Daughter of the House
Rosie Thomas
A stunning novel from the SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author of THE KASHMIR SHAWLLondon 1919Born into a down-at-heel family, Nancy Wix is more than her past dictates – more ambitious than the daughter of a faded showman, more original than a woman who will be confined by polite conventions. The end of the Great War has left a stricken London on the brink of an uncertain future, and with their hard-won freedoms now in doubt Nancy and her fellow suffragettes must strive all over again for the right to control their own destinies.At a time when shattered families are struggling to let go of their dead, Nancy discovers she has a gift that offers hope to the loved ones of the lost generation, and a chance encounter reveals a way in which she might use it for her own ends.As Nancy struggles to break free from the rigid bonds of society and find her place in the world, the only thing that could hold her back is her love for an unattainable man…
Copyright (#u5a0bdf10-c9ce-5c6f-8746-374fa71736ca)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Rosie Thomas 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Cover photograph © Malgorzata Maj/Arcangel Images
Rosie Thomas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007512089
Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007512072
Version 2016-03-22
Dedication (#u5a0bdf10-c9ce-5c6f-8746-374fa71736ca)
For James and Flora
14 February 2015
Table of Contents
Cover (#u6dfb321f-beea-53fe-bc25-5858265f02f8)
Title Page (#u015da7bf-4239-5f87-8275-0a9c8f3b05d6)
Copyright (#ufae4bf14-5985-5ba3-889f-6d33d4597827)
Dedication (#u27b127f6-2b2f-5668-a605-d86ae0b97782)
Part One (#uc1c1279b-6585-5593-a7ee-f18553e4f8c1)
Chapter One (#u1c187a4f-5140-5bfe-b69e-eb2f17417b98)
Chapter Two (#u4b6e9a51-5b41-5328-b8cf-317edda17474)
Chapter Three (#u95cf5c81-fcd2-5be3-ab8c-d4c4ba8a6771)
Part Two (#u13e0e6c1-3b59-54a2-acf1-070779a74af4)
Chapter Four (#u5a5e8f04-4df3-50bb-81c9-10da148aed40)
Chapter Five (#ud0b257d9-7a72-539f-b484-a4a8504ac810)
Chapter Six (#u8084878b-2bc5-5288-88af-98e9d238f9ff)
Chapter Seven (#uf6803a28-051c-5f3f-9825-32d70c3369a3)
Chapter Eight (#u51d41cc5-a9e6-5c3c-b226-8411fe369840)
Chapter Nine (#u859ee264-d6f5-532f-8c7a-a7b868503156)
Chapter Ten (#u8d301447-abca-5341-9d25-174d8accffbb)
Part Three (#uc7391dd2-8e32-5ebc-9fc4-52723ea7a87f)
Chapter Eleven (#u74fa93aa-6fd6-5d51-972e-c619b2dadc79)
Chapter Twelve (#u6d82d0c6-e762-5eac-b80a-657f0d95ec97)
Chapter Thirteen (#ufb485af6-c4b2-532a-bb85-bb2f7181ec2b)
Chapter Fourteen (#ua51d08f2-3432-5e37-83b7-012badae4c6a)
Chapter Fifteen (#ua5b4838f-6c37-5140-9e4f-97b4efd18012)
Chapter Sixteen (#uea11d8f6-201b-58e0-8278-904e999d0c12)
Chapter Seventeen (#u591965cc-e8fb-5d94-b809-570790c155f8)
Part Four (#ua7039705-8419-5ea7-b19b-007c5a39b041)
Chapter Eighteen (#u42695568-ba26-580d-b677-9a3ec1c8b72e)
Chapter Nineteen (#uec16cca3-5147-5f8e-aa03-ebd016aea58c)
Chapter Twenty (#u66311add-f057-539a-a711-8fcb11d6d38b)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u2b479096-d9ea-514b-9f5d-8577ac28e512)
Keep Reading … (#uf146aff1-4d50-5357-87a1-2e1f85e9d707)
About the Author (#u28d6ed66-3641-5f3e-90da-bb0584685990)
Also by Rosie Thomas (#ude948f90-d211-5ce5-88bc-1dc77ef78f86)
About the Publisher (#u7a033c29-205a-5fd2-8ce9-e2f9722e24a1)
PART ONE (#u5a0bdf10-c9ce-5c6f-8746-374fa71736ca)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5a0bdf10-c9ce-5c6f-8746-374fa71736ca)
Kent, 1910
Mr and Mrs Devil Wix and their three children made a vivid picture as they strolled towards the steamer jetty. Devil wore a loose blue flannel coat with patch pockets, and a straw hat that he tipped to the other holidaymakers. His wife Eliza’s short steps were dictated by the fashionably narrow hem of her rose-pink and dove-grey hobble skirt. She had dressed her hair under a grey turban with a matching pink feather cockade.
Arthur, the youngest child, dashed ahead in his enthusiasm to get aboard the pleasure boat before doubling back to chivvy his family. Cornelius and Nancy trailed behind with Phyllis, their paid companion. Cornelius’s slumped shoulders revealed how much he would have preferred to spend the morning out on the heathland with his butterfly net. He was gloomily asserting to Nancy that with the swell that was running out in the bay they would certainly all be seasick. It was very like him to adopt nautical terms without having ever ventured out to sea.
Nancy only half-listened. She was watching the little procession of guests strolling from their hotel towards the sea, and to her dismay she saw that the Clares and Mr Feather were also planning to take the excursion. Her mother, Eliza, had chatted to Mrs Clare on the hotel terrace, and on one or two evenings Mrs Clare had invited Eliza to sit with her after dinner in the drawing room. Once the two men had enjoyed their cigars they had joined them too. Devil had not been present to keep Eliza company, of course. He was almost always in London, because of the theatre. He was only here with his family now because it was a Sunday afternoon and there would be no stage show until tomorrow evening.
Nancy and Cornelius and Arthur had been introduced to Mrs Clare and to her husband and brother, and they had endured the usual polite conversations. Arthur and Mr Clare talked about cricket while Mrs Clare’s pale blue eyes assessed Nancy’s clothes. Nancy knew she was dressed too brightly. Her cerise coat marked her out, instead of concealing her in mouse-grey or mole-brown folds like the daughter of a conventional family. She tried not to mind about this, noticing on her own part that Mrs Clare looked quite prim and colourless next to Eliza’s abundant glamour.
Mr Feather was Mrs Clare’s brother, and it was his presence more than the others’ that made Nancy feel uncomfortable. Mrs Clare was always anxiously glancing at him, almost as if she suspected he might be angry and she was obliged to soothe him, but whenever Nancy looked in his direction he was staring at her. She couldn’t help returning his look even though she tried very hard not to. His dark eyes seemed to drill into her temple or the back of her head. Whenever he spoke to her it was always in a low voice and with a sympathetic half-smile, as though she had already confided something incriminating to him. His manner seemed to suggest they held an experience in common, and Nancy particularly hated this because she did have a secret. But she held it so deep within herself that she had never told a soul, and certainly not Mr Feather. How could the man know about her Uncanny? And if he didn’t know, why did he watch her with such close interest?
His presence was like one of her father’s hidden stage magnets, dragging her closer and weighing her down, and now he was coming on the steamer trip with them. Was she never to take a step in any direction without the man’s unwelcome concern reaching out for her, like the tentacles of an octopus? She could feel the tickle of one on the back of her neck right at this moment. She wanted to slap it away.
‘Come along, dear,’ Phyllis said.
The companion was clutching the frame of her bag in two hands and looking as if she was already seasick. Poor thing, Nancy thought. Why must her father always sweep them all along with his enthusiasms? The steamer trip had been his idea and Eliza had taken some persuasion before she agreed to it.
The Wixes joined the short queue to board the steamer. Arthur struck up a talk about the Eton versus Harrow cricket match with two boys of his own age. Devil had promised to take his sons to Lord’s for the Schools’ Day in a month’s time and Arthur was already working himself into a froth of excitement.
‘Half a crown’s on Eton,’ one boy taunted and Arthur feinted a punch at him. The three of them chased up the short gangway and sprang down into the launch.
