The Illusionists. Rosie Thomas
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,