by Rosie Thomas
At the end she asked, ‘So, did you just call on him out of the blue? Backstage, or at his home? And did he remem-ber you?’
Her father looked hurt. ‘We’re theatre people, Nancy, moving in the same world. Jake and I never lost touch, not really, except when he went to America during the war. He’s appearing now in some little modern play at the Duchess, likely to be a very short run, I’d say. I wrote a note and left it for him at the theatre and he responded warmly with an invitation for Eliza and me to weekend at his house in the country. It is a few years since we last met, but Jake Jones has always had a particular fondness for me, you know.’
Devil sat back to survey the room again.
‘When is the visit to take place?’ Arthur asked. Nancy and he did not look at each other.
‘The weekend after next. Of course Eliza is not well enough to accompany me and I would have asked you to take her place, Arthur, if you were not going back to France.’
Arthur apologised and Devil continued, ‘Perhaps you would like to come as my companion, Nancy? We have been asked for dinner and dancing and we’ll stay overnight because Jake’s house is outside London. I’m sure there will be some interesting people for you to meet.’
This was a prospect so beyond Nancy’s normal routine that she knew she couldn’t refuse.
‘Of course, Pa. I’d love to come with you to meet a famous actor.’
Devil glanced at her skirt and jumper.
‘Your mama can fix you up with a frock, I dare say?’
Arthur’s mouth twitched and Nancy kept a straight face by not thinking of scarves.
‘Yes, I expect so.’
‘Then that’s settled.’ Devil summoned their waitress and told her that she had magnificent eyes as he counted out shillings for the bill.
Nancy looked through the big plate-glass window, past display pyramids of tins of tea. Propped against a pillar in the rain a man with a wooden crutch was playing a mouth organ. He looked quite young. The lower half of his empty trouser leg was neatly pinned up and he wore a cardboard sign round his neck that read ‘JOBLESS’.
Arthur followed her gaze.
He murmured, ‘I wonder which show he was in? Poor fellow. What is he supposed to do? There’s nothing in England for any of them.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Devil and Nancy drove along the Great West Road before turning north into a series of smaller roads. The Ford which had replaced the De Dion-Bouton was a small black tourer with a varied history that included having been used as a courier vehicle in France. The car’s little frame shuddered and bucked until Nancy thought her teeth would be shaken out, but she was still enjoying the drive. She didn’t often get out of London and there was a pioneering edge to this excursion; her face was swathed in scarves and Devil had pulled his motoring cap down over his ears. He whistled as he steered and waved to the few oncoming vehicles.
Once they left the smoke of London behind the countryside began to shimmer with the first hesitant suggestions of green. The sap-thickened branches of trees stood out with extra clarity against pale skies, and wan clumps of primroses lay beneath the hedges. Nancy sniffed the keen air and the windborne gusts of ploughed earth and manure. Men were working in the fields and in the scattered villages children played outside whitewashed cottages. After London’s dirt and clatter the placid emptiness was appealing.
The road wound uphill and looped back for several turns. Beech trees interlaced their branches overhead. Devil stopped in the furthest village and asked directions from an old man leaning on his stick beside a gate. He pointed down a narrow lane and Devil thanked him before the Ford nosed between tall hedges. At last they reached a pair of red-brick gateposts. A trim sign fixed to the left-hand pillar read Whistlehalt.
‘This is the place,’ Devil announced.
They rattled up a short curve of driveway, passing a gardener with a wheelbarrow. The house stood in a knot of trees, their topmost branches clumped with rooks’ nests. It was built of red brick with thick vertical beams of exposed wood, a steep pitched roof and towering brick chimneys.
‘Well, just look at this,’ he murmured.
The front door had a small porthole let into it. A face swam briefly behind the glass before the door swung wide open.
‘Hullo there!’ a man called.
He had a thick mop of curly hair and a smile that seemed also in some way curly. Nancy knew she had seen this face before, but she couldn’t recall where.
The man strode out to meet them and patted the bonnet of the Ford as if it were an amusing pet.
