by Sarah Rayne
A polite refusal could be given, but Gilly guessed it would not be very far-sighted. She wanted very much to continue in Cauldron, and she wanted above everything to go on playing Mab. She did not know, not absolutely, that doing so depended on going to bed with Julius Sherry, but it was not something she dared ignore.
She listened with only partly-feigned interest to Sir Julius’s anecdotes throughout dinner, and laughed in the right places because even though he was not an actor, he had a theatre man’s instinct for a good punchline. As the evening progressed, he became sufficiently confident to grope her under the table, and his complexion, never exactly pale to start with, grew increasingly sanguine. This was slightly worrying, because it would be awkward if he succumbed to a coronary at the table, although not as awkward as if he succumbed to one when they were in bed together.
And when he patted her hand and suggested in a thickened voice that it seemed a pity to end the evening so early, what did she think? – Gilly said, ‘A very great pity indeed.’ And greatly daring, added, ‘Julius,’ which was the first time she had omitted his title, and which ought to signal the green light.
And now he would say the waiter could call them a taxi, and then he would give the address of her hotel, and there would be sly looks from the night reception staff who would all gossip, and people in the company would get to hear about it, and those inquisitive sidh dancers would tell one another that now they knew how she had landed the leading part, and they had suspected all the time that she was nothing but a hooker. Damn and blast! thought Gilly, crossly, and resolutely squashed the horrid little voice that said: But if it was Flynn Deverill you wouldn’t give a tuppenny toss what any of them thought! Castles in the air again, Gilly. Julius is calling for the bill. I’ll pretend to go to the loo while he settles it, that’s supposed to be tactful. And when I come out, he’ll have the taxi and everything arranged.
In fact Julius Sherry was in a bit of a quandary, having reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Ennismara Castle, regarded as a love-nest, was not on. It was one matter to do that kind of thing in London where everybody was anonymous and hotel staff did not give a damn what you did or how many people you did it with, so long as you paid the bill afterwards. But out here it was different. He remembered that Stephen was bowdlerising the Act One rape scene, and he remembered that this was Catholic Ireland and he found himself visualising, with extreme horror, a number of embarrassing scenarios, starting with a flat refusal by the hotel manager to allow him into Gilly’s room (which would be a whopping irony when he was footing the bill); progressing to the manager and assorted minions bursting into the room with the pass-key while he was actually on the job (knowing the Irish sense of timing he would just have reached the short strokes!), and ending with a truly unthinkable situation in which he was ordered from the hotel, in the kind of humiliating deshabille you only saw in blue movies (of which he had only a very limited experience, but everyone knew what went on in them).
But here was Gilly being extremely on-coming, and here was Julius himself in a very gratifying state of arousal under the table, and something would have to be thought of. He did think of something, he thought of it after the pudding and before the coffee, which he refused on account of it sometimes causing wind in the bowels.
He would take Gilly to the theatre. They would go in through the small stage door, and they would tiptoe through the darkened auditorium together, which would be intimate and sufficiently tinged with the forbidden to be titillating. And they would cement their little relationship in the Gallery’s Green Room. There was a satin-covered chaise longue in there – shabby but not distasteful – and the lights could be turned off, so that the shabbiness would look rather romantic.
‘I hope,’ said Gilly, when he explained all this to her, ‘that there isn’t a night watchman.’
There was not a night watchman, and there did not appear to be anyone in a watchman’s guise.
But there was something inside the theatre, and it was something that was watching and listening – and gloating, thought Gilly, as Julius pushed open the stage door. She was suddenly aware of a rather unpleasant little chill. I’m being very trusting over this, she thought, glancing at her companion. I’m going in to precisely the kind of situation that Danilo wanted me to avoid. Alone, into the deserted theatre . . . But I’m not alone, I’m with Sir Julius, thought Gilly, and then a scary little voice inside her head, said: Supposing that’s what Mia Makepiece thought?
