Velvet (6 page)

There was a murmur of interest from the audience and Madame asked if the lady who had asked the question would please rise. A woman stood up, not in the first flush of youth but very elegantly dressed in a black-and-white silk costume with a small feathered hat. When she smilingly confessed that the question had been hers, Velvet noticed that she had prominent front teeth which made her lisp slightly.

Madame was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘You will be happy to know that the answer from my spirits is a very positive one. They tell me that the gentleman in question is on the verge of proposing . . .’ this produced another murmur from the (mostly female) audience ‘. . . and that you will marry before next Christmas.’

‘How marvellous!’ said the lady.

‘They have even given me sight of the outfit you’ll be wearing when you receive the gentleman’s proposal,’ Madame said, and she smiled. ‘It’ll be an azure satin gown.’

‘I shall go and buy such a garment tomorrow!’ the questioner said, clearly delighted.

‘But you must try and look surprised when the gentleman asks you,’ George the assistant said, and everyone laughed.

‘May I confirm your question?’ Madame asked. The woman assenting, Madame pulled out the flap of the envelope she held, removed the slip of paper and read out, ‘
Will I marry soon?
’

An excited buzz ran around the hall. ‘How did she know it said that?’ Lizzie asked, truly amazed, but this time it was Velvet who was too transfixed to reply.

Madame took another envelope and held it to her heart for a moment, as before. ‘A question from someone who signs himself,
A gentleman from Scotland
,’ she said. Then followed a long pause during which Madame held her head on one side, as if listening. She eventually continued, ‘The spirits tell me that you will live a long and happy life, sir. What’s more, you and your wife will be blessed with one more child.’

The ‘gentleman from Scotland’ who stood up to own this question looked sheepish, but gave Madame permission to open the envelope and read out his question: ‘
I fear I will die young. Can the spirits tell me otherwise?
’

Madame held the next envelope aloft. The question inside was from someone who wanted confirmation that her father was in the spirit world, for she said he’d gone abroad and hadn’t been seen for many years. A stocky woman stood up to claim the question, and Madame told her that he was indeed on the Other Side, but that she shouldn’t grieve, as he was happy with another woman in spirit. ‘His wife or his sister?’ Madame asked.

‘That would be his sister,’ the stocky woman agreed. ‘She passed just last year.’

‘Indeed it is,’ Madame confirmed.

‘Has my father no messages for me?’ the woman asked.

Madame Savoya listened, then smiled. ‘He says he always was a man of few words. Is that correct?’

The woman laughed, saying, ‘Yes, he was.’

‘Do come and see me privately if you wish to communicate with him more fully,’ said Madame.

The questions and answers resumed, following the same format. Occasionally Madame would put aside an envelope, saying that the question within was too intimate and that the questioner might care to consult her privately. Laughter was provoked when, holding an envelope, Madame said, ‘Well, there’s someone here whose maid must have dressed them completely in the dark, for they’re asking me what colour gown they’re wearing. Would the lady who wrote this please own her question.’

A woman wearing a fashionable dress in dark green velvet rose to her feet, smiling and a little embarrassed.

Madame addressed her very kindly. ‘I’d say that you’re wearing moss green, madam.’

Madame continued as before, occasionally putting her hand to her forehead and looking somewhat strained. As it neared ten o’clock, there was still a number of envelopes left in the top hat but the young man said that they could only take two more.

Madame pulled out the next sealed envelope and held it close. ‘Here’s someone who asks about her future,’ she said. ‘A nearby spirit tells me that it’s from a young lady, who’s enterprising and bright, who’s not content to let the grass grow under her feet.’

Velvet nudged Lizzie and held her breath. This could be her question!

‘I see the young lady in a hot and steamy environment . . . could it be a place similar to the hothouses at Kew?’ Madame paused a moment, holding the envelope between her palms, as if praying. ‘No, I believe it to be a laundry, or something very like.’ She looked around the hall. ‘Will the young lady own her question, please?’

