Hokey Pokey, page 3
“Is she intelligent enough to hoodwink people? I think she’s hoodwinking herself. She’s too enamoured of her own mystique. And everyone here colludes…”
He waved vaguely at the other guests, who had returned to their drinking gayer, and more excitable, after Berenice’s singing. The room was notably louder than it had been when they arrived. The huddle round Berenice was thicker too, granting Nora only snapshots of her quarry. Nora speculated whether Arthur Crouch was criticising Berenice as a way to curry her own favour, having realised her antipathy for the singer. His strategy was futile. If Leo were here, he could tell Arthur that the fastest way to secure Nora’s interest would be to fall in love with Berenice; to think of no one else; to measure every other woman against her, and want them to the degree they matched.
Yet Arthur’s criticisms were correct. Berenice thrived on the collusion of others in her spiritualism. Could Nora lower herself to collude? If Nora presented herself as a believer, Berenice would preen. Nora could try to befriend Berenice; that might make it easier to finagle a confession, or at least be present when Berenice let slip some clue of her infidelity. Such a strategy would take time. Perhaps Nora could engineer an urgent situation to hasten Berenice’s dependence on her. Fortunately, from Berenice’s psychoanalysis with Leo, Nora knew which situations would constitute an emergency for the singer.
That very minute Berenice was breaking away from her companions, in a flurry of kissed cheeks and called goodbyes. Nora twitched inside.
“You know, I think that drink was too strong for me after all,” Nora said, newly grateful for spilling so much. “You must think me fickle, to keep you here then leave this soon, but I really think I should be going.”
“Oh, I won’t take offence; on one condition.”
“What might that be?”
“You’ll come back tomorrow?”
She nodded as she stood. Berenice was halfway to the door.
“Assuming your train’s still delayed,” Arthur Crouch prompted.
Nora wasn’t sure whether she imagined that his tone was meaningful – that she was a poor liar, it not coming naturally to her, and he had seen through her falsehoods.
“Assuming I’m still here,” she agreed.
*
Nora kept pace with Berenice, all the way into the lift which was full enough for Nora to be merely one nameless stranger amongst many. But then guests trickled out floor by floor, until only Nora, Berenice and the liftman remained. They reached the top. The Icon exited first; she tripped on the threshold. People had been buying cocktails for her, too. This was all to the good. Alcohol would lower the woman’s guard. She righted herself and walked on. Nora stepped out and the lift doors closed behind her.
They were now in the grandest quarters of the hotel. Nora swiftly turned up her sleeves, so that anyone could tell, with a glance, no tattoo was visible upon her. She saw Berenice reach a smooth, pink door. Up here, the richest guests reserved suites rather than the single, by no means humble, bedrooms of the type Nora was staying in. There were no room numbers. Instead each suite was marked with a different fruit; in Berenice’s case, a pineapple.
Nora called out: “Miss Oxbow?”
Berenice looked back, her hand raised with a key in her grip; her expression was blandly appeasing in the usual manner of someone fielding attention from a stranger. “Hm? Yes?”
“Miss Oxbow,” Nora said again, to give herself chance to draw level. At a conversational distance, she said: “I wondered if we might talk.”
“Oh angel.” Berenice smiled sweetly, her hand still aloft. The key was large and brassy; one end was wrought into a miniature version of the pineapple upon the door. “I’m tired as heck. Is it an autograph you want?”
Nora should lead with flattery.
“Yes, of course I’d love an autograph – but – I also have something to discuss with you.”
“Is that right? I hate to disappoint you, but I have to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for my performance tomorrow. We can catch up at the theatre door. Bring your autograph book.” She returned her attention to the lock.
“Miss Oxbow, the matter isn’t suited to the theatre door. It’s rather more grave than that.”
The door swung open. Berenice looked at Nora with a hint of condescension. “Sorry! I don’t tell fortunes.”
“That’s not what I want. Might I have just a quarter of an hour, to speak privately?”
Faced with Nora’s persistence, Berenice frowned and gestured to the empty corridor. “You’ve got privacy, angel. There’s nobody here but us chickens. What do you want?”
“To discuss your health. Miss Oxbow—”
“My health? I’ve never even met you!”
Nora must offer more to obtain entry.
