by Rosie Thomas
‘I want to see Vassilis, then. Call him for me.’
‘No,’ he repeated.
‘I want to see him.’
‘Why can’t she?’ Nancy asked. ‘Vassilis is her doctor, isn’t he?’
In the silence that followed her heart lurched.
She didn’t want to hear the answer to her question and she couldn’t stop it coming. She looked to Cornelius for support but he was staring numbly at the floor. His spilt tea made a dark stain on the mat.
Devil clenched and flexed his fingers, magician’s fingers that were beginning to stiffen with arthritis.
‘If she can’t go out to buy it for herself, she will want Vassilis to give her more of that filthy stuff.’
Nancy looked from one to the other. Patches of colour burned in Eliza’s parchment-white face.
‘What? What stuff?’
‘Your mother is addicted to morphine,’ he said.
Nancy’s hand crept to the pocket of her skirt, where the empty brown bottle lay like a poison capsule.
Here was the resemblance that had troubled her and which she had not been able to confront.
The feverish agitation, the bright-eyed lassitude – the fugitive sense of familiarity Celia Maitland had stirred in her belonged to her mother.
Eliza was quietly weeping. Between them Cornelius and Devil carried her upstairs to her bed and regardless of her father Nancy sent for Dr Vassilis. That night, after the muttering doctor had taken himself off, they made the decision that Eliza must have professional treatment and nursing care if she was ever to get better.
Lion took the news of what afflicted Eliza without a flicker of surprise, and he had a practical suggestion to make. He knew of a suitable nursing home.
He explained, ‘My aunt Frances is a sort of patron. It’s all very discreet and quite fascinating, in a way. There have been some rather prominent inmates, I gather.’
‘Not inmates,’ Nancy cried in horror.
The establishment was in a large house close to London, in a slice of countryside between the villages of Mill Hill and Stanmore. It was run by an order of nuns. Devil at first refused even to consider Nancy and Cornelius’s pleas to place Eliza there, but in the end she had grown so weak and wretched that he was forced to agree to the plan. A week before Christmas they lifted her into the Ford, propped up the ankle that stubbornly refused to heal, and Devil drove her out of London. She was so ill that she didn’t even try to protest.
On the day before Christmas Eve Lion came to see Nancy in her room at Covent Garden. They exchanged their presents before going out to a pub.
‘How is your ma?’
‘Devil says the doctor and the nuns are satisfied with her. We’ll be able to visit her on Christmas Day.’
Lion was going home to his father at Stadling and Nancy would spend the holiday with Devil and Cornelius at Waterloo Street. Arthur had not been granted Christmas leave this year.
The bar was noisy and crowded with festive drinkers. A man stumbled against their table and spilled Nancy’s drink.
‘Oopsy. I’m sorry, darling. Let me fill you up. What’ll it be?’
She thanked him and told him she didn’t need another.
He patted her on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up, my love, it’s Christmas.’
Through the windows she could see lazy flakes of snow spiralling through shafts of lamplight. Nancy rested her head against Lion’s shoulder, feeling a weight of sadness that she didn’t know how to dispel.
‘D’you want to have dinner? I could get the later train,’ he suggested.
Nancy knew she was poor company. ‘I’m not very hungry.’
‘All right. Walk with me to the station, then?’
Over the chorus of carol singing at Charing Cross he drew the collar of her coat up to her chin and kissed the tip of her nose.
‘Happy Christmas, Nancy.’
‘Happy Christmas, Lion.’
He had already turned away before she called after him. ‘Lion?’
‘What is it?’
She didn’t know, except that she wished matters could be made right between them. It shouldn’t matter that their backgrounds were so different. She didn’t care about marriage, did she? She might yearn for children, but there was time for that. She found a smile and deliberately stretched it.
‘Next year is going to be happy.’
‘I know that.’
He winked and waved, and she set off for Covent Garden with a lighter heart. Her key was in the lock before the prospect of the empty room and an evening alone lost its appeal. On impulse she walked quickly through the powdering of snow towards Shaftesbury Avenue.
Jinny and Ann were at home. As soon as she rang their bell Jinny’s head poked out of an upstairs window.
‘Come on up.’
