by BK Duncan
‘Alice, I’m busy right now, can’t it wait?’
‘I’m sorry, Vi, really I am, but I need to talk to you.’
The girl was so keyed-up she was making the air in the stuffy room shudder. Vi swiped the square of damp muslin over her forehead.
‘Another time.’
‘It has to be now.’
Vi looked at her in the mirror. She was a picture of perfect misery; it would take a monster not to feel a pang of pity.
‘Spit it out then. But be quick because I’ve things to do.’
Alice let out a quivering breath. ‘I know being his assistant could be my big break and I’m very grateful to you for thinking of me - truly - except... except...’
‘You’re right; a thousand girls would give their right arm to be given such a chance.’
‘But what if I mess things up? I’ve been going over and over it in my head - ain’t slept a wink since he asked me...’
Her diction - which had been noticeably elevating over the past five weeks - had slipped back to Poplar’s finest.
‘Those tricks he done, they were so clever...’
They were simple slight-of-hands, performed in parlours for children.
‘I couldn’t bear it if I let him down. I’ve never met anyone so wonderful. And he treats me like a proper grown-up - you both do. Singing’s easy, I’ve been doing that all my life, but being on stage like that with everyone thinking what he’s going to do ain’t natural, then if I do something stupid and show them they was right...’
Stage fright. Vi knew what that was like well enough. But her compassion for a fellow performer’s plight didn’t stop her from wondering what would happen if she were to heap on a little more pressure so the girl would make a debacle of Saturday night’s run-through. Whatever Alice thought of him in her hero-worship haze, Horatio wasn’t a tolerant man; one slip of her attention and he’d send whatever self-belief Alice had left, crashing like a stage weight. Leaving him with no alternative but to ask Vi to be his assistant. It would be a bit like accepting cold seconds, but you didn’t get anywhere in the theatre by being proud. The truth was that Horatio knew deep down she would be perfect for the role but, like every man, he’d allowed himself to be momentarily blinded by the dewy freshness of youth. And, as Vi remembered only too vividly, youth was easily spooked.
‘Sit down, Alice. I know this feels like too much all at once - there you are working in the box office of one of the most popular Music Hall and variety theatres in the East End when you’re thrust into the limelight by being offered your own slot on stage, and then to cap it all the impresario, producer and director of the show asks you to step in at the last minute to save the whole thing from being a humiliating disaster. Because you are aware he has everything riding on this, aren’t you? It’s his way of showing his father he can make it on the boards and that walking out of the family firm is an act of passion, not rebellion.’
Her speech was having the desired effect: Alice now looked like she’d been stung by a swarm of wasps.
‘It takes a real pro to rise magnificently to all that. Every show is only as good as its last turn - it’s what the audience remembers most as they leave the theatre - and the sawing the lady in half trick will only work if the assistant is up to it. Which I know you are or I wouldn’t have insisted Horatio ask you in the first place. There are so many things that can go wrong and end up making the magician look a fool. And it’s new over here; Horatio let slip he’d paid a fortune to a member of the Magicians of America for the secret.’
‘I don’t want to do it.’
Her voice was so quiet that Vi would’ve missed it if she hadn’t been listening so intently.
‘Will you explain to him for me? I couldn’t face it.’
She didn’t look so dewy now.
‘Will he be very cross with me?’
‘No performer likes someone to go back on their word. There’s the matter of professional pride.’
‘You could do it. You’d be so much better than me anyway.’
Her spirits were rallying a little but Vi wasn’t about to let Alice give in to false hope.
‘I have to say in all honesty that’s true but there comes a time when every established performer has to stand in the wings and allow a newcomer their chance to shine. I know the responsibility feels overwhelming at the moment but being thrown in at the deep end is the only way of testing if a person is up to the rigours of theatrical life. I’m doing you a favour here, Alice. Please don’t let me down.’
Vi took the lid off her box of face powder and handed Alice one of the small packets tucked inside; her precious stocks were getting low, but this would be worth the sacrifice.
