Читать книгу Death of a Dancer - Caro Peacock, Caro Peacock - Страница 7

The next day was Sunday. Mrs Martley went to church while I stayed at home and tried to distract myself with guitar practice. Later, she settled at our parlour table and allowed herself one of her indulgences: catching up with her Queen Victoria album. She had a stack of magazines that in their shining youth had been delivered to ladies in the houses fronting on to the park, and went from there via the hands of ladies’ maids to the kitchens, where Cook would fillet out recipes and household hints – possibly with the knife used to chop meat judging by the smears on some of the pages. They then made the sideways shift to our building because the carriage mender’s wife had friends in some of the kitchens. Mrs Martley would pore over them endlessly, looking for news of our young queen. Coming from a family of republicans, I didn’t share her loyal enthusiasm but tried not to laugh at it.

‘I got Mr Suter’s note,’ she said as she cut out an engraving of Little Vicky receiving an ambassador. ‘Your friend didn’t come home with you last night, then?’

‘No.’

‘Will she be coming today?’

‘I don’t know.’

Somewhere under the grey skies, in the slums around Covent Garden, I knew that Daniel would be searching for her.

‘She’ll have to share your bed, I suppose.’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

I’d worked hard at achieving my few square feet of privacy. Originally, Mrs Martley and I had to share the attic bedroom and the double bed, each to her own side of the feather mattress with a dip in the middle. Every night Mrs Martley, being heavier than I was, would roll down into the dip, leaving me clinging with my fingertips to the edge of the mattress to stop myself rolling on top of her. Also, she snored. Yet she claimed she couldn’t get a wink of sleep all night because of my fidgeting. So I spent five shillings on a smaller bed for myself from a second-hand shop in Tottenham Court Road, and another two shillings to have it carted home. Soon afterwards I acquired a long curtain which I nailed from a ceiling beam, giving us the luxury of a narrow bedroom each. I had a peg for my bonnet, a wooden chest for my clothes and an old apple box to support my candlestick.

Still concentrating on slotting her treasure on to a vacant corner of the page, Mrs Martley said, ‘The landlord came round yesterday when you were out. You know Old Slippers is going?’ Old Slippers was the tenant of the attic rooms above our parlour, so called because nobody had ever seen him in any other sort of footwear. ‘When he goes, the landlord wants to do this whole place up and let it out to a gentleman. Mr Grindley says he wants fifty pounds for a deposit.’

My heart sank even further. I’d known my hold on Abel Yard was precarious, but had hoped to keep it for a little longer. Setting up house is an expensive business, even second hand, and with only nineteen pounds and a few shillings of my original capital left our options would be severely limited.

With thoughts of an uncertain future weighing heavily on me, Sunday was a long day; it came as a relief at half past six on Monday morning to let myself out of the small door in the double carriage gates of Abel Yard and see the red glow of Amos Legge’s pipe in the dark. Cupping his hands for me to put my foot in, he threw me up to Rancie’s back as if my eight stone were no more than a wisp of straw. As we crossed into the park I asked him if he’d heard of a man named Rodney Hardcastle. He laughed out loud.

‘Heard of him? He owes me money.’

‘What!’

‘Me and half London besides. Last week, his hat blew off when he was driving in the Ring and I chased it and brought it back for him. “I owe you half a sovereign, my man,” he says, feeling in his pockets, though everybody knows they’re as empty as a pauper’s belly. “I’ll look forward to that, sir,” I says politely. The other grooms were laughing fit to bust. Twenty thousand, he owes, so I shan’t see my half-sovereign this side of Judgement Day’

‘How can a man owe twenty thousand pounds?’

‘Quite easy, in this town. His father’s Lord Silverdale and he’s rolling in money, see, so they all thought he’d pick up the son’s debts. Only he says he won’t, so they can all whistle for their money.’

The name Silverdale was vaguely familiar. I had an idea that he’d been a government minister at one time.

‘But some people get locked up in the Marshalsea for owing twenty pounds,’ I said.

‘That’s how it works, look. If you owe enough, nobody can afford to let you go down, because if you do, they sink with you.’

Amos, who’d probably never owed a man sixpence in his life, explained it like a lesson in political economy.

‘But it has to end somewhere, doesn’t it?’ I said.

‘In tears, probably. They do say he’s coming near the end of his rope now.’

‘He’s friendly with a dancer called Columbine. Do you know her?’

But Amos wasn’t a theatre-goer and Columbine did not strike me as a woman likely to go horse riding, so her name meant nothing to him.

I wished that Mr Disraeli would come riding up, now I had more questions to ask him. He’d wanted me to find out about Columbine’s gentlemen friends, but from the way Rodney Hardcastle had been behaving, half of London already knew about his affairs, financial and otherwise. So was Hardcastle a friend of his? I was disappointed in Mr Disraeli’s taste, if that was the case. But my questions remained unanswered because Disraeli didn’t appear.

When I arrived home, Mrs Martley was even more disapproving than usual.

‘You’ve missed poor Mr Suter. He waited half an hour or more.’

It was just past eight o’clock, hardly light yet.

‘What did he want?’

‘He looked as if he’d been up all night. I made him a cup of chocolate, but he only drank the half of it. That poor gentleman needs somebody to look after him.’

Another dig at me. I ignored it and asked her again what Daniel had wanted.

‘He left a note for you.’

She produced it.

My Dear Libby,

I am sorry I can’t wait. I have a favour to ask. Would you very kindly attend the performance at the Augustus tonight and see if anybody there has the slightest idea where Jenny might be. As you know, Blake has forbidden me to set foot in the place. Also, I sense that the dancers might be more ready to talk to another woman than to a man. Surrey’s wife (who plays Desdemona) is a decent sort of woman. I know Jenny talked to her sometimes. She might help.

