I wasn’t supposed to do it, of course. My mother was expecting me home. But after I’d felt what I felt when I took Gloria’s hand, I could no more have walked away from her than I could have walked on the moon. After a lifetime of being strange, of being alienated from everyone except for my mother, I had met someone who knew.
I found myself in Soho, following Gloria to her studio flat. I eyed the Home for Fallen Women on the corner half in suspicion, wondering whether it swallowed up girls who didn’t do what their mothers told them, girls who followed other girls they’d just met into seedy London neighborhoods.
The ground-floor psychic’s shop was shuttered; this was the woman, Gloria told me, who only inhabited the place when she came up with money to pay the rent. OUR PRECIOUS BOYS DO NOT DIE, a hand-lettered sign in the window read. THEY WISH TO SPEAK TO US. I forced my gaze away; my mother and I had been inundated with mourning women for the past four years. Widows and bereaved mothers were a medium’s largest pool of clients, and the war had created a boom. Tell me my son is happy. Tell me he did not suffer. Tell me he thought of his mother before he died. Tell me. Tell me.
At the first-floor landing, Gloria put a finger to her lips and motioned for me to be quiet, as if she wished to avoid someone. It didn’t work. As we passed, the first-floor door popped open and a mannish woman poked her head out. “You’re late,” she said, turning her suspicious eyes on me. “Who’s this?”
“Davies, dear, this is a friend of mine.”
The woman’s look of shock was unmistakable. “The hell she is. Who is she really?”
“A bosom sister,” replied Gloria. “A fly in my web. A deadly rival. I’m in love with her and I’ve decided to give up men.”
Davies’s eyes narrowed as I gaped at Gloria in openmouthed shock. “Am I supposed to pick one of those?” she grumbled. “Or none of them?”
“Whatever you like.”
“God, you’re being difficult again. Is it your time of month?”
Again, I stared openmouthed.
“Perhaps, sweetheart,” Gloria said. “You’d know better than I, wouldn’t you? You keep the schedule, after all.”
“Fine.” Davies threw her hands in the air in frustration. “I can’t deal with you when you’re in this mood. I’m only trying to tell you that Number Thirty-One wants to see you at seven.”
“Tell Number Thirty-One I am indisposed.” Gloria hefted her valise and turned to continue up the stairs, her legs flashing before me as I scrambled to follow. “Ellie and I have things to discuss.”
Once in her flat, Gloria dropped her handbag and coat in a mess and disappeared behind the thin curtain of her bedroom. I stared at my surroundings, at the clothes spilling from the wardrobe, the mermaid painting on the wall. She lived alone here, I realized. No mother, no flatmates. Gloriously alone, like a man. I eyed the séance table. “Who is Number Thirty-One?”
“A client,” came Gloria’s voice from behind the curtain. “They expect complete privacy, so Davies and I assign them numbers, just in case.”
“You really do this for a living?” I asked, tugging off a glove and touching the séance table. It vibrated under my hand, as if attached to an electrical wire. I pulled my hand away.
A hand came up and pulled the bedroom curtain aside. Gloria had shed her skirt and blouse and now wore a sleeveless dress of midnight black, belted just above the hips. Her body was long, sleek, and slender, with a narrow waist and breasts that sat high and round under the bodice. The hem of the dress swept down just past the knee, and I could see her stockings and high heels. It was a shocking length for 1919. Over the next few years, I would watch Gloria’s hemlines rise even faster than London fashion allowed.
“Darling,” she said, something steely flashing across her eyes, “I not only do this for a living, but I’m the best there is.”
“And you know my mother?”
“Not personally, no. But I know who she is, just like I know about every skimmer and showgirl between here and Calais. I make it my business to know about my competition.”
The idea of my mother, who almost never left the house, competing with this girl made me laugh out loud. “What did you do, hire an investigator to look in our windows? You can’t possibly be serious.”
Gloria’s eyes narrowed and she raised one penciled eyebrow, an extraordinary expression that was both witty and menacing. “I assure you, I’m serious,” she replied. “It isn’t personal, but I’m afraid I’m rather competitive. Even that hag on the ground floor is competition. I steal most of her clients, by the way. That’s why she can’t pay the rent.”
I rubbed the palms of my hands together, trying to get rid of the lingering sensation from the séance table. “All right. It just seems rather bloodthirsty to me.”
“I’m a girl on my own, darling. I pay the bills myself, and I keep myself in lipstick and heels. Are you telling me that The Fantastique isn’t in business to make money?”
“Of course she is,” I said. “If she didn’t take clients, she’d be doing char work, especially since my father died. But people are grieving, and there are frauds everywhere. We— My mother means to help people.”
“How noble.” Gloria moved to a side table, picked up her cigarette case, and turned it over in the long fingers of one hand, the silver glinting in the dim electric light. “Nothing I do helps people. It only makes them worse.” She raised her eyes to me. “How surprised do you think I am that The Fantastique has passed her talents on to her daughter?”
I thought of the sensation I felt when we’d shaken hands, and my cheeks flushed. Even though I lived with my mother, there was so much I didn’t know, so much I couldn’t ask her. I was desperate for answers. “How long have you known?” I asked Gloria. “About yourself, I mean. How early did you know what you could do?”