Paddington Green, page 28
When her hack at last drew up outside her little house by the Green she had no difficulty at all in removing her thoughts from him, for almost before she had paid the man Frederick was running down the path, a blanket clutched around him and his bare legs peering out from beneath his nightshirt, crying, ‘Oh, Mamma, Mamma! I am so glad you are home! We have been so worried about you. And it is a matter of such urgency—’
‘What has happened?’ In a sudden access of alarm, she took Frederick by the shoulders and pulled him close to look at him in the light thrown from the open door of the house, brushing the red hair away from his forehead, but he pulled away impatiently and dragged her up the path.
‘It is not me, Mamma! I am in perfect fettle! It is Phoebe—and her father and brother! They are here—Phoebe’s Papa says it is a matter of such urgency—do come, Mamma!’
She dropped her bonnet and mantle into the waiting Ellie’s arms and Frederick led her to the door of her little sitting room, he with his finger to his lips in an exaggerated warning to be quiet, and she followed him in, hardly able to understand what was happening so bewildered was she to have such a welcome added to the fatigue that so filled her and indeed threatened to overcome her.
Phoebe was lying outstretched on the little sofa, her head pillowed on one outflung arm, and her feet protruding from beneath the white shawl that had been thrown over her. Curled up on the rug before the dying fire lay Oliver, his head buried in his arms so that only his tousled head could be seen.
‘Oh, Mamma, she is so tired!’ Frederick said in a piercing whisper and crept carefully across the room to stand beside Phoebe and look down at her, his whole face alight with adoration. ‘Do but look, Mamma, how soundly she sleeps!’
‘Thank God you are here!’ Jonah came swiftly across the room from the window embrasure, where he had been standing staring out into the darkness, and she looked at him and narrowed her eyes trying to see him clearly, but she was so tired that her vision was blurred and she had to rub her eyes before she could see him properly. And when she did, her heart sank, for he looked so distraught that he seemed to have shed pounds of flesh from his handsome face since she had last seen him, only a few days before. His face was gaunt and tight, the lines running from his nose to the corners of his lips as deepcut as though they had been there for ever.
‘I did not know what to do, Abby! I could not leave them there with those stupid servants, could I? And anyway, they must deal with customers—and I must look for her, I must, for anything could have happened, she is in so strange a mood these days, and I am frantic with concern for her—and I could not leave the children, so I brought them here to you, and then you were not here, and though your servant said she would watch over them, I could not leave them till you came— you have been so long!’
‘Jonah, you must quiet yourself! Whatever has happened, it will not be aided by your getting into such a state of nerves! Now sit you down, and take a glass of wine and tell me quietly what’s amiss.’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘It is Celia—’
He looked over his shoulder at his sleeping children and then dropped his voice. ‘It is Celia. She went out at some time this afternoon, and did not return! I can get no sense from the servants and Betsy says she knows nothing, when clearly she does, and I am afraid that there is some harm befallen her—’
Abby shook her head, bemused. ‘But what time did you reach here, Jonah? It is only nine o’clock now! She cannot have gone so far! She will be at home, I am sure, and wondering with equal anxiety where you have taken the children on so raw a night!’
He shook his head and seized her hands and said urgently, ‘I know I am right to be so worried, Abby! You do not know her! She has never been absent from the supper rooms in the evening, not in all the years we have been there! She believes that none but she can supervise matters. She trusts no one! For her to be away at this time—it is most unusual! I am so very worried!’
She looked at him for a moment, and then nodded decisively. ‘Very well, Jonah,’ she said calmly. ‘If you believe you have cause to be concerned then I share your concern. Now, what do you wish me to do?’
‘The children,’ he said at once. ‘Will you keep them here? The servants at the supper rooms are all dealing with the customers, and the performance—I could not safely leave them there. Please to keep them here with you until such time as I find Celia—’ his voice faltered, and then went on in a little rush. ‘Until I find her and take her home. You have your governess here to help, and I hoped you would not find it too great an imposition.’
