The Whitechapel Girl Read online

  Jacob smiled down at her, puzzled yet intrigued.

  ‘Tell yer the truth. I ain’t really sure of what yer saying half the time. When you talked to me, when I went on the stage with yer. And them words yer used with the spirits; right fancy words. You know. I got right confused.’

  ‘Then you will simply have to learn to speak like me then, my language. Won’t you?’

  ‘That a fact?’ she said, looking directly at him for the first time.

  ‘Yes. That’s a fact.’

  Ettie put her hand on Maisie’s shoulder to steady herself and stepped around her and the sailor. ‘Mind yerself, May,’ she said as she did so, but her friend and the blond seafarer were too preoccupied with their noisy embrace to take any notice of Ettie climbing round them.

  Ettie walked forward and stopped a few yards from the foot of the stage. She looked up at Jacob.

  ‘Yer know, the only times we ever hear talk like yours round here is when the toffs come down cos they fancy getting themselves a Whitechapel girl.’ Ettie paused, curious to see if he understood. ‘If yer catch me drift,’ she went on.

  He nodded.

  ‘Some of them talk like you. Made me laugh when I first heard them. It’s comical sounding to us round here.’

  He still said nothing, only raised an inquiring eyebrow.

  Perhaps she had said too much. ‘Them freaks,’ she continued, flustered and pink-faced. ‘Whatever yer say. It ain’t very nice. It ain’t…’

  ‘Dignified?’

  ‘If yer say so.’

  ‘If you learn to look closely, Ettie, you will see that much of what you believe you are seeing is actually illusion. Nothing is what we think.’

  ‘Yer off again. Fancy words.’

  Jacob stepped down and led her to the edge of the stage. He wiped the boards with his handkerchief and indicated that she should take a seat.

  ‘Ta,’ she said, pleased, despite herself, with the unaccustomed attention to her needs.

  Jacob sat down next to her. ‘Ettie, supposing the freak show were real, supposing the Hooded Man did exist?’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No, listen. What alternatives would he have, do you suppose? Living in this cruel world where to be different is to be punished. Where not being like one’s neighbour is to make one an object of fear and hatred. Would you rather he lived on the streets, scavenging in the gutters for scraps?’

  ‘Yer don’t know that’s what would happen to him.’

  ‘Believe me, Ettie, I know more about being different than you might imagine.’

  ‘And I know more about living on the streets than you ever will.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It’s all right for you. Yer’ve got all the words. I only know what I know. What I feel.’

  ‘I could give you the words, Ettie. I could give you words you never dreamed of.’

  ‘Could you tell me how to forget?’

  ‘Forget?’

  ‘Nothing…’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘I’d be better off if I was a freak according to you. Then at least I could live in comfort.’

  ‘But you are a freak, Ettie.’

  She jumped to her feet and shoved her fists into her waist, confronting him like a plucky little bantam. ‘Aw, ta very much, I don’t think.’

  ‘You misunderstand me, Ettie,’ he said. ‘It is your beauty, when compared to the ordinary run of women, that makes you a freak.’

  ‘Cor, hark at him!’ said Maisie suddenly. She was nodding towards Protsky and elbowing the puzzled-looking man by her side. She had decided that, language barrier or not, she’d done plenty to persuade the sailor to take her out the next evening when, being off the ships, he’d have a few bob in his pocket.

  ‘How long yer been listening, yer rotten mare?’ demanded Ettie, spinning round to turn her anger on her friend.

  ‘Long enough,’ beamed May, screwing her eye into a most unsubtle wink. ‘Now, mind if me and me young man goes off now? I want to find out where he’s berthed, see? Don’t want this little fishy to escape, now do I?’

  ‘Of course you must go,’ said Protsky. ‘Ettie will be perfectly fine with me, thank you for your concern.’

  Ettie turned back to Protsky. ‘Will yer all stop making up me bleed’n mind for me? I ain’t a bloody idiot, yer know.’

  ‘I’ll wait outside for yer,’ said Maisie, tight-lipped at the reprimand. Then, recovering her composure, she added. ‘For five minutes. That’s all. Then I’m off. Old blondie here’s getting a bit impatient, ain’t yer, darling?’

  Maisie led the now thoroughly confused sailor out on to the Whitechapel Road.

