The Map of Time and The Turn of the Screw

How many people go through life without experiencing pure pain? Andrew had known complete happiness and utter torment; he had used up his soul, so to speak, exhausted it completely. And now, comfortably installed with his pain, like a fakir on a bed of nails, he seemed to await who knew what: perhaps the applause signalling the end of the performance. Charles was certain that if his cousin was still alive it was because he felt compelled to experience that pain to the hilt. It was irrelevant whether this was a practical study of suffering or to atone for his guilt. Once Andrew felt he had achieved this, he would take a last bow and leave the stage for good.

Thus, each time Charles visited the Harrington mansion and found his cousin prone but still breathing, he heaved a sigh of relief. And when he arrived home empty-handed, convinced that anything he could do for Andrew was useless, he reflected on how strange life could be, how flimsy and unpredictable it was if it could be altered so drastically by the mere purchase of a painting. Was it within his power to change his cousin’s life again? Could he alter the path it would take before it was too late? He did not know. The only thing he was certain of was that, given everyone else’s indifference, he had to try.

In the little room on Dorset Street, Andrew opened the cutting and read for the last time, as though it were a prayer, the account of Marie Kelly’s mutilations. Then he folded it and replaced it in his coat pocket. He contemplated the bed, which bore no trace of what had happened there eight years before. But that was the only thing that was different: everything else remained unchanged – the grimy mirror, in which the crime had been immortalised, Marie Kelly’s little perfume bottles, the cupboard where her clothes still hung, even the ashes in the hearth left from the fire the Ripper had lit to make slitting her open cosier. He could think of no better place to take his own life.

He placed the barrel of the revolver under his jaw and crooked his finger around the trigger. Those walls would be splattered with blood once more, and far away, on the distant moon, his soul would at last take up its place in the little hollow awaiting him in Marie Kelly’s bed.

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