Illusion

by Stephanie Elmas

  The woman smiled so that two great dimples formed in her cheeks. ‘Oh, he’s in there,’ she said, nodding at a closed door. ‘Walter!’ she called, knocking gently at it. ‘Your friend Mr…,’

  ‘Winter.’

  ‘Mr Winter is here.’

  There was a short wait before the door opened and a woman slipped out. She winked at Tom, adjusting a mass of dishevelled hair with an assortment of pins as she tottered away. Seconds later a young man slipped out of the same room, hastily tucking his half open shirt into his trousers. He also winked at Tom and disappeared in the same direction as the girl. Finally, Walter emerged.

  ‘Walter.’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘Some new… friends of yours?’

  Walter’s eyes glimmered back at him a little sheepishly. ‘You’ve met Madame Pansy I see.’

  The older woman flashed her dimples again. Tom tried to look at them rather than at the confined guard-dogs beneath.

  ‘Um, why have you summoned me here? I was in the middle of teaching.’

  Walter beckoned him over to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Together they peered down into the street.

  ‘There’s your reason,’ he answered. ‘Excellent timing.’

  There below them walked the familiar figure of a young woman with her mother and a maid. Tom felt his face flush hot and then cold.

  ‘She has a dress fitting at the shop opposite in approximately four minutes,’ said Walter. ‘The mother chaperones her obsessively, but today will have to leave her for a short time to attend her own appointment with the milliner, situated five doors up the road. This will allow us a very small window of time to interview our heroine and hopefully formulate a plan.’

  ‘What about the maid?’

  ‘Leave her to me. You just wait here.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll return with Tamara directly.’

  ‘But…,’

  But Walter was already slipping away like a nimble crane fly and Tom found himself being bundled into a room by Madame Pansy before he could object any further.

  ‘You’ll only have five minutes with her,’ she said, chuckling deeply. ‘It’ll have to be quick work.’

  ‘No… No! I don’t think you quite understand!’

  ‘Yes Mr Winter, I do understand. I’ve seen it all before, and the rest of it.’

  The door closed behind her and he was alone. He glanced around him. Thankfully this was not a bedroom but some sort of office. The walls were covered in velvet embossed wallpaper and there was a splendid teak desk. The decor was remarkably grand for a brothel; Madame Pansy must be doing splendidly well. He sank down at the desk, strummed the opening notes of a Mazurka with blundering fingers on its surface and then stood up again.

  A short time later he heard a shuffling noise outside. There was a pause and then the door swung open. Walter and Tamara appeared in its frame. The image of the two of them standing there was so odd, that for a moment Tom was lost for words. It was like the most whimsical portrait you could ever hope to see: the extraordinarily tall thin man in a velvet suit, the richly dressed young woman with startled eyes, set against the purple backdrop of a London whore house. What have we done?

  ‘You found me,’ she said. ‘Am I to stay with you now?’

  Walter ushered her into the room and closed the door.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘We can’t smuggle you out of Chelsea in broad daylight and, as yet, we have nowhere safe or suitable to take you. Madame Pansy has allowed us a few minutes but she cannot harbour you. Hearst is far too dangerous for her and her business.’

  ‘What have you done with the maid?’ asked Tom.

  ‘She is particularly enamoured by a range of gloves. Simply can’t keep her eyes off them…for now,’ replied Walter.

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ said Tamara. Her voice was low and soft. ‘I’ll do anything, be part of any plan, if only you can get me away from him.’ Her face was so determined, so brave, that Tom could think of nothing but cupping his hands around it and kissing her nightmares away. ‘You can do extraordinary things: you made a man disappear on stage, you put a panther in his place!’

  ‘It’s only an illusion,’ said Walter.

  ‘Yes, yes I know, but a very believable one. In a few months’ time I have to marry Cecil Hearst. It was planned between him and Mama many years ago. He controls her, somehow, I don’t know why. After my father died she gave Cecil a large part of our family business. Now that I’m of age he wants me, too. You… you saw a little of his character a few nights ago at his house. Just a little. Believe me; Cecil Hearst is capable of far worse. I’ve been brought up in a cage, primed for him alone, but I tell you, I cannot marry that man!’

  ‘What do you want us to do? Walter asked.

