‘And who are the Tinytones when they’re at home?’ asked Ruby.
‘You know, Ma,’ said Percy Pink. ‘They’re the ones we was telling you about. They do the same sort of act as us—’
‘Only not so well,’ said Rusty.
‘Only not nearly so well—’
‘And they’re dwarfs,’ said Rusty.
‘And they’re ruddy dwarfs, not proper midgets.’
‘Just because they once did a Royal Command at the Palladium, they think they’re the bee’s knees.’
‘And they were only on for about three seconds,’ said Percy Pink, determined to keep his end up.
‘Blink and you’d miss them,’ said Rusty, capping him. Percy now withdrew defeated from the conversational field while Rusty expanded on the general inferiority of the Tinytones. ‘Still,’ he concluded ‘we ought to pop down to Coldhaven. See what the competition is up to.’
‘Oh. Is that wise?’ said Ruby.
‘They might have pinched some of our act,’ said Percy Pink.
Rusty gave Pink a scornful, dismissive look. ‘We have to see them for professional purposes,’ he said. ‘We’ll go incognito.’ I had to stop myself from asking how.
So it was decided. They persuaded Ruby to ring up the Pier Pavilion box office and reserve them seven seats in various parts of the house. She declined to accompany them on the expedition, and did her best to dissuade them from going. ‘There might be trouble,’ she said; ‘you know what these dwarfs are like.’ The midgets were deaf to her warnings and I suspect that Rusty positively relished the idea of trouble.
The following day, the Saturday, I only saw the midgets briefly at breakfast. I had a matinee and evening performance while they had their appointment at Coldhaven, some ten miles down the coast from Westport. When I got back from the theatre that night, the midgets had not returned. Ruby was wandering about the hall looking very worried in fluffy mules and her late husband’s old tartan dressing gown.
‘They should be back by now. It wasn’t a late show or anything.’
I had a cup of tea with her in the kitchen while Sheba frisked about, making herself very friendly, evidently buoyed up by the absence of her tormentors. Ruby lit another cigarette from the almost extinct one on her lip and became calmer. I was thinking of leaving her and going up to bed when there was a banging at the front door. Ruby stood up; Sheba scuttled into her basket by the stove.
‘Something awful has happened,’ said Ruby. ‘I know it.’
We opened the door and Rusty staggered in, clutching his left side. He almost fell into Ruby’s arms. I unzipped his little leather bomber jacket. The left side of his shirt from the waist up was red and wet with blood. Ruby became hysterical.
‘I’ll ring for an ambulance,’ I said.
‘No! Don’t bother. It’s nothing,’ said Rusty.
‘Get the ambulance!’ shrieked Ruby.
When I had rung for an ambulance we moved Rusty’s surprisingly heavy bulk into Ruby’s parlour and laid him out on the sofa. Ruby kept telling him to rest and not to talk, but Rusty would not obey her. He was determined to explain what had happened.
