Automatic Woman Read online

  I lifted the Tiger mask over my head and drove him into the ground. Shots were firing from somewhere, to somewhere. My vision doubled, but this was a moot point in that all I could see was walls and walls of flames. Flame, coating the world. I crossed my arms over my face; the sleeves of my jacket were set ablaze. I turned to what might have been the window side of the room and leapt.

  By God or Fortuna, I was right. My fat body burst through the office window and I dropped like a flaming comet in the early evening sky. I remember hitting a slanted roof, sliding, falling, landing on my feet in the street, jacket still ablaze. Some thick bodied masker, Mr. Gazelle, Safari and company’s outside lookout, stared at me with mouth agape. Too late he reached for his holstered fire arm and I was on him. I grabbed his gun wrist and put two Engholm rounds in his chest with my free hand. The Gazelle slumped onto the pavement. I’d never killed a man before this. Sure I’ve seen war, maybe I’d shot a man, but the skirmishes I encountered were distant things, rifle rounds across fields to faraway strangers. This was different. My hand was on this man when I laid him low. This occupies my thoughts now, though it didn’t then. Not with Dr. Doyle’s magic solution coursing in my veins.

  I stripped off my flaming coat and took the masker’s firearm, a nickeled Colt Action Army. His fall had knocked the gazelle mask eschew. It was Owens. My Bow Street comrade. My safety net.

  I ran down the streets of London, a nutter of the first rate with a pistol in each hand and burn holes throughout my shirt and trousers. I ran the streets. If the maskers pursued, I knew not. I ran straight and true, pumping arms and legs and guns. A line of spittle ran from my mouth, down my chin and speckled my sooty shirt. I imagine I looked much like Mary Shelley’s monster. Evening strollers and late business folk jumped to avoid me, crossed busy roadways to avoid me, entered buildings to avoid me. Somewhere on Three Lanes a Metro called out to me. I paused and turned to him. I was breathing fire at this point and grinding my teeth so hard that one literally cracked and fell out of my mouth. The copper looked at me, looked at my pistol hands and what must have been the maddest eyes he’d ever beheld and made a decision not to interfere.

  “Get home safe, mate,” he called out. I’d taken to my running again. I ran back to Whitechapel, back to the Piece Work. The pimps and whores and clients gasped and stared at my entrance. Keeping my stay here secret might be harder than I imagined.

  I made it to my room and blacked out. I awoke naked on the mattress. Mary was holding me and whispering. The cold air was painful on my skin. My arms and legs were covered in bubbled skin and peeling blisters. Much of my hair was singed away.

  At some point, Dr. Doyle returned. At first he was speechless. There wasn’t much on me that wasn’t burnt and blistered.

  “Oh, what the shite!?” The good doctor said.

  Five

  Jolly finds himself in an unfamiliar setting

  I woke in a strange bed and strange surroundings. The plush faux elegance of the Piece Work was replaced by a room with spare and Spartan decor. I remember images like photographs, dirty plaster walls, bed sheets hung as curtains, a bed that squeaked and squealed with each of my turns and rolls. The smells were different here. The talcum and sex scent of the Piece Work was replaced by the scent of cabbage, stronger when the breeze pushed in a sheet curtain.

  I sat up. I was still naked. My skin was covered in some kind of thick salve, maybe petroleum jelly. All my skin was raw. What hadn’t peeled the first night of my convalescence had turned a shiny pink. What had peeled had turned into quite the scab collection. If I’d been a handsome man, this would have posed as a serious loss. Given my natural looks, I can’t say I was inconvenienced outside of tremendous pain and the loss of Lord knows how many days.

  How many days? I remembered still periods in the night, in the early morning, in the day. The flapping of that sheet and the ever-present smell of cabbage. My whole world was cabbage.

  My stomach rumbled. I wondered how long it had been since my last proper meal. Also, where were my clothes?

