The Ripper's Wife Read online

  24

  Was there ever a more wretched Christmas and unhappy New Year? Alfred was at our Christmas Ball, vying with Edwin to see who could be the most attentive, both of them clinging to me like ivy vines. I couldn’t turn my head without my garnet earbobs flying out to slap one or the other of them in the face as my hand was itching to do. Jim, thank goodness, had always been stone blind to Edwin’s ardor, but he might as well have been looking at Alfred Brierley through a telescope.

  Acting as though we were still the most intimate of lovers, Mr. Brierley sidled right up to me and said I had never looked more “breathtakingly beautiful” and he wished he was an artist so he could paint a portrait of me standing there by the candlelit Christmas tree dressed in my sumptuous, artfully draped layers of port-wine red and wintergreen velvet trimmed with deep flounces of creamy lace, with pearls woven through the burnished gold pompadour of my hair and a white dove of peace perched on top and long ringlets cascading down over my shoulders. Once he even reached past me to seemingly admire one of the ornaments and in doing so brushed his hand against my breast. When my nipple instantly perked up, he smiled, so gloating and triumphant that I wanted to slap him.

  “You can’t deceive me, Florie,” he whispered. “I know you still love me! See, your own body betrays you!”

  Looking across the room at Jim’s angry red face, I could see him, sweating and shaking, clenching his fists and quaking, like a pot about to boil over. I don’t know how he got through the evening without striking either or both of us. I had terrible visions of him hurling himself at Alfred and the two of them falling, knocking over the Christmas tree, and the candles setting the curtains and the whole house afire.

  How I dreaded the moment when the last good-bye was said and I was left alone with Jim. I prayed to God that the morning sun would find me still alive.

  Jim gave me his worst, as I knew he would. After beating me bloody he ran and got his will from the safe, rolled the parchment into a tube, and beat me about the head and shoulders with it, then tore it into confetti and flung it in my face and said I’d seen and spent the last penny I would ever have from him. Then he hurled me flat, onto the floor, so hard I lost my breath along with my senses and awoke moments later to the most excruciating pounding, piercing pain and to the even more painful sight of my poor, innocent children standing in the doorway seeing for the first time in their innocent little lives that the act of love can also be an act of violence.

  I felt so shamed before their wide-open eyes that I had to shut mine and turn my face to the wall. I was so ashamed to have them see me, see us, their father and mother, that way that I just wanted to die.

  It was that exact same sight, and realization no doubt, that tore Jim from me as violently as though God Himself had reached down from Heaven and yanked him off me. Bawling like a baby, he ran and locked himself in his study, and it was up to me to drag my bloody, battered body off the floor, tug together the tatters of my gown, and force myself to smile and reassure the children as I led them back to bed.

  The next morning I awoke to a bloody discharge trickling from between my thighs. When it persisted and grew heavier and I began to feel pains quite unlike those that often accompany the onset of a lady’s monthly, I had to summon Dr. Hopper. I just couldn’t lie there and let myself bleed to death; my children needed me! Before I let him examine me, I made him promise not to tell Jim. I said he didn’t know and it would be just too great a blow if he were to discover that in chastising me he had also murdered our unborn child. There was no telling what he might do, and I wanted to spare him.

  As I lay there, knees open and bent, my nightgown turned up over my bruise-mottled stomach, silently submitting to Dr. Hopper’s ministrations, I never thought a day would come when I would find myself actually grateful for a beating.

  25

  THE DIARY

  I am still he; he is still me. GOD HELP ME! I thought myself freed of this demon!

  “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not do, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.”

  I was dreaming, of a red waterfall, a waterfall of blood, and Mary Jane, waiting, on the other side of that red river for me. The other whores were there too, pointing the finger of blame, rattling their chains.

  I awoke. It was as though my soul floated above the bed where my numb body lay, paralysis slowly overtaking my limbs, limbs I saw and commanded to move but no longer felt. I rose. I dressed. I went out. Because I was so weak, Michael didn’t think he needed to lock me in. I am visiting him again, to see a new doctor. I wanted to shout, NO! I wanted to shake and slap myself awake. But I was powerless, and I was awake yet not, I think, awake. On and on my body moved, no longer mine to command, wholly in the demon’s power.

  She was a short little woman, a widow in black, as round as a barrel. “Victoria, like Our Gracious Queen,” she said her name was. Another whore with a tale of woe: driven onto the streets in dire need with seven kiddies at home to feed. Her black hair was striped with broad bands of gray. I wanted to laugh. It reminded me of my gray-and-black-striped cravat. She leaned forward and flipped her skirts up, revealing a fat, rosy pink, dimpled bum.

  The phantom shade of Mary Jane must have slapped me awake. I awoke from my trance and stood there dumb and blinking with a knife, taken from Michael’s kitchen, glinting in my hand, not knowing where I was. The questioning glance, from over her shoulder, turned to one of sheer fright. She screamed. My skeleton nearly leapt out of my skin. I do believe I was as scared as she was. I dropped the knife and fled into the night.

  I am still he; he is still me. Oh God, what can I do? I thought it was in my power to stop him! But the fiend I have made incarnate, the demon I have summoned up from the bowels of Hell and given a name, is still alive....

  I awakened in my bed, in Michael’s house, the next morning. Mud and manure tracked across the carpet told me I did not just dream it . . . it was all most terrifyingly real!

