Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Listen. You. Miss Amberly – you goin’ to marry my Lizah?’

  She blinked and pulled ineffectually at her hand. ‘What?’

  ‘I said are you planning to marry him? Because if you are –’

  She didn’t mean to. It just happened. She laughed, tilting her head back and letting the sound of real amusement come out, comfortable and easy. ‘Marry him? Of course not! I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life!’

  The old woman almost bridled, her face settling into a scowl.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with him! He’s a marvellous boy, best of all my children, may God forgive me for making such judgements! You could do worse, God help him if you do –’

  ‘Of course there’s nothing wrong with him,’ Mildred said and her amusement grew. What did the wretched woman want from her? Assurances of her undying love for her son, or assurances that she hated him? A little of both, probably, she thought shrewdly, and with her other hand, patted the old woman’s gnarled knuckles which were still whitening in their grip on Mildred’s arm. ‘But I have no intention of marrying him or anyone else. We’ve become friends. It’s mad really. We’ve nothing in common at all, nothing that we could be said to share. It’s something that just happened. But all it is is a friendship. He knows my brothers, and that’s how I know him. It means nothing. I have a dull life and he entertains me. That is all.’

  They could hear his footsteps moving about upstairs and then coming back towards the staircase and the old woman said quickly, ‘Listen, you swear? On your mother’s life?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry, you should forgive me. I wish you long life. On your father’s life, then. You swear you won’t marry my Lizah?’

  He was clattering down now and Mrs Harris almost shook her arm in her impatience, never taking her eyes from Mildred’s face. ‘Swear already, on your father’s life – swear it.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Mildred began but again the old woman shook her arm and said, ‘Swear it.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ At last she managed to pull herself away from that tight grip. ‘Anything you like. I swear. Will that satisfy you?’

  ‘Say it. Say “I swear I won’t marry Lizah Harris, on my father’s life”.’

  Mildred grimaced and rubbed her arm as she heard his footsteps reach the bottom of the stairs. ‘Oh, all right!’ she said hurriedly as Mrs Harris leaned closer, looking threatening, and repeated the words while feeling more than a little absurd, for it was so melodramatic; more like the things that happened on the stage at the old Britannia than real life, and as Kid came back into the room, slamming the glass-fronted door behind him, the old woman nodded, apparently satisfied, and leaned back so that her face was in the shadows and no longer illuminated by the central gaslight that hung over the table.

  ‘So here it is!’ he said jovially, and sat down between them again. ‘My first winnings! Now I get fat purses and make a good thing out of side bets, but when I got this, believe me, I felt richer’n I have any time since! See, Millie?’

  She looked at the oblong of paper covered in elaborate copperplate script, with his name, Lazarus Harris, carefully embossed in the centre and nodded.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured. ‘Beautiful.’ And then lifted her head and said very deliberately to the face in the shadows. ‘Like your cake, Mrs Harris. That is beautiful too. I enjoyed it. May I have another slice?’

  ‘You like it?’ She leaned forwards and stretched for the cake plate and knife. ‘You’ve got good taste, I’ll give you that. So tell me, you bake cakes yourself? Or are you too rich to have to do such things?’

  ‘I don’t bake cakes,’ Mildred said and took the plate that Mrs Harris thrust at her. ‘But I’m not rich either. I live with my father.’

  ‘You should see, Momma. Real class, that house. In Leinster Terrace, right by Hyde Park, lovely. One of these days, I promise you, I’ll get a house like that for you –’

  ‘And Queen Victoria will come and eat my plaver,’ Mrs Harris said and got up and took the tea pot back to the range to refill it from the hissing kettle. ‘And the moon’ll come down and turn into cheese and we’ll all eat smoked salmon every day.’

  ‘Just you wait and see.’ He leaned back in his chair and stretched. ‘Just you wait. One of these days, when I’m a world champion and got it all, my own gymnasiums, my own stable of fighters, you’ll see. You’ll have the moon, sure, and plenty more besides. Eh, Millie?’