“I’m a doctor. When you were singing in the Narcissus I noticed something.” Knowing how much Berenice feared the loss of her voice, Nora raised a hand to her own throat. “You have a lump.”
Berenice blanched. Silently she felt the corresponding patch of her neck, her fingers pushing at a very ordinary gland. In a more subdued tone, she asked: “How do I know you’re a real doctor?”
“You don’t,” Nora said. Taking a gamble, she added: “You can ask for the hotel physician if you prefer. I’m sure, if he isn’t resident, the manager will do his utmost to arrange an appointment once the snow’s cleared.”
“You really think I need to worry?”
“A short physical exam will give you more information.” So far, Nora had said nothing she considered to be false.
Conflicted, Berenice glanced through the open door into her apartment. She looked back at Nora. Did her gaze flicker towards Nora’s arm? Nora thought it did. Good. Berenice would see there was no tattoo.
“A quarter of an hour, you say?” Berenice asked.
“Yes.”
“All right. My schedule’s a harsh mistress and I’ve got to perform tomorrow.”
Nora followed her into a drawing room with a circular recessed floor at its centre. Miniature lamps on every table cast a gentle light. She noted the deep pink carpet, the low-backed, curving sofa, the shining curtains that fell from ceiling to skirting board. Berenice kicked her shoes off. From the drinks alcove, she poured herself a glass of crème de menthe, and knocked it back in one gulp. For nerves, probably.
“Might I have one of the stirrers?” Nora asked. She glanced about for any sign of prior visitors. Male visitors, specifically, though she was unsure what such evidence would consist of; an abandoned jacket, perhaps. “My medical bag’s in my room, but I can use a stirrer to depress your tongue.”
Berenice picked one from a silver tumbler. “Where do you want me?”
A man might be quietly concealed in one of the other rooms. As a pretext for seeing the rest of the suite, Nora improvised: “I need the brightest available light. I assume that will be the bathroom?”
Berenice led Nora down a wastefully wide hallway, lined with bouquets of orchids. They reached a bedroom, papered with an embossed, geometric pattern of midnight blue. No man awaited. Regrettably Nora had no time to look more closely at Berenice’s sleeping quarters; they immediately passed into the adjoining bathroom.
Nora gestured that Berenice should sit on the edge of the tub, and placed the stirrer on the shelf above the basin, beside the toiletries. She hoped in vain for a man’s razor; a shaving brush; a bottle of cologne.
She stood before the Icon. This was the closest they had ever been to each other. Berenice upturned her face. Her left eyebrow had a single fair hair which refused to rest in line with the others. Her skin was downy and poreless. Where her burgundy lipstick had worn away, Nora saw the pale pink lip beneath.
Nora placed the pads of her fingers below Berenice’s chin. How soft the Icon’s skin was; could Nora’s ever be so soft? She stored the sensation as she stored everything about Berenice. Nora felt beneath Berenice’s jawline, as she’d learnt to do long ago – earlier than medical school; at the knee of her father, for he’d also been a doctor.
“Are you expecting company?” Nora hoped the question passed for polite conversation as she walked her fingertips back towards Berenice’s ears then down the neck.
“At this hour? You must think I’m an incorrigible sinner,” Berenice said flirtatiously, albeit with an undercurrent of apprehension. “I told you I’m going to bed. My husband’s in another country.”
“Open your mouth,” Nora instructed, letting her hands drop.
Berenice did so, closing her eyes simultaneously. Her mouth was clean as a cat’s. Nora grabbed the stirrer and placed it on Berenice’s tongue. Everything looked perfectly healthy, just as Nora anticipated. She firmly jabbed the back of Berenice’s throat, pulling the stirrer back out again just as Berenice began to gag. The Icon pushed Nora out of the way, her eyes streaming as she coughed, to turn on the cold tap.
“There there,” Nora said softly. “All done.”
She wasn’t sure the Icon heard. Quietly, Nora stepped back into the bedroom. As she waited for the coughs to cease, her eyes darted for signs of masculine company, and found none. A single crystal tumbler stood empty on the dressing table, suggesting Berenice had been drinking alone earlier that night; a gown lay in a silken pool by the closet door, but if there were any items of men’s clothing in the room, they must have been safely stowed. No love letters were discarded in view. No photo but Leo’s was displayed, in its small travel frame, at the bedside. In fact Berenice appeared to be playing the part of devoted wife rather well. The running water stopped. Berenice muttered something in Russian before emerging from the bathroom.
