The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk

by Sean Wallace

  (The papers gasped. ‘Turn in Bridal Trends Expected!’ claimed the Tribune. Blushing Bride panicked: ‘Have We Seen the Last of White?’ Some botanical magazine ran a feature on why natural orchids were better than brass, and asked for a letter-of-complaint campaign.

  Greaselight Weekly cut to the chase: ‘WHEN STARS COLLIDE’.)

  In the receiving line, Rose shook Emily. “The comb was for the veil, you mad thing, I can’t believe you went bareheaded! Peter, come here, darling, kiss me.”

  “That veil was like frosting myself,” Emily said to Roger, next in line. “Horrible stuff.”

  She moved to kiss his cheek, but he froze, and they stood, her lips ghosting his skin, a moment too long.

  “Horrible stuff,” Roger agreed, moved down the line to shake Peter’s hand.

  The guests flooded the dance floor. Roger had never been much of a dancer. He considered signing the guest book. Didn’t. She’d ordered a plain cake with chocolate icing, and it sat forgotten on a side table away from the band and the lights.

  After he got home he hailed her libris.

  “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to see you. I thought I had, but turns out you dressed to match the cake. When they cut you up I was beside myself.”

  He didn’t say, I can’t believe you did it. He didn’t say, Peter wants to be famous and you want to be good and those are very different things, Emily. Emily.

  “Hope the honeymoon is lovely,” he said, hung up.

  Three days later he had a message, a screenful of tidy capitals.

  BORED TO TEARS IN PARIS. NEED TO BE ACTING. WROTE PLAY OVER WEEKEND. GOT LETTER ABOUT HOW I HATE ORCHIDS; PEOPLE ARE MAD. HUSH ABOUT DRESS – ALL WAS LOVELY – YOUR LOSS.

  They sat down at the table with a bottle of Scotch to work out the run.

  Peter pulled out his libris, scrolled furiously through their catalog. The case was a scrap of poster from back when venues begged for charity shows. (It still had a sliver of the ‘SOLD OUT’ sign.) Sometimes Roger caught Peter smiling at it when he thought he was alone.

  “We’ve got to start with a comedy,” Peter said.

  “Agreed,” said Roger. Dramatons had never mastered timing; automaton-comedies relied on sight gags.

  Peter frowned. “The Last March of Colonel Preson? It’s still our best.”

  He was right (he was often right). Roger slid it to the front page.

  “Then a romance,” Emily said, and Roger said, “And end on a drama.”

  They didn’t bother discussing which romance; it was time for Mira.

  “The drama’s got to be stunning,” Peter said. “None of the old stuff. They’re too good with that.”

  Emily skimmed her libris (still in the factory case); the light cast shadows along her face.

  “It seems unfair they can do Shakespeare,” she murmured.

  Peter said (because it would have to be Peter who said it), “What about a War play?”

  It was the one thing no one wanted from Dramatons; automatons had jobs to fill because English sons had died. Dramatons never touched on the War.

  “I think we’d do better with The Condemned Woman,” Roger suggested, not looking at Emily.

  Peter dropped a hand to the table. “And have another Cardiff on our hands? No.”

  “Stop acting like we killed someone,” Emily muttered, but she didn’t look up. A moment later she said, “We could try Pale Ghost.”

  “And what am I supposed to do while you two are making cow-eyes at each other?” Peter asked, but then he stood, so it was settled.

  The room seemed dimmer with Peter gone (rooms always did), but Roger preferred it. He was getting to an age where dimming the lights a little did a world of good.

  “I miss Phil and Rose,” she said.

  He glanced down at his hands, which he’d folded over his libris (ebony inlaid with a little tin star).

  She tapped a rhythm with her fingers.

  “I’m going out,” she said at last.

  No surprise. Emily haunted theatres to watch the enemy in action.

  She’d be going to the Theatre Dramaturgica. He’d seen posters on the way to the flat; they were staging Regina Gloriana. (Emily was too old for the part, now.)

  What surprised him was the question, “Come along?”

  He looked at her for a moment.

