“Not at all,” Charles said. “He prowls the back slums and byways, looking for ladybirds. We’ll not even draw his eye.”
Mr. Merrick did not appear convinced, but said nothing more, and I assumed he’d resigned himself to it. Charles tipped his cap and departed, while I went and sought the matron to ask her permission. It seemed foolish of me, given her promise, but I didn’t like the thought of hiding from her anymore, and if she were to sack me, a part of me wanted to just be done with it.
I hadn’t been back to her office since the day I’d applied for a position. Though nothing about the room had changed, I’d come to better know the woman who occupied it, and I saw anew the objects she’d chosen for the shelves behind her desk. The delicate pen-and-ink drawing of a girl with a puppy, for example, struck me as incongruous with the woman who now looked up at me from a stack of papers.
“Yes, Miss Fallow?” she asked.
“Ma’am,” I said with a curtsy. “I was wondering if you might let me take a few hours off tomorrow night.”
“Mr. Merrick is doing quite well, I hear.” She looked back down and resumed writing, the scratch of her pen the only sound in the room.
The floor beneath me felt as if it swayed. “He is, ma’am.”
“Dr. Tilney tells me that is largely because of your care.”
“Dr. Tilney is very kind,” I said. “Miss Flemming and Miss Doyle did much more than me, ma’am.”
“Of course they did,” she said. “I trained them.”
“They’re a credit to you,” I said.
“Dr. Tilney also told me it would be unwise to send you away. He says I ought to give you a probation and make a nurse out of you.”
“I appreciate his confidence in me,” I said.
“I do not share it,” she said, “so far as any thought of nursing is concerned. But he has a point about your current position. You are by far the best maid we’ve yet had working for Mr. Merrick, and I doubt I shall easily replace you. Consequently, I’ve decided to let you stay on.”
I felt such relief then I nearly lost my composure. I wanted to laugh and cry and pull the matron into an embrace, but I kept my bearings and curtsied instead. “Th-thank you, ma’am. I’m very grateful to you.”
“Thank Dr. Tilney as well.”
“I will, ma’am.”
“As to your other request, you may have a few hours’ leave tomorrow evening. So long as Mr. Merrick’s health stays improved.”
I curtsied again. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Good day, Miss Fallow.”
I left her office and returned to Mr. Merrick, and as I removed my shawl and entered Mr. Merrick’s room, he leaned forward in his armchair and asked, “What did Matron Luckes say?”
“She gave me leave,” I said.
He slumped backward. “So you mean to go with Charles.”
“Mr. Merrick,” I said, and pulled a chair over to him and sat down. “What is it that so distresses you about my outing?”
“It is what I already said.”
I looked at him a bit askance. “Is it really?”
“Yes,” he said.
I still suspected he might’ve been feeling some jealousy. “Mr. Merrick, you’re my friend and there is nothing in this world could change that. You know that, don’t you?” I leaned over and kissed his cheek, without even thinking about it, and that set the left side of his bottom lip quivering. “So you see,” I continued, “there is nothing to fear in my going on an outing with Charles. Nothing at all. When I’m back, I’ll come tell you all about it.”
“Very well. You are my friend,” he said. “And nothing will change that.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” I said, and we passed the rest of the afternoon and evening pleasantly, and that night, when I left him to go to my own bed, it was the first time in weeks I didn’t need to rise in the ungodly hours for a haunting. I slept soundly until morning, awoke in my bed at the same time that Becky and Martha did in theirs, had breakfast with the other maids, and remembered what it had been like before the ghosts had come.
The rest of the day did not pass as easily, for each hour brought me closer to my outing with Charles, and thoughts of that whipped my stomach to a froth and wrecked my nerves. I felt like a policeman entering Flower and Dean, and I was doing so willingly. But unlike a policeman, I’d already been maimed for life. What more could be done to me?
After I’d taken care of Mr. Merrick’s dinner and settled him for the evening, I left him to change into the better of my two dresses.
