Last Act (24 page)

“I know I won't.” She would not have long in which to do so. Nor want it, if all Michael had for her was gratitude. And yet, she made herself face it at last, she should be glad of this. Michael would be sorry when she died. That would be all. That must be enough.

“You're feeling all right?” Something in her tone had made Carl anxious.

“Stage-fright. Naturally. I'll be fine when we get started.”

“That's what they all say. There, the orchestra are tuning up. God, Annchen, I wish I had something to do!”

“You'd better get round to the front of the house,” she said. “There must be someone you ought to be welcoming.”

“They're all here! No one was chancing being late today. Not with the battle for seats, and the crowd outside. Listen to them.” He opened the greenroom door a crack, and behind the tuning of the orchestra she could hear the good-humoured roar of the audience.

“They don't sound as if they were going to throw things,” she said.

“Of course they're not. Don't even think about it. You're right, though. I must go round to the front. Annchen, I'm counting on you.”

She laughed. “Carl, dear, sound a little more certain when you speak to the press, or you might find you did more harm than good.”

“Does it show so? It's my great chance, Anne!”

“I know. But there's always Monday. After all, too good a dress rehearsal is supposed to be unlucky.”

“Not when it's a preview with half the world's press present.”

“As many as that? Ah, there's the five-minute call,” she said with relief. “Good luck to us all, Carl dear.”

“Dear Anne, you're a miracle.” He took both her hands, kissed them warmly and left.

She must forget Michael, forget everything. She was an idealistic young Roman, doomed to death. And that at least was true. A roar of applause from the audience told her that Falinieri had taken his place on the podium, and then came the miraculous hush as the last, tuning instruments fell silent one by one. As audience, it was almost her favourite moment, the pure anticipation of what was to come. As performer, it left her shivering with a mixture of fear and excitement. She settled her helmet firmly on her head and moved out into the corridor to hear the overture better. The chorus were already in place,
offstage, but ready to file on when the opera began; first white-clad Romans from the right, eagerly expecting the return of their hero, Regulus, then, massed against them, the threatening crimson of the Carthaginians, to form a background for her own entry with Regulus.

No need to go down yet, and it was quiet here. Mrs Riley and her assistants were down there checking the chorus for last-minute adjustments. She could listen to the overture in peace. But she must not let it make her cry as it had once or twice when the theme of her last duet with Regulus was introduced, then modulated into her farewell to his daughter Livia. Extraordinary and rather eerie to be so totally alone in the backstage rabbit warren. Or rather sidestage, she thought, remembering that the Roman chorus had had to take their places on the far side of the stage before the theatre had been opened to the audience.

The overture was rising to its climax and she had forgotten even to think of shedding a dangerous tear. Time to go down and join Adolf Stern for their entrance. A whisper from the audience, like wind over a cornfield, greeted the end of the overture and then came the slow, throbbing notes to which the Roman chorus would be beginning to file onstage. She took a deep breath, a diver about to take the plunge, and went down to where Adolf Stern was awaiting her.

“Colossal!” Carl had hurried round behind the scenes for the opera's one, long interval. “They're drunk with it. I love you all.”

“We love ourselves,” said Anne. “It
is
going well, isn't it?”

“Better than I've ever heard you. And not a movement wrong, so far.”

“'So far.'” Stern took him up on it. “Why should there be a movement wrong, pray? Are you looking for trouble, Herr Meyer?”

“Of course not. My unlucky turn of speech. I just wanted to say, it's tremendous. You're tremendous. All of you. Beyond anything I had imagined … hoped for. And—one other thing. The press have asked for a photo call after this performance. The stage hands are willing. Well, it suits them. Much more convenient now than after Monday's late show. If you don't mind?” It was addressed to the principals, but the chorus too were all there in the crowded greenroom, since the Romans had filed quietly across the open stage when the auditorium lights went up and the audience turned away at last to push towards the bar.

“My contract only calls for one photo call.” Adolf Stern answered the general question.

