Daughter of the House. Rosie Thomas
knew it. When she tried to call a warning no sound came because her voice was stuck in her throat. Nor could she run to save him because her legs and arms were frozen. The audience was shouting, black mouths flapping open as waves of noise crashed over the stage. Nancy sweated and gasped as she struggled to break out of her paralysis.
Her father grinned straight at her and then glanced up into the shadowed recess above the stage where scenery and mirrors were suspended out of sight. He swept off his silk hat and began to make a bow.
There came a terrible rush of air and a black pit opened at his feet. Nancy had once been shown the dark realm of machinery and pulleys and ladders that lay beneath the stage. Devil tipped forwards, slowly, like a giant puppet, and disappeared into the darkness. Too late, her voice tore out of her throat. The roaring filled her mouth with scarlet noise and she thrashed in the coils of her clothing that had now become slippery and voluminous.
Phyllis appeared in the audience, her face white and round as the full moon, and then she was gone and Nancy’s face was pressed up against the cold bars of the box. To her relief she found that the metal bars belonged to the hotel bedstead, not a box at the Palmyra. She was tangled up in the bedcovers and she writhed to set herself free.
She had fallen asleep after all and it had only been a nightmare, nothing more.
She had no idea of the time, but the depth of darkness suggested that it was the lowest hour of the night. She was sweating and shivering and her mouth was parched. Her water glass was empty. Phyllis had not filled it up for her.
Phyllis was dead.
Nancy slid out of bed and haphazardly drew on some clothes. She set out for the distant bathroom but in her confused state she remembered there were windows on the half-landing just beyond it. She was taken with the idea of looking out of one of the windows at the shifting sea. It wouldn’t be soothing, but it might be something like looking the enemy in the eye. Feeling her way along the wall she shuffled through the darkness. In an angle of the stairs a little triangular bay jutted out towards the sea. She sank down on a window seat and pressed her forehead to the cold glass.
There were bobbing lights out on the water but she thought at first that the beach below the terrace was deserted.
Then, looking harder, she saw that there was someone out there. A figure like a black stone pillar stood alone, staring in the direction of the pier. From the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head, Nancy knew it was Mr Feather.
She watched him for a long time but he didn’t move. The black flower was withering in her chest, its petals falling into soft dust.
A month later, on the Saturday of the Eton and Harrow Match, Devil left the house very early without telling anyone where he was going. Arthur boiled with fury and anguish, demanding of Eliza every five minutes when she thought he would come back.
‘We’ll be late, Mama. I can’t bear it. He promised, you know. He did, didn’t he?’
‘Hush, Arthur. Mama doesn’t know any more than you do,’ Nancy said. She could see that Eliza was particularly weary this morning. Her mother suffered from back pain and other ailments that were not discussed, and the holiday in Kent had been planned so she could rest and recover some strength in the sea air. The loss of the Queen Mab had been the end of that, and Phyllis’s death had left the Wixes’ London house muddled and freighted with unacknowledged grief.
It was ten-thirty before Devil reappeared. Cornelius had been out with his butterfly net to a patch of buddleia that grew on the canal towpath near to the house, and he saw the surprise first. He hurried in to find Nancy.
‘You’d better come and look,’ he called. She followed him outside to see what was causing a commotion in their quiet road, and she was not amazed to discover that it was her father.
Devil beamed behind the steering wheel of a motor car. He wore gauntlets and a tweed cap and he looked delighted with the world and himself. Arthur had already vaulted into the passenger’s seat. Devil leaned out to kiss his wife on the lips.
‘What do you think?’ Without waiting for an answer he called over her shoulder to Nancy and Cornelius, ‘Quite a handsome machine, eh?’
Arthur’s tow-blond head bobbed up and down. ‘Pappy says it’s a De Dion-Bouton landaulet,’ he shouted.
Two or three of the men from the street, hands in pockets and hats on the backs of their heads, were murmuring over the long, polished bonnet. Brass fittings glittered bright in the cloudy air. Devil kept the engine running and the machine purred and shivered like a big sleek animal. Nancy jumped on to the wooden running board. There was an open seat at the back, reached by its own door. Cornelius sprang in at the other side and they jigged up and down on the leather upholstery.
‘Can I drive?’ Cornelius demanded.
‘D’you fancy the job of chauffeur, Con?’ Devil laughed. ‘Let me show you how she runs first. Arthur, sit in the back, please. Make room for your mother up here.’
Eliza was all cold lines. She hesitated, but found no option other than to step up into the seat next to her husband.
‘Where are we going?’ she icily demanded.
Devil grinned. ‘To Lord’s, where else? We’re all dressed up and ready for Arthur’s special day, aren’t we?’
He eased a lever and the car rolled forward. He swung the wheel and they were soon bowling along the high road, overtaking a tram with a blast on the horn and a rush of speed. Cornelius sat with his palms flat on his thighs, rocking with pleasure, and Arthur chanted ‘De Dion-Bouton’ over and over.
‘She ran smooth as silk, all the way from the chap in Sydenham who sold it to me,’ Devil preened.
Eliza said, ‘Please tell me you haven’t paid good money for this motor car.’
‘It’s not new. Built in 1908, but hardly driven. Rather a bargain.’
Eliza’s voice rose. ‘You’ve bought it? A car, at a time like this?’
The three children glanced at each other.
‘What better time? We deserve to be happy. Everyone has been so cast down since the steamer, I thought a surprise would cheer you all up.’
Eliza’s gloved hand struck her husband’s arm.
‘Damn you,’ she hissed.
He looked down at her, and the car briefly swerved and rocked before he corrected it.
‘Don’t be a shrew, Eliza.’
She sat in silence all the way to the cricket ground. As they drew near to it the crowds heading for the match turned to stare at them. Devil waved as if he were the King.
‘Let’s have a happy day, shall we?’ Devil pleaded with her. ‘Arthur will soon be at Harrow, Cornelius is leaving school. We should enjoy being together while we can.’
As usual, Nancy was not mentioned. She was the middle child, and a girl.
Eliza was looking forward to meeting her sister Faith, with her husband Matthew Shaw and their three children, and to sharing a picnic luncheon with them. It was her choice either to enjoy herself or to let Devil’s misguided gesture mar the day. The two small vertical clefts between her eyebrows melted away.
‘We’ll talk about this machine later,’ she said, allowing her husband to help her down. Devil winked over his shoulder at Nancy and Cornelius. Arthur had already run to the gate, unable to contemplate missing a single ball.
It was a chilly day for July, with low clouds seeming almost to touch the roof of the pavilion. Under the muted sky the grass flared with a saturated, emerald brilliance. In the luncheon interval, when the ladies left their seats in the stands to