by Robert Lock
“You should not say such things!” The contortionist called after him, her voice echoing in the stairwell. “God will punish you for your words!”
Maybe, George thought, but the audience will cheer.
Victoria
Six weeks after that groundbreaking evening, Georgie Parr was coming to the end of his run at the Collins’ Music Hall. Sam Collins recognised a money-making opportunity when he saw one and so had been more than happy to keep the comedian treading his boards, but reaction in both the London press and trade papers to the new act had been unanimous in its condemnation, varying only in its degree of outrage. The closest Georgie came to a sympathetic review was a quote in the Illustrated Sporting and Theatrical News, which described his adoption of gin palace slang as ‘a regrettable but wholly predictable consequence of limiting the Lord Chamberlain’s influence’, but the majority regarded his act as ‘a disgraceful exhibition of profanity’, with an ‘utter disregard for the sensibilities of the audience’ and even provoked a call for George to be arrested for ‘rabble-rousing of the most pernicious kind.’ Needless to say, these diatribes from the establishment had exactly the opposite effect to that intended, ensuring full houses every evening and a burgeoning reputation amongst the capital’s working classes as something of a folk hero.
Katherine, heavily pregnant now and largely housebound through dizziness and debilitating bouts of cramp, understood that if George stayed in London his continuing presence might provoke the authorities into a more direct form of action, so she suggested a summer tour of the provinces, including several of the most popular resorts. These seaside towns, now accessible to the masses courtesy of the rapidly expanding rail network, shimmered at the end of the line, their crystalline skies and cathedral-like pleasure palaces so far removed from the landlocked black cities that they seemed, to each and every mill and factory worker, every clerk and miner and shopkeeper lucky enough to step off the train and breathe in that unfettered air, like visions of utopia. And it was these holidaymakers who, intoxicated by the resort and yet slightly afraid of it, required the reassurance of music hall for their entertainment. Here, by the sea, was where Georgie Parr’s new audience would be found.
First, however, were two more nights working for Sam Collins. George had enjoyed the evening’s performance, but as he relaxed in his dressing room he had to admit to a moment of distraction on stage, the faintest hint — born out of the familiarity of his patter and the reaction of the audience — that both he and they were settling into a routine. His reaction to this came as something of a shock to him. How often in the past had he watched other performers on stage and envied their comfort, their belonging? And now, having finally reached this point of equilibrium for himself, George was amazed to find that all it left him with was a vague sense of annoyance. For perhaps twenty seconds he had felt like an actor playing the part of Georgie Parr in a biographical play, with fixed lines and scripted movements. The further he left behind that astonishing, heretical first performance, the more he missed its tightrope-like crossing of the abyss. George had never regarded himself as a gambler, but he could not deny a craving for the shock and silence which followed his comments about Zlatka the contortionist. Katherine was right. He needed a new audience, a new town.
Without warning, the dressing room door burst open and Jacob, the hall’s carpenter and general factotum, burst in.
“Mr Parr, Mr Parr!”
George started in his chair. “Jacob,” he chided, “you must remember to knock on the door before entering.”
Jacob, whose senses had been permanently jumbled following a terrible rooftop fall as a young man, glanced back out into the corridor, as though debating whether he should leave and properly announce his arrival.
“Never mind,” George said reassuringly. “What is it?”
“It’s your missus, Mr Parr. Your missus.” Jacob’s hands twitched and trembled at his sides. He seemed most upset by both the news and his being the bearer of it.
George stood up. A feeling of dread settled on him like an icy web, and the fey light in Jacob’s eyes made his scalp prickle. “What has happened?”
“Your missus,” Jacob repeated, apparently panicked into repetition by George’s reaction.
“Yes, but what has happened to Mrs Parr, Jacob? What… has… happened?”
The carpenter took a deep breath. “She… she’s taken poorly. Mrs Parr’s taken poorly.” He nodded to confirm the veracity of his message.
“Who told you?”
