Sure enough, there were crowds of people streaming out of the doors marked stalls and heading left, presumably towards the loos and the bar – probably in that order. I stayed where I was and let the people go past – Seawoll at least, because of the sheer size of the man, should be easy to spot. Sartorially I was disappointed; everyone was dressed expensively but it was all smart casual with the occasional evening dress to relieve the boredom – I’d expected better of my betters. The crowd thinned and I merged with the flow and let it carry me left, past the cloakroom and up a flight of stairs into the main bar. According to the sign this was the Balconies Restaurant, and as far as I could see had been created by throwing several metric tons of stripped pine into a Victorian cast-iron greenhouse. Designed to serve the interval crowd, when a thousand lightly stunned punters would rush in and attempt to drown out the singing with gin and tonics, it featured large open spaces and plain padded furniture with clean brass fittings. Under the vaulted arch of its white iron and glass roof it was as if IKEA had been hired to refit St Pancras Station. If Thomas the Tank Engine had been Swedish, then his living room would have looked just like this.
Although he probably would have been a lot less cheerful.
There was a balcony six metres up that ran all the way around the room, wide enough for chairs and tables laid with white linen and silver. The crowds were thinner up there, presumably because most people had headed straight for the bar and as many gins as they could chuck down their necks before the music started again. I headed for the nearest flight of stairs, hoping to get a better look from above. I was halfway up when I realised that the mood of the room was changing. It wasn’t much of a sensation, but it was like a dog barking late at night and far away.
‘That bitch can fuck off,’ came a woman’s voice, shrill, from somewhere below me.
It was the same feeling of tension as I’d felt on Neal Street – just before Dr Framline went psycho on the cycle courier. Somebody dropped a tray, metal clattered on the expensive wooden floor, a couple of glasses smashed. There was an ironic cheer nearby.
I reached the balcony level, stepped between two unoccupied tables and looked out over the crowd.
‘Wanker,’ said a man somewhere below, ‘you fucking wanker.’
I spotted a fit-looking man in his late forties, salt and pepper hair, conservative suit, distinctively bushy eyebrows. It was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom – because my life was not complicated enough. I drew back from the balcony railing and as I did, I saw Lesley leaning on the railing of the balcony opposite, staring right at me. She looked normal, active, happy, wearing her on-duty leather jacket and slacks. When she was sure that I was watching she gave me a happy little wave and nodded down at the main bar, where Seawoll was getting himself a drink.
A voice announced that the performance would be restarting in three minutes.
Down in the main bar a guy in leather-patched tweed slapped one of the men he was talking to. Somebody shouted, Lesley glanced down and I sprinted down the length of the balcony shoving members of the public out of the way. I glanced over at Lesley, who was staring at me in shock as I rounded the first corner and charged across the balcony that bridged the width of the room. Whoever was doing the thinking in Lesley’s head at that moment, her or Henry Pyke, hadn’t expected me to push my way through a crowd of well-dressed worthies. Which was what I was counting on. It’s not easy to fumble a syrette full of tranquilliser out of your pocket while forcing your way past protesting opera lovers, but somehow I managed to get everything ready by the time I rounded the last corner and headed straight for Lesley.
She was watching me with quiet amusement, head cocked on one side, and I thought, you can be as cool as you like because you’re going to be sleeping soon enough. By that point, members of the public were getting out of my way of their own accord and I had a clear run for the last five metres. Or would have, if Seawoll hadn’t come up the stairs and hit me in the face. It was like running into a low ceiling beam: I flipped straight over onto my back and found myself contemplating a blurry view of the roof.
Damn, but that man could move fast when he wanted to.
Clearly Henry Pyke could influence other people, even hard-headed sods like Seawoll – that couldn’t be good.
‘I frankly don’t care,’ brayed a woman somewhere to my right. ‘It’s just fucking men singing about fucking men.’
A voice announced that the performance would recommence in less than a minute, and that people should return to their seats. A young man with a Romanian accent and a waiter’s uniform told me that I should stay where I was and that the police had been called.
