At last, Walter placed the Robin in a small box and helped Mr Jeffries to his feet, bringing the poor man back into the room. Mr Hearst pulled another handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to the ‘boy’, who didn’t seem quite sure what to do with it. As he did this Tom noticed Tamara look at the pair and then very quickly turn her face away from them again. At once her countenance turned pale, robbed of its warm honey glow. She seemed to be utterly repelled.
Walter moved on quickly to his next illusion. Tom helped him wheel a fresh pane of glass into the centre of the room and Walter opened the box with the revolver in it that Tom had practised with only a few hours before.
‘And now for my next…trick.’
The word ‘trick’ seemed to slide unpleasantly off Walter’s tongue. He hadn’t liked Mr Hearst’s use of the word. He hadn’t liked Mr Hearst.
‘Here, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a gun. It is quite empty at the moment, but I will now load it with these bullets.’
Walter loaded the bullets carefully, making sure that the audience could see that there was no foul play. There was no reason for anyone watching to suspect that the bullets were made of wax; they looked eerily realistic and Tom felt uneasy at the thought that in a moment he would have to shoot his dear friend again with one of them.
‘I am now going to ask my friend, Mr Winter here, to take this gun and stand on the other side of the glass screen. Watch carefully as I hand the gun over to him. You can see that nothing has been changed or tampered with.’
Tom walked over to his place on the other side of the screen.
‘This glass screen, Ladies and Gentleman, will be proof that Mr Winter has shot me. For as the bullet passes through the air, it will naturally shatter the glass and land neatly between my teeth.’
There were a few muffled gasps. Walter widened his chest and turned himself to face the loaded barrel. Tom’s hand shook as he aimed it towards his friend’s mouth. Although he knew this wasn’t real, everything inside him still cringed as his finger curled around the trigger and began to squeeze.
‘Stop!’ came a cry. Tom’s arm slumped down in relief. Even this illusion was too much for Mr Hearst’s audience. Thank the Lord he hadn’t allowed Walter to slash his arms in front of them.
It was Mr Hearst who’d cried out. Everyone turned their eyes on him.
‘I have an idea,’ he said with a sneaking smile. He left his seat and walked to a desk where he opened a drawer and pulled out a small gun. It glinted menacingly in the light.
‘It’s not that I don’t trust Mr Balanchine and Mr Winter, but I do think that this trick would be far more interesting and impressive if my gun were to be used instead.’
He placed it in Tom’s hand. ‘Don’t concern yourself, it’s already loaded,’ he said and his eyes glinted with obvious satisfaction. Tom clasped the new gun. His hand felt hot; was the heat coming from his own embarrassed skin, or was it the hard metal of this new weapon? He felt sick with disappointment. They’d have to leave straightaway. There was no point in trying to bluff and move on with something else: the audience’s belief in Walter would be gone. They’d be laughed at. Poor Walter.
He looked up at his friend and shrugged, but Walter’s face hadn’t changed. He resumed his stance and nodded at Tom to continue. The gun burned even hotter in his hand, his mouth fell open. He looked down at the thing and it gleamed back at him. The initials CH were embedded in the handle in mother-of-pearl. For a brief second he found Tamara in the audience. Her face had turned hauntingly pale. But Walter remained firm and unflinching. He nodded at Tom again.
Tom raised the gun towards his friend, settling the barrel at Walter’s mouth. His hand wasn’t shaking this time. It was deadly still, so engorged with fear that he could barely breathe, let alone tremble. But something in his heart told him to pull the trigger. Walter wanted him to and Tom trusted him. He trusted him with every fragment of his being. His finger curled around the trigger and he pulled it.
The glass exploded between them. A woman screamed in the audience and there was a sensation of feet moving back, dresses swishing out of the way. Tom felt the sound of the bullet still screaming in his ears. But through all this commotion, he saw his friend still standing before him. At last Walter bared his teeth in the same grimace as when they’d rehearsed and there, clenched between them, was a bullet.
Applause thundered around the room. Mr Hearst clapped as well, but Tom noticed that his face looked pinched. Perhaps he wasn’t used to being upstaged. Tamara had tears in her eyes as she clapped with all her might. Only her mother remained motionless; the one member of the audience who refused to clap or cheer.
