Kate of All or Nothing
‘What’s your name?’ the man at the desk asked the swaying woman.
She was like a badly stuffed scarecrow, held up between two officers. PC Robinson had struggled to get her to her feet. She’d already slipped through his arms once, landed in a heap on the pavement and burst out laughing. He’d had to enlist the help of PC Simmons and they’d half dragged her back to Bishopsgate Police Station.
A haggard old sparrow, the woman must have been in her forties. She was skinny, and her face had a misshapen slant to it, as if one too many beatings had shifted the bone structure. The shadows under her eyes were dark, but her features were small and fair. She’d probably been pretty once. A shame, really, what these women did to themselves through drink and bad choices, thought the teetotal PC Robinson.
‘I said, what’s your name?’ the man asked again, a little louder.
This time it looked like the woman had at least tried to focus on him. She bent her wobbling head forward, fixed him with an intense stare and narrowed her eyes as if trying to make them work. Either that or she was going to be sick.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
PC Simmons and PC Robinson rolled their eyes.
‘Did no one out there know who she is? Do either of you recognise her?’
‘No one said a word, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t know her. I don’t recognise her. There’s thousands of them – we can’t remember them all. They all look the same,’ said PC Robinson.
‘Can we put her in the cells, she ain’t ’arf kicking up,’ said PC Simmons.
‘Suit yourself. Go on then.’
*
The slight woman hiccupped and giggled her way along the echoing passageway. Bishopsgate Police Station wasn’t that busy tonight. Just a few drunks, all men, taking up the other cells.
Of course she knew her own name! Her name was Catherine Eddowes. Kate for short. Other names came and went, like the men they were attached to, or the reasons they were needed. Kate had lived a life of contradictions, of highs and lows, but never in the middle. Consistency had not been a gift bestowed on Kate, same as money, same as work and love. It had either been a barren land of want or flooding over with plenty, but never in between; never steady.
She was already feeling a little more sober, but the prospect of a kip in a nice, warm, dry cell didn’t seem such a bad way to spend a few hours. She wasn’t sure what had happened earlier that had made her so drunk. She was tired – she’d had to spend the night before in a shed on Thrawl Street. Truth was, she slept better under the stars, but not at the moment, not with the way they’d all been banging on about the murderer. That had got into her head.
She lay down on her back in the cell and was soon snoring. In a couple of hours she’d get fidgety anyway. Being hemmed in by solid walls always made her feel bad. It brought back memories, the worst kind of memories, from her time at the tinworks in Black Country hell, where the vats of acid had made her eyes burn and her throat itch. Even now, she could still hear the clank and grind of the chain makers, still felt herself choking on the poisonous smoke that billowed out of the brickmakers’ chimneys, still remembered the hammering as the men dragged the sheets of steel across the ground, the continuous churn of the pit wheels. No question she’d been right to take her chances in the freezing London outdoors, with its freedom and its music and its dancing. Anything was preferable to spending one more night trapped in the belly of the empire’s hell pit, however warm. No thank you.
*
At ten, Mr Hull, the gaoler of Bishopsgate, had checked on ‘Mrs Nothing’ and seen her flat on her back, her feet pointing straight up to the ceiling, snoring like a pig. He glanced through the door flap at regular intervals until, much later, he heard her singing to herself in her cell. She didn’t have a bad voice, he was surprised to note. He consulted the clock: it was quarter past midnight.
He pulled the hatch down and peered at Kate, who was now sitting up with her back to the wall, her legs dangling to the floor, feet swinging.
‘Are you going to let me out yet?’ she asked, rubbing her eyes. The gesture made her seem like a little girl, though the cracks in her face said differently.
‘I’ll let you out when you are capable of taking care of yourself,’ said Mr Hull.
‘I promise I’m capable of taking care of myself now,’ she said in a girlish voice.
He snapped the hatch shut. He would give it another fifteen minutes or so and then speak to Byfield on the desk.
When eventually she was led out of the cell to the station office to be discharged, she asked Mr Hull what the time was.
‘Too late for you
