Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

A s Nikolai was straightening his cuffs, Ruby Rowntree, the jewel in The Empire’s crown, the musical equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso and whoever made the London Transport posters rolled into one, was looking for a pencil. Her friend, former student and now secretary, Tom Lassiter, knew Ruby well enough to interpret that particular frown, as, eyes still staring unfocused into the air between the polished walnut of her upright piano and her nose, she reached vaguely for it.

Tom plucked a pencil from the bristling tin of ones he kept sharpened and ready for such eventualities, and placed it where her fingers would find it. They did, and with a small sniff of pleasure, she plucked it up and set to on the sheet of manuscript paper in front of her.

Ruby had a room dedicated to her use at The Empire, with an armchair, an upright piano and drifts of manuscript paper and hairpins over every available surface. Tom’s table was always scrupulously tidy. If a hairpin ever drifted onto it, he simply returned it to another small pot on top of the piano.

‘Will you check the proofs of “Midnight Bazaar” for me, Ruby?’ he said when she put down her pencil again. ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve caught everything, but there’s an accidental on the third page I’m not sure about.’

She didn’t answer.

‘Ruby?’

She turned with a quick smile. ‘Sorry, dear, I was still miles away.’ She rested her fingers on the keys. ‘I would think, now you have a degree in music, you could decide for yourself!’

She looked as she always had done, ever since she started teaching him to play piano when he was a small boy. She was a slight and short woman, with fiercely red cheeks and her greying hair piled untidily on top of her head. She had always been, in his opinion, quite brilliant, but in the last handful of years she had also made an impression on the wider public.

‘I wouldn’t dare. You’re a rich and famous composer now, Ruby.’

She giggled, turned around and plucked the sheet from his hand.

‘Oh no, I don’t want that. Strike it out.’

Tom wasn’t exaggerating her sudden fame and wealth – not that you could tell her circumstances had changed from looking at her. She wore the same clothes, ate at the same small tea shops and family-run restaurants, and lived in the same boarding house with a strict landlady and an ever-shifting collection of cats. The world was forced to conclude that she lived this way not as a result of genteel poverty, but simply because it suited her. Her two shows with Grace might have led to her being talked about in the same breath as No?l Coward and the Gershwins, but, she said firmly when asked, that did not mean she suddenly wished to socialise with them.

‘So have you got another tune for me?’ he asked, nodding at the manuscript paper she’d been working on.

‘I do! But it needs words.’

‘Shall I add a fair copy to the “when Grace is ready” pile?’

Ruby wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes, do. It’s getting to be quite a large pile, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’

She sighed. ‘Are you busy this evening, Tom? I want a night in the pub.’

‘Then a night in the pub we shall have. Where shall we go?’

‘How about the Bricklayers Arms?’

Tom had spent most of his gilded youth in the high-end restaurants and nightspots Highbridge had to offer, or playing tennis, but these days he found he had a lot more fun accompanying Ruby to the pubs and working men’s clubs of Highbridge. She liked, she said, to smell the sawdust and tobacco in the air, listen to the rhythm of the talk, and after a half pint of porter, she would talk to him about music and melody in a way which made his whisky taste like champagne.

‘Done.’

He wrote a note to the publishers of her latest hit, with a summary of the corrections he had made, and pinned it to the sheet in question, then looked up again. Ruby was still frowning with concentration, but she was looking up now, with her head on one side.

‘Ruby—’

She held up her hand. ‘Shush, Tom. Listen.’

He did. The faintest thread of melody was drifting up from the theatre below them and in through the half-open window, just audible under the rattle of the trams on the High Street. It was a baritone voice, and the melody – the fragments of it they could hear – seemed unusual: something rich and sinuous.

‘What is that?’ Tom said.

Ruby stood up. ‘I don’t know, Tom. But it’s certainly not the mid-act ballad of The Sunny Times Revue . Come along.’

She bustled out of the room and Tom followed.

‘One, two, three – heave! One more time, lads.’ Jack really put his back into it this time. ‘One, two, three – heave!’

Something gave. In the depths under the stage a cog found its groove, and Jack and the stagehands jumped back as the lift lowered with a shudder, then into place with an obedient sigh, just as it should have done half an hour before.

Jack pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the back of his neck and his hands. Now that the heaving was done, he listened for signs of riot out front.

‘Did they throw the audience out?’ he asked. The men shrugged.

‘Jack!’ Lillian appeared on the spiral stairs leading back onto the stage. ‘Do come and see what’s happening! It’s a marvel.’

He ran up the stairs towards her and as he did he heard music: a rich baritone singing in a foreign language, with a simple string vamp supporting it like a gazebo supports an explosion of climbing roses in summertime.

Lillian was beaming. She grabbed his hand and dragged him up the final steps, and he found himself jostling shoulders with Danny just inside the high, curved proscenium arch.

Nikolai was out on stage in front of the velvet curtain, singing in the beam of the follow spot, his arms wide. And nobody was throwing anything at him. He ended the line on a long, high note of syrupy richness.

‘Did the children leave?’ Jack asked.

Everybody shushed him.

‘Now, keep going, Mr Porter,’ Nikolai said, shading his eyes to peer into the orchestra pit. ‘Are you ready, my starlings? Girls first. Same tune – I met my love in the mountains . . .’ The children began to sing, with Nikolai prompting them with the words in English. ‘Now the boys, please!’ Same tune! It is a round, like “Frère Jacques”.’ The boys were a little unsteady at first, but Nikolai joined them for a moment until they had their confidence back, and the theatre was alive with the threaded voices.

‘Good Lord,’ Jack said under his breath. Nikolai was conducting the children, beaming at them across the footlights, and the rippling voices swelled as he encouraged first one group and then the other, arms wide. Jack peered out into the stalls. The children were on their feet, faces turned up, singing their little hearts out. Mr Poole was standing in the aisle looking utterly baffled; one of the usherettes was peering out from behind him, a handkerchief to her eyes. In the circle, Ruby and Tom were watching, Ruby leaning forward slightly. Jack thought he could see the sparkle in her eye from where he was standing.

‘Well, I’ll be . . .!’ Clara appeared at his shoulder, her plumage restored. ‘How the bloody hell am I supposed to follow that?’