Death of a Dancer

I bit my tongue to stop myself from asking how in the world he knew that. My father had loved music and the theatre, and many of his friends were musicians or writers. So were some of my best friends.

‘Do you happen to have heard of a dancer who calls herself Columbine?’ he said.

I was about to say no, when something stirred in my mind.

‘Wasn’t she quite famous about ten years ago?’

Ten years ago, I was twelve years old, trying to make sense of the adult world from hints and half-understandings. Disraeli laughed.

‘Heaven help us all, if fame lasts no more than ten years. I think the word you are looking for is “notorious”.’

‘Better known for her diamonds than her dancing,’ I said. The phrase came back to me suddenly in the voice of one of my father’s friends, surrounded by male laughter.

‘Yes. She must have used up all the diamonds, because she’s still dancing. I understand she’s heading the bill at the Augustus Theatre. It opens tonight, as it happens.’

I was on the brink of saying that here was a coincidence, because a good friend of mine was directing music at the Augustus. I stopped myself because, glancing at Disraeli’s face, I thought perhaps he knew that already. We were nearly back at the Grosvenor Gate now, where Amos and I should be turning out of the park.

‘So, what of her?’ I said.

He hesitated a moment then spoke, quickly and softly.

‘She’s done some damage to a friend of mine. We’re concerned because that may not be the end of it.’

‘What kind of damage? And who are “we”?’

‘People who care for the good order of society.’

‘Politicians?’

‘You sound sceptical,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten you were such a radical.’

I was sure he never forgot anything.

‘You don’t need to be a radical to be sceptical about politicians.’

‘Believe me, this goes beyond party politics.’

‘Are you implying that this Columbine is a danger to society? She must be a formidable femme fatale.’

‘A somewhat faded one by now. That’s not where her danger lies.’

‘Why is she dangerous, then?’

‘In all honesty, I don’t know. I only suspect certain things which I’d rather not talk about at present. If you should happen to pick up any backstage gossip about the woman, I’d be grateful to hear about it. Particularly any gentlemen she’s associating with.’

I knew what my answer should be. A cold, ‘Do you take me for a spy, sir?’ Followed by a sharp turn of the back and rapid canter away. Rancie would go straight from a walk to a canter at one twitch of my heel. My heel didn’t twitch. The trouble was, on the previous occasions when we’d met, a spy was precisely what I had been.

‘We should be very happy to pay any expenses you might incur,’ he said. ‘You can always send a note to me at the House.’

‘I must wish you good morning,’ I said. ‘We turn off here.’

In spite of his slow pace, we’d come to Grosvenor Gate. I nodded and Amos picked up the signal and came alongside me, cutting out Mr Disraeli with the precision of a cavalry manoeuvre. I didn’t look back as we went through the gate and into Park Lane.

‘He’s thinking of buying that mare,’ Amos commented. ‘They’re asking twenty guineas too much for her and she’s a devil to shoe.’

He led the way across Park Lane, going carefully because at this time of the morning carts came in with vegetables for Covent Garden from the farms north of the park, their drivers still half asleep. As we rode along Mount Street, Amos carried on talking about Mr Disraeli, not put out by my silence.

‘They say he’s got a mountain of debts already, and he’s looking for a rich widow to marry.’

Was that intended as a warning to me? If so, Amos was a long way off the mark for once. He was usually a totally reliable source of gossip. His success in adapting to life in London astounded me. A year ago, he’d never set foot outside his home county of Herefordshire, far away to the west, and he still spoke with an accent that carried hayfields and apple orchards in every syllable. He’d been caught in the same hurricane that had blown me into the life I was leading. When Rancie and I came to London he’d talked about staying a day or two to see us settled. Days had turned to weeks, weeks to months, and here he still was. With his strength and knowledge of horses, it was no surprise when he found work at a livery stables on the Bayswater Road, the northern edge of Hyde Park. He even solved for me the problem of how I was to keep Rancie (or Esperance, to give her her proper name), my father’s last gift to me. She was given board and lodging at the livery stables, in return for being ridden by some of the more skilful and light-handed lady clients. What was surprising was the extent to which this country giant, standing some six and a half feet in his riding boots, had become a source of knowledge about fashionable London life, all without the slightest hint of snobbery, more the way a boy might study the habits of birds or animals.

At first I wondered how he came by this gossip; then one day when I happened to be crossing the park on foot I saw him, though he didn’t see me. He was riding out behind a well-dressed and beautiful lady. His boots and the cob he was riding shone like mahogany, he wore a black hat with a silver lace cockade on his light brown hair and his blue eyes gleamed with good humour. I saw the glances he was getting from riders with less impressive grooms and the complacent smile on the face of his own lady, and could hardly keep from laughing out loud. I’d heard since that he was so popular with lady customers that his stables had to increase his wages to stop him being poached by rivals.

We turned into South Audley Street, nearly home. It was almost full light now.

‘I’ll come for you on Monday then, shall I?’ Amos said.

