Father helping me into a chair was typical of the days that followed. There were other things quite unlike anything that had happened to me at home before. For instance, Rosa brought me breakfast in bed every morning. At first she was annoyed about this and stood glowering at me from the end of the bed, iron curlers standing savagely on her head. For some reason, her marriage to Father was put off for a few weeks, which distressed her considerably, and she thought I was to blame. Then suddenly she was all smiles and sweetness. She cooked me delicious meals, kept forcing glasses of milk on to me because, she said, I needed feeding up; manicured my nails, and brushed my pale hair until it became a shining helmet. Whenever I left the house, she came with me, as if she couldn’t bear me out of her sight.
I wanted to visit Lucy, but I knew her mother wouldn’t welcome Rosa, so we just walked past her house. In the front garden was a frightful little buckled-up pram, vibrating with the screams of a newborn baby. Rosa said it was Lucy’s baby. I said no one had told me she was married, and Rosa gave a shriek of laughter. ‘Married, my foot!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who would marry such a half-witted deaf and dumb creature? No, that’s a bastard brat, and I’m telling you now: your father won’t have you seeing that Lucy any more.’
So the gentle Lucy had had a bastard like any common girl. I could hardly believe it, but there was no one to ask now Mrs Churchill had gone. Then I thought, ‘Well, if it’s true, at least Lucy has her baby, and I’d have been glad to have had Nicholas’s baby, even if we hadn’t been married.’ Then I felt afraid of myself for having such wicked thoughts.
I ate my meals with Father and Rosa now. ‘Do you fancy a little of the white meat, dear?’ Rosa would say. And Father would pour me out a glass of red wine and say, ‘There is nothing like wine to build you up.’ After dinner it would be, ‘You go upstairs and have a nice little rest. I’ll clear away and wash up, and later we might take a stroll on the common.’ And Father would add, ‘Yes, fresh air’s good for the girl. But, mind you, she’s not to leave the house if there is a sign of rain; we can’t have her getting wet.’
Two friends of Father’s kept coming to the house now – Frink and Sully they were called. Frink was a middle-aged German with straight grey hair sticking up like a dirty toothbrush; I think he was a watch-repairer. Sully was fat, with big creases in his face and wisps of sandy hair and a greasy voice. His moist and flabby hands were always touching Rosa when Father wasn’t there, and he would put his squashy face close to hers and she would scream, ‘Oh, Mr Sully, you mustn’t do that!’ then clap her hand over her mouth in case Father heard. He owned a local paper, and Rosa said he was a very important gentleman and entitled to take a few liberties. Fortunately, he didn’t take any with me. He was respectful; but his little blue eyes used to follow me round and on his face there was a strange, sort of calculating, expression.
Then I realised Sully and Frink were coming to the house because of my floating (only they always called it by its proper name – levitation). One evening Father ordered me into his room and told me they would be very interested to see what I could do. I didn’t want them to see me do this thing, looking at me with their big coarse faces and fat, buried eyes; but Father insisted that I should. He drew the curtains, and there I was, enclosed with these men and tobacco smoke and gaslight. I thought, ‘The only thing I can do is get it over quickly.’ I lay down, but because I felt this way and was not relaxed, it wouldn’t happen at first. Father became angry, and Sully and Frink exchanged glances. Suddenly, Father rushed towards me with his eyes bulging in a terrifying way and snarling like a fighting dog. I went up quickly enough then. I stayed there with my face close to the ceiling, feeling worried about my skirt hanging down and my drawers most likely showing. The men below seemed very upset. Sully was sobbing and Frink muttering away to himself in German. Father was dumbfounded – not by me, but the way these men were behaving. When I came down, they still hadn’t recovered. So I left them with Father, who was trying to revive them with whisky and water.
Although my levitation had had such a strange effect on these men, they couldn’t see enough of it. They kept pestering Father for another demonstration, then another, although I heard Father say he didn’t want me to be worn out already. It was true I was becoming worn out. Sometimes, after I’d done this thing for them, I’d fall asleep on the floor and stay like that for an hour; and often I’d find Rosa and my father had carried me upstairs to my room and I’d be lying on my bed when I awoke. In spite of all the extra food I was made to eat I was tired all the time.
One evening, when it was almost dark, they made me rise up in the garden. I was afraid, afraid of the house and high walls all round, and the clinkers that lay below. Even the cry of the newsboys and the street sounds were terrible up there in the near darkness. When I came down, I was so exhausted, they gave me red wine to drink. I could feel it running down my chin when I woke up. I remembered coming down in the garden and my back rather hurting, and then I was in the kitchen with warm wine running down my chin. I thought I’d injured myself and it must be blood.
I said, ‘I knew no good could ever come of this,’ but they ignored me. Frink was talking in his guttural way about the levitating Mr Home. Sully dismissed him as a religious crank, and said the beauty of my case was, I wasn’t religious. He seemed to think I was going to make them rich. I could not think how this could come about, but I knew it must be something bad they were planning.
Blinkers came to the house. I wasn’t allowed to see him, although I heard his voice in the hall. I was in the kitchen at the time, and Rosa made me go into the pantry and bolted the door on me. I kicked and shouted, not because I particularly wanted to see Blinkers, but because it was like prison in there – damp and airless and smelling of sour bread and cockroaches. There were angry men’s voices in the hall. Father had wanted Blinkers to take me away, but now he wouldn’t let him see me. It must be because I was valuable to him in some way to do with this levitation and Sully and Frink. I pondered on these things while I half-heartedly kicked the door, and I became afraid.
