Beautiful Freaks (5 page)

“They’re calling you a witch
yer know
.”
I turned to face the voice. It
belonged to an old man. He responded to the look of confusion on my face. “For what you did t’ that boy!
”
He tutted as he shook his head.
“
He’s dead yer know?
They set fire to ‘im after they found ‘im
; b
e
lieved he’d been kissed by the D
evil’s whore.” He paused as he added another log to
the fire. “You don’t look the D
evil’s whor
e to me. I be thinking maybe yous
as cursed as he.”

The
vision of the
old man blurred through my tears.

“Dead?” I managed to croak.

“Aye
, dead!
And if you’ve got any sense
at all
you’ll pretend you died on that night too.”

“I want to go home,” I whimpered.

“Course you do, pet, b
ut
yer home is ‘
ere now – as long
s
you need it. Got to pull your weight tho’; I ain’t got no lady’s quarters.”

Something must have shown on my face because he laughed, “Ain’t nothing to fear on that front, lovie. Accident with a shotgun made me perfectly safe t’ be in company of young ladies and not be a risk to their virtue.”

I blushed, embarrassed
that
my fear had been so transparent.

*

I lived with the old man until enough seasons had passed to grow me into a woman
,
and for death to
come and collect
the old man’s life. I dug his grave, carving it out of the hard spring ground
with his own shovel. With each blow of metal on earth, it
brought back
another sweet-sorrow memory
of the gardener’s boy. And so it was
on that cruel April day,
I buried both of them
– one in the cold, unwelcoming ground and the other in my dark and hardened heart. I
wept for them each alike.

The old man had no family and little money, but what he did have, I filled my purse with and set off
for the city. Within weeks I’
d made a free and new life. I dared to be happy. I even dared to spend the summer falling in love with an artist who
rented
the rooms above
mine
. But when the autumn
came
and we
finally
kissed,
the ice returned.

*

I spent my life travelling. Cursed to fall in love each spring
,
and to lose the man I
loved
on our first kis
s.
When I understood that the curse was inescapable, I withdrew my heart from the world
;
let it turn cold and unloving.

One morning I found myself standing on a London dockside. I don’t remember
from
where I had sailed. Much of the time
,
I
hid my life away even from myself.
There is only so much pain and guilt one heart can handle.

I’d
never meant to fall in love with the boy, Adrian
; the one they found in Shaftsbury Avenue
. The crueller I was to him, the more he pursued me. He was
sweet and kind but most of all he made me laugh – it
had
been
such a long time since I’d laughed. We spent more and more of our days together, visiting the galleries, going to the opera, taking tea. Then one night, when we were walking home from the theatre he suddenly
spun
on his heels and stole a kiss. The moments in which we kissed were wondro
us. I’
d almost forgotten what it was to share another’s breath – to feel their life force within your own body and then stop …

Thinking there was nobody
around,
I circled his
ice-entombed
body. I had seen it too many times to still be horrified by it. Where once there had been fear, now there was just sadness and curiosity. The smog
,
which had
disguised our tryst
, had
also c
oncealed a witness to my crime.

A voice cut t
hrough the grey, swirling gloom. “
Fascinating! Truly fascinating.”

It belonged to a tall
,
dramatically
dressed woman.
Her black silk skirts were flamboyantly large for her frame, which gathering from her nipped
-
in waist
was slim. She wore a waistcoat
and
a black cravat in the fashion
of a man. And if all of this wasn’t eccentric enough, she wore a
monocle
over
her left eye and a small miniature top hat
perched on a mess of
auburn
curly hair. 

As she stepped forward I saw that she was much younger, and far prettier than
the
first impression suggested. I stood firm, my legs slig
htly apart and
my eyes hard on hers.

“
That’s a
n interesting character trait you possess,” she said
as she circled
the boy. It
was
just as if she were a patron of the arts at an opening night. “Exquisite
! P
oetic
, one might even say
.”

“Pardon?
” I stammered.

She turned from the boy and fixed me with a twinkling eye and a crooked smile, “I
believe I
said, ‘exquisite
’
and
‘poetic,’” she paused before concluding, “Yes, really rather beautiful!
”

I understood immediately it wasn’t the boy s
he was talking about. I blushed;
surprised to think
that maybe
she was flirting with me.

“An abomination, you mean,” I whispered.

“We’d better go. The theatres are closing soon and the alarm will be sounded.”

She held out her
arm
and I took it.

*

We made our way through the city, coming out in the Haymarket. We passed drunks and cutthroats, prostitutes and missionaries
,
and each one tipped their head and greeted my companion with a knowing smile and a passing courtesy.

When at last we stopped, I turned to her and asked, “Who are you
?
”

She winked and smiled, “My name is Ev
e.
You must be Alicia. Welcome home.”