“A boy.”
“A boy? What boy?” He caught hold of the carpenter’s sleeve.
“What boy, Jacob?”
“He… I…”
“Try and remember, Jacob. This is very important.”
Jacob nodded and frowned. “A boy. A boy.” He looked up.
“Ralph.”
George nodded. His neighbour’s eldest. “Thank you, Jacob. You’ve done very well.” He grabbed his coat and hurried out into the corridor, where he almost collided with Sam Collins.
“Has Jacob…?” the music hall owner began.
“Yes, yes, I must go.”
Sam gripped George by the shoulders. “Calm down, lad, you’ll be no use to anybody turning up frothing at the mouth. There’s a cab waiting for you at the stage door. It’s already paid for.”
George nodded gratefully, moved by Sam’s thoughtfulness and generosity. “Thank you.”
“Well for God’s sake don’t tell everyone, they’ll all be wanting a free ride home. Now clear off.”
The journey home seemed interminable, though it could not have been more than three miles, a jolting passage across the north of London with a driver seemingly oblivious to George’s entreaties to hurry. Pedestrians and street vendors at first watched his passing with indifference, their blank faces leached of colour in the gaslights, as though the whole city was complicit in its disregard for Katherine’s plight. But gradually, as the carriage headed westward, he began to detect a note of censure in their eyes, a slowly evolving judgement that George, in his heart, could only accept. Because, staring back at this parade of strangers, which drifted by like corpses on the surface of a dark river, he felt only confusion and conflict. Yes, he loved Katherine, and yes, the thought that his unborn child was in danger filled him with dread, but woven into these anxieties was an awareness of his own hypocrisy. Since their confrontation over a month ago scarcely an hour went by that he did not think about Zlatka. Even though it was clear she loathed, perhaps even hated him, he persisted in concocting a series of imaginary assignations, with her strength and suppleness their theme. No matter how he tried to dismiss her from his mind, George knew that within the cab’s shadows her brown eyes, their gentle epicanthic fold giving the impression of being half-closed as though in ecstasy, would be shining. Better to endure the reproach of strangers than admit to a craving which made a mockery of all that he claimed to hold so dear.
The unmistakable rhythmic beat of a steam engine nearby told George that they were close to the Great Northern Railway depot. On still summer mornings he and Katherine would often open the window above their breakfast table and listen to the clanking of carriages and engines being coupled together, and conjecture as to the destination of the train being assembled a quarter of a mile away.
George opened the cab window and called up, “For the love of God, man, please hurry!”
“Not far now, sir,” the driver said reassuringly. “Just coming into Goldington Crescent.”
George slumped back into his seat. Bayham Street South was only a minute away, and yet his mind continued to seethe with conflicting emotions, as though some perverse small fraction of him delighted in this orgy of self-reproach. He pressed his fingertips against his forehead and rubbed them up and down, attempting to concentrate solely on the sensation of his skin moving over the contours of his skull. Now was not the time to indulge in some inner debate! George pressed harder, eager to accept the pain as both flagellation and focus,
a cleansing punishment. His resolve was such that the marks would still be visible when he held his daughter for the first time.
The cab slowed and turned right, lurching into a water-filled pothole that was as familiar to George as the stench of its contents, some of which spattered against the side of the cab. He had written to complain that a Gloucester Place sewer was obviously leaking and settling in the hole at the end of their road, but all he received in reply was a long discourse on how Mr Bazalgette’s engineering work was set to transform the capital, with only patience and understanding to be asked of its inhabitants.
“It appears our patience has yet to be rewarded,” he said out loud, wrinkling his nose at the foetid odour, which nevertheless was of a sufficient pungency to clear his mind of all thought and doubt save a fervent desire to hold Katherine and re-state his love for her.
