Well, that was quite unexpected.
‘Whatever for?’ he said, feeling dread at what he anticipated would be the most naive of answers.
What was it about London that turned the heads of silly women? What could a spinster of twenty-seven from a small village know of London and its insatiable appetites? How many girls had floated to the city on clouds of dreams only to fall into bad habits with bad people? The air was yellow, the stink of the river enough to make one choke, and beggars slept in heaps in the open like flea-ridden cats. More than once he had walked a street and not heard a word of his own language. In his own country!
It was certainly no place for an unmarried woman. These young girls, they thought it would be all hats and dresses. That they would go to the races every day, pick flowers in the park and be courted by a line of enamoured dukes waiting on bended knee. If only they knew of the broken-spirited, the hungry and the homeless, they’d never set a foot on the train.
‘I am to become a nurse, Mr Radcliffe, at the London Hospital, in Whitechapel. Really, I am grateful for the offer, but I can’t stay, not another minute. Not now they are both gone. You must understand.’
‘Well then, my dear, I wish you good luck in your endeavours. I was making assumptions, but I can see you are a strategist – no, a pioneer!’
She bid him farewell and left him sinking further into the mud. There was scant hope she would thrive. It was not the way of the city. In a village, a man could make a little money with hard work, be honest, fear God and heave himself up a rung or two. He could call himself a success. London was no place for ascension, despite all the promises. Oh, there was gold, all right: a fortune could be won and lost, or stolen, on the same day. But only the rich, the criminal or the criminally insane thrived in London.
1
1888
We married in St Jude’s, Whitechapel, a tiny dilapidated church that appeared to have sprouted like a fungus between two unconcerned buildings in Commercial Street. The vicar complained that the congregation only ventured inside on Sundays if it rained, and even then expected dole money, otherwise they’d be skipping and dipping down Petticoat Lane. I wore a blue travelling dress and a straw bonnet that Sister Park had insisted on decorating with a veil and paper orange blossoms, squinting at it by candlelight in the room we shared above the hospital. I told her to save her eyes, but she wouldn’t hear of it, being the sort that finds cheer in such pointless rituals.
Thomas’s best man was a fellow doctor, Dr Richard Lovett. I remembered him vaguely from the hospital, our paths not destined to cross, and only met him properly the day we were married. They seemed as close as two friends could be: laughing with each other, elbows into ribs and sly winks. They even resembled each other, both being dark and well groomed, tall and slender; they could have been brothers.
As soon as we were married, I told Matron Luckes, and she fired me on the spot, as I knew she would. A married woman could only devote herself to one profession, that of wife. Nursing was too demanding a career to accept anything other than complete devotion. There ended my career, the career I’d gambled my very existence on procuring, in the process rejecting everything my grandmother had wished for me. I had moved willingly to quite possibly the worst part of London and for two years had studied until I was near blind, to attain the coveted position of ward sister. Now I’d thrown that all away with both hands in a fit of cavalier delirium. Nevertheless, I couldn’t believe my luck: a plain old maid like me marrying so well, and to a young and beautiful man who adored me. It shouldn’t have happened. For a moment I really did believe in miracles.
I was giddy with joy and excited for our future. I felt rubber-stamped and approved by all things proper. Catapulted into another realm. Only weeks before, I had not known how I would carry on or what to do with myself, and now I had an entirely different existence and someone to make this future with. There was only one instance when I played my part badly. In the run-up to our marriage, when he suggested we honeymoon in Brighton, I hesitated. He asked if I’d ever been there before. I lied and said no. It was not a bad lie, but Brighton held memories for me and there would be no easy way to explain it.
My new husband took me to a hotel called the Royal Albion opposite Brighton Pier. It rained constantly, but I barely noticed. Summer had trouble starting in the year of 1888; it coughed and spluttered, trying to clear its lungs of a bitter winter. Only the occasional blast of light was able to break through the ashen clouds. We locked ourselves away in our room with its huge windows up to the ceiling. The murders hadn’t started yet. I was just another June bride on her honeymoon, struck with euphoria at my novel world, unaware the newlywed glow would tarnish.
At night, the wind would become trapped inside our hotel room and howl around the ceiling. We lay in bed and listened to its whistling with our limbs wrapped around each other, the skin of our bodies smooth and warm, like paper.
‘See how we fit, Chapman,’ he said. ‘We fit so perfectly together, don’t you think? As if we were chiselled from the same piece of rock. Made to match.’
And we did fit. I was happy. It was such sudden