‘Miss Miller is away from home this evening. She has gone to a theatre. But Ellie and I can manage. We will put them to bed, and then you can go and seek your Celia. And start your search at home, dear Jonah. I have no doubt she will be there by now and most put about to find you have taken the children out so late! Come, take a glass of brandy and we will seek a hack for you to send you back to town and the children shall sleep.’
‘No, no brandy. But I will help you put the children to bed—’ he said, turning back uncertainly but she shook her head and firmly pushed him away towards the hall and sent Ellie to fetch his coat and hat and urged him to the door.
‘You will find a rank of hacks waiting there beside the terminus where Shillibeer’s omnibuses turn round,’ she said. ‘Send word to me tomorrow about what has happened. And do not worry about the children! I shall have good care of them.’
He stopped for a moment, and then took his hat off and bent and kissed her cheek most fervently.
‘You are the best and kindest of sisters, Abby. My life would be quite insupportable without you, I think.’ And then he was gone into the darkness, leaving her to close the door behind him and set about putting the sleeping children to bed.
And when she and Ellie had managed to undress the sleepily complaining Phoebe and settle her in the little room that abutted Miss Miller’s, and with Frederick’s eager help had managed to undress Oliver (who did not wake throughout their ministrations) and dragged him to share Frederick’s own bed, she went to her own room almost in a state of collapse.
She undressed, and bathed in the big japanned tin tub Ellie had set ready for her in front of the blazing coals, letting the hot water float away the fatigue and confusion of the day. It was not until she was out of her bath and wrapped in the big white bath sheet that Ellie brought it to her.
She had come in straining under the weight of a big scuttle full of coals, and set it down and began to collect the bath things ready to take them away, when she tutted, and said awkwardly, ‘Oh, madam! I’m so sorry, I’m sure, but in all the excitement this evening, it was fair thrown out o’ my mind! There was Mr Gideon here most of the day, fit to bust with questions about where you was an’ everything an’ wouldn’t take any bite nor refreshment apart from a single dish o’ tea, though I offered it often enough, I promise you, and then he ‘ad to go and fair put about ’e was. But ’e left this for you, madam, and said as I was to give it to you the instant you came in, and there’s me gone and forgot! I’m that sorry, madam, but it ‘asn’t been what you might call an ordinary sort of an evenin’, ‘as it? I’m that sorry—’ And she pulled from the pocket of her voluminous apron a large squarely-folded piece of thick paper.
Abby waited until the girl had at last gone, taking the bath and its paraphernalia with her, sitting there wrapped in her bath sheet before the fire and letting the warmth dry her. And then when at last she was alone she released her arms from the enveloping folds and, moving slowly and very deliberately, broke the small seal, unfolded the letter and began to read.
‘My dearest Abby. I am nearly frantic about you! Where are you? They said at the manufactory that Henry Sydenham had come and you had gone out, and they knew no more. I have sent a message to Henry to see if he knows where you are, but have had no reply as yet.
‘Dear, dearest, Abby, I do love you so very much! You know that, and I need not tell you, but what has need to do with it? I want to tell you, I must tell you and I wait only for you to tell me of your feelings. For you cannot dissemble longer. I know as any man who loves must know that you love me as I love you. I saw you there in the gallery with the light of the candles about your head like a nimbus and I knew the light came from within you. It was as though you spoke to me in loud words, shouting to me from the gallery that you knew what was in my heart. And I know what is in yours. I am certain of it. I am sure this letter is disjointed, indeed stupid, but I am so beset with anxiety, and with need for you. Please, as soon as you return send a message for me! I must see you. You cannot know how much I need to be with you. Dear Abby, I love you so very much—’
He had signed it simply with a capital letter G, a brief and sharp scrawl of a line as though he could write no more, as though his feelings had suddenly overcome him. And she folded the letter slowly, immaculately returning it to its original folds, and stood up and went to fetch her nightgown, lying ready on her bed, dropping the bath sheet on the floor beside her chair.