  ‘No doubt,’ she said and stood up. ‘Mrs Harris, I really think I must leave now. It has been – I am happy to have met you.’ And she held out her hand and after a moment the other woman took it and shook it perfunctorily.

  ‘We may meet again some day,’ Mildred said formally and withdrew her hand and put on her gloves, and Kid Harris got to his feet and leaned over and hugged the diminutive old woman who stood quietly beside her tea tray, and said jovially, ‘So, Momma, I’ll be home late, all right? No need to worry none. I’m all right. And now you’ve met my friend, you’re all right there too, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Harris said, though her voice was colourless. ‘Yes. All right. Good night, Miss Amberly.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Harris,’ Mildred said firmly and turned and went.

  9

  It was never quite the same after that meeting. So much so that she did make herself think very hard about giving up her friendship with Harris altogether. His mother’s hostility had been more than unpleasant, she felt; it had been illuminating too, making her see the situation much more clearly. What had been just a ridiculous adventure now took on darker undertones. She wasn’t just flouting convention in sneaking out of her father’s house to go to East End music halls and theatres and cheap restaurants; she was actually taking risks not only with her own well-being but also that of others.

  Often, as she was falling asleep at night, she would see again Mrs Harris’s face, shadowed and watchful under her gaslight as she stood and watched her son go out of her home at Mildred’s side, and what she saw there wasn’t hostility and anger so much as fear and hurt. And that distressed her.

  But giving up the liaison was not as easy a matter as it might have been. First there were her own inclinations. The thought of returning to the humdrummery of life as it had been before that evening last September was a painful one, so painful she could not countenance it, for it was her evenings with Kid Harris which made her days tolerable. Without that respite she could not imagine living at all.

  And there was also the matter of Kid Harris himself. He was as determined she should continue with the friendship as she was unwilling to relinquish it. When she told him she thought she should stop going out to meet him, he threatened to come to the house to speak to her father and insist on her right to do as she chose. When she tried to tell him she was bored and no longer interested in spending time with him, he shrugged the words away as patent nonsense. It was not possible, to Kid Harris, that any person on whom he had set the seal of his approval could ever find him anything but enthralling. There were many childlike qualities in this little man with the blue cheeks, but this was the most childlike of them all. The people he liked must, of course, like him, and there was an end of it. And that innocent certainty of his in fact made him even more likeable.

  And so they went on, she still managing to escape detection at home and becoming ever more adept a liar about time ostensibly spent at Father Jay’s club (to which she had persuaded Kid Harris to take her on a visit so that she could trim her lies with details which would add a gloss of believability to her tales) and he seeming quite unperturbed about anything. Whatever her mood, he was sunny and pleased with himself, pushing aside any efforts she might make to talk of serious matters and wanting only to show her how generous and carefree he was. He seemed to be never happier than when sitting with her amid a crowd of his friends, ordering large quantitites of food and drink for them and generally being the centre of attraction. And she would sit quietly beside hi
m and try to imagine a life in which she did not share such jaunts, and would see it as very bleak indeed. And yet, it seemed to threaten to become just as bleak if matters went on as they were – and she would close her eyes against her confusion and try not to think of anything at all except the here and now, which was, after all, agreeable enough.

  At least he did not embarrass her with any unwanted physical advances. Their friendship remained just that, and quite unadulterated by any lover-like behaviour on his part. He would hold her arm to guide her, would put his hand on hers to make a point, and was much given to taking her by the elbow, but there was never anything lingering in any of these touches, nothing that could alarm her in the least. Her virtue, she knew, was totally safe with him. And whether this was because he felt no attraction towards her in that sense, or because he was holding himself rigidly controlled, she did not know and did not care to think about. It was bad enough that she experienced those strange and exciting sensations when she watched him boxing; to regard him as anything more than a friend was literally unthinkable.

