The Map of Time

There were times, owing to the constantly changing and rather unpredictable nature of his thought patterns, when this task appeared as impossible to him as lining up the goldfish in their bowl, but until he succeeded he sensed he would be unable to worry about what went on in the world, which for him started where his own pleasant, carefully scrutinised private concerns ended. In any case, he thought, it would be interesting to observe in himself how hitherto unknown preoccupations emerged through simple exposure. Who could tell? Perhaps his response to these new worries might hold the key to the mystery of who the real Andrew Harrington was.

He took an apple from the fruit bowl and settled into an armchair to wait yet again for his cousin to return to the land of the living. He had rested his muddy boots on a footstool and was smiling as he remembered Marie Kelly’s kisses and how they had both, gently but completely, made up for all the years they had been starved of affection, when his eye alighted on the newspaper lying on the table. It was the morning edition of the Star, announcing in bold print the murder of a Whitechapel prostitute called Anne Chapman. It gave details of the horrific mutilation she had suffered: besides her uterus, which he had already learned about from Marie Kelly, her bladder and womb had also been removed. Among other things, the newspaper also mentioned a couple of cheap rings missing from one of her fingers. It appeared the police had no clues as to the murderer’s identity although, after questioning other East End whores, the name of a possible suspect had emerged: a Jewish cobbler nicknamed Leather Apron, who was in the habit of robbing prostitutes at knife point. The article came with a macabre illustration of a policeman dangling a lamp over the bloody corpse of a woman sprawled on the pavement.

Andrew shook his head. He had forgotten that his paradise was surrounded by hell itself, and that the woman he loved was an angel trapped in a world full of demons.

He closely read the three-page report on the Whitechapel crimes committed to date, feeling worlds away from it all in this luxurious dining room, where man’s capacity for baseness and aberration was kept at bay as surely as the dust tirelessly polished away by servants. He had thought of giving Marie Kelly the money to pay off the gang of blackmailers she thought were responsible for the crimes, but the report did not seem to be pointing in that direction. The precise incisions on the bodies suggested that the killer had surgical knowledge, which implicated the entire medical profession, although the police had not ruled out furriers, cooks and barbers – anyone, in short, whose job brought them into contact with knives.

Queen Victoria’s medium was reported to have seen the killer’s face in a dream. Andrew sighed. The medium knew more about the killer than he, even though he had bumped into the fellow moments before he had committed the crime.

‘Since when did you develop an interest in the affairs of empire, cousin?’ asked Charles’s voice from behind him. ‘Ah, no – I see you are reading the crime pages.’

‘Good morning, Charles,’ said Andrew, tossing the paper on to the table as though he had been idly leafing through it.

‘The coverage given to the murders of those wretched tarts is incredible,’ his cousin remarked, plucking a cluster of shiny grapes from the fruit bowl and sitting in the armchair opposite. ‘Although I confess to being intrigued by the importance they’re attaching to this sordid affair: they’ve put Scotland Yard’s finest detective, Fred Abberline, in charge of the investigation. Clearly the Metropolitan Police are out of their depth in a case like this.’

Andrew pretended to agree, nodding abstractedly as he gazed out of the window, watching the wind scatter an air-balloon-shaped cloud. He did not want to arouse his cousin’s attention by showing too much interest in the affair, but the truth was he longed to know every detail of the crimes, apparently confined to the area where his beloved lived. How would his cousin react if he told him he had bumped into that brutal murderer in a murky Whitechapel alleyway? The sad fact was that, even so, he was unable to describe the fellow except to say he was enormous and evil-smelling.

‘In any case, regardless of Scotland Yard’s involvement, all they have are suspicions, some of them quite preposterous,’ his cousin went on, plucking a grape from the bunch and rolling it between his fingers. ‘Did you know they suspect one of the Red Indians from that Buffalo Bill show we saw last week, and even the actor Richard Mansfield, who is playing in Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the Lyceum? I recommend it, by the way: Mansfield’s transformation on stage is truly chilling.’

Andrew promised he would go, tossing the remains of his apple on to the table.