When it was Nancy’s turn a seaman with a full beard took her hand and called her ‘miss’ as she stepped down to the rocking deck. She hesitated. Although she couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary the smells of engine oil and seawater and boat varnish were overpowering, and that was always a sign. All her instincts were to leap back to safety on dry land.
The man’s grasp tightened.
‘I won’t let you fall, missy. Step this way.’
Salt-caked sisal matting was laid on the deck in case any of the ladies should lose her footing. Nancy felt she had no choice but to take the seat that was offered to her. Hampered by her fashionable skirt Eliza needed a helping hand on either side before she could step down. Devil escorted her to a cushioned bench under the awning and Phyllis nervously sat further along towards the rail.
Nancy watched the boatmen making their preparations for departure. Heavy ropes dragging swags of weed were hauled through the water and thick-legged boys in ragged trousers applied their backs to the capstan. The air was thick with more layers of stink, of tar and brass polish and coal smoke. Nancy had to swallow hard.
Devil chose a seat in the open nearer to the bow. He beckoned to some of the younger children and they sidled towards him. He winked at his little audience, making a show of flexing his fingers and pushing back the cuffs of his coat. One of Arthur’s new friends was playing with a cricket ball and as soon as he spotted it Devil held out his hand. The boy was reluctant but at a stern nod from his father he passed it over. He watched apprehensively as Devil tossed the ball high in the air. Even though the boat was rocking he caught it without an upward glance, as Nancy knew he would. With a casual flick of the wrist he threw the ball a second time, higher still. A big wave slammed the boat against the jetty, causing a gentleman to stumble as he squeezed between the crowded benches, but again the ball was drawn back to Devil’s hand as if magnetised. Three more times he threw and caught, defying the boat’s pitching. The owner of the ball had relaxed enough to smile as the ball flew upwards one more time.
There was a beat, stretched by the breeze and the shriek of a gull gliding overhead. This time there was no satisfying slap from the leather dropping into Devil’s cupped palm.
Devil took off his straw hat and peered inside it, scratching his head in astonishment. Several children looked down to the deck and others peered over the side, but there was no clatter or splash.
‘It’s gone,’ the owner wailed.
Devil replaced his hat.
‘Sorry about this, old chap,’ he murmured to the boy. ‘I’ll make it up to you somehow.’
Peering around, he noticed a girl with a posy basket set on her lap.
‘May I perhaps have a look in your basket, miss?’
Seated a little to one side Mrs Clare raised her eyebrows at her brother and almost imperceptibly pursed her lips. No one else was meant to see, but Nancy did. She hated it when her father chose to be conspicuous in this way – even though he had always been the same – and she turned her head in anguish. A yard away, on the jetty, the bearded captain and one of the other sailors spoke urgently together. They had been considering the wind and the sky but the bearded man indicated the full boat and the jaunty pennants snapping in the breeze. With his big sea boot he kicked the boat away from the moorings, leaping inboard over the widening gap at the very last moment. There was a roar from the engine and a churn of green water, a sailor snatched up the last end of rope and dropped it into a loop, and the steamer’s bow swung out into the bay. Nancy sneaked a look towards her father and saw that – of course – he had produced the cricket ball from the little girl’s basket. The boy grabbed it back and stowed it inside his coat as Devil bowed over his doffed hat.
Please, no more, Nancy prayed with a twelve-year-old’s disloyal fervour.
It seemed that she was heard because Devil came back to sit beside Eliza under the awning.
Arthur and his companions were gamely ragging each other and Cornelius had never looked up from his book. The steamer ploughed the length of the pier and then drove out into the stiff wind. Spume flew and Phyllis’s hands tightened on the cane handles of her bag. In trying not to look longingly at the pier amusements Nancy made the mistake of meeting Mr Feather’s eye again. Beadily he held her gaze and she thought there was a glimmer of superior amusement, as if the pleasure craft and the crew and the benches lined with ladies and gentlemen in their holiday outfits had all been placed there for just the two of them to observe, and enjoy.
It was intolerable.
The prow reared upwards. The view of the houses clustered at the side of the bay vanished behind a wall of green as a huge wave lifted the steamer. Spray scattered over the laughing gentlemen and bolder boys in the forward seats, sending them scurrying for the shelter of the awning even though a crewman shouted that they were to hold tight and keep their places. A second later the boat pitched down – and down – into the wave trough. Phyllis let out a mouse’s squeak of alarm. Nancy wondered if the budding apprehension she was experiencing inside her ribcage, like a dark flower beginning to unfurl, might be the beginning of seasickness. It was not, she told herself firmly. At least Mr Feather had transferred his attention to Mrs Clare. He was patting his sister’s hand and reassuring her.
Cornelius raised his head. Another huge wave lifted and tossed the boat down again. Eliza was the only one of the ladies who did not show any sign of dismay. She sat upright, seeming quite ready to meet the salt wind and the flung diamonds of spray.
The land dropped further behind them. After a few minutes Nancy grew used to the motion. It was even quite exhilarating to watch the glassy rollers with their curling lips of white foam as they swept towards them, and to feel the sharp upwards swing and then the answering downwards plunge as the boat cleaved through the water. The beat of the engine was steady, and her bearded sailor stood squarely in the wheelhouse with his pipe between his teeth and his eyes on the horizon. He looked just like a hero in a book.
‘I say!’ Arthur sang out. His childish grin split his face. Arthur loved all kinds of roughhousing.
Phyllis’s face had taken on a sweaty glimmer. She left her seat, treading with exaggerated care, and the gentleman next to her supported her arm and handed her closer to the rail. She sank down, her handkerchief to her mouth.
‘Oh dear, poor Phyllis,’ Eliza murmured.
She stood up too and took short, swaying steps to the companion’s side. Phyllis fended her off, clearly indicating that she preferred to be left to suffer alone. Eliza returned to her husband. The steamer turned slightly in its circuit of the bay and immediately pitched even more threateningly as the waves caught it broadside. Mrs Clare got unsteadily to her feet and joined Phyllis. One of the gentlemen had to make the same move and Nancy became aware that the talk and laughter had faded. Most of the passengers were sitting in silence. The stink of smoke and hot oil was not helping matters. Nancy uneasily scanned the faces, and black petals further unfurled in her chest. Two sailors passed down the twin gangways, moving with easy confidence. One of them ducked into the wheelhouse and conferred with the captain.
‘Pappy?’ Nancy said. His nod reassured her.
Mrs Clare leaned miserably over the rail. As if she set the proper example in this and in all other social matters, some others followed suit.
The bearded captain surrendered the wheel and took a megaphone from its cabinet. Bracing himself at the wheelhouse door he announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the sea is not going to be our friend this morning. We’ll make an early turn about. We don’t want any of our passengers to feel uncomfortable aboard Queen Mab.’
The engine laboured as they swung round in an arc, the churn of water at the stern swallowed by a wave that broke over the gunwale as it surged past them. The steamer bobbed and rolled, seeming for the first time unequal to the job of keeping afloat.
Devil said merrily, ‘Will we get our shillings back, do you think?’
At least the waves now swept them towards the welcome shore. Phyllis laid her forehead against the rail. Within quite a short time they were nearing the seaward end of the pier, where the strollers and fishermen were clearly visible. Cornelius’s book was closed in his lap but he held his place with his forefinger.
There came a lurch and a shriek of protesting machinery, and then a rending noise like metal plates being crunched up and pitched on a metal floor. When this din stopped the engine had stopped too, and in the strange quiet the buffet of wind and the waves churning beneath the pier sounded even louder.
From Cornelius’s expression Nancy knew that something must have gone seriously wrong.
The steamer rolled heavily as its prow turned through the water, unable to make headway without engine power. Two sailors dashed to the rail, pushing aside the passengers in their hurry. One of them grabbed a fender and the other took a boathook. Turning to her hero, Nancy saw that the pipe was gone. He fought with the wheel, trying to bring his boat round, but wind and current swept it towards the pier supports.
A woman pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling a scream.
