And he was gone.
Eventually the police gave up any hope of a second audience and left.
Henry used his key and walked into the kitchen.
They had found a body that afternoon, bumping up against one of the cutwaters of the Salt and Pepper bridge. Middle-aged. Male. As yet unidentified.
Headless.
TWO
LONDON, 1847
THIS IS LIFE FROM KNEE HEIGHT. YOU WAKE IN THE DARK beneath woolen blankets. You don’t often see stars and there is no moon. Nonetheless you know and feel the damp on the plaster walls of your little room glistening like silver. You know it is half past four in the morning. Your mother’s door has just opened.
Millicent’s mother opens her door, pokes her head in on the way past, and says, “Time for work, cherub.”
You let out your first real breath of the day and blink a few times. You reach out from under the blankets for the damp cloth your mother leaves there. A few mornings your eyes were stuck together with sleep. You were scared, but you didn’t panic, and your mother wiped your eyes open with warm water and a washrag. Now she leaves one there every night, as a habit.
The rag on your face is sharply cold, and it wakes you up.
There is a clank from downstairs as Millicent’s grandfather fills the kettle. Millicent puts the rag back on the side table and gets out from under her bedcovers.
This is life from knee height. You spend your day with spindle and ribbon making silk roses for ladies’ hats, while your mother holds pins for the mantua maker or offers advice on hosiery and jewelry and shoes.
Millicent has a stool and a table far out the back. When her mother can, she smiles and waves as she walks by, swags of bright material folded over her arm.
Your grandfather is your best friend, and you are your mother’s dream diary. She talks to you as she might talk to herself. You sit, and you listen, and if she should happen to become weepy you hold her hand and tell her Father will be home someday.
You are back under your woolen blankets, and the damp on the walls glistens like silver. Downstairs Mama and your grandfather—Papa—talk in low voices, because it is dark now, and they are drinking tea. You close your eyes and all you can see are silk roses.
Millicent wakes. It is dark. She knows she has not been asleep very long. She wonders for a moment why she is awake, and then she knows. Mother has just called her name.
Millicent pushes the heavy covers away and touches her bare feet down upon the cold boards. She rubs her eyes and uses both hands to open the door. She walks down the landing and stands at the top of the stairs.
You are looking down from the top of the stairs into the front room. It is like a portrait of sorts, everyone in their pose.
Mama’s white hands are clasped to the bib of her nightgown. You have never seen her smile like that. You want to hold her hand. On the other side Papa looks as though he might become angry. His bottom lip is pushing up toward his nose and his arms are crossed.
They are both looking at the gentleman at the bottom of the stairs who is smiling softly at you, one ringed hand on the banister, his hat in his hand.
“Hello,” he says, taking one careful step toward you.
Mother wipes her eyes quickly and says, “Millicent, say hello. This is Dorian, your father.”
Millicent is hoisted out of the carriage and placed gently upon the ground. Her new shoes click crisply upon the cobbles, and her new dress still itches. Dorian takes his wife by her white-gloved hand and assists her from the carriage. She smiles uncommonly wide, her eyes almost disappearing, and she presses herself close to this man. It makes Millicent feel strange to see her mother behaving this way.
“Tonight was wonderful,” Mama confides, scrunching her shoulders to her ears ever so briefly. “I cannot recall the last time I had a theater party.” They had eaten early in order to get to the play on time. Millicent had three extra cushions placed upon her chair so that she could reach her plate, and the room had been full to the brim with ladies dressed in things soft and sparkling, and men who were all straight lines and mustaches. People had glanced discreetly at them, for Millicent was the only child in the room. That a husband and wife would bring their child to dine at a club was decidedly uncommon, but Dorian was unfazed—smiling generously at anyone hapless enough to have their gaze apprehended—and Mama had giggled at the brashness of her husband and the novelty of it all. Everyone there was so bright, and dressed so neat and so fine…more elegant even than Mrs. Sutcliffe, and Millicent had seen her buy five hats all on the same day. There had been music, proper music, played by people with real instruments. The food was nice but Millicent hadn’t been able to look away from the violins. It had grown something warm inside her, and filled her head with light. When the time came to leave she had been almost unable to bear it.
