Ha'penny

by Jo Walton

  “Well, I suppose I should get back to these reports,” Carmichael said, picking up the lists. The top one showed that Sir Aloysius Farrell and Lady Russell had dined at Coltham on Monday night. He’d have to get Stebbings to work on Lady Russell, in the hope she might be the mysterious Siddy, or lead them to Sir Aloysius.

  “If they’re really boring you, and if you’re well enough, would you be interested in coming to the play?” Jacobson asked. “Hamlet, I mean. The security for the first night is so tight that they’ve taken all the other boxes, and they’re filling them with plainclothes police. If you’d like to come along, I’m sure there’s room in the Hampstead box.”

  “I’ve heard so much about it, I suppose I would like to see it,” Carmichael said.

  Jacobson looked at his watch. “Get changed then, and have a bite to eat if you want to, and I’ll call for you here in an hour and a half.”

  Jack sulked because Carmichael was going to the theater without him. He refused to sit down while Carmichael ate his steak. “I’ll have my menial dinner alone later,” he said.

  “You don’t even like Shakespeare,” Carmichael objected.

  “I might have liked to have seen the men doing the girls’ parts,” Jack said. “I might have liked to have been asked if I wanted to.”

  “I couldn’t possibly ask Jacobson if I could take you!”

  “And it’s always going to be that way, isn’t it?” Jack said, whisking away Carmichael’s plate though he hadn’t quite finished with it.

  It took Carmichael longer to change into evening dress than he expected, because his bandaged leg wouldn’t fit in the trousers of the first suit he tried. He was only barely ready when Jacobson returned.

  The traffic was light, and they arrived at the theater fifteen minutes before the show was due to start. Security was heavy. Carmichael had to show his papers and his police identification four times between the door and the box. “We’re getting everyone seated before the VIPs come in,” the last bobby confided as he led them around a curving corridor decorated with two hundred years’ worth of playbills from forgotten plays.

  Their box had ten chairs, packed together. He sat beside Jacobson and looked over into the Royal Box opposite. It was draped with the Union Jack and the blood-red swastika-inscribed flag of the Reich, and stuffed with flowers. There were five seats, but nobody was there yet but three armed and uniformed German soldiers. Carmichael settled down and looked at the program. Hamlet, Princess of Denmark, it said, in flowery script. On the back, he was assured that a Double Diamond Worked Wonders, and that Ridgeway’s tea was used in this theater and that there was a Marriage Bureau in New Bond Street, where all inquiries were treated in strict confidence.

  There was a rustling that made Carmichael look up. The curtain was still down, but the important people were filing into the Royal Box through the door at the back. Mark Normanby came first, looking revoltingly smug in evening dress that included a red cummerbund, accompanied by his beautiful wife Daphne, in a swirl of beige lace that made her look pale. Carmichael remembered her staring out of the window smoking the first time he had ever seen her. Behind them were another couple, a woman in a pretty dress and a thin German in uniform he recognized from photographs as Himmler. Normanby and Daphne sat down, and so did Himmler, but the woman, who looked English, hovered on her feet, waiting, as the rest of the audience was waiting, for the Fuhrer to make his entrance. He came in, dressed in black with a swastika armband, and settled himself in the center of the box. He was flanked by two bodyguards who stood, alert, on either side of the door.

  There was applause from the audience. Hitler acknowledged it politely with a casual wave. A moment after, the house lights dimmed and the play began.

  Carmichael had thought Hamlet thin stuff when they’d acted it at school. This interpretation made him realize how much he had missed. He thought Viola Lark did very well at bringing out Hamlet’s hesitations and difficulties. When Hamlet reached the famous lines that the play was the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the king, he found himself glancing over at Normanby, who had slain Sir James Thirkie, who was his brother-in-law, if not his brother, in order to have his shot at the kingdom. His conscience did not seem caught; he looked intent but not worried. The play wound on, and when the curtain fell at the interval with Hamlet having failed to kill Claudius at prayer, it almost surprised him to be brought back to the real world.

