Daughter of the House

by Rosie Thomas

  Nancy did her best, but her temper sometimes flared. If she did forget herself enough to snap at Eliza her mother sank back with an expression of shock and pain that made Nancy want to chop out her own tongue.

  ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ she would murmur, trying to gather her up and hold her close, but Eliza’s fragile body could no longer bear the pressure of even the lightest embrace.

  Cornelius tried to tell his sister that she shouldn’t mind. Eliza needed all her attention and sympathy for herself, he said, to help her to recover. She wasn’t trying to imagine herself in Nancy’s shoes or she wouldn’t be so harsh.

  Nancy said sadly, ‘It’s my fault. After what she has been through I ought to be more patient with her.’

  He patted her shoulder and told her that she had been cooped up indoors for too long. She should go out for a walk by the canal, or to meet Jinny Main and her friends. Nancy thought it was Cornelius who should go out more – in the months since he had come home he had hardly left the house. But when she casually suggested it he refused at once, unable to conceal a flash of panic.

  He preferred to stay with Eliza, he insisted. When he was not at her bedside he was teaching himself to cook. He made himself at home in the kitchen, creating a great deal of mess by preparing toast and porridge and stirring experimental concoctions that Nancy and Devil gamely consumed each night.

  One evening Nancy had to ask her father for some money to pay the butcher and the coal merchant, and he conjured ten shillings from his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘I must be out of practice,’ he said without smiling. ‘It used to be five pounds, didn’t it?’

  The time came when nursing Eliza and keeping house no longer called for two people, and Nancy decided she should go back to work to bring in some money. That same day she rang up Miss Dent. The secretary was non-committal on the telephone. Nancy put on her flannel skirt, pinned up her hair with the cloisonné combs and returned to Lennox & Ringland. The welcome clatter of the Linotype machines sounded as lovely as a symphony and she was humming as she ran up the stairs.

  As soon as she entered the outer office she saw that a change had taken place in her absence.

  Miss Dent had moved to Nancy’s old corner away from the fire, and in the secretary’s place stood a handsome mahogany desk with a leather top. There was no one seated at it, but it was clearly intended for someone important.

  ‘Would you go straight through to see Mr Lennox?’ the secretary said. She didn’t meet Nancy’s eye.

  Mr Lennox closed a folder and leaned back. His chair creaked on its claw feet.

  ‘Ah, Miss Wix. Won’t you sit down?’

  He had never asked her to sit before. She couldn’t remember that he had ever given her more than a casual glance. She took the chair opposite his desk.

  ‘I can’t keep your job for you.’

  He had more to say, but she didn’t really listen. The man’s son had been discharged from the Royal Navy and was returning to work in the family printing business. The desk in the corner was intended for him, and Nancy was no longer required in the office. In any case she had responsibilities at home, to her mother, didn’t she?

  ‘I’m so sorry I was absent. She is almost recovered now. Can’t I work down on the print floor with Jinny?’

  Mr Lennox shook his head. ‘The men are coming back. You young ladies have done well, but it’s men’s work.’

  Nancy might have retorted that it had been women’s work for as long as they were needed to do it, but she knew there was no point. Perhaps even Jinny’s job wouldn’t last much longer. She got to her feet as Mr Lennox stood up and came round the desk to her. Placing his hands on her shoulders he turned her towards him and his forearm brushed her breast.

  ‘It’s a shame, my dear, but a girl like you will want to find a husband and have a family.’ His breath was meaty on her face. She shook him off and stepped out of reach.

  ‘I see. You’ll want me to work my notice, I suppose?’

  No, she would receive a week’s pay instead of notice. Trembling, Nancy found herself back in the outer office. Poor Miss Dent looked wretched. Nancy went back down the stone stairs and found Jinny in her brown overall, performing the menial task of hand setting type for a theatre playbill. Nancy was reminded of the posters Devil liked to design for the Palmyra before the war.

  ‘I’ve been sacked.’

  Jinny slammed the form against the bench with a crash that shook the type out of line.

  ‘That bloody old bastard.’

