by Rayne, Sarah
But things did not change at all and the nearest she got to shopping trips was if Cousin Elspeth drove them into Norton or Scagglethorpe. Twice they took the train to York and went into Marks & Spencer and had lunch in a tea room on the top floor of C&A. Cousin Elspeth said this was a great treat. Shona thought she could hear Anna laughing at this.
Shona finally left Moil and Grith House three weeks after her eighteenth birthday. She went quietly and unobtrusively, and without any regrets. She had been born there and had lived there all her life, but she would not miss any of it—not the place or the people or the memories.
She knew all the stories about naive trusting girls who went to London thinking they were going to become actresses or film stars or models, and who ended up living in dreadful bedsits or even sleeping rough on the streets, but she did not particularly want to be an actress or a model. She thought she was being practical and sensible about the whole thing. She was prepared to take almost any job she could find, and she had money on which to live for a reasonable length of time.
It was as simple as getting a taxi to York, then boarding the London train and getting out again at Euston Station. She stood for a moment on the platform, clutching her suitcases, momentarily bewildered by the sheer size and noise of everything, and by the volume of people all rushing to and fro so purposefully, but she was determined not to panic at any of it. Wasn’t this what she had wanted?
Despite her resolve, she found London frightening at first and what she found even more frightening was the realization that her money might not last as long as she had thought. Rents for even the pokiest of places were astronomical and the cost of quite ordinary things appalled her, but eventually she got a tiny flat south of the river, in a house overlooking Tabard Gardens. She furnished the two rooms carefully, because she might have to stay there for several years.
Finding a job was a bit more difficult than finding a flat. It was the mid-eighties, still the era of the yuppies, but the effects of the boom and bust years were starting to bite and employment was becoming uncertain. In the end she got a very junior position with a company managing theatres for absentee landlords or owners, and specializing in research into Victorian and Edwardian theatre. It was not precisely the kind of job she had imagined, but for the time being she did not mind performing lowly but necessary tasks such as answering telephones, making coffee and filing. A gofer, they called it—Shona had never heard the word before, but she understood it was what her grandfather would have called a dogsbody. It did not much matter what it was called because it was a job with a salary and the office was in Southwark, reassuringly near her flat—she could not afford to live in Central London which still bewildered her. She did not know very much about theatre in any form, but she could learn and it seemed to be the kind of set-up where you could get noticed.
It certainly looked as if her boss was going to notice her; Shona had dressed carefully for the initial interview and after she got the job, she bought smart but subtly sexy outfits to wear each day. She was not very knowledgeable about clothes—she had already realized that Moil was about fifty years behind the fashions—but she studied people in the street and the displays in the better-class shops. The money she had brought from Moil was already deposited in the bank to earn interest—her grandfather would have approved of that!—but Shona thought she was justified in using some of it for clothes. She bought well-cut suits with narrow skirts or trousers and expensive shoes or boots, and she had her hair done every week and learned about make-up. Without telling anyone at the office, she took evening classes in management and book-keeping. Attending the classes and completing the various assignments filled her evenings, which might otherwise have been lonely. When she had the qualifications she intended to mention them casually to her boss. Between classes she read up on Edwardian and Victorian theatre, and went to lectures and exhibitions. She made a few rather tepid friendships and determinedly lost her virginity to a fellow student on the book-keeping course, in order to learn the rudiments of love-making. After this she progressed to one of the lecturers who was older and more experienced and from whom she was able to learn considerably more than just the rudiments. It was amazing what two human bodies could achieve, although some of the positions were surprising.
She had worked for the Harlequin Society for four years, gradually learning about the administration of the place, and was starting to be given slightly more responsible work, when she was trusted with checking the inventory of a couple of the theatres. ‘Good training,’ said Shona’s boss, who had not missed the fact that this attractive member of his staff worked hard and often stayed after hours or skipped her lunch hour. ‘A straightforward job and it needn’t take you much more than a couple of hours for each one, but it’s something we have to do.’
One of the theatres in question was a small concert hall, tucked between two warehouses, and mostly used for amateur shows and choral societies. It only took Shona an hour and a half to go through the list of contents, and by four o’clock she had typed up the report, although she was careful to be seen still diligently working on it when everyone left at five thirty.
The other theatre was the old Tarleton Music Hall. Her boss had said he would not normally suggest she go into this one by herself because it was quite a big place and a bit more of a target for vandals and drop-outs, but the cleaning company had just yesterday finished the six-monthly spruce-up, so she would be perfectly safe.
‘The electricity’s been switched on for the week for the cleaners, so it’ll still be on now,’ he said. ‘But you’d better take a torch in case any bulbs have blown. You really only need to check the auditorium, the supper room and the dressing rooms anyway— Oh, and the green room. Don’t bother about the dress circle or the boxes—they’ve been empty of everything for years. And we leave the lower levels to the annual survey—in fact it would be better not to go through the door leading down to the cellars at all; it’ll be dark and possibly dangerous.’
