India Dark (23 page)

Mr Arthur was incensed. He came into our change rooms before we had time to take off our costumes and shouted at Tilly. I was alarmed to smell a faint whiff of whiskey on his breath. In Malaya he used to take a nip after supper, but now it seemed that he'd started drinking early in the evening.

‘What do you think you were doing, making a fuss over those people in the booth? It was disgusting, unprofessional behaviour for an actress. You behaved like a common prostitute.' He spluttered a spray of spit onto Tilly's costume as he leaned close and wagged his finger. ‘You had better not be starting up another flirtation, Matilda Sweeney, because I will not stand for any more of your scurrilous behaviour.'

Tilly smiled a secret, knowing smile guaranteed to send Mr Arthur into a rage. ‘They're a very respectable married couple and they are my friends. Lieutenant Madden was my friend too, nothing more. It was you who poisoned him against me by suggesting there was something improper in our friendship. As to the Bartons, they've come down from Malabar Hill especially to see the Lilliputians and they've brought paying customers with them. I should think you'd be pleased.'

Mr Arthur frowned, as if suddenly flummoxed by her coolness.

‘Well, you mind yourself, Miss Sweeney. You mind yourself because I am watching every move you make.'

On the way home in the carriage, all hell broke loose. And Mr Arthur wasn't even there to trigger the explosion. It was as if Tilly had been bottling up so much poison in her that once the clock struck midnight it would have to explode outwards. There were only three of us in the gharry: me, Tilly and Lizzie. There couldn't have been a worse combination.

‘I don't know how you put up with him, Lizzie,' said Tilly, taking out her hatpin and stuffing her worn straw hat in her lap. Maybe it was the comparison with the lovely new linen hats that Mr Arthur had bought us that set her off.

‘You know he is doing his best, Tilly,' said Lizzie softly.

‘Do you call stringing you along with all those empty promises his best?'

‘Stop it, Tilly. Not in front of Poesy.'

‘Oh, don't worry, Lizzie. Poesy is your own little shadow. She won't believe me anyway. She thinks the sun shines out of your bottom.'

It was the last straw. I'd swallowed my pride and forgiven Tilly too many times that week. ‘Why should I believe you, Tilly!' I shouted. ‘You lie about everything. You say we're friends and then you're horrid to me. You call Mr Arthur a butcher but then you tell the police everything is perfect. You lie and lie and lie.'

‘You're a fine one to talk. You're just like one of those stupid little trio of monkeys they sell at the bazaars. You keep your eyes and ears covered and yet you open your big mouth and spew lies. How can you not see what's going on around you?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' I said.

‘Well, you don't keep your mouth shut, do you? All those little lies you set about spinning this afternoon – all for the Butcher's sake.'

‘They weren't lies!'

‘No? All that twaddle about your grandmother being potty and meddlesome when in truth she treats you like a princess and everyone in Richmond knows she's the soul of honesty with her ‘Hold the right thought' and ‘Love governs'. How you can be her granddaughter when you can't tell the difference between a lie and a half-truth beggars belief.'

I started to sob then and Lizzie put her arm around me protectively.

‘Leave her alone, Tilly. She's still only little.'

‘Not like you and me, Liz. We're grown-ups now, aren't we? But how grown-up will you be when Percival goes back to his wife and leaves you high and dry at the end of this tour?'

‘He's not going back to her. I told you that,' Lizzie said between gritted teeth.

‘Why are you tormenting us?' I sobbed. ‘I was only trying to protect us all.'

‘If you want to protect anyone, you should be protecting your precious Lizzie. Because Percival will chew her up and spit her out before this tour is over.'

‘Stop it, Tilly. Stop speaking like that!' cried Lizzie.

‘Yes, stop it,' I wept. ‘Mr Arthur would never hurt Lizzie.'

‘She's his mistress, Poesy. How can you not know that? What do you think she does in his room while the rest of us are sleeping in the afternoons? Why do you think they have supper together with only Lionel for company?'

‘But I've had supper with them too,' I stammered through my tears. ‘It's all perfectly proper. They're only friendly. He is a friend to Lizzie and to Lionel.'

