Sweet Songbird Read online

  Sweet Songbird

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  The New Cambridge Theatre, London

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Copyright

  For Andy and for Michele, with my love

  The New Cambridge Theatre, London

  Autumn 1865

  The splendid auditorium was packed. Tier upon tier of eager, animated faces were turned to the stage. Here and there a fan fluttered, shimmering in the dimmed gaslight that gleamed too upon the brilliant white of an elegant ruffled shirt, glowed upon the soft skin of a woman’s bared shoulders, struck fire from a jewelled throat or wrist.

  The terrifying rumours were true then; every seat in the house was taken.

  ‘There’s nobs in,’ someone had said in the dressing room, suppressed excitement in the words, curiosity in the eyes that had flicked to Kitty.

  Upon the stage, sequins glittering, the acrobats tumbled with professional grace from their pyramid, landing lightly, smiling their bright, empty smiles across the footlights. From where Kitty stood, transfixed with the paralysis of terror, she could see the sweat that shone upon their skin, smell its rank odour. Applause lifted and then died to an expectant silence as the orchestra struck a chord that slipped into a muted drumroll.

  God in heaven, she must be mad. What had possessed her ever to believe that she could step out onto that stage alone, face those avid, inquisitive eyes, fill that vast silence with the lift of her voice? Her throat was dry as dust, her heart thundering louder than the rattling drum.

  Upon the stage a cat-like young man in spangled silk panteloons stood poised upon a swaying tower, arms above his head in the manner of a diver, every eye upon him. His handsome face was arrogant. This was his moment. Kitty tried to clear her throat, swallowed a choking cough as silence fell upon the opulent gilt and gold palace that was the New Cambridge Theatre. It seemed to her that the air that entered her lungs was dry as dust, hot as a furnace.

  Along the great shingled stretches of beach that were the Suffolk coastline the air on this fine autumn evening would be cool; cool and sea-washed and stirred as always by the fresh salt breeze—

  The tower swayed. The onlookers gasped. Perfume drifted heavily upon the smoky air. From where Kitty stood she could quite clearly see the occupants of one of the boxes that abutted the stage. An impeccably dressed young man, a long-stemmed glass in his hand, leaned negligently in his chair, a half-smile on his face, as his eyes ran over the lithe body of the scantily-clad young girl acrobat who posed with a dramatic flourish near him. The eyes of the other three occupants of the box – an older man and two women, magnificently dressed, with almost identical nodding ostrich plumes adorning their piled, jewel-decked hair – were fixed in fascination on the handsome figure upon the tower.

  The sun would be gone, the vast, empty, light-washed sky still showing its glow in the west whilst the sea-horizon darkened to night—

  The young man lifted his head and closed his eyes.

  Kitty gagged on an agonized, nerve-induced cough. The muscle in her left leg, pulled painfully during yesterday’s last, gruelling and all but disastrous rehearsal, twitched and throbbed. What was she doing here? How had it happened? Her almost paralyzed brain refused to relinquish the vision it had conjured up of far-off peace, of the unchanging world of the Suffolk countryside.

  In a blur of shimmering, vivid movement the young man launched himself into the air, somersaulting once, twice, three times. As he landed upon the boards, before the applause could start he leapt once more, tumbling and spinning at dizzying speed. The orchestra picked up the tempo of his movements as he circled the stage like a child’s brilliant coloured spinning top, the strength and agility of his body apparently defying the common laws of gravity that bound other mortals to the earth. The excited audience were clapping now in time to the music, urging him on to greater efforts. With a facile grace that belied the sheen of sweat, the corded, strained muscles, he flipped from hands to feet, spun in the air, faster and faster. Kitty averted her eyes, the flashing movement deepening the chill, nervous nausea that threatened to betray her.

  ‘’Ere – ’ave a sip o’ this—’ Pol’s voice, Pol’s square, roughened hand thrusting a glass at her. Gratefully she took it. On the stage the last flamboyant somersault brought the audience to its feet with a crash of applause.

