I was indeed foreign. I came from the invisible class, the non-existent, and she couldn’t even see it when presented to her on a platter.
In better weather we could have made use of the garden, but it rained all day, so we were trapped inside, hemmed in like poor people. Gentlemen bumped shoulders with each other, and the beads on ladies’ dresses caught as they passed. The rain beat like stones against the windows and a string quartet gallantly played something even I knew was Beethoven. The chaotic rhythm on the glass, the furious way the musicians attacked their instruments, and the continual jostling and bumping as if we were sheep queuing at an abattoir made me hot and nauseous. I tried to concentrate on the conversation of the group next to me and take deep breaths.
A grey-whiskered man was holding court, attended to by a cluster of brightly dressed elderly ladies and gentlemen who had all been leached of the colour of youth: white skin, milky eyes and silver hair. The man spoke his opinions with great confidence, as if they were indisputable facts. ‘The people who inhabit that part of London,’ he declared, ‘acquire a taste for thieving and violence when still in their mothers’ arms. You cannot remove criminality any more than you can extract bad breeding from a dog.’
His audience nodded in agreement.
‘Well, they are different, are they not? You only have to look at them. They are short and have terrible complexions. They are simply not well bred,’ said a woman who appeared to be missing a chin, her lower jaw an apathetic bridge to her neck. All those generations of good breeding had bred out the ability to fold a tablecloth, but then if you never had to fold your own, what use was a chin?
The better classes tended to talk of money as if there was a finite amount of it, as if it were a cake. They had their slice and didn’t want to part with it. But they kept adding extra slices to their plate, using their first portion to justify why they were entitled to a second, and a third. Before long, the original cake was twice the size – a celebration cake! what a triumph to be British! – and yet the rest of us were still waiting obediently for a single piece.
I wanted to interrupt, inform them that gentlefolk were only taller because they were better fed, that bad skin could be fixed with good food, fresh air and decent hygiene. I wanted to talk to them about the children who left the hospital in better condition than when they were admitted but who would certainly get sick and malnourished again, their parents being too poor to cover the rent and feed them. But I didn’t. I was a coward. I disliked myself. I had been disgusted by the patients and happy to marry upwards myself, yet here I was, piously offended by the wealthy and their assumptions that their status was due to their innate superiority and nothing at all to do with luck, or greed, or theft. All this as I drank wine and ate creamed sweetbreads and cold boned turkey, served to me by a waiter who heard everything and kept his eyes nailed to the floor.
The group went on to discuss the murder of Martha Tabram.
‘Have you heard, my dears, that there were three cases of infanticide and another murder in Whitechapel this week alone!’
‘Indeed. But the latter was a straightforward case, was it not? The man beat his wife to death with his fists, I understand. Nothing like as dramatic as that poor unfortunate found cut to pieces in a stairwell.’
The ladies gasped into their silk handkerchiefs and leaned more closely into the conversation. They appeared thrilled, overtaken with a macabre fervour.
There followed theatrical descriptions of the ‘howling wilderness’ of the East End and the savages that lived in its criminal corners. How the subversive Jews made blood sacrifices and were conspiring to drive down wages and undercut English tradesmen.
‘There are far too many foreigners coming in. It’s like a flood!’ a portly gentleman opined. ‘They will overrun us all.’
‘And the socialists will drag us into the middle of Trafalgar Square and guillotine us. Let us not forget the poor French.’
‘And the whores! What shall we do with all the whores? Why can they not keep their skirts down? Those women are not women at all. They infect married men and send diseases into good, middle-class homes. Someone should stop them. No wonder they end up murdered and disembowelled in stairwells. Why do they not stay at home?’
My stays felt as if they were shrinking, pulling tighter and tighter, and I thought my ribs would crack. The press of the room was preventing me from taking my breaths deep down into the bottom of my lungs. I needed air. I was scared I would have another experience like I had when Emma Smith was brought in. There was a thunderstorm in my chest. I had to get out. I pushed through the crowds, apologising and trying not to look at the disgruntled faces as I shoved past them. I put a hand on the French doors, and the expressionless waiter approached.
‘Madam, it’s raining.’
‘I know,’ I said, and pushed open the doors and ran out into the cold blue rain. The chill shocked my skin and calmed me down.
I must have stood there one, maybe two minutes when Thomas called out.
‘Susannah! What are you doing? Get back in here at once.’
He was in the doorway, the waiter beside him. One angry face, one bemused. My hair stuck to my cheeks, dripping wet. Pallid faces stared back at me as if I had gone mad.
In the cab on the way home, Thomas lost no time telling me how humiliated he was.
‘I told a few choice people who
