Rosie Thomas - Daughter of the House

Nancy stared at the buttons of his coat so as not to see his face, and still his proximity made her shiver.

I don’t want to be a seer.

Mr Feather collected himself and sadly nodded.

‘Lemonade? That is kind, but no, thank you. I should offer my condolences in return, for the loss you also suffered on that day.’

‘Phyllis was our children’s companion. Very sad, of course, but she was not a relative.’

Eliza’s tone indicated that the topic was closed. Nancy shot her a glance, wondering how her mother could sometimes seem so devoid of feelings.

A young man hurried towards them. He called out, ‘Lawrence? So sorry, I had to speak to a chap I was … ah? Hullo!’

With an effort Lawrence Feather produced a smile. ‘Not at all, Lycett. I too have bumped into some friends. Mrs Wix, Miss Wix, may I introduce Mr Lycett Stone?’

He was a tall, plump and dishevelled Etonian in top hat and elaborate waistcoat. He grinned and removed the hat with a flourish, clearly elated by the match. Unconfined by the topper his curly hair gave him the look of an overgrown Cupid. Nancy didn’t want to stare, but she was struck by the young man’s exuberance. She thought it would have been fun to hear his account of the game. More fun than listening to Arthur, at any rate.

The young man beamed. ‘Well, I have to say, it’s been a great day.’

‘You must be delighted,’ Eliza agreed.

‘Eh? Oh dear. Your boy’s a Harrovian, I assume?’

‘Yes, he will be.’

Lycett Stone pursed his full lips and did his best to look sympathetic, but unruly satisfaction spilled out of him.

‘Next year,’ he consoled. ‘There’s always next year.’

Lawrence Feather looked even more sombre beside this vision of merriment. He murmured, ‘I shouldn’t detain you any longer, Mrs Wix. But may I call on you at some convenient time?’

Eliza agreed, mainly out of pity for the state he was in. The strange pair said goodbye and moved off into the crowd as Faith and Lizzie rejoined them.

‘Who was that?’ Lizzie Shaw demanded.

Eliza explained the circumstances in which they had last seen Lawrence Feather.

‘Oh, I see. Actually I meant the other one, the Eton boy.’

‘I don’t know, Lizzie,’ Eliza said. ‘His name is Lycett Stone. Why do you ask?’

‘He looked rather jolly.’

It was almost seven o’clock and the crowds were thinning out at last. The two families had planned to eat supper together but Rowland and Edwin Shaw excused themselves, saying they were going on to meet some fellows for a drink. The brothers shared a set of bachelor rooms in Holloway. Only Lizzie still lived with her mother and father, and she had privately confided to Nancy that she didn’t intend to remain there much longer. As they threaded their way to St John’s Wood underground station Lizzie was still volubly talking.

‘We are liberated women in this family. We don’t need overseeing and chaperoning every time we step out of the front door, do we? Look at your mama. Even in her day she was able to live in a ladies’ rooming house and work as an artists’ model.’

This wasn’t news to Nancy or anyone else. Eliza loved to reminisce about her artistic and theatrical days.

The Wixes lived beside the Regent’s Canal at Islington. It was a pretty house, rising three storeys above a basement area enclosed by railings. There were curled wrought-iron balconies at the tall windows, and the play of light over the water was caught in the rippled old glass. Only ten years before the canal had been busy with laden barges drawn by huge slow horses, but lately the furniture-makers of the area had begun to receive their timbers by motor wagon and the channel now bloomed with carpets of green weed.

Devil had bought the house for Eliza shortly after Cornelius was born, borrowing the money at a high rate of interest from a private bank. The heavy repayments on the loan had begun the serious undermining of the Wixes’ finances. The theatre business and their home lives had rocked on more or less unstable foundations ever since.

When they reached the house Eliza had to stop and lean against the railings to catch her breath. She seemed too tired even to search for her key.

‘Mama?’ Nancy said in concern.

Arthur ran up the steps to ring the bell and the door was grudgingly cracked open by Cook.

‘Evening, mum, Mrs Shaw, Mr Shaw.’

The cook was not pleased to see visitors for supper, especially since it was Peggy’s evening off.

The Wixes kept two servants in the house, Mrs Frost the cook (‘An aptly named person,’ Cornelius had remarked), and a housemaid. Nancy loyally insisted that she wouldn’t accept any replacement for Phyllis. A daily woman came in to do the heavy cleaning and laundry, her morose little husband did odd jobs, and a smeary-faced boy appeared in the mornings to clean the shoes and run any necessary errands.

‘There’s only cold cuts, mum,’ Cook called after Eliza as the sisters went upstairs to take off their hats. ‘I reckon I could boil up a few spuds, if you really need me to.’

In her bedroom Eliza drew the hatpins from her plumed toque and set it on the dressing table. Faith steered her to the chair at the window.

‘There. Sit for a moment.’

‘Matthew …’ Eliza began.

‘… will be glad to read the newspaper in peace for half an hour,’ Faith finished for her. ‘Shall I ask Cook to bring us a pot of tea?’

‘By all means. She will certainly give notice if you do. It will save me the trouble of dismissing her.’

Faith only laughed. She was well used to the state of semi-warfare between Eliza and the cook.

‘No tea, then. Something stronger?’

A silver tray with a bottle and glasses stood on Devil’s dressing stand. Faith placed a weak gin and water in her sister’s hand and watched her take two swallows.

‘I don’t know where I’d be without you, Faith.’

Eliza and her sister were close, and had become even more so in recent years. As a young woman Eliza had dismissed Faith’s choice of marriage and motherhood as unadventurous, but she was generous enough now to acknowledge that for all her youthful insistence on freedom they had ended up in more or less the same place. How age enamels us, she would say. It builds up in layers and locks us inside our own skin, stopping us from breaking out, preventing the outside from burrowing in.

Faith said, ‘You’d do perfectly well, but you don’t have to because I am here. Is it bad today?’

Eliza closed her eyes. Her fingers splayed over her lower belly as if to support the failures and collapses within.

‘My back aches, a little.’

‘What else, then? Is it Devil?’

There was a long pause.

‘No more than usual.’

Faith didn’t ask, ‘Who is it this time?’ but she might well have done.

There was always someone: an actress or a dancer from the theatre, a waitress from one of the supper clubs, or a young girl met across a shop counter when he was choosing a pair of gloves or a bottle of scent for Eliza.

That was the strange thing.

Apart from the few years at the beginning of their married life, before Cornelius was born, Devil had been incapable of fidelity. Yet even when his pursuit of women was at its most fervent, Devil had always been – so it seemed to Faith and Matthew – utterly obsessed with his wife.

Faith said, ‘He adores you.’

Eliza gave a thin sigh. It was not the first time the two of them had discussed the matter.

‘That’s partly the trouble. I can’t satisfy his craving, and the more I fail in that the more he longs for what he imagines I am withholding.’

It wasn’t just sex, although sex lay at the root of it. Once they had been well suited. But then Cornelius had come, or rather a brutal doctor with a pair of forceps had dragged him into the world, and after that there had been a change. Pain and distress made Eliza hesitant, even though she had tried to pretend otherwise, and although Devil had done his best he had in the end read her hesitancy as reluctance. He was cast as the importuner and Eliza as the withholder, and although the front line of their battle constantly shifted, sometimes dressed up as comedy and at others bitterly rancorous, there was always a battle.