The Palace of Curiosities

by Rosie Garland

  ‘Someone’s got to show a bit of spark round here.’ She grinned. ‘We’ll not get fed sitting round the kitchen table and moping over the teapot. Unless your palm-reading can sort me out with a few winners at Newmarket, eh?’

  My answer was to hold out the box. The mattress sank as she planted herself next to me and examined the ring. She tipped her head thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s pretty. But you’re not happy. There’s a riddle.’

  ‘It is a gift from my husband. But not for me.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well.’

  ‘Lizzie,’ I said carefully, ‘did you know?’

  ‘Evie, my pet—’

  ‘Don’t call me that. It’s what he calls me. Do not console me with kind words.’

  ‘I was not planning on doing so,’ she snorted. She turned the ring round and about in the dim light, squinting at it. ‘Pinchbeck.’ She tutted. ‘The stone is paste.’ She placed it between her teeth with a crunch. ‘Pearls as false as Bill’s claim to come from Malaya.’

  ‘Is that supposed to make me feel happier?’

  She shrugged her mountainous shoulders and put the gem back in its nest. There was a tiny graze where her teeth had taken the nacreous paint off the bead.

  ‘That is not something over which I have any power,’ she said gently.

  I sniffed. ‘He’ll leave me for her.’

  ‘He will most certainly not. You are his gold-mine. He’ll not throw you aside for some tart with big eyes, big tits and a big appetite for his money. He’ll never give you up.’

  ‘That ought to please me. It does not,’ I said, so softly my moustaches did not even stir.

  ‘Eve, he does not love her.’

  ‘How can you know?’

  She sighed and looked away, as though making up her mind how to explain an important yet uncomfortable fact to a foolish child.

  ‘Who – or what – did you think you had married, Evie?’

  ‘A husband.’

  ‘And that you have. The piece of paper, the name, the shield of respectability.’

  ‘I did not think you so cruel, Lizzie. George, yes; but you?’

  She covered my little hand with the broad expanse of her own. Her kindness insinuated itself through my skin.

  ‘What I tell you is so that you may be armed with truth and be free of the syrupy entanglement of romantic lies.’

  I hung my head.

  ‘I apologise.’

  They were the two most difficult words I had ever spoken.

  ‘I am not cruel. And you are not stupid. This you must know. Arroner loves neither you, nor her, nor any other person who walks this earth. I strongly suspect he does not love himself, either. There is but one thing he adores and that is—’

  ‘His money-box.’

  ‘Ha! I’ll wager he takes it to bed with him. I knew you were bright. Queer folk are by nature cleverer than the normal types, as a rule. Evie, I believe you are growing up.’

  I rubbed my face into the warm cushion of her breast.

  ‘Now.’ She slapped her palms against her knees and the bed trembled. ‘We must put the ring back where you found it, and tidy up in here.’ She stuck out her chin at the pile of clothes on the rug. ‘Were you planning on a moonlit flit?’

  ‘I was going to leave.’ I chewed my lip. ‘And then I was not.’

  ‘Sounds about right!’ She let out a squeeze of breath and raised an eyebrow. ‘All of us have dreams of our own salons filled with red velvet chairs and brocade curtains floor to ceiling and Indian carpets. But there’s no point in running away in the middle of the night without a plan. A girl can end up in a nasty spot, and that’s the truth.’

  She pulled each of her fingers in turn, as though her skin were a glove which had wrinkled and she had to smooth it out.

  ‘Lizzie, I do not know how much longer I can live with Mr Arroner and pretend.’

  She touched her finger over my heart, and I slowed.

  ‘It is important you should play him skilfully,’ she said, adjusting her thumb. ‘Tend his stupidity. Until it is clear to go – safely.’

  ‘I do not know if I can.’

  ‘You are far cleverer than your husband. His shallowness might save you yet. He is too thinly planted to take a root, his imagination being the sparsest of topsoils. He thinks himself intelligent and that is your great safety. But you must also be more cautious. If I have caught you looking at Abel, then so have others.’