They were laughing on either side of a tiny fir tree fixed in a bucket swathed with shiny red paper. Ann wound strands of tinsel through the resiny branches and Jinny held up two baubles.
‘Fairy or star for the top?’
‘Star,’ Nancy said firmly. Jinny fixed it with a twist of wire and stood back to admire the effect.
‘Omadood barm,’ she murmured. ‘Omadood barm, each and every one.’
Ann slipped an arm around her waist. ‘Christmas turns you all soppy, doesn’t it?’
‘Christmas with you is all I’ve ever wanted.’ They were both slightly drunk. They kissed before pulling apart when Jinny saw Nancy’s expression.
‘There’s beer, nice and cold on the windowsill. You’ll have some, Nancy, won’t you?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
Cramming between them on the sofa in front of the gas fire Nancy kicked off her shoes and settled down. Discovering that she was hungry after all she ate sausages and drank bottled beer as the tree twinkled and the room grew hot. Her sadness floated away. She was lucky to have such friends.
‘Jinny’s news from work is pretty dismal,’ Ann said.
‘Why’s that?’
Jinny sighed. ‘I think my New Year’s treat will be the sack. I’m told the print isn’t suitable work for women in peacetime. The union’s getting ready for a battle at L and R, not that they aren’t right and I’d support them every step of the way myself, including coming out on strike, but they don’t offer membership to women because that’s taking a man’s job.’
‘What will you do if it does happen?’
‘Find a job somewhere else, doing something else.’
Ann insisted that they would be fine, because she could support them both. Nursing was women’s work, at least.
‘If we had a garden, Annie, I could keep some chickens and grow vegetables. Perhaps we should move to Kent?’
‘Please don’t do that,’ Nancy begged. ‘I’m selfish and I don’t want you to move away. Couldn’t you get an allotment? Or – I know – ask Cornelius if you can share the garden at Waterloo Street? You could start a cooperative. Your runner beans in exchange for his onions.’
They laughed, and divided the last sausage into three bites. It was late when Nancy finally headed home, leaving dark footprints in a thin veil of snow.
On Christmas morning Devil and Cornelius and Nancy drove up to the nursing home. A plain wooden crucifix hung on the wall above Eliza’s bed. She lay against white pillows under a white coverlet, her grey hair combed to one side and tied with a red grosgrain ribbon. It was the only spot of colour in the bleached surroundings until Nancy unwrapped Lizzie’s gift of a basket of tangerines and purple hothouse grapes. Eliza slowly ate a tangerine, pressing the segments against the roof of her mouth and smiling at each burst of sweetness. The festive scent of citrus peel dispelled the hospital taint of Lysol and waxed linoleum and the clamour of nearby church bells brought Christmas into the room. Devil and Cornelius sat on either side of the bed and held Eliza’s hands. She was animated, although she had developed a troubling cough. She described how the Honourable Mrs Templeton, patron of the nursing home, had paid an early Christmas-morning call on
each of the patients.
‘So grand, my dears. She swept in with a retinue of nuns behind her and wished me a Merry Christmas exactly as if she was the Queen on a tour of the unfortunate poor in the East End. She was handing out a little booklet that I expected to be about God, but no – it’s called Women and the Future.’
‘Good,’ Nancy smiled, because that was what was expected of her.
‘Remind me, what relation is the great lady?’
‘She is Lion’s late mother’s sister.’
‘So she will be your aunt by marriage?’
Eliza hitched the sheets in a pretend curtsey and they all laughed.
‘Ma, I don’t think Lion and I will marry.’
Nancy unpacked the clean linen she had brought and tidied her mother’s belongings, and when there was nothing else to occupy her she looked out at a view of grey trees and rimed grass. The window stood open six inches at the top even though the panes were spangled with frost flowers. Fresh air was deemed to be good for Eliza’s chest.
The nuns were caring for her with calm attention as the allowance of morphine was steadily reduced. Soon it would be nothing. Sometimes Eliza wept and raged at them, beg-ging and pleading to be given more.
‘Jesus Christ is not my Saviour,’ she stormed. ‘I want my medicine.’
‘He is if you will allow Him to be. I will pray with you,’ one of the sisters said. Eliza writhed, but there was no mercy.
