by Rayne, Sarah
The ghost… Memory looped back to the past once again, to a world very different to this present one. Twenty-seven years should not, realistically, make much of a difference to a city, but the London Flora had known then seemed nothing like it was today. That’s a sign of increasing age if ever there was one, she thought wryly. But that London had been full of excitement and promise, of colour and discovery. There was new electric light and horseless carriages… Celebrations were in full swing for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee… Cumbersome bustles were giving way to a sleeker, more seductive cut for ladies’ skirts…
And a rising young dancer called the Flowered Fan, appearing at the Tarleton Music Hall, was being pursued by two brothers—twins lately come to England from somewhere in Central Europe—who had both fallen obsessively and dangerously in love with her.
1887
Flora was twenty-one, dancing her insouciant way through London music halls and starting to achieve a modest but gratifying success.
The Prince of Wales had seen her perform on two occasions and was known to have remarked that he considered her a very alluring lady, and there were admirers who sent flowers and who came to the stage door to take her to supper.
‘But don’t bestow any favours, madam,’ Minnie Bean said firmly. ‘Not until there’s the sound of wedding bells.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ said Flora. ‘You’ve bestowed a few favours in your time.’
In fact she did not intend to bestow any favours at all, but she enjoyed the suppers in the West End and the picnics and the days at race meetings. She accepted the gifts of flowers and chocolates, but always returned jewellery or clothes and on two occasions was known to have directed an extremely frosty stare at gentlemen who tried to give her money. This caused a rumour to start up that the Flowered Fan was cold-hearted, and a gentleman who had sent a cobweb-fine silk chemise along with a ten-pound note and a suggestive little message, used an uglier word.
Flora did not really mind. She would rather be considered cold-hearted or a cock-tease, than be thought of as a Piccadilly tart, and in fact the ardent attentions of some of her admirers really did leave her unmoved—so much so that she sometimes wondered if the accusation of cold-heartedness might be true. At the very least she seemed wholly unresponsive to any kind of love-making. She did not admit this to anyone because she felt it to be vaguely shameful, and she accepted the kisses—never anything more intimate than kisses—with suitably restrained appreciation.
For the rest of the time she worked hard at perfecting her dancing routines, helping to design her costumes and fans, and toying with the idea of taking singing lessons.
Minnie disapproved of this last idea (‘Stick to what you know you can do, madam’), but Minnie disapproved of most things on principle. One of things she disapproved of most strongly that autumn, was the presence of Anton and Stefan Reznik, who some people said were Romanian or Hungarian or even Russian, and others said hailed from Macedonia or Bulgaria or one of those confusing European countries. Although their English was excellent, everyone agreed, you had to say that for them. And they appeared to be acceptably wealthy and to possess very agreeable manners.
Whatever the Reznik twins’ true nationality, they were in the front row to see the Flowered Fan dance on every possible occasion. Flora thought them both rather immature and somewhat intense, but for a while she quite enjoyed being seen with two such dramatic young men who were startlingly alike in appearance and could afford to take her to Simpsons and Rules, and introduce her to some of the raffish attractive people who frequented the Café Royale. They both declared their passionate love for her on every occasion they met, sometimes singly, but more usually in chorus, neither seeming to mind if the other twin was present to hear these avowals. Flora several times had the strong impression that they found one another’s passion secretly arousing. This was disconcerting.
‘I don’t know about disconcerting,’ said Minnie. ‘What I do know is that four bare legs in a bed is natural, but six legs is a bit questionable.’
‘It happens, though,’ said Flora. ‘Three in a bed.’
‘Yes, but if two of the three are brothers, then to my mind it’s unnatural, in fact, not to mince words, I’d say it’s downright perverted. Mind you aren’t heading for trouble.’
‘I can deal with those two,’ said Flora, although she was beginning to wonder if she could.
Still, she seemed to be dealing with them quite well until the night their shared passion erupted into something very dangerous indeed.
Flora had not seen the twins for over a week—‘Because you’ve been too taken up with that political one,’ Minnie had said. Minnie liked to pretend she could never remember the names of Flora’s various admirers.
The ‘political one’ was Sir Harold Chance, whom Flora had already learned to call Hal, and who had walked into her dressing room a fortnight earlier, and said, ‘I haven’t brought flowers or anything like that, but if you’re free for supper tonight or tomorrow, or any night from now until the opening of the twentieth century…’
It had been like tumbling down a well, like being knocked over by a carriage and left gasping and breathless, so that you scarcely saw anyone else in the whole world, and you certainly did not hear the bleatings of other young men no matter their romantic natures and nationalities, no matter how much they swore undying devotion or threatened suicide if one did not return their passion. Flora was daring to believe it had been the same for Hal, although she did not yet know what he intended to do about it.
‘It’s plain to me what he intends to do about it,’ Minnie said. ‘He’ll be out for what he can get. Out for a spot of bed. Are you going to wear this green costume tonight? I should say are you ever going to wear it again, because in my opinion it’s ready for the dustbin. It moulted all over Collins’s stage on Monday—don’t laugh like that, it’s quite true, they had to sweep the boards after you went off, I saw them. It’s worse than a plucked chicken, that costume, and I’m not having you cavorting across the Tarleton’s stage looking like a plucked chicken. I’ll cut it up for curtains, shall I? Nice bit of brocade, that is.’