“What did you think of the pheasant,” Dorian asks her, bending at the waist and straightening the shoulders of her dress. His breath plumes about her face.
“It was very nice. Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you, Father,” Mama corrects, midfuss and wrist-deep in her purse.
“Thank you, Father,” says Millicent.
Mama takes the heavy key from her purse, climbs the few stairs to their door, and opens it. She enters their narrow house, singing. Papa is in the kitchen, at the table by the stove, nursing a mug of tea. “Home, then,” he says.
Mama kisses him heavily upon his thin-skinned cheek and the old man doesn’t react. “It was wonderful,” she says again.
“You must come with us next time, Papa,” Dorian says, placing his low-crowned hat upon the table.
“Now that you’re back,” Papa says, his chair squeaking upon the stone, “I’ll be a-bed. Good night, Mary.” He kisses his daughter on her cheek. “And good night to you, Miss Millicent Mumble.” He leans down and presses his lips to Millicent’s forehead. They’re cold, and his touch is whiskery, and it makes her smile. “You look beautiful,” he confides, just between them.
Dorian laughs generously. “How on Earth did you come to call her that?”
Millicent’s grandfather stands straight, chin up. Millicent catches a glimpse of him as a younger man, hard-chested and strong. “She would talk in her sleep, as an infant. It were a sweet sound. Not something a man wouldn’t treasure now.”
Dorian’s response is not quick, and for Millicent it is like watching someone stumble in the street. Mama wears a smile as she clasps her husband’s hand supportively, and shrugs her shoulders to her ears once more as though there were too much joy at his presence to be contained.
It makes Millicent anxious. She looks to her grandfather. “Will you tuck me in, Papa?”
“Oh no, Millicent!” Dorian exclaims. “Not tonight. Tonight you may stay up with us.” Dorian sweeps her up. “And we’ll have cocoa, and talk about all the things we shall change about this house. You’ve no objection now, do you, Papa?”
The old man sighs, takes his candle, and walks through the door, toward the stairs. “Good night all.”
“Good night, Papa.”
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Mama says and takes the remaining candle into the pantry to look for chocolate, leaving Dorian and Millicent in the kitchen by the light of the stove’s open door.
“You’ve been very reserved, young lady,” Father says. He smells like cigars, too, and the perfume he wears makes her nose wrinkle. “Do you not like your new shoes and dress? Wasn’t the play so very fine? Have you never eaten so well? And there’s so much more to come yet. I’m a man of means, my little one, and there’s nothing shall be denied you.”
“I’ve had a very nice time, thank you, Father.”
“Millicent,” Dorian says, quietly, looking to the pantry where Mama’s light is still flickering off the assembled jars and tins. “Do you not like me?”
“Sir…Father,” she says. “If I might be very forward…”
“Yes, Millicent?”
“Who are you?”
/> Dorian blinks, remaining still like someone who has heard something he does not understand, or who has been caught in a lie.
Mama reenters, waving the chocolate tin. “I’ve found it,” she says, and tends to the stove. Father puts Millicent back down, stands, and offers to draw water.
Water splashing into the kettle, he sings to himself.
Nelly Bly! Nelly Bly! Bring the broom along,
We’ll sweep the kitchen clean, my dear,
And have a little song.
Poke the wood, my lady love
And make the fire burn,
And while I take the banjo down,
Just give the mush a turn…
Mama laughs to herself. “Whatever is that nonsense you’re singing?”
Father smiles politely, placing the kettle upon the stove. “Something I picked up on my travels. The Americans are quite fond of it at the moment.”
Millicent pulls out Papa’s chair and sits herself upon it. She knows she will not be making roses tomorrow…and that Mama shall not be holding pins for the mantua maker. Everything is different now.
