Читать книгу The Illusionists - Rosie Thomas - Страница 10

The young couple walked southwards through the park. Suspended behind bare trees the pale orange sun held little warmth, and the insistence of the wind obliged them to keep up a steady pace. Jasper Button would have preferred to stroll and perhaps to have taken hold of Eliza’s arm, but he was compensated for the lack of this opportunity by the way brisk exercise in the chill air brought colour to her cheeks and made her eyes sparkle. He thought how pretty she looked in her neat bonnet and brown coat, and this demure exterior coupled with his awareness of where she was heading only increased his pleasure. She was not just a beauty. She both was and was entirely not what she seemed. He had never met anyone whose contradictions fascinated him so entirely. His admiration made him a little awkward in her company, but he was a determined man who did not lack self-confidence. He would win her in the end, Jasper assured himself. Eliza Dunlop would be his wife, and they would have a handsome family together. Aspects of this plan brought a flush to his cheeks to match Eliza’s own.

Between the trees ahead there was a flash of gold. Laughing, Eliza pointed to a Gothic spire and a canopy topped with pinnacles that spiked the fading sky.

‘The Memorial looks just like the Philosophers’ cabinet,’ she said.

‘Or rather, Devil constructed his cabinet to resemble the Memorial,’ Jasper replied. ‘In either case, they are both monstrosities.’

The sun was setting now and the gilt bronze of the Prince Consort’s statue glimmered so harshly in the horizontal rays that Jasper lifted his hand and pretended to shield his eyes. They skirted the west side of the structure and stopped to examine the modern frieze and sculptures. Jasper seized the opportunity to link Eliza’s arm in his. Her gloved hand rested on his forearm, neither yielding nor resisting. Her chin was tipped upwards as she gazed at the enthroned Albert.

‘I am half expecting his head to rotate and Carlo’s voice to utter a dire warning, aren’t you?’ In a mournful voice she quoted, ‘“I curse you to eternity and beyond.”’

‘Carlo isn’t of a size for it. It would take a giant to work a trick inside that vast thing.’

‘You are right. They would have to recruit a suitable one. Then it would be Boldoni, Wix and Cyclops, and that doesn’t sound nearly so good.’

Eliza laughed again and withdrew her arm. She turned her back on the Memorial and began to walk so fast that Jasper had to scurry to keep up with her. He was thinking, Does Boldoni and Wix sound good to her? Why is that?

‘I am afraid I shall be late,’ she said.

‘You have plenty of time.’

They passed through the traffic in front of the imposing dome of the Royal Albert Hall and set off through the streets of South Kensington. The evening was closing in, and yellow lights shone in comfortable rooms where the curtains had not yet been closed. Jasper admired the handsome stucco residences with their solid front doors surmounting flights of stone steps.

‘I would like to live in one of these houses some day,’ he said. There was no reason not to be ambitious.

‘They’re very large.’

‘A suitable size for a family.’

She turned her head and their eyes met. ‘Is that really what you want, Jasper?’

Her directness unnerved him a little but he answered with complete conviction, ‘Yes. Of course it is. A wife, a family, a comfortable home and security for all of us. What man wouldn’t wish for the same?’

‘Quite a number, I believe,’ she said in her composed manner.

Jasper persisted, ‘And what do you want, Eliza?’

They walked under a street lamp and as the light swept over her face he noticed the sudden bright eagerness of her expression. She looked almost avid, he thought.

‘Ah. I want to know the world, and myself.’

Jasper smiled. He sometimes forgot it, but she was very young. Barely twenty years old. He felt the opposite weight of his own cynical maturity, forged by the years in Stanmore as much as by those that had followed. Eliza was quick to follow his thoughts.

‘You think that sounds jejune? Believe me, I have considered my future with proper seriousness, even though you think I am hardly old enough to have learned my alphabet.’

‘Not in the least. I think you are amazingly aware.’

Eliza almost tossed her head. ‘For one so young and so female, do you mean to say?’

‘Of course not.’

‘I do not want to be like my poor mother. Nor do I even want to be like my sister Faith.’

