Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

J ack Treadwell was at that moment creeping along the curtain wall, stealthy as a ghost, towards the number one dressing room. He paused at the picture of Lillian, Agnes, himself and Grace, which had fallen off the wall on the night The Empire reopened. They had put the picture straight back up again and assured one another it hadn’t been an omen.

Jack noticed a smear on the glass covering the photograph, and rubbed it off with his sleeve. Mooning at pictures of him in happier times wasn’t going to help – he had a mission to accomplish, and whatever else was going on at The Empire, he was damn well going to get some accomplishing done. He steeled himself.

He crept closer to the number one dressing room. Clara Jones, its current occupant, would still be in bed this early on a Monday morning. She was a sweet singer, but rather miscast in the present production – a flashy touring revue which could have done with some songs from Ruby Rowntree and lines from Grace – and so deserved her beauty sleep. Poor girl had been sending her love and passion into the half-empty stalls for a week, and beaming at the desultory applause as if she was getting an ovation. That sort of performance needed lots of rest – and lots of steak suppers, too, judging by the bills coming in from the Metropole.

Her dressing room, though, Jack knew, was occupied. An evil influence had sneaked into his theatre and was causing further damage and distress. And Jack, finally, had a chance to do something about it. Ollie, the theatre dog, who was usually so good at identifying and discouraging unwanted visitors, had deserted Jack on this occasion. Jack had remonstrated with him. Ollie had turned over in his basket and huffed. Disappointing, but a man must learn to fight his own battles, and today Jack had the upper hand. He had only a minute before seen his nemesis – his enemy, the subtle snake fighting him for control of the theatre – slip into this very room. Jack had him cornered.

He reached for the door handle and flung it open, flicking the brass switch by the door as he did and flooding the room with light.

‘You are trapped, you devil! Surrender!’

His nemesis was at the dressing table – or rather, on it. A large brown rat, sitting on his hind paws, and admiring himself in Clara’s mirror while chewing on a stick of vermilion greasepaint.

Jack stared at the rat. The rat stared back. Jack realised that his plan of how to proceed from this point might have been a bit thin on detail. He had always been a man of action, though, and his training from three years of trench warfare in Europe kicked in. He opted for a full-frontal attack and so, with a blood-curdling yell, Jack pounced.

The rat did not flinch. It rather watched with curious detachment as Jack flew through the air towards it, then at the last possible moment, it dropped the greasepaint and skipped nimbly off the dressing table and into Clara’s clothes rack. Jack swiped ineffectually at the empty space where the rat had been, then spun on his heel and made another grab for it. The rat skipped up onto the picture rail, just out of reach, and watched as Jack, fully committed but hopelessly unstable, sailed sideways into the rack, snapping it under his weight and dragging down Clara’s Act Two ballgown – a feathery-looking monstrosity which was supposed to make her look like a peacock, but had a slight dyed chicken air to it – on top of himself. The broken rail slowly added to his distress as her silk pyjamas, nightclub flapper costume and wedding gown slithered on top of him, too, and then deposited her gypsy shawl over his head for good measure.

Jack floundered in fabric-clotted darkness, every inch of his six-foot frame tormented by aggressive coat hangers.

Jack didn’t often lose his temper, but this was too much. Deploying some colourful language, he shoved the silks and satins aside, spitting out feathers and sequins until he could see again, and scrambled for purchase. An attempt to use the upright part of the clothes rack to haul himself up proved ill-judged, and resulted in some light bruising to the back of his head and another uncomfortable encounter with a clothes hanger. He shook his head, slightly dazed, and looked up. The rat was still there, and – Jack would swear it on the grave of his dear adopted mum – the damn thing was sniggering at him.

There followed a lot more language and some fist-shaking. The rat was unabashed.

‘Goodness me, Mr Treadwell, what on earth are you doing tied up in Clara’s bits?’

The rat, with a final insouciant flick of its tail, disappeared into the shadows, and Jack directed his attention towards the door and the source of the voice.

‘Mr Poole! I very nearly caught the rat.’

Mr Poole put out his hand and hauled Jack to his feet. The coat hangers tinkled like cheap triangles as they fell from him.

‘Did you now? Well, God loves a trier, Mr Treadwell, so I’m told. But I fear you may have met your match in Harry.’

‘Harry?’

‘Yes, Danny’s named him after the American escapologist, Mr Houdini.’

‘Has he?’ Jack asked. So Danny was in on the conspiracy, too.

‘Yes. Now, do listen . . . It is a tale whispered in most theatres, Mr Treadwell, that in every generation a rat is born who develops an insatiable love of cold cream and greasepaint. I believe I did battle with such a one in my salad days as a man of the theatre.’

‘Did you win?’

Mr Poole leant forward to flick a feather from Jack’s lapel. ‘Not even close, Mr Treadwell. I was trounced.’

‘So what does one do?’ Jack asked in a despairing tone.

‘One buys more cold cream, Mr Treadwell.’

Jack turned to stare at the place where the rat had disappeared. Where had it gone? Was it working with a team of lookout rats? Some sort of huge rat conspiracy gnawing away at the foundations of his theatre, his life! If he could only get his hands on the little—

‘Mr Treadwell!’

