Illusion

by Stephanie Elmas

  A click, like a footfall on the road, disturbed his thoughts for a moment. He glanced up, but all remained empty: the silent windows, the opaque shades of the converging roads. No, no one was there.

  He rested his head back against the doorframe behind him, his breath making patterns in the air like dust and his eyelids fluttering between open and closed. In one night his life had been sucked out of him, dragged through a beautiful kaleidoscope, only to be forced back inside his poor bewildered body again. Suddenly he was incredibly tired. In the distance the screams had melted away and he allowed his eyes to close.

  He knew it was a dream and yet he still indulged in its caress. He was back at home; his old, real home, with the stone arched windows and the heavy kitchen table. The smell of dinner rose up in delicious, meaty vapours from the stove.

  Tom felt the lightness of boyhood curl around him once again. And there was Ma, up and about, her hair clean and tied neatly. There was fresh bread on the table. Tom felt an excited knot of expectation in his stomach. Father would be home soon and then he’d be able to tell him how well his lesson had gone; how easily his fingers had slipped up and down the piano keys, how his teacher had smiled with encouragement. Father wouldn’t say much, but he’d be that pleased. His chest would broaden an inch and he’d ruffle Tom’s hair with his long, nimble fingers. Because Father lived and breathed pianos. He was the best mender and tuner of pianos in the whole of London, the whole of the world! But what most people didn’t know was how beautifully Father could play those instruments as well. How nimbly those long fingers could tease the most beautiful music into the air. And yet Father only played for them, him and Ma. It was their little secret, as if the rest of the world wasn’t quite important enough to hear it.

  A door opened. Tom felt that knot in his stomach twinge excitedly. Ma didn’t notice him come in; she was busy stirring the soup. Father winked at Tom and slipped across the room to greet her. As he wrapped his arms around her, her face filled with smiling surprise.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, with the innocence of a young child.

  Tom could see his Father’s back flinch.

  ‘It’s me Molly, me,’ he murmured.

  ‘Really?’ her forehead gathered in concern. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before. Would you like some dinner? I’m waiting for my husband but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.’

  Something suddenly grasped Tom’s shoulder and shook him out of sleep.

  ‘Wake up, we’re off.’

  Walter was towering above him. He tried to gouge the sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles.

  ‘Back to the cemetery?’

  ‘No, I need a drink.’

  ‘Walter, do you ever sleep? It must be, what, three in the morning?’

  ‘I know somewhere, but we’ll have to run.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To escape the crowd. Come on.’

  As Walter dragged him up from the step, Tom peered bleary-eyed behind them to discover a group of rapidly approaching people.

  ‘Oi, medicine man,’ yelled one man. ‘Look at my arm, crushed it was, never ’ealed!’

  ‘And my poor old mincies an all! Can’t see a thing through one of ’em,’ cried another.

  They broke into a run, turning sharply into a dark alley that smelt of piss. They spattered towards a light in the distance and came out into a market square, which they crossed before hurling themselves down another alley. This one smelt of shit. Finally they came out into air that smelt of the river: brine tinged with rot. A door swung open and Tom was pulled through it into a dim room. Before he knew it he found himself in a chair with a glass of gin in his hand. Walter drowned his own glass and instantly refilled it from the bottle on the table.

  ‘I trust that mother and child are doing well?’ Tom finally ventured.

  Walter grunted. ‘I did nothing apart from give her something for the pain. The baby turned on its own in the end.’

  ‘And yet they now think you’re a healer. They’ll be queuing up at the cemetery to see you next.’

  ‘They’d be better off finding a plot. I’m no healer.’

  Walter looked hollow eyed and pale; so thin that it was hard to imagine what kept him going. The dock boys used to call him ‘scarecrow’ when they were growing up, and all manner of far more insulting names. Tom had always winced when Walter was beaten, scared that his long slim bones might snap, that a glint of ivory would suddenly skewer out of torn flesh. But his friend had always shown surprising fortitude, enduring the blows with stoic strength and lashing back whenever he had the chance.

