On the busy Commercial Road, Nora Mockett dreams of the shops of Regent Street and their large plate-glass windows that can be illuminated by gaseliers all evening long. She imagines sliding the lights down to her chosen product, shining light directly on it. What joy.
The door of Mockett’s shop opens and her lovely daydream disintegrates. With her metal nib poised mid-air, she cannot believe her eyes and actually blinks, in spite of herself. It is not possible …
Clovis Fowler stands before her – completely unchanged. How can it be? Dumbfounded, Nora simply stares at the radiant woman. She cannot tear her eyes away, even while she comprehends that Mrs Fowler is relishing every second of her stupefied gawking.
Clovis tilts her head an inch or two.
‘Mrs Mockett?’
‘Mrs Fowler,’ Nora manages.
Nora is further astounded when from behind Clovis’s enormous skirts the servant girl, she cannot remember her name, steps into view. She, too, is unchanged.
‘I am here on business with Mr Mockett.’
‘Indeed.’ Nora gathers strength in spite of her light-headedness. ‘And is he aware of your … return?’
‘No, but I had hoped I would not need an appointment to see an old friend at his place of business.’
Nora might be mistaken, but she senses a proprietorial tone in Mrs Fowler’s voice and she is more than a bit uneasy about it. She must find her footing again.
‘Mr Mockett is currently on a house call. I don’t expect him until after the lunch hour.’
‘Tell him I will return tomorrow, won’t you?’
‘Of course. I trust you found your home to your satisfaction?’
‘Indeed. The attention to the boy’s room is particularly noticeable.’
‘And is your son home with you now?’
‘He is. Perhaps I will let you meet him when I return.’ She turns to leave and pauses. With her back to Nora, ‘He is a handsome young thing.’
‘The reason I enquired about your house …’
‘You were paid well to look after it,’ Clovis clips. She loses patience with this woman.
‘After you were taken away, your neighbours pelted the windows with rotten fruit and vegetables,’ Nora continues. ‘They smashed eggs against your front door. The knocker was torn off and auctioned to the highest bidder at the Black Horse. We bought another to replace it. Then we set a couple of boys on watch at the house until the revellers grew bored.’
‘Who won the knocker?’ Clovis asks.
‘I do not know him.’
‘You will be reimbursed. And then I wish to hear no more of your good deeds.’
‘My word. Prison doesn’t half strip you of your manners.’
The door slams.
Later that evening, while Owen works late to fill last-minute orders, Nora sits at her dressing table and pours three fingers of whisky. She opens her folded vanity mirror and sets it on the table. Positioning the three bevelled mirrors so that she may catch all angles of her face, she turns the lamp up a notch.
The evidence stares back at her. The morning bloat takes a larger portion of the day to diminish, so that only now, late in the evening does it sink to wherever bloat goes. The beginning of a jowl disturbs her more than her crinkling smile. Puffed skin hangs above her eyelids. She positions one of the end mirrors to catch her profile. It is her first sight of a developing second chin. She closes her eyes. Until this day she had always considered that she was ageing well.
Her hands with their veins visibly pulsing under thin skin slide her dressing gown off her shoulders. They stroke the tiny crevices between her breasts. Nine years have done this to her. And nine years have not laid even a finger on Clovis Fowler, or her poor wispy slave.
Something stirs in the deepest part of her, from where all of her fears rise, from where all her sorrows are stored. She has not been – what? – strong enough, clever enough – to admit it. Even when he is overtaken with the terrifying long deep slumber and she waits for him to wake, she is so relieved when he does that she cannot bear to question the mystery. It is grotesque and too horrific to imagine.
Owen still has a full head of hair unlike most his age. Granted, it is bristly, but it is there, thick and plentiful, absent of the slightest grey. She glances at her mirror again. She has been experimenting with hair dye to hide her own grey strands that multiply daily. Whatever does this mean? Fear grabs her. He comes up the stairs now. She folds the mirror, turns the lamp down a notch and climbs into bed.
‘Owen, do take your clothes off, I want you naked.’
‘You only have to ask once.’ He throbs at her suggestion.
When he is in bed, she throws the bedding off him and raises the lamp.
‘I want to look at you.’
It is the only occasion in their marriage when Nora begins a night’s lovemaking with dishonesty. She strokes him with one hand, the other holds a lamp while she conducts her survey. He is amused and flattered that her eyes appear to travel lustily down his body. It takes only a few minutes to discover what she needs to know. Now that she seeks it, it stares her in the face so blatantly, so obviously. He has not aged at all these last few years. She kisses his face, noting only two slim wrinkles resting near the corners of his eyes and nowhere else. He is fifty-four for God’s sake!
There is an urgency in the way she takes him tonight. With her hands and her mouth, she does everything she can think of to him without allowing him that sweet release, and when he is almost in agony she finally places him in her. She changes positions to surprise him so that he holds on longer than he ever has before.
Nora Mockett abandons all her fear for one blessed moment until she is shuddering, and she screams out into the wicked, wicked night.
It took a year of diligence. A year of cajoling, planning, and explaining to Owen Mockett and the storm-faced boy how important it was to conduct tests. To warm the ten-year-old to the inevitable, Clovis mimicked family with Rafe. Once more she called upon her time in north Iceland, when her aunt’s large family sat by the fire and pots hung from chains full of moss porridge and meat. When their vigorous storytelling set against the blasted, howling wind whittled away at the bleak sunless hours. Her interpretation of that setting reborn in east London was startlingly diminished when it became apparent that the only storytelling talent she possessed was that of lying. Surprisingly however, Finn, somewhat shyly at first, filled the boy’s imagination with tales of his former seafaring life, and the summer of his astronomy-filled nights in Iceland. And once, upon the turn of the autumn into winter, the boy smiled at Finn’s account of waking to the tongue of a sheep licking at his face.
In the meantime, Clovis filled Owen Mockett’s thoughts with glory. Seduced by the possible results of replicating Rafe’s magical essence, which included acknowledgement from royalty and making scientific history, he braced himself for the first day of experiments with those riches in mind.
So it was, that late at night while Nora Mockett slept upstairs, the first session began in the back room of the apothecary. It was the taking of skin that hurt most. Rafe shrank from the lancet. Mockett looked at Clovis and questioned her with his raised brow: Is this necessary? Her answer was given when she held the boy down.