cousin went on, plucking a grape from the bunch and rolling it between his fingers. “Did you know they suspect one of the Red Indians from that Buffalo Bill show we saw last week, and even the actor Richard Mansfield, who is playing in Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde at the Lyceum? I recommend it, by the way: Mansfield’s transformation on stage is truly chilling.” Andrew promised he would go, tossing the remains of his apple onto the table.

“Anyway,” Charles concluded rather wearily to end the conversation, “the poor wretches in Whitechapel have formed vigilante groups and are patrolling the streets. It seems London’s population is growing so fast the police force can no longer cope. Everybody wants to live in this accursed city. People come here from all over the country in search of a better life, only to end up being exploited in factories, contracting typhus fever or turning to crime in order to pay inflated rent for a cellar or some other airless hole. Actually, I’m amazed there aren’t more murders and robberies, considering how many go unpunished. Mark my word Andrew, if the criminals became organized, London would be theirs. It’s hardly surprising Queen Victoria fears a popular uprising— a revolution like the one our French neighbors endured, which would end with her and her family’s head on the block. Her Empire is a hollow façade that needs progressively shoring up to stop it from collapsing. Our cows and sheep graze on Argentinian pastures, our tea is grown in China and India, our gold comes from South Africa and Australia, and the wine we drink is from France and Spain. Tell me, cousin, what, apart from crime, do we actually produce ourselves? If the criminal elements planned a proper rebellion, they could take over the country. Fortunately, evil and common sense rarely go hand in hand.” Andrew liked listening to Charles ramble in this relaxed way, pretending not to take himself seriously. In reality, he admired his cousin’s contradictory spirit, which reminded him of a house divided into endless chambers all separate from one another, so that what went on in one had no repercussions in the others. This explained why his cousin was able to glimpse amid his luxurious surroundings the most suppurating wounds and forget them a moment later, while he found it impossible to copulate successfully, to give a simple example, after a visit to a slaughterhouse or a hospital for the severely wounded. It was as if Andrew had been designed like a seashell; everything disappeared and resonated inside him. That was the basic difference between them: Charles reasoned and he felt.

“The truth is these sordid crimes are turning Whitechapel into a place where you wouldn’t want to spend the night,” Charles declared sententiously, abandoning his nonchalant pose, leaning across the table and staring meaningfully at his cousin. “Especially with a tart.” Andrew gaped at him, unable to conceal his surprise.

“You know about it?” he asked.

His cousin smiled.

“Servants talk, Andrew. You ought to know by now our most intimate secrets circulate like underground streams beneath the luxurious ground we walk on,” he said, stamping his feet symbolically on the carpet.

Andrew sighed. His cousin had not left the newspaper there by accident. In fact, he had probably not even been asleep. Charles enjoyed this kind of game. Certain his cousin would come, it was easy to imagine him hiding behind one of the many screens partitioning the vast dining room, and waiting patiently for his stunned cousin to fall into the trap he had laid, exactly as had happened.

“I don’t want my father to find out, Charles,” begged Andrew.

“Don’t worry, cousin. I’m aware of the scandal it would cause in the family. But tell me, are you in love with the girl or is this just a passing fancy?” Andrew remained silent. What could he say? “You needn’t reply,” his cousin said in a resigned voice. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t understand either way. I only hope you know what you’re doing.” Andrew of course did not know what he was doing, but could not stop doing it. Each night, like a moth drawn to the flame, he returned to the miserable room in Miller’s Court, hurling himself into the relentless blaze of Marie Kelly’s passion. They made love all night, driven by a frantic desire, as though they had been poisoned during dinner and did not know how long they had left to live, or as though the world around them were suddenly being decimated by the plague. Soon Andrew understood that if he left enough coins on her bedside table, their passion could continue gently smoldering beyond the dawn. His money preserved their fantasy, and even banished Joe, Marie Kelly’s husband, whom Andrew tried not to think of when, disguised beneath his modest clothes, he strolled with her through the maze of muddy streets in Whitechapel. Those were peaceful, pleasant walks, full of encounters with the girl’s friends and acquaintances, the long-suffering foot soldiers of a war without trenches; a bunch of poor souls, who rose from their beds each morning to face a hostile world, driven on by the sheer animal instinct for survival, and whom a fascinated Andrew gradually found himself admiring, as he would a species of exotic flower alien to his world. He became convinced that life there was more real, simpler, easier to understand than in the luxuriously carpeted mansions where he spent his days.

Occasionally, he had to pull his cap down over his eyes in order not to be recognized by the bands of wealthy young men who laid siege to the neighborhood some nights. They arrived in luxurious carriages mobbing the streets like rude, arrogant conquistadors, in search of some miserable brothel where they could satisfy their basest instincts with impunity, for, according to a rumor, Andrew had frequently heard in the West End smoking clubs, the only limits on what could be done with the wretched Whitechapel tarts were money and imagination. Watching these boisterous incursions, Andrew was assailed by a sudden protective instinct, which could only mean he had unconsciously begun to see Whitechapel as a place he should perhaps watch over. However, there was little he could do confronted with those barbarous invasions, besides feeling overwhelmingly sad and helpless, and trying to forget about them in the arms of his beloved, who appeared more beautiful to him by the day, as though beneath his loving caresses she had recovered the innate natural sparkle that life had robbed her of.

But, as everyone knows, no paradise is complete without a serpent, and the sweeter the moments spent with his beloved, the more bitter the taste in Andrew’s mouth when he realized what he had of Marie Kelly was all he could ever have. Because, although it was never enough and each day he yearned for more, this love that could not exist outside of Whitechapel, for all its undeniable intensity, remained rather arbitrary and illusory. And while outside a crazed mob tried to lynch the Jewish cobbler nicknamed Leather Apron, Andrew quenched his anger and fear in Marie Kelly’s body, wondering whether his beloved’s fervor was because she too realized they had embarked upon a reckless love affair and that all they could do was greedily clasp this unexpected rose of happiness, trying their best to ignore the painful thorns. Or was it her way of telling him she was prepared to rescue their apparently doomed love even if it meant altering the very course of the universe itself? And if this was the case, did he possess the same strength, did he have the necessary conviction to embark upon what he already considered a lost battle? However hard he tried, Andrew could not imagine Marie Kelly moving in his world of refined young ladies, whose sole purpose in life was to display their fecundity by filling their houses with children, and to entertain their beloved spouses” friends with their pianistic accomplishments. Would Marie Kelly succeed in fulfilling this role whilst trying to stay afloat amidst the waves of social rejection that would doubtless attempt to drown her, or would she end up perishing like an exotic bloom removed from its hothouse? The newspapers” continued coverage of the whores” murders scarcely managed to distract Andrew from the torment of his secret fears. One morning, while breakfasting, he came across a reproduction of a letter the murderer had audaciously sent to the Central News Agency, assuring them they would not catch him easily and promising he would carry on killing, testing out his fine blade on the Whitechapel tarts. Appropriately enough, the letter was written in red ink and signed Jack the Ripper, a name that, however you looked at it, Andrew thought was far more disturbing and imaginative than the rather dull Whitechapel Murderer by which he had been known up until then. This new name was taken up by all the newspapers, and inevitably conjured up the villain from the penny dreadfuls, Jack Lightfoot, and his treatment of women. It was rapidly adopted by everyone, as Andrew soon discovered from hearing it uttered everywhere he went. The words were always spoken with sinister excitement, as though for the sad souls of Whitechapel there were something thrilling and even fashionable about a ruthless murderer stalking the neighborhood with a razor-sharp knife.