‘The car?’ repeated Thackeray.
His informant rolled his eyes upwards. High above them in the flies, suspended from two pulley-blocks attached to the gridiron, was a huge basket. ‘This is a handworked house, not counterweight, so it’s all controlled by us. There’s a couple of blokes up there on the fly-floor with lines, but all the muscle-work’s done from down here. Harry!’
A voice answered from the fly-gallery above their heads.
‘Loosen your guys will you, Harry, and we’ll have the car down.’ He moved to a winch in the wings and commenced turning the handle vigorously. The basket slowly descended, to rest on the boards.
‘I see now,’ said Thackeray. ‘A balloon car!’
‘That’s right, mate. It don’t look much from here, of course, but when the lights are on and the old scene-drop’s glowin’ blue you can sit out front there in the hall and believe you’re watchin’ the aeronauts above the Crystal Palace gardens. There you are! Down now, and ready for her ladyship to step into.’
‘Does a lady go in there?’
‘Any time now, friend. Then it’s our job to winch her up again and there she stays in the flies until we bring her down for the transformation scene. When you see the one we’ve got tonight you’ll understand why we told Mr Plunkett we weren’t havin’ no sandbags on the side of the car. “Realism demands sandbags,” he says. “You can have your sandbags,” we told him, “or you can have the lady, but the ropes won’t stand both and neither will we.” That’s realism, ain’t it?’
‘Indubitably,’ said Thackeray. ‘How should I employ myself this evening?’
‘You’d best help me with the winchin’ first, and then we’ll put you on props—movin’ the heavy stuff into the middle when it’s wanted. You can’t go wrong there.’
‘That’s good,’ said Thackeray, not really convinced, but the possibility of further explanation was cut short by the arrival, from the opposite side, of the lady balloonist. He saw at once why sandbags were out of the question: she was of sufficient size to warrant an immediate overhaul of the lifting mechanism. Dressed as she was, in a brown poult-de-soie taffeta jacket and skirt and a large floral hat secured under her chin with a pink scarf, she might well have presented herself to balloonists in general as a challenge, like the unrideable mule or the caber no-one could toss. But redoubtable as the lady’s physique was, Thackeray found his attention drawn to an accessory clamped firmly under her right arm, a white bulldog in a pink ribbon, unquestionably Beaconsfield. The aeronaut was Albert’s mother.
Thackeray turned aside at once to shield his face from her. The possibility of being recognised in these circumstances was hideous to contemplate. He tugged the wig forward. Silver curls lolled over his forehead, actually meeting the natural crop of whiskers on the lower half of his face and giving him the shaggy anonymity of an Old English sheepdog.
‘You’ve got the idea, mate,’ said his new colleague. ‘You’ll find a basket down there, a kind of hamper. She wants it in the car for the dog to perch on, so that the audience can see him. Bring it over, will you?’
The last thing he would have volunteered for! He groped in the shadows for Beaconsfield’s basket and raised it in front of his face like a shield. Meanwhile the rest of the heavy contingent were assisting Albert’s mother over the rim of the balloon car. As Thackeray approached behind the basket, Beaconsfield barked excitedly and struggled in his mistress’s arms. The confounded animal had seen its basket—or had it picked up a familiar scent?
‘In the corner here, my man,’ ordered Albert’s mother. ‘Place the basket on end. You can sit there and put your little paws over the edge of the car, can’t you, Dizzie?’—but Beaconsfield was too occupied licking the hands on the basket to listen to such prattle. Thackeray snatched them away and almost fled to the obscurity of the wings.
‘Are you ready, Ma’am?’ called his companion. ‘Right then. Haul away, everyone!’
Heavens—the relief of bending over the winch-handle to help raise the car and its passenger by squeaking stages to a position where they could no longer identify anyone below! With three men on the handle the job took over a minute. Not once did Thackeray look up; for his part, Albert’s mother, basket and dog could continue their ascent indefinitely.
The floral hat appeared over the edge of the car. ‘Are we quite secure up here? It seems a long way from the stage.’