‘Yes please.’

Most mornings of the week I rode out on Rancie with Amos. Even on days when I didn’t see them, the thought of them less than a mile away across the park was enough to raise my spirits.

He rode in front of me into Adam’s Mews, then through the opening into a kind of appendix to the mews called Abel Yard. At the mounting block by the open gates he slid off Bishop to help me down, then, taking Rancie’s reins, vaulted back into his saddle. He touched his crop to his hat brim as they rode away, Rancie letting herself be led as quietly as a children’s pony.

There was a cow on our doorstep, a Guernsey, being milked into a quart jug.

‘Hello, Martha. Hello, Mr Colley,’ I said.

The cowman looked up from Martha’s stomach and grinned a hello at me, baring a set of toothless gums. He and Martha, along with his three other Guernsey cows, a dozen chickens and one cockerel, inhabited the end of the cul-de-sac that was Abel Yard. Mr Colley, his wife, daughter, daughter’s baby and daughter’s bone-idle husband lived above the cow barn. If I woke early enough, I could look out of the window and see Mr Colley leading his first cow of the day out by lamplight on the start of his milk round. He sometimes took the cows to graze on the long grass of the burying ground behind Grosvenor Chapel round the corner near the workhouse. The authorities tried to stop him and it was a frequent sight to see Mr Colley sprinting along the mews, a cow trotting beside him and the parish beadle uttering threats as he puffed along behind.

The other business in Abel Yard was a carriage mender’s. The owner, Mr Grindley, made a reasonable living repairing the springs and other metal parts of carriages in his workshop, which took up two brick-built coach houses on either side of the entrance, with living quarters above. Our two rooms were over the one on the right-hand side as you came in.

Mrs Martley was standing inside our door, watching to see that Mr Colley was giving good measure. She wore a white cotton apron over her usual dress of navy-blue wool, her faded brown and grey hair firmly pinned under a starched white cap, her face reddened from stirring saucepans over the fire. My riding habit made her frown. She didn’t approve of my morning rides, or very much about me at all for that matter, but I was the one who paid the rent, so she couldn’t do anything about it. Until quite recently, Mrs Martley had been earning her blameless living as a midwife; then that same hurricane had picked her up and plumped her down beside me like a ruffled hen. With the help of my father’s and my dear friend, Daniel Suter, I’d rescued her from kidnap and imprisonment and was now saddled with her, like the man in the fable who saves somebody from drowning and has to support him for the rest of his life.

It was Daniel Suter who had looked after us when I was too dazed to do anything. I strongly suspected that it was Daniel, too, who’d found some money for me. Soon after Mrs Martley and I moved in to Abel Yard a messenger delivered a banker’s order for fifty pounds, made out to Miss Liberty Lane; he wouldn’t say who’d sent it. It was a large amount, as much as a labourer might earn in a year. As a hard-working musician and composer, Daniel could never have spared such a sum himself, but he might have got up a collection among my father’s friends. He’d denied any knowledge of it and put on a good show of being puzzled, but I couldn’t think of any other possible source.

When Daniel told me he’d heard of a place that might do for Mrs Martley and me near Hyde Park, I’d wondered how we could possibly afford such an expensive neighbourhood. I had forgotten that expensive neighbourhoods must have people and animals to support them: grooms and horses, sweeps and grocers, chickens to lay their eggs, terriers to kill their rats, and men to cart away their rubbish. So while the great houses showed their fine fronts to the park, a whole community of us lived in the mews and streets behind, like birds and squirrels in mighty oak trees. Four shillings a week bought us the use of a parlour with its own fireplace and an attic bedroom. It was no more than a temporary refuge, for the landlord had other plans; but since everything else in my life seemed to be temporary, that was the least of my worries.

Mr Colley squeezed out the last creamy drops from Martha’s udder and Mrs Martley bent with a sigh to pick up the jug. Maybe I should have offered to carry it upstairs for her, but I didn’t want to spoil my only good pair of black gloves. I went ahead up the stairs and opened the door to the parlour.

‘There’s a letter come for you,’ she said. ‘It’s a foreign one.’

My heart bounded. The only person likely to be writing to me from abroad was my brother Tom – or Thomas Fraternity Lane, to give him his full name. He was two years my junior and, since our father’s death, my only close relation. It was the grief of my life that we hadn’t seen each other for four years and weren’t likely to do so until we were old. Since my father could provide no fortune or proper profession for him, Tom was sent away to India when he was sixteen years old to work for the East India Company.

The letter was lying on the table, I picked it up and thought I caught a whiff of salt from its long sea voyage, and an even fainter one of spices.

‘It came yesterday,’ Mrs Martley said, ‘only the boy delivered it to the coach house by mistake.’

By then I was halfway up the stairs. A letter from Tom was precious and I wanted to gloat over it on my own. I pushed aside the curtain that divided my share of the attic room from Mrs Martley’s and sat down on my narrow bed by the window to read.