We could be together. We could find a way. If she still loves me. For after all, surely there is no greater magic than love.
* * *
It is a warm April night and the window is open. Sitting on the cream sofa in my bedroom, my eyes closed, I can hear the chimes of Big Ben announcing the hour. Nine o’clock. Louis will be here any minute to take me to Charlotte’s fancy-dress party at the club she has booked for the purpose in Kensington. I would rather not go. Not only because of my natural dislike of such large, rowdy gatherings but because there are so many spirits whispering in my ear tonight. Some of them seem so lost. Others have pressing matters they wish to discuss with me. How can I leave them to go off and indulge in hours of frivolous society? Why do I allow myself to be persuaded to attend such things? I know the answer is Louis. He loves me to go, so that he may show me off, as if I were some sort of rare wild animal he has managed to trap. And, of course, there are Charlotte’s feelings to consider this time. This party is one of her fund-raising events. We have all bought our “tickets” to attend, and the money will go to one or another of the several good causes of which she now finds herself patron. She would be hurt if I did not attend.
There is a knock on my door and I bid Terence enter.
“Lord Harcourt is here, my lady.”
I take a slow breath and then release it, mentally sending the spirits on their way. I do not want any of them thinking they might accompany me to the party.
“Thank you, Terence. Would you help me with this, please?” He hurries forward and takes my ceremonial cape from me. With some difficulty, for I am taller than he is, he succeeds in draping it around my shoulders and helping me to fasten the ornate clasp at the front. It is a rare treat for me to be able to go out in public dressed as a witch. The fashion for fancy-dress parties has allowed me this small pleasure. Beneath my cloak I am wearing a favorite velvet gown. There is a medieval look to it, with long sleeves looped over a finger on each hand, and a low-slung gold-stitched belt sitting on my hips. Earlier I rinsed my hair in lemon juice so that it shines as it swings, the blunt cut stopping level with my jaw. I have kohled my eyes, and chosen my favorite dragonfly tiara, so that I do indeed resemble an exotic witch from an ancient land.
Downstairs, when Louis sees me he smiles broadly.
“What a wonderful costume, Lily. It suits you terribly well. Why is that, I wonder?” He kisses my hand and leans forward to touch my cheek. He is dressed as a vampire count, though he has decided against donning fangs. He still manages to look dangerous somehow and, disconcertingly, more like his father.
“Louis. I hope you aren’t planning on biting unwary maidens tonight.”
“Even Charlotte’s parties don’t get quite that wild.”
“Don’t be so certain.”
Louis’s chauffeur has the motorcar outside and we are sped the short distance through the nighttime streets. People are out enjoying the pleasant evening. Couples stroll arm-in-arm along the river. A few horse-drawn cabs still ply their trade, retaining something of a romantic appeal in these fast-moving modern times. Within minutes we are at the party venue and are escorted inside by a doorman liveried as some sort of Arabian pirate.
Louis whispers to me as similarly attired maids take our coats. “Oh dear, was there some theme or other we were supposed to know about, d’you think?”
I shake my head. “No, don’t worry. I’ve already spotted two Marie Antoinettes and a Robin Hood.”
The party is an uneasy marriage of old and new trends. The club itself has been recently refurbished and is a wonderful example of Art Deco, from its newly built facade, through the arrangement of the interior, to the smallest detail of the decor. The reception area has as its central focus a wonderful mural of angular shapes arranged in a starburst. Colors are clear, lines are crisp, with the thinnest strips and lines of gilt highlighting the geometric designs and shapes.
Charlotte’s choice of fancy dress, however, hopes to appeal to the partygoers’ fondness for the elaborate prewar balls we used to attend. There was always fierce competition in some quarters to win the prize for the best costume. Rivalries ran for several seasons, with outfits becoming ever more elaborate and outlandish.
