by Sarah Rayne
An academic existence, with all its gentle, often worthwhile benefits – yes, there were genuine and potentially happy possibilities there. He had himself considered entering the groves of academe when he came down from Oxford, but there had been a quirk in his nature that had sought excitement, and he had ended not in the scholar’s ivory tower, but the Harlequin’s motley one. He had not lived sufficiently long to discover that there was a quirk in his son’s nature as well.
As Christian reached Christchurch Street and let himself into his own house, he smiled wryly, because of the two young men who had come so firmly under James Roscius’s influence – Christian and Flynn Deverill – it was Flynn, the rebel without a cause, who was pursuing a more or less conventional career, while Christian – the academic recluse – was travelling down darker and more macabre paths than even the widely read, widely travelled professor could have imagined.
The irony of his present life amused him. He had broken out of the doorless tower his parents had tried to build around him; as soon as they were both dead he had escaped, shutting up the remote house on Ireland’s west coast and living first in Dublin, and then in London. There had been sufficient money: the professor had invested his not inconsiderable earnings, and Christian’s mother had come of a well-to-do family. Christian had inherited it all, including the rambling old Irish house, overlooking the wild and darkly beautiful Cliffs of Moher.
And there was an eerie coincidence in the fact that Fael had lit on the uncanny sidh spirits for her plot. The people of the small Moher community still quarter-believed in the sidh, and double-locked their doors on certain nights of the year and told how the sidh still walked the land looking for human prey . . . And how at times they stole away human babies and left in their place changelings, not quite human, wearing not quite human form. You could hear the sidh keening their chill faery music on those nights, they said nervously, and you did not walk abroad on Samhain, not if you had any sense, and certainly not if there was a newly-born child in your house.
Christian had been born in the clifftop house on the night that the Irish still called Samhain, and that the English called Hallowe’en. Had he been born to the sound of chill music, intended to blind the humans and deafen them, so that the human child could be stolen away and something else left in its stead . . .?
The Moher house had been built by and intended for, a large family, whose lives were overflowing with people and happiness; with dogs and children and friends and music. Its huge, high-ceilinged rooms could fill up with the wild brilliant light from the lashing Atlantic and, even when the stormy skies plunged it into premature night, lights glowed in all the rooms and fires kindled in the hearths, and warm yellow beacons of welcome shone from all the windows. The house was called Maise, which was a distortion of an old Gaelic word for happiness, but while Christian lived there he had never known any happiness, only loneliness and deep misery. The house had belonged to his mother’s family, and he was five when his parents took him there, and turned Maise for him into a sealed, living tomb.
Maise was the place where the small Christian was shut away between the spells in discreet private nursing homes, and between the attempts at what was called reconstructive surgery. His childhood had been bounded by pain – bad pain, sometimes barely-endurable pain. Pain that was not always alleviated because in those days he had not mastered speech, but pain that was so bad he had fought the doctors, screaming through his nose because it was the only way he could make sounds and beg for help . . .
Later there had been the hours upon hours of speech therapy, and also what he now recognised as psychiatric sessions. ‘To help him to come to terms,’ someone had said. He had understood that, because he could understand speech by then. And running in and out of it all, like black spider-webs of misery, the whispers about mirrors. ‘For the love of God,’ they all kept saying, ‘keep all mirrors locked up.’
It was not until he was seven that he had seen his own reflection in the surface of a polished saucepan in the Maise kitchen, and he had run from the room, not crying because he did not know how to cry, but with the blood pounding frighteningly inside his head. He had hidden himself in the attics for hours, curled into a tight, tiny ball in the darkest most inaccessible corner, because if people could not see him – if he pretended he did not exist – then the thing he had seen reflected fathoms down in the coppery depths might not exist either.
Later, after his father’s death, he had hidden behind anonymity, deliberating cultivating it and deliberately setting up his own legend. If people did not know his name, that name could not become synonymous with hideous and repellent deformity.