The show continued without further incident, or interference from their host. Kayan’s spectacular card tricks were particularly well received and he looked fit to explode with pride at the audience’s applause. When the performance had finished, Mr Hearst gave Tom a white envelope. It felt reassuringly heavy.
‘For your services,’ he said. ‘My brother enjoyed it very much.’
So, they were brothers. Tom watched the younger one hobble away with the aid of his sticks.
‘Palmer! Have the room cleaned. I want not a trace, not a single trace left,’ said Mr Hearst, and from the corner of Tom’s eye a shadow seemed to shift. Indeed, it was Palmer standing there: the same thuggish, shaven headed man who’d approached them with Mr Hearst’s invitation. He noticed the scar on his cheek again, the signet ring on the smallest finger of his right hand. How long had he been standing there? Tom had no recollection of him ever having entered the room.
Mr Hearst glided away without another word or look in Tom’s direction, and Palmer followed him, like an immaculately preened bulldog.
The three of them packed their props hastily. It was quite plain that they were no longer needed, or welcome, in the house. Tom heaved a box into his arms and stumbled out of the room.
‘Will you be a friend to me?’
He paused. The voice came as a tiny whisper, barely audible. He looked for it as well as he could with the box pressed heavily against his chest. She was standing in a narrow alcove in the hallway, her back against the inner wall. Tamara: hiding like a hunted animal.
‘Why, I hardly saw you there!’
‘Shhh,’ she raised a hasty finger to her lips.
Tom moved quietly towards her.
‘My name is Tamara Huntingdon,’ she whispered, ‘and I am engaged to be married to that man, Mr Hearst. I don’t have anyone in the world to help me. You and your … curious friend … from the East. You can do anything, it seems. ’
A voice boomed at the other end of the hallway and she shrank back. Palmer came into view; Tom could glimpse the fat wrinkles on the back of his neck. He was barking orders at a maid.
‘What is it that you want us to do?’ he whispered, turning back to Tamara.
Her chin trembled a little but her mouth remained firm.
‘Help me run away, before it’s too late.’
The boom of Palmer’s voice came again. ‘Hurry up!’
The maid began to scuttle in their direction.
‘Will you help me? Please. Will you be my friend?’
Her voice sounded agonised, as if a knife were already being held to her throat.
‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Yes I will. I promise.’
Her hazel eyes glimmered back at him; a heady mix of brown and green splinters fanned together.
‘Thank you,’ she mouthed. ‘Now go. You have to go.’
Chapter 9
The following evening Tom found himself on the doorstep of Cornelius’s house. After having been chased by a mob on his last adventure on this road, he felt a little wary of standing so brazenly on one of its doorsteps. A row of Jewish shops lined the other side of the street, with everything from chicken carcasses to felt hats gracing the windows. But they were all closed and dark, and on Cornelius’s side no one seemed to be about either.
The door flew open and Cornelius’s delighted face beamed
out at him.
‘Welcome, welcome!’ he cried, ‘We have a feast waiting for you. So glad to see you again my man, come up!’
The house had a warm and inviting feel. It was cluttered all about with the trappings of the drapery business; even the stairs heaved with rolls of cloth, like saplings planted too close together.
‘Don’t mind these,’ said Cornelius, squeezing past them. ‘It’s the Missus Cornelius. Her trade takes up every last inch. Can’t complain though, she’s a miracle-worker that woman.’
Walter and Kayan were already up there, their faces glowing in the warmth of a roaring fire. It was a haphazard room: part parlour, part dining-room, part workshop. In order to get anywhere it was necessary to weave through yet more rolls of fabric forestry.
‘No Sinbad tonight?’ asked Tom, ruffling Kayan’s hair. ‘Please don’t tell me he’s warming my mother’s toes again?’
‘Oh no, he’s out hunting,’ Kayan replied.
Tom gulped from a tankard that landed in his hands and tried to imagine what this might mean without daring to ask.