‘Take some of this no more than half an hour before the run-through on Saturday; not in water, mind, just a dab on the end of your tongue.’
‘What is it?’
Why tell the girl it was cocaine; and that the last thing it would do was calm her down?
‘A little something even the West End actresses take to deaden the nerves and sharpen performance. Look on it as the first of many stage secrets you’ll learn before the week is out.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
May stepped out of the taxicab. She’d had to raid her motorbike fund for the fare but she’d never have been able to walk to the Causeway in this dress. Besides, despite the dark green velvet cloak she’d also borrowed from Sally, the way the glass beads weighted the silk-georgette so it caressed the outline of her thighs made her feel almost naked.
The house didn’t look any different from its neighbours - tall and mean - the only note of individuality a door knocker in the shape of an anchor. Her sharp rap was answered straight away by a tall figure in an embroidered kimono the colours of a peacock feather. It was when she glanced down at the blue and gold brocaded slippers that May realised it was a man. The light in the hallway was soft but sufficient to reveal he was wearing a rosebud of lipstick, and thick black eyeliner. She’d seen enough cross-dressing on stage to know he was extremely good at his art.
‘Yes?’ His voice was husky and of an indeterminate register.
‘Sadie sent me.’
He turned on racehorse-delicate ankles and beckoned her to follow. Her lilac dance shoes sank up to the instep in carpet. Two flights of stairs with a doorway on the landing between (the facilities he told her) and they were at the main room. He pulled aside a beaded curtain and pressed her lightly on the back to go through.
Blood-red floor-length velvet curtains graced the windows, pierced brass lanterns hung from the ceiling; the walls were covered in paper decorated with dragons, herons, and goldfish so metallic they gleamed. A Japanese lacquered screen inlaid with birds of bright yellow and blue plumage; deeply dyed rugs of various oriental designs; armchairs and couches, and intricately carved rosewood knee-high tables. On one was an ivory figurine of a nude woman draping herself around a tree-trunk, an upraised arm pulling May’s gaze towards the shape of her perfect breasts.
She sank into a deep wicker armchair. It creaked and settled. There was a knock on the front door and a handful of minutes later two women and a man drifted in through the bead curtain. May thought they must have come on from somewhere else, their loose-limbed gait suggesting they were already three sheets to the wind.
‘Fix me a bone-dry martini, Algie, there’s a lamb.’
‘Oh, yes, another, another.’
‘Chinks don’t serve drinks; hey, I’m a poet and I don’t know it. Teetotal, the lot of them.’
The man was not unlike Jack in height and build but he was wearing a double-breasted tailcoat with silk lapels. The bottle-blonde had on a chiffon dress trimmed with lace, and the slimmer, prettier woman, a lemon yellow crêpe de chine gown. May had given her cloak up at the door and felt as out of place as if she’d worn her beaded dress to a ma
tinee at the pictures. At first the others pretended to ignore her, huddling together like children sharing a secret. But then the man walked over, flicked open a gold cigarette case, and held it out.
‘Chandu. Direct from Buenos Aires.’
The cigarettes were impossibly slim, the paper a dusky pink. May declined with the faintest shake of her head. The man lit up.
‘Not seen you here before, have I? Never forget a pretty face.’
The compliment had been thrown away in a puff of smoke.
‘Sadie sent me.’
‘Ah, lovely girl. Lovely, lovely girl...’ His voice grew thick and dreamy. ‘Sure you won’t have one?’ The case was proffered again although this time his thumb was planted over the needle-thin retaining bar. He swept a glance towards the women who were seated on a couch, their shoes kicked off and their legs tucked under them.
May realised that this pantomime was all for their benefit. To make them jealous. But it wasn’t his attentions he wanted them to crave. It was the opium-laced tobacco. A door latch clicked and the kimono-swathed man appeared from behind the lacquered screen. May looked at the size of his feet again and nearly giggled. Inhaling the sickly smoke was beginning to drug her as the frazzling of the opium pellet had in the yen-shi den.
