by Richard Peck
I said nothing.
“They ought to at least pay you something,” Alexander mumbled. “It was your story. They often pay money for stories that aren’t even true.”
“I wouldn’t take no money,” I said. “That’d be like dancing on Julian’s grave.” But my mind was elsewhere.
We’d walked nearly back to Brown’s Hotel. An omnibus rumbled by, plastered all over with ads for Whitbread’s Ales and Pear’s Soap and the London Palladium. On the back of the omnibus a plain white sign lettered in black read IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE.
And so it does, I thought. A scheme was forming in my mind. At the worst, it could only get us arrested. But if everything went just right, we might get famous enough to send Miss Dabney sailing straight into Buckingham Palace. I’d been famous before. I could be again. My method was somewhat vulgar by Miss Dabney’s high standards, but if it brought her to Queen Mary, she would surely not mind. And neither would Julian if he knew.
“Still,” said Alexander, “Madame Tussaud’s was the best museum.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” I told him, “for we’ll be going back tomorrow early. Let’s just find us a stationery store where we can buy a big piece of cardboard and some ink. I’ll do the lettering on the sign myself.”
“What sign?” asked Alexander.
“And I think I’ll wear my nightdress. It’ll be more dramatic than regular clothes.”
“What nightdress?”
“And you’ll be in charge of putting in a call to the London Times and various newspapers, as we’ll want the publicity.”
“What publicity?” asked Alexander, completely buffaloed. He can never see a minute ahead.
19
THOUGH WE MEANT to be back at Madame Tussaud’s before the press got there the next morning, Alexander and me had breakfast with Miss Dabney. It wouldn’t do if she got wind of our scheme too soon. Vague though she was and growing vaguer, she smelled a rat. I hoped to put her off the scent.
Alexander had failed to bring his guidebook to the table, not needing it. Miss Dabney noted this. “And where are you children off to today?”
“Westminster Abbey,” I replied. “The Tower of London,” Alexander said at the same time.
“An ambitious plan,” she remarked, her brows arching. “And, Blossom, may one inquire why you have worn your coat to breakfast, buttoned to the neck?”
The reason was that I had on my nightdress under it, the skirts hitched up in my bloomers. “It’s colder than a witch’s—it’s cold as ice in this dining room,” I explained.
Fortunately the waiter bore in our breakfasts: stone-cold masses of clotted baked beans on fried bread. This is an example of how the English start their day.
“You are looking very smart this morning, Alexander,” Miss Dabney said. “I have not seen you in your best knicker suit since the evening we dined at Captain Haddock’s table.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Alexander replied, his voice breaking again for the first time in weeks. He fidgeted throughout breakfast, earning us an early escape. Miss Dabney sent us packing. We snatched up the large sign Alexander had left with the porter, and I fitted it around him under his overcoat. We were soon racing along Dover Street.
The doors of Madame Tussaud’s were just opening, and we were the first two inside. I wondered if Alexander had made it clear to the various newspapers the sensational quality of what we were about to pull off. It’s hard to get your message across on an English telephone, and I saw no newspapermen around.
We sped past the waxen image of the founder and beyond. Then we hung around the notice pointing the way to the Titanic tableau. With nobody about, I peeled my new sign off Alexander. I’d done the lettering myself, which I’m expert at. It fit neatly over the other sign and read as follows:
LATEST TABLEAU
RECENTLY REVISED
Madame Tussaud’s begs to inform the public that its most current and striking tableau has been greatly improved: a re-creation of a tragic moment during the sinking of the White Star Liner
TITANIC
Now look upon the last moments of young Julian Poindexter, comforted on his deathbed by the image of Miss Blossom Culp of Bluff City, U.S.A.
Her who was translated back to the Great Disaster and wondrously returned to tell the tale. Miss Culp is Madame Tussaud’s crowning achievement, being absolutely lifelike due to a new secret process.
If you have not seen the tableau today, you have not seen the tableau atall. One flight up.
Nobody was in the Titanic room when we got there. So there was time to stow our coats in a dark corner. I flipped the skirt-tails of my nightdress out of my bloomers.
