Nathan Yocum - Automatic Woman

Eleven

I woke in the late morning with Mary still in my arms. We roused ourselves and gathered discarded bits of clothing. She brushed the rubbish from Mum’s floor off my back; I did the same for her. We were like grooming chimpanzees picking away bits of paper and tea leaves and cigar butts. The morning sun seemed a strange beast. I was positively hung-over from the violence of the night before.

We gathered our meager effects. Mary nicked a pair of sandals from under Mum’s couch, and we were on our way. The evening’s careful planning had given way to improvising. I knew that leaving London was the first priority. Things had gotten too hot, as the saying goes. I stopped in a general store for biscuits, a paper, and a coat for Mary to throw over her torn dress. We looked and smelled like gutter snipes. I retrieved my firearms from the tube station. We booked passage on an eleven o’clock southbound train to Portsmouth with all stops in-between.

We took advantage of a layover in Basingstoke. I rented us two copper tubs at a tavern under the pretense of being a married couple on holiday. We took short but heavenly baths. The hot water peeled away days of grime and dead skin and dried blood. I could have spent a lifetime basking in that water, getting clean, getting renewed. I rose from that copper tub reborn. The water I left behind was thick and black and stank despite the soaps and perfumes mixed in. Mary’s tub was not so dramatic, but she looked like a different person as well. We appeared less like street urchins and more like the newlywed widower and late marriage maid that I’d composed as our cover story.

We returned to the train and shared a quiet lunch of cold meats in the dining car. Afterward we found our seats and she rested her head against my arm. Mary slept while I watched the green earth roll past. Clouds blotted the sun and made everything gray and cool. The train stopped again in Winchester, but I made no movement for fear of waking Mary. She rubbed her face and grumbled and continued dreaming Lord knows what.

We detrained at Portsmouth. I booked passage for us on an eight p.m. ferry to Le Havre. We rented another room, this time for the purpose of changing appearances. Mary shaved off all of my hair and mutton chops, or at least those hairs that hadn’t been burned off in Bow Street. I matched my new hairstyle with a cheap shirt, wool trousers, suspenders, and cap. All in all I looked like a dock worker lost from port. Mary dyed her hair henna red and gave it a short bob, as was trendy among working class wives.

We shared another quiet meal, this one of Shepherd’s Pie and whiskey waters. I purchased three evening editions and scanned for my name or anything that could relate me to last evening’s activities.

On and on went tales of lurid violence and the heroic efforts of police officers and firefighters. Eleven dead, dozens injured. No mention of the Bow Street Firm or Lord Barnes or Charles Darwin or automatic statues that fight like men. Someone had whitewashed these stories and taken out the mystery, the true meaning. Two of the papers cited the cause as a drunken brawl that got out of hand, something started over choleric words at the St. George & Dragon. The Pall Mall Gazette, yellowest of the three papers, blamed the riot on an anarchist conspiracy to undermine our sovereign unity. They want to destroy our way of life because they hated freedom and happiness and blah, blah, blah. Someone had spent good currency or brandished incredible favors to alter the news. The effect was disorienting. Had I made up the conspiracies in my mind? Were the papers right? Was I mad?

I looked at Mary, dipping her fork into mash and sweeping it around. The things that happened last night, last week, the war of the geniuses, the statues that came to life, if all of that wasn’t real, then what was she doing with me?

“Mary?”

“Hmm.”

“Am I mad?”

“Hmm?”

“Am I crazy?”

Her brown eyes looked up as she solemnly chewed her food. She gave the impression of deep contemplation. She swallowed and gave me that lopsided grin.

“Maybe.”

“Why are you with me?”

“You scared off my pimp.”

“No, really. I’m in serious trouble. You can jump clear of this if you leave me. Why are you staying?”

She stroked the back of my hand with her finger.

“Jolly, I literally have nowhere else to go. Jack paid my rent. I’m not a woman of means; I’m an army widow. Less than that, actually. My husband, God rest his soul, was shot and killed in Egypt during Orabi’s Uprising. I was sad, I was hurt, but deep inside I was relieved. I married when I was young and pretty and stupid and didn’t know the ways of worldly men. My husband was older and dashing and strong and quick with his temper and fists. He also loved drink and cards. I imagine he loved drink and cards more than me given that he always had money for one and not the other. ‘Fine,’ I thought, ‘he’s dead and I’ll get my pension and the live the quiet widow’s life. Or perhaps I’ll go to a vocational school, take up the caring of children or typesetting.’ The government letter came and took what hope I had and burned it to ash. ‘Your husband was discharged from service prior to his death,’ they say. ‘Conduct not befitting a soldier in the Queen’s Army,’ they say. ‘Murdered in a common tavern brawl,’ they say. No heroics, no honor, no pension. That’s when Saucy Jack started coming around. Devon, my husband, owed money to several disreputable lenders. All gambling debts. Jack purchased the debts and presented me with two options: pay my husband’s outstanding balance or receive my husband’s punishment. No one sets out to be a whore, Jolly. But after five years, I know that’s all I’ll ever be. A whore.”

“I like you,” I said. I wanted to say something more substantial but found myself at a loss. I make no claim to being suave around the fairer sex, even one that I’ve already had the carnal knowledge of. To be sure, Mary gave me an inscrutable look.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Even if I’m a whore.”

“You’re not a whore today. You won’t be a whore tomorrow. You’re not a whore to me.”

“I’ve been a whore to you.”

“Those days are over.”

“All right, then. I like you, too. But I know that good days are to be lived in the moment and bad days are always on their way. I’m having fun now. I’m enjoying your company now. Where do you have us going from here?”

“We’ll land in Le Havre and take a train East. As far East as we can manage on our resources.”

She gave my hand another squeeze.

“The men chasing you, are they going to find us?”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty lucky.”

“You’re lucky my former husband cured me of handsome and charming men.”

I laughed at that.

“Lucky me,” I said.

The last of my money got us one way tickets to Budapest, with stops and changeovers in Cambrai, Brussels, Stuttgart, Munich and Graz. I’d come this way as a young man sent to war. I’d taken the opposite path home as an older, more cynical man. When I’d first ventured south, I’d been fleeing the life of a cobbler, fleeing the life of a man who never left the grit and horseshit of the city streets. I was fleeing my father and his life. When we’re young, often we don’t know the value of what we have. I loved my father despite hating his life. I joined the service to see the greater empire and claim adventure. My father died in the five years I spent adrift. He died and no one in my family knew how to reach me. I came back to a city lessened by his absence and stayed because my military service taught me that there is no such thing as the better place. All the places we live in our lives are tainted by the pettiness of human interest and the only happiness is that which we make for ourselves, independent of location.