  ‘Abel?’ I found that my heart was quickening, blood skipping into my cheeks. ‘There’s something about him.’

  ‘There is.’

  She tickled the back of my neck until I purred. I hugged myself into her flesh.

  ‘I believe he sees me, truly.’

  ‘Indeed?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I mean, through my fur. No other man does,’ I mumbled. I grew bolder. ‘I touched him, Lizzie,’ I whispered.

  ‘Did you, indeed!’

  She held me at arm’s length, bored crafty eyes into me.

  ‘No! Nothing like that. Like when I read palms. There are pictures inside him. Wonderful things,’ I moaned.

  ‘Be careful, Evie,’ she said. ‘Not of Abel.’

  ‘I know. It is my husband I must beware of.’

  She pressed her soft cheek into mine and breathed liquorice into my ear.

  ‘Return the ring. And the clothes, for now. When you leave, you will have no time for packing bags.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. You’ll know right enough when the time comes. Now, I must be off and find me a cup of gin. I believe I have the heartburn. Poor Lizzie! The heartache of others brings it on.’

  She billowed me into her. I drowsed against the booming of her heart. With a final squeeze she bade me good-night and waded away.

  I would not leave tonight. I could wait. It seemed that yesterday I had adored my husband; now I hated him, simple as turning a page. I had frittered away our marriage trying to read affection into his solicitous kindness, when it was bitterness enveloped in sweet words. He had snipped the tiny veins of my hope, small, sharp nicks but enough to bleed away my confidence; and each time I tried to sew up the shallow wounds made by the little razors of his mouth my head swooned more from the loss of it. Indeed, he had near killed me with his ever-hovering questions.

  Are you well? Are you comfortable?

  Do you want for anything?

  Would you care for a sugared almond?

  All I had ever desired was a kiss upon my lips.

  Would you like a new pair of gloves? The new style, which button to the elbow?

  My only dream of delight had been for him to take my hand and squeeze it with passion.

  Take a bite of this marzipan: it is as sweet as you.

  I lit another candle, and then another, until my room glowed. I stood before the dressing-mirror and assessed myself: my disordered hair, my rumpled night-dress, my eyes rough from weeping. Enough. I wet my hands from the ewer and smoothed droplets through my tresses. I scooped a handful of hairpins and stuck them between my teeth, looped a length of hair around my finger, wound it round and round and secured it close to my chin. Over and over I repeated the action until every hair on my head was clipped into curling-pins. It gave me the appearance of a startled hedgehog, but I was not planning on receiving visitors. It would dry into ringlets overnight. And in the morning, I would simper, toss my curls, play my part and my husband would be none the wiser.

  He would never guess how sick I was of his cloying sugar. I ached to blunt the sharp edges of my girlishness. I wanted to take a bite of the salt and sour of a man, feel him fire me up, rub me, flint me into flame. I had kept my heart faithful even when I felt drawn to Abel. It was pointless to deny it. I liked what I saw in Abel, and not only that – although I did find him handsome. With each day he seemed to grow into himself as though his being was a murky pond and he was the creature surfacing from its depths.

  I smiled when I thought of h
ow I had dutifully tamped down all lascivious thoughts about him and crushed them flat when they tickled my ankles or blew softly upon my neck. How I had pushed away dreams when they blossomed into wild flights in the breathless forest of my belly: dreams wherein Abel stepped out from the trees, seething with hair, eyes glowering up and down my body and spreading me open for that first gasping taste. My Pan, my serpent.

  I had throttled every wicked thought with wifely shame. I might as well have indulged my bodily imaginings and woken every morning with tangled sheets and a slack smile on my face. Yet this was no mere infatuation of the flesh. Abel spoke to me as one equal to another; both of us different, both of us travelling towards the city of self-discovery. Perhaps if I had met him when …? No. I shook my head and scattered hairpins on to the floor.