‘Do you wish to be together or separate? There is one apartment free will accommodate you all in comfort.’
‘Together, together. Can’t better a good time with three luscious ladies.’
May felt her stomach turn. Was he proposing some kind of sexual orgy? She stood, the wicker chair creaking once more as it released her.
‘Separate, if you please.’
‘Then as you were first to arrive, I will see you settled. Have you brought your own pipe or do you want to select from our range?’
This was all going too fast. She didn’t want to smoke any opium. What she wanted was to get a look at who it was secreted somewhere beyond the screen.
‘I’m more than happy to wait until you see to these ladies and gentleman. Perhaps I could look at your pipes in the meantime?’
He sashayed across to a mother-of-pearl encrusted cabinet and pulled out a brass-banded domed casket which he placed on the low table in front of her before leading the others from the room.
In it were three opium pipes, in sections like fairies’ fishing rods. The first had a bamboo stem so smooth the knuckles of the grass were merely slightly ridged discolorations, and a glowing amber mouthpiece. The brass bowl was not unlike a tiny upside-down ship’s bell. The second was smaller, slimmer, and May thought of such fine craftsmanship it should be in the window of the most expensive jewellers in London. A dark-wood stem peeped through an intricate lattice of silver filigree. She had to pick it up. The wires were finer than Sally’s thread. It was only when she screwed it to the jade mouthpiece that an image of a dragonfly with lacy folded wings floated up at her. Its head was pointing towards the silver bowl, seemingly wanting to lick the contents. For the briefest of moments she wanted to feel the jade resting between her lips, to suck narcotic smoke from the dragonfly’s belly and feel it come alive. She dismantled the pipe and replaced it in its cradle. The last was ivory. Plain and simple but mounted with gold at its joints. She had an image of Brilliant Chang cradling it in his manicured hands, curling his long fingers towards the bowl. May snapped the lid of the casket shut. The fumes of the man’s Chandu cigarette had softened her mind.
She stood and turned her back on temptation. What was taking the man in the kimono so long? Deciding she would pretend she was trying to find him, May skirted the lacquered screen and went through the door that lay behind.
Soft voices, wordless murmurings, and the unmistakable sound of a woman weeping accompanied her as she walked down the corridor. Her footfalls were lost in the carpet. She reached the window at the end and then turned back. Six doorways. She supposed that behind each door men and women lay wrapped in their opium dreams. Was there an office on the floor above as there had been in Brilliant Chang’s nightclub? Somewhere the owner sat and counted his profits as under his feet his patrons greedily burned through their entire wealth. But there weren’t any stairs back here.
And then the door on her right opened. In the light leaking from a red-shaded lamp, she saw a woman reclining on a divan surrounded by jewel-coloured cushions. The smell of burning opium tickled May’s nostrils and she almost wanted to go inside to fill her lungs with more. A man emerged from behind the door, closing it gently behind him. It was Richard Weatherby. He made to walk past her but she touched his sleeve.
‘Yes, what do you want? If it’s drugs you’re after then go see the man in the dress.’
‘We met in court.’
He looked at her as though it was a variation on a line he’d heard before.
‘I appreciate you don’t recognise me but I’m May Keaps, the coroner’s officer. Miles Elliott...’
‘I’d rather you didn’t mention this to anyone.’ He spoke out of the side of his mouth as if they were being watched. ‘I wanted to talk to you anyway.’
‘And I, you.’
They walked in silence back to the main room. They had seated themselves in opposite armchairs when the kimono man reappeared. May couldn’t work out where he had come from; he hadn’t been in the corridor and the bead curtain across the doorway was undisturbed. He nodded once, and exited behind the screen.
‘Why did you lie under oath?’
‘I had my reasons.’
‘Were you Miles’ dope-runner?’ May didn’t want to waste what was left of her wits on subtlety.
He laughed. A dry croaking sound that was painful to hear.
