Daughter of the House

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘Forgive me?’ Lion begged. ‘I am an oaf not to have realised you might be scared by that. It’s only Dorothy’s nonsense, you know. There’s no real harm in it.’

  ‘Of course,’ she managed to say.

  He came closer, solid against the dark foliage, and drew her into his arms. His mouth met hers and they experimentally kissed.

  Nancy hadn’t been kissed often enough, and then only by soldiers on leave. She leaned closer, a little giddy from drink, and felt a lazy flick of physical arousal that didn’t reach her head or heart. But she still remembered the planchette’s quick, decisive swerves across the board. She hesitated before turning her head aside to glimpse a black shape swooping low over the shrubs beyond the terrace. She had never seen one before but she guessed it must be a bat. Caught off balance she took an uncertain step backwards.

  ‘How is your godfather?’ she blurted out. ‘Mr Feather?’

  It was an absurd question although Lion fielded it.

  ‘He’s pretty well, thanks. How do you know Lawrence?’

  ‘I met him before the war. You too, actually.’

  ‘Oh Lord, I don’t remember. I’m so sorry. When? Was I very badly behaved?’

  She reminded him about the day at Lord’s.

  ‘Fowler’s match, of course. 1910. Darling Nancy, you must hardly have been out of the nursery.’

  ‘I had just turned thirteen.’

  ‘All right. Not exactly a baby, but still – you know – not of an age to attract my attention in those days. I was more interested in hanging around stage doors on the hunt for actresses. Optimistic, innocent ninny that I was.’

  ‘You must have known Mr Feather’s sister, of course.’

  ‘Aunt Helena? My father is a lot older than Lawrence, but many years ago he was interested in theosophy, Spiritualism, all that sort of thing. He was very impressed by Lawrence and they became friends. He went so far as to make him my godfather. Perhaps to ease my future transition to a better place, or some such. I’ve never been very interested in any of his theories, but I have to say that Lawrence stuck by me when I was a boy and out of favour with the family because of my bad behaviour. I was sorry for him when he lost his sister, although I barely knew Mrs Clare herself.’

  In the thick silence that followed, the music drifting out through the drawing-room doors was damped by the night air. Somewhere near the terrace’s brick balustrade a tiny rustle might have been a shrew or a field mouse creeping in the flower bed.

  A thought dawned on him. ‘Oh, Helena. I see. Well, you know, there are all sorts of explanations for that. It’s not an uncommon name. Or it might have been my unconscious at work, or yours, even poor old Dorothy’s, influencing the planch-whatsit. Jake and Freddie and this set all know Lawrence because he’s an old theatrical rogue, even though he dresses the business up as spiritualism. He’s rather in demand these days, as you can imagine, although I believe he also has a few rather vociferous detractors. You probably know Aunt Helena is on the other side, as Lawrence would put it? She drowned, sadly.’

  ‘I know. My family and I were aboard the pleasure steamer that day.’

  That was enough to startle even Lion Stone.

  ‘Good God. I mean, how terrible for you all. But that does rather support my argument, wouldn’t you say? Unconscious, and all that?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Nancy said. Her best dress was flimsy and she was cold. She pressed closer into Lion’s warmth and he eagerly held her.

  ‘I say, you don’t believe in the spirit realm and survival and all that, do you? You seem far too sensible to me.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Of course not. Look, you’re shivering. That won’t do.’ He kissed her, thoroughly and quite enjoyably, before taking her hand. ‘Come on inside.’

  The party was reaching its peak. Through the throng Nancy saw her father propped against the mantel. He had passed from being merely tight into drunkenness, and his face drooped with terrible melancholy as he surveyed the room.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Nancy said to Lion as she broke away from him. He was tactful enough to let her go.

  ‘Pa?’

  Devil closed one eye, then the other. He swayed precariously and she steadied him.

  ‘Damn it all,’ he muttered. His handsome face was ravaged.

