by Ellis Peters
It was because of them rather than as an expression of his own nostalgia that he had given his theatre its name; so many of the survivors of Hellespont’s crew shifted its scenery and minded its stagedoor and stoked its furnaces that it could have no other name but one closely recalling their old ship. And they had adopted it with all the enthusiasm they had given to the ship, and ran it like one of their old secretive, ramshackle, effective naval operations.
Probably no one now even remembered what discerning genius at Admiralty had recognised in Johnny Truscott, aged twenty-three and in his first command, a born buccaneer, and seconded him and his cockleshell to secret duties; but whoever he was, he had done well by England and by countless refugees and prisoners of war in Europe, and very well, in the long run, by Johnny himself. They’d taught him how to smuggle, how to infiltrate through even the strict and wary controls of wartime, how to ferry saboteurs and information into occupied territory, and wanted persons and more information out again; and Johnny had found his métier and bettered the instruction, until not even his instructors knew the half of what he was up to.
If his raids were also highly profitable to himself, at least England had no cause to complain of any losses on him. And was it his fault if he couldn’t settle down to a quiet, law-abiding life after the war, and went on with his old business? Not always to England’s satisfaction then, it must be admitted; as, for instance, the Israel period. By then he’d had three ships, all busy running illegal immigrants. Now he had ten, and they seldom smuggled anything more reprehensible than wine and brandy.
The spice had departed to some extent with the need; he was so rich that there was no point in exerting himself to grow even richer. Johnny himself fondly imagined that he was settling down and becoming middle-aged and respectable, whereas the truth was that he was as restless and venturesome at forty-five as he’d been at twenty-five. And as attractive, thought Gisela, looking down at the tangled brown shock-head he nursed in his hands, and the blunt, bold, sunburned face of an experienced and formidable but still ardent boy. Hopeful of all things, curious about all things. All he’d done was to pour his surplus energy into a new channel. He had approached grand opera dubiously, for Hero’s sake, but he had fallen for it with one of the biggest bangs in history, and no one had been more surprised than he.
‘And you’re unsettled, too,’ said Johnny unexpectedly, turning his head abruptly and catching her eyes thus brooding upon him. ‘I can feel it. It’s all since he came.’
‘No,’ she denied half-heartedly.
‘Yes, I always know by the look on your face when you start looking back and remembering.’
‘Don’t be silly, what earthly difference could he make to me? I do look back sometimes, but haven’t I good reason?’
‘Not any more. You should have forgotten all that by now.’ Johnny rose and stretched himself. ‘Come on, I must drive you home.’
She had a service flat in a new block no great distance from his house at Richmond, and they made their journeys to and from the theatre companionably together.
‘Cosi went well tonight,’ said Johnny, reaching his hat down from the peg behind the door; and the warmth of delight came back lightly into his voice as he returned to his passion.
‘Yes, very well.’
‘Franz is at the top of his powers. Seventy-five years young.’ He took her arm, hugging it to his side in a convulsion of pleasure at the perfection of his toy, and her shared delight in it. ‘Three days to the première of Figaro. It is going to be good, isn’t it?’
‘Of course, you know it is.’
He didn’t really need her reassurance, he was only exulting and inviting her to exult with him. As she’d been doing now for twenty years, ever since he’d dropped a tree across the road, and snatched her out of the car that was taking her to the clearance camp for Jewish women, en route for Ravensbruck. She had been one of very many who owed their lives and liberty to Johnny and his contacts, but to her he had come as a restoration of man to grace, a kind of miracle when she had felt herself discarded, forsaken and utterly without faith. What use was it for him to tell her she should forget? To forget the betrayal would have been to lose the revelation of faith regained. Gisela preferred to keep both.
Or perhaps it was all so much simpler than that. Perhaps she had merely clung to him ever afterwards for the most female of all reasons, because she loved him. And his wife, and his child, and his shipmates, and all the waifs and strays he accumulated around him, and every little dog that had the sound judgment to stop and speak to him in the street.