“This is it,” said Carl. “Anything else will be separately negotiated. I do beg you, Herr Stern.”

“Disorganisation,” said Stern. “We should have been notified sooner. But”—he set his helmet at a jauntier angle—” since you ask it, I think we should agree.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Anne, and the others joined in.

“
Thank you
” Carl was sweating with anxiety. “And, then, as you know, there is the reception Prince Rudolf is giving for press and cast after the performance. The valley outside is as crowded as ever. It looks as if people are settling down for the night, and the police do not want to create a disturbance by removing them. So—His Highness asks that you will be so kind as to come straight to the hotel, all together, in costume, so that the police can protect your walk up the arcade.”

“We can't go back to the hostel and change?” asked Gertrud,

“I'm afraid not. Your day clothes will be taken back there, and your costumes collected first thing tomorrow. The Prince apologises deeply for any inconvenience, and begs you will recognise that it is entirely due to the brilliance of your performance, on which he congratulates you.”

“And no doubt he plans to squeeze some more publicity out of our being in costume,” said Adolf Stern, but his voice was drowned by the ringing of a warning bell.

If possible, the second half of the opera went even better than the first. The audience had had time to compare notes, and approve, over drinks in the luxurious foyer. When they filed back into the house, Anne could hear the higher note of expectancy, and knew that, barring disaster, they were safe.

So far there had been no moment when she could even think of looking up at those dangerous side-galleries, but halfway through the last act, Regulus caught her and his daughter Livia in each other's arms—a scene that Anne oddly disliked playing with Gertrud. It was a relief to stand back while Regulus rebuked his daughter. And, since the audience's attention was focussed on Regulus and Livia, it gave her a chance to look quickly up to right and left. The central section of the audience was blacked out, but the two galleries of cut-price seats were dimly illuminated by the stage lights and she could just see their occupants, sitting still as death, apparently riveted by the performance. Impossible to recognise faces, but at least she knew that Michael was there.

The music called her attention back to the stage. Frau Bernz, Regulus' wife, had just made her entrance, and it was time for
Anne to join the three others in the quartet that she thought the high point of the opera. Regulus' wife and daughter had recognised at last that nothing would turn him from his resolve to keep his word and go back to Carthage, torture, and certain death. Finally accepting this, his daughter turned to Anne, to Marcus, her lover, and urged that he at least take the path of wisdom and stay in Rome, with her.

“Never.” Anne could feel the impact of her cry on the audience. From then on, as the opera rose, stage by triumphant stage, to her final exit with Regulus, and the blood-red Carthaginian chorus closing in behind them, Anne knew that nothing could touch them. The opera was where it should always have been, safe in the eternal canon of music.

Only, at last, taking the first of the many curtain calls Carl had planned, “in case,” she found herself thinking again of those side-galleries full of dissatisfied tradesmen, and became, on the thought, aware that they were indeed throwing something. But it was rose petals, crimson and white, not unpaid bills, that came gently fluttering down onto the stage. Smiling, bowing; bowing, smiling, she looked in vain for Michael as the house lights went up at last. Had he not waited for the end?

Even with the house lights on, it began to seem as if the applause would never stop, but finally the audience began to drift away, and the exhausted, euphoric cast assembled on stage for the long business of picture-taking. By the time the last photographer was satisfied, or rather, when the stage hands and electricians proclaimed that they had had enough and began to leave, it was after eight o'clock—the time when the Prince's reception began. “Lucky we don't have to go back and change,” Anne said to Hilde Bernz as they hurried to their dressing-rooms.

“I'll say. Are you going just as you are?”

“I think so. Just pick up my watch and purse. A bit absurd, with the costume, but I can't help it.”

“And leave the makeup? It will look pretty frightful close to.”

“You're right.” Anne sighed. “Besides, I haven't got any theatrical remover back at the hostel. Oh, well, I'll see you.”

