Death of a Dancer

The first part of it was entirely satisfactory. He was still, like me, trying to recover from the shock of our father’s murder, but life in Bombay was a wonderful distraction. He was working hard, learning the language, living in a fine house with three other fellows, each of them with his own servant to stand behind his chair at mealtimes. His chief was pleased with him and hinting at promotion.

Then, on the turn of the page, he had to spoil it with a passage that flung me into that state of fist-clenched fury to which only your nearest and dearest can reduce you, wanting to yell at him over those of thousands of miles of ocean as I’d once yelled across the nursery floor: How dare you tell me what to do? Service with the Company might be doing wonders for his prospects, but it was evidently making him pompous.

As to your own domestic arrangements, I understand what you say about their complete propriety but I am very concerned to hear that you have chosen to live on your own in London. Is this Mrs Martley you mention a house-keeper, or what is her status? In any case, it will hardly do. You mention that you frequently see Daniel Suter, and that he has been helpful to you. I should have expected no other from one of our father’s dearest friends and know I can rely totally on his sense of honour and your own. Still, we live in a world in which people are all too ready to impute their own bad instincts to even the most virtuous. If Daniel were to make you an offer of marriage, you would have my complete support and approval in accepting it. In the circumstances, I don’t think you need wait until the year of mourning for our father ends in June. If Daniel wrote to me asking for your hand, I should give it most whole-heartedly, knowing Father would have approved. I have written to Suter to hint as much.

That letter made up my mind for me, although not in the way my brother might have hoped. The day had hardly begun, and already two men had tried to tell me what to do.

As the world would see it, my brother’s instructions were entirely reasonable. Of all the men on earth, Daniel Suter was the one I liked best. He was ten years older than I was, but young in heart, blessed with great musical talent, and part of our family circle for as long as I could remember. Nothing could be more suitable. And yet there was something stubborn in me that made me rebel against what was merely suitable. Tom and I had been brought up to question everything. My very name, Liberty, was a token of my parents’ belief in a world where women as well as men could make their own decisions. Here I was, healthy and well educated, in the greatest city in the world. I was mistress – for the while, at least – of my rackety two-room household. I had money in my purse – albeit diminishing fast. The events of the past few months had given me unusual freedom for my age and sex, and it seemed to me that it would be ungrateful to waste it.

Mr Disraeli’s suggestion – unlike my brother’s – was entirely unsuitable, and yet the mystery and unexpectedness of it made my heart lift and tickled my curiosity. I wanted to know more about this Columbine and how she could possibly be a threat to people in Disraeli’s comfortable rank of society. Later that day, as I walked down Piccadilly heading for the theatre district adjoining Covent Garden, I felt as if I’d accepted a challenge.

CHAPTER THREE

On the way to the theatre, I called at the house in Bloomsbury Square where Daniel lodged with half a dozen other bachelor musicians. If Daniel had read his letter from my brother, I wanted to make it clear that the embarrassing hint about marriage had been dropped without my knowledge. The household’s maid-of-all work, Izzy, answered the door with a duster in one hand and a harassed look.

‘He’s gone to the theatre already. We don’t see much of him at home these days.’

It struck me that it had been two weeks or more since I had seen Daniel. He must be working even harder than usual, and yet the Augustus might be considered a step down for a man who regularly played at both Covent Garden and Drury Lane. I knew the theatre from earlier times when I’d lived in London, and I had been backstage several times. It was a barn of a place, at the Covent Garden end of Long Acre, built ten years earlier by a man who had hoped to convert London audiences to the delights of classical drama and gone spectacularly broke in the process. It had passed through several hands since and was already showing signs of shoddy construction, with plaster flaking from the walls and rust blistering the supports of the canopy over the main entrance.

When I got there, just as it was beginning to get dark at four o’clock, a few loiterers were reading the bright new playbills plastered to the walls. The Return to the London Stage of Madame Columbine topped the bill in large black letters. She was to perform two ballets: The Court of Queen Titaniaand Diana the Huntress. Among the other attractions were a new comical domestic burletta entitled The Hoodwinked Husband, Signor Cavalari and his arithmetical horse, twin boy acrobats (‘Peas in a Pod’), and the murder scene from Shakespeare’s Famous Tragedy Othello performed by the renowned tragedian Mr Robert Surrey. Daniel’s name was near the bottom of the bill as director of music.

The main doors were locked so I went in at the side entrance. There was nobody in the doorkeeper’s booth except a fat tabby cat, blinking at me from a stool. A long corridor with dressing-room doors off it led into the depths of the building. The air was colder than outside and a smell of damp plaster hung over everything. With three hours to go to curtain-rise, the place seemed deserted and quiet as a church.

Then somebody started singing. It was a simple song, ‘The Lass of Richmond Hill’, to piano accompaniment. The soprano voice was sweet and true, but it seemed to me not strong enough for a big place like the Augustus. I took a right turn and walked down a flight of steep wooden steps into the orchestra pit.

