Darlin’ Streets

by Wiebo Grobler

By midnight, London had washed the respectable people from her streets.

Rain ran along the gutters, carrying its filth towards the river. Mist pressed in against the buildings and lamps, quietly fighting for dominance. The mist was winning.

I walked slowly through Whitechapel, the rain finding the gap between my collar and my neck.

Outside a public house, a woman lifted her skirts to clear a puddle as she approached. A black lace ribbon circled her throat. She had one glove on and kept the other hand folded inside her shawl against the cold. She watched my boots first, then my bag. Powdered face and scarlet lips curling into a seductive smile. All it did was enhance the hollow of her cheeks. Money earned was spent on drink instead of bread.

“Looking for company, doctor?”

I stopped, intrigued.

“You have me at a disadvantage, madam. Do I know you?”

She smiled, yellowed teeth smudged with rouge. “You looked after Annie. Last winter.”

I cast my mind back. There had been several Annies. Women arrived at my surgery after dark, usually alone, sometimes with a friend who would wait outside. They brought small coins to help with big fears.

“I hope she recovered.”

“Back to work. Thanks to you.” The woman said it without gratitude or accusation. I found it…disheartening.

“What’s your name?”

“Rose.”

“Your real name?”

“That depends on what you’re paying for,” she said and stepped closer.

She smiled, but the smile tired before it reached her eyes. Juniper sweetened her breath.

From the next street came the measured tread of a constable. Rose glanced towards the sound in irritation. I kept my gaze upon her.

“They’re out in force tonight,” she said.

“Rightly so. People are frightened.”

“Well, someone’s giving them reason.”

“Aren’t you afeared?”

The footsteps faded. Rain ticked against the public house windows, hissed off the hot glass from the gas lamps.

“Should I be?”

“I try to help people, do you need help?” I ask.

For a moment, neither of us moved. Then she drew her shawl closer and looked down towards the wet road and whispered. “I have… a little trouble.”

I nod my understanding and look down at my bag. Its leather had darkened with rain.

“How long?”

She answered quietly, always the same story. An absent man, an unpaid room, a life already difficult becoming impossible. They come to me because other doors have closed.

I once found comfort in being needed. These beautifully, ugly pariahs of the dark, circling like sharks; for rich men’s hearts. Selling themselves for the glitter of gold and hungering for something that can’t be sold.

“My surgery is some distance,” I said.

“I haven’t much.”

I smiled, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It will be enough.”

She looked up, hope shining in her tired, gin addled eyes, and hooked my arm.

We walked arm in arm beneath the lamps, like wraiths flitting between mist, shadow and light.

There were nights when I remembered every patient I had saved. There were others when I could remember only the faces of those who had died. Between the two stood a door I had long ago stopped trying to lock. Some nights I was Jekyll and other nights Hyde. People liked stories in which a monster could be separated neatly from the man.

Rose spoke of Annie again. She wanted reassurance. I gave it readily.

At the mouth of a narrow passage, I turned.

“This way.”

She hesitated.

“There’s no lamp.”

I patted her hand. “Fear not, I know the path and these streets like the back of my hand.”

Above us, a broken gutter overflowed. Water fell steadily onto an upturned pail. I placed my bag beside the wall.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

I looked at the black lace around her throat.

“Only a little,” I said, running the back of my hand across her cheek and down to her neck where, with practiced ease, I slit her throat.

For a few moments, her pulse kept time beneath my fingers.

I waited for something more. Relief. Peace.

Beyond the passage, somebody laughed. A door slammed. London continued without asking what had happened in one small corner of her alleys and streets. Her own heartbeat and pulse that never ceased.

I picked up my bag and I walked west, following the noise. In the lamplight, my hands looked much as they always had. A healer’s, a devil’s.

Out of the mist another woman calls to me.

Surely, I thought, the next one will make me whole.