‘None of them looks English,’ I whispered to Oscar as we walked the length of the room towards the bar.
‘None of them is English. You won’t find the weather being discussed here. They only talk of revolution. They made me a member when I published The Soul of Man under Socialism. I read a paper here – in this room. In German. It was an evening short on laughter. German, French and Italian are the principal languages spoken here, though I sense that Russian is gaining ground.’
‘Why are we here?’
‘I like it. The drink is good and inexpensive. The conversation is challenging. Curiously, Constance likes it too.’
‘They have lady members?’
‘Oh yes. Look.’
We had reached the bar and there, standing at it, half-turned towards us, was Olga.
‘Hello,’ I said. I know that I spoke awkwardly. I fear that my face may have reddened.
‘Dobro pozhalovat,’ she replied. She smiled and put out a hand to touch mine. ‘I wasn’t sure that I was going to see you. I thought I might, so I came.’ Her fingers rested over my hand. I could not think what to say. ‘I know I look strange. I am wearing my costume underneath my coat.’ She laughed and stood back. She was wearing the same sombre coat she had worn when we had had tea together, but it was unbuttoned now and the way it hung around her slim frame made it look curiously like a dressing gown. ‘Do I look ridiculous?’ she asked.
‘You look lovely,’ I said, smitten.
‘Good afternoon, Dr Doyle.’ Ivan Salazkin was also at the bar. He, too, was wearing his circus costume, with, over it, a capacious black cape. Without his top hat or his elaborate waxed moustache, he looked magnificent but real, like a handsome hussar in a painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. ‘You are arriving just as we are leaving,’ he said in his impeccable English. ‘We expected you an hour ago.’
‘This is the Anarchists’ Club,’ said Oscar. ‘We thrive on confusion.’
‘I did not know we were expected,’ I said.
‘Olga wanted to say goodbye,’ said Salazkin, nodding towards her. ‘The circus moves on to Paris at the end of the week. Oscar proposed that we meet here for a farewell drink.’
‘I shall now organise a farewell dinner instead,’ said Oscar.
‘There will be no time,’ said Salazkin. ‘We have a performance every afternoon and every evening and then, next Sunday, in the early hours, we depart.’
‘There will be a post-show supper,’ Oscar insisted. ‘You will have time for that. I will arrange it.’
‘I have to get back to work,’ I said.
‘More Holmes, I hope?’ asked Salazkin pleasantly.
‘I don’t think so,’ I replied. ‘I have other plans.’
‘And responsibilities?’ said Salazkin.
‘Yes.’
‘You have a family?’
‘Yes.’ There was a moment’s pause.
‘You have children?’ asked Olga. We were standing side by side at the bar. Her fingers were no longer resting on my hand, but our arms were touching. I was aware of that.
‘Yes,’ I said, looking down at her. ‘I’m sure I told you. A girl and a boy.’
She smiled at me. ‘You did not tell me, Arthur. Do you have a photograph of them? Are they very young?’
‘Yes,’ I said awkwardly, ‘they are young.’
‘How old are they?’
Absurdly, I struggled to recall their ages. ‘They are four and two,’ I said. ‘They are with their mother and their nurse in Switzerland.’
‘And do you have a picture of them?’ she asked again. Her eyes sparkled. In them I saw no reproach.
‘He does,’ boomed Oscar from behind me. ‘Show her, Arthur.’
I reached inside my coat for my wallet and pulled from it the small photograph I carried with me of Kingsley as a baby resting on little Mary’s lap. It was a lovely picture, full of hope and joy and innocence.
Olga looked at the photograph and smiled. ‘He looks like you, Arthur. He is handsome, too. And he looks so happy.’
‘He looks nothing like Arthur,’ cried Oscar. ‘He’s a beautiful baby. Don’t you agree, Ivan?’
Olga held up the photograph for Salazkin to consider. The ringmaster looked at it coolly, nodded and said, ‘Charming.’ He felt beneath his cape for his timepiece. ‘We must go,’ he announced. ‘We are cutting it fine, as you English like to say.’