  Then he stood. “By all means,” he said. “After two weeks on choppy seas I’ve really been glutted on rest; I’m just aching to stumble around a strange city at all hours.”

  “You could just say no, you ham,” she said, which was the first time he’d even thought about it.

  * * *

  The Dramaturgica was a temple of geometry. The seats were arranged in a trapezoid; the curtain was pulled straight across like a Japanese screen; the proscenium inlay was a mass of acute angles.

  “Clever,” said Emily as they took their seats.

  As the lights went down, Roger saw why.

  The Dramatons were sculpted and padded and dressed and painted until they were almost human, but the effect was . . . not quite. The sharp points of the proscenium helped soften the rough edges of the players.

  The audience seemed unaware, but Roger could see it. It wasn’t much. Maybe one beat in twenty stuttered. They moved like player pianos: the right notes on time every time, with no grace or life.

  But they had flawless faces, sharp and perfect bodies. Even the aging King was handsome. All of them had a flashy beauty, a mask of quality. No one in the audience cared to know that anything was missing.

  It felt like the balcony was tilting, like Roger was going to crash to the ground.

  It always did, when he saw them act.

  This, Roger hated most. In every city, Dramatons were doing their job. Standardized. No mistakes. No changes. Thirty years from now, an audience not yet born would be watching this scene exactly this way.

  When the Queen embraced her consort it was a moment late, and her face was flat and unworried; but in filmy robes against a throne of eight-point stars, who else would think to see it?

  At the interval he said, “Not comforting, is it?”

  “No,” she said, sounding far away.

  “Maybe Peter’s right,” Roger went on. “The novelty is something, but after a while it will grate, won’t it, all this ratcheting about? People will want human actors back. These will be old hat in a few years.”

  “It had better be a very few years, or we won’t live to see it.”

  She was right more often than Peter was.

  He stood up. “We should go home.”

  “You go if you like,” she said. “I’ve forgotten how this one ends. I’m going to stick it out.”

  On his way out he glanced behind him; her hands were clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed on the stage.

  She came home late. He heard her moving through the flat, walking quietly so as not to wake Peter, and Roger wondered if she had stood at the stage door.

  (The stars went back to the dressing rooms only after stage-door photographs, to be calibrated by their handlers. Roger hadn’t waited since the first time, ages ago – once was more than enough for that. But Emily – well, they all had bad habits.)

  The Metropolitan was bright-scrubbed and shabby, and Mr Christie greeted them with the same forced cheer that was Peter’s signature.

  “Mr Elliott, Mrs El – Ms Howard, apologies, Mr Cavanaugh, a pleasure. Your journey was uneventful, I trust?”

  “Do you know who set up the Dramatons at the dock?” from Emily.

  Christie coughed. “The Metropolitan and the Dramaturgica are at the start of a relationship, and thought it would – we like to draw a little attention when we can.”

  “Of course,” said Peter, hopping onstage and looking around. “Happy to be here.”

  “You’ll find the dressing rooms sufficient, I hope. And the flat’s suitable?” Mr Christie frowned, as if just remembering his stars might not like bunking up together like bit players. “Rents, you understa
nd—”

  “Nonsense,” Peter cut in, grinning. “We’re piled on each other backstage, seems right to bring it home. We’re just excited to get to work. The dressing rooms?”

  He and Emily walked with Mr Christie past the curtain. Roger looked out across the audience. The seats were upholstered in dull gold, fraying at the edges. Seat 5L was missing, an empty socket stage left.

  He was too old to be here. This was a battleground for soldiers young enough to have a fight left in them.

  When he caught up, Peter was glad-handing the secondaries, and Emily was in discussion with Mr Christie.

  “The result’s worth the extra rehearsals, you understand.”

  The last was mimicry, too subtle for Mr Christie, who only heard someone he liked, and nodded. Emily was quieter than Peter, but she was a deft hand at business.

  (“It’s like an auto, isn’t it?” she’d said to Roger ages ago. “You watch the engine for a while, the rest is common sense. Pass the salt.”)