Charles came for me at the East Mount gate before the sun had gone down, wearing a better coat and trousers than I’d seen on him before, but with the same bowler, his swollen eyes opened wide enough to see his whites again.
“Miss Fallow,” he said. “You look lovely this evening.”
“Thank you, Mr. Weaver,” I said.
“You’ve not called me Mr. Weaver for some time,” he said.
“That’s true,” I said, but could not remember when I’d made the switch. “So where are we going?”
“Thought we might go down to the Saturday market by Mile End Gate.”
“All right,” I said, pulling my shawl tightly about my face.
We rode the omnibus down the tramway several blocks, and as we drew near the market, the light from the multitude of naphtha lamps set the sky above it ablaze. At the same time I saw the light from the market, I heard the sound of it, the cacophony of competing musicians, performers, costers, and vendors.
The omnibus deposited us where the street had been given over entirely to a slow-moving flood of pedestrians, the muddy roadway lined two and three deep with wagons, carts, and stalls. Even when I’d lived on the streets and even when I’d had a little money to spend, I’d zealously avoided such places.
“Come on!” Charles said, raising his voice above the din to be heard, and took my arm in his. He then led us forward into the thick of it, right up to a potato man and his wheeled hot cart. “Philosopher Jack’s baked potatoes!” the vendor shouted, the bright red kingsman about his neck at odds with his blue-striped shirt.
“We’ll have two,” Charles said, and paid him.
Philosopher Jack reached through a cloud of steam into his cart and pulled out two potatoes wrapped in paper. “Salt?” he asked, and Charles and I nodded yes. As he seasoned our food, the coster shouted, “Two potatoes, two philosophies! First! Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses itself! Second! If the missus won’t eat what she’s cooked, best test it on the dog!” He handed us our potatoes, and we carried on through the market as we ate them.
My potato was dry and turned my mouth into a desert, and Charles’s must have done the same to him, for as soon as we came across a ginger beer seller, he bought us two bottles. Next to where we stood to drink them, something huge and black filled a cage nearby. I peered closer and realized it was a gorilla, and next to its cage stood an Aztec. I moved toward the beast for a better look but was stopped by a showman’s cane.
“A penny to approach,” he said, which Charles paid. “Put nothing you value between the bars.”
I’d never before seen a gorilla in the flesh. I could sense the strength in its long arms and thick neck, quite sure the beast could’ve easily broken out of its prison, and I was surprised that it smelled much as a man might if he’d not bathed in a month. The spectators next to me shouted at the animal and jeered and taunted it with leaps and whoops, but the beast barely regarded them with its small, forlorn black eyes, and I could see that the cage had thoroughly dashed whatever spirit it had once possessed.
Charles barked and shouted at it, waving his arms and laughing. Then he turned to me. “There’s a monster for you.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Look at it,” he said. “Imagine that thing roaring at you from the trees.”
“I pity it,” I said, and on we moved.
We passed acrobats and flame-eaters, a hairy man with a hairless dog that gre
atly amused Charles, and even a giant who claimed to stand seven feet and six inches tall. We next came to the quack doctors who stood by diagnosing every ailment and disease, and likewise had the cures for those afflictions conveniently for sale. From there we reached the more general merchandise, where the cheapjacks shouted their wares on all sides.
“Carpets from the Orient!” called a vendor, the intricate patterns in his rugs a maze to trap the eye.
“Secondhand boots and clothes!” called a man next to him. “Barely worn!”
“Toys and diversions!” shouted a woman with a few dolls and figures carved in wood, as well as a cage of sparrows to which tethers had been tied so that children might enjoy the frantic flapping of their wings until the birds were either set free or finally gave out and died.
“Paintings by the famous artists!” shouted a dealer. “Portraits! Landscapes! Here we have a painting of Christ healing the sick! And here’s a portrait of Benjamin Lincoln, President of the United States!”
Hatchets, jewelry, oilcloths, furniture, artificial flowers, lamps, and nearly anything else one could wish for we passed and could be purchased at the market.
