Do not trouble yourself over what the audience can see. Only worry on what they will think they have seen when they walk from your pitch at the end of the show.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
The first five houses yielded nothing but confused expressions and scratched heads. At the sixth we were confronted by a man so muscled it seemed his head rested directly on his shoulders with no neck between. I asked my question and instead of a blank “no” he bit his lip and glanced anxiously back into the rooms behind.
“We’ll pay double the price of a new one,” I said.
Thus we walked away from that house and back towards Leyden Street, pushing a small perambulator before us.
I’d been spending the Duchess’s money with reckless abandon. Little now remained. Soon there would be insufficient to cover a journey back to the Republic. Not that I was planning on returning. One way or another, I was in the Kingdom to stay.
The revelation of my true gender had not surprised Mr Orville as much as I had expected. The equilibrium of his world being already deranged, one more strangeness added little to the confusion. Indeed, I think he had already begun to see through the disguise.
I had reverted to my female persona now, and was wearing the green skirt and coat purchased from the used clothing shop in South Leicester. My hair was pinned up under the hat. It was not a disguise as such. If Yan or Silvan or any of them looked me in the face, they would know.
Our hope lay in the dim light and in the confusion of context. Timpson’s troupe were searching for Mr Orville, a clean-shaven young man. Perhaps they also kept an eye open for me, a single young woman. But walking together, pushing the perambulator in front of us, we seemed for all the world a young married couple, not worth a closer look. That had been the plan. But making our way back from Bishopsgate Coach Station to the Jewish quarter, it was brought home to me how little Mr Orville understood about disguise and how short a time I had to teach him.
He raised his hand to his chin again.
“Stop that,” I said.
“Is the hair still in place?”
“It’s glued. It’ll not shift until you pull it free. And then you’ll feel it ripping at your skin.”
“They’ll know me.”
“They won’t look closely enough. But you must walk more freely.”
“My walking isn’t correct?”
“You walk too stiffly upright, like an aristocrat. Let your shoulders roll.”
He made an attempt.
“Better,” I said. “But I’m supposed to be your wife. Let your arm touch me. And your hip.”
“It doesn’t seem... right.”
Wondering whether it was my virtue or his that he hesitated to sully, I slipped my hand around his arm and pulled him in closer. “Don’t lean away! You must enjoy the contact or others will think it strange.”
“I’ll try.”
“We’re only pretending,” I said, though partly for my own benefit. Through the coat, I could feel the pleasant firmness of his muscles. I hadn’t touched someone of the opposite sex with this manner of intimacy since I was a girl. Beneath clothes and soap every person’s skin has its own scent. My reaction to Orville’s had taken me aback.
More must have been known of the science of fire in those few streets than anywhere else in the Empire. Yet the corporation had chosen to set the lamps there low, as if the inhabitants were less deserving of illumination.
The wheels of the perambulator clicked over the paving stones as we walked.
“Relax yourself,” I whispered. “You love me, remember.” I looked down into the place where a baby should have rested and favoured my battered travelling case with an affectionate smile.
Yan was even more conspicuous now that the street was empty and the shops closed. He peered from the other side of the road, leaning forward as if about to set off to intercept us. Any closer and he would recognise me. I found myself tensing, ready to run. But after a moment he leaned back against the wall once more and I began to breathe again.
Steering by the arm, I guided my pretend husband across the roadway to the other side. “Gentle with the baby, dear,” I whispered as he pushed the front wheels of the perambulator up the kerbstone.
Thus we arrived on Bell Lane opposite the place where Lara had intercepted me earlier. Knowing where to look, I spotted her without difficulty this time.
Bending forwards and reaching into the perambulator, I made as if to adjust a blanket. When I straightened myself, Lara was already behind us and my knife was in my hand, half tucked into the sleeve of my coat. I counted twenty paces more, then steered Orville’s arm, bringing us back across the roadway. Tension had tightened his muscles so that they felt like bundles of cable under strain.
“Which entrance?” I whispered.
“A little further.”
But every step brought us closer to the place where Silvan had been stationed. The blade of my knife rested against my hand. I moved my fingers across the edge, reminding myself of its sharpness.
Then, behind us, Lara whistled. A single shrill blast.
Orville started to quicken his pace, but I gripped him tighter and pulled back.
Fifty yards ahead, Silvan stepped out into the middle of the pavement.
“Which door?”
“Just a little further.”
Forty yards away, Silvan began to walk towards us.
“This one.”
“Slow,” I hissed, taking the handle of the perambulator and turning it towards the entrance. Orville went to the front and lifted the wheels over the step. We were inside a bare hallway. Doors with peeling paint lay to left and right. My heart sank as I saw the stairs that lay ahead.
“You didn’t tell me they were so steep!”
“I’ll take most of the weight,” he said.
We began to climb, Orville ahead, bent low, me following, holding the handle of the perambulator at face height. The front wheels bumped on every step.
I could see Orville’s fear, but it wasn’t until I reached the first corner that I saw Silvan standing in the doorway below. He stepped inside, but I was quickly around the turn and he was out of sight again.
Another gaslight hissed on the first landing. We pushed on past it into the welcoming gloom of the stairs, which creaked ominously under our feet. The smell of damp pervaded.
On the second landing there was no gas lamp. I gestured to Orville and we stopped, both poised, listening. I could hear the muffled sound of a man and woman arguing, perhaps in the rooms below. Quieter than that was the murmur of life in countless close-packed households – people talking, children playing, dishes being stacked. Outside in the far distance I could just hear a poorly tuned piano plonking out a sing-song tune.
