A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper (9 page)

From her new vantage point, she’d lost sight of Tom. Craning her neck to get a better view, she saw the man approaching with a glass.

No, not Tom—the publican. He set the glass on the table in front of her. “Tom gives you this,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, and the publican turned back.

The handsome man had slipped away from her again. Polly slumped in her seat and let out a deep breath. Disappointed, she sat and sipped her stout. The brew lay flat on her palate and felt like warm dishwater in her gut.

When she got home, her father was too stopped-up in the head to smell the drink on her. The time was early enough that the smell would have time to dissipate before Bill got home.

Both men complained about the stale bread served with supper, but, as she’d predicted, neither of them knew about the poor quality of the ingredients with which she’d made the stew.

* * *

Polly’s second adventure of 1866 occurred four months later. Papa had twisted his ankle and couldn’t stand all day, laboring at the work bench that unfolded from his barrow. Polly started out to repeat the process she’d gone through before. Instead she bought a glass of gin at the Compass Rose. The liquid smelled like paraffin, but she swallowed the drink anyway and became so stumbling drunk, she had difficulty making her way home.

Papa recognized her condition immediately when she arrived. “You’re in a shameful state,” he said. “Bill won’t have this.”

With her father’s immediate response, she knew she faced serious trouble. The realization brought fear and nausea. Polly grabbed the basin from the bedside table and vomited hot and bitter into it.

“Well,” Papa said, “that’s a start.”

Polly sat on the edge of her bed and moaned, trying to get the taste out of her mouth, yet unwilling to get up for water.

“Hush, or you’ll wake the boy.” Papa stared at her and shook his head. “I knew you were a drunkard when you were a girl of twelve and I saved you from the night. I suppose that weren’t enough punishment for you.”

He meant the night the Bonehill Ghost came for her.
Thirteen,
Polly thought,
I was thirteen.
She hadn’t thought of the demon in a couple of years.

“I’ll help you this time,” Papa said, “but you’d better make a change.” He took up the basin and hobbled on his bad foot through his room and out the back door to dump her vomit into a privy vault. Upon his return, he lifted the ewer from the bedside table, and poured water from it to rinse the basin. He tossed the rinse water out the back door. He poured fresh water into the basin and a cup. “Clean yourself up,” he said.

Polly washed her face, and rinsed her mouth out. As she did so, her father went through the basket she’d brought home from the market. He looked at her with a frown. “Were this what the market had to offer?”

Again, she’d purchased broxy and old potatoes. “It’s all Bill’s money could buy,” Polly lied. “He doesn’t give me much.”

Papa looked at her with suspicion. He paid a flat fee into their household accounts for his room and board. “You bought second-rate food so you’d have the means to drink.”

Polly hung her head.

“That takes a macer’s guile, woman.”

Polly hid her face behind her hands.

Papa had become too quiet, and Polly looked at him. He seemed to ponder something.

“The last time I saw him hit you,” he said, “it were all I could do to keep from hitting him back. I’ll help you now to keep a peaceful home. I won’t do it again.”

You’re the only one who gets to hit me,
Polly thought, but kept her mouth shut, since no good would come from angering him while he tried to help her.

“I should fix supper,” Polly said.

“You’ll rest. I’ll fix the stew.”

Polly lay down and closed her eyes while he set to work preparing food. Although fearful that Bill would find out about her drunkenness, she found sleep for a short time.

Papa woke her near seven o’clock in the evening. He had a small bottle of gin. “Bill ought to be home soon.” He poured a very small amount of gin into a cup for her. He poured a healthy dose into a cup which he kept for himself. “We shall sit and wait for your husband to arrive. When he does, you’ll take the sip of gin. I’ll offer him a drink as well. I’ll tell him as I offered you the drink, and he’ll believe the smell on you came from that.”

Polly looked to the hearth. She smelled the savory pot of stew which sat steaming on a trivet.

Papa was on to her, yet he tried to help her avoid the consequences of her drunkenness, and she felt grateful. Somehow, Polly knew that greater punishment lay in her future. She would promise herself a change of behavior, but she couldn’t imagine a future she would wish to endure without drink.

When the glossy black doorknob turned, Polly had a sickening feeling that the Bonehill Ghost would come through the door.

The soul of you, the whole of you, that’s all what you can preach…

Instead, as expected, Bill entered.

Polly quickly drank her gin, and immediately wished for more. Even so, that would be her last drink for a while. How long, she didn’t know.

8

Fragile Abstinence

Although Polly had no real hope that her effort would last, she stayed away from alcohol for over a year. She spent her time thinking of her child, keeping house, and doing her piece work.

In April of 1867, Polly’s husband borrowed Papa’s barrow to haul a printing press that had been manufactured in Holland in 1756. Bill had bought the mechanism from his employer. The press broke the side rails of the barrow, yet he managed to get the thing to his lodging. With the help of Polly and Papa, Bill succeeded in moving the contraption from the conveyance into their home. The press took up a good third of the front room.

“It’s broken,” he said. “We have a debt to the company for it, a fairly large sum, but we’ll make good on it.”

He breathed so heavily from his exertion, Polly thought she hadn’t heard him correctly.

Bill seemed to see the question in her eyes. “I got it for a good price
because
it’s broken. With your father’s help, we’ll make it right again.”

Papa nodded his head. “I’ve looked it over. I can manufacture and replace the broken parts.”

“I’ll teach you how to use it,” Bill said, “and we’ll be on our way to new earnings.”

Polly smiled. “No more brushes?”

“That’s right, no more brushes.”

