She nodded, and gave my hand another squeeze; then she opened the door and joined Alice on the landing, and I heard them step below, together.
I stood in the gathering shadows and put my trembling fingers before my face. I had taken to scrubbing my hands very carefully, since meeting Kitty Butler; and if they were ever a little stained at the creases now, it was as much with paint and hot-black and blanc-de-perle, as with vinegar. Even so, there was the scent of oysters on them still, and a slender thread - it might have been the bristle from the back of a lobster, the whisker from a shrimp - beneath one of my nails. How would it be, I thought, to surrender my family, my home, all my oyster-girl’s ways?
And how would it be to live at Kitty’s side, brim-full of a love so quick, and yet so secret, it made me shake?
Chapter 3
I wish, for sensation’s sake, I could say that my parents heard one word of Kitty’s proposal and forbade me, absolutely, to refer to it again; that when I pressed the matter, they cursed and shouted; that my mother wept, my father struck me; that I was obliged, in the end, to climb from a window at dawn, with my clothes in a rag at the end of a stick, and a streaming face, and a note pinned to my pillow saying Do not try to follow me ... But if I said these things, I would be lying. My parents were reasonable, not passionate, people. They loved me, and they feared for me; the idea of allowing their youngest daughter to travel in the care of an actress and a music-hall manager to the grimmest, wickedest city in England was, they knew, a mad one, that no sane parent should entertain for longer than a second. But because they loved me so, they could not bear to have me grieve. Anyone with half an eye could see that my heart lay all with Kitty Butler now; anyone might guess that, having once been offered the chance of a future at her side, and kept from it, I could never return to my father’s kitchen and be happy there, as I had been before.
So when, an hour or so after Kitty’s departure, I nervously put her plan before my parents, and argued and pleaded for their blessing, they listened to me wonderingly, but carefully; and when, the next day, Father stopped me on my way down to the kitchen to draw me into the parlour where it was quiet and still, his face was sad and serious, but kind. He asked me, first, whether I had not changed my mind? I shook my head, and he sighed. He said, if I was quite decided, then Mother and he could not keep me; that I was a grown-up woman, almost, and should be allowed to know my own mind; that they had thought to see me marry a Whitstable boy, and settle close at hand, and so have a share in my little happinesses and troubles - but that now, he supposed, I would go and hitch up with some London fellow, who wouldn’t understand their ways at all.
But children, he concluded, weren’t made to please their parents; and no father should expect to have his daughter at his side for ever... ‘In short, Nance, even was you going to the very devil himself, your mother and I would rather see you fly from us in joy, than stay with us in sorrow - and grow, maybe, to hate us, for keeping you from your fate.’ I had never known him so grave before, nor so eloquent. I had never seen him weep either; but now as he spoke his eyes glistened, and he blinked, twice or thrice, to hold the tears back, and his voice grew thin. I placed my head against his shoulder and let my own tears rise and spill. He put an arm about me, and patted me. ‘It breaks our hearts to lose you, dear,’ he went on. ‘You know it does. Only promise us that you won’t forget us, quite. That you’ll write to us, and visit us. And that, if things don’t turn out as you might, quite, wish them, you won’t be too proud to come home to those that love you -’ Here his voice failed utterly, and he shuddered; and I could only nod against his neck and say, ‘I will, I will; I promise you, I will.’
But oh! hard-hearted daughter that I was, when he had left me my tears dried at once, and I felt the return of all my gladness of the night before. I hugged myself in pleasure, and danced a jig around the parlour - but delicately, on tiptoe, so that they wouldn’t hear me in the dining-room below. Then quickly, before I should be missed, I ran to the post office and sent Kitty a card at the Palace - a picture of a Whitstable oyster-smack, upon whose sail I inked ‘To London’, and on the deck of which I drew two girls with bags and trunks and outsize, smiling faces. ‘I can come!!!’ I wrote upon the back, and added that she must do without her dresser for a few nights while I made all ready ... and I finished it ‘Fondly’, and signed it, ‘Your Nan’.
