A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper (5 page)

“It chokes me in my sleep. I become breathless even when walking a short way. It’s not as harmful and pays better than many other kinds of piece work. I’m fortunate to have it, and still we barely get by.”

“Can you do the work outside?”

“The down will blow away on the slightest breeze.”

“Hmm…my hatter charged me next to nothing to add the fur lining,” Mr. Shaw said, seemingly to himself.

“We need the income, but the work makes me miserable.”

He bowed his head for a moment, then said sadly, “You ought to go to school instead of spending your young life working.”

Polly smiled. “Yes, I wished for that. Without my mother…”

She knew she didn’t have to continue. He had a sympathetic smile. He was a good man, after all. He meant her no real harm.

“So many have so little,” he said. “You don’t deserve to grow up like that, and I’m certain that when I tell your father about this, it will not help, yet as Churchwarden, I have a duty.”

Polly had to think fast. She had to give him what he wanted; a contrite young woman who trusted God to mete out just punishment.

“Pray with me,” she said. Polly quickly took to her knees on the polished hardwood floor.

Mr. Shaw hesitated only a moment before joining her. He cleared his throat before beginning. “When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed,” he said, “and…um…doeth that which is right, he shall save his soul….”

Polly recognized his words as the opening to the Order for the Evening Prayer, something from Ezekiel, if she remembered correctly. He didn’t recite the words perfectly. She helped him with the next line, from Psalms, she thought. “I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.…”

Polly opened one eye and glanced at him, and found him glancing back. He looked a bit sheepish, perhaps because a young sinner had shown him up. As a lay official of the Church, Mr. Shaw wasn’t required to lead prayer. He nodded in approval, clearly relieved that she’d carried on. Polly closed her eyes as she continued. Her memory of the corporate prayer gave out, and she struggled to fill the gap with an individual expression. “O Lord, please help me to be satisfied as I toil at home. Make my fingers stronger so they don’t ache so much after a long day of work. Help me find a husband to provide me with a good life. Please keep illness away. Make Papa a happier man so he should treat me better than he has done.”

Polly thought she did well. She opened one eye to see Mr. Shaw’s reaction. Again, he glanced at her. He had a troubled look.

“Amen,” Polly concluded uneasily.

“Amen,” Mr. Shaw said, then cleared his throat. “Is that the manner in which you pray daily?”

“Yes,” she said, and he frowned.

Although Polly did believe in prayer, she didn’t pray daily. If she didn’t get what she wanted, she presumed that God could only hear and respond to so much, and that others more worthy had taken his attention. She and her family went to church rarely. They craved a day of rest from work, and Sunday was usually that day.

“Your prayers are all for you,” Mr. Shaw said.

Polly didn’t understand why he said that. She tilted her head questioningly.

“You prayed for your fingers to be stronger, for a husband to make you happier, and to be protected from illness. You only asked for your father to be happier so that he should treat you better. Do you always pray only for your own betterment?”

Polly understood, and saw the truth in what he said. She
was
selfish. Her father had been right, yet the problem was much worse than he’d made out. Uncomfortable with the revelation, she was dumbstruck. The intoxication of the gin had fled, and she felt suddenly out of control.

Mr. Shaw clearly saw her distress. He placed a warm hand on her shoulder. “I shouldn’t think our Lord responds to selfish prayers,” he said quietly.

Polly, lost in thoughts of her past efforts at prayer, staggered to her feet and sat back down in the chair. She thought about when her mother was dying. Her prayers of that time were the first she remembered offering on her own. “Please, O Lord, don’t let her die and leave me motherless.” She had not been praying for her mother, but for herself.

Polly looked up at Mr. Shaw, and felt naked before him. She had revealed an ugly flaw in her character to an official of the Church. Yet the shame of that notion paled in an instant, replaced with a deep mortification as she realized she’d stood before God her entire life with such a deficiency.

A stinging tear formed in Polly’s eye.

No wonder she had such a terrible life. God would not look upon her favorably, had perhaps never smiled upon Polly since her birth. No wonder a demon had been sent to torment her several years earlier.

“I pray only for others,” Mr. Shaw said, “never for myself.”

Polly half-heard him. How had she come to such a sad state? Was there no way out of misery, then? She sobbed briefly before controlling her voice to ask, “Is there no time when I can pray for myself?”

He touched her cheek and smiled sadly. “Only in the most dire of circumstances. In a situation in which there is imminent danger and there is no time to find help, I should think. I believe He will respond only when we are imperiled and have no other to turn to.”

Polly wept openly for a time, unashamed to do so before the Churchwarden.

He shifted from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable with her reaction. “Pray for your father, and when he is lifted up so you shall be,” he said.

As she became calm, he too settled down. “Here is a penitent prayer that helps me,” he said. Mr. Shaw pulled a card from an inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to Polly. “Say it with me.”

She read aloud from the card as he recited the prayer:

“Almighty God, of great goodness,

“I confess to you with my whole heart

“my failure to uphold your commandments,

“my wrong-doing, my unworthy thoughts and words,

“the harm I have done others,

“and the acts of kindness and proper deeds left undone.

“O God, forgive me, for I have sinned against you;

“and raise me up again;

“through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“Amen.”

“Keep the card and ask for forgiveness for your selfish ways often,” Mr. Shaw said, “and He will smile upon you.”

Polly decided he spoke wisely. He stepped back. She rose unsteadily to her feet and slipped the card into a pocket of her skirt.