Cornelius found it hardest of all of them to witness her suffering, but he insisted to Devil and Nancy that this treatment was her best hope of recovery.
At one o’clock precisely a nun brought in a bowl of soup. Her starched coif nodded as she straightened the already smooth bedcovers. She told them the short visiting hour was over and Nancy begged for a few more minutes. She fed her mother the soup, spoonful by spoonful as though Eliza were her child, and afterwards Eliza turned her face up to be kissed.
‘My dearest girl,’ she said. Exhaling made her cough.
Cornelius stooped over her in turn and then the two of them went out into the corridor to allow their parents a few moments alone together. When Devil rejoined them he was jaunty.
‘She’ll soon be herself again. I’ve got to lick the stage show into better shape before she comes in to see it.’
The magic and illusions continued at the Palmyra while Nancy’s spirit evenings brought in the money. There was some talk of Jake Jones putting on occasional evenings of poetry and Shakespeare readings.
They drove back to Waterloo Street in the spluttering Ford. Nancy and Cornelius companionably cooked their Christmas dinner while Devil dozed in his old chair beside the range.
The next day came the news that Eliza’s cough was much worse and she had developed a high fever. By the day after that she was gravely ill. Eliza was weak and her few reserves were already depleted. She died from double pneumonia in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1923.
All four of them as well as Faith were with her, but Christmas morning was the last time she knew them.
Devil insisted that she be buried in Stanmore churchyard, close to the cottage where he had lived as a small boy and where his father had been the village schoolmaster. With Arthur and Cornelius and Matthew Shaw he shouldered his wife’s coffin from the church to the graveside. Nancy stood with her arms linked in Faith’s and Lizzie’s. The bitter wind dragged at the vicar’s surplice beneath the hem of his cloak and stung the mourners’ cheeks and noses. Nancy was too numb even to shiver. Faith silently wept and Lizzie stared straight ahead of her.
Eliza’s children each scooped a handful of earth and let it fall on to the coffin lid before Devil dropped in a loop of golden cord with a tarnished tassel from the Palmyra curtain. They turned away to allow the gravediggers to finish their work. Devil had shrunk overnight into a frail old man. He shuffled off in the wrong direction, seeming disorientated by grief.
‘Pa, wait for me,’ Nancy called. She tried to take his arm but he pressed forward between headstones until they reached a flat tablet with two names carved on it.
CHARLIE MORRIS, she read, and beneath it CARLO BOLDONI. It was the dwarf’s grave. Devil squatted on his haunches and traced the handsome square-cut letters.
‘My old friend Jasper Button found the stonemason. We didn’t know Carlo’s birth date for certain so we left off the – the end date as well.’
‘Where is Jasper now?’
Nancy had heard this name mentioned, but she knew nothing about him.
‘I don’t know. I wish I did. He emigrated to Canada with his wife. I didn’t put enough value on my friends, did I? I never considered them. I thought your mother was all I needed.’
She couldn’t contradict him. She tried to steer him back to the small group of mourners whose black clothes twitched in the wind like crows’ feathers, but he still resisted. Nearby there was a boulder against a dark hedge and he stopped next to it. Here was an iron plaque, bearing a name she was certain had never been spoken in her hearing: GABRIEL GRIGG, 1870.
‘So, Gabe,’ Devil muttered.
‘Who was he?’
‘A boy. I killed him.’
‘No, you didn’t. Don’t ever say such a thing.’
Shock made her voice shrill and she dragged him away from the memorial. Her brothers were coming towards them, one upright and handsome in uniform and the other slightly shambling, his heavy head on rounded shoulders. Cornelius’s collar looked suddenly too large for his neck.
Back at Waterloo Street Jinny Main and Ann Gillespie waited for them. They had made sandwiches and laid out drinks for the mourners. Familiar faces from the Palmyra included Sylvia Aynscoe, tiny as a bird, and two boys from the third generation of the Crabbe family that had been employed by Devil since the beginning of his ownership. Jake Jones was there too. Sylvia was too much in awe of him to catch his eye until he drew up a chair and sat down next to her.