  I wrapped the bed’s quilt around myself and walked to the window. The touch of the quilt hurt the skin on my shoulders and arms. I walked to the window. Outside a big woman was singing and pegging laundry. Shirts and trousers and diapers. She sang in Gaelic:

  Luchd nan seòl àrd, hù il oro

  ‘S nan long luatha, o hi ibh o

  ‘S nam brataichean, hù il oro

  Gorm is uaine, boch orainn o

  Those beautiful and alien words. I don’t speak it, but all Gaelic sounds like the purr of love and the question of existence to me. Which got me thinking, was I still in London?

  My mind went back to Owens. I shot Owens in the chest, a man I knew. The animal maskers were in some way connected to Bow Street, which meant they were connected to Lord Barnes, which meant I was right fucked.

  The Gaelic singing was interrupted by shouts outside the front door. First female, then male, all muffled into tones and unknowns. I left the bedroom and walked through an equally Spartan living room adorned with a kitchenette, two ladder-backed chairs and a blank painter’s easel. The voices grew louder. Whoever was in the ruckus was outside the front door. The female voice grew louder, more shrill. Something thumped against the wall. A fist, a person, who knows? My investigative nature got the better of me. I opened the door and peeked out.

  Mary Kelly was there, as was a man I had yet to meet. He was dressed like a dandy: three piece suit, vest, all argyle. A gold watch fob linked a vest button to his jacket pocket. All very natty. His hands were on her shoulders, holding her up against the wall. Her face had the look of fear a person gets when they are trying not to cry, that moment when we have no words and our throats close and we wish we were anyone else, or anywhere else.

  “Excuse me, mate,” I interjected.

  The dandy turned to me. Surprise didn’t quite cover his expression.

  “Are you armed?” I enquired.

  “What?” he asked in genuine confusion.

  “Are you armed? Do you have a knife or a gun?”

  “No.”

  I let the quilt drop to the ground. All my greasy nakedness was displayed to the world. The dandy took his hands off of Mary.

  “That’s a shame, mate. Because if you were, I’d feel like this was a fair fight. As is, I’m going to have to tear your fancy fucking arms off and I can’t imagine you’ve got the means to stop me.”

  I held my fists out and clenched my hands until the knuckles popped. In my head I was praying that he stepped down. I didn’t have much more than the show of fight in me. In my experience guys who press girls to walls are cowards one hundred percent of the time. This dandy didn’t disappoint. He got the message and left in shameful haste and bluster. Mary knelt down and gripped her knees. She was hyperventilating a little. I presented my hand.

  “This is your place?”

  She took my hand and nodded.

  “That was your pimp?”

  She nodded again.

  “Sorry to intrude.”

  I walked her back inside. The living room kitchenette contained a hotplate, pantry, and sink. I proceeded to make a kettle of Earl Grey. I presented my tea selection to Mary, and she nodded in consent, still frazzled by the encounter.

  “Look, dear. I don’t want to cause you any trouble, but if that man comes back I’d very much like to hit him.”

  Mary giggled and nodded her head. I’ve never felt the better man in my life than in that moment.

  I made her a cup of tea, and one for myself. We sat and drank and listened to the Gaelic songs of old from her melodious neighbor. I reached out and grasped her hand. Words were lost to the occasion. We just sat and sipped and let the world around us do whatever it is it does. She eventually broke the silence.

  “I got your things.”

  “Did you?”

  “Your clothes. Your lockbox. Some toiletries, they’re all in the room.” She reached her hand behind her ear. A move of idle, embarrassed hands.
I was at a loss.

  “Thanks, love.”

  I returned to the room. In the closet were two new shirts, a pair of trousers, undergarments and wool socks. Everything in my size.

  “Couldn’t salvage my clown shirt?” I asked.

  She smiled at that. I dressed in solid respectable colors. Cream silk for the shirt, gray for the trousers, and a brown belt. A man’s outfit. She’d even found a replacement for my long coat. I went through my lockbox. Scotch, Boschon cards; my savings were down to about eighty pounds. I gave Mary a scrutinizing look.

  “I had debts to pay. I earned that,” she said.

