‘This is a good book,’ he said. His voice was very deep and rich. When he turned, Joe recognised him as the carriage driver from the theatre. ‘This is yours, Matthew? I do not recall you being inclined to read.’
He held up Saul’s dripping copy of From the Earth to the Moon. The book was swollen with water. A fat, bloated frog of a book. The sight of it made Joe giggle.
The carriage driver frowned and brought his face level with Joe’s. ‘Matthew?’
‘Have t’get t’work …’
Clumsily, Joe attempted to push himself to his feet. He barely made it to his knees. The carriage driver stood to help. He had been taking the brunt of the wind, and as soon as he moved the cold sliced through Joe’s soaked clothes, right down to the bone. Joe moaned, and the man took his arm. His grip was vice-like and devil-hot, a band of furnace-heat through the sodden fabric of Joe’s jacket.
‘You need to get warm, Matthew. You have been away too long to suffer this cold without ill effect.’
Joe began to struggle up the steps. ‘Need … get … t’work,’ he croaked. ‘’e’ll leave …’ thout me.’ His lips were growing too numb to move.
The carriage driver supported him up the steps with an arm around his waist, Saul’s sodden book in his free hand. ‘Come back to the hotel,’ he urged. ‘Come talk to Cornelius.’
The heat from him was intense, unnatural, cloying. Even through the crippling pain of the cold, Joe felt suffocated by it. He elbowed his way free, gasping, and staggered towards the bridge. The man followed, his voice raised against the wind. ‘Matthew!’ he cried. ‘He has been miserable since you left. Give him a chance. He meant none of what he said!’
Joe tried to run, but his legs were wet concrete; the man easily caught up. ‘Here,’ he said. Joe flinched at a sudden whipping flutter of cloth. Then came beautiful warmth – glorious warmth – as the man’s blue overcoat settled around him like a cloak. The man tried to support him again, that strange, trapped feeling closing in. ‘Let go!’ Joe yelled, shoving him away.
The carriage driver stepped back, his hands up in defeat. The wind tugged at his fine white shirt, fluttered his crimson necktie, jerked at the tails of his scarlet waistcoat. ‘Keep the coat,’ he said.
‘Don’t touch me again,’ said Joe as he backed away, his hand up in warning.
‘Keep the coat,’ repeated the carriage driver.
Joe backed across the bridge, then turned clumsily and stumbled his way down the quays towards the warren of Temple Bar. The man did not follow.
Auditions
HARRY FOUND TINA in the wings, her arms grimly folded, watching the auditions from the shadows backstage. ‘Hey,’ he whispered. ‘How’s Joe feeling?’
Tina shrugged unhappily. ‘He says he’s grand. He says he just needs to lie down awhile.’
‘Nice of Miss Ursula to let him use her dressing-room.’
‘She’s a nice lady,’ murmured Tina. ‘Under it all …’
She drifted to silence, her eyes on the performers onstage, her mind miles away. She was obviously eaten up with worry.
Harry had been impressed by her lack of fussing. When Joe had turned up for morning break, and they’d seen the state his cousins had reduced him to, Harry had wanted to punch something. Despite his claims, Joe had looked anything but ‘grand’. He had looked so far from grand – his heated cheeks stark in his chalky face – that Harry had been scared for him. It was all too familiar: too uncomfortably close to memories of Harry’s brother Armin. Of Armin’s horrible last days.
‘Here we go,’ whispered Tina. A sister act, Milly and Patsy Harris, had taken to the stage. All frills and curls and bows, they were just launching into a syrup-drenched rendition of Old Dog Tray. ‘Miss Ursula’s on after these two. She’s doing the Scottish play.’
‘She won’t be chosen,’ said Harry. Tina frowned at him, and he shrugged. ‘She won’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve been watching all morning. They’re only going for the dog and pony acts – the tumblers, the contortionists – the real carnie entertainment. That couple who sing opera? Out. The man who recites poems? Out! The only artiste chosen who had anything like a bit of the highbrow to him was the piano player.’
‘Professor Henman?’
Harry nodded. ‘If your Miss Ursula presents them with Shakespeare, she’s—’
‘Next!’ came the call from the auditorium.
