The Ripper's Wife

14

I can see myself now, sitting on my bedroom floor, hugging my knees, sobs shaking my blue velvet shoulders, tears dripping down onto my blue and cream tartan skirt, surrounded by boxes, tissue paper, and ribbons amidst the candy box clutter of my latest visit to Woollright’s.

None of them meant a thing to me, but I couldn’t stop myself from buying them. It was like a compulsion. But whenever I tried to persuade myself to take it all back, suddenly the most trivial trifle felt as necessary as air to me, as though the world would fall to pieces if I relinquished that lovely jade-green velvet jacket or deprived Bobo of the toy frog I had bought him. And the beautiful wax doll imported from Paris with real golden curls and blue glass eyes that opened and closed was the perfect gift for Gladys; one of those sweet salesgirls had even found a pretty rose-colored frock with a blue sash for Gladys to match the one the doll was wearing. What a pretty photograph that would make!

I liked the way the salespeople smiled at me, the way they picked out things that might please me, even going so far as to secrete certain items behind the counter to await my next visit, things I bought even if I didn’t like them because I just couldn’t bear to disappoint such kind, thoughtful people. They liked me; they really liked me! At that time in my life, when I felt so alone and friendless, that really meant something, and I clung to it desperately. A part of me seemed to feed like a vampire upon their kindness and I couldn’t live without it. I didn’t want coldness to replace the kindness. And they would be so disappointed if I started bringing things back.

Nothing had gone as I had expected since that stony, silent train ride back from London with Jekyll and Hyde sitting beside me.

I’d stripped myself naked for Alfred. My bruise-mottled body had thrilled to each one of his carefully tendered kisses and caresses. But, as he nuzzled my b-reasts, his silken voice asked a question I’d never expected: “But, my darling, doesn’t this”—his fingers delved down between my thighs, like a virtuoso harpist knowing exactly which string to pluck, making me shudder and gasp as pleasure reverberated all through me—“these pleasures we share, make this cross so much easier to bear?”

Where was the indignant lover leaping up, ready to grab his pistol or horsewhip and rush out to avenge me, the one I’d pictured having to plead with and restrain from rushing right out and giving Jim a heaping dishful of what he’d served me? Nowhere in sight! My gallant lover was lying lazily atop me, my bosom his soft, cushy pillow, languorously stroking me with his fingers, yawning, as though it were all a colossal bore. We might as well have been talking about the weather!

“Don’t rock the boat, Florie,” he said. “You have a good life with Jim, everything a woman could wish for, even if you must endure an occasional beating from time to time. It’s not so bad as all that. Just come to me, Florie, and I’ll kiss all the hurts better.” To prove it, he pressed a row of slow kisses onto my thigh where a long red scratch like a haphazardly embroidered seam was healing against an ugly, mottled yellow-brown bruise.

I think that was the first time I really noticed the crystal coldness of his blue eyes. The first time I truly felt their chill as something more than invigorating and refreshing, welcoming as a swimming hole on a hot summer’s day. For the first time, in Alfred’s arms, I felt cold and comfortless. Lord, how it frightened me! I couldn’t face it then. Instead I shoved the ugly truth away as hard as I could, but I knew then that I had made yet another mistake.

I’d trusted Love to save me, but Love wasn’t really Love, just another mask donned in the Masquerade of Life. It’s one of the harshest and hardest lessons a woman has to learn: Men are not kind unless it suits them. The peacock only shakes and shows his pretty feathers to coax the peahen into coupling with him; human males use kind words and sympathy, kisses, caresses, compliments, and gifts the same way. It’s all a cold, cruel sham, a masquerade that goes on as long as life endures.

Indignant, I leapt up, ignoring Alfred’s urgings that I stay awhile. But I couldn’t do that—every time I looked at the bed I saw a snake lying amidst the rumpled sheets instead of the handsome copper-haired Apollo who had gulled and charmed me. I threw on my clothes and rushed out, yanking my veil down to hide my tears and bruises, swearing to myself that I would never go back again as I leapt into a cab and rashly rushed to the nearest law office.

I brashly brushed past the clerk and into Mr. Yardley’s inner sanctum. I couldn’t have cared less about a little thing like the fact that I had no appointment. But that stern old graybeard was not the least bit impressed when I stopped before his desk, bosom heaving, and dramatically flung back my veil, baring my face to his cool legal scrutiny, and breathlessly blurted out my story. He barely looked up from the papers he was perusing and said he dealt mostly with maritime insurance cases.

When I asked if he would be so kind as to recommend another lawyer, one better suited to my needs, he said he would not and the only advice he had to give me was to “go home to your husband, young woman, and stop making mischief!” He was an old-fashioned man, he said, who believed a husband had the right to chastise his wife. Mr. Yardley fixed me with a shrewd monocled eye and said I was clearly a conniving little minx and my husband had only been acting for my own good and if I were his wife he’d take a broomstick to me for the way I was behaving right now, rushing into law offices unannounced like an actress onto the stage in some silly melodrama; he had half a mind to write to my husband and tell him all about my unbecoming and unladylike behavior and encourage him to get the broomstick ready to give me a walloping I would really profit from.

I stamped my foot and called him “a mean and hateful old billy goat!” I could barely restrain myself from reaching right across that desk and giving his long gray beard a good hard yank before I fled his office in tears just as I had come.

I didn’t know what else to do. There was nowhere else I could go except home—though it felt like a sacrilege to call it so. Battlecrease House, its occupants and frequent guests, had made a mockery of all my dreams of love and domestic bliss. So I told the driver to take me to Woollright’s Department Store.

I told the smiling, solicitous salespeople that I had been in a carriage accident in London, and they were very kind and gentle with me, bringing me a cup of chocolate, a chair, and a cushion for my back, escorting me gently from department to department, and parading their goods before me so I had only to point and say, “I’ll take that, and that, and that. . . .” I was so grateful I bought more than I should, but it was not enough, and it could never be enough, to ease the pain.