‘Anyway’ Charles concluded rather wearily, ‘the poor wretches in Whitechapel have formed vigilante groups and are patrolling the streets. It seems London’s population is growing so fast the police force can no longer cope. Everybody wants to live in this accursed city. People come here from all over the country in search of a better life, only to end up being exploited in factories, contracting typhus fever or turning to crime in order to pay an inflated rent for a cellar or some other airless hole. Actually, I’m amazed there aren’t more murders and robberies, considering how many go unpunished. Mark my words, Andrew, if the criminals became organised, London would be theirs. It’s hardly surprising Queen Victoria fears a popular uprising – a revolution like the one our French neighbours endured, which would end with her and her family’s heads on the block. Her empire is a hollow façade that needs progressively shoring up to stop it collapsing. Our cows and sheep graze on Argentinian pastures, our tea is grown in China and India, our gold comes from South Africa and Australia, and the wine we drink from France and Spain. Tell me, cousin, what, apart from crime, do we produce ourselves? If the criminal elements planned a proper rebellion they could take over the country. Fortunately, evil and common sense rarely go hand in hand.’

Andrew liked listening to Charles ramble in this relaxed way, pretending not to take himself seriously. He admired his cousin’s contradictory spirit, which reminded him of a house divided into endless chambers all separate from one another, so that what went on in one had no repercussions in the others. This explained why his cousin was able to glimpse, amid his luxurious surroundings, the most suppurating wounds and forget them a moment later, while he found it impossible to copulate successfully after a visit to a slaughterhouse or a hospital for the severely injured. It was as if Andrew had been designed like a seashell: everything disappeared and resonated inside him. That was the basic difference between them: Charles reasoned and he felt.

‘The truth is, these sordid crimes are turning Whitechapel into a place where you wouldn’t want to spend the night,’ Charles declared sententiously, abandoning his nonchalance to lean across the table and stare meaningfully at his cousin. ‘Especially with a tart’

Andrew gaped at him. ‘You know about it?’

His cousin smiled. ‘Servants talk, Andrew. You ought to know by now our most intimate secrets circulate like underground streams beneath the luxurious ground we walk on,’ he said, stamping his feet symbolically on the carpet.

Andrew sighed. His cousin had not left the newspaper there by accident. In fact, he had probably not even been asleep. Charles enjoyed this kind of game. It was easy to imagine him hiding behind one of the many screens that partitioned the vast dining room, waiting patiently for his stunned cousin to fall into the trap he had laid.

‘I don’t want my father to find out, Charles,’ begged Andrew.

‘Don’t worry, cousin. I’m aware of the scandal it would cause in the family. But tell me, are you in love with the girl or is this just a passing fancy?’

Andrew remained silent. What could he say?

You needn’t reply’ his cousin said, in a resigned voice. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t understand either way. I only hope you know what you’re doing.’

Andrew, of course, did not know what he was doing, but could not stop doing it. Each night, like a moth drawn to the flame, he returned to the miserable room in Miller’s Court, hurling himself into the relentless blaze of Marie Kelly’s passion. They made love all night, driven by frantic desire, as though they had been poisoned during dinner and did not know how long they had left to live, or as though the world around them were being decimated by the plague. Soon Andrew understood that if he left enough coins on her bedside table, their passion could continue gently smouldering beyond the dawn. His money preserved their fantasy, and even banished Joe, Marie Kelly’s husband, whom Andrew tried not to think of when, disguised in his modest clothes, he strolled with her through the maze of muddy streets.

Those were peaceful, pleasant walks, full of encounters with the girl’s friends and acquaintances, the long-suffering foot-soldiers of a war without trenches; a bunch of poor souls who rose from their beds each morning to face a hostile world, driven on by the sheer animal instinct for survival. Fascinated, Andrew found himself admiring them, as he would a species of exotic flower alien to his world. He became convinced that life in Whitechapel was more real, simpler, easier to understand than it was in the luxuriously carpeted mansions where he spent his days.