Jasper knew that Faith and Eliza were the daughters of a moderately prosperous greengrocer. Their mother had been a dutiful wife who had devoted herself to the care of her husband and daughters, always putting aside her own quiet interests in choral music and landscape painting, and then had died of a consumption before Faith turned fifteen. Until Faith’s marriage to Matthew Shaw an aunt had lived in the Dunlop household, but once that union was accomplished the aunt had grown tired of her role and returned to her own home, leaving Eliza in the care of her father. Mr Dunlop had soon remarried, but Eliza did not hold a high level of regard for her mother’s replacement. She had lived next with Faith and Matty, but when their first child was born a nursemaid arrived to help the new mother and the small house had been distinctly too small for all of them. By this time Eliza had declared that she would study art, her determination to do so only increased by John Dunlop’s opinion that this would be a waste of her time and his money.

‘Nevertheless, it is what I shall do,’ Eliza said.

She had a tiny amount of capital of her own, left to her by her mother, and this she used to establish herself in a room in a ladies’ lodging house in Bayswater. From here she had only to walk across the park to the Rawlinson School of Art.

‘A life model?’ her stepmother had gasped, her eyes two circles in her circular face.

‘Yes. It is a perfectly respectable job, and I need employment. Would you and my father prefer it if I went into service?’

John Dunlop had plenty of other pressing concerns, and there would soon be a new addition to his family.

‘Eliza reads books. She has educated herself out of our understanding, my dear. We must allow her to make her own mistakes,’ he said.

So Eliza had got her own way, which was the usual course of events.

Jasper asked too quickly, ‘Why don’t you want to be like your sister? Matty is a good man, they have healthy children, Faith appears – to me, at least – to be very contented.’

‘I hope so. But why do you assume that what makes my sister content would have the same result for me?’

He longed to tell her, Because I want to make you happy. Our happiness together will be my life’s ambition.

They had reached the steps of the school. Preposterously, Jasper found himself scanning the area for a spot where he might sink to his knees and propose to her. He didn’t manage to do this, or anything except gape at her like a village idiot.

A dark thought quivered at the margin of his consciousness, but out of long practice he suppressed it.

Eliza skipped up the steps and paused with her gloved hand on the massive doorknob.

‘You know, Jasper, there are so many places and things I would like to see. There is so much to learn.’

‘Yes,’ Jasper agreed, sounding even in his own ears the essence of dullness.

‘Thank you for walking me here.’

‘I’ll come back after the class and see you home again.’

‘No, please don’t do that. I can look after myself.’

Here was the nub of it, he understood. He wanted to protect her, but to place herself under a man’s protection went against what Eliza imagined to be her independent principles. He would have to be patient.

‘All right.’

She waved her small hand and the heavy door closed behind her.

Disconsolate, Jasper walked away. They had not quite quarrelled, but still the discussion had not taken the direction he had hoped for.

Inside the school’s domed entrance hall Eliza took a moment to collect herself. Students on their way to five o’clock classes clipped across the black-and-white marble floor, the double doors to Professor Rawlinson’s office stood partly open to reveal a slice of oriental carpet, portraits lining the stairs gazed down at her with welcome indifference. Jasper’s unspoken urgency, his sheer concern, had ruffled her temper. The school’s atmosphere of calm focus on art was soothing. She was pleased to find herself a small – but still essential – component in the functioning of this higher machine.

She untied her bonnet and mounted the stairs towards the Life Room.

‘Good evening gentlemen, Miss Frazier.’

The students had been lounging at their boards but they sat up as soon as Raleigh Coope RA, Master of Life Drawing, came in.

‘Good evening, Mr Coope.’

The Academician was an admired and respected teacher.

Eliza waited behind the screen. She was ready for the class. When the room fell silent she experienced a small flutter of nerves, but this always happened before she took a pose.

‘Miss Dunlop, if you are ready to join us, please?’

She emerged into the room. There was the usual circle of gentlemen, Charles Egan and Ralph Vine and the others, and one lady, Miss Frazier, in her tweed skirt and artist’s smock blouse. A mixed life drawing class was highly unusual, but the Rawlinson was a very modern school.

At the centre of the circle was an empty chair. Eliza walked to it, enjoying the snag of tension in the air. She untied the string of her robe and slipped it off, and Mr Coope took it from her and hung it within her reach. Naked, Eliza sat down and found her pose. She turned her head to reveal her neck, eased her shoulders, curled one hand and extended the fingers of the other on her thigh, letting all the bones and ligaments of her body loosen and settle in their proper alignment. A faint stirring of a draught brushed her skin.