  Damn him! She had to follow that—! Suddenly, beneath the sick apprehension, something else stirred, heartening and familiar. She squared her shoulders, took a breath, gave the glass of water back to Pol with a perfectly steady hand. The customers had not come to see a brash young circus performer, however much of a showman he might be. They had come to see Kitty Daniels. And now, suddenly, the inspiring excitement seeped into her veins, coursing through her body, steadying her nerves, clearing her head. The acrobats streamed past her, chattering and laughing, pleased with their success. One or two sidelong, curious glances were thrown. Kitty ignored them. The audience had quieted. Pat Kenny was on her feet.

  ‘And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment you’ve – the moment we’ve all – been waiting for—’

  The nerves that just moments before had threatened to incapacitate her were gone. She stepped into the lights.

  ‘—It’s my pride – my privilege – my happy prerogative – to present—’

  She swaggered forward, saw the impeccably dressed gentleman’s eyes open wide, caught the titillated, half-shocked gasps of the ladies.

  ‘Miss – Kitty – Daniels!’

  Above the applause the orchestra struck up the familiar introduction. And – would it have happened? she found herself wondering as she stepped to the centre of the stage – would I have been here if they had not died—?

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  (i)

  Cruelly, and as seems so often the way of such things, upon that June day of 1863 when the grey waters of the North Sea reluctantly gave up their dead, those who were to be most affected by the tragedy were almost the last to hear of it.

  The fishermen who had landed the gruesome catch clustered in silence upon the beach beneath the crumbling cliffs of the lost city of Dunwich and looked upon the sodden bodies in a shock of genuine grief that only barely masked a fearsome apprehension. In this isolated, close-knit community, that which affected one affected all; and who could tell what might come of this? The summer storm that had been the cause of the calamity had long since passed. The afternoon sun shone now, glinting upon the restless waters, the shifting wet shingle, the human bones that spilled grotesquely down the dark, eroded cliffs from the sea-devoured churchyard of All Saints. Its brilliance remorselessly illuminated the gaping, drowned faces, while above the still group upon the beach a gull soared, wheeling in the clear air, its cry a celebration of freedom and of the summer-bright beauty of the day.

  The gaze of the two girls who lay in a sheltered spot in the brackened dunes a mile or so to the north followed the bird’s sweeping flight. Kitty Daniels, lying in lazy comfort in a small, warm hollow in the sand, watched it with idle eyes as it drifted upon the peaceful air, a speck of living ligh
t against the vast blue spaces of the Suffolk skies.

  ‘If you were a bird,’ she said, her distinctive, husky voice low against the incessant wash of the North Sea tide, ‘and could go anywhere – anywhere you wanted – where would you choose?’

  Her companion – a small, neatly-built, pretty girl whose fair hair framed a doll-like, delicately complexioned face beneath the wide brim of her flower-decked sunhat – settled herself more comfortably, arranging her pale muslin skirts decorously and gracefully about her. ‘Lor’!’ she said, lightly, her blue eyes crinkling to quick laughter, ‘that’s an easy one! Almost anywhere away from this!’ She waved a small hand at the wild and windbeaten landscape that surrounded them, the dismissive gesture encompassing the unchanging and endless stretches of the beach, the long, creaming line of the surf, the scrubland, the bracken, the distant salt flats with their pools and inlets still now and reflecting the peaceful sky. A curlew called from the saltings, the eerie sound an echo of the hauntingly desolate countryside. ‘London. I’d go to London. I’d build my nest in a tree in Hyde Park and watch all the grand ladies and gentlemen parade beneath me in their carriages—’

  Kitty laughed softly.

  The other girl tossed her head a little petulantly. ‘Well, what are you laughing at? You surely wouldn’t want to stay here?’

