Tilly Sweetrick
Our first night in Lucknow we were squashed into a tiny annexe of the local clubhouse. There really wasn’t enough room for everyone. All the grown-ups except the Butcher stayed at another hotel. Even Miss Thrupp was sent away. Me, Poesy, Ruby, Eliza and po-faced Myrtle were all muddled into a room together. It was the first time I’d shared with Eliza since we’d left Melbourne and I remembered why once upon a time I’d rather liked her. Even if she did slip out for her ‘supper’ with the Butcher, she seemed perfectly sweet when we were together, like the old Eliza who had been my friend on my first American tour. For a few weeks, it was just like old times. Until she showed her true colours.
On our first night in Lucknow, we performed at the Mohamed Bagh Theatre. Like the clubhouse, it was too small and we were constantly bumping into each other backstage. Freddie and Max took up far too much space for a pair of fourteen-year-old boys. Once they were all kitted out for their onstage boxing scene they started taking swings at each other.
‘Watch out,’ said Lionel, trying to edge past them and not be hit by a flying boxing glove. When Freddie caught Lionel with a left hook to the side of his face, the Butcher grabbed poor Freddie and boxed his ears so hard that his eyes rolled back in his head.
‘Watch yourself, Kreutz,’ he growled. ‘If I catch you lashing out at young Lionel again, you’ll answer to me. I won’t be so gentle next time.’
Lionel tried to hide his glee. Disgusting little Butcher’s Boy. He knew Freddie had only cuffed him by accident.
For all the problems with cramped lodgings and fraying tempers, at Lucknow every show was a hit. When Flora minced about the stage as Fifi Fricot in The Belle of New York and wiggled her hips like a little coquette, the audience roared, but when I transformed myself from ordinary Violet the Salvation Army girl to outrageous Violet the showgirl, I nearly brought down the house.
I loved my costume for ‘At Ze Naughty Folies Bergère’. The tiara, the black velvet collar with the white silk rose and my silver dancing shoes with the big diamante buckles were delicious. But the low-cut pale green satin dress that was nipped so neatly at the waist showed off my figure to perfection. The layers of luscious tulle petticoats were so easy to angle I could show just a little bit of lace garter at exactly the right moments.
The audiences ate me up with their eyes. They laughed at every trick and joke and wept at the least little sentiment. They treated us all like stars. Lionel tried to spoil things by saying it was only because so few touring companies visited Lucknow that the audiences were utterly grateful to the Lilliputians. But I didn’t see what their terrible history had to do with me. It was simple. They loved us. The Butcher must have been raking in money and I began to see why some people rather fancied India. The audiences were hungry for us in a way I’d never felt before. Perhaps it helped that we’d escaped the heat. Now that we were further north, the days were bright and clear and the nights cool enough for us all to sleep. My blood had flowed like treacle in my veins all the time we’d been travelling through the Dutch colonies and Malaya and even in Calcutta, but in Lucknow it was as if my heart quickened and my skin sparkled with a new surge of life.
The Butcher still refused to pay us any pocket money and Miss Thrupp still moped around, a ghost on the edge of our days, but I started to feel differently about India. I began to feel differently about everything. In Lucknow, I became myself. And it was because of George. Lieutenant George Madden.
Somehow, the Butcher had managed to secure the Chattar Manzil Palace for a performance. The Palace was like something I’d dreamt about, something you could only imagine reading about in a picture book. It was nearly a hundred years old but it felt timeless. The locals called it the Umbrella Palace, and its roofs spread above us like heaven. The walls and ceilings were decorated with plates of silver and the audience looked just as grand as the palace itself. There was even a maharajah, dressed in a blue military uniform embroidered with gold. He wore an utterly magnificent diamond aigrette in his turban and a gold sword with a diamond hilt slung from his sword belt. There were dozens of men in his retinue, but no women. There were generals and beautiful ladies and scores of soldiers in lovely crisp uniforms.
We performed The Girl from Paris in the palace hall to a huge audience. It was a perfect moonlit night. The Gomti River shone like silver and our voices rose up into the turrets and minarets and echoed through the antechambers. After the show, as we stood waiting for carriages to take us back to the hotel, the air seemed to shimmer with magic. There were men down by the water and I heard one cry out, and even though he was a native his voice sounded beautiful on the cool evening air. I turned to ask one of the other girls if they’d heard it too, the cry of the boatman, and that was the first time I saw Lieutenant Madden. He was standing quite still, like a part of the grand picture, in the silvery moonlight on the steps outside the Palace. His brass buttons gleamed and his eyes were bright. Bright when he looked at me.
We took a train trip to Cawnpore the next morning and the Lieutenant was there too. After Cawnpore, we went to Meerut where there was a cantonment station and the headquarters of a division of the army, and that’s when I realised Lieutenant Madden was following me. At first, I wondered if it was simply a coincidence. I didn’t want it to be a coincidence.
I’d never seen so many soldiers in one place as there were at Meerut. Their faces glowed with rapt attention as they watched every turn, every flounce, every gesture I made. I knew it was what I was born for, to be admired in that way. It made me long to dance at the Tivoli, to sing vaudeville, or at the very least perform upon a stage where I’d be seen as a real actress, not simply a Lilliputian.
Some of the soldiers were only a few years older than we were and I don’t think they thought of me as a child. I’m sure George didn’t. When he looked at me, I could see that I was a woman in his eyes. When he smiled at me, his smile was for me alone. He came to every show. The first night in Meerut, when I saw him in the audience, I felt a throbbing in my temples, as if my heart was beating furiously and my blood bubbling like champagne.
