Ghost Song

by Rayne, Sarah

  ‘Well, whatever you’re doing with her, I’d rather it was you than me. She’d frighten me to death. See now, will we make that second chorus of “The Ghost Walks” a bit snappier by putting in a repeat?’

  In fact the Tarleton could be left almost entirely to its own devices while Toby was away. Rinaldi would make sure things ran smoothly, and if any of the acts failed to appear he would scramble something together to cover. Toby’s mamma would help as well; she loved getting involved in the running of the theatre (‘Madam never really retired,’ Minnie Bean was wont to say indulgently), although she would probably disrupt all Rinaldi’s arrangements. Rinaldi would not mind this in the least, however: Rinaldi had nurtured what Toby knew to be an entirely blameless passion for Flora for years.

  Rinaldi and Minnie Bean both thought madam should return to the theatre. ‘A benefit night,’ Rinaldi said hopefully, and he and Minnie sometimes got together in the Sailor’s Retreat to make elaborate plans, none of which had come to fruition so far. Toby could never decide if he was pleased or disappointed about that. On the one hand he had never seen his mamma on stage and would like to, but on the other hand, he had a secret, wholly irrational fear that she might be persuaded by Rinaldi and Minnie to reprise the infamous Flowered Fan dance. However much he loved his mother, she was nearly fifty years old and pleasantly plump, and Toby did not want to see her prancing in the spotlight clad only in a few flowers and sequinned tights, no matter how often Rinaldi said she had not altered in twenty-five years or Minnie’s assertions that you could do wonders with a bit of whalebone.

  Bunstable and Frank would have to lie low while Toby was away because they were supposed to be accompanying him on a working trip to Paris. This did not bother Bunstable who said he was partial to a bit of intrigue pepping up your life, and that Toby would have to tell him what it was all about afterwards. It did not bother Frank either, who, being Irish, regarded intrigue of any kind as meat and drink.

  The Rose Romain dancers were booked for two performances while Toby was away, which would please the audiences who enjoyed ogling Elise Le Brun’s legs and speculating about her love affairs. It was unfortunate, however, that Flora had insisted on engaging Prospero Garrick to deliver some of his monologues next Thursday, because half the audience would boo and the other half would go off to the Sailor’s Retreat after the first five minutes.

  It was even more unfortunate that Prospero got the dates mixed up and turned up that same night by mistake. He presented himself grandly at the door of Toby’s dressing room just as Toby was getting ready for his own performance, and was deeply hurt to discover he was not expected for another week. He said there were theatres in London who would have rearranged their entire evening’s programme for him there and then. People queued up to hear his Richard II, said Prospero, and he could not see why Toby would not sweep a couple of acts off tonight’s bill to accommodate him. Toby explained that it was impossible to do this and by way of a palliative listened to Prospero’s entire Richard II speech, accepting a good many swigs from a silver flask along the way.

  Prospero was mollified by Toby’s interest and by the flask’s contents. He told Toby that when he wrote his autobiography, which a great many people wanted him to do, he would make very favourable mention of Toby’s theatre and of Toby himself. He then took himself off, and could be heard singing ‘Come Where the Booze is Cheaper’ as he wound an unsteady path to the green room.

  Toby plunged his head into a bowl of cold water in an attempt to disperse the effects of Prospero’s gin, and was just towelling his hair dry when there was a furious screech of anger from somewhere within the theatre’s environs. It sounded like a soul in torment or Codling the theatre cat being skinned alive, but it turned out to be Elise Le Brun, beating off the lustful advances of Prospero who had wandered into her dressing room and embarked on a fruitily Edwardian seduction. Le Brun had shrieked to the heavens to be rescued, and was now demanding that her assailant was hauled off to justice.

  When Toby pointed out that they could not have people making unsolicited pounces on Tarleton performers, Prospero beamed drunkenly, launched into a muddled version of the Shakespearean speech about making the two-backed beast, and said it was a tribute to the lady’s charms, dear boy, and a mere bagatelle. Elise said bugger the charms, she was not being called a bagatelle, not by Prospero Garrick nor the king of England nor nobody. And, said Elise, growing shriller by the minute, they should all know that for all the speechifying, Mister Prospero bloody Garrick had been so soddenly drunk it had been obvious that he could not get his flagpole more than half mast anyway, which was no use to a girl at all, pardon the vulgarity, but it was enough to make a saint swear, it reely was.