Julius closed the stage door and slid the bolt across – ‘Because we don’t want any tramps or tinkers sneaking in after us, do we, my dear?’
‘No,’ said Gilly, who was still thinking about Mia Makepiece, poor stupid Mia, killed in the Harlequin, and from the sound of it, lured there by a fake message from an admirer. The police had not actually said this was what had happened, but you did not have to be Einstein to work it out. And nobody knew who the admirer had been. It might have been the Shadow, forging somebody’s name on a note or imitating somebody’s voice on the phone, which was what Flynn Deverill believed. But it might not have been. It could just as easily have been anyone in the company who had arranged that secret rendezvous.
And now here was Gilly herself going into a dark theatre for a secret rendezvous. She felt a spiral of panic uncoil, because was it conceivable that Flynn had been wrong, and that it had been Julius Sherry who had lured Mia into the Harlequin and killed her? And then killed Tod Miller as well?
She glanced at Sir Julius as they went through the dark, old theatre. It was a preposterous idea. Julius Sherry was not a schizo killer; he was very well-known in theatre circles. He did not act, but he financed things and helped produce them: Gilly thought the word ‘magnate’ described him. He backed shows and joined forces with like-dowered people to put on new plays. You saw fluorescent-lit boards over theatres saying that this was, ‘A Sherry and Somebody Production’. Sometimes he lent his name to workshop ventures for drama students, or to the twinning of British shows in the States. He was the senior trustee for the historic old Harlequin Theatre and everybody knew about him. Everybody knew about his illustrious background as well – the cousin who had been knighted for services to the theatre, the great-aunt who had been one of Wolfit’s favourite leading ladies, the great-grandfather who had been instrumental in reviving the Harlequin’s flagging fortunes in the eighteen-nineties, and who had perked up the fortunes of several ladies of the chorus at the same time. All of which Gilly had learned during the last few weeks; none of which was proof against Sir Julius being a schizo killer.
Whoever had built the Gallery had not planned a Green Room as such, but there was a sprawling, untidily asymmetric area that abutted several sections of the backstage area: a kind of natural lobby which had developed over the years into its present usage. You could reach it by means of a narrow corridor just beyond the stage door which had the dressing rooms opening off, or you could go through the auditorium and the swing pass-doors on the prompt side; you could get to it from the carpenters’ workshop at the very back of the theatre as well.
Sir Julius led Gilly along the narrow dressing-room corridor, which was the obvious approach, but which Gilly did not much like, because it was a one-way-street arrangement: once you started along it you could very easily be trapped, especially if you happened to be with an aspiring schizo killer who would bar your way out, and who might have cunningly locked the Green Room door at the other end.
But when Julius said, ‘All right, Gilly?’ Gilly at once said, ‘Oh yes, perfectly all right. Just that it’s a bit – well, spooky in here, isn’t it?’ She thought he might add, ‘You won’t feel spooky once I get going, my dear,’ but he did not. Over dinner he had said they would have a very cosy little time, and he had leaned across the table and huffed wine-breath into her face. She had thought that he only needed to put on a maroon velvet smoking jacket and refer to his very interesting etchings, or offer some more Madeira, m’dear, to be his randy old great-grandfather rebor
n, entertaining Gaiety Girls.
The sight of the Green Room, with its tattered furniture and ramshackle shabbiness, was unexpectedly comforting. Gilly found it rather endearing when Julius fussed anxiously over the arrangement of the lights, and even dusted off the tatty sofa. In a minute he would say, ‘And now, my dear,’ and they would be off.
Sir Julius seated himself on the chaise longue, patted the cover invitingly, and said, ‘And now, my dear,’ and Gilly with a mental shrug, went forward.
It was no better and no worse than she had expected. He got a bit out of breath and he needed a bit of coaxing – this was a potentially awkward development, because if he was too stubbornly flaccid to be of any use he would be embarrassed and angry, but if Gilly displayed too many tricks of the trade it might make him wonder about her background. Still, this was the twentieth century, for goodness’ sake: he would hardly expect her to be totally ignorant.
