The yellow silk scarf part 2a
Title: The Yellow Silk Scarf 2/3
Author: Jackie Thomas
Date: 10 January 2010
Category: Noelian AU
Pairing: Noel/Julian
Summary: A story set in Soho and the London music hall during the 1890s
Word count for 2a and 2b: 6000/18000
Warning: RPS though very AU. Cross dressing. Man Corsets
Rating: PG13
Disclaimer: Although this story contains real people it is fictional in all respects. Also Noel and Julian were never Victorian music hall artistes (despite what they might say).
The poem is Symphony in Yellow by Oscar Wilde
Part 1a
Part 1b
Part Two
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf
And like a yellow silken scarf
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
Noel never spoke about his meeting with Mallory, or about their subsequent meetings over the next two months. Julian was anxious about it, but he never got clear answers to his questions, so in the end, stopped asking.
In every other respect, he was enjoying his new life. After a week the Palace found a replacement pianist, and Julian left the orchestra to work permanently with Noel. At first the act remained the same, but gradually they introduced the new songs they were writing together. They also developed their Mister and Missus routine which the audience loved, even though they presented a marriage that made Punch and Judy’s look harmonious.
Their partnership, in reality, soon found its own eccentric rhythm. Julian woke early each morning and left for Rose Street, taking the omnibus with the clerks and shop keepers when he could afford it, and walking when he could not.
He had his own key now and he let himself into Noel’s rooms, where he went directly to the piano. He had the next few hours to himself to practice and compose, watched over by Noel’s menagerie of creatures. They crept into his writing too; he found his compositions turning stranger and wilder as his mind tuned into their calls and howls, their scratching claws and flapping wings.
Noel refused to consider rising earlier than noon, so Julian became used to his surfacing dreams providing an accompaniment to his work. He also got used to a sleep-hazy Noel, at last awake and in his questionable nightwear, following the mysterious paths of his waking rituals; all to do with tea, hair and excavating for lost clothes.
They would usually rehearse for an hour or two in the afternoon, and then, on days when there was no matinee, see to whatever business required attention before it was time to leave for the evening shows.
To Julian’s disquiet, Noel often spent this time with Mallory. He knew a meeting was scheduled because Noel became silent and preoccupied. Bathing and dressing carefully before he left; intent and seriousness replacing his usual joy in the task. When they met again, at their first engagement, he would only ever admit to having taken tea.
Julian knew Mallory often came to see the show, but Noel took care to keep them apart. On these nights, Mallory’s Brougham carriage would be waiting at the stage door for Noel, and their customary post-show visit to the Crown had to be foregone.
Autumn turned to winter, and Christmas day was a rare, free weekday. They spent it together anyway, eating goose and steamed pudding around Noel’s landlady’s table with the other Rose Street lodgers. Julian, trying not to catch Noel’s eye while Heinrich, their resident anarchist, tried to persuade him to the theory of spontaneous order and sell him a pamphlet.
The white cat curled up on Julian’s lap as he sat at the landlady’s piano afterwards, and he and Noel entertained the group with songs. It was a mismatched crowd but Julian almost felt as though there was somewhere he belonged.
~*~
January 1895 saw winter at its deepest. The daylight hardly seemed to penetrate, and solid ice formed in the water jug each morning. The first snow fell in the middle of the month, starting as Julian made his morning omnibus journey, settling quickly and thickly on the pavements and melting on the horses’ manes.
That morning, Noel woke after Julian had been at the piano for only an hour. He lay awake listening to him play, only rising when Julian stopped to rest and light a pipe.
At the bedroom window, Noel watched the snow turning the disordered landscape of rooftops clean and white.
“I’m going to the Square,” he said. “To look at the snow before it goes to sludge. Come with me, Jude.”
“All right,” Julian said, a little reluctantly. “Aren’t we going to work on West End Wolves?”
“It can wait an hour,” Noel said, amused at his dedication. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“You want an eel, boy?” The pea soup man shouted to Julian as they passed his stall. His top hat was trimmed with snow and the bird that habitually roosted on his shoulder fluffed its feathers and withdrew into itself, staring out with black beads for eyes. “What about you, young lady?”
“What about you getting your monocle polished?” Noel called back.
