‘But, as for our Jenny, although she was the prettiest and best-hearted harlot as ever trod Piccadilly, she had no special talent to put to work for her and never saved a penny but give it all to beggars. Her sole capital was her skin alone and what with the funeral and the eviction notice and a drop too much of Ma Nelson’s port, she fell a-weeping “What will become of me?” For she’d no heart to go it alone, after the security and companionship of the Academy. As we were comforting her and drying her eyes, comes a rat-a-tat-tat on the doorknocker and, lo and behold, it’s the telegraph boy.
‘And what have the twanging wires brought her? Why, a husband! For the message reads: “One death brings on another, or so they say, and my wife just dropped anchor in the same port as the Admiral.” (He always called Ma Nelson, the Admiral.) “Jennifer-gentle, be mine in sight of God and Man! Signed, Lord –”’
‘Muck,’ interpolated Lizzie, with a leaden and ironic discretion.
‘Lord Muck,’ agreed Fevvers reflectively. ‘So let us call ’im, for you’d be very much surprised, sir, if I told you his name and you looked him up in Burke’s Peerage. Now, as they say, no two deaths without a third follows. Well, married they were and a very refined affair it was, in St John’s, Smith Square, she in off-white because he’d given out she is a provincial widow. And, afterwards, at the reception, which was held in the Savoy Hotel, nothing but the best –’
‘– he chokes to death on the bombe surprise,’ said Lizzie, and emitted a sudden, fierce cackle, for which Fevvers reproved her with a look.
‘So she comes into thirty thousand a year, a place up in Yorkshire, another in Scotland, and a very nice house in Eaton Square, into the bargain. And our little duck would have been sitting pretty except she was a sentimental soul and grieved a good deal over the departed as, ever the optimist, she’d counted on a long and happy life with the old bugger.’
‘Only a whore,’ opined Lizzie with sudden force, ‘could hope for so much from marriage.’
‘Black did become our Jenny, as she is red-headed, and, in her mourning, she decided to take herself off to Monte Carlo, to have a bit of a flutter at the tables, it being November and bad weather at home and, if she’d a weakness, it was gambling. So she’s sitting at the tables, in black by Worth, wearing only the most reticently widowed of her diamonds –’
‘– when she catches the eye of a gentleman from Chicago who makes sewing-machines –’
‘– you don’t mean –’ interjected Walser.
‘Indeed.’
Walser tapped his teeth with his pencil tip, faced with the dilemma of the first checkable fact they’d offered him and the impossibility of checking it. Cable Mrs – III and ask her if she’d ever worked in a brothel run by a one-eyed whore named Nelson? Contracts had been taken out for less!
Fevvers and Lizzie now sighed in unison.
‘However, I understand this Husband Number Two ain’t feeling any too chipper, these days. Poor girl, one wonders,’ Lizzie intoned, poker-faced, ‘whether all his millions will console her for her loss.’
Fevvers let her left eyelid droop briefly over her left eye.
‘As for Esmeralda,’ resumed Fevvers, ‘she’d tootled away on her flute to such effect that one of Ma Nelson’s regulars, a gentleman in the theatrical profession whom she knew well, chooses this aptest of moments to send a special messenger to say he’d fixed her up with an act in which she charms a snake out of a laundry basket, this snake, as it turns out, being a young man of handsome appearance and preternatural physical agility professionally known as the Human Eel. Esmeralda appearing clad in a tigerskin and Greek sandals for this number. So hers turned out to be a magic flute and this very artistic act has toured Britain and Europe to great applause.
‘And the Human Eel soon contrives to wriggle his way into Esmeralda’s affections to such an extent they’ve now a brace of little elvers of their own, bless their hearts, to which Liz and I stood godmothers, sir.’
‘We two were not left homeless, either. Over the years, Fevvers and I had put all our earnings and our tips into my sister’s business and there was a room ready and waiting for us with her. So there we decided to retreat, where we could “recoil in order to jump better”, as the French say. My sister, Isotta. Best ice-cream in London, sir. Best cassata outside Sicily. Old family recipe. Il mio papa brought it with him. As for our bombe surprise –’
‘Ooops!’ interpolated Fevvers, who, at that moment, by some accident, had contrived to overturn her powder box. What a mess! It took a moment or two to dust the spilled powder off the things on the dressing-table and then it was she herself who continued.