Occasionally, he had to pull his cap down over his eyes in order not to be recognised by the bands of wealthy young men who laid siege to the neighbourhood some nights. They arrived in luxurious carriages and mobbed the streets, like rude, arrogant conquistadors, in search of some miserable brothel where they could satisfy their basest instincts for, according to a rumour Andrew had frequently heard in West End smoking clubs, the only limits on what could be done with the wretched Whitechapel tarts were money and imagination. Watching these boisterous incursions, Andrew was assailed by a sudden protective instinct, which could only mean he had unconsciously begun to see Whitechapel as a place he should perhaps watch over. However, there was little he could do, confronted with those barbarous invasions, besides feeling sad and helpless, and trying to forget about them in the arms of his beloved. She appeared more beautiful to him by the day, as though beneath his caresses she had recovered the innate sparkle of which life had robbed her.

But, as everyone knows, no paradise is complete without a serpent, and the sweeter the moments spent with his beloved, the more bitter the taste in Andrew’s mouth when he recalled that what he had of Marie Kelly was all he could ever have. Because, although it was never enough and each day he yearned for more, the love that could not exist outside Whitechapel, for all its undeniable intensity, remained arbitrary and illusory. And while outside a crazed mob tried to lynch the Jewish cobbler nicknamed Leather Apron, Andrew quenched his anger and fear in Marie Kelly’s body.

He wondered whether his beloved’s fervour sprang from her own realisation that they had embarked upon a reckless love affair, and that all they could do was greedily clasp the unexpected rose of happiness as they tried to ignore the painful thorns. Or was it her way of telling him she was prepared to rescue their apparently doomed love even if it meant altering the very course of the universe? And if that was the case, did he possess the same strength? Did he have the necessary conviction to embark upon what he already considered a lost battle?

However hard he tried, Andrew could not imagine Marie Kelly moving in his world of refined young ladies, whose sole purpose in life was to display their fecundity by filling their houses with children, and to entertain their spouses’ friends with their pianistic accomplishment. Would Marie Kelly succeed in fulfilling this role while trying to stay afloat amid the waves of social rejection that would doubtless seek to drown her, or would she perish like an exotic bloom removed from its hothouse?

The newspapers’ continued coverage of the whores’ murders scarcely managed to distract Andrew from the torment of his secret fears. One morning, while breakfasting, he came across a reproduction of a letter the murderer had audaciously sent to the Central News Agency, assuring the police they would not catch him easily and promising he would carry on killing, testing his fine blade on the Whitechapel tarts. Appropriately enough, the letter was written in red ink and signed ‘Jack the Ripper’, a name that, however you looked at it, Andrew thought, was far more disturbing and imaginative than the rather dull ‘Whitechapel Murderer’ by which he had been known until then.

The new name was taken up by all the newspapers, and inevitably conjured up the villain of the penny dreadfuls, Jack Lightfoot, and his treatment of women. It was rapidly adopted by everyone, as Andrew soon discovered from hearing it uttered everywhere he went. The words were always spoken with sinister excitement, as though for the sad souls of Whitechapel there was something thrilling and even fashionable about a ruthless murderer stalking the neighbourhood with a razor-sharp knife. Furthermore, as a result of this disturbing missive, Scotland Yard was deluged with similar correspondence (in which the alleged killer mocked the police, boasted childishly about his crimes and promised more murders). Andrew had the impression that England was teeming with people desperate to bring excitement into their lives by pretending they were murderers, normal men whose souls were sullied by sadistic impulses and unhealthy desires that fortunately they would never act upon.

Besides hampering the police investigation, the letters also transformed the vulgar individual he had bumped into in Hanbury Street into a monstrous creature apparently destined to personify man’s most primitive fears. Perhaps this uncontrolled proliferation of would-be perpetrators of his macabre crimes prompted the real killer to surpass himself. On the night of 30 September, at the timber merchants’ in Dutfield Yard, he murdered Elizabeth Stride – the whore who had originally put Andrew on Marie’s trail – and a few hours later, in Mtre Square, Catherine Eddowes, whom he had time to rip open from pubis to sternum, remove her left kidney and even cut off her nose.

