by Lyn Gardner
“Thank goodness for Katie, at least she’s always hale and hearty,” said Chuck smugly.
“Yes,” murmured Alicia drily. “Thank goodness for Katie.” Then she added, “I’ll talk to Tom. Leave it with me.” She stood up to go.
“I’ll walk down to the stage door with you, Alicia,” said Jon.
When they got there, they were greeted by a rather extraordinary sight. Eel, who was going shopping with Alicia for a new dress for press night, had been left in the care of Bert. He and Alicia were old friends. He’d been stage-door keeper at the Duke’s for years, stretching back into the days when Alicia had still been performing. In order to pass the time, Eel was giving Bert the full benefit of her performance as Gretl, honed to perfection by watching the show in preview for six nights in a row. Bert was really enjoying it and kept clapping his hands at her cheeky little asides. She was just embarking on “So Long, Farewell”, playing all the parts, when Alicia and Jon James walked into the stage-door area. Eel didn’t notice and carried on wickedly mimicking how some of the children performed, particularly Katie. But when she came to Gretl’s line, she delivered it with a melting sweetness that was all her own. Alicia was rather embarrassed by the spectacle and moved to stop Eel, but Jon put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
When Eel came to the end, he clapped loudly. “That was great. Who on earth are you?”
“I’m Alicia Ophelia Rosalind Marvell,” said Eel, once she’d caught her breath. “But everyone calls me Eel because I wriggle a lot. I’m Alicia’s granddaughter.” She put out her hand. “How do you do?”
Jon took it and laughed. “She’s brilliant, Alicia. Why didn’t she audition? She’d have made the cast easily.”
“Granny wouldn’t let me,” said Eel. She shook her head sadly. “I could be making my West End debut tomorrow night, and instead I’ll be sitting in the audience watching. It’s tragic.” She said it with such a dramatic flourish that even Alicia had to laugh.
Chapter Twelve
It was press night. In just over twenty minutes the curtain would rise on the first night of The Sound of Music. Backstage all the Alps children were gathered together in the girls’ dressing room. They had been warming up their voices and were now waiting nervously for the moment when they would be called downstairs to stand in the wings before making their first entrance. They could hear the sound of the orchestra beginning to tune up over the tannoy. The dressing room boasted a posy of flowers sent to the girls by Jon James and there were numerous other little first-night gifts and good-luck cards lying on the surfaces below the brightly lit mirrors.
Tom shivered when he saw the cards. Alicia had taken him out to tea that afternoon, just before he was due at the theatre for a final children’s rehearsal. But although she had offered him macaroons and cup cakes, he had barely been able to eat he felt so nervous and wretched.
He knew that Alicia didn’t normally take her pupils out to tea on first nights and he guessed that he was going to get a pep talk; perhaps that she was even going to tell him that he had been given the sack and wouldn’t be required that evening after all. He had noticed that Jon James had started to frown whenever he came near, and Josie Cutwell was always impatient when she spoke to him.
He didn’t blame either of them. Last night, when he’d come to put on his costume, he couldn’t find his trousers anywhere, but when he had gone to wardrobe to ask if they’d taken them away for washing or mending, the wardrobe mistress had sworn blind that they had put them back in the dressing room. When Lacey had accompanied him back to the dressing room, his trousers had indeed been hanging over the back of his chair, and he’d had to stutter an apology. Lacey, who Tom knew was sympathetic to him and thought that Josie gave him a hard time, gave a little tut as if even she was finally losing patience with him.
“Is everything all right, Tom? You don’t seem quite yourself,” said Alicia quietly, once the tea had arrived.
Tom looked at her, his green eyes cloudy. “They’re going to sack me, aren’t they?” he said desperately.
Alicia knew she had to choose her words carefully. “Tom, I’m not going to deny that you’ve made yourself unpopular with Jon James and the rest of the creative team. But the boy they tell me about doesn’t sound anything like the boy I know. I want to help you, and I promise you that I’ll do everything that I can, but I need you to tell me the truth.”