  ‘What has happened? Hold on to me. Let’s sit down here.’ As she guided him to a padded seat in the chimney alcove she saw that his pockets were still turned inside out. She tried unsuccessfully to tuck one of them away as Devil sagged against the cushions.

  ‘Nothing there. Empty. Thin air. I’m sorry, old girl. Life’s no more than a game of cards, you know. Somehow forgot to prime the deck after all these years. How did that happen? Foolish. No fool like an old one, eh?’

  ‘Pa, it’s all right. You need to get to bed. Everything will seem better tomorrow.’

  ‘My Zenobia, queen of the Palmyra. Your poor, deserted realm. But I will win it back for you.’ He wagged his finger. ‘There is a trick or two still to play, trust me.’

  ‘Of course there is. I know that.’

  ‘I asked our friend Jakey Jones for a loan.’

  Devil tugged at the limp ears of his empty pockets.

  ‘I showed him how it is. Jake and I have history, you know. He used to sleep under a market cart or curl up at the back of the Palmyra stage. Now here he is.’ One flick of a finger took in the vases of hothouse flowers, the bucket of ice replenished by a quiet servant, the jigging or sprawling guests and the essential gramophone. ‘You know what he said? He said that he would if he could, but he can’t. It’s all borrowed. No real cash. You have a name, a label, a role in the world and the money falls over itself in its rush into your pockets. All you need is a bright and shiny name. Jake claims to have no more real money than Devil Wix, but he’s on the stage and in a moving picture or two and his credit is good. And you know what?’

  Devil sucked in a deep breath and then exhaled a bitter gust of laughter.

  ‘I believe him.’

  Nancy believed it too. There was an unsettling fragility about the solid brick and oak house and a brittle quality to the evening. All these revellers might vanish, like Cinderella’s trappings on the stroke of midnight.

  She hoisted her father to his feet.

  ‘Time for bed,’ she insisted, as if speaking to a child. Without demur, stumbling only a little, he allowed her to lead him upstairs. They found his bedroom at the second attempt and she removed his coat and undid his white tie for him. He lay down with a sigh on top of the satin eiderdown and flung his arms wide as she eased off his tight shoes.

  ‘I wish your mother was here.’

  He was always sentimental about Eliza when he was drunk. Nancy had seen him earlier with the girl in the short skirt, and others.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she repeated and left him to sleep it off.

  Nancy hesitated on the landing. A bronze nymph holding a torch bulb aloft provided the only illumination. She jumped when she saw a man in the shadows at the head of the stairs.

  ‘It shouldn’t be a daughter’s job to put her father to bed,’ Jake said. ‘Freddie came to tell me you might need some help.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s all right, though. He’ll already be asleep.’

  The animal quiver had faded and the actor seemed entirely unmemorable. Nancy thought that if she closed her eyes she would be unable to recall his features. Jake’s utter ordinariness was reassuring and she stood quietly beside him, resting her forearms next to his on the banister rail as they gazed down into the hallway.

  A sobbing girl dashed beneath them, pursued by her friend who wore a man’s tailcoat with a monocle swinging on a satin ribbon. Freddie strolled in the opposite direction, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and then Caspar emerged with a poodle on a jewelled lead and let himself out of the front door. A great billow of sound set the oak boards shivering as someone turned up the gramophone to full volume.

  Jake remarked, ‘A party is rather like
a brief, jazzed-up version of life, don’t you think? Predictability interspersed with moments of high drama.’

  She noticed that he had green eyes with hazel flecks in the irises.

  ‘I haven’t been to many parties.’

  He laughed. ‘That will change, I’m sure. There will be plenty of parties. People want to enjoy themselves now. They might as well, while they can.’

  ‘You don’t sound very optimistic.’

  ‘About the future? No, I’m not.’

  The music was silenced and raised voices followed. The party was clearly coming to an end and Nancy thought that Jake was right about its resembling life. She was sharply aware that her own life had barely begun, and she was hungry for what it would bring.

  Jake said, ‘Devil asked me if I would lend him some money to keep the Palmyra open.’

  ‘I thought he might.’