Thus began the cold month of October, in which a veil of gloomy resignation descended upon the inhabitants of Whitechapel who, despite Scotland Yard’s efforts, felt more than ever abandoned to their fate. There was a look of helplessness in the whores’ eyes, but also a strange acceptance of their dreadful lot. Life became a long and anxious wait, during which Andrew held Marie Kelly’s trembling body tightly in his arms and whispered to her that she need not worry, provided she stayed away from the Ripper’s hunting ground, the area of backyards and deserted alleyways where he roamed with his thirsty blade, until the police managed to catch him.

But his words did nothing to calm a shaken Marie, who had even begun sheltering other whores in her tiny room at Miller’s Court to keep them off the unsafe streets. It resulted in her having a fight with her husband, Joe, during which he broke a window. The following night, Andrew gave her the money to fix the glass and keep out the piercing cold. However, she simply placed it on her bedside table and lay back dutifully on the bed so that he could take her. Now though all she offered him was a body, a dying flame, and the grief-stricken despair she had been unable to keep from her eyes in recent days, a look in which he thought he glimpsed a desperate cry for help, a silent appeal to him to take her away before it was too late.

Andrew made the mistake of pretending not to notice her distress, as though he had forgotten that everything could be expressed in a look. He felt incapable of altering the very course of the universe, which for him translated into the even more momentous feat of confronting his father. Perhaps that was why, as a silent rebuke for his cowardice, she began to go out looking for clients and spending the nights getting drunk with her fellow whores in the Britannia. There they cursed the uselessness of the police and the power of the monster from hell who continued to mock them, most recently by sending George Lusk, socialist firebrand and self-proclaimed president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, a cardboard box containing a human kidney.

Frustrated by his lack of courage, Andrew watched her return drunk each night to the little room. Then, before she could collapse on the floor or curl up like a dog beside the warm hearth, he would take her in his arms and put her to bed, grateful that no knife had stopped her in her tracks. But he knew she could not keep exposing herself to danger in this way, even if the murderer had not struck for several weeks and more than eighty policemen were patrolling the neighbourhood. He also knew he was the only one able to stop her. For that reason, sitting in the gloom while his beloved spun her drunken nightmares of corpses with their guts ripped out, Andrew would resolve to confront his father the very next day. But when the next day came all he could do was prowl around his father’s study, not daring to go in. And when it grew dark, his head bowed in shame, occasionally clutching a bottle, he returned to Marie Kelly’s little room, where she received him with her eyes’ silent reproach.

Then Andrew remembered all the things he had said to her, the impassioned declarations he had hoped would seal their union. How he had been trying to find her for he did not know how long -eighteen, a hundred, five hundred years – how he knew that if he had undergone reincarnations he had looked for her in every one, because they were twin spirits destined to meet each other in the labyrinth of time, and other such pronouncements. Now he was sure Marie Kelly could only see his avowals as a pathetic attempt to cloak his animal urges in romanticism or, worse, to conceal the thrill he derived from those voyeuristic forays into the wretched side of existence. ‘Where is your love now, Andrew?’ her eyes seemed to ask, before she trudged off to the Britannia, only to return a few hours later rolling drunk.

Until, on that cold night of 7 November, Andrew watched her leave again for the tavern, and something inside him shifted. Whether it was the alcohol, which, consumed in the right quantity, can clear some people’s heads, or simply that enough time had passed for this clarity to occur naturally, it finally dawned on him that without Marie Kelly his life would no longer have any meaning so he had nothing to lose by fighting for a future with her. Filled with resolve, suddenly able to breathe freely once more, he left the room, slamming the door resolutely, and strode off towards the place where Harold Barker waited while his master took his pleasure. The coachman was huddled like an owl on the seat, warming himself with a bottle of brandy.

That night his father was to discover his youngest son was in love with a whore.

