Illusion

by Stephanie Elmas

  She peered at the closing door with a baffled expression and then at the bottle in her hand with even more incredulity.

  ‘Your friend, Walter. He’s quite …,’

  ‘Extraordinary?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The room felt empty, now that Walter’s spidery frame had gone. Tom’s Ma sighed contentedly in her sleep, burying herself further into her blankets. They both watched her for a moment, her face flickering in the candlelight.

  Sally looked up at Tom; her eyes had become thoughtful and narrow. ‘He was upset, just now, what with that talk of his mother. Why was that?’ she asked.

  Tom turned away from her. He peered through the room’s small window, down into the street below. Walter and Kayan were there. They had the pack of cards out again. He watched as a small audience began to gather around them: smudge faced children mainly and then two old women who’d been stuffing a mattress a few doors up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom. Was it wrong of me to ask?’ came her voice.

  ‘No, no. Not at all. It’s just not the easiest thing to explain. Walter was abandoned, right from the start; spent most of his childhood in orphanages and workhouses. Not everyone would take him, what with his strange ways and funny looks. And he was always running away besides. Tricking people. Causing upsets. He’s never known either of his parents, or any other family for that matter. Only thing is, Ma’s always said these things about his mother. It hits a nerve with him, every time, but she’s never been well enough to tell us anything else. So, it remains a mystery; the one magical jigsaw piece he has nowhere to put.’

  Sally’s listening face was a portrait of calmness in the waning light. She was a powerful listener: patient and unassuming.

  ‘We’re his family, you see,’ Tom went on. ‘Me and Ma. He got us out of the workhouse: first me, then her. And we helped each other. We did bad things sometimes. Tricked people, stole from right under their noses. I’m not proud of it, but when you grow up in the dirt you…you…,

  ‘You do your best to find the right path. Which you have, Tom.’

  Sally drew closer, joining him at the window.

  ‘You have to look beyond this dirt you always speak of,’ she said softly. ‘There are beautiful things too in this life, all around us. Look at your Ma, sleeping soundly for the first time in weeks. Look at the snow outside the window.’

  ‘Cold, freezing snow!’

  ‘Oh, be quiet you! Forget the cold. Just think of all the beautiful patterns the snowflakes make in the sky.’

  Tom gazed back through the glass pane. If only he could see the world like Sally Jones. Where he found nothing but disorder: labyrinthine slums and rookeries, crammed with mangy courts and dead-ends, Sally saw just one straight road. One simple way that was clean and rightful. In that tiny frame, that intelligent face of hers, she embodied a strength that he felt unworthy of; it was something he knew he could never match.

  ‘I’ll give your Ma a wash, now that she’s so calm,’ she said. She clasped hold of a pot and began to busy herself around the stove. ‘I can stay here a few hours more but I’ve got chapel at seven. Go. Go and see to your friend. He needs you more than your Ma does at the moment.’

  *

  By the time Tom got downstairs, a sizeable crowd had gathered in the street. Tom had to elbow his way through just to catch a glimpse of Walter and Kayan, who were bending over something conspiratorially, their backs to the audience. The evening was drawing in and a low pillow of fog was descending over the squat terraces. Heads bobbed up and down, trying to catch a glimpse. Children squirmed through legs to get a better view.

  ‘Stand back,’ Walter shouted, as suddenly a great whizzing sound filled the air and something indiscernible shot up through the fog like a bullet. The crowd darted back, clasping caps to heads.

  ‘What’s he gone and done?’

  ‘Look Dad, look!’

  With a sharp snap, somewhere high above their heads, it was as if that pillow of fog had been punctured, over and over again. And through all those small holes, a shower of silver stars came tumbling out, making the cold twilight shimmer with their brilliance. It really was quite beautiful. Tom hoped that Sally was watching from the upstairs window.

  Boys and girls darted about, trying to catch the stars before they fizzled out. Murmurs of delight filled the air. Walter beamed triumphantly at them all.

  ‘Give us another one!’ came a voice when it had ended.

  ‘Are you a wizard sir, can you do more?’

  The wide-eyed crowd began to draw in closer again.