‘I am Irish,’ said Oscar, shaking Salazkin by the hand.
‘Goodbye, Arthur,’ said Olga, holding up her face for me to kiss. ‘Think of me now and then.’
I kissed her and she turned away at once, as if to hide the tears in her eyes. She ran after Salazkin who had already reached the door where Michael Ostrog was waiting, holding his master’s cane and hat. She did not look back and, suddenly, she was gone.
All that afternoon and evening I thought of her. As I stood with Oscar at the bar of the Anarchists’ Club, drinking small glasses of flavourless spirit, eating small wedges of beetroot doused in vinegar, while my friend filled the air with sound, Olga filled my head. Even as Constance arrived with Walter Wellbeloved and Oscar’s brother Willie in tow, and Oscar’s torrent of words became louder and more turbulent, I heard the hubbub, but I was not listening.
As we left the club to walk across Oxford Street and on through Soho towards the theatre, I was conscious of Oscar’s fury at Willie’s unexpected presence and his alarm that ‘Queensberry’s spy’, as he now called him, was observing our departure from across the street, but when Constance put her arm through mine and whispered, ‘You’re in a dream today, Arthur, and Oscar’s in a bate,’ I simply smiled at her vacantly, and answered, without thinking, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
At the theatre, Richard Mansfield had arranged a box for our party. I sat at the back of the box, on the banquette, alongside Willie, who made the occasional sardonic remark, to which I failed to respond. The auditorium was far from full, but the audience – friends of the company and other members of the theatrical profession – was enthusiastic and attentive and, while I did not focus on the plot of the drama or the detail of the dialogue, I felt the force of Mansfield’s portrayal of Napoleon. The actor had undeniable ‘presence’.
As soon the curtain fell at the end of the first act, reckoning I should make some sort of contribution, I said, ‘He’s playing it well, is he not?’
‘He’s a brutal murderer,’ barked Oscar, ‘notwithstanding the veneer of sophistication.’
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Mansfield?’
Oscar laughed. ‘Bonaparte, Arthur. His wars cost some six million lives. He was callous. He was cruel. He was arrogant. He led men to the slaughter while smirking at his own epigrams.’
‘He came up with some choice ones,’ said Willie. ‘“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” is a wonderful line. It’s one of my favourites.’
‘Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit,’ said Oscar.
During the second interval I said nothing. I returned to my reverie as Oscar turned the conversation from ‘mass murder of the Napoleonic kind’ to ‘our own capacity to kill’ and enquired of a bewildered Wellbeloved under what circumstances he would be ready to slaughter someone and what means he would use and whether his preference would be to take the life of a man or of a woman.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ answered Wellbeloved. ‘Those stories of human sacrifice and drinking blood . . . ’
‘Ignore Oscar,’ said Constance soothingly. ‘He is in one of his provocative moods.’
‘Could you kill a man, Oscar?’ asked Willie.
‘With my own hands? I doubt it. I lack the courage. I might give the order to another, I suppose.’
‘Don’t say that, dearest,’ said Constance, leaning over to her husband, ‘even in jest.’
‘If you want a thing done well, do it yourself,’ said Willie.
When the performance was over, Oscar led us out of the box and down the corridor towards a baize-covered door that opened i
mmediately onto the side of the stage. We were plunged from bright light to half-darkness. ‘I know this theatre,’ he declared. ‘Follow me.’ With his right arm raised like a tour guide escorting visitors around St Peter’s in Rome, he pushed his way through a small crowd of chatting supernumeraries and stagehands smoking cigarettes, and took us across the wings, through another door and down a narrow flight of metal steps.
‘Let the path be open to talent,’ murmured Willie as our party followed in Oscar’s wake.
‘Is that another of Boney’s bons mots, brother? You appear to have swallowed the Dictionary of Quotations whole.’
‘Hush, you two,’ scolded Constance.
‘We are here,’ announced Oscar triumphantly.
‘And you are expected,’ cried Richard Mansfield. The actor, in his dressing gown, stood in the doorway to his dressing room holding an open bottle of champagne in his hand. ‘Perrier-Jouët, Oscar. I got it in for you especially. There’s another in the bucket.’