‘If you knew how absurd such a suggestion is.’
‘I saw you in Three Colt Street cosying up to one of the cocaine sellers, and now I find you coming out of a room in which a woman is smoking opium. It seems a perfectly logical assumption to me.’
‘Do you have any idea who she is?’
‘One of your customers worthy of individual attention?’
‘My sister.’
‘You said she was in Italy.’
‘I lied about that as well. She was in Switzerland. At a clinic. To help her get off drugs.’ He shrugged. ‘And as you can see, it didn’t work. Miles, the bastard, got her hooked. If he wasn’t already dead I’d kill him for that. But he is, so I’ve been forced to settle for the next best thing which is to find out who supplied the shit and take my revenge on them.’
He glanced down at his hands. May could imagine his thick wrists straining as he squeezed around a neck. When he looked up again he had tears in his eyes.
‘And of course bringing Amelia here to get her fix - which she needs more and more often these days. I can’t make her stop, and I can’t let her smoke alone. She no longer knows how much her weakened body can tolerate. So I am like some sort of degenerate doctor dispensing a prescription I know will kill her. But I’ve no choice. And she’s going to die soon anyway. At least this way she’s spared much of the pain.’
May wanted to wrap the bear of a man in her arms. He was now openly weeping, the shame of emasculation nothing compared with the guilt of aiding and abetting suicide.
‘I am so sorry. This must be terrible for you.’
He sniffed. ‘Worse for her of course. She wakes most mornings vomiting - I have to sleep on a cot in her room to make sure she doesn’t choke. Sometimes she is overcome with such tiredness she sleeps wherever she is and whatever she’s doing, like a child. Then there are the nightmares. I wish she wouldn’t but she has to tell me about them; the specialists said that if she can express the horrors then they might diminish in her mind. But I don’t think they do. All about death of course. Decomposing bodies, worms writhing in empty eye sockets, bloated corpses dragged from the river and exploding under the pressure of her fingertip. Every sensation she des
cribes in such great detail because that is how she experiences it in her sleep. Look at me...’ he outlined the bulk of his body with his hands, ‘I’m a man of action, not imagination. I couldn’t make any of that up. It’s what she lives every night and re-lives every day. Now do you understand why I bring her here? On the journey home tonight she will have this dreamy smile on her face and she’ll tell me stories of wizards and magical creatures, unicorns and talking trees. And she will be happy. By God, this fucking poison is the only thing that can stop her suffering.’
May flicked a glance at the casket on the table and hoped that, at least once, his sister had experienced dancing with dragonflies. She pulled herself back. Richard Weatherby had nothing to do with Miles’ death. She wanted to ask what he’d learned from the drug-runners but thought it too cruel in his current state.
He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. ‘Will I be subpoenaed when the inquest resumes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does this have to come out?’
May pictured his sister screaming out her nightmares to the walls of a prison cell and shook her head. ‘Just tell the truth of what you know about Miles. Nobody else need know the rest.’
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that, if his prognosis was right, he’d shortly be having to reveal all of this - and more - at his sister’s inquest.
‘There is one other thing we can do for each other: if you go down and secure me a taxicab, I’ll stand guard outside her door and make sure no one takes in another pipe.’
Richard Weatherby gave a weak smile. His knee joints clicked as he heaved himself up.
‘I’ll be back in a tick. And to save you the trouble, no, the depraved creature in the girly get-up isn’t the one. I’ve been successful in finding out that much.’
***
It was a horse-drawn hansom he’d found her. Like the sailing ships with their masts touching the sky and their bowsprits protruding over the back yards of Millwall, it was a relic of the past that belonged to an age before men and boys were mown down in trenches, and women bled tears for their loss. May sat back on the cracked leather seat and dozed as they clopped through the streets. Occasionally a shout or gale of raucous laughter made her look blearily out of the window at the workers trudging to and from the docks, and the gaggles of Friday night drinkers listing from pub to pub.