Credit obviously to Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.
I have tried something new with this one. Most of the spoken lines included in this story are directly from the musical (I used a mix of lines from the Broadway show and the movie [adding one or two of my own]), and then paired it with actions / character development of my own interpretation.
'Epiphany's Companion'
When Beadle Bamford comes round at last, leading the Judge off his arm, Nell is in the window, scrubbing onions. As they pass by she finds herself going on tip-toe so as she can see them right, craning her neck. Turpin sees her and stops, tips his hat with a manner all perturbed. Nell's feet go flat again and she nods once, turns away. When she looks up again, they've gone up the side-stairs.
It's nothing but she's curious, really. Blasted man hasn't been round this edge of the city in ages. He used to come and stand in the street half the day long, every day or near to it. Things changed, though, and apart from to-day, she's not seen him in years. She rather liked it that way, come to think; a good riddance it was to the awful man. It's only on account of Mr Todd up-stairs that she even has cause to think of Judge Turpin any-more. Still, half an hour's wait and he'll not be by any-time again. And perhaps Mr Todd will be sated then, will be all right after all. And both them things will be lovely, won't they?
She tosses an onion from one hand to the other, absent. That one's done; she sets it down in the pile next to all the others she's scrubbed clean. She takes up the next one she has to do – she uses quite the lot of onions, now-a-days; it's all she can really do to mask the rancid meat, and, well, it don't do half the bit of good she rather likes pretending it do. Still, she is trying; she's always tried.
While Nell works the damp rag over her onions, she tilts one side of her head up-wards, tucking the odd few strands of hair behind her ear, so as she can hear proper what's going on up-stairs. It's some-thing she used to do quite a bit of the time, in the old days; and, well, it could be said that lately she's picked back up the habit.
She hears Mr Todd talking to Judge Turpin – funny, that them two should be having a damn near civil conversation, and after all this time, too. Of course, nothing's been put in the open – and, mind you, nothing will. It's just, the whole thing is mentionable odd, and so she listens.
Like is usual, she can't hear what it is he's saying, but the tones and sounds carry down quite clear. Up-stairs, he's inviting, soothing, satisfying ... personable. She hears Turpin's tone tight and unsure at first, and then relax with a bit of gentle flattery from Mr Todd. A few drops of water fall from the onion onto her palm, and then run like dewy tears all the way down her arm while she watches, troubled. He's got a whole sea of motives, of course, for bothering with his pleasantries to the Judge. She knows it well, but it don't stop her half wishing he'd talk to her like that – just the once, even if he was going to drag that lovely blade of his a-cross her throat after. But that is a morbid thought, she reminds herself, and shakes it from her head.
Just when she's got herself back to the onions for half a minute, all sudden she hears the sickening creak that tells her someone is tromping all the way up her side-stairs. She sets the rag down and hastens out the stoop, but she's too late; she only catches sight on the back of a sailor's coat as it disappears in Mr T.'s shop.
'Oh, dear,' she mutters to her-self, and stays put on the stoop. This can't end pleasant, that's sure; and Mr Todd will take an awful bad turn, that's sure too. And then he'll need her so much more than the onions do, not that he'll know it, mind; but she'll be there all the same. She waits for the crashing, but the yelling starts first: all three of them are up there shouting the after-noon away about pretty little Johanna.
'Johanna, elope with you?' she hears Judge Turpin fume and storm to the sailor boy. She don't dare even move a muscle, but her ears follow the sound. She can feel the heat crackling in poor Mr T.'s shop from the stoop where she stands, still queerly motionless. 'Deceiving slut,' she hears him say next, clear as day, and it's that what makes her move at last, back into her shop to do some fuming of her own, not thinking before she slams the door shut as hard as she can.
She stops for half a moment, making certain she's not changed their attention. But, no; the three men up-stairs have not even noticed her out-burst, carrying on up there like they are. As she shuts it all out, the last thing she hears is Judge Turpin, doing more shouting about how he'll be locking poor dear Johanna away some-where her sailor boy won't find her, for all his good wishes other-wise.