  Nancy hushed her. It wouldn’t help Jinny to be overheard cursing the managing director. Jinny left her bench and steered Nancy towards the kitchen.

  ‘I need a minute,’ she said to the frowning foreman as they passed him. ‘Women’s reasons, all right?’

  The man turned red in the face.

  The two girls leaned against the old sink as they had so often done before. There would be no cup of tea today.

  ‘What will you do?’

  Nancy did her best to be optimistic although she was close to tears. Given the situation at home she badly needed to work. ‘I’ll find another job. Can’t be a lady of leisure, can I?’

  ‘This place isn’t what it was anyway. You’ll get something better, easy. You can speak French, for God’s sake.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  Jinny huffed with frustration. ‘Come here.’ She held out her arms and gave Nancy a rough hug.

  ‘Thanks, Jinny. You should get back to work.’

  ‘Yeah. Look. Now that your ma’s so much better, and Cornelius as well, you can come out with us, can’t you? There’s an equal franchise meeting on Thursday night …’

  Nancy didn’t have much appetite for one of Jinny’s political gatherings. She nodded in a non-committal way.

  ‘I’ll see.’

  ‘That’s good. We need you. Omadood barm, eh?’

  ‘Omadood barm,’ Nancy reluctantly smiled.

  ‘Oh, by the way. I forgot to say. A man called here, wanting to see you. He looked in at the dispatch office and Frank sent him through to me.’

  Nancy gaped. Her heart was skipping against her ribs.

  Gil Maitland had come at last. She kept his laundered handkerchief in her pocket and her fingers closed on the folds of it. Her mind was racing ahead, to how she would tell him about Eliza’s illness and losing her job, and the luxury of his listening to her.

  ‘Nance? He was quite an odd-looking fellow, in a long overcoat and one of those big old hats. He said he knew you very well, so I asked him why didn’t he go to your house?’

  Her heart slowed until it was heavy as a stone. The caller wasn’t Gil at all.

  ‘He left his card for you. Hang on a sec. What have I done with it?’

  Jinny rummaged through the pockets of her ink-stained overall and at last found the creased card.

  ‘Thanks.’ Without glancing at it Nancy knew that it read Lawrence Feather, Medium. So it had been him in the flesh on the night Eliza fell ill, looking up at the window until he was sure she had seen him. The intensifying of the Uncanny, the way it swirled around her after having seemed almost dormant, must be to do with him.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘No one,’ Nancy said sadly.

  Before she left Lennox & Ringland for the last time she made a quick tour to say goodbye to her friends. The older men were sorry to see her go and they all demanded a kiss, but even in the three and a half weeks of her absence the workforce had changed. There were two unfriendly new typesetters, and an odd-job man with a big broom who didn’t even glance up from his sweeping as she passed. Fifteen minutes later she was making her way back down the alley to Fleet Street.

  She hesitated in the roar of traffic. Grimy-faced print workers from the early morning shift were elbowing their way out of the newspaper buildings and heading towards the pubs for a liquid breakfast. Following the bitterness of her disappointment about Gil Nancy wanted to find her father and at least confide in him about her lost job.
She turned west and began to trudge through the scurrying crowds towards the Strand. Devil would commiserate with her, and then make her laugh so she would briefly forget getting the sack from a menial position that she had liked. He would steer her across the street to the Lyons’ Corner House and they would take a table by the window. She could already taste the sweet white icing on the finger bun she planned to order with her coffee.

  Preoccupied with her thoughts and with threading her way through the throng, she didn’t look up at the theatre until she was almost at the steps. It was the foyer attend-ant’s job to keep them swept, but today they were gritty and littered with cigarette ends. The wind had pasted a crumpled sheet of newspaper and a greasy bag that had once held chips against the big doors that opened into the green-and-gold foyer.

  Nancy lifted her head. The brass door handles were chained and padlocked. A notice had been stuck behind the glass. It read simply ‘CLOSED’. One corner of the notice hung down like a dejected ear.

  The Palmyra was not only closed and deserted, it already had an air of dereliction.

