Chapter Twenty-Six

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

B oxing Day dawned, crisp and bright, over Highbridge. After an early breakfast, Jack and Grace motored down to the theatre for the dress rehearsal, with Tom and Dixon in the back of Jack’s car, and Lillian and Nikolai following behind them.

Jack had banned all discussion of records for now, and Lillian had declared she wanted to hear nothing about the newspaper. Jack glanced at his co-conspirators in the back seat, and wondered if Tom suspected Constance had gone to the trouble of procuring and sending the newspaper out of spite. He shook his head, took his hand from the wheel to squeeze his wife’s, and she glanced back at him with a tight, nervous smile.

‘Remember, Grace, we have the blessing of the ghost,’ he said. ‘So whatever happens at the dress today, it will go splendidly this evening.’

She only nodded, and then turned and looked out of the window as the country verges disappeared, and they passed between the neat villas at the northern edge of town before approaching the heart of Highbridge.

Miss Chisholm was waiting outside The Empire for them, looking appropriately festive in her green coat and red gloves. The sign sparkled, and the banner announcing opening night flickered in the light breeze.

Grace stepped out of the car and Miss Chisholm walked forward.

‘How are we looking, Miss C.?’ Jack asked.

‘Sam is asking for Lady Lassiter, and Mr Porter would like to double-check some of the tempi with you, Mrs Treadwell.’ Grace nodded her thanks, and hurried into the theatre. ‘Did you have a good Christmas, Mr Treadwell?’

‘It was a delight from beginning to end,’ Jack said, not entirely truthfully. ‘And you?’

‘Very pleasant,’ she said in a voice that discouraged further conversation.

‘Right.’ Jack rubbed his hands together. ‘Let’s get to work.

Tom discovered Sally in the promenade bar, polishing glasses and humming to herself, her hair tied up in a yellow kerchief. He watched her from the threshold for a second, the light sparkling on the glass as she worked, casting diamonds of light around her.

‘Good morning,’ he ventured eventually, and she jumped slightly and looked up at him.

‘Mr Lassiter,’ she said. ‘I hope you had a good Christmas.’

Her voice sounded strangely formal. ‘I thought we’d agreed you’d call me Tom,’ he replied, making his way into the room.

‘Perhaps in the pub,’ she said, returning her attention to the glass, ‘but it doesn’t seem right at work.’

Tom took a package of gingerbread out of his pocket and set it on the polished bar next to her. ‘From the party at Lassiter Court. I thought Dougie might like it.’

She bit her lip and didn’t say anything, only nodded; Tom thought that there was something about the way she was holding herself that suggested she might cry at any moment.

‘You’re not angry with me, are you, for suggesting that signature tune? Ruby said you were absolutely wonderful.’

She shook her head. ‘Just leave me alone. Please, Tom.’

Tom felt his heart squeezed so hard he couldn’t quite breathe for a second. Have I made a complete fool of myself?

‘I . . . Of course. I just wanted you to know, I did listen to you. I’m going to do something with myself rather than wait about—’

‘Please, I just need to get on with my work,’ Sally said sharply, and turned away.

Tom’s heart plummeted. Surely there was something he could say or do. Some way to find out what he had done to offend her. He looked at the straight, stiff line of her back and whatever it was, he couldn’t think of it.

Through the open doors of the auditorium the pantomime overture began. The tune, full of frivolity and cheer, was so at odds with his mood, he couldn’t bear it. He turned on his heel and left, feeling dark and miserable. He would push on. He went to Lillian’s office to make use of her telephone, a sense of hurt and hunger like a void under his ribs.

The dress rehearsal was a disaster. When Grace gathered the cast and crew on stage afterwards, they looked variously miserable, terrified, or, in the case of Terrence Fortescue, icy with rage.

Mr Porter ran through the missed and bungled music cues first, then Fortescue spent twenty minutes tearing each of the chorus to shreds, and another five sneering at the principals. The seam on Josie’s very tight jerkin had ripped, King Rat’s tail had been cut off by a trapdoor shut too soon, and Alderman Fitzwarren’s robes had got paint on them. In the process, the backdrop to the May Day Fair, which opened the show, had become somewhat blurred. Milly, the wardrobe assistant, was breathing into a paper bag. Little Sam and the stagehands were staring fixedly at their shoes.

‘. . . and if I could take my name off the programme at this stage, I would!’ Fortescue concluded, spitting each syllable out as if they had left an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

A heavy silence fell and Grace felt the eyes of the company turn towards her. Provincial author stumbles . . . she thought. She could almost see the fox that looked a little like Jason de Witte, the critic, weaving its way between the flats at the back of the stage.

