Splendors and Glooms (4 page)

She made a slight, imperious gesture toward the tea tray. “Good afternoon. How do you do?”

Parsefall jammed his hands in his pockets. Lizzie Rose spoke for them both. “We’re very well, miss. Thank you, miss.”

The little girl clasped her hands behind her back. “I’m very glad to see you. I hoped you might have tea with me.” She sounded suddenly shy. “We met in Hyde Park three weeks ago — I don’t suppose you remember?” She paused as if she hoped they would answer. “My name is Clara Wintermute.”

“I think I remember you,” Lizzie Rose said unconvincingly. Lizzie Rose was a poor liar. She didn’t get much practice.

Parsefall looked impatiently at the tea tray. There were three cups and a dish with a folded napkin in it. He wondered what was inside the napkin. Something buttery, he hoped: crumpets or muffins.

“Do you?” fluttered Clara. “I’m very glad. I admire you both so much — I wanted you to come for my birthday.” She gestured toward the table again. “Do sit down. There’s hot buttered toast in the dish — and strawberry jam.”

“We’d love tea, thank you,” Lizzie Rose said happily. “Wouldn’t we, Parsefall?”

Parsefall pulled out a chair and slumped into it. The two girls became irritatingly ladylike, murmuring courtesies about sugar and milk. Parsefall rested his elbows on the table and gnawed his toast. He knew better — Lizzie Rose was attempting to teach him table manners — but something about little Miss Wintermute made him want to be rude on a larger scale than usual. He slathered his toast with jam and sucked his fingers.

“This is ever so kind, miss.” Lizzie Rose set her teacup in the saucer. “A cup of tea is always a treat, especially on a cold day.”

Clara spoke impetuously. “Oh, please —! Won’t you call me Clara? I know I seem —” She waved a hand, indicating the ornate room around them. Her cheeks reddened.

Lizzie Rose helped her out. “My name is Elizabeth Rose Fawr. This is my brother, Parsefall.”

“’M’not her bruvver,” Parsefall corrected her around a mouthful of toast. “Me last name’s Hooke.”

“He isn’t my brother by birth,” Lizzie Rose explained, “but we have the same guardian, so I call him my brother.” Her eyes went to one of the paintings on the wall. “Are those your brothers and sisters?”

Parsefall looked at the painting. He had not examined it before, since it was much too large to steal. Now that he looked at it, it struck him as queer and therefore interesting. It was huge, with a gold frame full of swirls and little holes. Five life-size children stood together in a tangle of garden. The light suggested that it was early evening, and they had been gathering flowers. There were two girls with long golden hair. The taller of the two leaned against a broken column; the other held a small child on her lap and crowned him with a daisy chain. A boy with curly hair and laughing eyes stood next to a dark-haired girl with ringlets. It was evidently Clara Wintermute, but she looked younger in the picture, and as though she didn’t quite belong. The other children stood like deer poised for flight; the air around their bodies was faintly luminous, like mist or pale fire. Beside them, Clara looked dense and stiff: a wooden statue.

A little gasp came from Lizzie Rose. Parsefall looked back at the two girls. Something had passed between them. Lizzie Rose reached across the table to press Clara’s hand.

“I’m so sorry,” Lizzie Rose whispered.

Clara shook her head violently.

Parsefall gaped at them, feeling as if a joke had been told and he’d missed the punch line. “Wot is it?” he demanded.

“They’re —” Lizzie Rose lowered her voice. “They’re in heaven, aren’t they? I’m so sorry.”

“Wot?” repeated Parsefall.

Clara spoke brusquely. “My brothers and sisters are dead.”

Parsefall considered this. His eyes went back to the painting. “All of ’em?” he said incredulously.

Lizzie Rose hissed. “Parsefall!”

“There was cholera.” Clara spoke hurriedly, as if eager to get the explanation over with. “Quentin was just a baby. That’s Selina by the column — she was the eldest. She was seven, and Adelaide was six, and Charles Augustus and I were five. He was my twin.” She hesitated a moment and plunged on. “Papa thinks the contagion was in the watercress. I was naughty that day. I’ve never liked eating green things, and I wouldn’t eat the watercress at tea. So I wasn’t ill, but the others died.” She bent her head and brought up one hand as if to cover her face. “Of course, it was dreadful for Mamma. For Papa, too, but Mamma nearly died of grief.” She cleared her throat. “It was seven years ago. I’m twelve years old today.”

