The Mermaid in the Basement Read online

  Elise stared at the young man. “How long did that last?”

  “Until I ran away when I was seventeen.Went into the Army, I did.

  Then when I came out, I was almost starving again, and somehow I got a job working in the theatre. Tried out for a part.” He laughed ruefully.

  “And here I am rich and famous.” He gave Elise a warm smile, and the young woman understood why women flocked to him.

  “I think you will be succesful. You’ve got whatever it is that makes people look at you. Some actors are like that.When they’re onstage, the audience can’t look at anybody else.”

  “Oh, I don’t expect I’ll be doing this forever.”

  Elise shook her head. “Well, I will be! It’s my whole life, Dylan.” She glanced over at Kate and said, “Look at her toying with that poor young fool! Doesn’t he see that she’s nothing but a carnivore?”

  “I think the old saying that love is blind is true. In for a fall, that boy is!”

  Kate had let Clive into her dressing room. She changed clothes behind a screen, and when she came out wearing a gown of apricot-coloured silk with delicate lace a shade or two deeper, Clive went to her at once. “I have something for you.”

  “Really? A present for me? What is it, dear?”

  Clive reached into his pocket and brought out a small box. He opened it, and saw Kate’s eyes grow wide, and heard her catch her breath. “It’s . . . beautiful!” Kate took the ring, an emerald-cut diamond, and slipped it on her finger. “Why, I hardly know what to say, Clive!”

  “A little token of thanks would be appropriate.” Clive held his arms toward her, and she willingly walked into them. Her lips were soft and yielding under his, as was her body.He drew her closer, but then suddenly the door opened, and Kate quickly drew back. Clive turned to glare at the man who stepped inside. He knew him, of course—Sir William Dowding, the producer of the play. He was tall, and at the age of sixty-five had gained a little weight. Still, he made a powerful impression. He had grey hair and light blue eyes, and now his lips were twisted in a cynical grin. “Have I interrupted something, Kate?”

  “Oh, Sir William, come in. Look, Mr. Newton has given me a gift.”

  Dowding looked at the ring. His eyebrows lifted quizzically. “Well, that’s a beautiful stone. You must be quite a wealthy man, Mr. Newton.”

  Clive felt anger rushing through him, for he felt that Dowding was laughing at him. He knew, of course, that Dowding often took Kate out after the performance. He was a powerful figure in the world of drama, and had made his wealth in steel mills. He also had a wife and three grown children. It infuriated Clive that an old man, which is how he thought of him, would dominate Kate.

  “Let’s go, Kate. I’m hungry,” Clive said quickly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Clive, but Sir William came earlier. He wants to discuss my next play. It’s very exciting.”

  “But you promised—”

  “Oh, I know, dear, but he’s my employer. He has great plans for me, and I can’t offend him.”

  Sir William Dowding laughed. “Perhaps another time, dear fellow.

  Come along, Kate.”

  Clive was an amiable young man, but under the surface of that amiability lay a temper that sometimes escaped. It did so now as he stepped forward and ripped Kate’s hand away from where it rested on Dowding’s arm.“Miss Fairfield is dining with me!”

  Sir William Dowding was not a man who liked to be crossed. His eyes suddenly turned cold, and he said, “Who is this puppy, Katherine?”

  “Puppy! You call me a puppy!” A red curtain seemed to fall before Clive’s eyes, and he shouted something in anger. He doubled up his fists and started for Sir William, but Kate had come between them. She put her hands on his chest and said urgently, “Clive, I’ve told you how it is. This is business. You can come back after the performance tomorrow.We can go out then, but I have to talk to Mr. Dowding about my next play.”

  Kate took Dowding’s arm, and Dowding gave Clive a triumphant smile as the two walked out. Clive, still blinded with rage, followed them out shouting, “You think because you have money you’re something, but you’re not a man!”

  Kate turned, and her face was twisted with anger. “Clive, you’re making a spectacle of yourself. Now behave!” She turned, and Clive watched the two leave.