  ‘Make me disappear. Just like you did with the man on the stage. I don’t care where I go, I really don’t.’

  The air felt heavy on them all. Tom could hear her breathing: quick, sharp gasps.

  ‘You say that you live in a cage, but surely you must appear in public as well? There must be times when you are able to get away. I first saw you at a party after all,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes, but they are always with me. Mama knows my feelings; she knows I despise him. I feel her sticking closer and closer to me with every passing day. She won’t be content until I am married.’

  ‘When and where is your next public engagement?’ asked Walter.

  ‘The opera. Covent Garden, a week today.’

  ‘Covent Garden,’ he murmured. Walter looked thoughtful; his eyes became a little glazed as they always did when some work of alchemy was forming in his mind. Tom noticed Tamara peering at the bottles and trinkets around his friend’s neck.

  ‘I will check on the maid,’ he said suddenly. But he moved away slowly, as if his mind were still somewhere at the top of a mountain, or at the bottom of the sea. ‘You have three minutes.’

  They watched him leave. And then they were alone.

  Alone.

  Tom felt the thrill of joy and fear and absolute yearning race through him. He took her hands in his. It felt right to do so. They were long and slim, but not frail.

  ‘Will you help? Will he?’ she whispered.

  ‘We’ll help you all that we can.’

  ‘I knew you were kind. When I first saw you, when you first spoke to me.’

  Tom smiled. ‘Kind. Well, that is about all I have to give. And that in itself is dangerous. This place is not where someone like you should be seen.’

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t care what this place is. I feel more alive here with you now, safer and more truthful, than anywhere I have ever been with Cecil.’

  He raised his hand and ran his finger along the smooth contour of her cheek. They were both breathless; as if they’d been running alone for years, across hundreds of miles, just to meet at this point, right now. He thought of all the places he’d had to run through in his life just to get here: the workhouse, the docks, the hospital where they put his mother, a thousand piano lessons, the room where he’d held a gun to his best friend’s face. It had all been for this; for this perfect, heart-stopping three minutes alone with Tamara Huntingdon. He leaned forward and kissed her, deeply, lovingly; encircling every part of her into his embrace, winding his fingers through that gorgeous mass of brown hair. He closed his eyes and prayed that it would never ever end.

  But at last the sharp tap at the door came. ‘Time to leave now dear,’ called Madame Pansy through the wooden panels.

  They didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. He let her disappear from him and winced with the red-raw pain of love.

  Chapter 10

  The following night they opened at The Duchess. Walter wore a mustard suit, tailored by the fair hands of the Missus Cornelius. Even Tom had a costume of sorts: a black velvet cloak and a floppy cap that made him look like a court jester. Their performance was a roaring success.

  Walter seemed more comfortable on this stage, amongst the p
eople he had always known, and they lapped up the extravagance of his tricks. They wanted to believe that Kayan, dressed as an Indian prince, had levitated thirty feet off the ground. They cried in revulsion when Walter slashed his arms before them and then took to their feet when the blood turned to red powder on the floor. And when he hypnotised them; when he made them do funny dances, speak in strange languages, ruffle Sinbad’s head as if he were a stray tom cat, they actually rolled with laughter in the aisles.

  Tom gave up all hope of sleep for the rest of that week. He taught piano during the day and at night donned increasingly outrageous outfits, had swords thrust into him and shot bullets into his friend’s mouth.

  The theatre asked them to come back, seats became hot property, posters went up everywhere.

  ‘They’re calling you The East End Wizard, The Mystic of the Streets,’ said a man from the newspapers to Walter after the second show. He’d come backstage, sniffing around for a story.

  ‘Is it true? Were you really raised in the gutter?’

  ‘I wish I had been,’ Walter replied. ‘It would have been far better than the workhouse.’

  ‘And what put you in the workhouse Mr Balanchine?’

  ‘Cholera I believe, or so I’ve been told. It killed my family and left me on my own.’

  ‘It’s a sad story,’ said the reporter, scratching his head.

  ‘Is it? I remember nothing of it. It means very little to me.’