‘Jake told me you’d be here. He’s gone for a tramp in the woods, ha ha. Shouldn’t be too long.’
Devil stepped down and the two men shook hands.
‘I’m Devil Wix, and this is my daughter Zenobia.’
‘Really?’
Quickly she said, ‘People just call me Nancy.’
‘I like that better, I must say. How do you do, Nancy?’
His eyes met hers and held them. ‘I’m Lycett Stone, and people mostly call me Lion. By name not nature that is, although I’ll have to leave you to judge, ha ha.’ He laughed uproariously and Nancy struggled to recall where their previous encounter could have been. ‘Come on inside, won’t you?’
By the time they stood in a broad hallway hung with modern pictures that were incongruous between the oak beams and small-paned windows, she had it.
The Schools Match, almost nine years ago. This man was Lawrence Feather’s godson. What did it mean that Feather insinuated himself into her life seemingly at every turn, even here where she had never been before?
Angrily, she wondered if she would ever be free of him.
Lycett Stone showed them upstairs to a pair of bedrooms and invited them to come down whenever they were ready and have some tea. He seemed very much at home at Whistlehalt. Nancy’s room looked out over a hard tennis court and flower beds to a point where the ground dropped steeply away. Far below, over the broad tops of more trees, she could see the silvery curve of a river. She could hear the crunching of gravel as a procession of cars arrived.
‘What’s that river?’ she asked Devil when he came to find her. She had tidied her hair and put on her best dress.
‘It’s the Thames, darling. The very same one as ours. Mr Jake Jones is doing well for himself, I must say.’ Devil rubbed his hands together. She guessed he would be increasing the size of the loan he planned to ask for.
‘May I?’ Her father offered her his arm, and they descended the wide stairs together.
There was a hum of talk and loud bursts of laughter from the opposite end of the house. A pair of doors opened on to a large, low-ceilinged drawing room. Nancy had a confused impression of numbers of elegantly dressed young people draped over sofas or propped against a carved mantel. They were drinking cocktails, ignoring a tray with cups and a silver pot placed on a low table. Jazz was loudly playing on a gramophone.
She hesitated on the threshold, suddenly shy.
To her relief Lion sailed forward and seized her by the hand.
‘Here you are at last. You look nice in that frock. Now then, let me introduce you to some of these dreadful people.’
Her father appeared already to know several of the guests. He kissed the hand of a woman with bobbed hair, making her hoot with laughter. Lion shepherded Nancy to a sofa where several people were perched. Ice rattled as one of them agitated a silver shaker. She saw silk stockings and tennis shoes and one pair of pretty bare feet with gold-painted toenails.
‘This is Dorothy, and Freddie. Take no notice of him, by the way. And Suzette, and Caspar with the execrable beard.’
Well-disposed but incurious faces nodded and smiled in her direction. With twin circles of rouge and a plait of black hair Suzette looked like a doll that had once been Nancy’s favourite.
‘This is Nancy Wix,’ Lion explained.
The man called Freddie drawled, ‘Are you Devil’s daughter?’
‘Do you know my father
?’
They laughed. ‘In the theatre we all know each other, darling, whether we have been introduced or not.’
‘I am not a theatre person,’ Dorothy pouted. She wiggled her gold-tipped toes in emphasis.
‘What are you, dear?’
‘Fred, you know perfectly well that I am now the house model at Vionnet.’
‘A thousand apologies. I had entirely forgotten. Now, what will new Nancy have to drink?’
Nancy looked quickly, and pointed at Suzette’s glass.
‘The same, please.’
A space was made for her amongst velvet cushions and sprawled limbs on the sofa, and she accepted a cocktail with a green olive suspended in it. The glass was chill and silvery with condensation. She took a sip.
‘Gin martini. You like?’ Freddie raised a plucked eyebrow.
‘I do.’
‘Oh, good. You are one of us. What a very lovely mouth you have, by the way.’
