Abracadaver

CHAPTER

3

SERGEANT CRIBB, IN OPERA hat and Inverness cape, whistled a music hall tune to the rhythm of the cab-horse’s canter along Southwark Street, while Constable Thackeray, equally dazzling beside him, wrestled with insubordinate thoughts. The plain clothes allowance for detective-constables was a shilling a day: generous on the face of it, even allowing that there were long intervals of uniformed duty. Indeed, his total allowances for this year must have come close to Cribb’s statutory ten pounds. But plain clothes, in Thackeray’s opinion, were plain clothes. When a man spent a week’s wages on a swallow-tail suit for an occasional evening’s melodrama at the Lyceum he did not expect to be ordered to wear it to a common music hall. Scotland Yard might own you body and soul, but it was a confounded liberty to assume they owned your best suit as well.

He was not comforted by the spectacle of the crowds along the approach to the Grampian. Each Saturday evening the unwashed of south London converged there in hundreds for threepenny gallery tickets. On a wet evening like this one, when they huddled together under the gaslamps, you could positively see a noxious yellow vapour rising from their clothes. It was all very well for Cribb to make a lofty promise to book a stage-box. What was that worth against a jostling from a coal-bargee’s corduroys as you struggled through the lobby? For Thackeray at that moment, in his tailor-made twill, it was very nearly a resignation issue.

At the entrance, an enormous Corinthian portico, quite outrageous in the architecture of Blackfriars Road, you had to pass a phalanx of salespeople before you even joined the throng struggling to obtain tickets. The cabman had scarcely reined in when a barefoot boy jumped on to the step, wrenched open the door and demanded a tip. Behind him converged match-girls, and walnut-men, beggar-boys and a troupe of young women who gave Thackeray sufficient grounds for arresting them at once. Instead, he observed a studied indifference, nonchalantly stroking his beard while Cribb paid the fare.

At what cost to his suit Thackeray dared not contemplate, he edged towards the first-class box-office behind Cribb, grimly clutching the brim of his hat. The stench of the crowd brought water to his eyes; he was ready to abandon the sergeant altogether if they were unable to book a box, where the fumes rising from the footlights usually obliterated all other odours. At length they arrived at a hole in the wall and Cribb pushed a florin forward. An oddly-illuminated face inside creased into a grimace. Perhaps for a small consideration the two gentlemen might like the management to arrange for a pair of dainty companions to share their box? Cribb turned and lifted a wicked eyebrow. Thackeray shook his head so emphatically that he felt his hat slip round. He hoped to Heaven Cribb was joking.

Taking the numbered tin disc which served as a ticket, an old crone, their boxkeeper, led them through a darkened passage not unlike the corridors of Newgate, except that this one was lined with unaccompanied young ladies. The detectives marched resolutely past, their feet crunching on a carpet of walnut-and filbert-shells. They mounted some stairs, paid the old woman her due and entered their box.

‘Now there’s a high old scene!’ said Cribb with undisguised relish. The position of their box, some ten feet above stage-level and actually built on to the fore-stage, gave a view of the entire auditorium, brilliantly lit by six huge sun-burners turned fully on. Nine rows of tables extended from the orchestra pit along the length of the sanded floor into shadow and smoke beneath the circle. There, shopmen and clerks sat in hundreds, in snowy shirts and dress-suits with recklessly cut-down waistcoats and protruding crimson handkerchiefs—the swells of Southwark that night for two shillings and the price of a buttonhole. A barrage of gin-born good humour passed between tables, punctuated by occasional sharp reports and cheers as somebody collapsed an opera hat or withdrew a cork. Women with cigarettes and painted eyes sat bonnet to bonnet with respectable wives and saucer-eyed children. At intervals the chorus of a music hall song rose and died somewhere in the hall to a measure of stamping feet. At the sides of the seated area beyond the railings and the promenades were the bars, glittering with brass and pewter, polished beer-pumps and gilded mirrors, where overworked waiters urged barmaids to hurry with their orders. Even when their trays were loaded, they still faced the frustration of struggling for a passage between the press of promenaders to reach the tables.

Corinthian columns sprouted here and there as supports for the sixpenny gallery, which was fronted by an army of plaster and gilt cherubs pursuing buxom nymphs among the gas-brackets. Less lavishly, the bowler-hatted customers above were ranged on plank-seats without cushions. In the cheapest gallery above that, where up to a thousand of the lower orders massed, there were no seats provided—only crowd barriers to prevent a disaster.