Nell don't seem to be able to get her breath, and all sudden like she's so angry she can't see but in scarlet. She paces the shop, on the way shutting the door what goes on to the parlour. She has just took in a little boy off the dead Italian (along with the Signor's lovely red coin-purse and the three quid still in it), but the boy isn't in the shop any-more. Well, she had gave him the whole bottle of gin for this week, so perhaps he's drunk hisself silly and wandered off. She peers through the window into the parlour; in fact, he's a-sleep on the floor. Which is for the best, really, but still she takes her careful steps so as the poor little thing mightn't wake to catch her in such a humour. She don't get like this often – she's not the one in this house as don't see but in red and silver and bloody rubies – but hearing the Judge talk like that about Johanna, she just can't help herself.
It isn't just on account of her being Mr Todd's daughter; though, of course, that is how she pass it off to him. It weren't supposed to be Turpin to bring up Johanna after the Barkers was both gone, you see. Once, when Mr Barker was in Australia and Mrs Barker was in arsenic, her mind had come up just hardly long enough to put her daughter's charge in the hands of Mr and Mrs Lovett, before slipping down again to no mind at all; and Nell has never seen traces of her since. Still, it was quite clearly what she'd wanted, and she's sure that Mr Barker would have wanted so too if he'd had a thing to say about it. (Mr Todd, likely as not, wouldn't care much for the idea, but all these years later, there's no reason at all he need to hear of it.)
Nell and her husband had took Johanna in their lives, had took her in their hearts. Nell had run her shop with Johanna on one hip, and Albert had played with Johanna every night when he'd come home from office. They had both gave her out affections like sweets; they had loved her just exactly as much as they had their own daughters who had died, rest them all. Only for, six month down the line, to have her taken away by authorities at the word of Judge Turpin. And what could they do? Shouting and crying were no good, though Nell did her share of the both. You couldn't argue with a court order, particularly not using the preferences of a woman who barking bloody mad. And so they had watched Johanna go – Nell hysterical, Albert holding her up.
Johanna was not even near two years old when she was picked off Fleet Street, and so Nell knows, sensibly, that she could not possibly remember her, but to this day she don't love her a bit the less. So often she has thought of her – what misfortune, to be raised by that vile man! Nell will concede to feeling a bit ill when-ever she's set two eyes on the Turpin house; she would not dare to imagine what things goes on in there. Turpin's behaviour to-day only serves to make her more sure of worries like that. All these years she's loathed herself for not being able to save the dear little girl she came to think of like a daughter of her own. Which, of course, is one of ever so many reasons she has never said a word against Mr Todd and his hard-headed rage. She certainly don't approve of murder, but she supposes it has its place, like every-thing; and if they can do even one thing, late though it might be, to help Johanna ... well, that'll be one good thing come out of it.
Eyes still set a-flame, she watches out the shop window as Johanna's sailor runs down the side-stairs, trailed on close by the Judge. The two of them go barrelling off into the distance, not a bit mindful of the rest of the streets who watch them. No sooner have they gone than Nell bolts out the shop door and hastens up the stairs. Poor Mr Todd will be in such awful form, she knows good and well. He will need her near him, whether or not he will know as much. Which he won't, of course, but that don't stop it being ever so true.
She raps quick on the door, out of habit, before she comes in the room. She finds him standing quite motionless in the middle of the floor, back rigid as a blazing hot poker, razor still blinding white in his clenching hand. She wants to tell him so many things; she wants to plead with him to put it down, but all she can manage is: 'All that running and shouting – what is it now, dear?' Incredible, the silly sodding things she says to him, when she fears too much to say what she knows she damn well ought. She seeks to save him, and she thinks some-times that she might have done so already, could she but take the courage to say the things she knows he needs to hear.
'I had him,' he says to the room, to hisself, but surely not to her. 'And then –'
'The sailor busted in, I know.' Quickly, she turns to shut the shop door behind her. She can feel his dark humour turning the whole room red, and so she will use her quibbling words to ward it off; she will try her best job to distract him. 'I saw them both running down the stairs, and I said to meself: "The fat's in the fire, for sure –"'
'I had him!' His tone breaks to a high-pitched scream she has never yet heard from him. It takes her a-back for half a moment, but then she remembers herself. There is nothing she wants if not to save him, and she knew from the start it wasn't to be a pretty sort of saving. No matter what things he might do these next few moments, she will not leave him like this.
He snaps his gaze straight into hers. He is looking her right in the face, but she has the odd sense he still can't see her. 'His throat was bare beneath my hand,' he says, eyes glazed and tone thick.