  ‘I meant it, Ettie,’ said Protsky, when May and her catch were out of earshot. ‘Your beauty does mark you out from other women. That is the simple truth.’

  ‘Yer know how to turn a gel’s head, Professor, that’s the truth,’ she replied.

  ‘Call me Jacob, please.’

  ‘Fair enough – Jacob. Or maybe I’ll call yer Jack. That’s short for Jacob, innit? What d’yer think of that?’ She hoped she was sounding calm and collected, grown-up even, though inside she felt like a silly little girl. A silly, confused little girl. Her head was whirling with questions: what was she doing here? Why hadn’t she gone home hours ago? Why had she stayed behind for the three other shows? And finally, did she really need to ask herself those questions, didn’t she know all too well? Here, at last, might be the chance she was waiting for – the chance to escape.

  ‘I would rather you called me Jacob,’ he replied. ‘It is my given name.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You said you wished to call me “Jack”.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Right,’ she answered distractedly, struck by the thought that time was running out for her to make her mind up. If she didn’t get a move on and let May know what she was going to do, May would really be getting her wild up waiting outside.

  ‘I would like you to consider a proposition, Ettie.’

  ‘I should be going,’ she said, half-turning towards the way out.

  ‘You don’t have to sound so worried,’ he said soothingly, misunderstanding her reaction.

  ‘No. I ain’t worried. I just wanted to let May know what was happening.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘Good. I’m glad you’re not worried. I thought you had strength. That is why I would like you to consider a business proposition.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘I could use an assistant,’ he explained. ‘Particularly one with your looks.’

  ‘And how about Lou?’ Ettie said, forgetting her waiting friend and interested once more only in what this strange, handsome man had to say.

  ‘Ettie, do you really expect me to believe that you don’t understand the differences between yourself and Lou? That you weren’t aware of the effect you had on the audience tonight? And anyway, you would be assisting me in my act, not taking Lou’s role away from her.’

  Neither of them spoke for several long moments.

  ‘I ain’t never done nothing like no stage work before, you know.’

  ‘I realise that, but I can teach you. What do you think?’

  ‘Would it mean working round here?’

  ‘At first. Then, who knows?’ Seeing her disappointed expression, he asked. ‘Why? Wouldn’t you want to leave here?’

  Ettie gave a hollow laugh in reply.

  ‘So you want to leave Whitechapel?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but I know I wouldn’t mind getting away from home,’ she said. ‘It’s been a bit hard lately, see.’

  Jacob didn’t answer, he just continued looking at her, letting her speak.

  His expression was so caring – not judging or angry or threatening, unlike the looks she’d come to expect at home. She wasn’t used to such treatment from men like him: it confused her. Before she knew what she was doing a hastily censored version of her life story came bubbling out of her mouth, in a rush of partly incoherent, but mos
tly dejected words.

  ‘Me mum’s always had blokes hanging round her,’ she gabbled. ‘She was a right good-looker before she got the taste for gin. Clever and all. She can even read and write a bit. Not many of her age can do that. She could have made something of herself, yer know.’ She stared unseeingly into the far, dark corner of the little auditorium. ‘But she likes her drop of gin all right, does Mum. Though there’s never enough money, see, to get her all she wants.’ She looked round and smiled unconvincingly at Jacob. ‘The fellahs are her way of getting a few shillings. So long as she gets her drink she’s happy. I don’t blame her or nothing – who’d want to exist the way we have to down in them courts? The gin makes it all go away for her. But because we’re stuck in that one poxy rat-hole of a room it’s too easy for the blokes to…’ Ettie paused and drew in a long, slow breath. ‘Well, like I said, it ain’t her fault, is it? She’s in such a state she don’t realise what’s happening to me, does she?’ She paused again, then added sadly. ‘Least, I don’t think she does. But anyhow, that’s how it is, and that’s all there is to it.’ She hooked a stray curl of her thick dark hair behind her ear. ‘And then,’ she continued, ‘there’s the rotten fur-pulling. Gawd I hate that and all. It brings in a bit of money but it’s so horrible. Yer wouldn’t believe it unless yer had to do it. The bits of fluff get everywhere: in yer eyes and throat, up yer nose, even in yer ears. Terrible it is. And they ain’t always gutted out proper neither.’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust. ‘Then they stink worse than yer could imagine. Specially in the hot weather. And the bloke what collects the pelts, he’s a pig and all. Christ, I hate it. All of it.’