  So might they have gone on for many more months had Kid Harris not chosen on a very rainy night in February to take her to see the last night of the pantomime that the famous Mrs Lane was putting on at the Britannia. The ever popular Marie Lloyd was in it and there were to be guest appearances by Ada Reeve and Marie Kendall and the Lupinos, a very special night indeed. Kid Harris had only the week before won a fight in Shoreditch which had carried a huge purse of a hundred pounds and was feeling extremely pleased with himself, in spite of the fact that he still had a fading bruise on his right cheekbone and a healing cut across his right eyebrow, and in consequence was in an even more lordly mood than usual.

  ‘None o’ your rubbish, Millie!’ he said expansively. ‘Tonight we sits in a box. I’ve ordered some fizz for you, and there we shall sit and how they’ll all stare! It’ll be a good show and we’ll be as good a show as any of ’em!’

  She did not argue. She had tried to persuade him several times to understand her problems regarding dress. To leave her home in an evening gown was impossible, for no one would ever go to a Mission to help a priest in such a rig, so she nearly always wore her quiet tailormades, alternating the blue with the dark brown, and had stopped paying any attention to the differences between herself and the other women who attended the Britannia and Kid’s other places of entertainment. Let them strut in their vivid colours and low-cut bodices and frills and trimmings. She would sit demurely in her tailormades and not care a whit.

  So, on this occasion again she said nothing about the grandeur of sitting in a box, quietly settling into the little gilt chair at the front of the box, and not thinking at all about how visible she might be to the rest of the house. In this she was quite unlike Kid, who always knew exactly who was looking at him and who was speaking of him and who was approving of him, and basked in such attentions. Now he sat beside her, sumptuous in a new set of evening clothes which were even more handsome than the last, delighted to be seen so clearly.

  ‘I don’t know why I never took a box before,’ he confided to her as at last the orchestra struck up and the house lights slowly dimmed.

  ‘You get a lovely view of the stage ’n’ all from here –’

  And they, she thought good-humouredly, get a lovely view of you, as slowly the great tableau curtain rose and the huge wash of light came pouring out to illuminate the front rows of seats and even more their own eyrie, part way up the right side of the wall beside the stage.

  The pantomime was indeed delightful, and within a matter of minutes she was immersed in it, following the adventures of the character played by Marie Lloyd, one Princess Kristina, who had sundry adventures while carrying a lamp about with her at all times. The lamp, Mildred soon realized, represented her virtue and in one scene, when she lost the lamp, Miss Lloyd immediately became a very different character; no longer retiring and girlish, but forward and brazen, and the audience howled their delight as Marie Lloyd with a set of sidelong glances that were as wicked and knowing as those any woman ever delivered, took them all in her hand and squeezed their hearts until they shrieked for more. And Mildred was as entranced as anyone in the house, leaning forwards on the parapet of the box and laughing immoderately and clapping delightedly as the plot unfolded itself in one obvious but vastly enjoyable scene after another.

  By the time the curtain came down to mark the first interval and the fruit sellers and the cake peddlars were out in force in the aisles below them and the people in the gallery were scenting the air with their pigs’ trotters and fried fish and oranges – for the gallery always resembled a vast continuous picnic – she was very relaxed and happy. It was like one of those earlier evenings when she had first embarked on this silly mad caper, when she had first come to the Britannia and discovered what a place of joy it was. Whatever happens in the future, she thought confusedly as she accepted a glass of the champagne he gave her from the bottle in a bucket of ice which had been set ready for them at the back of their box, whatever happens, I am enjoying this. Live for the moment – just for now, and enjoy it –

  And then the door snapped open and Kid Harris turned his head lazily, expecting to see those of his friends he had spotted in the audience below coming to pay court, and she did not look at all, for the same reason. But then she heard the voice and her chin snapped round and she stared, her mouth half open and her belly somersaulting with shock.

  ‘Mildred!’ Basil stood in the little doorway with his back to the light that was coming in from the passageway outside so that his face was shadowed, but it was unmistakeably him and she stood up quickly, spilling some of her champagne as she did so. ‘What the deuce are you doing here?’