  Shocked by the sight, Nancy hurried to the stage door in the side alley that sloped steeply down to the river. This door was also closed and padlocked. By this time of the morning, even if the theatre front was still shut the stage door would normally be open and the doorman ensconced in his cubicle with his pungent paraffin stove warming his feet. She could almost hear him calling out, ‘Mornin’, Miss Nancy. Ow’ve yer bin? Yer dad’s in ’is hoffice.’

  But there was no one there and the theatre was closed.

  It was as if she had come down the Strand and found that her father’s heart had stopped beating.

  A tug towing a barge loaded with timber was making its way upriver. Nancy watched it, trying to work out what must have happened and why Devil hadn’t told anyone. She had been preoccupied – perhaps he had tried to tell her, and had given up because he didn’t have her attention.

  She walked home through the insistent drizzle. For all the glitter of the shop windows and the shimmering reflections in the puddles she did not think London had ever looked so dismal.

  In Islington a surprise was waiting for her. An officer’s cap with a highly polished badge lay on the hall stand with a pair of soft leather gloves beside it. A khaki greatcoat hung on one of the pegs.

  She shouted, ‘Arthur, is it you? Arthur?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The three of them were in the drawing room, seated in the window overlooking the water. Eliza was out of bed, dressed up like a Gipsy dancer in a full-skirted coat and multicoloured layers of scarves. There was a languid gaiety about her that Nancy put down to delight at seeing her second son.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ she called.

  ‘Arthur, it is you. How wonderful. Welcome home.’

  Her brother came to her with his arms outstretched and his tunic buttons glittering, bright as a ray of sunlight in a mineshaft. His fair hair was combed to a sharp parting, his moustache was trimmed with geometric precision and she could only marvel at how handsome he was. Cornelius looked on, his face slack with happy relief. His brother was here, straight-backed and able-bodied, direct from France and bringing with him nothing worse than the scent of soap and military laundry.

  ‘I say, Nancy. Darling Nancy,’ Arthur murmured. He folded her against him and she laid her cheek against khaki and creaking leather.

  ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. How long can you stay?’

  ‘Four days’ leave. I put in as soon as I got your letter, and the old man was really very obliging.’

  Without consulting anyone Nancy had written a few careful details about how ill Eliza really had been. It had seemed all right do so once their mother was positively out of danger.

  As Arthur squeezed her arm he murmured in her ear, ‘I think you didn’t tell me the whole truth when you wrote before.’

  No one in this family tells the truth, Nancy thought. Not one of us.

  ‘Pa and I were here. Neelie did an awful lot. There was no reason to worry you.’

  ‘Don’t whisper, you two,’ Eliza rebuked. ‘Nancy, why have you come home at this time of day? Now you are here, don’t you think we should celebrate your brother’s visit with a glass of something special? I’m expecting your father to look in before this evening’s show – we must drink a toast to all being together again.’

  ‘I’ll fetch a bottle in a minute, Ma,’ Cornelius replied. He needed plenty of time to shift from the expected route to a different track.

  Nancy said, ‘I’m back early to see you up and dressed, Ma. Did you feel well enough?’

  In reality Eliza was so gaunt that her skin puckered over her sharp bones. She had twisted her hair in a bun and skewered it with what appeared to be a red lacquer chopstick. The ensemble was completed with one necklace of amber beads and another of coral, and a set of carved bangles that rattled when she flicked her scarves. It was the first time since the influenza that she had assembled a complete outfit, and she was making up for missed opportunities.

  She waved her hand. ‘Vassilis came this morning and gave me something. I’m feeling not far from on top of the world.’

  ‘Svalbard?’ Cornelius murmured to no one in particular.

  Nancy parcelled up her concerns and placed them to one side for the time being.

  ‘Of course we must have a drink to welcome Arthur home.’

  Cornelius finally lumbered to his feet. ‘I am on my way.’

  He took responsibility for more and more of the household duties and he didn’t like to be interrupted or deflected from performing them.

  While he was gone Arthur laughed about the intransigence of French railway officials and the horrors of the Channel crossing.

  ‘Rather than enduring the saloon I set up a camp in one of the lifeboats. It was cold but there was no frightful music and almost no one was being sick. As soon as they tied up at Dover I dashed down the gangplank and into a hotel. I had a wash and shave and a plate of sausages and bacon.’

