by Maggie Ford
Once or twice she’d looked up one or two old friends, like Lizzie, and they were friendly enough, but there was now a strained atmosphere that made her realise that she’d moved on, and though she would still see Mum, as was her duty to, she had left her old friends behind. It was sad but life had to go on, and her life was different now.
As for Mum, it no longer mattered what Mum thought of what she did, she would always do her best by her, and she could do that now. She was at last reaping the harvest of all the hard work that being the assistant to a brilliant illusionist entailed. Theo was brilliant, and acclaimed, and she was proud to be at his side. At seventeen she was a capable young woman, as much part of his act as his right arm. She had more money than she’d ever dreamed as he commanded larger and larger fees for each appearance, of which there were plenty. She had lovely clothes, jewellery, and that gorgeous sapphire dress ring he’d given her for her seventeenth birthday. She was being noticed, and now had the elegance Theo’s work expected from her, in fact demanded. Sometimes it did get on top of her. The life of ease she’d imagined went with the luxury of success was a myth. In fact, the higher Theo climbed, the more exacting were his expectations of her.
‘One more slip like that,’ he reprimanded her after a trifling little lapse of concentration on her part this Sunday afternoon, using her hotel room as a rehearsal area, ‘and the whole thing will be ruined, myself demeaned.’
She was livid, as often she was at such times, and there had been many of these over the past seven months.
‘We’ve been at this one illusion for four hours,’ she raged. ‘And I’m tired. My brain isn’t working any more.’
He’d been pacing the room in his own tantrum. He now stopped and swung round to face her. ‘What if this happened on stage?’
‘It won’t! On stage I’ll be fresh. We’re only on for fifteen minutes at a time. Of course I won’t make any slip-up. But we’re not on stage and you’ve been working me all morning. I’m exhausted. I’m bound to make mistakes.’
‘Not with me you don’t, Amelia.’
He had adopted that ominous tone that, while carrying no threat of violence of any sort, had the power to silence her. Her only defence was to appeal to his gentler nature, tears very near the surface, from weariness rather than female weakness.
‘I feel as if I’m being pounded into the ground, Theo. And you’re always changing the routine.’
‘I need to if I intend to stay at the top.’
‘Are we at the top?’ she challenged, eyes moist and glistening.
‘A year from now we will be, I guarantee you that, my dear. And don’t start crying! I need you to get on top of this and apply yourself. Tears will make you useless to me.’
She stifled her emotions. She never cried, not in his presence anyway, no matter how hard he worked her, and he wasn’t going to see her do that now.
‘A lapse of concentration during a mind-reading will spoil the mystery at which I am aiming,’ he was saying, ‘but a mistake during one of my illusions could be dangerous, to you, Amelia, do you understand? You could be injured.’
‘Yes,’ she snapped, hating to give in. But she knew what he meant.
He had developed some startling illusions of late. What had once been simple now called for dexterity from her, agility which she practised every waking hour: how to contort herself into tiny spaces, how to move fast so as to reappear seconds after a concealing sheet was whisked away from where she had been a moment before. He was now using swords in his act, apparently piercing her with them. It was exacting and if she didn’t draw up her body sufficiently, one could draw blood and it would never do for an audience to see that. Never mind her being hurt!
So work went on, seven days a week without respite. Theo’s stamina was inexhaustible. Other than considering timetables, he never seemed to recognise weekdays from weekends.
‘If I worked in a shop,’ she said as he bent to take apart a trick box with its false back, ‘at least I’d have Sunday off.’
‘You don’t work in a shop,’ he said. ‘And you make as much money in one week as a shop girl could make in a year.’
‘I know, but I feel trapped. I feel as though I’m in a prison.’
Standing by the window, she could see over Kensington Gardens. Here, as in all the London parks on this beautiful, sundrenched September Sunday afternoon, people were taking life easy after their working week. How nice it would be to laze under a parasol, the light material of a summer dress spread out around her legs. She had a sudden image of Theo sitting beside her, tenderly holding her hand. Beside them a small picnic would be laid out, or maybe they would be gliding in a boat on the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Instead they were in this stuffy hotel room.