‘Don’t worry lady. It don’t take long to come down,’ someone cheerfully assured her. Thackeray eyed the winch, now secured by a simple ratchet-mechanism. One kick at the wooden support would bring the balloon-car plunging straight through the boards, the trap-floor and the canteen, to bury itself in the foundations. Anyone wanting to stage an accident here had no need of subtlety.
Then a blare of brass dismissed Albert’s mother from all immediate thoughts. The overture! Thackeray was at once assailed by an overwhelming sense of incompetence. The stage-hands in their yellow uniforms were everywhere, pulling at ropes, manhandling scenery across the stage, scaling the ladders to the fly-gallery. It was like being aboard a clipper as she set sail: incomparably thrilling— unless you were trying to pass for one of the crew. What the dickens did a C.I.D. man do in this situation? Certainly not remain where he was, anyway. Observing a large piece of scenery to his right, he backed cautiously around it, and into a situation one must hope is unparalleled in the annals of Scotland Yard.
He found himself in the thick of a close-packed group of almost naked young women. So tightly were they pressed against his person that it was quite impossible to observe what, if anything, they were wearing. He blushed to the roots of his beard. Any further movement was unthinkable. One simply had to stand shoulder to shoulder with them (as he wrote later in his diary) and submit to physical contact. An insupportable experience!
‘Careful with your whiskers, my love,’ one redheaded member of the group appealed. ‘You’re brushing the black off me eye-lashes.’
He held his chin high, his eyes closed and his hands firmly to his sides. Nothing could last for ever. Surely enough, he presently found himself still at attention, but quite unaccompanied. Purely in his role as investigator he turned to look at the stage, where the curtain had gone up. His so recent intimates were ranged in two circles and dancing like dervishes.
They were not naked after all, but it was easy to see how he had gained that impression. Gaping areas of undraped flesh gleamed brazenly in the limelight. Skirts recklessly divided from hip to hem revealed not only the black silk hose worn by the dancers, but the means of suspension as well, drawn tight across white expanses of thigh. Above the waist the only substantial garments worn were elbow-length gloves in black kid; flagrant indecency was just averted by short lengths of chiffon and large amounts of luck. ‘That’s nothing, mate,’ said a voice behind Thackeray. ‘Just wait for the living statues. If you think this is strong stuff, that’ll have you crawling up the blooming scenery. This is just the hors d’oeuvre, mate.’
He turned.
‘Sam Fagan,’ said the speaker, extending a hand. ‘Top of the bill in my time, but just a fill-in here. This class of audience don’t take to my brand of humour. It’s the spice they’ve come to sample—the tit-bits you don’t get in the penny gaffs. They’re all toffs out there, you know. Mr Plunkett don’t allow no riff-raff in the midnight house. Members of Parliament, Peers of the Realm, Field-Marshals and Generals. Now what can a cockney comic like me say to a nobby crowd like that? I tell you, they ain’t interested. It’s no good getting myself up in this toggery, neither. I might as well put on my tartan suit and red nose.’ Even so, he checked the angle of his silk hat in a mirror hanging on the wooden framework of the scenery. The strain of years of laughter-seeking showed in his face. He grinned like a gargoyle. ‘The poem ought to curl ’em up, though. Listen, if you haven’t heard it. Hey ho! Here come the girls.’
The dancers performed their last shrieking high-kicks, turned, wriggled their hips, blew kisses across the footlights
and swaggered to the wings, clustering round Thackeray again, several holding his arms for balance as they loosened their boots. Waves of warmth rose from their glistening bodies. ‘What’s Plunkett got out there tonight?’ the redheaded dancer angrily demanded. ‘You show more leg than anyone’s seen outside the giraffe house and bob your bristols up and down like buoys at high water and what does the applause sound like? Two wet plaice being dropped on a marble slab. Not a ruddy whistle from anyone. You’d think it was a bleeding temperance meeting. Well wouldn’t you?’
No-one answered. Perhaps they were too short of breath. Certainly the response of the audience had been luke-warm. Thackeray surmised that if Fagan were correct and Peers and Parliamentarians really were present, the cool reception was not so remarkable. People of that class were not accustomed to such displays. Some of them had probably walked out in disgust. Plunkett would need to find something more tasteful if he hoped to attract the aristocracy to the Paragon. Sam Fagan, at least, had the wit to see that vulgarities were not in order tonight. He was reciting ‘The Cane-bottom’d Chair’.
