by Maggie Ford
Simmons was stressing what a real start it was. ‘Better than where you are now, working for a mere crust. And this’ll bring you much more than money, old man. With the names I’ve mentioned your future’s assured.’
By the way Theo’s face brightened, he certainly appeared to agree as Simmons stood up to shake hands. Simmons nodded appreciatively at Emma.
‘Very nice. Good choice.’ He paused. ‘I’ll keep an eye out for any more interesting stuff coming along.’ He gave another of his big laughs. ‘After all, it behoves me to – to get my ten per cent out of you and all that.’
He saw them to the door, saying that he would relish his ten per cent of this present booking, still in a jovial mood, and giving Theo some paper work bearing the address and the amount that had been agreed, and as Emma moved past him, he gave her rump a far too familiar tap which made itself uncomfortably felt through the entire thickness of skirt and undergarments.
In view of Martin Page’s warning of Theo’s notorious jealous streak, she thought it better not to say anything to him about his agent’s gesture of familiarity in case he got angry and spoiled this apparently wonderful offer. It had been only a passing thing, playful, and maybe what she must come to expect, being on the stage now. Her mother had said as much.
Theo was quiet on the way home, but she could see he was happy with all that had occurred.
‘What about the two weeks we’ve still got to do at the Cambridge? Do we forget them?’
He looked at her as though she’d uttered a profanity. ‘An entertainer never lets down the manager who hires him. For the rest of your life, Amelia, you will remember that. Do you understand?’
Chastened, Emma nodded and said no more the rest of the way home.
Three days to go to their one-night engagement in Chelsea. It would be on Christmas Eve. Theo had drilled her until Emma felt she could hardly store another item in her head; it was so full of numbers and gestures that they went round and round in her brain as she sought sleep. It would be a relief when it was all over and this engagement behind them.
But Christmas Eve! She’d hoped to go and see her mother on that day, but now that had to be put aside. And with all this rehearsing, it looked as though she wouldn’t see her until after Christmas. She was able, though, to send her a postal order for two pounds with a promise to see her as soon as she had a moment to herself.
She could well afford the money. In fact she was richer than she’d ever been in her life, and stood to be even richer as time went on.
At the Cambridge, Theo had come away with twenty pounds for the two weeks. Out of that Simmons had claimed his ten per cent, of course. But Theo had generously given her five pounds as her share. She was now being required to pay for the rent of her own room, but that came to seven shillings a week, bed and board, which had left four pounds thirteen shillings. Even after sending Mum the postal order she’d been left with two pounds thirteen shillings all to herself. Wealth indeed for one who up to a few months ago had never had more than a shilling in her pocket, and that on only a very rare occasion.
Now Theo was being promised thirty guineas for one performance. Thirty guineas in one night! It sounded incredible. She’d caught a faint mention of the amount just before Simmons had given her rump that pat. How much would Theo give her out of it? Whatever it was, she’d be more than happy, but that was still to come.
She wrote to her mother about all that had happened to her these last weeks, again saying where she was living, and she waited for a reply. Mum wasn’t much of a writer, actually she was partially illiterate, but had made sure her children had stayed at school. But surely, on receiving the money, she would put together a few words if only thank you. Ben might help her word a reply. That was if she told him about the money. But forty shillings arriving out of the blue wasn’t to be sneezed at.
No letter came, not even a badly scribbled one. Perhaps it was just as well she hadn’t gone in person. Having the door slammed in her face would have been more than she could have borne, and the lack of a reply made it all too likely that it was indeed what would have happened.
Cloaking her bitterness, Emma threw herself into her work, earning a good deal of delight from Theo for her dedication. He didn’t know the truth behind it, but it did get her more prepared for what was in store, though as the day drew nearer she found her nerves getting the better of her. No time to worry about Mum.
He too seemed on edge, making it seem all the more intimidating. She hadn’t caught the names of those to whom he’d be performing, but they had to be quite important to make a self-assured man like Theo nervous.
‘It is never good to be complacent beforehand,’ he told her when she asked how he felt. ‘It is so with the very best. Nerves are designed to keep a performer on his toes. Once you are out there in front of your audience, you will be fine, my dear.’
He was always telling her she would be fine. She just hoped so. Such had been proved these last two weeks. The Cambridge held around fifteen hundred, small compared to some West End palaces of variety, and the first time on stage had dried her mouth as though flour had been poured into it. She’d got used to it, although having to move amongst so many at Theo’s command had been somewhat alarming. Theo said there’d be around a hundred at this Christmas Eve party, so perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad.
Chapter Sixteen
‘How are you feeling?’ Theo whispered as he handed her down from the four-wheeler where it had drawn up at the servants’ entrance.
‘Just the usual butterflies,’ she said, hoping her reply didn’t betray how scared she really felt.
After having got used to two weeks on stage in a music hall, this was something quite different. They’d passed the wide forecourt with its bevy of landaulettes and hackney carriages, even a couple of motor carriages, guests making their way up shallow steps to a marble portico to the front entrance while attendants ran back and forth helping others from their conveyances, all in the golden glow from a dozen lighted windows of the Chelsea mansion where Theo would perform his magic.
