Page 50 of The Show Woman

49

The mystery of faith

Each day the light lingers a little bit longer, as if reluctant to drain the darkening skies. Lena finds she no longer needs the woollen coat that once belonged to her mother to battle through the cold days but she wears it still, fingering the frayed cuffs, cherishing its thin warmth around her shoulders.

Mary’s arrest is the talk of the steamie. A steady line of showmen and women beat a path to the door of Lena’s wagon, ostensibly to pay their respects but mostly to hear the gossip. One old woman she has never seen before says Mary was never off the bad stuff, oh, the stories she could tell about that woman, she should have been in the asylum and no mistake.

Old Billy Weaver’s brother Donald comes to see her, cap in hand, and says that Billy was always a nice lad, but never too bright, and he wasn’t surprised he couldn’t see what was so clearly under his nose. Had he seen it, then? Lena asks. And he turns his cap in his hand like the wheel on a motor car and says no, miss, he hadn’t.

Esmeralda the fortune-teller materialises on the doorstep trailing chiffon and a deep, musky scent, informing Lena she’d always known Mary Weaver was a murderer, and had she considered there might be a second victim?

Lena endures their visits, pours tea, listens, nods. She tells them she is shocked, that she could never have imagined Mary capable of such a thing, or, indeed, that the woman was her grandmother. It is true, to a point.

But what she really feels is numb. Cold. As though her heart has been replaced by one of the chips of sea glass that Morag brings for Belle, sharp edges worn away by the swells of the ocean, blurred into un-being.

At night her dreams are of running rivers and coal carts. Her mother’s face, contorted in fear under the water, cherry-red blood pluming beneath the current.

To her amazement the policeman who came that day after Harry heard the whole sorry tale from his stepmother, her hiccupping and asking forgiveness at every step, had been kind, and interested. His own mother had been a show woman, it turned out, born right here in Vinegarhill. But his daddy died and they’d taken a flat in a tenement and well, he said, that was the end of that.

He and another copper had taken Mary away to the police station, and then to court. It seemed unlikely she would be coming back. That, at least, was a relief.

Lena expected that Belle would take it the hardest, would weep for the loss of her mammy, no matter what it was she had done, but in fact the young girl is silent, blank-faced. She seems more interested in her trapeze than ever now, and Rosie tells her she has talent. Lena promises herself she will go and see her practise some time, when she is up to it.

One afternoon as she sits in the caravan counting her dwindling number of pennies – so few now, it frightens her – she hears someone outside calling her name.

‘Miss Loveridge? Are you there?’

She opens the door to find the policeman, Sergeant Cooper, standing in front of the caravan in his uniform, brass buttons glinting in the late winter sun.

‘I’ve come with some news, miss,’ he says. He takes his hat off, and with a lurch of dread, Lena realises what he is about to tell her.

‘You’ve found her, haven’t you.’ It isn’t a question.

He nods.

‘Yesterday, miss. She was – well, she was where the Weaver woman said she would be. I’m very sorry.’

‘Thank you,’ says Lena. Her hand strays to her throat where her mother’s locket rests. ‘Will I get her back?’

‘Yes, miss. Not immediately, but you will. Then you can make arrangements.’

‘Thank you,’ she says.

After he has gone she sits on the caravan steps, a hollow emptiness surging through her bones. Bones, that’s all her mother will be now. Even after Mary’s confession, she had still nursed a kernel of hope. All those years she had spent believing her mother was still alive, thinking the letter stood as some sort of proof. Even now, it is hard to let go.

And the secrets. The secret her mother kept about who her own mother was. The secret Lena had kept from her father about the letter. What if her mammy had spoken up? What if she had? Now, the silence and the subterfuge all seem so pointless.

One morning, head bent against the wind, ignoring the curious stares, Lena sets out for Miss Sibyl’s caravan, on the far corner of the ground.

The fortune-teller is sitting outside drinking a cup of tea, shorn of her usual headdress of golden coins, her face spidered with lines in the harsh daylight. She looks up as Lena approaches, says nothing.

‘Can we talk?’ asks Lena.

To her surprise the woman smiles at her. ‘I always hoped you’d come back,’ she says. ‘Come away in.’

Inside, her wagon is painted ruby-red and emerald-green, like a Christmas tree. Her crystal ball sits on the windowsill, its contents clouded and perfectly still.

‘Take a seat,’ she says. ‘I won’t be charging you.’

Lena sits down on the small day bed, plump with feather-stuffed cushions. Miss Sibyl clearly does well enough at the shows to make a nice home for herself. Lena admires it. Her taste. Her independence. It’s what she had vaguely imagined for herself once, in those heady days of the previous summer.

‘What did you know, that day I came to see you?’ she asks. ‘What did you see? I mean, I take it you know what’s happened. About Mary Weaver. About my mother.’

The last word comes out as a small, constrained sob.

‘I do,’ says Sibyl. Her eyes are kind. ‘I heard about it all. It’s a terrible business and I must tell you I am so very sorry about your mammy. She was a lovely lady. We used to travel the same routes when you were a wee bairn, and she always had a kind word for me. She even came to see me once for a reading.’

Lena stiffens. ‘And did you see anything? Did you see what might happen to her?’

Sibyl straightens her skirts, stands up, and brings her crystal ball over to the small table in front of them.

‘What you have to understand is that this gift I have, the second sight, it’s not always clear. It’s not like watching a cinematograph, or playing a memory in your head. Sometimes I get a fragment. A single image. And sometimes it’s just a feeling.’

Lena nods. Tries to understand.

