Ghost Song

by Rayne, Sarah

  ‘It’s only because it’s dark and dusty,’ said Rinaldi—Mr Rinaldi, Toby had called him in those days. ‘We’ll take a lot of lanterns down there one day, Master Toby, and light everywhere properly, then you’ll see how it’s really a very interesting place.’

  Toby had not wanted to go back into the cellar ever again, even if Mr Rinaldi took a hundred lanterns, but he said thank you very much and secretly hoped Mr Rinaldi would forget or not have time.

  His mamma said afterwards, ‘But Toby, darling, why on earth didn’t you just run back up the stairs?’ and Toby mumbled that he did not know, but he ’spected he had got a bit lost. He never told his mother or anyone else that he had thought there was someone in the underground rooms with him—someone he could not see but whom he knew was there, like an invisible person in a story. Grown-ups did not believe in invisible people and they would probably pat him on the head and say he was imagining it. Toby did not think he had imagined it at all: he was as sure as sure that someone had been standing at the foot of the steps watching him, stopping him from going back up the steps.

  CHAPTER SIX

  TOBY DID NOT precisely forget his experience that day, but he managed to push it to the back of his mind. But something of it stayed with him, and even now, all these years later, he did not like going into the underground rooms.

  But yesterday Rinaldi had trundled down there with him, pleased that he could help his beloved Mr Toby, talking about what they might find and happily identifying this bit of scenery or that bit of furniture, as they searched: ‘We used that cottage flat for Jack and the Beanstalk in 1910, Mr Toby.’ ‘Those were the curtains we had for the old Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations,’ and in Rinaldi’s company Toby did not mind the rooms at all. And it was a useful trip; they found a scullery backcloth used when the Tarleton put on Cinderella many years ago. ‘Mr Prospero Garrick played Baron Hard-up as I recall,’ said Rinaldi. ‘Although he’ll never admit to it now, for he likes everyone to think he only does Shakespearean roles. Shocking old ham.’

  ‘I expect he needed the money that year,’ said Toby charitably, and because he rather liked old Prospero.

  ‘It was a long time ago, Mr Toby— My word, I think it might even have been in your mother’s day.’

  ‘I’ll ask her if she remembers,’ promised Toby before Rinaldi could go off into one of his trips of memory, recalling how Flora the Flowered Fan had dazzled audiences, and how Toby’s father had fallen in love with her from the front row of the stalls, so to speak. A great scandal at the time it had been, Rinaldi always said with happy nostalgia, what with Toby’s father being Sir Hal Chance, highly respectable and not at all the kind of man you would expect to marry a music-hall performer.

  Toby had been pleased to find the Cinderella back-cloth which would nicely suggest the kitchens of the big house in which the cook was making tipsy cake. Rinaldi was pleased as well; it had been a nuisance to lug the backcloths all the way down to the cellar rooms after the pantomime, but he had said at the time it would be worth the trouble. The canvas was slightly cracked at the edges but they could repair that this afternoon and put a lick of paint on it. It could be hung from the grid and, even from the front row, it would look as good as new.

  ‘I remember my old father saying to me you should never waste anything in the theatre, Mr Toby. He used to tell me stories about how he worked his way up. I loved hearing them, those stories. All the memories.’

  ‘Including the ghost?’ said Toby, as they carried the backcloth upstairs. ‘The cloaked man who slinks along Platt’s Alley, hiding his face?’

  ‘I don’t recall anything about the ghost,’ said Rinaldi rather shortly, and Toby glanced at him in slight surprise because there had been an unusually abrupt note in his voice. He was not normally abrupt about anything to do with the theatre, which was his entire life. Toby’s mother had once said the Rinaldis were a theatrical institution all by themselves; they had sawdust and glue-size in their veins instead of blood.