  Most of the cast had witnessed the scene; Ives Montgomery, who played Horatio in the production, was standing beside Dylan. He was a tall, slender young man with a deep tan and flashing white teeth. “Young Newton’s getting an education. It won’t kill him.” His expression turned sour, and he shook his head sadly. “Kate used me up and tossed me aside like a peeling of an orange. Well”—he shrugged his shoulders— “I survived. Come along, Dylan. Let’s get something to eat.”

  TWO

  The late afternoon sunlight filtered down through the large chestnut trees, throwing a latticework of light and shadow on a small young boy and a large dog. David Trent, the future Viscount of Radnor, was tugging at the huge mastiff. The large creature stood looking at the seven-year-old, then with obvious affection licked the boy thoroughly on the face.

  “Oh, stop that, Napoleon!” the boy cried. “You’re not playing the game.”

  Charles David Trent had a wealth of fair hair with a distinct curl in it. His eyes were the dark blue one sees sometimes offshore, with just a touch of aquamarine.He was lean, with the hint of a tall frame concealed within his small body and revealed by the length of his fingers and his relatively long legs.

  “Come on now. You’ve got to be a French dog.” David pulled the mastiff around and, with much huffing and puffing, pushed him into position.

  “Now I’m the Duke of Wellington, and you are the nasty old Frenchman Napoleon.We’re going to have a battle, and I’m going to win.”

  “Woof!”

  “That’s right. Now you stay right there. I’m going over to that tree, and when I get there I’m going to turn, and I’m going to charge you on a horse. I’ll be waving my sword, and I’m going to kill you.”

  “Woof!”

  David ran toward the tree quickly, but he did not get far before Napoleon loped after him.With a cry, David turned and threw his arms around the dog’s neck. The big mastiff fell on the ground, and the boy crawled all over him. His face flushed with excitement, David cried out, “I win! You’re dead, Napoleon, you nasty old Frenchman!”

  From the shadows of the barn, a young man approached. He was a lean young fellow of fifteen with a thin expressive face and watchful green eyes. He wore a pair of tight-fitting trousers, neat black boots, and a red-and- white checked shirt. Sandy hair escaped from under his loose cap.

  “Wot yer doin’ now, Master Trent?”

  David loosened his grip on Napoleon, rose, and sat down on the big dog’s side, whereupon the dog grunted but did not move.

  “I’m playing Army.”

  “Are you now? Yer a soldier, are you?”

  “Yes, I’m the Duke of Wellington, and I just whipped Napoleon here at the Battle of Waterloo. My mum read me the story out of the history book this morning. I won, didn’t I, Napoleon?”

  “Woof!”

  “Well, a’course yer won. An Englishman can wallop a Frog any day.”

  David was a rather literal young fellow. “I didn’t say anything about frogs.”

  Danny Spears, the groom for Viscountess Serafina Trent, laughed.He said in his definite Cockney accent, “Don’t yer know nuffin’? We calls Frenchmen Frogs.”

  “Why do we call them that?”

  “’Cause they eat ’em.”

  “They eat frogs alive?”

  “No, I suppose they cooks ’em, but it just shows ’ow backwards they be.”

  “Did you ever eat a frog, Danny?”

  “Wot do yer fink I am? The closest I ever come to it was jellied eel.

  Now there’s a proper dish for you!”

  “I’d like to try a frog.Maybe we could catch one.”

  “Nah, you hafter go
at night and stab the boogers.”

  The young future Viscount of Radnor’s mind shifted rapidly. “I want to ride Patches.”

  “Well, yer can’t.”

  “He’s my pony.”

  “I knows that, but your mum says yer couldn’t ride ’im today.”

  David glared at Danny and stuck his lip out in a gesture of defiance. “When I get big, and when I’m the Viscount of Radnor, I’m going to do everything I want to do.”

  Danny Spears laughed, a cheerful light in his eyes. “Blimey, boy! Not even ’er Majesty can do that.”

  “Yes, she can. Queen Victoria can do anything she wants.”