“Would you like ice cream?” Charles asked.
“All right,” I said.
He bought us two, which were more ice than cream, but sweetened with honey, and then he led us over to a public house. “I need a beer,” Charles said. “You want one?”
“No, thank you,” I said, remembering his earlier drunkenness. “And I’d rather not go—”
“Come on.” He tugged on my arm, and in we went anyway, the establishment even more crowded than the street. I adjusted my shawl and waited for Charles to order his drink, which seemed to take him as long as it had taken us to traverse the market. He ended up with a gin, rather than a beer, and he downed it fast.
“Ready?” he asked, as though I’d had a drink with him and actually wanted to be there in that place.
“Of course I am,” I said.
He led us out onto the sidewalk, and we went by foot up the back side of the market, passing more pubs, as well as music halls, theaters, and other live entertainments. Signs in their windows proclaimed the melodrama, violence, comedy, and bawdries to be found within. We hadn’t said much to each other thus far, and I suspected we were both aware of the awkwardness hanging between us like damp clothes on the line.
“I’ve played on most of these stages,” Charles finally announced.
“Oh?”
“I have.”
“I see. And do—do you have a favorite?”
“Uh, the Pavilion, up closer to the hospital.”
“Do you play by yourself, or with others?” I knew the question to be trivial, and wondered if Charles felt as I did about this forced conversation.
“I play what’s wanted and earns me coin,” he said. “The musician’s life is at the whim of the audience.” He pointed up ahead. “There’s a fine place full of proper donas and rorty blokes. Let’s see who’s on stage tonight.”
I followed him to the music hall, where the doorkeeper greeted him by name. “Blimey, what happened to you?”
“Fell off a bus,” Charles said. “Good crowd tonight?”
“Aye, good crowd. Got your fiddle?”
“Not tonight,” Charles said, and nodded toward me.
The doorkeeper looked at me and tipped his head. “Welcome, miss.” Then he turned back to Charles and winked. “In you go, then.”
The music hall was quite expansive, with a wide stage at the far end of a long, terraced floor jammed full up with tables and chairs. The audience occupying them seemed a raucous mixture of the middle and lower classes. Overhead, second and third tiers of seats wrapped around us, looking out over the floor and the stage. The ornate columns and balconies had been carved with the shapes of nearly naked women, devils, satyrs, and serpents. Charles found us two seats off to one side, and a waiter soon approached our table.
“Would you like something to drink?” Charles asked me.
“Another ginger beer would be nice,” I said.
He nodded and said to the waiter, “A ginger beer for the lady, and I’ll smother a parrot.”
“Absinthe?” I asked, after the waiter had gone.
Charles smiled. “You think me a Bohemian?”
I was more worried about how hard the drink would hit him. “Do you think yourself a Bohemian?”
He shrugged, and a few moments later, the gaslight dimmed and the stage brightened. What followed was a series of singers, musicians, dancers, and acrobats. Some of the women wore scandalously few clothes, or wore fleshings that made it seem they wore no clothes at all, provoking much reaction from the men in the audience. Some of the performers I found entertaining, but others struck me as vulgar and unfit for the stage. Two men dueled with swords and produced a profusion of fake blood, some of which sprayed in the air.
Act after act took to the stage, but before long I lost interest in them and turned my attention to Charles, who laughed and clapped enthusiastically with each performance. I could see this was the world he loved and he was at home in it, while I definitely was not. I wasn’t enjoying the outing with him at all, actually, and didn’t expect that to change, for aside from our mutual friendship with Mr. Merrick, we obviously shared little in common. We’d proceeded that evening from one thing to the next, as though Charles were merely enacting the steps of some plan he’d worked out. In fact, he’d paid less attention to me and become less flirtatious as the night had passed, as though having obtained my company, he no longer desired it.
It flattered me to be fancied by him, if in fact I was, but that wasn’t a sufficient reason for me to fancy him in return, and I realized in that moment I didn’t and never would.