  No more. I would make plans and dream of the day when I would throw away my curling pins and all feminine fripperies. I would let my beard roughen and wear it like a sailor, tugged into two greasy points, tangled with breadcrumbs and beer. I would swear out loud and not just in the tent of my head; I would have a girl in every port, and remember not one of their names. And when I tired of mannishness I would be so voluptuous my swains would faint away at the sight of me; I would braid ribbons into my beard, file my teeth to glittering points and hunt men for sport; pluck a hundred peacocks and sew their eyes into my coat; plume my dress with the sapphire sheen of magpie tail-feather. I would be the Woman Beast, fearful and beautiful.

  I could not tell this truth, for it would make gunpowder of the air between Mr Arroner and myself. I feared the spark that would light the touch paper, set off a thundering show and burn us all to ashes. I would bide my time: be sweet and quiet as a kitten. Lap at my saucer of milk and pretend myself brow-beaten, meek and obedient. I would slump round the table, pretending to look for hope in the bottom of a glass of gin. I would beat him at his own game. One day I would run, beating out the sweetest rhythm with my feet, the pounding percussion of escape.

  One day I would do it. Not yet.

  ABEL

  London, September 1858

  The front door slams.

  ‘We’re ruined!’

  Arroner’s roar of despair thunders down the hall, down the stairs and into the kitchen. I am sitting with Eve and George, hoping that George will leave for I wish to speak to her alone. I have so much to say that the words sizzle on my tongue. George is sipping his tea from the saucer more slowly than I think it possible for a man to drink, glancing from Eve to myself and back again, a crafty expression on his face. Arroner storms into the room, brandishing a crumpled sheet of paper.

  ‘Look!’ he screams. ‘The conniving, thieving bastards!’

  ‘What is it, dear husband?’ asks Eve mildly.

  She gets a fresh cup and pours tea into it.

  ‘What is it? What is it? Nothing but our entire collapse and ruination. All my years of careful labour turned to sand in the space of a moment!’

  ‘I’m sure it is not as bad as you think, dearest. Tell us what ails you.’

  ‘What ails me?’ he shrieks. He shoves his face close to hers and she draws away the smallest fraction of an inch. ‘Look!’ he continues, spittle spraying from his mouth and hanging in drops from her moustache and long eyebrows.

  With the word he slaps the paper on to the table. It is a handbill. Thick black letters in bold script declare an invitation: The New Sensation! Greater Than Any Seen Before! The Two-Headed Nightingale!

  ‘That’s what ails me, you stupid woman.’

  The picture beneath the trumpeting headline is of a young woman with two heads, both mouths smiling. Or rather, it is two girls, pressed closely together at the hip, their four arms in an affectionate embrace around the other. She is – or rather, they are – in dresses so short all four of their legs are clearly displayed. Something within me stirs damp wings: she seems happy with her strangeness. I wonder what that feels like. My finger rises of its own accord and traces the shape of the words.

  ‘What does it say?’ asks George, craning his neck for a peep.

  ‘It says you should bloody well learn to read,’ growls Arroner.

  He pushes it across the board towards Eve. She picks it up and reads it, her voice trembling a little.

  ‘The Two-Headed Nightingale. Twice the Beauty! Twice the Thrills! By Special Appointment to Royalty.’

  She looks up, confused.

  ‘Royal patronage, that’s what,’ snaps Arroner. ‘They only went and got a visit from some bloody baronet or other, didn’t they? Presented her with a ruby the size of my eye, didn’t he? No doubt she lifted her skirt for him, and all.’

  Eve’s hands hold steady on the paper and she reads on.

  ‘Also Featuring for the General Delectation of All Comers: the Thaumaturgic Thespianism of … Oh!’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ snarls Arroner.

  ‘What?’ asks George. ‘What is it?’

  Arroner snatches the bill from Eve’s hand and reads aloud.

  ‘The Thaumaturgic Thespianism of the Celebrated India-Rubber Man, in an All-New Entertainment.’

  George still looks blank. Arroner rounds on him this time, so that it is now his face which is splattered with furious saliva.

  ‘It’s Bill, you idiot. Dear sweet innocent Bill has jumped ship like the rat he is and has gone to this new – this new …’ He strangles the paper in his fist. ‘This is how I am repaid for all my generosity! I’ll kill the ungrateful little sod.’