Her gaze found the canvas she liked on the opposite wall. It was a blue-and-grey composition of sea, shingle and sky. She let her thoughts gather at the margin of this other place, and then she slipped into it as if into the sea itself.

The only sounds were the scrawl and slither of pencils on paper and Mr Coope’s slow tread as he circled the room.

The class lasted for two hours, with a short break halfway through during which Eliza put on her robe and drank a cup of tea. Miss Frazier ate a sandwich and read her book while most of the young men went outside to smoke and talk. The routine was familiar, even including Charles Egan’s attempts to engage Eliza in banter after Mr Coope brought the class to an end and left the room. She didn’t find any aspect of the work in the least tiring. She felt clean and refreshed after the dreamlike hours of wandering within the sea painting.

When Eliza emerged from the school she found herself satisfactorily alone, and briefly hesitated. An omnibus route passed quite close to her intended destination, but she noticed a hansom cab waiting nearby. She told herself that she took it on impulse, although at a deeper level she knew that this was what she had intended all along.

It had been a bad night. The house was less than half full and the sparse audience was sullen. All the performers were affected by the poor reception of their best efforts, and Jacko Grady’s brandy-fuelled bad temper and curses as they came offstage only added to the atmosphere of despondency.

Devil couldn’t see what was happening beneath the concealed trapdoor but Carlo had been slow to perform the demanding manoeuvre leading to his reappearance in the good philosopher’s robe, and there were three or four long seconds of delay before the heap of clothing stirred and resurrected itself. Devil lay waiting with his face in the stage dust and silently swore. Fortunately the audience seemed too sunk into lethargy even to notice the mistake.

When they came off Jacko Grady muttered to Devil, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you two? I keep telling you to go faster, Wix, not the opposite. Get it right or get out of my theatre.’

Devil clenched his fists within the sleeves of his costume. He hated the fat man so much that his fingers itched to close about his neck. In the foetid corner where they changed he took his fury out on the dwarf.

‘Grady’s right. You were like a dog in a sack out there. This is our chance, this act. Nothing less than perfection will do for Boldoni and Wix.’

Carlo’s bruised face turned even darker, but not before Devil saw the flicker of shame in it. He was proud and he would be even more disappointed with the night than Devil had been.

He snapped, ‘Shut your sloppy mouth. Where would this act be without me, I’d like to know? Who are you? Nothing but a tuppenny broadsman.’

‘What happened?’

‘Bloody stilt jammed in the trap.’ Carlo thrust out his hand. The heel of it was scraped, and freckled with splinters where he had evidently wrenched the raw wood to free himself. Silently Devil handed him a wet rag to wipe the skin clean. Next to them Heinrich took Lucie in his arms and arranged her ringlets over her shoulders before they went out into the lights. Bascia, the female partner of the acrobatic duo, sniggered and muttered something under her breath to her brother. The tiny bells stitched to her costume tinkled like an echo of laughter.

Devil tried to breathe evenly but suppressed frustration only made his heart knock against his ribs. Tremors ran under his skin and he shook as if in a fever. Failure was at hand, and out of failure fear blossomed.

The old figure of darkness edged with flame took shape and sprang at him. It was as real in that moment as Carlo or Grady. Devil recoiled. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to block out the apparition, but the screams of a dying boy were loud enough to deafen him.

Leave me alone, Devil inwardly howled. You are gone, I am still here.

He made himself drop his hands. If he brought his mind to bear on the here and now, he knew that the shape of Gabe would fade away.

He forced himself to think.

The badness of the show was Grady’s fault. Like its poor performers the theatre itself was cracking and subsiding all round them. Grady had chased away the proper audience, the front row customers in silk hats and jewels, and in their place he encouraged vulgarians and drunks – and not sufficient numbers even of those. The coarse comedian who now closed the first half was supposed to appeal to Grady’s mob, but the man wasn’t good enough to make even the lowest people laugh. Without subtlety, without at least giving an audience the opportunity to feign innocence at double meanings, dirty talk was just dirt. Devil was surprised to note his own prudery but he knew what was right: he knew what would bring in the crowds and their money. The failure was Grady’s, not his own.

The dark figure was still there, in the periphery of his vision. He was afraid of a memory, and a memory couldn’t hurt him. He aimed a vicious kick at the inner spectre but his foot connected only with a storage hamper that toppled over and spilled its contents. He slouched forwards to set it upright and saw that as usual Bascia was looking at him. Her black eyes reminded him of ripe berries in the Stanmore hedges. She tilted her head in a gesture of invitation.