He continued to drink a great deal more after the green absinthe, both beer and gin, and before long showed the signs of obvious drunkenness, reminding me of the night he’d tricked me into the waxworks. It likewise disturbed me to think of being with another person so consumed by drink.
“Charles,” I said, leaning close to him.
“Yes, my fairest flower?”
I didn’t care for the double meaning of that, whether he intended it or not. “I’d like to go back to the hospital. The matron only gave me a few hours’ leave.”
He smirked at me. “She’ll forgive you being late.”
“Please, Charles. I must go. Now.”
“But—” He pouted at the edge of anger. “I’ve waited for this.”
“I’m sorry. I’m expected back.”
He leapt to his feet with his hands balled into fists and said, “Let’s be off, then!” and kicked a chair over as he stormed away from the table, drawing stares from the men and women around us.
I followed him timidly from the music hall, but once outside he immediately draped his arm over my shoulder as though he didn’t even remember his outburst from the moment previous, which set a squirm loose in my neck.
“Off to sail the storm of heaves?” the doorkeeper asked, and I could hear the leer in his voice.
“If the lady be willing!” Charles replied, and I blanched, wondering if bedding me had been the whole reason for this orchestrated outing from the start.
I wriggled out from under his heavy arm and stepped away. “The lady is not willing,” I said. “You’ve had too much to drink, Charles. I’ll walk myself back.” With that, I turned and marched away from him for the second time, the sound of the doorkeeper’s laughter following me.
Crowded though the streets were, I knew I wasn’t safe walking alone, so I hurried as fast as I could up Whitechapel Road, ignoring the bustle I made my way through. I occasionally glanced back over my shoulder to see if Charles was following me but saw no sign of him, and I assumed that meant he’d been too drunk either to give chase or to care. The walk felt less dangerous in the light of the street’s gas lamps, but I passed numerous alleys and back lanes that fell away from the road into endless pitch. If Leather Apron were lurking anywher
e, it would be in one of those dark places.
At last I came to East Mount Street, but as I made to turn down it, I heard someone call my name, and then Charles rushed half stumbling from the crowd toward me.
“Evelyn, stop! I thought you wanted to see where I live!”
“Go home, Charles,” I said, and continued on my way down the side street toward the hospital gate, but alone in the shadows he caught up with me and seized my arm in a painful grip.
“Evelyn—”
“Let go!” I shouted. “You’re hurting me!”
“What’s your game?” he said, his words a slurry, his breath strong enough to carry coal. “You toyed with me!”
I yanked my arm free of his hand. “I have not toyed with you.”
“After all I’ve done,” he said. “My violin is gone! My … my … Can’t you see how hard I’ve been trying to win you over?” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You … you think you’re too good for me? Is that it? You?”
“Not at all, Charles.”
“Well you’re not!” he said. “I’m too good for you. Just have a look at your face.” The sneer he gave made me feel as though I wore no shawl. “Just look at you! Who could fancy you? I never fancied you; I just told you that so you’d fancy me. You’ve got nice round bubbies and a pretty back avenue, but you’d have to wear a sack on your head for me to bed you.”
Each of his words lashed, and each tore right through whatever feeble confidence I’d managed to gather about myself, leaving me without protection or any words to throw back at him. I had thought I couldn’t be maimed again, but it turned out I could. My legs weakened beneath me, and I found it hard to breathe. I turned toward the gate, desperate to get away.
“Don’t you turn your back on me!” he said, his voice a hiss, and he grabbed me from behind.
“Let go!” I shouted again, but he spun me around and drove me up against the wall, smothering my mouth with his hand, and for a horrifying moment I wondered if he was Leather Apron.
He came in close enough for his lips to graze my ear and whispered, “I’m owed …” Then he grabbed my breast and squeezed it hard, bringing tears of pain to my eyes, and then his hand slid down my body, over my belly, and snatched at my skirts, trying to gather them up.