Daughter of the House

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘My name is Zenobia Wix,’ she said, and closed her eyes.

  The silence was intense. Beside Devil a nervous woman touched her fingers to her lips. She jumped when Nancy spoke.

  ‘Is anyone there?’

  Nancy turned her head a fraction, listening. No one in the room could have doubted that she strained to catch a sound that came from beyond these walls. The slow seconds ticked away.

  ‘Come to us,’ she implored.

  When she did begin to speak properly it was in a low, hesitant voice. The woman next to Devil craned forwards now to catch what she said.

  ‘Elizabeth? Elizabeth … yes. Is your Thomas here? The cup and the old cupboard? What do you mean by that?’

  A man stood up. ‘I am Thomas.’

  Nancy’s face was a pale oval. Her wide eyes fixed on Thomas’s face.

  ‘Please sit down. Yes. Elizabeth is here with us. There is a key to the cupboard. Inside the cupboard you will find a china cup with a gold rim. Do you understand, Thomas?’

  The man turned crimson. ‘My grandma. Lost her mind at the end. She never said nothing to us about a cup.’

  ‘Is it a real cup, Elizabeth? Or does it stand for something? What did it hold?’

  These questions and answers didn’t lead anywhere, nor did the next subject.

  The tension leaked away. The audience settled, creaking and shuffling in their seats, shoe leather scraping the floor. It was the same fare that was served up at any spirit circle. Zenobia Wix was nothing new, after all.

  Eliza seemed lost in a place of her own. Devil folded his arms. He had recognised the boy seated opposite as Nancy’s dancing parter at Whistlehalt.

  The seance proceeded.

  Some subjects were grateful for messages delivered in the voice of this novice medium; one woman burst into uncontrollable weeping and had to be led away by her husband. The few who were flippant or obstructive, Nancy headed off. Lizzie whispered behind her hand to Jinny.

  Then without warning came a change. Nancy covered her mouth and nose as if overcome by a nauseating smell. She threw herself backwards and the chair rocked alarmingly.

  A damp chill seemed to gather in the hall. One or two people even turned up their collars or pulled scarves about their necks.

  Nancy swayed upright. Her eyes focused on the empty space in front of her. She extended a hand, more to fend off what she saw than to beckon to it. She murmured, ‘You are here?’

  The silence seemed heavy enough to press into their skulls. They waited it out, watching the small tense figure before them.

  Nancy gathered herself and spoke out in a clear voice quite unlike her earlier tentative tone.

  ‘Sarah Doherty. I am here to speak for Mrs Sarah Doherty. Is there anyone in the room who knows her?’

  A woman in the centre of the hall audibly gasped and nudged the man beside her. He hadn’t removed the thick, flat labourer’s cap he wore pulled down over his forehead. The exposed half of his drunkard’s face was dark red and heavily veined. He flinched and sank deeper into his chair.

  Nancy said, ‘There is sawdust on the floor. The woman who was here has left us.’

  The man’s companion stumbled to her feet. Every pair of eyes fastened on her, a heavy woman in a shapeless grey coat. No one would have looked twice at her in another place but now her anguish marked her out.

  ‘Sarah’s ours. She’s been missing these ten months. Left three little ones, she did. Tell us what she says.’

  ‘There are drops of blood in the sawdust.’ Nancy’s pale fingers fluttered to her mouth. ‘Fresh meat … The smell of it.’

  ‘That’s right. My brother’s a butcher. Tell him.’

  Nancy was absolutely white. She was struggling for words.

  ‘Tell him,’ the woman screamed.

  Jinny and Ann exchanged shocked glances. All Lion’s smiles had faded, leaving his face blank. Devil scanned the room for the apparatus of trickery and Eliza sat with the life seemingly drained out of her.

  ‘Sarah is gone. I mean that she is dead.’ A long pause followed before Nancy murmured, ‘I am sorry. I see the violence that was done to her.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  The woman’s voice shook so much that she could hardly get out the question.