‘I am the police, you pillock,’ I said, but it came out muffled on account of the fact that my jaw felt as if it was dislocated. I found my warrant card and waved it at him, and to be fair, he did give me a hand up. The bar was empty except for the staff cleaning up. Somebody had stepped on the syrette, crushing it flat. I felt my face. Since I still had all my teeth, Seawoll must have pulled his punches. I asked where the big man had gone and the staff said he’d headed downstairs with the blonde woman.
‘Into the theatre?’ I asked, but they didn’t know.
I ran down the steps and found myself staring at the long marble counter of the cloakroom. The good thing about Seawoll is that he’s hard to miss and difficult to forget – the attendant said he’d headed for the stalls. I went back to the lobby where a polite young lady tried to block my way. I told her I needed to see the manager, and when she tripped off to get him I slipped inside.
The music hit me first in a great gloomy wave, followed by the scale of the theatre. A great horseshoe rose up in tiers of gilt and red velvet. Ahead of me a sea of heads swept down to the orchestra pit and beyond them to the stage. The set depicted the back end of a sailing ship, although the scale was exaggerated to the point where the gunwales towered over the singers. Everything was painted in cool shades of blue, grey and dirty white – a ship adrift in a bitter ocean. The music was equally sombre, and could really have done with a back-beat or, failing that, a girl in a miniskirt. Men in uniforms and tricorn hats were singing at each other while a blond guy in a white shirt looked on with doe eyes. I had a funny feeling that it wasn’t going to end well for the blond guy, or the audience, for that matter. I’d just worked out that the tenor was playing the captain when the bass, playing the villain of the piece, faltered. I thought at first that this was part of the performance, but the murmur that ran through the audience made it clear it was a mistake. The singer tried to recover, but was having trouble remembering his part. The tenor stepped up to ad lib, but faltered himself, and with an expression of pure panic looked off the stage towards the wings. The audience was starting to drown out the orchestra who, having finally twigged that something was up, crashed to a stop.
I started down the aisle towards the orchestra pit, although I had no idea how I was going to get to the stage. A few of the audience had stood up and were craning their necks to see what was going on. I reached the edge of the pit and glanced down to see that the musicians were still poised over their instruments. I was close enough to touch a lead violinist. He was trembling and his eyes were glazed. The conductor tapped his baton on his music stand and the musicians started playing again. I recognised the music as the first tune sung by Mr Punch in the Piccini script, it was Malbrough s’en va-t-en guerre, an old French folk song, but in the English speaking world it was For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.
The tenor playing the captain picked up the refrain first:
Mr Punch is a jolly good fellow,
His dress is all scarlet and yellow.
The bass and baritone joined in in quick succession, followed by the company, singing as if they had the song sheet before them.
And if now and then he gets mellow,
It’s only among good friends.
The singers stamped their feet to the beat of the music. The audience seemed stuck in their seats; I couldn’t tell if they w
ere confused, mesmerised or just too appalled to move. Then the front row of the stalls took up the beat with hands and feet. I could feel the compulsion myself, a wash of beer and skittles and pork pies and dancing and not caring a fig for the opinions of others.
With the girls he’s a rogue and rover;
He lives, while he can, upon clover;
The clapping and stamping spread back, row by row, from the front of the stalls. In the good acoustics of the Opera House the stamping was louder than a Highbury crowd, and just as contagious. I had to lock my knees to stop my feet from moving.
When he dies it’s only all over:
And there Punch’s comedy ends.
Lesley stepped onto the stage and, bold as brass, walked up the steps that took her to the exaggerated poop deck and turned to face the audience. I saw then that in her left hand she carried a silver-topped cane. I recognised it – the bastard had stolen it from Nightingale. A spotlight stabbed out of the darkness and bathed her in harsh white light. The music and the singing stopped and the stamping trailed away.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ called Lesley, ‘boys and girls. I present to you today the most tragical comedy and comical tragedy of Mr Punch, as related to that great talent and impresario Mr Henry Pyke.’ She waited for applause, and when it didn’t come she muttered under her breath and made a curt gesture with the cane. I felt the compulsion roll over me, while behind me the audience broke into applause.
