Daughter of the House

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘But we have Neelie to think of, as well as Ma.’

  A floorboard creaked before Eliza appeared in the doorway. Half-blinded by tears she stumbled on a trailing scarf but even in this anguish some of her magnificence remained, like the memory of a fine portrait glimpsed long ago or a fading waft of perfume.

  Devil leapt to his feet.

  ‘Eliza,’ he implored.

  Nancy was thrust aside as Eliza ran at him and pounded his chest with her clenched fists.

  ‘What else will you do?’ she howled. ‘Why not just shoot us?’

  ‘Be rational. A house is just a house,’ Devil murmured, unwisely. Eliza’s frenzy increased to the point where they had to pinion her arms and wait until the rage exhausted her. Finally she sank against him, crying bitterly. Devil cradled her head and rocked her, still looking into the distance. He was making mental calculations, even now.

  Nancy edged past. There was no role for her in the drama that endlessly played out between her parents. She filled the kettle at the sink, lit the gas with its popping flare and placed it on the burner. It seemed a long time since she had shared a pork pie and tomatoes for tea with Lion and Ann and Jinny. How much easier it would be, she thought, to come home to her own place instead of returning to arguments and anxiety and illness. Guilt at this disloyalty swelled in her. Her emotions jarred as she warmed the teapot and spooned tea from the Victoria Jubilee caddy. The old tin had stood in its place on the shelf for as long as she could remember.

  Eliza hunted amongst the pots and bottles on the table for the familiar brown phial.

  ‘I don’t want tea. Where’s my medicine? Vassilis brought it.’

  ‘You’ve already had some,’ Devil warned.

  She glared at him, dismay followed by cunning chasing across her face.

  ‘I haven’t. I can’t have done. My back is so painful.’

  ‘Here, Ma,’ Nancy said. She gave her mother a cup of heavily sweetened tea and Devil coaxed her to take a sip.

  Nancy found Cornelius sitting in his bedside chair, his hands hanging between his knees, as he used to do when he first came home. She saw that he was shaking. To be taken out of this house and deposited in a strange place would terrify him. She tried to offer what reassurance she could muster, but he answered only in monosyllables. In the end she kissed him and told him to try to sleep.

  In the refuge of her own room Nancy stared at the wall and thought about what was to be done. The refrain Martinmart‌inmartinmartin softly sounded and she shook her head to try to silence it. An odd impulse made her get to her feet and search the top of her dressing table, but there was nothing unusual there.

  It was Lion who came up with the idea.

  Nancy described to him the dismal business of packing and emptying the Islington house before the move into a much smaller one that Devil had discovered for rent, in the network of seamy streets to the south of the canal.

  Lion listened with her hands folded between his.

  ‘I’ve got a suggestion to make,’ he said in the end.

  Nancy sighed. Whatever the idea, it had come too late. Devil was not to be deflected from his purpose, and the old house had already been sold.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My godfather.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘What about him?’

  Lion told her that Lawrence Feather’s seances had become enormously popular. Bereaved women flocked to him in the hope of a word or a sign from the men they had lost, and Mr Feather was now in need of bigger halls to play in and new voices to help him deliver the stream of messages from the other side.

  Nancy raised her head. The clatter of the café was stilled.

  ‘You could help him, couldn’t you?’ Lion said gently. ‘You wouldn’t even be a fraud.’

  She didn’t immediately dismiss the idea, as she would definitely have done only a month earlier.

  Instead she considered the implications.

  ‘Does he make money?’ she asked at length.

  ‘A whole heap, believe me. Everyone has lost someone, haven’t they?’

  Nancy was no longer a frightened child. She was a grown woman, with the ability to steer her own course, and with a family who needed her support. Automatically she felt in her pocket, although she had long ago thrown away the card Mr Feather had once given her.

  She summoned up her resolve.

