Changeling

by Sarah Rayne

  He thought he might telephone Fael Miller again.

  Gilly was nervous, but not paralysingly so. She thought that when they got to the understudies she would be able to give a fair account of herself.

  It was nice of the Cauldron people to invite her to sit in on Danilo’s audition. She had expected to stay inconspicuously outside, but a thin-faced man, who turned out to be Stephen Sherry himself, had said that of course she could come inside, they did not like to have people standing around on landings, it was unfriendly.

  Tod Miller was here, of course, and also a timid little man called something-or-other Makepiece and a red-haired lady wearing a sweater that was slightly too tight for her bust, which was large, and trousers that were slightly too tight for her bottom, which was even larger. A fur jacket was draped over the chair she was sitting on. Gilly, who only put on her low-cut sweater, mini-skirt and high heels in the evenings, was wearing a denim skirt and denim bomber jacket, and she had a sudden hideous doubt that she might be wrongly dressed. But Danilo would have tipped her the wink about that, and anyway Danilo was wearing the most ordinary corduroy trousers and a sweater, with scuffed loafers. And surely to goodness nobody in the theatre wore fur jackets for theatre rehearsals these days! Starlet complex, thought Gilly. Nineteen fifties starlet complex. Whoever this female was, she was eyeing Gilly with dislike. Too bad.

  Julius Sherry – actually Sir Julius himself, for God’s sake! – patted Gilly’s hand and said she should sit next to him, and later on they would hear her sing, how would that be? Gilly thought that would be fine. She intercepted a dagger-like glare from the red-headed large-busted-and-bottomed female and resisted the urge to stick up two fingers.

  She did not in the least mind Sir Julius patting her hand; she was perfectly used to portly gentlemen, who started with hand-patting and worked up to more intimate exercises. She desperately wanted to get off the game, and if things went well here she might manage it, but she would not mind making an exception for Julius Sherry (think of name-dropping amongst Lori and her lot!), although he would have to pay top whack.

  Danilo looked as cool as if he did this kind of thing every day of his life. He had listened absorbedly to the explanation of the part he was trying for, and he had been given a couple of sheets of music score. Gilly felt panic well up at that, because if they were expecting her to sight-read music, she might as well leave now.

  Stephen Sherry had produced a cassette player, so that Danilo could listen to the piece first. It was strange music; not quite the stuff you heard in the pubs and clubs, but not quite the stuff people went to Covent Garden or the Royal Opera to hear either. It made you think of lost loves and forbidden passions and dark, dangerous creatures who would suck out your soul or your blood or both . . .

  Danilo was studying the music score, and asking if it would be possible for him to hear the music again at a slightly slower pace. He said something about more andante, and Gilly remembered that he had received a proper musical training. You tended to forget that, especially if you were more used to seeing him togged up for one of his drag acts. It took guts to make such a request in such company as well, but it seemed to have gone down all right. Sir Julius said of course it would be possible, they had the piano to hand, and Mr Miller would not mind. Everyone looked at Tod Miller, and Gilly turned round to see better.

  For some reason the request had flustered Mr Miller. There was a peculiar silence, and Gilly saw that Danilo was about to say it did not matter, he would sing with the tape as backing.

  And then the black-haired young man who had arrived after everyone else and who had been sprawling untidily across a sagging chaise-longue at the back of the room, got up and came towards the group.

  He said, ‘There you are then, Toddy; there’s the piano and there’s the request, and it seems a fair one to me. Your man wants to hear it slower, and why not?’ He paused deliberately, and then said, ‘Will you play it for him, or will I?’

  The silence came down again, and lengthened embarrassingly. The red-haired woman sighed and studied her nails in a bored fashion, and then pulled the fur jacket around her shoulders pettishly.

  Stephen Sherry said, ‘I didn’t know you could play, Flynn.’

  ‘And I a protégé of James Roscius? Come on now, Stephen. Would the professor have turned me untutored and unharmonic into the uncaring world? I’m a bit out of practice, but if Tod’s declining, I can probably get us through it.’