  “I hope you can get by without the stage for a while,” Christie said to Roger as if he’d asked. “The secondary players are bit out of practice, and we’ll need the space to block them all.”

  “He doesn’t need to rehearse,” Emily said. “He’s the best actor in the world.”

  Mr Christie took a proud breath, patted his pocket square like he was wired for sound. “Yes. Of course. Only the best for the Metropolitan, we’ve always said.”

  “Except seat 5L,” she said quietly, after Mr Christie was gone, and Roger looked over at her a moment too late to catch her eye.

  Peter was giddy; he turned up the radio and skipped Emily around the maze of the living room; then he stopped, spread his arms.

  “We’ll throw a party,” he said. “Thespians aren’t a dying breed! Alive and well in London, this autumn! I should call Christie.”

  Roger and Emily looked at each other.

  Roger said, “We might want to rehearse first, Peter.”

  He smiled and danced into the kitchen. “Nonsense! This is going to be the story of the year on the newsreels, you watch me. Most of them are hopeless, but no one’s going to notice, and there was some David and some Penelope who have a chance at it if they work. She’d be lovely in Pale Ghost as your sister, Emily.”

  “She would,” Emily agreed smoothly, the way she always did when Peter mentioned a girl he was going to sleep with.

  “Better get started,” said Roger, and stood.

  He closed his bedroom door tightly and studied his script until the words ran into each other, a maze of letters he didn’t understand.

  II. Little Tin Stars

  Emily got Peter to see reason, and they rehearsed for a month before Peter announced the party.

  Christie wasn’t happy. “Mr Grant, of course that’s a generous idea, but the terms of your lease forbid—”

  “Oh, we’ll have it here!” Peter said, as if that had been the plan all along, and Emily looked with sympathy at poor Mr Christie, who was out of his league with Peter when it came to finding loopholes.

  Roger was gnawing on his bottom lip to keep his countenance. (Born gentleman.)

  But as Christie moved past her, Emily winked at Roger, and of course then he smiled.

  Twenty years ago, whenever they’d gone on tour, Emily and Rose had four trunks, not counting Rose’s jewelry. Emily hated the stuff (once during The Duchess the fake pearls had broken and they’d spent the interval frantically sweeping so they wouldn’t break their necks), but Rose slung bangles over her wrists like armor.

  Every night the five of them had walked out together into blinding flashbulbs, a knot of long jackets and long gowns, a cluster of stars.

  Their shows were staged in opera houses, and they’d gathered in the wings at the start of each performance to listen to two thousand people applauding as the curtain rose. The whole stage trembled under their feet.

  Emily opened her suitcase and shook off her good gown. If she hung it in the bathroom while she bathed, most of the wrinkles would fall out in the steam. The rest of the wrinkles didn’t matter; they’d match her face.

  “Oh, we’ve got just LOADS of people interested,” Penelope said. “Nearly three hundred people came to our last one, it was smashing!”

  Emily looked out at the sparse collection of guests. The three photographers who’d bothered to show were drinking the good gin and not taking any pictures.

  “God,” Penelope went on, like it was a conversation, “I can’t WAIT till the run. We’ve been gnawing since we knew you were coming – I mean, THE Peter Elliott, THE Emily Howard! I’ve loved you for AGES, ever since I was little! I won’t let you down, I promise.”

  Emily glanced over at Penelope and her dress, made of beaded netting and optimism.

  “We should try the bar,” Emily said. It would give the photographers something to shoot, and she needed a drink.

  Roger was talking with two young men; they were his sons in Pale Ghost, and the suitors in Colonel Preson, and something in Mira she didn’t remember. They were hanging on his every word, nodding solemnly in tandem, and she would have laughed, except it was Roger and he generally deserved someone’s attention.

  “Darling,” said Peter from beside her, “things are picking up! What do you think?”

  He pointed to the bar, where Penelope was posing for two cameras. She moistened her lips and glanced at Peter.

  Emily had never looked at Peter that way, not once.

  (He had a soft spot for the exception to the rule.)

  “Well, go on,” Emily said at last.

