“The perfect age.”
“I don’t like him, Mama,” her daughter put in. “He’s sarcastic.”
“Well, maybe a little,” her Mama allowed.
“Surely,” I interrupted, “he can’t be much of a Lord, can he? I mean, where are his lands exactly?”
“Scotland,” both women replied, their research deep and complete. “Along the river Tay, I believe,” Mama added. “That would mean quite a lot of land.”
That didn’t sound quite correct to me. “Perhaps, but what do they grow there? Oats? Barley? Rye? None of those are high yielding crops.”
“It’s probably all rotten,” the girl said, “You know, a lot of subsistence farmers who can barely pay rents.”
“That can’t amount to very much, can it?”
“It adds up,” phlegmatic Mama insisted. “And anyway, one doesn’t marry a Lord for his money.”
“One doesn’t?”
“Of course not.” Her daughter spelled out the life-lesson. “One has the money and then marries the Lord. It would be completely unfair if he were landed, beautiful, sardonic, and rich. What could a girl bring to the table?”
“Well put, Gwen,” her mother agreed.
Somewhat later, before Eugene called me to depart, I found myself playing croquet in a triples team, against the same mother-daughter duo and the Lord.
“Beware those ladies,” I warned Tay under his breath.
“Not to worry. They’ve long ago given up on me,” he said, adding, “Shall we go for a ride on the downs? My cousin’s stable isn’t at all bad, and we might be alone.”
That’s when Eugene showed up, and I promptly said my good-byes.
This second time I was illegally outside the House, going home was a longer journey. Before she rifled my trousers, Vanessa asked what I had learned.
“A very great deal,” I replied and told her some of it.
“Very good,” she agreed. “And who do you think asked me particularly about your whereabouts this coming fortnight?”
I liked guessing games and turned out to be good at this one. “Lord Afton’s son, Ralph. That half-German Baron something or other, Rolf-Heinz. And that arms manufacturer’s heir, what’s his name, don’t tell me—Billingham?”
“Only three?”
“Well, then, a wild guess, also that nephew of Mrs. Prescott-Tay, that Nigel King fellow?”
“Two others, also. But those three are enough for a start once you are on your own again.”
“Lord Tay asked me to ride with him,” I reported. “Would he be number six?”
She didn’t answer then nor later.
We reached the house not an hour before Mrs. Jukes made her own, more ballyhooed, return. By then I was alone again, counting my earnings.
Tiger had rested sufficiently during the fortnight vacation by the sea that her next levee was less of an interrogation of the lads than usual. Instead, she was gracious, she passed out sweets and even discreet little parcels of praise. Clearly, she had looked at the carefully noted record books of her dull young in-law and knew to a penny what earnings had come in.
“It does a lady’s soul good to know that the youth she has worked so assiduously to help in this world have seen fit to recompense that nourishment,” she said generally, before particularising each of the six who had remained behind. Those each received an appropriate compliment, especially Big Joe and myself, who “surpassed expectations and seems to have brought in a profitable new client.”
“How long I can keep that new client is the question.”
“Is there a problem one should know of?” Tiger asked.
“The profitable new client dislikes coming all the way here.”
This wasn’t the first time Tiger had heard this complaint from a lad. She dove into the record book and noted, “Five times in a fortnight. Perhaps an exception could be made if the client sent his own carriage. Is that within the realm of possibility, dear?” I knew this would mean no extra cost for her for Hansom cab fees.
“That was the very offer made,” I said as diffidently as possible.
“And the client is comfortable?” Tiger asked.
“Comfortable enough, Mrs. Jukes.”
“Good. Then we’ll send a card informing him. Perhaps a day before his next promised visit? Anselm, you will see to that.”
And her levee continued.
