‘Looks in good health to me.’
‘You never know with old maids though. They can go sudden.’
‘Or be pushed sudden.’
And the two, in the middle of their pleasure, giggled at the thought.
Ambrose Barker was familiar with the use of force. It was one of his attractions for Kitty Partout. She had first admired him while he was wearing no more than knee breeches and practising his trade at the Black Lion near Drury Lane. Miss Partout was keeping company with a young Corinthian or swell who enjoyed seeing men of a lower class beat each other to pulp. Usually Kitty enjoyed it too. Most of the fighters showed the marks of their trade in broken noses and ripped ears and swollen hands. Although Ambrose possessed a dented nose he still had a touch of youth about him. But that evening he came off badly at the hands of a negro called Turner. As he was being dragged from the ring — which was nothing more than a chalked-off square on the bare pine boards of a back room — he managed to exchange glances with Kitty. She felt a thrill go through her.
About an hour later, when ‘Ebony’ Turner had disposed of several more contenders and Kitty’s swell had drunk so much that he was staggering worse than the fighters, they left the Lion. Ambrose was waiting outside, lounging against a wall, holding a flannel to the side of his face where Turner had torn a great rent in it. Apart from that wound he had quite recovered as he demonstrated by what he did next. With his free hand he seized Kitty’s arm and said, ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘Where we going then?’ she said, as her Corinthian swell fell into the gutter without needing so much as a shove. ‘Where are we going? Gretna Green?’
It was such a good joke that she was still laughing as they stumbled, hand in hand, towards Covent Garden. They didn’t end up in Gretna Green but in a nethersken in Hackney — two pennies for a room to yourself — where they stayed for that first night and plenty more of the nights to come. When they eventually found time to talk, Ambrose explained that he’d had enough of the fancy or P.R. as he called it, meaning Prize Ring. The ring was on its last legs in these new respectable days; he’d come at it too late and maybe — he didn’t say this but Kitty guessed it — he was not quite ruthless enough or sufficiently indifferent to his own injuries. There must be safer means of getting by.
Ambrose and Kitty tried a couple of the safer means. He worked on the docks and in a carpenter’s while she tried her hand as a milliner’s assistant. But there was always the pull of something darker and more lucrative — and more dangerous. Ambrose had links with the fancymen who hung about the prize ring, and obligations to one in particular. It was suggested that, to fulfil one such obligation, that he work as a bearer-up — a robber — while Kitty would be the decoy. He might have done it; he wasn’t averse to a spot of outright robbery. But Kitty balked at being his accomplice. She had never, yet, broken the law, at least not so nakedly or violently.
But they had to leave Hackney in a hurry and somehow they decided to quit London altogether. They made a slow zigzag progress north, going via Newport Pagnell and Birmingham and then across to Derby and Nottingham. It was as if they were giving substance to her original jest about Gretna Green. Eventually they arrived in Durham, a city that neither of them knew. They were on their uppers.
It was then that, in desperation, they tried a form of mild extortion. Kitty was to accost a man in one of the city vennels or alleys and after a brief time Ambrose would appear on the scene as her outraged mate demanding payment by bluff and bluster. They were depending on Kitty’s good looks and Ambrose’s pugnacious ones. They selected a fine-looking gent on account of his clothes and swagger. They watched as he turned off Saddler Street down one of the alleys, and Kitty cooeed softly after him. The pair got to talking in the covered passage. Kitty started to fondle him, even though he was not very receptive, and she wondered whether she’d laid her hands on a molly. Then, too soon, Ambrose clumped down the alley, full of useless outrage.
The gent was Eustace Flask. Unfortunately for Kitty and Ambrose, Flask was better at the bluff and bluster business than they were. He saw through them, saw that they were not as ferocious or threatening as they seemed. Rather than taking his money, the couple found themselves listening to a proposition. He, Flask, was in need of a couple of assistants for his work. What work? It’s legal, he said, it’s legitimate. It will take you into the better houses in the city. It will make us some lucre. They were impressed by his smoothness, by his way with words. He explained that they would have to smarten themselves up, be on their best behaviour. They agreed.
The threesome established themselves in the rented house in Old Elvet. Kitty was Eustace’s niece, if anyone asked questions, while Ambrose was a cousin. Flask was ready to develop his spiritualist show. No longer content with table-rapping and such minor manifestations, he realized that more elaborate and impressive effects were required. He was cultivating a wealthy spinster who lived in the old part of town. Ambrose constructed the spirit cabinet and Kitty purchased the material for the curtains and painted the cabinet.
This was a new world for them. Flask instructed them in some of his methods. He demonstrated how one could write on a slate even while one’s hands were seemingly at rest on top of a table. He showed them how to tie knots which could easily be slipped. He taught them how to use two of the key techniques of the performer, which are expectation and distraction.
Kitty in particular took to her role as Running Brook, the Indian maid who was Flask’s ‘control’. She was an adept performer. Ambrose wasn’t so willing or useful but he acted as a combination of handyman and valet. He still believed that Flask was a molly but Kitty wasn’t so sure. Some day she would have to put it to the test, to put him to the test. But not yet. She was happy to be in bed with Ambrose, even if he was somewhat coarse and brutish compared to Eustace. She was happy that they were all together, that they had a roof over their heads and a bit of cash in their pockets. They were almost like a family.
By the River Wear
‘It felt like a real hand,’ said Helen, ‘though now I think about it I was only touching one of his fingers with one of mine, which is what the medium told me to do. And the lights were low.’
‘Well, we know that Flask somehow managed to write those words on the slate and at the same time make you and your aunt believe both his hands were resting on the table.’
‘Unless he’s got three hands,’ said Helen. ‘Or unless he was using his feet to write. Or unless there was a dwarf concealed beneath the table and busy scribbling away.’
‘That wouldn’t explain the blue chalk on his fingers,’ Tom couldn’t help pointing out, though he admired his wife’s skill and imagination in coming up with all these possibilities.
‘Whatever the explanation, whether it’s three hands or feet capable of writing or whether it’s dwarves, it is all rather horrid. I did not like the way he employed my name. Writing ‘BELIEVE HELEN’ on the slate.’
‘But you asked him a question,’ said Tom.
‘I felt that he wanted me to. It gave me goose-bumps.’
‘And he was using your name to show how familiar he is with the household,’ said Tom. ‘He’s clever all right.’
‘Clever and sinister. I’m glad we’ve got this romantic view all around to distract us from Mr Eustace Flask.’
It was the morning after their arrival in Durham. Helen and Tom Ansell were strolling beside the river and below the rise dominated by the castle and cathedral. They could feel the presence of those great edifices although the buildings themselves were hidden by the rise of the bank and thick tiers of summer foliage. A walk had been created under the overhanging oaks and chestnuts, and there were other people ambling along in the morning sun. Among the casual walkers was the individual who had alighted at Durham Station from the same train as Tom and Helen. Once again, his attention seemed to be fixed on the backs of the young couple who were perhaps fifty yards ahead of him.
It was warm and Helen had brought a parasol although it was still furled. In front of them was a fulling mill and a line of dirty foam where the river level dropped and the water tumbled across rocks. For all the coal-black streaks which ran through it like threads, the water sparkled in the light.
They’d spent most of the walk discussing the session of the previous evening. They thought they’d worked out how the thin white arms might have been done: Tom said it was significant he hadn’t been able to spot Kitty during the time when the limbs were being waggled through the muslin curtains. Although she’d appeared in front of the cabinet just as the arms were being withdrawn inside, perhaps some trickery had occurred. Make-believe