‘They’re a lousy act, them Tinytones. Unprofessional, that’s what they are: no discipline, no timing. We was disgusted. They’re giving our sort a bad name, I tell you. Well, after the show I was for making tracks, but Billy, he wanted a jar, so we go to the pub, “The Turk’s Head” on the pier next to the Pavilion. Well, we was just sitting there, having a jar, minding our own business when in comes the Tinytones, oh, very high and mighty. Very Royal Command, I must say; five pounds to look at them, not as you’d want to. Well, their leader, Bertie Banjo, his name is, was up the bar ordering his brandy and Babycham, when he sees us. And we’re just quietly having this jar, minding our own business. And he comes over, and he says: “Well, if it ain’t the marvellous midgets.” All sneery like, he was. “What’s that, to you, Bertie Banjo?” says Billy Whiffin. And Bertie goes: “Don’t think I didn’t spot you lot in the theatre, clocking our act. What were you up to? Seeing how it’s done properly, were you?” I goes: “More like seeing how not to do it!” I was just joshing, like, see, trying to keep it light. By this time the other Tinytones are all gathered round with Bertie. And Bertie goes all hoity toity: “Don’t you take that tone with me, Rusty Dalgliesh!” And I says: “I’ll take what tone I like, thank you very much.” And he goes: “I don’t care what tone you take, you little toe-rag.” Well then Percy Pink who’s been all quiet up till now, gets very shirty and says; “Don’t you call my friend here a toe-rag. You show some respect, you dirty dwarf.” And he throws his ginger beer shandy right in Bertie’s ugly moosh. Well, by rights, maybe Percy shouldn’t have done that, because that starts it. The Tinytones, they all pile in, and the next thing I know, there’s a full-on ruckus between us and the Tinys. There’s punches and kicks and beer bloody everywhere. And the whole rest of the pub is standing round, just watching us fight, laughing fit to bust, like it’s a comedy act or something. Only it wasn’t. They had knives, you see, the Tinys. Bob Dobley goes down and then Billy Whiffin goes bloody bananas. He throws this broken beer glass right at Bertie Banjo and catches him a good ’un on the chin, and after that—my God, it was terrible. I got out quick but not before some little bastard of a Tiny has stuck me in the ribs. Didn’t think it was that bad at first so I gets a taxi here. I never saw the end of it, but Billy’s a gonner; I think Percy Pink’s had it. Bob’s probably a write-off. Mind you, we gave as good as we got. Effing dwarfs: they’re nothing but trouble.’
‘Oh, Rusty!’ was all Ruby could say. The ambulance arrived, but it was too late: Rusty was dead before he reached the hospital.
I had meant to leave on the Sunday morning and go back to my flat in London for twenty-four hours before travelling on to the next date of the tour, but Ruby was in a bad way, so I stayed on. The company’s next port of call was Swansea which I could easily make on the Monday. News of the fight at the Turk’s Head pub came in during the day and it was bad, Billy Whiffin and Bob Dobley were dead; others had sustained horrific injuries. The Tinytones had come off rather better, but no-one escaped unscathed.
In the afternoon Leo Baskerville, the midgets’ manager arrived, a big grim man with a black moustache who seemed to hold Ruby personally responsible for the tragedy. I tried to defend her but was brushed aside with a curt: ‘You keep out of this, young man.’ By the Monday morning there was nothing more that I could do for Ruby, so I took my leave and travelled across country by a succession of trains and buses to Swansea. Dial M for Murder did particularly well that week.
I do not know what exactly happened to all the Tinytones and Baskerville’s Midgets who survived the fight at the Turk’s Head pub, but I am pretty sure that none of them ever worked again. There was a brief report of Percy Pink’s suicide later that year in The Stage. For a long time afterwards the whole idea of dwarfs or midgets on stage was anathema. If the pantomime subject was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the little men were played by children from the local dancing school. Children are cheaper anyway.
It was another two years before I came again to the Queen’s Theatre, Westport. This time, by way of contrast, I was playing Dr Haydock in Murder at the Vicarage. I booked into ‘Stage Door’ for the week. On the telephone Ruby had sounded a little faint and didn’t at first seem quite sure who I was. I knew something was wrong almost as soon as I had arrived at ‘Stage Door’ on the Monday afternoon. Two minutes after I had rung the bell I began to hear the faint sound of shuffling feet, and it was another full minute before the door was opened.
The cigarette was still there, hanging slackly from the corner of her mouth. She was more stooped, and her bottle blonde had faded in patches to near white. What startled me most was that she appeared to be smaller in a way that could not be explained simply by the normal erosions of age and infirmity. Everything about her had shrunk. Sheba tottered up to her side. She too looked unkempt, and she had begun to smell.
‘Where did you spring from?’ asked Ruby.
I explained and she reluctantly let me in. She said: ‘When are the others coming?’ I replied that there was no-one but myself and asked which room I was in. She said I could choose and shuffled off into the kitchen.
I climbed the stairs and selected the room that smelt least of damp. It happened to be the one I had been moved to on my last visit. The bed was made up with clean linen, but a thin patina of dust lay over everything. In the corridor a tongue of the Pompeian red wallpaper hung down to reveal, on the wall behind, a miniature garden of green mildew.