‘Thank you, my friend. And thank you, too, for the performance of a lifetime. I had thought of Napoleon as a poisonous pygmy. You made him a giant – heroic in the first act, human in the second, and in the third, a fallen demi-god. You were magnificent!’
Mansfield, his face glowing through a mask of sweat and Pond’s cold cream, beamed at Oscar and tossed his head lightly from side to side like a frisky pony. ‘Come in one, come in all. Did the performance live up to your expectations, Dr Conan Doyle? I hope so. Entrez. My dresser will pour the champagne.’ He handed over the bottle to a handsome young Malay who served each of us with glasses that I noticed were engraved with a Napoleonic ‘N’ surmounted by an imperial crown.
‘What did you really think, Oscar?’ asked the actor, now wiping his face with a towel and addressing my friend through the looking glass above his dressing table.
‘You were Napoleon,’ said Oscar with conviction.
‘What did you make of the play?’ asked Mansfield, raising an eyebrow and looking in my direction.
Oscar answered for me. ‘The play is nothing,’ he declared. ‘You, Richard, are everything!’
‘Too kind,’ breathed Mansfield contentedly, and then, slowly, carefully, reverentially, with both hands and each finger extended, he lifted his wig off his head and held it up before him as though he were a priest raising the host before his congregation. He placed the wig on top of a skull that stood on the dressing table next to an open cigar box that served as the container for sticks of make-up. As he did so, he caught my eye in the mirror and winked. ‘Yorick’s skull,’ he said. He turned towards me and picked it up to show me. It looked quite hideous: a gaunt, grey death’s-head sporting Napoleon’s distinctive pate lopsidedly. ‘The skull is actually that of John Wilkes Booth,’ he said.
‘The man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln?’
‘The very same. He was an actor, too, of course – though less well known than his celebrated brother, Edwin.’
‘Perhaps not now,’ said Oscar, peering down at the skull.
‘You used it for your Hamlet?’ asked Constance.
‘I did.’
‘How did you acquire it?’ asked Oscar.
‘I bought it from Tom Norman. He specialises in these things. Do you know him?’
‘I know him,’ volunteered Walter Wellbeloved from the back of the crowd in his curious, musical voice. ‘A good man.’
‘I agree, sir,’ said Mansfield. ‘He is leaving the country, you know. He is not appreciated here – but I love him. Look at this!’ From within the cigar box, the actor scooped up a glass phial half-filled with a reddish-brown liquid. He held it up to one of the gas lamps at the side of his looking glass.
‘What is it?’ Constance asked.
‘The blood of the Emperor Napoleon!’
‘Good grief,’ cried Wellbeloved.
‘Can you be sure?’ asked Oscar.
‘You saw the performance, Oscar. What do you think? I take a sip of the blood before the curtain rises every day.’
I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
‘Tom Norman acquired the blood from the grandson of Sir Hudson Lowe, governor of St Helena when Napoleon died.’
‘I imagine it cost you a pretty penny,’ said Oscar.
‘And not only in the cash I handed over to Norman – but more so in the cost to my reputation. It was because of my repeated visits to Norman’s emporium that I gained a reputation as a Whitechapel habitué and consequently was accused of being Jack the Ripper.’
‘Ah.’ Oscar nodded sympathetically.
‘Would you like to play him on stage?’ asked Willie.
‘Jack the Ripper? Oh, yes!’ cried the actor. ‘What a part! Immortal Jack! I would kill for the role.’
‘Would you now?’ said Oscar playfully.
Mansfield laughed. ‘You know what I mean, Oscar. Napoleon, Richard Crookback, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – these are the parts for me. The name is known, but the man isn’t. By playing him, I would reveal him. Who is he, this inhuman human? “Who is Jack the Ripper?” That should be the title. You must write the play, Oscar.’
‘Perhaps I will,’ answered Oscar, raising his glass in Mansfield’s direction.
‘More champagne, Haziq – and the photographs!’
