Ghost Song (16 page)

‘No, it's the old saying about the ghost paying the wages,' said Toby. He glanced at her. ‘I've never asked if you ever saw the Tarleton's ghost?' He was quite surprised to hear himself asking this question. But she'll laugh and say that of course she never saw it, he thought. And that there are no such things.

‘Yes,' said Flora. ‘Yes, I did see it once.'

Toby looked at her in surprise. ‘You've never mentioned it before.'

‘It was a long time ago,' said Flora. ‘Before I married your father. And I was never actually sure what I had seen: it was one of those fog-ridden nights, so afterwards I thought I might have been mistaken.'

‘That's part of the legend, though. He's only ever been seen walking through the fog.'

‘Has he? I didn't know that. I daresay it's just that fog makes the story sound more eerie,' said Flora rather indifferently. Then she smiled, said something about hoping he would not work too hard in this killing heat, and went out of the room before he could ask any more questions. Toby could not decide if his reference to the ghost had upset her. Perhaps it had reminded her of her youth and made her feel a bit wistful. He thought he would not mention it again, and in any case he did not really want to know the ghost's provenance. He would rather keep it mysterious and timeless, so he could slot it into whatever century he liked, and allot to it whatever tragedy or melodrama or romance occurred to him. He wondered if this made him a thwarted romantic, or a ghost story writer manqué?

He saw the printers—there was going to be a rather good cover on this song sheet: a leery, beery gentleman in butler's attire winking at a mob-capped cook, with an improbably lush, cream-topped confection of the chef's art set between them. Toby approved the cover, and went back to the house to work on his new song. There was a large empty room next to his bedroom which he had turned into a study, importing a big oak desk, two comfortably battered chairs and most of his books.

After lunch, he heard his mother come upstairs and go into her own bedroom and close the door. It was quite unusual for her to retire to her room during the day, but the heat this summer was enough to drain anyone's energy. Toby carried on working and at six o'clock went out to Frank Douglas's comfortable, slightly battered rooms in Earls Court to see if they could fit music to his lyrics.

Frank was pleased with the proposed cover for ‘Tipsy Cake', and he loved the concept of the salary-distributing ghost in Toby's new lyrics. He adored making people laugh and he immediately sat down to improvise some beautifully semi-eerie, semi-comic music. They spent the evening polishing this and rehearsing the song, sending out for beer and hot steak pies halfway through. By midnight they were agreed that the song would be ready for Saturday night.

Toby had kept the first few lines exactly as they had formed in his head that evening in the theatre when he had heard Alicia walking about.

On Friday nights the ghost walks

Rattling its chains to itself;

Because that's the night the ghost hands out the pelf.

They agreed they would ask Rinaldi to turn down some of the footlights at that point, and Toby thought they might even have something clanked loudly off-stage to indicate chains, or even create echoing footsteps. Filling the rain-box with lead shot ought to work very effectively.

Two more lines followed the opening chorus, describing how the ghost shook its head mournfully at the amounts it had to pay out and bewailing the fact that it had never been paid half as much in its own heyday. Then came a verse listing the tribulations of the actors themselves as they waited for wages night.

There's sweet Daisy Croker who dances the polka

By Thursday she's gone to the nearest pawnbroker…

There's young Johnnie Smart Heels who turns fifty cartwheels

And adds a few tumbles to hide stomach rumbles…

And Leo the Strong Arm who don't come to much harm

Until he's deprived of his nightly half quartern…

But on Friday night the ghost walks,

Always as white as a sheet

Cheerless as sin, so they buy it some gin,

And some bedsocks for its feet.

Frank said the Saturday night audience would love it; almost all of them would understand about running out of money by Thursday and resorting to pawning things, and about enjoying a drink in the pub no matter how broke they might be.

By this time Toby was more or less resigned to the journey to Bosnia with Tranz. He had tried to think of a way to renege on it and had thought of at least three excuses that would hold water. The trouble was that he kept seeing Sonja Kaplen's contemptuous expression if he broke his word.

Flora Chance's bedroom overlooked the garden, and someone, probably Minnie, had opened the windows earlier on so the room was cool. The scent of lavender and lilac drifted in, mingling with the tang of herbs from the little kitchen garden. Parsley and thyme like the old song, and the cool sharpness of the mint. Fennel and rosemary. Rosemary was for remembrance, of course, everyone knew that old line, although Flora could never remember where it was from. Toby would probably know, she would ask him later.

She could hear a faint clatter of crockery from the kitchen—she and Hal were going to the theatre with some of his Foreign Office colleagues tonight and then entertaining them to supper here afterwards, so Flora would shortly have to make sure the preparations were all in hand. It would be what cook called an informal summer meal, but there would still be panics about whether the salmon mousse was setting and if the iced pudding would stay properly iced in the current heat. Flora would help the kitchen staff to solve these problems and it would be one of the many times when she would be secretly amused to think the girl from the East End could these days coolly give orders to a cook and supervise the correct laying of a table for ten people. I've come a long way, she thought with the self-deprecatory amusement this knowledge always gave her.