3

BIRTHDAYS & MYSTERIES

Kaspian
still lay in bed even though it was well past ten o’clock. It was the morning of his eighteenth birthday
;
a Wednesday. He sighed, knowing that he ought to get up and play the part of the birthday boy, but he didn’t feel like stirring from his bed. He hadn’t slept properly in over a week
;
not since he had seen the strange woman outside the church. There had been something about her that had left a haunting impression, and he was now plagued by images of her in both his daydreams and his sleep. It wasn’t an unpleasant disease as far as diseases went. One of the main symptoms was being unable to last for more than an hour without imagining her in various situations and stages of dishevelled undress. Whatever attraction there was to her, his body seemed to be quite literally going mad for it.  He smiled to himself at the thought and allowed himself at least another twenty minutes in bed – it was his birthday after all.

A
knock at the doo
r broke the silence of the room and caused
Kaspian
to snap
the covers of his sketchbook together
. In a flurry of tangled sheets, he shoved the book under the lip of his mattress.
Even though he was now a man, it would not be fitting
for his patron to be informed that he had been caught spending his morning in bed
drawing figures of women
,
especially ones
that were
entirely naked except for a monocle.

“Come in!
” Kaspian called as he composed himself by the window,
pulling together the ties of his dressing gown and running a hand through his black hair. He knew it would be Heartlock’s butler, Letterton; a strange fellow but one for whom Kaspian had a great fondness.

“Morning, Sir
and … Happy Birthday!” Letterton said as he walked across the room, holding out a large buttonhole Malmaison Carnation in his gloved hands. “Just a little token for your birthday, I hope you don’t think me presumptuous.”

Kaspian reached out and took the perfectly formed carnation in his hand. It smelt deliciously of cloves.

“Thank you, Letterton, that’s terribly kind of you,” Kaspian replied with a smile.

“
Mr Heartlock
,
sends his felicitations and wonders if you’d like to join him for
a late
breakfast?”

“
Please inform him I will be with him presently.”
Kaspian
ended his response with a slightly awkward cough – the customary
sign
al
for dismissing servants
. As
the grey
-
haired gent made
his
exit through the doorway backwards with his idiosyncratic
and slightly outlandish bow, Kaspian couldn’t resist a smile
.

When Letterton finally left the room, Kaspian looked down at the
Malmaison Carnation
in his hand. It would have cost the old boy half a day’s wages.
It was a huge bloom, taking up most of the space of his palm, white, and carrying
a heady scent.
Kaspian always wore a Malmaison Carnation in the fashion of the disgraced writer
W
ilde. Heartlock found this small act of social subversion irritating, informing Kaspian repeatedly that
,
‘it was a nod to ind
ulgent aestheticism – just like the
occult.’
  Heartlock had no time for the infamous Wilde and his
‘decadent, dandy ways
.’
When Kaspian had attempted to extol the merits of Wilde’s notorious work, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray
,’
Heartlock responded with the simple voice of religious ignorance,
‘
It
is the work of the devil disguised
by a thin
veil of moral learning.’

Heartlock’s disapproval only served to make the work more precious to Kaspian, but just like the sketchpad
,
it remained tucked under the mattress.

He
made his way down to the breakfast room. Heartlock
, tired of waiting,
had started without him and was half way down his boiled egg. To the side of him sat a small
stack
of beautifully w
rapped parcels – clearly they’
d been wrapped
by the woman
at the shop.

“Happy Birthday, Kaspian,
” Heartlock said through a large and genuine smile. “Man at last.” He chuckled. “I bet there were times when you feared you might not make it under my
less-than-practiced
care.”

Kaspian bent over and kissed Heartlock on the cheek before flicking out the tails of his morning suit and taking a seat next to him.

“I never doubted you. You have been the best father a boy could wish for.”

Heartlock reached out a liver
-
spotted hand and tapped the top of Kaspian’s. “And as a man, will I still be a father you wish for?
” Sadness flitted over the old man’s face. “After all,
you’re free to leave if you wish. Technically my guardianship is over.”

“Of course
I would like to stay
, Sir. I
cannot
think of leaving you.”

Heartlock let out a hearty laugh and slapped the table, causing his spoon to clatter
against his plate.
“Maybe you want to reserve such declarations until you have opened your birthday correspondence.”

“Gifts first – correspondence is for the grown up world and I do believe I still have three hours of my childhood left.”

Heartlock
offered the gifts, one by one,
taking delight in Kaspian’s reactions. Mainly the gifts were books of a scientific and technological nature
;
heavy tomes written by weighty brains. When the pile had been reduced to just one small book
-
sized parcel, Heartlock reached onto his lap and produced a
nother gift.
There had been little point to wrapping it
,
as it was obvio
us from its distinctly walking-cane shape as to what it was. But
what the beautiful silk
wrapping did disguise was the
p
olished ball of quartz crystal that made its topper.