The Flower Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Mention of Christmas had made him remember Simmons’s news. Two weeks from now, they would be entertaining in a warm, dry venue, albeit shoddy and run down.

  ‘You’re above that!’ she burst out in a show of pride on his behalf, then compressed her lips. ‘You must stay here. I can sit in the chair until daylight. I can doze.’

  She was assuming herself quite safe with him. In one way he was flattered, in another afraid, afraid of his own feelings.

  ‘No, my dear,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not done.’

  ‘Who’s to know?’

  It was late. He was tired after being awoken from a fine sleep. He needed to make a decision. ‘If you are comfortable with that, so be it, child.’ He uttered that word for his own comfort, not hers. ‘But you can’t sleep on a chair. You must have the bed, such as it is. I’ll make it tidy enough for you.’

  At least he’d cleaned the place a little since having known her. He had her to thank for that. He had her to thank for much of what had happened. He’d begun to see a future again, even to wonder why he’d needed to cast himself down into this pit of his own creating. In the morning he would tell her about Simmons.

  ‘Where will you sleep?’ she asked.

  ‘I will be comfortable enough on the floor with my overcoat for a cover and I will fold one of my boxes to make a pillow.’

  ‘It’s your bed,’ she protested. ‘I don’t mind the chair.’

  ‘Good Lord, child!’ Sudden annoyance caught him out. ‘Allow me to be a gentleman. What gentleman would see a tender young girl sit up all night in a chair whilst he slumbers at his ease?’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Enough, my dear. If you do not like the arrangement, then go home!’

  For a moment she pondered, then seeing him smiling at her concern, she nodded, her own lips parting.

  It did him good to see her smile, but already he was regretting allowing her to stay. She seemed to see no harm in it. Maybe there was no harm, not now, but did she realise how differently a man might feel in the quiet, dead of night with such a lovely young thing not a hand’s reach away, and nothing but his own willpower to stop him giving way to such an urge as was in a man’s nature, in some circumstances stronger even than willpower?

  But he could hardly turn her out now. He knew she’d never go home, and to roam the dark streets was infinitely more dangerous than staying here, for he must control himself. Tonight this young and innocent girl must not only feel safe, she must be kept safe, no matter how affected he’d been by her nearness this night in this small room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She must have fallen asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. He had made her a mug of tea, which she drank thirstily though she refused the bread and jam he’d offered. Since giving up the hurdy-gurdy, now lying unused under the table, he made sure of having provisions around.

  While she drank her tea, he had gone to refill the kettle from the tap out back ready for tomorrow morning, and to visit the ramshackle hut that went under the name of water closet, used by every tenant in this building. When he returned, he found her fast asleep, still in her street jacket, her straw boater pushed to one side.

  Gently he eased his overcoat from off the foot of the bed to draw out the blanket beneath it – another luxury he’d gained from entertaining with magic instead of the hurdy-gurdy – to lay over her.

  He stood for a while gazing down on the slim form, the legs drawn up under her skirts, one cheek resting on her hands, the palms pressed together as if in prayer, the dark lashes lying softly on those cheeks, the full lips gently relaxed, and felt a depth of fondness, move him. Hastily he turned away. Putting the kettle down in the hearth, he settled himself on the floor beside the bed, the only space to be had, covering himself with his overcoat and using one of the cardboard boxes as a pillow. It was impossible to keep warm. The night air crept into the room through every crack and crevice, despite his having remarked on it not being all that cold for December.

  Lying awake, the floor hard under his hip and shoulder, he listened intently to the gentle breathing just a foot above him. Now and again came a soft rustle as she turned in her sleep, her innocent sleep that sent his heart into turmoil. Fiercely he resisted the temptation to get up just to look at her. To do so could so easily be the preliminary to reaching out a careful hand to touch her arm or her cheek, and if she stirred, awoke, looked up at him with that lovely smile, to bend and kiss her.