Between fumblings and strokings, Sir Julius’s chancy manhood revived quite promisingly. To help him along, Gilly got up from the sofa, and, standing in front of him, stripped off, leaving on her stockings, suspender belt, and high-heeled shoes. This generally helped most men along, and it helped Sir Julius along very strongly indeed. He pulled her back onto the chaise longue and lumbered on top of her, and Gilly tried not to mind that the sofa had hideously uncomfortable walnut arms that dug into you in the most unexpected places. Over his shoulder she could see the door leading to the narrow corridor; they had left it partly open, and Gilly caught herself imagining that at any minute she would see the Shadow himself, standing in the doorway watching them.
Julius seemed to have judged his alcoholic intake fairly well, so that he did not struggle sweatily for half an hour before managing to climax. He moved off her as soon as he had regained his breath, which Gilly thought considerate, and pulled his clothes together, muttering something about a quick visit to the loo. Troublesome prostate, poor old sod, thought Gilly, not without sympathy, and smiled at him as he went out, using the swing-door exit that led down to the auditorium. She heard his footsteps going towards the men’s cloakroom near the stalls.
I could do a great deal worse, thought Gilly, leaning back. He’s very courteous, even when he’s screwing, and that’s worth a lot; people wouldn’t believe the selfish ways of some men. What a calculating bitch I’m sounding. But she was not really; she was simply fighting not to return to the days of having no money – of not being able to pay bills, and of barely having enough to buy food. Those hideous weeks when there was often nothing in the pantry except maybe flour and a cheap tub of margarine, so that the only thing to do was make a kind of scone dough, which was pretty tasteless but at least stopped you feeling hungry. I’d do anything to avoid going back to that, thought Gilly, staring up at the Green Room’s peeling ceiling. It’s all very well to be high-minded and high-principled when you’ve never been really broke, and to say you’d rather scrub floors for a living – I’d have scrubbed floors gladly, if somebody would have employed me to do it, or I’d have— There’s somebody outside.
She sat up, pulling her clothes around her. Had she imagined it? No, there it was again, a furtive darting movement in the shadowy corridor almost as if the shadows had reared up and tiptoed forward to peer through the chink in the door. Gilly caught the sound of extremely stealthy footsteps, and instantly began to scramble into her clothes, keeping her eyes on the partly-open door. There was no need to panic quite so comprehensively, of course; Julius would be back at any minute, and if anything appeared from the passage – the Shadow? Julius Sherry armed with a dripping axe? oh come on! – she could be through the other door, and out into the auditorium or into the carpenters’ workshop.
And then Gilly heard, very faintly, the sound of a door opening and closing in the auditorium. Julius! she thought, thankfully. Or is it? And is he the one I’ve got to be wary of after all? No, I don’t think he could have got round to the dressing-room corridor so soon – he’d have had to go out into the street and along to the stage door. She listened for Julius’s footsteps, which were distinctive as are most people’s footsteps. At any minute she would hear him coming back and she would call out and tell him what had happened, and they would take a look together and find nothing, and they might even be able to laugh over it.
But there were no reassuring footsteps. There were sounds coming from beyond the Green Room, but they were not footsteps. They were probably nothing at all, and the whole thing was probably in her imagination—
The sounds were not in her imagination at all. Gilly moved stealthily to the door, glancing uneasily back at the passage, but listening intently. Yes, there it went again. A soft dragging sound. Like a heavy sack being lugged across a bare surface. Her skin began to prickle with fear.
Whatever it was, it was coming from the auditorium. Gilly stayed where she was, listening, trying to summon up the courage either to make a bolt for it through the corridor and risk whatever might be lurking there, or to go firmly out into the theatre and investigate, calling for Julius as she went. This was probably the better choice, in fact it was probably the only choice.