It’s dangerous, Shona… You can go anywhere else, but not down there… In the depths of Shona’s mind something stirred, but she pushed it away, and said of course she would not go into the underground sections. Was there something structurally wrong with the place? She had been secretly trying to study some of the basic points of building construction, but it was not a thing you could do properly without practical experience and someone to explain things to you along the way. ‘Has it got settlement?’ she said tentatively, not exactly plucking the word at random from her gleanings, but hoping it was a sufficiently general term to be appropriate. ‘That area’s had problems in the past, hasn’t it?’
Her boss glanced at her, plainly surprised, and then with more attention, which was exactly what she had been hoping for. He said, ‘I don’t think there’s any actual settlement, in fact on the whole the fabric’s very stable and sound. But there’s an old pumping station in Candle Square and I shouldn’t be surprised if the Thames doesn’t occasionally slop over its sluice gates round that neighbourhood; so it’s possible the Tarleton’s foundations occasionally get flooded.’
The memories stirred again. Moil Moor sometimes overflows a bit after heavy rain, her grandfather had said. It’s likely that the cellar occasionally gets flooded. The words came into Shona’s mind like thin fog, like the will o’ the wisp lights people said flickered over Moil Moor itself. She frowned and forced her mind to concentrate on what had to be done, getting the file from the cabinet, studying the list of contents she would have to check. It would probably not take long: it sounded as if anything not actually nailed down had long since been removed.
She went to the Tarleton the following day, arming herself with a good torch and making sure to take the office mobile phone with her. Mobile phones were becoming more common but they were still quite expensive. Even so, Shona’s boss had invested in one for general use; people going into deserted buildings as his staff often had to do, should be able to summon help in the event of the unexpected, he said. Walking along
Southwark Street, the file in her bag, the phone in her coat pocket, Shona was aware of a sudden surge of well-being. For the first time she felt she was really part of London and of the people who scurried importantly to and fro.
She turned off Southwark Street and into Burbage Street, and from there went along the narrow passage called Platt’s Alley at the side of the theatre. The old lantern with the legend ‘Stage Door’ engraved on it was still over the door; Shona glanced up at it and tried to imagine how it must have looked nearly a hundred years ago with the gas light flaring.
The lock was not exactly stiff, but it resisted the key before the door finally opened. Shona had been braced for the smell of dirt and age, but there was a sense of newly cleaned walls and floors. There was a fairly wide passage beyond the door, with a small hatch and a counter on the right, a bit like a cloakroom hatch in an old-fashioned hotel. Over the hatch was faded lettering—‘Stage Doorkeeper’. Shona looked inside and saw the battered desk and chair, and the large pigeon-hole rack on the wall for letters.
Once inside the main part of the theatre she went through the ground level methodically, checking the list of contents, noting that a light fitting had fallen down in the supper room, seeing that there were only eight chairs in the green room when the inventory stated ten. Could one of the cleaners have filched a couple? If they were anything like the chairs still here they had probably not been worth anyone’s while to take, but she would check tactfully, although she would be firm. Her grandfather had always said you should be firm with servants, ‘Or they will ride roughshod over you.’ Her grandfather would probably have been lynched in today’s classless society.
Everywhere was spick and span and pleasantly scented with polish and soap. Shona could report this and her boss would be pleased with the cleaning company and with Shona herself for being so efficient and thorough. She might create an opportunity to talk a bit more to him about how she was studying theatre history in her spare time: it might develop a spark between them. She would quite like to stay with the Harlequin Society, but she did not intend to answer phones and file reports for much longer and she would do whatever it took to move up the ladder. Her grandfather would have drawn down his brows at that, and said she was selling herself like a cheap tart, but Shona was not going to be cheap, in fact she was going to be very expensive indeed.
For the time being, she focussed on her work, sitting down in a corner of the auditorium to check the inventory again. She thought she had not missed anything and closed the file and went back through the foyer and along to the stage door. If she left now she would be back at the office before they locked the street door. It was then that she saw the secondary passage, almost opposite the doorkeeper’s room. Did it lead to the underground rooms? She hesitated, remembering her boss’s offhand warning, wondering if he would be pleased if she reported making a quick check of the cellars or if he would be annoyed with her for ignoring his instructions. Perhaps she could just go to the end of the passage and see what the layout was.
It did not look as if electricity had been extended down here, and when Shona switched on the torch it was clear that the cleaners had not extended their attentions here either. The brick walls were draped with cobwebs and the ground felt gritty with dirt.
As she went cautiously forward, she could hear timbers creaking overhead which made her think of her grandfather saying Grith House creaked because it was old. But the creakings in here were not just an old building’s joists and timbers; they were more rhythmic. Almost like footsteps. Shona’s heart started to beat a bit faster. Could it possibly be footsteps she was hearing? She remained where she was, listening intently, hearing faint sighings. Probably the sighings were just little gusts of wind getting in through a badly fitting window somewhere. Grith House had sighed and creaked in the same way.
The creakings came again, louder this time, and with a definite pattern to them. Footsteps? No, it was her imagination. But it really did sound as if someone was walking round inside the theatre. Supposing someone had got in and was hiding somewhere in the darkness, watching her? Shona was becoming quite frightened by this time, but tried to remember if she had locked the stage door when she came in. Yes, she had. Then there could not be anyone in here. She turned to retrace her steps, intending to get out of this place as quickly as possible and into the safe, crowded London streets.
