Chaplin & Company
Page 31
‘Do I at least get to sample my cooking?’ She hands him a plate and he goes over to the low orange and brown chair in the corner and sinks into it, taking a bite of the sausage roll. It leaves black flakes in his beard.
The others have taken seats along the walls of the cabin and are eating. ‘Delicious,’ says the badger-haired man, lifting half a roll in a salute to Odeline. The two girls are lifting the Great London Theatres book from her bookshelf.
‘Girls,’ Angela says, ‘don’t touch other people’s possessions without asking.’
The girls hurtle over.
‘Can we look at the book, please?’ says one.
‘Will you do the bird act again?’ says the other, taking hold of her tailcoat and flapping it up and down. Odeline snatches it back.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ shouts the other one, jumping up and down.
Angela laughs and ruffles the girl’s head. ‘You really loved that bird act, didn’t you?’ She raises her big eyebrows at Odeline. ‘They’ve been talking about it ever since.’
‘It’s amazing!’ shout the girls in unison, gazing up at Odeline. They are clasping their hands to her.
Their faces are wide and adoring. Beseeching.
They are holding their breath, imploring.
‘Perhaps . . . perhaps I could do it again,’ says Odeline.
The girls dance around each other, clapping. ‘The bird, the bird!’
London’s adult audiences may be just as philistine as Arundel’s, thinks Odeline. But perhaps its children are more enlightened. Angela shepherds the girls to a seat at the end nearest the bookshelves and Odeline goes to sit opposite. Ridley is standing at the counter with his fiddle and bow.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Who’s up first?’
Green to yellow on the canal as autumn curls the edges of the leaves and lets them fall. Blue to grey as autumn clouds the sky and the water’s surface turns to iron, a metal ribbon that runs from west to east and billows out at this triangular junction, this soldered join where three paths meet. If summer beat down on this stretch of canal, compressed and cooked it, then autumn will whistle a breeze through, moving things on. Three boats by the bridge. From the smallest, the handsomest, the most polished and painted, comes the sound of a bow being drawn across strings, the first notes of a slow song, which leak from this boat and travel with the breeze, up, out, along the water.
The woman walking along the towpath towards the bridge, she knows the words. My funny valentine, sweet, comic valentine. She stretches her lips and tips her head back to sing, holding the low notes in a deep vibrato. You make me smile with my heart. The wheels of her trolley trundle over the slabs of concrete. Her snaffled loafers plant outwards as she pushes. Your looks are laughable, unphotographable. Her new trolley is piled high, the racket covers spilling out of the end like flowers from a vase, a half-bottle of brandy in the child’s seat at the front. Yet you’re my favourite work of art. She wears tights and chequered trousers under her floral dress on this cool evening – her burgundy towel is draped around her shoulders. Is your figure less than Greek? The temperature will drop tonight as she sleeps. Is your mouth a little weak? She will put on all the clothes from her trolley before she lifts out the duvet to lay on top of her. When you open it to speak, are you smart? She will pull a red beanie hat with a football crest upon her rustling matt of hair. Don’t change a hair for me. But still she needs the brandy to carry her through the night. Not if you care for me.
This is how it is.
Stay, little valentine, stay.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am extremely grateful to Sheila Mossé for her memories of life on board the Shropshire Lass, to Rebecca McKenzie on board Myark, John on board Prosper and to Richard and Geraldine Sear on board Trafalgar. Thanks to Joseph Alexander Smith and others for their insights on the asylum process. Any inaccuracies or inconsistencies are my own.
Thanks to my agent and friend Alice Lutyens for taking me on, for all her efforts, encouragement and unstinting frankness. Huge credit and thanks to Alex Bowler whose ideas and vision transformed the book. Thank you to Katie Adams for taking Chaplin & Company across the pond, and to Cordelia Calvert and all of the team at Liveright.
For the hours of writing time, thanks to Wednesday Fellowes, Leeanne James and Tracy Daines. For unofficially launching the book in such style, thanks to Natasha Ascott and Lucy Payton. And for your patience, support, spelling suggestions, and for believing this could happen, thank you Nick.
Copyright © 2013 by Mave Fellowes
First American Edition 2014
First published by Jonathan Cape Lts.,
one of the publishers in The Random House Group Ltd.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Fellowes, Mave.
Chaplin & Company / Mave Fellowes. — First American Edition.
pages cm.
ISBN 978-0-87140-744-3 (hardcover)
1. Orphans—Fiction. 2. Mime—Fiction. 3. Neighborhood watch
programs—England—London—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Chaplin and
Company.
PR6106.E415C53 2014
823'.92—dc23
2013041286
ISBN 978-0-87140-761-0 (e-book)
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