1

THE BANSHEE

London, January 1849

Strangely, the City of London Steam Packet Company had named their ship after a fairy spirit whose keening is an omen of death.

‘We’ll miss the Banshee!’ Edmond was halfway down the Alderman Stairs, head craned forward to show his pink neck and an inch of blond hair between collar and top hat. ‘Do come on!’ They were late because he had gone at the last minute to collect his winnings. Now he would not wait for her. I was good enough to wait for you, was what she might have said.

Jane gathered her skirts clear of the rain-slick granite steps that plunged between the mossy warehouse walls to the river. The porters were already dumping their baggage down where a strip of slimy cobbles stuck out into the Thames. The easterly wind of a January morning whistled in the rigging of the crowded vessels, a shrill counterpoint to the rumbling engines.

What if they did miss their passage to Dublin? She wished, in fact, that they would. Her letter to William, harder to compose than music, demanding much paper, ink and anguish, was only just in the post.

Edmond tipped the porters and hailed a waterman who rowed them amongst the river traffic to where the Banshee was getting up steam. Dense black smoke billowed from her funnel, scattering smuts.

‘We’ll be aboard in time.’ Edmond patted his gloved hand over Jane’s. He was smiling down at her. At least he was cheerful. He always was when he had won a good amount.

The boatman tied up alongside the pontoon and sprang up, holding out a hand to Jane. His hard grip propelled her toward the Banshee’s gangway. As she clambered up after Edmond she wondered if her letter might reach William in Dublin before the bookings opened.

They were just in time, for the Banshee’s whistle wailed, the anchor chains rattled up fore and aft, the mechanism grumbled into action, and they were under way, a flock of jeering seagulls wheeling above. The foredeck was crammed with soldiers, redcoats filling the benches, cursing one another, roaring with laughter, and sharing bottles of drink. Searching through rows of trunks were a respectable family: a bewhiskered gentleman in a black curricle coat and stovepipe hat, and his bustling wife with chestnut hair peeping from a jaunty green bonnet, who snapped at the deckhands and scolded her daughter for dreaming. Jane exchanged a brief smile with the younger woman, hoping she might prove an alternative to rehearsing Edmond’s lines with him and hearing his talk of racing fixtures.

After their luggage was carried below, Jane stood at the stern to see the last of London beneath its grey pall. Edmond lit a cigar beside her. He was tall and fair, the star of Davenant’s Players, with a nobility in his bearing that drew glances from women. Jane knew they made an elegant ensemble, their treble notes sparkling clear in a major key, even if their lower notes were mute.

Soon a steady wind came across the dull water, whipping up waves. Jane wrapped her shawl over her bonnet, tying it under her chin; Edmond, holding his top hat to his head, teased that she looked like an old peasant woman.

‘I’m cold,’ she shuddered, chilled by the journey ahead.

‘Ah, now, Jane!’ He opened his greatcoat to hug her against his canary silk waistcoat. He smelled of cigar smoke and bergamot hair oil. ‘You’ve become too scrawny, my darling – I’m a bad husband for letting it happen. But I’ve a letter of credit for a hundred pounds, plus my gains today – perhaps in Dublin we’ll find a sable wrap to warm you, and restaurants to feed you up?’

She quailed at the thought. They were used to touring the British provincial theatres, to waking late every morning with no idea of where to dine that night. But she had never expected that they would cross the sea to Dublin, or that she would have had to write about it to William:

My dear Dr Doughty,

I apologise for neglecting your letters. You were kind to have sent me your new address. I hope you have found success in your employment at the Meath Hospital. Unfortunately, despite your invitations, there was no opportunity for me to visit Dublin. She had only been able to continue the letter with the thought that William might put it aside with a shrug. But you may have seen in the newspapers that Davenant’s Players are to open in Dublin at the Queen’s Royal Theatre on the 14th of February, for a period of at least one month.