Chapter V

Yes, I know that when I began this tale I promised there would be a fabulous time machine, and there will be. There will even be intrepid explorers and fierce native tribes – a must in any adventure story. But all in good time. Isn’t it necessary at the start of any game to place all the pieces on their respective squares? Of course it is – so let me continue to set up the board, slowly but surely, by returning to young Andrew, who might have taken the opportunity of the long journey back to the Harrington mansion to sober up, but who chose instead to cloud his thoughts further by finishing the bottle he had in his pocket.

Ultimately, there was no point in confronting his father with a sound argument and reasoned thinking: he was sure that any civilised discussion of the matter would be impossible. He needed to dull his senses as much as he could, staying just sober enough not to be completely tongue-tied. There was no point in slipping back into the elegant clothes he always left judiciously in a bundle on the carriage seat.

That night there was no longer any need for secrecy. When they arrived at the mansion, Andrew stepped out of the carriage, asked Harold to stay where he was, and hurried into the house. The coachman watched in dismay as he ran up the steps in his rags, and wondered if he would hear Mr Harrington’s shouts from where he sat.

Andrew had forgotten his father had a meeting with businessmen that night until he staggered into the library. A dozen men stood gaping at him in astonishment. This was not the situation he had anticipated, but he had too much alcohol in his blood to be put off. He searched for his father amid the array of dinner jackets, and finally found him by the fireplace, next to his brother Anthony. Glass in one hand, cigar in the other, both men looked him up and down. But his clothing was the least of it, as they would soon discover, thought Andrew, who in the end felt pleased to have an audience. Since he was about to stick his head in the noose, it was better to do so in front of witnesses than alone with his father in his study.

He cleared his throat loudly under the fixed gaze of the gathering, and said: ‘Father, I’ve come here to tell you I’m in love.’

His words were followed by a heavy silence, broken only by an embarrassed cough here and there.

‘Andrew, this is hardly a suitable moment to—’ his father began, visibly irritated, before Andrew silenced him with a sudden gesture of his hand.

‘I assure you, Father, this is as unsuitable a moment as any other,’ he said, trying to keep his balance so he would not have to finish his bravura performance flat on his face.

His father bridled, but remained silent.

Andrew took a deep breath. The moment had come for him to destroy his life. ‘And the woman who has stolen my heart,’ he declared, ‘is a Whitechapel whore by the name of Marie Kelly’

Having unburdened himself, he smiled defiantly at the gathering. Faces fell, heads were clutched in hands, arms flapped in the air, but no one said a word: they all knew they were witnessing a melodrama with two protagonists and, of course, that William Harrington must speak. All eyes were fixed on the host.

Staring at the pattern on the carpet, his father shook his head, let out a low, barely repressed growl, and put down his glass on the mantelpiece, as though it were suddenly encumbering him.

‘Contrary to what I’ve heard you maintain, gentlemen,’ Andrew went on, unaware of the rage stirring in his father’s breast, ‘whores aren’t whores because they want to be. I assure you that any one of them would choose to have a respectable job if they could. Believe me, I know what I’m saying.’ His father’s colleagues continued to demonstrate their ability to express surprise without opening their mouths. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time in their company, these past few weeks. I’ve watched them washing in horse-troughs in the mornings, seen them sitting down to sleep, held against the wall by a rope if they could not find a bed …’

The more he went on speaking in this way about prostitutes, the more Andrew realised his feelings for Marie Kelly were deeper than he had imagined. He gazed round with infinite pity at the men with their orderly lives, their dreary, passionless existences, who would consider it impractical to yield to a near-uncontrollable urge. He could tell them what it was like to lose one’s head, to burn up with feverish desire. He could tell them what the inside of love looked like, because he had split it open like a piece of fruit.

But Andrew could not tell them this or anything else because at that moment his father, emitting enraged grunts, strode unsteadily across the room, almost harpooning the carpet with his cane. Without warning, he struck his son hard across the face. Andrew staggered backwards, stunned by the blow. When he finally understood what had happened, he rubbed his stinging cheek, trying to put on the same smile of defiance. For a few moments that seemed like eternity to those present, father and son stared at one another in the middle of the room, until William Harrington said: ‘As of tonight I have only one son.’