‘When your mammy came to me I knew she was carrying secrets. She didn’t want to tell me what they were, but I knew she had them. And then, as we were talking, I felt cold all over. As though I was freezing, and I couldn’t breathe. As though my heart was doing its best to pump blood, keep my fingers and toes moving, but the rest of me had given up. Gone numb. I’ve only ever had that feeling once before, and, well, the lad died. Thrown from a horse three days later.’

Lena sits, spellbound, gazing at a spot of red paint on the green wall ahead of her.

‘So when it happened with your mammy, I said nothing. I was scared for her, and I didn’t want her to live her life in fear. And anyway, whatever it was, it could have been years away. We all die some time, don’t we? Who was I to put the fear of God or—’ she waves her hands towards the ceiling ‘—whoever is up there, into her?’

‘When was this?’ asks Lena. ‘When did she come to see you?’

Sibyl swallows hard, looks down at the still glass of her ball.

‘It was in Galston,’ she says. ‘The day before she went missing.’

Lena feels a chill spread through her own bones, wonders if that is what Sibyl had felt that day. What her own mammy felt down there in the water, under the rushing current.

‘After that, after I heard about your mammy disappearing, I decided that no matter what I felt, or saw, when people came to see me, I had to tell them. Even if it upset them. That’s why I warned you last summer, in Aberdeen. I could see danger was coming for you; I had an image in my mind of a woman holding something sharp. So I tried to tell you. But you did what many people did. You ran away. That’s the thing about these predictions. People don’t want to hear them.’

She reaches over and pats Lena’s arm with a warm, dry hand.

‘I’m glad you tried,’ says Lena. ‘Maybe it made me a wee bit wary. Thank you.’

Sibyl smiles sadly. ‘I just wish I’d been able to do more for your mammy.’

*

The church, when she comes upon it, is of a cheerful red sandstone. She had not meant to walk so far, past the scorching wail of the Gorbals, through the city centre and into a wide, hushed square of tall grand houses, where motor cars sit idle on cobbled streets, maids scurry about in smart white aprons and caps and a man in a three-piece suit bends down to brush an immaculate front step. Down a hill past Sauchiehall Street, busy with carts and trams, businessmen hurrying home from work, and up another hill to this peculiar building, a steep stair that takes her on to a wide sweeping terrace.

She stands for a moment, unsure of herself in the looming dusk. A lady touches her arm. ‘Are you here for Mass, dear?’

The woman is elderly, with a puckered face and soft, rheumy eyes. She is wearing an enormous hat covered in lilac flowers. And, for reasons that Lena cannot quite answer, she nods, and follows her inside.

The church is cool and quiet. Candles flicker on the long altar, sheeted in white. A vast golden sun with three letters in the middle sprawls across a high wall, while above it a dome opens up, revealing eight high arches of coloured glass. On sunny days it must look as though God himself is sending shards of light down on to the cross that sits, impassive, on the altar below.

Lena follows the old lady down the long aisle, hears her own steps echoing, before darting into a pew. And there in front of her, next to a pillar of sea-green marble, is Carmen.

She is deep in prayer, kneeling on the hard wooden bench before her, rosary beads clasped between her fingers, silently mouthing words that Lena would not be able to understand, even if she could hear them.

Throughout that strange, beautiful Mass, where a priest, sheathed in angelic white, sings the liturgy and reads from gospels, commands his altar boys to swing burning, fragrant pots of incense, a peace descends over Lena. She does not comprehend what is being said, and does not try to, and yet it soothes her aching, battered soul. When the priest holds up a goblet and sings haunting words in Latin, she swallows a small sob.

At the end, Lena waits in her pew until Carmen rises, turns and makes her way down the aisle. When she sees her she freezes, then tries to hurry past, but the lady in the lilac hat is having a long conversation with the priest and a queue has formed.

‘Carmen,’ says Lena, and grasps her gently by the arm. ‘Please talk to me.’

They walk down Sauchiehall Street together. It is dark now, and the shadows are narrow and long. Lena tells Carmen about Rosie’s father, and Mary Weaver, and how it was she all along who had killed her mother.

‘So you and Violet were sisters?’ she asks. ‘That makes so much sense. You looked after each other. Cared for each other. Fought with each other. Hated each other, at times. You always seemed like sisters to me.’

‘Not actually sisters; but yes, we were family. Who is caring for you now, Carmen?’ Lena asks.

Carmen stops. ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘I will be just fine.’

‘What would you have done if you’d had the baby? Would you have tried to find Harry?’

Carmen shrugs. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. I doubt it would have been a good marriage, though. He is not...’ she hesitates ‘...my type. That is how you say it, yes?’

They sit down on a bench. Opposite them, a drunk in a battered brown coat is snoring gently, an empty bottle clutched in his hand.

‘But I know he is yours. And it sounds as if he has been good to you. You should go back to him. Make something good from all this sadness. All this death. Oh, but wait...’ She frowns.

‘Mary was his stepmother; we’re not related,’ says Lena, smiling. ‘You’re good at advice, you know that?’

Carmen laughs, shrugs. ‘I like to tell people what to do.’

‘Can I give you some advice, then, just for a change?’

Carmen furrows her eyebrows. ‘Alright.’

‘Come back to the circus. I’ve been thinking about it. There’s a new season starting and Rosie’s still at Vinegarhill with Tommy Pony. And I’ve got my eye on a new trapeze artist. But we need you, Carmen. With your flute, and your costumes. The crowds loved you. I know it won’t be the same without Violet but it’s just like you said. We need to make something good from all this sadness. All this death. You can’t stay at the rat pit forever.’

Carmen nods slowly, gives her a small smile.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she says, and from her pocket she produces the rainbow ribbon Lena gave her in the rat pit, and winds it round her finger. ‘I never stopped thinking about it.’

Opposite them the drunk wakes with a start, and the bottle drops with a great crash to the ground.