A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper (11 page)

“I understand, but where?” Polly didn’t like the impatience in her own voice. “If someone were to come home unexpectedly, we’d be caught out.”

“My husband will not come home on the days of the auctions,” Judith said evenly. “He works long hours and the distance is too great. It matters little if no one is at my home. I’m the one who can move about. We ought to always have the children at your lodging.”

Polly thought about that. The woman sounded somehow too reasonable, too confident. Didn’t she realize they embarked upon a potentially perilous enterprise?

“We’d need explanations—” Polly began in a tone that sounded as if she argued against going forward with the plan. She stopped and softened her voice before continuing. “Explanations for your child, or you and your child, to be there, if my father or husband were to come home.”

“We’ll find a way,” Judith said calmly. She’d clearly had a drink and couldn’t be bothered with worries.

Polly needed the same outlook. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said, and went to the publican to fetch a glass of stout. Polly thought through her problem as she waited impatiently for the barkeep to carefully draw her drink. When she’d returned to the table and sat, she said, “If you are seen to be a friend, I should easily say that I took charge of your child because you arrived in need of a childminder so you could run an errand.”

“That’s right,” Judith said. “The same might be true if I were discovered at your lodging with all three children, but we’d lay it a bit different. We should say as I stopped by unexpectedly and you took the opportunity to go out for something needed while I stayed to watch the children. That’s what mothers do for one another, after all.”

“If we told them we did it weekly—” Polly began.

Judith cut her off. “No, we don’t want to give a hint of a plan if we don’t have to. No sense allowing them to know how often you’re out or they should wonder what you’re doing with all the free time.”

Polly worried about her capacity to keep lies straight. “I’d need to have something from market as were indeed needed.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll sort it out,” Judith said, reaching for Polly’s hand. “What day is best for you to be out, Mondays or Fridays?”

“Mondays,” Polly said, since her father still came home early on some Fridays.

“You can start by taking me home with you today and introducing me to your family. We must make certain they know we’re friends.”

Polly wondered briefly if Judith truly was her friend.

“My father is with the boys so I could go to market,” she said.

“Finish your stout and then we’ll both go.”

Polly tried to put away her trepidations about Judith and the plan. The stout helped a bit.

Is the feeling I get from the drinking worth all this?
She’d experienced fear when severely drunk in the past, but when lightly intoxicated, she enjoyed a euphoric feeling of separation from her troubles.

Polly rose to her feet. “I’ll have another stout to quiet my concerns.”

Judith took her hand. “You must learn to have just enough,” she said, taking a small sip of her bitter as if demonstrating, “and quit in time to lose the touch and the smell before you rejoin your family.”

Polly sat back down, imagining herself capable of what her friend suggested. She had intended to plan with Judith a
greater adventure,
a time of deeper drunkenness for which the three shillings earned from Mrs. Conway would be necessary. What Judith suggested was smarter, safer, and more responsible. Polly had her children to think about, after all.

She finished her stout and rose with Judith to exit the pub and head for the market.

A
greater adventure
would have to wait. How long before Polly’s current responsibilities would allow for such a lark, she didn’t know. She didn’t have to decide right away. Although she had trepidations about her plans with Judith, Polly found the risk exciting.

11

Mistrust

On the day Polly took Judith home with her, Bill had come home early and Papa had left the children with their father and gone out. Polly introduced Judith to Bill as her friend, then didn’t think much about not having the opportunity to introduce her to Papa.

On a Monday in the summer of 1869, Polly arrived home to find her father with John, Percy, Judith, and the woman’s infant girl, Dorrie.

“I know all the women in the neighborhood. I don’t know who this is, staying here with your boys while you’re out,” he said.

Sitting at the table in Papa’s room, holding her infant, Judith remained silent.

“Papa, Judith is my friend,” Polly said. Papa might have let the matter go with that, but she knew instantly that her face betrayed her unease, and that he held suspicions about her motives.

“She’s pleasant enough,” he said, “and her girl is no trouble at all. I find it curious, though, that you haven’t spoken to me of her. I saw this woman leaving our abode last Friday, just as I turned into the lane on my way home. She didn’t know me, and walked by, carrying her babe, without a word. When I came into our rooms, straight away you asked for my help with John while you put a fresh nappy on Percy, and I forgot about the woman until later. When I did remember her, I thought it odd you never spoke of her. I should think as lonely as it must be for you here, alone so much of the time, you would mention a visitor.”

Caught off guard and dumbstruck, Polly laughed hesitantly. To cover her awkward response, she walked to Papa’s rickety old bed and lifted Percy. John hid behind Polly’s skirts, perhaps a bit frightened to hear the serious tone in his grandfather’s voice.

“And now that you’ve heard my words,” Papa said, “you’re as gammy as I’ve ever known you to be.”

“I do not deceive!” she said too forcefully.

Papa had acted the same way toward Polly on occasion when she was a child, any time he thought she hid something. His aggressive questioning had always rattled her. Before she’d figure out his tactic, he’d got a few confessions out of her.

Not this time,
she decided. “When did women helping each other with the raising of their children become such a curiosity? Judith were our neighbor in Scoresby Street. I’ve seen her at market and we’ve made an agreement to help each other on Mondays.”

She had forgotten to pretend she’d merely taken advantage of Judith’s spontaneous visit. His tactic had spooked her again and he’d got some of the truth.

“And does she live there still?”

“Yes,” Polly answered quickly, then realized she’d given away more of the truth when she saw Judith shaking her head. Thankfully, Papa didn’t see the woman’s silent communication.

