Читать книгу The Map of Time - Felix J. Palma - Страница 9

Chapter III

In order not to draw attention to himself, Andrew made Harold pull up the luxurious carriage in Leadenhall, and continued alone on foot towards Commercial Street. After wandering a good way down that evil-smelling thoroughfare, he plucked up his courage and entered the maze of alleyways that made up Whitechapel. Within ten minutes, a dozen prostitutes loomed out of the fog to offer him a trip to Mount Venus for the price of a few pennies, but none was the girl in the portrait. Had they been draped in seaweed, Andrew might easily have mistaken them for faded, dirty ship’s figureheads. He refused them politely, a dreadful sadness welling up in him at the sight of those scarecrows, hunched against the cold, who had no better way to earn a living. Their toothless mouths, attempting bawdy smiles, were more repulsive than desirable. Would Marie look like that outside the portrait, far from the brushstrokes that had transformed her into an angel?

He soon realised he was unlikely to find her by chance. Perhaps he would have more luck if he asked for her directly. Once he was sure his disguise was convincing, he entered the Ten Bells, a popular tavern on the corner of Fournier Street and Commercial Street, opposite the ghostly Christ Church. When he peered inside the pub, it looked to him the sort of place whores would go in search of clients. As soon as he reached the bar, two came up to him. Trying to seem casual, Andrew refused their propositions as politely as he could and offered them a glass of stout. He explained he was looking for a woman called Marie Jeanette. One of the whores left immediately, pretending to be offended, but the other, the taller of the two, accepted a drink. ‘I suppose you mean Marie Kelly’ she said. ‘That dratted Irishwoman, everybody wants her. I expect she’s done a few by now and is in the Britannia – that’s where we all go when we’ve made enough for a bed and a bit more besides so that we can get drunk quick and forget our sorrows.’ She spoke with more irony than bitterness.

‘Where is this tavern?’ Andrew asked.

‘Near here, on the corner of Crispin Street and Dorset Street.’

The least Andrew could do was thank her for the information by giving her four shillings. ‘Get yourself a room,’ he recommended, with a smile. ‘It’s too cold out there tonight to be traipsing the streets.’

‘Why, thank you, mister. You’re too kind, I’m sure,’ said the whore, genuinely grateful.

Andrew said goodbye, politely doffing his cap.

‘If Marie Kelly won’t give you what you want, come back and see me,’ she added, with a flash of coquettishness that was blighted by her toothless smile. ‘My name’s Liz – Liz Stride. Don’t forget’

Andrew had no problem finding the Britannia, a seedy bar with a windowed front. The room was brilliantly lit by oil lamps and thick with tobacco smoke. At the far end there was a long bar, with a couple of private rooms to the left. A crowd of noisy customers filled the large main area, which was cluttered with tables and chairs, the floor strewn with sawdust. A fleet of bartenders in filthy aprons squeezed their way between tightly packed tables, juggling metal tankards brimming with beer. In the corner, a battered old piano displayed its grubby keys to anyone wishing to enliven the evening with a tune.

Andrew reached the bar, which was laden with large jugs of wine, oil lamps and plates of cheese cut into huge chunks – they looked like bits of rubble from a tip. He lit a cigarette from one of the lamps, ordered a pint of beer, and leaned discreetly against the bar, surveying the crowd and wrinkling his nose at the strong smell of sausage that emanated from the kitchen. As he had been told, the atmosphere was more convivial than it had been at the Ten Bells. Most of the tables were occupied by sailors on shore leave and local people dressed as modestly as he, although he also noticed a few groups of prostitutes busy getting drunk. He sipped his beer slowly and looked for one who fitted Marie Kelly’s description, but none did.

By his third beer, he had begun to despair, and wondered what on earth he was doing there, chasing an illusion. He was about to leave when she pushed her way through the pub door. He recognised her at once. There was no doubt about it: she was the girl in the portrait, but more beautiful still for being endowed with movement. Her face looked drained, yet she moved with the energy Andrew had imagined from seeing her on canvas. Most of the other customers remained oblivious to her. How was it possible for anyone not to react to the small miracle that had just taken place in front of them? Their complete indifference made him feel he was a privileged witness to the phenomenon.