‘I remember Jasper and Hannah Button’s wedding day,’ Jake murmured, although he had not spoken of the long-ago occasion to anyone else.
Sylvia had been among the guests that day too, at Islington, when Devil and Eliza were riding high in their fine new house and all their fortunes were still to be made. Cornelius had been no more than a baby and there had seemed every chance that Eliza would fully recover from his birth.
‘You’ve done so well, Mr Jones,’ Sylvia murmured. ‘I saw your Hamlet, you know. I had a seat up in the gods. It was a magnificent performance.’ She coloured up again.
‘I’m Jake, not Mr Jones. Thank you. I wish I’d known. I like to think of you being there. What about you, Sylvia?’
‘There have been some hard times at the theatre lately. You know that.’
They looked to Devil on the far side of the room. While there were people in the house to be greeted and entertained he was managing to hold his show together.
‘There will always be work for a good theatrical dresser. You would ask me, Sylvia, wouldn’t you?’
She said quickly, ‘Oh, I couldn’t leave the Palmyra. For Eliza’s sake now, as much as his and Nancy’s.’
‘I understand. But don’t forget what I said.’
Jake watched Devil touching a shoulder here and shaking a hand there. ‘Devil is a lucky man to have such fine and loyal children, but I wonder how he will be without Eliza? He couldn’t stay faithful to her for as long as a month yet she was his sun and moon and all the stars besides.’
‘Those of us who remember her as she was can understand why.’
‘Yes. She was a remarkable woman.’
Cornelius had retreated into the garden. He stood with his back to the door, tears silently running down his face. Jinny went out and gently walked him up and down between the vegetable beds.
Lizzie Shaw and Ann Gillespie collected plates and washed up at the old stone sink, providing fresh pots of tea for those who couldn’t drink spirits at Devil’s pace. Nancy and Arthur moved between the groups accepting condolences and exchanging memories as Lizzie
’s son Tommy ranged between the adults, quite used to being the only child present. Faith and Matthew sat in a corner and kept an eye on him. Neither was in good health and Eliza’s death had been a terrible blow. Lizzie had recently learned to drive and she had brought them from Bavaria to the funeral and then on to Waterloo Street in her own car. She had also acquired an emerald-green van, employing a uniformed driver to deliver her imported produce from the refrigerated warehouse to expensive greengrocers and smart private addresses in the West End. ‘Shaw’s Exotics’ was sign-painted in gold letters on each side.
‘Palmyra colours,’ Eliza had remarked, the only time she saw the vehicle.
‘Of course, Aunt Eliza, what else?’ Lizzie agreed.
There was a late ring at the doorbell and Nancy went to answer it. She found Bella and Harry Bolton on the doorstep. Both siblings embraced her.
Bella said, ‘I didn’t think we should come to the church because I only met Mrs Wix that one time. But Harry and I wanted to pay our respects and to tell you and your father and Cornelius how sorry we are for your loss.’
Nancy was touched. She clasped them both by the hand. ‘Thank you. Come in.’
Arthur hurried towards them. ‘Bella, my darling. And Harry, old chap.’
His pleasure at seeing Bella almost rubbed the grief out of his face. She stood on tiptoe as he kissed her, visibly filled with warmth and concern for him.
‘My poor boy,’ Bella murmured. Nancy was heartened. With Bella beside him, Arthur would do well.
After he had accepted their condolences Devil took the brother and sister by the arm and led them off.
‘Miss Bolton, Mr Bolton, do you know Mr Jones?’ Even today, his lips curled with satisfaction at being able to effect this introduction.
Bella gave a gasp. ‘Jake Jones? But I saw you in the film Sweet September. You were wonderful, really. My mother will be madly jealous to hear I’ve actually met you in person.’
Nancy knew Jake well enough by now to see him as he really was, but Bella’s admiration brought his fame into the room with them as if a further unexpected guest had arrived.
The time came for Devil to speak. He stood up, shaky and bowed, just managing to thank everyone in a few choking words before having to turn aside. He hid his face in his hands, unable when the moment came on this day of all days to deliver the curtain speech. Cornelius shook his head so it was left to Arthur to speak a short tribute. Jake responded for all of them with a toast to Eliza’s memory.