  I couldn’t argue with her, but still, funds were running short, as were my days.

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Four days. The porter you sent out never came back. People at the Piece started getting nervous and I figured you were better somewhere else. Dr. Doyle helped me get you here.”

  She sipped her tea. I watched her little fingers encircle that blue porcelain China and bring the cup to her red painted lips. Her lip coloring did not match her skin tone well. The morning sun showed her age, but I didn’t care. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever beheld, this tiny protective creature. Forget everything I ever said about the beauty of the Swan Princess or Nouveau’s machine, the real thing will always claim superiority.

  “Thanks. I owe you and the doctor a debt.”

  She smiled her little smile and I felt that everything was fine. That the world was not pressing me. That I wasn’t an animal, cornered and desperate.

  “I bought you a present,” she said and got up. She went to what I assume was her room, the room in which I’d been slipping in and out of consciousness for the last four days. She returned with two enormous leather belts, really more a harness. On closer inspection, I found that the harness was two linked holster belts, the shoulder strap set for the Engholm and the waist strap set for the Colt Army. It was some mad contraption meant for heroes in American dime novels. It looked bloody mean.

  “I know a leather specialist,” she smiled and blushed. “Try it on.”

  Mary helped me into the contraption. I must admit, with guns bristling from chest and hip I felt like Michael the Archangel. I felt like a warrior, a tough as nails enforcer, a man with three cocks and no curfew.

  “Thanks, love.” I took hold of her neck and kissed it twice. My face was hurting a lot less than in days past.

  I pocketed the rest of my currency and threw the new long coat over my gun gear. It covered the pistols just enough.

  “What’s your pimp’s name?”

  “Saucy Jack.”

  “Is he the type to come back?”

  “Yes.”

  I gave her a five pound note.

  “Go find yourself a day worth having. Lunch, clothes, whatever. I’ll be back here before evening, best you’re gone while I’m gone.”

  Mary nodded. I kissed her again for good measure, just to be sure that the things I felt were the things she felt. I kissed her and walked out the front door. Things needed to get done and time was a pressing issue.

  My thoughts turned again to Owens. Dumb luck Owens. The duffer with two bullets in his chest. I imagined there was a wake at the Bow Street Firm. All fallen comrades were given the respect of a good drunken wake. A celebration of life. I wondered what the excuse was for his death. Surely Lord Barnes didn’t list his demise as shot down due to a bloody stupid animal mask.

  Old newspapers in Mary’s apartment mentioned the fire at Saxon’s but neither Owens nor myself were mentioned. No stranger than usual, I guess.

  I waved a hansom down and gave the driver the address of Mr. C. Darwin, 12 Upper Gower Street. Saxon’s envelope had burned with my old jacket. By good fortune, Mary’s rubbings of the cogs had been in my trouser pockets, and she’d had the good sense to bring them with me to her little sanctuary.

  Quickly enough the hansom took me to a nondescript cottage in a middle-class neighborhood. I knocked on the door and puffed out my chest, just in case. The door was answered by a small man with a large mustache. To say the mustache was large actually does it no justice. The hair on his lip dominated his mouth. I literally couldn’t tell you if his lips were red or pink or blue. He must have been Italian, though Hungarian would be a good second guess.

  “Mr. Darwin?” I asked.

  The man might have smirked. He had a smirk in his eyes, but I couldn’t tell if it reached his mouth beneath that godforsaken mustache.

  “No,” he said.

  “Is Mr. Darwin here?”

  “You want to know if Charles Darwin is here?”

  Shite! Charles Darwin! How many blokes named C. Darwin could there be in London? I cursed myself for not seeing the obvious. Charles Darwin was the most well-known, if not the most controversial scientist in all of England. Maybe the world. Of course some fringe genius like Saxon would have correspondence with the great naturalist, the destroyer of small minds and large institutions.

  “Sorry, mate. I had it that he lived here.”

  “Thirty years ago,” Mustache told me.