The little girls onstage faltered in mid-song. Their mother fluttered anxiously in the far wings. ‘W … would you like a different tune, sir?’ called Milly, peering past the brightness of the limes to the darkness beyond. ‘We do a lovely version of—’
‘You’re too young. Next!’
‘We—’
‘NEXT, damn your eyes! NEXT!’
The little girls leapt in shock at the unexpected roar. Patsy burst into tears, and they fled to their mother’s scandalised arms.
‘Never mind, m’dears,’ whispered Miss Ursula as they stumbled past her in the far wings. ‘It has happened to the best of us.’ She spread her arms, and the glitter on her magnificent costume haloed her in light as she swept onto the stage.
‘Oh God,’ groaned Harry. ‘She’s ancient! What’s she thinking in that dress?’
‘Shh, Harry. Listen to her.’
The old lady stopped mid-stage, her kohl-ringed eyes glaring out at the surrounding darkness. There was silence. She lifted her arm. ‘Come,’ she ordered. ‘Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts; unsex me here. Fill me from my crown unto my toe, top-full of direst cruelty.’
She paused, searching the dark air of the auditorium, as if waiting for the spirits to come forth as ordered, and she looked so compelling that Harry felt himself lean forward – drawn in.
Miss Ursula pressed her hand to her heart. ‘Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, so that no compunctious visitings of nature shall shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts. Take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature’s mischief.’
Another long silence followed as the old woman awaited an answer from the ringing void. The light from her dress shivered against her papery skin and gave her face all the authority of age as, once again, she held her arm out to the darkness and commanded it.
‘Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry unto me, “Hold.”’
A whisper came from the darkness. ‘No.’
The old woman paused, frowning as if uncertain of what she had heard.
‘No,’ whispered the voice in the darkness again, and then, as if in panic, it shouted: ‘No! No! Off!’
Tina stepped forward, Harry at her side, both of them appalled by this terrible reaction to what had been a mesmerising performance.
‘Get off!’ cried the now unmistakable voice of Lord Wolcroft. ‘Get off the stage, you old crone! AND TAKE OFF THAT DAMNED DRESS!’
Miss Ursula froze for the briefest of moments. Then she graced her audience with a stiff bow and swept from the stage.
‘Miss U,’ cried Tina, rushing to her. But Miss Ursula simply held a hand out in dismissal, and then continued on down the steps to the backstage corridor, where her costume caught whatever dim light it could and cast it in glitter onto the shabby ceiling and walls before she rounded the corner and was out of sight.
‘Poor lady,’ whispered Tina. ‘Poor, poor …’ She made a helpless gesture. Then, suddenly, she was angry – she was raging – and Harry had to step away from her as she kicked the sandbags with a ferocity he hadn’t witnessed in her before.
Harry cast about for words of comfort, but before he could even speak Tina had contained herself, her arms wrapped tight around her chest, her breathing deep in the light-filtered half dark.
‘Joe knew,’ she said. ‘He told me Miss U was too old. He said that’s all the world can
see of her now. How old she is. And he was right.’
She compressed her mouth and eyes against more rage. ‘Joe,’ she whispered.
‘He’ll be fine,’ soothed Harry.
‘Have you seen what they did to him?’
‘He’ll be fine, Tina. He’s a tough guy.’
‘He’s never going to escape them, Harry. I don’t think he knows how much he needs to escape. How much I need him to—’ She cut herself off, took another deep breath, as if telling herself to calm down. ‘You’ve no idea the kind of place Joe lives, Harry; the place we both come from. You can’t imagine the people we grew up with, the street we grew up on. It’s like a trap, and everyone he knows is caught in it. They all say they hate it, but they’d rather see each other dead than free of it.’
‘You did okay,’ said Harry quietly.
‘But I had Fran, didn’t I? I had the Lady Nana. No one tells them what to do. They just said, “Feck the lot of yehs,” and we dragged ourselves out of there. But Joe … poor Joe. He has no one. Only stones weighing him down. Only a snare he can’t seem to—’
She made a sharp noise suddenly, and turned for the steps.