“Why is he always here?” Julian asked, not expecting an answer.
“His name’s Hitcher,” Noel said, tipping back his bus conductor’s cap, so flakes fell against his face. “Mallory’s paying him to spy on me.”
“Are you sure?” Julian asked, shocked.
“He can’t help it, he’s possessive.”
“How can you be so easy about it?”
Noel sighed. “I’ll tell you all, if you want to hear it.”
The garden at the centre of the square was deserted but for a fluid population of street children conducting snow wars across the empty expanses. When a new front in the battle opened on to the street, Noel and Julian had the square to themselves.
They walked together, making the first tracks in the untouched fall where the children had not ventured. It fleetingly reminded Julian of the moors outside Whitby. When snow fell there, the roads were impassable for days and the whole town came out to help dig sheep from the drifts.
“I’m thinking about going back to Mallory,” Noel said when they found a seat in a little sheltered arbour.
“Back to him? Do you mean he would manage the act?”
“That,” Noel said carefully. “But not only that. I would go and live with him.”
“But who is he?” Julian exclaimed. “Why has he this power over you?”
“Do you want to know the story?”
“I...yes.”
“Are you sure, Jude? Because once you’ve heard it, you won’t be able to unhear it and I don’t want to chase you away.”
“You won’t,” he said. “I mean it this time.”
“All right.” But he did not seem to know where to start. “Let’s get a drink, shall we? You’ll need one in front of you for this, and I’m not from Yorkshire so I’m about to freeze to death out here.”
They got no further than Hercules Pillars, the pub at the end of Rose Street, settling at their usual table by its fire with their drinks. The pub was beginning to fill with a lunchtime crowd of working men and, heads close, they spoke in lowered voices.
“It may be hard for you to believe,” Noel began. “But I wasn’t always the respectable citizen you see before you.”
“I’m shocked.”
“Yes I thought you would be.” He wound his hair around his finger and began. “Remember I told you my parents were in the New World? Well, they left for America when I was sixteen. I grew up in Kent, and I’d been working in their tailoring business until then. I didn’t want to go with them, so before they left, they bought me an apprenticeship with one of the tailors in Lambs Conduit Street. I often wonder how life would have turned out if I had followed that path, but it came to nothing. Something happened and I lost my position.”
“What happened?”
“Another story for another time. But it was bad enough that I couldn’t get another respectable position. But I was young and hardworking, and I could get less respectable jobs. I worked at the penny gaffs round your way in Waterloo and the Old Kent Road. First collecting entrance fees and working back stage, and then taking part in some of the theatricals. If you can call them that. You know the places, don’t you? Some of the entertainments are of the lowest kind.”
The stagehand wages were poor, and we all slept in the room they were using for a theatre; a freezing basement below a pub. The pay wasn’t enough to live on and I needed to make more money. I soon discovered I could earn a month’s wage in a night by going outside with some of the customers.”
He waited for Julian to understand his meaning. “You mean you -?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, this isn’t a pretty story. But I had long known my preferences did not lie with women, so it wasn’t a particular hardship to get on my knees in a back alley. And you are looking confused, Jude. Bless you for that.”
Julian had not actually considered it possible for a man not to desire women. He had thought of what went on between men in the secret clubs, and in places like the lavatory of the Crown, as a kind of hobby. Like croquet. He decided, just this once, not to reveal his ignorance.
“Go on, Noel.”
“Anyway, one of these men who came looking to buy a boy was John Mallory, and he noticed me. The club he owned put on female impersonator acts, and he offered me a job there as a waiter. We would all dress as ladies and go among the customers, selling them drinks and charging a shilling for a dance, or whatsoever they wanted. When I was younger I looked very feminine and some of them like that. Maybe it makes them feel they are not going with a boy at all.”
The story was already worse than Julian had anticipated. He thought of his father, the only teacher the poor children had in their town. He remembered how he would listen patiently with a grave expression and clasped hands, to the tales told to him by his pupils and their families, how he would do his best to help, and never chastise or judge.
“Do I go on?” Noel asked, catching his expression.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s all right,”
Noel smiled gratefully. “Mallory took a shine to me. He told me not to dance with the customers anymore, and had me stay at his house; a beautiful place in Bloomsbury, which he still has. When I was at home he had me wear women’s gowns and made all his servants call me ‘Miss’.”