It was in Meerut that George finally spoke to me.
Meerut was a city of canvas, with streets lit by electric light. The tents were unimaginably elegant. They had carpets, dressing tables and armchairs, as if they were real rooms, and in some of them the walls were lined with pretty patterned material.
It was cold at night in Meerut, and though the days were bright we had to bundle up snugly in our beds. We slept under lovely razais, thick quilts made in Jaipur. It’s funny to think that you can feel more like a princess in a tent than in a hotel.
On our last night in Meerut, as we strolled back through the city of canvas, a great crowd of girls, I looked over my shoulder and saw Lieutenant Madden following us. I shivered. Once he knew I’d seen him, he walked more briskly, catching up with us in a moment. He wore a woollen greatcoat to keep the cold at bay and he looked so dashing I was dizzy with pleasure at the sight of him.
‘Excuse me, Miss Sweetrick,’ he said, his voice deliciously mellow and gentle. The other girls stopped too, their faces alive with curiosity.
He took a step closer to me and I shivered again. ‘I’m sorry to keep you, but I was wondering if you would autograph your portrait for me.’
All the girls had sold dozens of photos at the end of the Meerut performance. There was no shortage of young men keen to own an image of us. George had been dumbstruck when I walked through the audience at the close of the performance that evening. He hadn’t uttered a word. He had simply taken one of my portraits and given me two rupees in exchange. Now it was my turn to be rendered mute.
‘You look cold, Miss Sweetrick.’
He swept off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. The other girls laughed and George smiled at them as he handed me his pen and my portrait. ‘I’m sorry I only have one coat to share, ladies,’ he said to them. Then he lowered his tone so it was warm and husky. ‘Miss Sweetrick,’ he said, ‘I will treasure this image all the more if it bears your signature.’
Finally, I found my voice. ‘To whom should I inscribe it?’
‘To Lieutenant George Madden,’ he said, leaning over me to watch as I signed my name across the bottom of the photograph.
When I handed back his pen, our hands touched briefly and the warmth of his skin sent a charge of heat through me. I reached to take his coat off, to return it to him, but he raised his hands. ‘No, Miss Sweetrick. I’ll send my batman to collect it in the morning.’
That’s when I knew he was a gentleman. Not only had he let me wear his coat, but he was important enough to have his own batman. I think I was walking on air for the rest of the short trip to our quarters. That night, in our tent, I spread his coat across the end of my bed so I could snuggle my toes beneath it, and I said his name over and over. It tasted honey-sweet on my lips.
Eliza was in the bed closest to me, and as I savoured my moment with George, I did something I’ve regretted ever since. I turned to her and asked, ‘What does it feel like to be in love, Liz?’
‘It’s wonderful and it’s terrible and it changes everything,’ she said.
I wanted everything to change. I believed it would once we were in Delhi. In Delhi, I turned sixteen. Sweet sixteen.
As we drove through the wide streets, past heathen buildings with their strange towers and ramshackle bazaars crowded with Indians, on our way to the Rama Theatre, all I could think of was George. That first night he wasn’t in the audience. I thought he would be at our show at Ludlow Castle, because he simply had to be a member of the Delhi Club. But he wasn’t there either. I couldn’t understand it. I knew, in my heart, that he wanted me.
We stayed at the Maidens Hotel in Delhi, and while the others were napping, I wandered the long colonnaded foyer, gazing out into the gardens, trying to will Lieutenant Madden into being, trying to make him appear through the sheer strength of my longing. I still had the note he’d given me, the one his batman had delivered when he’d come to collect his greatcoat. He’d said it wasn’t very far from Meerut to Delhi, closer than Cawnpore had been to Meerut, and that he would be there to see me sing. He hoped I would sing Violet Gray again in The Belle of New York, and he loved it when I sang ‘I Do, So There’. There was nothing improper in the note, but beneath the words I could sense something special.
It was still warm in the late afternoon, before the cool night air began to fall. I was dressed in my best fine white linens but as the heat subsided, I found a cane armchair and arranged myself to appear dainty. I was taut with anticipation, expecting to see George saunter into the foyer at any moment. That’s probably why my hearing was attuned to every passing conversation.
When I heard Eliza and the Butcher chatting as they settled themselves at a table in the tearooms I didn’t alert them to my presence. They were so close to me, just the other side of the potted ferns, and I could hear every word of their conversation. Every poisonous little word.
‘He turned out to be a gentleman when I confronted him,’ said the Butcher. ‘But what cheek, really, thinking because he’s an officer that he’s less of a stagedoor Johnny.’
‘She was thinking very fondly of him.’
‘Which you know leads to nothing but trouble. Why, she’s not sixteen yet, is she?’
‘Oh Arthur, you forget everyone’s birthdays. It was yesterday. Besides, sixteen is quite old enough to know your own heart. I was not sixteen when we began,’ said Eliza, disgustingly coquettish.
‘But you, my dear, are altogether a different character to Tilly Sweetrick, as the child calls herself.’ And then he had the temerity to laugh.
It was like a lead weight dropping through my body, the moment of realisation. Eliza had betrayed me. The past few days, when I’d thought we were almost back to our old friendship, had been an illusion. Even as I sat beside her in railway carriages and we held hands, as we pretended to find our way back to that easy companionship we’d shared in America, she was conspiring against me.
Between them, Eliza and the Butcher had broken my heart.
Eliza said love changes everything. So does betrayal.