She sat on the edge of the bed and sank backwards into the blankets.
“Everything’s spinning. Did you finish the examination? Do you need to check anything else?”
“No, that’ll be all. I’m happy to say the lump isn’t serious,” Nora said. “You have an inflamed lymph node, which suggests you may have fought off a cold or another trivial infection.”
“Hallelujah,” Berenice said with relief. “You were none too gentle back there. What do I owe you?”
This was an opportunity for collusion. “Half a crown – unless—”
“What?”
“Do you really never tell fortunes?”
“Oh!” Berenice laughed. “I’ve still got one eye on the clock, baby, and your time is up. Maybe later in the week. I knew you were a devotee.”
“Well, I heard you at dinner.” Quoting the Old Victorian, she said: “You’re someone who has seen things beyond our understanding… I know the sound of the otherworld when I hear it.”
“That’s sweet.” Berenice sighed, then giggled, as she sat up. The back of her hair was mussed into peaks like a duck’s tail. She reached for a fat ceramic bear on the bedside cabinet.
With no remaining rooms to search, Nora felt suddenly flat at the lack of evidence. For the first time since her departure from Zurich she let a worm of doubt enter her mind. Leo had confided his suspicions about Berenice’s loyalty, and Nora had her own reasons for seizing upon those doubts as truth. But was it plausible that Berenice – with all her passion for scandal and limelight – would conduct an affair discreetly?
Berenice removed the bear’s head and withdrew half a crown, which she offered to Nora. “You never told me your name, you know.”
Nora thought, once more, how they had this in common: the use of pseudonyms. Berenice understood the slipperiness of naming. She was Вераніка on her documents. She was Vieranika, or Weronika, or Berenike, depending on the territory, because she had been much harmonised. She was once Nika, to her dead father; Vroni to her friends in Zurich; Véro to her husband. Oxbow was simpler for American tongues than Luckiewicz, or Luchesk, or any of the other English transliterations of her true last name. Nora wondered which of those names felt most true to Berenice. For here, in this hotel near the woods where her mother was born and died, Nora didn’t feel like a Čapek. Her mother’s maiden name felt most right. So she claimed it again, as she had with the receptionist, and with Crouch.
She said, feeling the name was faithful and true: “I’m Dr Dickinson.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Dr Dickinson, but I really need you to skedaddle.”
Berenice rose unsteadily from the bed, and walked Nora back through the apartment.
3
In the ground floor lobby, Nora passed by the waiting room chairs and front desk to the row of silence cabinets positioned in the far right corner. They were nearly all occupied. She stepped inside the sole empty kiosk. It was narrow, with a telephone book suspended from an s-shaped wooden holder on the wall. A page had loosened from the centre, listing local companies in the middle of the alphabet. The Pacific Steam Navigation Company, 86 Colmore Row. 8340 Central. Parker Iron and Steel Merchants, 39 Corporation Street. 1869 Central. Parkes and Son, 16 and 18 Cherry Street. 6210 Central. Patent Borax Company Limited, Ladywood. 3572 Central. Payton, Pepper and Sons, 3, 4 and 5 Vyse Street. 7 Jewellers.
Nora spoke to the operator; Leo would be expecting her call. As she waited, her eyes settled on the next cabinet. Carlo Merlini was deep in a telephone conversation of his own. Their gaze met through the glass, and Nora looked swiftly away.
“Well?” Leo greeted her. The line was dreadful. She could barely hear him.
“Nothing yet,” she said as loudly as she could.
He didn’t answer, she guessed from a combination of impatience and irritation.
“It’s only the first night,” she pointed out.
“I know.”
What would she do if the evidence he was anticipating never materialised? So ready was he to believe, she could invent whatever she liked to discredit Berenice. Couldn’t she describe a parade of lovers, as luridly as she wished, each of them brazenly encouraged by Leo’s depraved wife? Nora realised how easy she found it to imagine a train of people in love with Berenice.
But Nora wasn’t a liar.
“I’ll be watching her all the time,” Nora reassured him.
“And listening?”
“Always.”
