Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event (19 page)

Bess drew her into a comforting embrace.

The gash in Elizabeth’s neck would heal and she’d resume her search for something better tomorrow.

~End~

Of Thimble and Threat

A novel by

Alan M. Clark

Bermondsey, London 1855

Katie took the silver-plated thimble from the sewing kit on the table and palmed it to conceal it from her mother, Catherine. Once it was in the folds of cloth in her lap, she removed the old, dented black thimble from her finger and slipped on the silver one. If she kept her hands busy, Catherine might not notice. The metal, cool to the touch at first, warmed quickly and was smooth and cozy on her finger.

After a lunch of half a potato, Katie’s hunger still nagged. She would say nothing about it to save her mother’s feelings, but her growling stomach said everything. As it became louder, Catherine smiled grimly. “You’re a good girl,” she said, “always so willing to help your mum.”

Katie could distract with small talk too. “Since Father died, you work too hard. If I didn’t help, you’d work your fingers to the bone.” She spoke with feigned sternness, tempered with a sweet smile. “And...I like having you all to myself.”

Spending afternoons and evenings together was pleasant, sitting at the table, talking and mending the clothes Catherine’s employer sent home with her each day; replacing buttons lost in the wash or stitching torn seams.

“I work harder now, but we’re more comfortable than we were in the attic room, and I don’t have to walk so far.”

Five years of walking to Bermondsey from their old room in South Bermondsey had taken its toll on her mother’s feet. Laboring as a scourer, Catherine had been employed in this very room for those years. Visiting the place before it became their home was fun for Katie because of the laundry’s bustling activity and sweet smell of scented soap. A glad day came in the summer when her mother’s employer moved his laundry operations to a new location not far away, and Catherine had been able to get the room for a good price. Autumn had come now, and for all the mold and filth, it still smelled of fresh soap.

“I could leave school to help more.”

“No, we’re lucky to have the charity school. You’ll need your education, and I don’t mind the work.”

Her mother’s response was pleasing, for Katie loved school.

Catherine tied off the blue thread she was using and cut it with her crooked, yellow teeth.

“If you take good care of yourself and your family,” she said with a reflective sigh, “there will always be something of beauty in your life, something sterling.” She leaned toward Katie and cradled the girl’s chin in her hand. The hand of a scourer, it was rough, but Katie didn’t mind. “I have
you
,” Catherine said with a fragile smile. Her face held deep lines and a permanent look of worry, but it was the most warm and loving face there ever was.

Katie smiled. When her mother said, “something sterling,” she meant a thing
good and pure,
but because Katie liked the shine and high worth of silver, she always imagined it was the metal Catherine was talking about.
Merely touching the silver of the thimble on her finger brought a thrill.

“Perhaps Christopher will bring something home for supper,” Catherine said. Katie’s brother and sisters, Christopher, Emma and Margaret, had gone to the West End to work as crossing-sweepers. When their earnings were good, they brought home fish.

Katie pushed the thought away to concentrate on sewing instead of hunger. Although it was foolish to think a silver thimble worked any better than a tin thimble, the silver one definitely made pushing the needle and thread through cloth and buttons easier. She did a better job than before and she was faster. Something about
silver
spoke of swiftness, but she couldn’t remember what it was. If she had her own silver thimble, what couldn’t she accomplish?

Catherine’s work as a scourer was never enough. She took odd jobs where she found them and Katie helped any way she could. Although Katie was thirteen years old, she knew her contribution to the welfare of the family was what kept her mother going. She was happy to help Catherine, but she also had ideas of her own to improve their situation. 

“If we took in mending work from Aunt Elizabeth—”

“You know I won’t,” Catherine said, her words bitten off short.

“Yes, but I don’t understand why.” Katie said it calmly, hoping her mother would soften her tone.

“I will have nothing from that man.” Clearly Catherine struggled to maintain her composure.

“Uncle William?” He was usually in his cups, but was harmless.

“That’s enough of that,” Catherine said. “I cannot expect you to understand.” The crackling tension in her voice turned into wet coughing and she bent forward. Her hacking spells were at their worst on days like today when the dense, yellow fog, known as London Particular, hung over the city. Alarmed by the duration of the spell, Katie set aside her sewing and hugged her mother.