Carlo ignored his antics with the hamper. He pulled down his cap to cover his eyes and stalked away. Devil understood that he should go after him and try to set matters straight, perhaps even apologise if he could bring himself to do so. There would not be much of an act without Carlo, whereas the dwarf could always find another front man. But instead he matched Bascia’s head tilt with one of his own. The warmth of a woman’s body would obliterate Gabe more effectively than brandy ever could.

There was a cupboard in an angle of the dim corridor that led between the dressing rooms and the stage. He took the girl’s hand and they slid into the cramped space. The opening bars of Heinrich’s and Lucie’s waltz scraped the air as their mouths met.

Eliza paid the hansom driver, wincing at the size of the fare. She hurried down the alley beside the theatre and she was at the stage door when the dwarf flew out. He almost collided with her but before she could stop him or call out his name he whirled past and raced towards the Strand. She watched him go, then seized the opportunity to step in through the open stage door. She blinked in the yellow light. The air was redolent of sweat and smoke and there was a hollow echo of stamping feet in the distance.

‘Yes?’

A man seated in a cubbyhole looked at her over his newspaper. She recognised the doorman who had bundled them into the street on her first visit to the theatre.

‘Mr Wix. I am here to see Mr Wix.’

The man’s grin showed his teeth, or the place where most of his teeth had once been.

‘Box office round at the front of house, ma’am. I believe there may be some seats available for this performance. Just a handful.’ He laughed at his own wit.

Eliza had no intention of negotiating with this person. She marched past the cubbyhole and into the warren of tight corridors and wooden stairways at the back of the stage. A foreign-looking man tried to push past her as Carlo had done, but she caught him by the elbow.

‘I’m looking for Mr Wix.’

‘Good luck,’ the fellow almost spat. He shook off her hand and strode to the stage door. She pushed her way deeper into the theatre. The din of stamping feet now mingled with boos and jeers. A space opened in front of her, except that space was the wrong word for this wild muddle of strewn clothing, trunks and boxes, dismembered chairs, fragments of mirror perched on ledges strewn with face powder, empty bottles, discarded boots, and half-dressed performers jostling for room to clothe themselves. From behind a screen with a broken leaf emerged the soprano who had closed the show on the night she came with Jasper and Faith. The woman adjusted her bodice as a slatternly creature tugged at her laces.

‘That will do,’ the singer snapped and pushed the dresser aside. She took a long pull at a tankard, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set off at a tipsy angle towards the stage. From the opposite direction came a ragged shout of mocking laughter mingled with louder catcalling. Eliza was about to appeal to the nearest performer for Devil’s whereabouts when she saw him emerge from a doorway. A dishevelled girl sidled in his wake, accompanied by a faint tinkle of silvery bells.

Devil saw her and his face changed.

‘Miss Dunlop? Eliza?’

Eliza kept her head up. ‘I have an idea to discuss with you,’ she said. ‘When it is convenient.’

Before he could offer a response they became aware of silence spreading through the dressing room. Heinrich Bayer had appeared with Lucie in his arms. His face glistened with tears. The performers stood awkwardly aside to let him pass as he carried the doll to her velvet nest. Eliza went to him, putting her hand on his sleeve.

‘What is wrong? Can I help you?’ she whispered.

Heinrich leapt away from her. He began the work of folding the rubber limbs into their niches. He wept soundlessly as he leaned over to smooth the doll’s hair and kiss her forehead. Lucie’s glass eyes gazed up, void of all expression. Devil came to his side.

‘They are all fools, Heinrich. Ignorant, stupid fools. Make Lucie ready and we’ll go.’

The other performers gave up their staring and turned aside to occupy themselves as Grady burst in on them. Hands in his pockets, belly jutting, he glared at the room.

‘That was the worst of the bad. You, Bayer, and your dancing doll. Don’t trouble to come back tomorrow.’

Heinrich was trembling, but he had stopped weeping. Lines deepened in his worn face. He closed up Lucie’s trunk and fastened the catches, then positioned himself in front of it.

‘You should please pay me for tonight’s performance.’

Grady made a sound like rending fabric. ‘Not a brass farthing.’