Nobody seemed to require any heavy props, and Albert’s mother was still secure in the flies, so when the dancers had dispersed (not without winks), Thackeray gave his attention to the poem. For a small man, Sam Fagan possessed a good carrying voice. One of the prop-men on the opposite side had brought on a large potted fern and Fagan was standing beside it, addressing his audience, but turning occasionally to direct a limp hand towards the wings. As an elocutionist, he lacked the polish of more practised performers, but it was a spirited rendering, even if the emphasis seemed a little uneven in parts. The disquieting feature of the recitation was the way it was being received. Sections of the audience were openly convulsed with laughter. To Fagan’s credit he was not at all discountenanced; perhaps the rehearsal at Philbeach House had steeled him for such an ordeal.
‘It was but a moment she sat in this place.
She’d a scarf on her neck and a smile on her face.
A smile on her face and a rose in her hair,
And she sat there and bloom’d in my cane-bottom’d chair.’
He paused, actually smiling back at the mockers below, who now regrettably seemed the greater part of the audience.
‘And so I have valued my chair ever since
Like the shrine of a saint or the throne of a prince;
Saint Fanny my patroness sweet I declare,
The queen of my heart and my cane-bottom’d chair.’
Where was the humour in that? Thackeray was beginning to believe that the halls were not the place for serious poetry.
Then the lights were lowered, indubitably for effect as the final verse of the poem was recited, but the audience could scarcely contain themselves, whistling and calling out as coarsely as anyone had done at the Grampian. ‘He can’t find his Fanny!’
Someone tugged Thackeray’s sleeve. ‘Push this into the middle. Not too fast.’
On to the open stage? Good Lord! Thank heavens the place was in darkness.
He looked down at the prop. Of course—a cane-bottom’d chair! And in it he could just see a seated young woman, presumably a dramatic representation of Fanny. By George, someone at the Paragon had a genius for scenic effects. He pushed at the chair-back; it was on wheels and moved easily. Fagan was already beginning the verse:
‘When the candles burn low, and the company’s gone.
In the silence of night as I sit here alone—
I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair—
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottom’d chair.’
A spotlight streamed down from the flies, dramatically picking out the chair. Thackeray reacted with as neat a side-step as you could hope to see outside a prize-ring. He smiled in the shadows. Who would have believed it was his first night as a scene-shifter? An instant later the smile froze and he was almost bowled over. Not by the massive and unexpected roar from the audience, but by the sight which provoked it. The young woman in the chair was wearing nothing at all.
Thackeray clapped his hand to his forehead. Thirty years in the Force had to have some relevance to this situation. His first impulse was to restore order by snatching the chair back into the darkness, but that involved the considerable risk of ejecting the sitter. That was unthinkable. Then he considered treating the audience like a runaway horse, and leaping protectively in front of the chair with arms outspread and waving. In uniform he could have brought himself to do that; not in yellow satin and white stockings.
Before he could think of another expedient, someone mercifully brought down the curtain. A coat was tossed to the young woman and she got up, put it round her shoulders and walked past Thackeray and off the stage, as unconcerned as if she were shopping in the Strand. He felt a trembling sensation in the region of his knees. What in the name of Robert Peel was he participating in?
‘Look alive there!’ someone shouted. ‘Transformation scene!’
Other liveried figures were already struggling with scenery and scrambling up the fly-ladders. ‘Carry out your orders like the rest, whatever happens,’ Cribb had said—but could he have envisaged anything so unspeakable as what had just taken place?
‘The winch, man!’ a voice bellowed. ‘You’re wanted on the winch!’
In a ferment of scandalised confusion, he reeled to the wings and took his place at the handle, beside another of the heavy contingent.
‘All right. She comes down about fifteen turns of the handle till she’s nice and central,’ explained his companion. ‘When I release the catch I want you to take the strain. Hold on as if it’s your own mother up there. Right?’