  What if she were to respond, reach up and touch his face? And if her fingers were to brush through his beard, would a kiss alarm her or would she draw him to her in her need for a little comfort? If he were to take advantage of it – man isn’t made of wood – how easily it could develop into something else, something he dare not contemplate.

  The thought brought a sensation surging through him that alarmed him and in desperation he turned his back, closing his eyes in an attempt to seek sleep and forget what had passed through his mind. When next he opened them, it was to feel his shoulder being gently shaken. Looking up, he saw her bending over him, and feeble sunlight being reflected into the room by the dingy walls of the houses opposite. Stiff and aching, he rose and sat on the edge of the bed she’d vacated so recently. It was still warm from her body and he let his hand rest on the place where she had lain.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked as she applied a match to the fire she had laid with bits of newspaper and wood for some warmth.

  ‘Well enough,’ he answered. ‘And you?’

  ‘Like a top. I was so worn out, I could have slept on a clothesline.’

  He stretched his cramped back. ‘Have you decided what you are going to do?’ This startled her.

  ‘I can’t go back.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you would,’ he said slowly.

  While he had lain awake, and before being tormented by unsavoury notions, he had given a deal of thought as to what to do with her come the morning. She could not stay here. If she still refused to go home he’d have to find her alternative accommodation, modest, respectable lodgings. He was making money now, but it was foolhardy to spend out too much.

  There were quite a few theatrical boarding houses scattered around the West End theatres, cheap but not seedy, plain but wholesome, and she would be better served by a motherly sort of landlady willing to keep an eye on her.

  With the prospect of returning to legitimate work, he could pay her rent for a while. Once his fame began again to spread, with money rolling in, he would give her a proper percentage of his fee, allowing her to pay her own way. At all costs, after what she had told him of her mother’s misconstrued ideas, no one must be allowed to think she was being kept by him. But first he would try once more to persuade her to go back home, thus alleviating the need for all concern for her.

  While the fire blazed, sending warmth through the room, he went to put the kettle on the scullery gas ring. They had risen so early that no one was about. While the water boiled he gazed through the dusty window. In the night there had been a sharp frost; everything was white and glistening, covering the filth of the East End. Just as well he hadn’t been too gallant in his offer to spend the night elsewhere. He inhaled deeply, returning with hot water for the tea to find her making his bed. She glanced round at him and smiled.

  ‘Thank you for letting me stay,’ she said simply. Before turning back to her task she added, ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’

  ‘You could have found some friend,’ he said. ‘You do have friends?’

  ‘Oh, yes. My best friend is Lizzie Wallis. She lives a few streets from me. I’ve not seen that much of her lately – too taken up doing what we’ve been doing and I’ve not said anything about it to her. I’d have to tell her why I’ve left home if I went there asking to be put up, wouldn’t I? Anyway, at that time of night and her parents already with a house full, I don’t think I could of asked them.’

  ‘Could have asked,’ he corrected automatically.

  �
�Oh yes, sorry. Have! Could have asked.’

  ‘I would feel happier if you at least attempted to make peace with your mother,’ he ventured.

  She shook her head and, folding his overcoat and jacket, placed them on the bed beside the tidied blanket. It came to him as a small shock that the whole room seemed to be glowing from the touch of a woman’s hand.

  ‘I’m never going to go back there,’ she was saying. She’d taken the kettle from him and was dropping in a handful of tea ready to pour it into his one mug.

  ‘You have the mug first,’ she suggested brightly. She seemed suddenly so bright and cheerful almost as if some weight had been lifted from her shoulders by her decision. ‘I can wait till you’ve finished. You must have been perished down there on that floor all night.’

  He didn’t argue as it was handed to him. There was more on his mind than who should have the mug first. ‘Has it occurred to you, my dear, that your mother might be beside herself with worry as to where you might be?’

  ‘She knows where I am,’ she said, a bitter ring to the statement. ‘She said I can go and live with my … with you, for all she cared, and that I’m no better than a trollop. I’ll never forgive ’er fer that.’