Parsefall looked back at the picture. “You’re five years old in that?” he asked, jerking his thumb at the canvas.

“Not in that picture,” Clara told him. “That was painted four years ago. Mamma had an artist come to the house — she wanted a picture of the way they might have looked, if only they’d lived. Of course we have photographs — and their death masks.” She indicated four white casts over the piano. “Mamma says we must keep them alive by thinking of them all the time. We must never forget them or stop loving them.”

Parsefall stared at the death masks on the wall. “Wot’s a death mask?”

Lizzie Rose kicked him under the table.

“They take plaster,” Clara said very calmly, “and press it over the — the dear one’s face. And then later take more plaster and make a mask. That way —” She stopped and covered her mouth with her hand. She did not seem grief stricken so much as embarrassed.

Parsefall’s eyes went back to the four white casts. “That’s nasty,” he said. “Stickin’ plaster on somebody’s face wot’s dead. It’s ’orrible.”

Lizzie Rose kicked him a second time, harder. But Clara’s blue eyes met Parsefall’s. Something flashed between them. It was almost as if she said,
I think so, too.

“It’s good to remember the dead,” said Lizzie Rose. “My mother and father died of diphtheria a year and a half ago. It makes me sorrowful to remember them, but it’s good, too. I think of my father when I practice my music, because he taught me to play. And I sleep with my mother’s Bible under my pillow. I have her ice skates and a pair of coral earrings set in gold. Of course, I’m too young to pierce my ears, so Mr. Grisini is taking care of them for me. But he’ll let me have them when I’m sixteen.”

Parsefall snorted. He had a very good idea how Grisini had taken care of Lizzie Rose’s earrings. He’d seen the ticket from the pawnshop. He pointed to the teapot, and Clara reached for it. “Would you like another cup of tea?”

Both children accepted. Parsefall saw one piece of toast remaining, broke it in half, and gave part to Lizzie Rose. Lizzie Rose rolled her eyes at him to signal that this was bad manners, but Parsefall didn’t care.

Clara took her last sip of tea — she hadn’t had any toast, Parsefall noticed. Her eyes strayed to the puppet theatre.

“Would you like to see the puppets?” Lizzie Rose asked, and Clara’s face lit up. “Come and see.”

The children left the table — Parsefall with a piece of toast between his fingers. “We carry them in bags to keep them clean,” Lizzie Rose explained proudly; the calico bags had been her own invention. “The fog makes everything dirty. Before the show, we unwrap them and hang them on the rack —”

“The gallows,” Parsefall corrected her. He grinned ghoulishly at Clara. “It’s called the gallows. We ’ang ’em on the gallows, just like men.” But Clara was too intrigued to be squeamish.

“We have to set them up just so, because it’s dark under the curtain,” said Lizzie Rose. “I make their costumes — Grisini can sew as well as I can, but he doesn’t like to. I just made a new frock for Little Red Riding Hood — isn’t she pretty?”

Clara admired the puppet with her hands behind her back. She looked as if she were used to being told not to touch things. Lizzie Rose had an inspiration. “Would you like to work Little Red? You hold her by the crutch — that’s the wooden bit at the end — and pull the strings.”

Clara dangled the puppet. Timidly she jerked a string. One wooden leg kicked.

“The hardest thing is making them walk,” Lizzie Rose told her. “It’s easy to make the
fantoccini
dance, but hard to make them walk — isn’t that funny? I still float them sometimes — that’s what we call it when their feet don’t touch the floor. That’s a sign of a bad worker. Let Parsefall show you.”

Parsefall took the Devil from the gallows and made him saunter toward Clara. The manikin had joints at the ankles; he walked with a swagger, but his wooden feet brushed the carpet with every step. Clara squeaked with delight and clapped her hands.

“Grisini and Parsefall do the figure working,” Lizzie Rose explained. “I play the music. I’m not good enough to work the
fantoccini,
unless Grisini and Parsefall have their hands full. But Parsefall’s good.” She laid a hand on Parsefall’s shoulder. “Parsefall has magic in his fingers.”

Clara looked at Parsefall’s hands. She gave a faint start.