  ‘Will you arrange for me to meet him?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  A few days later Lion strolled with Nancy to Gower Street where he rang the bell at a grand, gloomy house. They were shown upstairs to the first floor and Lawrence Feather emerged through double doors to greet them. Nancy saw that the man looked much the same. His long dark coat still made him resemble a Nonconformist preacher al-though the cloth and cut were finer now and there were glints of gold from a signet ring and an opulent pair of cufflinks.

  Lion greeted his godfather affectionately and then said he would retire to a handy pub so Lawrence and Nancy could talk in peace. He named a place nearby and went on his way.

  Feather seized Nancy’s hands and led her into his rooms. The roar of Gower Street traffic was subdued by heavy brocade curtains. The room was crammed with mahogany and velvet-padded furniture, a breakfront bookcase stuffed with heavy books loomed to one side and on a table stood a spherical item draped in a paisley shawl. This object was quite possibly a crystal ball. The set-up was somehow so reminiscent of one of her father’s most stagy and old-fashioned tricks that she had to swallow a laugh.

  The medium studied her face.

  ‘You have grown so like your mother. How is she?’

  ‘She is fairly well, thank you,’ Nancy lied.

  The truth was that the Wixes’ forced removal to the small dark house in a cul-de-sac called Waterloo Street had precipitated a serious crisis. Eliza seemed deranged by the loss of her home and refused to settle in the new one. She had retreated to her sister and brother-in-law’s house while Devil ranged through the disordered rooms of the rented place like a shabby tiger.

  ‘And how are you, child?’

  Nancy extricated her hands. ‘I’m not really a child any longer. And I am at a crossroads, I think. It was Lycett who suggested I might come and talk to you about choosing a direction.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I am so pleased you felt you could come to me. How may I help you? Do you wish to consult the spirits for guidance? Or perhaps –’ his glance slid keenly over her face – ‘the time has come to discuss your own gift? I was always convinced it could be remarkable, if allowed to develop. But you know that, of course.’ He smiled, without warmth. ‘It was your mother who was not in favour of our connection.’

  Almost ten years ago Eliza’s hostility had been rooted in instinctive mistrust, whereas Nancy had recoiled from the man for a deeper reason. Now she was able to judge for herself, and she marshalled her thoughts from the new perspective. Mr Feather no longer seemed particularly alarming, although she didn’t care for the way he assumed a familiarity that he hadn’t earned. But she was here today for her family’s sake, so she would have to overcome her misgivings.

  ‘Mothers are always protective.’

  Feather nodded and waited.

  ‘I have begun to understand that I can’t deny my gift, if that’s what it is,’ Nancy continued. ‘So I would like to explore it and try to find out what it means. With your help, perhaps?’

  Her eyes travelled across Chinese silk rugs, over the solid, expensive furniture and upwards to the high cornices of the room.

  ‘Please go on.’

  ‘Lion – Lycett – tells me that you are the best and most sought-after medium in London.’

  It was true. She had looked into it, and Lawrence Feather was famous in Spiritualist circles. Aristocrats, politicians and artists consulted him, as well as the women longing for a sign from their lost husbands and sons. Pushing out his lips in a deprecating shrug, Feather couldn’t disguise his pleasure at the compliment.

&nbs
p; She went on. ‘I … find myself in difficult circumstances. My family does, I mean. I need to earn a living, perhaps a better one than I could hope for as a saleswoman or a secretary.’

  ‘I understand.’ There was a flash of malicious satisfaction. ‘I have heard that your father is insolvent, and has had to close down his music hall.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is many years since our last unfortunate meeting, Nancy. If I understand you, you propose yourself now as my protégée? Do you look for tutelage as a fledgling medium, spreading your wings under the banner of my reputation?’

  His voice was silky.

  Nancy had known that it would be awkward to offer her gift, or her affliction, whichever it was, as a commercial proposition. But she believed in the Uncanny; furthermore it was all she had and there was no point in trying to pretend the situation was anything other. She needed Feather’s help and she hoped she could be useful to him in return.