The first thing he noticed as the cab drew up outside their modest terrace was Edith, their maid and housekeeper, sitting on the front doorstep staring down at her shoes. She looked up, and when George saw the tears glistening in her eyes his stomach lurched. Edith stood, took a deep breath, and made a desultory effort to brush the creases out of her apron. Even in the feeble gaslight of their street George could see the poor girl’s red-rimmed eyes, and in the moment before they spoke, a terrible thought leaped unbidden into his mind, as though whispered by some pitiless fiend: Let it be the child.
“Oh, sir,” she blurted the moment George stepped down from the cab, “why could you not have come sooner?”
Too distracted to notice her familiarity, George took hold of her by the shoulders. “What has happened, Edie? What has happened?”
“It’s Mrs Parr, sir. She started with the baby… Oh, she was in such pain, and then I noticed the blood, so I ran to Dr Zimmerman’s, and when we got back Mrs Parr was lying on the floor, and Dr Zimmerman told me to boil lots of water…”
George could not bear another second of Edith’s rambling. “For pity’s sake, Edie! What has happened?”
The housekeeper glanced up at her employer. She pressed her fingers to her nose in an attempt to hold back her tears. “She’s dead, sir. Poor Mrs Parr’s dead, not twenty minutes ago. Why didn’t you come?”
“I was on stage,” George said hollowly. “No one can interrupt a performance. I came as soon as I could.”
“I’m so sorry, sir.”
The prominent nodes and struts of Edith’s skeleton beneath his hands suddenly repulsed him. How thin she was! And hardly more than a child. She could not have done any more to save Katherine. She deserved his praise, his thanks, not this rough interrogation.
“The child!” George cried. “Is it…?”
Edith sniffed loudly. “You have a beautiful daughter, Mr Parr. Dr Zimmerman is attending to her.” She looked into George’s pale brown eyes, so full of confusion and anguish that she felt her throat tighten with emotion. “If you’ll pardon my saying, sir, she has your eyes… and Mrs Parr’s hair. I’ve never seen a more beautiful baby, honest I haven’t.”
George nodded. It was not the child. He thanked God that at least one life had been spared, and detested himself for allowing such a vile thought to even cross his mind. His hands fell from Edith’s shoulders. “I should speak to the doctor.”
She nodded in agreement. “He told me to send you up the moment you got here.”
“Thank you, Edie. Go to bed, now, you must be exhausted.”
“That’s alright, sir. You’ll be needing some errands running.” She managed a tight little smile. “Now go on, sir, go and see your daughter.”
George nodded. He stepped up to the door but hesitated on the threshold, his hand poised over the doorknob. What tragic tableau awaited him inside? And how would he react to the scene of his beloved Katherine’s lonely death? George feared that guilt would overwhelm him; he sensed it already, like a barrier impeding the correct proprieties of grief. Until that whispered vulgarity in the theatre wings he had always thought of himself as a man possessed of quite simple moral philosophies, but now, even though by setting free a more salacious Georgie Parr he had ensured his music hall success, this man’s unrestrained sensuality threatened to leach into other aspects of his life and taint them forever.
He opened the front door and stepped into the hall.
What first struck him was how everything could appear normal, unchanged, and yet at the same time be an entirely different world, coloured by the convulsive palette of his wife’s death. George’s hand patted the umbrella and walking stick handles protruding from their stand, reassured in some strange way by the familiar curves. Only one of the candle sconces had been lit, leaving most of the hall and staircase as little more than an abstraction of shadows. He wanted to call out Katherine’s name, as he had done so often in this hallway, and see her appear, either on the stairs or from the kitchen, smiling and eager to put his day’s tribulations into perspective. How selfless she had been, and how he had taken that generosity for granted! All those years of struggle, as he searched for his own comedic voice and enduring self-belief, both of these quests bolstered by Katherine’s unwavering confidence. And now, so soon after the realisation of this dream, she had been snatched away from him. All their plans for the future lay in ruins. If only he could call her back for a moment, delay her departure just long enough to express his love, and in that expression offer Katherine a vindication of her faith in him. Then George could let her die. That would be fair. That would be just. Not this wrenching away, this incoherent night.
