Seventy-Seven Clocks

∨ Seventy-Seven Clocks ∧

14

Occultation

Joseph shone the torch across a paint-streaked brick wall, then up into a network of distant blackened rafters. “Come on. It’s safe.”

“I have a problem with the dark,” she said, peering ahead. “It’s a stupid phobia. If there’s a light somewhere I’m okay.”

“There’s a junction box here that controls the lights.” The torch beam picked up a grey steel cabinet with electrical warning stickers pasted to the doors. “All the structural repair work has been completed, but I’m still not supposed to bring anyone else in here. If you fall through the floor you’re not covered by the insurance.”

They had entered the site of the Savoy Theatre through the wooden surround that encased the redbrick and Portland stone of the building’s ground floor. Joseph wrenched open a door of the cabinet and flicked a row of switches. A handful of dim emergency bulbs threw amber pools of light across the auditorium. Jerry tried to relax her breathing, not daring to think about the surrounding darkness.

Part of the interior of the theatre was still blackened and fire-ravaged, but the proscenium arch and the stage beyond it had been fully restored, and waited under sheets of heavy plastic to be unveiled once more before an audience.

“You wouldn’t think we were just two weeks away from opening, would you?” Joseph said. “Nobody thought it would ever open again after the fire. It doesn’t look as if the paintwork’s going to be dry by the time they admit the paying public. Theatres and restaurants – I’ve worked in both, and you’re always busy up to the last minute.”

Many of the surrounding seats had been newly installed, and were covered in cloths. As Jerry followed him down the side aisle, she could hear distant rain falling on glass far above them.

“Richard D’Oyly Carte was ahead of his time,” he called back. “His theatre was designed for all-round visibility, no matter what you’d paid for your ticket. He abolished tipping the attendants and gave them decent wages instead. Best of all, he ditched all the dingy dark walls and heavy velvets favoured by the Victorians. This whole place was a blaze of yellow satin, white and gold paintwork. The seats were bright blue and the boxes were red. And the vestibule floor was paved in black-and-white marble. It was a monument to light and cool style. The medieval palace of the Princes of Savoy used to stand on this site. I think Carte was trying to recapture that spirit.” He pulled himself up on the stage and beckoned for her to join him.

“The Tasaka Corporation are paying for most of the restoration,” he explained, walking to the rear of the stage. “They’ll also help to decide management policy.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re even half ready to open,” she said, clambering up on to the front of the stage.

“But we will be open, in the New Year. It will be a Japanese-British co-production, and they’ll have touring rights for the East. Mr Miyagawa is hoping that the Savoy will become a forum for world theatre. I keep thinking my luck will run out.”

Jerry watched as he strode back and forth across the stage, a tall figure dressed in black with an extraordinary knotted tumble of hair. She wanted to run up and press her fingers over his heart, to feel the life pulsing inside him.

Somewhere in the rear of the penumbral auditorium there was a yielding sound, like a roll of rope uncoiling. Jerry paused on the stair and listened. The slithering was lost in a renewed stress of rain on the roof. Ahead, metal drums and tangles of wiring blocked the way.

“Where are you?” she called. “Be careful you don’t fall over.”

“It’s okay,” he replied, his voice muffled by the curtain hanging at one side of the proscenium arch. “I know my way around.”

The sound which reached her ears this time was much nearer. A metallic rasping, as if steel cables were dropping past one another.

“Joseph,” she called, “are we the only people in here?”

There was no reply. The hanging lights strung across the stage flickered momentarily, causing patchwork light to jigsaw between the pipework and the walls.

“Joseph?” Jerry squeezed through the gap between a pair of steel stanchions and walked deeper into the stage area. The wings were dark with equipment and debris. Above, boards creaked as if a weight had been gently laid across them.

She glanced up, but could see nothing.

Surely he wouldn’t just have left her here? She walked slowly toward the orchestra pit, moving between deep pools of shade. The chill air pricked at the flesh on her arms, ghosts of the theatre passing by. It felt as if someone was watching her. She smiled at the thought; after all, she was standing on a stage.

There was a ping of metal, and a small steel bolt bounced on the floorboards beside her. She looked up at a gantry half covered in dust sheets. She sensed the figure before seeing it. A small man, wrapped in a brown cloth like some period stage character, was crouched between the bars like a motionless insect, staring silently down at her.

Jerry cried out in horror as the figure jumped to its feet and kicked away from the wall.

With a creak and a groan the gantry began moving toward her. Planks cascaded to the floor in a series of timed explosions. As she turned to run, she knew that the steel stack had been shoved free of its moorings, and would land on top of her. Ahead lay the orchestra pit, its depth impossible to calculate, its floor lost in shadow.

As the gantry dropped, she flung herself out into the darkness, her deepest fears made real.

The pit was shallower than she had expected. As she hit the ground, the gantry slammed on to the floor of the stage and broke into singing steel sections. Above her lay a twisted network of galvanized pipes. One of the fallen emergency lights was shining across her eyes. She raised herself on a bruised elbow as the sheeted figure scampered on to the scaffolding to peer down at her.