“Good God,” Julian murmured.
“I didn’t mind the dresses,” Noel said. “I’m a hopeless case, Jude, you know that. The other business I just found funny. Of course I had to sleep in his bed, as well. That didn’t bother me too much either; I had known what it was like to be hungry and homeless and now I was sleeping in clean sheets and dining like a king. Please don’t look so shocked. I couldn’t bear it if I disgusted you.”
“You don’t,” he answered honestly. “It’s just we don’t have this sort of thing in Whitby.”
“I don’t advise you to take a wager on that.” Noel paused to swallow a mouthful of brandy as he found the right words to continue. “The nicest thing Mallory did for me was pay for singing lessons. I think he wanted to turn me into his own accomplished lady. Eventually I went from being a waiter to a performer and Lady Patricia was born.”
I learnt his kindness was on condition of complete obedience. I had to do everything he wanted. If I didn’t I found myself locked in my bedroom, in true romantic heroine style. Imagine that! I started to resent him; I wasn’t even twenty years old, after all. I began to socialise with the customers, just as he had told me not to. I was punished, of course, this time with a whip.”
“Noel.”
“Don’t get upset,” Noel whispered. “It was a long time ago.”
This was about the time the club was raided by the police. You’ve already heard this part of the story; Mallory was arrested for keeping a disorderly house.”
They arrested staff and customers too, and it was only by good fortune I wasn’t there at the time. I decided to leave, and luckily, I acted quickly, because although the club was shut down, Mallory escaped criminal charges. I took what I could carry, and what money I could find and left London by the railways. I didn’t see him again for more than a decade.”
“Where did you go?”
“Everywhere. I went to Glasgow first; it was the furthest place I could think of. I got a job in one of the music halls there, and then I travelled with a troupe. It wasn’t the Savoy, but I learnt my trade. I met Lizzy in Manchester when she joined the company as wardrobe mistress. I used to help her with the costumes and we got on well. I really did love her, I thought marrying her would be a way to put the past behind me. It worked for a while, but you can’t pretend forever.”
We came back to London two years ago. I’d been travelling for nine years, by then. I had started getting offers to take the Lady to the West End theatres, and Lizzy wanted to settle somewhere so she could open up a shop.”
I never thought I’d see Mallory again. I thought he would have been transported or sent to prison, but he had been living freely between Paris and London and managing his business. It didn’t take long for him to find me when he returned home this time.”
“And the first thing he did was break up your marriage.”
“No, the first thing he did was poach my pianist. He wanted to make a point.”
“And you are seriously considering going back to him?”
“He wants me, Julian,” Noel said, his voice so low as to be almost inaudible. “No one else does. I’m thirty years old, I’m not a pretty child any more and still he wants me, I never expected that.”
“But can’t you see, he thinks of you as his property?”
“He wants me to sing and he wants me to wear silk. Those are the two things I like doing most.”
“And what if, one day, you do something he disapproves of?”
“What happens in any marriage?” Noel sighed. “I don’t expect you to understand. If you’re like me, there aren’t many choices.”
Julian had actually forgotten he was having a conversation about a practice he never usually allowed himself to even think about. He did not dwell on it, all he knew was he could not allow Noel to give up his freedom to this man.
“Noel, please,” he said. “He’s dangerous; you know it better than anyone.”
“He’s changed since then, we both have. He’s respectful and considerate and I’m not so rebellious as I was. I’m dining with him tonight, after we finish at the Royalty, come with us.”
“Noel, I -”
“Come with us. You’ll need to meet him if he is to manage the act.”
“I have met him, remember.”
“Please, Jude.”
~*~
The request was made so urgently, Julian could not refuse, but he was not happy to find Mallory’s Brougham waiting for them outside the theatre when their last show of the evening was over.
The snow fall of the morning had been flattened into ice and the driver walked the nervous horse the short distance to Kettners, the animal’s snorting breaths loud in the muffled quiet of the snow covered city night.