‘So all us girls was fixed up satisfactorily and none of us got a wink of sleep that night, as we was all busy with planning and packing. Once our things were stowed away at last, we foregathered in the parlour to crack the last bottle of Ma Nelson’s port that Esmeralda thoughtfully hid behind the fireguard when that demented Minister bust in. How sad we were to say goodbye to one another and to that room, the repository of so many bittersweet memories and humiliation and camaraderie, of whoring and sisterhood. And, as for me, that room will be ever hallowed in my mind since it was there I first released myself from gravity. We each took a little souvenir to remind us forever of stout-hearted Nelson.’
‘Myself,’ said Lizzie, ‘I took the French clock that always says, midnight, or noon –’
‘– for ain’t it living proof that time stands still, sir?’
And Fevvers opened her great eyes at him, again, with such a swish of lashes that the pages of his notebook rustled in the breeze even if, due to the lateness of the hour, the thick, shining whites of those eyes were now lightly streaked with red.
‘That clock – you’ll find it right there, on the mantelpiece, for we never move an inch without it. Why, I do declare! I must have tossed my knickers over it in my haste to dress for this evening’s show, for it’s quite hidden!’
She stretched one long arm across the room and twitched the voluminous drawers away from the very pretty, old-fashioned clock of her description, with Father Time on top and hands stuck at twelve for all eternity. Then dropped the drawers in a lacy heap on Walser’s lap. The women chuckled a little as he removed them with tactful thumb and fingertips and laid them on the sofa behind him.
‘But, as for me,’ she said, ‘I took my sword, Victory’s sword, the sword that started out its life on Nelson’s thigh.’
She thrust her hand into the bosom of her dressing-gown and brought forth a gilt sword, which then she flourished above her head. Although it was only the little toy sword of a full-dress Admiral, it flashed and glittered in the exhausted light so sharply that Walser jumped.
‘My sword. I carry it about all the time, for reasons both of sentiment and self-protection.’
When she’d made sure he’d noticed what an edge it had, she replaced it in her bosom.
‘At the end of the night, there we clustered like sad birds in that salon and sipped our port and nibbled a bit of fruitcake Lizzie had put up for Christmas but there was no point in keeping it. How sad, how chilly that room! We never bothered to light a fire, after the funeral, so there was only a few nostalgic ashes of yesterday’s sandalwood in the hearth. It was: “Remember this?” and “Remember that?” until our Jenny says: “I say, why don’t we open our curtains and let in a little light on the subject, since this is the last we shall see of this room?”
‘And the curtains had never been opened in all my memory of the place, nor could a single one of the other girls recall when those curtains had last been opened, either, for with those drapes there had been made the artificial night of pleasure which was the perennial season of the salon. But now, with the Mistress of the Revels departed into darkness, it seemed only right and proper that we should give it all back to common day.
‘So we threw open the curtains, and the shutters too, and then the tall window that opened above the melancholy river, from which came off a chill yet bracing wind
.
‘It was the cold light of early dawn and how sadly, how soberly it lit that room which deceitful candles made so gorgeous! We saw, now, what we had never seen before; how the moth had nibbled the upholstery, the mice had gnawed away the Persian carpets and dust caked all the cornices. The luxury of that place had been nothing but illusion, created by the candles of midnight, and, in the dawn, all was sere, worn-out decay. We saw the stains of damp and mould on ceilings and the damask walls; the gilding on the mirrors was all tarnished and a bloom of dust obscured the glass so that, when we looked within them, there we saw, not the fresh young women that we were, but the hags we would become, and knew that, we too, like pleasures, were mortal.
‘Then we understood the house had served its turn for us, for the parlour itself began to waver and dissolve before our very eyes. Even the solidity of the sofas seemed called into question for they and the heavy leather armchairs now had the dubious air of furniture carved out of smoke.