Upstairs a baby cried. For a moment the sound did not register, it did not belong in the house, and again George felt like an intruder. The second cry had him charging up the stairs two steps at a time, across the tiny landing and into the bedroom.
Doctor Zimmerman was seated on the edge of the bed, illuminated by an oil lamp on the bedside table. In the crook of one arm he cradled a small bundle with a casual confidence that unaccountably filled George with resentment, whilst with his free hand the doctor was pouring himself a glass of whisky from a silver hip flask. He looked up calmly, as though impervious to fright or shock.
“Ah,” he said, glancing down at the bundle. “Here is your papa.”
George stopped dead. The smell of ether hung heavily in the air, its caustic note woven into the darkness, which besieged them and imposed a fierce intimacy on every word. He glanced at the bed, but it appeared to have been newly made up with Edith’s customary tautness. Doctor Zimmerman noticed the glance and understood immediately what George was thinking.
“I have placed your wife on the settee in the front parlour,” he explained in a deep and heavily accented voice. “I thought it best to separate mother and child in order to prevent confusion in the baby. We do not want her to expect her mother’s breast.”
This stark medical explanation shocked George, but he saw the sense in it nevertheless. “No, no, I understand.”
“Good.” Doctor Zimmerman flipped shut and tightened the stopper of his hip flask with a deft and clearly practised twirl of thumb and forefinger, before slipping the flask back into an inner pocket of his jacket. He lifted the glass and spoke while swirling its contents in front of the oil lamp, as though the colour and clarity of the whisky were of equal interest to him as the man before him and the baby in his arms. “I am most sorry for your loss, Mr Parr, but you have the unenviable task of containing your grief, at least for the foreseeable future. In my experience, the living are far more importunate than the dead.”
George took a step closer. “Our maid said I have a daughter…”
“Indeed you have.” Doctor Zimmerman took a sip of his whisky.
“Is she well?”
“Quite splendid, I should say.”
George waited for more information, but the doctor seemed content to supply nothing more than a brief reply to the specifics of his questions, so he attempted to pose a more open-ended inquiry. “How can the child be unharmed when my wife… succumbed to her labour?”
�
�My dear chap, post-partum haemorrhage has no effect on a child already delivered safely. Once the umbilical cord has been severed its blood supply is entirely self-contained, and your wife insisted that I attend to the baby before her. She would not countenance any other course of action, which I found most admirable.”
“Are you saying she sacrificed herself for the baby’s sake?”
The doctor looked at George disapprovingly. “You have a tendency to the melodramatic, Mr Parr.”
This was more than George could endure. “I have become both a father and a widower in the same day, sir! What would you have me do, pass it all off as of no account?”
She might have been reacting to the note of distress in his voice, or simply its volume, but whatever the reason, George’s daughter commenced her own vigorous response: a rhythmic, high-pitched squawk whose vigour was out of all proportion to her size. Doctor Zimmerman jiggled her up and down on his knee, but when this failed to pacify her he dipped his little finger in the whisky and stuck it unceremoniously into her mouth.
Appalled by the doctor’s behaviour, which seemed to him both unethical and quite possibly dangerous, George strode to the bedside and snatched the child from Doctor Zimmerman. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Simply trying—”
“I will not have my daughter weaned on cheap whisky!” George could feel a rage bubbling inside him, a fury he had never known, tempered only by the surprising weight of the baby pressed against his chest. “Is that what you were doing before you attended my wife? Is that why she died, because you were too drunk to perform your duties properly?”
The doctor’s jaw worked, as though he were chewing the accusation like a piece of gristle. “That, young man, is slander! I should have you in court for it!”
“And my wife’s corpse will be the first item of evidence!”
There was a moment of silence, a distillation of the darkness that surrounded them, in which both men were presented with an empathetic vision of the other, almost as if the shabby little terraced house could bear no more conflicts that night, no more calamity.