  She said honestly, ‘If I set out alone, to offer private and public seances, I believe I could do it. Based on what I know and have already experienced, that is. But you did acknowledge my ability, and you once said to me if I should need anything …’

  Her eyes met his.

  She could see him turning her proposition over in his mind. He could either launch a new voice that might capture public attention in association with his own, or suffer the threat of competition if he chose not to.

  ‘I see.’

  There were heavy blinds at the windows, at present raised.

  Looking towards them she asked, ‘Do you hold your seances here?’

  ‘For individual clients or small family groups, yes. Of course for bigger events I need a hall.’

  ‘Do you have the use of one?’

  A corner of Feather’s mouth tucked inwards. ‘Not permanently.’

  A French clock on the mantel struck sweetly seven times. Lion would be sitting in the pub with a half-pint of bitter, the evening newspaper folded on the table and his cigarette tin and match case beside it. She would have liked to be there with him. The medium let another minute tick by before he stood up. He moved to lower the blinds against the evening light and beckoned her.

  ‘Shall we close the spirit circle together, Nancy?’

  He raised her to her feet and guided her to two upright chairs separated by a small table. They faced each other over their interlocked fingers. His were solid male fists with a tiny whorl of black hair on each knuckle. She could hear the man’s breathing, see the bobbing of his Adam’s apple above his starched collar.

  Nancy cleared her throat.

  ‘Is anyone there?’ she asked.

  She felt none of the energy that had raced through her beside the Kentish campfire, and none of the certainty.

  It wasn’t going to be as easy as she had hoped.

  ‘Speak to us,’ Lawrence Feather urged.

  She wondered if she should utter a name or make some interesting claim, but inspiration entirely failed her. If Feather was hearing a clamour of spirit voices he didn’t volunteer to be their mouthpiece. She was the one who was being auditioned, not vice versa.

  ‘This is a safe place,’ he murmured, either to encourage her or the invisible others, she wasn’t quite sure which.

  Some time passed in silence.

  Nancy concentrated so hard that blood roared in her ears but she realised they might sit here until midnight and nothing would happen. The seance was a miserable failure. She had been over-confident in expecting the Uncanny to favour Lawrence Feather’s polished rooms, and she was quite unable to fake it.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered.

  His pale face remained impassive.

  ‘There is no need for apology, Nancy. You mentioned experience, so you will know already that there is not invariably a successful connection.’

  Feather left the table and raised the blinds. A shaft of light fell across the rugs as she confided, ‘I can’t control what I see or hear, Mr Feather. I hoped that you might be able to teach me. Perhaps you would say, to harness my abilities?’

  He drifted from the covered crystal ball to the bookcase, running his fingertips over their surfaces as if to emphasise the breadth of his resources. There was more theatre than substance in him. Her confidence began to creep back as he talked at her.

  ‘I don’t know about that. You see, Nancy, I have an obligation to my sitters. They bring me their trust and they look for – yes – messages of hope and reassurance. They have lost their beloved and they want to believe in survival after death. It’s my privilege to assist that belief, and it is a privilege to see the joy and tears, the relief and hope that come springing from a word or a name from beyond. But by the very nature of what we do, the channels are not always reliably open.’

  His voice shook a little.

  ‘My own poor sister’s voice has never been audible to me.’

  Nancy listened intently, hearing the whisper of truth be-neath the smooth skin of words.

  ‘The supplicants on this side are always with us, and always waiting, and so my work – ours, if you will – involves an element of performance. Not every time of course, not even often, but sometimes I have to speak on my own authority. I offer sitters nothing but what I know to be there in essence and to be true in outline, you understand.’

  She noted the predatory glint beneath the priestly earn-estness.

  So Lawrence Feather was a showman just like her father, which was more or less what she had always assumed. The difference was that Devil was an entertainer with no ambitions but to give pleasure – ‘to create wonder’ as he often said – while Feather played deliberately on the anguish of human loss. Yet Feather’s grasp of the paranormal had allowed him to recognise Nancy’s ability and therefore, she judged, he couldn’t be entirely cynical about what he did. Quite likely he made use of what talents he possessed, and supplied the rest from his imagination. In doing so he brought comfort to those who were in need of it.

