Chaplin & Company Read online

  Chaplin &

  Company

  MAVE FELLOWES

  LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORPORATION

  A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

  New York • London

  For NPP and JPP

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  For Odeline at least, this is how it all began.

  On a warm Saturday morning, nineteen years ago in genteel Arundel, a circus came to town. Coloured caravans and articulated lorries drove through the centre, past the shop fronts and striped awnings of Arundel High Street, past the Tudor facades and the quiet conversations of residents meeting on the pavement. On they rolled, over the bridge towards the southern outskirts, along the Causeway that links Arundel to its scruffier neighbour, the seaside resort of Worthing. The caravans and lorries turned off this road and bumped across to the far end of a field. Doors opened, ramps swung down. By midday the tent poles were up, carrying their huge folds of coloured canvas. Men with mallets worked their way around the sides, bashing rusty pegs into the ground. It was September, the end of the circus season; this was the second-to-last destination on their tour of Southern England.

  If the circus’s arrival had fallen on a weekday then things might never have begun for Odeline at all, for her mother’s absorption in her work excluded any recreational inclinations between Monday and Friday. Work filled up her head completely. On the rare occasion that someone came to the door of the big house on Maltravers Street, they would not be greeted. Eunice Milk did not care for company. But most likely she never heard the bell over the much more urgent and noisy calculations inside her head, or the scratching and scribbling of her pencil working through the pages of her clients’ account books. These fractions, decimals and percentages were more real to her. From Monday to Friday her mind made patterns of profits, climbed up and down numbers.

  The weekends, however, were different. Eunice would plod plainly, big-boned and big-haired and blank-faced, down to the newsagent’s on Saturday morning to collect the television schedule and then plod plainly back to her big house and lift her big body on to a stool at the kitchen table, where her pen pot stood. She would take out her biro and ruler. A chunk of tangerine hair would flop forward as she tipped her head to the pages. She would scan the columns for films and comedy programmes, and particularly for anything marked a ‘Classic’. She drew a blue box around everything she wanted to watch. Her favourites were the old pictures – the romances (not the horrors). Her absolute favourites: the comedies where the funny men were always falling over, tripping up, bashing into things. It surprised her every time, even though she knew what the men were going to do. She liked the way they walked, those men in suits too big and hats too small. It made her laugh inside.

  For the comedies, she would switch the television on long before the scheduled start time, and kneel by it waiting for the title to appear. The opening credits came and she would rush back to her chair, to sit with her ruddy, ginger-freckled face cupped in her hands. She watched and waited, and when the funny man came on, her face, usually so empty of expression, would ignite with pent-up laughter, her shoulders squeezed up to her ears. As he waddled obliviously into trouble she held her breath. She was ready to burst.

  And then clonk, over he went and she would explode, hee-hawing and pounding her thighs with her fists. When the funny man was happy she would clap and clasp her hands, and when he was sad her face, her sighs, mirrored his. Sometimes, when the film ended with him still sad, she would flick away the tears from her cheeks, cross with the television for taking him away. But she couldn’t bring herself to turn it off, however cross, in case he came back with a smile to wave her goodbye.

  It was a picture of a clown that caught her attention that warm Saturday morning in the newsagent’s as she paid for her television schedule. There were cards on the counter – advertisements for the circus. The clown in the advertisement had too-big shoes and a black hat like the men in the comedies, but his clothes were bright colours, squares of yellow and red, and his face was painted white with red lips and black diamonds for eyes. These black diamonds looked like something from the horrors, but the rest of him looked funny and the colours made her eyes dance, and so she picked up the picture from the pile on the counter and took it away with her.

  So it began.

  That afternoon Eunice Milk walked out of Arundel, down the High Street and over the bridge towards the Causeway road. She had a pair of scissors and a ball of string in the pockets of her blue-checked housecoat. Others were on their way to the circus too but she paid them no attention. Six foot tall and with her eyes fixed forward, she could see over their heads. Big-legged, she strode through them, her head of apricot hair jigging. When she saw the circus sign in blue and gold – ‘CIRQUE MAROC! CIRQUE EXTRAORDINAIRE!’ – she stopped and took out her scissors. She knelt down to the verge and snipped.

  An hour later she was sitting on a bench in the big top, clutching a bouquet of wild flowers and long grass stems, looking up in wonder at the kaleidoscope of twisting, flipping, tumbling, turning figures above her. Two bodies in sparkling suits against the red and yellow triangles of the tent, swinging back and forth on the trapeze. One bent back and dropped, was caught, swung up and flipped, was caught. The sparkles made little dazzling explosions as they swept across her vision. So bright. Down below there was commotion, and through the heavy red curtains came an elephant, loping into the ring. Sitting on top, a boy in a blue turban and pale blue robes, holding a quivering cane over the elephant’s shoulders. As the trapezes slowed, the elephant and the boy swayed on around the outside of the ring, the elephant lumbering from side to side, the boy switching the cane from right to left and back again, his mouth mumbling something inaudible under the gasps and jostle of the crowd. Eunice Milk sat upright and silent in the middle of it. She did not like animals.