“Lilith, darling!” Charlotte, exquisitely turned out as Titania, complete with gossamer wings, floats over to us and embraces me in a flurry of chiffon and seed pearls. “You look simply divine, as always. Oh, Louis, it is beastly of you to look so heart-stopping when you are firmly engaged to the most beautiful woman in the room. What are the rest of us supposed to do?”
She leads us into the throng, through the foyer, and into the main room that is not quite a ballroom, more a modern dance hall, with a bar to one side. There is a small stage, where an energetic jazz band is playing loudly. Waiters in vaguely Middle Eastern costume of several centuries ago weave through the merrymakers, silver trays of mysterious cocktails and glasses of champagne held perilously high. Already I wish I were back in the calm of my own apartment. I do not feel like dancing or engaging in the idle chatter I am required to find interesting.
Louis senses my resistance and sends to me a little spell to evoke the smell of roses. As he had anticipated, it makes me smile.
“That’s better. Can’t have you glum so close to our wedding day. People will think you’ve gone off the idea of marrying me,” he says, pulling me through the melee. “Come on, let’s dance.”
“But, Louis, I don’t know this new one. I’ve no idea…”
“Nor have I. Let’s make it up as we go along, shall we?”
He holds me tightly, picking up the upbeat tempo, expertly guiding me through the other dancers as we invent something between a foxtrot and an as yet undiscovered sequence of steps. I can tell he is enjoying himself, and I don’t wish to spoil his evening. All around us the young and the not so young are dancing, laughing, and drinking with something akin to desperation. It is as if their very lives depend on their having a good time. As if the only way they can banish all the pain, all the loss, all the sadness of the war, is to fill each moment with wild enjoyment. But that very desperation is itself a kind of loss, as if they have misplaced the spontaneous, sincere happiness of old and replaced it with something contrived. Something that is only on the surface. Something pitiful.
We pass the next two hours dancing, drinking, and exchanging words we can barely hear above the din of the party with a curious assortment of historical and legendary figures. The evening becomes ever more surreal, as a gigantic rabbit attempts the Charleston with Queen Elizabeth I, and at one point three Julius Caesars are spotted playing a game of poker on the bar. I find myself withdrawing, overcome by a melancholy brought on by the sight of such determination to have fun. And part of the frenzy, it seems to me, is to distract us from noticing what is surely the most poignant difference between this party and a similar event that might have been held six years ago: the room contains easily three times as many women as men. And among those men who have survived to be here, plenty carry visible wounds bequeathed to them by a dying bomb or a bullet. One can only guess at how many endure scars of the invisible kind.
“So, Beauty, I see the war has not changed you.”
The voice is instantly recognizable. I turn to see Gudrun behind me, sitting elegantly atop a bar stool, smoking a cigarette through a long black holder. She has had her glorious red hair cut and firmly set into ripples that gleam beneath the party lights. She is dressed in a glamorous satin dress without the slightest attempt at a costume. She looks a little thinner than when last I saw her. A little older, yes, but something else. There is a wariness about her now. A watchfulness. I cannot claim to be surprised. To be a German living in London through the war must have been a horrid experience.
“Hello, Gudrun. It is good to see you again. Is Mangan with you?” I peer past her.
“At such a charade? Huh! He would sooner eat his own foot. No, Mangan dislikes such gaiety these days. He is not in the best of health now, thanks to the wo
nderful British penal system. He prefers quieter occasions.” She draws deeply on her pungent cigarette and then exhales slowly, blowing smoke through her nose, letting the plumes drift away and watching them as they go, before she speaks again. “Besides, Mangan does not receive the number of invitations he used to.”
“Surely he was on Charlotte’s guest list.”
“Oh, yes. But he would never pay for a ticket. Neither would nor could, in fact. No, I am only here because my patron brought me. See, over there.” She points to a rotund man whose age and girth are making it difficult for him to stand the pace of the revelry. “He is a buffoon, but a loyal one. The only man left in London prepared to buy my work. He thinks one day Germans will be back in fashion.” She laughs at this, a dry, mirthless sound.
