by Sarah Rayne
Once they got going it would almost certainly be all right, but every time she thought about stepping out onto that legendary stage, with that huge audience waiting, ready to criticise or devour, her stomach cramped with panic and her pulse-rate went through the roof. She was beginning to feel as if she was here under false pretences, and she thought that at any minute somebody would recognise her for what she was, and denounce her, and they would all suddenly realise that it was only Gilly Blair after all: a street-girl, who had been padding the hoof through Soho barely a month ago. And had only rehearsed for a week. They would throw her out and she would end in the sleazy world of half-drunk tourists who could not get it up and thought it was your fault; she would be back with the Sunday evenings at the Greasepaint, paying the Shadow his bloody five per cent! And this wonderful opportunity, this marvellous world would vanish.
And I awoke and found me here on the cold hill side . . .
That was a line from one of Mab’s songs; the one she sang at the end of the second act, when she had escaped from Aillen mac Midha and was struggling to find her way back to her own world, and when the gallant Fianna captain found her and took her with him on the quest for the cauldron, not realising her true identity.
It was a lovely song, achingly sad, and Gilly had to sing it alone on the great stage, with the marvellous, swirling, violet mists that Flynn Deverill had managed to create everywhere, and the tantalising, smoky vision of her lost palace glimpsed through a thin gauze scrim at the back. One or two of the cast had said, a bit scathingly, that the words of the song were a shameless pinch from a poem by Keats, but Gilly had gone to the public library and looked it up, and she did not think it was a pinch at all. Whoever had written the song (Tod Miller, presumably) had simply loosened one or two threads of the poem, and woven them with his own threads to make a different tapestry. It conjured up something misty and a bit chill, and something that might occasionally turn back a corner of a magic veil to let you see through to strange, inhuman worlds . . .
As Gilly began to make up for the opening scene, she thought again how much appearances could deceive. She would never have believed Tod Miller capable of writing such wonderful music.
The rest of the company were succumbing to their own brand of nerves.
Danilo studied himself in the mirror of the dressing room he shared with the Fianna captain, and felt an inward twinge of amusement. Well, and what would the club circuit say if they could see me now? From drag queen to inhuman prince, and that’s a leg up the ladder if ever there was one! Off with the sequins and the false eyelashes, Danny-boy, and on with the motley instead.
He was churning with nerves, but beneath it he was aware of a feeling of being where he belonged at last. Finished with the appalling tedium of the clubs, and done with the nail-biting, shoulder-hunching jealousies and spiteful gossiping. The jealousies were here as well, of course; human nature was human nature the world over, but they were different jealousies. They were somehow larger and easier to tolerate. Like Gilly, he thought: I’m finished with those macabre little meetings every Sunday night, and he wondered suddenly what happened to the Shadow’s people when they broke away from that odd world and entered new ones.
He leaned closer to the mirror, lengthening his eyes with dark liner, and then brushing on green and blue to give them a slanting, inhuman look. A ‘beckoning’ look. He had not yet decided who he would beckon to once Cauldron was up and running, or if he would in fact beckon to anyone, but there were several possibilities.
The Fianna captain, applying his own make-up at the other mirror, thought it was going to get bloody hot in all this armour. It was a very strenuous part, the captain. But it was a brilliant part to have landed. Second lead, really. And it was great to only have to share a dressing room with one, instead of lumping in with half a dozen others, which you often had to do, putting up with sweaty armpits and stupid rituals that had to be followed to ward off disasters, never mind queuing for the loo because of people having a nervous pee every five minutes. The captain had not quite made up his mind about Danilo’s sexual proclivities, but at least he did not smell of sweat and he got on with things quietly and without fuss. Still, it might be as well to just mention to him that the captain was considering his chances with the girl playing the sorceress who guarded the magic cauldron.
Tod Miller was still being very busy indeed. He had arranged that the press should be brought to the hospitality suite at the first interval, where Tod would himself dispense drinks. It was a good thing he had got in before Julius, who liked to buttonhole critics in the most embarrassing way, and could not be trusted not to tip them off about snippets of information that would be better kept from them. Tod would not be surprised to learn that Julius was in the pay of gossip columnists, in fact, and he was certainly not having that. He straightened his bow tie in the mirror and went down to the circle bar, where he solemnly drank a pint of the tipple called Black Velvet, which was half Guinness and half vintage champagne. The very young barman had never heard of it, and so he was very grateful to Tod for telling him that it had been Prince Bismarck’s drink. Tod set down the empty glass and took himself off, feeling pleased. The very young barman would have been flattered at Tod’s talking to him in such a friendly way. It paid to take trouble over these little details; the boy would tell everyone that Tod Miller was a man of the people.
The barman washed up the empty glass thoughtfully. He did not give a toss what people drank so long as they did not expect him to put it on the slate, and actually he had thought Bismarck was a ship (you saw it on the old black-and-white films on the telly). In any case, he was more interested in deciding whether he dare invite Danilo to come out for a beer. He would not do it tonight, because there would be the usual first-night bash and then they would all be waiting for the papers to read the reviews. But he might try tomorrow. He checked the stores for Guinness and champers, in case that pretentious old fart, Tod Miller, asked for it again.
