Jane Steele(101)

She sounded so bitter at this last that I hastened to inquire, “How did your fortunes change?”

A wistful look glazed Clarke’s eyes. “I was singing near to Elephant and Castle when a woman—Mrs. Priscilla Pellanora is her name—stopped to speak with me. She asked if I had ever sung in a company before, harmonies and the like, and of course I had at Lowan Bridge, and she offered me a place in the chorus of her production.”

“But that’s absolutely wonderful!” Laughing, I imagined Clarke in a wooden-walled theatre, her freckles blurred by the faint glow of the footlights, the smell of peanuts and ale thick in the air. “You excelled, of course, which is why now you are so fashionable.”

Clarke lifted one shoulder, though she seemed pleased; she had always been peculiarly uninterested in her own talents, the same way she viewed everyone else’s attributes and shortcomings as stamped in the stars, inevitable. “Mrs. Pellanora is an excellent tutor.”

“Oh! May I come see you? Do please say yes. Are you at the Olympic, or maybe the Delphi?”

Biting her lip, Clarke shook her head.

“The Lyceum, then! I know you must think . . .” I stopped, eyes prickling. “That is, I don’t know what you must think of me, but I should so love to hear you sing again.”

“I’m not at the Lyceum,” she husked strangely.

“Do you sing for penny concerts, then? I’ll come to the Surrey side to see you, only tell me which it is. The Victoria? The Bower Saloon?”

“Jane, I sing at Mrs. Pellanora’s private club,” she snapped.

My ears buzzed in the ensuing silence, drowning out the soft clinking of tableware and the susurration of strangers’ voices. A man with a Yorkshire accent was demanding to know where his pudding had got to as the words private club echoed in my skull.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Clarke groaned, then abruptly lowered her voice. “Surely this cannot be quite so surprising as some of your own past revelations. Wipe that expression off your face, if you please—no one touches me, the stage is gorgeously appointed, I’ve room and board with a set of bang-up girls, I’m petted and toasted all over town, and the costumes are nothing like what you’re picturing. They’re not far off from what I’m wearing now, come to that, only more . . . theatrical, and with trousers, and apt to get kohl stains.”

“I’m sorry,” I protested. “I wasn’t thinking anything, only that you were always so scrupulous, you see, but now I comprehend it’s all quite aboveboard.”

“No, it isn’t either,” she hissed.

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s outrageously bawdy, the content of the programme.”

“Oh,” was all I could muster.

“That must please you, that I work in a dirty cabaret.”

“No! I mean I’m happy—so long as you are.”

“You don’t look happy, Jane.”

“I’m delighted for you, only . . . surprised, I suppose. You were always so honourable.”

“Well, honour wasn’t doing anything for me.” The waiter had dropped a salver on the table and she signed her bill with a flourish. “Mrs. Pellanora’s establishment does.”

“I don’t think any the less of you,” I said fiercely, panicked at the thought of losing her again so soon—here one heartbeat, gone the next. “I could never think less of you.”

Wincing, Clarke shook her head. She was so striking in her boyish clothing, the curve of her throat and the flash of her eye beneath the glass half-moons, that save for the skirts and the curls she really did seem a young rake cooing over watch fobs and walking sticks in Regent Street.

“I’ve an appointment to rehearse with our pianist in half an hour.” She tugged on a pair of gloves. “You should know I don’t regret seeing you, Jane, and that I don’t any longer harbour a . . . Hang it, nothing I say will do any good to anyone. When I think of you, it’s altogether fondly.”

“Clarke, please don’t—”

“Will you say my name at least?” Flushing again, she adjusted her pince-nez. “I don’t know why you do that, I never did. Rebecca is my name, Becky what my parents called me, Becca what the four other company girls call me. Take your pick. Why should you want to remind us of Lowan Bridge?”

Because the only shaft of sunshine in all that endless midnight was meeting you.

“Rebecca.” The name tasted strange, like salt where sugar was expected. “Let me contact you, please. Have you an address?”

“That would be unwise.”

Desperate, I snatched up her bill and stole the pencil from the salver, scribbling my room number at the Weathercock and the street address. I thrust it at her.

After breathing tensely through her nose for a few seconds, she took it. Clarke placed the paper in a pocket beneath her jacket lapel and pressed her lips together.

“I always loved you as a sister.” My hand was so near to hers that taking it was a thoughtless act, the only right one.

My old friend cocked her head at our joined fingers, cogitating; she was a self-made woman, a singer of questionable provenance, and otherwise she had not changed a whit since she was six years old, and I was speaking the truth: I had always loved her.