But only a small part of her heard these ordinary household sounds because the memories and ghosts were crowding in, blotting out everything else. Ghosts… One ghost in particular…

‘I've never asked if you ever saw the Tarleton's ghost?' Toby had said, and Flora had managed a light-hearted reply. She had seen it more than just once, that figure. And she had known who it was and what its purpose was, and that was the really dreadful part of those memories.

She leaned her face against the coolness of the windowpane. From Toby's room came the occasional snatch of piano music; he was no pianist, but he had a small upright piano in his room and he could play enough to help with the initial shaping of his lyrics. Busking it, he called it, smiling with his father's smile. Flora loved it when he looked like that. Toby was one of the very best things in her life: one of the shining things. He had said the new song was something to do with the hoary theatrical expression about the ghost walking—meaning the paying of wages to the actors at the end of the week.

The ghost… Memory looped back to the past once again, to a world very different to this present one. Twenty-seven years should not, realistically, make much of a difference to a city, but the London Flora had known then seemed nothing like it was today. That's a sign of increasing age if ever there was one, she thought wryly. But that London had been full of excitement and promise, of colour and discovery. There was new electric light and horseless carriages… Celebrations were in full swing for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee… Cumbersome bustles were giving way to a sleeker, more seductive cut for ladies' skirts…

And a rising young dancer called the Flowered Fan, appearing at the Tarleton Music Hall, was being pursued by two brothers—twins lately come to England from somewhere in Central Europe—who had both fallen obsessively and dangerously in love with her.

Flora was twenty-one, dancing her insouciant way through London music halls and starting to achieve a modest but gratifying success.

The Prince of Wales had seen her perform on two occasions and was known to have remarked that he considered her a very alluring lady, and there were admirers who sent flowers and who came to the stage door to take her to supper.

‘But don't bestow any favours, madam,' Minnie Bean said firmly. ‘Not until there's the sound of wedding bells.'

‘You're a fine one to talk,' said Flora. ‘You've bestowed a few favours in your time.'

In fact she did not intend to bestow any favours at all, but she enjoyed the suppers in the West End and the picnics and the days at race meetings. She accepted the gifts of flowers and chocolates, but always returned jewellery or clothes and on two occasions was known to have directed an extremely frosty stare at gentlemen who tried to give her money. This caused a rumour to start up that the Flowered Fan was cold-hearted, and a gentleman who had sent a cobweb-fine silk chemise along with a ten-pound note and a suggestive little message, used an uglier word.

Flora did not really mind. She would rather be considered cold-hearted or a cock-tease, than be thought of as a Piccadilly tart, and in fact the ardent attentions of some of her admirers really did leave her unmoved—so much so that she sometimes wondered if the accusation of cold-heartedness might be true. At the very least she seemed wholly unresponsive to any kind of love-making. She did not admit this to anyone because she felt it to be vaguely shameful, and she accepted the kisses—never anything more intimate than kisses—with suitably restrained appreciation.

For the rest of the time she worked hard at perfecting her dancing routines, helping to design her costumes and fans, and toying with the idea of taking singing lessons.

Minnie disapproved of this last idea (‘Stick to what you know you can do, madam'), but Minnie disapproved of most things on principle. One of things she disapproved of most strongly that autumn, was the presence of Anton and Stefan Reznik, who some people said were Romanian or Hungarian or even Russian, and others said hailed from Macedonia or Bulgaria or one of those confusing European countries. Although their English was excellent, everyone agreed, you had to say that for them. And they appeared to be acceptably wealthy and to possess
very
agreeable manners.

Whatever the Reznik twins' true nationality, they were in the front row to see the Flowered Fan dance on every possible occasion. Flora thought them both rather immature and somewhat intense, but for a while she quite enjoyed being seen with two such dramatic young men who were startlingly alike in appearance and could afford to take her to Simpsons and Rules, and introduce her to some of the raffish attractive people who frequented the Café Royale. They both declared their passionate love for her on every occasion they met, sometimes singly, but more usually in chorus, neither seeming to mind if the other twin was present to hear these avowals. Flora several times had the strong impression that they found one another's passion secretly arousing. This was disconcerting.

‘I don't know about disconcerting,' said Minnie. ‘What I do know is that four bare legs in a bed is natural, but six legs is a bit questionable.'

‘It happens, though,' said Flora. ‘Three in a bed.'

‘Yes, but if two of the three are brothers, then to my mind it's unnatural, in fact, not to mince words, I'd say it's downright perverted. Mind you aren't heading for trouble.'

‘I can deal with those two,' said Flora, although she was beginning to wonder if she could.

Still, she seemed to be dealing with them quite well until the night their shared passion erupted into something very dangerous indeed.