But he was never to forget that first sight of his own face. Because it was not like other people’s; it was not like his father’s, which had clever eyes and a short neat beard framing a gentle sensitive mouth, and it was not like his mother’s, whose features he could just remember, and which had been thin and worried, but with lovely, long-lashed green eyes and soft, creamy skin.
He understood now why he had been made to repeat words into a tape-recorder or a cassette-player, over and over until he got them right. He understood why no mirrors were allowed in Maise. His eyes and forehead were ordinary and normal. His eyes were his mother’s: a clear hard green like a cat’s, and his forehead was broad and white under glossy thick hair that grew in a widow’s peak. But his face had scarcely any nose-bone, only two nostrils surrounded by thickened flesh, and although the upper lip was fully formed, it curled upwards to half-fuse with the nostrils like an animal’s.
Where all other humans had a jaw, a mouth and chin, there was nothing save a thin, nearly transparent membrane like a sac to act as a food-trap. The sac was veined with thin fibrous gristle that might have been the cartilage and the bones that had not developed.
He had barely half a face.
Chapter Seven
Gerald Makepiece packed his suitcase happily and prepared to have an early night. Mia had set off for London ahead of him, catching the 9.45 train, and Gerald would follow her tomorrow. He would book in to his hotel and meet up with Mia, and in the evening he would go along to the Greasepaint Club for a meeting to discuss the show.
He was beginning to feel quite metropolitan by now; he had had to travel to London for several meetings, some of which had been in the Greasepaint, and some which had been in the rehearsal rooms in St Martin’s Lane, and he was getting to know this corner of London quite well. Everyone seemed very pleased with progress, and everyone was very pleased indeed with the show, which Tod Miller had produced in what was apparently a remarkably short space of time.
Sir Julius had said solemnly that they had a sure-fire hit on their hands, and Flynn Deverill, who lounged in to most meetings, had said, ‘Almost too good to be true, isn’t it? Who would have thought Toddy to have had such talent all those years when he was writing baked bean adverts?’
‘No, but what do you really think of it, Flynn?’
‘I think it’s very unexpected,’ said Flynn, and Miller had smiled faintly and studied his fingernails.
Tod Miller’s musical was called Cauldron and Gerald had already read it. Proper bound copies were being prepared by printers, but Gerald and Sir Julius and Simkins of the bank had been given preliminary copies of the typescript, which was really very nice of Miller.
Gerald thought Cauldron an unusual and very remarkable piece of work. He thought it was beautiful and funny and moving. He had furrowed his brow over several of the scenes as he read, because some were really quite disturbing, and they made you think a bit more deeply than perhaps you liked. A sure-fire hit, Sir Julius had said, although Simkins had cautiously observed that a modest success would suit very nicely.
Gerald thought there was nothing modest about Cauldron, but he thought there would be no half-measures about it. Either it would become a legendary and overnight success, or it would sink without trace. A turkey, didn’t the Americans call it? He hoped, a bit uneasily, that he was not back
ing a turkey.
And to look at Tod Miller and to talk to him, you would never guess he was capable of conjuring up this remarkable fantasy world of Celtic mythology and legend, where people went on quests, and braved dangers and were carried off by half-human beings for sinister and sensual purposes. Nor had it previously occurred to Gerald that it was possible to draw parallels between such legends and the modern-day world, but that was what had been done. When the ill-starred hero was sent out to find for the Irish warriors the magical cauldron – ‘Which is never without meat and always has enough to feed the whole world’ – there was an extremely clever echo of the famines of Third World countries, for which Gerald himself sent regular donations, even though Mia had pouted and said it was not necessary.
