by Sarah Rayne
He could not think of a single thing. Everything was ending in screwed-up balls in the bin. You might even go so far as to say that this was representative of his entire life, which was screwed up and ballsed-up and might as well be thrown into the bin and flushed into the Thames. He was supremely unloved and monumentally neglected and his muse had abandoned him and he was in arrears with the mortgage and there was no whisky in the house.
But now that he thought about it, was there any reason why he could not lay the entire scheme before the bank and suggest that they might care to take a financial slice of it? No reason in the world. They would accord him a bit of respect on account of it as well, instead of sending him coldly polite letters with silly phrases like ‘feel sure you would like to know . . .’ and ‘regret to have to inform you . . .’ There was nobody in the world who really wanted to know about a rapidly-accelerating debt, and so far from being regretful the bank were very likely laughing up their sleeves the entire time! Jealousy, plain and simple, that was all it was, but they would change their tune when they saw how very famous and wealthy he was about to be, by God they would! He would make an appointment to see the manager this very afternoon, and he would point out that here was a very good opportunity for a bit of sponsorship. You often saw things like ‘sponsored by such-and-such a bank’, or ‘such-and-such company’ on theatre programmes and on football stands and at golf tournaments.
Planning the actual company cheered him up. He would direct the show himself, of course (whatever it turned out to be), but he would need all manner of people to work for him. Stage managers and designers and electricians and publicity people. The image of himself seated at a large desk with several telephones presented itself pleasantly, and was followed by others, equally pleasant: rehearsals with himself at the centre of it all, his actors listening respectfully to him, carrying out his directions admiringly. He remembered that there were several quite reasonably-priced rehearsal rooms near St Martin’s Lane.
Stephen Sherry would be the ideal choice for stage manager: the boy had done some good work at Bristol and Coventry and had an amiable custom of paying for the drinks whenever he and Tod met in the Greasepaint Club. It had been worth keeping up his subscription there, even though Fael said it was an extravagant frittering of money they did not have. But you met people there; you made contacts there.
Yes, Stephen would be a useful man to have, and his rich papa might be even more useful. Tod was not altogether sure what role Sir Julius Sherry played in the theatre these days, but he thought that there was some kind of managerial involvement with the Harlequin Theatre. Chairman of the governing board? Trustee? It had been the Harlequin that had seen the original West End run of the Dwarf Spinner and it would really be very nice if the Harlequin could be available again. Tod tried to think what was playing there at the moment and whether it was likely to close. He wondered as well if it might be possible to tell Julius Sherry that the bank were considering an investment, and then to tell the bank that Julius was considering one. He could certainly do it, but the difficulty was whether he would get away with it. It was not being deceitful or even particularly devious, of course; it was simply good business sense. He jotted the two names down.
For the designer he would very much like Flynn Deverill. He wrote the name down and looked at it doubtfully. It would be a bit of a risk to engage Deverill, who was outstandingly talented but notoriously difficult to work with. However, you did not become successful without taking a few chances and Flynn was certainly a chance worth taking. It was regrettable that a trail of rows and chaos tended to follow in his wake, and that he was said to drink and womanise to an alarming degree, but possibly a good deal of this was exaggerated. The Irish tended to flamboyance, of course, and Deverill was very flamboyant indeed; Tod had not been present at the famous Inigo Jones Award ceremony (owing largely to the petty-mindedness of the organisers who had deliberately omitted his name from the guest list), but the speech that Flynn had made on being announced as the winner had become a legend. The BBC had reportedly been on the verge of signing him up to design an extravagant serialisation of Pepys’s Diaries, but since he had denounced the entire awards system as tin cups for amateurs and the panel of judges as venal provincial sycophants, and had done so live on prime-time television, they had understandably changed their minds. Half the guests said afterwards that Flynn had been drunk, but the other half said he had never been more sober.