She caught one last glimpse of Eileen’s photograph in its silver frame on the desk, before Johnny switched off the light and closed the door. Grey-eyed and black-lashed and honey-fair, like her daughter; and fifteen years dead. Poor Johnny! The bad partners never die young.
They went down the carpeted stairs together, Johnny’s hand at her elbow. The lavish, rambling spaces of the theatre were growing quiet, the lights going out in the corridors. Glasses clinked softly to a murmur of tired, contented voices in the circle bar, and Dolly Glazier called a good night to them as they passed. Below in the foyer old Sam Priddy rolled across the dim, splendid purple and gold carpeting on his two odd legs, both shortened after the explosion in the engine-room, but shortened unevenly so that he went always with a heavy list to port. He opened the door for them, and roared: ‘Hey, Codger!’ over his shoulder; and in a moment Codger Bayliss came running eagerly with his knitting rolled up under his arm, the steel needles clacking to his ungainly gallop.
Johnny was never allowed to get into a car without Codger being present to open the door for him and shut it with a conscientious slam. If Johnny ever fell out of a car in motion, it wasn’t going to be because Codger hadn’t closed the door properly.
‘You want to watch out tonight,’ said Sam, eyeing with a frown the overcoat he did not consider warm enough for November. ‘There’s a thin wind come up. Shouldn’t wonder it’ll drop in the small hours and there’ll be frost.’
‘I’ll be careful, grandma. Went well tonight, Sam. How did you like Inga’s Fiordiligi?’
There had been a time when Gisela had wondered if Sam really liked opera, or whether it was only a reflected glow from Johnny’s pleasure that made him burn bright when it was mentioned. Now she accepted his passion, and did not question its nature.
‘Smashing, skipper!’ Sam whistled a line of the lady’s melting and agitated self-reproaches; he knew whole operas by heart.
And there was the Bentley, just drawing up smartly at the foot of the steps, the wheel almost invisible within Tom Connard’s enormous, gentle hands. Codger reached for the handle of the door and held it open for them.
Since his disaster Codger never aged, never worried; a kind of dim understanding of essential things like daylight and warmth and love moved behind the mute and arrested face, and sometimes there was a faint tremor of wonder and disquiet, as though recollection stirred for a second; but never for longer. The large, calm, chiselled features, lit by those big, devoted eyes, had a beauty he had certainly never possessed while the mind behind them had troubled and racked him.
Johnny smiled at him and twitched at the dangling end of green wool, but only to tease him, not hard enough to drag a stitch from the needle.
‘Thanks, Codger! Sorry I kept you waiting. Now you get Dolly to pack up quickly, and I’ll send the car back for you.’
Codger lived with Sam, and Dolly had a flat in the same house, and looked after them both. The house belonged to Johnny, and the rent they paid for it was a sop to their independence.
Johnny looked back as they drew away, to see the lighted façade of his darling recede and dwindle until he lost it at the first corner. The Leander Theatre. Fifth winter season. Within easy reach of London by bus or underground. The only enterprise on which Johnny Truscott lost money regularly and heavily. But it was worth ten times his losses to him.
‘Just imagine,’ said Johnny, sliding down o
n to the small of his back with a deep sigh of content, ‘if there’d been no Mozart! What on earth would it have been like, trying to live without him?’
Franz Hassilt rapped irritably for the tenth time, gathered the phlegmatic attention of his orchestra with snapping fingers, and ordered: ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, once more! We are tired, I know, but once more. From: “Cognoscite, Signor Figaro, questo foglio …”’
The four people on the stage drew breath wearily, for he had worked them hard. Susanna and the Countess hovered uneasily on either side of the Count, Figaro confronted him assured and smiling. It was the smile, perhaps, that unnerved Hans, and caused him to miss the beat on which he should have made his stern attack, flourishing the letter.