  ‘Ah, I fear I have been too merry with the fruitful grape,’ said Prospero, not in the least discomposed. ‘And there’s the rub. The grape promotes the desire but takes away the perfor-formance—hic—beg pardon.’

  ‘Whatever it does, you’d better go and do your fruitful grape-drinking somewhere else,’ said Toby crossly. ‘But you’ll apologize to Miss Le Brun first. And Elise, if you don’t stop screeching like a Billingsgate fishwife and get properly dressed, you’ll miss your music and you’ll be off.’

  He left the green room on this note and returned to his own dressing room to prepare for the maiden performance of ‘The Ghost Walks’. It had been planned for nine o’clock that evening, but between Prospero’s gin and Le Brun’s wrath, it was well after ten before Frank sat down to play the semi-spooky, semi-comic music he had devised.

  As Toby waited in the wings, for a disconcerting moment he found himself remembering his mother’s offhand remark about the Tarleton’s real ghost. ‘I saw him once,’ Flora had said. ‘But it was one of those fog-ridden nights so afterwards I thought I might have been mistaken.’

  You weren’t mistaken, thought Toby. And I think you know you weren’t mistaken. He’s here, all right, that ghost, whoever and whatever he was. But I think he’s benign. I think he’s a friend.

  When he walked out onto the stage he knew at once that the delay had not mattered. They don’t mind, he thought, looking out into the dark smoky well of the auditorium, aware of the waves of warmth. They’re so pleased at the prospect of a new Chance and Douglas song, they don’t care we’re running an hour late. The realization was both humbling and exhilarating.

  On Friday nights the ghost walks

  Rattling its chains to itself;

  Because that’s the night the ghost hands out the pelf.

  On Friday nights the ghosts walks,

  Glum and at times rather Gothic.

  In its chequered career, it had often appeared

  With Tarleton, Grimaldi and Garrick.

  When the audience cheered and when the gallery shouted for an encore and began a rendition of the chorus on their own account, Toby, nodding to Rinaldi to hold back the curtain, wondered how he could bear to leave his theatre for this mad jaunt across Europe in company with a group of people he hardly knew.

  Two nights later was Tranz’s final meeting before the Sarajevo venture, and Toby had persuaded Sonja to have supper with him beforehand.

  She appeared to enjoy herself, although in the restaurant she told Toby that in a properly run country, people would not have to wait on other people.

  ‘Quite right,’ Toby had said promptly. ‘And on that basis, I’ll leave you to pour your own wine. Are you happy to eat the chicken you’ve ordered, or will it worry you that someone had to build the hen coop and farm the land and feed the chickens?’

  ‘In an ideal world we would all share that kind of work.’

  ‘Sonja, darling, the world isn’t ideal and it never will be.’

  ‘I know, but— Don’t call me darling.’

  ‘But you are a darling,’ said Toby. ‘Particularly when you’re being serious. I love watching your expression when you’re wanting to help the human race.’

  ‘Well, you can make your contribution to that by helping me to some mo
re salad.’

  ‘The vinaigrette dressing is very sharp tonight,’ said Toby, without expression, and she laughed, her face lighting up, and he wished they had not got to go to Tranz’s meeting for ten o’clock, and that he could sit like this with her until at least midnight.

  At the meeting Petrovnic made a speech that was essentially a final rallying call, about the voice of the people being heard and the freeing of all nations. Toby was still more than half hoping to be presented with a reason to honourably back out of this wild affair, but faced with Petrovnic again it was impossible not to be swept along by the magnetism and energy of the man.

  ‘Our friends await us in Sarajevo,’ Petrovnic said, his eyes glowing as he scanned the room. ‘The Café Zlatna Moruna is their headquarters and will be ours also.’

  ‘He makes it sound like Nirvana and the Promised Land all rolled into one,’ murmured Toby to Sonja. ‘Whereas I daresay in reality it’s a scrubby little place with sawdust on the floor and in the food.’