But he would have Flynn if possible. He remembered that the boy had been Professor Roscius’s protégé during the professor’s later years and that Roscius had certainly been responsible for Flynn’s early involvement with the Harlequin – there you were, the Harlequin connection again. A good omen, surely! And Tod would be able to control Flynn; the boy could not be more than twenty-nine or thirty, and he would naturally treat with respect an older man and an erstwhile colleague of Roscius’s. Dammit, Roscius had been musical director for the Dwarf Spinner all those years ago. He had come up with one or two suggestions for the musical side as well – only a tweak here and there, of course; the thing had been pretty near perfection before it went into rehearsal, but Aine had thought Roscius’s suggestions good.
Of course, from one point of view, it was a pity that Aine had died in the road smash just before the first night. But looked at from another point of view, it had prevented any potentially embarrassing scenes. Also, it had meant that Tod had been able to deliver that marvellous emotional speech at curtain fall, referring to her as his inspiration – ‘My splendid spur’ he had called her, unashamedly wiping the tears away. It was a good thing that no one had known that the phrase was a direct pinch from the memoirs of an old Victorian actor-manager called John Martin Harvey.
And after all that, it was going to be a screaming irony if the years of writing about Beany Boppers and Camembert Crumpet had seriously impaired his skills. He drew the ruled pad towards him again.
Fael was absorbed in the new project for the clinic when Tod came plunging into her room. He appeared to have come straight from the rather seedy club he insisted on belonging to in Soho, which was more or less a gathering-place for fifth-rate actors who could not get work. Some people said it had other uses as well, and told darkly of a basement room beneath the wine cellars, which acted as a kind of secret headquarters for a particular band of Soho prostitutes. Fael, who had only been in the Greasepaint twice in her life, thought this might even be true because it felt like the kind of place where you might encounter anything from a hookers’ trade union to secret IRA meetings, or even gatherings of those impassioned little societies for restoring the Stuarts to the throne of England. London was probably spattered with such things and Soho probably had a minimum of four per street.
Tod was not precisely drunk this afternoon, but he smelt of whisky and stale cigarette smoke, and Fael thought he was in the blustering stage that often tipped into embarrassing self-pity.
She put aside the notes for the hospital show and listened to what he had to say. It was depressingly familiar; Fael could almost have written the script. But it would provoke a row to say this, and there was always the possibility that one day Tod might really find someone to take him seriously.
In fact it was starting to sound as if this might actually turn out to be the day. Fael began to listen with more attention. The name of Gerald Makepiece came up a number of times – mostly preceded with adjectives ranging from ‘little’ to ‘rabbity’ – and it appeared that there had even been serious discussion about actual amounts. Whoever this Gerald Makepiece was he was either very rich or very silly, or possibly both. There was an obvious chance that he was very mad, of course.
But when Tod began to disclose the extent of the arrangement alarm bells sounded in Fael’s head.
She said, ‘You have done what?’
‘I don’t see why you have to glare like that, it isn’t—’
Fael said, ‘Let me get this clear. You have agreed with some unknown white rabbit called Ger
ald Makepiece to form a theatre company, write a new musical and put it on in the West End?’
‘Well why not?’
‘You’re mad,’ said Fael flatly. ‘Were you sober at the time?’
‘Of course I was sober!’
‘Well, was he?’
‘Yes, of course! He’s a very respectable factory owner if you must know,’ said Tod crossly. ‘They make parts for – for something or other, I don’t know what.’
‘He’ll need to be a very rich factory owner if he’s going to finance a West End musical single-handed! I suppose you’ve checked him out, have you?’ said Fael. ‘I mean his financial position? No, I thought you hadn’t.’
‘I shouldn’t dream of being so ungentlemanly.’
‘You could ask the bank to do it for you. Or a solicitor. Banks don’t mind about being ungentlemanly. Solicitors certainly don’t. Supposing the rabbit’s a screwball rabbit? Or a schizoid rabbit? And what if you start things rolling with your own money – not that you’ve got any – and he turns out to be an escaped lunatic? A bankrupt escaped lunatic. Have you thought about that?’
