The Ripper's Wife (15 page)

I flung open the door and looked where Gladys was pointing. Bobo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, still in his little nightgown, with
The Happy Prince
open before him to the picture of the Prince in his gilt armor with the swallow perched upon his shoulder. My darling’s beautiful long black ringlets lay scattered on the floor all around him. He’d cut them off in imitation of the Prince’s medieval bob. Bobo was just snipping off the last one when I ran in.

“What have you done?”
I screamed, and Jim had to catch me before I fell.

Bobo’s face wore such a gleeful expression as he shook his head vigorously, like a dog after a bath, and he leapt up and ran to me.

“Don’t cry, Mama,” he said. “I’m seven years old—too big for curls! I have to tuck them up under my hat to keep the big boys in the park from pulling them and calling me a sissy. They make fun of my clothes too; they chase after me pointing and shouting, ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy!,’ and if they catch me they knock my hat off and hold me down and stretch my curls out and let them spring back while they laugh and call me names. Once they even made me pull my pants down to prove I wasn’t a girl. I
hate
it, Mama. I
hate
the way I look! And as angry as I am, I can’t shout at them or hit them, because inside I’m laughing at me too. Sometimes I have nightmares—I see myself going off to university in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with my hair in long curls and everybody pointing and laughing at me, or I see myself going to work at Papa’s office, a grown man but still in those silly suits and curls, or getting married, standing at the altar with the bride with my hair in ringlets just like hers, the people in the pews pointing and jeering that the groom looks prettier than the bride in his lace and velvet! Oh, Mama!” He grasped my hand and gazed up at me with those beautiful melted-chocolate eyes framed by the longest lashes I’d ever seen in my life. “I don’t want to be Little Lord Fauntleroy, I just want to be
me,
and I
can’t
with those long girly curls and sissy suits!”

“It’s true, ma’am,” Nanny Yapp placidly volunteered. “The older boys have been tormenting him for quite some time and he has shown remarkable fortitude and restraint in dealing with them. You should be proud of him.”

“You!”
I rounded on her. “You mean to tell me you just
stood there
twiddling your thumbs and
let
him do
this
to himself?” I brandished a hand at Bobo’s new bob. “
Why didn’t you stop him?
He could have hurt himself with those scissors! He might have cut his ear off or put his eye out!”

“It was time, ma’am. He’d already kept his curls longer than most boys do; they are customarily cropped at five,” Nanny Yapp said, then turned to my husband for affirmation. “Don’t you agree, Sir Jim?”

To my horror, Jim agreed wholeheartedly, then turned to me, saying gently, “Like it or not, those curls
had
to go, my dear. I was planning to talk to you about it. I was going to take Bobo to my barber, but . . .” He knelt down and, like one gentleman to another, offered Bobo his hand to shake. “That’s a fine job you’ve done, Son; I daresay no barber could have done better. You look wonderfully grown-up; Mama shall have to get you some new clothes. Won’t that be fun, Bunny? You can take Bobo to Woollright’s tomorrow for a whole new wardrobe more befitting of his maturity!”

I burst into tears and ran from the room and flung myself facedown on my bed, the big mound of pink roses on my bustle shaking with every sob.

Jim came and sat on the bed beside me and stroked my back. “Do pull yourself together, Bunny dear,” he said gently, “for the children’s sake as well as yours; if you keep on like this you’ll make yourself sick. You mustn’t let this spoil Gladys’s birthday. Come now, sit up and dry your eyes, dear, you’ll make your face all red and you won’t look a bit pretty, and everyone will know you’ve been crying, and you
know
how people talk. Come on now,” he coaxed, and when I did he daubed at my wet eyes with his own handkerchief. “That’s my girl!” He smiled. “My Bunny is
so
brave!” He kissed me. “And you must be braver still—Bobo thinks you are mad at him, that you won’t love him anymore without his curls. You must go and reassure him that that isn’t so.”

And that’s just what I did. I sent down to the kitchen for three of the little pastel-iced dainty cakes I had ordered and three little cups of grape punch and went back to my children. I knelt before my son and looked him straight in the eye and told him, “You
know
Mama would love you just the same if you were bald as an egg and ugly as a gargoyle!” I stroked his shorn head. “It was just a surprise, that’s all; I’d thought to have more time to become accustomed to the idea. We foolish mothers sometimes try to keep our sons little boys instead of letting them grow up as we should. Will you forgive your poor, silly mama?”

With a radiant smile Bobo instantly flung his arms around my neck and covered my face with kisses, giving me every assurance that all was indeed forgiven.

All smiles again, we sat on the floor and had a private birthday celebration all our own even with Nanny Yapp hovering over us like a black thundercloud warning this would spoil the children’s appetites and they wouldn’t enjoy the party as much if they couldn’t join their little friends for cake and ice cream.

“Well, if it does, it’ll spare you from having to worry that they’ll forget their manners and gobble like hogs!” I shot back at her. I smiled and snapped my fingers in her face and sang the verse from that song Edwin was always singing about a lady’s bird-tiny appetite when in public. Recognizing it, the children gleefully joined in:

Nanny Yapp just glared at me as though it were my own manners that needed reproving and she wished she had the authority to do so, and said it might even make them feel compelled to try to keep up with their friends, who had not come to the party with their stomachs stuffed. Bobo and Gladys would surely overindulge and then be up all night with bellyaches, and if that happened we’d all know who was to blame. But I just smiled and sang that verse again. Bobo and Gladys cackled with delight, snapped their fingers at Nanny Yapp, and sang along.