“But you still live with Mangan’s family, back in Bloomsbury?” I ask, though in truth I know. I have seen Mangan several times since the end of the war. It is true, he has suffered some lasting damage to his health, but his time in the countryside has restored him a little. He is trying to work again, I know, but people have long memories. He and Gudrun are no longer fashionable, he for his stand against the war, she simply for being German.
“Where else would I go? Mangan is trying to sculpt again. The work is really too heavy for him now. I have told him he should work in something lighter, something smaller, but, ach, you know Mangan. When did he ever listen to reason? Perry is busy doing whatever it is Perry does. Jane feeds people. The children make noise. All as if the war never was.”
“Except that it was.”
“Yes. It was.” She tips her head back and downs her champagne, and then waves the empty glass at a distant waiter to summon more. “I hear you are getting married, Beauty.”
“Yes. Next month.”
“Poor Artist, have you forgotten him completely?”
“Of course not.”
“So, in this case, you will be coming to his exhibition next week.”
“Bram has an exhibition here? In London?” I cannot keep the breathlessness out of my voice. Bram. Here. And painting again!
“At the Dauntless Gallery in Cork Street. I’m surprised he has not sent you an invitation to the private view. But, of course he won’t mind if you just turn up anyway. Perhaps you could bring your fiancé.”
I am too distracted to rise to Gudrun’s provocation. Bram. Here. In London. Most likely staying at Mangan’s house. I experience a piercing stab of jealousy at the thought of him spending time with Gudrun but not with me. But then, that is utterly ridiculous. I was the one who did not go to the station as I had promised him I would do, five years and a lifetime ago. I was the one who fell silent, who turned away. Why should he contact me ever again? Why would he think to come and see me or to send me an invitation to his show? Why would he? And even if he did, I could not accept. I am engaged to Louis. My life is moving on, and it would be wrong to pretend otherwise, to him or to myself. It is true times have changed. Perhaps there are not the same barriers between us that there once were. But some remain. I am still a witch. Bram is not. No, I cannot see him or go to see his paintings, much as I admit I long to do so. In a few weeks’ time I will be Lady Lilith Harcourt, Countess of Winchester, and there is an end to it.
25.
When Bram enters the house in Bloomsbury he sees so few changes that he is taken back to the very first time he came to Mangan’s home. The dog has gone, and the children are each a little taller. Jane has gray hair now, and Perry has lost the bloom of youth, but otherwise, much is as it was. The hallway is still full of coats and boots and clutter. Doors are missing from doorways. Electricity has been installed but is not used. The hole in the wall from the house into the studio space remains. The air of pandemonium under light restraint continues.
“Children, run along, do.” Jane shoos three small boys ahead of her down the hallway. “Bram has had a long journey and the last thing he needs is all your noise. Come along, dear, Mangan is so looking forward to seeing you again. Freedom, go and put the kettle on, will you? Such a helpful boy. Couldn’t have managed without him when Mangan was away.” She pauses and lowers her voice. “You will find my darling husband a little … older,” she warns him. “He is not as robust as once he was. Still,” she adds, brightening again, “having you here will be just the tonic he requires. I’m certain of it.”
Bram braces himself for an elderly Mangan in a bath chair, so he is astonished to find the great man halfway up a ladder, paintbrush in hand, putting the finishing touches to a startling mural that covers one entire wall of the studio.
“Mangan, my dear, Bram is here,” Jane calls up to him.
“What’s that? Bram from Yorkshire? Well, don’t just stand there gawping, my young friend, make yourself useful. Pass me up another pot of paint, would you? Over there. The pea-green. That’s the one. Want to get this tree finished before Jane starts clucking like a mother hen and insists I put my feet up. Woman thinks I’m an invalid.”
“I think no such thing, I simply believe a little rest and some soup from time to time might just stop you wearing yourself to a frazzle. Talk him down from there, Bram, dear, do,” she says, leaving them with an exasperated flap of her hands.