I had to be glad only in snatches that day, for the scene that I had passed with Father, after breakfast, had to be undergone again with Mother - who hugged me to her, and cried that they must be fools to let me go; and Davy - who said, quite absurdly, that I was too little to go to London, and would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square the minute I set foot in it; and Alice - who said nothing at all when she heard the news, but ran from the kitchen in tears, and could not be persuaded to take up her duties in the Parlour until lunch-time. Only my cousins seemed happy for me - and they were more jealous than happy, calling me a lucky cat, and swearing that I would make my fortune in the city, and forget them all; or else that I would be ruined utterly, and come sneaking back to them in disgrace.
That week passed quickly. I spent my evenings in calling on friends and family, and bidding them farewell; and in washing and patching and packing my dresses, and sorting out which little items to take with me, which to leave behind. I visited the Palace only once, and that was in the company of my parents, who came to reassure themselves that Miss Butler was still sensible and good, and to ask for further particulars of the shadowy Walter Bliss.
I had Kitty to myself for no more than a minute, while Father chatted with Tony and Tricky, after the show. I had feared all week that I had imagined the words that she had spoken to me on Sunday evening, or misunderstood them entirely. Every night, almost, I had woken sweating from dreams in which I presented myself at her door, with my bags all packed and my hat upon my head, and she looked at me in wonder, and frowned, or laughed with derision; or else I arrived too late at the station, and had to chase the train along the track while Kitty and Mr Bliss gazed at me from their carriage window, and would not lean outside to pull me in ... That night at the Palace, however, she led me to one side, and pressed my hand, and was quite as kind and excited as she had been before.
‘I’ve had a letter from Mr Bliss,’ she said. ‘He has found us rooms in a house in a place called Brixton - a place so full, he says, of music-hall people and actors that they call it “GreasePaint Avenue”.’
Grease-Paint Avenue! I saw it instantly and it was marvellous, a street set out like a make-up box, with narrow, gilded houses, each one with a different coloured roof; and ours would be number 3 - with a chimney the colour of Kitty’s carmined lips!
‘We are to catch the two o’clock train on Sunday,’ she went on, ‘and Mr Bliss himself will meet us at the station, in a carriage. And I’m due to start the very next day at the Star Music Hall, in Bermondsey.’
‘The Star,’ I said. ‘That’s a lucky name.’
She smiled. ‘Let’s hope so. Oh, Nan, let’s only hope so!’
My last morning at home was - like every last morning in history, I suppose - a sad one. We breakfasted together, the five of us, and were bright enough; but there was a horrible sense of expectation in the house that made anything except sighing, and drifting aimlessly from job to job, seem quite impossible. By eleven o’clock I felt as penned and as stifled as a rat in a box, and made Alice walk with me to the beach, and hold my shoes and stockings while I stood at the water’s edge one final time. But even this little ritual was a disappointing one. I put my hand to my brow and gazed at the glittering bay, at the distant fields and hedges of Sheppey, at the low, pitch-painted houses of the town, and the masts and cranes of the harbour and the shipyard. It was all as familiar to me as the lines on my own face, and — like one’s face when viewed in a glass - both fascinating and rather dull. No matter how hard I studied it, how fiercely I thought, I shall not gaze at you again for months and months, it looked just as it always did
; and at last I turned my eyes away, and walked sadly home.
But it was the same there: nothing that I gazed at or touched was as special as I thought it should be, or changed by my going in any way. Nothing, that is, except the faces of my family; and these were so grave, or so falsely merry and stiff, that I could hardly bear to look at them at all.
So I was almost glad, at last, when it was time to say farewell. Father wouldn’t let me take the little train to Canterbury, but said I must be driven, and hired a gig from the ostler at the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, to take me there himself. I kissed Mother, and Alice, and let my brother hand me to my seat at Father’s side and place my luggage at my feet. There was little enough of it: an old leather suitcase with a strap about it, that held my clothes; a cap-box for my hats; and a little black tin trunk for everything else. The trunk was a good-bye gift from Davy. He had bought it new, and had my initials painted on the lid in swooning yellow capitals; and inside it he had pasted a map of Kent, with Whitstable marked on it with an arrow - to remind me, he said, where home was, in case I should forget.