  “Fair enough.” I gave mustache a nod and stepped lively back to the road. I didn’t need to ask where Charles Darwin currently resided, I already knew. Everyone who read the society papers knew. Charles Darwin was currently at the University of Oxford where he was in his fifth year of a permanent fellowship. He’d reached a level of academic notoriety in which no one expected him to produce anything, his presence simply added to reputations. Time for me to catch a train to Oxford.

  Six

  Jolly confides in the great Naturalist Charles Darwin

  The train ride was lovely except for the gawks and stares I received from regular folk. Not just children mind you, grown men and women looked at me seated and whispered to each other. It reminded me of my public school days before I’d hit my growth spurt. The stares bothered me, the normality of the ladies and gents bothered me. All flush and fancy. Do regular people know what they look like? Do they know how they look when they gawk, when their dumb mouths hang open and their small minds work toward some bland conclusion? I finally turned to the couple sitting across from me.

  “What, never seen a leper before?” I asked.

  That shut them up but good. The man seated next to me rose and exited the car. Everyone seated within ten feet of me followed. Privacy works for me. I stretched my arms and legs and looked out the window at the scenery. Black Park, Stoke Poges, the Church Wood. Rolling hills and greenery pocked by country villages. It never failed to take my breath.

  I’m a product of the city, of London, mainly Whitechapel. I’d never even been to the countryside until I was thirteen. Dad took me to scatter Mom’s ashes at Longwick, where she’d been born. He borrowed a horse and cart from a draftsman who he’d done free work for. We walked that horse from early morning to late afternoon. Father was silent in a way I was not used to. The verbose man, the cobbler philosopher. I had nothing to say either. Mother had been sick a long time. She’d been coughing blood for years, confined to her bed for months. Her death was an inevitability and we had adapted to the “when” rather than the “if” of our circumstances.

  I can’t remember her face except to see a red speckled handkerchief in front of it. Blond hair, pale skin, blood on white cloth. That is my image of Mother.

  Father and I left London in silence. Buildings gave way to grasslands and trees and I sat in stunned silence. I’d always seen trees as creatures of as much gray as green, as receptacles of soot that hung constant in our brave industrial society. To see trees unadorned by ash, to see them clean and swaying in a gentle breeze… Words escape me.

  The trip lasted hours but to me it seemed much longer. We met Mother’s family in Longwick, but I wasn’t there. My mind took on the pictures of rolling grass and trees and I was running through them. I was drenched in sunlight and the grass came to my waist and rolled like crashing ocean waves.

  The scattering, Mother’s wake - I was pre
sent for each event in body only. We left early the next morning and I swore to myself that when I grew to be a man, I would live my life in these forests. That I would become like the mythical elf, a creature who lives in the woods and for the woods and has nothing to do with the smoke and retch of our city home.

  Like all dreams of youth, this was quashed quickly in the practical. I returned to school. I assisted Father. I grew to be a man of the city. A man who forgets his dreams only to remember them as the biography of a person wholly different and strange. Wood elf. Bollocks.

  I must have dozed off. I woke at the stop before Oxford Station. The other passengers still kept their distance. I exited at Oxford and walked to the splendid university grounds.

  Oxford is like the prototype of all universities. Old brick structures, open parks, hordes of brilliant youth in natty clothes. Every campus I’ve seen or heard of is some version of this. Which makes sense, Oxford being the first and oldest university of the Western world. The Italians claim the University of Bologna came first but I’ve been to Italy, I’ve spent holidays there and communed with the people. It’s just not possible that they came up with higher learning before we did.

  I found the campus central library, another gray brick structure; it was three stories with windows cut through all floors. A kindly librarian gave me the whereabouts of Mr. Charles Darwin’s office but warned me not to bother checking there for two reasons. First, Mr. Darwin was constantly inundated with visitors, many unfriendly. His secretary had grown adept at removing them, bodily if necessary. The second and more relevant reason was that today was Thursday, thus Mr. Darwin would be giving his weekly lecture at the College of Science. She gave me directions to the college and I was on my way.