The male passengers began shouting and dashing to the seaward side, propelling their children and womenfolk away from the looming pier. The people on the walkways were now far above them and at the lower level yawned an underworld of heaving water and dripping iron stanchions.
Devil caught Eliza tightly at his side. Arthur was trapped in the press of people who had fled to the far rail.
‘For God’s sake hold on,’ Devil bellowed to his family.
The sailor made a stab with his boathook, but the sturdy pole splintered as the Queen Mab smashed into the pier.
The force of the impact threw the steamer sideways. The outer rail dipped and water flowed over it before the vessel sluggishly rolled in the opposite direction, sending bodies tumbling across the decks and falling against the benches. Cornelius lunged towards his sister and caught her by the arm to stop her skidding down the crazily angled gangway. A confusion of shouts and screams tore the air. Water poured everywhere, covering the decks and the seats and flooding into the wheelhouse.
Devil supported his wife as the water rose past his knees. She was trapped by the weight of her sodden skirt. A barnacled ladder on the nearest pier support rose to an opening that was already jammed with shocked faces. An arm reached down with a dangling lifebelt and Devil somehow hoisted Eliza up the lowest metal rungs. She grasped the lifebelt and men began to haul her up from above. Only when she was safe did Devil turn to look for his children.
Nancy saw all this, as if from the depths of the Uncanny.
Cornelius shouted her name as icy water sucked round her knees. A wave slammed into her chest; she was torn away and thrown against the submerged rail. All around there were people in the water, splashing and flailing as the Queen Mab went down.
To her horror she saw Arthur amongst them. His blond head was darkened with the hair plastered against his skull. Nancy let the next wave lift her free of the sinking vessel. Her skirt caught between her legs as she tried to kick out. She was submerged, sinking into bubbling depths with her hair fanning out like seaweed. Somehow she freed her limbs and frantically fought her way upwards. Her face broke the surface and she gulped for air.
There were boats approaching, and at the same time men with ropes came swarming down the pier stanchions. A half-submerged dark shape was bobbing close at hand and she recognised it as one of the boat’s wooden benches, the green seat cushion still attached. She launched herself at it and somehow caught hold. She took a sobbing breath, trying to remember where she had seen Arthur in the water. Clawing back the hair that clogged her eyes and mouth she yelled his name.
The waves were dotted with hats and cushions and a dark floating web that had been a woman’s shawl. Rotating as far as she could without losing her hold on the seat she caught sight of him. He had torn off his coat and his shirt billowed in the swell. When she glimpsed his face it was dead white, frighteningly like a corpse.
But Arthur knew how to swim.
She screamed again, ‘Arthur. Here, Arthur. Swim to me.’
He caught sight of her and tried to reach out, a splashy scramble that brought him no closer. He was already exhausted by his efforts to stay afloat. His head seemed to sink lower in the water.
Powered by desperation Nancy kicked towards him, towing her makeshift raft. Arthur’s shirt ballooned as another wave caught and released them. They were only a yard apart now. Filling her lungs with a huge breath Nancy let go of the bench. She splashed frantically to her brother and at last caught hold of him. They clung together and there was a long, suffocating and terrible moment when it seemed certain they were going to drag each other down. But then Arthur seemed to revive a little. He struck out with his free arm and Nancy followed suit and somehow they propelled themselves through the water to reach the floating bench. They grabbed it at the same instant. The seat wallowed and sank deeper but it was just buoyant enough to support them both.
A rowing boat swayed on the crest of the next wave.
‘Two children here,’ a man at the prow shouted.
Nancy’s layers of clothes were dragging her down. It took every ounce of her strength to keep her head above the waves, but somehow she managed also to watch Arthur and make sure his grip was secure. He shuddered and coughed as the waves tipped their raft up and down. Water sluiced over his head and she screamed at him to hold on.
An oar thrust past Nancy’s ear and then a grappling hook caught the slats of the bench. A man’s hand reached for and snatched the collar of her coat. She felt herself being towed in to the side of the rowing boat where more sturdy arms supported her. The boat rocked fiercely and she howled at her rescuers, ‘Save my brother.’
‘Your brother’ll be right enough,’ someone shouted back.
A man in a jersey leaned right down into the waves and tried to lift her, but it took another fellow to help him and they hauled on her wrists and arms and then her heavy body until her hips cleared the side and she tumbled into the bottom of the boat. Her petticoats and even her drawers were all on show but she didn’t give it a thought.
‘Arthur!’
She fought to sit upright and her rescuers steadied her.
‘We’ve got ’im. You’m a brave girl, ain’t you?’
A sodden, inert mass was hoisted and deposited beside her.
Sobbing and spitting up water she half-crawled to him. His shirt was twisted up to his armpits and his exposed skin was mottled but his eyes opened, startlingly blue in his blanched face. Two of the boatmen bent at the oars and Nancy glimpsed the looming corner of the pier as they swung away from the wreck. The third wrapped a coat around the shuddering boy, and then did the same for Nancy.
‘You’ll be good as new,’ their rescuer said.
The grim faces of the three men told Nancy that they were the fortunate ones.
Arthur lay half in her lap with his eyes fixed on her face. His breath came in shallow gulps but he was clearly reviving. Through chattering teeth he gasped, ‘Mama? Where’s Mama?’
Nancy stretched upright to look back at the pier. Eliza had reached the ladder and the lifebelt, and must have been saved.
But where was Cornelius? Phyllis? And their father?
The water was dotted with floating debris and rescue boats that had made the short trip out from the beach. She saw some steamer passengers in the other boats, and others being helped up to the pier walkway, but she recognised none of them. The Queen Mab was almost submerged. The funnel and the wheelhouse tilted at a crazy angle, and the jaunty awning had been torn to tatters by the force of the waves.
The black flower grew so big that it filled her whole chest.
Their boat rode a wave close in to the beach and a man in big rubber waders strode out to them. He swept Nancy into his arms and carried her to the shingly rim, where she was passed along a chain of hands and finally set down on the sand where a blanket immediately enveloped her. Arthur was given the same treatment, and the boat pushed out again.
‘My father,’ Nancy screamed. ‘Where is he?’
Her legs gave way beneath her. A woman in an apron knelt to take her in her arms and wrap the blanket tighter. Nancy thought she recognised her from the cockle stall on the beach corner.
‘There you are, my love. You’m all right now. Don’t you worry.’
‘My father.’
She was shuddering now like Arthur, great uncontrollable waves of cold and panic sweeping over her. ‘My other brother. I have to find them. Phyllis was with us too. Where are they?’
‘Your daddy will be here, I’m sure. Where are you staying, my darling?’
Someone else was trying to make her drink warm milk out of a thick white cup. The smell of it was unbearable. Her teeth rattled on the rim before she managed to turn her face away. Arthur drank his although his head was hanging and he seemed too shocked to speak.
‘Terrible,’ a voice said nearby. ‘I seen one drowned at least.’
‘Not now, Mary,’ another reprimanded.
The little boats straggled back to the beach with the last of the rescued passengers. Women and children were passed ashore as Nancy and Arthur had been, to be immediately swaddled in makeshift coverings. Arthur’s friend with the cricket ball was amongst them. He was crying and trying to hide his tears. Nancy sat with her arms wrapped round her knees in an attempt to control her shivers. Her eyes stung from the salt and the effort of scanning the beach for her family.
A shadow fell across her. Mr Feather loomed tall and black like the gnomon of a sundial. One of the rescuers had draped a rough blanket over his wet clothes, giving him the look of an Old Testament prophet. The resemblance was strengthened when he raised one hand and brought it to rest on the top of her head. The uneasy sense of being weighted down that she felt in his presence now became real. She tried to duck away but his hand pinned her beneath it like one of Cornelius’s butterflies in a case. In the shingle beside her feet she saw a pink shell, the size and shape of a child’s fingernail.
In a hoarse voice he begged, ‘She slipped away from me. Where is she now? Tell me what you see. Is she here or has she passed?’