  As suddenly as the flow of words had begun, they stopped, but her chest continued visibly to rise and fall from the strain of making her revelations.

  ‘Shall I take it then that you are agreeing to accept my offer of employment?’ Jacob asked her calmly.

  ‘Do yer mean will I work for yer?’

  ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I mean.’

  She hesitated for only a second. ‘When do yer want me to start?’ she grinned.

  ‘Why not immediately?’ he said easily, as though it were the most natural thing in the world that she should suddenly take up employment with this strange man she knew next to nothing about.

  ‘But haven’t yer finished for the night?’

  ‘Here I have, yes. But there’s no reason why we can’t begin discussing your new job, now is there? You must come home and stay with me.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Well, you can’t possibly want to go back to your mother’s room. Not after what you have told me about living there.’

  Ettie was not sure whether to be angry with his presumption or flattered by his concern. ‘You never said nothing about having to go back to your place,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘You have no need to worry,’ he said, smiling amiably. ‘My intentions are, of course, entirely honourable.’

  ‘No,’ Ettie said. “Thanks all the same, but I have to go back. To sort things out and to see my mum. She’ll be worried if I don’t turn up.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense, Ettie,’ he persisted. ‘From what you said she won’t even be conscious by this time of night.’

  ‘Don’t keep going on at me,’ Ettie’s voice was tense. ‘Yer confusing me. I’ll have to go home. I can’t just bugger off, can I? I’ll wait till she’s slept it off and then I’ll talk to her. I’ll be able to come back in the morning, all right?’ Suddenly worried that she might have overstepped the mark, Ettie softened her tones. ‘I didn’t mean to sound so… Aw, I don’t know, so…’

  In her inimitable style, Maisie broke the tension of the moment by poking her head round the canvas screen – yet again. This time she was not only angry, she was panicking too. ‘Now you come on, Ettie Wilkins. This really is me limit. I mean it. Now. I’m right pissed off. I said five minutes I’d give yer and that was sodding ages ago. I ain’t having no more of it.’ She jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the street outside. ‘It’ll be bloody daylight in a couple of hours. Me mum’s going to love this.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have delayed you. It was my fault entirely,’ said Jacob, giving a stiff little bow from his neck.

  ‘Never you mind all that old nonsense,’ fumed May. ‘I’ve already risked me mum chopping me up in little bits and feeding me to the rats just by coming here. Now, just for good measure, I’ve lost myself a right nice geezer and all. Took off, he has.’

  Ettie went over to her friend and whispered to her. ‘I’m sorry, May, really I am. I’ll be with yer in one minute, all right? I promise yer.’ Ettie’s eyes shone as she lowered her voice to an even quieter whisper, not daring to risk anyone hearing about her luck and stealing it away. ‘May, guess what?’

  ‘Surprise me,’ said May, sounding more fed up than angry now.

  ‘He said he could use me as his assistant. Me, May. Me!’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘And he’s going to let me stay with him and all.’ Seeing her friend’s expression, Ettie added hurriedly: ‘It’s all above board, May. He said so.’

  ‘Ettie, girl,’ said May loudly over her friend’s shoulder, making sure that her words were aimed directly at Protsky. ‘If yer go off with him, yer more flaming barmy than I thought yer were. And that’s saying something.’

  ‘Shut up, May, will yer? Keep yer voice down.’ Ettie turned to face Jacob. ‘I’m just going home for a bit, like I said. To see me mum, sort things out and get some money. Then I’m coming right back. First thing tomorrow.’

  ’“There’s no need to go, Ettie,’ said Jacob, ignoring the alarmed faces Maisie was pulling at her friend. ‘Why don’t you stay? Now. You said you hated…’

  ‘Hold on,’ May interrupted. She took Ettie firmly by the arm. ‘Money? What flipping money?’ She was now too concerned – and curious – to be annoyed about the loss of her would-be lover or all the time she’d been kept waiting. ‘Yer said that before, to our Billy, about going home to get money. What, have yer come into an inheritance or something? Got a rich auntie have yer?’ she demanded sarcastically.