After Dublin they would tour Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh, then perhaps Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham on the way back to London. Davenant had borrowed heavily, expecting takings to be high. Edmond had given up their lease, even selling her piano – a good one – back to the maker, saying they would find better on their return. If only the months away would also break some of his connections.

Escorted by pilot-boats, the Banshee made slow progress down the Thames, hampered by the rising tide, before tying up at Woolwich. A sergeant-major came on board and restored order amongst the military men.

‘I’m getting queasy already,’ Edmond complained.

Jane hoped that he was not becoming unwell. He was always ailing. ‘The boat’s barely moving.’ It was rocking slightly as coal was winched on board.

‘But it stinks here.’ Edmond peered over the side. Below them, the brown water bore the effluvia of London out to sea, while moored in mid-river were the prison hulks, a pair of dismasted warships. The river lapped and slapped at their rotting hulls, as an ugly bunting of green algae flapped from their ropes. The old gunports were barred with rusting iron; men were confined on those gundecks and in the lightless holds below.

‘Can you imagine how much worse it must be for those convicts?’ Jane looked up at Edmond, who wrinkled his nose at her.

‘I doubt it. This boat’s no better. Is Banshee an Irish word for floating shed?’ He shivered, despite his greatcoat. ‘It’s too cold. I’ll have to go inside.’ He led the way below decks. In the cabin they stumbled over their luggage, which occupied the floor. It would be too dark for Edmond to read the newspaper and he lay down on the lower bunk, pulling his coat around himself. ‘This is a dismal rat-hole, isn’t it?’

‘It’s only for three nights.’ She stood looking through the dirty porthole at the hulk across the water. ‘We’ll be in Dublin by Tuesday evening.’ William would have read her letter by then:

There is something that I could not bring myself to tell you before, but which I hope the passage of time enables you to accept. Edmond and I married seven years ago, in London. He only knows that I was your housemaid. So I ask you – I beg you – not to try to come to the theatre to see me. Any contact will only cause difficulties.

She could not meet William. She had never confessed to Edmond about him, even though Edmond’s brief engagement to his leading lady, Maud Frith, was public knowledge. After Jane had left William and gone to London, she had tried to keep her distance from Edmond, reluctant to trust him. But he had continually sought her out. He had agonised over the several months that they had spent apart: if only he’d not left her in Birmingham, he should have married her then, should have kept her with him on the tour. If only he’d had money to send, and she’d not gone to the workhouse …

Brandy would calm Edmond to sleep but wake him to melancholy. He had begun to doubt his own worth, afraid he was ageing and that his public would desert him for a younger talent. He dried up in rehearsals, convinced that his voice could not project. Eventually Davenant had called him into his office for a quiet word, and after that had sent for Jane. He had reminded her that Edmond had made him take her on as a pianist, a role which, he assured her, she had fulfilled admirably. Her grasp of the repertoire was undeniable, her musical arrangements exquisite. But there was one thing wanting for the theatre company to truly succeed: Edmond must flourish into a great actor, which he could only do if she forgave him.

‘You’ll make a handsome couple,’ he wheedled. ‘You always did. A fine man like that. You must surely still care for him a little …’

She had reopened the old familiarity, tried to warm to Edmond, allowed him his kisses. Beside the breadth of his shoulders she appeared small, holding his arm as if he protected her. Only Davenant knew that she was not hanging on but propping him up; the fracture in their past was one that had healed just enough for them to limp along with an ache.

At least she had her music: her own income from playing in Davenant’s orchestra, and her piano compositions that released her into an abstract world. Although William had longed for her to share his life in Dublin, had even transported his old piano from Birmingham, there had never been a future with him. She would have been playing that cottage piano at home, and nothing more.

She had tried to persuade herself, while writing her letter, that William would be indifferent to its contents. But if her mind was idle, or in the depths of the night, the truth would return to anguish her. If only she had not had to write it. How it would hurt him, to realise that he had waited in vain.