The sidh manoeuvred for the best positions at the two long mirrors they shared in the chorus’s dressing room. The more experienced were very blasé in front of a couple of newcomers, whose first West End show this was. Same old cramped dressing room, they said. Same old treadmill. There was a minor altercation over a pair of green tights which had unaccountably vanished, and then an anxious discussion as to whether a new hair colour, tried by one of them that morning, and disastrously streaky, would show up too blonde under the lights. Somebody said that Flynn Deverill would play merry hell if the sidh did not have the right appearance, and the streaky-haired one looked terrified and calculated whether there was time to shampoo it out before Beginners was called. People began to warm up at the wooden barre at the far end.
Stephen Sherry padded conscientiously round the dressing rooms, wishing good luck to those who were not superstitious, and saying ‘break a leg’ to those who were. For the sidh dancers, he remembered to say ‘Merde’ which was a ballet tradition. He kissed the females and shook the men’s hands, and everyone said what a nice chap he was, good old Stephen, never forgot anyone’s name, never forgot a single detail. Shame he never married, probably married to his work, though.
Morrie Camperdown arranged his music, pocketed a handful of loose soda mints, and drank a glass of milk very slowly because first-night nerves always attacked his stomach.
Sir Julius Sherry cunningly arranged things so that the press should be brought to the hospitality bar in the second interval (which was the longest), so that he could hand out drinks. He would have preferred to make it the first interval, because of getting to the press before Toddy – you never knew what the old buffoon might say, and Julius would not put it past Miller to feed them with indiscreet snippets about the company, which would never do. But the first interval was traditionally taken up with touring the dressing rooms and boosting the cast, and telling them how well things were going and how much the audience were loving the show. Sir Julius hoped that he would be able to say this with tr
uth tonight, because sometimes you had to lie just to keep the actors’ spirits up.
Gerald Makepiece got quietly and miserably drunk in his hotel room, and tried to think how to get through the evening without breaking down at the sight of another female playing the part that had been his beloved Mia’s.
And Fael Miller, at exactly six-fifteen, discovered that her father had locked her in the house and taken away the wheelchair.
Chapter Twelve
Fael had bathed and changed in good time; her bath had a swivel-chair which meant she could get in and out without anyone having to help her, which she would have found intolerable. She was going to wear velvet trousers, the colour of moss, with a cream silk shirt with full sleeves and deep cuffs. There was a matching, moss-velvet waistcoat, cut like a man’s. She had washed her hair that morning, and it was like a shining silver-gilt cap. She would have liked to grow it long, but it was too awkward to manage while she was still using the wheelchair. Her mother had had hair the same colour, but it had rippled past her shoulders, and when it was loose she had looked like a water nymph or a gilt-haired pre-Raphaelite. Fael put on the huge jade ear-rings that had been her mother’s and the matching moss agate ring. Pretty good for a cripple, Fael. Not perfect, but not bad.
It was when she reached for the phone to ring up the taxi firm she always used that she saw her chair was not in its normal place. This was so odd that she stopped halfway through tapping out the number. When she was not using the chair it was always, but always, in the little alcove just outside her bedroom door. This was its logical and sensible place, because Fael could reach it easily and it was tucked away so that people coming through the hall could not fall over it. It was never moved. But somebody must have moved it, because it was not there now.
Fael felt the start of a flutter of panic. Don’t be ridiculous, probably Tod shunted it farther down the hall because he was looking for something. But what? There was nothing else in the alcove, except for a couple of framed flower prints on the wall.
Using her stick she managed to get all the way along the hall, and she managed to look in each room as she went. It was a long and exhausting process; the hall was a large L-shaped arrangement with the sitting room and the dining room and study opening off the long leg of the L, and the kitchen and downstairs cloakroom and the old pantry opening off the short one. Fael’s own two rooms were at the very back, at the foot of the L. By the time she had finished she was drenched in sweat, which meant she would have to change the silk shirt if she was to appear at the Harlequin looking halfway decent. This was a nuisance because it was already twenty to seven. Her arms were aching unbearably and her leg muscles felt as if they had been torn with red-hot pincers. Not good. She was supposed to increase the exercises by a little each day, and a little meant about five minutes, not half an hour spent in a panicky search. But she might still make it. The taxi people were very good, and the Harlequin was only a quarter of an hour’s drive. If she could find the wheelchair she would make it.
The wheelchair was not here. It was not anywhere on the ground floor. Fael sank into a chair in the front half of the hall and leaned against the small hall table which held letters and a phone extension, and considered the situation. It was possible that the chair was upstairs, and although she might just about manage the stairs, it would take a very long time. And it would not really advance the case much, because even if the chair was there, she would never get it down unaided.