‘Seeing it from this viewpoint,’ remarked Thackeray, ‘I’m uncommon thankful I don’t have to give a performance.’

‘At a wage of ten pounds or more I’d sing a couple of songs all right,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s more than the Chief Superintendent himself takes home. They say the Vital Spark—Miss Jenny Hill—is booked for more than fifty a week.’

‘I think they earn every penny of it, Sarge, skedaddling across London in cabs to fit in three or four halls a night.’

Cribb sniffed. ‘I suppose you think you’re better off padding your hoof round Bermondsey all night for thirty-five bob a week, after thirty years’ service.’

The opening of the door behind them stifled Thackeray’s reply.

‘Now ’ere’s two ’andsome gentlemen what look the sort to ’ave one of me kidney-pies,’ said the fat woman. ‘You won’t? They’re ’ot and fresh, I warrant you, gents. No? Perhaps I could fetch you up a plate of natives, then? Swill ’em down with your fizz.’

Cribb glanced towards Thackeray, who had a weakness for oysters.

‘Not on thirty-five bob,’ the constable said with a smile.

Action below, the arrival of the orchestra, was greeted with hoots and cheering from the auditorium. The sun-burners were turned low and the footlights flickered into tall, yellowish flames. The conductor took his stance among the instrumentalists and bowed with great seriousness. This evoked a storm of good-natured abuse, which he summarily quelled with the overture to ‘Carmen’.

A waiter arrived in the box and was sent for two pints of Bass East India, ‘But don’t for a moment forget you’re on duty,’ Cribb warned Thackeray, shouting to compete with the orchestra. ‘At the first sign of an accident you’re going down on to that stage.’

The constable nodded, and peered over the drop to the boards. He was no coward, but he had a shrewd idea that fourteen stone descending ten feet that way would add another name to the casualty-list. Fortunately the moulding on the front of the box suggested a safer route. By taking a hand-hold on a cupid’s upturned rump he could reach the curtain of the box below. From there, if nothing gave way, a sliding descent would bring him smoothly to stage-level.

‘Sometimes they make something look like a mishap to give the audience a thrill, Sarge. Like a trapeze-artiste dropping off his trapeze and then being caught by his partner. I wouldn’t want to make a—’

‘What are you saying?’ bawled Cribb.

‘It don’t matter,’ said Thackeray, philosophically.

The overture ended with a clash of cymbals, and a beam of limelight from the circle picked out a small table at the front of the hall. The chairman, a hulk of unbelievable girth, doffed his hat.

‘On your feet!’ demanded the audience.

He shook his head. His chins quivered like a freshly turned-out blancmange.

‘Up! Up! Up!’

Unperturbed, he lit a cigar, and the chanting rose to a frenzy.

He placed his hands on the edge of the table, leaned forward slowly, flexed, strained and then subsided, shaking his head.

‘Lord bless you, Billy,’ somebody shouted. ‘You can’t manage it no more!’ Half the audience doubled up laughing.

Three knocks from Billy’s gavel restored order. ‘Stow your jaws!’ he commanded in a voice that brooked no nonsense. ‘And watch this.’

He handed the gavel and his cigar to one of the guests at his table and another cleared its surface of tankards. With profound concentration, Billy placed his palms flat on the table like a medium, took a huge breath, and commenced rocking slowly forward from his chair-back. Then with a decisive grunt he projected himself suddenly forward and up from the seat. There was an agonising second of uncertainty as his arms took the strain, before his legs straightened and he stood erect, his small eyes darting contemptuously over the audience. Thunderous applause revived his good humour. Again he sounded the gavel.

‘Well, you merciless rabble, since I ’appen to be on my feet I might as well tell you what you’ve got in store tonight. It’s a regular jamboree of delights—a bill that’ll touch your ’earts while it’s ticklin’ your fancies at the same time.’ (Exaggerated groans from the regulars and shrieks of scandalised laughter from the pit.) ‘And not a word nor a sight to offend even the most delicate-minded females among you.’ (‘Shame!’) ‘You think so, madam? So do I. Meet me after the show and I’ll remedy that deficiency.’ (‘Oy! Oy!’ from the gallery.) ‘But now without more ado to the first delicacy of the evening. Fresh from ’er successes at the London Pavilion’ (an awed shout of ‘Ooh!’) ‘the Metropolitan’ (‘Ooh!’) ‘and the Tivoli Garden,’ (a prolonged, suggestive ‘Ah!’) ‘here to charm you with her ditties,’ (‘Lovely!’) ‘Miss Ellen Blake!’