Finally Catherine sat back and wiped her mouth on a stained handkerchief.

“Do you feel better?” Katie asked.

Catherine waved away her concern. After a moment, she said, “I love my sister, but her husband is not a good man. We’ll leave it at that.”

“Yes, Mum. I don’t mean to upset you.” Katie reached to take her mother’s hand.

No, she’ll see!

She tried to abort the gesture, but it was too late; the bright silver had caught her mother’s attention.

Katie expected her to be angry, but Catherine gently removed the thimble from her finger and returned it to the sewing kit. “You know you should use a more sensible one. The tin thimbles work just as well. But if you must have something fancy, use the porcelain one.”

“Why have it if you don’t use it?” Katie’s words came short and fast.

“It’s a pretty thing and that’s all,” Catherine said, obviously trying to remain calm. “You were not to use the silver thimble and still you took it. Nothing good will come from such dishonesty. It is certainly not ladylike.”

Katie balked at the idea. “If I were a lady, I’d have plenty of silver thimbles as well as other riches.”

“You’re not a child anymore. Your temper will only bring trouble, and others will judge you harshly. Take caution from the example of your cousin, Charles. He is too young to be drinking and fighting the way he does. He has spent more than one night in jail. Life is not all cakes and ale. He’ll come to no good.”

Katie didn’t like to hear that. Despite Charles’s carousing and his bad reputation, he was her favorite cousin. He was three years older. She’d caught his eye and he hers, but their mothers had kept them apart and she resented it.

Katie frowned, took a tin thimble from the sewing kit and turned her chair so that she faced away from her mother before returning to her work.

“Life is hard on pretty girls, Katie. Pretty girls want things and have ways of getting them. Be careful what you do, to get what you want.”

Katie didn’t like the wistful tone in Catherine’s voice.

“Yes, still a girl, but then you’re also a young woman,” Catherine said.

Katie smiled, despite her foul mood, and was glad her mother couldn’t see it.

“We are two poor women,” Catherine said, “among many poor women, gathered in the dark corners of London. Like the coal soot that falls everywhere—you don’t mind it until it collects in your home, your kitchen, your bed. Then it’s a nuisance that must be swept away into the street. Don’t become a nuisance, Katie.”

She says I’m a woman, then spoils it calling me soot.

“One day,” Catherine said, “the silver thimble will be yours. You’ll wear all the pretty off the outside using it. I know you will. I hope it takes many years. Take care you don’t wear yourself out the way your poor mum has. But even so, if you do what you know to be right, like that thimble, there will always be a bit of pretty on the inside. That’s what keeps me going.”

The pretty? The silver? Something good and pure? Does she mean herself, me, or the thimble?

Catherine was so good, it was easy to imagine pretty white metal inside her, right beneath her skin. But no, silver was hard and rigid, and her mother would be incapable of movement with all that inside her.

Then Katie remembered quicksilver. That was the something
swift
about silver. Her brother, Christopher, had once brought home a small bottle of the shiny liquid when he worked at a percussion cap factory.

Now, her mother was good and pure, filled with the pretty metal, and could move again.

If I’m truly good
, she told herself,
that is what I should bleed and then I shall always have my Mum
.

Catherine’s growling stomach interrupted Katie’s thoughts, reminding her of the ache in her own belly and that she was supposed to be angry. She turned to her mother. “If you’ll not use the thimble, then we should sell it.”

“That isn’t for you to decide. It was a gift from my sister.”

Katie didn’t really want it sold. She wanted to break her mother’s rigid thinking about it. The thimble was a wonder that helped work go faster and made it more pleasurable. “Perhaps you’re too proud to take good advice from a child.”

“Such impertinence!” Catherine raised her hand to slap Katie across the mouth, but a shade of misery darkened her face and she flew into another coughing fit. Katie winced to see her cough bright blood into her handkerchief. 

Life in the old laundry room was suddenly fragile. Gone were Katie’s illusions that her efforts supported the family, that somehow the thimble would be the key to their success. A dread of the future welled up in her small frame, but she pushed it back down and held her mother. Finally Catherine leaned back and wiped her mouth and nose.

“I’m so sorry, Mum,” Katie said. “I am such a wicked—”

“No, child, you are just hungry—hungry in many ways.” She reached into the sewing kit and pulled out the thimble and set it on the table beside her handkerchief. “It’s for you.”

