Читать книгу Death of a Dancer - Caro Peacock, Caro Peacock - Страница 5

On the way to the theatre, I called at the house in Bloomsbury Square where Daniel lodged with half a dozen other bachelor musicians. If Daniel had read his letter from my brother, I wanted to make it clear that the embarrassing hint about marriage had been dropped without my knowledge. The household’s maid-of-all work, Izzy, answered the door with a duster in one hand and a harassed look.

‘He’s gone to the theatre already. We don’t see much of him at home these days.’

It struck me that it had been two weeks or more since I had seen Daniel. He must be working even harder than usual, and yet the Augustus might be considered a step down for a man who regularly played at both Covent Garden and Drury Lane. I knew the theatre from earlier times when I’d lived in London, and I had been backstage several times. It was a barn of a place, at the Covent Garden end of Long Acre, built ten years earlier by a man who had hoped to convert London audiences to the delights of classical drama and gone spectacularly broke in the process. It had passed through several hands since and was already showing signs of shoddy construction, with plaster flaking from the walls and rust blistering the supports of the canopy over the main entrance.

When I got there, just as it was beginning to get dark at four o’clock, a few loiterers were reading the bright new playbills plastered to the walls. The Return to the London Stage of Madame Columbine topped the bill in large black letters. She was to perform two ballets: The Court of Queen Titaniaand Diana the Huntress. Among the other attractions were a new comical domestic burletta entitled The Hoodwinked Husband, Signor Cavalari and his arithmetical horse, twin boy acrobats (‘Peas in a Pod’), and the murder scene from Shakespeare’s Famous Tragedy Othello performed by the renowned tragedian Mr Robert Surrey. Daniel’s name was near the bottom of the bill as director of music.

The main doors were locked so I went in at the side entrance. There was nobody in the doorkeeper’s booth except a fat tabby cat, blinking at me from a stool. A long corridor with dressing-room doors off it led into the depths of the building. The air was colder than outside and a smell of damp plaster hung over everything. With three hours to go to curtain-rise, the place seemed deserted and quiet as a church.

Then somebody started singing. It was a simple song, ‘The Lass of Richmond Hill’, to piano accompaniment. The soprano voice was sweet and true, but it seemed to me not strong enough for a big place like the Augustus. I took a right turn and walked down a flight of steep wooden steps into the orchestra pit.

There were just the two of them: the man at the piano and the woman standing beside it. It was almost dark in the pit, apart from one candle in the holder on the piano. By the light of it, the first thing I noticed was the girl’s beautiful red hair, the colour of a beech tree in autumn. Her pale face, eyes wide, was intent on the song. The man sitting at the piano was looking up at her, his fingers stroking out the accompaniment so tenderly that it seemed to make a cave of music to shelter the two of them. He was Daniel.

I knew I was intruding so turned to go, but must have made some sound because she stopped singing suddenly and looked scared, as if they had no right to be there. The accompaniment stopped as well.

‘Is that you, Mr Blake?’ the man at the piano said, not able to see outside their halo of candlelight.

‘No, it’s me,’ I said, wishing I were a thousand miles away.

‘Liberty?’ From the sound of Daniel’s voice, he wished the same. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, I’m going. I’m sorry.’

‘Wait, Libby.’ He’d recovered himself now and spoke in his usual gentle voice. ‘Come over here. There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.’

The girl looked as if she wanted to run away. He touched her hand quickly and gave her a nod, as if to reassure her that I posed no threat.

‘Liberty, may I introduce Jenny Jarvis. Jenny, this is Liberty Lane, one of my oldest and dearest friends.’

Her bare hand met my gloved hand. I could feel her pulse beating like a trapped bird against a window. She was wearing a plain cotton dress, not warm enough for winter. Daniel picked up a grey wool shawl from the top of the piano and adjusted it carefully round her narrow shoulders.

‘Jenny, would you go to the dressing room and keep warm if you can. I’ll come soon.’

She went without a word, picking her way among the shadowy chairs and music stands as gracefully as a deer in a hazel copse.