‘We danced for your audience. It is not Lucie’s fault nor mine that they did not appreciate the artistry …’

‘Bloody artistry. Entertainment, that’s what I want. And I’m going to get it from the rest of you if I have to whip it out of you.’ The man’s sausage finger jabbed at the silent onlookers.

Devil could suppress his hatred no longer. He dived at Grady and grasping his hands round his thick neck he shook him as hard as he could although the manager’s bulk barely rocked. Behind them somebody, perhaps the coarse comic, gave a low-voiced cheer.

‘Pay him what you owe or I will kill you,’ Devil growled.

Grady’s eyes were watering. He coughed, ‘Is that what you are, Wix? A killer?’

Through the fog of his rage Devil glimpsed the dark figure again. He blinked and it was gone, drawing his strength with it. His hands fell to his sides.

‘Pay him,’ he muttered.

‘You can get out of here, as well. You and the dwarf. And stay out.’

The same voice muttered. ‘It’s them as are bringing in what audiences you do get, Mr Grady. Knock ’em out and you’re done for.’

Grady cursed. He caught sight of Eliza at Heinrich’s side.

‘Who are you?’

‘A friend of Herr Bayer’s.’

‘A living woman? Indeed? Backstage is for artistes only, madam.’

Jacko Grady adjusted his straining waistcoat and stalked away.

‘Let’s go,’ Devil muttered to Heinrich Bayer and Eliza chose to believe that she was included in the command. As they left the room there was no sign of the dishevelled girl although Eliza believed she heard an accusatory jingle.

‘Where d’you live?’ Devil demanded of Heinrich when they reached the Strand. The Swiss gave an address not far from the coffin maker’s workshop.

‘It’s a fair step, but I’ll walk back there with you,’ Devil sighed. ‘Miss Dunlop, how did you come here? May I find you a cab, perhaps?’

She gave him a look. ‘I will come with you. As a matter of fact the idea I hoped to discuss with you was originally Herr Bayer’s, so this is quite opportune.’

Devil sighed again. He was disgusted by his failure to get the better of Jacko Grady over Heinrich’s money. Getting the better of Jacko Grady was becoming as important to him as the success of Boldoni and Wix, and it was infuriating that the success of Boldoni and Wix was dependent for now on staying with Grady and the Palmyra.

Heinrich Bayer was already walking, trundling ahead of him the cart with Lucie’s trunk strapped to it, seeming too unhappy to care whether or not he was alone. He looked utterly beaten, his shabby coat overlarge for his thin body. Devil and Eliza flanked him and they moved through the late evening crowds of swells and revellers and street hawkers that surged to the steps of theatres and saloons. London seemed all glitter and celebration, with poor Heinrich Bayer the frayed figure at its brass heart.

They walked in silence, occupied with their separate thoughts. Devil’s pace was purposeful and Eliza could only reflect on the differences between this journey and the earlier stroll though Hyde Park. Jasper was forever holding back and taking her arm, asking questions as if he was trying to work his way into her head. Devil was bracingly indifferent to her presence. Eliza was excited to find herself out in these vivid streets with the crowds washing past her, not knowing where she was going or what lay in store.

Beyond St Clement Danes there were fewer people. Street lamps shone on empty stretches of cobbled road and the wheels of Lucie’s cart clattered in the sudden stillness. The dome of St Paul’s was pasted black against the sky as they turned to the north of it, skirted the heaving city within the city of the meat market, and headed deep into the warren of Clerkenwell. When they finally reached a recessed doorway Heinrich looked at them as if surprised to find that he had company. But he nudged the door open and led them down an internal alleyway to unlock another door, a low entrance leading into a darkened mews at the rear of some forbidding building. They stepped over the threshold in his wake and waited as he lit a candle.

‘Oh,’ Eliza said in astonishment.

The room was little more than a barn, but it was not a barn that either she or Devil could have imagined. It seemed as much a charnel house as a laboratory. On a bench lay the lower portion of a leg, the limp flaps of its rubber skin partially peeled back to expose bright metal rods within. On a clean square of cloth a row of silvery instruments, small tweezers, pliers and screw clamps was neatly laid out. A brass microscope occupied the end of the bench, and next to that stood a metalworker’s lathe with coils like tiny locks of metal hair littering the floor beside its clawed iron feet. A foot and a hand, each with a piston shaft protruding from the severed joint, rested on a smaller table. This much the light of the single candle revealed as Devil and Eliza silently stared around them. The recesses of the room were hidden in shadow but there was an impression of other implements, tall cupboards, and more strange work in progress.