‘Tina, where are you going?’
‘This is not going to happen anymore, Harry. I’ve decided. Joe’s not going back. I’m not letting him. I’m going to his gaff right now, while he’s asleep. I’m going to get his things. I’m bringing them back here, and he’s never going back.’
‘Say! You can’t just make the chap’s decisions like that!’
‘Oh, can I not?’
Harry rushed to the top of the steps. ‘Tina!’ he hissed. ‘Tina, you’re making a huge mistake.’
But she was already gone.
Practicalities
VINCENT HAD NEGLECTED the first round of auditions in favour of inquiring after Matthew at the stables where he worked. Returning to the theatre no better off for accurate information, he was surprised to find the backstage door blocked by a girl. She wore a bright-blue bonnet and scarf, and was in the process of angrily buttoning a yellow tartan coat. She glanced up at the sudden influx of wintry light as Vincent came in, and rather than push his way past, he gestured that she should finish what she was doing.
‘Thank you, mister,’ she said. ‘I’ll be out of your way now.’
Vincent liked the way she looked him directly in the eye when she said this, her grim efficiency as she tugged on her gloves. Her hair and eyes were almost as dark as Raquel’s, her skin as creamy-fresh as Raquel’s had been when they’d first met.
‘You’re Lord Wolcroft’s man,’ she said.
Suddenly it struck him who she was. ‘You are the seamstress.’
She nodded, confused.
‘Cornelius told me of you: a pretty girl carrying a pretty dress that shimmered like the sea.’
Her sudden discomfort was charming, her disconcerted frown a delight. Vincent had an urge, suddenly, like a flash of old heat, to see this pretty girl in that pretty dress – to shine a light upon her and make her sparkle like the sea. How well Cornelius knew him.
The girl shifted, obviously nervous under his frank examination of her, but she restrained herself from looking around for help. Vincent admired that. ‘I have been looking for the stable boy,’ he said. ‘Joe, as you call him. He hasn’t returned from his luncheon, apparently. I believe you are his friend?’
She nodded uncertainly.
‘How long have you known him? The stable boy?’
‘A … a long time. Since we were children.’
He quelled a flash of irritation. ‘Come now. No lies. How long?’
She just stared at him, and Vincent sighed. ‘I want you to give him a message,’ he said. ‘Tell him I am not fooled by his rough clothes and speech. Tell him I know who he is.’
Vincent leaned close. The girl shrank back as he spoke low into her ear. ‘I had not been certain at first, but when I saw those men accost him – throw him to the water like that, like so much trash – I knew. Tell him this cannot continue. Tell him that his mother and I miss him. Tell him … tell him that we should both be much happier were he home.’
The girl remained motionless, her small hands clenched. Their faces were very close. She smelled faintly of violets. After a moment she glanced up and met his eyes. There was a real core of steel beneath her fear, a genuine ferocity that thrilled him in a way he had not felt in years. Vincent had no doubt that if he tried to touch her, she would fight.
The thought made him chuckle. Drawing back, he gestured that he would like to pass. The girl pressed close to the wall, and he moved on.
CORNELIUS WAS JUST where Vincent had left him, sitting in the middle row of the dress circle, by the aisle. There was a tray with fine china cups, a silver coffee pot and good pastries on the seat beside him. They had not been there when Vincent had left for the stables. It would seem that the theatre was going all-out to fete their impresario.
The stage manager was leaning over from the aisle, murmuring and pointing things out on the performance list, but Cornelius was only half-listening, his attention focused on the stage steps as if doggedly awaiting Vincent’s return from backstage. The stage manager continued to speak as Vincent approached, but Cornelius flung up a hand to silence him. The manager straightened, his face stiff with disapproval as Vincent slipped past him and reclaimed his seat at Cornelius’ side.
‘The next performances shall start within the hour,’ said the manager. ‘If that is to your pleasure, Lord Wolcroft.’
‘Auditions,’ corrected Vincent.
The manager’s jaw twitched. ‘Beg pardon?’ he asked tightly.