  ‘Wizard, my arse!’ came a lone voice. They paused to find it. ‘Have none of you idiots ever seen a firework before? There ain’t nothing magical about that.’

  The voice belonged to a man in a chair that had been crudely fitted with old wooden wheels on either side. He had remained on the periphery of the crowd, close to his house which was opposite Tom’s. He’d been a tanner once and was known by everyone as Old Reg.

  Walter walked towards him and the crowd followed eagerly. Old Reg was known for his sharp tongue; always loitering outside his door in his chair, passing judgement on the world.

  ‘How long have you been lame?’ asked Walter. The sound of his smooth voice lulled his listeners.

  ‘Haven’t walked these three years,’ the man muttered, shaking his grizzled head. ‘My wife and grandson, they have to care for me now.’

  Walter turned to see a bedraggled woman nearby and a small boy with a fresh black eye adorning his pinched little face.

  ‘Well, I shall make you walk again,’ he said.

  ‘When?’ laughed Old Reg, gathering his lumpy features into a sneer.

  ‘Right now.’

  A muffled buzz of expectation grew in the air as the crowd drew in. Walter stepped closer towards Old Reg, fixing his eyes on him in a way that seemed to hold the old man’s attention. And then Walter began to speak, quietly, their faces so close now that it was as if they were the only two people there, in the fog and the snow. Old Reg didn’t even blink.

  ‘You will walk right now,’ said Walter. ‘You will get up out of that chair and walk into your house. And as you walk, all that anger you harbour will slip away from you. You will have no cause to shout or hurt anyone any more. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ the old man nodded.

  A gasp circled around them.

  ‘Come on then, stand up. It’s chilly out here. Go and put yourself to bed.’

  Walter moved back and slowly the old man shifted forward, placing both feet on the ground. And then, as if it were of no concern for him at all, he raised himself to his feet and strode into his house, shutting the front door behind him.

  A tumult of applause erupted in the street. Walter was patted on the back, kissed on the hands. Even a few scant coins were thrown towards him, which Kayan caught deftly in his hat. Old Reg’s wife and grandson watched on, seemingly unable to utter a word.

  ‘Come on,’ said Walter, suddenly finding Tom in the crowd and marching him away at a hearty pace. ‘Let’s get out of here. Kayan will distract them, he’ll find us later.’

  Walter’s arm hooked through his and they darted hurriedly down a side alley.

  ‘How … how on earth did you just do that?’ Tom gulped breathlessly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That! You know? Make that miserable old bastard walk again!’

  ‘Oh him. That was easy. He had no problem walking in the first place. I saw him through that window on the way up your stairs earlier, when all that noise was going on. He was plain to see, up in the bedroom opposite and grinding that small grandson of his into a pulp. Jumped about the room like an athlete. Nothing wrong with him.’

  Tom shook his head in disbelief and then found himself snorting with laughter. Walter grinned back. He thought of Sally again, and what she’d said about beauty. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps, even here, glimpses of it really did exist. Even in the darkest of places.

  ‘First thing to d
o,’ urged Walter, ‘is find ourselves a theatre.’

  Chapter 4

  Tom tried not to wince as the melody reached its pinnacle of awfulness. Rosalind Gallop paused for some seconds, her finger wavering over E-sharp, which she then abandoned in favour of a few uncertain notes by way of a finale. When the noise had died she placed her hands in her lap and looked at him, blankly.

  Rosalind’s face was large and moon-like, revealing nothing of the internal workings of her mind. She rarely spoke, apart from the occasional simper, which made her thought patterns even harder to guess. In fact her only genuine response to the world seemed to be based on temperature: that is, whether she was feeling cold or very cold. Tom could generally gauge this by the number of wraps and shawls that Rosalind wore around her small, broad frame. On one occasion she conducted her entire piano lesson from beneath a blanket. At this moment, thankfully, she was wearing no more than two or three fur wraps.

  ‘Excellent Miss Gallop. May I ask … the notes at the end?’

  She looked at the music blankly, breathed in and then blinked at him.

  ‘Well… I see we have another five minutes or so. Perhaps you can show me how you are progressing with ‘Around the Pear Tree’?