  Eliza giggled like a schoolgirl at these mild anecdotes.

  Nancy asked, ‘So that’s how you look so immaculately scrubbed?’

  He smiled. ‘Ah, to be clean and shaved is the greatest luxury in the world. I didn’t understand that until I was regularly filthy. Now I’d choose a bowl of hot water and a sharp razor over the finest Cuban cigar any day.’

  She had heard from Jinny about the wounded men’s rags of battledress, often crawling with lice. She understood why Arthur’s hair was barbered so close to the nape of his neck and why his fingernails were scraped almost painfully clean. Involuntarily she sat on her own hands, fearing they might be blotted with printer’s ink, and then recalled that that wouldn’t be happening any longer. Cornelius puffed back into the room. He had assembled a butler’s tray with several mismatched glasses, a stone bottle of lemonade, a jug containing some tufted celery stalks and the prize of a dusty bottle of port. He frowned in concentration as he drew the cork and sniffed it.

  ‘Port and lemonade.’ He smacked his lips. ‘It tastes of Christmas. Christmas like it was a long time ago, I mean.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Eliza beamed. She put out her hand for the drink. ‘I am so happy,’ she added.

  They held up their glasses, leaning into the circle until the rims clinked.

  When she laughed Eliza seemed her old self again. Looking at her family Nancy knew how much she loved them. The war was receding and the dark ripples from it they would somehow find a way to deal with – there wasn’t a family in the country that was not doing the same thing. They were here and together, that was the only thing that mattered.

  Cornelius whipped a celery stalk from the jug, spraying droplets of water all over the tray and nearby cushions. There was plenty of grit clinging in the furrows but he bit into it anyway.

  ‘I do like something to chew on, with a drink,’ he ex-plained.

  Into this celebration Devil suddenly arrived. He tossed his hat and coat on the near
est chair and bear-hugged his son, then kissed his wife and told her that she looked ravishing.

  ‘Nancy? I thought you’d be at work.’

  She avoided her father’s eye.

  ‘Well, Arthur’s home.’

  Stating the obvious was enough to deflect him. Devil did a stagy double take when he saw what they were drinking.

  ‘What’s this? Don’t we have champagne?’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Nancy said.

  ‘That’s a pity. Never mind. Welcome home, my boy. It does my old heart good to see you.’

  It clearly did. Devil and Eliza drank and bravely nibbled the celery stalks. Arthur talked about his friend Captain Bolton and their performance of magic tricks in an out-building of the farm that was their present divisional HQ. His men liked the cards and silks pretty well, Arthur said, but what they loved above all was seeing their officer done up in short skirts and a blonde wig. He leapt up to demonstrate a dip and swing of the hip.

  ‘I’m received with total rapture, let me tell you,’ he grinned. ‘I think I may have a brilliant performing career ahead of me. What do you think, Pa? A stage burlesque for the old Palmyra?’

  Devil didn’t falter. ‘Quality acts like that are very costly to book. What would Captains Bolton and Wix charge by the week, do you think?’

  It was almost two hours before Devil slipped his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. He made the familiar announcement that he was expected at the theatre before curtain up. Nancy thought of the littered steps and padlocked doors down in the Strand and she stiffened when her father stooped to say goodnight. He didn’t notice that she kept her face turned aside.

  After Devil had gone, whistling on his way down the steps as if there were nothing unusual about the day, Cornelius cooked a dinner of fried liver and mashed potato. Eliza only played with her food but she chatted brightly. Arthur ate everything on his plate with apparent relish, although Nancy guessed he would be used to better fare in the officers’ mess. He would be used to being waited on, too. Later she was touched when he removed his belt and tunic and rolled up his shirtsleeves to help her with the washing-up. Seeing the old kitchen through her brother’s less accustomed eyes made her realise how dingy it had become. The sink was greasy and the distemper was flaking off the ceiling in leprous patches. She must do something, she told herself. It wouldn’t cost too much to have a man come in to paint the walls, and the difference would lift their spirits. Perhaps old Gibb would know someone she could ask.