The Whitechapel Girl Read online

  She rubbed her tired eyes and turned to the next pamphlet. This one was illustrated with yet more details of the women’s lives and the sensational publications they were reviling. Her cheeks reddened, and she skipped over the more distressing sections.

  Then, against all that she had expected, she found what she wanted. It was a closely printed leaflet of just six pages, but it made everything clear in the way she had sought. The author’s view was that it was no good condemning and protesting. Action was called for of the most vigorous type to give the young women of the slums an example and inspiration for the life that they could be leading. She looked at the cover for the author’s name. There it was, in thick black lettering: the Reverend Roland Stedgely. She remembered hearing the name before – yes, that was it. She had heard it from Sophia, the daughter of one of her father’s colleagues at the hospital, one of the few friends he had allowed Celia to keep since her mother’s death. It wouldn’t do to cause talk amongst one’s colleagues, he had agreed grudgingly, and so had tolerated their continued friendship.

  Celia re-read the little booklet and its stirring depictions of Stedgely’s missionary work amongst the young women of the slums, taking in its vivid portrayal of the crowded courts where the girls lived. Instead of the young women being written off as evil agents of corruption as the other authors had done, the Reverend Roland Stedgely wrote of them as unfortunates who, with the right help, could help themselves from falling into the depths of despair into which their mothers and older sisters had already plunged.

  But, as she closed the cover of the little leaflet, as inspiring as it had been, Celia’s resolve began to weaken. What could she really achieve when her own life was so imperfect? Tears began to fill her eyes as the thought of her father slumped in the drawing room armchair in his drug-induced stupor made her feel suddenly weak and so very tired. If she were truthful, what hope did she really have of ever finding the strength she would need to carry out such work? On many occasions lately she had wondered if she had enough strength even to complete another day’s existence…

  Celia picked up the leaflets from the library table. She would return them to the shelves and then perhaps she would turn instead to Miss Austen’s Emma. It was a book she had read many times in the past, and one she knew had no hidden secrets slipped between its precious leaves. She almost smiled to herself. She would do well to learn the lessons of Emma – another meddling girl. And, who knows, she thought, perhaps her own story would have a similarly comforting ending. But she did not convince herself for even a moment that it might really be so.

  As she reached up to replace the pamphlets, she noticed her father’s spiky writing in the margins of a well-thumbed booklet which was tucked next to a pile of the more lurid leaflets which she hadn’t bothered to take down from the shelf. Curiosity got the better of her and she began to read. First she examined the printed text.

  The deformed wizened body of the new-born is a sure sign that the infant is a victim of this despicable condition – an undoubted indication that the infant has suffered for the sins of its parents – that the child is a victim of the so-called Syphilis of the Innocents. The disease as contracted by these guiltless souls is all the more heart-rending and despicable as it is the disease in its disastrous secondary stage when the nervous system is attacked. It is fortunate, therefore, that these tiny hostages to fortune can expect the shortest, though most painful, of existences.

  Celia frowned at the abominable words. They held for her a horrid fascination. She was drawn to that word. It was printed there quite openly: ‘syphilis’. Her father had said the word in her presence only once, when he had shouted it aloud in his anger. It had happened when the body delivered to him that night for dissection had been diseased with that dread thing yet again. He was angry about the condition of the corpse, complaining that the men had taken good money from him for inferior goods.

  And then there was the awful description of the poor afflicted mite.

  She turned the slim booklet round, tilting it on one side and holding it closer to the lamp, more easily to read the words which filled the margin, words written in her father’s own hand. She bowed her head and a single teardrop plopped on to the paper, spreading out in a creeping, irregular, damp stain.

  Her father’s description of his son’s, her baby brother’s, death: the words linking his tiny, malformed body to the pitiable description of the printed words. She gulped hard, taking down great sobbing breaths as she thought of her mother dying so soon after the birth, even though she had been so well. Well, that is, until the baby had died. And then those whispers from the servants about poison, prussic acid. No. She would not believe it. She could not. Her mother with that vile disease, losing her tiny son to its ravages and then being driven to commit the dread sin of self-destruction. And leaving Celia alone with her father.

  She felt hot, disordered, sickened. She covered her face with her hands, hiding herself from the appalling words in front of her. But she couldn’t hide from the words in her head: her mother had passed syphilis on to the unborn child she was carrying. A disease that she could only have contracted in one way.

  Never before had Celia hated her father more, and yet there was something else about the discovery, something that disturbed her in a different way. The terrible madness that came with the disease could, she realised, be the explanation for her father’s vile behaviour towards her. She remembered a time when he had been a good and gentle man, caring for her and her mother; the times he would sit in his big armchair by the fire, holding her on his knee and singing to her in his deep, comforting voice while her mother accompanied him on the piano. Her tears ran down her cheeks as she wept for the loss of the father she had almost forgotten.

  But she cried too for herself, for she knew that she also might one day show the symptoms of the unspeakable disease that caused its victims to degenerate into madness. She resolved that she would work fast, find the strength no matter how weak she felt, to do some good in the world, lest its dreaded onset prevented her. The strength would come from her love for her dear, dead mother, for the brother she had never known, and for the precious father she now remembered.