  Kitty folded her hands behind her head, stretched long legs that had been tangled in her skirt, stared into the limitless sky. ‘Oh, I don’t know—’

  ‘Oh, fiddle to that!’ the smaller girl interrupted, and laughed suddenly, the sound characteristically warm and impulsive. ‘We aren’t staying here, I promise you that, Kitty Daniels! So just make up your mind to it! I plan to marry a gentleman of independent means with a town house in Mayfair and a country estate in Kent, so that you and I need never feel that beastly east wind again—!’

  Kitty rolled onto her stomach and cradled her chin in her hands. Her dun-coloured homespun gown, a little too short for her rangy frame, was crumpled and dusted with sand, her straight dark brown hair, escaping from its confining pins, straggled, windblown, across her shoulders. ‘Oh – I don’t know—’ she said again. ‘Tha’ss peaceful here—’ She stopped then, faint colour glowing in her cheeks. Always she tried to be careful in her speech, emulating Anne’s clear enunciation and trying to avoid the soft accents of Suffolk. Never, never would she forget the scorn of Miss Alexander, Anne’s governess, when, at his daughter’s insistence, Sir George Bowyer had indulgently agreed that Kitty, Anne’s friend and playmate of childhood, the future companion of her young womanhood, should join her in the schoolroom of Westwood Grange. ‘A servant’s child, Sir George?’ the woman had spoken as if Kitty had not been present, had spoken indeed as if the child had neither ears to hear the disparaging words, nor intelligence to understand them, ‘Well – really – I must say that I hold out very little hope of improving the mind – or the behaviour – of a servant’s child—’

  Kitty now put the sound of the sharp, unpleasant voice from her. ‘I like it here,’ she said, ‘it’s all I know. I don’t see why you should have taken so against it all at once?’

  Anne’s smile was amiably dismissive. ‘You just say such things to provoke me, you know you do. Of course I’ve “taken against it”. Lor’, Kitty – we aren’t children any more, to run barefoot on the beach or build castles in the sand! I won’t – I will not! – spend the rest of my life buried here at the ends of the earth – and oh, for goodness’ sake, Kitty,’ she broke in on herself, her irritability as quick as her gaiety and as swiftly expressed, ‘do put your bonnet on! You’ll finish up looking like a gypsy if you aren’t careful.’ She tossed the unadorned, battered straw bonnet that the other girl had discarded upon the sand across the small distance that separated them.

  Kitty let it lie where it fell. She was looking out to sea, her dark eyes narrowed against the sun beneath their forcefully slanting brows. ‘Strange.’

  ‘What is?’ Anne was combing through the tangled ringlets that blew against her cheeks, separating them with her fingers, tucking wayward strands beneath the flowered hat.

  ‘This morning the sea was wild as winter. Yet just look at it now.’ Sunlight glistened upon long, swelling, white-topped rollers, glimmered diamond-bright upon the broken water, washed the vast horizon in light. ‘It’s like the millpond.’

  Anne turned her back upon the water, drew her knees up beneath her flounced skirts and linked her hands about them. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said, firmly. ‘Horrible. It’s always freezing cold, the colour of slate and choppy enough to make you seasick just looking at it! Oh, no. When I marry, Kitty, I shall make very certain that my devoted spouse lives nowhere near the North Sea! I shall not care if I never see it again, that I shan’t. These salt winds are terribly bad for a lady’s skin, you know.’

  Kitty found herself smiling at the small conceit. ‘Well – at least I don’t have to worry about that, then!’

  ‘Oh, but of course you do!’ Anne was quick to turn, to reach a hand. ‘A lady’s – companion—’ Kitty knew that it was not the first word that had come to her tongue ‘—must be as careful of such things as her – as anyone. You shall not sit in my boudoir, Kitty dear, with a face scoured raw by the east wind! Nor—’ she added, firmly, ‘—with a skin as dark as a Turk’s! Do put your bonnet on! If not for your sake, then for mine. Miss Alexander will take me to task as much as you if you turn up to lessons tomorrow looking like a Blackamoor!’

  Sighing, Kitty sat up and reached for the despised bonnet. ‘That makes me look a proper donkey,’ she muttered, half under her breath.

  ‘It,’ Anne said, automatically.

