Rosie Thomas - The Illusionists

Eliza recalled the backstage realm at the Palmyra theatre as a chaos of casually naked limbs barely concealed by dressing screens, where discarded or not yet assumed costumes gaudy with feathers and sequins hung in wait for the strutting performers. It was a swarming, hectic and self-absorbed space stinking of perspiration and gas fumes, stale beer and face paint, where a half-consumed dinner of bread and cold beef lay on a table under which a bucket of piss stood in plain view. In her waking hours she mulled over the thrillingly disreputable vigour of all this, and the trapped din of the unseen audience reverberated in her head along with the jingle of tiny bells.

But when she slept, it was different. When she slept she became one of the performers. Amongst these creatures, who like a series of violently coloured butterflies had managed the transition from humdrum world to stage glamour, she grew wings and flew, she spiralled in dances, she sank in an exaggerated curtsey to acknowledge the roar of applause.

When she woke up from her dreams, she felt dull.

To be an artists’ model had in her own estimation seemed daring, and she had certainly shocked her father and stepmother – this Eliza always found pleasant to contemplate – but now she realised that her own notions of what it was to reject proper behaviour were in themselves staid enough. Up until now she had felt fairly satisfied with the precariousness of her existence, but her spirits sank when she contemplated the stale routines of the day that actually lay ahead. A languid class in watercolour painting at the Rawlinson School did not compare with the seamy adulation she was offered in her dreams.

At this point, with an inevitability that was becoming familiar, her thoughts would turn to Devil Wix. If she wished for closer acquaintance with the theatre, surely it was Devil who could lead her to it? It was true that he had dismissed her barely thought-out suggestion about a female role, but – characteristically – she would not allow that to deter her. Eliza considered matters. The first strategy was to earn Devil’s approval, and his gratitude if that were possible. She must find a way to direct paying customers to the box office in the Strand.

To this end, after the next life class, instead of leaving immediately once she was dressed and Mr Coope was out of the room, she lingered for a few minutes to talk to the students. Charles Egan and the others were delighted with this opportunity and they were soon established in a semicircle, with the young men’s coats slung aside and their feet hooked up on chair rungs. Ralph Vine laced his fingers behind his head and tipped his seat at a reckless angle. Even Miss Frazier hovered within earshot. For her own part Eliza was enjoying the stimulating contrast between her nakedness of half an hour ago and the polite cadences of the present conversation.

She began by asking them, ‘I wonder if any of you have seen the new variety show at the Palmyra theatre?’

‘That old place?’ Leonard Woolley shook his head. ‘My father used to go to concerts there. It has been closed for years.’

‘Indeed it was closed, but it has recently reopened as a variety hall. It is not much better than derelict even now, but you should go and see the magic act. The illusion is called the Execution of the Philosopher. I promise you, Mr Woolley, you will not believe your eyes.’

‘Whatever you command, Miss Dunlop. May I persuade you to come with me?’

‘Thank you. I have already seen the performance,’ Eliza smiled at him. Some of the young men were languid and others were bumptious. None of them had interested her, even before her visits to the Palmyra and Herr Bayer’s studio.

When she arrived for the next class Leonard Woolley and two others were quick to announce that they had followed her instructions and enjoyed a visit to the theatre.

‘It’s a rough sort of place, though. Who took you along there, Miss Dunlop, may I ask?’

‘My sister and her husband.’

‘Not your young man?’ Ralph Vine slyly murmured.

‘I don’t have such a thing.’

‘I saw you walking in the park with a chap who looked as if he’d like to be.’

Charles Egan mocked him. ‘You might like it too, Viney, but that doesn’t necessarily make it happen.’

‘What did you think of the Philosophers illusion?’ Eliza persisted.

Mr Woolley whistled. ‘Top-notch, I have to say. I was astounded. Cutting off his head, you know. A strange person in the row in front of us nearly screamed her own head off. The trick is a waxwork of course. But how is it done?’

‘I couldn’t reveal any details.’

‘But you do know? How come? Do tell us. I love theatrical illusions. They have such a primitive appeal.’

Everyone was interested now. Miss Frazier paused in the adjustment of her smock ties.

‘I know in principle. I am acquainted with the performers.’ Eliza couldn’t resist the little boast. There was another whistle.

Ralph Vine said, ‘ Are you? Dark horse, Miss Dunlop. Gentlemen, who apart from me has not yet seen this fascinating show? I propose we put matters right tomorrow evening.’

All the male students went in an exuberant group to the Palmyra. Eliza crossed her fingers that Devil and Carlo would give their best performance, but she could come up with no reason for going to the theatre herself. She returned to her lodgings in Bayswater instead. After eating the usual dinner in the company of her two fellow lodgers she left the beef-coloured downstairs front room and withdrew to her bedroom. Laid out beside the oil lamp on the table in the tiny bay window were two quires of blank paper acquired at an advantageous price from the clerk of supplies at the Rawlinson School.

Eliza sat down, picked up her pencil and turned over the pages. She sighed as she did so, but she persevered. The playlet she had envisaged, an airy confection of lovers, a duenna, and cupboards into which people disappeared before comically tumbling out through a different set of doors, remained obstinately buried inside her head. She had tried for several evenings in succession but however hard she stared at her paper before pressing the lead pencil into its creamy whiteness, the actual words defied excavation. Who would have thought the business of writing could be so difficult? She knew the character she would play, had planned her elegant costume and even the way her hair would be dressed, but how did one make any of this happen?

‘ Good evening, Charlotte ,’ she wrote, the first line to be uttered by the lover, a role that would necessarily have to be taken by Devil Wix.

‘ Good evening, sir .’

Was that really all she could manage? The noise of the Palmyra’s brutal audiences in likely response to this insipid exchange was all too easy to conjure. Eliza gnawed her lip and screwed up her eyes until the sheet of paper faded to a fuzzy grey rectangle, but the pencil obstinately refused to move. She listened to her upstairs neighbour’s footsteps as they passed overhead, from the washstand to the wardrobe and back again. Miss Aynscoe was the overseer of an atelier specialising in fine beadwork and embroideries for ladies’ clothing. She was so poor that her own garments seemed worn almost to the point of transparency, and the sparse evening meal provided for them by their landlady was probably the only food she ate all day. But then Miss Aynscoe lived within her means. Eliza did not, and she was perfectly well aware that her small capital would not last for ever. Or indeed, much beyond the next year. But what was the point of being alive, she reasoned, if everything were to be planned for and measured in advance? That was the way Faith and Matthew lived, and it did not appeal to her.