We held each other’s gaze. The stairs below us remained silent. If we abandoned the perambulator on this landing and Silvan were to find it, he would know for sure we were not what we had seemed to be. So we lifted it once more and set out, trying to be quieter on the final flight of stairs.
On the third landing, we found ourselves standing under the angle of the roof. The only illumination came from a skylight above our heads, and that but a dim reflection of the city’s gaslights from the low clouds. Orville turned his key in the door and I pushed the perambulator into his small room. I caught the impression of an iron bed frame and small table in the darkness. Orville scrabbled about on hands and knees in the corner. Furniture scraped on the bare floorboards and he was standing again, a small square box in his hands.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
It seemed an unremarkable thing – a box barely big enough to contain a gentleman’s top hat. I reached out to touch it and saw him flinch.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been hiding it for so long.”
Then he held it towards me and I ran my fingers over the lid, feeling the ridges and lines of an inlaid pattern which I could not make out with my eyes.
“Is it heavy?”
“The perambulator will hold it easily.”
“That may be a problem. Silvan isn’t a fool. If we try to leave the same way we came–”
“But there isn’t another door!” Alarm had raised the pitch of his voice. “These tenements are built directly onto each other. Back to back.”
“There is a way,” I said. “But you may not like it. Do you have any rope?”
I unpacked my battered travelling case one final time and secreted about my person those small, tell-tale items that might have given away the truth of my double existence. Then, boosted by a high stool from Orville’s room, I reached my arms through the skylight window and braced them on the slates. “Push me,” I hissed. But having taken one look up and caught sight of my pantaloons and perhaps more besides, Orville turned his head away and would not come close again. I dangled for a moment, before finding the strength to haul myself out on the steep incline of the roof.
He followed, climbing out easily enough. But when confronted with the drop he became distressed and clung tightly to the lip of the skylight. We had cut strips from his linen sheet to form a makeshift rope. This I now hauled, pulling the precious box up behind us.
“I don’t have a good head for heights,” he said.
“You tell me this now?”
He closed his eyes and took in a shuddering breath.
“Will you abandon your treasure?” I asked.
“I will not!”
“Then you must climb. At the ridge tiles it’ll be easier.”
I made him go first, steadying his foot with my free hand as he inched upwards, his body pressed flat to the slope. When he reached the apex, I let go and lowered the skylight glass, following him up on hands and knees.
Though sat astride the roof and thus having no risk of falling, Orville became yet more agitated by the vertiginous exposure.
“There is nowhere to look,” he said.
“You don’t have to look. There’s only one way you can crawl!” I snatched a glance over his shoulder along the central ridge, taking in the chimney that stood like a wall some ten yards ahead, coal smoke rising from three of its pots.
I followed behind him as he inched forwards. A fine rain now drifted in the air, making the slates more slippery than they would have been. My clothes began to feel heavy with moisture. Orville’s hand reached the base of the chimney and he stopped. Standing and climbing onto the top of the stack and across would have been the safest way to go. But judging by Orville’s reactions so far, I did not think he could cope with such exposure.
“Hold this,” I said, handing him the end of the rope. Then taking the box under one arm, I lowered myself onto the slick incline. Had I slipped, I doubt the strip of cut linen would have helped me. But even with the flimsiness of the cord and Orville’s vertigo, I felt safer knowing he had hold of the other end.
Spreading the fingers of my free hand for a better grip, I descended, then crabbed across to the other side of the chimney and was quickly back at the ridge line where I anchored myself. Orville seemed emboldened by the length of linen in his hand just as I had been. Soon he appeared around the masonry and was climbing back towards me. But as his free hand reached for safety, one foot slipped and he fell heavily, knocking a slate free. I lunged, grabbing the sleeve of his coat to steady him. But the slate was skittering away down the roof, accelerating as it went. It shot out from the edge.
I clenched my teeth as it smashed in the street below. A second passed before the shouting began. Silvan’s voice to start with: “They’re on the roof!” Then a shrill whistle, Lara’s I thought. Other shouts followed in the distance. The pounding of running feet.
I looked across the next stretch of roof, searching for a skylight, finding none. Orville’s coat sleeve was still in my grip. I stood, one foot on each side of the ridge and hauled him up after me. We wobbled together for a moment, then I started walking towards the next chimney, leading him by one hand, clutching the box to my chest with my free arm.
I heard a clatter behind us. The skylight had opened. They had found the stool and must now be clambering out onto the roof themselves. I stepped down the slope and around the next chimney. Orville followed, not waiting for me to reach the other side.
At first it seemed there would be no escape from this stretch of roof either, but as I hauled myself back to the top, I saw another skylight window directly below. I was already sliding down towards it before Orville had reached the ridge. Slipping on the wet slates, I threw out my free arm and grabbed the edge of the frame to stop me.
Bracing my feet as best I could, and praying for luck just this once, I dug my fingers into the crack and heaved. The skylight lifted. In a second, Orville was with me. I gave him the box and climbed in through the opening, hanging for a moment before dropping onto the dark landing below. The box came next and then Orville.
“They’re on the road,” he gasped. “We can’t go out.”
“But don’t you see?” I said. “We’ve come down on the other side of the ridge. This house empties out at the back of the tenement. If we run...”
He grabbed my hand and we were off down the treacherous stairs. I took them two at a time, praying they’d all be there, for there wasn’t light enough to see. Hoping also that the rickety rail would hold me if I slipped.
Then we were out into the night once more, our feet sliding on wet flagstones. The poorly tuned piano that I’d heard in the distance was suddenly loud. I could smell stale beer and smoke. Bottles clinked. We scrambled over a low wall and dropped into the rear yard of a bustling pub.
“Is it done?” he asked, catching his breath.
“We’ll know in a moment.”