‘You have to let me rest sometimes,’ she pleaded. ‘If you don’t, I’ll end up going mad!’ Perhaps it was the way she glowered at him as he returned her look, but his own glare faded and when he spoke his voice had become gentle.
‘Come here,’ he said quietly. Her frustration melting away, she did as he asked and felt his arms encircle her. His breath was warm on her cheek. It had the usual immediate soothing effect and she found herself relaxing in one way, and in another tensing to the feelings the touch of his breath evoked. Many times over the months he’d held her like this, but never more than this. She was fully aware that he would go no further. It was as if he feared to allow himself that chance but she could almost sense the tension building inside him.
‘Perhaps I am working you too hard, my dear,’ he murmured. ‘Of course you need to rest.’
She didn’t believe him. His idea of resting was hardly ten or fifteen minutes before he was again chafing at the bit. Emma lifted her face to tell him so and without warning his lips closed upon hers, surprising her, his embrace tightening. Through the kiss, came his whisper: ‘You are so young, so innocent.’ There was a pause, and then, ‘so adorable’. The pressure of his lips again bore down on hers, this time even harder.
Since the interrupted moment of love that evening last Christmas, he had never attempted to hold her in this way, but she hadn’t forgotten the feelings it aroused. This time he didn’t pull away sharply as he had that last time. She felt him lift her. She was being carried to her bed and a wave of fear swept through her, not quite knowing why.
‘Theo, no!’ She could hear the fear in her voice. He must have detected it too. He paused, looked down at her for a second, but continued to bear her to her bed. There he laid her down gently while she steeled herself to accept this inevitable culmination of his need, aware that her reluctance came only from an instinctive fear of the unknown.
He had straightened up, to prepare himself, came the thought, and she shut her eyes tight. How would he react should she refuse him? Yet she felt her lips forming silent words: ‘Please, Theo, I don’t feel ready.’
His voice broke through her silent plea, deep, hollow and abrupt. ‘As you wish.’
There was a movement. When she opened her eyes it was to see her door closing behind him, leaving her alone to wonder how much offence he may have taken at her petty show of weakness, but more, why she had felt the need to push him away, miserable now because of a deep sense of a moment unfulfilled, even as she felt relieved that he hadn’t pursued his intentions.
October saw preparations already stepping up in the approach of the Christmas season, major artistes being sought, less important ones growing a little frantic. Jack Simmons was having no trouble finding work for Theo.
They sat in his office, Emma sitting a little to one side as usual while he and Theo discussed some likely opening out of the several on his file. At one point, Simmons let his gaze drift towards her. ‘Does she need to be here, Barrington? She’s getting to be like your shadow these days. Can’t move an inch without her.’
Theo didn’t even follow his gaze. ‘I prefer her with me.’
Simmons chuckled. ‘Don’t like letting her out of your sight, eh? Worried in case she strays, is that it?’
Emma had become accustomed to being discussed by these two as though she wasn’t there, yet it still irked as Simmons continued in a joking vein, ‘Why don’t you marry her, Barrington? With her looks it strikes me it’s the only way you’re going to hang on to her. Otherwise, one day you’ll find her off with someone else. Then where will you be?’
Theodore scowled at him, evading the quip about marriage. ‘Are you implying that my act relies solely on her?’
‘I’m saying she’s so much part of it now and that without her it just wouldn’t quite be the same. My advice? Marry her.’
Annoyed by the flippant exchange, Emma wanted to tell them that it was up to her who she married, though for a while now, half her mind had been toying with the fine sound of being called Mrs Theodore Barrington. So far Theo had never made any mention of marriage, nor had she ever brought the matter up, aware that in everything he judged himself the one to make decisions.
By the time she’d thought about her answer, the conversation had moved on to the run-up to Christmas and the demand for top-quality turns by all the better-class variety theatres, Theo’s mystifying illusions and mind-reading act now topping the bill with other famous names.