  26

  When my body had healed and I could safely show myself in public again, I defiantly rekindled my romance with Alfred Brierley. Our passion for each other must have been the most stubborn, tenacious flame that ever burned. It just would not die out; try and douse it though we might, it persisted, flickering, sputtering, and flaring. One or the other of us just kept fanning the flame, keeping it alive; we might as well have been throwing kerosene on it for all the good it did us.

  We were seen together at the races in a pose some might call at best unwise and at worst compromising.

  We’d all gone down to Aintree for the fiftieth anniversary of the running of the Grand National. Everyone who was anyone would be there, including the Prince of Wales. Jim and I were making a party of it with Edwin, Alfred Brierley, the Samuelsons, and Mrs. Briggs and her unfortunate husband, Horace.

  Some mischief-maker with a camera took a photograph of Alfred and me, by intent or by chance, I’m still not entirely certain. They captured us standing close together, much too close apparently for it to be quite socially seemly. My kid-gloved hand was resting intimately on his arm, and we were staring into each other’s faces with raw and naked yearning. His hand, in elegant dove-gray kid, was resting lightly on the waist of my periwinkle-blue linen suit, fingers fanning down to lightly graze my hip.

  The photographer printed out a copy and sent it to Jim suggesting he might like to have the negative, for a mere pittance of course, as though any sum with three zeros following a comma and a two-digit number could be accounted a pittance by anyone whose last name wasn’t Vanderbilt.

  “Damn it, but I will not!” Jim declared, and balled the letter up and flung it into the fire.

  I was proud of him for refusing to pay it.

  I suggested he brazen it out and paste the picture in our album to sho
w the world how much it truly did not matter, that some greedy fool was just trying to stir up a tempest in a teapot where none existed and Mr. Brierley and I had just been sharing a joke about the Prince of Wale’s latest amour. I’d said I would not sit so close to a man with such a notoriously gargantuan appetite if I were wearing a whole stuffed pheasant on my hat lest his stomach feel a grumble and he be tempted to reach up and tear off a wing. We were, after all, friends, we’d been sitting together in the same box, so really what was the harm of our strolling out together?

  Jim was still smarting about it when we sat down to play cards with the Samuelsons that evening. I wondered idly if Christina was still bedding down with him, but I was long past caring if she was. I had Alfred, after all. Jim could do what he liked, with Mad Sarah, Christina, or any other willing party. I knew now that peace would never reign within our marriage. Fidelity, like honesty, was an unattainable dream.

  The truth was we were both just too weak. Neither of us could make a promise and stick to it. We’d tried and tried and failed and failed each and every time. Jim couldn’t stop striking me, beating me bloody black-and-blue, anytime he was of half a mind to; his promises of “never again” had long ago lost all meaning. He wasn’t willing to renounce the medicines that brought out the beast in him, and I couldn’t stop shopping or keep out of Alfred Brierley’s bed, at least not for long. We were just treading water, and we all knew it. We’d just have to own up to our failure and figure out the right way to end it. I’d written to Mama about that last beating and the destruction of Jim’s will and told her that as long as the children were provided for nothing else mattered; I didn’t care.

  Jim sat gloomy and glowering over his cards, displaying none of his usual charm. His eyes were dull and dead, and he never once smiled or even lifted a finger to stroke his diamond horseshoe. Mr. Samuelson either was too big of a fool to realize anything was awry or gave such a fine impression of being one that the stage was surely much poorer without his presence. He was clearly far more interested in a crystal dish filled with pretty fruit-shaped marzipan candies than he was in the flirty eyes his wife was flashing at my husband. Alfred and I kept quiet and mechanically played our cards. Only Christina was her usual giddy, giggling, simpering self, full of gossipy prattle, so annoying at times I wondered how all of us had the restraint not to shout at her to just SHUT UP! When the game was finally over and she had lost, Christina, with her typical redhead temper, burst into tears and threw her cards in her husband’s face and cried, “I HATE YOU!” and fled the room in a flurry of tears and teal taffeta.

  Poor Mr. Samuelson sat there blinking in astonishment, cheeks puffed out with marzipan and a lot of bewildered hurt in his big innocent blue eyes. I felt so sorry for him that I just had to reach out and say kindly, “You mustn’t think anything of it; I say ‘I hate you’ to Jim all the time.” Words I would later come to regret; sometimes a kindness given freely ends up costing us dearly.

  In April we were invited to a masquerade ball at the Wellington Rooms; it was to be the event of the season. Every dressmaker and tailor in town was worn to a shadow trying to meet the demand for costumes, each more elaborate and fanciful than the last, with every member of the Currant Jelly Set vying to outdo the rest.

  Jim had taken to his bed again, moaning that this was surely the end and he would never rise again. I don’t mean to sound dispassionate, but it was the same old talk of cold hands and feet, numbness, paralysis, migraines, and bellyaches, and more than I wished to know about the state of any person’s stools, including my own. Our parlor had become like a waiting room for doctors; one would be going out while the maid was going in to announce to Dr. So-and-So that Mr. Maybrick would see him now. Even when Jim had their prescriptions in hand, he did nothing but criticize and disparage them and triple every dosage as though he knew better.

  When he heard about the ball, Jim determined to rouse himself and summoned his tailor to make him a matador’s gilt-encrusted Traje de Luces, Suit of Lights.

  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 do
or, 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 breasts 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.