* * *

A year would pass before Papa had fixed the press. Within that time, a second child, Percy, was born to Polly and Bill. Again, before the child came, Polly had worried she might not love the infant or that her love might shift from John to Percy, leaving the older child out in the cold. With relief, she quickly discovered affection for both.

To help make room, John, at present two years old, slept in his grandfather’s room. With the extra work the infant brought, Polly’s days began to run together.

Her desire for drink had stalked her since her last sip of gin, distantly at first, but as time had passed, the urge had moved closer. At present, the beast crouched, barely concealed behind the closest hummock of unforeseen circumstance, looking for the right time to pounce; perhaps a moment when emotional hardship tested Polly. Aware that her abstinence was fragile, she imagined the predatory desire watching her from a distance with Mr. Macklin’s glowing eyes. She tried to keep a close watch on the beast.

Bill brought home cases of type, tins of ink, bundles of paper, and a dozen or more additional metal and wooden devices that had to be installed on the press for it to perform its function. Polly learned how to create blocks of type to place in frames, or coffins as Bill called them, which were then placed on wooden beds and locked in place on the press. She learned how to ink properly, and then to use the great lever of the press to squeeze paper and type together to get an impression. At first, she didn’t have the strength to work the lever with enough force to get consistent results on paper.

“Do no better than that,” Bill said, “and I’ll have to work nights as well as days to make a go of it.”

Looking at the expression of disgust on his face, she wondered if he tried to discourage her.
Shaming will not make me stronger.
“I shall gain the strength,” she said calmly.

“See as you do.”

With persistence, she became proficient with the press. Bill brought home jobs for her to do, simple single sheet jobs at first, then more elaborate orders that required several broadsheets to be folded together, sewn, and cut to form a small book.

Polly became fascinated with the process and the machinery. She spent her days tending her children, and trying different configurations of the mechanisms to improve her results. Within a few months, clients were coming to the lodging in Trafalgar Street to receive their orders directly from Polly and pay her. She earned more than she ever had with piece work.

Bill kept up with all the transactions at first, yet with his mind on the work he did for his employer, he began to forget to make entries in the bookkeeping.

“I can keep the books for the printing,” Polly told him. “You have enough to worry about.” With all the responsibilities she had with housekeeping, the two children, and working the press, she didn’t know why she’d made the offer, but she had a suspicion and decided not to look at her misgivings too closely.

Bill looked at her skeptically.

“I learned my maths when I were a girl in school,” she said.

Her father overheard. “She’s always done the ciphering for me when I’ve had need of it.”

“Show me,” Bill said.

They sat at the table in Papa’s room, and Polly demonstrated her abilities with numbers. To see the surprise in her husband’s eyes left her simultaneously annoyed and satisfied.

Bill came to trust her to keep the accounts for the printing. He also put her in charge of getting the ink and paper she needed and keeping a record of the costs. Within a few months, Polly was skimming off a penny here and there to go on
small adventure
s, as she liked to think of them; she’d stop at a pub for half an hour and have one drink. During the second adventure of that sort, she saw her old neighbor from the Scoresby Street address, Judith Stanbrough, at the Compass Rose pub.

“If you see Bill, don’t tell him you saw me here,” she told the woman as she sat at the table with her. Judith appeared plumper than in the past. If anything, she had more freckles.

“I won’t tell your husband, if you won’t tell mine,” she said.

They both laughed, Judith loudly. Polly looked around for fear they’d attracted the attention of people at other tables. No one watched.

“Do you still live in Scoresby Street?” she asked.

“Yes,” Judith said. “I come this far so my husband needn’t hear of my drinking. My Swaine, he’s a teetotaler. He works for a butcher, stays over Mondays and Fridays near the Portobello Road Market to help with cattle auctions. I take the time to have a drink.” She smiled crookedly. “Last I saw of you were the day I helped you home from The Boar’s Tusk. You were full of the lush.”

Polly felt her mouth drop open as she tried to recollect.

Judith laughed. “You don’t remember!”

Polly shook her head. Full memory of the afternoon she’d spent singing with Kevin Lace and his pals still eluded her.

“I found you with that pretty boy between the privies out back. He’d reached under your skirts and were about to have more. I saw what you weren’t with us.”

Shame gripped Polly.

“I shouted and he scampered away, the coward.”

Ah, he didn’t have his way with me!
Despite relief in knowing the truth, Polly remained ashamed that Judith knew what she’d done.

“I saw you home that day.”

Polly lowered her head, and took a drink of her stout.

“No need to feel bad,” Judith said, gently touching Polly’s left hand. “I’ve got that way too. Life is hard, and we have need to get away from it sometimes.”

Grateful to have a sympathetic friend, Polly looked up, smiled, and clasped Judith’s hand. Knowing that another young wife also liked to drink, and for similar reasons, she didn’t feel so lonely and dishonorable.

“You were knapped, I think.”

“Yes, I have two children now, John and Percy, so I don’t have much time. I ought to finish this and go.”

Judith rubbed her tummy. “And, now, I have one on the way. Soon, I’ll not have time either. Perhaps we can help each other. I could keep yours when you want to have a drink, and, in return, you could do the same for me.”

Polly found the offer unsettling, but had to think about why. She felt comfortable with the idea of small adventures because the time she allotted to them and the funds she committed each outing were both limited. Even if she gave herself more time, fear kept her from taking more than the occasional penny from the printing accounts, so her drinking was regulated to one glass of bitter or stout, and nothing stronger, per adventure. The freedom Judith’s offer entailed seemed dangerous, yet Polly didn’t want to close the door on it.