‘He’s not an escaped lunatic and he’s not bankrupt,’ said Tod, irritably. ‘He seemed to me a very responsible person.’
‘He seems to me a piss-artist.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t swear!’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do things to make me!’
They glared at one another. Then Tod said, ‘Anyway, the thing is that I’m – hum – a trifle stuck with the actual writing. A tad bogged down – well, more than a tad, really. I’ve been trying all yesterday and the day before that, and all morning and—’
‘And you’re having difficulty,’ said Fael. ‘Writer’s block. There’s no shame in that.’
‘Oh no, of course there isn’t. No, absolutely not.’
‘On the diet you’ve given your brain for the last ten years it’s not surprising if it needs a bit of a kick,’ said Fael. ‘I should think even Mozart would find it a struggle to write something halfway decent if he’d spent years mushing his brain with washing powders and cheese-whiz biscuits and – what was that other thing you did? – Lily Laguna Lima Bean.’
It was unfair of Fael to bring up Lily the Lima Bean, which had not been one of Tod’s most conspicuous successes, but surely to God a man was allowed one failure. Tod paced around the room a few times, and finally came to sit down again. ‘Fael,’ he said. ‘It’s more than writer’s block. I can’t do it.’
‘You mean you really can’t?’ said Fael. ‘You mean you really have got a promising backer – the real McCoy this time—’
‘Of course he’s the real McCoy—’
‘And you’re going to muff it because of Lima Beans and Crumpet Cheeses?’
‘I wouldn’t like to put it quite so hurtfully—’
‘Well, how else would you like to put it?’
There was an uncomfortable silence and Fael remembered the unknown young man’s words. It’s twenty years since your father created the Dwarf Spinner, and he’s done nothing worth mentioning since then. You’re going to need my help, Fael . . . Something unexpected brushed her mind. Anticipation? Exhilaration?
Fael said, bracingly, ‘Listen, now. If this rabbit really is prepared to put up the money you’ll just have to keep at it. Maybe you haven’t given yourself enough time.’
‘It isn’t that,’ said Tod, and something unfamiliar showed in his eyes. The dying embers of a burnt-out man? He’s a spent force, Fael . . .
And then the odd furtive look vanished as quickly as it had come, and Tod said, ‘Fael, all those things you’ve done at the hospital – the shows you’ve written and set to music—’
‘You’re not suggesting I write this thing, are you?’ Fael stared at him. ‘Oh God, that’s just what you are suggesting! Oh God, now I know you’re mad! Listen, those were little concerts for children, for heaven’s sake! They weren’t original – they weren’t even particularly good. They were therapy projects, to help disabled kids. Versions of other people’s work – scaled-down, simplified—’
‘Oh, everything in the world is a version of something else!’ said Tod, instantly. ‘There’re only five or six basic plots, anyway, just as there are only five or six basic melodies. Anyone will tell you that.’
‘But I can’t write music. I’ve never composed anything in my life!’
‘Only because you’ve never tried. Roscius taught you the principles of composition, didn’t he? Well, I know he did because he told me before he went back to Ireland. As a matter of fact he thought rather highly of you.’
‘Nice of you to pass that on after all these years,’ said Fael, sarcastically.
‘No, but you understand music at least as well as I do.’
‘My God, there’s an admission!’
Tod reached out and took her hand. This was something he hardly ever did, and Fael felt a sudden chill. He means it. He really means it. He’s going to force me to do this. Not with whips and beatings and starvation, but by appealing to my better nature. I haven’t got a better nature. Yes, but I can’t let him look a fool in the eyes of the world and the white rabbit. We’re broke, as well. If this is all genuine, I can’t let him miss such a chance.
Tod said, ‘Help me, Fael,’ and this time his voice was humble and his face was pouchy with panic. ‘I can’t do it. But I think you can.’
Could she? The thought brought a churning blend of panic and fear, but underlying it was a burgeoning excitement.