Velvet, her legs shaking at the thought of being conspicuous in such company, got to her feet. Several fur-coated ladies looked at her and exchanged glances of surprise, for it was highly unusual for a working-class girl – not only that, but someone who apparently worked in a laundry – to attend such a gathering.

Madame smiled at her kindly, however, and Velvet no longer felt small and insignificant but – as she told Lizzie later – as if she were standing in a pool of sunlight. ‘My dear girl,’ Madame said sweetly, ‘don’t be nervous. The spirits say there are great things in store for you. You won’t continue long in your present position, but will rise up in the world.’

Overawed, Velvet could do no more than say, ‘Oh! Thank you very much, Madame.’ She would have liked to ask many other things – when she might meet her future husband, what he would be like, how she would know he was the one and how soon all this might come about – but she did not dare. She merely stammered that she was grateful for the information and sat down.

Following the last question, which sadly was not Lizzie’s, Madame left the stage leaning heavily on the young man’s arm. He returned to apologise on her behalf because she hadn’t been able to answer everyone’s questions and repeated that those who needed specific advice, or wanted messages from their relatives on the Other Side, should attend a private session. He spoke so elegantly, seemed so solicitous of the feelings of others and had such chiselled cheekbones that Velvet and Lizzie both returned home to dream of him.

Chapter Five

In Which a Terrible Disaster Leads to a Very Surprising Outcome

Velvet’s life continued as before – if it was going to be her lucky year there was no indication of it. Every day was the same: rise, wash and dress by the light of a candle, breakfast swiftly on anything left over from supper the night before, meet Lizzie outside the house for the brisk, icy cold walk to work and spend the next near-twelve hours in stupefying heat before walking home again, ashen-faced with tiredness, and falling into bed. Velvet found that it was a little cooler working at the Personal Laundry end of the room, but this was negated by the intense concentration required for the exacting, detailed work she had to do so that she felt just as weary. Every day bar Sunday was the same, and the routine was only briefly interrupted at the start of February when everyone was given a day off work to mark the funeral of Queen Victoria.

The queen had been in deep mourning and more or less permanent seclusion on the Isle of Wight since the death of her husband Prince Albert forty years before. Mindful of all this gloom and anxious to start a new, forward-thinking regime, her son, the new King Edward VII, put a three-month limit on the mourning of her by her subjects. Within this time, however, a great deal of black garments descended on the laundry to be freshened, sponged and pressed.

Velvet thought a lot about Madame Savoya whilst pressing black bombazine skirts, black-beaded bodices and the tight little black jackets which were so much in fashion. In fact, she had a recurring dream in which Madame adopted her and brought her up as her own child. She knew this was quite ridiculous because Madame was probably not more than five or six years older than her – and anyway, she herself was over sixteen now and surely too old to be adopted. Nevertheless, the dream was often repeated and proved strangely comforting. Waking, shivering, in her miserable room in the middle of the night, Velvet would imagine that she was safe and comfortable, a daughter in Madame’s house, only momentarily feeling chilled because her feather-filled quilt had slipped from the bed. Soon she would wake to a warm house, find hot water for washing and her clothes laid out for her by her maid, then go downstairs to breakfast on kedgeree. Sometimes the make-believe would work and she would easily fall asleep once more, but mostly it did not and she would lie awake until the church clock struck five and then rise to the same poor room, her washcloth frozen hard and the water in her jug having formed itself into a block of solid ice.

Madame’s success as a medium gathered momentum. Velvet sometimes saw a mention of her in a newspaper, and once overheard a woman in the street talking of some remarkable happening: ‘And Madame Savoya said she saw him actually standing there before her. Standing there – and him five years dead!’ Madame’s laundry boxes continued also, and although Velvet laid claim to several other regular customers, it was Madame’s clothes that she cherished. No other customer wore such wonderful materials in so many different fashions and styles, no other gowns had such lavish embroidery or bore such an extravagance of smocking, lace, tucking, ruffles and beads.