  “Well, you just keep on thinkin’ that, Master Trent.”

  David leapt up off the dog, and Napoleon got to his feet. “Let’s go down to the stream and see if we caught anything on the line.”

  “Righto.” Danny reached out and took the boy’s hand, and the two started across the emerald yard. April had brought a brilliant green to the grass, and the flowers were exploding in riotous colours. They passed through some of the garden, and the big dog took his place protectively beside the boy, who reached up and put his hand on the mastiff ’s neck. “If we don’t catch any in our stream, Danny, we can go over to catch some in Squire Watkins’s pond.”

  “Why, that’d be poachin’. It’s agin’ the law.We’d both go to jail.”

  “Not me.”

  “Yes, you. If you get caught poaching.”

  “Nobody can put a viscount in jail.”

  Danny laughed, reached out with his free hand, and tousled the boy’s hair. “That’s right, but I ain’t no bloody viscount—and neither are you. Not yet anyways.”

  By the time they reached the stream, David had thought the matter over. He pulled his hand free and stared up at Danny, saying, “My mum wouldn’t let them put me in jail. If they did, she’d get me out.”

  Danny was an astute young fellow. He had a great fondness for the boy and spent much of his time watching him. He had, in effect, become a playmate for the youngster. “You got that right. That’s about wot she’d do, the viscountess. She’d blow the whole bloody jail up!”

  The two laughed and then turned to pulling the lines out, checking the bait.

  Septimus Isaac Newton had received his name in a logical fashion.He was the seventh son of his parents, thus the name Septimus. He was also a descendant of a close relative of the famous scientist Isaac Newton, thus the name Isaac. Septimus was a tall, gangling man of sixty-two. All of his movements seemed awkward, and it never ceased to amaze those who watched how delicate his touch was in a laboratory or when performing a surgery. He excelled in those two areas, having been a surgeon for a time, but he’d given it up for his experiments in science.He was a pathologist of world reputation and had written the definitive book on human anatomy. Right now he was sprawled on a couch, his white hair in no order whatsoever, except it fell, at times, over his broad forehead.He had forgotten to shave for several days, as the grey stubble on his face indicated. “What are you looking at, Alberta?”

  Alberta Rose Stockard Newton, wife of Septimus, was ten years younger than her husband. For all her expensive clothes, she had a peasant’s stocky figure.Her hands revealed the hard work she had done when she was a young girl, and even for a time after she had married Septimus. She tried to cover up this part of her past, since her husband had become rich and famous due to an experiment that produced something to do with coal mining that she never understood. She could buy any clothes she liked, although none of them ever concealed her background.

  Alberta always looked as if she were a washerwoman in a rather ridiculous disguise. Now as she stood at the window, she had several ropes of pearls around her neck that complemented the rest of her costume. The dress was the latest cut, but it was made for a more slender woman, full-sleeved at the shoulder, flaring at the knees and onto the ground. “I was just watching David. He’s playing some game with Napoleon.”

  “Fine dog, that. I’d like to see the man that could harm David with him around.”

  Alberta watched silently and then said,“Danny’s taking him down to the stream, I suppose.”

  “Danny’s a good boy. Knows horses well as any young fellow alive.”

  Alberta turned and came over to sit beside her husband. She took a look around the room, and as she did, a memory surfaced from her subconscious. She thought of the room she and Septimus had shared when they were first married—small, crowded, and almost bare of furniture. But things had changed since then.

  The parlor of the Trent house was large, the furniture of heavy dark wood. Embroidered antimacassars decorated the backs of the chairs. The pictures on the walls were of Italy, painted in hard blues—blue sky, blue sea with harsh sunlight. Over the fireplace hung an embroidered text: “The price of a good woman is above rubies.”

  Alberta always felt a keen pleasure in reading those words, for it was one of the few romantic things that Septimus had ever given her. She loved her husband and knew that he loved her, but he was of a scientific, clinical mind, not given to flowery or poetic expressions. She glanced over at the chiffonier bearing a vase of artificial silk flowers, delicate things with gay gossamer petals. It was a surprising touch of beauty that Alberta longed for in her life.