The tableau was lit in its wavering green. And Julian’s bedside lamp illuminated his sad, motionless features. I stood there communing with his image. But his spirit was elsewhere, for I felt nothing unlikely except the biting chill of that night far out to sea.
Ducking under the rope, I stepped cautiously down the slanting floor. Where the shadow was cast across his blanket I cast myself, kneeling by his bunk. My nightdress fanned out upon the carpet. Up close, Julian’s wax image lost none of its realism. Each blond eyelash was separately set. Peach fuzz on his cheeks gave way to shades of gray beneath his haunted eyes.
I reached out for his hand as I’d done in our last moments, but it was not easy. In a way he was more worrisome than the mummy, being more lifelike. And of course I had not died with the mummy, and hope I never do.
Seeming to hear the creak of lowering lifeboats, I lightly grasped Julian’s hand. I hoped none of his fingers would come off. Then I practiced remaining as still as a statue. Immobility is not my way.
“Turn your head a little this direction,” Alexander muttered. “Your hair hides your face. That’s better. Hold it right there.” It was easy for him to say, fidgeting out there beyond the rope. I locked eyes with Julian’s glass ones just as the first museum visitors entered the room.
Voices came from the darkness outside the tableau. “Oh, do look, Papa,” came a childish one, “she’s breathing!”
I had little choice there. And after all, Madame Du Barry breathes and is well known for it. The room seemed to fill with the awed and curious, and I was reminded of one of Professor Regis’s seances.
It’s a strange thing about the public. They’ll believe anything written on a sign. And they’ll see exactly what they expect to see. No more. No less.
I must have been there on my knees at Julian’s side for an hour. Long enough to know that baked beans had been a poor choice for breakfast. Voices rose at the rear of the crowd. Over these I heard Alexander, seeming to speak to someone near him but sending me a clear message. “It must be reporters from the London papers come to cover this new, improved tableau,” he sung out.
“I can assure you all, gentlemen,” said an official voice at the door, “that Madame Tussaud’s has not altered the Titanic tableau in the least particular. Some crank has posted a mendacious sign over the real one. And no doubt the same crank has issued false reports to the press. Our tableau depicts only the lad, Julian P—”
At that moment the museum official caught his first sight of me. He said a word that surprised men often use. And I seemed to hear the steady scratching of reporters taking quick notes.
“That waxwork is an impostor!” announced the museum man. The velvet rope quivered in his grasp. And the crowd laughed merrily. I breathed on, very lightly, and my eyes comforted Julian’s image. “This exhibit is closed to the public! Step along smartly, please! Everyone out!” But the museum man’s own voice only drew more gawkers. The room seemed full to overflowing.
I knew a way of clearing it at once.
My hand slid away from Julian’s. And my head turned slowly to the crowd. I rolled my eyes half up under the lids as if they’d been set in rather hurriedly. And then I stood up very slowly, letting the folds of my nightdress fall out.
The English are said to be a very calm and emotionless people. This is an o
utright lie. They will scream and grow faint and knock each other down to get out of a room just like any American.
The newspapermen drew back, but they were still with us. The museum official seemed turned to wax himself. Alexander was in complete possession of himself, of course. “Gentlemen of the press,” he said, “this here is the real Miss Blossom Culp, who will gladly entertain any questions you may care to put to her.”
* * *
Well, the rest is history, as the poet says. There are few reporters in Great Britain who do not claim to have been there the day I come to life at Madame Tussaud’s. Some raked me over the coals for desecrating a museum exhibit. Others gave me full marks for displaying “a pert and antic ingenuity that is purely American.” But they all wrote me up in lengthy articles, many claiming to be exclusive interviews.
The response to this was heavy in a nation easily swayed by the supernatural. But I’d been famous before and will doubtless be again. So I bore it all with modest patience. Even later when Madame Tussaud’s asked me to sit for the sculpting of a waxwork of myself to be added to the tableau. I’d given them more free advertising than they’re ever like to see again. And I will say this: After their first shock, they treated me right. I was never threatened with imprisonment after the first hour or so.