She was avoiding the main issue, of course, and that was the issue of who had deliberately moved the chair out of her reach. Her father. Fael admitted this at last, and it was just as nasty as she had known it would be. Her father had calculatedly and furtively taken her chair away so that she would not get out of the house tonight. Hard on its heels came another thought: if Tod had done that, he might also have locked her in. Her handbag was sitting on the hall table next to the phone. She checked it for her keys. They weren’t there. They weren’t in her coat pocket. The spare set wasn’t on the hook in the kitchen. Fael dragged painfully along the hall once more, going to check the garden door first. Yes, locked. And that door had an old-fashioned deadlock which meant that without the key you could not open it from within. That left the front door. Fael summoned her strength again and after what felt like a lifetime, managed to reach the front of the hall. The door was a massive late-Victorian affair with complicated coloured glass in a fanlight, and interlacings of thin metal wires so that enterprising burglars could not break the glass and get in.
She stared at the shiny brass door knob. This was a bad moment, because if this door was locked— She shook her head impatiently and reached for the knob. It resisted at once, and Fael’s heart sank. Locked. In fact double-locked; the knob would not turn at all, which meant that whoever had locked it from outside had engaged the extra spin of the key which was meant to be yet another precaution against burglars. That extra turn of the key meant the door could not be opened from the inside, and it was the last turn of the screw as well. It was the final straw. But it was no good standing here like a wimpish Victorian heroine wringing her hands; her father had locked her in. The bastard had actually taken away her chair and stolen her keys and locked her in.
Tod had never intended her to be present at Cauldron’s first night, and he had intended all along to grab the acclaim for himself. Unless Fael could think of a way of getting to the Harlequin he was going to get away with it as well.
She returned to the hall chair to review the situation. She could ring the taxi company, who would certainly come out, but short of breaking a window she could not get out of the house. The anti-theft precautions were working both ways. The taxidrivers at the company all knew her, and they were always cheerful and friendly about helping her into the car and about folding the chair away, and then unfolding it at the other end, wherever the other end happened to be. But she thought she could not expect a taximan to help her to break a window and climb out. She probably could not climb out anyway.
She looked back at the phone. Was there anyone she could ring? The names of various people came to mind, and most of them would help but none of them had a key and all of them would take at least half an hour to get here. Also, a number of them were theatre people and working, and would therefore be unreachable at this hour. Fael glanced at her watch. Five past seven. She cursed her father all over again.
The obvious thing was to ring Tod at the theatre, but Fael dismissed this idea almost at once. There was just under half an hour to curtain up and whoever answered the phone would probably be unable to reach Tod. And even if he was reached he would simply refuse to speak to her, and even if he did not, he would never in a million years come all the way out to Pimlico now. He would not send anyone out with the key either, because that would mean admitting what he had done.
But unless she could somehow get to the Harlequin before the final curtain, she would have broken her promise to Scathach. Fael sat very still. The central heating was humming through the pipes and the hall radiator was warm, but she suddenly felt as if she had been plunged neck-deep into black, icy water.
The thought of facing Scathach’s anger was very frightening indeed.
Tod was feeling very pleased with himself. Nowhere in the world was there any thrill to equal the thrill of a first night, and when it was your own first night – when you were at the centre and at the humming, spinning heart – ah yes, that was the greatest thrill of all. He had come home. He was in his rightful place once more.
Act One had gone splendidly. It had been brilliant, and there was no other word for it. The Fianna had erupted onto the stage, recognisable as the half-legendary, half-historical royal armies they were, but now and again showing glimpses of their modern-day counterparts: paratroopers or SAS men or the allied troops in Bosnia. Flynn Deverill had been very clever and very subtle over the costumes and the settings; Tod would give credit where it was due. Of course, Deverill had only worked to the directions that he, Tod, had given.
It was a remarkable scene: Tod thought it might very easily have been over-explicit and possibly even embarrassing or offensive, but somehow it was not any of these things. It was not suggestive like sleazy men touting for porno sex clubs or offering dirty postcards; it was bawdy in the way that the Elizabethans had been bawdy, and it was very funny indeed. The eight girls and eight men playing the sidh were extremely good, which helped. They all wore sinuous blue-green costumes, with sometimes-clinging, sometimes-floating draperies, that deceived you into thinking they were transparent, and that were spattered here and there with shining fishtail iridescence. Tod had jibbed a bit at the high fees for the sidh’s choreographer, but he hoped he was large-minded enough to admit that he had been wrong, because it looked as if it had been worth the money.
The lodge-keeper had given a terrific performance as well; wringing his hands and wailing to the gods to rout the mischievous sidh-creatures or at least render the evil little creatures impotent, because his wife would never after this be satisfied with what he could give her. The mournful lodge-keeper’s song – ‘I’m only a once-a-week man’ – had been cheered, and when the wife had joined with the sly rollicking counterpart – ‘He’s a weak man once a week’ – which was their duet, several people had shouted ‘Encore!’ Tod had been quite annoyed that Morrie Camperdown had ignored that; he would have to have a word with him.