Thackeray nodded. The catch was released. He braced and gripped the handle grimly. The seam down the back of his jacket began to part under the strain. By Jove, it was harder work letting Albert’s mother down gently than winching her up. Even before the fifteen turns were made, Harry in the fly-gallery pulled on his guy-rope to produce a lateral swing on the balloon-car. At the same time the curtain went up, the band played and the lime-boys directed a brilliant blue light on to the gauze-cloth suspended across the stage.
Albert’s mother, soon oscillating convincingly against an azure background, launched powerfully into Nellie Power’s song.
‘Up in a Balloon, girls, up in a Balloon,
Sailing through the air on a summer afternoon.
Up in a Balloon, girls, up in a Balloon,
What a happy place, now, to spend your honeymoon.’
Unfortunately either the pendulum motion or the awfulness of the lyric had upset the second passenger. As a pianissimo passage sought to convey the airy delights of ballooning, a dismal whining was plainly audible from above. Beaconsfield’s face peered dolefully over the rim of the car.
‘She’s secure now,’ said Thackeray’s companion. ‘You can help with the scene-removing. There’s no sitting about when the transformation scene’s on, you know.’
Behind the gauze-cloth an exotic scene was almost mounted. A drop decorated with a crudely painted skyline of cupolas and minarets was already in place and a border representing Eastern arches had been flown from the grid. Thackeray joined two men struggling with a profile flat, a piece of shaped scenery representing a section of wall surmounted by palm trees. On the other side of the gauze-cloth Albert’s mother gamely started the fourth verse of ‘Up in a Balloon’.
‘That’s safely home,’ said one of the men, addressing Thackeray. ‘Just secure it, will you, while me and my mate get the small props in place? There’s all them potted plants to go yet.’
He found himself standing alone behind two pieces of scenery with a length of sashcord in his hand, attached to the left-hand flat. It was a long time since he had felt so inadequate.
‘Why, if it ain’t the feller with the beaver again,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Having trouble, are you, Dad?’
It was difficult to look round when one was providing the only support for a large piece of scenery, but he thought he recognised t
he voice of the red-headed chorus girl. Unless she had found some more clothes he was not inclined to conduct a conversation with that young woman anyway.
‘You don’t know what you’re about, do you?’ she continued. ‘Here. Give the throwline to me.’ She wedged herself in front of him, took it from his hand and tossed it neatly over a cleat, high on the right-hand flat. Then she brought the line back across the join and fastened it below, over two cleats, one on either flat. ‘You tie it with a slippery-hitch like this, so as it’s easy to break when you need to strike the scene.’
‘I’m obliged to you.’
‘You can step away now. It won’t fall down. That is, unless you’ve a mind to remain here pressing yourself against me.’
The very idea! He backed away like a horse from the halter. He could now see her red hair and a good deal more of her besides. She was dressed in a sequinned waistcoat and diaphanous harem trousers. ‘I think I may be wanted on the winch,’ he said.
‘About time,’ said his companion testily, when he got there. ‘I can’t turn this blooming thing on my own, you know.’
Ahead of them, the swinging motion of the balloon-car had stopped and Albert’s mother was completing her final chorus. As the applause—there was not much of it—died away, the blue lights went out and the scene behind the gauze cloth was illuminated. Albert’s mother leaned precariously over the edge of the car.
‘Gentlemen, just look at what my gas-balloon has caught on—
A palm-tree in Morocco in the harem of a sultan!’
‘Right. Lift her clear. Fifteen turns!’ said the man on the winch.
As Albert’s mother ascended into the flies so did the gauze-cloth. Five young women, dressed like the one Thackeray had seen, performed what passed for an Arabesque dance among the props and scenery. Now that the initial shock was over, he could bring himself to look at the scene. The audience, from what he could hear, actually seemed quite friendly-disposed towards the dancers. He supposed that if one had a well-developed imagination—and people of that class unquestionably would have—one might even make a mental journey to Morocco and observe the performance without reference to British standards of decorum. If he tried hard, even a man of his upbringing might manage it. But a nudge in the ribs brought him firmly back to London.
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