When the legendary armies of the High King set out to storm the under-water realm of the strange inhuman sidh and rescue the kidnapped Irish queen, they might almost have been modern-day paratroopers or SAS men storming a beleaguered embassy. Some of the battles they fought along the way were clearly meant to suggest the fight for independence and justice for humanity that still went on today and Gerald thought there were one or two lightly-sketched depictions of people like Nelson Mandela or Lech Walesa. The royal armies were called the Fianna: Gerald had learned the pronunciation along with the pronunciation of sidh, which sounded like sheeth, poring over a Gaelic dictionary bought for the purpose. The Fianna were the kind of dashing hero-figures schoolboys had revered in Gerald’s youth, and his romantic soul was thrilled to its depths by them; when he read the roistering swashbuckling captain’s speech, ‘I have a dream,’ (Martin Luther King’s legendary words, of course), he could very nearly see audiences standing up and cheering.
Tomorrow evening, or the day after, they would all hear some of the music for the show. Tod Miller’s daughter, Fael, had apparently recorded it onto a cassette, and it would be played over to them all. It would be unaccompanied piano music, and the final thing would be a full orchestra, of course, but it was hoped that everyone would be able to visualise the finished product. It had been explained to Gerald that a professional company was being engaged to transcribe or transpose the music (Gerald was not very sure of the difference) for the full orchestra. Violins and violas and cellos and trumpets.
This was all being done under the supervision of the musical director, Maurice Camperdown, whom Gerald had not yet met. Somebody said he was very good and they were lucky to get him, and somebody else said he was nearly as good as James Roscius had been in the Harlequin’s heyday. Julius Sherry at once went off into several long anecdotes about Professor Roscius, and people suppressed yawns, because while everyone quite liked hearing about the professor, who had been charismatic, but – it had to be admitted – given to caprice at times, once Julius got on to the ‘Ah me, I remember the days –’ it could go on for some time.
And Mia was going to take the part of the Irish queen, Mab; Gerald hoped this would go without saying. She had protested to Gerald about the idea, saying she had become a little plump lately; her voice was a bit rusty, and perhaps she was a trifle old for the role, but Gerald had quelled these frivolous quibbles at once. Mia was not plump, she was nicely rounded, and gentlemen liked nicely-rounded figures. Her voice was not in the least rusty, either, and she was going to have a marvellous success as Mab. He did not say that this was what the whole project was about, but instead dwelled with pleasure on the picture of Mia as the queen. There was a song about her at the beginning of the show, sung by her court, all about how her name really meant mead, and how a sip from her lips would intoxicate a man for ever. Gerald was looking forward to hearing the music for that. It was this song that the strange inhuman creature, Aillen mac Midha, overheard, and it was the reason he resolved to kidnap her. (And here again, Miller had been clever, just hinting at a hostage situation, the kind you so often heard of where terrorists kidnapped journalists or held embassies to ransom.)
Gerald was secretly a bit anxious about the young man they would get to play Aillen. You heard such tales about these actors and their leading ladies – well, you had only to read the newspapers! – so it was no use Mia telling him he was a jealous old silly and people did not behave like that. Gerald could remember the tales his grandfather had told (roistering old boy he’d been, what that generation had called a gay dog although you had to be careful about using the word ‘gay’ nowadays). But he’d had one or two lady-friends within the theatre, and Gerald could remember him telling how it was a long-standing theatrical tradition for actresses to go to bed with their leading men. Othello with Desdemona, Petruchio with Katherina and so on. Some Portias, said Gerald’s grandfather, chuckling gleefully, slept with all three of the suitors, and not necessarily separately either, although that depended on the suitors’ inclinations. Sometimes the suitors preferred each other to Portia, you could never tell.
But of course, Mia could be trusted absolutely.
Fael had gone to bed early tonight, because she had felt tired after recording Cauldron’s music onto the tape for her father’s meeting with the Makepiece rabbit and Julius Sherry tomorrow. She had not played it all, but she had played quite a lot and it had taken most of the day. And then, over supper, there had been one of the exasperating conversations with her father, who was in one of his irritatingly vague moods and would not be drawn into a discussion about who had really written Cauldron. He said it was vulgar to talk about such things, and Fael had lost her temper and said he was a selfish, inconsiderate plagiarist, which instantly sent Tod into a tantrum. He said he saw that he had been nurturing a viper in his bosom all these years and obviously it had been expecting too much when he had asked his only daughter for a bit of help. At any minute he would start quoting Othello and saying, O, who would be a father.