  Was that helpful or otherwise?

  She hesitated, caught between conflicting impulses.

  Then she remembered Cornelius waiting for her at Waterloo Street and Eliza angry and wounded in her sister’s house.

  ‘I would like to learn from you,’ she said.

  Feather looked as pleased as a stroked cat. He crossed to the window and looped back the curtains in order to gaze down into Gower Street, conscious theatricality in every movement he made.

  At last he sighed.

  ‘I am flattered, but I’m afraid I can’t undertake to sponsor you professionally. These business matters are always ticklish, as your father well knows. If there is another way I can help you?’

  Nancy hadn’t anticipated that Feather would reject her proposal out of hand. This was a real blow. Eliza’s brutal dismissal of him so long ago must have seriously punctured his pride. Silenced by disappointment she could only nod and begin to gather her coat and bag. Feather made some small talk about Lion, saying how pleased he was that the young people had struck up a friendship.

  ‘Poor John Stone, Lycett’s father and my old friend, was quite a theosophist in his younger days, you know. He’s grown frail lately. Within the framework of our beliefs he made me godfather to his boy, and I have done my best to pass on the knowledge.’ Feather pursed his lips. ‘I am afraid Lycett is not one of us, my dear, in talent or inclination, although he is a fine young man. He was only a boy at the time but I will never forget his kindness to me after our beloved Helena passed across.’

  Already halfway to the door, Nancy saw the flash of stark grief in his face. A channel to his drowned sister was what the medium had craved all along.

  Impulsively she said, ‘Please, may I tell you something?’

  He heard the change in her voice.

  ‘Why, yes. Anything you wish.’

  ‘I saw a locket lying on my dressing table that day, just after you came to visit my mother in Islington.’

  He seized her arm, the fingers digging into he
r flesh.

  ‘A locket?’

  ‘It was a silver locket, with a pretty design of leaves engraved on the front. On the back there was a monogram.’

  His grip tightened until she almost winced.

  ‘The initials were HMF.’

  She could see it as clearly as if she were back in her old bedroom with the trinket cupped in the palm of her hand.

  ‘Tell me what was inside the locket, Nancy.’

  She came closer and whispered, ‘Two locks of hair, formed into a ring bound up with scarlet thread.’

  Feather threw back his head. He gave a cry that was more animal than human.

  ‘I gave that locket to Helena on her sixteenth birthday. And when I buried her it was fastened round her throat.’

  Nancy waited.

  ‘And then?’ he begged.

  ‘There was some disturbance outside the room. My younger brother. When I turned back to the dressing table the locket was gone. Only my hairbrush and comb were there, lying in their usual places.’

  Feather gave another cry, this time with a raw edge in it that made Nancy shiver. His eyes glittered with tears.

  ‘Thank you’, he gasped. ‘Thank you. It’s the sign from her I have longed for. She survives in another place.’

  ‘I am sorry’, Nancy whispered, wishing she had not kept the sign from him for so long.

  ‘No, no. Never say you are sorry for having given me such joy.’

  He lifted her hand and kissed it.

  ‘I can’t explain to you how I saw the locket’, she murmured. All she knew was that it had been there and then it had vanished. Even stranger was the way Helena’s presence somehow flooded into her whilst evading her brother’s supplication. Rowland and Edwin had never appeared amongst the scores of soldiers who populated her Uncanny, perhaps because she had been too close to them. Quite possibly, Nancy thought, there was a blankness about her that made her a ready mouthpiece. She felt cloudy inside her head when she tried to work it all out, and the suspicion that there was something unhealthy about Feather’s relationship with his sister made her shrink from their history.

  Feather stepped closer still and almost reverently brushed his lips against her forehead. Her antipathy to him dissolved a little at his touch. She was left with an odd fellow feeling, as if the two of them had walked a great distance together.