  Miller said at once, ‘Oh you play it, if you don’t mind, Flynn.’ His voice was very off-hand, as if this was really a very minor thing indeed. ‘A touch of my old trouble, I’m afraid,’ he said, and rubbed his hands together, smiling ruefully round the room.

  ‘Is that Portnoy’s Complaint, Toddy, or just miser’s cramp?’

  ‘It’s rheumatism!’ shouted Tod, angrily. ‘Will you please stop making these disgusting remarks, Flynn. I know quite well you only do it to rile me!’

  ‘And,’ observed Flynn, ‘I appear to succeed.’ He crossed to the piano and sat down, flinging the trailing skirts of his disreputable greatcoat out behind him. ‘I really am out of practice,’ he said, speaking directly to Danilo. ‘But they say it’s like swimming or riding a bike or screwing a woman—’

  Danilo, straight-faced, said, ‘Once you’ve done it, you never lose the knack.’

  ‘Whether you get this part or not, you’re a man after my own heart,’ rejoined Flynn. He tried a few chords, and then said, ‘At least the thing’s in tune, you can never guarantee it in these places, and when it’s Toddy paying the bills—’

  He bent forward, frowning in sudden concentration at the music propped up in front of him, and the flippancy and the insolence seemed suddenly to dissolve. Gilly saw for the first time that Flynn Deverill cared very deeply about this show. She wondered what his part in it was. Not a musician, clearly. He might be one of the backers; he looked about as scruffy as it was possible to look without actually being a tramp, but that was no indication. Padding the Soho streets taught you that.

  Flynn grinned at Danilo. ‘This is going to be the blind leading the halt,’ he said. ‘But at least it’s not the rheumatic leading the dumb, which it nearly was. Wait now, till we see—’ He played the music through once, frowning as he did so, hitting a few wrong notes, but making (Gilly thought) a pretty good job of it. It was remarkable how much better it sounded even on this worn-out honky-tonk piano than coming out of a tinny cassette player. This was a beautiful piece of music.

  ‘Ready?’ said Flynn Deverill, his hands poised over the keys.

  ‘Ready,’ said Danilo, and straightaway launched into Aillen mac Midha’s ‘Lodestone Song’.

  For every person present the song sent a different message.

  For Julius Sherry it was the lingering regret of a lost youth which had not been nearly as mis-spent as it might have been. This young man, wherever he had come from, whatever his sexual persuasion might be (he looked as if he might be just a touch ambiguous), had an extraordinary voice. Not quite tenor, certainly not soprano. Sexless but somehow chockfull of sex, thought Sir Julius in some surprise at his own epigrammatical wit. He wondered what Stephen was thinking of it; he was a bit of a cold fish, Stephen. No real private life; no life at all in fact outside of his work.

  Sir Julius was very nearly right; Stephen Sherry was listening with detached appreciation to the music, and he was hearing the gilt-edged notes of chart-toppers and rave reviews, and he was seeing the glittering visions of House Full notices outside the Harlequin. It would be good to have a genuine West End success, although it was vaguely irritating that once again his father would be involved.

  Gerald Makepiece sighed with unaffected pleasure in the music. Lovely, it was, and made you feel honoured to be having a part in all this. He had listened to quite a lot of the tapes now – Fael Miller was clearly a gifted pianist and Gerald was looking forward to meeting her – and the haunting quality of the songs and the music came across very clearly indeed. Some of
it had quite made the hairs stand up on the back of Gerald’s neck, although Mia had pouted a bit and said it was very difficult to follow; she was not sure she could manage such high notes. This was just her modesty, however; when the young man had finished singing, Gerald would politely suggest that he and Mia might try the duet. She would enjoy that. He glanced at her, and was pleased to see that she was watching the young man with rapt attention. It was grand to see her recognising his quality, just as Gerald had recognised it. He sighed happily, delighted to find himself so completely in accord with her.

