Ghost Song

by Rayne, Sarah

  ‘Well spoken,’ said Flora, looking at Alicia with approval. ‘Go on, Hal.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hal, ‘thirty-year-old scandals aside, if we let Rinaldi’s death be known, there’s no guarantee the truth would be believed. I’d put money on Anton Reznik being out of the country by lunchtime tomorrow, anyway. And whether we were believed or not wouldn’t matter, because by then the whole Sarajevo business would have blown up in our faces. Everything we’ve striven to keep secret—everything the government wants us to keep secret—would be public knowledge. There’d have to be an inquiry—even perhaps a trial.’

  ‘I’d face a trial,’ said Toby. ‘I’d fight to prove my innocence. And if we could prove it was Anton who killed Rinaldi that would discredit the statement he made in Bosnia, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It might,’ said Hal a bit dubiously.

  ‘And it might not,’ said Alicia. ‘Toby, earlier on, you told me something that Anton said while you were in the cellar. He said if you hadn’t escaped him in Sarajevo, he was going to make very sure you were found guilty and executed.’

  ‘He said there would have been other statements as well as his,’ remembered Toby.

  ‘We always knew that,’ said Hal. ‘If Anton Reznik and that grisly old baroness could have been discredited, we might have taken the chance and let the whole thing come out, but Reznik has too many followers. Even if Tranz’s people had all gone underground, he’d have found half a dozen eye-witnesses—all probably perfectly reputable people—prepared to describe how Toby helped activate the bomb or even fired one of the shots.’

  Flora said, ‘And there’s Sonja to consider. A trial would drag her in.’

  ‘There’s also this,’ said Alicia. ‘Rinaldi was trying to save you from Anton tonight, Toby. He was, you know. How—how ungrateful it would be if you let that go to waste.’

  They looked at one another. ‘Then,’ said Toby, ‘we leave Rinaldi where he is. And I become Rinaldi.’

  ‘Also, we build a wall to hide his body and hope it’s not discovered until it’s so far in the future it will have ceased to matter,’ said Hal. ‘Dear God, I don’t believe this conversation is real. I don’t believe the situation is real, either. We’re discussing the concealment of a body, denying it Christian burial— D’you realize that in the past few days I’ve gone from being a respectable and respected member of His Majesty’s Foreign Office to a man committing half the crimes in the Newgate calendar. Toby, you’re the most infuriating liability—’ He broke off.

  ‘Sir Hal,’ said Alicia, ‘can it really make any difference to Rinaldi’s immortal soul if he’s dropped in the ground at Highgate Cemetery with a few prayers chanted over him, or left quietly at rest in the theatre that represented his life.’

  ‘You appear to have the soul of a pagan, Mrs Darke,’ said Hal.

  ‘Paganism is a very interesting religion, Sir Hal. You should try some of its traditions for yourself.’ The look she gave him was nearly, but not quite, an invitation.

  ‘Let’s examine the practicalities,’ said Flora. ‘Would building such a wall be a problem?’

  ‘If Rinaldi was here,’ began Toby, and then broke off. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I suspect we’ll keep talking about him as if he’s still alive. But I don’t think a wall would be too difficult to build. It might take three or four days. The difficult part will be to get the materials into the theatre without being noticed, but the ghost legend ought to cover that. The ghost can carry in hods of bricks—that will have to be Frank’s task; I don’t think he’ll mind, though. And he and I will build the wall together. Neither of us is the best in the world at practical things, but we’ll manage it.’ He paused again, and said, ‘We’ll treat that dear old boy with respect, of course.’

  ‘We know that.’

  ‘You do realize,’ said Toby suddenly, ‘that it will mean sealing off almost half the entire under-stage area?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘I’d seen that ten minutes ago.’

  ‘We’ll need to make sure no one can get down there any other way. It won’t matter about the cellar door because once the wall’s in place, anyone going down those steps will just see a blank wall. But the grave trap itself will have to be sealed.’

  There was a sudden silence.

  ‘Sealed on stage, d’you mean?’ said Flora.