‘She’s a dancer,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m teaching her singing, when we have time.’

‘You shouldn’t have sent her away for my sake.’

‘She needs to rest before the performance. In any case, I wanted to talk to you. It’s providential in a way, your being here.’

I thought, but didn’t say, that he hadn’t felt that way a minute ago. He was keyed up and nervous, far more than a man of his experience would be for a first night in a second-rate theatre.

‘Jenny’s nineteen,‘ he said. ‘She’s only been in London a few months. She comes from a village in Kent, near Maidstone. Her father’s a farm labourer. Her mother died and he married again.’

‘She ran away from a wicked step-mother?’

I didn’t like the flippancy in my own voice. In fact, I didn’t like myself very much at all. Only minutes ago, I’d been angry that my brother was trying to press me into marrying Daniel. Now here I was feeling shocked and miserable because he loved somebody else. I’d guessed the moment I saw them together, known for certain when his fingers rested on her shoulder just a moment longer than it needed to settle the shawl. Why should I be shocked? Daniel had made no promises to me, nor I to him. If I’d assumed, too easily, that I’d always be the woman in the world who mattered most to him, that was no fault of his.

Daniel gave no sign that he’d noticed my tone.

‘She ran away to London because she wanted to dance. She saw some travelling troupe at a fair and that was all she wanted to do. I honestly believe she thought London was full of happy people singing and dancing.’

I bit my tongue to stop myself saying that nobody should be that naïve, even a country girl. Daniel must have picked up on my thoughts.

‘I’m making her sound like a fool, Liberty. I promise you, she’s far from that. She’s quick minded, a talented dancer and has an excellent ear for music. And the sheer courage of her amazes me. Here she is, a little thing with no friends and no experience, managing to survive in London. Can you imagine what that must be like?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s sharing a room with two of the other dancers in Seven Dials. One of them brings men home. There’s only the one room and two beds in it. You understand?’

I imagined two girls huddled in one of the beds of a slum room, listening to the sounds from the other bed a few feet away.

‘She’s only just begun trusting me enough to tell me about it,‘ Daniel said. ’It makes me sick even thinking of it.’

‘How long have you known her?’

‘Three weeks. I must do something, Libby. But I can’t bring her to lodge with me in a house of men. Her reputation would be entirely gone.’

I thought, Unless you married her. I didn’t put it into words in case it tipped him into something he’d spend the rest of his life regretting.

‘So you can guess what I want to ask you. It was in my mind in any case, but when you arrived just now …’

Ironic, I supposed, guessing what was coming.

‘I wonder if she might come to live with you and Mrs Martley. Only for a while, of course, until I can make some other arrangement. It’s a lot to ask, but…’

He looked me in the face, wanting this more than I’d ever known him want anything. I hoped my horror didn’t show. The two rooms in Abel Yard were a tight fit for me and Mrs Martley. Having to take in a girl I knew almost nothing about would be a burden, even without this feeling of hollowness round my heart. But Daniel had found me the rooms; even paid for them, if my suspicions were correct.

‘Yes, very well,’ I said.

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, face bright with relief.

‘Bless you, child. May I tell her?’

‘Yes, if you like.’

‘She could come straight home with you after the performance tonight. I’ll find a cab.’

Worse and worse. I’d hoped for a day or two’s breathing space.

‘I’ll have to warn Mrs Martley.’

‘We’ll send her a note.‘ He was buoyant now, glowing with relief. ’Now, what was it you wanted to see me about?’

‘My brother’s written you a letter,‘ I said. ’I think there may be something impertinent in it about me. He shouldn’t have written it; please disregard it.’

He looked blank for a while.

‘Oh yes, a letter from India arrived yesterday. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to open it yet. Is it important?’

‘No. Would you tear it up, please.’

‘Yes, if you want me to.’ He smiled like his old self. ‘Child, you’re a constant surprise. You walk from Mayfair to Long Acre to ask me to tear up a letter.’

‘There’s something else,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘What do you know about Columbine?’

His good humour was gone in an instant. He thumped his palm down on the bass notes of the piano, producing a sound like an elephant stepping on a stack of plates.

