A Brutal Chill in August: A Novel of Polly Nichols, The First Victim of Jack the Ripper by Alan M. Clark

she said.
    They both laughed, Judith loudly. Polly looked around for fear they’d attracted the attention of people at other tables. No one watched.
    “Do you still live in Scoresby Street?” she asked.
    “Yes,” Judith said. “I come this far so my husband needn’t hear of my drinking. My Swaine, he’s a teetotaler. He works for a butcher, stays over Mondays and Fridays near the Portobello Road Market to help with cattle auctions. I take the time to have a drink.” She smiled crookedly. “Last I saw of you were the day I helped you home from The Boar’s Tusk. You were full of the lush.”
    Polly felt her mouth drop open as she tried to recollect.
    Judith laughed. “You don’t remember!”
    Polly shook her head. Full memory of the afternoon she’d spent singing with Kevin Lace and his pals still eluded her.
    “I found you with that pretty boy between the privies out back. He’d reached under your skirts and were about to have more. I saw what you weren’t with us.”
    Shame gripped Polly.
    “I shouted and he scampered away, the coward.”
    Ah, he didn’t have his way with me! Despite relief in knowing the truth, Polly remained ashamed that Judith knew what she’d done.
    “I saw you home that day.”
    Polly lowered her head, and took a drink of her stout.
    “No need to feel bad,” Judith said, gently touching Polly’s left hand. “I’ve got that way too. Life is hard, and we have need to get away from it sometimes.”
    Grateful to have a sympathetic friend, Polly looked up, smiled, and clasped Judith’s hand. Knowing that another young wife also liked to drink, and for similar reasons, she didn’t feel so lonely and dishonorable.
    “You were knapped, I think.”
    “Yes, I have two children now, John and Percy, so I don’t have much time. I ought to finish this and go.”
    Judith rubbed her tummy. “And, now, I have one on the way. Soon, I’ll not have time either. Perhaps we can help each other. I could keep yours when you want to have a drink, and, in return, you could do the same for me.”
    Polly found the offer unsettling, but had to think about why. She felt comfortable with the idea of small adventures because the time she allotted to them and the funds she committed each outing were both limited. Even if she gave herself more time, fear kept her from taking more than the occasional penny from the printing accounts, so her drinking was regulated to one glass of bitter or stout, and nothing stronger, per adventure. The freedom Judith’s offer entailed seemed dangerous, yet Polly didn’t want to close the door on it.
    “That might be a good thing,” she said. She finished her stout and stood.
    “If you want to talk about it,” Judith said, “I’ll be here Monday afternoons—at least for a while—I’m two months along already.”
    “Thank you,” Polly said.

9
    Something in Common
     
     
    In mid-summer of 1868, Polly received an order for a chapbook about the life and crime of a condemned criminal, Thomas Wells, who would hang at Newgate Prison in August. Following the hanging of the Fenian murderer, Michael Barrett, in May, executions had ceased to be public events. She had assumed that would put the writers of gallows ballads out of business.
    Looking over the materials her husband had brought her for the job, a hand-written manuscript and a small woodcut block for the front page illustration, she noted with discomfort the author’s name: Conway. The day she’d spent singing the man’s ballad about Theodore Pritchard with Kevin Lace and his friends wasn’t a good memory.
    Over the next few days, as she went about the work of setting type, printing, folding, sewing and cutting two hundred of the books, Lace’s voice rang in her head, singing the song over and over. Thinking about the loss of memory and control she’d experienced that day at The Boar’s Tusk was an uncomfortable reminder of her problem with alcohol, and brought on a nauseating shame. She finished the job