A flurry of violin-bows; the strains of Fresh as the New-Mown Hay; the irresistible chink of curtain-rings; and Miss Blake was revealed in a long satin dress with broad white and lilac stripes, palms extended across the safety-rail and head thrust back to catch the glow of the footlights on her neck and chin. Wayward wisps of blonde hair fluttered against her bonnet in the upsurge of warm air. Constable Thackeray found himself reconsidering a spectacular leap to the rescue.

‘She’s a stunner, ain’t she, Sarge?’

‘Keep yourself in check, man. Lord, you’re foaming at the mouth.’

‘That’s the head on the ale, Sarge,’ protested Thackeray, wiping his beard with a large chequered handkerchief.

Miss Blake’s assault upon Fresh as the New-Mown Hay may have lacked somewhat in gusto, but the rapid transition after that to ‘Moonlight Promenade’ was executed with undoubted professionalism. This was a stronger melody, and involved a few mincing steps to right and left in which the emphasis was diverted from her voice to her figure, to the general satisfaction of the audience. Even so, she was having to compete with pockets of conversation from the galleries and open lack of interest at some of the tables. And when the opening bars of a third song were played, there were blatant groans.

‘Take a hold on yourself, Thackeray, for God’s sake,’ said Cribb. ‘You look as solemn as a blasted tombstone. She’s getting a damned good hearing. Wasn’t many years ago they covered the orchestra with netting to protect them from rotten fruit that fell short of duff performers.’

The sprinkle of applause at the end was more in relief than enthusiasm, but Miss Blake seemed satisfied, took her curtseys, blew kisses to someone still enthusiastic enough to whistle, and left the stage.

‘And now to chill your precious ’earts,’ announced the chairman from his seated position, ‘we ’ave a visitor from the wilds of North America. You’ve ’eard of ’Iawatha? Yes, my friends, a genuine Red Indian. What do you think ’e calls ’imself? Not Runnin’ Water—no-one cares for that ’ere. Not Bleedin’ Wolf—there’s enough of them about already. No, ladies, it’s your ’eart-throb, the man with the ’atchets—Gleamin’ Blade!’

Cymbals crashed, the front-cloth was lifted up into the flies, and the mediums, sets of coloured glass worked on the lever principle, filtered the footlight flames, to immerse the stage in Satanic crimson. A prancing Red Indian, with a tomahawk in each hand, dominated the centre, whooping and chanting. Upstage was a board the size of a door, surmounted with a totem-like carved head. The redskin momentarily interrupted his war-dance to hurl a tomahawk in that direction. It cut into the wood with a fearful thud. The audience’s unified gasp died in their throats as the second tomahawk was buried deep beside the first. With a shriek, the Indian retrieved both weapons and leapt round to face the audience. Thackeray tensed. Cribb’s restraining hand touched his arm. A drum-roll promised fresh horrors. ‘My God, Sarge! Look over there!’ Waiting out of sight of the rest of the audience in the wings opposite was a young woman in fleshings and a skimpy bodice and breech-clout. A single vertical feather was attached to her head. The hatchet-thrower now ran to the side of the stage, grabbed her wrist and pulled her, apparently struggling to escape, towards the board. There were screams from several parts of the hall.

‘Be ready, then,’ said Cribb, ‘but wait for the word from me!’

Thackeray leaned forward, poised for sudden movement, like the survivor in a game of musical chairs. On the stage below, the girl was being secured by rope to the totem. The Indian spoke a few words to her and then backed some twelve feet away. She waited, helplessly spreadeagled, as the drum-roll began again.

‘Not yet,’ muttered Cribb.

At the Indian’s feet were six tomahawks, glinting in the sinister illumination. He stooped for the first two. The drums reached their climax. His arm swung back behind his head and with a fiendish shriek he flung the first weapon. It hit the board, shuddering, six inches to the left of her waist.

‘One!’ shouted those of the audience able to speak.

The second tomahawk matched the first on the right.

‘Two!’

He picked up two more. The first came perilously close to her left knee.

‘Three!’

‘Four!’

The last two. They would have to be aimed at each side of her head. The Indian sighted his throw and, with awful menace, slowly drew back the weapon. A yell!

‘Five!’ Within two inches of the ear.

A final drum-roll.

The hurtling blade shimmered in flight.

‘Six!’ Shouted in huge relief, and topped with a storm of clapping and stamping.