  ‘I’m afraid that I had to say no. I don’t have the means, even though this house indicates that I might. It’s only rented. But even if I were in a position to offer your father a loan, I don’t think I would. Music hall and magic tricks aren’t right for these times, Nancy. The pleasure of being deceived and distracted is a tease that relies on innocence, and the war has changed all that. People know all too well what’s real, and their imaginations are haunted. They look for enlightenment, or comfort, and if they can’t have those they want oblivion.’

  ‘I see.’

  She did, almost too clearly.

  ‘I’m sorry for your sake and your brothers’ that the theatre is in trouble. If you ever need me, personally that is, if I can help you in any way, a line sent here to Whistlehalt will always reach me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Nancy said.

  ‘Goodnight, then.’

  She retreated along the corridor to her bedroom. The room was chilly and she undressed quickly, shivering at the kiss of cold air on her bare skin. Finding her nightdress she scrambled into it, then lay down quickly and drew the sheet up to her chin in the hope that the bed would soon warm up. Somewhere close at hand a door creaked open and shut, and pipes shuddered as water ran in a distant bathroom. At last the house seemed to settle for the night. The heat of Nancy’s body slowly thawed the bedclothes and she sank towards sleep.

  The click of the door latch jerked her back to full consciousness. She sat upright, her heart pounding, and saw the door swing open. A black figure moved against the deeper darkness of the room. Remembering the demonic swerves of the planchette and – from long ago – a glimpse of a silver locket engraved with Helena Clare’s initials, she called out in a high voice cracking with alarm, ‘Who’s there?’

  The figure came closer. She flung back the covers and scrambled to her feet.

  ‘What do you want?’

  It stopped.

  ‘Darling, what do you think?’

  ‘Lion?’

  ‘Who were you expecting?’

  ‘Nobody at all. You scared me. That’s the second time tonight.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Come here. You look like a ghost yourself in that long white thing.’

  His arms circled her and his mouth found hers as one hand moved over her body.

  ‘Take it off, won’t you?’ he whispered.

  ‘No.’

  She struggled out of his grasp, caught between the residue of fear and a disconcerting flare of physical longing. He hesitated, his confusion evident even in the pitch darkness.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  He chuckled. ‘To make love to you, Nancy. Don’t you want me to?’

  ‘No.’

  Perhaps she meant yes. She did want to be made love to. She yearned for it, and had done ever since the night of the rain and a single hour of talk in a Fleet Street pub. Only she didn’t want it like this, under Jake Jones’s roof at Whistlehalt, with this particular man.

  ‘I misunderstood. I apologise.’ Lion was offended but she couldn’t see how this awkwardness was her fault. He added stiffly, ‘You seem pretty modern, but perhaps you aren’t at all.’

  Jake had said at the beginning of the evening that his own appearance was an illusion, as she knew hers to be. At the end of it he had told her that the war had put paid to everyone’s innocence. Including her own, she understood. If you couldn’t have the man you wanted – obviously not – should you settle for a man you could have? The question was too big for her to answer now, when she was tired and a little drunk.

  ‘I don’t know what I am,’ Nancy said sadly. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything wrong or hurtful. I enjoyed tonight so much.’

  Lion was slightly appeased.

  ‘All right. I’m sorry too, I think we should both go to sleep now, in our own beds of course. Goodnight.’ He spoke lightly and a second later the door closed behind him.

  Nancy flung herself down and cried, from a mixture of exhaustion and gin and disappointment, as well as from longing to be as ordinary as she feared she was not. As soon as she had cried herself to sleep, it seemed that it was daylight and time to get dressed again. Devil had insisted they must leave first thing because he had business to do in town.

  When she crept downstairs she found the house deserted and chaotic with the detritus of the party. The drawing room was littered with ashtrays and discarded clothing and empty and broken glasses. Miserably she picked her way to the kitchen and there she found her father, leaning against a sink crammed with dirty pots and eating bread and jam. There were grey patches beneath his eyes and he was unshaven, but otherwise he looked as usual. He offered her a slice of bread but she refused it and drank a cup of water instead.