And so the scene was set and the plan moved forward, slowly, so as to not cause unnecessary alarm, and in a regulated and stately manner, so that even one small deviation would eventually be accepted. That required another five visits to Eugene by his own carriage, until on the fifth such visit, I not only invoked that deviation by staying out overnight, but simply did not return. Moreover, by the time I was missed at one of Tiger Juke’s morning business levees, I was already at Portsmouth Harbour, en travesti as the doubly veiled and somewhat ailing lady known as “Mrs. V. LaBenthe” traveling en suite with Mr. Eugene LaBenthe—Vanessa—and their two servants by packet across the channel to Dieppe.
Naturally Tiger’s man, Michael Aloysius, felt betrayed by this signal turn of events, but well aware of the extremely high temper this would cause in the already volcanic Mrs. Jukes, he dared not say a word of our relations. Nor for a longish time dared he look into that place where he had been helping me stash my earnings. This was a Thameside private postal office that also sold weekly subscriptions to the Metropolitan Transit Line and the omnibus service newly installed in various newer areas of the city. When he did dare try the key to the safety box, he was pleasantly surprised it opened to a note: My best lover ever—I shall miss you dearly and enough sovereigns to keep his mouth shut for the near future at least.
In truth, it was enough that when the clerk-owner of the postal establishment asked if Michael Aloysius was looking for a position, he answered in the affirmative. Despite his relational connection to Folly’s Ditch, he soon convinced his wife to relocate to Lambeth, where he eventually opened his own version of that postal and omnibus office. Those profits allowed a greater scope to her own social ambition, and far better opportunities for shopping. Years later, a substantial woman herself, she would look back at Folly’s Ditch as “that rather dark period of our youth.” Cleverly, she never once asked Michael Aloysius where he discovered or how he had come about this life-changing treasure.
The Tiger raged and tore about for some weeks denouncing me, then came to her senses and all was as before. The other lads were still occupied, and a few, like Digby, had grown into their young manhood with surprisingly solidified good looks. With a little pampering and the right outfitting, he might easily ascend into my former chamber, number six, off the drawing room, and call himself Addison to new clients seeking that boy-paragon.
This paragon returned from the Continent to —— Street, taking up residence as planned in those rooms in the edifice semi-attached to Eugene’s. There, in a matter of weeks, I managed to communicate to those of my previous clients who I still wished to see, and slowly, but with a sure hand—Eugene’s hand for the most part—I amassed a superior clientele, one we had together first envisaged at Gathering Oaks.
It was composed of eligible young men who seemed eternally eligible and their newly-wed acquaintances who found that marrying into wealth allowed them more than enough free time to spend long hours at their club, and eventually, nearby, in my chambers. Nor were more punch and cigar nights at selected clubs exempt. And, of course, house-parties in Sussex and Kent remained a rich field for discovering new clients among the disenchanted and the sensually uncertain. Late night and early morning invasions of their bedrooms by a lost Addison soon discovered which of them were ripe to become regulars.
Lord Tay, “Laurence,” was a recurrent, one might almost say persistent staple of the latter social gatherings, if an increasingly enigmatic one. He certainly had prime opportunities for furthering his fortune. One young lady from Ohio combined blue eyes and brunette hair, taste, excellent equestrian abilities, the usual l
adylike accomplishments, and an enormous endowment. Furthermore, she preferred England and Scotland to America and adored the lean and satiric fellow despite his facial hair. But by the end of that season, he still hadn’t made a move, and she was taken by another—one of my irregular clients who excused his increasingly sporadic visits thereafter by saying, “Difficult to admit as it is, I’m coming to really like my wife. These American girls are so fresh!” Despite that, neither Eugene nor any of his informants could find a “Greek taint” to the curious Scottish Lord, even after a long search.
Intriguingly, one of those house parties yielded a literary personage who became very interested in Eugene while there and was so fascinated by what he discovered that he offered entrée to a loftier sort of club for both Eugene and me.
Xavier Quentin Pell was a very minor poet. Yet because he’d been an Apostle at University, he hadn’t very far to go to have all the connexions a very minor poet of his day and place might require to make his mark. He certainly never had any fiduciary necessity for advancement, being a child of fortune of his time with “intrusted” railroad share dividends to burn. Nor—frankly—had he even a quivering of the aspiration to rise into becoming a Tennyson, a Browning, or even a Swinburne.