He recalled when, as a child, he had seen the wind take a leaf between invisible fingers and balance its tip on the surface of a puddle, spinning it like a top until a carriage wheel had put an end to its dance. To Andrew, it had seemed Mother Nature had engineered that magic trick for his eyes alone. From then on he was convinced that the universe dazzled mankind with volcanic eruptions, but had its own secret way of communicating with the select few, people like himself, who looked at reality as though it were a strip of wallpaper covering something else. Taken aback, he watched Marie Kelly walk towards him as if she knew him. His heart started to pound. He calmed a little when she propped her elbow on the bar and ordered half a pint of beer without glancing at him.

‘Having a good night, Marie?’

‘Can’t grumble, Mrs Ringer.’

Andrew was on the verge of blacking out. She was standing next to him! He could scarcely believe it, yet it was true. He had heard her voice. A tired, rather husky voice, but lovely in any case. And if he really tried, ignoring the stench of tobacco smoke and sausages, he could probably smell her, too. Smell Marie Kelly. Mesmerised, Andrew gazed at her, rediscovering in her every gesture what he already knew. In the same way that a shell holds the roar of the sea so this fragile body seemed to contain within it a force of nature.

When the landlady placed the beer on the counter, Andrew realised this was an opportunity he must not waste. He rummaged swiftly in his pockets and paid before she could. Allow me, miss.’

The gesture, as unexpected as it was chivalrous, earned him an openly approving look from Marie Kelly. He was paralysed. As the painting had already shown, the girl’s eyes were beautiful, yet they seemed buried beneath a layer of resentment. He could not help comparing her to a poppy field where someone had decided to dump refuse. And yet he was completely, hopelessly enthralled by her, and he tried to make the instant at which their eyes met as meaningful to her as it was to him, but – my apologies to any romantic souls reading these lines – some things cannot be expressed in a look.

How could Andrew make her share in the almost mystical feeling overwhelming him? How could he convey, with nothing more than his eyes, the sudden knowledge that he had been searching for her all his life without knowing it? If in addition we consider that Marie Kelly’s existence up to that point had done little to increase her understanding of life’s subtleties, it should come as no surprise that this initial attempt at spiritual communion (for want of a better way of putting it) was doomed to failure. Andrew did his best, obviously, but the girl understood his passionate gaze just as she interpreted that of the other men who accosted her every evening.

‘Thanks, mister,’ she replied, with a lewd smile, no doubt from force of habit.

Andrew nodded, dismissing the significance of a gesture he considered an all-important part of his strategy, then realised with horror that his careful plan had not taken into account how he was to strike up a conversation with the girl once he found her. What did he have to say to her? Or, more precisely, what did he have to say to a whore? A Whitechapel whore, at that. He had never bothered speaking much to the Chelsea prostitutes, only enough to discuss positions or the lighting in the room, and with the charming Keller sisters, or his other female acquaintances -young ladies whom it would not do to worry with talk of politics or Darwin’s theories – he only discussed trivia: Paris fashions, botany and, more recently, spiritualism, the latest craze. But none of these subjects seemed suitable to embark on with this woman, who was unlikely to want to summon some spirit to tell her which of her many suitors she would marry. So he simply stared at her, enraptured.

Luckily, Marie Kelly knew a better way of breaking the ice. ‘I know what you want, mister, although you’re too shy to ask,’ she said, her grin broadening as she gave his hand a fugitive caress. It brought him out in goose pimples. ‘Thruppence, and I can make your dreams come true. Tonight, at any rate.’

Andrew was shaken: she did not know how right she was. She had been his only dream the past few nights, his deepest longing, his most urgent desire, and now, although he was still scarcely able to believe it, he could have her. His whole body tingled with excitement at the mere thought of touching her, of caressing the slender body silhouetted beneath the shabby dress, of bringing forth moans from her lips as he was set alight by her eyes, those of a wild animal, a tormented, indomitable creature. That tremor of joy rapidly gave way to a profound sadness when he considered the unjust plight of the fallen angel, the ease with which any man could grope her, defile her in a filthy back alley, without anyone in the world uttering a cry of protest. Was that what such a unique creature had been created for?

He had no choice but to accept her invitation, a lump in his throat, distressed at being compelled to take her in the same way as her other clients, as if his intentions were no different from theirs.

Once he had accepted, Marie Kelly smiled with what looked to Andrew like forced enthusiasm, and tilted her head for them to leave the pub.

