Chapter Thirty
Ava thought of their session as she walked to the theatre the following day.
Thought of Damien as a child, scratching those words over and over, until they’d fastened there.
She supposed that was the trouble with words – with their power.
For when people tell you something over and again – you start to believe it.
You stop questioning it. Instead, you let it sink beneath your skin. Let it define you.
She thought of the review – of the words that she’d scorched into her mind.
Words like hollow and false, and wondered if that was what she had done, too.
If she had taken that handful of words, and let them mark her.
And perhaps she’d been wrong in that, just as Damien had been wrong to believe what his father had taught him.
Perhaps she’d been too quick to let the words of others shape her.
She supposed it didn’t matter now. She wouldn’t go back on that stage – no matter what she proved to herself in that dusty room. What happened between those walls was for her, not for Miss Lillian. It wasn’t to fill seats in the theatre, nor to garner applause.
It was to prove to herself that whatever had been broken could be fixed.
That she could fix it.
‘You’re in trouble,’ said Miss Fairchild in a sing-song voice as Ava stepped through the door on Houghton Street. Her tone was bright and cheery, though the look in her eyes was dark, and it took all of the learned stage confidence within Ava to keep walking.
‘I know, I know,’ said Ava, sidling past her. ‘I’m late.’
Ava was never late – but she’d barely slept last night. She hadn’t slept soundly since stepping through the doors of Foster’s Apothecary – though when she’d pulled out her sketch book to try and calm her roiling thoughts, it wasn’t Jem’s face she traced upon its pages.
It was Damien’s.
She’d drawn him outside the theatre – leaning against the wall, one foot resting upon the brick.
She’d drawn him upon her doorstep, his face masked in the darkness.
She’d drawn him in that alleyway, his hand resting above her shoulder, the space between them but a small, sliver of white upon the page.
She’d drawn him until her hand had started to ache. Until the charcoal clutched between her fingertips had worn to dust – and even that hadn’t been enough to stop her remembering the way he’d looked at her in that room – the way it’d thudded into the pit of her stomach.
‘I didn’t mean with Miss Lillian,’ said Miss Fairchild – following her at pace as they wound their way down the dark corridor towards the underbelly of the theatre, frigid now thanks to the greying skies outside and just as cluttered as ever.
‘Although it’d be nice to have her ire trained away from me for once. I meant with me. I saw you.’
‘Doing what?’ Ava asked, reaching for the door handle at the other end – and the dressing rooms that lay beyond.
‘Screaming at strangers in the street.’
Ava’s fingers hesitated against the cool metal handle – and she turned back to Miss Fairchild. ‘You haven’t told Lillian, have you?’
‘Oh, I’m considering it.’ Miss Fairchild’s dark eyebrows twitched upwards, a look of faux innocence upon her face. ‘After all, I reckon she’d rather want to know if you’ve finally married.’
Ava shunted a breath through her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut. It was abominably damp in this corridor – and it made her chest ache. ‘It was only an act. A way of getting those men away from him.’
‘Away from who?’
‘No one.’ Ava said it too quickly, and too forcefully, and Miss Fairchild’s eyes flashed with delight.
‘He didn’t look like a no one. In fact, he most definitely looked like a someone.’
Ava felt something grip at the pit of her stomach, felt it twist – and for once the feeling that surged within her was one she could wield. One she could use.
‘What do you want from me, Miss Fairchild?’ Ava said, turning to her – her face warm, her breath stinging in her chest. ‘Do you wish to humiliate me? Because you have already done that once. Do you wish to hold power over me? Because Lillian already commands more than you could ever know. You have the top spot. You have the act. What more can I give you? What more could you want?’
Ava’s chest was heaving by the time she’d finished, the constricting feeling that’d begun to press against her lungs getting heavier by the second, though the sharp expression on Miss Fairchild’s face crumpled.
‘I just … I want to know how to do what you did,’ she said.
‘I want to know … how to make it better. More believable.’
In that moment, Ava saw herself standing there – in the gloom of this corridor, asking the very same question of her mother. She remembered the press of her mother’s hand against her cheek, the way her head had tilted as she’d said: But darling. You already can.
That had been a poor answer. Another riddle Ava had never solved – and she felt some of the bluster leave her. Felt some of her anger melt. For the agreement she’d made with Miss Lillian was to help Miss Fairchild – not lead her in circles.
And perhaps she could do that.
‘Well, for one you need to stop talking so much about the history of mesmerism as part of your act,’ Ava said.
‘But Lillian suggested I ground it. Besides, you always had some patter about Franz Mesmer being the first mesmerist in your performances—’
Ava shook her head. ‘Franz Mesmer was the father of mesmerism, yes, but he believed we had this fluid within us, a—’ She paused, coughing slightly, her voice catching in her throat now.
‘A physical fluid – that coursed through humans as well as animals. It was disproved of course, but his whole career was about healing physical ailments with mesmerism – which is why it isn’t working in your act.
Your act is all about the power of the mind, not the failings of the body.
Besides, you’re clearly not interested in the topic – it sounds like you’re reading notes you haven’t fully memorized. ’
The look on Miss Fairchild’s face suggested that was exactly what she had been doing, though she merely crossed her arms over her chest and said: ‘What else?’
‘You put too little focus on the sleep portion of the act. It’s the key to it all – to the audience’s belief, to their understanding of how it works.
You make it look too easy to entrance someone – but the reality is it takes work.
It’s a gentle dance, back and forth – you have to really coax them into it, and you have to be confident in it.
The audience has to see that confidence in you, they have to feel it, too – for only then will they believe it.
Only then will they believe what comes next. ’
‘And the script? What do you think of that? Tommy’s lines.’
Ava glanced back at the door, lowering her voice.
‘It’s not enough,’ she said. ‘People never came on stage because they wished to recall something awful. It was always something beautiful they wanted to recapture – love. How it feels to love someone else, how it felt to have that person love them back. That’s what your stories need to be about.
Your scripts. They need to be about love, and nothing else. ’
Miss Fairchild’s expression suggested she didn’t think that true, although there was a spark in her eye. ‘Very well,’ she said, lowering her voice between them. ‘I can try it. And if it works, perhaps I’ll start to believe you do really wish to help me.’
Ava shunted a short breath through her lips. ‘I’ve said that from the first.’
‘We’ll see what the audience thinks.’ Miss Fairchild reached for the handle then, the light from the dressing rooms spilling into the dark corridor. ‘And I won’t tell her,’ she said. ‘Lillian. Now come on, or else we’ll both be late.’