As she passed the cheval glass that was set between the heavily curtained windows she stopped and turned and looked at herself, almost shyly at first and then with a curiously abstracted sort of gaze, as though she were looking at someone quite different, not herself at all.
She saw a sturdy body with long hips and a slightly soft rounded belly, a little stretched from Frederick’s birth, but not unduly so; her breasts were full and a little dependent, but again not unduly so. With her heavy brown hair unbound and lying in heavy sheets on her shoulders she looked young and yet mature, with a sort of sumptuousness about her, and she knew herself to be desirable and desirous.
But it had been ten years since she had shared her body with anyone, ten years since it had been anything more than a shell in which she moved and lived and worked. As a source of happiness, of contentment, of any sort of pleasure, it had been as nothing. And remembering how she had been with James, so long ago, she mourned a little for the waste of it, for the knowledge that no man would ever share that soft voluptuousness with her; for there was only one man she could share with. And he she could not have.
25
He had felt he must take his sister’s advice, even though deep in his mind he knew she would not be there. So he had ordered the hack to carry him back to King Street and gone in to stand at the back of the crowded supper room looking about him for signs of her presence; but without any real hope.
The place was as smoky and reeking and noisy as ever when he came in but no one paid him any attention for Norah Norton was up on stage, resplendent in crimson tights and silver spangles with five inches of heavy silk fringe hanging from her low-cut bodice, and leading them all in a raucous chorus of’ ’E’s got the biggest, busiest, ’eaviest one in all of Seven Dials!’ a lubricious song about a man who owned a donkey, and hearing it made Jonah’s gorge suddenly rise.
To think that he had spent so many of his years here, listening to songs like this; to think, heaven help him, that he had rehearsed Norah Norton in this very ditty, had shown her how to place the emphasis so that the audience were encouraged to remain good-humoured enough to join in. He who had called himself a poet, who had written the dramas and polemics he once had, to be so brought down!
And she, Celia; hadn’t it been this place that had changed her, too? Looking about at the red-faced beer-swilling men and their women, bedecked in colours as garish and as ill-matched and bespangled as any ever seen on the stage, he was quite sure it had. Working so relentlessly all these years had made him weak and useless and had dimmed the passion he had once had to make his pen the weapon he knew it could be. Could it not have made her so secret and remote and frighteningly strange?
She was not here, and he knew it, but he looked dutifully for her, moving among the tables and the food and drinks being carried head high by the servants; going into the kitchen and the store-rooms to see what was happening there, but they all shook their heads at him when he asked if any had seen their mistress and made expressive faces at each other behind his back as he passed.
He escaped into the chill of King Street almost gratefully, although he was still heavy with fear for her. Quite where he intended to look he did not know, but look he must and he set out at a brisk pace, walking towards Bedfordbury and then veering along New Row towards St Martin’s Lane. His long legs covered the ground swiftly and as he walked with his head up and his shoulders held very straight the capes of his coat swung about him, and many of the women of the town who passed him ogled and whispered, for he was a well set-up man in every way. But he did not notice them at all, letting his eyes move as they would over the milling crowds, past glaring cookshop windows and pavement sellers’ smoky flares and the heedless plunging traffic.
Quite when the notion came into his head he was not quite sure; but there it suddenly was, and when he found himself crossing Leicester Fields, keeping close to the centre of the road for fear of the thieves and pickpockets who were known to congregate in the subfusc shadows there under the stunted trees, he moved purposefully onwards towards the top of the Haymarket and turned sharply left into its garish hubbub.
He hesitated for a moment outside the theatre, staring at the big entrance door, and then shook his head almost imperceptibly and turned back to go plunging into the dark recesses of Orange Street. If she had come here she would not behave like any gawping outsider. She who had always been part of this theatre would use the stage door as of a right, as she had all through her childhood. And he too felt that he had the same right, and went so quickly in through the little badly lit stage door that the old man who was responsible for it hardly noticed him go by.