  “Septimus, we’ve got to do something about friends for David.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he needs other children his own age to play with.”

  “Why, Danny’s a good playmate for him, and Serafina spends a great deal of time with him. I do the best I can, and I know you do. He’s never lonely.”

  But Alberta, for all her husband’s tremendous breadth of knowledge, was wiser than he in some ways. He might know chemical formulas and every bone in the human body, but she knew more about human nature than Septimus ever would. “A child needs other children around. Don’t you remember having playmates when you were a boy?”

  “Well, I suppose I do. Perhaps we could hire some children to come and play with him.”

  Alberta laughed and shook her head with slight disgust. “You do think of the oddest things! You can’t rent a child as you rent a buggy.”

  “I don’t see why not,” Septimus said with a measure of surprise. “Lots of poor families would be glad to take a few pounds for one of their darlings to be David’s playmate for part of the day.”

  Ellie Malder, a “tweeny” or teenage maid who could help with a variety of household tasks, appeared. She was an attractive young girl of fifteen with brown hair and warm brown eyes. “Shall I serve the tea, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Ellie, please do.”

  Septimus lounged on the couch, listening as Alberta proposed solutions to finding friends for David.When Ellie brought the tea cart in, he sat up. The tea arrived in an exquisite bone china service, hand painted with blue harebells. She also served sandwiches about the size of one of Septimus’s fingers and cakes no more than an inch and a half across.

  “Septimus, you’re eating like a starved wolf! Can’t you be more dainty?”

  “Yes,my dear, I’ll certainly try.”He picked up a tiny sandwich, bit off a fragment of it, and chewed. Suddenly Alberta turned to face Septimus.

  “Does David ever say anything to you about his father?”

  “No, I don’t know as he does. I don’t believe he ever thinks of him.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “He does? Has he talked to you?”

  “Not directly, but I’m sure he thinks of him. Sometimes, when I read him a story, there’ll be a family in it, and he’ll ask a great many questions about the father in the story. It’s as if he knows something important is missing from his life, but he doesn’t know how to find it.”

  Septimus picked up one of the tiny teacups, holding it delicately between his thumb and forefinger, sipped the tea, and put it down. “You know, my dear, it’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s probably best that Charles died.”

  Alberta shot him a quick gl
ance. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, I know you were happy when Serafina married into the peerage and became a viscountess, but there was always something missing, something wrong with the marriage, and I always thought it was Charles.”

  Alberta stared at her husband. She had thought the same thing herself. “He wasn’t a good husband,” she admitted reluctantly.

  “No, nor a good father either.”

  The two sat there, silently thinking back over the years that had passed since their daughter Serafina had married Viscount Charles Trent. The marriage had been a disappointment to both of them, for the viscount had indeed not been a good husband. He had not been abusive, at least not in public, but something had been lacking in the marriage that neither Septimus nor Alberta could put their finger on. Alberta shook her shoulders as if freeing herself from some burden and said, “We must have a dinner soon. Lord Wentworth is back from France.”

  “That fellow? Why would we want to give him a dinner?”

  “Because we have two daughters who need husbands, of course.”

  “No,we have only one, and she’s too young.Aldora’s only seventeen.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of Aldora for Wentworth.”

  Septimus gave his wife a look of pure astonishment. “You’re not thinking that Serafina might make a match with him!”

  “Why, of course I was.”

  “She’ll never marry again.”

  “Septimus, she’s only twenty-seven years old. Of course she must marry.”

  “Alberta, she won’t even speak of it. Have you forgotten how miserable she was while Charles was alive?”

  Alberta could not answer for a moment, for the memory was painful. They sat there, and each of them was conscious of a failure that somehow seemed to be at least partially their fault.

  “Serafina was such a happy child,” Alberta whispered. “She went about singing all the time and laughing.”

  “Yes, she was a happy child. And before she was married, she talked a great deal about what it would be like to have a husband and children.”