“I shall not tell your father about what happened here today, if you will learn to pray for others, and promise not to drink again until you’re older.”

Polly wiped away her tears and nodded. She looked Mr. Shaw in the eyes. He
was
a good man.

“Yes, I shall—I’ll learn how to pray for others,” she said. “I can but try.”

Mr. Shaw did not seem to notice her omission of the promise not to drink. He moved to the door and opened it for her.

She gave him a grateful smile, then left the office to make her way home.

* * *

After her conversation with Mr. Martin Shaw, Churchwarden, Polly ceased to pray for herself. Instead, she prayed for the well-being of her friends and family, most fervently for her Papa. God did not choose to lift him up, and, consequently, her work load remained the same. Still, she persevered in her prayers, usually following them with the penitent one from the card Mr. Shaw had given her.

When bored, she scolded herself for being selfish.

Please, O Lord help others who labor to find their work fulfilling.

When she had coughing fits, sore hands, and an aching back from sitting for hours hunched over her work, she did her best to ignore the discomfort.

Merciful God, ease the suffering of those who become ill from their labors.

5

Risk

In the early evening of a day in May of 1862, Polly heard her father coming up the stairs of the lodging house to their second floor room. She opened the door for him. He carried something box-shaped, wrapped in a blue woolen blanket, the burden evidently heavy.

“I left my barrow in the lane in front.” He groaned as he set the box down beside his bed. “I’ll fetch it to the court and be right back. Leave that alone.” Papa gestured toward the odd package.

“What does it—”

“Nothing that concerns you.” He turned and left.

While Polly spooned potatoes into a bowl in preparation for supper, Eddie came in. Curious about the package, he began tugging at the blanket.

“Leave it be,” Polly told him. “Papa doesn’t want it disturbed.”

By the time she put her spoon down, Eddie had got the blanket off. Seeing the iron box underneath, a thing held together with rivets and metal straps, she forgot about Papa’s instruction. A heavy padlock with three keyholes was fitted through a hasp that held the straps in place and the lid of the box closed.

“It’s a lockbox,” Eddie said. “No, a strongbox.”

They heard their father hurrying up the stairs, and Eddie tried to cover the heavy chest up with the blanket again. He had not succeeded before Papa entered the room.

“Get away from that.” He turned and glared at Polly. “What did I tell you?”

“I told Eddie what you said.”

Papa grumbled, and shoved the box under the bed.

They ate their supper of potatoes and a bit of cold chicken Eddie had brought home with him. Then Polly cleared the table.

“Go out until bedtime,” Papa said, “the both of you. Don’t return until nine o’clock.”

He’d never asked for such a thing before. Polly thought the request a curious thing. Eddie had a confused look. They gazed at their father silently for a moment.

“Go!” he said.

Polly knew better than to question their father when he was in such a commanding mood. She and her brother filed out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the lodging house into the street.

Polly looked silently to Eddie for answers.

“When certain men come to talk to him at the barrow, he sends me away. Papa doesn’t want me to know what they’re saying, I think. I’ve watched from a distance.”

Intrigued and worried, Polly asked, “Who are they?”

Eddie shrugged. “A tall fellow with black hair and mutton chops. Another with no hair on his head, tattoos instead, but he’s hiding them under a hat. He’s a big, strong one with a mean look. I think they’re family people.”

“Criminals?”

Eddie nodded.

The worry had turned to fear, with a chill feeling in her gut. “What do they want?”

He shrugged again. “They look like they’re threatening him and he tries to calm them. It happened again at the end of the day. That’s why I weren’t with him when he come home.”

“What more?” Although she asked for it, Polly wasn’t certain she wanted to hear more.

“There’s lots of trouble along Fleet Street, especially near Farringdon Circus, lots of family people looking for advantage. Most of it comes to nothing. Papa’s good with his fists—I’ve seen him defend the barrow and our purse more than once. Try not to worry.”

“What about the box?”

“Something they want opened. As long as the Miltonians—”

“The police?” She had visions of her father arrested, being imprisoned, she and Eddie cast into the streets to fend for themselves.

“Yeah, if they don’t catch wind of it, Papa will be all right.”

Polly covered her eyes so her brother wouldn’t see how upset she’d become.

Eddie took her hands away from her face and looked her in the eye. “You are home
too
much.”

She nodded vigorously and grimaced to keep from tearing up.

“A pity,” he said, “but I suppose there’s nothing for it.”

Polly chose to believe he was being sweet to her in his own way. As he turned and walked off, she looked to take courage from his words and found none to be had.

Trying to keep her fears at bay, she wandered up and down the darkened lane until she heard church bells striking the nine o’clock hour.

Polly returned to her family’s room to find that Papa had hung up the blue wool blanket that had been wrapped around the strongbox across one corner of the room as a curtain.

“Don’t lift the blanket,” he said sternly.

“Yes, Papa.”

She heard him working on something metal—the lock of the strongbox, she presumed—with metal tools. The light of a lamp behind the blanket reflected off the cracked plaster of the ceiling. By that dim illumination, Polly dressed in her nightclothes and got in bed. She lay awake, unable to sleep for all her worry, listening to the sounds of her father’s work.

Eddie came in and received the same warning that she had from Papa. Polly heard him move about for a time, and eventually get into bed.

Then a curious thought occurred to her:
Something exciting has happened. It might turn out bad for all of us, especially Papa, but it isn’t dull.
Something
is at risk.