Parsefall understood why. His fingers were clever enough, but there were only nine of them. The little finger on his right hand was missing. There was no scar, nothing ugly to see. It was just that the little finger was not there. Parsefall didn’t know what had become of it. He was almost certain he had once had ten fingers, and it tormented him that he couldn’t remember what had become of the one he lost.

“You’re so clever,” Clara said admiringly. “Both of you. You know how to make the wagon into a stage, and play music, and work the puppets.” She sighed. “I wish I could do things.”

“I’m sure you can, miss,” Lizzie Rose soothed her, but Clara shook her head.

“No. I embroider, of course, and I can play the piano, but there isn’t any use in it. Mamma doesn’t like music, because it makes her head ache, and we have too many cushions already.” She swept the room with a glance that was almost contemptuous. It reminded Parsefall of what he had intended earlier — to rid this room of one of the objects that crowded it.

“Would you like to help me take the rest of the
fantoccini
out of the bags?” Lizzie Rose asked, and Clara brightened at once.

“Oh, yes, please! May I?”

Parsefall hung the Devil puppet back on the gallows and turned his back. The two girls went on talking. The chirping, purring sounds in their voices seemed to indicate that they were becoming friends, but Parsefall paid no attention to their words. He was searching the room for something to steal.

What should he take? The room was stocked with valuables, many of them small enough to be portable. Parsefall knew what he wanted: something that would fit in his pocket without making a telltale bulge, something valuable but not so precious that its absence would be noticed immediately. He surveyed a table full of knickknacks: a mosaic box, a wreath of wax flowers under glass, three china babies with gilded wings, and an assortment of photographs in silver frames. Another table held a porcelain bowl full of dead rose petals, a prayer book with mother-of-pearl covers, and more photographs.

One of the smallest photographs had a round frame with tiny pearls going around the edge. Parsefall eyed it speculatively. Pearls were worth money, and the silver was probably real. There were half a dozen other photographs on the table. That was good; the absence of one might go undetected for some time. He glanced at Clara and Lizzie Rose, saw that they were occupied with the puppets, and his hand shot out. Another moment, and the photograph was in his pocket.

A
t half past four in the afternoon, Clara led her guests upstairs to the drawing room and invited them to seat themselves before the stage. The youngest children sat on the floor with Clara. Older children chose footstools, and their mothers sat on chairs assembled from all over the house. Clara’s governess, Miss Cameron, shared a sofa with Mrs. Wintermute. The servants in the back of the room watched standing.

Agnes dimmed the lamps, leaving most of the room in semidarkness. The little theatre stood in a pool of light. One of the footmen coughed. The door opened, and Clara’s father stole inside. Clara was glad. She had been afraid that Dr. Wintermute would be too busy to see the show.

There was a rattle from Parsefall’s tambourine, and Lizzie Rose played a weird little melody on the flute. The miniature curtains lifted and parted, revealing a painted wood and a wolf in a green satin frock coat.

The wolf tilted his head and began to speak. Gesticulating with one paw, he told the audience how hungry he was and how he longed for a little child to eat. He spoke so plaintively that Clara fully sympathized with him. Then Red Riding Hood took the stage. The little puppet in her red cloak was dainty and innocent; it seemed cruel that she should be the wolf’s prey. Clara locked her fingers together, caught between warring desires. Around her, the audience was held in thrall. The children in the front row no longer saw the strings that worked the puppets. The miniature actors appeared to swell in size; their painted features looked as if they smiled and frowned.

Red Riding Hood was tricked, devoured, and reborn by the ax of the hunter. The front curtain dropped, while Lizzie Rose played the kit and Parsefall changed the backdrop. The curtain lifted to reveal a Venetian street scene, complete with humpbacked bridges and moving gondolas. A handsome young puppet lamented his lack of money. A stranger with a plumed hat overheard his complaint and offered to sell him a magic bottle with a demon inside it. The Bottle Imp, he explained, would grant him all the gold in the world — only he must sell it before he died, or risk the fires of hell. Ten minutes later, the hero lay at death’s door, and the demon leaped out of his bottle with a clap of thunder. He was sea green, with horns sprouting from his temples and bat wings instead of arms. His countenance was so frightful that one little girl left her seat on the floor and plunged into her mother’s lap.