HIS OTHER SON

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  Meg swore softly and stepped forward, cracking her head on a sheet of plate glass she hadn’t seen. She cried out and threw her hands to her head, feeling a bump the size of a quail’s egg growing on her brow. This was pointless, like chasing a shadow. She turned and tried to retrace her steps, but realized within seconds that she’d come deep into the maze and completely lost her bearings. She looked at her watch again. She should have been back at the theatre five minutes ago.

  Starting to panic she stretched out her hand in front of her and began to move quickly along the wooden path, and as she moved she started to hear voices. Soft voices whispering her name over and over again, and a small thrill of fear began to worm its way into her mind.

  As she moved forwards more figures appeared in the maze, fleeting shapes that darted this way and that, never still long enough for her to get a close look at them. Her mind was becoming woolly, her mouth dry. She could still taste the bitterness of the coffee… and something else – a slight chemical aftertaste that stuck in her throat, sharp and sour. She stopped moving forwards, swaying slightly as she stood at junction of the mirrors. She closed her eyes and shook her head to try to clear it. When she opened her eyes again she saw the girl with the pale melancholy face standing inches away from her, separated from her by a single sheet of glass.

  The girl stretched out her hand and the glass in front of her stretched to accommodate it, then, as if it were made of nothing more substantial than jelly, the glass parted and the girl stepped through, wrapping her arms around Meg and pulling her close. ‘Help me,’ the girl whispered into Meg’s mind.

  The coldness of the young girl’s body seeped through Meg’s clothes, through her skin and drove deep into her bones. Her teeth started chattering and her whole body shook. The girl seemed to be passing straight through her and out the other side. Meg screwed her eyes tight, waiting for the freezing sensation to end. When she opened them she was still standing at the junction of mirrors but she was alone. There was no sign of the girl but the voices were louder. They were still hissing her name, but there were other sounds now as well. There was a deep baritone rumbling and high-pitched screaming – a loud, clamorous chorus of sound that forced her to cover her ears.

  The air was split by a loud crack as the mirror in front of her fractured. The glass shook and a thousand spider-webbed cracks appeared, before the mirror crumpled in on itself and dropped to the floor. The crack came again and another mirror broke, followed by another and another. Meg realised suddenly that a path was opening up for her. The sheets of glass and the mirrors were cracking and breaking in sequence, forming an alleyway through the maze. With her shoes crunching over broken glass, she followed the alleyway, hoping it would lead her back to the pier. And almost crying out with dismay when the last mirror cracked and fell away to reveal a solid brick wall.

  She stood facing the wall, swaying slightly, her head swimming and her thoughts spinning. There was a final crack and the wall split, deep red light pouring out from the crack, filtering through the brick dust clouding the air. Inch by inch the crack widened and more and more light poured through, bathing her in redness as a cool breeze played on her face. Soon the dust subsided and she could see clearly through the gap in the wall.

  She took a few steps forward and found herself standing on the soft silver sand of the beach. The tide was out, the sea nothing more than a pale strip of reflected sunlight in the distance. There was a small noise behind her and she spun round to face a blank, white stuccoed wall, solid, no cracks. Confused, she turned back. Away in the distance she could see a brightly painted beach hut, pink and white candy stripe forming a high spot of colour on an otherwise blank canvas. Slowly, with uncertain steps she started to walk towards it.

  Above her the sky was an unbroken blue. Seagulls floated on high thermals, calling to her with their raucous voices. She shielded her eyes and looked up at them, squinting past the sun’s brilliant starburst of light.

  ‘Meg, glad you could make it.’

  With a gasp she looked along the beach to the source of the voice. Narina Dressler was leaning against the candy-striped wall of the hut, immaculately dressed, smoking a cigarette, a sardonic smile playing on her beautifully painted lips.

  Meg felt her head start to spin. Her mouth was dry and filled with the bitter after-taste of the coffee. She swayed slightly, groaned, and then pitched forward in a dead faint.

