The Map of Time and The Turn of the Screw. Felix J. Palma

had tossed on the ground.

      ‘We won’t be disturbed here, mister,’ Marie Kelly reassured him, leaning back against the wall and drawing him to her.

      Before he knew it, she had unbuttoned his trousers and pulled out his manhood. She did so with startling ease, without any of the provocative foreplay to which the Chelsea prostitutes had accustomed him. The matter-of-fact way in which she manoeuvred his sex beneath her hiked-up skirts made it clear to Andrew that what to him was another magical moment was to her no more than routine.

      ‘It’s in,’ she assured him.

      In? Andrew had enough experience to know the whore was lying. She was simply gripping him between her thighs. He assumed it was common practice among them, a trick to avoid penetration, which, if they were lucky and the client failed to notice or was too drunk, reduced the number of hasty intrusions they were forced to undergo each day, and with them the unwanted pregnancies that such might bring about. With this in mind, he began to thrust energetically, prepared to go along with the charade.

      It was enough for him to rub himself against the silky skin of her inner thigh, to feel her body pressed against his for as long as the pretence lasted. What did it matter whether it was a sham if this phantom penetration allowed him to cross the boundary imposed by good manners and force his way into the intimacy that only lovers share? Feeling her hot breath in his ear, inhaling the delicate odour of her neck and clasping her to him until he felt the contours of her body merge with his was worth infinitely more than thruppence. And, as he soon discovered when he ejaculated into her petticoats, it had the same effect on him as other, greater, undertakings. Slightly ashamed at his lack of endurance, he finished emptying himself in quiet contemplation, still pressed against her.

      Eventually he felt her stir impatiently. He stepped back, embarrassed. Oblivious to his unease, the whore straightened her skirts and thrust out a hand to be paid. Trying to regain his composure, Andrew hurriedly gave her the agreed sum. He had enough money left in his pockets to buy her for the whole night, but he preferred to savour what he had just experienced in the privacy of his own bed, and to persuade her to meet him the next night.

      ‘My name’s Andrew,’ he introduced himself, his voice high-pitched with emotion. She raised an eyebrow, amused. ‘And I’d like to see you again tomorrow.’

      ‘Certainly, mister. You know where to find me,’ the whore said, leading him back along the gloomy passageway she had brought him down.

      As they made their way towards the main streets, Andrew was wondering whether ejaculating between her thighs entitled him to put his arm around her shoulders. He had decided it did, and was about to do precisely that, when they ran into another couple walking almost blindly towards them down the dim alley. Andrew mumbled an apology to the fellow he had bumped into, who, although scarcely more than a shadow in the darkness, seemed quite a burly sort. He was clinging to a whore, whom Marie Kelly greeted with a smile.

      ‘It’s all yours, Annie,’ she said, referring to the backyard she and Andrew had just left.

      Annie thanked her with a raucous laugh and tugged her companion towards the passageway. Andrew watched them stagger into the blackness. Would that fellow be satisfied with having his member trapped between her thighs? he wondered. He had noticed how avidly the man clutched the whore to him.

      ‘Didn’t I tell you it was a quiet spot?’ Marie Kelly remarked, as they came out into Hanbury Street.

      They said a laconic goodbye in front of the Britannia. Rather disheartened by the coldness she had shown after the act, Andrew tried to find his way back through the gloomy streets to his carriage. It was a good half-hour before he came upon it. He avoided Harold’s eyes as he climbed into the brougham.

      ‘Home, sir?’ Harold enquired sardonically.

      The following night he arrived at the Britannia determined to behave like a self-assured man instead of the fumbling, timid dandy of his previous encounter. He had to overcome his nerves and prove he could adapt to his surroundings if he was to display his true charms to the girl, the repertoire of smiles and flattery with which he habitually captivated the ladies of his own class.

      He found Marie Kelly sitting at a corner table, brooding over a pint of beer. Her demeanour unnerved him, but as he was not the sort to think up a new strategy as he went along, he decided to stick with his original plan. He ordered a beer at the bar, sat down at the girl’s table, as naturally as he could, and told her he knew of a guaranteed way to wipe the worry from her face. Marie Kelly shot him a black look, confirming what he feared: he had made a tactless blunder. Andrew thought she was going to tell him to clear off with a simple wave of her hand, as if he were an irritating fly, but she restrained herself and gazed at him quizzically for a few seconds.

      She must have decided he was as good a person as any to unburden herself to because she took a swig from her tankard, wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and told him that her friend Annie, the woman they had bumped into in Hanbury Street the night before, had been found that morning, murdered, in the same yard they had been in. The poor woman had been partially decapitated, sliced open, her intestines pulled out and her womb removed.

      Andrew stammered that he was sorry, as shocked by the killer’s attention to detail as he was to have collided with him moments before the crime. Evidently that particular client had not been satisfied with the usual service. But Marie Kelly had other concerns. According to her, Annie was the third prostitute in less than a month to be murdered in Whitechapel. Polly Nichols had been found dead with her throat slit in Bucks Road, opposite Essex Pier, on 31 August, and on the seventh of that month, Martha Tabram had been found brutally stabbed with a penknife on the stairs of a rooming house. Marie Kelly laid the blame on the gang from Old Nichol Street, blackmailers who demanded a share of the whores’ earnings.

      ‘Those bastards will stop at nothing to get us working for them,’ she said, between gritted teeth.

      This state of affairs disturbed Andrew, but it should have come as no surprise: after all, they were in Whitechapel – the putrid dung-heap upon which London had turned its back, home to more than a thousand prostitutes living alongside German, Jewish and French immigrants. Stabbings were a daily occurrence. Wiping away the tears that had finally flowed from her eyes, Marie Kelly sat, head bowed, as though in prayer, until, to Andrew’s surprise, she roused herself from her stupor, grasped his hand and smiled lustfully at him. Whatever else happened, life went on. Was that what she had meant by her gesture? After all, she, Marie Kelly, had not been murdered. She had to go on living, dragging her skirts through those foul-smelling streets in search of money to pay for a bed.

      Andrew gazed with pity at her hand lying in his, the dirty nails poking through the frayed mitten. He, too, felt the need to concentrate for a moment in order to change masks, like an actor who needs time in his dressing room to concentrate on becoming a different character. After all, life went on for him, too. Time did not stop because a whore had been murdered. He stroked her hand tenderly, ready to resume his plan. As though wiping condensation from a window pane, he freed his young lover’s smile from its veil of sadness and, looking her in the eye for the first time, said: ‘I have enough money to buy you for the whole night, but I don’t want any fakery in a cold backyard.’

      This startled Marie Kelly, and she tensed, but Andrew’s smile soon put her at ease. ‘I rent a room at Miller’s Court, but I don’t know as it’ll be good enough for the likes of you,’ she remarked flirtatiously.

      ‘I’m sure you’ll make me like it,’ Andrew ventured, delighted at the bantering tone their conversation had taken – this was a register at which he excelled.

      ‘But first I’ll have to turn out my good-for-nothing husband,’ she replied. ‘He doesn’t like me bringing work home.’

      This remark came as yet another shock to Andrew on an extraordinary night over which he clearly had no control. He tried not to let his disappointment show.

      ‘Still, I’m sure your money will make up his mind for him,’ Marie concluded.

      ***

      So it was that Andrew found paradise