He scoffed. “Plenty of women in the neighborhood watch your children for the hour or two needed to go to the grocer, yet you’re telling me you have a weekly arrangement with a woman who must travel nearly two miles to get here. Do you then return the favor, going to her?”

Polly knew that suggesting she’d take both her children such a distance for a childminder wasn’t believable. “We haven’t worked that out.”

“Strange that you haven’t mentioned any of this to me before. I shouldn’t be surprised to find Bill knows nothing about it either.”

When Polly didn’t respond with anything more than a glare, he stepped forward to smell her breath.

“Pickled whelks,” she said. She’d eaten the sea snails at market to help cover the smell of the stout she drank. Also a product of fermentation, the vinegar used in pickling did wonders to hide the smell of alcohol.

“What did you get at market?” he asked.

“Toke,” she said flatly, pulling a loaf of bread from her basket.

“Hmph,” Papa grumbled as if he knew his investigation had been thwarted. As he stepped back a loud squeak came from the floorboards and John hugged his mother tightly.

Polly resented Papa’s high and mighty manner. She had a mind to bring up his crime involving the strongbox. Although she still knew little about it, he might be embarrassed if she asked him to explain what happened. Fear of his reaction kept her from saying anything.

Polly turned to Judith. “Thank you for looking after my boys. I’m sorry you had to see us at our worst.” She walked out of Papa’s room, then turned to look back, waiting for Judith to follow.

“Our worst?” her father said. When nobody responded, he shook his head.

Judith was in no hurry. She’d remained calm throughout the conversation.

Papa looked at her and said, “Out.”

Judith rose from the table and joined Polly. Papa shut the ill-fitting door between the two rooms.

Polly immediately sagged, and Judith took her roughly by the arm to steady her.

John let go and sat on the floor. He gathered up a wooden doll Papa had made him, and began striking the floor with its head and humming a tune.

Polly and Judith walked out the front door and along Trafalgar Street.

“Are you flat?” Judith asked. She didn’t give Polly time to answer. “You must do better. You might just as well have told him all our plans.”

Polly winced. She knew she’d pled innocence poorly. The woman’s belittling didn’t help. “I’ll do better next time,” she said curtly.

“Let’s hope so. Until Friday, then.”

Polly watched Judith, carrying her Dorrie, move along the gray lane between the rows of red brick houses toward South Street. Much like the houses along the road, which appeared alike on the outside, she and Judith seemed much the same. Also like the houses, what could be found on the inside was quite different. The complexity of their deception didn’t seem to trouble Judith. Polly wondered what made the difference. She also wondered again if Judith considered herself a friend or if the woman merely used her.

As Polly made her way back to her room, the gray dustmen, in their buckled down clothes and fantail hats, drove by in the same direction. She usually found the way they set their “dust ho” song to the rhythm of the clomp of their horse’s hooves clever and amusing. At present, though, above all else, she heard the grating of the iron-rimmed cart wheels cutting through the roadway mire to the paving stones beneath. The whole seemed an ugly tune to which the flies following the conveyance danced. Polly watched clods of horse manure tumble over the high sides of the overburdened cart bed and land in the road. Somehow, the sight, sound, and stench reflected how she felt.

12

With Time

For over a year, in the evening of each Monday, Polly’s father got in close enough to smell her breath. “You like the pickled whelks, don’t you?” he’d said to her more than once, a smirk on his face.

She tried not to react.

Although unhappy to find herself pregnant again, Polly’s vexation turned to delight when the child she bore in 1870 was female. She named the girl Alice. The last two months of her pregnancy, Polly and Judith ceased to take their Mondays and Fridays for drinking. They agreed to resume the schedule again two months following the child’s birth.

The time off from drinking didn’t go well for Polly. With three children, the housekeeping, and the printing, she had more work than ever, and desperately sought a break from it. One month after Alice’s birth, Polly couldn’t wait any longer, and wrote to Judith, asking her to come as soon as possible. Shortly thereafter, the two women returned to their schedule.

Having gone without drink for a time, Polly had a frightening desire to cut herself loose from constraints and become truly sodden, yet she succeeded in controlling her drinking enough during her Monday outings to avoid exposing her indulgence.

* * *

One Monday afternoon at the Compass Rose, Polly saw the handsome fellow named Tom enter and speak to the publican. Assuming that once he’d fetched a drink for himself, he’d walk toward the corner where she’d seen him sit before, she planned to invite him to join her.

She watched him receive a bottle of gin from the publican, then turn and exit the pub without ever having looked in her direction. Polly wanted to get up and go after him, but knew she’d feel foolish. What did she have to say to the fellow? He probably wouldn’t remember her.

Twice more in the next couple of years, she saw Tom. Each time, she longed to approach him, to get to know him, to touch him, and with each encounter, the idea seemed more ridiculous. On the occasions she found a moment of solitude in which to pleasure herself, the desire came from thinking of Tom, his muscular form, his graceful, sure movements, the slight sadness in his thoughtful eyes.

* * *

In the spring of 1871, Papa ceased to smell Polly’s breath in the evening. “So long as you don’t eat too many of those ‘whelks,’” he said, “I have no quarrel with you.”

Polly decided that he meant he accepted her drinking if she didn’t take the habit too far.

Because he hadn’t said anything about his suspicions to her husband, Bill remained ignorant of Papa’s misgivings about his daughter.

Despite the increased time and care Polly gave to her children, she continued to earn an income from printing. Some relief came in 1872 when John started attending Saint Mary Magdalen National Infants School. At six years of age, he enjoyed making his way to and from school, walking with friends, though he did not like the “Infants” designation of his school.