The smell hit him almost like a physical blow. He had forgotten that mixture of heavy odours, of unwashed bodies, paint and dust and spilled beer and mutton pies and paint. He had forgotten the way cold air could suddenly come hissing round corners and go creeping along at floor level to chill his legs with a sudden cruel swirl. And he had forgotten the sense of expectancy that filled that cold air, as actors and wardrobe women and carpenters and all the other hangers-on went hurrying along the walkways between the scenery towards the noise of the distant stage.
He followed one such hurrying figure, moving through the darkness with an ease that he took for granted; it was surprising how much he had learned in those few months he had spent here in this theatre, all those years ago. He was thinking of that, feeling the weight of the intervening ten years on his back, and became so abstracted that when he did reach the wings it came almost as a surprise.
He stood there blinking in the blazing light, feeling the heat of the great gas flares above him coming down on his head, the waves of sluggishly moving air that came out into the wings from that vividly lit plain that spread before him, and he unbuttoned his coat for he felt almost stifled now though his legs still felt the chill draughts that were whistling in from the distant scene dock doors.
There was a sudden roar of laughter, as huge and as solid as a wall, and he almost flinched at the sound and blinked again and behind him someone muttered, ‘Get out of the way, you fool—’ and he was pushed aside against the painted canvas flat as a bewigged man in a costume dripping with lace, his legs obviously padded under his scarlet hose, went skipping past him on to the stage to be greeted by another roar from the unseen audience.
‘What are you doing here?’ a voice croaked at him. He turned his head to see a face that was vaguely familiar and he racked his memory for a moment to place it; and then said gratefully, ‘Castleton! It is Mr Castleton, isn’t it?’
The almost bald man with the scowling face who was standing there staring at him frowned even more heavily and said, ‘What if it is?’
‘Don’t you remember me? Lackland? I’m Jonah Lackland. I—you knew me. Ten years ago, near enough—’
The man sniffed and stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Can’t say as I do. Can’t say as I want to either. And whether you were here or not ten years ago, you’ve no damned right to be here now. So sling your hook. Go on, out of it. We don’t want any snoopers of your sort here—’
‘I’m not spying,’ Jonah said at once. ‘I’ve nothing to do with the theatre any more. Not the legitimate theatre, that is. I’m not trying to make any capital here, I promise you.’ He knew enough about the rivalries of the London theatres to understand the man’s obvious suspicion, and as he moved closer, clearly intending to set hands on him and hustle him out he added almost despairingly, ‘You must remember me! I was a friend of Lilith Lucas! It is Lilith’s daughter I am here to seek!’
Another roar came from the audience as the man in red tights shouted some comic line and capered briefly, Castleton stopped and peered even closer at Jonah and then very slowly nodded his head so that the hairless skull shone greasily in the light, and suddenly he opened his mouth to laugh, revealing blackened stumps of teeth.
‘Yes—yes, I remember! Lackland, that’s it. One of Madam L’s bits of fun. And then went and ran off with her daughter! Oh, yes, I remember.’ He laughed again. ‘There was plenty of talk about it too. To think you’d want that little dab of a piece instead of her Ma! It set the lot of ’em into whoops!’
‘I am looking for my wife,’ Jonah said stiffly. ‘I—we—arrangements made for us to meet went awry, and it—it occurred to me she might be here.’
‘Gone to Grosvenor Square, then,’ Castleton said confidently. ‘That’s where she’ll be. Grosvenor Square. Number 25. Under the circumstances it’s natural enough, hell’s bitch though she is—’
There was a sudden roar of applause from the stage behind them and a heavy rumbling as the curtain came thudding on to the boards, muffling the audience’s noise for a moment, and the actors came hustling off to primp in the big mirror set just within the wings before going sweeping on again to take a bow as the curtain once more swooped and rose to the noise of cheers and clapping hands. Jonah, pushed out of the way by the hubbub as sweating scene-shifters made way for the actors again coming off as the curtain fell, called above the noise, ‘Castleton—where did you say? Gone where? And why?’