  ‘Yes. We’ve got to make very sure no one can get down to the cellar and find Rinaldi’s body. So the floor of the trap will have to stay up—to be permanently flush with the stage,’ he said, by way of explanation for Alicia. ‘We’ll have to disable the pulleys and nail the floor itself into position—with steel brackets or something like that, so no one can lower it and get under the stage that way. I think I can manage that,’ said Toby. ‘There are plenty of odds and ends of timber and bits of steel brackets in the carpenter’s room.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Hal. ‘We can’t risk that body being found for a very long time. Not until there’s no longer the possibility of identification. If you do take Rinaldi’s identity, it’s vital the real person is never found.’

  ‘Can we do it, though? There are dozens of people in London who’d know you both,’ said Flora.

  ‘But I’m not going to be in London,’ said Toby. ‘I’m going to be somewhere in Europe—France probably, helping the war effort. I don’t know yet what form that help will be, but I’ll certainly do something. There’s no reason why strangers wouldn’t accept that I’m called Rinaldi, is there? Or is there? If you see any flaws, for goodness’ sake say so now.’

  ‘I can’t see any flaws,’ said Hal, frowning. ‘No, I think that will hold water.’

  ‘Is the grave trap ever used?’ asked Alicia.

  ‘Only occasionally,’ said Toby. ‘It’s sometimes useful for Christmas shows and pantomimes. Or for moving heavy scenery—it saves dragging things down the stairs.’

  ‘People will ask why it’s nailed up,’ said Flora a bit doubtfully. ‘Which is the one thing we can’t risk.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Toby. ‘What do we do? Is there an answer to this?’

  ‘I think there is,’ said Flora. ‘It’s an answer that would solve just about everything, but it’s not an answer I like.’ She looked at him. ‘You already know, don’t you?’

  ‘We’ve got to close the theatre,’ said Toby. ‘Indefinitely.’

  ‘Yes.’

  All the time he and Frank worked on the wall, Sonja and Flora both looked in to provide food or simply encouragement and companionship, but Toby’s mind was in turmoil. This may be the last thing I’ll ever do here, he thought. How much do I mind? He was surprised to find he minded less than he would have expected.

  ‘Your father and I have discussed the Tarleton’s future,’ said Flora, after the wall was finished.

  ‘Has it got a future any longer?’ The words came out flippantly, but Toby knew his mother would understand that the flippancy hid his real feelings.

  ‘No,’ said Flora, ‘not for a very long time. Perhaps not for as long as twenty years.’

  ‘Everything has got to completely die down, hasn’t it?’ said Toby. ‘Sarajevo and this war—however long that lasts.’

  ‘It might last a very long time. Your father doesn’t believe all this over by Christmas talk.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said Toby. ‘So all that’s got to settle. All the echoes, all the memories of Tranz have got to fade into nothing. And I’ve got to become accepted as Rinaldi—but by people who didn’t know him. After all that’s over, I might have to create a life away from the Tarleton. Perhaps even away from England.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone will see it as peculiar if the theatre closes for the duration of the war,’ said Flora. ‘I know there’s the famous tradition of theatres staying open to boost morale, but your father thinks a great many people in this part of London will become involved in the fighting. The younger men will join the army or the navy and they’ll go off to France or Belgium or wherever the battles are. The older ones and the
women will help with voluntary work—nursing and food parcels for the troops. I’m already hoping to set up a travelling company for entertaining the soldiers in their barracks, as you know. We’ll try to let it be thought that you’re part of that if we can. So I don’t think closing this place would cause much comment.’

  ‘But the Tarleton will still need someone to keep an eye on it,’ said Toby. ‘To make sure it isn’t burned down or blown up or washed away. I’ll be out of England more or less permanently and it sounds as if you’ll be whizzing round the camps. And father will be buried under bureaucracy at the Foreign Office—’

  ‘We’ve thought of that.’ Flora hesitated, and then said, ‘How would you feel about ceding the place to Frank Douglas?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Toby considered this. ‘It’s a hell of a responsibility to place on his shoulders.’

