Ghost Song (2 page)

He came back to the stage. The lights he had rigged up cast sharp bluish circles, giving the impression of old spotlights trained on the stage, and Robert stood for a moment, looking into the dark well of the auditorium. Most of the seats were still in place, and he could see the shadowy outline of the dress circle and of the four boxes, two on each side of the stage. Wisps of almost colourless curtains still hung over the tarnished giltwork of one of the boxes.

How would the Tarleton have looked in its heyday? On a Saturday night, with performers on this stage and a full house, how would it have looked and sounded and smelt? Hot and raucous, said Robert to himself. It'd have been crowded with people, and it would have smelt greasily of jellied eels, oysters and cigars. You'd have hated it.

He looked about him again, trying to brighten the faded colours, trying to see what might lie beneath that thick layer of amber. This auditorium would have had the florid decor of its era—crimson and gilt paintwork and thick flock wallpaper, with glossy mahogany the colour of black treacle. I wouldn't have hated it in the least, thought Robert, rolling up the tape measure. I'd have loved it.

Toby Chance always found the Tarleton's crimson flock wallpaper and dark molasses-coloured mahogany a bit overpowering in hot weather. He liked the theatre better in winter, when the stoves were lit and roaring out their heat, and the street sellers brought in bags of roasted chestnuts, and the hot-codling sellers handed round their roast apples, juicy and spiked with cinnamon.

Crossing the foyer, he made a face at the fleur-de-lys and a rude gesture to the nearest of the blow-cheeked cherubs. He was early for the evening's performance, but there were two reasons for this. The first was simply that he loved walking through the theatre when it was empty: it seemed to become his theatre more than at any other time. He liked, as well, the feeling of anticipation, as if the ghosts of audiences lingered, perhaps hoping for another show, perhaps another chance to see Marie Lloyd—getting a bit past her best now, of course, the great old girl, but still able to light up a theatre.

She had certainly lit up the Tarleton a couple of weeks previously. Toby grinned, remembering he had lit up a few things himself that night. Alicia Darke was the name of the lady who had been with him, and she and Toby had been in the stage box for Marie's act—the stage box was regarded as Toby's own particular province and it was hardly ever opened for anyone else. Alicia had worn a dark red evening gown with a demure neckline and long silk gloves covering her arms. But as Marie embarked on ‘A Little of What You Fancy' Alicia's hand, still gloved, strayed to Toby's lap. It was erotic to near explosion point to sit in full view of a Tarleton audience, with Alicia's fingers exploring and caressing with such insistent intimacy. Her hand was just—but only just—out of the audience's sight-line, below the box's parapet. On stage, Marie reached the line about, ‘I don't mind nice boys staring hard…' The irony of the timing of this was not lost on Toby.

It would have afforded more privacy to draw the curtains across the front of the box, but half the audience would have noticed this, so they retreated to the back of the box. At this point Alicia removed the gloves, then she removed several other garments as well, and by the time Marie was reaching the climax of her act, Toby was reaching a climax of his own. They managed to be back in their seats by the time the lights came up, and had eaten a very decorous supper with the performers afterwards. Then they had a second, very indecorous, supper at Alicia's house in Chelsea. Remembering all this, Toby winked at the framed photograph of Marie in the foyer as he went past.

His other reason for arriving early was a practical one. He wanted to run through the new song, which was called ‘All Because of Too Much Tipsy Cake'. His pianist and music partner, Frank Douglas, had said they would put Marie Lloyd to rout with it, but Frank thought every new song would put somebody to rout. He was a happy-go-lucky Irishman from Galway, and he could play the piano by ear more skilfully than anyone Toby had ever known. He shaped his tunes to Toby's lyrics, producing melodies the audiences loved—somebody had said quite recently that if you walked down any of the streets around the Tarleton you would hear at least one errand boy whistling a Chance and Douglas song.

Toby was hoping ‘Tipsy Cake' would be whistled tomorrow and also that the chorus would be sung by the audience tonight. He thought it would; most of them would pick up the sly bawdiness of the lyrics—the cook tippling the cooking sherry while making tipsy cake for the mistress's grand dinner party upstairs.

She'd just tipped up the bottle for the smallest taster
When the butler said, ‘Let's have another glass.'

They would like that—they would like the implied suggestion that the butler and the cook had become so drunk on the cooking sherry that they had ended up in bed together. Toby thought he had managed to suggest this without actually saying it, which should keep him on the right side of the Lord Chamberlain.

It was to be hoped it would keep Toby on the right side of his father as well. Toby had recently written a song, describing how the Kaiser had vainly tried to drill Prussian troops preparatory to taking over the world, and had flown into a temper over a hapless new recruit who was pigeon-toed and made the entire army look untidy. His father had found the lyrics and broken an almost unbreakable rule between them by asking Toby not to perform it.

‘But he's such a silly posturing creature,' Toby said. ‘You can't help making fun of him.'

‘He might be a poseur, but he's a very dangerous poseur,' said Toby's father. ‘Hardly anyone in Europe trusts him. For God's sake don't ridicule him publicly, Toby, you might come to grief in a way you don't expect. If you don't care about your own reputation, you might care about mine. I might come to grief as well.'

It was not often his father referred to his position within the Foreign Office in quite this way and Toby had wavered, but in the end he had gone ahead and performed his song on the Tarleton's stage. He had been horrified when quarrels broke out in the stalls where three Germans, deeply injured at the insult to their emperor, were sitting. One of them challenged Toby to a duel and in the end the police had had to be called to break things up. The next day four people were charged at Cannon Street with disturbing the peace. Toby had regretted the disturbance, but he had regretted even more the fact that his father had been proved right.