  ‘Be quiet, someone will hear.’

  ‘I don’t care if the entire room hears.’

  Petrovnic was still describing their destination and the people they would meet. ‘And perhaps even as we sit here tonight, they are gathered round a table, making their plans by flickering candlelight, drinking the wine of the country, painting word pictures for each other of how the world might one day be. Soon we will be with them, adding our voices to theirs, adding our faith to theirs.’ His voice lifted, and took on the battle-cry note again. ‘And when the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand reaches Sarajevo, a wild welcome will await him.’

  He broke off, and a smile lifted his lips, and Toby stared at him and thought, my God, I wouldn’t like to make an enemy of this one!

  He had no idea if Petrovnic had sensed his hesitancy, but after the meeting he made his way quite purposefully to Toby’s table and sat down, fixing Toby with his dark eyes. So far from framing an apologetic explanation that he could not travel to Bosnia, Toby found himself listening with absorption as Petrovnic talked quietly and earnestly, explaining about Tranz’s aims and formation.

  ‘Tranz was not born out of hatred for the Austro-Hungarian Empire,’ he said, his eyes holding Toby’s. ‘It was born from the desire for independence and unity within a single nation. That is one of its main aims: to inspire and strengthen the sentiment of individual nationalities.’

  ‘That’s very admirable,’ said Toby after a moment.

  ‘We have literature—pamphlets about our formation—you would perhaps like to have one?’

  ‘Yes, I should.’

  ‘I will send it to your theatre for you to study before our journey,’ said Petrovnic. ‘And when we reach Sarajevo, I shall make you known to the people who are to lead our protest. Three of our most ardent workers have already been smuggled into the country and they await our arrival. One of them—a man called Gavrilo Princip—is a good friend and utterly devoted to the cause. He is extremely young—barely twenty—but he sees our work as a crusade, a torch to light his people on the path to their freedom.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Toby, unable to think of a better rejoinder.

  ‘All of us who work for Tranz have dreams of a better world, Mr Chance,’ said Petrovnic. ‘Strong dreams which we hope to realize.’

  ‘Dreams of iron and blood?’ Toby could not imagine what had prompted him to say this, but Petrovnic’s eyes showed a brief spark of emotion.

  He said, very sharply, ‘That is war talk.’

  ‘I know it is. Bismarck said it, about twenty years ago,’ said Toby, meeting the other’s regard unwaveringly.

  ‘Eisen und blut,’ said Petrovnic, half to himself. ‘Well, it is true that sometimes it is not speeches and resolutions that decide the great questions of our time, but iron and blood.’

  ‘War,’ said Toby, trying out the word.

  ‘We shall hope it does not come to that,’ said Petrovnic, and stood up, nodded briefly to Toby, and went out.

  Toby went home with his head spinning, realizing that so far from recanting, he was becoming drawn deeper in. Blood and iron, he thought. Petrovnic didn’t like my saying that tonight. I don’t like my saying it either. Bismarck, that defiant old aristocrat, one of the fiercest war-horses to come out of Prussia. What put him and his words into my mind? Was it because my father thinks a whole new war is coming out of Prussia before the year is out?

  He would have liked to talk to his father about all this, and he might have done so if Sir Hal had been at home more and had he not worn a perpetually worried look.

  ‘Foreign Office flaps,’ said Toby’s mother, when Toby remarked on this one evening. ‘I try never to ask. He does get so furious with that sarcastic little man who quotes Napoleon and says we’re a nation of shopkeepers.’

  ‘Sarcastic little man?’

  ‘Kaiser Wilhelm II,’ said Flora drily.

  Toby remembered how his father had said that one hell of a war was brewing and that most of Europe would be plunged into it before the year ended. One hell of a war… Eisen und blut. Perhaps it was better not to talk to his father at the moment. Perhaps it was better to let the fiction about a jaunt to Paris stand. It was at this point he knew that so far from pulling out of the journey, he was looking forward to it. Because wasn’t Petrovnic right? Wasn’t it vital that people stood up for justice and equality in the world? Listening to Petrovnic—confronted by the man’s passionate beliefs and by the fervour of everyone associated with Tranz—he was swept along by the idea of righting the wrongs of the world and it was easy to be convinced of the sheer rightness of everything Petrovnic said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TWO DAYS BEFORE TOBY was due to leave for Bosnia, he and Frank Douglas spent the afternoon in a bare and rather dusty studio just off the Tottenham Court Road, making a gramophone recording of ‘The Ghost Walks’. It was the first time they had done this and Toby was inclined to treat the whole experience with flippancy, because it was the sheet music of their songs that was important and that people bought.

