by Rosie Thomas
A thin black cat purred and rubbed itself against her ankles before slinking away to chase cabbage white butterflies in the buddleia sprouting from the wall. An hour passed before she saw Feather coming down the road. A string bag of shopping bumped against his leg.
He started in alarm. ‘Nancy?’
He had cut his hair and trimmed his beard. Although his face was increasingly haggard he appeared less unkempt than at their last meeting. He looked shabby but ordinary, like one of the workless men she had passed on the way here.
There was no shade in front of the house and the sun had reddened her face. She had discarded the grotesque glass eye and her black patch drew the heat to her throbbing eye socket. He stared at it.
She said, ‘May I come in and talk to you?’
His mouth twisted. ‘Really? Are you alone? Aren’t you afraid I might hurt you in some way?’
‘No, I’m not afraid of you.’
This was true. The bright sun and the bald, unremarkable street convinced her. The world had shrunk to what was limited and measurable. For her whole life the Uncanny had set her apart, and now it seemed she had joined the throng. She felt nothing but relief that her long isolation was over.
Feather led the way to a room at the back of the tiny house. A fly buzzed against the closed window and the clank of shunting drifted from the yards.
He put his bag down and looked directly at her.
‘I am sorry for what happened to you at my camp.’
‘Did you intend it?’
‘That you should be half-blinded? No, I did not. Please, won’t you sit?’
Two chairs were drawn up to a table covered with a greasy oilcloth. It was a long way from the opulent Victorian rooms overlooking Gower Street. She sat down and placed her hands flat on the cloth.
He asked in a low voice, ‘Why have you come here?’
‘I want you to tell me what happened that night and before it. You sent that little child to me, didn’t you, all those times? And you manipulated her mother and father. Why was that?’
He shifted, giving the smallest shrug. ‘Why do any of these things happen? In the spirit world, as you well know …’
She cut him short. ‘I laid no charges for assault against you or your accomplices. You will repay my generosity with the truth. Providing you know what that is. Do you know, Mr Feather?’
There was a metallic bite of satisfaction in provoking the clash at long last. His insinuating smile had faded altogether. There was a long pause.
‘I find myself humiliated.’ His voice was so low that she had to lean forward to catch the words, although his gesture at the dismal room spoke loudly enough. ‘I was once the most celebrated. I had the best audiences. I com-manded …’
She cut off the bluster. ‘I know.’
‘You took my success away from me. You double-crossed me.’
‘I did not. The truth, I said.’
He bridled. ‘Perhaps I made some claims I should not have done. I over-reached, you might say. My loss of favour was quite rapid and mostly unjustified.’
He told her a few details about his fading career, some of which Nancy already knew. Then he cocked his head at her, rediscovering his assurance.
‘But I was never one to bow down to an ignorant public. I collected around me a small group of committed Spiritual-ists. Men and women who truly appreciated my gift. Lenny and Peg were amongst them, of course. They came to me first to contact their daughter, poor little Emmy.’
A drowned child, with her posy basket. The soaking girl, gone forever.
Feather said, almost wheedling now, ‘You and I understand a little of the paranormal, Nancy. We know the margins, at least. We appreciate all that lies beyond the range for normal people, and we can estimate how much stretches beyond our own range. I had a channel to Emmy Simmons. Not a strong one, but she was an easy spirit. I was able to transport her, to will her into your presence. You are the adept, but I had my powers, didn’t I? You kept my Helena from me so I sent Emmy to remind you of the Queen Mab and what I had lost.’
‘You did.’
He chuckled. He might be humiliated by his current quarters yet his competitive vanity seemed undiminished.
‘Lenny and Peg knew I could reach their girl. I assured them that I was her channel, and that you formed part of the connection because you were on the Queen Mab too. I brought them once to the Palmyra, remember?’
‘I do.’
‘They stuck with me for years. Them, and the others you saw. They looked to my guidance and leadership. I appreciated our life in the camp, you know. Raw, stripped to the bones, close to the bare earth. It was honest.’