Jerry rolled to one side and thrust herself through the gap at the side of the pit, scrambling back into the aisle as the figure darted ahead. The door marked with an emergency exit symbol clanged shut behind him.

She gave chase and found herself in a red-painted passageway leading to the rear of the theatre. The bar of the external door slammed up with a hard echo, and she turned the corner to find it closing on her. Kicking it wide, she ran out into the downpour and caught sight of the ragged figure lurching away towards the Thames.

The rain-slick street impeded her progress as she slid on to the Embankment just yards behind the draped man. She could hear her attacker wheezing as he tried to stay ahead. They crossed to the river, where aureoles of light sparkled around the illuminated globes lining the Embankment, marking the causeway to the sea.

The road in front of her was deserted. There was nowhere for the fleeing beggar to escape or hide. Rain flapped rhythmically from his robes as he loped ahead, his head concealed beneath a dirty brown hat.

For a moment Jerry was reminded of her dream. The enclosing brick walls were absent, but the beggar was as deformed as her nightmare creatures. The image was too close for comfort, and her pace momentarily faltered.

A crippling stitch in her side caused her to drop further back. Her quarry veered out into the road, darting through the traffic, nimbly vaulting the fence into the park. Jerry doubled over in pain, her breath coming in hot gasps. There was no point in going on. She couldn’t believe that she had been outrun by what appeared to be a tramp. Pulling her shirttails above her belt, she examined her stomach and found the cause of the trouble. A long red welt was already darkening across the lower part of her ribcage. She had landed badly in the orchestra pit.

I disturbed the killer in his hiding place, she thought. He knew the police were looking for him. Perhaps he had nowhere else to go. Anxious to find Joseph, she reversed her direction and made a painful journey back to the theatre. She arrived to find him waiting outside for her. He was covered in dirt and dust.

“What happened to you?” she asked, slapping his shoulder angrily. “Why didn’t you answer me when I called?”

“I couldn’t. Someone shoved me into one of the bloody property cupboards.”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“How the hell should I know? I just felt his hands in the middle of my back. The next thing I knew, I was in complete darkness.”

“You’re big enough to take care of yourself. Why didn’t you do anything?”

“Because I was caught by surprise, that’s why.”

“Then why didn’t you call out?”

“I did, but the damned thing was filled with dust sheets. I nearly choked to death. There was an enormous bang, clanging metal, God knows what. I managed to get the door open, but I couldn’t find you anywhere. He’d turned all the lights off.”

“Then there must have been two of them. There was someone on the scaffolding. He tried to kill me.”

“Oh, come on…”

“You didn’t see him, but I did. He tipped the gantry over, nearly squashed me flat.”

“It couldn’t have been intentional.” Joseph looked back at the silent theatre. “What did he look like?”

“A tramp, I guess. No, more like an actor in a play, someone’s idea of what a tramp should look like.”

“That’s it, then,” said Joseph. He brushed at his sweater, but only succeeded in matting the dust into wet wool. “We disturbed a couple of tramps, probably scared the hell out of them.”

“This was no ordinary dosser, Joseph.”

“There are plenty of homeless kids in the Strand looking for somewhere to sleep. Maybe they managed to break into the theatre.”

“No, this was deliberate. He cut the gantry loose. And there was more than one – you were locked up to be kept out of the way.”

“Listen to yourself. You’re saying that someone tried to murder you.”

“Why not?” Jerry shouted. “They’re dropping like flies around this place, or did you forget? I’m already a witness to two deaths.”

“If you were a real witness you’d have seen who did it,” retorted Joseph calmly. “And you didn’t, did you?”

“That’s not the point. If other people can be attacked, why not me? The management’s called a security meeting for all hotel staff. They think we’re in danger. Maybe someone deliberately followed me into the theatre.”

“You’re a hotel clerk, you’re not selling state secrets to the Soviet Union. Why would someone pick on you?”

She felt a knot of rage in her stomach, the anger of not being taken seriously, of being dismissed as insignificant. It was the feeling that had dogged her ever since she was a child.

“Why wouldn’t they?” she cried. “What’s so different about me?”

“You make it sound like you want to be part of it, like you’ve got some kind of victim complex.”

“I just want – ”

“Jerry, I’ve a really big day tomorrow, and I have to get some sleep. Can we talk about it some other time?”

“Well, I’m pleased that you’ve got your career,” she shouted pointlessly, desperately. “I’m glad everything’s so damned perfect in your life. You’re not the only one who’s going to do great things, Mr Ego. You’d be amazed at what I could do!”

“Probably,” he called wearily. “It’s been a weird evening and I’m going to bed. Good night, Jerry. Get some rest.” She kicked out against the wooden casement surrounding the theatre, kicking again and again until stinging tears of fury were forced from her eyes. Above the darkened theatre, the rain stippled the city in glittering sheets.