‘I can’t see anything.’ Nancy was close to sobbing. The man did know her secret, her way of seeing with her inside eyes, into places no one else saw. Ever since she was a little girl she had possessed the ability. When she was small she linked the waking dreams with her sleeping dreams, and she assumed that everyone had the two different kinds. She was almost thirteen now, and as she grew away from childhood she understood – because no else ever mentioned such a thing – that the wakeful dreams were somehow hers alone.
He crouched to bring his mouth closer to her ear. ‘Yes, you can. As soon as I set eyes on you, I knew you were a seer. Where is my Helena?’
She tried to shake off his hand, but she was paralysed. It seemed that her head was no longer made of bone and skin because it was softening and lightening to the point where it threatened to float off her shoulders. The blood noisily surged in her veins.
The beach and the rescuers melted away. Instead of the sand and a slice of busy sea she saw billows of mud with the skeletons of trees poking up like crooked fingers. At the same time a foul smell wrapped round her. She coughed in disgust and tried to pull away, but Feather still restrained her.
The smell became overpowering, nauseating. She blinked and the mud churned and there were broken men lying in it. Dozens of them were strewn as far as the eye could see, dying and already dead, with smirched or shattered faces gazing up at the white sky.
She had no idea where this horrifying place could be. All she knew was that this inside vision was made somehow sharper and more real by the man’s hand resting on the top of her head.
She screwed her eyes shut. Tears burned the inner lids. She whispered, ‘Please. Please make it stop.’
Mercifully the scene was already fading. It had been no more than a glimpse. As swiftly as it had come the smell ebbed away, carrying the mud and the wounded and dead with it. Her head grew heavy once more and wobbled on her neck, and the man’s hand lifted at last.
He murmured, ‘Don’t be frightened. You are a seer. You might even think of your ability as a gift. Some of us do.’
She didn’t want to be any sort of us, not in a company with this man who excluded her father and mother and even Neelie and Arthur.
Then to her joy she saw Devil. He was searching the knots of people lined up on the beach. She scrambled to her feet and now Feather did not try to hold her back.
‘Pappy! We’re here.’
She ran at him and pressed her face against his soaked clothes as he hugged her. Neither of them could find words. Arthur came more slowly, white with shock, and Devil bent his head over his two children.
‘Thank God,’ he murmured.
‘Mama?’ Arthur managed to ask.
‘She is safe. Cornelius is with her.’
‘And Phyllis?’
Nancy’s question was not answered. Devil thanked the cockle seller and her helpers and shepherded his children away from the rescue scene. At the pier entrance Eliza and Cornelius had been searching amongst the passengers who had been brought in that way. As soon as she saw them Eliza ran, tripping up in the constricting skirt. Tears were running down her face, her smart turban was gone and her hair had come down in thick hanks. Nancy had never seen her composed mother in such a way and the sight was deeply shocking.
Devil hustled them away from the beach. Nancy didn’t look back to see if Mr Feather was still searching for his sister. Devil said they must get back to the hotel immediately, to warmth and dry clothing. Some of the townspeople had brought drays and fish wagons down to the promenade to ferry survivors, but these had now set off and it seemed that the Wixes must either walk or take the little pleasure tram that ran to their hotel from the pier. Its driver looked incongruous in his smart braided uniform as he tried to hurry their shivering group towards it.
‘But where is Phyllis?’ Nancy demanded. Eliza was trying to massage some warmth into Arthur’s blanketed body. Cornelius took Nancy’s hand and tucked it under his arm.
‘We don’t know,’ he said.
‘Where is she?’
‘The men are looking for her,’ Devil answered.
‘We can’t go without her,’ Nancy flamed.
Her father’s face darkened. ‘There’s nothing you can do here, Nancy. Do as you are told.’
The toy tram trundled towards the hotel, leaving behind the rescue scene and the stricken steamer. It was wrong to be perched like carefree holidaymakers under the little canopy. In Nancy’s head the wind seemed to chivvy the fragments of the day, briefly pasting lurid, disjointed images of the steamer and their escape from it over the innocent seaside landscape.
Arthur had still barely spoken.
Eliza told him, ‘You’re safe now. You did very well, you know, to take care of your sister. Papa and I are proud of you.’
The tram rocked around the curve of track. Arthur turned his coin-bright profile towards Nancy. There was a tick of silence during which she prepared to accept whatever he would say. He was younger than her by fifteen months, but she was only a girl. Cornelius was watching her too from beneath his heavy eyelids. Cornelius often saw more than he would afterwards admit to.
‘I didn’t take care of her,’ Arthur said.
It must have been the salt in his throat and chest that made his treble voice crack and emerge an octave lower.
‘Nancy saved me. She was safe but she let go and came for me. The boatman told her she was a brave girl.’ There was another silence before he added, ‘So you see, actually I was rather useless.’
The last words came out in a boy’s piping voice once more.
Nancy noticed that her skirt was beginning to dry, leaving wavy tidemarks of salt. She was thinking that from today – or from the day before yesterday, really – everything would be different. You could never un-see what you had seen; that much was clear without any intervention from the Uncanny or Mr Feather.
‘No, Arthur, you weren’t useless at all,’ she mumbled.
Eliza cupped Nancy’s chin and lifted it so their eyes met. Her fingers were icy cold and the grey in her matted hair was revealed. With the blanket over her shoulders she could have been one of the cockle women, but still she commanded attention. Nancy yearned for the warmth of her approval.
Eliza asked, ‘Is that what happened?’
Arthur’s honesty was brave because it had cost him something. Nancy had done what she did without thinking, and therefore she hadn’t really and truly been brave at all. So she reluctantly nodded because to claim any more would have felt like an untruth.
‘Good girl,’ Eliza said, and Nancy stored up this praise like treasure.
‘Well done, Zenobia.’
At her father’s insistence Nancy had been named after the queen of the Asian desert kingdom of Palmyra, and Devil invariably used her formal name on significant occasions. But there had never been a day like this one. Nancy shifted closer to him on the narrow seat, he put his arm round her and she nestled against him.
At the hotel Eliza took charge of running a hot bath in the clanking bathroom at the end of the corridor. Usually it was Phyllis who filled baths and laid out nightclothes and brought hot-water bottles when they were needed. Her absence shouted at every turn.
When Nancy was dressed Cornelius and Arthur came to her room. Cornelius settled himself at the foot of his sister’s bed and Nancy rested her feet against his solid thigh. Of all of them he seemed the best survivor – he told her that after he had lost sight of her and Arthur he had paddled to the pier ladder and clung on to the lowest rung until all the women and children had climbed to safety. Devil had swum several times between the pier and the stricken steamer, desperately searching the water for the two of them.
Arthur remained silent, standing with his back to them and apparently staring out at the heathland. Finally he spun round.
‘I want to be a brave man,’ he blurted out.
The possibility that he might not be, that bravery was not the automatic right of boys of his sort, was deeply disturbing to him.
Cornelius blinked behind his glasses. Nancy said quickly, ‘Of course you will be.’
Arthur’s mouth quivered. He was on the point of tears.
‘And I want Phyllis to come back.’
Late that afternoon Devil and Eliza broke the news to their children that the companion’s body had been recovered from the sea.
Four of the forty people aboard the Queen Mab had lost their lives. The others were Mr and Mrs Clare and the youngest passenger, the little girl with the posy basket. Nancy couldn’t put out of her mind how Devil’s first thought had been for Eliza, and she imagined how Mr Clare must also have struggled to save his wife, never giving up until the waves claimed him too. That evening, the Clares’ usual table in the dining room was covered with a cloth but left unlaid.
In her bed, after the strange dinner where almost no one in the room spoke or ate much and the rattle of cutlery seemed too loud to bear, Nancy was unable to sleep. For the last year Phyllis had been with her to make sure she brushed her hair and placed her shoes side by side under her chair. Now the gaunt little hotel bedroom was full of strange shadows, and although she forced herself to lie still her head seethed with unwelcome images.
She lay awake for so long that sleep seemed impossibly remote. The procession of images through her mind led her to the Palmyra, to one of the theatre’s private boxes. She was watching a performance but she wasn’t enjoying the stage spectacle because Devil was in danger, and she was the only one in the audience who knew it. When she tried to call a warning no sound came because her voice was stuck in her throat. Nor could she run to save him because her legs and arms were frozen. The audience was shouting, black mouths flapping open as waves of noise crashed over the stage. Nancy sweated and gasped as she struggled to break out of her paralysis.
