push a finger into the soft bit of his arm and whisper into the black of his ear: “But don’t you see, this is the root of it! One generous thing done a lifetime ago and they think the world is in debt to them since. There’s no fairness in it. In the first place, I don’t think you can call giving your parents’ good money away generous. If you can call it anything, it’s—”
The blood now comes beating to his face. An angry flush overspreads his features. He shifts his chair so he can face away from me. I take my hand back and sigh. These foreigners have no notion of the banter. The Irish, there’s not much I can say in their favor, but at least they allow for a woman’s words when she’s lushed; they know it’s only the drop talking.
The music stops and the remaining dancers bow and clap, and now make their way back to the chairs and sofas. A woman rushes in from the hall, as if summoned by the new quiet.
“Where’ve you been?” rasps her redheaded friend, just two paces from me. “All this time, I’ve not seen you.”
“I was in the kitchen playing cards with the hired men. What a lark! I won this.” She opens her palm to show a threepenny bit.
Jenny walks into the center of the room and calls for a final applause for the musicians, then orders us up the stairs to the parlor for the performance.
“The moment we’ve been waiting for!” someone shouts.
Frederick comes to take me up. “Are you safe?” he says when my foot squeaks on the carpet of the stairs and I have a little wobble.
“Go to blazes, Frederick,” I says.
In the parlor we get seats, but the men have to stay on their feet. Jenny comes to stand in front of a counterpane held up as a curtain by two menservants. She gives a little speech about the effort she and Karl have made towards the Girls’ education, and how unfortunate it is they couldn’t do so much for them in music as they’d have hoped. “In any case,” she says, “their real strength is drama and elocution. And tonight my youngest daughter, Eleanor, whom many of you know as Tussy, shall be playing Hamlet. This is apt, for her father used to always say she was more like a boy than a girl.”
A chuckle goes round.
“Good old Tussy!” someone calls out.
“My eldest daughter, Janey, shall be playing Gertrude, and although she knows not yet the joys and pain of motherhood for herself, I think you shall find she does the role full justice.”
Cheers and claps.
“The Girls would like to dedicate their performance to their sister Laura and her husband Paul, who are now safe in Bordeaux, thank heavens, and expecting a child.”
Applause.
Jenny bows and the servants let drop the curtain. One of the men has given Tussy a military jacket. Jenny has put Janey in one of her ball gowns.
“Now, Mother,” says Tussy, “what’s the matter?”
“Hamlet,” says Janey, “thou hast thy father much offended.”
“Mother, you have my father much offended.”
This stirs up such laughter in the crowd that Janey is forced to hesitate before speaking her next line. “Come, come,” she says once there’s quiet, and the two set off into their theatricals, speeching off and casting their limbs about. I don’t know if it’s the lush or the heat of the room, but I’m finding it hard to stay with the meaning of it. My head pounds. I feel all face. I look around to see if anyone has noticed the wrong with me. Nim, I see, is stood by the door. That’s where I must go.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” I says as I make my way down the line.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Burns,” Nim says when I reach her. She gestures into the room to remind me of what I’ll miss if I leave. I turn back to see Tussy striking a blow at a figure wrapped in the drapes, and now Karl spinning out from behind them and falling onto the floor.
Dizzying, I rush down the stairs and out the street door. I take the air and am thankful for it; it keeps what’s down from coming up. A moment and Nim is outside with me.
“Here,” she says, wrapping a shawl around me.
“You don’t have to worry, Helen. I’m grand.”
“Shall I fetch you a glass of water?”
“Nay, nay. Just stay a minute.”
“Well, all right. But not too long. I must get back.” She puts the door on the latch. Rubs her arms. “It’s getting cold now,” she says. “It will be fully winter before we know it.”
“Aye, that it will.”
Some minutes pass. The noise from upstairs comes through the windows and out into the night. All down the road, the houses are dark.
“I shall have to leave you now,” Nim says.
“Nay, wait—”
Knowing no way to proper introduce it, I go ahead and bring out the money: the savings from the dressmaker’s and a few other morsels I’ve managed to gather up.
“Here,” I says, “I want you to have this.”
She takes a step away.
“Take it. It’s from Mr. Engels. He wants you to have it.”
“Mr. Engels? For what?”
For what. For what. She must believe my head emptier than the Savior’s tomb.
“Helen, please. I’m not just another of these silly women. I know how many beans makes five.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Mr. Engels and me, we have so much. More than we can cope with.”
“I’m not going short. I’m looked after.”
“I don’t doubt it. This is just an extra bit. You have full claim to it.”
She shakes her head and pushes open the door. “I have no claims to anything.”
“Your son does. Think of your—”
But she’s already gone. Leaving me to hold the whole weight of my purse.
Back upstairs, I find the performance over. Port and sweets are being tendered round. Tussy pushes through to reach me.
“You missed the whole thing, Aunt Lizzie!”
“Not at all, I saw you up there. You were a star. I’ve never seen such—”
But she’ll not be cozened, nor condoled, and she doesn’t spare me any of her pouting, and I don’t have the force to bring her round, so it comes a relief when, from across the room, the woman Dmitrieff calls her away with the lure of her smoke. I watch her go, the man’s jacket spilling over her shoulders, and
