since the day of the Queen Mab. She had thought for a long time that she controlled it but now it spilled through the air and possessed her.
Feather stood for another moment, locking her eyes with his. Then with an exaggerated gesture he raised his hat to her, and walked slowly away.
Inside her head Nancy tried to defy him. She watched him turn the corner where the canal entered the tunnel and she thought – or perhaps she spoke the words aloud – if you are dead you can’t affect us. If you are not, there is nothing here that concerns you.
She closed the curtains tight, leaving not a chink between them, and continued her way downstairs. In the kitchen she made herself comfortable in a chair close to the range where she could hear the soft hissing of coals.
She had been sitting deep in thought for perhaps half an hour when her father came in. Devil was in his old tweed overcoat, his face not quite scrubbed bare of stage make-up and his regular smell of bay rum and cigar smoke spiked with fumes of brandy.
‘You’re up late, Nancy.’
She found a smile.
‘I was about to make a cup of cocoa. Would you like one?’
‘Keeping up your wartime skills, eh?’
He teased her, but he was proud of her work for Jinny’s column. Unlike Eliza, Devil was fond of Jinny. He asked about her while Nancy warmed and whisked the milk.
‘Got a young man yet, has she? A nice warm armful like that, she must have someone.’
‘Pa.’
Devil chuckled. ‘A young girl then?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t be nosy.’
They both laughed and Nancy forgot her anxieties. She loved the rare occasions when she had her father to herself. She handed him his cocoa mug and he thoughtfully sipped.
‘It would taste much better with a splash of brandy.’
She ignored him.
‘And you?’ he asked.
‘Do I have a nice young girl?’
Devil had the grace to look slightly abashed.
‘I’d like to see you with a couple of admirers. You’re young and pretty. You should be having some fun and misbehaving, kissing someone under a full moon, instead of going off to work every day at your printers and coming home to your mother and me and Neelie. Eh?’
He sandwiched her feet between his on the rag rug.
She smiled. ‘Misbehaving? Is that what fun is?’
Until tonight the only men Nancy had known were just back from the war, no longer eager to snatch every opportunity for a kiss and a joke. Now they were home for good they seemed aware of an uncertain future.
Gil Maitland was different, and she thought he was thrillingly unlike any male she had ever encountered. Unfortunately there had been no glimpse of any moon, and he had not been remotely eager for a kiss.
Devil raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course. What’s wrong with dancing to jazz bands, may I ask? Dressing up and drinking cocktails?’
‘Nothing at all.’
She told him about having tea and a jam biscuit with Jinny, and the puddle of rain on the steps that looked like mercury. She wanted to keep the Daimler and its owner to herself. Nor did she say I saw a ghost. Maybe two.
Devil didn’t notice any reticence. He loved to reminisce about his old tricks.
‘Mercury, eh? Ah, that was a good illusion, the Melting Wand. Maybe I should bring back some of the old favourites. Nostalgia plays well, or it used to. Listen to me, I’m getting old. Modern is what counts nowadays, isn’t it?’
‘Was it a decent house tonight?’
Like Eliza, Devil had gone grey. It was only when he smiled that he looked as rakishly handsome as ever. He didn’t smile now.
‘No,’ he admitted.
The Palmyra was going through a particularly thin time. Public tastes had changed, and it seemed that spectacular magic shows belonged to a happier and less cynical age.
‘Are you worried, Pa?’
He tried to shrug off the question. ‘Luckily I am not the worrying kind. Otherwise I’d have worn myself into the grave long ago.’
Nancy couldn’t remember a time when even the air they breathed had not been clouded with uncertainty about the theatre. But their impending poverty was usually Eliza’s refrain, and Devil’s chorus had always been that they should spend money and leave the making of it to him.
Tonight was different, though, in so many respects.
‘What can we do?’
‘My lovely girl. Thank you for that “we”, but the Palmyra is your old dad’s concern. Always has been.’
Once it had been his and Eliza’s together. Nowadays his wife was too infirm. Cornelius couldn’t help, and Arthur was doubly absent because they had chosen to make him inviolate. Arthur was now an army officer, with a classical education. He would never be allowed to step back across the divide into a disreputable and precarious life in the theatre.
A quick rush of love for her father caught in Nancy’s throat. To hide her emotion she gathered up the empty cups and took them to the sink.
‘How was your mama this evening?’
‘She wasn’t very well. I saw her into bed.’
Devil leapt to his feet.
‘What? Why didn’t you tell me?’
His wife, and the theatre. Always Devil’s true, twin poles.
‘She’s asleep now.’
‘I’ll go up to her. Goodnight, my girl.’
His lips brushed her forehead and he hurried away.
Nancy washed up the saucepan and crockery and left them on the scrubbed draining board. She damped the fire, and looked around the room for what needed to be done in the morning before she quietly made her own way to bed.
Devil came to Nancy’s room long before daylight.
He said hoarsely, ‘Your mother is ill.’
Nancy pushed back the bedcovers and ran. She found Eliza sweating and semi-delirious. When she put her hand to her forehead she moaned and twisted in the soaking sheets.
Devil asked, ‘Where