“Woman would have me spoon-fed if I let her.”
“She’s only trying to look after you.”
“I am perfectly sound in wind and limb, as you can see,” says Mangan, letting go of the ladder to brandish his paintbrush expansively. He teeters horribly, and for a moment Bram thinks he will fall, but he grasps the wooden tread above him once more and continues applying paint, seemingly unperturbed.
“That’s quite some mural,” says Bram, taking in the image of a sweep of English countryside, complete with farm, barns, stream, and hedgerows. Many artists might have rendered such a scene cloyingly sentimental, but in Mangan’s hands it is depicted as something vibrant, bold, and bursting with life.
“This place saved my life, Bram, I don’t mind telling you. I was rescued from that Stygian hellhole of a jail and transported to this other world. I have never lived in the countryside, but, my word, there is so much we can learn about ourselves. When we are returned to nature, working the land with our hands, these hands, look at the calluses, honestly earned, through toil and effort, in all weathers, at one with the elements. I was … invigorated. Whatever Jane likes to tell people, I feel reborn, full of energy, and ready to work again!”
“Paintings this time, then? And on such a scale.”
“Oh, no, this is for me. An aide-mémoire of my time spent tilling the soil. Not that I need one, no, no, but I confess, I miss the open landscape. I wanted to have it here with me still.” He starts to descend the ladder. “No, I shall return to my sculptures, my true calling.” He reaches the ground and stands in front of Bram. “Not that there is a demand for works in stone just now, but I daresay there will be again, when the world has recovered its senses and is in its right mind once more.”
“And you really think it will? Recover its senses, I mean?”
Mangan narrows his eyes at Bram for a moment. “What? Where is that glorious youthful optimism I remember you for?”
“I may have left a little of it in Africa.”
“Ah. Yes. Bad business that. Still.” He drops his brush into an open tin of paint nearby, paying no heed to the fresh splash of green that joins others already decorating his worn trousers. He clasps Bram to him in a manly embrace. “Good to have you back with us, Bram from Yorkshire. Splendid. Yes, splendid indeed.”
Bram experiences a flash of memory of the time he overheard Mangan talking to a fellow coven member. The images in his mind are shadowy, but the recollection is bright and sharp, of the night he learned that Lilith is not the only person close to him who is a witch.
This man counts me as his friend. There exists between us a mutual trust. And yet he keeps a secret so large I wonder there is space enough for it even in this rambling house.
“Why so serious, young man?” Mangan frowns at
him. “You have the world at your feet, or will presently. This is no time for the maudlin reflection I judge you are now engaged in.” He narrows his eyes and then goes on. “Or could it be a troubled heart that is giving you such a dyspeptic appearance all of a sudden?”
Bram shrugs. “You know Lilith is soon to be married?”
“I know Jane has been fussing about having nothing suitable to wear for some months now. I know all over London the great and the ennobled are dusting off their finery, and licking their lips, no doubt, at the opportunity to display their wealth and good taste, or the lack of it, at what I am told will be the wedding of the year.”
“I’m sure it would be an occasion of unrivaled glamor,” Bram says.
“Would?” Mangan raises his eyebrows. “Is there any doubt that the marriage will go ahead?”
“I … hope so.”
“Ah-ha. So that’s how it is. Well, well. You’ve set yourself a challenge there, my friend.”
“Do you think me unworthy?”
“Indeed I do not.”
“Do you think me unwise?”
“Ha! When has wisdom had any say in affairs of the heart?”
“We are from different worlds, Lilith and I.”
“Nonsense, you both lived in London.”
“She is the daughter of a duke. My father is a man who made his own money.”
“The war changed everything, haven’t you heard? These things matter so much less now than they used to.”
“She is very rich. My father so disapproves of my painting he will likely leave me a pauper.”
“Then she’ll have money enough for both of you.”
The Midnight Witch Page 35