Lesley bowed graciously. ‘Lovely to be here,’ she said. ‘My, but this theatre is much enlarged since my day. Is anyone else here from the 1790s?’
A solitary whoop floated down from the gods, just to prove that there’s always one in every crowd.
‘Not that I don’t believe you, sir, but you’re a bloody liar,’ said Lesley. ‘The old ham will be here by and by.’ She looked out past the lights into the stalls, searching for something. ‘I know you’re out there, you black Irish dog.’
She shook her head. ‘I’d just like to say, it’s good to be here in the twenty-first century,’ she said suddenly. ‘Lots of things to be grateful for: indoor plumbing, horseless carriages – a decent life expectancy.’
There was no obvious way to get from the stalls to the stage. The orchestra pit was two metres deep, and the lip of the stage opposite was higher than a man could reach.
‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for your entertainment, I give you my rendition of that lamentable scene from the story of Mr Punch,’ said Lesley. ‘I refer of course to his incarceration and, alas, impending execution.’
‘No,’ I yelled. I’d read the script. I knew what was coming next.
Lesley looked straight at me and smiled. ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘The play’s the thing.’ There was a crack of breaking bone, and her face changed. As her nose became a hooked blade, her voice rose to a piercing, warbling shriek.
‘That’s the way to do it!’ she screeched.
I was too late, but I threw myself into the orchestra pit just the same. The Royal Opera House doesn’t mess about with a quartet with a drum machine – you get a full-on orchestra seventy musicians strong, and the pit is built to match. I landed amid the horn section, who were not so dazed by the compulsion Henry Pyke had them under that they didn’t protest. I pushed my way through the violinists, but it was no good, even with a standing jump I couldn’t get my hands on the stage. One of the violinists asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing and, backed up by a bassist, threatened to kick my head in. They both had that same Friday-night, mean drunk look in their eyes that I was beginning to associate with Henry Pyke. I’d just grabbed a music stand to hold them at bay when the orchestra started up again. As soon as it did the two homicidal musicians ignored me, took up their instruments, took their places and, with a great deal of decorum, considering they were having a psychotic episode, started playing. I could hear the thing wearing Lesley’s body singing in its awful high-pitched voice:
Punch when parted from his dear,
Still must sing in doleful tune.
I couldn’t see what Lesley was doing, but judging from the song she was acting out the scene where punch watches a gallows being assembled outside his prison window. There were doors at either end of the orchestra pit – they had to reach backstage one way or the other. I elbowed my way through the musicians towards the nearest door leaving a trail of squawks, twangs, squeals and crashes behind me. The door led into another narrow breezeblock passageway with other, identical-looking passageways branching off left and right. Since I’d exited stage left, I guessed another left turn would get me backstage. I was right, only the Royal Opera House didn’t have a backstage, it had an aircraft hangar, a huge, high-ceilinged room at least three times the size of the main stage that you could have parked a Zeppelin in. All the stage managers, prompts and whoever else lurks out of sight during a performance had crowded into the wings, transfixed by whatever influence Henry Pyke was using on the audience. Getting away from that influence had given me a chance to cool down and think. The damage to Lesley had been done; if I stuck her with the tranquilliser now, her face would fall off. Rushing onto the stage wasn’t going to help – for all I knew, me blundering in was part of Henry Pyke’s script. I sidled among the stagehands and tried to get as close to the stage as I could without showing myself.
They hadn’t built a gallows. Instead, a noose had been lowered from above, as if from a yardarm. Either Henry Pyke was even more organised than I thought he was, or the original opera had involved someone getting hanged. Presumably after a lot of singing.
Lesley, still playing the role of Punch, mimed languishing behind a barred window. She didn’t seem to be following the Piccini script any longer, but instead was regaling the audience with the life story of one Henry Pyke, aspiring actor, from his humble beginnings in a small Warwickshire village to his burgeoning career on the London stage.