But an eccentric Mathematics professor and sometime bedmate-friend of Pell’s at school, named Mr. Dodgson, held a certain unstinting regard for him; Mrs. Meredith giggled when she allowed she simply had to have Pell at her Sunday repasts; the Ruskins insisted he miss far fewer of their intellectual teas than he already had. Besides, being so civil and lightly witty and well spoken, he was so pleasant to look upon, that even I had to admit Pell certainly boded well for a well-bred Englishman at the advanced age of thirty-and-one in the final decades of the nineteenth century.
Ex-Queue, as I quickly came to term him in sobriquet, became a charming addendum to our Addison-Eugene nexus, both socially and in the bedroom. It took Pell some time to understand why Eugene never undressed completely, but then it didn’t really matter to him, since he was as well taken care of as he took care of his amore. He considerably extended our social network, and I began pondering hiring a secretary or some sort of clerk, perhaps only in the mornings, to keep my visiting schedule more tightly in place. I even lackadaisically interviewed one or two apparently down on their luck young fellows who’d had experience in some lesser capacity as clerks, and who clearly seemed daunted by these new surroundings.
It was only when the third lad to show up almost silently admitted he had family in Brick Lane and knew of the Villas Sheen that I really perked up.
The boy was about thirteen or fourteen years of age, and his hands were chapped enough to signify that he had been engaged in manual and not very clean labour for several years. Despite that, he was personally neat and trim, his murkily dark hair was not left uncut overlong, his head and face displayed what Ex-Queue would term “an honest British yeoman.”
“What’s needed here,” I told the interviewee, “is someone who can read and write and keep dates and times in a book, who is also willing to be of general use. Someone who might hail a Hansom, or pre-arrange a carriage, someone who could receive important communications and deliver the same.”
“I believe I can do all that, sir.”
“Often I am visited by gentlemen of high station,” I appended, liking how alertly the lad had spoken up. “My lad must keep everything he sees and hears to himself.”
“I have well learned discretion already, sir. Must where I was brought up.”
I supposed that was so. “You would reside here in the floor below, in a chamber next to those of my friend and neighbour’s manservant and his wife, who is our general cook. She has a female cousin who serves as char for both of our residences. They would provide you with meals and bed linens. They too are unusually discreet, and well paid—as you would be. You might take time off to visit your family, when you are not needed. For example, if I travel to a country residence of my familiars and you should wish to accompany me in those cases, you would be taken care of as usual, along with their own servants.”
The lad looked intelligent and eager, so I dropped a week of visiting cards I’d received and had hastily noted myself with coming appointments and handed the lad pen and ink and paper.
“Can you read my handwriting? Good, then arrange these correctly for date and time of appointment.”
I stepped to the window, so as to not oversee the lad. But the window was shadowed so that I might see by reflection. I was pleased to see the lad roll back his jacket arms and shirtsleeves and then tear off a deckled edge of the paper as an ink-guard. In less than ten minutes, he had arranged the dates and times in a completely regular fashion.
“Very good,” I admitted. “You are neat, too. But I will provide a small record book for you to write in. You are to date each page appropriately whenever an appointment comes in and to ensure that they do not overlap. Every morning, when I ask for my tea, you will also bring the day’s appointments.”
“Might I ask,” the lad pointed to an entry, “what it signifies when there is an Ex and then Queue, like this?”
“That is a friend. Did you also notice two dashes after a name or initials? That means my appointment is not here but outside this flat, and that a Hansom or carriage is needed and ought to be readied a half hour to an hour beforehand.”
The lad ventured a shy smile. All this was within his capability.
“Your clothing is clean but not new. I’ll bring you to an emporium where you will try on two sets of ready-made suit and shirts and etcetera to wear in my service.” I quickly wrote at the bottom of the page an amount of money.
