Rosie Thomas - The Illusionists

‘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, this act. Nothing less than perfection will do for Boldoni and Wix.’

Carlo’s bruised face turned even darker, but not before Devil saw the flicker of shame in it. He was proud and he would be even more disappointed with the night than Devil had been.

He snapped, ‘Shut your sloppy mouth. Where would this act be without me, I’d like to know? Who are you? Nothing but a tuppenny broadsman.’

‘What happened?’

‘Bloody stilt jammed in the trap.’ Carlo thrust out his hand. The heel of it was scraped, and freckled with splinters where he had evidently wrenched the raw wood to free himself. Silently Devil handed him a wet rag to wipe the skin clean. Next to them Heinrich took Lucie in his arms and arranged her ringlets over her shoulders before they went out into the lights. Bascia, the female partner of the acrobatic duo, sniggered and muttered something under her breath to her brother. The tiny bells stitched to her costume tinkled like an echo of laughter.

Devil tried to breathe evenly but suppressed frustration only made his heart knock against his ribs. Tremors ran under his skin and he shook as if in a fever. Failure was at hand, and out of failure fear blossomed.

The old figure of darkness edged with flame took shape and sprang at him. It was as real in that moment as Carlo or Grady. Devil recoiled. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to block out the apparition, but the screams of a dying boy were loud enough to deafen him.

Leave me alone , Devil inwardly howled. You are gone, I am still here.

He made himself drop his hands. If he brought his mind to bear on the here and now, he knew that the shape of Gabe would fade away.

He forced himself to think.

The badness of the show was Grady’s fault. Like its poor performers the theatre itself was cracking and subsiding all round them. Grady had chased away the proper audience, the front row customers in silk hats and jewels, and in their place he encouraged vulgarians and drunks – and not sufficient numbers even of those. The coarse comedian who now closed the first half was supposed to appeal to Grady’s mob, but the man wasn’t good enough to make even the lowest people laugh. Without subtlety, without at least giving an audience the opportunity to feign innocence at double meanings, dirty talk was just dirt. Devil was surprised to note his own prudery but he knew what was right: he knew what would bring in the crowds and their money. The failure was Grady’s, not his own.

The dark figure was still there, in the periphery of his vision. He was afraid of a memory , and a memory couldn’t hurt him. He aimed a vicious kick at the inner spectre but his foot connected only with a storage hamper that toppled over and spilled its contents. He slouched forwards to set it upright and saw that as usual Bascia was looking at him. Her black eyes reminded him of ripe berries in the Stanmore hedges. She tilted her head in a gesture of invitation.

Carlo ignored his antics with the hamper. He pulled down his cap to cover his eyes and stalked away. Devil understood that he should go after him and try to set matters straight, perhaps even apologise if he could bring himself to do so. There would not be much of an act without Carlo, whereas the dwarf could always find another front man. But instead he matched Bascia’s head tilt with one of his own. The warmth of a woman’s body would obliterate Gabe more effectively than brandy ever could.