Andrew felt odd following the whore, walking behind her with bird-like steps as though Marie Kelly were leading him to the gallows instead of to plunge between her thighs. But could their meeting have been any different? From the moment he had come across his cousin’s painting he had been penetrating deeper into unknown territory, where he could not get his bearings because nothing around him was familiar. Everything was new and, to judge from the deserted streets they were going through, quite possibly dangerous. Was he blithely walking into a trap laid by the whore’s pimp? He wondered whether Harold would hear his shouts and, if so, if he would bother coming to his aid, or use the opportunity to avenge himself for the offhand treatment he had received from his master all these years.

After guiding him along Hanbury Street, a muddy alley dimly lit by a single oil-lamp sputtering on a corner, Marie Kelly beckoned him down a narrow passageway leading into pitch darkness. Andrew followed her, convinced he would meet his death, or at least be beaten to within an inch of his life by a couple of ruffians much bigger than him who, having stolen everything including his socks, would spit contemptuously on his bloody remains. That was how they did things here, and his idiotic adventure richly deserved such an ending. But before fear had time to take hold, they came out into a filthy, water-logged backyard where, to his surprise, no one was waiting for him.

Andrew glanced warily about him. Yes: strange as it might seem, they were alone in that evil-smelling place. The world they had left behind was reduced to a muffled rumble in which a distant church bell’s chimes rang out. At his feet the moon, reflected in a puddle, looked like a crumpled letter some unhappy lover had tossed on the ground.

‘We won’t be disturbed here, mister,’ Marie Kelly reassured him, leaning back against the wall and drawing him to her.

Before he knew it, she had unbuttoned his trousers and pulled out his manhood. She did so with startling ease, without any of the provocative foreplay to which the Chelsea prostitutes had accustomed him. The matter-of-fact way in which she manoeuvred his sex beneath her hiked-up skirts made it clear to Andrew that what to him was another magical moment was to her no more than routine.

‘It’s in,’ she assured him.

In? Andrew had enough experience to know the whore was lying. She was simply gripping him between her thighs. He assumed it was common practice among them, a trick to avoid penetration, which, if they were lucky and the client failed to notice or was too drunk, reduced the number of hasty intrusions they were forced to undergo each day, and with them the unwanted pregnancies that such might bring about. With this in mind, he began to thrust energetically, prepared to go along with the charade.

It was enough for him to rub himself against the silky skin of her inner thigh, to feel her body pressed against his for as long as the pretence lasted. What did it matter whether it was a sham if this phantom penetration allowed him to cross the boundary imposed by good manners and force his way into the intimacy that only lovers share? Feeling her hot breath in his ear, inhaling the delicate odour of her neck and clasping her to him until he felt the contours of her body merge with his was worth infinitely more than thruppence. And, as he soon discovered when he ejaculated into her petticoats, it had the same effect on him as other, greater, undertakings. Slightly ashamed at his lack of endurance, he finished emptying himself in quiet contemplation, still pressed against her.

Eventually he felt her stir impatiently. He stepped back, embarrassed. Oblivious to his unease, the whore straightened her skirts and thrust out a hand to be paid. Trying to regain his composure, Andrew hurriedly gave her the agreed sum. He had enough money left in his pockets to buy her for the whole night, but he preferred to savour what he had just experienced in the privacy of his own bed, and to persuade her to meet him the next night.

‘My name’s Andrew,’ he introduced himself, his voice high-pitched with emotion. She raised an eyebrow, amused. ‘And I’d like to see you again tomorrow.’

‘Certainly, mister. You know where to find me,’ the whore said, leading him back along the gloomy passageway she had brought him down.

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

‘It’s all yours, Annie,’ she said, referring to the backyard she and Andrew had just left.

Annie thanked her with a raucous laugh and tugged her companion towards the passageway. Andrew watched them stagger into the blackness. Would that fellow be satisfied with having his member trapped between her thighs? he wondered. He had noticed how avidly the man clutched the whore to him.

‘Didn’t I tell you it was a quiet spot?’ Marie Kelly remarked, as they came out into Hanbury Street.

They said a laconic goodbye 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 came upon it. He avoided Harold’s eyes as he climbed into the brougham.

‘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 his 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, the 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 demeanour unnerved him, but as 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 worry from her face. Marie Kelly shot him a black look, confirming what he feared: he had made a tactless blunder. Andrew thought she was going to tell him to clear off with a simple wave of her hand, as if he were an irritating fly, but she restrained herself and gazed at him quizzically for a few seconds.

