by Rosie Thomas
Nancy knew this, and she used it.
As the silence collected she studied the faces suspended like so many pale moons, picking out the likeliest targets for the night. Women were in the majority because they had lost sons and husbands and brothers, but sometimes there was a nervous-looking young man, or a much older one who didn’t know how to live in the world without his wife at his side. People came to the Palmyra to be entertained, but Nancy understood that many of them longed for something more.
Sometimes she was able to give them what they wanted.
This evening she saw the face immediately. The young woman was seated in the second row from the front, in one of the paired armchairs with a little table and a silk shaded lamp between them. She wore a fur that billowed like a cloud under her chin, her painted lips were slightly parted, jewels glinted in her hair. Longing pulsed in her like a second heartbeat. Her husband or her beau, whoever he was, sat in the shadows beside her. Nancy didn’t even glance at him.
The silence reached its deepest point. Nancy nodded to the boy who operated the tabs and took her mark at centre stage, where the tight spot would fall on her. A single long note was drawn from the cello in the musicians’ pit, and the curtain lifted.
There were some familiar faces dotted further back in the stalls. She had her regulars and she had constructed a series of voices for them. She swept into her practised introduction, choosing the easy targets to begin with and deliberately allowing a ripple of humour to lighten their exchanges. These people were the ones who told her in as many words what they wanted to hear, so she only had to turn it round and repeat it back to them.
Letting her subconscious guide her she tried the name Stella on a useful-looking man in the front of the gallery, but he shook his head. A woman seated behind him bobbed up at once, crying out that it was the name of her sister who had died as a child. One person’s blank could be another’s seam of gold. The second spot operator smoothly swung the beam on to the woman’s face.
Ignoring an inner whisper of Martinmartinmartinmartin Nancy said, ‘I hear her voice. She’s with your mother, the two of them together. There is a beautiful garden.’
Stella’s sister looked to be in her late sixties. It wasn’t a reckless gamble that her mother would be dead. But she stuttered in amazement, ‘My … Ma loved her garden. So do I.’
‘They want you to think of them when you are with your flowers. That’s when they are closest to you.’
The woman pressed a handkerchief to her face and her voice caught on a sob as she tried to answer. Tactfully the lighting man slid the beam away. There was a murmur of appreciation as the alert audience relaxed. The atmosphere was building well.
This was what Nancy had learned from Lawrence Feather – to allow information unspoken as well as spoken to build a picture in her head. While the face was held in the spotlight she tried to see into and beyond it, using her wits to dance ahead of the words. It was Jakey who had coached her to be physically still, to pitch her voice, above all to command the theatre and never be intimidated by it. She was good, and getting steadily better. She had no need for props or any fakery of visible manifestations, other than the mirrors Devil had taught her to position in the wings. In these she could observe her subjects’ responses while seeming to look elsewhere. During the Stella exchange, Nancy observed the girl in the second row. She was clutching her sable and drawing it closer about her throat, unaware that she was cold because the piped heating was closed off and one of the front-of-house hands had inched open the street doors. A satisfactory chill crept along the aisles as the lighting boy faded out the golden tones to leave a blueish cast.
Nancy sat down in an upright chair, the only piece of furniture on the stage. The audience craned forwards, understanding that the seance was properly beginning. She met the young woman’s eyes.
Seeming to speak only to her, although her words could be heard in every corner of the theatre, she said, ‘There is someone here for you. A man. A very young man.’
Nancy could see how the longing surged through her. Her head turned fractionally and a diamond earring flashed in the beams of light.
Nancy whispered, ‘I am right, aren’t I?’
The girl nodded, anticipation leaping in her face.
‘I have the initial R.’
Nancy could have picked any letter of the alphabet. As with ‘Stella’, her instinct was her only guide.
The woman’s fur fell to her shoulders, revealing her white throat. She was wearing a necklace to match her earrings. Her lips moved, framing a name.
‘Richard,’ Nancy repeated. It was so easy.
The woman gasped.
On another night at a different show Nancy would have moved smoothly forwards, from question to answer, building up a story. Tonight she found she had to grasp the frame of the chair where the folds of her skirt fell over her knuckles. The faces were staring at her.
The smell had come on her so quickly and it was so strong that she almost flung up her hands to ward it off. It was putrefaction, the old stench from the long-ago morning on the Kentish beach.
She managed to say, ‘Richard. He was killed, wasn’t he?’
The woman’s eyes were enormous pools in her white face.
‘Please, tell me, what does he say?’
‘He is here,’ Nancy repeated. And he was, but not in any way she could describe, not to tie up with a ribbon bow to comfort the bereaved in the way she had done for Stella’s sister. By now the Uncanny was all around her. She looked from side to side and the clutter of the wings had vanished. The mirrors were populated with the remnants of men. In a scoop of slippery filth lay a young boy. His rifle rested across his chest and from beneath his twisted body another man’s legs protruded. Just legs, with boots and gaiters and knees in crusted khaki. There were no thighs or hips. Beyond the hollow more men, blackened, dragged a gun carriage through the mud.
In his agony the soldier looked straight at her.
