Days followed, then weeks; I had a yellow velvet purse which I had stuffed with spare coin, and the supply rapidly dwindled after I paid our landlord for a further month’s rent (with tears in my eyes for poor, unlucky Mr. Grizzlehurst).
Did I mourn him? After a fashion, and this baffled me; where Edwin’s demise had devastated me, and Mr. Munt’s was a pinprick, I found myself morose over murdering Hugh Grizzlehurst, as if I had smashed a spider which ought to have been shooed out the door. I felt an echo over him of the anguish I once suffered for letting my misbehaving kitten out of doors, and to this day, I sometimes daydream that he approaches me insisting, Cannivoristic habsolutely is a word, by Jesus, Miss Steele, a genuine word.
Meanwhile, I concluded: love is a terrible reason for committing murder. I adored Clarke because she was good, and that very goodness had stolen her from me.
Your badness stole her from you.
Sleepless in the hollow hours, I meditated on her love of the night sky, her wonder at vast, unknowable things; I obsessed over her facility at music, her mathematical precision tied to ethereal tones. I thought to write broadsides, but there was no one to hawk them; I thought to follow my former employer into the Thames.
Instead, I walked the streets, passing the sky-piercing spire of St. Mary the Virgin at a beggarly pace, hoping that I could garner solace outside a church if not inside; this did not work, nor did it assuage the hunger I studiously avoided thinking about. Instead of eating, I supped on gin and melancholy, and watched my shillings disappear.
The day before rent was next due, I struck out for more dismal pastures.
Quoting the fictional Mr. Rochester seems simplest: In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style; like any other spoony. I slept on mice-gnawed mattresses in public houses, wrote more broadsides, hawked my wares until I sounded like a saw against a board, and then understood what Mr. Grizzlehurst meant when he said, I’ve a hunnatural talent for ’awking—not the most dulcedious tones, mind, but I never wear out.
I did not thank my alma mater for propelling me into the world with expert skills in deportment, Cicero, and decorative needlework, for I could find no crying need for any of these disciplines along the docksides. In the depths of my melancholy, I fear it did not even occur to me to be equally grateful to Lowan Bridge for its tutelage in thieving, swallowing unpalatable food, and hiding from authority figures, though these proved more useful talents. When I could not sleep in public houses, I slept on the floors of the desperate and the greedy; when I could not hawk, I stole. Discovering that some men pay scant attention to waifs hovering near their pocketbooks, I relieved them of their banknotes. Often these men were cherry cheeked, laughing bright whiskey clouds, and to these men I apologise; others had eyes the colour of scaffolds, muddy and vicious, and to them I simply say thank you.
Through it all I loved Clarke, and wanted her back. When I was caught by a costermonger and he gave chase, clutching at my sleeve and tearing it, I wanted her back; when I took to sleeping rough, half-stupefied with gin and risking the law as I settled under gorse bushes, I wanted her back; when I began to be invisible, strangers’ glances sliding off my tangled hair and my veiny eyes, I wanted her back. When I was accosted by leering men, fighting each off with a fury that I think astonished them, I wanted her back.
I ought to have died, reader, but I did not.
? ? ?
’Ere, what in Christ’s name d’you think you’re doing?” Tilly laughed, slapping my forearm as I stole her pipe from her; I inhaled, dark fumes and buzzing light filling my lungs.
“Helping the day along, just as you are,” said I, passing it back.
We were at home before my crackling fire, sipping honey-coloured dreams. It was tobacco mixed with scant enough opium to be perfectly respectable, as neither Tilly nor I had any intention of overindulging—or not on that occasion, anyhow.
Reader, we find ourselves six years later, in December of 1851, when I was twenty-four years of age, and you doubtless wonder whether I ignored Nick the coachman’s admonishment and was an unfortunate, as we call those not always entirely unfortunate women who pleasure men for frocks and food.
I was not; I was friendly, however, with those who lodged in my building near Covent Garden. Tilly Cate was my favourite, because Tilly was fond of me, the daft sot. Tilly was big bosomed, with yards of wiry dark blond hair, her complexion porous but rosy; and she was motherly, which characteristic made perfect sense when one learnt she had a daughter named Kitty Cate (an appellation which the child, I am thankful to report, did not deserve in the slightest degree).