‘That she has the temperament of a cobra, the rhythmic sense of a lame cow and a belief in her own importance that would make Cleopatra look like a shrinking violet.’

I laughed.

‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘she is the most infuriating person it’s ever been my misfortune to work with. In two weeks, she’s attended rehearsal just four times and then walked out the moment it suited her. She won’t hear the faintest word of criticism, and the other dancers spend most of the time trying to keep the wretched woman upright. Why in the world are you interested in her?’

I took a deep breath and told him about the meeting with Disraeli, knowing he wouldn’t like it.

‘That puffed-up dilettante! He had no right to approach you. You should have snubbed him.’

‘He’s not easy to snub.’

‘I’m sure he’s past caring about his own reputation, but he should have more concern for yours.’

That sounded so like my brother that I began to suspect he’d read the letter after all.

‘I can take care of my own reputation, thank you. I know he’s a Conservative, but what else is to his discredit?’

‘Apart from the most ridiculous maiden speech in parliamentary history?’

It had been the talk of the town for days. Within a few weeks of taking his seat, Disraeli had made his first speech on the Irish question, with so many high-flown theatrical flourishes that he’d reduced even his own side to helpless laughter.

‘That’s beside the point,‘ I said. ’Apparently he has friends who are prepared to pay money for backstage gossip about Columbine.’

‘I hope you told him you’d have nothing to do with it.’

I didn’t answer. He drew the correct conclusion from that and sighed. He wanted to argue, I knew, but was too grateful to me at the moment.

‘Be very careful, Libby. I don’t trust that man or anything to do with him. Do you mind if I go and tell Jenny now?’

He ran up the steps towards the dressing-room corridor, leaving me sitting at the piano, fingering out some tune and trying in my head to talk sense to myself. I didn’t want to marry Daniel, did I? I’d been almost sure of that. So I would be an ungrateful dog in the manger if I did anything but wish him luck with all my heart in this affair with Jenny.

In the background, I was aware of things coming to life up on the stage behind the red curtain – bumpings and screechings of scenery being moved around, the swish of backcloth coming down. A deep voice with a West Country accent shouted instructions to the men up in the flies, as loudly as if he were in a Cape Horn tempest. He probably had been. Most scene-shifters are ex-sailors, hired because of their skill with ropes. Somebody must have lit gas-lights on stage. Even though I couldn’t see behind the curtain I could smell the acrid reek of them.

Hearing footsteps hurrying down the stairs to the pit, I thought it was Daniel coming back, but it turned out to be a tall, plump man of forty or so, with a paunch that filled out his waistcoat.

‘Suter, have you finished the music for the burletta?’

His voice was rounded and actorly. He had that air of professional dignity with panic showing through that seems normal with theatre managers. I told him that Mr Suter would be back in a minute. He gave me a harassed glance, not bothering to ask who I was.

‘Has he finished the music, do you know?’

‘Yes, I’m sure he has.’

I was far from sure. Daniel would probably be scribbling notes for his musician friends up until the curtain rose and beyond.

‘Tell him the business with the bucket is in. Cymbals when Charlie signals with his elbow. And in the Othello, the drummer’s to go on until he’s finished strangling the woman, however long it takes.’

He hurried back up the steps out of the pit. Daniel returned soon afterwards and I passed on the message.

‘Who is he?’ I said.

‘Barnaby Blake, the manager. Big ambitions for this place, but he’s trying to do everything on a small budget. He’s relying on Columbine to bring in the crowds, which is why he’s so patient with the confounded woman.’

I told Daniel I was going for a walk outside and would come back in time for the performance. The gas fumes were making my eyes water. The doors along the dressing-room corridor were still closed, but sounds and voices were coming from some of them. A distant smell of dung suggested that Signor Cavalari’s arithmetical horse had arrived.