‘Help me,’ he begged. ‘Help me.’
Nancy was shivering. The woman in the second row stared and it was as if the two of them were submerged together in the Uncanny. All Nancy could hear was the boom of guns.
She ran her tongue over dry lips.
‘He … he was with his men. He was very brave. It was quick. He didn’t suffer.’
The boy’s face loomed out of the mirror’s mist. Even on the point of death the resemblance was striking. They were brother and sister.
Nancy lurched to her feet. She had to get offstage for a moment even though it meant running towards the mirrors. The woman jumped up too. ‘Wait,’ she called.
In a stronger voice Nancy told her, ‘It’s over. Passchendaele is gone and the war is in the past. You have to look ahead now. Have children,’ she added, a little wildly. ‘That is how your brother will live on. Do you hear me?’
The soldier was horribly dead now, she could see his body in the mirror.
There were no soothing words or messages of hope from the other side – those she had to supply herself. The spirit voices were a sham and there was only death and decay. She felt sickened by the theatre, and this work, and the Uncanny itself. She stumbled offstage, past the images caught in the glass that shimmered and pulsed as in a migraine. A pair of arms supported her. Sylvia held up a tin basin and she vomited.
‘There you are. My poor love.’
Sylvia gave her a damp cloth to wipe her mouth and another to cool her forehead. The stench drifted away and the roar of the guns with it, leaving the disturbed murmurs of the audience. Nancy couldn’t stay off for too long in the middle of a show. She sipped some water. The Uncanny was fading.
‘Warm up the house,’ she told Desmond the stage manager. ‘Lights and heat.’
She walked back onstage to a ripple of uncertain applause. The two armchairs in the second row were empty. The rest of the performance was dull, but no one asked for their money back.
Afterwards in the dressing room Sylvia helped
her out of her dress and wrapped her in the red Chinese robe that had once belonged to Eliza. Her mother had given it to her, wondering why Nancy would want such a shabby old thing.
There was some privacy backstage these days because Nancy had insisted to Devil that she must have a corner of her own to dress in, and he had grudgingly cleared a space not much bigger than a cupboard. At least the room had a door that could be closed. She and Sylvia had furnished their retreat with a miniature fender placed in front of the gas fire, and a cooking ring. The old piping from the days of gas lighting still ran through the theatre.
Nancy put her feet on the fender and rested her head against the chair cushion. She needed to sit quietly to recover herself.
‘How’s your tummy, dear?’
‘It’s settled, thank you.’
‘Would you like your drink?’
She had copied Jake’s pleasant custom. Nancy was in a position nowadays to drink a glass of champagne if she wanted to. She took the glass.
‘What about a nice poached egg?’ Sylvia asked.
There was a knock at the door. Desmond would be wanting to know if tomorrow’s show might be threatened following Nancy’s sickness. The stage manager preferred Devil’s music-hall nights, with the acrobats and magicians and dancers who did not act either mystic or artistic, as he put it.
‘Tell him I’m fine,’ she said hurriedly to Sylvia.
The dresser cracked open the door.
‘Miss Wix …’ Desmond began.
‘Thank you. That will do,’ a man’s voice broke in from behind him.
Every nerve in Nancy’s body shrilled. She looked up to see the woman from the second row, and presumably her shadowy escort.
He was Gil Maitland.
The woman was deathly pale except for two patches of colour high on her cheekbones, yet the pair of them still looked as glossy as a picture in a society magazine. Money gave people that burnished sheen. The woman’s diamonds were obviously real.
‘It’s all right, Sylvia.’ To her unexpected guests Nancy managed to say, ‘Please come in. Won’t you sit down? Perhaps you would like a glass of champagne?’
Without as much as a glance in his direction, she was aware of Gil’s attention. She held herself rigid, forcing herself not to meet his eyes.
The only seating other than Nancy’s armchair and the stool at the dressing table was a narrow bench with shiny leather padding that had spent long years pushed against the wall in Devil’s office. The couple sat down on it, their gleam incongruous as they perched on the narrow slope.
‘Miss Zenobia Wix?’ the man said. He lingered over the syllables.
Sylvia found two more glasses and dusted them with the corner of her apron.
‘Gil,’ the woman murmured, touching his arm. Nancy noticed her wedding band and the oversized ruby of her engagement ring.
This must be Mrs Gil Maitland. It was funny that she had imagined herself in the role.
‘Yes, darling.’ He spoke gently, as if he were soothing a nervous colt. ‘Miss Wix, may I introduce my wife, Lady Celia Maitland?’
He neglected to introduce himself. Lady Celia didn’t notice the omission.
They shook hands. Nancy still didn’t meet his eyes. She was struggling not to betray any sign of recognition, or any quiver of dismay. Gil was turning the stem of the glass in his fingers as he examined the clutter of brushes and jars of cold cream, the glass propped against the wall, and the wilting bouquet sent a few days ago by Nancy’s stage-door admirer, Alfie Egan.
‘How may I help you?’ Nancy asked them.
‘I want to speak to my brother,’ Lady Celia said in a rush. ‘I know you can help me.’