Millicent has spent the day by the window. Her hands feel strange and weightless. They should be making roses.
Mama didn’t come to Millicent’s door this morning. Millicent walked to Mama’s room and knocked. Mama laughed and said to go away and Father said they would be down soon. Papa made her a breakfast of tea and toast, and then Millicent went and sat at the window.
“Mama’s acting strange, isn’t she, cherub,” Papa says. He is standing behind Millicent, looking out at the road through bushes gone leafless with the cold. Sunday is his rest day. Six days a week he works as a handyman for families about town.
“Papa, why don’t you like Father?”
“Ah, you’ve heard your mother and I having words,” he says. Millicent nods. Papa sits himself down on the window seat and thinks at his folded hands. “Well,” he says. “Your mother and I knew your father before you came along. He was a younger man then and, as you’ll learn when you grow older, young men don’t often think as much of others as they should.”
“Was he bad to Mama, Papa?”
Papa thought again. “I might say he would have hurt your Mama’s feelings, had I not had words with him. As a younger man he could have made her very sad.”
“Mama has been very sad, Papa.”
Papa nodded and patted her knee. “And you’ve been a veritable paladin, you have, helping her all your life as you’ve done. And a hard worker, too.”
“Will she be happy now?”
“I hope so, cherub.”
Millicent is woken by the pounding of the great knocker on the front door. Outside someone is calling Father’s name. Shouting it at the walls. Instantly the house comes alive. Exclamations from Papa downstairs, curses from Father in the next room. Puzzled grumbles and shrieks from Mama. Doors open. Feet tramp. The knocker is slammed down over and over, reverberating through the house. Still the voice keeps calling, thick with a strange accent.
“Dorian! Dorian! Dorian!”
Millicent struggles out of bed, opening her door with both hands, rubbing her eyes.
Through the balustrade you watch Papa stagger from his room, candle in hand, yelling at the door. Father rushes past behind you, almost knocking you over, and gallops down the stairs, making it to the front door just inches ahead of Papa.
Wrenching it open, one hand extended backward to fend off Papa, Father is fallen upon.
“Dorian! Dios querido, mi amigo…!”
Swarthy-faced and loose-limbed the stranger collapses onto Father, one arm slung around his shoulder. In the stranger’s sweat-sheened hand a long blade flashes.
Papa exclaims, “What is the meaning of this!” and reaches for the walking stick kept by the front door. The stranger reacts violently, shoving Father away and thrusting the blade toward Papa.
Father slaps a hand down upon the man’s wrist and disarms him with the other. “Luis, no. Todo está bien. You are safe with me.”
“Safe? I am next! It tells me so! It tells me it has told you so! It tells you now! You know this.”
Father’s head turns slightly toward where Papa stands, dumb-struck by this scene. The cold night air fills the room. Mama stands by you, peering around the corner like a child.
“Me ha dicho esto.”
“Then do as it asks, cabrón! I will not die for you.”
Father turns and looks up at his wife, at Millicent, at Papa who stands by the door with a face like a thundercloud. “We will step outside, and disturb my family no longer. Come with me, Luis.” Father takes his coat from the stand by the door and disappears outside with the strange man who came into their house waving a knife. After a long moment Mama places a hand on Millicent’s shoulder and walks her back to bed.
Millicent sits upon her bed, listening to the words being said in the kitchen. Papa is louder than the others and Mama wants him to be quiet, but Millicent knows he is angry with Father. Millicent is worried for Mama.
After a while Papa stops talking and Millicent hears him go to his bed. She hears Mama and Father talking low just outside her door, and then the door to Mama’s chamber opens, then closes. And then Millicent’s door quietly opens and Father peers in. His face is bright and smiling in the candlelight.
“Hello,” he says.
“Hello, Father,” says Millicent, carefully.
“I’m giving you some of my bad habits, staying up so late.”
“What other habits do you have?”