I have been in such houses before and there the decay has been accompanied by a great absence, a deadness, but ‘Stage Door’ was different. The place was full of small noises; nothing alarming, just a symphony of tiny clicks, and creaks and sighs, as if the whole building were shifting in its last restless sleep. If this was decay, then it was active decay.
Ruby’s voice called up to me: ‘I’ve made a brew. Would you like some?’
This encouraged me a little, so I went down to the kitchen where Ruby handed me the front door key as usual and a cup of tea. Her conversation occasionally made sense, but the thoughts she came up with were not connected with one another. Once she asked me if I knew when ‘the others’ were coming; a little later she enquired: ‘Where are they hiding now?’ I decided that I would stay that night and decide in the morning if it was still bearable.
Just before I left for the theatre that evening I thought I would look in on Ruby to tell her I was going, perhaps also to see if she was all right. The kitchen door was closed and I was about to knock when I heard her voice coming from within. It was hard to tell at first what she was saying; it was like some sort of chant. Then I recognised it.
‘. . . Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred!’ A pause. ‘I’m coming!’
I walked quietly away from the kitchen door and left the house.
Usually when I was on tour I would call in to the theatre before going to my digs. This time I hadn’t, and when I went into my dressing room I saw that the previous occupant had scrawled in lipstick across the mirror the words:
DON’T STAY AT ‘STAGE DOOR’
That Monday night the company went for a curry after the show so I was late into ‘Stage Door’. As I had expected there was no light on in the hall or anywhere in the house, and the darkness accentuated the presence of little noises everywhere. Most of the sounds could be explained by the terminal decline of the house with its creaking boards and hissing, rattling pipes, but some perhaps could not. I did not like to think about them.
I kept as many lights on as I could until I was safely in my room. If I was not mistaken the smell of damp and mildew, mingled with the faint odour of elderly and infirm dog, had become more pronounced. I opened a window, but it was too cold for that so I closed it again. To protect me from the dampness of the sheets I wore socks and a dressing gown when I got into bed.
I will definitely leave this place tomorrow, I said to myself; I shouldn’t have stayed tonight. In the street outside the window a drunk was singing; I heard a smash of glass on the road. Then the house began to shake.
It was strange. I felt the shake before I heard the noise that presumably caused it. Someone or something was running heavy- footed up and down the passage outside my room. The whole house quaked at the sound. I got up, opened the door and looked out into the passage. Through the gloom I saw the vague shape of Sheba limping unsteadily towards the stairs, but surely she could have not made the noise. I told myself that she could. I also told myself that there was nothing I could do for her. Ruby should have the dog put down. I closed the door and returned to bed.
There was silence for a few moments. Then someone under my bed whispered: ‘Roobee!’
I lay still, every muscle tensed. The room grew colder. Then it came again, this time more insistent, aggressive.
‘Roobee!’
I knew the voice. It was the angry, hoarse whisper of Rusty as he lay bleeding on Ruby’s sofa, telling us about the fight at the Turk’s Head pub. I switched on the bedside light. I looked under the bed. Nothing. I dressed in a frenzy. I went out into the passage. Sheba lay at the top of the stairs. She looked as if she had been flattened, as if sat upon by something. She was surely dead. I ran down the stairs and out of the house.
I have no recollection of the next few minutes but I do remember the next five hours or so. I spent them on a bench in a shelter on Westport front, watching the reassuring lights of ferry boats as they glided in and out of the harbour. When dawn came up I returned to Ruby’s house and transferred my bags to a café where I had breakfast. Later that morning I found new digs. The landlady seemed perplexed at first by my unexpected arrival. When I said I was from the theatre, she grimaced and nodded as if this fact was a more than adequate explanation for my behaviour.
Some weeks later I saw this small paragraph in The Stage.
THEATRICAL LANDLADY FOUND DEAD
Mrs Ruby Baker, the well-known theatrical landlady of ‘Stage Door’, No. 10 Harbour Street, Westport was found dead yesterday in her own home. Neighbours raised the alarm after they had not seen her for several days and calls to her remained unanswered. Police broke into the house and conducted a search of the building.