‘And there I was,’ declaimed Lesley, ‘no longer a young man but a seasoned actor, my God-given gifts augmented by years of experience dearly won on the hard and unforgiving stages of London.’
That nobody among the stage managers was even sniggering showed the strength of the compulsion they were under. Since Nightingale hadn’t yet started me on ‘compulsion for beginners’, I didn’t know how much magic it took to hold over two thousand people in thrall, but I bet it was a lot, and that’s when I decided it was probably better for Lesley to have her face fall off than her brain shrivel up. I looked around. There had to be a first-aid kit close by. Dr Walid had said I was going to need saline solution and bandages to wrap around her head if I was going to keep her alive long enough for the ambulance to get there. I spotted the kit mounted on the wall above a selection of fire extinguishers, contained in an impressively large suitcase of red ballistic plastic that would also come in handy as an offensive weapon. I got my last syrette ready, and with the first-aid kit in my other hand I sidled into the wings. By the time I had sight of the stage again, Lesley – I couldn’t bear to think of her as Punch or Henry Pyke – was giving a full and detailed description of Henry’s disappointments. Most of which he blamed on Charles Macklin who, Henry claimed, had turned his hand against him out of spite and when challenged, outside this very theatre, had cruelly struck Henry down.
‘He should have swung for that,’ said Lesley. ‘Just as he should have swung for poor Thomas Hallum that he did for in the Theatre Royal. But he has the luck of the Irish and the gift of the gab.’
That’s when I realised what Henry Pyke was waiting for. Charles Macklin had been a regular at the Royal Opera House until his death. According to legend, Macklin’s ghost was supposed to have been seen on numerous occasions in his favourite seat in the stalls. Henry Pyke was trying to draw him out, but I didn’t think he was going to turn up. Lesley paced the width of the poop deck, peering out into the stalls.
‘Show yourself, Macklin,’ she called. I thought there was uncertainty in her voice now. The poop deck was a raised section of the st
age, too high at the sides for me to climb. The only access would be up the stairs at the front – but there was no way to sneak up on Lesley. I was going to have to do something stupid.
I stepped boldly onto the stage, and then made the mistake of looking out at the audience. I couldn’t see much beyond the footlights, but I could see enough to register the great mass of people staring back at me from the towering darkness. I stumbled over my own feet and caught myself on a prop cannon.
‘What’s this?’ screeched Lesley.
‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, rather too quietly.
‘God spare me from fools and amateurs,’ said Lesley under her breath, then louder. ‘What’s this?’
‘I am Jack Ketch,’ I said, and this time I felt it carry out to the audience. I got a ripple of vestigia back, not from the people but from the fabric of the auditorium. The theatre remembered Jack Ketch, executioner for Charles II, a man famed for being so unrepentantly crap at his job that he once published a pamphlet in which he blamed his victim, Lord Russell, for failing to stay still when he swung the axe. For a century afterwards, Ketch was a synonym for the hangman, the murderer and the Devil himself: if ever there was a name to conjure him with, then it would be Jack Ketch. Which explained his role in the Punch and Judy show, and why this was my best chance to get close enough to Lesley to use the syrette.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Ketch, but I am quite comfortable here,’ said Lesley.
I hadn’t bothered to learn the script by heart, but I knew enough to improvise. ‘But you must come out,’ I said. ‘Come out and be hanged.’
‘You would not be so cruel,’ said Lesley.
I know for a fact that there was supposed to be a load more banter here, but since I couldn’t remember the words I cut to the action. ‘Then I must fetch you,’ I said, and advanced up the stairs to the poop deck. It was hard to make myself look at the ruin of Lesley’s face, but I couldn’t risk any surprise moves. Her Punch face twisted with irritation, presumably because I was skipping lines, but she went on with the show – just as I’d been hoping she would. This was the part where Jack Ketch seizes Punch and drags him to the noose, at which point the wily wife-murderer tricks Jack Ketch into sticking his own head through the loop and thus hanging himself. No sir, they don’t make role models for children like that any more.
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