The centre of the room, where the candle glow was brightest, was occupied by two chairs. In one sat a female doll, wide-eyed, her hands resting in her lap. Her flaxen hair was tied back from her slender neck. Her lower body was clothed in petticoats but she was naked from the waist up. Her breasts were unmodelled protrusions of pallid rubber. Next to her sat a manikin on a square pedestal, an expressionless Chinaman with a round black hat and long, drooping moustaches. With his triangular yellow face he looked like an illustration in a child’s picture book.

‘Excuse me, Miss Dunlop. My work …’ Heinrich murmured. He wrapped a shroud of cloth around the torso of the female doll.

‘I believe Miss Dunlop did mention that she is employed as an artists’ model,’ Devil put in.

Heinrich frowned, evidently distracted. The candle flame flickered.

‘We need more light,’ he said. He pressed a bell push and Eliza thought she heard a distant peal. Heinrich busied himself with Lucie’s trunk and a moment later a knock announced the arrival of a servant, in this strange room a surprisingly conventional figure in a dark dress and white apron. She brought in a lamp and placed it on the bench.

‘Good evening, Herr Bayer. Shall I light a fire? Will you be wanting some dinner?’

Eliza’s eyes met Devil’s. His eyebrows rose in black circumflexes but she could see that he was intrigued rather than repelled by this macabre place. The shadows of the room were barely dispelled by the lamp, and dread seemed to linger just out of her sight. A tremor of fear ran down her spine.

Heinrich laid Lucie on a cushioned surface that appeared to Eliza something between a bed and a catafalque. She shivered at the spectacle.

‘Yes. Some dinner,’ Heinrich said vaguely. He shook out a fine paisley shawl and let the folds drift over Lucie’s face and body. The resemblance to a catafalque was heightened.

‘Shall I lay up a table over in the house, sir?’

‘Perhaps we could stay here.’ Devil put in. ‘I think this is where our business will lie.’ He sounded quite at ease, with a purposeful note under his light tone, and Eliza wondered how he achieved this in so bizarre a setting.

Heinrich waved his hand. Whenever his attention returned to them he seemed startled to discover that he still had company.

When the servant had withdrawn Devil strolled to the bench. He picked up a watchmaker’s glass and screwed it into his eye, then examined the dismembered leg. Next he inquisitively turned the bezels of the microscope.

‘Whose place is this, Heinrich? Do you work here?’

Heinrich sat down on a stool, then jumped up again and offered the seat to Eliza.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and sat. She was beginning to feel weary.

‘I work here, yes.’

‘For whom?’ Devil persisted.

‘What? For myself, of course. My interests are not so usual. I am a maker of automata.’ He gestured towards the flaxen doll and the Chinese manikin. ‘But you know that much, Mr Wix. You are acquainted with my beautiful Lucie.’

There was a small silence.

‘I thought you were a poor man, Heinrich, like me. If you are rich, as it seems you are, why have you and Lucie danced every night for Jacko Grady and his audience of barbarians?’

Heinrich was still wearing his ruined coat, with his frayed shirt collar protruding. His boot heels were worn to wafers and he looked as if he had not eaten a meal in the last week. Eliza longed to ask the same question, but she would not have had Devil’s boldness in coming straight out with it.

Surprisingly the Swiss smiled. The deep lines in his face vanished and for a moment he looked a younger man. ‘I am not rich. My family have been watchmakers at Le Locle in Neuchatel for three generations. I am the last son. My care is not for watches, but in what I do there is the same precision. The same love for a device that is intricate, ingenious, unique. I am a craftsman, Mr Wix, not a banker. What is money?’

‘I could tell you,’ Devil said bitterly. The note in his voice made Eliza look at him with attention.

Bayer said, ‘I dance with Lucie at the Palmyra because I want the world to see her. There has to be a debut. A London debut, in your popular music hall. I hoped – expected – this would quickly lead to better things. But, sadly, it seems not. We are disappointed of course.’ He shrugged his thin shoulders. It was clear that his brilliance as an inventor was not matched by his knowledge of the world. ‘The worst of it all is the insult to Lucie. This evening, I am afraid, I was unable to hide the pain it caused me.’