The directness of this compliment might have disconcerted her had the man not been so obviously what her father called a bertie.
‘Devil would tell you it’s my mother’s.’
‘I think I saw her once. Quite a vision.’
Nancy slowly relaxed as warm wires of alcohol threaded through her veins. There was a lot of chatter about people she didn’t know, but the witticisms basting the talk did make her laugh. Lion sat on the floor with his back resting against her shins, and when he spoke to her he hitched his elbow on her knee as if they had known each other for ever. It was the first time she had been so openly singled out by a young man, and she was flattered. The music was turned up when two people pushed back a rug to dance on the parquet, but after one song they drifted away. Evening light briefly slanted into the room before the lamps were switched on.
Someone was saying that they should play a game when a man slid into the room.
He was middle-aged, of medium height with colourless hair combed almost as precisely as Arthur’s. He was dressed in an open-collared grey shirt, flannels and tennis shoes, like an unassuming undergraduate. His face was pleasant, with slightly hooded eyes and a full lower lip, but there was nothing remarkable in his appearance.
Even so, Nancy knew that someone important had just entered.
‘Here he is,’ Freddie murmured, as if to confirm it.
‘Sorry. I’ve been neglecting you all,’ the new arrival apologised. His voice was clear, resonant, and neutral. He didn’t speak like a working man or a member of the upper classes and no external colour attached to him.
He said to Freddie, ‘Has everyone got a drink? What about you, Caspar? That’s good. Now, is it really you, Devil?’
Nancy noticed that her father leaned forwards, tipping his head to one side like a dog eager to be patted. He was anxious for the younger man’s approval in a way she had never seen before.
So this was the actor, Jake Jones.
When Devil introduced her Jake took her hand between both of his. His gaze was direct.
‘Welcome to Whistlehalt. I haven’t seen your mother for many years, Nancy, but you look remarkably like her. Have they been looking after you?’
Freddie had only a moment ago handed her a second martini.
‘Yes, thank you. It’s a beautiful old house, Mr Jones.’
He flicked her a smile, and suddenly he was animated. There was a ripple under his skin that put her in mind of a stag or a greyhound.
‘It pretends to be. In fact it was built ten years ago and the appearance is an illusion. It matches its owner in that. You should call me Jake, by the way, we’re all friends here.’
Suzette claimed their host’s attention, and the guests moved on and melded into new groups. Nancy tried to remember the names of all the people she met.
‘Would you like to dance?’ Lion asked her later, nodding at the square of parquet. They moved on to the improvised floor together. Suzette and Dorothy were there, giggling and holding their half-finished drinks aloft until Freddie slid between them. He didn’t so much dance as undulate, Nancy thought.
Instead of being formally served dinner at Whistlehalt was laid out by discreet staff in the adjoining dining room. People drifted by in twos and threes and helped themselves from silver dishes on a sideboard. Fire dogs stood in a wide hearth and French doors overlooked darkness. Nancy put her face to the glass and peered out. She glimpsed a stone terrace and steps leading down to a lawn but mostly she could only see reflections of the throng behind her. The party was growing lively. She had never been to a gathering remotely like this, and she was enjoying herself – it didn’t matter what you actually said or did, she realised. The important thing was to do it amusingly or provocatively. Preferably both.
‘I’ll show you around the gardens tomorrow,’ Lion promised.
‘I think we have to go back to town early in the morning, unfortunately.’
He ran his fingers through his thick curls and turned down the corners of his expressive mouth.
‘That’s a blow.’
She liked his attention, even wishing she could feel more drawn to him than she actually did.
‘I know,’ she smiled.
He helped her to a generous plateful of cold beef and some sliced potatoes baked in cream and gilded with a crust of cheese and herbs. The food was negligently rich and delicious and she ate greedily, letting the weight of it subdue the gin in her stomach.
‘Are you an old friend of Jake’s?’ she asked.
Lion waved a fork. ‘Not at all. My aunt Frances, my mother’s sister that is, is married to the chap who owns all the land hereabouts. Their place is about half a mile up the river. Jake is their tenant.’