Hardly, Nancy thought.
‘Lacking my stamina, the others were tiring of it. Threatening to leave me. I needed my little crew, Nancy. I can’t … I thought I couldn’t be alone with the voices. Then I woke up in the camp one night and Peg was sitting on my chest. The nails of her two hands were here, like this.’ He dug his hooked fingers under his jawbone. Nancy could imagine all too well and she shivered.
‘I promised to bring you to the camp. With both of us there, the connection would be so strong. I told them they would see her for themselves, Nancy.’
The poor creatures.
‘I didn’t expect Lenny to do what he did to you.’
Nancy raised her hand to the patch. The room was square, dull, grubby, with no shimmer or echo.
‘Where are they now?’
‘Lenny knows the country ways and how to slip into the empty places. Peg’s people are Irish. Perhaps they have gone there. They won’t come back. Not after what he did to you.’ There was a final, heavy pause.
‘I didn’t know Lenny would attack you. The poor brute was usually docile enough. All I wanted from you was fellow-feeling and the respect I deserve. Is that too much, after the way you behaved?’
Everything about Lawrence Feather was disgusting, yet a worm of sympathy for him burrowed within her. Wearily she said, ‘You always over-estimated my command of Helena. But even if I had had the closest contact I would have tried to keep it from you, because of what you did and were to her.’
His lips drew back. ‘Do you truly believe I harmed her? The most precious and beloved creature who ever breathed?’
Nancy sighed.
‘It doesn’t matter what I believe, or what the truth is. I don’t think truth is a concept you properly understand.’
Perhaps the misdefining of truth was – or had been – a failing of hers too. Yes, certainly it had been. No more.
She reminded him, ‘I thought you said Helena was with you.’
His face seemed to collapse inwards. ‘I try. I try so hard to believe she is.’ He hesitated. ‘Nancy, do you still hear her?’
‘No.’
The man’s skin was papery and creased with tiny lines. He looked old and frail.
Nancy said, ‘I want you to answer one more question and then I am going to walk out of here. After the accident, after I lost my eye and all the damage happened inside here,’ she gestured at her cheekbone, ‘the other place began to slip away. Has it really gone? I have to know if it really is over and done with.’
The man seemed to reflect.
Rather than attempt words, he scooped his hands in the shape of a skull. His fingers tapped the imaginary bumps of bone and traced a net of blood vessels. He seemed to indicate that, in Dr Pennington’s language, there could be a physiological explanation for the Uncanny. It was to do with small brain seizures, or the blocking and unblocking of neural pathways. Nancy already knew that the thick olfactory nerve controlled the most powerful of the senses, which was why the Uncanny was so entwined with her sense of smell. Then Feather’s fingers fluttered and flew apart. Just as eloquently he sketched a different picture with his hands, this one of time’s intersecting loops and swirls. Finally he smoothed the unruly strands to show her how they coalesced and flowed onwards in an unbroken stream.
Nancy exhaled a long, ragged breath
. Her body yielded its stiff knots and kinks of confusion. Wordlessly, Feather confirmed what she had suspected: the Uncanny was gone. She was as light as air.
He asked, ‘Do you regret the loss, if that is what has happened?’
A smile briefly transfigured her.
‘No.’
Feather bowed.
‘The child?’ Nancy asked.
‘At peace.’
There was a moment’s stillness before she whispered, ‘Helena too, I believe.’
Nancy stood up and pushed back her chair. She would never see Feather after today.
‘How do you live? What are you going to do?’
‘I live in a way. It is a temporary state in an endless con-tinuum and I don’t consider it important.’ His shrug was preening. The same old fraud. ‘I do a few tarot readings. One or two private sittings. It’s enough.’
She nodded. Lawrence Feather could take care of himself. She was ready to leave but he restrained her with a touch of his hand. For the last time she managed not to flinch.
‘And you?’