When Blinkers had gone, Rosa let me out. She said it was a bloody shame: she wouldn’t have done it, only Father had ordered her to lock me up if that ‘Peebles fellow’ turned up – she couldn’t tell me why. I told her Blinkers didn’t mean a thing to me except that he had always been kind. Then, in my loneliness, I told her how I’d loved Nicholas. I tried to describe the careless beauty that surrounded him with a golden haze, and, as I spoke of Nicholas, I forgot it was Rosa I was speaking to – until she interrupted me with screams of laughter and said I’d be the death of her. I deeply regretted I’d ever mentioned Nicholas to her. It was strange she said I’d be the ‘death of her’, because in a way I was.
After Blinkers’s visit I became a sort of prisoner, with Rosa as my rather unwilling jailer; I even slept in her room. Sully and Frink were in and out of the house all the time, and I became more and more afraid because I knew it was because of me that they came. Then one day Rosa showed me a newspaper – the one that Sully owned. In deep black type there was an announcement to say that Miss Alice was going to give an amazing demonstration on Clapham Common on Sunday afternoon. It gave the date and the exact place on the Common where the demonstration was going to take place; but it omitted to say what Miss Alice was going to demonstrate. Then Father called me into his dreadful room. He told me that I was Miss Alice. I was to rise up before all the people on the Common, and the result would be that I’d be showered with offers to appear in circuses and music-halls all over England – and the world, too, perhaps.
‘Rise up before people on the Common and in music-halls and circuses! Please God, don’t let that happen to me. Father, don’t make me do this thing. I don’t want to be peculiar and different. I want to be an ordinary person. I’ll marry Henry Peebles and go away and you needn’t see me any more – but don’t make me do this terrible thing.’
I cried to God and to my father, but it was printed there in Sully’s paper and there was no escape.
The days that followed this announcement were like a nightmare, unreal and terrible. All the unexpected kindness and care which had come my way so recently were like a fattening up before I was slaughtered. I fretted and couldn’t eat, so Rosa held my nose while Father forced minced chicken and beef down my throat. Then my nose became discoloured and swollen as a result of this rough treatment, and Sully said I wouldn’t do them much credit with a nose like that, so the forcible feeding ceased and I lived on raw eggs beaten up in milk. Sully and Frink wanted me to have what they called a ‘preliminary canter’ on the Common before Sunday, but, to my relief, Father refused. I think he thought I’d float right away – which is what I would have done if I had had the strength.
At night I lay in Mother’s old room. It was now all pink, and belonged to Rosa. I lay stretched out beside Rosa, who was rather bony, and her hair, which was like dry wool, was on the pillow beside me. My eyes stayed wide open, and I was so rigid that my jaw ached and felt as if it were locked. Sometimes I must have slept, but the nights seemed interminable. I kept imagining how it would be on the Common. I’d see a white and glaring sky and feel the aching tiredness of trying to remain above a gaping crowd, above all their round faces and open, toothless mouths, and noses that pointed up towards me. Then I’d think I heard them shrieking with laughter. Sometimes I’d be on the ground struggling to rise, but pulled back as if by great bands of elastic; my father and Sully would be urging me on, and Frink looking at me intently through a magnifying glass. If I did manage to doze off for a few minutes, I’d dream I was falling and wake with a start, my heart pounding. I knew that, whatever happened on the Common, life would be dreadful for me afterwards. If I failed to levitate myself, I’d be publicly disgraced and probably murdered by my father; but if I managed to do this thing, I’d be branded as peculiar and separated from ordinary people for ever. I’d be a kind of peep-show, a poor freak travelling the country, and people would press close and gape at me.
I began to long for Blinkers and Mrs Churchill, Blinkers in particular because I knew he had more power to help me. I remembered the selfless kindness he had always shown me and the feeling of safeness about him. I thought that, if only he would come to the house now, I’d gladly go away with him for life. I used to call him to myself ‘that Blinkard’, but now he seemed to me a sort of hero – even if rather a round and sturdy one. I’d try not to mind the stodginess of him or the thick hairy arms if only he would save me.
In the night, when Rosa was asleep, I wrote to him on a sheet of paper that had lined the drawers that held my clothes.
Henry, save me! They are going to make me float on the Common and in music-halls all over the world. I want to be ordinary. Please save me, Blinkers.
I wrote this with a pencil intended for Rosa’s brows, and I made an envelope and closed it with a pin. During the morning I gave this home-made letter to little Hank to post. He was worried about the absence of a stamp and I had difficulty in making him promise to post it, but eventually he clumped off with a couple of dogs, eating a hunk of bread and treacle I’d bribed him with. When he returned, I ran into the hall and examined his pockets to make sure the letter was really gone.
Rosa came into the hall, shouting, ‘What are you doing with that snivelling kid?’
I answered that he was a good boy really, and couldn’t he have a cup of tea with us in the kitchen; and so we sat there together in the kitchen, Hank never saying a word. I felt almost happy because I knew, if Blinkers received that letter, I would be saved.
Sunday morning came. I awoke from a late dream that I was being submerged in a pit of cobwebs made of dank mud. Even when I saw Rosa standing there in her long night-gown with the morning light shining on her high cheek-bones, I thought, as I struggled from my dream, ‘There is still time for Blinkers to save me. All I must do is keep calm until he comes.’
They wanted me to stay in bed all the morning. I was locked in the bedroom and treated rather like a reluctant bride. I didn’t panic, but just lay there waiting for Blinkers.
He did not come.