  ‘You must eat my dear friend. Look, let me find you some bread at least.’

  Walter smiled dreamily. ‘I live on air. You should know that by now.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but not so fortunate when the air stinks of shit.’

  The door creaked open. Tom and Walter both looked up. It was strange that someone else should enter the place at such an ungodly hour. All the other customers were either sleeping where they sat or approaching a similar place. A man entered: squat, but as broad as a bull. His head was shaven and three deep wrinkles fought for space where the back of his neck should be. He turned and gave them a long, thoughtful stare. He had the face of a brute: meaty lips and jowls, a jagged scar across his right cheek and small, hungry-looking eyes. And yet despite his thuggish demeanour, he wore a rich blue woollen coat and a gold signet ring flashed on the smallest finger of his right hand.

  He peered around the establishment with his meaty lips turned down at the corners in disgust. And then he brushed at the shoulders of his immaculate coat, as if a layer of grime had already begun to settle there.

  ‘You are Mr Winter and Mr Balanchine I believe?’ he said in a low voice.

  Walter and Tom said nothing in response, but this didn’t seem to deter him. He lowered himself into a chair and wrinkled his nose at their filthy table with a look of absolute revulsion.

  ‘My name is Palmer. I am in the employment of Mr Hearst, a member of your audience this evening.’

  So, they had been followed. It seemed extraordinary that the man had been able to track them down to this flea-pit when a mob of local residents had failed.

  ‘You have excellent detection skills,’ said Walter. ‘We’ve had a busy night.’

  ‘Why did you not introduce yourself earlier?’ asked Tom.

  Palmer stretched his mouth into a smile that looked more like a sneer.

  ‘I like to know a little something more about the people I deal with before making a proposition,’ he replied.

  ‘A proposition?’

  Palmer sneered again and produced a crisp white card from his pocket. He placed it on the table. It had a black line around the border and an address in the middle in pristine black letters. ‘Mr Hearst was impressed with your performance tonight. He would like you to perform a different show next Friday at nine o’clock in the evening at his house in Mayfair. This is his card. The audience will be a little more intimate this time. Make sure you are prompt; Mr Hearst does not like to be kept waiting.’

  Palmer curled his hand into a small fist and coughed gently into it before standing up to leave.

  ‘And what if we are unable to attend next Friday?’ asked Walter.

  Palmer paused. His signet ring flashed as he raised his hand to the door. ‘You’ll be paid handsomely of course,’ he said. He paused again before adding, ‘It would be unwise to turn such a gracious offer down.’

  Chapter 7

  The following morning Tom’s head felt no clearer than the bottom of the Thames. He battled through his classes, stifling yawns between scales and arpeggios and trying, constantly, to fight back visions of Tamara. It seemed that every time he blinked, a flash of those almond shaped eyes would appear before him, or the gentle curved neck of her willowy frame.

  When he finally padded home it was early evening. Shops were closing up, the market sellers had gone and stray dogs picked at the grubby l
eftovers of the day. He pushed the door open to his small dwelling upstairs and was at once greeted by the vision of Sally. She was reading out loud from a book and Kayan was curled next to her in the chair. The boy’s face was locked in deep concentration, and Sally, too, barely seemed to have noticed Tom enter. It was a charming sight: the young pretty woman reading to the boy. She was so fair that her skin seemed translucent in the dim light. Her eyelashes and hair were almost the same colour as her skin. In contrast, the boy’s skin was deep and rich. His eyelashes were so thick and dark that they canopied the eyes beneath. The two of them provided such a sharp contrast in every characteristic and yet they seemed as one, reading there, perfectly in tune with each other.

  Sally looked up and the spell was broken.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  She held up the book, ‘Tom Jones.’

  ‘It is excellent,’ said the boy in a crisp English accent; a wide beam stretching across his face. Tom and Sally burst into laughter.

