The English Assassin (8 page)

“They think we are barbarians,” said Pyat, filling Jerry’s glass with whisky and letting Jerry add his own Malvern water, “but they do not mind selling us weapons and war machines. Where would their economy be without us?”

Jerry reached his hand halfway to his drink. “They’d like us to get it over with, though. We disturb them by our continued existence. We’ve been staving off the apocalypse for so long. Suppose we turned on them? They have no army.”

“Then they are fools. How long can this
Traumrepublik
last? A few more years?”

“Months, more likely. Keep your voice down. They don’t have to know…”

Pyat’s ironic glance gave way to a look of introspection. “You speak like a priest. Not a soldier.” It was a statement which hoped for a reply, but Jerry merely smiled and picked up his glass.

“To which regiment do you belong, colonel?” Pyat decided on a direct approach.

Jerry looked curiously at his uniform as if he himself hoped to find some clue to the answer there. “The 30th Deccan Horse, I think.”

“You have been seconded, then?”

“Quite likely. No.”

“You are a civilian!”

Jerry laughed. “Well, I’m not sure, you know.” He shook his head. There were tears in his eyes now as his whole body trembled with mirth. “I’m simply not sure.”

Pyat laughed too, because he enjoyed laughing. “Let’s get a bottle each, shall we? I have a suite upstairs. And perhaps someone can find us a couple of girls? Or perhaps two girls will volunteer their services! Everyone is emancipated in Guatemala City!”

“Fine!”

When they had risen, Pyat flung his arm around Jerry’s slender shoulders. “Do you feel like a girl, Colonel Cornelius?”

Dressed as a gentleman, Una Persson stalked the stage behind the green velvet curtain.

From the other side of the curtain came the noise of the crowd: shouts, laughter, screams, ironic cheers, groans, the clink of glasses and bottles, the rustle of heavy clothing. In the pit the orchestra was tuning up for the overture.

His paleness emphasised by the astrakhan collar of his chesterfield, Sebastian Auchinek raised a gold-tipped Unfiadis to his curved lips and coughed. He sat on a prop—an imitation rock—and looked through hooded eyes at the ballet girls in their frothy costumes as they took their places for the opening divertissement. Behind the girls was a backdrop showing Windsor Castle. The girls were dressed to represent
Rose
,
Shamrock
,
Thistle
, and
Wales
(in a tall black hat and a pinafore because a leek had been thought too indelicate a plant). The divertissement was entitled ‘Under One Flag’. In the wings, waiting to go on, stood Sailors, Highlanders and Beefeaters. Una Persson was not appearing in the first of the two tableaux. She would feature in the second, ‘Honour to the Queen’, and lead the chorus in the closing cantata.

“You will be a success, Una!” Auchinek got up and caught her by the arm. “You are bound to be! Come, the curtain!” The gas flared brightly above the stage, the electrical spotlights began to come on. “It is going up!”

She walked swiftly into the wings. Auchinek hurried behind her. She pushed her way nervously past Mr Clement Scott, author of the opening Patriotic Ode. The orchestra began to play a rousing chorus of the satirical ‘Oh, What a Happy Land is England’:

We shall soon be buying Consols, at the rate of

half-a-crown
,

For like the Russian battleships, they’re always

going down!

We have lately built an Airship and the only

thing it lacks

Is the power to go on rising like the British

Income Tax!

Hip-hip-hooray!

Oh! what a happy land is England!

Envied by all Nations near and far!

Where the wretched Alien

Robs the British working men!

Oh! what a lucky race we are!

Oh! what a happy land is England!

Envied by all Nations near and far!

All Foreigners have found

This a happy dumping ground!

Oh! what a lucky race we are!

sang the audience and then began to cheer. The curtain rose.

Una reached the dressing room. Though she shared it with Marguerite Cornille, the comédienne, it was the best-equipped dressing room she had ever used. This was her first time at the Empire, Leicester Square. It was one of the most respected of the newer, better class of music halls: a Theatre of Varieties. But it was the very reputation and respectability of the Empire which distressed Una so much. She was used to the friendlier, less ostentatious halls of Stepney, Brixton and Shepherd’s Bush.