It was the fourth or fifth time Flora had appeared at the Tarleton, so it felt pleasantly familiar by now. Tonight was something of a gala occasion as it would be closed for the whole of November for refurbishment, so the evening was being billed as a Grand Autumn Finale and there were some quite famous people on the bill. The theatre was going to be electrified which was a considerable event in its history, and it would reopen at the end of December with a run of Christmas shows. Flora had been approached to see if she would take part in the pantomime which was to be a fairly robust version of Cinderella. It had apparently been thought that she might play the part of the fairy godmother. ‘Not the traditional sequins and tutu,’ the theatre manager said to her. ‘We’re thinking of something a bit livelier, just by way of a change. We’d very much like you to do it.’ He added what had been a phrase on everyone’s lips for the past week. ‘It’ll be electric lights, remember.’
Electric lights aside, this would be a new and rather exciting direction for her career to take, but she said she would think about it, which infuriated Minnie who accused her of playing for time in case Sir Hal proposed.
‘And he won’t do it, not in a pig’s eye he won’t. The likes of him don’t marry the likes of us, so think on. He may be very gentlemanly, with his Kensington house and his title and the Foreign Office, but it’ll come down to him wanting four legs in a bed and no marriage lines on the mantelpiece.’
‘Minnie, you’re becoming preoccupied with this business of legs in a bed.’
‘That’s because men are all alike,’ said Minnie, fluffing up Flora’s costume before the call. ‘They have to be watched and guarded against. And where is Sir Hal tonight, I’d like to know. If he’s so smitten he should be in the front row applauding your act.’
‘Late meetings at Westminster,’ said Flora, to which Minnie retorted
he was more likely at home with a lawful wife and children, or engaged in some disgraceful debauchery somewhere.
‘No, he isn’t.’
Minnie said time would tell and stumped crossly off to tell that jumped-up young stage manager Rinaldi that madam’s music was not to be played so fast tonight. Did they think she was one of those Frenchified dancers, all black stockings and frilled drawers? Madam’s act was art, said Minnie, and pretended not to hear the hoots of derision.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BUT IF HAL CHANCE was not in the front row, Anton and Stefan Reznik were, and they were waiting for Flora in her dressing room when she came off. They had booked a table for supper at Kettners, they announced.
This cool appropriation of the rest of her evening annoyed Flora, who said, as politely as possible, that she was too tired to go out to supper that night.
‘You will come,’ stated Anton. ‘It is all arranged.’
‘And we shall invigorate you.’
One of the increasingly disconcerting things about them was the way they seemed to finish each other’s thoughts. Flora would normally have found this rather attractive in twins, but with these two it was becoming slightly scary.
She said, ‘Perhaps another night. I’m going straight home.’ She was genuinely tired and was looking forward to putting her feet up and eating the supper Minnie would cook. She did not tell the twins that if she could not spend her after show time with Hal Chance she did not want to spend it with anyone these days.
They would not accept the refusal. They stayed obstinately in the dressing room, oblivious to all Flora’s hints. Anton perched on the arm of a chair, Stefan lounged in the chair itself. They were imperiously monosyllabic with people who looked in to say how well the evening had gone and how much they were looking forward to panto, and asked if it was true that Flora was going to be in Cinderella, which would be rather fun, because Freddie was playing Buttons and that young actor, Prospero somebody-or-other, was Baron Hard-up.
None of this was well received by the twins. Anton affected to find it boring and Stefan sent smoulderingly jealous looks at everyone and took frequent swigs from a silver flask. Flora hoped they were not heading for a difficult situation and wondered if she ought to call the helpful Mr Rinaldi, or even the doorkeeper, Bob Shilling, whom she did not much like but who could certainly sort out trouble-makers and drunks. Anton was not drunk but she did not think he was entirely sober.
Minnie left shortly after eleven, talking pointedly about lighting a nice fire against the chilly night and getting some supper for Flora—‘I daresay you’ll be along soon, will you, madam?’—but it was twenty past eleven before Flora finally went out of the dressing room with the twins on each side of her. It was faintly worrying to discover that everyone else seemed to have gone home and the theatre was in semi-darkness.
‘We are locked in?’ said Anton.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Flora at once, not liking the sudden predatory note in his voice or the way Stefan was standing so close to her. ‘Bob Shilling will still be on duty at the stage door, and even if he’s not there and it’s locked, he’ll be back at midnight. He always does a midnight round, it’s one of the eternal jokes about this theatre, Shilling and the midnight round.’
She wanted to see if there were any messages for her in the doorman’s room: it was just possible that Hal had sent a note to say his meeting was finishing early and asking if they could meet at one of the little restaurants near the theatre for a late drink or even a bite of supper. The Linkman, perhaps—they had been there twice after a Tarleton night and Hal had liked it. He had liked meeting the scattering of theatre people who had drifted in after their respective shows. Flora had introduced some of them and Hal had seemed to find it easy to fall into conversation and to be genuinely interested in them. This was not something Flora had expected and it had pleased her. On the second occasion, Hal had said, ‘Would you like to see round Westminster, Flora? Then you can meet some of the people I work with.’ Flora had said she would love to, but perhaps his colleagues would not think it suitable.