  This time he didn’t correct her. There was so much pain there that trivialities such as correct diction had no place. All he could think to say was, ‘You know you cannot stay here, my dear. We must find you somewhere to live.’

  Quickly he explained about theatrical lodging houses, hastening to convince her as she had left home without money, he would pay for her lodgings for the time being.

  ‘Later on you will have to pay for yourself,’ he said taking delight in seeing the concern that crept over her face. It was time to break the news Simmons had sent him, and with immense pleasure he saw the worried expression give way first to incredulity then an overt wave of excitement.

  ‘In two weeks’ time,’ he said, grandly, ‘we’ll be on a music hall stage. It should take us up to Christmas.’

  ‘Us,’ she said, savouring the word. She moved forward until he could lay his arms about her waist, the intimate action feeling quite natural, and such a small, neat waist.

  ‘Yes, my dear girl. Us. I intend to take you with me to the pinnacle of my profession. But for you, my dear Amelia, I would never have done this.’

  He got hurriedly up from the bed, keenly aware of a sensation stirring inside him at the feel of that shapely waist beneath his hands. When he again spoke, it was to make his tone gruff and businesslike.

  ‘Get your coat and hat. We will find a café for a quick and modest breakfast before seeking accommodation for you. After which we will begin work in earnest.’

  He couldn’t help his elation now at her having left home. In all truth it had been to his benefit. Without her family’s yoke she was free to rehearse at any time, all day if necessary. His mind-reading act was now paramount.

  Maud Beech could have sworn she hadn’t slept a wink all night for thinking of Emma. Yet she hadn’t heard Ben come home.

  She came out of her room around half past seven, her old, faded blue bed shawl over her nightdress, to find him snoring on his sofa. He always complained long and bitterly about not having a proper bed, but it never kept him awake.

  Creeping to the fireplace, she stirred the ashes. Not a spark. It would need re-laying and coaxing into life before she could get a kettle of water boiling for tea. First she must dress, go down and fill it from the yard tap and then she could begin her day.

  Her day! What sort of day without Em? Maud felt lost. She tried to cheer herself up. No doubt Emma would come creeping back this morning, tail between her legs, apologising. Maud shuddered a little to think that that man must have taken her in. But what if he hadn’t? What if she’d slept the night under some arches, at the mercy of the weather and God knows what else?

  ‘No, he’s taken ’er in,’ she said aloud as much to give herself comfort as to come to any conclusion, although it gave little relief.

  Ben snorted, stirred and turned over irascibly, raising himself on one elbow to focus his eyes on her with an effort, having had more than a drink or two last night.

  ‘What you up for? What time is it?’

  ‘Half past seven.’

  ‘Gawdstruth!’ He snorted again in disgust and sucked at his dry mouth. ‘Can’t yer let a bloke sleep? Raking that damned ’earth with the poker like you ’ated it.’

  ‘What time did yer get in?’

  ‘Do it matter?’ he muttered. ‘Where’s Em?’

  ‘Gorn.’

  ‘What d’yer mean, gorn?’

  Maud held herself in, her lips tight. ‘Gorn. Left ’ome. Last night after you ’it her.’

  ‘I hit ’er? Oh, yeah, we ’ad a row. Where’s she gorn?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It was hard to keep the worry out of her voice. ‘And I don’t much care!’

  This, said in summoned-up anger, failed to deaden the concern. Leaving him to sink back on the old cushion he used for a pillow, she went back into her room to dress.

  It was hard trying to retain everything Theo was endeavouring to teach her. While they’d entertained queues outside a theatre, all she’d had to do was to use this simple trick he’d taught her of slipping some small object into an unsuspecting pocket, her hands so small and light that they were never felt. Now she’d be inside a theatre, lit up by footlights and spotlights, a hundred or more people just waiting to see through a trick. There was just this single week in which to be shown what to do and to do it well. Theo, she came to realise traumatically, was a perfectionist.

  ‘No! I said smoothly! You’re like a drunken cart horse.’ How many more times was he going to tell her that? Yet when he wasn’t rehearsing he’d say she was dainty, composed, had natural poise. ‘You will be a fine lady a few years from now, my dear. I am so proud of you.’