  Jacobson asked Carmichael what he thought of it so far.

  “I’m really enjoying it,” Carmichael said. “I think she’s very good. She makes it make sense.”

  “Viola Lark? She’s variable, but she does seem to have hit her stride with this one. I’ve never seen her so good,” Jacobson said, in the tones of a connoisseur. He went on to discuss other plays he had seen her in.

  In the Royal Box, Normanby was sharing a pleasantry with Himmler as they shared a drink. Hitler was staring out at the auditorium, looking bored, ignoring the woman beside him.

  “Who is that pretty woman in the Royal Box?” Carmichael asked, staring over. “She looks English, but she’s fussing over Hitler as if she’s German.”

  “She’s Celia Himmler, who was Celia Larkin,” Jacobson said.

  “Viola Lark’s sister, then,” Carmichael said, remembering. “One of them was married to old Thirkie, originally.”

  “Olivia, Celia, Viola, Cressida, Miranda, and Rosalind,” Jacobson said. “Like the six wives of Henry VIII, only more Shakespearean. My wife reads the society papers every single week.”

  “Cressida,” Carmichael said, slowly, as the lights dipped, to indicate that the play was about to begin again. “Siddy?”

  “I don’t know if that’s what they call her. She’s Lady Russell,” Jacobson said.

  “Siddy,” Carmichael repeated, and stood up. His wounded leg shook under him. If Viola was the sister of one of the conspirators, and Siddy had been meeting with the conspiracy as recently as Monday night, then there could be a bomb in the theater now. He remembered the Irishman he had met with Viola, who had been introduced as Connelly. Could that have been Sir Aloysius? His body moved as slowly as treacle towards the back of the box, while his brain raced through everything he knew. Lord Scott was keeping silent to protect something. Sir Aloysius hadn’t wanted to build a crude bomb but wanted to wait for a better one. It might be on a timer, or it might be radio controlled. If he shouted out, that might cause someone to set it off.

  31

  There was a guard at the pass door. I gave him my best smile. “I’m Viola Lark,” I said. “These flowers had the wrong label, they came to me but they were meant for the Royal Box. I thought I’d bring them through in case they have a hole up there these are meant to fill.”

  “Will you want to come back through this way, miss?” he asked.

  “Oh yes, probably in about five minutes.”

  “I’ll still be here then, so I’ll just open up for you, no problem,” he said.

  It was as easy as that.

  The theater was dark in the literal sense. They hadn’t even let the program sellers in yet. I had to be very careful going down the stairs into the pit. I did trust what Devlin had said about the bomb, but if I fell and squashed the azaleas nobody would want them anyway. I picked my way through and then up the stairs at the back that go to the passage that runs along behind the grand circle and has doors into the boxes. There were two men outside the door to the Royal Box, both Germans in uniform. They carried guns prominently in their holsters, big scary ones. I took a breath and held the flowers in front of me, though my arms were starting to ache, and smiled.

  “These were supposed to be for you, but they came to me,” I said.

  “Flowers comed,” one of the soldiers said.

  “We flowers have,” the other agreed, in slightly better English. That one did at least have the grace to smile as he shook his head.

  I was out of ideas, but fortunately Captain Keiler came down the corridor. “Oh, Captain Keiler, I
hope you can help,” I said. My smile was almost a simper by now.

  “Heil Hitler! What can I do for you, Lady Viola?” he asked, bowing. He looked as if he’d probably have kissed my hand if it hadn’t been for the azaleas.

  “These are your flowers—yours for the box I mean, not the carnations you so kindly sent me—but the labels were mixed on these and they came to me.”

  “Give them to me,” he said. He took the azaleas, glanced at the labels briefly, then handed them to the soldier who had smiled. He said something to the other in German, clearly an order, and the other man opened the box door. I caught a glimpse of the inside, where there were banked masses of azaleas, all absolutely identical to the ones I’d brought up. Then the soldier took mine in and the other one closed the door so I couldn’t see exactly where he put them.

  “Oh thank you so much,” I said to Captain Keiler. “I was so afraid you’d have a hole where they were supposed to go.”