‘Why on earth not?’
‘Because you can’t take a music-hall dancer into those hallowed halls,’ she had said, trying to keep the tone light.
‘I’ll take whomever I want into any number of hallowed halls,’ he said, and smiled and reached for her hand across the table, and they had arranged that he would take her to Westminster the following week and on to afternoon tea somewhere.
As Flora went through the auditorium with the twins, she found the darkness unnerving; she was used to seeing a theatre—any theatre—blazing with light and filled with people and music. There were two low gaslights burning—one near the main exit and another by the stage box—casting slightly eerie shadows. As they went through to the stone passage with Bob Shilling’s room at the far end, she began to wonder if it was the twins who were making her nervous, rather than the shadowy theatre. Stefan was very drunk, but he was not unsteady on his feet or likely to be sick. If Shilling was around she would ask him to get them a cab: she thought the twins lived somewhere in Bloomsbury. Or would they see that as an insult?
There were a couple of gas jets burning in the corridors, and Flora began to feel safer, because no one would leave gas jets burning unattended. But Shilling’s room was in darkness.
At her side, Anton said, ‘The doorman is not there.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Flora, and moved along the passage. But it looked as if he was right; Shilling’s room was empty and no coat was hanging on the usual hook. She glanced at the pigeon-holes, but there was nothing in her box. Then it was to be supper on a tray in her dressing gown after all.
She walked towards the stage door, aware that the twins were watching her. Please let the door be unlocked, she thought. It looks as if Shilling’s gone out to the Linkman or the Sailor’s Retreat for a couple of drinks, but please let this be the one night he forgot to lock the stage door. Let me be able to open it and step outside into Platt’s Alley… Her hand closed over the handle, but even before she tried to turn it, she felt the stiff resistance. Locked.
In the uncertain light, the twins suddenly seemed taller and menacing. As Flora walked up to them, Anton said, softly, ‘So, Flora, your doorman is not here and we are locked in together,’ and before Flora could say anything he put his arm round her waist, pulling her backwards against him, his other hand closing over her breast. Flora gasped and tried to push him away, but Stefan moved in and bent to kiss her, forcing her lips open. The whisky he had been drinking tainted his breath unpleasantly. Flora was by now very frightened, but within the fear was a tiny speck of anger. She tried to hold on to this anger because it gave her courage, and twisting her mouth free she said, ‘Stop it both of you. Let me go or I’ll yell for help.’
‘Yell as loudly as you wish,’ said Anton. ‘There’s no one to hear you.’ He pulled her back to him again and thrust his body against her so that she felt the hot hard masculinity between his thighs. Fear welled up all over again, and she shouted for help, the sound echoing hollowly in the narrow passage.
Stefan laughed. ‘Everyone has gone to the Linkman,’ he said. ‘The performers and the people who work backstage. I heard them planning it.’
‘We were asked, also, and we said we would be there and you with us.’
‘Then they’ll wonder where we are,’ said Flora eagerly.
‘They will not wonder,’ said Anton. ‘They will think we have taken you to our house, and they will laugh and exchange winks and the men will whisper to one another about what we are doing, the three of us in a bed… First one then the other, they will say…’
‘We shall be envied,’ said Stefan. ‘They all want you, but we want you more than they do. We have wanted you ever since we met you.’
‘It would be better in a bed,’ said Anton. ‘But we could be very comfortable in this theatre. There is a couch on the stage they used for the small play earlier.’
‘An
d if we are on the stage we can close the curtains.’
What was beginning to terrify Flora almost as much as the prospect of being raped, was their unity of speech. It was as if only one person was talking to her—one person who somehow inhabited two separate bodies.
But she said, ‘I think you must be mad—both of you.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Stefan. ‘But it is a very sweet madness.’
He picked her up bodily and began to carry her back to the main part of the theatre. Flora shouted again and fought to get free, but he held her too tightly. Anton went ahead, opening the door to the auditorium and leading the way between the seats and up the stage steps. The curtains were partly open, but as Stefan laid her on the wide elaborate chaise longue that had formed part of the sketch earlier, Anton went into the wings. After a moment there was the sound of the massive winch being turned and with a slow rattling scrape the curtains drew across, shutting the three of them in.
Flora thought this could not really be happening; it was a nightmare and at any minute she would wake up. Even if it were real, she could not possibly be raped by these two men, here on the stage, on the rubbed velvet of the chaise longue. At any minute there would be the sound of footsteps and a voice calling out to know if everything was all right. It was half past eleven already, which meant Shilling would be back within half an hour. But even half an hour might be too late.
Stefan lay down next to her, already moving urgently against her, and Anton leaned over from the other side and grasped the bodice of her gown as if to unfasten it. Flora jerked away from him, and the thin silk tore and fell forward, revealing the flimsy camisole beneath. Stefan gave a low half-moan of pleasure and thrust his hands inside her bodice, his fingers closing round her breast.