Outside, drizzle was falling, smearing a greasy gleam over the pavements under the lamplight. I put up the hood of my cloak and strolled to Covent Garden. At this time on a winter afternoon, the main business of the day was over, but the place was still teeming with people. Ragged women and children gleaned cabbage leaves and crushed potatoes from gutters by the light of public house windows. Sounds of loud voices and singing came from inside the public houses, while gaunt horses dozed in the shafts of empty carts outside. A few porters were still at work, collecting up empty baskets and stacking them, ready for the morning. They carried half a dozen of them easily on their heads. Some of the porters were Irish women, calling out to each other in their own language. There was one I noticed particularly, a woman who must have been nearly six feet tall, face brown as leather, thick dark hair with streaks of grey hanging in damp waves over her broad shoulders. She wore a man’s tweed cap and jacket and a red printed cotton skirt with as many petticoats under it as a grand lady’s. Her muddy bare feet were firmly planted on the cobbles and she was shouting the odds at a male porter who’d offended her in some way. She was surrounded by other women, yelling their support, jeering at the man until eventually he slunk away. I thought, There’s a woman who can look after herself, and felt somehow comforted.

I bought a beef pie from a man selling them from a tray and took it to a bench outside St Paul’s Church on the west side of the market. I ate it with my fingers, getting gravy on my second-best gloves, as I watched a man juggling with flaming torches. A young woman walked past him into the church. She was tall and confident, wearing a purple cloak and feathered bonnet. Her hair under the bonnet was as yellow as an artificial daffodil and her pretty face had a hard, intent look in the flickering torchlight. I should not have put her down as a church-goer.

Having finished the pie I walked back to the Augustus. Under flaring gas-lights people were queuing for the gallery. This time there was somebody on duty in the doorkeeper’s room, a plump, bald-headed man with tired eyes. He watched me walk in without inquiring who I was. By now, with less than an hour to curtain-up, the dressing-room corridor was noisy and crowded. Some of the crowd were artistes. Twin boys in harlequin suits who looked no more than twelve years of age had their heads together in serious discussion. A man in a satin doublet with a handsome face and grizzled hair put his head round a door and yelled, ‘Honoria, where are my breeches?’

Some half-dozen of the people cluttering the corridor were gentlemen about town, elegantly dressed and all with that air of condescending boredom, as if this would do as well as anywhere to fill the gap between card games and supper. They were clustered round the half-open door of one dressing room, leaning against the wall or on their canes, top hats tilted over their foreheads. Girls’ laughter came from the room, along with a whiff of face powder and stale sweat. I glanced inside as I pushed my way past the dandies, collecting a hurt yelp as I trod on a fine leather boot. Gas-lights and mirrors took up one wall of a long and narrow room. Piles of outdoor clothes covered most of the floor. Seven girls in green muslin dresses with low-cut bodices and short skirts showing ankles and calves were crammed into the room with hardly space to turn. Some of them were pretending to disregard the men, leaning into the mirrors to apply colour to their lips, patting powder on to their bosoms. Two or three were talking to them, giving and receiving cheerful insults as if they were old friends. The men had probably spent most of the afternoon drinking at their clubs and when you came close to them their breath fumed stale claret. Only one of the seven girls genuinely seemed to want to avoid their notice. At the far end of the room, a head of copper-beech hair was turned away from them all.

A blast of damp air from outside blew along the corridor. Barnaby Blake came running from the direction of the stage.

‘Madame’s arriving, thank God.’

He dashed out to the pavement and returned as part of a small procession. First came the doorkeeper, struggling under the weight of an armchair with a gold wooden frame and damask seat. After him came a woman in her thirties, dark-haired and trimly dressed. She had an ivory silk cushion under one arm, a bag hooked round the other elbow and a glass bowl with a silver cover in both hands. Behind her Columbine floated in a swirl of plum-coloured velvet and white fur, dark hair flying loose. She looked furious. The gentlemen had to squeeze against the corridor walls like a reluctant guard of honour, but she didn’t give them a glance. Seen close to, she was beautiful still, but looked all of her thirty or so years. Barnaby Blake walked behind her, expression anxious. She seemed to be lecturing him over her shoulder, her voice loud and carrying.