  The backcloth was in place tonight, waiting to be winched down from the gridiron framework under the roof. Having checked this, Toby retreated to his own small dressing room. Performing a quick change into the slightly raffish evening clothes he normally wore for his act, he heard music flooding the theatre and hoped that meant the flute player had dried out his music. Now Bunstable was on from the sound of it—there was a roar of appreciation from the audience who liked Bunstable because he came from Hoxton and was regarded as one of their own. It’s going all right, thought Toby.

  He surveyed himself one last time in the fly-blown mirror. Loosened evening tie, coat unbuttoned, silk hat tilted at a disreputable angle, hands stuck in trouser pockets… Not precisely drunk-looking, but a bit the worse for wear. ‘Mr Chance looks like a toff after a night on the tiles,’ one critic had said, which had pleased Toby immensely.

  One last check—which was, in the words of the old Victorian turns, a question of, ‘All right behind?’ He twisted his head over one shoulder to look backwards in the mirror. Yes, he was all right from all angles. He went out to the side of the stage to wait for his cue, and panic welled up. I’m not getting the surge of power, thought Toby. I’m not filling up with that thousand-candle-power energy and I should be; in fact, I should be crackling like a cat’s fur in a thunderstorm by now— Bloody Alicia Darke and her sinister alluring secret societies…

  Rinaldi was winching the backcloth down. From here Toby could see the repairs he had made to its edge. They looked very good and they would certainly not show from the front.

  Sheer terror had him by the throat now and he knew he would not be able to sing a note. And even if I do, they won’t hear me for the thunder, he thought. Oh God, this is the night I always knew would come—it’s the night I’m going to fail. They’ll boo me, they’ll hate the song, they’ll give me the bird, I’ll die the death. I’ll have to live out the rest of my life in squalid obscurity, busking outside the theatres. And if they write any histories of music halls in the future, and if they include the Tarleton, they’ll say, ‘During a night in May 1914, Mr Toby Chance was jeered from the stage during a thunderstorm and disappeared into obscurity…’

  Oh, for pity’s sake, he said sharply to himself, you’re not Irving or Garrick—you’re not even that shocking old ham Prospero Garrick who does monologues on Monday nights if we can’t get anyone else, and is always threatening to write his memoirs. You’re just here to sing a couple of tunes and cheer people up, and if you’re letting a bloody thunderstorm and a deliberately mysterious female get to you, then busking in the street’s about what you deserve.

  ‘Mr Toby, you’re on,’ said Rinaldi’s frantic voice, and Toby realized that Frank had reached the end of the opening bars and was looking across to the wings.

  He took a deep breath and walked forward into the lighted well of the stage. The footlights flared, hissing slightly, and the heat and lights and scents of the theatre closed round him. There was a delighted cheer from the stalls and whistles from the gallery, and the sizzling energy he had sought was suddenly there, pouring into his whole body. In that moment he loved everyone inside the Tarleton, extravagantly and indiscriminately. It was going to be all right—the song really was going to be the best thing he had ever written, and Frank’s music was already tripping slyly across the keys exactly as they had rehearsed, and the audience was already shouting in time to it.

  We’re almost there, thought Toby. Look at the audience now—look at all the audience. That was his mother’s dictum, of course: use your eyes, Flora always said. Stalls, dress circle, gallery, and don’t forget the poor so-and-sos behind that pillar on the far left, because they’ve paid as well…

  I’m not forgetting a single one of them, thought Toby. Here we go…

  ‘In the Maida Vale kitchens of the house

  The maids were stirring soup and roasting grouse.

  They were baking bread and cakes and boiling ham.

  And the cook was feeling merry
, just a-tasting of the sherry.

  Making tipsy cake with sheets of sponge and sweetest strawberry jam…’

  Pause. Let Frank play the four bars of footstep stumbling music. Now the orchestra was coming in as they had rehearsed, and this was the verse about the butler getting frisky, having drunk the master’s whisky, and the confusion about the sheets of sponge cake and the sheets on the cook’s bed. Had the audience picked that up? Yes, of course they had, trust a Tarleton audience for that. Toby grinned and took off his silk hat in a mock bow to the house, who shouted their appreciation, and when he sang the chorus for the second time, they roared it with him.

