Chapter Fifty-Six

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

T om made it back down to the wings in time to take the clipboard from Danny as Stella’s final verse began, and went to fetch Sally.

He walked down the east corridor to the large dressing room and there she was, sitting next to Baby June, the star of the first half, with Clive. He was in shirtsleeves, but someone had run a comb through his hair and managed to get his face clean.

‘Sally?’

‘Break a leg,’ said Baby June, blowing smoke into the air.

‘Thanks,’ Sally said, standing up. She seemed, Tom thought, reasonably calm, just that slight shimmer coming off her he’d got used to sensing in some performers. Not nerves so much as anticipation – a readiness, like a greyhound in the traps.

Clive went ahead of them, his accordion over his shoulder. Tom breathed slowly and his heart began to slow to something like its usual rhythm.

‘Sally,’ he said, pausing in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the light washing from the stage. ‘I’m so very glad you came.’

She looked at him. A quick smile. ‘I am, too, I think. I hear you’ve let the men at your factory form a union.’

Alive. Better make use of the days, then.

‘The women, too. And . . .’ The idea became clear in his head even as he spoke. ‘And I’m going to take over the whole thing, you know. Lassiter Enterprises. No more Ray Kelly, no more starvation wages. Everyone who works for us will be able to unionise if they want.’

She studied him in the half-light. ‘I’m glad to hear that, Tom. It will be a better place, Highbridge, if you take charge. I’m proud of you.’

On stage, Stella was talking to the crowd, ‘. . . and now here is a singer I know you’ve all been waiting to hear from. Yes, I went to the Bricklayers Arms to fetch her myself!’

‘Proud enough to marry me?’ Tom asked.

Sally gasped. ‘Oh, Tom . . .’ Her eyes glistened. ‘I don’t—’

‘Tell me when you’ve won,’ he said, and took a half step back as Stella finished the introduction.

‘Yes, Your Royal Highnesses, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, with Clive Goodwin on the squeezebox, it’s the Rose of Highbridge, Sally Blow!’

Lillian appeared at his shoulder. ‘Everything all right, Tom?’

‘Yes. Someone planted a bomb in the royal box, but Jack defused it. But I think now everything is going to be perfect.’

‘I . . .? What . . .?’ Lillian steadied herself against the wall. ‘Jack defused a bomb? Good God, who planted it?’

‘Lillian, I’m going to worry about that in a few minutes’ time, but for now, I’m going to watch Sally Blow set the world on fire.’

The applause carried Sally out of the wings. As Stella returned upstage to her seat next to Lancelot Drake, the lights dimmed, leaving her and Clive in a single golden beam. The little motes of dust sparkled in the air in front of her.

This was not like the pub.

She had a sense of the crowd, the great breathing mass of them, but beyond the first row, she couldn’t see any faces. She didn’t need to see much more than that row, though. There was Dougie, his cheeks pink and his eyes shining, sitting between Belle and Alfred. Belle was holding his hand. And next to her, Mr and Mrs Blow, who looked as excited as Dougie. The applause died down, and somewhere in the depths of the theatre someone coughed.

‘She did come and fetch me – Miss Stella, I mean,’ Sally said. ‘Alfred the landlord – he’s sitting down there – almost had a heart attack when she walked into the saloon bar.’

A warm ripple of laughter ran through the auditorium.

She shielded her eyes and turned towards the judges. ‘How did you know about that Rose of Highbridge thing, Miss Stella?’

‘Belle told me!’ Stella called back.

‘That’s Alf’s wife,’ she said. ‘I should have known.’ Then she felt it: the audience settling, coming towards her, all attention. ‘Belle and Alf are both here tonight, with my little boy Dougie, and my late husband’s mum and dad. My dress all right, Dougie? ’she asked.

‘It’s not crinkly!’ Dougie shouted, which got another laugh.

‘Oh, thank you. A nice girl backstage ironed it for me. I had to stand there in my smalls while she did it. But the print’s nice, isn’t it? End of the line from Fenwick’s.’

And she was ready.

‘Now, Miss Ruby Rowntree did the arrangement of this song for me and Clive here. It’s a sad one, so get your handkerchieves out.’

Jack still had his head in his hands. The door to the royal circle opened a little way along the corridor, and Agnes peered out.

‘Jack,’ she hissed, ‘what are you doing lounging about? Do come in a moment! That girl Sally’s on the stage. You have to see it.’

He pulled himself to his feet, and followed her in.

‘Come on then, Clive,’ Sally said, nodding to the boy. ‘Let’s give them the song.’

Clive pulled on the accordion, and the long rasp of it seemed to ease its way through the whole theatre, running up the aisles and climbing like a tendril up the gilded columns and over the curve of the roof, nestling among the crystals of the chandelier, and making them hum.

When I feel the cold, when the mist

runs down the hills, the ghost of Johnny D

She began over the steady, open drone of the accordion. The silence was absolute.

‘My God, she can hold them,’ whispered Jack.