She makes a move to draw herself nearer him, both hands out, going just as slow as she fancies he will need her to. 'There, there, dear,' she supplicates to him, 'calm down –'
'No!' – that terrible scream again, setting the whole house on fire. 'I had him.'
He is a man so very easily fixated – she has always known that. 'Easy, now,' she tells him, slowly taking one arm round his shoulder, then the other. 'Hush, love, hush,' she whispers to him, one hand creeping up to cradle the back of his neck in her finger-tips. He lets her, for now. He's subject to his moods since he's come home; she never can tell how it is she'll find him, one moment to the next. But, for now, he lets her hold him. She says to him, all the time when she sees him feeling frail, that he needn't worry any-more for the worst is over now, it is. But he never seems to put much stock in the words she only says to do him comfort. 'I keep telling you,' she starts to say.
All sudden rough, he shoves her away like a cockroach. 'You told me to wait!' he switches his rage onto her, for there is no-one else left. 'Now, he'll never come again,' he hisses, accusing. For one moment he looks her full in the face. His crashing sea-storm eyes set fire to her, to hisself, to all of London. Her fingers twitch at her sides; she wants to take them round his neck and say that every-thing will be all right now, that the worst is over, though she knows it isn't. She knows she'll need to take care with him just now; she knows she has never seen him like this.
He spins on his heel, leaving her in his wake without a word. She fancies that she sees his eyes throw off a twitch of disgust, the half-moment just before he turns away; likely as not she is just imagining silly things.
He is standing at the bay windows, pacing hard, muttering things she can't quite hear and can't quite understand. None the less, they make her fear for him so very much. She stands, rooted in the floor. She wants to rush a-cross the room and grab him round his shoulders. Mr Todd, she wants to say. You're rambling. But she can't make her feet move. She looks on, hopeless, as he whispers away, under his breath, about holes in the world and great black pits. Of course, she isn't particularly certain what the devil in hell he's on about, but she does feel the chill of omen staining the room red.
His manner all sudden gone from vicious hasty to painful slow, he swivels round to face her, but he can't see her. He can't see nothing; he's off some-where she can't grab him back. Nell bites her bottom lip, avoiding Mr Todd's glassy, pitching gaze; and she wonders how long it will be.
'The vermin of the world inhabit it,' is the first clear sentence she can make out as he says, 'but not for long.' This last thing makes her snap her head back up, her eyes wide while she tries with-out much profit to catch his. She wants to shut her eyes, but will not take them from him. His meaning is clear now; she can't pretend she's not heard it. But she can't very well lose him either, can she, she she'll stay with him, no matter what he might do this next while. His mutterings have took meaning, now; she knows. She don't need to hear more, but he don't stop.
He takes one of his lovely strong hands round her little neck, slams her up against his shop wall. The back of her head bumps hard against the wood, but she don't say nothing. So many times he has done just this, but she has never yet shuddered quite like she does now. He could snap her collar-bone right in two, had he half the mind for it. In her ear his jagged, shaken whisper says that every-one in the whole world deserves death. 'Even you, Mrs Lovett,' he is breathing into the inky black curls in her hair. 'Even I.' She lets him detain her there for as long as he likes, brushing her eye-lashes open and closed against his neck. They're dewy all over with the odd few tears she couldn't stop herself crying for him, before they were out already, but she don't worry. He can't be contained, lit on fire like he is now; certainly he can't feel them any-way.
With-out warning, he seizes hold of her by both her wrists, forceful, dragging her a-cross the floor. She comes to a thud in Albert's favourite chair, what she has herself gave to Mr Todd for his trade. He reaches for the razor at his belt, flicks it open with hasty, shaking hands. One hand grasped strong round her shoulder, he sets the blade at her throat – far enough away that it don't brush her skin, but near enough she can proper feel it. She turns her head to the side, grazing his knuckles with her chin, opening her neck. She can feel the goose-flesh all over, popping through her skin.
If he is going to kill her, she had rather he does it now. If not, close the blade; either way, she begs for a straight answer. She can't imagine he will kill her; but then, she can't properly imagine what he will do. She keeps herself still and silent while she bursts into flames for him.