Her father grinned straight at her and then glanced up into the shadowed recess above the stage where scenery and mirrors were suspended out of sight. He swept off his silk hat and began to make a bow.
There came a terrible rush of air and a black pit opened at his feet. Nancy had once been shown the dark realm of machinery and pulleys and ladders that lay beneath the stage. Devil tipped forwards, slowly, like a giant puppet, and disappeared into the darkness. Too late, her voice tore out of her throat. The roaring filled her mouth with scarlet noise and she thrashed in the coils of her clothing that had now become slippery and voluminous.
Phyllis appeared in the audience, her face white and round as the full moon, and then she was gone and Nancy’s face was pressed up against the cold bars of the box. To her relief she found that the metal bars belonged to the hotel bedstead, not a box at the Palmyra. She was tangled up in the bedcovers and she writhed to set herself free.
She had fallen asleep after all and it had only been a nightmare, nothing more.
She had no idea of the time, but the depth of darkness suggested that it was the lowest hour of the night. She was sweating and shivering and her mouth was parched. Her water glass was empty. Phyllis had not filled it up for her.
Phyllis was dead.
Nancy slid out of bed and haphazardly drew on some clothes. She set out for the distant bathroom but in her confused state she remembered there were windows on the half-landing just beyond it. She was taken with the idea of looking out of one of the windows at the shifting sea. It wouldn’t be soothing, but it might be something like looking the enemy in the eye. Feeling her way along the wall she shuffled through the darkness. In an angle of the stairs a little triangular bay jutted out towards the sea. She sank down on a window seat and pressed her forehead to the cold glass.
There were bobbing lights out on the water but she thought at first that the beach below the terrace was deserted.
Then, looking harder, she saw that there was someone out there. A figure like a black stone pillar stood alone, staring in the direction of the pier. From the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, Nancy knew it was Mr Feather.
She watched him for a long time but he didn’t move. The black flower was withering in her chest, its petals falling into soft dust.
CHAPTER TWO (#u5a0bdf10-c9ce-5c6f-8746-374fa71736ca)
A month later, on the Saturday of the Eton and Harrow Match, Devil left the house very early without telling anyone where he was going. Arthur boiled with fury and anguish, demanding of Eliza every five minutes when she thought he would come back.
‘We’ll be late, Mama. I can’t bear it. He promised, you know. He did, didn’t he?’
‘Hush, Arthur. Mama doesn’t know any more than you do,’ Nancy said. She could see that Eliza was particularly weary this morning. Her mother suffered from back pain and other ailments that were not discussed, and the holiday in Kent had been planned so she could rest and recover some strength in the sea air. The loss of the Queen Mab had been the end of that, and Phyllis’s death had left the Wixes’ London house muddled and freighted with unacknowledged grief.
It was ten-thirty before Devil reappeared. Cornelius had been out with his butterfly net to a patch of buddleia that grew on the canal towpath near to the house, and he saw the surprise first. He hurried in to find Nancy.
‘You’d better come and look,’ he called. She followed him outside to see what was causing a commotion in their quiet road, and she was not amazed to discover that it was her father.
Devil beamed behind the steering wheel of a motor car. He wore gauntlets and a tweed cap and he looked delighted with the world and himself. Arthur had already vaulted into the passenger’s seat. Devil leaned out to kiss his wife on the lips.
‘What do you think?’ Without waiting for an answer he called over her shoulder to Nancy and Cornelius, ‘Quite a handsome machine, eh?’
Arthur’s tow-blond head bobbed up and down. ‘Pappy says it’s a De Dion-Bouton landaulet,’ he shouted.
Two or three of the men from the street, hands in pockets and hats on the backs of their heads, were murmuring over the long, polished bonnet. Brass fittings glittered bright in the cloudy air. Devil kept the engine running and the machine purred and shivered like a big sleek animal. Nancy jumped on to the wooden running board. There was an open seat at the back, reached by its own door. Cornelius sprang in at the other side and they jigged up and down on the leather upholstery.
‘Can I drive?’ Cornelius demanded.
‘D’you fancy the job of chauffeur, Con?’ Devil laughed. ‘Let me show you how she runs first. Arthur, sit in the back, please. Make room for your mother up here.’
Eliza was all cold lines. She hesitated, but found no option other than to step up into the seat next to her husband.
‘Where are we going?’ she icily demanded.
Devil grinned. ‘To Lord’s, where else? We’re all dressed up and ready for Arthur’s special day, aren’t we?’
He eased a lever and the car rolled forward. He swung the wheel and they were soon bowling along the high road, overtaking a tram with a blast on the horn and a rush of speed. Cornelius sat with his palms flat on his thighs, rocking with pleasure, and Arthur chanted ‘De Dion-Bouton’ over and over.
‘She ran smooth as silk, all the way from the chap in Sydenham who sold it to me,’ Devil preened.
Eliza said, ‘Please tell me you haven’t paid good money for this motor car.’
‘It’s not new. Built in 1908, but hardly driven. Rather a bargain.’
Eliza’s voice rose. ‘You’ve bought it? A car, at a time like this?’
The three children glanced at each other.
‘What better time? We deserve to be happy. Everyone has been so cast down since the steamer, I thought a surprise would cheer you all up.’
Eliza’s gloved hand struck her husband’s arm.
‘Damn you,’ she hissed.
He looked down at her, and the car briefly swerved and rocked before he corrected it.
‘Don’t be a shrew, Eliza.’
She sat in silence all the way to the cricket ground. As they drew near to it the crowds heading for the match turned to stare at them. Devil waved as if he were the King.
‘Let’s have a happy day, shall we?’ Devil pleaded with her. ‘Arthur will soon be at Harrow, Cornelius is leaving school. We should enjoy being together while we can.’
As usual, Nancy was not mentioned. She was the middle child, and a girl.
Eliza was looking forward to meeting her sister Faith, with her husband Matthew Shaw and their three children, and to sharing a picnic luncheon with them. It was her choice either to enjoy herself or to let Devil’s misguided gesture mar the day. The two small vertical clefts between her eyebrows melted away.
‘We’ll talk about this machine later,’ she said, allowing her husband to help her down. Devil winked over his shoulder at Nancy and Cornelius. Arthur had already run to the gate, unable to contemplate missing a single ball.
It was a chilly day for July, with low clouds seeming almost to touch the roof of the pavilion. Under the muted sky the grass flared with a saturated, emerald brilliance. In the luncheon interval, when the ladies left their seats in the stands to mingle in the outfield with the other family groups, they covered their shoulders with wraps and kept their parasols furled.
After their picnic the sisters strolled arm in arm, drawing plenty of interested glances from the other spectators. Faith’s vast hat was festooned with flowers and veiling while Eliza had chosen a tall, narrow toque with a single extravagant plume that curled almost to her shoulder. The hat made her look like an Egyptian queen.
Nancy and her cousin Lizzie Shaw followed them, arms linked in an unconscious reflection of their mothers. Nancy had turned thirteen last week and to mark this milestone Eliza had given her a pair of glacé leather shoes with raised heels, and her first pair of silk stockings. After her usual lisle bulletproofs the whispery silk left her ankles feeling naked, and she stepped a little unsteadily on the unaccustomed heels. The day was supposed to be a celebration of Arthur’s imminent entry into Harrow and the ranks of public-school men, but for Nancy it retained the queasy, brittle veneer that had become familiar since the loss of the Queen Mab. She did what was expected of her, at school and at home, but she couldn’t shake off the sense that none of it mattered. What did it even mean to be alive, she wondered, when death always hovered so close?
Phyllis had disappeared as if she had never existed, and they hadn’t even attended her funeral. Nancy had asked Eliza if she might go, but Eliza had replied that it would not be suitable. If Nancy even tried to talk about the companion, Eliza shook her head.
‘My poor Nancy. It’s hard to come to terms with it at your age, but people do die. The best way is to look forwards, and try not to dwell on the past.’