She was eventually found in a linen cupboard, having somehow shut herself in there. Cause of death is thought to be asphyxiation from smoke caused by a cigarette end falling onto the bed linen in the cupboard and making it smoulder. It is thought that she was either too weak and malnourished or too confused to break out from her confinement. Neighbours say that in recent months her mental condition had deteriorated and that she had been heard talking of hiding from something or someone. Foul play is not suspected. Mrs Baker was a widow and had no children.
Personally, I have always favoured dwarfs over midgets. We all have our prejudices, and our reasons for them.
THE GAME OF BEAR
by M.R. James, completed by Reggie Oliver
Two elderly persons sat reading and smoking in the library of a country house after tea on an afternoon in the Christmas holidays, and outside a number of the children of the house were playing about. They had turned out all the lights and were engaged in the dreadful game of ‘Bear’ which entails stealthy creepings up and down staircases and along passages, and being leapt upon from doorways with loud and hideous cries. Such a cry, and an answering scream of great poignancy, were heard just outside the library door. One of the two readers—an uncle of the young things who were disporting themselves there—leapt from his chair and dashed the door open. ‘I will not have you doing that!’ he shouted (and his voice was vibrant with real anger); ‘do you hear? Stop it at once. I can’t stand it. You—you—Why can’t you find something else? What? . . . Well, I don’t care, I can’t put up with it . . . Yes, very well, go and do it somewhere where I can’t hear it.’ He subsided into a growl and came back to his chair; but his friend saw that his nerves were really on edge, and ventured something sympathetic. ‘It’s all very well,’ said the uncle, ‘but I can not bear that jumping out and screaming. Stupid of me to fly out like that, but I couldn’t help it. It reminded me of all that business—you know.’
‘Well,’ said the friend after a short pause, ‘I’m really not sure that I do. Oh!’ he added, in a more concerned tone, ‘unless you mean Purdue.’
‘That’s it,’ said the uncle. There was another silence, and then the friend said, ‘Really, I’m not sorry that happened just now, for I never did hear the rights of the Purdue business. Will you tell me exactly what happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the uncle: ‘I really don’t know, if I ought. But I think I will. Not just now, though. I’ll tell you what: if it’s fine tomorrow we’ll take a walk in the morning; and tonight I’ll think over the whole affair and get it straight in my mind. I have often felt somebody besides me ought to know about it, and all his people are out of the way now.’
The next day was fine, a
nd the two men walked out to a hill at no real distance, which was known as Windmill Hill. The mill that had topped it was gone but a bit of the brick foundation remained and afforded a seat from which a good stretch of pleasant wild country could be seen. Here then Mr A and Mr B sat down on the short, dry grass with their backs against the warm brick wall, and Mr A produced a little bundle of folded paper and a pocket-book which he held up before Mr B as an indication that he was prepared not only to tell the story to which he stood pledged, but to back it with documentary evidence.
‘I brought you here,’ he said, ‘partly because you can see Purdue’s place. There!’ He pointed with his stick to a wooded slope which might be three or four miles off. In the wood was a large clearing and in the clearing stood a mansion of yellow stone with a portico, upon which, as it chanced, the sun was shining very brilliantly, so that the house stood out brightly against the background of dark trees.
‘Where shall I begin?’ said Mr A.
‘Why,’ said Mr B, ‘I’ll tell you exactly how little I know, and then you can judge. You and Purdue, you remember, were senior to me at school and at Cambridge. He went down after his three years; you stayed up for part of a fourth, and then I began to see more of you: before that, I was more with people of my own year, and, beyond a fair number of meetings with Purdue at breakfast and lunch and so on, I never saw much of him—not nearly as much as I should have liked, in fact. Then I remember your going to stay with him—there, I suppose’ (pointing with his stick)—‘in the Easter Vac, and—well, that was the last of it.’
‘Just so,’ said Mr A; ‘I didn’t come up again, and you and I practically didn’t meet till a year or two back, did we? Though you were a better correspondent than any of my other Cambridge friends. Very well, then, there it is: I was never inclined to write the story down in a letter, and the long and short of it is that you have never heard it: but you do know what sort of man Purdue was, and how fond I was of him.
The Ballet of Dr Caligari Page 10