‘But not to you, Poesy. He is not a true friend to you. He only wants to use you to cover his tracks because he knows you're so innocent you don't see what's right in front of you. And he hates me because I know and I understand. He hates us all except Lionel, his little Butcher's boy, and Lizzie, his little whore.'

I'd been sitting between them until that moment, but with a great cry of rage Lizzie pushed me aside and wedged herself next to Tilly. She tore at Tilly's hair and snatched at her hatpin, as if she would stab her through the heart.

The driver glanced back at us in alarm and then whipped his poor little pony so he could rid his gharry of its load of banshees. I wanted to leap out right then, to run and hide from them both, but there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I covered my ears so I couldn't hear them scream at each other.

We tumbled out of the gharry and into the gutter outside Watson's Hotel. If it hadn't been for the terrible coincidence of the Bartons appearing before us, perhaps everything would have been all right, but when Tilly saw them stepping through the doors of Watson's, she almost fell into Mrs Barton's arms. I don't know what she said to them. Lizzie and I kept our distance, waiting for their conversation to finish.

But when Lionel and Mr Arthur climbed out of the next carriage, Lizzie ran to him.

‘You have to stop her, Arthur,' said Lizzie. ‘She's conspiring with those Barton people. She's determined to make trouble. It was Tilly who put the little girls up to that spectacle this afternoon. And those people are disgraceful. Why, he's in the racing industry and that woman he calls his wife, she's probably no such thing.'

I'd never seen Lizzie so furious, never seen her beautiful face so distorted with rage.

‘Punish her, Arthur. Punish her or there will be no end to her mischief.'

Mr Arthur stood stock still, waiting for his moment. It was as if half the players in the terrible scene were frozen in time. Another carriage arrived and a load of weary girls disgorged onto the sidewalk. I watched, trembling with anticipation as the Bartons climbed into their car and waved goodbye. If Tilly had known what was good for her, she would have hurried into the hotel with the last of the troupe. But she stood in the street, farewelling the Bartons' car until it turned the corner.

The moment the Bartons were out of sight, Mr Arthur seized her by both arms. ‘What have you said! What lies have you been telling those people?'

Tilly didn't speak for a long moment while she looked Mr Arthur up and down with disdain. ‘I should have told them that you are a sneaking cad, a dirty ruffian and a bully.'

He pushed her away from him and then his cane flew so swiftly that none of us saw it cutting the night air until Tilly let out a cry, a long scream of rage and pain, and bent to clasp her calf. I looked at Lizzie and saw a fierce, angry joy in her face. Mr Arthur raised his cane in the air again, to bring it down across Tilly's back. I couldn't let it happen. I had to stop him. I ran across the road and dived between them, throwing my arms around Tilly's body to shield her from the blow. Mr Arthur's arm quivered in midair, hesitating. That moment of hesitancy was all we needed to escape.

I pushed Tilly towards the entrance. ‘Quick, quick,' I cried, grabbing her wrist and running with her into the safety of Watson's Hotel. We ran across the tiled floor, past the quiet shops and the sleepy doormen, as a sharp crescent moon glittered on the black glass above us.

Later, in our room, Tilly showed me the welt, four inches long and throbbing, where Mr Arthur's blow had fallen. It was red and angry, destined to make a long bruise.

‘I was only thanking the Bartons for coming to the show. And there was no conspiracy. They were only at Watson's to drop off some friends. I wasn't telling them to fetch the Police Commissioner, but the Butcher is so guilty he assumes the worst. Now I can't walk properly,' she complained.

I shut my eyes and replayed every horrid moment of the fight in the carriage, every terrible word that Tilly had spoken, each accusation reverberating in my ears.‘Mr Arthur and Lizzie . . .' I began. But I couldn't finish the question. I didn't want to hear Tilly tell me the answer. Perhaps I'd always known but had never wanted to believe. Tilly was right. I had been like the Three Monkeys, not wanting to hear or see or speak of the evil in our midst, but now I would uncover my ears. Now, I would see for myself.

That night, long after everyone had gone to sleep, I pushed aside the mosquito netting and climbed out of bed. There was a narrow ray of light shining through the crack between the folding doors at the end of the room. Our bedroom had once been part of a suite linked to the room next door. Now the folding doors that opened onto Mr Arthur's room were held shut with long, looping chains and a thick padlock. If I stood close, I could see straight into it. And I saw that Eliza was stretched out on the bed. Lionel was sitting on a chair in the corner, practising a card trick. But where was Mr Arthur?