  Rosalind looked a little unsure about this. She raised her hands to the keys two or three times, falteringly. Tom gave her a smile of encouragement. Finally she began to play something resembling the tune he’d now been trying to teach her for some weeks. The notes fought for space in the air and he narrowed his eyes, as if, in some way, this might lessen the impact on his ears. His thoughts drifted to the only subject his mind had any room for at the moment: Walter.

  How could loyalty have dealt him such a complex hand? He’d longed, no, ached for the return of his friend for three long years. The gap Walter had left in his life had, at first, been cavernous and inexplicably lonely. Losing him had been like losing his father all over again because Walter had kept him from drowning in the sludge and, crucially, he’d helped him with Ma.

  When his father died, Tom had lost everything: his leafy childhood home, the music he loved, his entire sense of belonging. All those years later, when Walter waved farewell from that clipper, Tom had felt the same great weight of abandonment squeeze down inside him again; the same impossibility of life. And yet, miraculously, he’d survived. Work of varying degrees cropped up, he began to play the piano again, in pubs and churches at first. He moved Ma into Samuel Street and then Sally came along. Everything quietly fell into place.

  But now Walter’s re-entry into his quiet life had given him an unexpected jolt. His friend’s grand plans, delicious and tempting as they were, sent rivulets of terror right through him. To risk all that he had carefully built for himself, for Ma, their small oasis of domesticity… It was terrifying, yes. But god knows it was exciting, too. Life with Walter was never anything but. And could his old friend, just possibly, be the one to make Ma better? It was almost too painful to hope.

  He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and moved his chair an inch away from the raging hearth nearby. As if in response, Rosalind halted to pull a wrap a little further up her throat. She then flexed her fingers and resumed her battle with ‘Around the Pear Tree’.

  And yet, he owed Walter. He owed him everything that he had now. Because if that gawky, strange named beanpole of a boy hadn’t taken him under his wing all those years ago, then Tom Winter would be dead by now. He’d be one of those small, starved, sackful of bones they throw into pits for people who have nothing to show for in this world. He’d be deep under the frosty earth, not sizzling by the fire in Rosalind Gallop’s parlour.

  ‘D’ya want to see something funny?’

  Those had been Walter’s first words to him. Tom had found himself unable to respond. He was too cold and too hungry: a lost and shivering little boy of eight.

  But the skull-like face didn’t seem to need his question answered. ‘I’m gonna count back from five and then you’re gonna smile, like you still know how to do it.’

  They were sitting in the refectory: a hundred miserable, snot faced, filthy children, and Mrs Chester was serving out the slop that passed for their food. She heaved a gigantic pan up onto the table, clutching its iron handle.

  ‘Pigeon broth!’ she bellowed. ‘It’s burnt, mind.’

  Walter winked and began to count down quietly. ‘Five, four, three, two …,’

  The lid came up from the giant pot. Mrs Chester danced back, shrieking as the room fell into disarray. Because instead of emitting the odour of burnt, liquid bird, the pot unleashed three very much alive pigeons. They spiralled up from their prison, wings flapping a series of sharp slaps in Mrs Chester’s face, feathers cascading in the air. Everyone in the room bounced up from their seats, eyes wet with laughter. Pigeons swooped and chairs got knocked over as children took cover. Mrs Chester waved an old rag around her head, cursing loudly at them all.

  At last the three birds settled, perching on one of the great beams that traversed the rectory ceiling. Calm descended and Mrs Chester was about to speak again when an impressive shower of bird shit suddenly splattered down onto one of the tables.

  New gasps and squawks of hilarity rippled through the room. But Mrs Chester remained silent, dangerously so, and the laughter petered out.

  ‘Walter!’ she cried at last, her cheeks now streaked with lurid veins. She marched towards their table, grabbing Walter by the ear.

  ‘I got you smiling though, didn’t I Tom Winter?’ he said as she dragged him away, his gangly legs skimming in all directions across the floor. Tom trembled at the thought of what punishment awaited this strange boy. His own skin began to tingle sympathetically as he imagined the swipe of some vile instrument striking that papery skin, bruising those knobbly bones of his. But Walter had been right. Because when those pigeons came flapping out of that pot, he had smiled. More than that. He’d laughed, for the first time since his world had fallen apart.

