Things in Jars

by Jess Kidd

He could be a fortune-teller, the way he’s inventing the future, coaxing and muttering it into being.

Bridie looks down at the man sprawled by the showy tomb of a successful family butcher. Two things strike her as immediately wrong. Firstly, the man is deficient of clothing (his wardrobe consisting in its entirety of: a top hat, boots and a pair of drawers). Secondly, she can see through the man.

Ruby Doyle watches her walk away. God love her, she hasn’t changed. She’s still captain of herself, you can see that; chin up, shoulders back, a level green-eyed gaze. You’ll look away before she does. She has done well for herself, with the voice and the clothes and the bearing of her. If it were not for that irresistible scowl and that unmistakable hair, would he have recognised her? But then, the heart always knows those long-ago loved, even when new liveries confuse the eye and new songs confound the ear.

London is like a difficult surgical patient; however cautious the incision anything and everything is liable to burst out.

Above all, you may notice the rich and sickening chorus of shit. The smell of shit is the primary olfactory emission from the multifarious inhabitants in Bridie Devine’s part of town. Everyone contributes, the Russians, Polish, Germans, Scots and especially the Irish. Everyone is at it.

When cholera comes to visit, the streets are quiet. There is no bustling to and fro, no gossip and ribald laughter, only fervent prayer and the dread of an unholy bowel movement.

you never can tell if a good act will turn bad, no more than if a bad one will turn good.

‘All the legions of the glorious dead,’ she informs him, pointing to a patch of air, ‘and I’m plagued by that.’

Her spectacularly ugly bonnet is curled up before the fire, bristling with feathers. She refused to give it up into the hands of the butler. Not that the butler was over-eager to take it. If it comes alive, Sir Edmund thinks, he will do for it with the poker. Bridie Devine is a fairer prospect without her bonnet.

As with all terrible, wondrous sights, there is a jolt of shock, then a hypnotic fascination, then the uneasy queasiness, then the whole thing starts again; the desire to look and the desire never to have looked in the first place.

Gan would have a good cough and a spit and lie down and smoke. Bridie would say her prayers: ‘God bless Gan and myself and the tavern cat. ‘God grant eternal rest to Mammy, Daddy, James, John, Theresa, Margaret, Ellen and little baby Owen. ‘God grant that bastard Paddy Fadden a kick up his hole and severe death to him and his gang, of a slow and a terrible variety. ‘God also wash us up a few more dead fellas so that Gan can earn a coin. And may they not be too far gone and have a head and two arms and two legs and be the kind the doctors like to play with. But only if they are dead anyway, not so’s they would have to die, unless you’ve a mind for them to be Paddy Fadden and his gang. For then that would be like killing the two birds with the one stone and would be much appreciated, dear Lord, who is above.’

Gan was eyes, nose and ears, attached to a long coughing gristle of a man. If anyone died, Gan Murphy knew about it. If someone fell in the river at Chelsea, Gan would hear it in Vauxhall. If someone keeled over friendless in Holywell Street (possibly striking his head on the way down), Gan would hear it in Chancery Lane. He’d hear it with those great cockleshell ears he had, like dinner plates. And what about Gan’s eyes? He could spy a fresh-dug grave at a hundred paces and a failing man at fifty. If Gan Murphy followed you home you knew you were doomed. And what about Gan’s nose? One sniff and he would tell you the age on a corpse and why it had expired. Gan would get right up close and take a deep breath. He knew the workings, he didn’t need to take anything apart. Not any more.

‘Clean air: a tonic to the lungs,’ says Ruby. ‘What does it smell like, Bridie?’ ‘Leaf mould, cow shit and this fella’s feet.’

isn’t the strongest backbone found in those who fight to survive?

Bridie frowns. ‘You are forgetting my recent failure, Inspector.’ ‘And you are forgetting your many successes,’ replies Rose, smiling into her eyes.

‘I’m saying, Bridie, that people can be tricked, or they can trick themselves.

At best she had viewed poor Lydia as a dress-up doll, at worst an inconvenience, like February or indigestion.

‘He’s a charming boy with such wicked coldness inside him. Have no doubt: he would smile into your eyes while he knifed you in the heart.’

‘You think I parlay with the enemy?’ ‘I think you’re a businessman.’ Lufkin narrows his eyes. ‘You’ve pitched up at my court, Mrs Devine, in the ugliest bonnet in Christendom, to tell me about my moral failings?’

Buyers come; dithering and eyeing, lifting and bartering, poking and pawing. Sellers call out, entreat, cajole. Trade, when it happens, is brisk; goods are bought, wrapped and handed over in an eye-blink.

And all at once Bridie is filled with the hot rage that comes over any sane woman who rails against her market price, or the damnable fact that there is a market price in the first place.

Several years ago, the vicar came to the realisation that human animals were beyond his ministries. Being, as they are, block-headed and irredeemably fallen. Oh, the most eloquent of sermons – wasted! Reverend Gale thus resolved to avoid human animals, or if the necessity arose, be more economical in his dealings with them.

‘Is that so?’ asks Bridie. Widmerpole bites his lip. ‘Assuredly, probably, conceivably, yes.’

isn’t it a gentleman’s primary occupation to look rather than be looked at?

Don’t bring the bad to mind else you set it galloping towards you.

Ruby sees a contender. In the Red Corner: Ruby Doyle. Heavyweight. Clearing six-feet. Left-handed. Stunning technique. Devastating brown eyes. Moustache, waxed, black. Favours drawers, tangled bandages, unlaced boots. Nose: broken on occasion, but always set with careful hands. Square of head like a dependable dog, broad of shoulder and passionate of temper. Dead. In the Blue Corner: Valentine Rose. Middleweight. Just shy of average height. Right-handed. Will fight dirty. Grey eyes, sandy beard, well-trimmed. Dapper dresser. Rose (currently pink) in his buttonhole. Nose: unbroken. Unremarkable of head, slim of shoulder and resolute of temper. Living.

Ellen’s brother, the head of the family, listened. Ellen’s brother’s wife, the real head of the family, listened too.

London has never seen rain like it. And now, all over the city the streets run with water, this foul, grey-foamed downpour. As if God has emptied his wash-tub after boiling Satan’s inexpressibles in it.

And all around you: sky. The raven turns in her element and the world turns too, confirming what she already knew: she is the centre of everything.

The heart on Ruby’s chest is complete now, still and whole. Bridie reads her name on it, etched in blue, where it has always been. Bridget ‘I think you should live a bit, Bridie.’

He holds her with his eyes for the longest time. For this is their parting: as sudden and slow, surprising and foreseen as any parting. Between together and apart: an eye-blink and all of eternity.