The Map of Time. Felix J. Palma

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.’

      Andrew tried not to show any emotion. ‘As you wish,’ he replied coldly. Then, to the guests, he made as if to bow. ‘Gentlemen, my apologies, I must leave this place for ever.’

      With as much dignity as he could muster, Andrew turned on his heel and left the room. The cold night air had a calming effect on him. In the end, he thought, trying not to trip as he descended the steps, nothing that had happened had come as a surprise. His disgraced father had just disinherited him, in front of half of London’s wealthiest businessmen, giving them a first-hand display of his famous temper, unleashed against his offspring without the slightest compunction. Now Andrew had nothing, except his love for Marie Kelly. If before the disastrous encounter he had entertained the slightest hope that his father might give in, and even let him bring his beloved to the house, to remove her from the monster stalking Whitechapel, it was clear now that they must live by their own means. He climbed into the carriage and ordered Harold to return to Miller’s Court.

      The coachman, who had been pacing round the vehicle in circles, waiting for the dénouement of the drama, clambered back onto the box and urged the horses on. He was trying to imagine what had taken place inside the house – and to his credit, based on the clues he had been perceptive enough to pick up, we must say that his reconstruction of the scene was remarkably accurate.

      When the carriage stopped in the usual place, Andrew got out and hurried towards Dorset Street, anxious to embrace Marie Kelly and tell her how much he loved her. He had sacrificed everything for her. Still he had no regrets, only a vague uncertainly regarding the future. But they would manage. He was sure he could rely on Charles. His cousin would lend him enough money to rent a house in Vauxhall or Warwick Street, at least until they were able to find decent jobs that would allow them to fend for themselves. Marie Kelly could find work at a dressmaker’s – but what skills did he possess? It made no difference. He was young, able-bodied and willing. He would find something. The main thing was he had stood up to his father, and what happened next was neither here nor there. Marie Kelly had pleaded with him, silently, to take her away from Whitechapel, and that was what he intended to do, with or without anyone else’s help. They would leave that accursed neighbourhood, that outpost of hell.

      Andrew glanced at his watch as he paused beneath the stone archway into Miller’s Court. It was five o’clock in the morning. Marie Kelly would probably have already returned to the room, probably as drunk as he. Andrew visualised them communicating through a haze of alcohol in gestures and grunts like Darwin’s primates. With boyish excitement, he walked into the yard where the flats stood. The door to number thirteen was closed. He banged on it a few times but got no reply. She must be asleep, but that would not be a problem. Careful not to cut himself on the shards of glass sticking out of the window frame, Andrew reached through the hole and flicked open the door catch, as he had seen Marie do after she had lost her key. ‘Marie, it’s me,’ he said, opening the door. ‘Andrew’

      Allow me at this point to break off the story to warn you that what took place next is hard to relate, because the sensations Andrew experienced were apparently too numerous for a scene lasting only a few seconds. That is why I need you to take into account the elasticity of time, its ability to expand or contract like an accordion, regardless of clocks. I am sure this is something you will have experienced frequently in your own life, depending on which side of the bathroom door you have found yourself. In Andrew’s case, time expanded in his mind, creating an eternity of a few seconds. I am going to describe the scene from that perspective, and therefore ask you not to blame my inept story-telling for the discrepancies you will no doubt perceive between the events and their correlation in time.

      When he first opened the door and stepped into the room, Andrew did not understand what he was seeing or, more precisely, he refused to accept what he was seeing. During that brief but endless moment, he still felt safe, although the certainty was forming in some still-functioning part of his brain that what he saw before him would kill him. Nobody could be faced with a thing like that and go on living, at least not completely. And what he saw before him, let’s be blunt about it, was Marie Kelly – but at the same time it wasn’t, for it was hard to accept that the object lying on the bed in the middle of all the blood was she.

      Andrew could not compare what awaited him in that room with anything he had seen before because, like most other men, he had never been exposed to a carefully mutilated human body. And once Andrew’s brain had finally accepted that he was indeed looking at a meticulously destroyed corpse, although nothing in his pleasant life of country-house gatherings and fancy headwear seemed to offer him any clues, he had no time to feel the appropriate revulsion: he could not avoid the terrible line of reasoning that led him to the inevitable conclusion that this human wreckage must be his beloved.

      The Ripper, for this could be the work of none other, had stripped the flesh off her face, rendering her unrecognisable, and yet, however great the temptation, Andrew could not deny the corpse belonged to Marie Kelly. It seemed an almost simplistic, not to say improbable, approach, but given its size and appearance and, above all, the place where he had found it, the dismembered corpse could only be that of Marie Kelly.

      After this, of course, Andrew was overcome by a devastating pain, which, despite everything, was only a pale expression of what it would later become: it was still tempered by the shock paralysing and, to some extent, protecting him. Once he was convinced he was standing before the corpse of his beloved, he felt compelled by a sort of posthumous loyalty to look tenderly upon that ghastly sight, but he was incapable of contemplating with anything other than revulsion her flayed face, the skull’s macabre, caricatured smile peeping through the strips of flesh.

      But how could the skull on which he had bestowed his last passionate kisses revolt him