  ‘He came with some more of that medicine for your Ma,’ said Sally. ‘We’re reading partners now.’

  Tom smiled back and found, suddenly, that he could say nothing in response. He felt his neck flush up and fingers of guilt crawl up his spine. Oh Sally! Dear, lovely, kind Sally.

  ‘And how is Sinbad?’ he asked Kayan, falteringly.

  ‘Very well, keeping your Mama warm.’

  ‘Aha, very funny!’ He turned to Sally. ‘How is she, has she had a good day?’

  She drew her eyebrows together. ‘Not so good. She’s been very restless.’

  Tom couldn’t help but slump his shoulders. He lived for the days when Sally could give him a good report. And Sally knew that too. He saw the sympathy well up in her sad expression and somehow that made everything seem even worse.

  ‘She’s calm now though, resting peacefully and fast asleep. The new bottle of medicine has helped.’

  Tom’s eyes flitted to the floor. He could tell that she was watching him now, reading him. She reached out and touched his arm.

  ‘Tom, come to chapel with me now. We won’t be far and Kayan can stay and watch your Ma.’

  He nodded softly. He didn’t have the energy to say no.

  *

  Sally’s chapel was on a quiet lane, barely a hundred yards away. He knew it well as he’d played for the congregation there many times in the early days of Walter’s absence. Until then Tom had barely stepped inside a church since before his father’s death. He still considered himself as peripheral to religion; neither Anglican nor Catholic, and certainly not Methodist. But the chapel had greeted him warmly, enjoyed his musicianship and, on the rare occasions he now ventured there, he was still greeted as one of the family again.

  The chapel was no more than a large room. Its stone walls were modest and white-washed. Its pews were made of roughly hewn wood. There were no embellishments, but the congregation sang with a fervour that could have filled a great cathedral.

  At the cross, at the cross,

  where I first saw the light,

  and the burden of my heart rolled away;

  it was there by faith I received my sight,

  and now I am happy all the day.

  Sally sang next to him, her chin up, her eyes wide with joy… the burden of my heart… Yes, he knew what that meant, he understood it well. If only it were as easy for him to rid himself of such a thing; to stretch his chest out for once and breathe, freely. At times the burden had been so heavy that he felt as if his heart might be crushed completely.

  It had taken over a year for them to get Ma back after he and Walter had escaped the workhouse. They’d worked like slaves in the docks, barefoot much of the time. That’s how Walter had developed his foot infection; the flesh had stank like putrid fish for weeks. It was a Chinese doctor who finally healed it, over at Limehouse. Walter would come back from his visits smiling, his hair smelling of smoke and his feet smelling, well, less putrid then before.

  They paid the Chinese doctor to get Ma out, along with a drunk called Albert who’d once, apparently, been an actor. She’d been moved to a hospital of some sort, with no windows and stains on the walls. When she was being difficult they tied her to the bed.

  The doctor and Albert did a good job; thankfully Albert had remained sober for long enough. ‘Experimentation,’ they’d called it. She’d be taken to an excellent institution in Shanghai; ‘pioneering’, ‘the first of its sort’. The experiments there would be vital to the development of our understanding of the human brain. The hospital had been so impressed that they’d offered them more: old dribbling men, women who’d torn their hair out. But Catherine Winter was enough for starters, they’d said, her type of condition was just what they were looking for.

  Tom hadn’t cared about handing over their hard earned savings to get his Ma back. Of course his bony body would have been plumper if they hadn’t done it. He wouldn’t have half frozen to death on many a winter evening. And Walter’s foot would never have rotted if he’d been able to buy some shoes. The thing was, Walter never complained about any of it, never uttered a word of resentment about having to use up their precious earnings to retrieve a woman he didn’t know and was half out of her mind.

  But Tom had had a burden. No food or warmth could make up for the knowledge that his mother was disintegrating in that place, surrounded by strangers. Her absence tortured him, it rang persistently in his ears for that entire year until the triumphant day when Walter’s plan worked and they got her out.

