Sepia

I was called when Lady Blackmere went into labour at eight o’clock in the evening. It was, though, an easy confinement, being Her Ladyship’s third, and after securing another fine young son for his Lordship I left the house in Grosvenor Square at about one in the morning.
The fog had grown thicker during the night as I was inside, and had become what the working classes delight in referring to as ‘a real pea-souper’.    His Lordship tried to press the use of his carriage upon me but as my chambers were near and as I anyway desired a walk to clear my head of the fumes of the laudanum used earlier as well as the somewhat bucolic results of his Lordship’s relief and pleasure at the results of the evening, celebrated with a very fine double-malt, I declined his generosity.
It would have been easy to regret that decision, although in truth a carriage in thick fog can be a somewhat hazardous conveyance in its own right.  There was little enough horse-traffic around at that time of the morning, of course, - I saw perhaps one water-cart and  a brewer’s dray delivering – but even the most sensible of horses can be too easily spooked by the unexpected approaching it in fog and, on balance, I preferred my own two feet.
The streets in town were almost deserted of pedestrian traffic as well, for the theatres and public houses were long closed and all decent people snug abed.  A few lone figures thickly wrapped and huddled against the chill damp of the fog and the November night scurried guiltily past me, probably servants hurrying back to their employment after illicit assignations, but for long stretches of streets so bustling and busy during the day I was alone in a surreal silence.
As I strode along the click of my footfalls on the pavement sounded strangely muffled and distant while the heart of the great city seemed extra-ordinarily still and empty.  With all its familiar sights as well as the more mundane architecture of the streets I knew so well swallowed in the darkness and the fog it would have been easy to imagine oneself in Paris, Berlin or even some dark Mephistophelean underworld.
For the fog, thick enough in its own right and heavy with the salty tang of the Thames, had been greatly added to by the tens of thousands of fires burning in the hearths of the great city as well as the fumes and furnaces of the industries crowding around its edge.  Good Welsh coal adding its carbon particulates and sulphur gasses to the damp moisture of the air and turning the fog into what the popular papers with their appalling disregard for the proper use of the English language were beginning to call ‘smog’, while baying for the authorities to do something about it as though there was something which could be done.
True I could smell the soot and sulphur in the air with the salt, and knew that my surgery would be full all too soon on the morrow that was already today with the consumptive and the asthmatic coughing blood and phlegm onto my carpets; that there would be more death certificates to sign giving pulmonary inflammation as the cause of death, yet are we to stop people burning coal and let the Welsh miners and their families starve?  Do we stop the wheels of industry for fear of fog and a few deaths?  Of course not.
The Metropolitan gas street-lighting was functioning, each standard creating a globe of yellow light outside of which nothing more than the indistinct loom of buildings could be seen while inside each globe the gas-light and sooty sulphur of the fog combined to paint the immediate scene in soft, monochrome tints, a circular sepia photographer’s plate of glistening pavement, blank wall and blind, black windows in a row along the street.
It was in one such globe that I saw the girl.
Some wayward, lazy fold of air had thickened the fog behind her and as I stepped into the pool of lamplight she seemed to be standing on some silent, empty stage with a backdrop just of soft brown and pale yellow hues washed over a silken, folded drape.  I had caught her unawares and for a moment, an eternity of a heart-beat, she stood lost within herself, alone in her private universe of sepia fog.
Indecision informed her.  Her feet were at rest but slightly apart as though ready to bear her ahead or to the right or the left once the decision was made and her whole body was poised on a very needle-point of balance, motionless and steady, yet just a slight inclination further, the tiniest relaxation of her stance, and commitment would be made, the motion begun, straight ahead or left or right. Irredeemable.  For ever.
Her hands were held before her stomach, fingertips lightly kissing as she looked down at them unseeing, ticking off the thoughts in her mind, balancing the weights of each pro and each con. Heart against mind, perhaps.  Duty against inclination.  Desire against conscience.  Right or left.  Forward or back.  A girl at a cross-roads, lost in a fog.
I came to her attention and her face half-turned to me, the whole fragile edifice of her contemplations crumbling as I unwittingly intruded into her world.  Yet if she felt irritation or annoyance she gave no sign.  Just a slight, quirky smile at some inner amusement at herself, or at the world.
I stopped short so as not to alarm her, for even the wealthier parts of London know footpads and worse while the constabulary almost entirely occupies itself with the rougher boroughs,  and I saw her briefly appraise me and judge me.  Presumably my patent shoes, the sharp creases in my trousers, the tails of my frock-coat and the glint of the diamond pin in the silken sheen of my cravat put any fears she might have harboured at ease for she did no more than hold me in that enigmatic gaze, her own decision postponed while she waited the outcome of this unexpected meeting.