‘Sometimes they try it again blindfold,’ suggested Cribb to Thackeray, who was paler than the Indian maiden.

Then—surprise—normal gaslight was restored and there were two unmistakably European performers removing their head-dresses to receive their salute from the enraptured audience.

‘Capital act!’ said Cribb, applauding energetically.

‘It’s left me feeling like a glass of beer gone flat.’

A large 3 was already in place on the frame to their right where the order of the acts was charted. Nobody appeared to have a programme, so the information was valuable only to the chairman. ‘If that last act ’orrified the ladies a little too much, I’ve got some news to set your minds at rest, girls. We ’ave with us tonight two outstandin’ guardians of the peace. Yes, the boys in blue are with us tonight . . .’

‘Blimey, Sarge. We’ve been spotted.’

‘Steady, Constable.’

‘. . . Those two favourite myrmidons of the Law, P.C.s Salt and Battree!’

The act-drop had been lowered during the announcement, and now two performers dressed as uniformed police officers marched in step to the centre of the stage, the second ludicrously close behind the first. Predictably, there was a collision when they stopped in mid-stage, emphasised with cymbals.

‘Lord save us!’ said Cribb. ‘Not one of these lunatic displays!’

‘Watch yerselves!’ shouted one of the performers. ‘I’m watching you!’

‘Guying the Force is just about the favourite occupation of your fair-minded British general public,’ grumbled Cribb. ‘There ain’t been a pantomime since Grimaldi without a flatfooted constable blundering about with a string of sausages. And there’s more bluebottles on the music halls than there is in the Metropolitan: Vance, Stead, Arthur Lloyd, Edward Marshall—even Gilbert and Sullivan are up to it now. Blasted scandal, it is. Home Secretary wants to look into it, in my opinon.’

‘I’m the man wot takes to pris’n

He who steals wot isn’t his’n

X yer know is my Division

Number ninety-two,’ sang P.C. Salt.

Both artistes now produced authentic police-rattles, which they sprang, to the delight of the audience.

‘We could take ’em in for having police property, Sarge,’ suggested Thackeray.

‘It ain’t the night for it,’ growled Cribb, hunched over the box-front, with his hands over his face, watching the performance between his fingers.

Another song got under way:

‘They gave us an ’elmet and a greatcoat

And armlets to wear upon our sleeve

An ’andsome tunic too

In regulation blue

But now we’ve rattled our rattles we want to leave—

All together now—But now we’ve rattled our rattles we want to leave.’

‘Damned disgrace!’ said Cribb.

‘Watch yerselves!’ shouted P.C. Battree, ‘I’m watching you!’

‘These buffoons earn more for five minutes of this rubbish than you and I would get for a week’s beat-bashing,’ continued the sergeant. ‘And here we are protecting ’em. If this pair suffer an attack, you and I are taking the long way down to the stage, Thackeray.’

Whistles from the audience greeted a pretty young woman who had joined the officers on the stage. Her dress had a certain theatricality about it, but it was her mode of walking—characterised by a singular mobility in the region of the hips—that left no-one in any doubt as to the class of person she represented. After several exaggerated backward glances, P.C.s Salt and Battree began their final chorus:

‘Poor old feet

Out on the beat

Pursuin’ the enforcement of the Law.

But you gets a saucy wink

And the offer of a drink

And that prevents yer feet from gettin’ sore—

Once more now—And that prevents yer feet from gettin’ sore!’

Then, with arch nods and pointing, to leave the audience in no doubt of their intention, they trotted off in pursuit of their assistant, shortly afterwards returning with her to take their bow.

‘At least we didn’t have to go to their aid,’ said Thackeray, conscious of the fury in Cribb’s silence.

‘If I ever meet ’em in the course of duty, they’ll need aid all right.’

The curtain descended and the limelight returned to the chairman’s table. ‘And now, my friends, after that rare entertainment, not being a temperance-observer, I shall enjoy a tipple of fizz generously subscribed by the table on my right. The show proceeds with a redoubtable display of manly vigour from that sovereign of strong men, the ’Ercules of Rotherhithe, the great Albert.’

Albert’s props were the most interesting so far. He stood like some eccentric costermonger behind a substantial platform on wheels, neatly stacked with an extraordinary array of articles: books, folded clothes, the plinth for a statue, a top-hat, flags, a picnic-hamper and three sets of bar-bells. With a nod to the conductor, a cue for the Anvil Chorus, Albert mounted his platform and stood with legs apart, chest inflated and head in profile to the auditorium, and then clasped his hands so that his biceps bobbed up like ferrets in a sack. He was wearing a one-piece costume of the type introduced by Leotard, the original Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. Generous applause greeted this display of muscularity, so Albert climbed on to his plinth, leaned forward, positioned his legs carefully, and assumed the classic stance of the Discobolus.