  “No, thank you for taking the time to bring them,” he said, bowing again, and this time he did kiss my hand. “I am so much looking forward to seeing you in the play,” he said. “And I am touched that you remembered the flowers I sent you. Perhaps one night before I go back to Berlin when I am not on duty, I might come to see the play again, and perhaps you and I would do supper and dance afterwards?”

  I was about to refuse politely when I remembered that this would never happen in any case, and I might as well keep him sweet. “When do you go back to Berlin?” I asked.

  “I go back with the Fuhrer, on next Thursday, after his last dinner with the king and queen on Wednesday night. Perhaps Tuesday night?”

  “Come around to the stage door after the performance on Tuesday,” I said.

  I thought I’d got rid of him with that, but he insisted on walking back with me to the pass door. “Will you be watching the play from in the box with the Fuhrer?” I asked.

  “I have that honor, yes,” he said.

  “It’s the best view in the house,” I said, thinking that I would have this man’s soul on my conscience too, but it wouldn’t weigh very heavily.

  “But I am on duty and will have to give part of my attention to checking for assassins and murderers,” he said.

  “Surely you’re not expecting to find any here?” I said.

  “I must always be alert for my Fuhrer,” he said.

  Then we were at the pass door and he ordered the policeman there to let me through. “Until Tuesday,” he said, and kissed my hand again.

  As soon as I was backstage again my legs started to shake. I had to lean on the wall for a moment and take deep breaths. Then I pulled myself together and walked back to my dressing room. The part I had been dreading most was over. At least the bomb was out of my possession. Now I could start worrying about when it would go off and ruin the play. I wished Devlin had told me how long we had. It was such a good play, now it had come together. All I had to go on was the joke about putting the trigger in Yorick’s skull, which made me hope we had at least until the graveyard scene.

  Mrs. Tring did my face, then fussed with my hair and with a wine spot on the sleeve of my dress. It hardly showed close up, and wouldn’t show at all to the audience, but I let her fuss. It was familiar and reassuring. After a while she went off to dress Mollie and I looked into the mirror. Usually when I did this before a performance I was going over my lines and thinking myself into the character, but that day my mind kept drifting away from Hamlet and onto myself. It was my own eyes I looked into, not Hamlet’s, my own problems with murder I contemplated, not hers. Claudius was her uncle, her father’s brother, she must have known him well all her life, no wonder she found it so hard to believe he was a murderer. Pip was my sister, and the murder and slavery she was condoning was far away. Siddy—I didn’t want to think about Siddy, but I could picture her shaking hands with Devlin outside the flower shop and stalking straight off to take the next plane to Lisbon. She was more like Cassius than anyone in Hamlet.

  “Five minutes!” the boy said. “Orchestra and beginners!” Devlin would be out there in the audience now, and Loy, sitting in their places, with their little radio devices, waiting. It was all out of my control. I had passed “to be or not to be” and could coast. Devlin would have made short work of Claudius.

  My nerves had quite passed off by the time I got out onto the stage. It was too late, anyway, everything was out of my hands. All I could do now was give the audience as much of Hamlet as they were able to get. I was Hamlet, coming back to Elsinore. By the scenes where Antony, blue-lit, played my father’s ghost I had almost forgotten everything but the performance. Charlie missed a cue in his first scene, but the others covered for him and I don’t think the audience noticed. Mollie was on top form throughout. I almost slipped getting away from Pat in the nunnery scene, but we made it look deliberate. It fit in quite well as a sidestep after Pat had been walking round and round me, taunting me with the gifts he was supposedly returning. It wasn’t until we were all sitting along the dais and Antony and I were exchanging banter that I remembered the bomb. I caught myself praying, “Not now, not yet, please God, Devlin!” Devlin, or God, or somebody, heard me, and we made it all the way past Claudius’s prayer and to the interval.

  “I thought you were going to fall when Pat was holding those letters and things out of your reach,” Mollie said as I came off.