The door from the foyer opened and the footsteps came along the corridor towards her.
There was no longer any question of getting out. The footsteps were already coming along the corridor and whoever the owner of those footsteps was, Shona would run smack into him. Even if she could beat him to the stage door, the old lock would take a minute or two to unfasten. She supposed it was just about possible this was someone with a reasonable right to be here, but as far as she knew the Harlequin Society had the only set of keys and she was not prepared to take any chances.
She switched off the torch, and moved back into the musty shadows of the brick tunnel. It was not pitch dark, there was just enough spill of light from the corridor to see the way, but it was dark enough to be cautious. With luck he would not know she was here and once he had gone she could get out. She pressed back against the cobwebby wall, her head turned. Would he go past? But unless he had his own keys, she was locked in with him. And then she heard something else—something that caused one of her old nightmares to stir uneasily.
Whoever was out there was singing quietly to himself as he walked through the darkness.
At the sound of that soft singing, Shona felt absolute terror scald through her, and for a frightening, shutter-flash of a second the nightmare was with her—it was all round her, and it was the dark night, the bad nightmare, the one in which she crouched in the darkness, listening for footsteps and for the soft singing that would mean her grandfather was coming and might find her…
She pushed the nightmare away and stayed where she was, not daring to move. The singing stopped and the footsteps paused, as if their owner was looking round. Had he realized she was here? If he looked into this passageway would he be able to see her? She risked turning her head to look deeper into the shadows and now that her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she saw the little recess in the bricks on her left, about five feet high. Was it deep enough to hide in? Making as little noise as possible, she moved along to it. It was not a recess after all, but a door set deep into the brick-work: a door with a scarred oak surface and an iron handle.
A thick oak door, worn and scarred with age. A door that had been hidden behind an old rood screen and was never opened. But it was all right, because this was not Grith, this was the Tarleton.
This door was not locked. It made a rusty protest which Shona thought was not loud enough to be heard beyond the passage, and when she turned the handle it swung inwards with only the faintest scrape. She glanced back towards the main passageway, listening, but nothing happened and she could no longer hear that soft, eerie singing. She looked back at the partly open door.
It would be better not to go through the door leading down to the cellars, her boss had said. It’ll be dark and possibly dangerous. And, Don’t go through the cellar door, Shona, her mother and grandfather used to say. It’s dark and dangerous down there…
Shona’s surroundings blurred and the scents of dust and age were no longer those of an old music hall in London’s Bankside: they were unmistakably and terrifyingly the scents of Grith House. But this was London, not Moil, and she was in the Tarleton and the ghosts had been left behind at Grith House.
Are you sure about that, Shona? You might have left me, but perhaps I never really left you—perhaps I came with you all the way to London and your splendid new life. Perhaps I’m here with you now.
You’re not here, said Shona to the sly voice. You’re at Grith.
Beyond the door was a flight of steps—old stone steps, worn away at the centre, winding down into a thick blackness. A faint stale breath of air gusted out to meet her like bad drains, lik
e something walled up in an old cellar, like the Thames slopping over its sluice gates, or Moil Moor overflowing after heavy rain.
Shona could no longer hear the soft singing or the footsteps, but she could hear the whispering inside her head.
Are you going down there, Shona?
She could ignore the whispering voice; the vital thing was to stay out of the way until the intruder had gone. There was no real need to worry, and she had the mobile phone if she had to call someone for help. But it would be better if the intruder did not know she was here. She would go down the steps, just a little way.
It was very dark but Shona could see her way and there was a narrow handrail. Halfway down she remembered the torch and switched it on; its light would not be seen from here. Her grandfather would not know she was here; he would not catch her down here— No, Grandfather was not here, he was at Moil and had been dead for years. Keep hold of the present, Shona. Yes, but someone had walked through this place with Grandfather’s tread, humming softly in the way Grandfather always did… Shona glanced back up the steps uneasily, but nothing stirred.
The steps ended in a large, low-ceilinged room—probably it had once been used as a general storage area, but there was nothing much in it now except some pieces of scenery stacked at one end, and a couple of old skips, their lids open to show old stage costumes and folded lengths of cloth, all thick with dust and grey with age. She moved the torch beam round the cellar. There was nothing much down here, except dust and dirt, and—
And a flat brick wall. A wall that was grimed with dirt and cobwebs, but that looked different from the rest of the cellar. Newer? Because someone had built it secretly and privately, in the middle of the night. Someone who had had to work by lantern light and candlelight.
Something seemed to move deep within Shona’s mind, like a deep fissure in a cliff widening, and this time the flare of memory was stronger, it was like a scalding tide of acid. She sank to her knees on the lowest step, and crouched there, hugging her knees in her arms, the sinister footsteps that had driven her to hide forgotten. She had no idea how long she sat like that, but she thought it was a long time before she finally managed to thrust the memories down and shakily stand up again.