‘… hoped you’d have sold out all the boxes by now. I’ve no intention of dancing to half-empty houses.’

‘I promise you, the figures are very promising, considering,’ he told her.

She went on talking, taking no notice. The man with the armchair and the maid waited in the corridor as Blake held a dressing-room door open for Columbine, more like a nervous host welcoming a duchess than a theatre manager whose star was late. The maid and the doorkeeper followed them inside with their burdens, then the doorkeeper came out, puffing his cheeks.

‘Dovey-wovey, why didn’t you wait for Rodders?’

The cry came from a gentleman who’d just strolled in from outside. He was a young man so pleased with himself that he seemed to glow from inside like a fat white candle. He was probably twenty-five or so, average height and running to fat already. His head was round and slightly too large for his body, set on his shoulders without much in the way of neck intervening, his hair so fair and fine that it stood out like a halo round his head. Buckskin breeches, fine tan riding boots with pink tops that matched the tassel on his walking cane, a chestnut-coloured cutaway coat over a waistcoat figured in squares of chestnut and pink completed the look of something from a child’s toy box grown to life size. The other gentlemen seemed to know him well and called out various sarcastic remarks about being late. He brushed past them and rapped with his cane on Columbine’s closed door.

Barnaby Blake’s voice was audible from inside, still trying to argue his case.

‘… audiences improving all the time. We’ll be playing to full houses all summer with the coronation coming up. There’ll be people from all over the country who’ve never seen anything like these shows before, fighting to get into theatres. I’ve had men begging me to let them invest.’

It sounded as if he hoped to keep Columbine on the bill all season, which would be bad news for Daniel.

The gentleman who called himself Rodders rapped on the door again.

‘Open up, Dovey-wovey.’

Columbine’s maid opened the door a crack, said some words that I couldn’t hear, and closed it in his face.

‘Dovey-wovey.’

The man set up a howl like a disappointed child. Barnaby Blake came out, looking annoyed at having his diplomacy interrupted, but his face changed when he saw who was causing the commotion.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Hardcastle.’

‘She won’t let me in,’ the gentleman wailed. ‘Why won’t she let me in?’

By now the sounds of the orchestra tuning up were drifting along the corridor. The chances of Columbine being ready in time for the first ballet seemed remote.

‘Artistic temperament, Mr Hardcastle. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see you at the interval,’ Blake soothed, as if calming a child. ‘My wine merchant has just delivered a case of claret and I’d appreciate your opinion. Would you join me in a glass?’

Young Mr Hardcastle allowed himself to be led into the manager’s room, with backward glances towards Columbine’s door.

A smaller fuss was going on back at the dancers‘ dressing room. An eighth girl had arrived late and at a run, to a chorus of ironic cheers from the gentlemen and twitterings of ’Where were you, Pauline?’ from the girls. She was already unhooking her outdoor cloak as she ran into the room. A purple cloak and a bonnet with feathers over daffodil-coloured hair; the girl I’d seen going into the church. But then, why shouldn’t a dancer enter a church? Theatre people are notoriously superstitious; perhaps she was praying for good luck.

‘Has Madame arrived yet?’ she asked the other girls, her tone suggesting that she didn’t much care for Columbine. They told her that, yes, she had, so she’d better hurry up changing.

I walked towards the pit, intending to warn Daniel that curtain-rise looked likely to be late. Running footsteps sounded behind me. I turned and there was Jenny in her thin costume and dancing pumps. She laid a hand on my arm, light as a falling leaf.

‘Excuse me, Miss Lane …’ She spoke in a whisper, with a Kentish accent. She was shaking with nerves or cold, but determined to say her piece. ‘I wanted to tell you how grateful I am. I didn’t… didn’t know anybody could be so kind.’

I looked into her wide grey eyes and understood what Daniel meant about her courage, but she was fragile too. You could no more be unkind to her than a bird fallen out of its nest. I held out my hand to her.

Instead of taking it, she suddenly threw her arms round my neck and kissed me on the cheek.

‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

Then she turned and fled in a rustle of muslin, back towards the dancers’ dressing room.