  ‘She’d just tipped up the bottle for the smallest taster

  When the butler said, “Let’s have another glass.” ’

  The cheers were still ringing in Toby’s ears and the music was still running in his mind when he finally left the theatre. He thanked Rinaldi, looked in on Bob Shilling to see if there were any messages in his pigeon-hole, and then went out, walking briskly down Platt’s Alley.

  He was delighted with the response to the song; he thought the errand boys would undoubtedly be whistling it tomorrow morning. He might come down here early and walk along Southwark Street just to listen to them. Was that being vain? Who cared if it was, he would do it anyway.

  It was a little after eleven o’clock, and the storm had blown itself out. It had not cleared the air though: the night was still hot and close. Toby would have preferred to go straight home and take a cool bath and eat whatever Minnie Bean would have left out for him by way of supper, but there was the hansom at the end of Platt’s Alley as Alicia had promised, and Alicia herself would be tucked sinuously inside it. No escape, thought Toby. But I’m not sure I want to escape, because whatever this is, it sounds quite adventurous. Even a bit risky, maybe. Shall I bet my virtue (ha!) on it being a plot to topple the house of Saxe Coburg Gotha in favour of some bizarre claimant? After all this anticipation, it would be an anticlimax if it was just another outré drinking club.

  As the cab rattled through the streets, he said, ‘You still haven’t told me what this is all about or where we’re going.’

  ‘It’s in Bloomsbury,’ said Alicia. ‘That’s where we’re going.’

  Then it was unlikely to involve Hellfire Clubs or Jacobite Pretenders. It would more likely be earnest writers and painters, which might be deeply interesting or stultifyingly dull.

  ‘A group of like-minded people,’ Alicia was saying. ‘We meet to discuss the situation in the world.’

  ‘A political meeting?’ said Toby sharply, suddenly seeing several different and slightly worrying possibilities.

  ‘Well, I would not use quite such a dull term as political,’ she said, and gave him the smile that one of her admirers had likened to a very patrician cat, but that at the moment reminded Toby more of a snake contemplating its prey.

  ‘What name would you put to it?’ he said.

  ‘It has a number of names,’ she said. ‘It was formed from a larger organization called Narodna Odbrana.’ She glanced at him, and then said, ‘That’s Serbian, and literally translated it means the People’s Defence.’ She paused, clearly waiting for a reaction, and when Toby did not speak, went on, ‘Tonight’s meeting is a splinter group from that. It is called Tranz.’

  Tranz. The name dropped into the dark stuffiness of the hansom like a heavy stone. After a moment, Toby said, ‘And its purpose?’

  ‘It has several purposes. You will understand better when you meet the others and hear the discussion. They can explain it better than I.’

  The cab rumbled its way forward, and although she continued to talk, lightly and almost flippantly about the meeting ahead of them, Toby scarcely heard her.

  His mind was in turmoil. He had heard the names of Narodna Odbrana and Tranz because of his father’s position within the Foreign Office.

  ‘Dangerous nest of rebels and trouble-makers, Narodna Odbrana,’ Sir Hal had said one night, when he had had a drop too much to drink and for once had opened up to Toby about his work. ‘At ground level it’s a cluster of grubby little secret societies—groups of a dozen or so people—but the higher you go the bigger it gets and the more important it seems to become. It has government officials and high-ranking army officers, and goodness knows who else in its ranks.’

  Toby had asked what this partly grubby, partly important society actually did.

  ‘That’s open to question,’ said Hal. ‘They’d tell you they’re promoting a greater Serbia and breaking down barriers between countries. Hence this splinter group, Tranz.’

  ‘Tranz,’ said Toby thoughtfully. ‘Translating as “to cross barriers”?’

  ‘Exactly that.’ Hal shot his son an appreciative glance. ‘And I’d have to say it all sounds very fine on the face of it.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ It was not often Toby’s father talked to him like this and he was interested.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Hal impatiently. ‘Boiled down to the bones, it’s a breeding ground for saboteurs and spies. A machine to promote war between Serbia and Austria.’