  ‘I think he’d do it, though.’

  ‘I wonder if he would. It would sever the link for you and for me, wouldn’t it?’ said Toby after a moment. ‘The Chance link to the Tarleton?’

  ‘Yes. Would that hurt?’

  ‘Not as much as it would have done a couple of months ago,’ said Toby. ‘People have their own links to one another, don’t they? They don’t need bricks and mortar for it. And there seems to be so much ahead that’s far more important. This war—finding out how to help fight it,’ said Toby.

  ‘That’s how I feel.’

  ‘It would have to be done very discreetly.’

  ‘Your father thinks a Deed of Gift would meet the case.’

  ‘He usually knows about that kind of thing,’ said Toby. ‘But could we specify some kind of a restriction on reopening it? Write in—I don’t know the legal terms—but something to ensure it stays closed for a number of years?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Flora. ‘But we could try. Toby—when we came up with this bizarre plan, you said if Rinaldi had to be anywhere in the world, he’d want to be here. Probably a part of him always will be. But I think a part of you will always be here, as well, no matter where you go after all this.’

  Toby looked round. ‘Yes,’ he said, softly. ‘Yes, I think part of me will always be here.’

  The Present

  ‘The ghosts will still be there,’ Hilary said to Caley Merrick as the preparations for the Tarleton’s opening gathered momentum. ‘Ghosts are one of the great traditions of English theatre—of all theatres in the world, I should think. So you won’t lose them. And if you like, I could get permission for you to attend a few rehearsals, so you’d see the place sort of emerge from the darkness.’

  He was hesitant at first, but in the end he accepted Hilary’s suggestion, sitting quietly in the back of the auditorium, unnoticed by most people. She thought that after the first time he rather liked it; he had thanked her very carefully, although Hilary had no idea if he had accepted the opening of the theatre he had haunted so strangely and so faithfully for so many years, and into which he had poured his lonely music. Nor did she know if his ghosts were still there for him.

  But there was one ghost he gave her and it was a ghost she had not expected.

  ‘It was in the box of my family’s things,’ he said. ‘You remember about that? Madeleine said she snatched up papers and photographs more or less at random that day? I was given them eighteen years later.’

  ‘Of course I remember.’ Hilary noticed he did not yet speak of Madeleine as his mother.

  ‘This was among them,’ he said. ‘It didn’t mean much to me—it was just some scribbled lyrics for a song. But I kept it with everything else, because it was another of the links for me.’

  He handed her the sheet of paper, and Hilary took it, not thinking too much about what it might be.

  But when she looked down at it, she saw it was the lyrics of Toby’s lost song about the Sarajevo assassination.

  They had not managed to track down everything from the Tarleton’s last, long-ago closing night, but Hilary thought they had a lot of it. There was a really good comedy sketch about a man trying to travel between two places and becoming hopelessly lost. There were also dances from the era—Judy Randall had unearthed an old playbill in a St Martin’s Lane print shop, with the name of Elise Le Brun and the Rose Romain dancers. They had no idea if the playbill was for the relevant night, but it was dated as being from 1914, so they had used it.

  There were other songs and comedy acts, and also a Shakespearean monologue which Prospero Garrick had referred to in his book. ‘Because we can’t possibly miss the old ham out,’ Hilary said, and one of the agencies had found a semi-retired actor with a marvellously rich voice who mostly did voice-overs for commercials and bit parts in costume dramas. He said his grandfather had met Prospero after the first world war, and expressed himself as being delighted to be part of the Tarleton’s reopening. He would give them the old boy’s rendering of Henry V’s St Crispin Day speech if that would suit, he said, and added something about the tradition of Irving and Tree, leaving Hilary with the feeling that she might almost have encountered the ghost of Prospero himself.

  ‘We don’t want any celebrities or TV soap stars,’ she had said firmly to the theatrical agency. ‘Just good ordinary working actors and actresses and musicians, doing their job. That’s what the Tarleton always was, and that’s what its owner would like it to remain.’