If you find out anything, please get word to me at any time of the night or day.

Thank you. I’m sorry to bring you into this.

Daniel

Mrs Martley was watching me as I read.

‘Bad news?’

I thought that the true answer was probably yes. Instead I told her I’d be late back and she shouldn’t wait up for me.

I had a pupil in Piccadilly who’d demanded some last-minute coaching, having been persuaded by friends to sing ‘impromptu’ at an evening reception. She needed so much fussing and reassurance that I didn’t get to the Augustus until it was almost time for the interval. I lingered outside for a while, with the loiterers who hoped to slip into the gallery free of charge for the second half of the evening. A chanter was strolling up and down, singing ballads and selling copies of the words for a penny. Chanters are almost as good as the newspapers in their way, and often nearly as accurate. It had always amazed me that these ballads were on sale on the streets, sometimes only a few hours after the events they described. Then I caught the name ‘Columbine’ and stopped to listen.

O come all you sportsmen who like a good fight Take seats at the ballet on Saturday night When fair Columbine is defending her crown Against young Copper-knob, the new battler in town.

Obviously the writer of the ballad hadn’t known Jenny by name, but the detail suggested he’d been there in person.

Queen Columbine deals her a whack to the shin But game Copper-knob swears the title she’ll win. ‘To spoil her coiffure, I’ll my talons engage.’ In the blink of an eye there are wigs on the stage.

I paid my penny and bought the word sheet. The chanter went on singing.

Says young Mr H: ‘I will back Columbine To lay out this upstart in round eight or nine

I put the ballad in my pocket, hoping Daniel hadn’t heard it.

After waiting at the side door until some of the musicians came out at the start of the interval, I slipped along the corridor to the orchestra pit. Toby Kennedy had taken over from Daniel as director of the orchestra and was there with a few of the other musicians. Immediately, we both asked, ‘Have you seen Daniel?’

‘I met him in the Haymarket around seven,’ Kennedy said. ‘He’s still looking for her. I told him if the poor lass has the sense she was born with, she’ll have taken herself back home to the country until the fuss dies down.’

‘I saw him after that,’ a trombone player said.

He’d obviously been eavesdropping unashamedly. I supposed that a lot of the musicians were gossiping about Daniel.

‘Where?’ I said.

‘Just outside the stage door here, when I came in. I said good evening to him, but I don’t think he noticed.’

Kennedy looked at me and pulled a wry face. He guessed, as I did, that although Daniel was forbidden the theatre, he’d hoped against hope to see somebody who knew Jenny’s whereabouts. I asked Kennedy if the ballets were being performed in Columbine’s absence, wondering about my chances of talking to the other dancers.

‘They’re still being performed in her presence, God help us.’

‘But I heard her telling Blake she wouldn’t set foot on stage again,’ I said.

‘He knew the remedy for that.’ He mimed the passing over of money. ‘A hundred pounds per performance.’

‘What! I doubt if even Taglioni gets that much.’

‘No, but then, as far as I know, Taglioni has never picked a fight with another dancer on stage.’

An ordinary dancer, like Jenny, might get four shillings a performance if she was lucky, with no pay for all those hours of rehearsals. I recalled Columbine’s conversation with Blake; whatever her failings as a dancer, she was certainly astute when it came to business matters.

‘Blake must think she’s worth it, just for the buzz,’ Kennedy said. ‘He’s even found another red-headed dancer in Jenny’s place to keep the audience hoping.’

I asked Kennedy how Columbine had performed in the first ballet.

‘As badly as ever. Clumsier, if anything.’

I decided to leave any attempt at questioning the dancers about Jenny until after the second ballet, because there wasn’t much time left before they’d be on stage again. The players who had left during the interval were returning now and the audience were taking their seats, Rodney Hardcastle and his friends trailing in after the rest, as usual.

The head of the stagehands tapped the boards to signify to Kennedy that the scene change was complete, and the musicians launched into the introductory music. The curtain should have begun rising at the beginning of the last repeat. It stayed down and immobile, not even twitching. Accustomed to these little hitches, Kennedy signalled to play the repeat again. At the end of it, with the curtain still stubbornly down, they played the whole introduction again. By now, the gallery were getting restive. When at last Barnaby Blake, looking hot and worried, came out in front of the curtains he was greeted with catcalls and booing. He raised his hand for silence. The musicians put down their instruments.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we regret that we have had to cancel the second ballet. Madame Columbine is indisposed.’

‘Oh, that confounded woman,’ Kennedy whispered.

There was more booing. Under cover of it, Blake hissed down to the pit: ‘Acrobats’ music. Loud.’

He disappeared behind the curtain. Minutes later it rose on the Two Peas, hastily spinning themselves into an extra routine. The gallery went on shouting and booing for a while, then gradually decided it wasn’t worth rioting over.

It seemed to me a useful opportunity. As the dancers were not needed for the second ballet, they should have time on their hands and be ready to talk. I slipped quietly up the stairs from the pit, into the dressing-room corridor. It was blocked by a huddle of fluttering gauze and goose-pimpled flesh, as the dancers gathered to stare at something I couldn’t see. A cold draught blew along the corridor. Beyond them, a woman was screaming, a continuous high-pitched sound. I touched the shoulder of the nearest dancer.

‘Who’s that screaming?’

‘Her maid. She won’t stop.’

It was the small dark-haired dancer who’d remembered Jenny’s basket. She was shaking from cold or fear. Over her shoulder, I saw that they were all looking at the closed door of Columbine’s dressing room.

‘What’s happened?’

‘She’s dead. There’s a policeman in there.’

‘Who’s dead?’

The dark-haired girl stared at me as if I should have known.

‘Columbine.’