As he went into the auditorium, he realized that after all he was not on his own in the theatre. Going up the steps to the stage, he heard a sound somewhere in the shadows. In the stalls, had it been? Perhaps it was Minnie Bean—she sometimes liked to prowl around the theatre, remembering the days when she had been dresser to Toby's mother. But Minnie had been on door-opening duty at the Kensington house when Toby left, and she did not prowl—she was four-square as to build and inclined to clump. If she had taken a nip of gin in the Sailor's Rest (‘Just two nips for a little bit of comfort, Mr Toby'), she clumped a wildly erratic path. For years Toby had longed to write a song about Minnie and the gin-nipping, but she was sharp enough to recognize herself and he was too fond of her to upset her.

But when he looked out into the darkness nothing moved, and when he called out to ask if anyone was there, there was only the echo of his own voice. Probably it had just been one of the inexplicable sounds old buildings sometimes made. Or it could have been rain pattering down on a section of roof somewhere—thunder had been sulking its way in from the east since lunchtime and thunder-rain was usually very heavy.

It might even be one of the theatre's ghosts he had heard. When he was fourteen he had read
A Tale of Two Cities
and been entranced by Dickens's concept of London having corners where there were resonances from the past and where footsteps echoed down the years. He thought Dickens might easily have been writing about Platt's Alley and Burbage Street and Candle Square.

But although Toby believed in the echoes and sometimes thought he heard them for himself, he was inclined to be cynical about the existence of actual ghosts. Still, most theatres were supposed to be a bit haunted—you had only to look at Drury Lane with its famous eighteenth-century gentleman who had been seen quite a few times over the years. The Tarleton was certainly old enough to have one or two spooks. There was a persistent legend of a man wearing a long cloak or coat and a wide-brimmed hat who was supposed to be occasionally glimpsed in Platt's Alley. He was said to hide his face as he slunk through the darkness and to hum snatches of song to himself occasionally, although the legend did not tell why he did either of these things. Toby had no idea when the legend had begun; he had never seen the ghost and he did not know anyone who had, but the story was part of the Tarleton's folklore.

But even if there were ghosts he did not mind. There might even be a song to be written about them—something spooky but comic. Something about the ghost walking? Would the audiences recognize that as a theatre expression? Would they know that when actors talked about the ghost walking, they meant wages were being paid? It could be written as part of the lyrics and Frank could create eerie music that sounded like tiptoeing footsteps.

Tiptoeing footsteps… The sound came again, exactly as if someone was walking stealthily through the darkness. He looked about him, but there was nothing to be seen. Imagination or creaking timbers. Yes, but supposing it really was the ghost walking again? Don't be absurd! But the phrase and the idea had lodged firmly in his mind and he was already trying out lyrics.

On Friday nights the ghost walks
Rattling its chains to itself;
Because that's the night the ghost hands out the pelf.

Not W. S. Gilbert's standards by any means, but not bad as a starting point and presumably Gilbert did not write
The Pirates of Penzance
in five minutes.

Toby, his mind full of this promising new idea, went into the green room to write it down, so absorbed that he did not hear the footsteps start up again. Nor did he see the figure that stood unseen in a corner of the auditorium, watching him through the darkness.

H
ILARY BRYANT HAD
worked for the Harlequin Society for four years, and she still found every day a delight. The society was listed in most reference books as being specialists and consultants on early-nineteenth-century theatre—people said this was a massive generalization, but Hilary thought it described their work as well as anything could. She loved everything to do with Edwardian theatre and she enjoyed tracking down freelancers who would work with television set designers, and getting involved in research for early-nineteenth-century plays or documentaries. Last year they had helped set up a series of lectures for Open University summer schools, and after that had been an exhibition of music-hall memorabilia which
The Sunday Times
had told its readers was original and well worth seeing.

Shona Seymour, Hilary's boss, was pretty good to work for. She was practical and crisply efficient, and she dealt with the administration and budgeting for the society, and inveigled money or grants out of obscure government departments and arts councils. Nobody knew much about her private life, but it was part of the office folklore that she had started out as a lowly receptionist twenty-odd years ago and worked her way up to executive manager.

‘She's like those exaggerated success stories about people starting in the post room and ending as chairman of the board,' said Judy Randall, who was a freelance nineteenth-century food expert, regularly used by the Harlequin. Judy wore hand-woven cloaks like a psychedelic version of Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple, and rode through London on a bicycle, with long striped scarves trailing behind her like flattened rainbows. She had once invited Hilary to a meal at her flat and had served a complete five-course menu from 1880. Hilary and two of the other guests had had to walk all the way along the Embankment afterwards to work off the apple and mutton pudding and meringue glacé.

‘And you know, of course,' said Judy, who on this occasion had called at the office to collect a brief for a TV programme and stayed to talk, ‘that she's got a bit of a thing for young men. You've only got to see the glint if anyone under thirty comes into the office. In fact, I'll bet she glinted at that surveyor who managed to get inside the mysterious Tarleton. Was he worth glinting at?'

‘I only spoke to him over the phone. He sounded rather nice though.'

‘Whatever he sounded like, I'll bet Shona didn't like him borrowing the keys to the Tarleton,' said Judy. ‘She doesn't like anyone going in there, does she?'

‘No, but to be fair that's because the owner wants it kept firmly closed.'

‘Who is the owner?'

‘I don't know. I don't think anyone does. There isn't even a name in the file,' said Hilary. ‘That's one of the mysteries.'

‘I bet Shona knows who it is.'

‘If she does, she isn't saying.'

The mysterious Tarleton Music Hall was a bit of an on-going joke at the Harlequin. Every so often somebody came across a new reference to it and started up a line of speculation as to why it had been closed for more than ninety years and who the owner might be. Hilary was always meaning to borrow the keys when no one was around and take a look inside on her own account, but she had never got round to it.