So Tom told her everything that had happened, including the disappearing clothes and the phone call to his house. “You should ask my mum; she took the call and she said it was Josie. I am telling the truth, Miss Swan, really I am.”
“I believe you, Tom,” Alicia said. “But it’s very mysterious. You’re going to have to be on your very best behaviour over the next few days and you’re going to have to be extra alert.”
She had walked with him back to the stage door of the theatre because she had wanted to give Bert some cream for the arthritis in his fingers. Bert was delighted to see her, and had kissed her hand and immediately started reminiscing.
“Those were the days, Miss Swan. Happy times. You were always my favourite. I used to creep into the wings to watch you whenever I could. I loved your Goneril in King Lear. The Queen came to see it, didn’t she?”
“She did,” smiled Alicia. “And when I was introduced to her afterwards, she said, ‘Really a rather unpleasant family, those Lears,’ and I could hardly keep a straight face.”
Bert suddenly realised that Tom was standing there.
“Here you are, Tom lad, I’ve got some first-night cards for you. You’d better sign in and take them up to your dressing room.” He handed a sheaf of cards to Tom who took them and wandered miserably away towards the stairs.
“Nice boy, that Tom,” said Bert. “Much nicer than that snooty Katie girl.” Then he added, “Mind you, they’re lucky they’ve got a full team of kids at all tonight. I’ve never known anything like it. Both the other Gretls are out of action; thank goodness that Freya is such a little trouper. She may not be the strongest performer in the world, but she’ll make sure that the show goes on.”
Up in his dressing room, Tom had begun to open the cards. He knew they would be good-luck cards and at the moment he needed all the luck he could get. There was one from his mum and dad telling him how much they loved him and how much they were looking forward to being in the audience this evening. There was a hand-drawn one from his little sister, Lily, with a picture of a star on it. There was a card from his gran and granddad who lived in Manchester, saying how proud of him they were and that they would be down to see The Sound of Music next month. It made Tom feel very sad. The way things were going, he probably wouldn’t be in The Sound of Music next month.
There was one from Aeysha saying how sorry she was she couldn’t be there, another from Miss Swan and everyone at the Academy and another from Georgia saying, “Break a leg,” which theatre people said because wishing someone good luck was considered a jinx. He’d sent her a card, too.
Tom suddenly thought about Liv. He wished she could have been here tonight to see him make his West End debut. He had hardly been at the Swan since previews had begun, but he’d seen her one day earlier in the week and she’d gazed at him with a look in her eye so beseeching that he had had to turn away.
However awfully she had behaved, he thought that once press night was out the way and he was back at school regularly during the day, he would finally try and make it up with her, if she would only let him. Maybe they could never be really close friends again, and maybe he’d never be her partner again on the high-wire, but at least they could stop feeling like enemies.
There had been one more card. His name and address were typed on the front of the crisp, white envelope. He pulled the card out. It was a good-luck card but the word “Good” had been viciously crossed out and the word “Bad” written over it in angry red letters. Inside there was one scrawled word: Olivia.
Tom felt sick. He threw the card as far away from him as possible, and
it slipped down the gap between the dressing table and the wall.
“Oh, Liv,” he whispered. “How could you?”
Chapter Thirteen
It was close to seven p.m. on the press night of The Sound of Music. The chandeliers in the Duke’s auditorium shimmered and glittered, but the audience shimmered and glittered even more brightly. There were at least four theatrical dames present, and assorted stars from screen and stage, including a former child star who had appeared in a production about which the famous playwright Noel Coward had declared, “Two things should be cut: the second act and the child’s throat.”
Most of the audience were still in the bars, sipping champagne and greeting old friends with “Darling!” and flamboyant kisses on each cheek. Theo Deacon, a former Swan pupil and now a big Hollywood star who was back in London to play Hamlet at the National Theatre, was surrounded by friends and admirers. Others in the bar nudged each other and pointed him out while pretending they were really much too cool to care. They all nudged each other again when he suddenly caught sight of Alicia across the room and pushed his way through the throng to her, enveloping her in a massive bear hug.