  At the sound of the library door opening she jumped as though she had been scalded.

  She turned to see the butler standing there in his nightshirt, his hair dishevelled from sleep.

  ‘Oh. Oh, it’s you, Smithson,’ she said, swiftly concealing the pamphlet in the folds of her skirts and keeping her chin down to hide her tears.

  ‘It’s your father,’ said the butler, not even bothering to conceal the leer which curled around his thin, bloodless lips. ‘He’s woken from his rest and wants to…’ he hesitated, tilting his ugly head to one side, considering the next word. ‘He wants to see you,’ he eventually said.

  ‘Have you no idea of the time, Smithson? It is nearly daybreak. Tell him I cannot,’ she said recklessly. ‘Say I am in bed. Asleep.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Miss Celia,’ he said, and opened the door wider for her.

  A moment later, Celia was standing nervously by her father’s side as Bartholomew Tressing sipped at his glass of brandy. She usually knew better than to speak before she was spoken to, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Father,’ she said, her pale lips quivering. ‘How exactly did Mother die?’

  His hand was slim and manicured but it stung her cheek as harshly as any labourer’s calloused flesh could have done.

  When he eventually allowed his daughter to go to her room, the sun was shining brightly in the clear spring sky over the square below. Celia washed her tears from her face at the washstand, then sat at the pretty inlaid writing table which had stood at her window since her eighth birthday – it had been her last gift from her mother.

  She took out pen and paper and began to compose a letter. It took several attempts before she succeeded in hiding the new horrors which haunted her from showing themselves in her words.

  Dear Sophia,
/>   I trust you are well. Yes, I know I have promised to write more often, though I have been remiss. There, I confess. You have a lazy, but loving friend. Not really lazy perhaps but, more honestly, rather preoccupied of late.

  I think that my request, however, will make you happier with me, and inclined to forgive my laxity in letter-writing.

  I should like to come with you to one of the Reverend Roland Stedgely’s League meetings to which you are always inviting me, as I have become very interested of late in the work done by the League. I trust that you are pleased that your request is, at last, granted.

  Celia lifted her pen and tapped the end to her lips. How to not make Sophia, so impulsive a girl, ask all sorts of difficult questions? She loaded her nib with ink and continued.

  I will come with you, Sophia, but I want you to be clear that my attendance at the meeting is only because I am inquisitive to discover more about them. I do not intend to join the League, as I know that if I do so you will soon become bored, as you have with all your other enthusiasms, and then I shall be left to attend the meetings on my own.

  I await your reply with great anticipation. Remember, please, not to make any reference to the meeting in your letter. Father would not approve of my going to places where gentlemen might be present. Instead, suggest we meet for afternoon tea with your governess or something. I know how resourceful you can be, my artful friend.

  With fondest regards, from your dear friend, Celia.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Here you are, Maise, drink that.’ Alfie pushed his way through the busy lunchtime crush of drinkers in the Frying Pan and slid the thick, stumpy glass of gin across the beer-stained marble table towards his sister.

  ‘Ta, Alf,’ she said, and drained the glass in one shuddering gulp.

  ‘Gawd blimey, sis, I’d rather keep you for a week than a fortnight. I brought yer out to cheer yer up, not to see how fast yer could pour all me money down yer throat.’

  ‘Sorry, Alf,’ said May, wiping her mouth with the frayed cuff of her blouse. ‘But I feel right fed up.’

  ‘Yer don’t need to tell me, yer’ve been right humpy.’

  Maisie looked round the bar full of laughing, joking people. She swallowed hard before she spoke. ‘She ain’t even bothered to come back and see me, Alf.’

  ‘So that’s it. Ettie Wilkins.’ Alf chucked his sister affectionately under the chin. ‘Yer can’t blame her really, now can yer, May? Wouldn’t you get out of here if you had the chance?’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Alf’s affection towards her made it even more difficult for her to hold back the tears that had been threatening to start all morning. ‘I’m pleased for her – honest – but… Aw, I don’t know. I’m worried for her that’s all. She’s been gone a whole week now. And as for that Professor Protsky or whatever he calls himself. You never saw him, did yer?’ Maisie blew her nose noisily into the grey cotton rag that served as her handkerchief. ‘He was a right strange type of geezer. And she didn’t know nothing about him, Alf. Nothing. Anything could have happened to her.’

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Alfie, putting his arm round his sister’s, broad shoulders. ‘And it ain’t as though she’s miles away is it? She’s only down Bow way somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah, according to Jimmy Tanner,’ said May, sniffing loudly. ‘And yer know what a Tom Pepper he is.’ May shook her head sadly. ‘And say she really is in Bow. Don’t that makes it worse? She could easy have popped round to see me, to let me know how she was. We’ve always been like sisters, me and her; now it’s like she never even knew me.’

  Alfie stood up. ‘Let’s get in another round.’ He held up his hand to stop her speaking. ‘No. Don’t argue. I’ve got a few bob this week. Let me treat yer.’