‘Pose Plastique,’ explained Cribb authoritatively. ‘The man’s got a fine body. Pity about the moustache, though. Don’t look like ancient Greece to me.’

Albert now descended and progressed to a series of lifts with the bar-bells, accompanied by intermittent chords from the brass section and exhortations from the gallery. Just as the interest was threatening to flag, a novelty was introduced, in the person of an extremely stout, florid-faced woman in long white robes and a hat with red, white and blue ostrich feathers.

‘Blimey!’ shouted someone from the gallery. ‘Keep away from Albert, missus. You’ll rupture ’im.’

The lady’s contribution to the performance was soon made clear, however. While Albert ducked behind his platform to change his costume, she curtseyed and made the following announcement: ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, in a tribute to a most distinguished member of our race, my son Albert gives his unique portrayal of the bard, Shakespeare!’

There, leaning against his plinth in the pose of the monument in Westminster Abbey, was Albert, with legs crossed, one arm resting on a pile of volumes on the plinth, the other holding an unfurled scroll. He wore breeches, doublet and cloak and a false beard. When the impact of this tableau was fully appreciated, he placed both hands on the edge of the plinth and gracefully upended himself into a slow handstand, the cloak draping itself elegantly over the back of the plinth. Then to a drum-roll and a powerful gesture from his mother’s right arm, Albert removed one of his hands from the plinth and remained poised on the other. The audience broke into open cheering. Theatres like Drury Lane and the Lyceum might have their Shakespeare; only the Grampian had him upside down on one hand!

‘Had me worried for a moment,’ admitted Cribb, when the strong man had righted himself. ‘There was the makings of a nasty little accident there. What are they doing now?’

Albert had disappeared behind the platform again for a change of costume while his mother occupied the centre of the stage with a Union Jack. To the strains of a patriotic tune, she began singing in a strong contralto,

‘O’er all the mighty world by British sons unfurled

The red and white and blue!

But to drag it in the mire now seems the sole desire

Of Gladstone and his crew.’

Unshaken by the mixed reception this got, she proceeded to:

‘Oh England, who shall shield thee from the shame?

And thy sons and thy daughters who shall save?

But we cherish in our hearts that one undying name—

Lord Beaconsfield, now lying in his grave!

Ladies and gentlemen, my son Albert now portrays the Greatness of Britain and her Empire!’

From the dangerous area of political controversy, the limelight made a timely return to Albert, now standing on the platform, which had been cleared of everything but a huge bar-bell and the picnic-basket. He was dressed convincingly as John Bull. A portentous thrumming from the orchestra-pit promised something even more spectacular than Shakespeare upside down.

John Bull spat into each hand and crouched at the bar-bell as the drumming slowly increased in volume. He braced, strained and began to lift, his veins protruding with the effort. The bar itself bowed impressively as it took the weight of the massive iron balls. He hauled it to the level of his knees. His hips. The Union Jack on his chest. His chin. His top-hat. Finally the lift was complete, his arms fully extended above his head, his legs vibrating with the colossal strain.

The role of the picnic-basket was now explained. While Albert bravely held his stance, his mother began unstrap-ping the lid.

‘Fancy bothering to strap it up, Sarge,’ murmured Thackeray. ‘The poor cove has to stand holding that lot above his head while she—Good Lord!’

One second of action transformed the scene. From the basket struggled a large white bulldog with a Union Jack tied about its middle. Snarling ferociously, it sank its teeth into the nearest of Albert’s quivering calves. His howl of pain echoed through the theatre, even after the crash of the bar-bell descending straight through the platform. Man and dog, still attached, disappeared in a mass of splintered wood.

‘That’s it, Thackeray!’ shouted Cribb. ‘Get the dog!’

Whether Thackeray used the route he had planned he could not remember afterwards; his descent was a four-second fumbling confusion among gilt bosoms and bottoms and torn curtains. But his debut on the stage was impeccable. The great Irving could not have moved with more despatch to the battered structure at the centre of the stage, pulled the debris aside with more vigour or seized the collar of the bulldog with more resolve. So surprised was the animal that it relaxed its grip on Albert and found itself hoisted by collar and tail-stump and clapped into the basket before uttering another growl.