She stood now beside the four-wheeler while he took charge of unloading the equipment, the sharpness of his commands to the driver telling her that he too was edgy.
The man’s reaction, typical of the nickname, growlers, for these four-wheelers, was making his grievances known by growling and grumbling as he dumped box after box inside the side entrance that he was a bloody cabby, not a bloody carter. But offered a sizeable tip, his churlishness ceased and he tipped his cap. ‘Thanks, guv,’ he muttered hoarsely.
Emma was glad to be out of the vehicle that smelled of damp leather after a day of sleet. The clouds, thankfully, had parted and a full, cold moon lit up the gravel driveway as Theo led the way. A short, broad-chested man carrying a portmanteau was being admitted by a manservant in a black apron, grandly stating his name and what he did before proceeding inside.
Theo sounded equally grandiose as he too announced himself, his voice deep compared to the other, apparently some well-known operatic tenor, though Emma had never heard of him. But what would she know of opera, having never been?
The footman moved back to the announcement, ‘The Great Theodore!’
‘Oh, yes, the magician. Right.’ He glanced down at the array of boxes. ‘I’ll get them taken in for you, sir.’
Theo nodded curtly. The man continued, ‘Right, this way then, Mr Theodore. We’ve a room set aside just along here for all the entertainers.’
‘How many of us?’ enquired Theo. The man looked back over his shoulder as he led the way.
‘There’s you, there’s that opera singer, the one following you in is a violinist. There’s a minstrel group and a Shakespearean chap that’s going to recite, and when it’s all over there’s a quartet that’s going to play for Lady G’s cotillion. That’s dancing, y’know.’
‘I know what a cotillion is,’ said Theo. Emma said nothing, following close behind.
‘Well, it’s a dance all right,’
said the man, ‘but these days they call the whole evening of dancing after it now.’
‘I am aware of that. Are these the only entertainers?’
‘Yes. You’re the last to go on before the dancing starts. She your assistant, the young lady?’
Theodore deigned not to reply as they were shown into a large room sparsely furnished with dark wood cupboards and chests. It had several tables with mirrors on them, chairs, some screens for the privacy of performers who needed to change; it was probably used as a storeroom between times.
Nodding in response to a reminder that refreshments would arrive shortly, to be partaken whilst Lady G’s guests were at dinner, Theodore sought out a corner for himself and Emma, arranging the screen supplied for privacy to form a small room, and ignoring the other performers as if they were below him.
‘This will have to do,’ he said, sitting at the table provided and gazing around for room to put the equipment. There was time to set things up and to dress in what they would wear.
Theo’s evening clothes had secret compartments for items that would appear magically before his audience. She would have a gown of pale green chiffon, a colour he insisted on to bring out her auburn hair, flouting the old superstition of green being unlucky. He had chosen everything for her, paying for it himself – the gown, the elbow-length cream gloves, the sparkling choker and tiara of emeralds, glass of course not real – ‘They’ll be real one day, my dear,’ he promised in soft tones – enhancing her so that she seemed at least two years older than a girl just two months off seventeen. She wished she felt like that. While he went off to organise the setting-up of his equipment, she dressed, unable to touch any of the sumptuous refreshment for nerves, but when he returned she saw admiration in his eyes as he regarded her.
‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘You will enchant them. There are among the audience tonight some who themselves have to do with the legitimate stage, as well as several titled personages and eminent business people.’
It did little to eradicate her already nervous state. ‘I’m starting to feel awfully jittery,’ she admitted, risking his irritation, but he took one of her hands in his own and raised it to his lips, his beard soft against her skin.
‘Don’t be,’ he murmured, turning her to hook her back fastenings for her. ‘They are only people. The time to be jittery is if you let me down.’
It had been said gently enough, but it carried the faintest of threats for her to do well. ‘When you go on, you leave your nerves behind you. If you let them take hold while performing, you’ll be incapable of doing your job.’ To her mind, as much to say, don’t make a fool of him. Thereafter she withheld her feelings from him.
Now they were dressed and waiting, time seemed to creep when all she wanted was for it to be over and to be on their way home. Just fifteen minutes, she kept telling herself, that’s all it is, just fifteen minutes of your life, fifteen minutes you’d hardly notice go by, normally. It didn’t help at all.
She tried to distract her mind from what lay ahead by listening to the sounds of preparations beyond their screen: the tentative tuning of violin, cello, flute and viola by the quartet; the recitalist chatting in sonorous tones to the opera singer from whom wafted waves of perfume; the minstrels were going through their song parts in small snatches of harmony. All of them waiting their turn to appear before this illustrious gathering; were they as terrified as she?
Apart from a certain amount of tension in making sure his equipment was in its correct order, Theodore alone seemed composed, though he had spoken to no one other than her.
‘Watch me well when we are on,’ he said as he surveyed her to make certain her appearance was impeccable. ‘I want no hesitation in replying to my questions except where rehearsed, no fumbling when you hand me what I require, all must be done gracefully, smoothly, efficiently.’