“The atmosphere’s a bit frosty.” She entered the dressing room and nodded to Mlle Cornille who was making up already, with one eye on the mirror and the other on a magazine she held in her left hand, even though she was tenth on the programme.

“You get used to it, love. The crowd’s all right. Same as anywhere.” The pert-faced girl was re-reading a short photographic feature about herself in
Nash’s Magazine
which had just come out. “The rules and the snobs is the price you pay for regular work. It’s my last week here. It’ll be back to three different halls a night for me if I’m lucky and no halls at all if it’s really bad. So my two weeks at the Alhambra over Christmas’ll be like a holiday.” She was boasting a bit, for a feature in
Nash’s
usually meant a few good bookings at very least. Una wondered if
she
would ever go so far as showing her legs for a
Nash’s
photographer.

Auchinek came in, closing the door softly behind him. “A good audience, by the sound of it.”

“What I was saying,” said Mlle Cornille.

Auchinek offered them Unfiadis Egyptian cigarettes from his gold Liberty’s case. Mlle Cornille shook her head, but Una accepted one. As she lit it herself she looked closely at Auchinek, wondering what his real thoughts were.

“It’s a step up, Una.” He was her agent and in love with what he saw as her perfection, but he was embarrassed by the fact that he found Mlle Cornille’s brown curls and buxom charms more physically attractive. He was hoping that Una had not noticed. That Mlle Cornille had noticed was evident in the attitude of friendly contempt she took towards him.

Una picked up her music and read over the lines of her songs as she finished the cigarette. There was a knock on the door. “Overture and beginners second tab.”

Una felt her stomach muscles tighten. She spread her fingers wide as she ran her palms down the front of her thighs, over her trousers. Auchinek stepped forward and adjusted her bow tie. He handed her the cane and the silk opera hat, he flicked a speck of glitter from her tailcoat. “All right?”

She smiled. If she had had her own way she would have remained out of the West End, but she knew that he desperately wanted her to get to the top; and that was what performing at the Empire meant.

“Good luck, love,” said Mlle Cornille, both eyes now on her article.

“Stay here,” said Una to Auchinek.

“I’d rather…” he glanced guiltily away from the comédienne, “give you moral support.”

“Stay here.” She straightened her coat and put on her silk hat. “You can come to the wings and watch as soon as I’m on.”

“Very well.”

She walked down the corridor. Against a tide of returning Highlanders, Sailors, Beefeaters, Roses, Shamrocks, Thistles and Welsh girls, she made her way towards the wings. In the wings she saw that the chorus was already arranging itself on stage. There were eight girls, each dressed as a colony. There was India, Canada, Australia, Cape Colony, the West Indies, Malta, Gibraltar and New Zealand, each with her own verse to sing. In the opposite wings waited Art, Science, Commerce, Industry and a splendid Britannia, whose carriage they were to draw on stage. That was when Una would come on.

The curtain rose and the orchestra began a rousing accompaniment as the chorus sang together:

We, the children of the Empire, pay homage to

our Queen!

And we know she can be counted on where e’er her

flag is seen!

She’s good, she’s just, she’s mighty and we know you

will agree

She’s loved, admired and envied through all the

seven seas!

Una felt calm now. The music was jolly enough and the audience applauded loudly at the end of every verse and joined in each chorus. They weren’t anything like as stuffy as she’d thought they’d be.

Art, Science, Commerce and Industry began to pull at Britannia’s carriage. The float moved forward with a slight lurch. India, Canada, Australia, Cape Colony, the West Indies, Malta, Gibraltar and New Zealand fell back on two sides of the stage. The orchestra struck up with the opening bars of Una’s introduction. Una cleared her throat, took a deep breath and poised herself.

The gaslight dimmed.

At first Una thought it had been done for deliberate dramatic effect. But then the lights went out altogether, including the electrics, and the clapping faded, matches were struck, an anxious murmuring began to fill the theatre.

Something exploded in the gallery. Someone shouted loudly. Women screamed. Una Persson was thrown backwards into the curtains and fell down. Feet struck her face and a body fell across her legs. The curtain collapsed over her. She heard muffled exclamations.

“Anarchists!”

“An air raid!”