  The climax of the show was the thing that people talked about the most. It had taken an exceptional amount of planning, much of which had fallen on Cornelius’s shoulders, owing to his strong connections with a travelling circus. The illusion required Walter to lie on a plank of wood, supported by a few bricks at either end to form a makeshift bed. A succession of animals were then led on stage and commanded to walk over the length of Walter’s body.

  The first animal was a large dog. Walter made a point of wriggling uneasily as the dog treaded on his nose and the audience pealed with laughter. Next came a small pony. It seemed rather put out at having to walk over a live man and Walter made neighing noises as it did so that made the audience laugh even more. After that came a leopard, and then a llama. When a cart-horse was brought onto the stage the crowd quietened and began to lean forward in their seats.

  ‘Watch out mate, you’ll get a hoof in the throat!’ cried a man in the front row. There were shocked murmurs as a hoof burrowed down into Walter’s stomach, bending the plank of wood beneath him. Another hoof narrowly missed his head. When the horse was finally led away and Walter still appeared to be breathing, the relief in the auditorium was palpable. But then, when an elephant was brought onto the stage, the people actually took to their feet.

  The lights went down, mist rose around Walter. The elephant, with surprising daintiness, stepped on top of him. Beneath his body the wood bent almost to the floor; those sitting closest heard a splintering sound. A scuffle broke out in the crowd; it appeared that someone had fainted. As one of the beast’s mighty feet covered the entirety of Walter’s face, a general cry of terror rose up in the auditorium.

  At last, when the elephant stepped down, the stage was plunged into darkness. The air hummed with anticipation.

  ‘He’s dead, ain’t ee?’ yelled a young voice. ‘They’re taking ’is body away!’

  But then, in a moment of brilliance, the lights suddenly came on again and a flock of doves rose up from the stage. There, standing behind them, was Walter; alive and perfectly intact in his mustard suit. The Duchess was used to noise, but rarely had it encountered quite this level of outburst and applause.

  It was on the final night, near the end of the performance, that Tom spotted the woman in the audience. He was standing in the wings, commanding a complex system of pulleys to make Kayan seem as if he were somersaulting through space across the stage. Tom spotted her close to the back of the auditorium. He had to squint just to make sure. But no, there was no mistaking it: almond-shaped eyes, stony, unsmiling features that refused to bend with the emotions of the people around her. It was Tamara’s mother.

  The shock of it nearly caused him to lose control of the pulleys. Kayan jolted in the air. Another second and he would have come crashing to the floor. Tom readjusted the ropes, gulped a few deep breaths, and stole another glance. It was definitely her, dressed entirely in black. What was the woman doing here? Sniffing them out, that was for sure. He looked over at Walter in the other wing, locked in deep concentration as he prepared for his final act. Had he seen her too?

  ‘What was that, Master Tom Winter?’ cried Kayan, puffing out his cheeks as he came somersaulting off the stage in a final flourish.

  ‘Sorry, something caught my eye.’

  Walter’s final act caused the greatest riot yet. Tom watched on as only one character remained motionless in her seat throughout. The elephant came off stage, darkness fell in the auditorium, and the room heaved with the suspense of it. The lights flashed on again and, through a cloud of doves, he saw that one seat was now empty. She had gone.

  *

  With the money from The Duchess, Tom bought new clothes for his mother, Sally and himself. He also paid for a hansom cab to take the three of them out. It was Saturday morning; the first day of the year to fill the air with some real warmth.

  Sally wrapped Ma in shawls and Tom carried her down the stairs and into the carriage. Ma seemed pleased. She smiled at the sun rays on her face, closing her eyes to them and lapping them up like a cat.

  They took her to Walter’s cemetery, where Kayan and Sinbad were waiting for them. A table and an assortment of chairs had been brought outside into the sunniest spot. It felt less eerie there with the sun out; the marble statues seemed friendlier, more like Greek gods keeping company in a forest clearing.

  ‘Master Walter gone to buy bread,’ Kayan said.

  ‘Has gone to buy bread,’ corrected Sally.

  ‘Yes Miss Sally, he gone to buy bread.’

  They lowered Ma in a deep cushioned chair and Sinbad lay protectively at her feet. Tom ran his hand over the cat’s silky ears.

  ‘I love the sun!’ cried Kayan, dancing around them, his long brown limbs flying through the air. ‘Like home!’

  ‘What was your home like?’ asked Sally.

