A Boy Called MOUSE

by Penny Dolan

  ‘Then take this for your trouble,’ Aunt Violet insisted, dropping a coin into his gloved palm.

  She took Aunt Indigo’s arm, and the pair set off towards the theatre. They stepped very daintily because they were dressed in silks and furs, and on their feet were buckled shoes they had not worn for years. They stopped to chat to the apple-women and chestnut sellers and then made for the grand entrance.

  ‘Goodness me, Violet, isn’t this exciting?’ said Aunt Indigo. ‘Quite like the old days, eh?’

  ‘Like seeing our dear Katherine again,’ Violet answered. The girls’ poor dear mother was in both their minds.

  As they entered the brightly lit foyer, the General swooped forward, presenting programmes to their gloved hands.

  ‘Make room, make room!’ he bellowed, ushering the Aunts up the grand staircase and into a private box close to the stage itself.

  ‘Mr Adnam hopes you have a wonderful evening,’ he said, and left them admiring the gilded cherubs and hissing gas lamps.

  No sooner had the Aunts laid their furs and gloves beside them on the plush seats than a young woman appeared with a silver tea service.

  ‘To warm you both after your journey, gentle ladies. Mr Adnam has arranged further refreshment for the next interval.’

  The Aunts extracted dainty mother-of-pearl lorgnettes from their handbags and clucked over all the names in the programme.

  As they sipped their tea, the orchestra began to tune its instruments.

  ‘Almost time, my dearest Indigo,’ Aunt Violet said, as they smoothed their skirts and got ready for the raising of the Albion’s magnificent fringed curtains.

  A far less grandly dressed procession pressed through the Albion’s cheaper entrances, shouting and calling. They clattered up flights of uncarpeted stairs and rushed to the best places. From here, the highest point in the auditorium, up close to the painted ceiling, the view tipped dizzily down towards Adnam’s wide stage.

  No apron-clad maids with tea trays welcomed the boisterous crowd gathered up in the gods. From the crest of the proscenium arch, the blind masks of comedy and tragedy regarded the rough and ready theatre-goers cramming excitedly on to the narrow wooden benches. Snatches of tunes drifted up from the orchestra far below.

  A short man was almost carried along by the crowd’s enthusiastic ascent. He was nudged and elbowed and shoved onwards.

  Once he had arrived at the gods, he fought his way across to the far side and pushed himself into a particular spot by the brass railing. He had little trouble obtaining that spot. Who would choose a seat with such a poor view of the play?

  By now, the man’s glossy polish was smeared. His rosy cheeks were blotched from exhaustion, and his neat black clothes were creased and scuffed from his visit to the cells.

  Tonight Mr Button did not smile. Desperate hate was fixed firmly on his face.

  .

  CHAPTER 73

  A VIEW FROM THE STALLS

  ‘Many apologies, madam, but the house is already full tonight,’ the General politely informed the three late arrivals.

  ‘I must get into the play, I must,’ Adeline pleaded, wild as a lioness and hungry for a sight of her child.

  Albert took the General aside and explained. ‘A matter of great importance, sir, so if you can help . . .’

  Thankfully, a family party had argued over some private matter and decided to leave. Before long all three were seated, just in time to hear the orchestra start to tune up.

  Adeline could hardly keep quiet. ‘His name is in the programme, Albert. Look! Mouse! The flying Mouse! It must be our boy, it must,’ she muttered fretfully, starting to stand up. ‘Shouldn’t we go to him now? Go backstage this very minute?’

  ‘It might be another child altogether.’ Albert pulled her gently down into her place. ‘Besides, nothing can happen to the boy while the performance takes place. If it might be him, we’ll go backstage as soon as we can, I promise.’

  Scrope, meanwhile, hunched awkwardly down in his theatre seat, peering at the crushed paper. Was it at all possible that the name in the programme could be his nephew, the child to whom he had wished such ill? How strange that would be!

  It was so dreadfully hot. As Scrope stood to loosen his coat, he gazed around the theatre. He saw two amiable elderly women fussing about in one of the grand boxes, adjusting their shawls and trying out opera glasses. They were not the pretty young birds that usually nested in such expensive seats, but Scrope, despite his own troubles, found he was glad to see the two dears looking so happy.