  Frank disagreed with him. ‘Gramophone recordings are the way of the future,’ he said. ‘This will be a reproduction of our music performed by us—it’ll be the way we want people to hear it. Sheet music’s all very fine, but it can get torn or lost or thrown away. Gramophone records are more enduring. You never know who might one day be listening to this gramophone record we’re making today.’

  ‘Some descendant in the faraway future?’ said Toby, grinning.

  ‘Don’t mock. And it’ll be an interesting experience anyway.’

  It was a very interesting experience, partly because neither of them had ever seen sound-recording machinery before, but also because they had not realized they would be expected to perform two songs.

  ‘Didn’t anyone tell you there were going to be two songs?’ demanded the willowy young man who was supervising the procedure, whose temperament appeared to be mercurial and whose temper was unreliable. ‘We always do two at a time, one on each side. You have to have one on each side.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Frank warmly. ‘One on each side.’

  ‘I daresay we could fudge up something for the—uh—the other side, couldn’t we Frank?’ said Toby, not daring to meet Frank’s eye.

  ‘Oh we could fudge up anything in the world,’ said Frank, with such suppressed mirth in his voice Toby knew they were going to have difficulty in remaining serious for the length of ‘The Ghost Walks’.

  ‘We’ll perform “Tipsy Cake” for the second one,’ said Toby firmly, and thought that at least if the solemnity of either of them wavered on that one it would be in keeping with the song’s mood.

  ‘What a good idea. “Tipsy Cake” let it be,’ agreed Frank cheerfully. ‘See then, Mr—uh, Mr Willoughby, the full title is “All Because of Too Much Tipsy Cake”. Will you have room for all that on the label?’

  ‘Well, of course we’ll have room for— Where is your accompanist?’ demanded the willowy Willoughby su
ddenly looking round as if he suspected someone of hiding in the corner.

  ‘It’s me. I’m the accompanist,’ said Frank. ‘And I called in the fiddler from the Tarleton’s orchestra as well, only I don’t see him yet— Oh, wait though, is that him arriving now?’

  The fiddler, clattering up the stairs and entering the studio noisily, was enthusiastic about the recording procedure, and inclined to study the machines with interest. ‘I’ve never done a sound recording before, it’s all very clever, isn’t it?’

  But after they had run through a few bars as a rehearsal, it seemed the combined sounds of violin and piano did not give sufficient resonance. They needed another instrument, said Willoughby crossly. No, he did not know precisely what instrument it ought to be, it did not bloody matter what instrument, but they needed another one.

  ‘I’ll see if I can get old Arthur,’ offered the fiddler. ‘I’ll bet he’d love to do it. And it won’t take long to fetch him, he only lives in Finsbury Park and he’ll most likely be at home at this time of day—’

  ‘Finsbury Park!’ shrieked Willoughby. ‘We haven’t the time for you to go all the way to Finsbury Park and back again, for pity’s sake! Vesta Tilley’s coming at twelve o’clock for “Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Loves a Soldier”, and we’re doing “The Girl in the Pinafore Dress” and “I Do Like Pickled Onions” at two.’

  ‘One on each side,’ said Frank.

  ‘Yes, and— Please don’t touch that, it’s the wax for the cutting of the record and if it isn’t kept at the right degree of warmth you’ll all come out horribly distorted.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said the fiddler, guiltily snatching his hand back.

  ‘How about this for a solution,’ said Toby hastily. ‘If there’s a second piano to hand, I could play at the same time as Frank.’

  ‘So you could,’ said Frank enthusiastically. ‘And with a bit of luck we’ll hit the notes at the same time, and even if one of us is a semi-quaver or two behind it’ll sound like an echo. That’d be entirely in keeping with “The Ghost Walks”.’