  It was four o’clock before Gareth could get away from the theatre. Meg’s absence was noticed by Toby Malling, the director, and despite Gareth’s assurances that Meg would not just disappear without good reason, the man was clearly angry. As he walked along the promenade Gareth was worried, though he couldn’t begin to imagine what had happened to her.

  The proprietor of the pier’s cafeteria was a stout man with a day’s stubble shading his chin and thick brylcreemed hair. ‘Yes, I remember her,’ he said in answer to Gareth’s question. ‘Pretty little thing. Sitting over there in the corner having coffee with the mysterious one in sunglasses. Sunglasses indoors, I ask you! Is she all right? I must admit I was tempted to call an ambulance when I saw how groggy she was. But she said she’d be okay.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Gareth said.

  The proprietor put down the plate he was drying and flicked the tea towel over his shoulder. ‘I thought that’s why you were here. I was worried about her.’

  ‘I’m looking for her. We’re rehearsing a show at the Palace and she came here to meet this other woman for lunch and didn’t come back to the theatre. She was taken ill, you say?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say ill, but after the other one left – the one with the glasses – your one got up to leave and was all over the place. Staggering…really unsteady. Well, I was round the counter like a shot. I thought she was going to faint. I asked her if she felt all right, and she told me she was fine. But, I don’t know, there was something about her eyes. They were very bright. Too bright, and her skin looked sort of waxy. Anyway she left and I watched her as she walked away. Not steady on her feet at all. Next thing this car pulls up on the prom and she gets inside, and that’s the last I saw of her.’

  ‘What type of car?’

  The proprietor shook his head. ‘I’m not a driver so I’ve never taken much interest in them. Big though, and black. Not like a hearse, more sporty than that.’

  Gareth thanked him and left. He had a sick, hollow feeling in his stomach. If something had happened to Meg he would never forgive himself. He rushed back to the theatre.

  Ted Taylor was sliding reams of sheet music into a slim leather carrying case, the ever-present roll-up stuck between his lips. He looked up when Gareth walked onto the stage. ‘Hello, boy, thought you’d gone home for the night.’

  ‘No,’ Gareth said. ‘I went looking for Meg.’

  Taylor pursed his lips and blew through them. ‘Very wise,’ he said. ‘She needs her card marked. Haven’t seen Toby so angry for years and Ronnie Miller was just adding fuel to the fire. Not on though, is it, walking out halfway through the first day’s rehearsals? Doesn’t bode well for the rest of the run.’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t think she did walk out. She was meeting someone for coffee, but that was all. I’m worried that something might have happened to her.’

  ‘Oh,’ Taylor said. ‘What sort of something?’ He finished packing his bag, secured the catches and started to walk to the side of the stage to fetch his coat.

  Gareth kept pace with him. ‘When I told you earlier about Finlay Crawford, you said “he who sups with the devil”…’

  ‘Should use a long spoon. Right enough.’

  ‘But why Finlay Crawford? What do you know about him?’

  Taylor put down his case and slipped his arms into the sleeves of his coat. He shrugged the coat onto his shoulders and set about buttoning it. Then he picked up his case and opened the flap, pulling out a sheet of plain manuscript paper and a pencil. Closing the case and turning it over to use as a rest he wrote something on the
paper and handed it to Gareth.

  It was a list of names. Finlay Crawford was at the top of the list followed by at least twenty more; names that Gareth recognised instantly – the names of some of the most important people in country.

  Ted Taylor watched Gareth’s face as he read, smiling with satisfaction as his young friend’s eyebrows slowly raised. ‘I see you recognise most of the names then.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gareth said. ‘But then who wouldn’t?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Taylor walking towards the stage door. ‘But put them together and you have something a little special.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gareth said, running to keep up with him. ‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  Taylor opened the stage door. ‘I’ve said enough already. And all I’m doing is giving you the benefit of what I’ve picked up over the years; backstage gossip and whispers. You’d be amazed what people confide to their accompanist. You’re staying with June, aren’t you?’

  ‘June?’