  At last the elephant pushed out through the curtain, and in its place burst a man in a yellow and red harlequin suit – the man from the picture. With a white-painted face, bowler hat and those too-big shoes. He looked surprised to be in the ring, his black diamond eyes wide and worried. He tried to get out again but couldn’t find the opening in the curtain. People began to laugh. He took a few steps back and ran at the curtain – but bounced off it on to his back. Eunice slapped her hand to her mouth, but he was all right; he got up and dusted the sawdust off. And then fell over again. She realised he was joking and let out a squawk of laughter. He flipped on to his hands and knees and began to walk, swaying side to side like the elephant, with a glum face and one arm waving out in front. She guffawed. When he reached the
ladder at the edge of the ring, he took the bottom rung in his hand and began to climb. Up, up he went until he reached a tightrope that crossed the ring to another ladder on the right-hand side. He looked at the rope, and then at the audience with a worried expression. They cheered. He held his nose and prodded the rope with a huge-booted toe. It wobbled violently and he snatched his foot back. He looked terrified.

  The audience shouted encouragement and Eunice began to shake her head: no, don’t. He produced a long cane from behind the ladder and turned round to face the tightrope, holding the cane across him with its ends wobbling down. He shut his eyes and slid an enormous boot on to the rope. Eunice was holding her breath, bolt upright; the people on either side were silent too. The rope shook and then was still. He brought his other foot round in front of the first and tipped the cane to balance. Now he was standing freely on the rope. He looked at the audience and grinned, his painted mouth stretching from one side of his face to the other. He took another step, and another, and then he was almost dancing along it, stepping back and forth. The audience broke out into cheers, Eunice released her breath. Somewhere in the ring an accordion began to play. He took the cane in one hand and flipped his hat on top of it, twirling it round as he turned his head to the audience and lifted one of his boots sideways into the air. His hair was jet black and framed his painted face in corkscrew curls. The grin had dropped into a playful smile and as he looked down it seemed to Eunice that he stared directly at her and that his eyes twinkled. She smiled back and tipped her head to the side. She had never seen anything like him before.

  That night she went back to watch the circus and sat on the same bench, waiting there long before the performance started. She kept her eyes fixed on the curtain. She ignored the ringmaster, she ignored the trapeze artists, she ignored the elephant. When he eventually came out through the curtain her shoulders gave a shudder. And when he looked down from the rope his twinkling eyes in their painted black diamonds were stars. Eunice dived into them and for her it was like falling through space. Her world was a distant speck in the night sky, far behind.

  When he left the ring, she stood up and pushed her way out, not hearing the complaints of people on the benches around her. At the back of the big top was a patch of grass next to a caravan where the costumes were kept. He was climbing out of his red and yellow suit when he looked up to see a big-limbed, middle-aged woman with a helmet of fiery hair, standing plainly with her arms at her sides. Her cheeks were scrubbed pink and she was gazing at him with a wide, shining face, a full moon. She held an oddly cut bunch of flowers in one hand. Her head tipped to the side as she lifted her arm to offer them to him.

  And so that is how this clown, this acrobat, this opportunist who was to become Odeline’s father, found himself a place to stay while the circus was in town. Eunice Milk went back to the big top every evening that September fortnight, and when the performance was over she would wait for him outside. She forgot about her work: invoices were left unopened, tax receipts went unlogged. She walked past the stack of account books on the kitchen floor oblivious. During the days she attended him, fed him, watched him. At night she sponged the white paint and black diamonds from his upturned face and discovered such beauty underneath. His body was brown and taut, arms like ropes, she could see the ribs sliding under the skin of his chest when he breathed. She hadn’t had anyone to look after before, and he was so hungry. She sat him on the chair at the kitchen table and gazed as he ate. He would bend down to the bowl and rush the food into his mouth. She reached out and felt the springs of his hair, the shiny black springs.

  The circus left town at the end of the month and when he went she did not complain. It was not in her nature to ask for more.

  ONE

  London in August. From above, the city shimmers and glints in the sun. There is so much activity on its surface that it looks crawling, swarming with movement, as if it is one whole living thing. But look closer and this is just an impression given by the million little channels of movement that cross, curve, diverge and wind between buildings. These channels glitter. Look closer still. Sunlight flashes back from the windscreens and the roofs of the coaches, trains, lorries moving across the surface of the city. The machines chug out a quivering exhaust which softens the edges of the buildings and blurs outlines. It is thirty degrees of dry, dusty heat and London is baking.

  It is a relief to notice the band of water at its middle, the cool ribbon of metal grey Thames which cuts through the hot, busy oval of the city.