  A moment later, a charming little man in an antique coat joined the pair. There was much smiling and greeting. A small black and white dog popped up, peered over the box and then vanished, as if it had settled down at someone’s feet.

  There were gas lamps all the way around the stalls, the circle and right up to the gallery itself. It must be terribly hot up there, Scrope thought, as he idly studied the gilded cherubs that fluttered around the domed ceiling and mirrored globe. How full the Albion was with brightness, even up there where the lamps lit the faces overhanging from the gods.

  Scrope started. He almost rushed from his seat, but hesitated, unbelieving. He glanced up again. One face, round as a balloon, had appeared over the handrail before, but now it was gone.

  As the orchestra struck up, the velvet curtains trembled and slowly started to rise. Scrope fidgeted uncertainly, screwing his eyes up as if to be sure what he had seen.

  It was him, he was sure of it. He had seen the face of the man who had helped to wreck his life, the man who enjoyed other people’s misery as much as their money. That face, here in the Albion Theatre tonight, but why?

  .

  CHAPTER 74

  DREAMS IN MIDWINTER

  It might be midwinter outside, but onstage a sweet midsummer bloomed.

  Roses cascaded down the pillars of Theseus’s painted palace. Hidden wooden rollers turned, setting the silken waves of an aquamarine sea billowing. Concealed ropes dragged an antique sailing ship across the glimmering bay. The glowing sunset changed into purple evening light, and a waning moon ascended, shaking a little, into the artificial sky.

  Adnam, as Lord Theseus, led a subdued Queen Hippolyta to centre stage. La Bellina’s make-up was heavy enough to conceal her puffy, reddened eyes.

  Kitty and I waited in the wings, green-painted and green-clothed, almost identical. It no longer mattered who saw us. We were a pair. I knew Kitty’s voice was better than mine, and she knew that I was by far the better flyer, but tonight, together, we would make our Puck the most triumphant one of all.

  Miss Tildy was having trouble quietening the fairies. Flora and Dora were bubbling with joy about Kitty’s part, and their excitement had infected the others. Eventually the troupe ran to their positions at the front of the stage, ready to dance enchantingly while the entire set was being transformed into a leafy Shakespearean grove behind the canvas drop.

  I had to be ready for my cue, for my first long flight. Up I climbed, up and up, and edged out along the walkway. Tonight I felt so light-headed that I could almost fly without wings.

  I waved to the stagehand and clipped the lines to my harness. The lighting man prepared his change of coloured filters in preparation for the flight scene.

  The melody that carried my musical cue began. Slowly the gas flames were turned up, and the lantern flaps opened, washing the boards below with the green of a woodland glade and deepening the shadows between the trees.

  For a moment, as I gazed down, the shades below seemed like the malicious faces of Grindle and his gang again. I saw the tiny figures of the actors, waiting in the wings. Suddenly the drop below looked as deep as poor Pyeberry’s fall. My stomach swung over. I thought about Kitty, and how Button carried her away so easily, and I started to shake.

 
A hand gripped my shoulder. I whirled round, almost expecting to see some awful ghost from my past, but it was only one of the stagehands. And I had missed my cue.

  ‘Mouse, are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Think so.’ How could I be in a panic this time, tonight, when all was solved and secure?

  The orchestra covered my fault with a run of merry notes that wound back into the woodland melody, bringing my cue to me a second time.

  Would I make it? Could I do it? The low mumbles and calls from the gods made hidden voices rise in my head, and I heard echoes of Bulloughby’s growls, and Shankbone’s groans, and even the cold moans of that place where Punchman’s life had ended.

  The thick, greasepainted air seemed to breathe with pretended joy and hidden sorrow. I was not at all sure I could do this tonight, yet the melody was about to call me. I closed my eyes, totally unsure.

  Then the very slightest sound rose from backstage: the whinny of the fairy horses as they waited in the wings. I caught the merest breath of grassy sweetness. I remembered Isaac’s barn, and the little mouse crossing the vast wooden beam, and I remembered sunlight and delight, not fear. I remembered Ma smiling at me across the yard, the Ma I had now found.