  She was delirious by the time she was installed in their meagre lodgings; entirely unaware of whom Tom was. Happily she let them undress her and wash her like a rag doll. He’d thought that by getting her out and into his care, his Ma would miraculously improve. He’d believed that things would fall back into place and that they’d heal and begin a new family, with Walter. But the burden grew back again like an angry boil. Every day they had to lock her in their small room, scared of what they might find when they returned after a back breaking day at the docks.

  …the burden of my heart… echoed through his head again. Was anyone free of burdens? Walter? His poor Ma? Beautiful Tamara? And Sally. Sally. Because, try as he might, he simply did not love her as a man should love the woman he hopes to marry. He admired her, revered her even. He loved her as a friend, a sister. And of course she knew all of that. Sally was one of the sharpest people he’d ever met. He hoped she realised that he’d tried to change his feelings; battled to feel something more than he did. But he’d failed. And yet she still stayed on. She could have left them both, angry and defiant, in search of better ways to spend her time. She had every right to loathe him for his ungratefulness. He listened to her sweet singing, full of the soft Welsh tones of her upbringing. The same words ran over and over in his head: I don’t deserve Sally and I don’t deserve Walter.

  ‘How did you learn to sing like that?’ he asked her, as they walked home.

  She gave a shrug. ‘You don’t learn to sing in chapel. The feeling just takes hold of you and suddenly you’re up there with everyone else. It’s like love. You don’t learn to love those who are dear to you. It just happens.’

  When they returned all was quiet and Kayan was writing serenely at the table. Walter had bought the boy a thick woollen coat that was far too large for him and he now wore it indoors, outdoors, wherever he went.

  ‘How are you faring?’ said Sally, walking over to the boy and resting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Tom peered down at his writing and discovered that the page was full of repeated strokes of the same letter: A.

  He smiled up at her broadly as she admired his handiwork.

  ‘Come on then, you and Sinbad can walk me home.’

  Tom’s heart skipped a beat. Was Sinbad really in his home? The idea had been so preposterous that he’d assumed it had been a joke. Kayan whistled softly between his teeth and the enormous cat skirted around the doorway of his mother’s room.

  ‘Do you mean to say that… that that cat really
was keeping my mother warm?’ he blurted.

  ‘Yes, Master Tom. Why would I lie?’ said the boy with a confused look.

  Sally stroked the cat’s head as if it were no more threatening than a fat tabby. ‘Come on then.’

  He watched them leave, wondering if he’d gone mad or if the rest of the world had and he was the only sane one left. His eyes blurred with tiredness. In the next room Ma was sleeping peacefully. There was a large, Sinbad-shaped indentation on the blanket next to her. She had a soft smile on her face, as if she were floating on clouds, and her cheeks were rosy. She certainly looked very warm indeed.

  Chapter 8

  ‘Have a look at this.’

  Walter rolled his sleeve up to reveal the diaphanous white of his left arm. His right hand suddenly swiped up into the air, brandishing a vicious looking blade, which he then sliced down the length of his exposed limb. At once thick blood welled up from the wound.

  ‘Oh, God!’

  Tom ran towards his friend. They were in Walter’s graveyard dwelling: a surprisingly pleasant room with a pitched beamed roof. Sinbad watched them drowsily from his Turkish rug in the corner.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said Walter, holding up his hand. Tom halted and watched with astonishment as the dripping blood turned to red powder on reaching the floor. In just a few moments all the blood had disappeared and Walter’s arm was perfectly intact.

  Walter peered at him, eyebrows raised. ‘Too much?’

  ‘I think so, yes. Absolutely. I’m not sure if Mayfair’s ready for that.’

  ‘I’ll save it for The Duchess.’

  ‘Duchess!’

  ‘Hold your horses, it’s a theatre…well, music hall really. Draws a good crowd but, less refined, shall we say. Cornelius managed to twist a few arms and got us three nights there.’