Emma gloried in seeing queues outside the theatres they played, ones she and Theo had once played for pennies – less than a year ago. Hard to believe how far they’d come. It was she on whom Theo’s mind-reading act depended, which was worth the hard work, the pounding headaches trying to remember so much, the tears, the arguments, the sleepless nights with numbers and signs marching across her brain. Worth it when the lights dimmed, and in a darkened theatre with haunting music from the orchestra in the pit, Theo moved among the hushed audience, she motionless on the stage, her figure lit by a dim light that turned her green gown – always a green gown – virtually colourless, her auburn hair mysteriously dark so that she looked like a statue, completely still. Eyes turned upward, though like a hawk she was watching his every move, she waited for signals, ears keened to every nuance in tone, where and how certain words were placed, the slightest alteration to voice or body movement. She loved the gasp of the audience, or a woman’s startled, often alarmed cry as she correctly described the colour of the embroidery on the woman’s handkerchief and the design, or repeated the inscription on a ring; a man’s stunned exclamation as the contents of his pocket book were told him from an incredible distance away. Yes, worth it all.
Theo moving among the audience was awesome, but without her apparently ethereal presence up there on the stage, Emma was certain that his act wouldn’t be what it now was. Theatrical pamphlets spoke highly of his act, as well as the lasting impression her beauty left on people who saw her. The latter didn’t please Theo as much as she would have thought – almost as if he was jealous of any praise she might receive. But perhaps she was wrong. She was after all merely his assistant, his employee, and was perhaps in a way stealing his thunder.
With these thoughts in her mind, she sat to one side in Simmons’s office and tried not to feel too annoyed at being discussed by them.
‘We will dine out this evening,’ Theo declared as they returned to the hotel where they were staying. ‘Just the two of us for once. Somewhere special, I think.’ He was being very emphatic. She wondered why.
Mostly they dined out with others, theatre people, a few quite eminent people loosely connected with the theatre, some with real money, and friends, as that host of hangers-on preferred to call themselves, as he had again become an important person to be seen with. He would unwind with them, allowing Emma to see a totally different side of him – talkative, jovial, entertaining, with a laugh that, deep and sudden, exploded and ended before others could begin to join in.
There was always lots of sparkling conversation, a great deal of merriment and easy camaraderie, and high-pitched laughter would ripple around the table if Emma after a drink or two said a wrong thing or her speech slipped. The men with eyes feasting upon her would slap the table while women remarked how delightfully droll had been her misusage of the King’s English, making note of it to repeat to others as their own idea. On the strength of too much wine she even dared to think that some of what she said in error might creep into fashionable idiom. On these occasions Theo either didn’t seem to mind her odd slip of the tongue or was too mellowed by brandy to have noticed.
This evening, however, for just the two of them, Theo had chosen the Criterion in which to dine, in a secluded alcove away from the general hubbub of evening diners, but he was not merry. In fact he seemed in a strange mood. Most of the time he merely picked at his food, was brusque with the waiters whose subtleness could make an evening as pleasant or as difficult as they wished, and seemed to be in a world of his own, consuming far too much brandy for her liking. All she could do was resort either to a trivial, one-sided conversation or like him, eat in silence. It was a relief when he eventually called for the bill and ushered her out into a breezy night.
‘You’re very quiet,’ she remarked as they returned to their hotel by one of those noisy motor cabs that had begun to appear on the streets. Not half as comfortable as hansom cabs, but they got a passenger to his destination much quicker, though the fumes from the engine assaulted the nostrils as never did the warm odour of horse-flesh.
‘I have reason to be, I think,’ Theo replied. As she wondered how she had upset him, he turned abruptly to her. ‘I would like your opinion of the suggestion Simmons made when we were in his office.’
She remembered reference to the several excellent engagements the man had got for him, top billing at the Strand, the first of several fine spots taking him up to Christmas and beyond, one being the Oxford in Oxford Street, another the Alhambra in Leicester Square, and after that the most prestigious one of all, the Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane, set to open for the first time on Christmas Eve, a huge variety house built and decorated in the style of an ancient Roman coliseum, but with a revolving stage, the first one in London, a foyer of granite columns and statues of chariots, and lifts as well as stairways.
‘What suggestion?’ she asked absently.