“Alicia, darling!” he cried. “How are you? I hear you’ve been in Hollywood, sorting out the Wood twins. I worked with the little brats when I was first starting out in LA. It was like acting with inanimate objects. There are bags of crisps with more talent. I wouldn’t work with them again if you paid me a million dollars. Which is what I hope they paid you, Alicia, to coax a decent performance out of them. If you succeeded, you deserve every last cent.”
“It wasn’t quite that much,” laughed Alicia. “But I was handsomely rewarded. You really are as incorrigible as ever, Theo, and very unkind about the poor twins. It must be quite a burden coming from an acting dynasty like that. I don’t think that Cosmo and Cosima are completely talentless, they just don’t have any training or technique to fall back on.”
“I heard a rumour they might be coming to London to star in a West End show,” said Theo, “but that can’t be true; it would be too cruel. You can get away with murder making a movie or being on TV. There are plenty of tricks that can be done with the camera to make a bad or indifferent actor look good. But there’s nowhere to hide on stage. The critics would swallow little Cosmo and Cosima whole and then regurgitate them and eat them again for lunch and dinner, too.” Then he added thoughtfully, “Unless … unless of course they could get you to teach them…” He looked at Alicia meaningfully, but she said nothing and hastily changed the subject, introducing him to Eel, who was standing next to her and looking at Theo with awe.
“This is my granddaughter, Eel.”
Theo looked at her with interest and when Eel proffered her hand to shake, he raised it to his lips and kissed it, which made Eel gasp with delight.
“You must be Toni and Jack’s daughter. Are you an actor like your mum or a daredevil like your dad?”
“Neither. I’m a dancer,” said Eel proudly.
“Good for you,” said Theo. “You know what I really miss?”
Eel shook her head.
“Tap-dancing lessons at the Swan. Tap-dancing was always my favourite, but there’s not much call for it in the movies or the stage work I do now.” Theo suddenly looked as if a light bulb had gone on in his head. “Maybe I could be the world’s first tap-dancing Hamlet at the National. I’ll suggest it to the director in the morning.” And with that he was gone, wending his way through the crowd.
Eel stared at the hand he had kissed. “I am never, ever going to wash my hand again,” she said.
It was turning into a wonderful night. The only thing that would have made it better was if Livy had been there. Alicia had invited her, but she’d said she had to stay at home and practise the trapeze with Pablo. Eel guessed that her sister couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Tom and Georgia on stage in The Sound of Music.
Slowly the auditorium began to fill up. The five-minute bell rang and the ushers tried to encourage the audience to take their seats. The critics, all looking a little rumpled compared with the rest of the glamorous crowd, stood up to let others pass by to get to their seats. One was still wearing his bicycle clips and another had egg stains down his suit. The critics had aisle seats so they could rush away quickly to write their reviews in time for them to appear in the newspapers the next day.
Eel was sitting near the end of row G. She was very excited. She felt very grown up in her new dress, which was dark green and silky with tiny sparkles around the hem and the cuffs. She had glimpsed Jon James in the bar greeting the Broadway producers and had been delighted when he had smiled and waved at her as he hurried away to go backstage.
Eel loved the whole atmosphere of the theatre, the sense of fevered expectation, and she was gleefully anticipating the moment when the curtain would rise and suddenly she would be whisked away to another world entirely and get caught up in the magic of the story.
How she wished that she was in the show tonight! She thought how intensely thrilling it must feel to be standing backstage waiting to make the first entrance of your West End debut. How she envied Georgia and Tom and all the other children in the cast. One day, vowed Eel to herself, one day that will be me!
“Beginners, please.” The call went out over the tannoy into the dressing rooms. All those who were in the first scene needed to make their way down to the wings. Everyone could hear the buzz of the audience, which sounded like a colony of busy bees. Josie flung open the door of the girls’ dressing room, where the whole of Alps team had assembled.