‘I know what to do,’ she hissed back, adjusting her shoulder straps. ‘We’ve rehearsed it enough times.’
‘One can never rehearse enough,’ came the sharp reply.
Knowing it unwise to make another retort, Emma occupied herself by tweaking at her décolletage. It was far too low, far too revealing. How would they see her out there on stage or whatever other arrangements had been made for a stage in this private house – an alluring young woman or just a showgirl? A footman was requesting the first performer to follow him. Emma peeped through a gap in the screen to see the Shakespearean actor tug at the jacket of his evening dress and smooth a hand over his thin, dark hair before following the man. She looked at Theodore, adjusting the hidden pockets of his own evening dress.
‘We’re last,’ she said unnecessarily.
‘All the better,’ he returned evenly. ‘No one to see you going through your final paces, except those returning to depart after their performance. Then it will not matter. You must be nothing less than perfect. The whole of my future career depends on tonight. I am putting my head on the block, trusting that you will not let me down. You understand me, my dear?’
She nodded. He should have had Martin Page for this, not Emma, who had no experience beyond a few months having her role drummed into her and playing to street audiences, and two weeks on a stage before a gaping, toffee-munching, beer-swilling crowd. But she dared not voice it. Not now.
‘Then see you do,’ he said. ‘Already I have misgivings.’
It was as if he read her thoughts. As if his mind-reading act was far more real than she imagined. Emma stemmed a small shiver and turned her thoughts to the mind-reading, concentrating on all those tiny nuances that called for her response to the slightest variation of movement from him, the faintest inflection of tone and sequence of words that would bring from her the reply he was asking for – all to lodge in her brain as though a part of it.
Yet still Theo wasn’t satisfied. ‘What am I asking you to say when I hold my hand thus? What am I asking you to tell me when I turn my head thus on speaking the words, “What do I have here?” What, when I look up at the ceiling as though in thought? What, when I turn my head to the right?’
Thought transference and mental telepathy worried the life out of her, afraid that she’d forget a certain sound or move.
‘You remember the sequence of the numbers, the letters, the moves we have rehearsed?’ He was torturing her with his badgering.
‘Yes. Yes,’ she said, her head already reeling, but still he drilled her.
It was imperative, of course, that she make no errors. It still surprised her that she’d learned to retain so much in such a short time, how retentive was her memory.
She’d left school at such a young age that she’d never realised how good a brain she had, regarding herself as dim and not worthy of learning, but her schoolteachers had not been the dedicated type. Had her father been well off she now felt sure she might have gone on to one of those universities for young women that in this still young century were beginning to spring up for those who could afford it. She’d had lots of confidence in herself but of the street sort, a natural gift for survival. But she had Theo to thank for opening her eyes to what she really could attain.
The Shakespearean actor had returned. He saw her standing by the now half-drawn-back screen. He smiled at her, winked encouragingly, but as Theo glared at him and pulled her slightly back, he went on without saying a word. Going to his corner, he began packing ready to depart. An office near to the servants’ side door would have his fee waiting for him.
The opera singer was being summoned, stalking by without looking right or left. He returned after twenty minutes, still looking imperiously ahead.
The minstrels, probably hired to add a little lightness to the evening, were a lively group, chatting and laughing loud enough for a footman to come and shush them. All young men, one winked at Emma, another saucily eyed her up and down. Thankfully Theo didn’t see them, being busy with his preparations.
As they left in their street clothes, one said cheerily, ‘You’re in for a bit of a nice surprise, old matey,
when you get out there and see who they’ve got as one of their guests.’ Theo didn’t reply.
Then came the turn of the violinist, a small and wiry, pale-faced man, with black hair that seemed in need of a trim. He glanced sideways at the magician as he hurried after the footman. The quartet, of course, would be needed for the dancing.
The violinist approaching his finale, Emma and Theo were conducted up a flight of stairs and along a carpeted corridor with wide, double doors at the end. They were open and Emma could see that a low stage had been set up in the room beyond, with curtains on one side of the double doors to serve as the wings. There were heavy, drawn curtains before the windows, behind which Theo had set up his special equipment while the guests were at dinner in another room.
Out of sight behind the side curtains as they waited their turn to go on, Emma felt a sickness in her stomach at the sight of the great room. It was all a-glitter with huge chandeliers. Rosewood chairs had been set in rows on a highly polished floor. There were deep sofas all around the room’s perimeter, the furnishings and drapes in rich fawn velvet. There were beautiful vases everywhere, and gilt statuettes, and huge paintings. At one end of the room was another pair of tall, wide, double doors like those at this end. The walls were covered in pale blue, in a fabric that looked like silk, and the ceiling was a sight to behold with gilt and plaster cherubs smiling down from the frieze.
It was the audience, sitting very stiff and upright on their chairs, that threw her into a flurry. Such dresses, such evening clothes. Perfume wafted towards her, as did the well-bred chatter and occasional genteel laugh. She had never seen such people, even those coming out of a theatre in their outdoor finery who had usually hurried by with hardly a glance at her, hardly seeing her. Now, they would all see her.