Resonance (2 page)

H
E TOOK THE
gravel driveway in long, crunching strides. Despite his vile cargo, Cornelius registered the breeze, fresh and subtle against his skin, the scent of flowers and trill of birdsong. He had not been outside in … how long? Weeks? Yes, certainly weeks, possibly even months. Why had he forsaken this simple pleasure? It was too easy to forget how good it felt, simply being alive.

Still walking, he glanced back at the house. Vincent, a dim figure now in the distant window, placed his hand
against the glass, his palm a stark pink against the blackness of his skin.

Pale vapours of mist closed in unexpectedly, obscuring the view. Cornelius looked down. The gravel at his feet was harsh with frost. To his right, the dark expanse of the pond stretched away in frozen silence. The birdsong was muffled here, as if he had left sound behind in the brighter reaches of the garden.

Something in the stillness made him falter. He stared out across the brooding ice, listening for he knew not what. There was a sense of held breath here. A sense of something sleeping, just about to stir. Cornelius shuddered, uncertain, almost frightened.

Then two shapes moved within the mist, sidling through the reeds at the edge of the ice, and he huffed with recognition and relief.

‘Come, then,’ he called. ‘Come on.’

The shapes resolved themselves into the great shaggy forms of his dogs. They slunk towards him, their heads low between their massive shoulders, their eyes on the dripping box in his hands. For a moment, Cornelius thought of letting them have the rabbit – it would be an end to the poor thing, after all – but the idea that they might run off without eating it and bury it in the grounds was just too awful, so he snapped, ‘No!’

The dogs backed down, trailing obediently behind him as he completed the frigid trek to the edge of the estate. Outside the gates, Cornelius stood with the box in his hands, looking up and down the foggy length of open road. There had been snow here, a light sprinkling of it, and the hedgerows were rimmed in hoarfrost though the sun was high in a clear sky. It must be winter.

The wretch in the box shifted and moaned, and Cornelius looked down at it. ‘All right, dear,’ he murmured. ‘All right. It is nearly over now.’

He took his knife from his belt and crouched in the road. The dogs watched from the other side of the gates as he gently tipped the contents of the box onto the frozen earth. Cornelius could not bring himself to uncover the poor creature, so he chopped down through the spoiled silk, blindly separating head from spine, limb from twitching limb. He prayed that each cut would cease the feeble stirrings, but this was an estate creature born and bred. It had lived all its life within the benign radius of the Angel, and even there on outside ground, even there, it took an unconscionably long time to die.

The American Chap

Oracle Theatre, Dublin, 1890

T
HERE WAS A
bulky travel bag dumped outside the theatre manager’s office, and Joe nearly fell over it in the gloom. He was none too gently kicking it out of his way when an angry American voice cried out from within the office.

‘He’s
dead
? Whaddayah mean, he’s dead?’

Someone was dead? Joe didn’t know anyone was dead! Fascinated, he stepped into the gash of light and peered through the partially opened door. A stranger was silhouetted against the lamp on Mr Simmons’ desk. A short enough fellow, dressed in a nice brown suit, he was broad-shouldered and strong-looking, his dark hair neatly oiled into waves. He shocked Joe by slapping Mr Simmons’ desk.

‘Explain yourself, sir! What exactly do you mean?’

Mr Simmons answered in his usual well bred drawl. ‘Mr Weiss, despite your colonial delight in mangling the Queen’s good English, I would not have thought you’d have such trouble understanding me. The Great Mundi is dead. I doubt I can be clearer than that.’

Joe felt a tweak of disappointment. Oh, the Great Mundi. Was that all? Sure, the old magician had been dead three weeks already, of pneumonia. Everyone knew that.

‘But I’m contracted as his assistant!’ protested the American.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘Well. Awfully sorry about that.’

‘It was to be a six-month tour, including the entire Christmas season here.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I’ve spent everything I had to get here. I gave up a good job. I bought a one-way ticket.’ The American’s voice suddenly changed to the exaggerated tones of a stage performer. ‘I’m an excellent conjuror, sir! Allow me to astound you with some feats of legerdemain. As you can see, I have nothing up my sleeve, yet—’

‘Mr Weiss,’ interrupted Mr Simmons, ‘as I’ve already told you, this theatre has its own troubles. With the fire and its subsequent expenses and delays, I can’t even offer you the Great Mundi’s spot on the bill. Had the poor man not died, he would have found himself as out of work as you are now, I’m afraid.’

‘But what am I to
do
?’

There came the harsh scrape of a chair as Mr Simmons abruptly stood. Instinctively Joe stepped back, and tripped over the damned travel bag, his heavy lunch-pail clattering against the wall. The American whirled to glare at the door.

‘Say!’ he cried. ‘Who’s skulking out there?’