  Taylor sighed. ‘June Gafney? Gafney’s Guesthouse?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gareth said. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Well,’ Taylor said, stepping out onto the street. ‘Go back and see June, and ask her about the Brotherhood.’

  ‘The Brotherhood?’

  ‘June knows about them… first hand, so to speak. Get her to tell you what she knows.’ He looked along the street. ‘There’s my bus. I’ll see you tomorrow. I hope you find the girl, she seemed quite nice.’ He trotted along the street towards the bus stop. Gareth watched until he was on the bus then stared again at the list of names on the sheet of manuscript paper. Folding it into quarters he slipped it into the pocket of his jacket and headed back to their digs.

  Meg opened her eyes but she was in darkness, she could see nothing. Her mouth was dry and her tongue seemed swollen. She needed a drink. She seemed to be lying on a couch. Her hand traced its contour. Leather by the feel of it… studded…expensive. She tried to sit up but a sharp pain lanced through her head and she groaned and lay back down. There was a small noise and the light was switched on.

  ‘She’s awake.’

  The sudden brightness blinded her but she recognised the voice. Narina Dressler.

  Meg squinted through the brightness and saw Narina Dressler’s face inches from her own. Then she looked past the Dressler woman to the person who’d just come into the room.

  ‘Give her another shot,’ Martin Stein said and Meg felt a sharp pain in her arm. The faces began to swim in front of her.

  ‘She’s going under again.’

  ‘Good. Keep her sedated until we hear one way or the other. We shouldn’t have to wait long for his answer.’

  Their voices receded, became indistinct then fell silent. Meg closed her eyes and slept once more.

  Gareth let himself into the guesthouse, went straight across to Mrs Gafney’s door and knocked sharply.

  ‘It’s open.’

  Gareth pushed the door and it swung inwards. ‘Mrs Gafney, has Meg been back here?’ he said as he walked into the cluttered room.

  June Gafney was sitting in an armchair, the scrapbook propped open on her lap. She looked up at Gareth with tear-streaked eyes. ‘It’s happening again,’ she said.

  ‘What is?’

  The landlady picked up the scrapbook and held it out to him. Gareth took it and turned it around in his hands. The book was open at a newspaper cutting. The headline read - MARIE ELISE – A TRAGIC ACCIDENT!

  ‘Who was Marie Elise?’ Gareth said, although the name was ringing bells somewhere at the back of his mind.

  Mrs Gafney smiled, a faraway look in her eyes. ‘My dear Mary, my daughter.’

  ‘I’d no idea…’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘It wasn’t common knowledge. I never married the father, and things like that were brushed under the carpet in those days.’

  Gareth pulled up a chair and sat down opposite her, waiting for her to continue.

  June Gafney leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes and shaking her head slightly. ‘I was young, just starting out as an actress, and he seemed… he seemed so unobtainable. He was already a star, already a draw at the box office, and me? Well, I was never going to set any theatres on fire. So when he started taking an interest in me, well, I was just swept away with it.’

  Gareth sat in silence, leafing through the pages of the scrapbook. He stopped at a page. All the page contained was a photograph. A publicity still. The photograph showed a young woman with a pale porcelain face, with long fair hair parted in the centre. The face was beautiful but there something in her eyes; an aloofness – a look of haughty superiority. The face was also vaguely familiar.

  ‘And this is your daughter?’ he said, turning the book for her to see.

  Mrs Gafney nodded. ‘It was taken the week after she found out who her father was. I pleaded with her to go away, to put an ocean between herself and him. She’d had offers from a Hollywood studio. She could have gone out to America and started again there. She could have escaped.’

  Suddenly he realised why the girl’s face seemed so familiar. ‘Finlay Crawford was her father, wasn’t he?’ he said.

  June Gafney nodded her head slowly and stared off into space. ‘I loved that man more than I have ever loved anyone. But the longer I knew him, the more I began to realise there was dark side to him. He could be incredibly ruthless… and cruel too. I’d seen Finlay reduce a fellow actor to tears, literally to tears, simply because the poor chap trod on one of his lines during their scene together. There was a terrible cruelty there… but also a terrible attraction. He drew people to him. He surrounded himself with his friends. So many famous people. Household names all of them.’