“Right then, you lot, let’s get this show on the road,” she said. “You’re not on for a bit, but I want you all downstairs where I can keep a good eye on you.” She led them in single file towards the stairs, and as she took the first step she turned back and said with a smile, “Break a leg, kids.”
At that moment, Tom felt somebody push him in the small of the back, making him stumble. As he fell forwards he bumped into little Freya, who lost her footing and tumbled head over heels down the steps. She sat up, dazed, gave a wail and then fainted dead away.
In the auditorium, the expectant buzz had turned into a rising hum of discontent. It was seven fifteen p.m. The audience had been sitting in their seats for a good ten minutes and nothing had happened. The critics were looking pointedly at their watches and muttering ominously about deadlines being missed. Several people seemed to be trying to make a break for the bar while somebody in the circle began a slow hand-clap but was shushed.
Eel wondered what was causing the delay. Then suddenly a spotlight appeared on the front of the red velvet curtains, one of which was held back to allow the house manager to slip through. He appeared on stage in a pool of light. His forehead glistened with sweat. The audience quietened.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m very sorry for the delay. There has been a slight technical hitch, but we’re confident that it will be rectified imminently. We would be very grateful if you would just remain in your seats. Tonight’s performance of The Sound of Music will begin shortly.” He sounded extremely nervous, as if he didn’t entirely believe what he was saying.
Backstage, it was mayhem. It had been immediately clear that poor Freya would not be able to perform that night, or indeed any night in the foreseeable future. It looked almost certain that she had broken her leg in the tumble. Her mum and dad had been collected from the auditorium by Josie and were now holding her hand and talking soothingly to her as they waited for the ambulance to arrive. Little Freya’s face was sweaty and pale and everybody had been moved away from the stairs to give her and her family some privacy. Mia and Georgia were crying and Tom looked completely devastated. Even Katie, normally so super-cool, looked shocked.
In normal circumstances, Freya’s fall would have been a headache but not a disaster. Jon James would have had two other Gretls that he could call upon, and on an important night like press night one of them would have been on standby in the theatre. But tonight was not normal in any way.
Meadows’s Gretl was still trying not to scratch her chicken-pox scabs in bed in Kingston and Lakes’s was throwing up at her home in Islington. Even if one of them was well enough to perform, which was unlikely, it would mean at least a fifty-minute delay while she got to the theatre.
“We’ll have to cancel,” said Jon James over and over again. “There’s no way around it. We can’t do the show with six Von Trapp children; everyone would laugh. We’ve got no choice but to cancel.” He pulled himself up to his full height. “I’ll have to go out there and announce it.”
“Mr James?” said Georgia, raising her hand.
“Not now!” snapped Josie.
“But…” said Georgia. Josie glared at her.
“Wish me luck,” said Jon James, with the air of a condemned man.
“Mr James!” shouted Georgia. “Eel could do it. Eel Marvell. I know she could!”
Josie and the others looked at her as if she were insane, but a hopeful gleam shone briefly in Jon James’s eye. Then he shrugged miserably. “No, she couldn’t,” he said. “She doesn’t know the blocking. We’d be tripping over her all the time. It’d be havoc. It’s impossible.”
“But she does know the blocking!” cried Georgia. “I taught it to her. We’ve rehearsed it at the Swan, and she’s seen the show six times. She’s like a sponge the way she picks things up. I know she could do it. We’ll all just have to help her a bit.”
In the auditorium, the slow hand-clap had begun in earnest and lots of people were joining in. The unrest was spreading.
Jon James groaned. “Listen to that. This show is finished unless we get it underway. If the curtain doesn’t go up tonight, I doubt it’ll rise on any other night either. Eel’s our only chance. She’s going to have to do it!” He turned wildly to the cast and the production team. “Tell them to standby to start the overture. Wardrobe! Get Gretl’s costume ready. We’ll put her in it in the wings.” He turned to Georgia. “Do you know where Eel’s sitting?”