Nancy began to wonder about the events in her parents’ history that made them so fiercely intent on the here and now, and so unwilling to acknowledge what was past.
Lizzie tugged at her wrist and flashed a grin. Miss Elizabeth Shaw was a red-lipped young woman of twenty-one, with dark eyelashes and a ripe giggle. She had trained as a shorthand typist before taking a job with the managing director of a tea-importing company. She liked to describe herself as a career woman, tilting her head on the stalk of her pretty neck as she did so and laughing in a way that was not in the least self-deprecating. Lizzie declared interests in the suffragist movement, although Nancy privately believed that this might be as much to discountenance her conventional parents as from real conviction.
‘Guy Earle is a handsome boy, don’t you think?’
She was referring to the Harrow captain, at the same time as observing the progress of a pair of uniformed young army officers who were strolling in the opposite direction.
‘Is he?’
Lizzie let out a spurt of laughter. ‘Come off it, Nancy. You’re not a baby. You like boys, don’t you?’
‘I like my brothers and my cousins. I don’t know any others.’
Lizzie’s brothers Rowland and Edwin were sleek young City men in their mid-twenties, one a stockbroker and the other employed in a bank.
Her cousin laughed again. ‘Oh, darling Nancy. You will, I promise.’
Their fathers leaned against the front wall of one of the stands, smoking as they watched the crowds passing in front of them. Devil had never been interested in cricket and barely understood the rules of the game, but he was quite happy to issue his thoughts on the bowling.
Nancy’s uncle Matthew Shaw was hardly any better informed. He was a solid, uxorious man who had long ago – when the Shaws and Eliza first met Devil Wix – been the manager of a waxworks gallery. Since those early days he had taken over the running of his late father-in-law’s wholesale greengrocery business and was building up a sideline in fruit importing. He was a capable businessman and Devil had more than once tried to recruit him to manage the theatre – in tandem with himself, naturally. Matthew always rejected these advances. He loved Eliza Wix as a sister, but he considered his in-laws to be a racy and a risky combination. Matthew was aware that the Palmyra was forever on a precarious footing, and it mystified him that year after year Devil was able to keep it afloat, constantly reinventing and rejuvenating what was (for all its proprietor’s claims) a Victorian variety hall.
‘Arthur’s happy,’ Matthew observed.
The boy could be seen at the foot of the pavilion steps as he tried to catch an off-pitch glimpse of his team heroes.
‘He’s got good reason. This match is in the bag.’
Matthew nodded. They all knew that Cornelius was not quite like other boys and would never tread the conventional path, so Devil had determined that his younger son should go to a great public school. Arthur was a gifted cricketer but he was only average at his lessons, unlike Cornelius who was an encyclopaedic authority on the few subjects that interested him – Lepidoptera and the classical orders of architecture amongst them. So it had been a day of rejoicing in the Wix family when after months of tutoring Arthur narrowly passed the Common Entrance exam for Harrow. For Devil and Eliza it was a measure of how far they had risen in the world.
Eliza’s late father had been a wholesale greengrocer and Devil’s course had been even more dramatic. He ran away from a bleak village childhood, and in his early days in London he had slept in the streets. Now that he was a theatre impresario, even though the foundations of his prosperity were not as secure as they appeared, these precarious origins were not much recalled – even with Faith and Matthew. Arthur was now only weeks away from entering Harrow School, and although he and Faith thought it both pretentious and extravagant of the Wixes to be sending their boy to one of the great public schools, Matthew had to acknowledge that Devil’s partisan attitude was justified today.
The Shaw brothers reappeared from their excursion to the Lord’s Hotel, carrying a beery waft with them. Rowland laced his hands behind his head and stretched his legs beneath the seat in front. He swallowed a belch.
‘I’m quite ready. Play can resume.’
Arthur raced round the ellipse of grass and bounded up to his family.
‘Earle and the rest of our fellows are pretty confident,’ he announced, as if he had taken his lunch in the pavilion with them.
Bats under their arms, two Eton men strode out to the wicket.
Eliza had taken a glass of hock with her picnic. She remarked, ‘How lovely it is to be all together like this. We must come again next year, don’t you think?’
‘Please, Mama, hush,’ Arthur cried in anguish.
Nancy rested her chin on doubled fists. She longed to lose herself in the game like everyone else, but the scent of mown grass rose and surged into the crannies of her head. A tilt of perspective replaced the cricket pitch with mud and shattered trees and the sad remains of men.
She resisted the swamp with all her strength, clenching her teeth until her jaw creaked. No one was looking at her. Flags in front of the pavilion stirred in the summer breeze and she heard the cheering for a boundary as if it came from a long way off.
Perhaps strength of will was what was needed. The Uncanny mustn’t be allowed to claim her.
From now on, she must try to be the one who claimed it.
The white figures of the cricketers swam against the grass but they remained themselves. The smell of grass was now only a midsummer scent mingling with strawberries and her mother’s perfume.
I won’t think about the other place, she repeated. I shall try to be more like Arthur and Lizzie.
As if to endorse her strength of will her father nudged her and winked.
‘What do you think of this, eh?’
She swallowed hard. ‘So exciting.’
Bob Fowler, the Eton captain, was finally caught out.
‘Now we’re secure,’ Arthur crowed.
But Eton’s tenth-wicket partnership suddenly began to hit the Harrow bowling all over the field. Astonishingly, fifty runs were put on in only half an hour.
In the tea interval Devil and the three Shaw men walked to the boundary to watch groundsmen dragging up the heavy roller. The sky was lightening at last and a pale bar of sunlight crept between clouds to fall across the face of the Grand Stand. In a state of unbearable tension Arthur could only jiggle in his seat. The Shaw men stopped ribbing him.
A succession of wickets fell before the Harrow captain came out to bat. He staunched the flow with a score of thirteen, but then he was caught off a savage yorker.
Arthur could not help himself. He jumped up and yelled, ‘No! Earle’s not out. It was a bump ball, I saw it. Not out, I say.’ Faces turned to him.
‘Arthur,’ Devil said sharply. He knew enough about cricket to recognise unsporting behaviour.
Harrow’s tenth man could be seen sprinting out of one of the tea tents with a cream bun still grasped in his hand, urgently summoned to prepare for his innings. The last stand put on a desperate thirteen runs.
‘Come on,’ Arthur gasped.
But then, at one minute to six, the end came. The batsman played inside a ball that did not turn as expected, and was caught in the slips. The roar from the crowd was loud enough to lift the roofs. It swelled over Regent’s Park and the villas of St John’s Wood. Eton had won the match by nine runs.
Arthur blinked at the tumult of Eton boys and families surging on to the pitch. He pulled his straw hat down towards his ears until the crown threatened to split from the brim.
‘I don’t know how that happened,’ he whispered. ‘It’s beyond comprehension.’
Cornelius placed his bookmark.
‘Are we going home now?’
The pandemonium in the ground was growing and the exuberant crowds seemed denser than they had done all day.
‘It will take for ever to make our way to the underground in this crush,’ Matthew complained.
‘And I am afraid I must leave you and take the De Dion to the theatre,’ Devil apologised. He adjusted the brim of his hat with the Harrow colours to a more rakish angle and smoothed the flanks of his striped blazer. In less than an hour he would be in his white tie and tailcoat, ready to step out on the Palmyra stage as the evening’s master of ceremonies.
‘I’m glad you have your motor car, and the rest of us are in no hurry,’ Eliza observed.
Devil kissed her on the cheek and offered Faith the same salute. To Arthur he said, ‘Next year, there will be another match. And in five years’ time you will be lifting your bat in the Harrow eleven.’
Arthur set his smooth jaw as he stared into this dizzy future. A second later Devil had vanished into the crowd.
The rest of the party agreed that they might as well allow the hubbub to die down. The four women took a stroll round the outfield. Lizzie was saying that her boss Mr Hastings was a tremendous oarsman and she greatly preferred rowing to cricket as a spectator sport. Perhaps next year Nancy might like to come with her and some lively girls to Henley? This year they had had so much fun – a broad wink – and she was sure Nancy would adore it.