  Gareth took the folded piece of paper from his pocket and started to read the names aloud.

  ‘The Brotherhood,’ Gareth said at the end of his recital.

  ‘That’s what they liked to call themselves.’ She screwed up her eyes, tears pressing out from behind the closed lids. ‘And believe me, young man, that list of yours barely scratches the surface. It’s larger than you could possibly know. It reaches into every part of society – business, politics, the police… even the church. And the man… or creature… at its head is Finlay Crawford. But I didn’t know anything about it when we first met. As I said, I was young… innocent, and I was bowled over because my lover was Finlay Crawford, and I was totally besotted by him. But then one night he took me to a party at Clifford Stein’s house in Bayswater…’

  June Gafney stopped talking and sat staring into space, her glass tilting in her grasp, slopping sherry over her floral print dress. Gareth leaned forward and gently righted the glass and said, ‘Are you okay?’

  She was lost in the past, buried in the memories haunting her for the last thirty years. She jerked back to the present day and reality with a small cry, and stared at Gareth as though he was a total stranger. ‘A party!’ She laughed harshly. ‘That’s a good one. An orgy more like. People were drunk and drugged, and they were doing things to each other… well, I’ll let you use your imagination. I just wanted to go, to get out of there and go home. I told Finlay and he was so kind and understanding. “Of course we should go,” he said. “It was wrong of me to bring you here. Just have one more drink while I finish talking to Clifford.” That’s what he said, “Just have one more drink.” He fetched the drink for me and I, like a fool, drank it while I waited for him… and that’s the last I remember until I woke up, naked, in the middle of a stage. I couldn’t even tell you which theatre it was. I was drugged. I wasn’t in my right mind…’ She shuddered violently and the tears started to flow once more. She dabbed at them with a crumpled handkerchief. ‘Most of them were there, the Brotherhood, sitting in the front row of the stalls, watching me… hungry, obscene looks on their faces… Finlay was first. The others followed. One by one they came up onto that stage and…’

  The sherry schooner exploded as she crushed it in her hand.

  In his Mayfair ap
artment Finlay Crawford threw off his coat and kicked the front door shut. The news was even worse than he’d feared. He stared at his reflection in the hall mirror, his fingers pulling gently at the skin beneath his eyes. There was no mistake. It was no longer as elastic as it was. The skin stayed pulled for seconds before gradually resuming its former shape and smoothness. He’d been warned that this would happen eventually, that dissolution and decay were just as much a part of the cycle as the youth and vitality that had sustained him for the past decades. But he wasn’t expecting to see the results so quickly and so dramatically. He’d expected at least another forty years out of this body. But it was now obvious it was not meant to be.

  Jefferson Phillips, his Harley Street consultant and associate member of the Brotherhood, spelled out his options in stark and unpleasant terms. And he, Finlay Crawford, baulked. Damn it! He’d become used to being Finlay Crawford! The character fitted him like a glove and he enjoyed the lifestyle Crawford’s celebrity afforded him. The thought of starting again, in another guise, with another body appalled him, angered him. Life could be so unfair.

  He went through to the lounge and stood at the cocktail bar, again studying his reflection in the mirror that served as the bar’s counter. He poured four fingers of scotch into a tumbler, threw in some ice from the bucket, and knocked the drink back, letting the whisky burn down his throat, making his eyes water. Then he repeated the process.

  He flopped down on the leather couch and stared up at the ceiling, his mind spinning with unpleasant possibilities. He knew he would have to choose well. He could not afford to be saddled with a specimen anything less than perfect. And there had to be talent there – an innate talent that could not be taught, but was as natural as the lungs drawing breath. Looks were important too. Phillips poked fun at his vanity when he raised the subject in the consulting rooms, but he’d silenced the man with a glare. Phillips knew that without Finlay’s approbation and support, he could never hope to become a full member of the Brotherhood, and receive all the benefits that exalted position merited.