  I rose on my toes, ready to fly once more.

  .

  CHAPTER 75

  A PRIME POSITION

  Button, way up in the gods, had his eyes fixed feverishly on the space above the stage, on the line of the flight.

  A cold fury gripped his heart, a silent rage, an icy hatred. His plans were supposed to work. His plans were supposed to deliver what he wanted.

  What Button wanted he was used to getting. He would show everybody he was the one who pulled the strings, the one who got his own way. Him and nobody else, especially not that wretched boy, that vermin who had outsmarted him.

  The music rose again for the woodland scene, and Button reached inside his overcoat. At the edge of the gods he leaned over the brass railing. This time he would not make any mistake.

  .

  CHAPTER 76

  A GIFT FROM THE GODS

  The music summoned Puck forth. Right on cue this time, I leaped out from my high place. The straps tightened. The wheels and lines ran, and I soared forward, flying out over everyone as if I was free.

  I, the most magical, mischievous Puck, circled around, with my garments and ivy trails fluttering. The music whirled and swirled. I spread my arms out widely, weaving out towards the stalls. The crowd might be gasping and gaping below, but all I heard was the precious sound of my mechanical flight. I was a blithe sprite on the wing, free of the power of the earth, free of all that held me down.

  Within too short a time, the lines tautened on my harness, and I swung out into one last wide arc, ready to return.

  As the music softened, a single voice called my name.

  ‘Mouse, Mouse!’ A woman in fine clothes was standing below me in the stalls, waving her arms wildly. ‘Mouse! Mouse!’

  Who was she? Why did she shout my name?

  At that very moment, a star of fire exploded from the gods, and pain burst in my chest.

  Like a shot bird, I swung away into darkness, broken-winged. I heard another pistol shot, and that woman screaming and screaming and screaming, and suddenly the musicians stopped playing.

  .

  CHAPTER 77

  A FIRM HAND

  Scrope, racing up the steep stairs, heard the first shot. Too late, too late! He pushed his way along the gods, thrusting through the crowd, struggling to reach the silhouette of the man leaning at the railing.

  Into Scrope’s mind flashed that day when Mouse stood by the sunlit window, trusting him, his uncle. The day when he first considered that perhaps . . . that time when Hanny tried to stop . . . that moment when his bitterness set it all in motion . . . the boy, the boy and that dreadful place . . . though she had called him her true and trusted friend . . . Adeline, dear Adeline . . .

  He shoved, he trampled, he forced himself onwards. No good, too late, no time to think, not even whether he was doing this for Mouse or for himself.

  ‘No! Not again!’ he yelled.

  Scrope grabbed Button’s tight black-coated person, lifting him, flinging him forward so swiftly there was no time to break his own grip. The pistol cracked again, the weight unbalanced him, and together they toppled over the railing, down, down, down . . .

  Mercifully, they crashed on the carpeted gangway below, not on the horrified audience. There was a pause, then sudden uproar in the auditorium. What was happening, and where and why . . .

  As the stage curtains swished down, Arthur Boddy strode on to the stage. His comforting, chuckling persona reassured the audience.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, folks!’ he called out in a cheerful chuckle. ‘Take your seats, please. Only a pair of acrobats, trying to draw Adnam’s attention to their act – and our poor little Puck must have fainted. No wonder, watching such a blooming bad act! Ho ho!’

  As Arthur’s corpulent form chased the fears of the audience away, Adnam’s well-trained theatre staff surrounded the fallen figures. In the space of one of Boddy’s old-fashioned jokes, the bodies were removed, leaving no instant for the audience to reflect on what they had witnessed. The General’s runner was already summoning the nearest policeman.

  Meanwhile, Adnam got ready to make a swift speech, full of confident charm, and the musicians in the orchestra pit riffled through their stack of Miss de Salle’s specially selected songs, most useful for all theatrical emergencies. The show must go on.

  .

  CHAPTER 78

  A SENSE OF DIRECTION

  ‘Mouse! Come on, boy. Come on!’