  The water snakes up, round and back on itself in its traverse from left to right. Look carefully and it is possible to see other smaller lengths of water, making less natural lefts and rights. Some connect to the wide band of the Thames but others come in from the outskirts, and stop abruptly somewhere near the centre. These waterways are manmade and tend to be set in straight lines and meet at sharp-angled junctions, like roads. They were valuable arteries into the city when they were first built, when water supported the loads that horses could not, and reached places that the locomotives could not. But now they are long unused, long unappreciated, long unnoticed.

  London has risen, built itself up like a toy city, stacked itself, crammed buildings against the edges of waterways and railways, so that from the ground these canals are rarely seen. To cross a bridge and glimpse one is a surprise. Life on these waterways is lower than life on the streets around it. It is below the eyeline. A good place to hide.

  Come down over the west of the city, above the patch of sun-blanched green with its round dot of pond and long pointed lake. Above this, snaking towards and away from the railway that cuts into the city’s north-west, is a waterway that could take you all the way out to Birmingham. Come closer down, to where this canal briefly touches the raised section of the Westway, and closer still, until you can see it emerging from under the road and winding up to the right. This is where we join Odeline, who is making her way along the towpath towards the canal junction of Little Venice. Odeline the fledgling, wheeling her enormous black cases along the paving slabs.

  She makes for an unusual figure. From a short distance away she looks like an overgrown boy dressed in his father’s clothes. Not that many fathers these days wear the baggy pinstripe suits of a 1920s banker – or leather brogues, which in this case are several sizes too big, even for Odeline’s size 9s. She has the height for the suit but not the breadth and so the shoulder pads slip down, making the sleeves longer than they should be. The trousers are bulky under the jacket but held up by a pair of bright-red leather-buttonholed braces, which are probably Odeline’s favourite accessory. More preferred, even, than her bowler hat, which she is not wearing as she walks along the canal. It is wrapped in tissue paper inside her prop box. Her hair is absolutely black and forms a bowl around the back and sides of her head. A crudely short fringe sticks out slightly at the top of her forehead. It looks like she has cut it herself, and she has.

  The suit is heavy; she is terrifically overdressed for this sweltering day. People in the tower blocks behind the towpath are sitting out on their metal balconies showing shoulders and legs to the sun. It is a Sunday. There is the smell of their barbecues, the buzz of bass from their sound systems. But if Odeline is hot she is hiding it. Her face is set in its usual determined mask, with her dark eyes – huge and round and long-lashed – slightly hooded in the sun. She is refusing to squint.

  At nine forty-five this morning she boarded the coach for London that would take her away from Arundel for ever. She was over an hour early but the coach doors were open, so she got on anyway and sat down at the front, stacking her cases on to the seat next to her. She held on to the handles and to her ticket. She is eighteen and she is an orphan. The roar of bus engines seemed deafening. Everything seemed too real, too loud, too colourful, too three-dimensional. The beige and brown carpeted stripes on the seat in front began to tremble, the sun was dazzlingly bright through the glass.

  She checked through the papers in her bulging mo
neybelt. In the first compartment she has filed: two documents detailing the sale of her mother’s house in Arundel (furnishings included), a blue booklet for a Post Office account which contains all her funds, and the receipt for her coach ticket. She has put a cash card in a separate compartment, next to a small brown solar-powered calculator. In the large pocket at the back of the moneybelt is a London A–Z and a letter confirming her first booking with Top Hat Entertainers in a Covent Garden theatre tomorrow night. Also in this pocket is an envelope containing London theatre tickets, with a receipt for payment stapled to the corner. She checks they are all still in there. And in a fourth compartment is a set of keys, an advert from a British Waterways magazine, and a letter from them with information about a houseboat named Chaplin and Company, which she has bought with a portion of her inheritance.

  On the bus, she took her pince-nez out of her pocket, pushed them on to her nose and read through the contract. Passengers began to board and if they looked at her strangely, she refused to notice. In the A–Z she checked the route she had already memorised, to make sure.

  Odeline’s mother passed away six weeks ago, in pain but uncomplaining. Kidney stones. Her death was avoidable but she didn’t go to the doctor. She was fifty-seven and healthy in all other respects, she just didn’t want anyone prodding her like they did when she gave birth to Odeline. She hadn’t known what was wrong with her and it wasn’t in her nature to wonder. She bore pain the way she bore the rest of life, wordlessly, incuriously, and with half her mind somewhere else. Odeline’s mother’s face usually had an absent expression, like she was trying to work out an answer to something at the back of her mind. At the moment she died, this expression had lifted and her face was flooded, illuminated, as if she had finally found the pattern.

  Eunice Milk has taken very good care of her daughter. In that Post Office account sits a small fortune. There is also a valuable life insurance policy. It turns out that she made a substantial profit out of her own death. As an accountant this might have been her greatest achievement.