  Antony took off his usurped crown and held it in his hands. “I loved that slip, Viola, we’ll have to keep that. It looked so natural.”

  “My shoe just skidded under me,” I said.

  “Well, fake it just the same tomorrow,” he said. He opened a crack in the curtains. “They look quite happy in the Royal Box. They’re having drinks brought to them.”

  “I expect Hitler’s bored to tears, he doesn’t speak English,” Mollie said.

  “He said Shakespeare transcends language,” I said. They both looked at me. “No, he really did. And then he said, ‘Alas Poor Yorick’ in English.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me!” Antony said, as if it was the most significant thing that had ever happened. I wanted to laugh. “Transcends language,” he murmured.

  I left him peeking at Hitler and went down to get changed. Mrs. Tring had been reading the Tatler in the dressing room as usual between changes. “How’s it going then?” she asked, helping me out of my gold play-watching dress.

  “Antony says he liked it that I almost fell and wants to keep it in,” I said. “The audience seem to be concentrating, which is a good sign with Shakespeare.”

  “If you’re going up to the Royal Box to see Hitler after the curtain, what are you going to wear? Your doublet and hose, or one of the other costumes, or that cream nonsense you had on when you came in?”

  “It’s a perfectly good street dress,” I said, though I had chosen it with ice cream in mind and it obviously wouldn’t do. I couldn’t say to Mrs. Tring that there would be no meeting Hitler afterwards, and possibly no Hitler. I couldn’t really imagine there being an afterwards.

  “Doublet and hose or which Hamlet dress then?” Mrs. Tring asked.

  I laughed and put my arm around her. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Well, he saw the blue dress at the Embassy party. He’ll have seen the rest on stage as well, but I think the russet one from the gravedigger scene would be the best, and that way Mollie can wear her gold one. It was all very well for you to match on stage, but it might be a bit odd off.”

  I was taking off my gold dress and putting on my white nightdress for the next scene as we spoke. “It’ll do,” I said. “Thanks. My change out of it is a really quick one, but get it ready again for me for after.”

  “Sit down and let me do your shadows,” she said. I was supposed to have shadows under my eyes in the second half. I stared into the mirror as she did it and thought that I might never put on the doublet and hose and I’d certainly never put the russet dress on again later. I was back where I had been at the very beginning, mentally, as if the w
hole bomb thing was a play and everything with Devlin, everything since I met Siddy outside the Empire, was real but only in its own terms, as Hamlet’s tragedy was, as if the bomb could explode and yet everything in the real world and my real life would go on as it had been, the way it did at the end of a play. Mrs. Tring always used to express wonder at how Mollie and I learned our lines, and say our heads must be packed full with all the plays we knew. I don’t know how it was for Mollie, but although I lived and breathed the play while it was taking shape and while it was running, I would forget my lines afterwards and it would start to recede into the general shape of what I knew. I could feel this business doing the same thing, taking on a dramatic shape in my mind.

  “Five minutes,” the boy said.

  “I must lace Mollie,” Mrs. Tring said, and almost ran out. I made my way up to the wings. Antony was still there, and still looking out. “It seems a very happy house,” he said. “A lot depends on the critics, of course, and they may be paying more attention to our distinguished audience than to us, but I think things are going as well as can be expected.”

  He’d have said he thought we had a hit if he wasn’t so superstitious. “Break a leg,” I said, and he patted me on the arm. Then Mollie and Tim were exchanging their lines and Mollie got into bed and Tim stepped behind the arras and that was my cue so I went on again.

  32

  The bobby in the corridor outside the Hampstead box was the unimaginative and anti-Semitic one Carmichael had met outside Gilmore’s house. Jacobson had followed Carmichael; now he waved him back and shut the door of the box. He needed to act quickly, and he wanted no visible disturbance in case they were being watched.

  Out in the curved corridor, the bobby looked at Carmichael incuriously. “There’s a possibility there may be a bomb,” Carmichael said. “It’s not sure, but it’s enough of a risk I need to investigate further. I need to speak to the guards on the Royal Box.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Just go around the curve and keep going.”