Mansfield’s dresser emptied the remains of the second bottle of Perrier-Jouët into our champagne flutes and then, with some ceremony, presented each of us with a handsome quarto-sized card containing a signed photograph of our host in his costume as Napoleon.
‘Oh,’ cried Oscar happily, ‘I love photographs like these. When I went to America to lecture, you know, I had to have two secretaries, one for autographs, one for locks of hair. Within six months the one had died of writer’s cramp and the other was completely bald.’ We all laughed. Oscar turned to me. ‘Oh, Arthur,’ he said, ‘do show our friends that charming picture of your children. It is so delightful.’
‘Please, Oscar,’ I protested, ‘this is hardly—’
‘I’d love to see a picture of your little ones, Arthur. Do show us.’
Pressed by Constance, I produced my photograph and passed it around the group, murmuring embarrassed apologies as I did so. Each in turn studied the small picture and made gently appreciative noises.
‘A boy and a girl,’ said Mansfield good-humouredly. ‘You’re a lucky devil.’
Willie surprised me by remarking, ‘It is only for the quality of his wife and the fact of his children that I envy Oscar. Nothing else.’
When we left the theatre, accompanied to the stage door by Haziq the dresser, Oscar, now in high spirits, proposed dinner at Kettner’s: ‘Foie gras and sole Careme, followed by souff lé a la Josephine – something light yet Napoleonic, don’t you think?’
I professed exhaustion, made my excuses, kissed Constance, saluted Willie and Wellbeloved, promised Oscar I would not be late for our appointment in the morning, and, alone (mercifully alone!), walked down Shaftesbury Avenue, around Piccadilly Circus and along Regent Street, back to the Langham Hotel.
I had a beef sandwich and a glass of beer in the hotel buttery and then retired to my room and went directly to bed. It can’t have been later than eight o’clock.
I pressed my face into the pillow and willed myself to sleep. I wanted to dream of Olga.
31
Paradise Walk
Islept soundly until nine o’clock on Monday morning. As I awoke, unbidden, one of Oscar’s favourite lines came into my head: ‘They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.’
I got up, dipped my face into a basin of cold water, shaved and dressed. For once, I did not join my friend for breakfast. Instead, I rang the bell and ordered coffee in my room. It was strong and welcome. As I drank it, I sat at the table by the window and wrote a letter to my wife. I told Touie how much I loved her and how greatly I missed her and the children. I told her something of my week’s adventures, but not everything, of course. (Some doors are best
left forever closed.) I shared with her my frustration at having spent a week in town – and seven nights at an expensive West End hotel – on what felt now like a wild-goose chase in pursuit of fool’s gold. I told her how much I was looking forward to returning to our home in South Norwood that afternoon and to getting back to my own desk – ‘my dear old desk’– and to proper work. As I signed and sealed the letter, I repeated out loud the words that I had said to myself on the afternoon I had taken tea with Olga: ‘We cannot command our love, but we can our actions.’
I took the letter down into the street to catch the mid-morning post. I could have given it to one of the porters or the bellboy, but I wanted to post it myself –the postbox was no more than thirty yards from the hotel’s front entrance and the day was a fine one. The sky was clear, the air bracing.
My small task done, as I turned back from the postbox, feeling curiously exhilarated, I found myself almost face to face with the man who had been set to spy on Oscar. We were walking towards one another. Our paths crossed. His eyes did not meet mine and it took me a moment to realise who he was. When I did, I turned back and called out to him: ‘Good morning, sir.’ He stopped, but said nothing. ‘May I ask what your business is?’ He neither turned nor spoke. ‘You are making a nuisance of yourself, sir,’ I continued, ‘loitering here as you do, following my friend as you have been.’ Still the man said nothing. Nor did he move. I walked back towards him. He stood stock still, almost to attention. From the way in which he held his arms and shoulders I recognised a military bearing. I walked beyond him and turned back to confront him. His features were clean-cut; his hair was fair; his eyes were blue; there was a small scar across his forehead. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
[Oscar Wilde 07] - Jack the Ripper: Case Closed Page 22