First dress rehearsals always go badly, but that was the worst moment of a bad morning. His mind fell blank and his mouth dry; and smiling, helpful, condescending, Marc Chatrier came in for him, prompting him like a Sunday school teacher rescuing a backward boy who has forgotten his catechism:
‘“Cognoscite … Signor … Figaro …”’
Syllable clearly intoned after syllable, with meaning nods of encouragement, to complete his humiliation. Killing with kindness. The fiery red surged up out of his lace cravat and dyed him crimson to the roots of his hair, but with healthy rage as much as embarrassment. He refused to pick up the proffered thread, looking over his tormentor’s shoulder straight into Franz Hassilt’s eloquent eyes.
‘I am very sorry, that was my fault. Again, please, be so kind!’
This time his blood was up, and he made a good job of it. No Figaro had ever been bawled out with more authority.
There was no doubt about which side the women were on; they hovered caressingly, complimenting the scowling Count with speaking eyes all the while they were conspiring with his manservant against him. Tonda leaned close to one elbow, Inga hung upon the other arm. And the red in the Count’s cheeks did not subside, it merely changed in some subtle way to a milder and more pleasurable shade.
If he only knew, thought Hero critically, hugging her knees in Johnny’s stage box, what an ass he looked, shiny with complacency at being courted by two goddesses at once, publicly and blatantly – like a ridiculous latter-day Paris! Uncomfortable he might be, but he couldn’t help being flattered even in his discomfort. And she had carefully dissociated herself from the contest, ostentatiously flourished her boyishness under his nose off-stage as well as on, and where had it got her? Had he relaxed with her? He had, and only too thoroughly!
He proceeded to demonstrate it by taking refuge with her in the box as soon as they drew the act to a close and were released for a quarter of an hour’s break after their labours. He climbed in to her over the front of the box from the stage, none too deftly because of his elaborate breeches and stiff embroidered coat-skirts. He didn’t mind being clumsy in front of her; he would have minded very much if she’d been Tonda or Inga.
He was still flushed, but he’d got over his anger; the twin pussies had purred him into a good humour and an excellent conceit of himself.
‘Himmel!’ he said in a great sigh of relief, and dropped into the seat beside her.
‘You made a fine idiot of yourself that time,’ said Hero, with the unflattering candour that was expected of her.
‘I know it! What will Franz say to me when he gets me alone? But now I am all right. It will not happen again.’
‘Well, they certainly did their best to kiss it better,’ agreed Hero, straddling the crimson plush rail with the studied maleness she had cultivated for Cherubino’s sake until it was almost second nature. ‘You know, you’ll really have to put ’em out of their agony soon. You can’t have both, my boy. Take one and let the other go. This is Figaro, not Seraglio.’
And he was fool enough to do it, she thought bitterly, if only he could make up his mind which. Luckily he couldn’t. And they were both at least twelve years older than he was!
He turned and gave her a speculative look and a tempted grin. ‘You want I should drop you overboard, Master Cherubino? With your commission also?’
‘You and how many more?’ said Hero derisively.
He could move fast enough when he chose, but she could have ducked and rolled out of reach if she had really wished. He held her between large, well-shaped and very capable hands, dangling her backwards over the rim of the box. Oh, yes, she’d succeeded in putting him at his ease with her, all right! She tried to reach his chest with her small fists, but he had her fast by the upper arms, and all she could reach was the satin of his sleeves.
‘Let me up, you big ape! I’m falling!’
‘Only as far as I shall let you. You are quite safe. Beg my pardon nicely for being impudent!’
But she didn’t; and as soon as she allowed the hint of a whimper to complicate her breathless laughter he hoisted her gently back into the box, shifting one hand to a fistful of her hair. He shook her by it softly, and let it go without so much as noticing that it was a fascinating colour between corn and honey, and very thick and fine. No, she’d miscalculated badly, these tactics were getting her nowhere. He never really saw her at all.
However, she probed forward experimentally to be sure of her ground.
‘A good thing for you,’ she said, shaking her ruffles back into order, ‘that I’m not the predatory type, too.’
‘Dear God, yes!’ he said, with such heartfelt gratitude that she turned open-mouthed to stare at him, suspicious for a moment of such improbable simplicity; but his face was as open as a sunflower at noon, and fervently friendly.