‘“Come, now!” cried Esmeralda, never one to mope. “What say we give the good old girl a funeral pyre like the pagan kings of old, and cheat the Reverend out of his inheritance, to boot!”
‘Off she runs to the kitchen and comes back with a can of kerosene. We all make haste to shift our bits and bobs out on the lawn, clear of the conflagration, and then we ritually anoint the walls and portals of the old place with oil, sir. Thoroughly soak the cellars, drench the damned beds, douse the carpets.
‘Lizzie, as she had been the housekeeper, sought for herself the last task of tidying up – she struck the match.’
‘I wept,’ said Lizzie.
‘We girls stood on the lawn and the morning wind off the river whipped our skirts about us. We shivered, from the cold, from anxiety, from sorrow at the end of one part of our lives and the exhilaration of our new beginnings. When the fire had fairly taken hold, off we went, Indian file, clutching our bundles, up the towpath, until we got to the main road and found a rank of sleepy cabbies under the Tower only too pleased to see custom at that hour in the morning. We kissed and parted and went each our separate ways. And so the first chapter of my life went up in flames, sir.’
THREE
‘What a long drive it was to Battersea! But such a welcome when we got there, the little nieces and nephews jumping up from the breakfast table to throw their arms around us, Isotta running to put fresh coffee on! A little, old-fashioned family life did not come amiss to either of us, after so long of the other kind, and we’d help out in the shop; I would turn the crank of the ice-cream machine in the mornings while Fevvers, discreetly shrouded in a shawl, would man the counter.’
‘Hokey pokey penny a lump.
‘The more you eat the more you jump –
‘I love to be among the little children, sir! How I love to hear their prattle and their little voices lisping merry rhymes! Oh, sir! can you think of a more innocent way of earning a living, than to sell good ice-cream at modest prices to little children, after so many years of selling tricks to dirty old men. Why, each day in that white, well-scrubbed, shining ice-cream parlour was a positive purification! Don’t you think, sir, that in heaven we shall all eat nothing but ice-cream?’ Fevvers smiled beatifically, belched, and interrupted herself: ‘Here, Liz . . . is there a bite left to eat in the place? I’m starved, again. All this talking about meself, sir; Gawd, it takes the strength out of you . . .’
Lizzie peered beneath the napkin in the basket, but found nothing except dirty crockery.
‘Tell you, what, love,’ she said, ‘I’ll just slip out to the all-night cab-stand in Piccadilly for a bacon sandwich, shall I? No, sir! put away your money. Our treat.’
Lizzie briskly slipped a jacket of grey, disturbingly anonymous fur over her dress and speared a queer little, still little round black hat to her cropped head with a savage pin. She was still fresh as a daisy. She tossed Walser a gratuitously ironic leer as she ducked out of the door.
Now Walser was alone with the giantess.
Who fell silent, as she had done the first time Lizzie left them alone together, and turned back to the inverted world of her mirror, in which she stroked an eyebrow as if it were imperative for her peace of mind that she set the hairs in perfect order. Then, perhaps hoping their scent would refresh her, she pulled her violets dripping from the jam-jar and buried her face in them. Perhaps she was tiring? After she’d imbibed whatever virtue she might obtain from her violets, she yawned.
But not as a tired girl yawns. Fevvers yawned with prodigious energy, opening up a crimson maw the size of that of a basking shark, taking in enough air to lift a Montgolfier, and then she stretched herself suddenly and hugely, extending every muscle as a cat does, until it seemed she intended to fill up all the mirror, all the room with her bulk. As she raised her arms, Walser, confronted by stubbled, thickly powdered armpits, felt faint; God! she could easily crush him to death in her huge arms, although he was a big man with the strength of Californian sunshine distilled in his limbs. A seismic erotic disturbance convulsed him – unless it was their damn’ champagne. He scrambled to his feet, suddenly panicking, scattering underwear, grazing his scalp painfully on the mantelpiece.
‘Ouch – excuse me, ma’am; the call of nature –’
If he got out of her room for just one moment, was allowed, however briefly, to stand by himself in the cold, grimy passage away from her presence, if he could fill his lungs just the one time with air that was not choking with ‘essence of Fevvers’, then he might recover his sense of proportion.