After our cakes and punch, I helped Gladys into her fairy princess gown and fastened the amethyst heart around her neck.

“You look just heavenly, honey!” I said as I set the glittering crown atop her curls and handed her her silver wand. “You’ll be the belle of the ball!” I smiled and fluffed her big puffy sleeves and crinoline skirt.

Bobo was going to be my little maharajah. I’d had a sumptuous tunic made for him of gold-flowered red brocade, red silk trousers, and little golden slippers with turned-up toes. I hung ropes of glass pearls and big paste rubies around his neck and crowned his cropped curls with a golden turban covered with paste gems and a tall white feather rising like a plume of smoke from the top of his head. I knelt before him and playfully called him “Your Highness” as I slipped rings set with immense faux gems onto his fingers and buckled a bejeweled belt around his waist to hold a little saber. “Look.” I pointed. “It’s got a ruby on the hilt just like the Happy Prince’s! I hope you can walk,” I teased, “you’ve got so many jewels on you. Don’t you go outside and be falling in the pond now, darling, or you’ll sink right to the bottom and drown!”

Bobo giggled. “I promise I won’t, Mama,” he said, and hugged me again. I buried my face in his little shoulder, ignoring the rough gilt threads scratching my face, and shed another tear or two, not over his curls this time but because my boy was growing up. He was such a loving little thing, so affectionate, I
dreaded
the day that would most surely come when he no longer wanted to hug and cuddle and kiss and would declare such things foolish and unmanly. Rare are the ones who truly keep that sweetness all their lives and do not turn on sentimentality like prizefighters or learn to use affection, kisses, and kind words as bait to lure women into even greater intimacies.

Live only for today,
I kept telling myself.
Don’t even think about tomorrow. . . .

 

The children all seemed to enjoy the party. That should have been enough for me. After all, every detail was planned for their pleasure. But their parents quite spoiled it for me; after I saw their frowns and heard the whispers they fully intended for me to hear I just couldn’t see it all in the same happy glow anymore. I walked alone, with no friend at my side, through the crowded ballroom, forcing myself to go on nodding and smiling when inside I felt like crying. I heard the whispers—they wanted me to—about the vulgar American, the Dollar Princess, how everything was ostentatious and overdone, especially that “monstrosity of a cake.” I heard them mocking my Southern accent, turning my explanation about wanting every child to have a rose into a joke.

I needed a quiet moment alone to collect myself; my head was throbbing and the tears I was trying so hard to hold back were fighting for their right to flow. I made my way to the second parlor, thinking I would just sit down there and rest for a while. When my hand was on the knob and the door open no wider than an inch, I heard murmured voices, a man and a woman, and the rustle of skirts. A pair of lovers? I should have shut the door and disappeared, but I couldn’t resist peeking, to see who it was.

Leaning in the window embrasure, framed by sunlight and roses, a couple stood embracing, a redheaded woman in peach satin trimmed with gold and white point lace, Christina Samuelson, and a dark-haired man in a dark suit, ardently smothering her mouth with his own, his hand greedily grasping her breast, which had sprung free from her tightly laced bodice. A smile danced across my lips. The Samuelsons were a young married couple and their union was said to be quite passionate; they had a habit of sneaking away together when evenings out grew too long and tedious, and also of leaving early to hurry home to their happy bed.

I started to back away from the door, praying it wouldn’t squeak and my skirts wouldn’t rustle. The kiss ended and the smile fell from my lips as the man lifted his head and the sun fully illuminated his face. That wasn’t Charles Samuelson kissing Christina; it was
my husband!
I shut the door as quietly as I could, feeling like I was slamming it on my own heart. So much for new beginnings....

This is the
last
time; you are
not
going to break my heart anymore!
I silently raged at Jim as I slapped on a smile as false as the ones most of our guests were wearing. I returned to the party, smiling and graciously nodding as though nothing were wrong. As I walked by Alfred Brierley I discreetly put out my fingers to brush his in passing. I met his eyes, just for an instant, with an invitation in my own.

“Mr. Brierley.” I nodded politely.

“Mrs. Maybrick.” He smiled and nodded back.

 

When Jim came to my bed that night the back I turned on him was as chilly as ice. I didn’t deign to explain. Let him figure it out or let the mystery linger, I didn’t care. I had my pride. I never said a word about Christina Samuelson. What good would it have done? He would have only told me more lies, like all that rot about Mad Sarah, probably that Christina had thrown herself at him, and I would have grasped at them, like a drowning woman, so desperate to believe and keep hope and happiness alive and afloat.

The next morning when a messenger boy from the photographer’s studio delivered the beautifully hand-tinted family portrait we’d posed for prior to Gladys’s party I sat staring at it for a long time until tears blurred my eyes and I could no longer see it.

There we were, Gladys and me in lacy white dresses with sashes of violet-blue satin, an enormous satin hair bow for her and a fine feathered hat for me. We were sitting on a bench with Jim standing behind us smiling broadly with his hands on our shoulders, the very picture of a proud and happy husband and father. Bobo was leaning against my knee in a blue velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and Alençon lace collar, captured by the camera, for the very last time, with curls flowing past his shoulders. How the camera
loved
him, his perfect angel face and long lashes. His face should be gracing calendars and candy boxes; he was just
so beautiful
it seemed a crime to deprive the world of the chance to adore him.