Vincent took his time, pouring himself a coffee and taking a pastry before looking at him. ‘They are auditions, Mr Simmons. We have not yet decided which performers shall be chosen – so they are auditions.’ He took a large bite of the pastry and chewed, holding the manager’s eye.
‘Be sure they do start within the hour,’ said Cornelius softly. ‘We do not have all day.’
Vincent watched the manager leave, then spat the mouthful of chewed pastry into his hand and dropped it to the plate. He swilled the coffee around his mouth; savoured the almost forgotten process of swallowing.
Cornelius eyed all of this with horror. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’
‘I have never done anything in God’s name, cully.’ Vincent chanced another small mouthful of coffee and swallowed, suddenly in tremendously good form.
‘You shall make yourself ill.’
‘May chance, but you know, I believe I might actually have begun to enjoy myself.’
Cornelius’ scowl made him grin. Nevertheless, Vincent placed the cup on its saucer and spread his hands in surrender. ‘I am done,’ he promised. ‘No more.’
Cornelius eyed the cup as if he would like to smash it, and, despite his amusement, Vincent felt a pang of guilt. He knew this uncharacteristic shortness of temper was a direct result of Cornelius’ physical distress.
Never mind, cully, he thought. Soon you will be home and this torment will end.
Cornelius nodded tightly.
I saw the little seamstress, added Vincent, attempting to soothe him.
‘And?’
She is delightful.
Cornelius brightened. I knew it! I knew you would enjoy her. Never fear, Captain, I shall obtain her for you.
Vincent thought about this a moment, then waved his hand. No, he said. Leave her.
Cornelius stared.
Vincent struggled to articulate his reasons. The girl was, as Cornelius had described her, oddly moving. Caught in the chiaroscuro of that gloomy corridor, she had been arresting in a way that went beyond prettiness. It was almost as though she emitted an aura – a magnetic field, perhaps – and Vincent found it particularly compelling. It was foolishness to leave her behind. Yet … Vincent thought again of Raquel, of Raquel’s decline, the calcification of her once passionate, if fragile, vivacity, and he realised he did not want that vibrant girl d
iminished. He did not want her used. It was as simple as that. Besides, he thought to himself, she is Matthew’s friend. What would he think?
‘Let her go,’ he murmured. ‘The ballet chorus will suffice for me.’
Cornelius grimly turned his attention to the list of players he held in his lap. He pretended to read, but his entire body was stiff with offence. Vincent sighed. Cornelius never did react well to the rejection of a gift. In an attempt to move the situation along, he leaned across to read the performance list.
‘Raquel will adore that little piano player.’
‘She did once love the piano …’
‘And the dog act is an inspired choice. And the woman with the monkey. Both will certainly appeal to the children.’
The corner of Cornelius’ mouth twitched with distaste, and Vincent threw his hands up in frustration. ‘Oh, come now! You cannot mean to have second thoughts about the animals?’
‘You know what the children are capable of.’
‘Cornelius, we are not discussing torture here. Simply a shorter than usual life – a speedier conclusion to the inevitably limited time on earth faced by all mortal creatures.’
‘I cannot stand the idea of an animal suffering,’ said Cornelius softly. ‘Mankind deserves all it gets, for the most part, but animals … Animals are entirely innocent and incapable of cruelty.’
‘You must never have witnessed a cat toy with a mouse then, friend.’
Cornelius shrugged. He continued to stare at the list, his fine face troubled, and Vincent knew where his mind was. When Cornelius had carried that bloodstained hatbox past him on the stairs, the waves of pain coming from it had fizzed against Vincent’s skin. The despair – even from such a tiny creature, so little aware of its own existence – had been astounding.
When Vincent had made his way to the playroom, there had been a pool of blood on the floorboards, pairs of scissors, an orderly collection of bloodstained hatpins. He had gazed at the multitude of bloody boot-prints that tracked to and from the sleeping children. Apparently they had got up many times during the poor creature’s ordeal – to adjust something on its body, perhaps, before taking their places again to watch. Vincent had to admit he had been shocked at that – it had turned even his stomach. He had had second thoughts, then, about having allowed this to happen. About having left it for Cornelius to handle.
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