  ‘Around the Pear Tree’ came to an end and Rosalind seemed to give a contented little murmur. They both looked up as the vast, spherical mass of Mrs Gallop appeared in the doorway.

  ‘What lovely playing. It always cheers me up so,’ she said rather breathlessly. She shuffled in and landed on a gilt chair. There was a notable silence as she mopped at her face with her handkerchief and her swollen eyes suggested that she was, in truth, far from happy.

  ‘Please forgive me for asking Mrs Gallop, but you seem a little under the weather. Can I assist you in any way?’ asked Tom.

  Her bosom rippled with a deep sigh, as if absorbing the delectable bait his question had handed her. She rolled her moist eyes around the room. Was the answer to her plight hiding in some deep recess? Could someone, anyone, fish it out for her?

  ‘It’s a disaster!’ she finally whimpered.

  Rosalind looked at her mother with something like concern in her eyes.

  ‘What…what is a disaster?’ Tom ventured.

  ‘My Rosalind’s birthday party tomorrow!’ she moaned, actually wringing her hands. ‘So many people coming. So many suitors.’ She sucked this last word in as if it were something precious, something almost unpronounceable. ‘Forty-nine platters of food! That’s five more than the Arkwrights had for their daughter; fifteen more than Mrs McFarlane arranged for her precious Isobel. It was all going so well.’

  ‘It sounds marvellous. Is there some other problem?’ Tom ventured.

  At this moment Mr Gallop appeared in the door; a wiry man of approximately a third of his wife’s size. He took one looked at her bloodshot eyes and threw his arms up in rage.

  ‘Must you go on about this to everyone, Alice? I mean everyone?’

  His arms fell back down again, fists poised at the floor and he marched away, loudly.

  ‘Yes, there is a problem Mr Winter,’ continued Mrs Gallop, once her husband’s footsteps had petered out. ‘Lydia Selwyn!’

  ‘Lydia Selwyn?’

  ‘Yes. Oh you explain it, Rosalind.’

&n
bsp; Her daughter’s mouth gaped open and then closed again.

  ‘Or perhaps I should,’ continued her mother. ‘Ballet dancers! Yes, I’m not surprised by your confusion. She had actual ballet dancers frolicking about at her coming out.’ There was a long pregnant pause to allow room for Tom to digest this shocking revelation. ‘Of course it was awful. So vulgar to have those young women flapping around the house. But the extraordinary thing is that everyone seemed to love it. Ballet dancers! Would you believe it? And they’re all talking of nothing else now.’ Her lip trembled, fresh tears welled up again. ‘And I thought the platters would be quite enough, I really did. But now it seems that I’m expected to put on some sort of show for my Rosalind. What next I ask you? What next?’

  Oh, the temptation. It sprung up before him like a great white beacon. He teetered close to it; palms sweating, his stomach now a bucket of eels. Could he really let Walter loose in the Gallops’ gilted, varnished, thickly upholstered drawing room? If it all went horribly wrong, then far more than just this job would be at stake. Tongues would wag, the news would spread and he might as well pack up Samuel Street for good. But then those three pigeons, perching up on that beam, came back to him again. And that marvellous shower of shit they’d sent hurtling down onto the grim refectory. If it wasn’t for his sweating palms and the eels in his stomach, he’d be close to laughing again.

  ‘I might have an answer for you, Mrs Gallop,’ he said, heart now speaking faster than brain.

  She heaved a long, defeated breath. ‘More ballerinas?’

  ‘No. A wizard, from the East. Someone quite beyond anything you could ever imagine.’

  *

  Tom found Kayan perched on the back doorstep of the Limehouse lodgings Walter had found for them. It was part of a laundry and the small courtyard at the back was filled with the criss-cross hangings of a half frozen bed sheets. Their rigid creases glistened in the midday light. Kayan was entertaining two squat little girls with rosy cheeks. He was juggling with peanuts, occasionally hurling one into an open mouth. The girls squealed with delight.