And astonishingly, diluting the panic, was the shadowy memory of the dark young man. You’re going to need a dark, satanic familiar, Fael, he had said.
A familiar . . . An eerie, compelling twin-self with a voice like melted honey, or a black cat’s fur, who would come stealing through the dusk-laden garden and help her to spin a dazzling spell-binding tale out of nothing.
Fael had no idea if she could do what Tod wanted, but there was nothing to be lost by trying. She drew the wheelchair up to the desk in the music room, and slotted a sheet of paper into the typewriter. Almost at once an unlooked-for bolt of excitement sliced through her. It was like facing an enormous blank canvas with a palette of vivid sizzling colours. It was like seating yourself in a roller coaster and waiting for the invisible machinery to rocket you helplessly onto its spinning, breathless track. I’m about to walk into a make-believe world, thought Fael with fearful delight. I’m about to enter the world of illusion, and I’ve got to forget that the creatures who people that world aren’t real: they’ll have painted faces and their swords will be card and their jewels paste and pinchbeck. But I mustn’t see that. I mustn’t see that the castles are only plaster and timber either, or that the mist-wreathed lands are only misty because somebody’s pumping out fake fog. I can’t see the ending of this, thought Fael: I don’t even think I can see the beginning. But here we go anyway.
A small fire was burning in the hearth, and the desk lamp cast a pool of radiance. The room was warm and safe. But night was creeping over the garden outside her window, and the shadows were becoming edged with violet. The garden was sliding into its dark, sinister shadow-self; it was turning into a place of black enchantments and spider-web witchery. The twilight thrummed with unseen forces and with strange murmurings and Fael thought it was the kind of night when anything in the world might happen. When creatures who had been sleeping at the heart of the trees might lift their three-cornered and inhuman faces and look about them . . . When horned and cloven-footed beings might dance through the gloaming, and faceless young men with blurred velvet voices prowl through the undergrowth, or dark, disguised heroes approach the doorless tower and climb up a plait of yellow hair because it was the only way in . . .
But other than that, it was not looking like a night when barnstorming award-winning musicals were created. Fael scribbled a few more notes, and acknowledged crossly that the moonwashed garden was becoming a distraction. Because I’m watching for him? Because I know he’ll come, or – jarring thought!
– because I know he won’t?
You’re going to need a dark familiar, Fael . . . You’re going to need someone you can summon . . .
Well, all right, I’m summoning you, said Fael, silently. I’m conjuring you up, whoever you are, and if there’s anything at all in telepathy you’ll appear now! I don’t know if you’re a genie or a banshee or the ghost of Christmas past, and I don’t even know if you’re simply a figment of a disordered imagination. But I’m commanding you to appear now!
For a moment the shadows seemed to flinch, almost as if a strong light had suddenly shone down onto them, and Fael felt her heart begin to beat faster.
He’s here. He’s approaching. I can’t hear him, but I can feel him. He’s coming along the old river towpath, through the lychgate that Tod always meant to have blocked up and never did . . . Through the dark trees . . . He’s coming softly and slowly, because he doesn’t tread quite like other people, and he’s keeping to the shadows because I don’t think he looks quite like other people, either . . .
She remained very still, trying not to make any sound that might break the spell, trying not to breathe, fiercely aware of her heart pounding in her chest. And then with a lurch of half-fearful, half-delighted panic, she suddenly saw that he was there, and that he had been there all along, part of the night, part of the twisting darkness, part of the interlacing branches of the old trees.
Like the old Irish legend of the Castle of Shadow and the beings that walked silently there and only appeared when it suited them – what was its name? – Scathach, yes that was it! He was a Scathach, a shadow being.
He came up to the window and stood for a moment silhouetted against the dusk. The soft voice Fael remembered so vividly said, ‘Invite me in, Fael.’
A thrill of horror brushed Fael’s skin. Am I really going to do this? Tod’s out, and I’m on my own. In a kind of daze she heard her voice saying, ‘Yes. All right. Go round to the garden door, and I’ll unlock it.’