I raised my hat and bowed slightly.  “Good evening,”  I bid her.  “I hope I did not alarm you.”
She was quite exquisitely beautiful.  Tall and straight, a finely-featured face and long, musician’s hands with her fingertips still unconsciously, gently, toying with some small object I could not see – a lover’s ring returned, perhaps?  A coin to toss, heads or tails into the future?  She was bareheaded with loose and flowing hair to her shoulders, a strange vanity in the present fashion yet for her somehow right, for not only could no bonnet have set off that face as well as did her natural flow of hair, the very absence of a hat shouted at an independence of thought and refusal to accord to expectation which was apparent in the confidence of her stance as she considered a chance-met stranger in a city, a fog-bound world, of just two.
Her gown, too, was simplicity itself.  No layers of lace or bows and bustles with which women are wont to adorn themselves to hide plainness of face or poverty of wit.  A simple satin, as I guessed.  Cream in colour, though it was hard to tell in the tan-stained gaslight. Cream, though, would have been perfect, the choice of genius as it underplayed the soft golden sheen of her hair, and by underplaying it made it all the clearer.  A deeply ruffed hem and cuffs lent femininity but no softness while, most startling, an underskirt of virgin white revealed at the front by a scooping parting of her overdress from her ankles to her waist declaring, nay shouting, her sexuality while yet placing a shield as firm and bold as that of any medieval knight between her shy sex and the lusting world.
Sheer silk stockings and light shoes with strange raised heels that would surely make dancing difficult completed the ensemble, and the enigma.
For it seemed inconceivable that she should be unaccompanied at such a place and such a time.  A serving-girl creeping back from some lover’s arms might be alone, except that no serving girl would surely dress as she was dressed or return my study with such a calm scrutiny of her own.  Yet no daughter of any family of worth would dare dress as boldly as she was dressed, invite such scandal as she would draw were she to attend a function of quality so attired, let alone walk the streets of London in the early hours unchaperoned.  What wealthy merchant would allow his daughter to risk his hopes of a good match for her by declaring so boldly that she was not just the match of any man, she was his better?
Ah, but an actress!  Not one of those who declare themselves actresses yet pursue another profession although it, too, involves dissimulation. No, a real thespian.  Where else could a woman gain such poise and self-confidence than on a stage in the gaze of hundreds?  How other than secured by her talents could a woman acquire such an air of independence?  Even the oddities of her costume were explained for surely Electra might be portrayed as such on stage, or Perdita in her days as a shepherdess.
“Sir,” she returned my bow with a slight one of her own.  “You did not.”  I had for a moment forgotten my question but covered the time I required to recall it by replacing my hat.
Her voice was low and sure, soft and velvet.  The voice surely of an actress for it bore no hint of accent or station.
“May I perhaps be of assistance?’ I offered.  “I am returning to my rooms from a confinement, but am too much the Englishman to allow a lady to walk the night streets unaccompanied.”  I slightly raised the leather bag containing my obstetrical instruments to reinforce my claim although she would, of course, already have seen it.
If she saw my remark as a comment on her predicament, or a slight against whomsoever might have placed her in it, she gave no sign but merely regarded me with that bold scrutiny for a moment more and than inclined her head in assent.
“Sir, I would not be so churlish as to keep you from your bed.  Yet I fear that in this aureate haze I have misplaced my direction.  If you could indicate the way to my destination I would be beholden to you.”  She named her objective, a street of private houses of quality many occupied, I knew, by foreign nobility who maintained residences in London.
Not an actress, then?  A foreign princess, perhaps, well-schooled in the English language and manners yet not quite perfect in their application for I was sure she had not been mocking my correctness in her reply.  Royalty, surely, would explain such composure, such elegance, perhaps even such beauty, and foreign fashion could explain her attire, yet surely no princess of however fallen a Royal House would be allowed alone in a London street at night.
“It would be my pleasure to accompany you there,” I told her, sincerely.  “And men of medicine and their beds are often strangers.”  I knew the way well and in truth it was not far, yet I was equally sure she was well aware of the way also, and that the direction she had misplaced was of another kind altogether.  Indeed so sure of this was I that I sought a way to offer her the opportunity to pursue some other course.
“Although if there is some other destination you have in mind?  Or perhaps some sanctuary you would seek until that destination becomes clearer in your mind?”