  At the sound of those magic words, two shabby but gaudily dressed women had shoved their way from the bar and were standing either side of Alfie before he’d even had the chance to move.

  ‘Hello, Alfie, darling,’ said one of them, wiping an ingrained finger down his cheek. ‘I ain’t seen yer for ages, sweetheart.’

  ‘No, not since the last time yer tried scrounging a drink, Flo,’ he said, pushing his hands deep into his trouser pockets and rocking back on his heels.

  ‘Did you hear that, Ada?’ said Florrie, wide-eyed with offence. ‘I can’t believe a chap’d talk like that to a neighbour.’

  ‘Come on, girls,’ said Alfie, smiling despite himself. ‘You can do a better job of cheering our Maisie up than me. Come and sit down and make her laugh and I’ll treat the pair of yers to a drop of Satin.’

  ‘Good luck to yer, darling,’ said Ada, getting her feet safely under the table. ‘Now tell us, May, what’s up with yer, me little love?’

  Before Maisie could even begin to explain her unhappiness to the two women, Ada was back on her feet waving extravagantly to a man who had just come in the door. ‘Over here!’ she yelled above the noise. ‘Come on. Come and sit with us.’

  Maisie looked round to see who was being invited to join them. ‘Bill?’ She could hardly believe her eyes. ‘What you doing here?’

  ‘Aw,’ said Florrie, beaming benevolently. ‘It’s like a family reunion, ain’t it? It’s nice the way you Burys stick together.’

  Billy pulled out the chair next to May and sat down without saying a word.

  ‘Yer never come for a drink of a dinner-time, Bill,’ said May, frowning. ‘Does your governor know yer here?’

  ‘Yer gonna shut up going on, May,’ said Billy bleakly, pushing back his chair. ‘Or shall I go down the Alma instead?’

  Maisie didn’t have the opportunity to answer.

  ‘No, Bill, don’t do that,’ said Ada. Knowing there’d be more chance of another drink with the table full, she wanted to keep the party going. ‘You stay here with us, darling.’ She stood up and hollered across the bar. ‘Alfie! Alf!’ When she’d got his attention she nodded and pointed towards the table. ‘Your Billy’s here. Get a pint in for him.’ She sat down, smiling happily. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That’s just the job, ain’t it?’

  Maisie took her brother’s face gently in her big, wide-palmed hands. ‘Bill,’ she said softly. ‘I ain’t having a go at yer or nothing, I’m just worried, that’s all. Now, what yer doing here?’

  Billy brushed his sister’s hands away.

  Maisie didn’t look at Billy as she spoke, she picked at a splinter on the edge of the table. ‘It’s Ettie, right?’

  ‘I can’t get her off me mind, May. I know it’s stupid but I just thought she might be here with you.’

  ‘I ain’t seen her, Bill.’

  Billy raked his fingers through his hair. ‘She’s never gonna love me, is she? I don’t stand no chance.’

  ‘What did he say?’ said Florrie, craning her neck to hear.

  ‘Mind yer own,’ snapped Maisie at her, then turned back to her brother. ‘She’s not the only girl, Bill,’ she whispered to him.

  ‘She is for me, May.’ His voice cracked as he said the words.

  At the sight of her brother’s pain, Maisie could hardly stop her own voice from quavering. ‘This ain’t like you, Bill,’ she said, trying to jolly him along. ‘I thought you was tough as old boots.’

  ‘Not where Ett’s concerned I’m not, May.

  For nearly an hour the drinks flowed, but the conversation was far from smooth. Florrie and Ada, concerned that the drinks might stop, did their best to keep it going, but after a while neither Alfie nor May wanted to hear yet another tale about the men they’d picked up, nor what they’d been expected to do with them, and Billy wasn’t even listening.

  ‘So,’ said Florrie, after a lull when they’d all stared morosely into their empty glasses. ‘What yer all doing in here of a dinnertime, then?’

  Alfie sighed. ‘I told yer earlier,’ he said impatiently. ‘I brought Maisie in to cheer her up. And you two was meant to be helping. Fat lot of good yer’ve done.’

  ‘No, yer don’t look that cheerful, come to think of it, May,’ slurr
ed Florrie, stating what was actually patently obvious for everyone to see. ‘And Billy looks like he’s lost a shilling and found ha’penny and all.’

  ‘I know!’ exclaimed Ada, rising unsteadily to her feet and knocking her chair over in a mixture of drunken clumsiness and enthusiasm for the idea she’d just had. ‘I’ll give yer all a song.’

  ‘Sod me,’ mumbled Billy into his chest. ‘That’s all I flaming want.’

  ‘Patrick. Patrick.’ Ada stumbled over to the bar, leant across the counter and began poking the unfortunate landlord in the chest. ‘Get on that piano, go on. Let’s liven this place up a bit.’

  ‘That’s it, I’m off. I’m getting back to work.’ Billy took a handful of coppers from his pocket and slapped them down on the table in front of May. ‘Have the next round on me,’ he said, and was through the door and on his way back to Shoreditch before anyone even had the chance to say goodbye, let alone start singing.