  Peter kissed her cheek. “Sweet old thing,” he said, and then he was beside Penelope.

  The flash washed away his crow’s feet, the bastard.

  “Christ,” Roger said beside her, “help me, it’s like the lectures of Socrates over there.”

  This close, she could feel his warmth right through her sleeve.

  “It’s respectful to learn from your elders.”

  He snorted. “I was going to ask if you wanted a drink,” he said, and moved ahead.

  He walked between Peter and Penelope, so they had to step back from one another, and for a moment Emily’s dress was too tight, like she’d taken too big a breath.

  A flash went off, catching everyone at the bar: Penelope frowning at Roger, Peter frowning at the cameras, Roger with a glass in his hand, looking around without a care in the world.

  * * *

  Peter folded his arms under his head.

  “Do you think we’ll be all right?” he asked, his voice nervous in the dark.

  His voice always gave him away even if his face was composed; it was why he was a mediocre actor, and why he was so fond of photographs.

  Sometimes she thought he’d married her just so she’d figure that out about him. Sometimes she thought she’d married him just to find him out.

  Sometimes she thought she was a fool.

  “No,” she said finally. “We won’t be all right. They’re shit, and we’re old.”

  “Oh, what are you like? You’ll jinx us if you keep talking like that.” He thumped his pillow. “I’m going to start sleeping with Roger.”

  “Don’t, please,” she said. “There’s got to be someone left on the planet you’re not sleeping with.”

  After a long silence, Peter kissed her hair. “You’ll see. We’ll come out in front.”

  He’d said the same in Dublin, and in Cardiff, and the Isle of Skye, where the wind beat so loud against the ramshackle theatre that the fifty people who came couldn’t hear. The Dramatons staged the same play a week later, in the concert hall, to an audience of a thousand.

  “Here’s hoping,” she said.

  Her good dress was hanging from the back of the door, and when Roger turned on the light in the living room it bled through a little hole in the left sleeve.

  Better mend it, she thought after a moment, as long as someone else was awake.

  Roger was sitting at the kitchen table studying his li
bris. The screen hummed like it was a holy text and not a comedy about a drunk Colonel who misplaces his soldiers on the way home from war.

  He didn’t look up as she sat across from him, and she was well into her work before he spoke.

  “Painting the town red this evening?”

  “We might have another party,” she said, moving the needle through the fabric (she’d gotten good at mending). “I can’t have a hole in my frock. It doesn’t do to be threadbare in front of fine people.”

  Roger glanced up, held her gaze. The seconds ticked by on the kitchen clock.

  “Except you,” she said, half-smiled around the tightness in her throat. “You’re fine people.”

  Sometimes she thought that Roger knew about it all. “You always look lovely,” he said, dropped his gaze. “I’ll go back to my room. Don’t want to wake Peter.”

  Sometimes she thought Roger was a fool.

  “Of course I came back,” Roger said. His face filled her vision. “Would I let death stop me now?”

  Emily took a shuddering breath, on the verge of tears. “But at dawn . . .”

  “Dawn is not upon us yet,” he said, lowered his face to hers. She rested her hand on his elbow. They hesitated.

  “Good,” said Peter. “Fine. Penelope, wait for them to break the kiss, and then come out and cross downstage. Penelope? Good morning, Penelope, are you with us?”

  “Sorry,” Penelope said like she had been woken from a dream, “I was just – caught up.”

  “Well, if you would actually catch up, I’d appreciate it,” said Peter.

  Penelope scurried to her mark, her shoes clomping on the cheap wood.

  “Good. I like that composition. Roger, please remember, when you step back you have to stay in reach of the spot. Right, then I need the sons. Sons, could you perhaps stir yourselves on cue?”

  Peter only had eyes for the stage when he was directing. Even if he looked over, he wouldn’t see how Roger had turned his face so his mouth wasn’t so close to her mouth; he wouldn’t see her fingers wrapped around Roger’s arm to hold them steady.

  Peter was an indifferent actor; to him it was all artifice of some kind or another. Didn’t much matter why, so long as it ended with applause.