There were just the two of them: the man at the piano and the woman standing beside it. It was almost dark in the pit, apart from one candle in the holder on the piano. By the light of it, the first thing I noticed was the girl’s beautiful red hair, the colour of a beech tree in autumn. Her pale face, eyes wide, was intent on the song. The man sitting at the piano was looking up at her, his fingers stroking out the accompaniment so tenderly that it seemed to make a cave of music to shelter the two of them. He was Daniel.

I knew I was intruding so turned to go, but must have made some sound because she stopped singing suddenly and looked scared, as if they had no right to be there. The accompaniment stopped as well.

‘Is that you, Mr Blake?’ the man at the piano said, not able to see outside their halo of candlelight.

‘No, it’s me,’ I said, wishing I were a thousand miles away.

‘Liberty?’ From the sound of Daniel’s voice, he wished the same. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, I’m going. I’m sorry.’

‘Wait, Libby.’ He’d recovered himself now and spoke in his usual gentle voice. ‘Come over here. There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.’

The girl looked as if she wanted to run away. He touched her hand quickly and gave her a nod, as if to reassure her that I posed no threat.

‘Liberty, may I introduce Jenny Jarvis. Jenny, this is Liberty Lane, one of my oldest and dearest friends.’

Her bare hand met my gloved hand. I could feel her pulse beating like a trapped bird against a window. She was wearing a plain cotton dress, not warm enough for winter. Daniel picked up a grey wool shawl from the top of the piano and adjusted it carefully round her narrow shoulders.

‘Jenny, would you go to the dressing room and keep warm if you can. I’ll come soon.’

She went without a word, picking her way among the shadowy chairs and music stands as gracefully as a deer in a hazel copse.

‘She’s a dancer,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m teaching her singing, when we have time.’

‘You shouldn’t have sent her away for my sake.’

‘She needs to rest before the performance. In any case, I wanted to talk to you. It’s providential in a way, your being here.’

I thought, but didn’t say, that he hadn’t felt that way a minute ago. He was keyed up and nervous, far more than a man of his experience would be for a first night in a second-rate theatre.

‘Jenny’s nineteen,‘ he said. ‘She’s only been in London a few months. She comes from a village in Kent, near Maidstone. Her father’s a farm labourer. Her mother died and he married again.’

‘She ran away from a wicked step-mother?’

I didn’t like the flippancy in my own voice. In fact, I didn’t like myself very much at all. Only minutes ago, I’d been angry that my brother was trying to press me into marrying Daniel. Now here I was feeling shocked and miserable because he loved somebody else. I’d guessed the moment I saw them together, known for certain when his fingers rested on her shoulder just a moment longer than it needed to settle the shawl. Why should I be shocked? Daniel had made no promises to me, nor I to him. If I’d assumed, too easily, that I’d always be the woman in the world who mattered most to him, that was no fault of his.

Daniel gave no sign that he’d noticed my tone.

‘She ran away to London because she wanted to dance. She saw some travelling troupe at a fair and that was all she wanted to do. I honestly believe she thought London was full of happy people singing and dancing.’

I bit my tongue to stop myself saying that nobody should be that naïve, even a country girl. Daniel must have picked up on my thoughts.

‘I’m making her sound like a fool, Liberty. I promise you, she’s far from that. She’s quick minded, a talented dancer and has an excellent ear for music. And the sheer courage of her amazes me. Here she is, a little thing with no friends and no experience, managing to survive in London. Can you imagine what that must be like?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s sharing a room with two of the other dancers in Seven Dials. One of them brings men home. There’s only the one room and two beds in it. You understand?’

I imagined two girls huddled in one of the beds of a slum room, listening to the sounds from the other bed a few feet away.

‘She’s only just begun trusting me enough to tell me about it,‘ Daniel said. ’It makes me sick even thinking of it.’

‘How long have you known her?’

‘Three weeks. I must do something, Libby. But I can’t bring her to lodge with me in a house of men. Her reputation would be entirely gone.’

I thought, Unless you married her. I didn’t put it into words in case it tipped him into something he’d spend the rest of his life regretting.

‘So you can guess what I want to ask you. It was in my mind in any case, but when you arrived just now …’

Ironic, I supposed, guessing what was coming.

‘I wonder if she might come to live with you and Mrs Martley. Only for a while, of course, until I can make some other arrangement. It’s a lot to ask, but…’

He looked me in the face, wanting this more than I’d ever known him want anything. I hoped my horror didn’t show. The two rooms in Abel Yard were a tight fit for me and Mrs Martley. Having to take in a girl I knew almost nothing about would be a burden, even without this feeling of hollowness round my heart. But Daniel had found me the rooms; even paid for them, if my suspicions were correct.

‘Yes, very well,’ I said.

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, face bright with relief.

‘Bless you, child. May I tell her?’