‘I’m not sure. I can’t pretend to be a medium any longer.’
‘What will you do instead? What would you like to happen?’
I want to be Gil’s wife.
She blurted instead, ‘I would like a family.’
Lizzie Shaw was ripening like one of her own fruits. Nancy felt desiccated beside her.
Feather reached out and placed his hand on her head. He let it rest before stroking her hair. The gesture was so reminiscent of the morning long ago on the Kentish beach that she almost overturned the table in pulling away.
They said goodbye formally and without animosity. She left him sitting in the kitchen where the fly still batted against the glass. On the slow train back to London she fell deeply asleep with her cheek pressed to the dusty seat cover.
Gil came to Bloomsbury as he often did, in the hour after dinner. She had been reading beside the door into the enclosed garden. He kissed her before bringing up another chair and they sat side by side to look out into the midsummer twilight.
‘What an old couple we are,’ he remarked.
It was true. The rooms were layered with the years, their stolen hours written in the books collected on the shelves, the exchanged gifts, small pieces of furniture and china discovered in the cluttered shops of the neighbourhood. Even so there were only a few items of clothing hanging in the wardrobe. They wore only one version of themselves in this place.
‘How is your father this week?’
Nancy sighed. ‘He was on his way up the road this morning, still in his pyjamas. I had to run after him and beg him to come home. He said he was late for the theatre.’
‘Poor Nancy.’
‘Poor Pa, rather. Imagine losing your memory. All the precious moments of your life, melting away into a fog. Sometimes, when he realises what’s happening to him, he weeps.’
Gil traced the line of her jaw before his mouth found the notch at the base of her throat. They rarely kissed on the lips now because Nancy was conscious of her eyepatch and anxious to keep it in place. After the one time at Whistlehalt she had never let him see the empty socket.
They felt a matching urge to deny ageing in the most primitive way.
He undid her buttons and cupped his hands beneath her breasts. He lifted the hem of her skirt and ran his hand from the knee up to her thigh, all the way to the tiny bulge of flesh above her stocking top. The whole of her immediately became concentrated in that square inch of skin.
The first time they made love had been in this room, and there had been dozens of times – no, hundreds – since that first discovery.
She wanted him as much tonight as she had ever done.
Nancy closed her eyes. The world contracted to the here, here, and now, this moment, this. She had been released from all the eavesdropping and the eavesdroppers, from the queasy shimmers and the insistent voices, and the consequent impression that she was never quite anchored in one place. She was free now. Desire, sex, the longing for physical gratification; urgency rushed into all the vacated spaces in her head and concentrated there.
He took off her blouse and slid the straps of her slip from her shoulders. Cool air touched her hot skin. Her fingers trembled as she made the equivalent moves with his collar and studs.
She broke away from him and took off the remainder of her clothes, deliberately slow with the hooks and eyes. The garments dropped in a heap at her feet and she stood naked. She indicated with a lift of her chin that he should do the same. Gil hesitated, the thumbnail dimple beneath his eye appearing and deepening, but she waited until he complied.
Then she took him by the wrist and led him to the bed.
For the first time, as she straddled him, she understood something that Lizzie Shaw must have known all along. Sex was for taking as well as giving. You could abandon yourself. She sat upright, looking down into his eyes through the fall of her hair. On an impulse she pulled off her eyepatch. Gil blinked, but that was all. He grasped her shoulders and pulled her down to him.
‘Kiss me,’ he said.
She was tired of the woman she had been. Goodbye, Zenobia Wix, she exulted, and gave herself up to the moment.
It was a good moment, perhaps the best.
When it was over they lay for a long time listening to their breathing as it slowed and separated and grew apart.
‘Are you awake?’ he whispered, with his fingers still wound in her hair.
‘Of course I am.’
Her limbs were heavy and her body seemed all one valedictory smile, but she had never been more conscious. All was well, all would be well. Gil loved her, and she him. They would find a way to be together.