Tod said, ‘O, my female offspring,’ which was Rossini and was just as apt.
‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ said Fael, exasperated.
‘All I wanted was a little help. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.’
‘A little!’ shouted Fael in disbelief. ‘A little!’
Tod descended at once from grand tantrum to melancholy. He could not bear discord, he said, pained. It was inner agony to him. He would betake himself out, although it was a sad world when a man was driven from his own house and forced to seek solace in the company of strangers. And now he did say, O, who would be a father.
‘Oh stop hamming it up!’ rejoined Fael.
Tod switched from melancholy to self-pity. It was extremely inconsiderate of Fael to bother him with these trivial matters when he was so busy, he said. There was a great deal to be done, and he was bustling back and forth between the rehearsal rooms and Pimlico; soon he would be bustling between Pimlico and the Harlequin, and he really had no time to be worried about Fael’s concerns. He certainly had no time to sit down to what sounded suspiciously like a family committee meeting.
Fael said, ‘I don’t know how you think we could hold a committee meeting with only the two of us. But shouldn’t we at least talk about who’s going to respond if there’s a call for ”author” on Cauldron’s first night?’ And thought: That sounded greedy and hard. I don’t care for myself, but there’s him. Scathach. No, be honest, Fael, of course you care for yourself.
Tod said, airily, ‘We’ve been into all that. I shall have a speech ready, of course. Nothing elaborate or fancy. But just a few words, in case—’
‘Exactly,’ said Fael. ‘In case there’s a call for “author”. And will your few words acknowledge me?’
‘I shall touch on it, of course. Of course I shall.’ He had in fact jotted down a couple of phrases, in which ‘pay tribute to the support of my daughter’, and ‘enthusiastic encouragement’ figured. This was surely sufficient.
‘I don’t trust you,’ said Fael, glaring at him. ‘I don’t trust you an inch. You know quite well that Cauldron’s mine.’ Mine and one other’s, said the inner voice. And if that other one suspects I’ve cheated . . . She said, ‘I wouldn’t put
it past you to claim it as your own. And it’s not the slightest use looking grand and huffy, because we both know it’s in your mind.’ She studied him. ‘I’m going to be listening to your speech with extreme interest.’
‘Well, I shall tell you about it afterwards, naturally—’ Tod stopped and then said, ‘What do you mean, you’re going to be listening to it?’
‘You didn’t think I’d miss the first night, did you?’ demanded Fael. ‘Yes, I see you did. Well, imagine that.’
‘Oh, well, I don’t know what you do half the time,’ said Tod. ‘But I’m far too busy to talk about it now.’
‘Auditions?’
‘Yes, we’re having trouble finding Aillen mac Midha.’
‘I thought you would,’ said Fael. ‘Can I come to them? A couple of them at least?’
Tod had been ready for this, and he said, cannily, that Fael could come, of course, but Julius Sherry – stupid old poseur – had apparently a very strict policy that only the director and the pianist be present at auditions.
‘I think it’s pretentious of him,’ said Tod, grandly. ‘But there it is.’
‘So it is.’ Fael studied her father thoughtfully, and then said, ‘But I hear you’ve done quite well with the dancers and the Fianna captain.’
‘Yes, we’ve managed to get— How did you hear about the auditions?’ demanded Tod.
‘Flynn Deverill told me about them when he phoned you the other day and you were at that sleazy Greasepaint.’
‘Well, he had no right to discuss them with you.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘And anyway, the Greasepaint isn’t sleazy!’ shouted Tod, and banged out of the house.
Fael had wheeled her chair crossly into the kitchen, even though it was really the time she should be devoting to exercises to strengthen her leg muscles. She had been so furious with Tod that she had dropped a vegetable tureen on the floor and of course it had to be one of the good ones, which was monstrous of it. She left the pieces for Tod to sweep up when he returned, because if he had not made her so angry it would not have happened.