‘Piss in the pot behind the screen, love. Go on. We don’t stand on ceremony.’
‘But –’
‘GO ON.’
It seemed he must not leave the room until she and her familiar were done with him. So he humbly stepped behind the screen to direct the brown arc of the excess of her champagne, as bidden, into the white china pot. The act of engaging in this most human of activities brought him down to earth again, for there is no element of the metaphysical about pissing, not, at least, in our culture. As he buttoned his fly, earthiness reasserted itself all around him. The dressing-room suddenly sizzled with the salt, savoury smell of fried bacon and a hand holding the brown teapot appeared around the screen and upended the cold contents into Fevvers’ dirty bath-water, on the scummed, grey surface of which the last deposit of tealeaves already floated. When he emerged from behind the screen the passage door stood open and a welcome draught freshened up the crusted air. The room echoed with the melody of running water and the chink of the plumbing as Lizzie refilled the kettle at the tap in the passage. Walser sighed with reassurance.
‘Hark!’ said Fevvers, raising her hand.
On the soundless air of night came the ripple of Big Ben. Lizzie slammed the door as she came back to put the kettle on the hissing stove; the mauve and orange flames dipped and swayed.
Big Ben concluded the run-up, struck – and went on striking.
Walser relapsed on the sofa, dislodging not only a slithering mass of silken underthings but also the concealed layer of pamphlets and newspapers that lay beneath them. Muttering apologies, he bundled together the musky garments, but Lizzie, chattering with rage, snatched the papers from him and stuffed them away in the corner cupboard. Odd, that – that she did not want him to examine her old newspaper.
But, odder still – Big Ben had once again struck midnight. The time outside still corresponded to that registered by the stopped gilt clock, inside. Inside and outside matched exactly, but both were badly wrong.
H’m.
He rejected a bacon sandwich; the strips of rusty meat slapped between the doorsteps of white bread seemed to him for dire extremities of hunger only, but Fevvers tucked in with relish, a vigorous mastication of large teeth, a smacking of plump lips smeared with grease. Lizzie passed him a fresh mug of black tea for him to burn his gullet with. Everything aggressively normal about all this, except the hour.
The food put fresh heart into the aerialiste. Her backbone firmed up and she
began to glow, again, quite brightly, as she wiped her mouth once more on her sleeve, leaving behind shining traces of bacon fat on the grubby satin.
‘As I was saying,’ she resumed, ‘we lived for a while at Isotta’s in Battersea amid all the joys of home. And, an especial joy – we were just a hop and a skip and a jump away from the good Old Vic at Waterloo where, at very reasonable prices, we perched up in the gods and wept at Romeo and Juliet, booed and hissed at Crookback Dick, laughed ourselves silly at Malvolio’s yellow stockings –’
‘We dearly love the Bard, sir,’ said Lizzie briskly. ‘What spiritual sustenance he offers!’
‘And we’d take in a bit of opera, too – our favourites, sir? Why –’
‘Marriage of Figaro, for the class analysis,’ offered Lizzie, deadpan. Fevvers’ hearty laughter did not quite conceal her irritation.
‘Oh, Liz, you are a one! As for me, sir, I’ve a special fondness for Bizet’s Carmen, due to the spirit of the heroine.’
She subjected Walser to a blue bombardment from her eyes, challenge and attack at once, before she took up the narrative again.
‘So there we were, in Battersea; happy days! but a fearful cold winter came on with very little call for ice-cream and Gianni –’
‘– Isotta’s husband, my brother-in-law –’
‘– Gianni’s chest got very bad. They having the five little ones and another in the pot, with trade going so bad, we were hard put to manage, I can tell you. Then the baby fell sick and would take no nourishment and we was all crazed with worry.’
‘One morning, the elder kiddies at school, Gianni out on business in the freezing November fog, poor soul, with his cough, Isotta upstairs grieving over the baby, myself in the kitchen chopping candied peel, Fevvers in the room behind the shop teaching the four-year-old her letters –’
‘Though I know I should have no favourites among them, and truly, I love them all as if they was my own, well, my Violetta . . .’