She cleared her throat and stood up from her stool, her notes of all the missed lines, bungled jokes, sloppy exits and fluffed scene changes between her hands.

‘And that is why we have dress rehearsals,’ she said. Harold smiled wryly and Josie looked up. ‘These are my notes for you,’ Grace went on, holding them up above her head. Then she ripped the pages apart and dropped them onto the stage.

Milly put down her paper bag and the chorus huddled together a little closer, like baby birds in an ice storm.

‘You don’t need these,’ Grace said firmly. ‘You all know exactly what went wrong. And that’s why I know you are going to get it right this evening. Not just because you’re frightened of Terrence here . . .’ Some of them risked a smile. ‘Not just because you know how hard Josie’s been working, or the joy Harold’s going to bring to the people who come to see us tonight, or because we want Nikolai to finally understand pantomime . . .’ A few risked a light chuckle. ‘But because I have seen how brilliant you all are,’ she continued, ‘and I know that that’s what the audience is going to see tonight. Now we’ve got the nonsense out of the way, go and relax. Eat, sleep, take a walk in the municipal gardens, and then come back here and let’s give Highbridge a truly brilliant show. From the first note to last curtain call. And congratulations on all of your hard work. I am really terribly proud of you.’

They looked comforted, but still nervous. Harold hauled himself to his feet, came over to Grace and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Bless you, my love. Now people, we’ll do it for Grace, shall we? Give yourselves a kick up the arse and I’ll see you at five.’

Jack took Grace’s hand as the overture began and felt the bones of his fingers nearly snapping under the pressure of hers, but he was convinced the ghost was right and they had a hit on their hands. There was a lightness in the air, a general enthusiasm. Lillian and Nikolai sat alongside them in the royal box, with Stella, Dixon, Miss Chisholm, Tom and Ruby in a line behind them, while Agnes de Monfort, the co-owner of the theatre, and Joe Allerdyce, her long-time fiancé, grinned at them from the directors’ box opposite.

Jack had felt it – that simmering pleasure – as he’d walked through the theatre as the audience began to gather outside. He’d seen it in the nervous smiles the chorus exchanged as they practised in the corridors, in the care with which the stage crew re-coiled the fly ropes, and the way the prop master rearranged the candy-coloured rolling pins, pie tins and spoons on his table, in the glint of the treasure chest filled with outsized doubloons. He’d seen it in the whip of Milly’s needle as she added just one final crop of sequins to Alice’s wedding gown, in the way the trumpeter taped the sheets of music together on his stand, then polished the bell of his instrument on his tie, in the skip in Mr Poole’s step as he carried a stack of souvenir programmes from one side of the lobby to the other, in the flick the waiter in the promenade bar gave to his cloth as he polished a champagne glass. In the corridor backstage between dressing rooms, he paused, hearing it in the competing vocal exercises coming from Harold Drabble’s and Josie’s doors. But it was the magic the audience brought in through the doors with them that clinched it: the strange shimmer in the air which arrives with a thousand men, women and children gathered together in full expectation of a really good time.

Act I, scene 1. Dick and his cat arrive in London on May Day. Jack leant forward, his elbows on the edge of the box, and watched.

Grace had filled the stage with colour and movement. The chorus were a surging crowd, Dick lost and dazzled among them and joining in awkwardly with the dance of a city street, till he was caught, transfixed by the sight of his one true love, Alice. There was a lovely bit of business with the cat teasing a chorus boy in character of a spaniel, and a warm surge of laughter rose up like a wave through the stalls. Fitzwarren came on stage to lament in bouncing couplets about his failing fortunes to his daughter, Alice. The audience oohed and aahed in sympathy. Then, in a hooped skirt that extended a good two feet in every direction from his considerable bulk, Harold appeared at the back of the stage, borne forward by the chorus. His wig rose a foot from his head, bound round with a red kerchief. The May Day crowd, Alice, Dick and Fitzwarren dispersed, and Harold turned to the audience, making them wait. They held their breath.

‘Oh, where’s my tiffin!’ he declared, hands on his hips, and the audience erupted into happy cheers. ‘Good evening, boys and girls! I’m Sarah, Fitzwarren’s cook. Now, are you having a good time?’

Jack leant over to his wife, ready to whisper some encouragement or reassurance, but at that moment she relaxed the pressure on his fingers and sighed. She knew.