  ‘So there really is going to be a war?’ said Toby.

  ‘My dear boy, there’s going to be one hell of a war before the year’s out. Serbia, Austria, Germany, Russia. They’ll all go into it. It’s a seething cauldron, and the lid’s about to come off it.’

  ‘And this country? Will we go into the cauldron as well?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll be in it up to our necks, there’s no doubt about that. I’m not an especially pious man and it’s not often I thank God for being the age I am,’ said Hal, ‘but when I contemplate what’s brewing up in the world, I thank Him very sincerely for that.’ He sent Toby a sudden sharp look. ‘It’ll be a bloodbath, Toby. It’ll sound mightily heroic at first but when it comes to the reality, it’ll be the grimmest thing we’ve ever known.’ He did not say, so stay out of it, but Toby knew his father was thinking it.

  As the cab took him and Alicia through the streets, that conversation came back to him, and most vivid of all was his father’s final remark.

  ‘We’ve never proved it,’ Hal had said, ‘but we suspect Narodna Odbrana—and therefore Tranz as well—of arranging political murders.’ And then he had said, ‘My lord, I must be squiffy to talk like this; I hope you will be discreet about this conversation.’

  ‘State secrets?’ Toby had said, trying for a lighter note, and Hal had said, ‘For the moment they’re secret. Pray they stay that way. In any case, I’m most likely wrong about Tranz.’ On which note he had gone a bit unevenly to bed.

  And now, according to Alicia Darke, this group of people—Tranz—who were suspected of training saboteurs and committing murder, were longing to meet Toby.

  Why? Because of his father’s Foreign Office work and connections? That was surely the likeliest answer. But what if it was not? Toby thought of himself as a singer and writer of music-hall songs, but he was also part of—part-owner of—an extremely successful theatre. He could not see why a group of political agitators might be interested in a theatre, but he supposed anything was possible.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Present

  SHONA SEYMOUR HAD always had the feeling that when it came to the Tarleton, anything was possible.

  Since she had started to work for the Harlequin Society she had come to know quite a lot about the old theatre’s history. Anyone who was at all interested in that branch of Edwardian theatre knew in a general way that in 1914, when the lights went out all over Europe, they went out at the Tarleton as well. But what very few of them knew was at the same time a strange restriction had come into being—a restriction that turned the place into a curious half world, almost a twilight sleep.

  It had not been until Shona was promoted that she had found out a little more. This was the late 1980s and, although the era of Thatcherism was drawing to a close, it was still a good time to be working your way up in London or anywhere else for that matter, because people were conscientious ab
out equal opportunities. Shona’s boss, preparing for his retirement, had been very pleased to hand over the reins to the assistant who had worked so hard and so devotedly for the last five years. But one of the things he had said was that Shona needed to know about the Tarleton. ‘We haven’t a great deal of information,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to keep what there is to yourself—that’s a condition imposed on us. You’ll have to agree not to talk to anyone about it.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Shona. ‘You know I don’t gossip. You know how discreet I am,’ and her boss, who had very good cause indeed to know the truth of this, nodded.

  ‘It’s years before you’ll actually need to do anything about it,’ he said, ‘but make sure you read the file thoroughly. We’ve never been given all the facts and we probably never will be, but we’re being paid to keep the place in mothballs until—well, until the restraint ends. You’ll see the dates on the file for yourself.’

  Shona had read the file which was just about the oldest one the Harlequin Society possessed, absorbed the rather sparse information it contained, and noted the dates. As her boss said, it would be many years before anything could happen—years of silent darkness. Twelve years, ten, plenty of time left. As the eighties slid smoothly into the nineties, Shona worked hard to make the Harlequin Society respected and profitable, choosing permanent staff carefully and building up a reliable register of freelancers. It was interesting work and the members of the governing trust—in the main distant figures whose involvement did not amount to much more than attending committee meetings twice a year—were pleased with the results and with Shona herself.