We did not talk much, Father and I, on the drive to Canterbury. At the station we found the train already in and steaming, and Kitty, her own bags and baskets at her side, frowning over her watch. It wasn’t like my anxious dreams at all: she gave a great wave when she saw us, and a smile.
‘I thought you might have changed your mind,’ she cried, ‘at the very last moment.’ And I shook my head - in wonder that she could still think such a thing, after all I’d said!
Father was very kind. He greeted Kitty graciously and, when he kissed me good-bye he kissed her, too, and wished her happiness and luck. At the last moment, as I leaned from the carriage to embrace him, he drew a little chamois bag from his pocket and placed it in my hand, and closed my fingers over it. It held coins - sovereigns - six of them, and more, I knew, than he could afford to part with; but by the time I had drawn open the neck of the bag and seen the gleam of the gold inside it, the train had begun to move, and it was too late to thrust them back. Instead, I could only shout my thanks, and kiss my fingers to him, and watch as he raised his hat and waved it; then place my cheek against the window-glass when he was gone from sight, and wonder when I should see him next.
I did not wonder for long, I am afraid to say, for the thrill of being with Kitty - of hearing her talk again of the rooms we were to share, and the kind of life we were to have together in the city, where she was to make her fortune - soon overcame my grief. My family would have thought me cruel, I know, to see me laugh while they were sad at home without me; but oh! I could no more not have smiled, that afternoon, than not drawn breath, or sweated.
And soon, too, I had London to gaze at and marvel over; for in an hour we had arrived at Charing Cross. Here Kitty found a porter to help us with our bags and boxes, and while he loaded them on to a trolley we looked round anxiously for Mr Bliss. At last, ‘There he is!’ cried Kitty, and her pointing finger showed him striding up the platform, his whiskers and his coat-tails flying and his face very red.
‘Miss Butler!’ he cried when he reached us. ‘What a pleasure! What a pleasure! I feared I would be late; but here you are exactly as we planned, and even more charming than before.’ He turned to me, then removed his hat - the silk, again - and made me a low, theatrical bow. ‘“Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wrench!’” he said, rather loudly. ‘Miss Astley - late of Whitstable, I believe?’ He took my hand and gripped it briefly. Then he snapped his fingers at the porter, and offered us each an arm.
He had left a carriage waiting for us on the Strand; the driver touched his whip to his cap when we approached, and jumped from his seat to place our luggage on the roof. I looked about me. It was a Sunday and the Strand was rather quiet - but I didn’t know it; it might have been the race-track at the Derby to me, so deafening and dizzying was the clatter of the traffic, so swift the passage of the horses. I felt safer in the carriage, and only rather queer, to be so close to a gentleman I did not know, being transported I knew not where, in a city that was vaster and smokier and more alarming than I could have thought possible.
There was much, of course, to look at. Mr Bliss had suggested we take in the sights a little before we headed for Brixton, so now we rolled into Trafalgar Square - towards Nelson on his pillar, and the fountains, and the lovely, bone-coloured front of the National Gallery, and the view down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament.
‘My brother,’ I said, as I pressed my face to the window to gaze at it all, ‘said I would be run down by a tram in Trafalgar Square, if ever I came to London.’
Mr Bliss looked grave. ‘Your brother was very sensible to warn you, Miss Astley - but sadly misinformed. There are no trams in Trafalgar Square - only buses and hansoms, and broughams like our own. Trams are for common people; you should have to go quite as far as Kilburn, I’m afraid, or Camden Town, in order to be struck by a tram.’