It was a silk ruffle which led to a dreadful happening, however, for when Velvet was slowly and carefully twirling the frilled edge of one of Madame’s precious blouses, disaster struck. Something – afterwards she wracked her brains to think what it might have been – took her attention away from the job and she left the ruffle iron in position a moment longer than she should have done. A moment was all it needed: the tip of the iron became caught up and, in the blink of an eye, a flounce of purest silk melted into a shrivelled grey lump.

‘No!’ Velvet stared at the lump in horror, tears starting in her eyes. ‘Madame’s beautiful blouse!’ She touched the frizzled material with her fingertips. It bore a Parisian label and she didn’t dare to think what it must have cost.

Hearing her cry out, the other girls turned to look and gasped or urged her to go and plunge the blouse into cold water. Mrs Sloane jumped down from her box and was on the spot almost immediately, snatching the blouse from Velvet’s hands and carrying it to the light to inspect the damage. Whilst Mrs Sloane was studying it, Velvet felt there was a chance that it might not be as bad as she’d thought, but as soon as the supervisor turned from the window she shook her head.

‘It’s beyond any help,’ she said. ‘Completely ruined. You careless girl! What were you thinking of?’

Velvet burst into tears, knowing that this would mean instant dismissal. It wasn’t just that, though – it was knowing that she’d let Madame down, and destroyed something that she held dear. Why, she’d rather have burned her own arm than spoiled one of Madame’s beautiful garments!

‘You were chattering, I suppose,’ said Mrs Sloane. ‘Chattering and giggling like you all do. Oh, I knew that something like this would happen sooner or later.’

Velvet was crying too hard to even begin to say that she hadn’t been talking. Besides, she knew it was useless to protest, for a girl had been dismissed only the previous week for making a tiny burn mark in a sheet, even though she’d pleaded that it was a rust stain which was already there.

Mrs Sloane looked at Velvet’s heaving shoulders, then pursed her lips and steeled herself. Velvet was a favourite of hers, but rules were rules and she’d already given the girl one chance. ‘You can stay until the end of the week,’ she said.

Velvet sniffed back tears and looked at Mrs Sloane bleakly. It was Thursday, so she had two more days earning money before she had to join the massed ranks of London’s unemployed. ‘What if you took payment for the blouse out of my earnings?’ she asked. ‘Couldn’t you do that, Mrs Sloane, please?’

‘And how long do you think
that
would take?’ Mrs Sloane snorted, then lowered her voice. ‘I’m already going against rules letting you stay on an extra two days. Dismissal is supposed to be instant.’

Velvet said no more, but wept on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Mr Ruffold himself was informed of the unlucky incident and went to see Madame Savoya personally to apologise and to try and make good, in financial terms at least, what had occurred.

That night Velvet went home anxious and very miserable, imagining Madame’s horror and disappointment at the damage done to her blouse, and spending a sleepless night wondering how on earth she was going to manage without a job. Saturday was to be her last day at Ruffold’s. She would collect her wages that afternoon, pay her rent for the following week and then have just a few coins between her and the dreaded workhouse.

When the girls made their way into the corridor for their dinner break that Saturday, Velvet sat huddled, worry gnawing at her, unable to eat – unable, even, to respond to Lizzie’s sympathetic suggestions as to what she might do next. How could she earn money? Where could she go? She had no particular experience except at washing and ironing, but she couldn’t possibly take in laundry at home because she had no access to hot water and certainly nowhere to hang lines of drying sheets.

Sunk in despair, it took her a while to become aware that one of the little girl learners was tapping her on the shoulder. ‘Mrs Sloane wants to see you,’ she said, ‘and you’re to come as quick as you can.’

‘Is Mr Ruffold there?’ Velvet asked, for she was fearful that the boss might take some of her wages as partial compensation for the accident.