It was unnecessary to confess anything to Miss Dabney. When Alexander and me finally got away from the museum on the day of my unveiling, we stormed into the hotel parlors breathless. She and Mr. Birdsall occupied their corner sofa, swapping favorite lines from Shakespeare. He had his new spectacles on, giving him a froglike look. But still he gazed up at Miss Dabney with the same admiration.
She sat with an early-evening edition of a newspaper screaming my name on her lap. But she only pulled her mouth down in a sharp V, saying, “It could have been much worse. The pair of you were so shifty-eyed at breakfast this morning that I feared for the Crown Jewels.”
We were all nearly put out of Brown’s Hotel though, for the number of bouquets of waxen lilies and other tributes I received from leading British spiritualists. I had many odd callers too, but the hotel doorman turned them away. Brown’s never savored the publicity like Madame Tussaud’s did.
It was another week of relentless acclaim before we heard from Buckingham Palace. Evidently Queen Mary kept up on her newspaper reading, for a footman or some such delivered an envelope to the hotel, bearing the Royal coat of arms.
A hotel servant brought it into the parlors on a silver tray, causing Miss Dabney to leap up, shrieking, “I am vindicated! I am justified! We have not come this distance to be turned back at the gates! I do hope Queen Mary will not be in powder blue, for I will!” et cetera.
This sudden noise created a worse scandal in Brown’s parlors than any of my highjinks. Sleepers woke suddenly, thinking war had broken out.
The Royal letter was much like the first one I’d had from the Queen. It expressed profound pleasure to learn that I and my party were in London. Surprise and shock at what I’d been up to played no part in the letter, as Royalty is above all that. The letter signed off by inviting Miss Dabney and me to an occasion called a Drawing Room. This is a simple party during the day. Miss Dabney wrung her hands in ecstasy, and Mr. Birdsall goggled at her with complete understanding.
As a Drawing Room is for ladies only, Alexander was out of the picture. On the day of the party Mr. Birdsall took him to his club for lunch, which Alexander reported as being white fish in a gray sauce surrounded by brown peas.
All Miss Dabney’s uncertainties fell away as we prepared for the Drawing Room. She was neither skittish nor withdrawn. When she strode out of Brown’s to get into the hired limousine, I’d never seen her looking finer. An entire spray of egret feathers rose from her Queen Mary hat, which wound round and round her powdered forehead in satin bands. Her papa’s watch swung from her bosom like a military medal, nestled in much fur.
I won’t comment on my own appearance out of modesty. I wore my first wide-brimmed hat. And my Princess dress, previously noted, is now on my image at Madame Tussaud’s, where you can have a look at it yourself if you’re ever there.
As our high black limousine drove through the gates at Buckingham Palace, a small crowd always at the fence sent up a cheer. Miss Dabney raised her hand in a small gesture. It did them no harm to think they’d caught a glimpse of the Queen herself.
Since the Palace is never open to the public, we were shortly beyond the limits of Alexander’s guidebook. Well-dressed flunkies ushered us along with a gaggle of other fashionable ladies down many marble halls.
Expecting the Queen to pop out from behind any pillar, I craned my neck. But this was rushing my fences. We were shown into a paneled room for a lesson in how to behave.
Our instructress was a lady-in-waiting, doubtless a replacement for Lady Beatrix. She was as well spoken in her way as Miss Spaulding, though highly placed English people whinny their speech strangely through the nose. She seemed to smile. At least her lip curled back over brown teeth.
“Ladies,” she drawled, “though I am sure that most amongst you are accustomed to Court usages, permit me a review of certain points, for the sake of any who may be unfamiliar with them.” Here her milky eye drifted over Miss Dabney’s feather and rested on me.
“In addressing the Queen, ‘Your Majesty’ is to be used initially and ‘Ma’am’ thereafter. Take care to pronounce ‘Ma’am’ to rhyme with ‘calm’ as I do, rather than with ‘jam.’
“Referring to the Queen as ‘you’ is not done. It should be, ‘Did Your Majesty enjoy a pleasant day?’ And never, ‘Did you enjoy a pleasant day?’