  My eyes opened so, so slowly. I was lying on the stage, with straps and ropes about me. One arm ached most painfully. The lighting men stared down at me from their roosts above, but their lanterns dazzled me.

  ‘The child’s waking,’ Vanya said, patting my cheek. Kitty was kneeling by me, her face anxious.

  The thick curtains enclosed the scene, so the audience could not witness the panic around my fall.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, excuse this short intermission,’ I heard Adnam telling the audience, his voice heroically strong. ‘We beg your honoured patience. The Dream will resume shortly. Meanwhile, for your delight . . .’

  I heard the orchestra strike up, and Miss Tildy’s hiss as she hurried the fairies out on to the front of stage. ‘No crying, lassies. Just dance your best, my darlings. Dance as you have never danced before.’

  Miss de Salle was out front, singing with much spirit. Arthur Boddy’s rumbling voice warned the cast to keep back.

  Dimly I felt the pain reach over to stroke my chest, to squeeze my shoulder, but not quite as harshly as before.

  Vanya leaned over me. ‘Does it hurt, boy? Here? Or here?’

  ‘The blood?’ Kitty whispered. ‘I heard two shots, but where’s the blood?’

  As Vanya started to unbutton my tunic, I gasped. I had been brought to the floor too swiftly. My joints ached. I clutched at my chest, where it hurt. Then I heard footsteps running rapidly across the boards, and the dim shapes above me parted.

  A strange woman – a fine lady who smelled of lilies and whose clothes swished like silk – was also leaning over me, so close I could feel her anxious breath. She stared, her face almost against mine, and turned to the man at her side. I could not recognise either of them, but she was surely the lady who screamed as I flew.

  ‘It is. It’s him! I’m sure of it! Mouse? My little Mouse? Oh heavens, I can’t have lost him already, can I, Albert?’ She tried to touch me, but the man called Albert held her back.

  ‘Lady, please be very silent,’ Vanya insisted firmly. ‘The boy’s arm is not so good. He may have hit his skull too.’
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  As Vanya undid the last button, the tunic fell open. He chuckled softly. ‘Fortune must love this boy.’

  He held up something that seemed a scrap of crushed silver paper. No! I was filled with desperation. How had this happened? This crumpled silver was all that remained of my mouse medal, my precious compass. I tried to seize my secret back from Vanya, hide it from all the staring eyes. I grabbed about wildly with my good hand.

  ‘Mine,’ I shouted unsteadily, though my voice did not feel like mine. ‘Mine! Give it me.’

  ‘Saved your life, did this small thing,’ Vanya told me. ‘Softened the shot. Is not much use any more, Mouse-boy. Sorry.’ He placed my damaged treasure in my palm.

  However, as my fingers folded over the twisted disc, the fine lady swooped forward to take it. ‘I must see that!’ she said, her voice almost imperious.

  ‘No!’ I heard myself scream as I fought her away, clenching the twisted unfamiliar shape. ‘No! Nobody can have it. It’s mine. I mustn’t give it to anyone. Get away, whoever you are!’

  The lady sank down on her knees beside me. She put a cool hand tenderly on my forehead. She gazed into my eyes, calmly and sadly. ‘Even if I was the one who gave it to you, Mouse?’ she said at last. Her voice was almost a whisper.

  ‘You’re not Hanny! Hanny gave it to me!’

  I tossed my head from side to side, trying to see someone who could help, someone who could make sense of this moment. Everyone, even the mighty Adnam, was standing there open-mouthed.

  ‘No, no!’ I yelled, breaking the gathering web of silence, ‘Go away. It’s mine.’

  ‘I know. I know that Hanny gave it to you,’ the lady told me, her soft hand resting on my clenched fist. ‘Don’t worry, Mouse, I won’t try to take your treasure. I gave it to Hanny.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I gave you to Hanny too, Mouse.’

  Aunt Violet and Aunt Indigo pattered across the stage. They, and everyone else, heard the lady speak, saying words so fine they could be part of a play. Did they find the lines as hard to take in as I did? What did she say?