In his hand the razor shakes and shudders; his voice is so choked with rage that he can't hardly put one word after the next. 'Death should be a relief,' he stammers to the room, but certainly not to her. She don't yet dare raise her eyes to him. All her fingers grip hard round the arms of the chair; both wrists wear screaming scarlet rings where he's grabbed her. If he don't drag his blade a-long her throat this after-noon, she knows, they'll turn blue by morning. 'We all deserve to die,' he says again. 'We all deserve to die.' Her heart bends in her chest when she hears him say it.
After what seems ages, he takes the blade off her neck. He don't bother closing it, but his arm slackens, dropping to one side. He bends his face into the crook between her neck and shoulder, all jagged exhales. 'I'll never see Johanna,' he says; she knows, at last, he has said so to her. She turns to him; he sounds so quietly sad.
In a moment of being so awful brave for him, Nell twists in the chair and brings one hand to lay up on his cheek, finger-tips smoothing temples in the way he likes. She hopes high that it might bring him back to hisself, might draw him out his night-mare. 'Oh,' she says, 'dearie –'
With another short, sudden snap of his mind, he springs away from her, making her jump. 'Finished!' he screams at no-one, starting up with the pacing again. Nell frowns. She hasn't helped, then; she half wonders whether she has made him worse.
He stops before the mirror in the corner of the room. He stares for a time, then draws up a hardened fist and slams it into the glass, muttering all the while. When he has gone back to his pacing at the bay windows, she sighs and goes a-cross the floor, kneeling to pick up the shards. 'I will have vengeance!' he is shouting, with his face pressed up against the window-panes. 'I will have salvation!'
Again Nell sighs, quiet, rolls her eyes up-ward for a split half-second. 'Yes, dear,' she says, supplicating while she bends over the glass he's shattered on the floor, being ever so careful not to cut into her fingers on the way. She hears his voice, his lovely voice what she has always so liked to hear, talking on and on that one man's blood on his blade will not do for him; no, nor will the blood from one hundred ... that he will have all of them, all he can, all there are.
It's then she comes to a decision about things. She knows him; she knows that he will end men's lives with-out a thought, to satisfy the painful beating of his heart. She knows that he will do so for his hurt and for his need, and never think about what's to come after; for that is his way, always has been. She lost him once, she recalls with the most horrible twinge in her chest. She lost him once, and very near did not recover from his absence. In the end, she pulled herself through it – though quite how escapes her memory, particularly these days – but by the good grace of God he has been brought back to her, good as dead though he was.
She can't lose him again. Perhaps it is selfish reasoning, but the fact is that Nell's heart in her chest can't take losing him a second time, not when she could rightly save him. He has made hisself quite clear, and if she do nothing about it, she will be watching the man she loves most in the world get hauled a-cross the sea away from her, again. Watching him go a second time just isn't an option, and so she will fight for him; she is more than willing to stake her own life for his. She wishes terrible dear that it weren't so, that he were all right; but he isn't. If this is really what he needs, then she will do what she has to do.
He swivels round, looks her straight in the eyes for the first time to-day. 'I will get him back,' he tells her, purposeful, a strange sort of smile playing on his mouth.
She stands, slips the shattered glass into her skirt-pocket. She goes to him then, looking up in his face now she can. 'Of course you will, dear,' she says simply, and kisses him on the cheek.
'In the mean-time,' she hears him say, close to her ear, 'I'll practice on less honourable throats.' She feels him slide his razor up the strings at her back, till both his hands rest on her shoulders. 'My Lucy lies in ashes,' he says, queerly calm as he speaks. She bites her lip; still she can't say. Well, she is thinking, pressed close in his chest, she lies in ash-cans, any-way; close enough. Of a sudden, he thuds to a kneel on the floor, dragging Nell with him. 'And I'll never see my girl again,' he says too, his head cocked to one side.
She can feel his sadness destroying him, and it draws her, in a split half-moment, out the thoughts and tangents in her own head. Quickly, she wraps her arms up round his neck. 'Oh, dearie,' she says, chin between his neck and shoulders. 'Dearie.'
He pulls her embrace away, but does not let go. He holds her head in his hands, one pressed up strong on either side, thumbs behind her ears. 'But the work waits!' he exclaims, his beautiful sea-storm eyes quite blazing, flooding her with flames. 'I'm alive at last, and I'm full of joy!'