“However, it is Royalty that initiates conversations, and so the selection of a suitable topic does not rest with the visitor.
“Upon meeting or taking leave of the Queen, ladies are expected to curtsy. The occasion of turning your back on Her Majesty should not arise. And above all, do not shake the Queen’s hand. Permit it to rest gently in your own, and briefly.”
“She is completely right,” Miss Dabney whispered to me, “down to the last detail.”
We were next shown into a room well known to me. It was the same as the copy at Madame Tussaud’s, though shabbier. Beyond great windows small Royal dogs romped in a private park. A tall door opened, and in stepped Queen Mary in a procession of more ladies-in-waiting. Miss Dabney sighed in relief, for the Queen was in mint green and not powder blue.
We were all lined up in some sort of order. The duchesses seemed to be farther ahead, bobbing and simpering. I followed Miss Dabney, who moved well above the floor. A different lady-in-waiting announced us. “Your Majesty, Miss Gertrude Dabney, a visitor from America.”
Seen together, the two didn’t look as much alike as I expected. Miss Dabney had a few years on the Queen, and even when her curtsy was at its lowest, she still towered over Royalty. Queen Mary offered her hand and gave Miss Dabney a veiled once-over. Though her eyes told nothing, she searched her Royal mind for a pleasantry. At last it came to her. “We like your hat.”
“How kind, Your Majesty,” Miss Dabney breathed.
And then the fondest moment of her life passed, and it was my turn. “Miss Blossom Culp, Ma’am,” announced the lady-in-waiting, “of whom Your Majesty has heard.”
My knee crooked unbidden, and I bobbed, staring straight into a bosom bejeweled and fortified.
“Ah—of course,” said Queen Mary. “The Miss Culp who has both edified us with her goodness and won our hearts with her witty ways. Tell us, Miss Culp, how does it feel to be a footnote to history?”
My tongue swelled in my mouth. I seemed bewitched, for I spoke in Mama’s coarse voice, and all other training went out the window. “Aw pshaw, Your Highness, it wasn’t nothing,” I warbled. “You know yourself how them reporters blow an event up just to sell papers. And I’m switched if I don’t think your English papers is worse than ours back home!” Then I gave her hand a good pumping.
The lady-in-waiting looked faint. “Lady Winstanton
,” she announced quickly, “and her daughter, the Honorable . . .”
* * *
Well, that’s what a Drawing Room is like, for the benefit of those who never went to one. I could have done better, and I might have done worse. But that’s true of life in general. Miss Dabney didn’t correct my etiquette. She drifted in a dream long after the event.
We sailed on the next boat home. I spent our last night in England clipping out newspaper articles regarding myself, as documents for use in this present account. On the reverse side of a photo of me sitting for my waxwork was a classified ad which drew my eye.
FORTUNES AND FUTURES SKILFULLY TOLD
Palms read and dead loved ones contacted
Seance sittings in a refined atmosphere
Four shillings with this advertisement
See Sybil of the Bermondsey Road.
Later, on the boat home, Miss Dabney and I settled into deck chairs while Alexander paced off the deck. She reviewed everything tirelessly. “It was very wonderful,” she said of our Drawing Room day. “It is ritual that gives shape to life.” And I suppose that’s the role that Royalty plays. There are many kinds of wisdom in this world, and Miss Dabney is very wise in her way.
“But it will be good to get away to a quiet village and a home of one’s own,” she said, sighing.
“I won’t be sorry to see Bluff City again myself,” I said.
“Bluff City?” Miss Dabney rose up from her deck chair. “Oh, Blossom,” said she, all astonishment, “I am only seeing you and Alexander safely home. Then I shall dispose of my properties there. Mr. Birdsall has been good enough to ask for my hand in marriage. And as dear Papa is gone, I shall give it myself. Atlee—Mr. Birdsall—and I will live in England in a small cottage he keeps on the verge of the River Avon.”
She spoke like this was common knowledge. But her eyes were upon me, and they had the shy gleam of a young bride’s. I wondered what Minerva would do with herself in an empty house. But I said nothing. Minerva was part of the past, and Miss Dabney was looking to the future.