  Kitty turned her head.

  ‘Not “that” – “it”.’ Anne threw up her pale hands in despair. ‘Truly, Kitty, you must try to remember! You know how you hate for Miss Alexander to pick on you because of the way you speak. Do try. You mustn’t say “that” – you must say “it” – it makes you look a proper donkey—’

  There was a brief moment of silence. Anne bit her lip, trying not to laugh, for despite her occasional thoughtlessness she was anxious above all things not to hurt this girl who had been her friend, companion and stoutest strength for as long as she could remember, and whose prickly pride she had cause to know all too well. Kitty’s brown eyes crinkled. In a moment they were helpless, clinging to each other, spluttering for breath through their laughter.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’ Anne went off into another infectious peal of helpless laughter.

  ‘Stop it! Oh, do stop it!’ Kitty buried her sun-bright face in the crown of the offending bonnet.

  They stilled at last, calmed to a quiet that was broken still by an occasional breathless giggle. In the distance, spray-hazed, a small, solitary figure had appeared, wandering aimlessly towards them along the beach, stooping now and again to pick up a stone and hurl it far out across the water.

  Kitty, watching, sobered.

  Anne followed the direction of her gaze. ‘Is that Matt?’

  Kitty nodded. ‘Yes.’ As always, the sight of her young brother had brought the faintest of shadows to her face.

  ‘I thought he’d gone out in the boat with Papa and Geoffrey?’

  ‘No.’ Kitty sat up, brushed sand from her bodice. ‘Patrick decided he wanted to go with the others after all. There wasn’t room for Matt.’

  Anne’s practised ear had caught the change in her tone. Impulsively she leaned to Kitty, touching her hand lightly. ‘You really mustn’t worry about him so much, you know—’

  The other girl moved her head sharply, in a half-impatient, half-negative gesture. ‘What else can I do but worry? Who else is there to worry about him?’ She stopped abruptly at the expression on Anne’s face. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, truly I didn’t. You – your father – all of you – have done so much for us both since Father died. But – it isn’t like family, is it? You must see that?’

  ‘Papa loved your father dearly,’ Anne said, a fai
nt, stubborn hurt in the blue eyes. ‘They were friends as we are friends. They grew up together, as we did. They fought in the war together. At Sebastopol your father saved Papa’s life. He never forgot it – you know that—’

  Kitty, half-smiling, was shaking her head slowly back and forth. ‘Anne – Father was Sir George’s servant. As I, for all our friendship, am yours.’

  Anne turned rudely from her. ‘Oh, do stop it!’

  Kitty, however, could be as stubborn as anyone. ‘Not speaking of it won’t change it,’ she said softly. ‘Matt and I have to look out for each other. We have no other family—’

  A rosy, petulant lower lip pouted. ‘You’re just being tiresome. And I won’t hear another word. Papa couldn’t have treated you better if you had been my true sister—’

  Kitty eyed the pretty, wilful face in silence for a moment then, gently, she leaned forward and drew a fold of the soft, pale muslin towards her, laying it across the coarse stuff of her own skirt. The flared, expressive eyebrows lifted very slightly, but she did not speak.

  Anne snatched the fold of skirt away, her colour high.

  Kitty sighed. ‘Please – don’t be angry. I don’t mean to be ungrateful. It’s just that, for all your kindness, for all the kindness in the world—’ She trailed to a halt, watching the oncoming figure. ‘Blood, they say, is thicker than water. And Matt is my brother. My responsibility.’

  With another sudden, characteristic change of mood, Anne laughed. ‘I told you – you worry too much about the little devil. He’ll settle down. He’ll be all right. It’s your own life you should be thinking about! Imagine what fun it’ll be when I’m married! I shan’t move one step without you, I swear!’ She made a dramatic gesture. ‘We’ll travel, how would you like that? All over the world! Well, Europe at least. London – Paris – Rome—’ She paused, giggled again. ‘Oh, pooh! My geography’s truly awful! I can’t think of anywhere else—!’