  ‘It had fig trees and a well. It was hot, dusty. Not like here. Sometimes the winds hurt our eyes.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  He stopped dancing and collapsed in a chair, as if all that energy had suddenly been sapped out of him.

  ‘There was a war,’ he murmured.

  Walter arrived not only with bread, but with buns and pies and meat and chocolate, the last of which sent Kayan into a state of dreamy ecstasy.

  ‘I’m going to take Ma to a doctor,’ said Tom. ‘For the first time in my life I have some money and I want her to see the best I can afford.’

  Sally and Walter said nothing. He could see only hopelessness in their faces.

  ‘Even if I can just find her the right medicine. She’s responded well to yours Walter, perhaps there are more …,’

  ‘I’ve had some supplies shipped in, from a great doctor I met in Egypt,’ said Walter. ‘I’m thinking of setting up a clinic of some sort. Their methods are so much more advanced than back here.’

  Tom noticed that another small bottle had joined the collection of trinkets hanging around Walter’s neck.

  ‘Perhaps you could join me, Sally,’ he continued. ‘I’ll need an assistant.’

  Sally grinned and rolled her eyes. ‘Is there nothing you can’t do Mr Balanchine? The Mystic of the Streets now becomes the curer of all ailments!’

  ‘The magic shows won’t last forever. They are merely a means of getting somewhere else.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I want to be a healer,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘You mean a doctor?’

  ‘No, not in the normal sense anyway. I’m more interested in souls than bodies.’

  Souls. The word immedi
ately drove Cecil Hearst back into Tom’s mind; he felt the hairs on his arms tingle. He tried to imagine what a “dark soul” might look or sound or feel like: the bottom of a well perhaps, the deepest recess of a cave, cold, unscalable, a dying sob in the night.

  Could Walter really see inside a person’s soul? Maybe this was why he felt so comfortable living in a graveyard; among those who had departed their physical state entirely. He wondered whether Walter could see a few souls right now: hovering around their small table, groaning and wailing, tearing at their hair – all those things that ghosts were supposed to do.

  Although Tom probably knew his friend better than anyone else in the world, there were so many elements to Walter’s nature that he still found utterly incomprehensible. Over the years he had learned that it was simply easier and better to trust him than to try to comprehend. Now, somehow, Walter had become the Wizard of the East End; an orphan of cholera. And yet this was the first time that Tom had heard such a story. The truth was that Walter had no idea what had brought him to the East End of London.

  ‘What’s that there?’ Tom once asked him, when they had first become bony little friends. He pointed at the locket around Walter’s neck.

  Walter’s hand went round it, quick as a flash, as if just talking about the locket would somehow tarnish its already mucky exterior.

  ‘It’s alright, you don’t have to say. I won’t take it from you.’

  Slowly the boy removed his fingers. He opened the locket so carefully that you would have thought it was the most precious thing in the world. What Tom’s childish brain didn’t realise at the time was that for Walter, it was.

  ‘What is it?’ Tom asked, peering at something that looked like a shrivelled old stick inside.

  ‘It’s lavender. Still smells.’ Walter’s hollowed face seemed to crumple, although he didn’t cry. It was a look more of disbelief than sorrow. ‘It’s the only thing that came with me when I was left.’

  ‘Who left you?’

  ‘I don’t know. They never came back and they never will.’

  Tom and Walter rarely spoke of it after that. He often heard others asking Walter about where he came from and usually he’d brush them off with some fictional tale of woe. But Tom couldn’t help but look into his friend’s face sometimes and wonder where he had truly sprung from. His sallow skin and those high, protruding cheeks were not typical of an English boy. As they’d grown up around the docks, Tom had often studied the faces of passers-by to see if he could find anything of Walter in them. Every sort of person came off those boats. Walter wasn’t dark skinned enough to be African, Indian or even Arabic. Some Russian soldiers had once come in: tall and burly, far stronger figures than Walter, and yet they had had similar shaped faces. He could see a likeness there, although they were much fairer than his friend. Many thought that Walter was Jewish, probably because they spent much of their time after the workhouse living in Jewish quarters and mixing with Jewish children. But no, in all his life he had never seen another Walter. He was unique and that was all that could possibly be said about him.