  ‘Even so,’ said the agent, ‘you’ll be making a few names with this one, Miss Bryant. We’ve very much enjoyed this association with the Harlequin, by the way—can we hope for more of the same things in the future?’

  ‘That would be very nice indeed,’ said Hilary, and went away, trying not to grin like the Cheshire Cat at this prospect of new ventures for the Harlequin.

  It was looking as if there might be another reason to grin as well. Two days ago, the senior member of the Harlequin’s trust had phoned to say how pleased they were with what she was doing. ‘Especially since you were more or less thrown into Shona Seymour’s place with no warning,’ he said. ‘A dreadful business, that. They say she’s unlikely ever to be released from Thornacre Asylum.’

  ‘I know.’ Hilary had resolved to visit Shona again after the Tarleton’s opening, to describe the evening for her. She knew Shona would probably only stare at her with that distressing sly hostility, but there was still the chance that something might get through. She was going to take the programme for Shona to see, and if possible a few photographs.

  The senior trust member said, ‘When this Tarleton opening is over, perhaps we should talk about making things a bit more official for you, if you’d be interested.’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ said Hilary. ‘I’d be very interested indeed.’

  As she and Robert walked along Burbage Street, Hilary thought: this is it. This is the night I hoped would happen: the night when an old legend is laid to rest and a new one born. I wish I could take hold of this moment and keep it cupped in my hands for ever. She glanced at Robert, and the delight increased, because Robert was another thing in her life for Cheshire-Cat smiling, and it was absolutely right that he should be with her tonight.

  As they stepped inside the foyer, she knew at once the ghosts were still here. They were not obtrusive, they would not force their presence on this twenty-first-century audience, but they were here all the same and they were interested in what was happening. It’s your night as much as anyone else’s, said Hilary silently to these gentle, inquisitive ghosts. Whoever you were and whatever you were, you’re all part of this. All the memories and the echoes and the happinesses and sadnesses. I was right when I told Caley you wouldn’t vanish.

  They were quite early, but the theatre was already filling up with people and TV cameras—there were two small outside broadcast crews, who would edit a brief story for the end of the main news programmes, probably calling tonight another layer of theatre history for Bankside and another fragment of the past reclaimed to put alongside the Rose and the Globe. There were also local TV and radio stations who would give a bit more coverage. Journali
sts from several dailies and Sundays had accepted invitations, and there would be features in at least three of them. This was all deeply satisfying.

  The theatre sparkled and spun, and when Hilary and Robert went into the auditorium Hilary thought the atmosphere was so electric that if you could somehow reach out to touch it, you would receive a full-volt shock. She had reserved seats in the third row—‘Near enough to the front to see everything, but not to have to crane our necks to the stage,’ she said. Several of the Harlequin Society’s governing board were present; they nodded and smiled to Hilary and the one who had made the suggestion of promotion put up his hand in a half salute.

  Judy Randall was at the other end of the row with several of the Harlequin’s freelancers. They waved to Hilary and gestured that this was all absolutely terrific and Hilary gestured back that yes, it was. Madeleine was near them; Hilary had worried that it might all be too much for her, but Madeleine had said, ‘If you think I’m missing tonight, you can think again. I might have to be tanked up with pills and potions, but I’ll be there if I’m carried.’

  She had not had to be carried, of course; she had walked slowly and rather carefully, but she was in her seat, looking about her with bright-eyed delight. Caley Merrick was with her; he was not saying much, but he was listening to what people were saying, and when Judy Randall leaned forward to make some remark to Madeleine, Hilary saw him laugh.

  The lights went down and the stage lights came up, and with a sigh of pure delight, Hilary plunged completely and marvellously into the Tarleton’s past.

  In the first interval Robert said, very quietly, ‘Hilary. Before the scrum in the bar I want you to see this. I found it on the internet about a week ago and I’ve saved it for tonight, because I wanted to give it to you here, inside the Tarleton.’ He passed her a single sheet of paper, a printout of a website. The heading was ‘Debt of Honour Register: 1914–1918’. Hilary did not read the rest of the heading, because directly beneath it were the words: