Changeling

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘Then get on with it, Toddy, before your man here sends in the bailiffs. Are you wanting me for design director of your little concert, by the way? Because if so, you’d better make sure you can afford me.’ He tilted his chair back and rested the heels of his boots on the edge of the table, addressing the company generally. ‘That was something Roscius taught me, you know – that people will always take you at the value you put on yourself. So I always put a very high value on myself indeed.’

  Mia Makepiece said, warmly, ‘I’m sure any fee you charged wouldn’t be too high, Mr Deverill,’ and Gerald said carefully that of course they would want to engage the best they could get.

  ‘You see, Toddy? That little fowl with leggings over there wants me in the company.’

  ‘I didn’t actually say—’

  ‘Oh, yes you do want me,’ said Flynn, instantly. ‘You really do, you know.’

  Gerald interposed a hesitant question as to the amount that might be in question here, and turned to the page headed ‘Salaries’, his pen poised expectantly. Flynn grinned and named a figure, and Gerald’s pen skidded across the page.

  ‘But I’m worth it,’ said Flynn. ‘Because I’m very good, in fact I’m probably the best in London. And it so happens that I’m free at the moment, aren’t you in luck?’

  ‘Stop showing off,’ said Sir Julius repressively, and Flynn grinned again, and raised his glass. ‘And take your feet off the table.’

  ‘I thought it would be cleaner than the floor,’ said Flynn, but did as requested. ‘And now, will we talk about forming this company and finding out what Toddy’s going to write for us all, before I’m sick on the mat from that terrible wine? And we’ll hope we don’t have to repair to the wine bar downstairs, because the claret they serve’s even worse than this horse-piss Toddy’s giving us, and Bill lets the hookers in for half-price booze at five o’clock.’

  Gerald Makepiece went back to the small, quiet Kensington hotel, his mind in a happy tumult.

  The afternoon had not been like any afternoon he had ever experienced, and the meeting unlike any meeting he had ever attended. At Makepiece Enterprises they had serious and responsibly-minded conferences, where people presented reports; where figures were carefully considered and budgets balanced to the farthing. Coffee was served if it was morning, and tea if it was afternoon, and on Gerald’s birthday, or if somebody was retiring or getting married, they all had a glass of Crofts dry sherry, and it was all very orderly and respectful.

  There had not been a great deal of order about this afternoon’s meeting, and there had not been very much respect, either! But despite it, they appeared to have formed the nucleus of a company, the articles of association for which Gerald’s solicitors would draw up, and the directors of which would be Tod Miller, Julius Sherry, Gerald himself, and Miller’s bank. Gerald had wanted Mia to be included, but she had very prettily declined.

  ‘I shouldn’t know the first thing about being a director,’ she had said, and Sir Julius had at once made a joke about sleeping partners which made everyone laugh very heartily.

  Then there had been some question as to whether Flynn Deverill would be drafted onto the board as well. Sir Julius had been inclined to favour the idea on account of the Harlequin connection, but Flynn had refused point-blank.

  ‘I’ll design Toddy’s concert for him, but I’ll only do it as a paid employee.’

  It had not previously occurred to Gerald that anyone would refuse a seat on any board, and he had stared at Flynn in fascination.

  Sir Julius Sherry said in an exasperated voice, ‘For goodness’ sake, Flynn, why not?’

  ‘Oh, if you make me a director there’ll be no authority for me to challenge,’ said Flynn. ‘I like challenging authority, in fact it’s the very breath of life to me. And my best work’s done when I’m quarrelling with people.’

  Julius said, in a resigned fashion, ‘The fighting Irish.’

  ‘Exactly. So you can pay me that enormous salary the little fowl’s got written down there, but you can leave me below the salt. I’ll lead the mutinies and foment the unrest and stir up rebellion amongst the all-licensed fools and the rude mechanicals.’

  ‘How appropriate,’ said a lugubrious voice from the other side of the table, and Flynn at once raised his glass of the disputed wine to Simkins of the bank.

  There had been a point in the discussions when Gerald had been afraid that Tod Miller was going to fly into a real rage with Flynn, and throw the disrespectful young Irishman out of the Greasepaint Club neck and crop. Miller had actually started up out of his chair, his face purpling in a way that made Gerald wonder uneasily about heart attacks and strokes, but the bank representative cleared his throat and began to say something about the need to get swift returns on investments, and Tod Miller had said ‘Hrmph’, and sat down again. In the end he had agreed to accept Flynn as the company’s designer. Gerald had no very clear idea of what this entailed, but had grasped that it was a position of some importance and that they were fortunate to have Flynn.

  ‘It’s the most important thing of all,’ said Flynn. ‘And you’re very fortunate indeed to have me. I’ll design you the most startling show you ever heard of. You’ll see. Toddy, when will we see the book?’

  ‘Oh hum, well, when it’s finished,’ said Miller, and Gerald saw Julius Sherry look up sharply.

  ‘There’s no problem, is there, Toddy?’

  ‘Oh no, absolutely not, my word, no problem at all. It just isn’t ready for anyone to see it yet.’

  ‘Hasn’t Toddy been telling us all for years he’s got a drawerful of West End successes just waiting to be staged?’ said Flynn. ‘Six musicals in search of an angel.’ He looked at Tod through his lashes. It was ridiculous for a man to possess such extravagantly long lashes. It was a very good thing indeed that Mia had no eye for these insolent young men, as well, because Flynn Deverill possessed the kind of startling good looks that ladies sometimes became silly about. But he was shockingly rude, and Mia would not care for that.

  ‘It’s all very fine for the rest of you to make jokes,’ said Tod, crossly. ‘But you’ll have copies in plenty of time.’

  ‘Well, could we have a general idea?’

  Tod said irritably that writing was not like working on a factory bench. ‘Dammit, I’m an artist. I’m a creator. I can’t be yoked and fettered.’

  ‘I’m sure no one expects it, Mr Miller,’ said Mia.

  ‘Well, no. Thank you, Mia.’

  Flynn Deverill remarked that a full-blown musical would inevitably take longer to dash off than a handful of television commercials. ‘It takes a bit longer than Stilton Hooker, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Camembert Crumpet,’ said Tod, infusing the words with as much dignity as was possible. He stood up, pointedly ignoring Flynn. ‘Julius, are you getting a taxi back, because if so—’

  But Sir Julius, it appeared, had agreed with Mia that the two of them would just nip across to the Harlequin Theatre together. ‘Only a very quick nip,’ he said. ‘Our little lady is not familiar with the house, and we’re going to review the ground. So to speak. You don’t mind do you, Makepiece? No, I didn’t think you would. Flynn, can we drop you anywhere?’

  It was not immediately clear to Gerald how or at what point this arrangement had been arrived at, or quite why it was necessary for ground (what ground?) to be surveyed, but since Mia was going to be involved, she would want to know as much as possible about what was ahead of her. It was extremely kind of Sir Julius to go to such trouble.

  Gerald stepped cautiously out into the street and waited for a taxi to drive past. There were certainly quite a lot. He placed his left foot on the kerb edge and lifted his right hand in a hailing gesture, which was what you saw people do in films. He felt very daring and nonchalant, and he managed not to appear too startled when it actually worked.

  As night began to shroud the London streets, the Greasepaint’s doorman went quietly down the stair that led to the wine cellars, and unlocked th
e subterranean room that was only ever used on Sunday nights.

  The Sunday meetings at the Greasepaint were a queer old set-up; the doorman had to say they were very strange indeed. Normally you got your girls and you got your pimps, and as a rule the pimps went to the girls’ flats or to the nearest pub to settle up all the monies and so on. Sometimes you got trouble between them, and the police had to be called, and quite often you got trouble of a more private kind as well: pimps poaching girls, or girls poaching territories, and private feuds and jealousies and scores to be settled. Sometimes the police got involved with those and sometimes they did not. It was mostly how it operated and although the system was a bit rough and ready, everybody knew the rules and on the whole it worked all right. If you lived or worked in Soho you knew about it almost without thinking about it, although probably it was different with the class girls who had maids and regular bookings. It would probably be a whole lot different in Mayfair and St John’s Wood; the doorman was not very familiar with those areas.

  The main thing that stood out about the Sunday night meetings was that they were organised. In fact the doorman had only remarked the other week to Bill on the bar, that if this arrangement ever caught on they’d find themselves with a hookers’ trade union, and Bill had said, well, why not? The girls worked their arses off most nights, poor cows, why shouldn’t somebody take up their cause? He had not actually said ‘cows’, and he had not actually said ‘arses’ either.

  The room had to be ready at midnight, to the tick. Neither of them knew where the initial instructions had come from, but they knew the arrangement had been there for two or three years and that payment for the room was made scrupulously but anonymously each Sunday, the cash left in a sealed envelope on the table after everyone had gone. The arrangements were fairly easy, really; there had to be the table at the far end, with the velvet cloth thrown over it, and there had to be the thick crimson curtains drawn behind the table, so that they hid the small door that opened onto the passage leading to the area steps. The area was sometimes used as a delivery yard and not many people knew it was there, but the man who came here every Sunday knew it was there and he had his own key, although neither the doorman nor Bill knew how he had come by it. This was only one of the faintly sinister things about him.

  The chairs had to be lined up for the girls, neat rows facing the velvet-draped table. Bill and the doorman usually took down the stackable chairs from the upstairs meeting room. And, eeriest of all, every light bulb had to be removed and the special low-wattage, red-tinted bulbs put in place. Bill ordered them in bulk from the same suppliers Raymond’s Revuebar used. It was cheaper that way. The meeting began at midnight exactly and ended an hour to an hour and a half later. No refreshments were served, but a decanter of brandy and a glass had to be left on the table, and it had to be the good brandy as well.

  Neither Bill nor the doorman himself had ever questioned what would happen if the room was not ready one night or if the preparations deviated from the instructions, quite simply because it must never happen. The man who paid for the room’s use, and who entered through the low door in the wall and sat at the table each Sunday night and drank the very good brandy was not someone either of them wanted to risk angering. This was remarkable in itself when you remembered the doorman’s Navy and boxing years and the fact that Bill had grown up in one of the roughest parts of the East End.

  They always told one another that one of these nights they would creep down and hide somewhere and see exactly what went on at the meetings. They were both becoming very curious indeed about the identity of the man who came under cover of darkness, and whose name nobody seemed to know, but who apparently wielded such authority in the neon-lit demi-world of Soho’s night streets.

  Putting the final touches to the room tonight, the doorman straightened up and looked about him. Like this, with the sulky lights burning, you might almost mistake it for a stage set – something from one of those slightly raunchy, sometimes bizarre shows in the sixties and seventies, where fantasy and fiction and reality all overlapped a bit. The rock musicals like Hair and Oh Calcutta! and Jesus Christ Superstar. Or that curious dark fairytale musical that had been such a cult at one time – the Dwarf Spinner. The doorman was familiar with the Dwarf Spinner; when he had left the Navy he had got a job at the Harlequin for a time, scene-shifting and carpentering, and he could remember helping to set the stage for the eerie scene where the twisted evil genius, Rossani, made his first appearance.

  Looking about the red-lit cave that was the Greasepaint’s deepest cellar, he was reminded very strongly of Rossani. Which was the outside of absurdity.

  He shook his head to dispel the clustering shadows, and went back up the stairs.

  Chapter Five

  The dwarf’s power is only to be broken if his name can be discovered.

  Classic Fairy Tales, lona and Peter Opie

  Leila and Gilly normally went to the Sunday night Greasepaint meeting together. It was not precisely that they were fearful, but Leila said and Gilly agreed that the man they all knew as the Shadow was not someone you really wanted to face on your own. They usually met up with a few of the others on the way – there’d be Lori and her lot, and there might be Danilo if his stint at the club finished early enough. It generally did, because Danilo did not want to get on the Shadow’s wrong side. Nobody did.

  They all had to sit in a row like at school or the theatre. People made jokes about it, but the jokes were a bit shrill. Nerves, of course. Silly when you thought that most of them walked the streets by night and picked up men who might be anything from Jack the Ripper reborn to Frederick West, but there it was. Danilo said the Shadow was a hypnotist: he’d seen it done in clubs and he’d got them all hypnotised. Some people agreed with this, but some thought it was something to do with drugs and insisted that the Shadow had found a way of pumping speed or E through the walls of the cellar. Others said it was neither of these things, it was that the Shadow knew too much about them all. Nobody quite believed any of these theories, but nobody quite disbelieved them either. Gilly sometimes thought that the Shadow could see into people’s minds, that he could see into hers, and that he knew how much she hated having fallen into this horrid, sordid way of life. Once or twice she had even thought that he sympathised with her, although this was probably being fanciful in the extreme.

  It was remarkable how the tension built as they all assembled. They came in in threes and fours, the girls clicking down the stairs in their high heels, calling ribald greetings to one another as they sat down, comparing notes, telling how it had been a good week or a bad one, or a better week than last. People shrugged off coats if it had been cold outside, and shook out their hair so that a new colour could be noticed, or displayed a new outfit. Danilo was usually straight from a club gig, which meant there were sequins falling off him all over the place, to say nothing of false fingernails. If you were wearing leather that night you didn’t sit next to him because there was nothing worse than getting scarlet and silver sequins stuck to leather. Leila said he did it deliberately.

  And then one by one they fell silent, and turned to look up at the big clock on the wall, above the velvet-draped door. As the silence lengthened they all watched the minute hand crawling its way to midnight. Tick-tick . . . You almost felt his approach before you heard it. Tick-tick . . . He was almost with them. People seated nearest the thick red curtains behind the table sometimes caught a snatch of tune being hummed very softly: the theme from the old seventies musical the Dwarf Spinner. It still got played sometimes, and most people knew it.

  O never go walking in the fields of the flax

  At night when the looms are a-singing;

  For Rossani’s at work and he’s hungry for prey;

  He’ll melt down your eyes and he’ll spin them for gold.

  He’ll peel off your skin and he’ll sew him a cloak.

  O never go walking at Samhain at dusk

  In company of one whom you know not to
trust;

  Rossani’s a-prowl and he’s looking for fools;

  He’ll cut out your heart and he’ll weave it to gold.

  He’ll grind down your bones and he’ll shred up your soul.

  Samhain was Hallowe’en – the man who wrote the musical was Irish or married to an Irish wife or something – and the song had become a bit of a Hallowe’en anthem at discos and in wine bars and clubs. It was grisly and gory, and it could be sung with relish at Hallowe’en parties. But it was very creepy indeed to hear it softly whistled just as midnight was striking, just as the Shadow approached.

  The minute-hand whirred the last few seconds, and clicked onto the twelve, and in the distance a church clock somewhere – most likely St Martin’s-in-the-Fields – chimed dully.

  There was a whisper of sound – silk against velvet – and the curtains shivered and parted and he was there. Gilly, who had had a bit of dance training and had got a few tiny parts before running out of money and ending up in the Soho clubs, thought it was as effective an entrance as you could get. Whoever the Shadow was, he had a terrific sense of theatre.

  A stir of unease went through the room when he appeared, but every eye was on him. Once he was here, you simply were not aware of anyone or anything else. Sometimes he’d be wearing a black silk mask so that you only saw his eyes glittering through the slits, and other times he’d have on a deep-brimmed hat – the kind you saw old villains wearing in late-night black and white films. Tod Slaughter in The Face at the Window, or Bela Lugosi in Dracula. They were good for a laugh, those old villains, but nobody wanted to meet the real thing. Once or twice the Shadow had appeared with long black hair obscuring his face – like Michael Jackson’s dreadlocks only much thicker – and dark glasses. He was not very tall and as far as anyone could tell he was quite thin. Gilly said he was slightly deformed, but opinion was divided about this.