Gil sat up, tucking the covers over her so she wouldn’t feel any draught. He swung his legs to the side of the bed and she studied the chain of his spine as he leaned forward to pick something out of the tangle of clothing on the floor.
It was the eyepatch. He fitted it in place for her and kissed her forehead.
‘I have to go, Nancy.’
Even in her exultation she couldn’t help but think that for all the time they had known each other he had been going, leaving her behind. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him, What about your divorce? Why do you always have to leave me? But she had trained herself so assiduously not to put demands on him, and the words went unspoken.
‘Are you staying?’ he asked.
Sometimes she slept alone at the flat after he had gone.
‘Perhaps.’
With a curled finger he stroked her cheek.
‘Goodnight, darling.’
She did lie there for a while after he had left, but then she thought of Waterloo Street and very much wanted to be there. She flung on her clothes, tidied the bed and locked the door on the time being.
Cornelius and Jinny were playing chess at the kitchen table. The teapot in the old knitted cosy stood on the hob and the back door was propped open to let in the evening air. They were surprised to see her; Cornelius’s beefy face was flushed and he pressed his glasses into place as if they might have become dislodged.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I wasn’t going to, but I decided to come home. Carry on with the game.’
‘She’s beating me,’ Cornelius complained, hunching his shoulders over the board.
‘I am not,’ Jinny said. She touched Nancy’s arm. ‘All well?’
‘All well,’ she answered.
Cornelius and Jinny were so tactful. They knew about her life with Gil and they accepted as little or as much as she wanted to tell them about it. She pressed her cheek briefly to the top of her friend’s head, wanting to convey to her how much she loved her.
‘Is Pa awake?’
Cornelius frowned at the board, made a decisive move and captured Jinny’s rook.
‘I took him a cup of tea half an hour ago. He asked if you were in.’
Nancy went to her room and took off her outer clothes in case any scent of Gil’s
cigar smoke was caught in the folds. She tied the sash of her mother’s red robe before stepping across the narrow landing to tap on Devil’s door.
‘There you are at last. How was the house tonight?’
‘Pa, I don’t do my act any longer. Don’t you remember? Desmond’s looking after the Palmyra for us for the time being.’
For now. The theatre’s rows of worn green plush seats were increasingly empty. The music halls were over and the craze for Spiritualism was fading. Everything seemed in flux.
‘Come here,’ he said. She went to him and he hooked his arm around her waist, letting his head fall against her red silken hip.
‘Eliza, don’t leave me alone all the time like this. Why are you wearing that thing over your eye?’
She stroked his hair. Devil had aged in the last year but he was still physically strong.
‘It’s Nancy, Pa.’
He stared up at her. There were cloudy rings around his dark irises and the black eyebrows stood up in wild tufts.
‘Of course. What am I thinking?’
His gaze slid to Charlie Egan’s drawing of his wife.
‘I’m nearly seventy-seven,’ he remarked, in a voice as plaintive as a child’s. ‘Nearly seventy-eight.’ There was some confusion as to Devil’s real age because he had chosen to amend it so many times. But he was quite certain of the day and the month.
‘I know,’ Nancy smiled.
Arthur and Bella came with their three boys to spend the birthday afternoon. They brought the good news that Harry Bolton’s young wife was expecting her first child.
‘That is marvellous,’ Nancy smiled. They had begun to worry about the time it was taking, but now it seemed all was well.
The Wix boys loved visiting Waterloo Street because they could race their toy cars up and down the length of bare linoleum in the hallway. They dutifully wished their grandfather many happy returns before dashing off to play. The cars flew against the skirtings and no one told them off. Jinny even sat on the bottom stair to look on and cheer.
‘A trio of proper little officers in the making,’ Devil remarked.
He was surprised by the two older boys’ regulation grey flannel shorts and combed hair, and had to be reminded that these miniature gentlemen were his grandsons. He was careless with his own clothes these days, and he harked back constantly to his ragged childhood.