The dressing-room was full of flowers, and she looked quickly through the cards so as to thank any of the senders who would be
at the reception, then began the slow task of removing the expertly applied makeup that turned her from young woman to younger man. She was interrupted by the telephone. “Yes?” she picked it off its hook.

Silence. “Yes?” she said again, and heard breathing—quiet, steady. “What is it?” And then, trying for a German phrase, “
Was ist?
”

Still nothing but that heavy, regular breathing. A crank, of course. She replaced the receiver, and went back to work on her face, only to have the bell ring again. She picked the receiver up, heard the same breathing, replaced and lifted it at once to call the operator. But the connection had not been severed; she got the breathing again. A practical joke, merely. She would ignore it. Her hands had been sticky with makeup remover when she lifted the receiver and as a result it had come off black on them. She washed them quickly in the small basin in the corner of the room and went back to work, ignoring the phone, which had been silent for a while, but now rang again. This was all taking too long. The others would be waiting for her; she was making them all late for the Prince's reception. Her hands were beginning to shake from the long strain of the day. She washed her face, quickly and ruthlessly, then went to the cupboard for her purse and the bag with her own makeup.

Odd. She thought she had left them on the top shelf, above the hanger with her fur jacket. No sign of them there. Desperate now, she looked quickly on the cupboard floor behind her shoes, but the two bags were not there either. On the chair, then, under her clothes? She could see they were not. Absurd. She could not possibly have lost them in this tiny, bare room. Fighting panic, she looked on the shelf above the basin, knowing all the time that they were not there. The telephone rang again and she picked it up automatically, still looking wildly round the room. “Found your bag yet?” asked the croaking, whispering voice. “Now, listen, you murderess …”

“Murder?” It startled her into a reply, which she knew at once was a mistake.

“How did you do it? Tamper with the steering? Fix the brakes? Or drug their drinks? My little sister never drank. Nor
did that husband of yours.”

“Robin!” She was shocked into silence. What horror from the past was this?

“Yes, Robin. Your fine husband who seduced my sister; carried her off to England; promised her marriage. I don't care about what you did to him. He deserved everything he got. But my sister; you killed my sister, you …”

She listened, horrified, to the whispered string of obscenities, then slammed down the receiver, pulled her fur jacket from its hanger and hurried out of the room—anywhere to get away from that odious voice from the past and its unspeakable suggestions. In the corridor, she paused. It was all too quiet. Held by that horrible voice, she must have taken longer than she had realised, and the others had all gone on down and would be awaiting her impatiently in the greenroom. She had thought of borrowing makeup from Hilde, but now this seemed a trivial waste of time; she merely longed for the comfort of company. She hurried along the empty, echoing corridor, past the half open doors of other dressing rooms, and down the steep flight of stairs that led to the greenroom, her apologies ready on her lips.

At the bottom of the stair she stopped dead. Not a sound from the greenroom. Impossible. But it was empty. She hurried across it to the door that led through to the front of the house. Locked. Impossible again. How could they have gone without her? Locked her in? Another way out? From the stage down into the orchestra pit? A climb, but not a difficult one. All some absurd muddle; the result of the long, exhausting day. She almost ran back and through to the huge stage, then stopped at sight of the heavy asbestos safety curtain which was normally only lowered once, during the interval. Now it effectively blocked her escape that way.

Escape? On the thought, the lights went out. She drew in her breath to shout to the one remaining electrician for help, then held it. The electrician's box commanded a total view of the stage. Impossible that whoever was up there was not aware of her presence. he must have blacked her out on purpose. A practical joke? No. She made herself let her breath out quietly … steadily. Someone wanted very much to frighten her, and
someone was succeeding. Frighten? Hurt? Kill?

“Murderess,” the voice had called her. Was the speaker up there now, in the electrician's box, gloating in anticipation of revenge? It was a thought to chill the blood. Almost instinctively, she began to move, in the total darkness—not back towards the greenroom, but out on to the huge stage. The electrician's box was reached by a stair and long corridor from the greenroom. Whoever had been up there would have to come down that way, and in the dark. It gave her a little time.