  At the moment he was reminding her that a week from now she would be in front of hundreds, which wasn’t helping her composure one bit.

  But there were wonders to help alleviate her doubts. From those cardboard boxes she’d never before seen opened, he brought out other boxes whose false backs and sides she could not detect even a few feet away.

  ‘This,’ he said, grandly, bringing from one box a plain straight-sided cooking pan with a lid, silvery and shining, which had never seen a cooking fire, ‘this is a dove pan. But it can accommodate more or less anything.’

  He took off the lid. The base was quite empty. ‘I have not used this for street entertainment,’ he said. ‘This is for stage work.’

  Emma watched as he put the lid on the pan, not knowing what to expect, if there was anything at all to expect. A second later he’d whipped off the lid, and there in the previously empty space was a mass of coloured, soft balls.

  ‘Where did they come from?’ she gasped in pleasure. ‘Do that again!’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Why not?

  ‘Surprise, my dear. Magic needs the element of surprise. Hesitate, or repeat the same trick immediately on request, and the chances are that a previously mystified onlooker will deduce how it is done. For an illusionist, surprise and misdirection are everything.’

  ‘But I’m your assistant.’ As she pouted, he laughed. A deep laugh, faintly sinister, but which she found fascinating. ‘Won’t I have to know if I’m to be helping you on stage?’ They sounded wonderful, those words, ‘on stage’. She could hardly believe she was saying it with such conviction.

  ‘Of course, my dear,’ he said, relenting. ‘Now come and look.’ She came nearer. ‘This is the basis of most illusions: boxes, cages, all illusion, this and the swiftness of the hand deceiving the eye. People are so easily deluded.’

  He waited until she briefly inspected the object. ‘Did you not notice?’ he asked as she looked up. ‘It has not two parts, a lid and a base, but three – a lid, a base and a “fake”. The first thing one does is to show the empty pan to the audience. There are springs attached to the inne
r wall of the lid. They project slightly inwards. When the fake holding your doves, or balls, is pushed up into the lid, the projecting rim of the base will push back the springs so that when the lid is removed from the pan the fake is left behind, revealing the doves or whatever else you have there.’

  For her benefit, he demonstrated several times. Her face close to his in order to see what was happening, she could feel the warmth emanating from it. She heard him draw a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

  ‘Once more.’ His voice shook. ‘Place the lid on the base. The base pushes back the springs, when the lid is lifted the fake is left behind in the pan with its contents for the audience to see. Using live birds is made quite dramatic by placing a sheet of paper in the pan and setting it alight for all to see. Replacing the lid extinguishes the flame, but immediately removed, reveals the doves, unhurt, like a phoenix rising from the fire. Very effective.’

  As Emma nodded, she felt his lips brush her cheek as if in triumph. It felt nice, made her feel part of it all.

  ‘In time,’ he said, moving quickly away, ‘I shall buy live doves and rabbits. By their very nature they crouch, very still, when in dark spaces. Only on release will they move. It makes matters simple for an illusionist.’

  The morning was taken up with various clever demonstrations: a cage lined with black velvet, a hinged lid situated so as to conceal its contents from the view of the audience, who would see only empty bars, a silk handkerchief held in front of the cage for only a second or two, to be removed with a flourish, and then a shoe where once had been empty space. ‘It is meant to be the rabbit, of course,’ he laughed, and she laughed with him.

  There were endless other tricks, unfathomable, yet when shown, so simple. It was a wonderful morning, if marred at intervals by his sudden fit of anger at something she had not done quite to his liking which made her wonder if selling flowers wasn’t preferable. She refused to let it upset her, knowing she could no longer go home, not after what had passed between her and Mum, having to face the accusations and having Ben sneer at her and being called names that weren’t true. It was at these moments of Theo’s temper that she longed to see her mother, find out how she was, and let her know that she was all right, but it would only start up friction all over again.