  ‘Sarah lies in woodland, a lovely place. She is at peace now. It is best to leave her where she is. There is nothing we can do to help her.’ Nancy picked her words as precisely as type from the case, although the horror of the vision was evident.

  The brother staggered to his feet. He broke out of the row of seats with the woman frantically catching at the tail of his coat. He shoved her aside and flung himself at Nancy.

  Jinny shouted, ‘Stop him.’

  From opposite sides of the hall Devil and Lion were forcing their way to the front. Lawrence Feather remained impassive except for two blots of colour showing high on his cheekbones. The butcher seized Nancy by the collar of her dress and gave her a vicious shake.

  ‘My Sarah ain’t dead. She’s run off, that’s what. When I find her and bring her home I’ll give her what for, leaving us like this.’

  His sister reached him and caught his arm.

  ‘Sam, listen to what she says,’ she implored.

  The man rounded on her, his red face suffused with guilt and pain. He was like a bull at the doors of the abbatoir, sensing what lay ahead.

  ‘I’m not listening to no one. I only come here tonight with you because of what you done for us, and because you wouldn’t bloody shut up.’

  Devil and Lion reached Nancy’s side but she raised a hand to warn them to stay back. She was deathly pale, but in command of herself and of the packed hall.

  ‘Sam, you know what happened to your wife. Tell us the truth,’ Nancy whispered.

  They might have been the only two people in the room.

  He roared, ‘You see nothing, you lying bitch.’

  He swung round to the horrified audience. ‘Don’t you listen to these lies. I never touched her. What does she know, doing this for money?’

  The people shifted and murmured.

  ‘She wears a wedding ring with a little red stone. Beneath her chin, just here –’ Nancy indicated her own throat – ‘I see a small brown mark. A birthmark.’

  The sister began to sob.

  ‘It’s her. Where is she?’ she begged.

  Nancy answered, ‘I don’t know. There are trees, close together. It is woodland.’

  ‘Shut your mouth.’

  The butcher gave a final bellow and swung his fist. He was unsteady on his feet and the blow glanced off the side of Nancy’s head. Amidst cries of alarm Devil and Lion dived at the man to pin his arms to his sides. Nancy didn’t flinch.

  ‘Listen to me. There is no more hurting, Sam. That’s what she says. Did you hurt her? Did you kill her?’

  The clamour of the audience swelled. Their support seemed mostly for Nancy, but some were protesting that it wasn’t right to say such things to a fellow who had lost his wife. Shouting and disputes broke out as Jinny and Ann struggled through with Lizzie to form a protective circle around Nancy.

  Sam somehow broke free of Lion and Devil. When he raised his huge fists everyone except his sister took a step backwards.

  ‘You don’t know nothing,’ he hissed at Nancy. ‘It’s a fucking lie.’

  Then he whirled away, trampling through the fringes of the audience and kicking aside chairs as he bolted. He broke out of the door and disappeared into the darkness. His sister bunched her grey coat to her hips and reeled after him.

  Nancy pressed her hand to the side of her head.

  Jinny held her. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No. I’ll be all right in a moment.’

  The women tried to lead her towards the side room but Nancy still craned round to the empty spot just in front of her chair. When she was sure there was nothing there she let herself be taken out of the hall.

  A few handclaps trailed her and some insistent voices called
for more, but most of the witnesses were too stunned by what they had seen to make further demands. When it became clear that Zenobia Wix was not going to reappear the noise dropped to an excited buzz. People prepared to leave.

  ‘He did away with his wife, that feller, did he?’ one astonished woman asked another as they filed past Lawrence Feather on their way to the door.

  Her friend wagged her head. ‘It seems that’s what she was saying. It’s not like any sitting I’ve been to before. I’m not sure it’s what we want to hear, that sort of thing, is it? My Stanley wouldn’t have cared for it.’

  ‘Your Stanley wouldn’t have come in the first place, Dora. It would have been too strange for him.’