Eliza was filled with sudden pity for him which only intensified her discomfort.

The servant came back with a young boy to assist her, and together they unfolded a card table and set three chairs around it. On the bench they laid out a china tureen and some covered dishes with a tray of cutlery and glassware.

‘Will there be anything else, Herr Bayer?’

‘I don’t think so, Mrs McKay. Or, wait a moment. Perhaps some wine?’

‘Thank you. Yes,’ said Devil with distinct emphasis.

A bottle was brought and uncorked. Devil and Eliza helped themselves to soup from the tureen and thick slices of ham with potatoes. The food was plain, but plentiful and good. Devil drank a glass of wine straight off. Heinrich took a few spoonfuls of soup but he soon left the table and went to the Chinaman sitting on its plinth next to the yellow-haired doll. He reached behind it, and its head suddenly flopped sideways with a gasp of exhaled air that sounded like a human sigh. Eliza jumped and her spoon clinked in the bowl. The creature’s hands rose from its lap and its head jerked upright with another hiss. The fingers flexed and its mouth opened and closed to reveal two rows of porcelain teeth.

‘You see?’ Heinrich said.

‘I do,’ Devil replied. He put down his spoon and fork in order to concentrate on the inventor.

‘He is operated by a system of compressed air cylinders, controlled from here.’ Heinrich indicated a notched drum with a handle, a simple enough mechanism that reminded Eliza of a barrel organ.

Devil remarked, ‘He’s of a size with Carlo Boldoni. But this fellow is more biddable, I’m sure. Tell me, Heinrich, what is your creature for?’

The inventor frowned. ‘I made him. His existence is sufficient reason in itself. But I thought I might have him tell ladies’ fortunes? One shilling a time. “Mr Wu knows the secrets of a woman’s heart, and will answer the questions you cannot ask.” Look at this.’ He turned a handle and one of the Chinaman’s hands drew a spool of paper from the opposite sleeve. ‘What is a fortune? You or I could invent a fine one.’ Heinrich laughed then, a creaking sound of rare usage. Eliza found that the palms of her hands were damp.

Devil’s concentration intensified and his forefinger rubbed slow circles in the green baize surface of the card table.

‘Do you play cards?’

‘I am a busy man, Mr Wix. No, I do not.’

‘Please call me Devil. If I had friends that’s how they would know me.’

Jasper is your friend, Eliza silently corrected him. Why had Devil obliterated the Hector of their shared boyhood?

‘I wonder if Jacko Grady plays cards,’ Devil mused in the softest voice. The Chinaman’s hands descended and once more lay inert in its lap as Heinrich wandered away to his bench. He took up the half leg and held it suspended by its metal arteries.

‘Have you ever heard of a false automaton?’ Devil asked.

Heinrich did not look up. These questions bored him.

‘Of course. Who has not? Even Mr Grady spoke of such a thing. But why would I be interested? They are the province of …’ There was a pause while he searched for the word. Not tricksters, or even conjurors. ‘Illusionists.’

‘Exactly.’ Devil’s smile did not reach his eyes. He poured himself another glass of wine to rinse down a large mouthful of ham and potato. Only when he had cleared his plate did he turn to Eliza.

‘Tell me, what drew you back to the elegant and acclaimed Palmyra theatre this evening, Miss Dunlop? Eliza, that is. That is how I think of you.’

He thinks of me? She only nodded. ‘How is Carlo’s poor face? I was not able to ask about the damage when I saw him earlier.’

‘Probably for the best. He would have bitten off your head, if you had done so. Yes, he is mending quite well although he complains enough. You came to the theatre to ask after him?’

‘No, not for that reason alone. As I said earlier, I have an idea. You recall the suggestion Heinrich made when we were leaving the tavern that evening? That you should perhaps have a woman in your act?’

Summoning his patience Devil nodded. ‘And you agreed with him.’

Eliza said, ‘I enjoyed the Philosophers illusion, of course. But so much gore? And to tell the truth, the play as a whole did not appeal to me in the way it would have done had there also been a female role.’

Heinrich returned to his automata. He rested his fingertips on the shoulders of the flaxen girl. ‘Nor to me,’ he agreed.

‘Ah. You would prefer a female philosopher. Really?’