The dragging had stopped now, and she could hear a muffled rhythmic banging. She frowned, because the picture forming in her mind was that of the theatre workshop, of the carpenters hammering in nails to flats. There were probably a dozen ordinary explanations for the sounds. The stage staff might be working late, or the electricians might be finishing off something on the lighting deck. People did work at night, especially in this profession. If that was the explanation, it might be a bit embarrassing to be caught here, having a clandestine meeting with Julius, although it might even be Julius himself – Gilly could not think for the moment what he could be doing, but there might be any number of things. Whatever it is and whoever it is, I can’t just stay here, thought Gilly, and taking a deep breath, pushed open the door and went through into the wings, and towards the swing doors.
She knew instantly that she was not alone. She paused, just inside the swing doors, which opened about halfway down the stalls, looking about her.
The stage was lit by a bluish working light, and the set for the sidh’s abduction of Mab was half erected, exactly as it had been for that afternoon’s rehearsal. The Gallery’s ground floor was quite small; the stalls only seated about a hundred and fifty people, and from where she stood Gilly could see everything very plainly indeed; she could see the swathes of mesh nets that had been designed to look like fishing nets or man-traps or soul-traps, or anything you wanted them to look like. She could see the yawning cavern entrance where the sidh prince had his lair. Danilo stood there for the ‘Lodestone Song’ in one scene, framed against the cavern mouth, clothed in the fish-scale cloak, the huge-eyed face mask dully reflecting the light.
But it was not Danilo who stood there now, and it was not Gilly who lay at his feet, mesmerised in terrible fascination. It was a slight, black-clad figure who stood on stage, his face hidden by the enormous opaque glasses he had so often worn at the Soho cellar meetings. The Shadow.
She thought he had not heard her. Whatever he was doing so absorbed him that he had not even looked round. He was bending over something that seemed to be lying in a lumpish crouching position more or less centre stage. Gilly did not dare to move in case it attracted his attention.
After a moment the Shadow straightened up and moved to the wings, and Gilly saw that the huddled shape was Sir Julius Sherry, and that he was not crouching, but sitting on the stage with his knees drawn up to his chest, and his head flopping forward. His feet were set squarely down on the boards of the stage.
A pulse began to beat inside Gilly’s head, because where Julius Sherry’s feet were, was also a seeping sluggish fluid, almost black in this light, but puddling outwards. There was an elusive fragment of music coming from somewhere, but she could not quite grasp it. Something about never walking at dusk with one you did not 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.
The music was being hummed on the stage. The Shadow was humming Rossani’s song from the Dwarf Spinner, exactly as he did when he came to the Sunday night meetings. It was his signature tune, his trademark and it sent trickles of ice down Gilly’s spine. The sound drifted through the deserted theatre and she cast a frantic glance about her. The swing doors were behind her, but they led straight to the backstage area, and the Shadow was somewhere there now. Could she get to the main exit doors at the back, and out to the foyer without him hearing?
From somewhere deep within the old theatre came the creaking, grating sound of struggling machinery, and Gilly began to shiver. She stared helplessly at the stage, and slowly, inch by appalling inch and with grotesque jerky puppet movements, the crouching figure of Julius Sherry began to unfold.
He’s winching him up, thought Gilly, wildly. He’s fastened his hands to something – oh God yes, they’re being pulled above his head! – he’s fastened his hands to guy ropes and he’s winding him up into the flies. Is he conscious? Is he even alive?
The fact that the machinery was out of sight added to the macabre effect. As Sir Julius slowly stood up it seemed that the grating mechanism was inside his body, and that what Gilly was hearing was the sound of his bones grinding and scraping against one another. She shuddered, and as if in response to her earlier thought, she heard a deep groan issue from the stage.
Sir Julius was standing impossibly, unnaturally upright now, his head falling forward onto his chest, hiding his face. His legs were slightly apart, and his hands were tautly upflung, so that he formed a monstrous human X against the sinister, beautiful sidh background. His head moved slightly, as if trying to lift itself to look around. He groaned again.