“Is this agreeable as a wage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you do well, it could rise. And if you are good and discreet, my friends might even tip you. Will your family need to see you oftener than I’ve allowed?”
“Not if I’m in good service, like this, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“Thomas, sir. Thom Cullen.”
“Well, Thom Cullen, you are hired on to be my man. Now go downstairs, find your way to the servants there, and fetch me tea and crumpet. And when you have brought it, have both of those for yourself down there.”
“Yes, sir,” said Thom Cullen, as happy to be fed as to be taken on. He half bowed as he left.
There was a moment when I thought: that could have been myself, or my brother Tom some years ago. But that melancholy moment passed.
“Damn me!” I said aloud when I was alone. “I have just turned seventeen years of age, and I am in business and have myself a manservant.”
✥ ✥ ✥
It was Ex-Queue who suggested it. As a prank, he said. It was one of those larks that Pell always came up with after all three of us had pleasured ourselves and each other and were lying about smoking cigarets. Those “fantastickal conceits” often came and went without any issue. This time, however, Vanessa took it up quickly, because as she put it, “Laurence certainly has something coming to him.” The poet had explained that he had it on the best authority Lord Tay had actually attended one of those “séance-table-knocking things,” in the hopes of attaining communication with the defunct heiress he was always going on about.
“With what result?” she asked.
“None.”
“How very disappointing.”
“Yes. Perhaps we should be more productive. We ought to produce her for him,” Ex-Queue said in no uncertain terms, and Vanessa seconded it.
How this was to be done was a weightier question. Knockings and mists were one thing. Producing a memorable event was quite another, and when we three spoke of it, a memorable event was what we believed we must produce.
“Thom Cullen dressed as the Yorkshire Miss?” I suggested.
“Myself dressed as the Yorkshire Miss,” Vanessa replied. “Laurence has never seen me out of men’s clothing and has no idea.”
“We surely can find a roto of the lass from her loc
al newspaper’s obituary and make you up to resemble her,” Ex-Queue said. “Perhaps a garment or decoration similar to hers would add verisimilitude. Sheets otherwise.”
“She will have to be at a distance from the séance table, yet visible,” I opined. “Perhaps in an alcove, nook, or on a dais or…”
“We’d have to do it elsewhere. Nowhere near any of our addresses.”
“There’s a small Odeon closed for years that I know of on property mired in contending lawsuits in Chancery,” Pell said. “I don’t doubt we could rent it for a night at a low rate. It possesses such an alcove.”
“You may have to be the Swami,” Vanessa said to me. “Can you do a proper foreign accent?”
“Yaass, my deeaaah. I cawn,” I replied, remembering how the woman at the onion and mangel stall in Covent Garden spoke. She was, I believed, Herzegovinian. Or Venezuelan. One or the other.
After the third discussion, we agreed to do it. The place was rented for two nights. The first for a rather technical go-through: a mist machine and coloured stage lights were borrowed from the theatre itself. Two sets of draperies were hung thickly, taken from the theatre’s own storage.
We used the chapel-like extension of the original inner lobby, which contained such an alcove. It was originally the tea shop of the place, where theatre-goers might imbibe during the interval. Draped, it made for an intimate space. Naturally, it contained an alcove in front of a stairway. A statue of Erato, probably in the belief that any muse would serve for theatre, was placed on a four-foot stone plinth. The alcove was to be doubly draped. Vanessa would have to move to and from the plinth, covering the statue with drapes and herself be the focus of attention. A cord from those drapes was prepared and nailed in place under a deal table so that I could pull the drapes slowly open and then closed.
One question was whether Thom Cullen would agree to be a participant in the pantomime. When asked, he did agree, with jollity and gusto. As did Vanessa’s own two servants, sober to the point of dourness, who agreed to impersonate other clients who had lost their own loved ones and wished to see them again. They would be dressed in portions of Pell and Vanessa’s cast-off clothing.
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