When he finally came into the room, Lionel looked up and nodded. Then he left the room. Lizzie and Mr Arthur were alone, alone while the fans spun above their heads and the French doors stood open onto the cast-iron balcony.

Sometimes I pretend to myself that I saw nothing, that I covered my eyes at the very moment the truth was revealed. But I didn't. I saw it all. The curve of her hip, as she opened her kimono, the way he covered her body with his own, the way she pulled the white shirt from his back. My heart beat so loudly that I could hear it inside my own head. I tried to tell myself that he was drunk. There could be no other excuse. But deep inside, I knew there was another truth. The truth that I had ignored from the first moment I'd stood shivering outside our cabin door on board the
Ceylon
. The truth that I had pushed away whenever it crept close to me. The terrible, ugly truth.

42

KISS MISS 1909

Tilly Sweetrick

‘Kiss Miss'. It was on everyone's lips. Whenever I heard someone say it, I remembered George. I would never know the sweetness of his kiss. That thought twisted in my heart like a knot of pain. But of course ‘Kiss Miss' was only what the Indians called Christmas.

Kiss Miss, Burra Din, no matter what they called it, Christmas 1909 was the worst of my life. The grand dining room at Watson's was decorated with paper streamers and lanterns and there were three sorts of roast meat and fish and lobsters and far too many peculiar Indian dishes, but I couldn't eat a thing. I picked at the food and rolled the soft core of my bread into tiny lumps. Perhaps that's what gave Max the idea. He picked up a little ball of squashed bread and flicked it across the table at Freddie.

‘Pelleting,' said Freddie. ‘See, I've heard of it. The Britishers used to reckon it was great sport. Let's have a go.'

When Freddie kept landing perfect shots in the faces of the boys on the other side, Max picked up a whole bread roll and flung it across the room. It hit the cream pudding, and then the table erupted. Everyone started flinging things: bits of meat, potatoes, handfuls of pie and pudding. Daisy threw a chicken drumstick at Flora. The
khitmungars
scurried about, scraping the food from the floor and looking completely alarmed. Freddie knocked one of their turbans right off and we all screamed with laughter.

The Butcher leapt up from his table and raced at the Kreutz twins, dragging the pair of them out of the dining room by their collars. The fury on his face was enough to subdue all of us. Daisy began to cry as Lo furiously wiped a blob of gravy from the front of her dress and picked a handful of peas from her hair. As fast as the frenzy had erupted, it settled again and most of us were sent to our rooms to change our clothes so they could be given to the dhobis to wash. But that meant we spent all of Christmas afternoon sitting on our beds in our underwear. I simmered with rage against the injustice of being treated like a child.

We weren't allowed down to the dining room for breakfast the next day and waiters brought us trays of
chota hazri
in our room, as if we were little children. I picked at the grapes and watched the other girls, each looking thoroughly sorry for herself. Poesy was the most sullen. Since the night Lizzie had tried to stab me with my own hatpin, Poesy had barely said boo to anyone except Charlie Byrne. Sometimes, I wondered if she actually fancied him. For a little boy he was rather sweet, but he was still only thirteen. What was she thinking?

On the evening of Boxing Day we performed
La Poupée
to a full house. It's such an awful show. The only decent role in it for a girl is Alesia, who pretends to be a doll and gets the prettiest costume. The rest of us mostly clump around the stage in monks' habits, and I never like having to play the boy roles.

For some reason, the Butcher decided to cast Poesy as Alesia. Maybe he was trying to get her back on side by giving her a big role opposite Lionel, who played the romantic lead, Lancelot. As irritating as Lionel could be, he did sing nicely, but Poesy really wasn't up to it. She jerked her way gracelessly across the boards and sang upstage so her voice didn't carry into the theatre. It was almost as if she was
trying
to ruin the show. She was so awful that the Butcher had Iris take her place in the second act. Poesy's face was smudged with tears as she wiped away her make-up and changed into a monk's cowl. When Lizzie tried to comfort her, she gave her the cold shoulder. It was the only satisfying moment across two horrible days.