I smiled uncertainly. I did not know, quite, what to make of Mr Bliss, to whom my future and my happiness had been so recently, and so unexpectedly, entrusted. While he addressed himself to Kitty, and directed our attention every so often to some scene or character in the street beyond, I studied him. He was a little younger, I saw, than I had taken him to be at first. That night in Kitty’s dressing-room I had thought him almost middle-aged; now I guessed him to be one- or two-and-thirty, at the most. He was an impressive, rather than a handsome, man, but for all his flash and his speeches, rather homely: I thought he must have a little wife who loved him, and a baby; and that if he did not - which, in fact, was the case - that he should have. I knew nothing, then, of his history, but learned later that he came from an old, respectable, theatrical family (his real name was no more Bliss, of course, than Kitty’s was Butler); that he had left the legitimate stage when he was still a young man, in order to work the halls as a comic singer; and that he managed, now, a dozen artistes, but still, on occasion, took a turn before the footlights - as ‘Walter Waters, Character Baritone’ - for sheer love of the profession. I knew none of this that day in the brougham - but I began to guess a little of it. For we had reached Pall Mall and turned into the Haymarket, where the theatres and the music halls begin; and as we rumbled past them he raised his hand and tilted the brim of his hat in a kind of salute. I have seen old Irishwomen, passing before a church, do something similar.
‘Her Majesty’s,’ he said, nodding to a handsome building on his left: ‘my father saw Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, make her debut there. The Haymarket: managed by Mr Beerbohm Tree. The Criterion, or Cri: a marvel of a theatre, built entirely underground.’ Theatre upon theatre, hall upon hall; and he knew all their histories. ‘Ahead of us, the London Pavilion. Down there’ - we squinted along Great Windmill Street - ‘the Trocadero Palace. On our right, the Prince’s Theatre.’ We passed into Leicester Square; he took a breath. ‘And finally,’ he said - and here he removed his hat entirely, and held it in his lap - ‘finally, the Empire and the Alhambra, the handsomest music halls in England, where every artiste is a star, and the audience is so distinguished that even the gay girls in the gallery - if you’ll pardon my French, Miss Butler, Miss Astley - wear furs, and pearls, and diamonds.’
He tapped on the ceiling of the brougham, and the driver drew to a halt at a corner of the little garden in the middle of the square. Mr Bliss opened the carriage door, and led us to its centre. Here, with William Shakespeare on his marble pedestal at our backs, we gazed, all three of us, at the glorious facades of the Empire and the Alhambra - the former with its columns and its glinting cressets, its stained glass and its soft electric glow; the latter with its dome, its minarets and fountain. I had not known there were theatres like this in the world. I had not known that there was such a place as this, at all - this place that was so squalid and so splendid, so ugly and so grand, where every imaginable manner of person stood, or strolled, or lounged, side by side.
There were ladies and gentlemen, stepping from carriages.
There were girls with trays of flowers and fruit; and coffee-sellers, and sherbet-sellers, and soup-men.
There were soldiers in scarlet jackets; there were off-duty shop-boys in bowlers and boaters and checks. There were women in shawls, and women in neck-ties; and women in short skirts, showing their ankles.
There were black men, and Chinamen, and Italians and Greeks. There were newcomers to the city, gazing about them as dazed and confounded as I; and there were people curled on steps and benches, people in clothes that were crumpled or stained, who looked as if they spent all their daylit hours here - and all their dark ones, too.
I gazed at Kitty, and my face, I suppose, showed my amazement, for she laughed, and stroked my cheek, then seized my hand and held it.
‘We are at the heart of London,’ said Mr Bliss as she did so, ‘the very heart of it. Over there’ - he nodded to the Alhambra - ‘and all around us’ - and here he swept his hand across the square itself - ‘you see what makes that great heart beat: Variety! Variety, Miss Astley, which age cannot wither, nor custom stale.’ Now he turned to Kitty. ‘We stand,’ he said, ‘before the greatest Temple of Variety in all the land. Tomorrow, Miss Butler - tomorrow, or next week, or next month, perhaps, but soon, soon, I promise you - you will stand within it, your feet upon its stage. Then it will be you that sets the heart of London racing! You that makes the throats of the city shout, “Brava!”’
As he spoke he lifted his hat, and punched the air with it; one or two passers-by turned their faces towards us, then looked away quite unconcerned. His words, I thought, were marvellous ones - and I knew Kitty thought so, too, for she gripped my hand at the sound of them, and gave a little shudder of delight; and her cheeks were flushed, as mine were, and her eyes, like mine, were shining and wide.