Cornelius flew about the room in high spirits. He replenished drinks, whipped away swathes of silk and cotton from the table and replaced them with plates of meat and great hunks of bread. A haze of fabric dust rose up into the candlelit air and then settled neatly again on the food.
The Missus Cornelius entered, smiling and offering warm welcomes to the guests. She was a hefty woman, considerably taller than Cornelius, with an impressive pyramid of red curls piled high upon her head. In her left arm she clutched a small blanketed parcel closely to her breast. Tom guessed that this must be the new baby Walter.
As the company settled together, gorging on the heartiest meal Tom had had for a long time, Walter recounted their experiences of Mr Hearst. Cornelius could barely contain his mirth, spluttering on his food and jumping to his feet as the story reached its climax.
‘So you swapped the bullets? How? When?’ he demanded.
‘Directly after we met Hearst,’ replied Walter, dangling his fork in the air. ‘I knew he was trouble, so smooth he almost left a trail of grease behind him. The man’s no good and he likes to interfere. He hires performers but he wants to take centre stage.’
‘But how did you know he’d have a gun?’
‘Men like that always do. It took no more than a second to find it in his desk.’
Cornelius’s eyes bulged. He unleashed a full-bellied laugh and performed a small jig that made him look like an egg trying to find a solid base. ‘I tell you, this man is brilliant!’ he cried out. ‘I’ll get you a whole season at The Duchess if it’s the last thing I do. We’ll all be rich!’
His enthusiasm was infectious. The room rocked with merriment, the Missus Cornelius howling loudest whilst feigning eye-rolling embarrassment as her husband planted great kisses on her cheeks. Intermittently Cornelius hurled chicken legs across the table at his guests until Kayan looked as if his sides were set to split, both from food and laughter. His face had turned crimson. Tom felt his own cheeks burn hot. He had to wipe the tears from his eyes.
‘What ails you Tom?’ asked Walter, taking out his pipe.
‘Nothing my friend, only Cornelius’s ridiculous jokes here. We really should send him to the circus!’
‘I quite agree,’ Walter replied. He loaded his pipe with a gold-tinged tobacco. ‘But I’m not referring to those tears of yours.’
The room quietened down suddenly. All eyes seemed to fall on him. Tom glanced around at the flushed, enquiring faces and groaned. ‘You know me too well Walter Balanchine.’
‘You can laugh until you piss yourself but I can still see the clouds in your face. What ails you?’
‘Nothing … well, something.’
The room was completely silent now. Only one small gurgle from baby Walter sent a ripple through the air. The Missus Cornelius patted softly at the blanket with a cupped hand.
‘Does that something have almond shaped eyes and the saddest countenance you’ve ever seen?’ Walter asked.
‘Nothing escapes you, does it?’
Walter shrugged.
Tom scrunched his eyes up. He could see her immediately, cowering in that alcove again … Will you be a friend to me?... And he’d agreed, no, promised to help her! What in the world could he possibly do? I am a lowly piano teacher. That’s what he should have said. I know nothing of your world. And yet all night her terrified face had haunted his thoughts, tendrils of brown hair had run through his fingers, those almond shaped eyes had blinked back at him through the darkness. Will you be a friend to me?
‘She asked for my help,’ he said at last to the room of faces. ‘She’s engaged to Hearst and she thinks that we can magic her away from him. I…I don’t even know where she lives.’
The Missus Cornelius leaned forward, ‘What’s her name, duckie?’
‘Tamara Huntingdon.’
‘Tamara Huntingdon,’ she said slowly, her temples wrinkling together. ‘I can find out where she lives soon enough.’
‘How?’
‘I supply every dressmaker in the West End. I’ll soon find out who the Huntingdons use and we can trace her from there.’
Cornelius raised his glass and broke into a smile that threatened to split his face in two.
‘To my tremendous wife. A diamond! A pure diamond.’
Tom looked at Walter. He was smoking deeply.
‘Walter?’
His friend shook his head softly. ‘No, she must not marry him,’ he murmured.
‘But what do we do? What can we do?’
He exhaled a smoke ring, like a child’s drawing of a cloud. ‘We will make her disappear.’
