The Ripper's Wife

The next morning I rose early and morosely endured the maid May’s ministrations, performed with all the diligence and precision of a military exercise. She didn’t utter a single friendly word as she yanked my corset strings so hard it made my waist feel like a chicken having its neck wrung. It didn’t really matter, I told myself. I was in no mood for conversation anyway. So I stood in gloomy, self-conscious silence and let her lace me into a flowing morning gown of lilac chiffon with lavender satin ribbon trim that flowed beautifully over my bustle and crown my coiled and braided hair with a pretty frilled white breakfast cap with a spray of silk violets and dangling loops of ribbon. Neither of us mentioned my bruised and swollen face, not even when she stood directly in front of me pinning a corsage of silk violets to my breast.

With a stalwart air, I descended the stairs, bravely determined to ignore the stares and whispers of the servants, and took my place at the breakfast table in the conservatory, surrounded by leafy palms and gilt pagoda birdcages filled with canaries and finches. I had no choice but to show my naked face. I had never had cause to paint my face before. I still had the lustrous glow of youth about me, so I hadn’t yet acquired the accoutrements, much less learned what creams, rouges, and powders to buy to best hide the bruises, or how to apply them, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to send May out to buy them, then devote a hasty half hour to attempting to master the art. I could just imagine myself descending the stairs, head held high, face painted like an inept circus clown’s, and the servants tittering that only harlots, actresses, and fast American girls painted their faces; my stomach turned somersaults at the very idea. Having Bessie stare so that she almost overflowed my teacup was better than suffering through that.

Jim came in whistling one of Michael’s nautical ditties and lightly kissed my cheek. Feigning blindness to the livid purple-red plum of a bruise blooming there, ignoring how even the featherlight touch of his lips made me wince, he told me how beautiful I looked. I smiled bravely at him across the breakfast table and watched as he took the familiar silver box from his breast pocket and liberally sprinkled the white powder I now knew was arsenic onto his porridge and into his tea.

Jim smiled and reached for my hand. “I daresay you would be horrified, my darling Bunny, if you knew that right now I am taking enough arsenic to kill you.”

He was right. I couldn’t hide it; I was horrified. I wanted to leap up and overturn the breakfast table. Death was floating in his teacup, dangling from his spoon; how could he make a jest of it?

He took a sip of his tea and smiled at me. “Yes, I can see by your face you are.” He took a heaping spoonful of his porridge. “But you mustn’t worry; I know what I am doing, better, I daresay, than most doctors. My medicine makes me stronger, and I am a better man for it.”

I nodded wanly and forced a fragile smile and, like a dutiful wife, offered my husband some marmalade for his toast, while expecting that at any moment he would gasp, clutch his chest, and fall over dead before I could even scream for help. But I was afraid to speak up. I couldn’t shake the memory of the blow he had struck me. Privately I didn’t think anything used to poison rats could be good for a human being to ingest, but I bit my tongue and strained my trembling lips into what I hoped was a convincing smile. The truth was I wanted the fairy tale back, to don a smiling mask and dance through the days as if in a giddy masquerade. I didn’t want the ugly truth to write his name on my dance card. I had already begun running. I disliked confrontations. I didn’t know how to be brave. I was never what you would call an assertive person; my spine was more like a licorice whip than a steel rod.

After Jim had gone I sat down at my lovely little Louis XV writing desk, with its drawers inlaid with sky-blue-stained mother-of-pearl, and wrote a long letter to Mama. When I was finished, I rang for the maid and gave it to her to mail.

A few moments later Mrs. Grant, the housekeeper, returned with my letter. It was then that I discovered that before departing for his office Jim had instructed that no letter of mine was to be dispatched without his first having read it. It was for my own good, Mrs. Grant explained, lest I write anything hasty I might regret in the heated aftermath of a marital spat. I was a young bride, and a highly emotional one at that, and might not realize how easily these things were blown out of all proportion.

“All couples quarrel, and the first tiff feels like the end of the world, if I may take the liberty of saying so, ma’am,” Mrs. Grant, cool as a cucumber and sour as a pickle, volunteered.

Fighting to hold back my anger, I snatched my letter and dismissed her.

With furious fingers I shredded it, ripping it until not even one word could be read, before tossing the fragments like snowflakes onto the fire; the flames, it seemed, were the only ones I could confide in and trust to keep my secrets safe and private.

I was trapped, like a wild animal caged in a zoo, and I didn’t like it. I kept to my room all day, pacing, imagining the walls closing in on me, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I’m afraid I spoke rather sharply to the maid when she knocked and offered luncheon.

When Jim came home he had a surprise for me. He was carrying an object draped in a sky-blue blanket. He sat it on the floor and, like a magician, whisked off the blanket to reveal a basket in which a fluffy white kitten with a blue satin bow tied around her neck lay curled in a nervous little ball. I squealed with delight. I had always adored cats, and now I had a little beauty of my very own.