His body still felt the weight of the shells in his arms, but somehow, as Sally sang, nothing else mattered. He knew Grace was all right. He knew the prince was safe, and for the next few minutes he was in the place he should be. There was magnetism, and an ease of being around Sally which made him feel as if he was part of the song, just like she was – that he, her, the music and that slow melody, with the accordion just rippling behind it, were all part of one whole.

Then she glanced down into the pit and the orchestra came in and Jack thought his heart might explode in his chest as she put up her arms and began the chorus.

Oh what use your fairy gold,

what use grape and grain,

when my chance to have a heart that’s full

can never come again?

Grace squeezed Lillian’s hand while she passed on some garbled version of events she had had from Tom.

‘Who would do such a thing?’ Grace panted.

‘Not long now, Grace, you’re doing well,’ Mrs Cook said. ‘Perhaps we could save the bomb talk till afterwards? It’s like trying to deliver a baby in Piccadilly Circus in here.’

‘Of course, Mrs Cook,’ Lillian said calmly. ‘These fascists who don’t want a new king with Nikolai advising him, I imagine.’

‘But how?’ Grace said, gritting her teeth. ‘They would need access to The Empire! They would need to know every nook and cranny.’

Lillian fetched a cushion and tucked it under Grace’s head.

‘Darling, I know you’re fond of him, but do you think . . . perhaps Dixon? He arrived after Nikolai, and knows that impossible language—’

‘No, it can’t be, Lillian. How could it?’

Lillian hesitated. ‘Dixon’s father is not a good man.’

‘When did you meet him? Mr Poole said he’d only just arrived.’

Lillian’s world swam suddenly in front of her eyes.

‘Dixon’s father is here?’ Lillian said. ‘Yes, he came with news . . .’

Another spasm shook Grace into silence.

‘Lillian,’ Grace said through gritted teeth as it passed. ‘Go, you’re due on stage any minute!’

Tom appeared at the doorway, and peered round carefully. ‘Lillian? They’re about to play your introduction.’

‘Tom, how . . . did . . . Sally do?’ Grace said, panting between words.

‘Piccadilly Circus,’ Mrs Cook muttered.

‘Wonderful,’ Tom said simply. ‘The judges are lavishing her with praise right now. It’s a triumph, Grace.’

‘Goodgoawaynowbothofyou,’ Grace hissed and Mrs Cook ushered them both out of the room.

Tom led Lillian towards the stage.

‘Sally was incredible, Lillian. I’ve never seen anything like it. How’s Grace?’

‘Mrs Cook is looking after her. She said something about Sir Gideon Wells being here?’

‘Yes!’ Tom saw her face and frowned. ‘Do you know him? It turns out he’s Dixon’s father. The one who threatened the poor chap with asylums and caused him to run away in the first place. He’s with the Foreign Office. He and a Marakovian with a fearsome moustache are in the record shop, apparently. Flew up from London. Mr Poole says the King of Marakovia is dead. Presumably they’ll have to get Stefan back . . . Lillian, are you all right?’

The children who would join Nikolai and Lillian for the final chorus were gathered, wide-eyed and overexcited around her husband and Mabel Mills in the wings. Nikolai looked around at her and smiled.

‘Does Nikolai know about the king?’ she asked.

Tom looked suddenly aghast. ‘No, I haven’t said . . . Should I? Lillian, I’m so sorry. Can we go on?’

She looked down, smoothing the heavy gold lamé of her dress.

Her grandchild was being born, her son had just narrowly escaped a bomb, and somewhere in the theatre, whoever had planned to blow them up was wondering at the failure of their plans. Grace was right: whoever had placed it there must know the theatre well, and she had believed they were all friends, all family here. And the King of Marakovia was dead. That meant her husband – her romantic, brilliant, dashing husband – would be leaving her to steer that country through dangerous waters. And Colonel Sir Gideon Wells was here. She could not be sure, she told herself, but those fragments of her attacker – and of Jack – she’d seen in Dixon, and the rumours Agnes’s network had offered up, made her think it was very likely he was the man who had forced himself on her when she herself was hardly more than a child.

Can I go on? Out of the corner of her eye she saw the picture of her, Jack, Grace and Agnes outside the rebuilt theatre, and made her decision.

I am Lillian Kuznetsov, wife of His Excellency, Grand Duke Nikolai Goranovich Kuznetsov, I am Lady Lassiter, widow of Sir Barnabas Lassiter. I am the mother of Jack Treadwell. I am Lillian Lyons, star of the Paris stage, and ‘Our Lil’, touring the north-west with a ragtag family of Vaudeville players. I am a girl, sweeping the factory floor and dreaming of another life. She glanced at the mirror screwed to the wall behind the empty prompt desk. She was a little pale, but otherwise as she should be. She checked her teeth for lipstick.

‘Of course we go on. Make sure the children don’t miss their cue.

Now, let’s finish the show.’

The orchestra began to vamp the introduction and Nikolai came towards her, his hand outstretched.