  She had seen little of him for some time; ever since the night when she had rescued them from their pickle, both he and Claude had kept themselves very much to themselves at home, hurrying out in the morning to their respectable employment and spending more evenings at their club than at home. And that had suited her well enough, for she knew that they would have been far less easy to gull than her father, who was, she knew, always glad to see as little as possible of the children of his first marriage, finding them an embarrassment now that he had another nursery full and a whining ailing wife to boot. So, seeing Basil now was an added shock, for he seemed to have grown more than she had noticed on the few occasions when she had passed him on the stairs at home, or had seen him hurrying down the front steps to the street on his way out. He looked formidable as he stood there filling the doorway with his height, if not his bulk, and she pressed her hands together to still their shaking as she looked at him.

  ‘Basil!’ she said. ‘I – how very – I mean –’

  ‘And with this horrible creature!’ Basil stepped forwards and stared at Kid Harris who now came slowly to his feet and stood with his legs slightly apart and his arms hanging loose and yet clearly tensed at his sides.

  ‘Good evenin’, Amberly,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s been some time since I saw you. Not layin’ any more bets, then? Given up your interest in matters pugilistic, have you?’

  ‘I’ll deal with you in a minute,’ Basil said and straightened his shoulders and she thought fleetingly of the timid way he had sat slouched on the bench at the back of the cellar when these two had last been in the same place, and could not help but feel a little lift of approval. He had indeed come on in more ways than one during the past six months. ‘Mildred, put on your hat and we’ll be going.’

  ‘Going where, Basil?’ She sat down again, feeling the need to do so, for her legs had begun to tremble in reaction to the alarm the sight of him had created in her. ‘I am quite well able to get myself home, thank you.’ She stopped and then added daringly, ‘I usually do, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you usually do?’ He stepped forwards now so that his face was in the light coming up from the noisy orchestra stalls below them. ‘Have you been here like this before?’

  She laughed a little shakily
. ‘Basil, you are a donkey! Why should I not have been? I am as free as you. Freer perhaps, since I am older. I am well past the age of my majority, after all.’

  ‘Don’t talk such rubbish,’ he said shortly. ‘And put on your hat and come away at once. A girl like you, in a place like this! It is ridiculous.’

  ‘Why?’ She looked over her shoulder at the crowds below and then tilted her chin to take in the grand circle and the balconies and galleries above it. ‘I see many women and girls here who seem to be safe enough.’

  ‘Safe!’ he snorted, sounding more like his father than he knew. ‘These ghastly females, greasy Jew girls and tarts and –’

  ‘That is enough, Amberly.’ Kid Harris did not move, still standing with his hands loose at his sides, but the sound of his voice made Basil rock back a little on his heels. ‘You owe me an apology for that. And your sister. Make it and get out of here.’

  ‘I apologize to no one,’ Basil cried passionately. ‘I don’t know what is happening here and it’s better perhaps that I shouldn’t be told, for if I hear what I suspect I may, then you will not live to tell the tale and –’

  Harris said nothing. He did not even seem to move at all quickly, but she heard the sound as his hand met Basil’s cheek and the even more sickening sound as Basil’s head cracked back on his neck and she jumped to her feet and threw herself at Harris and cried, ‘No!’

  But it was too late to stop either of them. They were staring at each other with so much venom that it was almost palpable in the air, making her catch her breath in her throat and then Harris said in a voice she hardly recognized, ‘Get out of the way, Millie –’

  It was that which seemed to galvanize Basil, for he howled at the top of his voice, ‘Millie! You bastard, who are you to call my sister “Millie”?’ And with a great deal more courage than sense hurled himself at Harris, who, moving with a fluid ease, set his hands up at chest level, the fists lightly formed, and began to punch at Basil rhythmically and methodically, each blow hitting home with the same revolting sound and she cried, ‘Stop it! Kid, Basil, stop – For pity’s sake, stop it –’