  Nancy sat in the chair they had placed for her. She looked as if she might pass out. Jinny spotted a bottle of sal volatile on a shelf, uncorked it and waved it under her nose. Nancy sniffed and gagged, but it revived her. Unwillingly she allowed Jinny to take her pulse.

  ‘Dear bloody hell,’ Lizzie cried. ‘Was that an act, Nancy?’

  Ann Gillespie hushed her.

  Slightly chastened, Lizzie crossed to the sink in the corner of the room and ran cold water on the spider trapped in it. She filled a glass of water and took it to her cousin.

  Lion moved protectively to Nancy’s side.

  ‘There,’ he told her. ‘You’ll be fine in a few minutes.’

  The nature of their friendship was obvious, and it was equally clear that her parents didn’t know it existed. Ann and Jinny saw the two of them attempting to absorb this further development. Devil Wix looked a powerful man although there was a touch of dissolution in his handsome face. His wife was a wild-haired, emaciated but striking figure whose eyes seemed far too large. For all the drama of the evening, Devil and Eliza appeared to be confused rather than deeply shaken. They were theatre people, and perhaps they had seen even stranger and more disturbing things.

  Nancy rested her cheek against Lion’s.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  She looked up at Devil and Eliza, knowing that she must try to explain herself.

  ‘Don’t worry. Sometimes I do see things I can’t explain. I always have done.’

  Eliza swept forward.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  It seemed to Jinny and Ann that Nancy and her mother were the twin pivots of all the passion in this room. The rest of them, even Devil Wix, were peripheral.

  Nancy shrugged, made cruel by the exhaustion that al-ways came in the wake of the Uncanny, and by a headache that threatened to crush her skull.

  ‘I never felt that I could tell you. It wouldn’t have been what you wanted for me.’

  Eliza flinched. Turning aside she groped for and found her husband’s supporting arm.

  ‘What did you see, Nancy?’ It was Devil who put the question.

  She ran her tongue over dry lips and swallowed before she spoke. ‘I saw a dead woman in a forest. She had been hacked to pieces with a meat cleaver.’

  Lawrence Feather walked into the silence. Ignoring all the others, he spoke quietly to Nancy.

  ‘You were magnificent,’ he said.

  ‘Is that what you’d call it?’

  He took her hand and kissed it.

  ‘I would. You have a great career ahead of you, Nancy.’

  Feather was smiling. For a man who was usually sombre he was almost animated.

  ‘My boy.’ He embraced his godson as Eliza stared at them.

  ‘I remember now,’ she whispered.

  ‘This is my friend Lycett Stone,’ Nancy said to her parents.

  Devil moved forward to confront Feather. He held himself very straight, except for one thumb hooked into the pocket of his waistcoat where he kept his old-fashioned fob watch.

  ‘I am Devil Wix,’ he said. His voice was like a dripping icicle. ‘Nancy’s father.’

  ‘Lawrence Feather.’

  The two men were the same height, and over Nancy’s head a look passed between them. There was a depth of recognition in it, as well as mutual antipathy.

  Jinny and Ann exchanged a glance and Lizzie stared. Lion’s good-humoured face was clouded with discomfort. Eliza’s hands were shaking.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Wix,’ Feather said pleasantly. He could afford to be polite. ‘I think you should take your daughter home and let her rest.’

  Devil seethed. He didn’t possess Feather’s self-control, and his fists bunched.

  ‘Pa,’ Nancy warned.

  ‘I can take care of my own family without the benefit of your advice, you trickster. Voices of the spirits? The cheapest of stale old tricks.’ He laughed in the man’s face.

  Feather cocked his head.

  ‘You would know, Wix.’

  Nancy stood up. The authority she had acquired in the hall stayed with her. In a level voice she said, ‘I am not a commodity. I will make my decisions about where I go and with whom.’

  It was Lion she reached out for, and he took her arm at once.

  The three young women closed ranks behind them and Devil and Eliza were left with Feather.

  Eliza followed her daughter with her eyes.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  London, 1921

  Nancy and Lion were at a party. Surveying tonight’s scene from the threshold Nancy remembered what Jake Jones had told her. Parties were like life, consisting of the predictable spiked with moments of high drama.