*
‘Sit up straight Alice,’ chirped Miss Wallington. ‘I won’t tolerate slouching and I’m sure Mr Winter doesn’t like it either, although he’s too polite to say.’
It was Tuesday morning. Tom usually enjoyed Tuesday mornings, as this involved teaching at Miss Wallington’s School for the Poor Unfortunate Orphaned Children of the Clergy. At this present moment the rickety figure of Miss Wallington herself was arranging an assortment of pails and bowls across the floor to catch drippings from the leaking roof. Alice: a sweet, mottled faced girl, straightened her back and returned to her piece on the rather out of tune piano. At the same time the soft tones of girls singing in a distant room came drifting through the door.
‘Three little maids from school are we…’
Yes, he enjoyed Tuesday mornings, usually. Although Miss Wallington could barely pay him anything at all, teaching at the school was generally a charming break from the Rosalind Gallops. And yet today, four days since Tamara’s desperate appeal to him, three days since dinner at Cornelius’s house, he was no fitter to teach the piano than the eels squirming at the bottom of the Thames. They had all promised to help him in his plight. The Missus Cornelius had been certain of success; Walter was planning something miraculous beneath what must surely now be a great lacy canopy of smoke rings. He trusted them, entirely, and yet the waiting was unbearable.
Sally had noticed the change in him of course. He had sensed her wanting to ask what was troubling him, even trying to coax it out of him in various round about ways. But how could he possibly talk to her about such a thing? And even his Ma, his poor Ma, had sensed his disquietude. She’d been bad-tempered, brushing her food away with the back of her hand when he tried to feed her, so that it sprayed over the bedclothes and him. She was sulking with him, he was quite sure.
‘Sorry Ma,’ he whispered, wiping the porridge out of his hair. ‘Now what would you do about that Mr Hearst then? If only you could tell me. I’m just wondering what might happen when a man with a dark soul becomes very, very angry?’
As Alice was finishing her piece, and the water dripping into Miss Wallington’s pails and bowls was beginning to make a music of its own, there was a loud rapping at the door. Without waiting, a small bedraggled boy scampered in.
‘I’ve an urgent message for Mr Tom
Winter,’ he heckled through cracked teeth.
‘Well go on then,’ said Miss Wallington.
The boy reached into his grubby pocket, pulled out a note and thrust it into Tom’s hand.
Meet me in one hour. 12b March Gardens, Chelsea.
The note wasn’t signed, but he could tell from the long, jagged strokes that it was from Walter. Even his handwriting looked like him.
‘Miss Wallington, my apologies. I’m afraid I’ve been called to something of a rather urgent nature.’
But Miss Wallington seemed to be too busy squeezing the bony arms of the bedraggled boy to notice what he was saying.
‘When did you last eat?’ she asked the child. ‘Not an ounce of fat on you!’
‘If I could leave now, I’ll make up the extra teaching hours this afternoon …,’
She looked up at him with a wrinkled expression; her glasses had slid half way down her nose. ‘I’ll get some chicken broth into him, that’s what I’ll do. Not an ounce of fat!’
‘Yes, I think that would help. I’ll come back at about, 3o’clock?’
*
March Gardens was a narrow, pleasant lane with a milliner, a dress maker and an inviting looking inn. The air was cleaner here, away from the docks, and this was made even pleasanter by the sudden appearance of the sun, which made all the wetness of the day glisten brightly.
12b was nothing more than a narrow door with a pot of pansies sitting outside. He tapped gently and an attractive young woman opened. She blinked at him, questioningly.
‘I’m here to see Walter Balanchine… I think,’ said Tom.
‘Oh come on in, you’re most welcome.’
The air was heavily scented inside and the carpet so thick that it almost sighed beneath his feet. An older woman greeted him.
‘Are you here for some entertainment, sir?’ she asked coyly. She had an extensive bosom that bore a peculiar resemblance to two balding guard dogs he used to have to dodge at St Katharine Docks. Tom hesitated and took in his surroundings: red wallpaper, heavily curtained windows, a carpet capable of digestion.
‘No… thank you. I’m here to meet a friend, Walter Balanchine.’
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