“Oh, Jim!” I cried as I knelt and gathered her tenderly against my breast as Jim explained, in words similar to Mrs. Grant’s, why he had felt compelled to temporarily—how curious that Mrs. Grant had left that word out!—censor my correspondence.

“Of course you may write to your mother, my angel,” he said. “I only wanted to prevent your dashing off something in haste that you might later regret, words that might lead to this unfortunate, ugly incident being endlessly dredged up instead of being laid to rest and buried as it deserves.”

The way he explained it made perfect sense. I felt my anger evaporating. Here was my own dear, kind, sweet, gentle Jim; how could I ever have been frightened of him? Last night suddenly seemed all a bad dream. I was ever so glad I hadn’t sent that letter; it might have changed forever how Mama regarded Jim. My hasty words had painted him as a monster. I had actually called him “a great bully” and “a brute,” it shamed me now to remember. And if Mama had carelessly left the letter lying about and someone else had read it . . . Oh! I shuddered as I realized the horrific consequences that might have resulted from one impetuous letter! No wonder people spoke about the pen being mightier than the sword; for the first time in my life I actually understood what they meant. Jim had been so right and I so wrong! I must learn to think before I acted. I really was an impulsive, emotional creature, all heart, no head, sometimes, and I needed a husband like Jim to be the voice of reason and keep my head out of the clouds and my feet on the ground.

“All is forgiven?” Jim asked as he knelt beside me.

“All is forgiven.” I smiled up at him.

He gathered me in his arms, and while I cradled my kitten he gently, patiently, explained that the way I had blurted out my reference to his medicine cabinet, in such an accusing manner, had wounded him to the core and he had struck out blindly. He had been unforgivably hasty with his fists when he should have used words, and only words, patient, gentle, loving words like he was using now. He had been raised to always consider appearances and how others might perceive things, so he knew quite well what his cluttered medicine cabinet might suggest. The way I had spoken and looked at him had struck a nerve, like sugar on a bad tooth. I had made him feel like some degenerate opium fiend, lazing his life away with a pipe in some smoke-hazy den, instead of a respectable, upstanding English businessman who had been “perhaps a tad overzealous” about the preservation of his health since his bout with malaria.

“I almost died, Bunny.” He shuddered at the memory. I put my kitten down and took my husband in my arms and kissed him and stroked the hair I now knew owed its darkness to Indian Princess Hair Blacking.

“I cannot tell you how awful it was, or how afraid I was,” he continued. “It is an illness I would not wish upon my worst enemy. When the quinine failed to work, I felt certain my hours were numbered. I could feel my time on this earth slipping away, minute by precious minute, but I was in such agony I almost didn’t care; my body and soul were worn-out from fighting the disease. You cannot even imagine unless you have gone through it yourself, and I pray you never do, my angel. Malaria is a disease that leaves a permanent mark upon a man. Though he may seem to recover, he never truly does, and is forever afterward vulnerable, and that is a way no man likes to feel, much less appear. It shows a strong man just how weak he really is. Some say it is God’s way of reminding a man that he isn’t invincible, some even call it an antidote to hubris, and I cannot but agree. It certainly shakes all the strength and pride right out of you. It was the arsenic and strychnine that saved me, and I take them still to give me strength. Without them . . . I feel weak, but they make me strong—”

“Oh, Jim, forgive me! I didn’t know! I didn’t mean . . .” I began to weep and burrowed against his chest. “I never want you to be anything but well, and when I saw all those medicines . . . I was so afraid you would die and leave me . . . that you would harm yourself.... After all, it is poison you’re taking!”

“We all take some poison or another.” Jim shrugged. “But my darling Bunny, you must trust me. I am your husband and I love you, and I would never do anything that would take me from your side. I have made myself an expert in these matters; I know just how much I can take. I am not so reckless as to gamble with my life, only my money.” He smiled and stroked his diamond horseshoe.

So I let myself be comforted. He was my husband; I loved and trusted him. And I was, as he said, young and inexperienced; I should not have presumed to judge when I myself knew nothing and had no personal experience of arsenic beyond the little hint in the face wash Dr. Greggs prescribed for me, and I had even been timid and afraid of that, my mind chock-full of murderous melodramas and poisoned rats.

What a silly little fool you are, Florie, I scolded myself as I relaxed in my husband’s loving arms and listened to my kitten purring contentedly against my breast. You behave more like the heroine of some silly blood and thunder melodrama than a real flesh and blood wife! You really must acquire some sense before you make a fool of yourself out where all the world can see; you know the Currant Jelly Set won’t be half so forgiving as Jim!