  Ettie didn’t answer, so Maisie carried on with her interrogation. ‘First it’s farthings for Tommy. Now this. What’s going on? Yer really have gone barmy, haven’t yer? Yer going to wind up in a right old mess the way yer performing. You mark my words.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Ettie,’ said Jacob, as though Maisie hadn’t uttered a word. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere.’

  ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about, May,’ she said, ignoring Jacob’s offer out of a practised wariness, but also out of pride. ‘I can get some money from home all right.’

  ‘I’m right,’ Maisie said, this time addressing Jacob directly. ‘She is barmy. Totally sodding crackers. I’m telling yer, yer might as well have a monkey for an assistant. It’d make more bleed’n sense than her.’

  Jacob looked at Ettie, then he spoke to May. ‘You need have no fears for your friend, Maisie. Ettie can make up her own mind about what she does. I have faith in her. And I will be waiting for her when she returns.’ With that he lifted the canvas screen once more and let the two young women out into the corridor. ‘Good night, Maisie,’ he said very formally. ‘Au revoir, Ettie.’

  ‘Do what?’ asked May.

  ‘Shut yer gob,’ said Ettie, shoving her friend into the corridor and out towards the cool night air.

  ‘Well, he talks funny,’ said May, stumbling forward.

  ‘No he don’t, it’s because he’s a gentleman.’

  ‘Gentleman?’ snorted May. ‘So what makes him so different from any other bloke then?’

  Ettie turned to May and smiled dreamily. ‘Yer didn’t notice, Maise, did yer? How he wiped that seat for me, and the stage, before I sat down. And with his very own handkerchief and everything.’ Ettie hugged herself. ‘That was as wonderful to me as any magic he could ever do. No one’s ever done nothing like that for me before. Never.’ She pinched Maisie
’s plump, pink cheek. ‘And that’s why I’m going to stay with him and be his assistant.’

  Maisie rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said.

  Chapter 2

  ‘No more arguments, you will assist me and that is final.’

  ‘No, please, I don’t want to. I…’

  ‘Celia, I told you today at the hospital, I’ll have no more of your disagreeable wilfulness. I order you. You will assist me. Now put them on.’

  He didn’t need to shout. The cool, calm authority of his voice was always enough to chill her. He held out the garments.

  ‘You will do as you are told, Celia. Or risk my anger.’

  Fighting back the rising waves of nausea, Celia took the stiff, starched dress and the almost rigid cap and apron from his long, strangely delicate hands. She turned her back on him and began to change, doing her best to slip off her heavy woollen dress and put on the cotton clothes before he could see her body. It wasn’t even cool for the time of year, yet she shivered.

  He took off his black frock coat and placed it carefully in the plain wooden cupboard, so tidily, with an almost obsessive regard for neatness, adjusting the sleeves so that they hung just so. Next he rolled up the sleeves of his pure white shirt, exposing his pale, hairless arms.

  The ritual had begun.

  Outside the house, in the elegant Belgravia square, it was like any other evening with life going on as usual. But, as she followed her father along the elegantly furnished corridor towards the operating theatre attached to his consulting rooms, she was oblivious to the ordinariness of the world outside. The passing hansoms and the couples strolling by arm-in-arm enjoying the last of the evening’s spring sunshine meant nothing to her, nor did the laughter or other sounds in the streets below: they were the commonplace business of everyday life. Life had long since ceased to be in any way normal for Celia Tressing.

  As Bartholomew Tressing opened the door and guided her in, no matter how she tried to control her reactions, she couldn’t. As always, she gagged. She had become used to the sight of the hinged amputation boards swinging from the operating table. She could almost ignore the box of sawdust, positioned to receive the gory by-products of her father’s chosen profession. And the black metal box of shining instruments could nearly always be dismissed by her as being mere craftsman’s tools. Even the white jugs of hot water set out by one of the servants, which had acquired their own repulsive significance, could be tolerated by thinking of them in their more familiar domestic setting. But she would never become used to the cloying stench of the carbolic, as her father primed the hand-pump and sprayed a fine mist of the stuff round the big, high-ceilinged room. There was an all-pervasive reek as it danced in the air, settling on every surface in the room – her included, seeping into the very pores of her skin. The worst thing for her was that it never quite managed to cover the real stink of the place, the stink of rotting flesh and coagulated blood that had soaked so deeply into the cracks and very fibre of the scrubbed wooden table and floorboards.