Julian was more discomfited than usual in the evening suit he had worn on stage, but Noel was lively and talkative. He wore his blue velvet coat and, under that, a burgundy smoking jacket liberated from the Palace’s costume department, his scarf was artfully draped and a silk rose blossomed from his button hole. For reasons Julian had never felt strong enough to explore, Noel had taken to carrying a doctor’s bag about with him. This he clutched to his side like a faithful dog, the only sign he gave of nervousness.
Mallory appeared relaxed and at ease, perfectly groomed in his dress suit and great-coat. Once again Julian was struck by his imposing presence. He had charisma, but there was steel in his pale blue gaze; the eyes of a man who could take a whip to a young lover.
The word lover, even silently in his mind, brought a flush to his cheek. He finally, vividly understood this was what the two men sharing the carriage with him had been to each other, and were now for all he knew. Noel appeared unbidden in his imagination, on an ivy covered bed, naked and breathless, his creatures come to life around him, Julian’s own arms reaching for him.
Dining out was a rare event for Julian, and he had no experience of a restaurant like this. The private room Mallory had reserved was papered in muted gold and green and lit by twinkling electric lights in gilt candelabra. It made too small a space to be comfortable in. The menu in French brought him out in a cold sweat, as did the quantity and variety of wine glasses before him.
In the end Mallory ordered for them all, and course after course arrived. Sole, slices of tongue, and chicken in rich sauce were apparently only the beginning. Each course had its own wine, and each its own special pieces of cutlery.
Mallory also took responsibility for the conversation, giving the appearance of gracious interest in someone far lower down the social scale.
“So Mr Barratt, where do you reside?”
“I have a room in Brixton.”
“Goodness, how do you stand it? The factories in Lambeth and Southwark release the most noxious filth.”
“Then, why do you visit south of the river, Mr Mallory?” Julian asked evenly.
“Mal lives near the British Museum,” Noel cut in. “He thinks it makes him an intellectual.”
“And Noel believes living among the foreigners and revolutionaries means he can break all the rules.” Noel laughed, but Julian heard a clear note of rebuke.
“And do you find work easy to come by?” Mallory asked.
“I’ve been fortunate and never had to search for it,” Julian replied. “I got my place in the Palace orchestra soon after I came to London, and now I’m with Mr Fielding.”
“When Fielding becomes one of my clients, I can see about getting you a new position. There is always a need for a pianist of your calibre.”
“Why would I need a new position?” Julian asked. It had not occurred to him Mallory might, in taking Noel on, break up their working partnership. Evidently it had not occurred to Noel either.
“What’s that, Mal? Julian’s part of the act now.”
Mallory put down his champagne with studied casualness. “I have plans for your female character. They do not involve comedy, and you will be accompanied by my musicians.”
“You don’t understand,” Noel said, more firmly, the seasoned performer in him finally awakening. “Lady Patricia can’t do without Julian. The audience comes for both.”
“I understand perfectly,” Mallory said coldly. “But if that is the case then it would be impossible for you to become one of my...clients.”
“Mal?” Noel said. “You don’t mean it. I thought you liked us.”
“You’re still welcome to come to me of course. But I’m afraid I can’t use this good gentleman.”
“I see.” Noel was silent for a moment, staring into his plate of asparagus. Then he looked up. “I’m sorry, Jude.”
Julian said nothing, surprised by the wave of anticipatory sorrow washing over him.
“I wasted your time today.” Noel got to his feet. “We should have been rehearsing our new song. Perhaps we can start afresh tomorrow.”
“Aye,” he said, surprised again by the turn of events. “I see no reason not to. Good evening, Mr Mallory.”
He pulled loose his bow tie, and followed Noel out of the private room without looking back.
Outside, Noel walked slowly away through a fresh fall of snow, flakes settling in his hair before melting away. Julian lingered by the restaurant doorway, wondering if he should leave him to his thoughts, wondering if he might be regretting the unconsidered decision he had just made.
Noel stopped and turned when he realised he was alone. He trudged back to Julian.
“Come, Captain,” he said softly. He linked his arm with Julian’s and they walked together through the snow-bright Soho streets.
“I know I’ve made a fool of myself,” he said later, after last bells at the Crown, as they went their separate ways at Trafalgar Square. “It’s just there are some things I don’t want to always live without.
End of part 2a
Go to part 2b