She could hardly believe it. Could anyone really be as modest as that in his disarming vanity?
‘At least you feel safe with me, don’t you?’ she said with wincing care. The note that should have warned him crept in, all the same, withering the edges of the words like frost browning the rim of a leaf. But he never noticed it.
‘But of course!’ he said blithely.
So that was that. He meant it; he had no qualms at all.
That was one plan cancelled; and now something drastic would have to be done to shake him out of his complacency and make him take another look at what he was slighting. No use turning feminine now, that would only make her one of three in pursuit of him, and lose her even this maddening intimacy which was all she’d gained. No, let him stay feeling safe until he began to feel himself injured and deprived by his security. She could be as feminine as she pleased with someone else; not exactly under his nose, but somewhere just in the corner of his vision.
She cast one comprehensive glance over the available field, and there was only one man in it at all suitable for her purpose. Her grey eyes lingered speculatively on Marc Chatrier’s straight shoulders and long, erect back, so elegantly filling the coat of the Count’s gentleman’s gentleman. Maybe Hans would wake up if she began to demonstrate that a man with twice his experience found her irresistible.
And she wouldn’t even have to make the running. As soon as she turned her serious consideration upon Marc Chatrier she became aware what extremely serious consideration he was devoting to her.
‘The poor man’s Glyndebourne, Johnny calls it,’ said Hero over coffee. ‘It was Gisela who started him on opera. She told him I had a good ear and a good voice, and he ought to have me properly taught. And he did, and it turned out opera was what I was best suited for, as well as what I wanted most. So he took up opera and fell wildly in love with it. He built the Leander, and got Franz to take over the musical direction, and we were off. Hellespont was the name of his ship, you know, the one he lost the last year of the war. That’s why it had to be the Leander Theatre.’
‘And that’s why you are Hero?’
‘Oh, yes, that was inevitable. The Hellespont changed Johnny’s life, it comes out like a rash all over. She was torpedoed, you know, blown to shreds. They lost half the crew, and a lot of the others were disabled. Well, you’ve seen them. You must have noticed Sam Priddy, the lame one. Chief deck-hand, so to speak. He was Johnny’s bos’
n, with him all through the war. They think the world of each other.’
‘So that explains your rather startling staff,’ said Chatrier, smiling. ‘I won’t pretend I hadn’t wondered.’
‘Yes, well … We’re nice,’ said Hero firmly, speaking up loyally for her family, ‘but let’s face it, we are a bit odd. There’s Sam, and there’s Dolly Glazier – her husband was drowned when the Hellespont went down. And there’s Stoker Bates, who has only one hand, and Chips, and Mateo. And there’s Codger Bayliss, the big one who sits in Sam’s box and knits. Codger was torpedoed once before he came to Johnny’s crew, and then again with the Hellespont, and he was about forty hours in the water that time before they found him. They didn’t think he’d live, but he did, only now he can’t speak, and the shock did something to his mind. We taught him to knit to keep him busy and happy. It’s the one new skill he’s managed to pick up since it happened to him, and he’s so proud of it he almost never stops. Haven’t you noticed how many sweaters we all have?’
He laughed. ‘Your father seems to have had an adventurous war.’
‘Oh, he did. They were on secret duties, a sort of roving commission. Suited them, they were all born anarchists. They brought out no end of people from occupied Europe, you know. Gisela was one of them,’ said Hero proudly.
‘She was?’ A flicker in the dark eyes. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘She had some heel of a husband who divorced her as soon as she became a bit of a drag on his career – she’s half-Jewish, you see. She’d have gone to Ravensbruck if it hadn’t been for Johnny.’
‘No wonder,’ said Chatrier softly, ‘no wonder she’s become such a devoted friend to him.’
‘Gisela’s a darling,’ said Hero warmly. ‘And she did something just as wonderful for him when she introduced him to opera. She never expected him to go head over heels for it like he did, or to launch out and build an opera house of his own. But Johnny had so much money he didn’t know what to do with it. And nothing was too good for me, being the only child, you see.’