She must have decided he was as good a person as any to unburden herself to because she took a swig from her tankard, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and told him that her friend Annie, 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 by the killer’s attention to detail as he was to have collided with him moments before the crime. Evidently that particular client had not been satisfied with the usual service. But Marie Kelly had other concerns. According to her, Annie was the third prostitute in less than a month to be murdered in Whitechapel. Polly Nichols had been found dead with her throat slit in Bucks Road, opposite Essex Pier, on 31 August, and on the seventh of that month, Martha Tabram had been found brutally stabbed 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 – the putrid dung-heap upon which London had turned its back, 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, as though in prayer, until, to Andrew’s surprise, she roused herself from her stupor, grasped his hand and smiled lustfully at him. 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, the dirty nails poking through the frayed mitten. He, too, felt the need to concentrate for a moment in order to change masks, like an actor who needs time in his dressing room to concentrate on becoming a different character. After all, life went on for him, too. Time did not stop because a whore had been murdered. He stroked her hand tenderly, ready to resume his plan. As though wiping condensation from a window pane, he freed his young lover’s smile from its veil of sadness and, looking her in the eye for the first time, 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, but Andrew’s smile soon put her at ease. ‘I rent a room at Miller’s Court, but I don’t know as it’ll be good enough for the likes of you,’ she remarked flirtatiously.

‘I’m sure you’ll make me like it,’ Andrew ventured, delighted at the bantering tone their conversation had taken – 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 an 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.

***

So it was that Andrew found paradise in the dismal little room where he was now sitting. That night, everything had changed between them. When at last she lay naked, Andrew made love to her so respectfully, caressing her with such tenderness, that Marie Kelly could feel the hard shell she had carefully built around her begin to crack. To her surprise, Andrew’s kisses, marking her body like a pleasurable itch, made her own caresses less mechanical, and she quickly discovered she 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 love-making was freeing the real Marie Kelly, as though he were rescuing her from one of the water tanks in which stage magicians immersed their beautiful assistants, bound hand and foot, or as though his sense of direction had saved him from getting lost in the maze, like her other lovers, allowing him to reach a secret corner where the girl’s true nature survived intact.

They burned with a single flame, and when it waned, and Marie Kelly began to talk about springtime in Paris, where she had worked as an artist’s model, and about her childhood in Wales and on Ratcliffe Highway in London, Andrew understood that the strange sensation in his chest must be the pangs of love: he was experiencing all the emotions of which the poets spoke.

He was touched by the 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 the distant fragrance that softened life’s sharp edges. He was equally moved by the hint of sadness in her voice as she described how they had hanged pirates from the Ratcliffe Highway Bridge until they drowned in the rising waters of the Thames. This was the real Marie Kelly, this bitter-sweet fruit, nature’s flawed perfection, one of God’s contradictions.

When she asked what work he did that could apparently allow him to buy her for the rest of his life, he decided to risk telling her the truth. If their love were to exist it must be nurtured in truth or not at all, and the truth (of how her portrait had sent him on his foolish quest to find her in a neighbourhood so different from his own) seemed as beautiful and miraculous to him as those stories about impossible love you read of in books. When their bodies came together again, he realised 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 when 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 favourite time of day, when the grass was still dewy and everything appeared untouched. How could he waste such an opportunity? Within minutes, he 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 was how he felt, remembering the loving look she had given him before they had said goodbye until the following night. It was as though she could see in his eyes that, unwittingly, he had been searching for her for years and perhaps I should take this opportunity to apologise for my earlier scepticism 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 by a burning, pulsating sensation that might reasonably be described as happiness. Prey to the effects of such a violent infatuation, everything 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 by an inner glow.

But, have no fear, I shall not become bogged down in lengthy descriptions of practically luminous parkland, because not only do I have no taste for it but it would be untrue. Despite Andrew’s altered vision, the landscape clearly did not undergo any transformation, not even the squirrels, which are well known as creatures that pursue their own interests.

After more than an hour of strenuous, exhilarating riding, Andrew remembered he had a whole day to get through before he could return to Marie Kelly’s humble bed, and must find some way of distracting himself from the dreadful feeling that would assail him when he realised that 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. Would he glow, like the squirrels in the park?