Of course, Nancy thought, there would be a grand house hereabouts.
‘My uncle, Frances’s husband, is Everard Templeton. He’s a barrister but his people have been here since Edward the Confessor or some such. Absurd, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not surprised people go on strike and so forth. It seems quite unfair even to me, and I stand to inherit a couple of acres when the old man dies. Not that I’ve got a bean to keep the estate running. None of us does. It’s only people like Jakey who have any proper loot nowadays.’
Nancy did like him, even if not in that way. As well as being nice to look at he was good-humoured, and not too pleased with himself.
‘Is that the Honourable Frances Templeton?’ she asked.
‘That’s the bird. Do you know her?’
‘I used to go to her suffragist meetings with my cousin and some other girls.’
What would Jinny Main think of this gathering? Nancy imagined that she would – reluctantly – rather enjoy it.
‘Lord, yes. Auntie Fra is no end of a politico. The latest is that she is planning to stand for Parliament. So you are one of these votes-for-women women, are you?’
This time she met Lion’s bright eyes. Even as they laughed together she thought of Gil Maitland, and how different he was from this hearty boy. It occurred to her that no one she met ever had – or ever would – measure up to a man with whom she had spent a single hour of her life. And she would probably never see him again.
‘Some women have the vote now, you know.’
‘So they should,’ he said equably. ‘So you should, darling.’
They went back to the drawing room where the dancing was hotting up. Jake and Freddie stomped and shimmied together and Devil was in the thick of it too, shirtsleeved and partnering a buxom young woman in a skirt that exposed her legs far above the knee. He winked over her shoulder as he caught sight of Nancy. He was tight, but in control of himself and the tick of anxiety that had started up in her at the sight of him died down again. She noticed that his pockets were turned inside out, coat and trousers, and the empty flaps bounced as he moved.
Dorothy and Suzette caught Nancy’s arms. ‘C’mon. Planchette.’
‘No,’ Lion protested. ‘We have to go out to look at the moon, Nancy, don’t we?’
‘Planchette first, Li, don’t be such a damp sq
uib. It’ll be fun.’
Nancy knew a little about the craze and she didn’t in the least want to play, but Lion let himself be drawn in without further protest and she couldn’t think quickly enough to extricate herself. Seconds later, it seemed, she was in a room like a library, except that the books lining the shelves were nearly all replicas with painted spines. Looking more closely at the ones close to her shoulder she noticed the titles were rude puns.
A board painted with strange symbols and the letters of the alphabet lay on a circular table, and eight of them gathered round it.
Dorothy put on a solemn face.
‘Place one finger here, everyone.’
Here was a wooden plate in the shape of a teardrop. A pencil was slotted through the centre and the whole moved freely on small castors.
Each of them rested a fingertip on the wooden teardrop. There was a long second of stillness before the contraption violently juddered and shot across the board. Nancy wanted to pull back, but she told herself it was only a game. She kept her finger lightly resting in its place.
Dorothy closed her eyes.
‘Is there any spirit present who would like to come to the board?’
The planchette careered wildly and Caspar tutted.
‘Do behave, whoever it is doing that. I suppose it’s you, Lion?’
Another swerve.
‘Lion.’
‘I’m not bloody well doing anything.’
‘Hush. You have to concentrate. Who do you want to speak to? What is your name?’
Again the planchette swerved. It came to an abrupt stop at the edge of the board with the tip of the teardrop over the letter H.
‘A spirit,’ Dorothy murmured.
Another swoop indicated E and then L. A cold finger caressed the back of Nancy’s neck and then danced its way down her spine. E, N and A followed.
She snatched her hand away and scrambled to her feet.
‘Sorry. I need some fresh air.’
She fought her way through the revelry in the drawing room and escaped out on to the terrace. There was no moon to look at, and the darkness was heavy with the unfamiliar scents of open countryside. A footstep sounded behind her and she whirled round, fearful of who or what she might see.