  Flynn was still playing, studying Danilo without appearing to do so. Neither quite masculine nor wholly feminine, this one. The husky voice, the slightly tip-tilted eyes – Italian? – were filled with implicit promises, but they were promises that might well be very slightly off-centre. The phrase, One of the third sex slid through Flynn’s mind. He wondered if any of the others saw it, and thought they did not. It doesn’t matter in any case, thought Flynn, although it wouldn’t be my taste. But he’ll cause a flutter among the females – yes, and the men backstage. God, he’s got to play the prince or there’s no justice in the world! I’ll give him a slinky, sensual outfit of turquoise and violet – like the drowned evening light that creeps inland on Ireland’s west coast – and a cloak of iridescent green over it all. He’ll trail it arrogantly in the dust as he walks. His scenes will have to be very carefully lit as well . . . Pouring purple shadows and the outlines of half-glimpsed, not-quite-substantial buildings: under-sea fortresses . . . I’ll revamp them a bit now I’ve seen him. I wonder could we somehow pump one of those heady, sexy perfumes into the auditorium while he’s centre stage, or would that be classed as tampering with the senses of the audience? It would be bloody effective, though.

  Only Tod Miller, cross with Danilo for putting him into an impossible situation and furious with Flynn for making the situation even worse, missed the husky allure of Danilo’s voice. Ugly, thought Tod, resentfully. You could almost believe the boy has a bad cold. Well, we can’t let this one loose in the theatre, that’s for sure!

  Chapter Nine

  Often the changeling would be an ancient, withered fairy, of no more use to the fairy tribe . . . cherished, fed and carried about by its foster-mother, wawling and crying for food and attention, in an apparent state of paralysis.

  Medieval Chronicles of Ralph of Coggeshall and Gervase of Tilbury, A Dictionary of Fairies,

  Katharine Briggs

  The suspicion that Tod Miller had not written Cauldron or even had much of a hand in any part of it grew on Flynn as rehearsals progressed. But it was not until just before the company moved from the rehearsal rooms into the Harlequin for the final stretch before opening night, that he picked up any real clues.

  Flynn liked the Harlequin better than any other London theatre he had worked in. He had no idea if it was because it was here that he had received his first real break, or if it was the Harlequin’s long and colourfully ignoble tradition, or if it was simply the theatre’s particular atmosphere, which was generally agreed to be unusual. Parts of it were very old indeed, and romantically-minded actresses were apt to say that if you stood in a particular corner backstage, or near the stair where the old tiring rooms had been, you could imagine the ghosts quite close to you. You could almost see the past stretching back and back, all the way to the days of the notorious Scaramel Smith, who had bought the land with her father’s money and built the theatre’s fame on the strength of her mother’s reputation – her mother having been one Frances Smith, a player of small parts at His Majesty’s Theatre Royal in Brydges Street, her father having been one Charles Stuart, a man of many parts at His Majesty’s Court in Whitehall.

  By the time the Theatre Royal had metamorphosed into the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the Harlequin had become famous and Scaramel had become infamous, flaunting a cheerful immorality across half of London – a legacy, said the disapproving, from her amoral father and her immoral mother. Irritated rivals recalled that Frances had been known as Five-penny Fan in her Hounsditch days, and said once a guttersnipe always a guttersnipe, and what was in the meat came out in the gravy.

  Flynn enjoyed Scaramel’s legend, and he never passed through the Harlequin’s Green Room without tipping a wink to the portrait which hung there, and from which the lady herself regarded the world with mischievous delight. One day, if he could find the right writer, Flynn was going to piece together the snippets and the tag-ends of legend and disentangle which was myth and which was fact and which was plain jealous gossip, and stage a huge, raunchy musical here of Scaramel’s life. It would be a kind of Moll Flanders meets Tom Jones meets Forever Amber, but it would be lively and fun and it ought to be very promotable indeed. Not for the first time, he paid silent tribute to James Roscius who had been instrumental in bringing him here eight years earlier.

  Roscius had resigned as the Harlequin’s musical director by then, and he had been living that curious life, spending half his time in Ireland, but he had been invited back as guest director for the Christmas play, and he had suggested that Flynn submit designs for it. The Harlequin did not put on pantomime but it remained, as Scaramel had intended, a people’s theatre, and there was a long tradition of lively Christmas shows for children. The play that year had been Hans Christian Andersen’s The Tinder Box, and Roscius said that although nothing might come of it, it would be interesting to see what kind of settings and costumes Flynn could conjure up.