“Tell me what you’ve heard?”
She let her eyes meet Carlo Merlini’s again.
“Angel.” Nora spoke with Berenice’s voice, her lips moved as Berenice’s moved. “There’s nobody here but us…”
Far, far away, she heard Leo say: “I’ve missed you, being her.”
She had missed being her too, with the validation of an audience. Alone in her room wasn’t enough. Should she believe Leo missed her mimicry when he had the real thing? He was paying her to spy, but he must realise that, more than the money, Nora wanted to hear she was indistinguishable from the Icon. I’ve missed you, being her. It was a victory to hear him say it. It made her want to cry. She counted the buttons on Merlini’s waistcoat to stop herself. He had his key in his slim waistcoat pocket. A brassy key, the top just peeking over the seam.
She could see it was wrought into the shape of a pineapple.
Straightening, Nora said: “Leo – I think there’s something I need to ch—”
The line went dead.
She assumed they were cut off through the vagaries of long distance calls. But Merlini was looking bemused at his own telephone, speechless. People were stepping out from the other kiosks. Nora pulled back her cabinet door, and walked to the reception desk to report the difficulty. Harvey was attempting, and failing, to reach the operator on the desk phone.
From his office to the side, Quarrington, the manager, approached the desk.
“All down at once?” Nora asked him.
“So it seems!” His hands were clasped apologetically. “A temporary problem, I’m sure.”
“The snow?”
“Very likely.”
From the corner of her eye, Nora saw Merlini ascending the grand staircase.
“We’ll establish how much of the area is affected,” the manager was telling her. “It may still be possible to send telegrams from the post office. If you have urgent communications, instruct our usual telegraphist and she will check—”
“Thank you,” Nora cut in, with a small nod of thanks.
She strode to the stairs. Merlini had passed out of view. If she had interpreted his possession of the key correctly, rather than alighting at the first floor he would have kept going on to the next flight. So much for respectability and chaperoning. Quarrington or Harvey must have sanctioned the extra key to Berenice’s suite; a famous opera singer wouldn’t have to toe the same line as their other guests.
Hoping to close the gap, Nora picked up speed. By the time she’d gained on Merlini, on the third flight, she was flushed but trying to maintain an outward impression of composure.
She watched him turn a corner, towards the hotel suites where Nora had already followed a guest that evening. By now she was feeling quite the old hand at spying. Nora lingered at the edge of the wall, peeping round as Merlini audibly shoved a key into a smooth, pale pink door. It swung open before he had successfully turned the key.
Berenice stood in the doorway.
“You’re very late,” Berenice told Merlini, and pouted. Her Russian accent was stronger with drink.
“La lontananza è come il vento. And it’s a taste of your own medicine.”
She tutted, leaning against the jamb. “I had company anyway. It was good you weren’t on time.”
“Company? Who?”
“A lady come to venerate! My audience, they love me.”
So Merlini wasn’t someone Berenice would tell about a doctor’s visit. Still, he pulled her waist towards his, his hand on the small of her back. Nora watched them kiss. Then they went in, and the door was closed.
Nora exhaled. Leo had guessed right; his wife was faithless. Now Nora could tell him so, and name the culprit into the bargain. An unaccustomed sensation engulfed her: glee. She hadn’t been happy for months. She hadn’t been happy since Leo got married. A smile spread, slowly, across her face.
*
Nora worded a telegram for Leo, succinctly confirming Berenice’s infidelity and partner in crime, which was left with a telegraphist for despatch. There was nothing left to keep Nora there now, but on enquiry at reception, the snow was still preventing all trains from leaving the city. Five days remained until Nora’s scheduled voyage home, weather conditions permitting. She was not disappointed. What was it Leo had said? I’ve missed you, being her. He didn’t miss Berenice – how could he, guessing at her treachery? He didn’t miss Nora – he didn’t love her, nor she him. But he missed Nora being Berenice and it was this she thrived upon. So she should take the opportunity to watch, and imitate, the true Icon, to perform the role better in Zurich. For now she returned to her own rooms. She diligently recited Berenice’s speech of the evening; beginning with the Russian song, which Nora mimicked perfectly with no understanding of the meaning. With that done, she repeated every line of English Berenice had spoken under Nora’s surveillance.