She moves her hands a slight bit, so that she's got the same hold on him he's got on her. She has let him run his course with this – what-ever this is – but the truth is, there is a dead Italian stashed in the trunk on the other side of the room, and it's not terrible long before he starts to smell; so, she needs to ground Mr Todd right away. 'That's all very well,' she says. 'Now, what are we going to do about him?'
But her hands don't seem to take effect, nor neither don't her words. He's still off some-where; he don't seem to know where he is. 'Hello?' she calls. 'Can you hear me?' When he still don't reply, and she really can't tell what else to do, she reaches her hand back and slaps him square a-cross the face.
His eyes, at last, take back their focus. He looks about him, as though he's right confused as to how he's got here, as though he don't remember. She gets to her feet, dusts off her skirts. 'Come on,' she says, offering her hands. He takes them, and once he's up-right it all seems to hit him; he leans on her for support. This she more than obliges to give to him, and she wraps one arm round his waist. 'Great useless thing,' she murmurs, holding him close. As they walk together, she puts her cheek on his chest, breathing out, thoughts whirling all over. 'And there's the lad down-stairs,' she is telling him while she helps him down all the steps. He don't say nothing, but gives her a look so as she knows he's heard her. As they come to the bottom step she says to him: 'We'd better go and have a look, and be sure he's still there.'
Mr Todd rests against the side of the house in the late after-noon light, and she gazes up in his eyes. 'When I left him,' she says, 'he was sound a-sleep in the parlour.' He stands motionless; she glances up-wards. To-day the weather is oddly nice, with beams of lovely warm sun-light piercing the fog above them; it don't hardly seem fitting. She grabs him by the hands. 'Come on!' she says again, pulling him up the stoop and through her shop door.
Once he's inside, she shuts it quick. She pulls out a chair from the table by the window, her favourite. 'There,' she says, 'sit you down before you fall.' He does what she tells him, and with-out one more word she disappears into the parlour. Sure enough, the little boy is still a-sleep on the floor, gin bottle snuggled in his grasp like a toy. She frowns while she slips it from his hands, making certain so as not to wake him as she does. She goes quickly to the closet in the hall between the parlour and the bed-room, fetches a quilt to set over him. She tucks it up under his chin, still frowning. He's just took his eighth birth-day, so he said earlier, and he looks even smaller. She's got to keep him; she's got to take care of him right and proper.
She spins on her heel, shaking the bottle back and forth as she goes. There isn't much left, she notices now she's got it back, and she had only just bought it the other day. She supposes it's quite all right just the once; she'll have a word with him when he wakes.
She comes back out to the shop, and Mr T. is right where she's left him. She grabs up a tumbler from the cupboards and pours him a gin. She knows perfectly well that he don't much care for gin, but now is certainly the time to pretend, isn't it? Any-way, she's fresh out of his whiskey. For once, he's more than willing to take the gin, and despite what's all round them, she smiles at the face he makes as it goes down.
'No problem there,' she goes on, while he drinks in silence. 'He's still sleeping. He's simple as a baby lamb,' she says, and reaches over to hold Mr Todd's shaky free hand with hers. She picks it up and kisses his knuckles to calm him, one by one. 'Later, I can fob him off with some story,' she says as she does, 'easy.' When his hand stops shaking she sets it down, and he finishes the last of his gin. She looks him in the eyes, all sudden serious. 'But him!' she says, flicking her eyes above them. 'What are we going to do about him?' she asks again.
He exhales, meets her gaze. 'Later on,' he says, 'when it's dark, we'll take him to some secret place and bury him.'
'Oh, yea,' she says, drumming her fingers on the table. She's got a better idea, she has, but she knows very well she's got to approach the subject all gentle like, so as he'll think it's his. 'I suppose we could do that.'
She stands, slips behind him. She runs her fingers all over the back of his neck while she assures him – quite gentle – that it isn't too likely the Signor would have had any family to come poking about. 'Well,' she says, leaning down with her wrists at his vest-buttons. 'You know me. Bright ideas just pop into me head,' she tells him, her lips just hardly grazing his ear. At last he turns to look at her, his humour an odd mix between very perturbed and very curious. 'And I was thinking ...' she says to him. 'Seems a down-right shame.' She ticks a clever half-smile, and waits for him to catch on.