“Well,” he says, stepping inside and closing the door, keeping his voice low. “I do tend to get myself into trouble from time to time.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Oh, you know. This and that.” He crouches by her bedside, and Millicent wonders what he expects. “I’ve traveled here with a friend of mine, actually. We came from Mexico. Do you know where that is?”
Millicent shakes her head. “Were you in trouble there?”
Father smiles. “It’s part of the game we all play. You know what it’s like.”
Millicent shakes her head. “I used to make mistakes when I was making the roses, but I have become much better since then.”
“Roses…?”
“Mama and I work at the milliner’s.”
“Ah. Ah yes, of course.”
“I make roses mostly, and Mama helps the mantua maker.”
“Yes, yes, but what about when you’re not doing that?”
Millicent thinks about that. “Then we come home.”
Father’s brow furrows with disbelief. “Do you not have friends?”
“I have Papa and I have Mama. They are my friends. Papa and Mama will be sending me to a school next year,” she says. “After we save enough.”
The eager smile fades from Father’s face and is replaced with something else. Millicent wonders if she has been impertinent, if Father is about to become angry.
Father stands up with a calisthenic sigh and looks about the tiny little room. He says, “Well well well,” in a way that tells Millicent he wants to change the subject. He looks at the wet walls, the cloudy little window with its view onto the street, the bedside table that Papa made, with its single flickering candle in a holder of green iron. “Well well well,” he says.
She moves to placate him. “I like making roses,” she says.
“Hmm?” he says. “Oh, yes, I’m sure they’re lovely.” And then he is down to her level again, in a shot, and urgently hissing, “God’s wounds, haven’t you done anything?”
Millicent flinches backward, her father’s face like a mad mask in the darkness before her, unsure what he will say or do. She has never had a grown-up speak to her like this.
Father lowers his eyes and looks away, defeated. “Never mind. Are you tired, Millicent?”
Millicent shakes her head, frightened.
“May we talk for a while?”
Millicent is very sleepy the next morning. Papa makes her toast and
tea and asks what it was she and Father talked about all last night. Papa heard Father leave the house at about four in the morning, and he hasn’t returned.
“Father was telling me about when he was a boy.”
“Oh yes?”
“It wasn’t very nice. His mama kept him locked up all the time. Made him tell people things for money.”
Papa forgets his plate, leaves it on the sideboard. “What?”
Millicent puts her toast down. “When she made him tell people things he went away, in his head.”
At that moment Mama comes down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“Your Dorian’s mother was a spirit-rapper, did you know that? A cheap confidence artist, just like him.”
“His family was very poor,” Mama says, sliding a pin through her hair. “I’m sure they did what they had to in order to get by.”
Over the following days the house changed. Out went their old things, the tattered old love seat by the fire, the chipped and worn table that Papa had made for the kitchen, the battered old kettle and blackened pots. Out went Millicent’s little bed. And in came everything soft and bright and new. Almost the only thing that survived the forced evacuation was Papa’s old armchair, which he refused to part with, and his own bed that he had slept in through marriage and loss. Curtains fell and drapes were raised, and legions of men came to scrape the windows and roll out new rugs.
Through it all smiled Mama, buoyed to new heights by each new gift and arrival. Papa kept himself away from it all for as long as it happened, returning each day after dark smelling of clipped grass and lacquer, and the first thing he would say would always be “My chair and bed best still be here,” and Mama would always reply, tired and patient, “Yes, Papa, they’re still here, same as they ever were,” as if there was no avoiding it. And through it all Millicent kept out of the way of Mama and Father and the workers who came and went, as the house she grew up in washed away, piece by piece. Millicent was not so attached to the old things that their leaving cast a sadness upon her. What left her quiet from the moment the first new chair came through the door was the notion that if Father should leave there would not be one thing in the entire house—except Papa’s bed and chair—that would not remind Mama of Father. It was the thought of that sadness falling upon her mother that kept Millicent silent and to herself through all the days in which the house changed.
The Music of Razors Page 7
