After dinner they enjoyed some music. Matthew had a strong tenor voice and Faith accompanied him for two or three songs, and then the sisters played a piano duet. Under protest, with his voice sliding and cracking, Arthur performed ‘In the Lion’s Cage’, a comic ditty that had been his party piece since he was six years old. Edwin joined in the choruses, miming the lion’s antics until they all shook with laughter.
Finally Rowland rolled up his shirtsleeves, bit a cigarette between his teeth and crashed into a ragtime tune. He played with such wild energy that no one minded the wrong notes. The rugs had been pushed back and they were all laughing and dancing, even Cornelius. The two-step was beyond him but he hopped from foot to foot, managing not to trample on his sister’s feet.
There had been a glass of wine for everyone at dinner, to drink a toast to Arthur and wish him luck, and Nancy felt the heat of alcohol flushing through her veins. She flung her arms around Cornelius’s jigging bulk.
‘I love you, Neelie,’ she smiled.
He answered solemnly, ‘And I you.’
Devil seized Faith’s modern glass fire screen. He tipped it on one side and balanced it on two stools. He stroked his wrists and flexed his hands, the signal for magic.
A bright penny lay in the palm of his left hand. He threw it in the air, caught it and pressed it down to the glass. They all heard the clink.
Devil made a show of crouching close to the screen. He slid his right palm underneath the glass so it matched the left and pressed downwards with great force. Then with a great sweep he lifted the upper hand and revealed the penny shining in the lower palm. It seemed that he had forced it through an unbroken sheet of glass.
Everyone laughed and clapped. Arthur ran to his father.
‘Disguise, distraction, deception, misdirection,’ he chanted.
‘Very good, my boy. You are one-tenth of the way to becoming a magician.’
‘And I know the other nine-tenths, Pappy, don’t I?’
‘Practice,’ they all chorused.
At the door as they were leaving Eliza kissed her sister.
‘That was a golden evening,’ she said.
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ Faith smiled.
In the jolting murk of the train Arthur sighed.
‘I’m jolly well going to miss you all, you know.’
Cornelius frowned. ‘I would say the same, Arthur, but no one would believe me.’
‘Idiot,’ Arthur mumbled. He was almost asleep.
Eliza’s head rested against Devil’s shoulder and her gloved hand lay in his.
London, 1919
The fire in the outer office had sunk to an ashy heap with no more than a red glimmer at its heart. Glancing at the clock on the wall, Nancy set aside the sheaf of invoices she was filing. Only just four o’clock on a bitter January afternoon. The managing director’s secretary was in the inner office with the door closed. Nancy stooped over the hearth to stir the embers with the poker, then tipped a scoop of coke. A rising puff of dust filled her throat and made her eyes water. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, but that only reminded her that she had chilblains on her knuckles and the stubborn remains of a head cold.
On the way back to her desk she stuck her head out of the door. She heard the rat-a-tat clatter of the small press running in the print room downstairs and a snatch of someone whistling before Jinny Main’s hooting laughter rose up the stairwell. Nancy sighed. Up here she had only the ticking clock and Miss Dent for company. She was hardly back in her seat before Jinny herself looked in.
‘Got a minute, Nance? I could do with a hand down there.’
Nancy followed Jinny down the stone stairs. Her friend’s brown overall was ink-stained, pulled in at the waist with a thick leather belt. Her hair was tied up in a scarf to keep it clear of the machinery. During the war when she worked on the print floor Nancy had dressed the same, and she kept her own work coat hanging on a peg in the women’s lavatory at the back of the building. But in her new position as office assistant she must wear more suitable clothing, or so Miss Dent had advised her. Uncertain of herself and hoping for the best, Nancy now dressed in a jersey with a plain flannel skirt, fixing her hair with a pair of cloisonné combs Arthur had brought back from Antwerp.
‘Take the other end of this blasted trolley,’ Jinny ordered.
Old Desmond the machine minder was shifting flat sheets ready for the collating machine and there was no one else free to help. Using the trolley they manoeuvred the finished copies of the left-wing magazine New Measure through two sets of doors to the dispatch room.
‘That’s my girls,’ the dispatch manager greeted them approvingly. Frank was another old man who had worked through the war at Lennox & Ringland. ‘Let’s pack ’em before that van driver sticks his ugly mug in here.’
Jinny counted out the magazines in batches of two dozen, Frank wrapped them in brown paper and Nancy finished the packages with string. The job was soon done. It was only a short print run, a typical job for L & R. Frank stood upright, wincing.
‘The knee still hurts, does it?’ Jinny asked. She had sympathy for everyone.
‘I’ll live, darling. Look at you, Nancy Wix. Black smuts all over your pretty face.’
Frank pulled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and dabbed at her cheek. The hanky smelt bad and she craned her neck away. At least he hadn’t spat on it first.
‘So long, Frankie,’ Jinny called, taking her arm. ‘See you in the morning, eh?’
The two girls escaped the pipe-smoke fug of the dispatch room just as the van driver arrived for the magazines.
‘C’mon. Let’s have a quick cuppa,’ Jinny muttered.
‘Ma Dent …’
‘You can tell Ma Dent we shifted and packed the whole run of New Measure for Frankie Fingers, can’t you?’
There was a tiny kitchen beyond the typesetting benches. The girls passed behind two printers perched at the keyboards of the rattling Linotype machines, their copy pegged beside them and their hands flying over the keys. On occasions even Nancy had been called upon to work a machine shift, but since the armistice the men had come back to take up their old jobs. Jinny was relegated to the hand-setting benches and Nancy made the best of the uncongenial work upstairs in the office.
Nancy filled the kettle at the single cold tap and lit the gas ring. She rinsed a pair of cups and swiped them with a drying-up cloth. The printworks floor was noisy and dirty, thick with oil and acrid fumes from the machinery, but she loved it.
There was nowhere to sit down so when the brew was ready they leaned against the sink.
Jinny smacked her lips. ‘That’s better. Here, Nance. Have one of these. The jam ones are good.’
She took the biscuit and ate it while her friend rolled and smoked a cigarette. Even now, this made Nancy think of her cousin Lizzie.
Poor Lizzie. Or not so poor nowadays, Nancy reminded herself. Lizzie had been unlucky, but she had refused to let circumstances get the better of her.
Jinny’s