A man was standing beside the perimeter wall, shading his eyes from the weak sun as he looked towards them. His dark coat made him incongruous amongst the other spectators in their light summer clothes. As they drew abreast he stepped into their path.
‘Mrs Wix? Nancy?’
It was Mr Feather.
He tried to lock his gaze with Nancy’s but after the smallest nod in his direction she fixed her attention on the pavilion roof. Her heart banged uncomfortably against her ribs. Faith and Lizzie politely withdrew a little distance.
‘How are you?’ Eliza murmured to him. The man’s gaunt appearance startled her. ‘I am so sorry about Mrs Clare.’
‘Thank you. It was a terrible … it is not … I had hoped …’
He struggled for the words and then bowed his head. In a man who had been so fluent the inarticulacy was even more shocking than his altered looks.
Eliza placed her hand on his sleeve.
‘Perhaps Nancy might bring you a glass of lemonade?’
Nancy stared at the buttons of his coat so as not to see his face, and still his proximity made her shiver.
I don’t want to be a seer.
Mr Feather collected himself and sadly nodded.
‘Lemonade? That is kind, but no, thank you. I should offer my condolences in return, for the loss you also suffered on that day.’
‘Phyllis was our children’s companion. Very sad, of course, but she was not a relative.’
Eliza’s tone indicated that the topic was closed. Nancy shot her a glance, wondering how her mother could sometimes seem so devoid of feelings.
A young man hurried towards them. He called out, ‘Lawrence? So sorry, I had to speak to a chap I was … ah? Hullo!’
With an effort Lawrence Feather produced a smile. ‘Not at all, Lycett. I too have bumped into some friends. Mrs Wix, Miss Wix, may I introduce Mr Lycett Stone?’
He was a tall, plump and dishevelled Etonian in top hat and elaborate waistcoat. He grinned and removed the hat with a flourish, clearly elated by the match. Unconfined by the topper his curly hair gave him the look of an overgrown Cupid. Nancy didn’t want to stare, but she was struck by the young man’s exuberance. She thought it would have been fun to hear his account of the game. More fun than listening to Arthur, at any rate.
The young man beamed. ‘Well, I have to say, it’s been a great day.’
‘You must be delighted,’ Eliza agreed.
‘Eh? Oh dear. Your boy’s a Harrovian, I assume?’
‘Yes, he will be.’
Lycett Stone pursed his full lips and did his best to look sympathetic, but unruly satisfaction spilled out of him.
‘Next year,’ he consoled. ‘There’s always next year.’
Lawrence Feather looked even more sombre beside this vision of merriment. He murmured, ‘I shouldn’t detain you any longer, Mrs Wix. But may I call on you at some convenient time?’
Eliza agreed, mainly out of pity for the state he was in. The strange pair said goodbye and moved off into the crowd as Faith and Lizzie rejoined them.
‘Who was that?’ Lizzie Shaw demanded.
Eliza explained the circumstances in which they had last seen Lawrence Feather.
‘Oh, I see. Actually I meant the other one, the Eton boy.’
‘I don’t know, Lizzie,’ Eliza said. ‘His name is Lycett Stone. Why do you ask?’
‘He looked rather jolly.’
It was almost seven o’clock and the crowds were thinning out at last. The two families had planned to eat supper together but Rowland and Edwin Shaw excused themselves, saying they were going on to meet some fellows for a drink. The brothers shared a set of bachelor rooms in Holloway. Only Lizzie still lived with her mother and father, and she had privately confided to Nancy that she didn’t intend to remain there much longer. As they threaded their way to St John’s Wood underground station Lizzie was still volubly talking.
‘We are liberated women in this family. We don’t need overseeing and chaperoning every time we step out of the front door, do we? Look at your mama. Even in her day she was able to live in a ladies’ rooming house and work as an artists’ model.’
This wasn’t news to Nancy or anyone else. Eliza loved to reminisce about her artistic and theatrical days.
The Wixes lived beside the Regent’s Canal at Islington. It was a pretty house, rising three storeys above a basement area enclosed by railings. There were curled wrought-iron balconies at the tall windows, and the play of light over the water was caught in the rippled old glass. Only ten years before the canal had been busy with laden barges drawn by huge slow horses, but lately the furniture-makers of the area had begun to receive their timbers by motor wagon and the channel now bloomed with carpets of green weed.
Devil had bought the house for Eliza shortly after Cornelius was born, borrowing the money at a high rate of interest from a private bank. The heavy repayments on the loan had begun the serious undermining of the Wixes’ finances. The theatre business and their home lives had rocked on more or less unstable foundations ever since.
When they reached the house Eliza had to stop and lean against the railings to catch her breath. She seemed too tired even to search for her key.
‘Mama?’ Nancy said in concern.
Arthur ran up the steps to ring the bell and the door was grudgingly cracked open by Cook.
‘Evening, mum, Mrs Shaw, Mr Shaw.’
The cook was not pleased to see visitors for supper, especially since it was Peggy’s evening off.
The Wixes kept two servants in the house, Mrs Frost the cook (‘An aptly named person,’ Cornelius had remarked), and a housemaid. Nancy loyally insisted that she wouldn’t accept any replacement for Phyllis. A daily woman came in to do the heavy cleaning and laundry, her morose little husband did odd jobs, and a smeary-faced boy appeared in the mornings to clean the shoes and run any necessary errands.
‘There’s only cold cuts, mum,’ Cook called after Eliza as the sisters went upstairs to take off their hats. ‘I reckon I could boil up a few spuds, if you really need me to.’
In her bedroom Eliza drew the hatpins from her plumed toque and set it on the dressing table. Faith steered her to the chair at the window.
‘There. Sit for a moment.’
‘Matthew …’ Eliza began.
‘… will be glad to read the newspaper in peace for half an hour,’ Faith finished for her. ‘Shall I ask Cook to bring us a pot of tea?’
‘By all means. She will certainly give notice if you do. It will save me the trouble of dismissing her.’
Faith only laughed. She was well used to the state of semi-warfare between Eliza and the cook.
‘No tea, then. Something stronger?’
A silver tray with a bottle and glasses stood on Devil’s dressing stand. Faith placed a weak gin and water in her sister’s hand and watched her take two swallows.
‘I don’t know where I’d be without you, Faith.’
Eliza and her sister were close, and had become even more so in recent years. As a young woman Eliza had dismissed Faith’s choice of marriage and motherhood as unadventurous, but she was generous enough now to acknowledge that for all her youthful insistence on freedom they had ended up in more or less the same place. How age enamels us, she would say. It builds up in layers and locks us inside our own skin, stopping us from breaking out, preventing the outside from burrowing in.
Faith said, ‘You’d do perfectly well, but you don’t have to because I am here. Is it bad today?’
Eliza closed her eyes. Her fingers splayed over her lower belly as if to support the failures and collapses within.
‘My back aches, a little.’
‘What else, then? Is it Devil?’
There was a long pause.
‘No more than usual.’
Faith didn’t ask, ‘Who is it this time?’ but she might well have done.
There was always someone: an actress or a dancer from the theatre, a waitress from one of the supper clubs, or a young girl met across a shop counter when he was choosing a pair of gloves or a bottle of scent for Eliza.
That was the strange thing.
Apart from the few years at the beginning of their married life, before Cornelius was born, Devil had been incapable of fidelity. Yet even when his pursuit of women was at its most fervent, Devil had always been – so it seemed to Faith and Matthew – utterly obsessed with his wife.
Faith said, ‘He adores you.’
Eliza gave a thin sigh. It was not the first time the two of them had discussed the matter.
‘That’s partly the trouble. I can’t satisfy his craving, and the more I fail in that the more he longs for what he imagines I am withholding.’
It wasn’t just sex, although sex lay at the root of it. Once they had been well suited. But then Cornelius had come, or rather a brutal doctor with a pair of forceps had dragged him into the world, and after that there had been a change. Pain and distress made Eliza hesitant, even though she had tried to pretend otherwise, and although Devil had done his best he had in the end read her hesitancy as reluctance. He was cast as the importuner and Eliza as the withholder, and although the front line of their battle constantly shifted, sometimes dressed up as comedy and at others bitterly rancorous, there was always a battle.