Nancy had seen such pitiful eagerness before. Lawrence Feather had been only the first of many.
‘It’s not quite so straightforward. It’s not like using the telephone. I’m sorry …’
‘I didn’t imagine it was. But you saw him. You weren’t putting on a show, I know that. You saw. I want to know more. Everything. I need to, Miss Wix. You’ll help me, won’t you? Please?’
There was a troubling intensity in her manner. In the sickening depths of the Uncanny Nancy had the sense that the woman had followed her. Somehow Lady Celia had distinguished the real thing from the performance. Perhaps untapped grief thinned her skin and heightened her perceptions beyond normal limits.
‘I don’t think I can.’
Her husband crossed his legs. ‘Why is that? Can Miss Zenobia Wix’s Spirit Voices be a mere act?’
Nancy disliked the show’s vulgar title too, but Devil insisted on it. She felt the prickle of challenge, and the current of his interest in her.
Sylvia indicated her disapproval of all this by clattering the plates and frying pan.
‘Gilbert.’
‘I’m sorry, Celia. Please, Miss Wix.’
‘Obviously, Mr Maitland, my performance is an act. It would be pointless to argue otherwise, since we both know that you paid ten-and-sixpence for the best seats from which to watch it. But what I do in the course of the performance is attempt to channel what I hear and see on the other side. That is my talent. Or my gift, if you like.’
Gilbert Maitland slid out a gold cigarette case and offered it. Nancy shook her head.
‘My wife believes that you can help her to contact her late brother. Richard was only nineteen when he was killed.’
Nancy turned to his wife.
‘Lady Celia …’
‘Please, won’t you just call me Celia?’
She was two or three years older than Nancy. She wanted to make friends, perhaps believing that this was her quickest route to Richard.
‘I’m trying to explain. It’s not like asking the operator to put you through to Kensington. Sometimes I can hear clearly, at other times there is just noise. Or silence.’
Essentially, that was the truth. Gilbert Maitland watched Nancy. She felt it keenly.
Celia said breathlessly, ‘I understand. I don’t ask for any guarantees. But perhaps you might come to our house, for a private sitting? If I could have just a single word, a sign, the smallest thing? After that I believe I could bear what seems so hard.’ She was twisting her beautiful gloves into a rope. ‘I love him, loved him, more than anything in the world. Until I married Gilbert, that is. When we were children, the two of us, we were allies. Conspirators against a harsh world.’ She smiled with her lips pressed together.
Nancy could imagine it. She felt sorry for her. She felt sorry for Faith and Lizzie too, and all the other women whose men had died.
The high colour in Celia’s cheeks intensified to two circles of dark red.
‘I’d pay you well, of course. I’m sorry to mention it if it’s not a matter of money.’
‘It’s not, really.’
Nancy was thinking that it would take a lot more money than she was ever likely to earn to buy just one of the diamonds from Celia’s necklace. The woman’s accent and her manner brought Bella Bolton into her mind, although they were hardly similar. It was as if Celia somehow pro-vided a photographic negative of Bella’s upper-class innocence.
The fire dully glowed. Staring into it, it occurred to Nancy that if Gil Maitland and his wife were here, in her dressing room, it was because he had – at the least – agreed to come. Perhaps he had even suggested it. Did he want to see her, after the brief glimpse at the party? After overhearing what the painted woman had said?
It was possible. Yet this woman was his wife. Of course he would be married – how could she have imagined he would not be?
She felt a turmoil of longing and disappointment and self-dislike as she tried to work out what she should do. Almost certainly she should refuse to see either of them again, even professionally. Yet through all the clamour of her thoughts she knew that however hard she might try, she couldn’t – physically, mentally, abjectly – turn her back on the opportunity to see Gil again.
As if he read her thoughts, he shifted his position on the uncomfortable seat.
She said to Celia, ‘I will give you a private sitting. But you may learn nothing at all. It often happens.’
Celia sat up.
‘Thank you, thank you.’
As soon as she had extracted a promise the ugly flush faded and she grew listless. They discussed money, with Nancy naming a healthy sum and Celia agreeing to it without a murmur. She seemed exhausted now.
Sylvia said, ‘Your egg is almost ready.’ She speared a slice of bread with the prongs of a toasting fork and held it to the fire.
The Maitlands politely stood up and Celia passed across an engraved card. The two women agreed on a date and a time for the seance.
‘Thank you, Miss Wix,’ Gil bowed.
The dresser firmly closed the door.
‘Well, really,’ Sylvia exclaimed.
‘I liked them. They’re used to getting their own way, but people of that sort always are, aren’t they?’ She tried to speak normally.
Even Lion was the same, for all his egalitarian notions.
Nancy finished her glass of champagne and meekly ate the egg on toast. Her mother’s old friend was aged and her tiny frame was bent and as brittle as a dried leaf, but at the theatre she had taken on a maternal role. Nancy had long ago learned not to look for mothering, but she let the faithful dresser fuss over her. Sylvia was washing up the pan and plate and Nancy was changing out of the scarlet wrap when they heard a footstep creaking on the old boards outside.
Devil’s head poked round the door.