Her laugh was light and mischievous. “No, sir,” she exclaimed.  “I will have done with obfustication tonight.  Pray lead on.”
I took her at her word and stepped past her, and she fell into place by my side.
She was perfection.  Not as tall as at first I had thought, a trick of the fog perhaps, she moved as smoothly as the mist over a lake.  Despite the hindrance of the dress and petticoats beneath she matched my pace with just the faintest ‘slip slip’ whisper of the silken fabric against her legs.  The loose flounces of the edging to her dress obscured the lay of the material above her breasts but the cut of the cloth to either side betrayed a soft fullness there.  She was divine.  Angelic.  I loved her.
We walked in silence.  That enigmatic smile on her face told me that she was well aware of my burning curiosity.  Who was she?  Why had she been alone in the fog in the early hours of the morning?  What had been the decision she had been on the verge of taking when I had walked into her?  What might that decision have been had I not?  Why now was she letting me take her so meekly one way when it had been so hard for her to decide on it previously.  I wanted to know and yet, more, I wanted not to know.  I wanted her to remain for ever a mystery.  The Mystery that is Woman.
I stopped.  Buildings loomed softly above us to one side in the amber-stained fog and the pools of gaslight receded ahead of us and behind but to the other side was a thick darkness.
“We could save a little by cutting through the gardens,” I said, “Or stay on the road and take the long way around, if you prefer.”
“Life, sir, is too short to take the long way around,” she observed lightly.  “Let us cut through the gardens.”
I held the wrought-iron gate for her and then followed her inside.  Enough light leaked from the gas-lamps on the road to make the path through the grass and around the flowerbeds a pale glimmer in the night-shrouded fog, but the caverns beneath the trees were inky and thick.
She died quickly and, I hope, easily for medical men trained to give life and preserve it  know how to take it – a thumb on the carotid artery to starve the brain of blood, a pinch on the oesophagus to stop the lungs, and the scream.  She struggled like a bird in my hand for a long moment and then was still, and I laid her down on the fog-soaked grass.
I was shaking and trembling, for I hate the killing.  It has to be done, a necessary vileness I must endure although it leaves me sickened for who apart from a soldier on the battlefield sees so closely the finality of death, becomes so aware of its very utterness, as the physician.  Until her life had gone I was so terribly aware that it was not too late; that I could pull back from the awful act and let her live on with her imperfections, her disease.  For the short while she fought me, I fought me too: fought the sentiment that urged me to let her live on regardless for she, I knew, would never accept that what I was doing was for her own good, and at times it is hard for me to keep that clear vision in my mind.
But now she was still, and I could put the dreadful act behind me and move on.  
Despite the dark it was easy to undress her and my instruments are always carefully placed in their proper places in my bag.  First remove that disgusting, disfiguring hair on the pubis.  Then, with scalpel and the most delicate of touches, excise the uterus and ovaries.  No light except the faintest of pale shimmers that was her body in the blanket of black fog to aid me but I had need of none, for how well do my hands know those parts of a woman.
It was done.  She was pure.  She was perfection.   No more would that disgusting menstrual flow give monthly reminder of her base nature.  She was free of that constant animal urge to ‘live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew’d in corruption and making love over the nasty sty’ as the Bard so forcefully put it.  Never would she be marred by those disgusting sweats and slimes that had reduced the usually elegant Angela Blackmere to the level of a beast those few hours ago.  She would never experience the agony of an alien body splitting her own in its ruthless drive to be separate.  The bloody, feral indignities of the childbed would never be hers to endure.
Outwardly she had seemed an angel but I had known that she still carried within her the disease of the base animal Mr. Darwin has shown is ancestor to us all. Thanks to me she, whoever she was, is free of that now.  An Angel indeed.
I left the gardens hurriedly and resumed my course home.  Soon the streets of the City would be full again, of people hurrying through the cold, clammy, persistent fog in the yellow dawn, and I knew the newsvendors would be crying out laviciously the lure of their wares.  “Ripper strikes again.”
         Jack the Ripper, they have named me.  So common, brutal and coarse.  If only they could see the loveliness I do.  If only they could meet an Angel in a sepia fog and have the power to make her fly. 

© Rex Antioch
Written for ASSTR’s 2003 anniversary celebration and, personally, to celebrate the awesome talent of Jonathon Earl Bowser. One of the objectives of the celebration is to acknowledge those who make a donation to ASSTR. ASSTR relies on your donations to keep doing its great work. Please make a donation if you can. You can find details on how to donate at /donations.html . 
“Sepia” can be found at  http://www.jonathonart.com/drawing1.html