Katie’s eyes grew wide and she tried to look at it, but all she could see was the indelible red on the handkerchief.

The London Particular was so heavy the day Catherine died, the gas lamps on the streets were lit at midday. Katie chose to believe they were lit for her mother.

She and her siblings were the only persons in attendance at Catherine’s funeral. The stretch of marsh near St. Bride’s Church that held her mother’s grave emitted an odor like rotten eggs. The heavy fog, still present, created a wall around the burial party that was too close and contained too little air. Katie turned away in shame as Catherine’s body was dumped, along with the corpses of three others, into a pauper’s grave. The clergyman mumbled prayers and raggedy gravediggers shoveled clotted soil back into the deep, wet hole.

“We should save what money we can to have her taken from here and buried properly in hallowed ground,” Katie said, her voice unsteady and cracking with emotion. 

Christopher frowned, looked at his feet, shifted from foot to foot.

“The minister says we have six months,” Emma said. “After that, they will not open the grave.”

“We have little now and in six months we may have less,” Christopher said in a hurried way, sounding too practical for a sixteen-year-old. He still had the pink cheeks and thin blonde hair of a child. “You know how she likes people. She has company here. I’m sure they’ll get along famously
.”

Perhaps he talked about their mother as if she were still alive to soften the blow of their loss. His way was to joke when things were hard.

“You could agree to try,” Margaret said, holding tears back.

“Very well.” Christopher nodded a little too vigorously to be believed, but they all let it go.

~~~

Katie and her older siblings were evicted from their dwelling. Christopher left for the industrial school to become a cobbler and Emma and Margaret found themselves in the workhouse. Katie went to live with her Aunt Elizabeth.

Choosing among her mother’s possessions to carry away with her, Katie favored those items that held her mother’s scent; a green alpaca skirt, a blue cotton skirt with a red flounce, bedclothes and a pillow. 

A week after Catherine’s death, on a chill, damp Tuesday night in the winter of 1855, carrying everything she owned in her mother’s old leather travel bag, Katie crossed the threshold and entered for the first time her Aunt Elizabeth’s house in South Bermondsey. Although a much finer home than she’d ever hoped to live in, the quality of it made little impression. Katie moved in a daze, hugging the pillow, the bag slung over her shoulder and wearing the bedclothes like an outer garment. Her friend, her teacher, her confidant, her love was gone. Abandoned and alone in the world, she was greeted by her aunt and uncle without ceremony. 

“I’ll not make sacrifices to see that she’s fed,” Uncle William said, eyeing her curiously.

“We’ll manage somehow,” Aunt Elizabeth said, leading Katie to a small room with shelves of textile supplies on either side of a small, makeshift bed. “I’ve needed help for some time.”

She looked Katie in the eye. “You’ll do your part, won’t you?”

Katie could only nod her head.

“When I address you,” Elizabeth said, “you will respond with words and use my name.”

“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth,” Katie said mechanically.

Her aunt’s expression was severe. She took Katie’s travel bag and placed it on the floor beside the door. “Now give me those filthy bedclothes and that wretched pillow.”

Suddenly alert, Katie said, “No, please, Aunt Elizabeth. They are my Mum, my home.”

“Catherine is gone, girl. This is your new home.” Aunt Elizabeth snatched the items from her and hurried from the room.

Katie would have chased after her, but Uncle William stood in the doorway staring. Confused and numb, Katie merely stood, looking at her feet and the rough floorboards. He lingered, his eyes moving up and down her length, then he abruptly left, shutting the door behind him.

Katie climbed in the bed, put her head on the unfamiliar pillow and pulled the covers up around her slight form. She had never been in such a warm, clean bed.
Why can’t I feel it?
Strange and unwelcoming, she would trade it in an instant for another night in her own bed and one more goodnight kiss from her mother. She tossed off the covers, fetched her mother’s alpaca skirt from her travel bag and curled up with it on the floor, breathing in Catherine’s scent.

Not my home. I may have to stay a while, but I’ll find my own home one day and start a new life.

At some point in the night she awoke, cold and sore from the rough floorboards biting into her. Katie tossed the skirt into the bed and climbed up after it. She hid it under the pillow, pulled the covers up over herself and went back to sleep.