  There were few people from whom Flynn would accept either criticism or help, but James Roscius was one of these. He thought – when he thought about it at all – that it was because the professor had for so long been a part of his life: there was some kind of distant connection with Flynn’s mother and Roscius had possessed the Irish clan-instinct.

  Flynn had poured his heart and soul into that first Harlequin project, basing his designs on the evocative Gothic-flavoured work of the Victorian illustrators: Andrew Lang and the amazingly grisly work of Gustave Doré, which had been considered suitable for children’s books in the nineteenth century, a fact that never ceased to amaze Flynn.

  He could still remember how Roscius had studied them in silence, and then had said, ‘Flynn, you’re very talented. If you behave yourself, you could go very far indeed in the theatre.’ And for some reason, his eyes had been shadowed, almost as if Flynn’s talent caused him a deep sadness.

  The Tinder Box designs had been accepted; the show had received considerable acclaim and Flynn had shared in it, which for a young man barely out of university was heady stuff. He had gone on to design other Christmas shows for other houses on the strength of it – light, frothy stuff – and then shows that were not quite so light and frothy. There had been a couple of seasons with the RSC and a couple more with Chichester and a summer at Glyndebourne. He was not quite at the stage where he could pick and choose work, but the nerve-wracking periods of unemployment had been amazingly few. Before Roscius died he had nominated Flynn as one of the Harlequin’s trustees, which brought a small quarterly income, and a large degree of involvement and prestige.

  Flynn did not care about the prestige, but he enjoyed being part of the Harlequin’s administrative board, and he liked the idea of continuing to carry out Scaramel’s designs for her theatre, in accordance with the will, made, it was said, on the lady’s unrepentant deathbed. The will stated with arrogant assurance that if the Harlequin ever ceased to be a theatre, it should be burned down rather than used for some other purpose. Flynn suspected that Scaramel had enjoyed laying this imperious demand on future generations of theatre managers; he thought she had derived great enjoyment from her flamboyant reputation. Flynn enjoyed being flamboyant as well; he liked puncturing the pretentions of the pompous and denouncing ridiculous back-scratching award ceremonies – that meaningless Inigo Jones thing last year! – and he got an immense kick from playing the prima donna before people like Tod Miller. But designing Cauldron had been a joy and whoever had created it possessed genuine bri
lliance. Which brought him full circle to the nagging question of Cauldron’s real creator.

  The early rehearsals intrigued Flynn, and he noticed that Tod seemed to be delegating a good deal of the actual direction to Stephen Sherry. But it was not until the week preceding the dress and technical rehearsals, when the company was preparing to move from St Martin’s Lane, that he had his first glimpse of the slight figure standing in the upper circle, its face in shadow, but seeming to watch the stage with the fiercest concentration Flynn had ever seen.

  And then, as he started forward, puzzled rather than anything else, there was a whisper of sound, and the figure melted into the shadows and was gone.

  Entering the Harlequin once more was a bitter-sweet experience. Christian had timed his visit carefully, waiting until just before Tod Miller’s company would be taking up residence, and when the place – especially the backstage areas – would be inhabited only by a handful of maintenance men or carpenters. He had chosen the late afternoon, the time of half-shadows, when daylight was draining but no one had yet switched on lights, and he had gone quietly through the small sub-basement door, which had been the original stage door, and which even in his father’s day had never been used. Christian thought very few people had ever known it was there.

  He was taking a bit of a gamble, but not much of a one. The door had once opened directly into the Harlequin’s original brick and wood structure, and it was inconvenient and difficult to find if you did not know exactly where it was. It opened now onto a dank, brick-walled corridor with a cobblestone floor which might have once been part of an old inn-yard. There was no electricity, and there were not even any of the old gas mantles, which were still evident in parts of the building. He switched on a thin pencil torch and went cautiously forward. But he did not think he was likely to be heard or seen; no one would use this entrance or this passageway these days. Even if its existence was known, it was not very likely that anyone would have a key.