Eliza looked at her surroundings. Surely nothing she could propose in such a setting would seem outlandish? ‘You are laughing at us, Mr Wix. The role would not necessarily be a philosopher. The time will come for novelty, don’t you agree? I was envisaging a more – what? – feminine scenario. A comedy, perhaps. Disappearances, clever materialisations, mistaken identity, laughter closing with a kiss.’

‘If I knew any Shakespeare I would say that is what your idea sounds like.’

‘Why not?’ Eliza laughed.

‘And who do you suggest might play this female role, Eliza?’ Devil’s mouth was curling.

‘Not Lucie. I could not agree to that. But Hilde, here,’ Heinrich cried. ‘When she is finished.’

Eliza said, ‘I am an artist, and a model. I have always dreamed of acting, and I do not think it would be such a big leap to make.’ Seeing Devil’s face she protested too quickly, ‘I’m not a fool, you know. You might at least let me try. I will even write you a comic playlet, if you like, and you can tell me what you think of it.’

‘That sounds delightful. I am obliged to you. But you are overlooking the sad fact that the Palmyra is owned and managed by Jacko Grady. I have no control over his programme, and I don’t believe your tender comic playlet will appeal to his low audiences.’

‘That is true,’ Eliza acknowledged.

‘If I were the owner and manager, it would be a different matter. A sparkling comedy of illusion? Of course. The best tricks Carlo can devise? Certainly. Maybe Heinrich might assist with the engineering of the devices? My stage would be a perfect showcase for Lucie, also. Who knows what fame she might achieve?’

A silence fell.

Between them Devil and Eliza had wiped the plates clean of the last crumbs of food, and the wine bottle was empty. Devil still traced circles on the green baize with his forefinger.

‘What is inside your Chinese fortune-teller, Heinrich?’

‘Inside him? The mechanisms, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Devil stood up. ‘It is late. You have been hospitable, Heinrich. Thank you.’

Heinrich put out his hand. ‘We don’t see many people, Lucie and I. We enjoyed our excursion the other evening with you, and Miss Dunlop and her friends. And you refused my money at the end of it, which doesn’t happen often. It was also kind of you to notice my distress tonight and to walk all the way home with us. Therefore I believe the thanks are all due to you.’ With the strange, sidelong look that Eliza attributed to shyness he shook Devil’s hand.

Once they were outside in the Clerkenwell alley Eliza realised how late it was. She was thoroughly relieved to be out of Heinrich Bayer’s domain, but the eeriness seemed to extend even to here. There was no sound, and few lights showed in the nearby tenements and warehouses. Damp clouded the air and muffled their footsteps as they hurried to the corner. Devil asked where she was going and she told him.

He said, ‘I have to go only to Holborn, but Bayswater is too far to walk. What shall we do?’

Another two turns brought them closer to Smithfield where there was still torchlight and a sullen clatter of activity around the market. A dejected hansom stood at a corner, the horse’s head hanging low and the driver dozing under his greatcoat. There was nothing for it, Eliza realised. Two cab rides in one night, and no money left over. At least she had gained a square meal, although the eeriness of Herr Bayer’s workshop had depressed her appetite.

Devil followed her thoughts. He was embarrassed that he could not even pay for the girl to ride home in safety, when he would have wished to drive her to Bayswater in his own brougham.

‘It is all very well for Bayer to say, Vat is money? as if he were royalty. It is always people who have plenty who profess their lack of interest in it. I will get some very soon, and then I will allow myself the luxury of dismissing its importance.’

Eliza thought of the afternoon’s walk through South Kensington. It seemed a long time ago.

‘Jasper was saying earlier that he intends to buy one of those fine white stucco houses with eight steps up to the front door. He will have a man in livery to open the door for him too, no doubt.’

‘My house will have ten steps. And my man will have a finer set of whiskers than Jasper’s man.’

They burst into laughter.

As they reached the hansom and Devil was holding open the door for her he asked, ‘How long have you been walking out with Jasper Button, Eliza?’

‘I am not walking out with him.’

‘I think you are.’

He handed her up the step. The sad vehicle reeked of tobacco.

‘Will you consider my idea?’ she persisted. ‘About the role?’

‘When I own the Palmyra theatre, I promise I will do so.’

‘When you own it?’

He stood back from the door, his black face hard under the brim of his bowler.

‘Yes. What else did you imagine?’

He touched his hand to his hat and the driver whipped up the old horse.