  ‘I’ll not leave you, Mr Arroner,’ I say.

  Arroner ignores me, pacing up and down the red-tiled floor.

  ‘A woman with four legs, and not afraid to show them off. A pretty face to boot.’ He glances at Eve as he speaks. ‘Why couldn’t we get a bloody lord? I’d settle for a Member of Parliament. All the years I’ve toiled. The money I’ve lavished on you all.’ He stops in his tracks, hands clasped behind his back and surveying us like so many empty beer-bottles. ‘We can compete against Cow-Horned Women, but this? All I have is old rubbish and unsightliness. Shiftless ugly freaks, the whole damn lot of you.’

  ‘Thanks a million,’ grunts George. ‘If I’m so ruddy ugly, maybe I’ll go and join them as well.’

  ‘You damn well won’t.’

  George gets to his feet and squares up to Arroner.

  ‘Oh, won’t I?’

  ‘I’d like to see you try. Worthless without me, you are.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. And maybe I won’t go alone when I go, neither.’

  ‘What! You …’

  Arroner’s voice soars to new heights of fury and his face blooms a dangerous purple. Eve speaks, so softly it has the strange effect of making him quieten.

  ‘We shall endure, dear Mr Arroner. Wherever there is heard the call for sensation, for entertainment—’

  ‘Stow it,’ grumbles George. ‘You might get by, genuine article like yourself. Me? The minute I roll up my sleeves I’m marked as a gaff. As for him …’ He nods in my direction.

  ‘George. There is no need for these hysterics,’ says Eve, cleverly not including her husband in the accusation.

  ‘Yes, George,’ adds Arroner, breathing heavily and wiping his shining face with a gaudy handkerchief. ‘Listen to my wife. Calm yourself.’

  ‘You’ll drop us like dog turds. You’ve just said as much.’

  ‘You will keep a civil tongue, George.’

  ‘A civil tongue? You can talk, you money-grabbing old skinflint. What you’re about is filling your pockets and no-one else’s. It’s a sorry state when that idiot gets paid the same as me.’

  George jabs his thumb in my face. Arroner narrows his eyelids, folds the handkerchief with great care and tucks it into his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Why should he not?’

  ‘You even ask? That dead fish doesn’t know what to do with what he has got. Now, I—’

  ‘George.’

  ‘He gives me the fucking creeps.’

  ‘George, your profanity is most upsetting. Besi
des, the public continue to marvel at our good friend Abel, even if in somewhat reduced numbers. In my books, that makes him a better man than you are. Especially in these straitened circumstances.’

  ‘What? You have got to be kidding me. How can he possibly—’

  ‘He demonstrates a respectful manner to his betters. In case you have not noticed.’

  ‘I’ve done your bidding this past five years, Arroner. In this circus and out of it. Not a word of complaint.’

  ‘But I am hearing words of complaint, George. Plenty of words.’

  ‘He’s half-asleep most of the time. Half-dead the rest!’

  ‘And half the trouble you are turning out to be.’

  ‘I’ve given you everything.’ His voice shakes.

  ‘And I have paid you for it all.’

  ‘Not even half of what I’m owed, you bastard.’

  ‘George, I have asked you to moderate your regrettable lapses into vulgarity. There is a lady present.’

  He takes no notice. ‘You’ve drunk the profits. Gambled away what’s left.’

  ‘Investments, George,’ Mr Arroner replies, tapping the side of his nose. ‘I am an investor, not a gambler.’

  ‘You’re a fool.’

  ‘I believe I have had enough of this unpleasant and quite unnecessary display of histrionics. I must formulate plans to beat this new show at its own game. They’ll not get the better of Josiah Arroner. I shall retire and enjoy the more stimulating company of my associates in investment matters. They conduct a far more pleasurable conversation.’

  He screws his silk hat on to his head and leaves the room, shoes stamping an angry rhythm on the hall tiles. We sit around the table, staring anywhere but at each other. I rise, slowly.

  ‘I shall go and prepare for tonight’s show,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Why don’t you run off and play, you pointless excuse for a man.’