“Una? Una?” Auchinek’s voice.

She tried to get up but could not fight free of the velvet folds.

“Sebastian!”

“Una!” His soft hands began to tear away the curtains.

She saw his face. It was bright red. There were flames leaping in the stalls. The crowd was a confused mass of flapping coat-tails, bustles and feather hats. It was climbing onto the stage, unable to use the ordinary exits.

Auchinek helped her to her feet. The heat from the flames was horrible. They were almost pushed into the orchestra pit by the panic-stricken audience. He held her tightly.

“What happened?” She let him guide her back to the wings. They were carried with the crowd towards the stage door. The fire roared behind them. Smoke made their eyes water and stung their throats. Props crashed down. Individual voices blended into one terrified wail.

“Incendiary bomb. Dropped from the gallery, I think. Why did it have to be tonight, Una? Your most important chance. The theatre will be closed for a week at least.”

They reached the alley which ran beside the theatre. It was clogged with bewildered entertainers in flimsy, polychrome costumes, the frightened audience in heavy serge and scarlet and green velvet. At the end of the alley stood a tall, bearded policeman trying to calm the crowd and stop it from rushing headlong over the edge of the street and into the forty-foot-deep crater which, until the air raids had begun a month ago, had been Leicester Square.

By the time the fire engines arrived at the front of the theatre, many of the people had been allowed to pass through the police cordon and the press had thinned. It was cold and there was a trace of fog in the air. The gas must have been turned off at a main, for none of the nearby streetlamps was alight. The only illumination came from the policemen’s bull’s-eyes and the fire itself. She felt full of relief. “Back to Brixton,” she said. “What’s bad luck for some is good luck for others, Seb, my boy.”

He directed at her a mixed look of misery and malice. “Don’t count on Brixton, Una. At this rate they’ll be closing down all the halls.” He regretted his spite. “I’m sorry.” He took off his coat and placed it round her shoulders over the man’s jacket she still wore.

More fire engines arrived—steamers this time—and the police let a substantial number of people through the cordon.

A sensation of being watched made her glance back at the theatre. She saw a young man leaning against the open stage door looking for all the world like a masher waiting casually for the appearance of his favourite chorus girl. He wore a dark yellow frock-coat with an exaggerated waist and flair, with brown braid at collar and cuff. He had a matching bowler with its brim tightly curled, a light brown cravat, and bell-bottomed trousers cut very tight at the knee. The trousers were in a mustard check some would have considered vulgar. His gold-topped stick was in his left hand and an empty amber cigar holder in his right. On the third finger of his right hand was a heavy gold signet ring. He seemed either unaware of the confusion around him or careless of it.

Una Persson regarded him with interest. His black, soft hair hung straight to his shoulders in the style of the aesthetes of some years earlier. His long, lean face bore an ambiguous expression which might have been amusement or satisfaction or surprise. His black eyes were large, deep-set, unreadable. Suddenly, with a nod to her, he stepped sideways and entered the burning theatre. Impulsively she made to follow him. Then she felt Auchinek’s hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “This can’t last for ever.”

She looked again at the stage door. The dark smoky interior of the theatre was now alive with red flame. She saw the young man’s silhouette against the firelight before it disappeared, apparently marching without hesitation into the heart of the inferno.

“He’ll die!” Una said softly. “The heat!”

Auchinek said anxiously: “Are you sure you’re yourself, Una?”

Mrs Cornelius settled her pink feather boa around her broad shoulders and patted it down over the green-and-white fabric flowers decorating her fine big bosom. She wasn’t doing too badly for thirty, she thought, giving her image a wink and dabbing at the rouge on her right cheek with a damp finger which protruded from the broderie anglaise cuff.

“’And up me ’at, love.”

The mean-faced boy of fifteen wiped his nose on the sleeve of his tattered Norfolk jacket and reached to the mock Georgian mahogany chiffonier for the extravagant pile of artificial roses, peonies and sweet williams topped off by a yard or two of pink gauze, some wax grapes and a pair of pheasant’s wings, which rested amongst her nick-nacks. In both hands he carried the hat to where she stood before the full-length fly-specked wardrobe mirror in its gilded cast-iron frame.