Almost five years after Cornelius Nancy had arrived easily, but Arthur’s birth hardly more than a year after that had been almost as difficult as his brother’s.
Nowadays Devil propitiated his wife with expensive comforts and sea air. Accepting her reliance on new doctors and patent cures, he squandered too much time and energy on the Palmyra, arguing that otherwise the theatre could not generate the money he needed to care for his family. Devil regarded the diversions of motor cars and women as just that, and would have claimed – in the circumstances – they were nothing less than he deserved. Eliza didn’t see it the same way, and she was angry with him. All the images of herself that she had created as a young woman had been to do with strength and freedom, and now she possessed neither. She was little better than an invalid, and she had become dependent on her unreliable husband for everything.
Eliza sat upright. She squeezed her glass so tightly that it might have shattered.
‘How has this happened to me? Here I sit like a wilting girl. I’m ashamed of myself, Faith.’
‘There is no shame in what you have suffered.’
‘I am weak.’
Faith shot back at her, ‘We’re women. We’re all weak. You don’t have a monopoly on the condition.’
Faith was not usually so blunt. Eliza stuck out her glass, still miraculously intact. They were both smiling, almost girls again.
‘We’ll have to endure it, I suppose. Give me some more gin before we go down and feast on the boiled spuds.’
On the floor above Lizzie stuck her head out of Nancy’s bedroom window and – to Nancy’s astonished awe – smoked a cigarette.
‘Do you want one?’
‘No. I mean … I don’t mind, but I don’t smoke.’
‘Terrible, isn’t it? I caught the habit from some of the girls at work and now I’m completely hooked.’
Cornelius rapped on the door and Lizzie quickly ground out the cigarette on the windowsill before tossing the end into the grey air.
Cornelius called, ‘Cook says to come now if you don’t want it cold.’
‘It was cold to start with, wasn’t it?’ Lizzie laughed.
The stage door was in a narrow alley that ran from the Strand towards the Embankment. Devil stepped inside. The doorman in his wooden cubicle passed over a sheaf of post and wished him a good evening.
‘Who won the match, sir?’
‘Eton, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Mr Arthur’ll be disappointed.’
‘That’s hardly the word.’
Devil made his way down a dark passageway lit by a single overhead bulb and up a short flight of bare wooden stairs. There was a strong smell of worn clothing, congealed grease, and mice.
The theatre owner and manager’s office had brown-painted walls and was hardly wide enough for a cluttered desk. The lighting was no better or brighter than in the corridor outside. He propped himself on a corner of the desk and quickly shuffled through the mail. It was all bills, mostly final demands, and at the bottom of the heap he found a flyer for the new show at a rival theatre. The type was blocky, modern and rather eye-catching. Devil screwed the sheet up and threw it at the wastebasket.
The backstage manager Anthony Ellis stuck his head round the door.
‘All right, Mr Wix?’
‘Hullo, Anthony. What was the house like this afternoon?’
‘Eighty-three.’
‘Christ. Tonight?’
‘Better. Might be two hundred.’
Devil nodded. The capacity of the Palmyra was two hundred and fifty. Its intimate scale made it perfect for performances of magic, although even when it was full it was an exacting task to make it pay well. There was no profit to be taken out of a thin house.
‘Thirty until the up,’ Anthony reminded him.
The stage manager withdrew. Devil heard him tread along the corridor to the door of the main dressing area. He knew every creak of the old floorboards, every scrape of a hinge and click of a switch. The other performers all made ready in one chaotic room, ducking behind screens and crowding at a single mirror. The Palmyra was not noted for its backstage luxury. All resources were lavished on the front of house.
Devil whistled as he stripped off his blazer and soft-collared shirt. He stood in his vest at a broken piece of mirror and rapidly applied a layer of make-up, then worked over the arches of his eyebrows with a dark pencil before finally reddening his lips with a crimson crayon. When he was finished he removed his starched shirt from the hanger and slipped it on, careful to keep the folds away from his painted face. He fixed his collar with an old stud and deftly tied his white butterfly.
Once he was fully costumed he stood in front of the glass again. He rubbed brilliantine through his greying hair, the gloss turning it darker. Then he briskly applied a pair of old wooden-backed hairbrushes to the sides and top.
Devil was fifty-four years old and still a notably handsome man.
By this time Anthony Ellis was coming back to call the ten. Devil walked through the skein of cramped passageways to the wings. Stagehands in shirtsleeves greeted him as he passed. From the pit he could hear the small orchestra tuning up. As he took his place behind the house curtain a stooping elderly woman hurried from a niche to brush the shoulders of his coat. Sylvia Aynscoe was the wardrobe mistress and dresser, and she had been employed at the Palmyra almost since the beginning.
‘Evening, Sylvia.’
She gave him a compressed smile before twitching the points of his collar into place. Sylvia was an old ally of Eliza’s. It was through the unobtrusive conduit of the dresser that news of everything that happened at the Palmyra found its way back to Islington.
At two minutes to the up Devil was poised on the balls of his feet like an athlete ready to sprint. He flexed his white-gloved fingers and patted the props in the concealed pockets in his coat. The rustle and chatter of the audience through the heavy green velvet drapes sounded like the sea.
The first act of the current show was a dance illusion routine. Four girls in laced satin pumps and scanty dresses of sequinned tulle softly padded to their positions behind him. The best-looking of the four, an elfin girl with a dancer’s taut body, knew better than to try to attract his attention at this tense moment. She turned her head instead to catch her reflection in one of the mirrors. A tall plume of white feathers nodded from a tiny tiara, darts of radiance flashing from the paste gems.
The orchestra struck up the national anthem and the audience rose to its feet. As soon as they had resumed their seats Devil stepped out between the tabs. The bright circle of the following spot tightened on him as he smiled into the heart of the expectant house. He was glad to see that it was better than two hundred. All the stalls were occupied and only a score of seats in the gallery were empty. Pale faces gazed down at him from two tiers of gilt-fronted boxes at the sides of the stage. He let his eyes sweep over the rows of seats.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the home of magic and illusion. We have a magnificent and intriguing show for you tonight.’
Devil pivoted. When he turned again a ringmaster’s whip had appeared in his hand. He cracked the whip and a mirrored ball spun on the boards at his feet; he cracked it a second time and the ball rose like a giant soap bubble and floated away.
Laughter and applause spread through his veins, lovely as warmth in winter. Even though he was pinioned in the lights he could see out to the slender pillars that were carved to resemble palm stems, and the fronds of painted plaster leaves. Gilt-framed lozenges of bright paint glimmered at him. His voice rose into the graceful cupola surmounting the auditorium. Devil thought of his theatre as a jewel box that his audience could open, only a few feet removed from the din of the Strand. He offered them opulence in exchange for the mundane world.
He loved every brick and plank of the place.
The giant bubble sank again. Another flick of the whip broke it into real soap bubbles that drifted out over the double fauteuils at the front of the stalls and gently vanished.
Devil swept his bow and backed into the wings.
The curtain rose at once on the dancers. Four girls arched their taut bodies against four triangular columns. Two faces of the columns were mirrored and the third was black.
The orchestra began to play ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’.
The columns were mounted on spindles, and in the recess beneath their feet a stagehand turned a drum and the columns silently revolved. The girls moved into their dance. Four were multiplied to eight, and the mirrors reflected their reflections until sixty-four splintered images danced into the light, were swallowed up by the turning darkness, and then pirouetted into view again. Dozens of white plumes swayed and the jewels shot points of fire.
The audience drew a collective breath and the applause for this vision almost drowned out the music.
Devil watched from the wings. The elfin dancer spun en pointe and her blank gaze passed over his face. But on the next turn their eyes locked for a fraction of a second. No one else saw it, but the ghost of her smile for him was multiplied into infinity.
Devil lifted his gloved hand in a small salute. He turned away through the wings, and returned to his office where the bills were still piled on his desk.
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