  Night after night they all went to parties, as if every single person they had ever met had taken the decision to live without remembering yesterday or thinking of tomorrow. This hectic pace suited gregarious Lion, who was careless about having to go to work the next day with a headache, but Nancy had begun to find so much studied frivolity tiresome. It was hard to believe that only two years ago the Whistlehalt party had seemed so exotic. As Lion Stone’s girlfriend she had long ago lost count of its gaudy successors. Lion never seemed to want anything more out of life than fun. She wondered how other people progressed from cocktails to being serious, and when she asked herself what serious might mean she admitted that it was getting married and having children.

  With Lion there was never any discussion of the future, and when she tried to introduce the subject he laughed it off.

  Sometimes, in quiet moments, she still thought of Gil Maitland.

  At parties, she searched the crowd for a glimpse, but he was never there.

  Small gatherings tended to take place in cramped upstairs flats in Earl’s Court. The bigger ones happened in empty warehouses near the river, or in galleries with brand new avant-garde art decorating the walls. The smartest affairs were in the Mayfair town houses of friends of friends, usually when their parents were away. There was always loud music, from a gramophone or even a real band with a singer who tried out the latest hit tunes. Suzette and Dorothy were usually present, showing off their tango moves together or partnering one of the black dancers from a fashionable African troupe. The girls would be with Caspar and Freddie, and the lesbian who wore a monocle and a duke’s younger son who was known to take quantities of drugs. Surrounding them would be a throng of jockeys and publishers and the children of landowners, thrilled debutantes and beady social climbers, actors without any roles and aspiring artists, all of them dancing and shouting and trying to attract each other’s attention. The din always made talking difficult but the tide of drink meant that no one cared what anyone else said in any case.

  Nancy did not possess Lion’s stamina or his casual attitude to the demands of work, and the rackety existence they led would have been impossible to combine with her job at the draper’s shop at the top of Essex Road. Luckily she had been able to give that up, because slowly at first and lately more steadily she had been gaining a reputation.

  Zenobia Wix was the fashionable new medium and spirit channel, and the bereaved and the lonely and needy had begun to seek her out. Lawrence Feather managed her appearances and even after the takings had been split between them there was enough money f
or Nancy to feel, for the very first time in her life, that she had some actual freedom of choice.

  Following her debut in the chapel hall, a few paragraphs in the newspapers announced the arrest of a butcher from Bethnal Green, east London, detained on suspicion of murder after the disappearance of his wife. Most of the papers reported the story, but only the Daily Sketch ran an inside-page headline about the sensational paranormal seance that had indicated the woman’s probable fate, after which the butcher’s own sister had reported him to the police. No further details came to light and by the next day the story had been forgotten by most of the world.

  In the depths of the winter, a police search turned up a grave in Epping Forest and an excavation brought up the body of the missing woman. The butcher confessed to the murder, and was committed to trial. Nancy did not read the lurid newspaper accounts. She knew what she had seen, she grieved for the misery that must lie behind such a crime and its concealment, but she understood the importance of detachment and of husbanding her energy.

  In the circles linking Lawrence Feather and his followers to other spiritualists, the events at the seance caused a more lasting stir. The first invitations for Nancy to appear at open and private sittings began to arrive at Gower Street, and almost from the beginning she was able to pick the most promising engagements.

  In spite of the difficulty of it all, she discovered satisfaction in weaving the fragments brought up by her clairvoyance with the coarser yarn of observations and deduction. Nancy liked watching people and listening to their stories. The questions she was asked did often betray the desired answers, as she had learned from Mr Feather, and soon the processions of faces, all marked with lines of grief or anxiety mingled with hope, began to seem almost as legible as a headline set up in bold type. The people listened to what she had to say, and they went away comforted. Even the children of the butcher from Bethnal Green, she thought, would be better in the end from knowing their mother’s real fate and the justice that had been done on her behalf.