  ‘No one will be up here for hours. I’ll write a line to Jake. You should do the same,’ he said.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  The morning was sparkling. Turning the starting handle of the Ford gave Devil trouble and he sweated and cursed, but at length the engine spluttered and the little car shuddered into life. Soon they were spinning under the arch of beech trees.

  Devil glanced at her. He was in one of his comic moods and she knew he wouldn’t try to talk about money, or welcome any conversation.

  ‘Now you know what fun is, eh? Jazz and cocktails and kissing? What do you think of it?’

  Nancy looked through the tiny windscreen at fields of lambs.

  ‘I’m in favour,’ she replied.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The glamour of Whistlehalt and the pleasurable frisson of being found desirable soon faded from her memory. It was as difficult to find another job as Nancy had feared it might be. Every day she hunted through the advertisements, but she was not well qualified for the print even though in their years at Lennox & Ringland Jinny Main had taught her everything she knew. For every one of the handful of vacancies Nancy applied for, she found a line of determined men ahead of her.

  Devil and Eliza didn’t speak of it to their children, but the crisis at the Palmyra deepened. Following the begging expedition to Whistlehalt Devil’s once unshakeable confidence seemed to have faded. There were layers of debt that he hadn’t even acknowledged and once they understood that the Palmyra had permanently closed his creditors homed in on him. He became even more evasive, until a knock at the door was a thing to be dreaded. He sat close up to the kitchen range in his shirtsleeves, making urgent calculations in notebooks, or pulled on his coat and left the house for unexplained hours at a time.

  Arthur’s return to France was hard for all of them to bear. Once he had gone gloom settled on the Islington house like an extra layer of city grime. Nancy didn’t even ask if there was money to pay for painting the kitchen because she knew there was not, and this certainty made her even more aware of the faded curtains and worn drugget in the tall rooms. Eliza drifted through the house in her layers of scarves. Her moods were erratic. Sometimes she was wildly energetic, as when Lizzie sent a sack of Seville oranges from the fruit warehouse and she embarked on a project to make pounds of marmalade. Cornelius advised against it but she wouldn’t hear him. The
marmalade turned out over-boiled and bitter, and set so hard that it wouldn’t yield to a spoon.

  ‘It’s only marmalade,’ Eliza snapped. She threw the filled jars away.

  At other times she sank into languor. She sat in the win-dow overlooking the canal, childishly pleased by the rare sight of a horse-drawn barge gliding past with its cargo of timber protected from the rain by a shroud of tarpaulin. Sometimes she was possessed by irreconcilable anger. Nancy felt that most of her mother’s rage was directed at her. She did her best to smooth all the moods, or to deflect them as gently as she could.

  And at last she did find work. She was offered a post as a counter assistant at the same draper’s shop in the Essex Road where Eliza had once been a valued customer.

  Eliza was horrified.

  ‘I didn’t bring you up to be a shop assistant.’

  ‘I don’t know what you did bring me up to be.’

  ‘A success in life,’ Eliza snapped.

  Nancy hesitated, looking into her mother’s blazing eyes.

  ‘I will do my best.’

  Eliza had wanted so much and she had schemed and fought to achieve her aims, and it was not her fault that her lack of physical strength had destroyed her hopes.

  Cornelius followed his sister out of the room.

  ‘Don’t blame her. She doesn’t mean what she says.’

  ‘I know that, Neelie.’

  He pushed his spectacles back up to the bridge of his nose, the same gesture that he had made as a little boy. It told her that he was more than usually troubled.

  ‘I’m the son of the house. I should really go and ask for my old job back. I was quite good at it, you know.’

  He squared his shoulders as he spoke but Nancy knew the effort of will that it cost even to voice the suggestion. Lately Cornelius had seemed comfortable at home, close to Eliza and soothed by his experiments in the kitchen. He made simple excursions to the nearest shops but never went any further afield. As they talked she could see the silvering in his eyes that meant he was close to tears. Her brother’s suffering was harder to bear than anything else.