‘That I marry you.’
Taken aback, Emma’s instant response came in a bubble of laughter. ‘He suggested …’ It was an effort to control the giggle except that it was tinged with indignation. ‘He suggested that you marry me? I always thought that a gentleman asks a girl if she would marry him.’
‘Your opinion of his suggestion is all I have asked for,’ he returned stiffly.
Emma said nothing, but stared ahead, all laughter erased as she fumed at Simmons’s audacity, aware all the time of Theo’s gaze boring into her temples.
When he spoke, his voice was low. ‘I’m sorry if I have offended you, Amelia,’ he said, so sadly that she suddenly realised how deeply her flippant reaction had wounded him.
The remaining few minutes of their journey was spent in silence. He only spoke again to say goodnight on proceeding on to his own bedroom, not even pausing to drop a kiss on her cheek as he usually did.
The withheld kiss bothered her more than she imagined as she lay alone in bed that night. After what she assumed she had been to him this last few weeks, for him to behave this way. She’d been so sure of herself with him, and now this. Suddenly she didn’t feel sure any more. She should have stopped to think before giggling at his awkward proposal; it had been meant as a proposal, and it was never easy for a man to commit himself to a woman. Even at her tender age she instinctively knew that. She had hurt him deeply, and no man can take ridicule, especially a man like Theo, his pride a flaming staff no less. Had she waited a moment longer, suppressed that tipsy giggle, which mistakenly had been made to cover her own ruffled feathers, he might now be lying here beside her, her place beside him assured, her whole future assured. She’d made a stupid mess of it.
Theo had hardly spoken to her for over two weeks. Rehearsals continued as normal, except that he was being almost too careful not to overwork her. It wasn’t like him, and sometime
s it felt as though she was working with a virtual stranger. This Friday, November the fourth, the day before Guy Fawkes’ Night, when she had mentioned a wish to see how her mother was, he offered no protest that she was needed here, not even a frown.
‘As you wish, my dear,’ he said, frigidly, not even looking up from his morning paper. ‘As long as you are back here in time to be ready for tonight’s appearance.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed, her reply equally as frigid, and for good measure, added huffily, ‘I’ve always been on time for the theatre. I don’t mean to change that now.’
He hadn’t answered, going back to his paper, and she had left without kissing his cheek. So now she was alighting from the motor cab outside St Anne’s Church, around eleven-thirty, her face turned towards her mother’s, her mood far from matching the late autumn sunshine that tried to brighten the squalor of Church Row with its tenements permanently smoke-blackened from the Blackwall Railway.
She hadn’t let the cab proceed into Church Row itself. People around here would gawp and Mum wouldn’t have been happy at her advertising her coming to all and sundry.
She hated coming here. It was only filial duty and guilty conscience that brought her, weekly postal orders and notes asking after her mother and always unanswered were not enough. Her visits, few and far between as they were, at least eased her conscience even though Mum would never be reconciled to her work on the stage. Sometimes she’d bring a handbill from the theatre in which the Great Theodore was appearing to show her how respectable and respected he was, but it made little difference. To Mum she was still a girl showing off her legs on the stage. Today would be the same and Emma already knew the reception she would get from Mum. Yet she had to come.
A group of ragged urchins passed her, battling with a squeaking wheelbarrow full of old wood, newspaper, broken bits of furniture, calling out continuously as they went: ‘Throw out yer rubbish!’
Whatever they collected would be added to the bonfire they’d been building for more than a week in readiness for the fifth of November, when a badly made effigy of Guy Fawkes – one they’d taken around propped up on an old chair beside which they’d probably taken up residence outside a butcher’s shop or some other place that saw regular customers, pleading them to give a ‘Penny fer the Guy, missus! Don’t fergit the Guy, sir!’ although even farthings were accepted – would be placed on top of the bonfire, the lot set ablaze to the bangs and shrieks of ha’penny squibs, proceeds of their particular form of begging. Tomorrow night, every neighbourhood would be full of stinking smoke from the burning of mounds of dubious rubbish and saltpetre from the exploding fireworks.
