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Chapter Twenty
The next week passed in a flurry of activities as Carmen oversaw the repairing before she headed to the Davenport mansion for the lessons. After she came back, the rest of the evening would be spent rehearsing music and songs and getting everything ready for their debut performance.
To manage her time, she had to wake up at the crack of dawn and by the time she came to bed at night, she passed out cold almost immediately. Carmen was glad to be kept busy as it meant that she didn’t have time for worrying thoughts anymore.
Carmen yawned as she watched Nora play the piano. She nodded when Nora asked for something, but she was barely paying attention. In her mind, she was ticking off the things that still needed to be taken care of. She had left the charge to Lily, but she wondered if she remembered that she needed to ask the workers to put up the screen behind the hall’s stage.
Nora stopped playing. Carmen turned to her pupil. “Did you get stuck on a note?”
She shook her head. “No, but Miss Black, if you don’t mind me asking, are you quite all right?”
“I’m fine,” Carmen lied. The logistics of everything that accompanied the looming date of the opening date of the music hall lay heavy on her mind.
“You don’t look fine. The cook told me about lavender tea that is supposed to soothe both your mind and bones. Do you want me to get some for you?”
Carmen shook her head. “It’s just that I simply haven’t got any time to stop and breathe. After the lessons, I’m meeting some of my friends to go down to the streets and give out more pamphlets.”
“That sounds like an exhausting task. I wish I could help you in some manner.”
“You can,” Carmen said. “I would love it if you came down there on the first day. I’ll even have a special seat saved for you so that you can have one of the best views of the hall.”
“You will do that?” Nora beamed at her.
“Of course,” Carmen said with a weary smile. All she wanted to do was to rest her head on the bed. But she couldn’t afford to lose time. “You’ll be the guest of honor.”
“We would definitely come.” Arthur’s voice came from the door. Carmen looked up. She hadn’t realized that he was there till he had spoken.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said. Something undecipherable crossed his face at her address. He cleared his throat. “You don’t have to thank me.”
But he was wrong. Shehada lot to thank him for. Her heart sped up as he stepped closer and she hated herself for it. She had fallen prey to her stupid heart once and she couldn’t afford to do it again.
“We will be there to support you,” Arthur said. Nora clapped her hands. “Yes, we will. I’ll even tell Mrs. Cooper to accompany us there.”
Carmen smiled at Arthur and he smiled down at her. Something passed between them at that moment but maybe it was only a figment of her imagination. When she closed her eyes, she could foolishly and stupidly believe that this was the family that she had dreamed of when she was younger. But that faded away as soon as reality returned. Arthur would never be hers and Nora wasn’t her daughter either. Her heart ached at the thought.
She excused herself from the lesson and Nora let her go. As she walked down the street towards where she knew Lily and the rest were waiting for her, a strange feeling came over her and she had the keen feeling that someone was watching her. She whipped around to look at her back but recognized nobody in the throng of the mid-afternoon crowd. She shook her head at the thought. Out of everything else, this wasn’t the time to be paranoid.
Then she spotted Elaine, Kate and the rest of them on the other side of the street. But as soon as she got to them, their conversation died down almost abruptly. She knew immediately that something was wrong. Some of the women looked at her strangely. She had the keen feeling that they had been talking about her. She was surprised to see that Remi had accompanied them and wondered if she had spoken something about her and Arthur to them.
“Here you go,” Queenie said rather coldly as she handed her a few pamphlets. She didn’t get why they were being so odd, but she didn’t have the time to ponder over it either. This was the time to act.
Pushing these thoughts out of her head, she walked to various people and explained to them about the music hall. Most of them refused to take the pamphlets or just plain ignored them. It was frustrating but Carmen wasn’t giving up anytime soon.
“Excuse me sir,” she said to the man crossing her. To her surprise, he stopped and even took a pamphlet from her. Carmen felt a flutter of hope.
“What’s this about?”
Carmen stepped closer to him. “We have a music hall that’s opening next week, and we would love it if you came down to visit us. The prices are nominal, but the performance will be enthralling as any, performed by all working-class women.”
She could see him staring at her bosom as she spoke and tried to ignore that. “What can I do to have you pretty thing instead?” the man said with a leer. “How many coins will make your legs spread for me?” He tried to grab her hand, but Carmen’s instincts took over and she slapped his wrist away from her. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Don’t waste my time, whore,” the man said. “I don’t have time for this nonsense and it’s better if you take this stupid idea out of your head. Nobody wants to see a whore when she isn’t trying to get naked.” He spat at her feet before walking away. Carmen shook her head in dismay.
“Are you all right?” Queenie asked, rushing to her.
Carmen nodded. She felt shaken at his words, but she knew that she couldn’t express that to the other women, lest they lost their morale. “There will always be men like that. But they aren’t who we are looking for.”
They spent the rest of the hour going from person to person, handing out pamphlets and giving them more information about their music hall. Some of them seemed genuinely interested to hear what they had to say but they were ignored for the most part. It was even worse than the first time they had started handing out pamphlets. It was almost as if the city’s interest in them had faded over only a matter of few weeks.