Jack blinked and turned back. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Poole, you were saying?’

‘I was saying that the conveniences are blocked in the stalls again and Mrs Briggs’s plunger has plunged its last. The smell is beginning to settle, and I think her arthritis is playing up. We need another girl to clean. The printers have delivered the proofs of the programmes for next week’s performance of The Two Ladies of Grasmere , and Miss Pritchard’s name is definitely a shade larger than Miss Gardiner’s on the front cover. I’ve measured them. You know what Miss Gardiner will say about that . I have my suspicions that the printers have been corrupted. Apparently something similar happened in Deal and the company almost fell apart. The panto posters have arrived, Sir Toby wants you to discuss the new tram stop on the High Street, and there’s a letter in the newspaper saying the old Egyptian restaurant is becoming an eyesore. The final E has gone out again, and Mr Turnbull is developing a tone. The Metropole are refusing to feed Miss Clara anything more substantial than a cucumber sandwich till their bill is paid, and I’m closing the gallery for the matinee this afternoon. Most of the audience will be schoolchildren.’

Jack sighed deeply. He was still staring at the clothes scattered around his feet, but Poole could see his mind was running through the reversals, just as his had done. ‘We’ve got ourselves into a bit of a state, Mr Poole, haven’t we?’

Frederick Poole was not a man given to gestures of intimacy, but so forlorn did Jack look at that moment, he risked a pat on the shoulder. Even though, with Jack being such a tall young man, he had to stand on his tiptoes a little to reach it.

‘Now, Mr Treadwell, we all thought the Egyptian restaurant was a good idea, and I was just as taken in by that cook as you were.’

‘Funny how he’d never speak to me in French, now you come to think of it, wasn’t it?’

‘He insisted he was practising his English, as I recall. And it’s not your fault everyone’s feeling the pinch these days. How is dear Grace’s new play coming along?’ Jack’s expression made a verbal answer unnecessary. ‘That is a shame. That notice still troubling her?’

‘She can recite it, Mr Poole. Every nasty word of it, a whole year later. “Provincial authoress stumbles on West End stage . . .”’

‘And so on.’

‘I try and remind her of all the marvellous notices she’s had, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.’

Mr Poole’s eyes travelled over the room. The paint was flaking near the ceiling, and the dressing table had folded theatre bills stuffed under one leg to stop it wobbling. But through it all, they had put on their best faces, convinced the audience they had been transported somewhere out of time and worry, sent them home smiling. Still, backstage the little disasters and compromises seemed to accrue like dust in the corners, and even Mrs Briggs, in all her fervour, could not drive them back. Especially if she had an inadequate plunger.

‘Mrs Treadwell is a sensible woman,’ Mr Poole said, ‘but she is still an artist. And she has suffered blows.’

Grace’s first miscarriage had been followed by a second. Again, they did not speak of it, but Mr Poole had charted it in Jack’s behaviour. His happiness, then his worried distractions, his renewed absences. Then Darien had buggered off to Switzerland and the rat had moved in. They stood for a few moments in silence, then Jack straightened his back.

‘I’m going to buy a plunger and a really, really good rat trap at Bertram’s, then pop into the Metropole with a cheque. Though I’m certain I’ve already sent one.’ He ran his hand through his rather disordered mop of hair. ‘Then I’ll see Sir Toby about the tram stop at lunch, and speak to the printers on my way between the Metropole and the club. And once I find the account book, we can see about hiring a new girl for Mrs Briggs. Any new applicants for the job of my assistant?’

Poole forced his face into a tight smile as he remembered the various young men and women who had taken one look at the state of Jack’s office and fled. ‘None who seemed suitable, as yet.’

Jack scratched the back of his neck. ‘Maybe the rat put them off. Once we get rid of it, they’ll be queuing round the block.’

Mr Poole tried again.

‘I admire your pluck, Mr Treadwell. You know I do. But be warned, a theatrical rodent will laugh – nay, scoff – at a conventional rat trap, even a top-of-the-range item. Far better, to me, to come to a sort of reasonable accommodation with the creature.’

‘You think Clara will consent to sharing her face cream with a rat?’ He pointed at the open jar, with a telltale paw-print on its surface.

The thought seemed to give Mr Poole pause. He picked up the jar and carefully wiped away Harry’s signature. ‘Perhaps we might persuade her he is a lucky pet?’

Jack gathered up an armful of costumes and rehung them with vigour. ‘I’m not prepared to give up so easily, Mr Poole.’

Mr Poole tsked and removed the costumes from his grasp. ‘We have to mend the rack first, Mr Treadwell, before we rehang. Now leave this to me, and off you go, if trying a trap will make you feel better.’ Jack beamed at him. ‘But the WCs, Mr Treadwell . . .’

‘Yes,’ Jack replied. ‘The smell is settling! Thank you, Mr Poole.’

Mr Poole watched him charging off with his head up and a sense of renewed purpose, then turned to examine the clothes rail. He heard a squeak from the corner of the room but didn’t turn his head.

‘That’s enough from you today, I think, Harry,’ he said firmly, and after a slight scrabbling sound, he was left to his work in peace.