Joe’s first impulse was to bolt, but the thought of Mr Simmons rushing out and catching him scurrying away was just too embarrassing. He pushed the door open. ‘Just me,
Mr Simmons.’ He lifted the lunch-pail. ‘I come to share me dinner with Tina.’

The American belligerently looked him up and down. He was younger than Joe had first assumed – seventeen, maybe even sixteen – and his terrier-like ferocity was not in any way reduced by the fact that Mr Simmons, a full foot taller, could see right across the top of his head.

‘Very well, Joseph,’ said Mr Simmons. ‘Thank you for letting me know that you are here.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Joe said, turning to go.

‘Joseph!’

In the gloom of the hallway, Joe sighed and hung his head. Simmons was all right, but he always had to have a little something to say. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘Be sure you don’t entice Miss Kelly to dawdle; she has quite an amount of work to do.’

Joe gritted his teeth around another ‘Yes, sir’, took one last look at the American, and headed off down the corridor.
Entice her to dawdle,
he thought.
As if either of us had all day to be sitting on our arses doing nothing …

The sight of the theatre did not improve his temper.

The proscenium arch and the stage itself had already been replaced. But the harsh smell of burnt wood and smoke lingered, and the orchestra pit was still a blackened hole. There was so much work to be done before the theatre could open again. The loss of business had hit the theatre cabbies hard – no one knew that better than Joe – but it was the artistes who would suffer most, being out of work this close to the lucrative Christmas season. It was such rotten luck.

Joe was just climbing the steps to the stage, his mind on the artistes, his brow furrowed with worry, when a fortuitous
coincidence of time and weather stopped him in his tracks. First the sun came out, streaming through the uncovered skylights and flooding the stage with all its wintry brilliance. Then Tina stepped from the wings. Her arms were filled with the skirts and bodice of some elaborate costume, the heavy brocade sprinkled all over with gold and silver sequins. As soon as she left the shadows, the sun reflected off her, like in a kaleidoscope, and the gloomy interior came alive with a million dancing spangles of light.

Tina paused onstage, gazing upwards. Her face was all aglitter – her dark eyes, her strong jaw and nose, her loosely gathered mass of dark hair, all dazzling and bottom-lit with radiance from the dress.

‘You look like a mermaid, Tina,’ said Joe softly. ‘You look like you’re standing at the bottom of the sea.’

She turned to him in surprise, laughed, and ran to crouch at the edge of the stage. She was so close, her face so luminous with those golden scribbles of light, that Joe found himself momentarily short of words. ‘You’re … you’re all glittery,’ he managed at last.

‘So are you.’

He indicated the shimmering costume. ‘It’s lovely.’

‘It should be! It’s taken me days to sew. Her Ladyship is waiting for the final fitting now.’

‘It would look much nicer on you,’ he said, glancing briefly into her eyes.

Tina laughed again, and shook the stiff brocade. ‘This is an eighteen-inch waist, Joe Gosling! I’d need to be wired into a corset just to look sideways at it. The day I do
that
to meself, you can drown me in the canal.’

Joe huffed fondly. ‘You fiery radical. Here, look what I
brought you.’ He lifted his lunch-pail. ‘Mutton stew from Finnegan’s!’

Tina’s smile twisted a little with an anxiety she couldn’t quite hide.

‘It’s all right,’ he assured her. ‘A coach-load of toffs gave me a shilling-and-six tip last night. Mr Trott was too drunk to even notice. Mickey’ll get his cut of me wages on payday as usual, and never be any the wiser there was more to be had.’

Tina reached for his arm. ‘Joe, why don’t you just get out of there? Get yourself some
nice
lodgings, with a nice landlady, who’ll make a fuss of you? There’s no need to be staying with that … with Mickey, now your mam is gone.’

He gently twisted his arm until she let go. ‘I’m not ready.’

‘Joe. You’re
seventeen
. When will you be ready?’

That stung – Joe was surprised how badly. Did she think he hadn’t the courage to leave? He almost blurted his plan at her there and then, almost shouted it. But in the end, he just glowered. ‘Do you want to share me dinner or not?’ he snapped.

Tina got the message. She smiled. ‘The stew does smell lovely.’

Joe felt himself smiling back at her. He could never stay angry with Tina. ‘Look what else I got.’

He reached into his jacket and slyly drew out the book. Tina practically squealed with delight.

‘Oh, Joe, you rented a new one! What’s it about? What’s it called?’

‘It’s by that French lad you like, the one who wrote about Captain Nemo. This one’s about people who go to the moon. See?’ He showed her the cover, running his finger under the
title, reading slowly so she could follow the words.
‘From the Earth to the Moon,’
he said.

‘To the moon,’ breathed Tina. ‘Just imagine.’

She said this very softly, looking at him all the while, and suddenly it was as if Joe’s heart had dropped off the edge of a cliff. His smile became a grin, and he could no longer bring himself to look up from the book.

Tina stood in an abrupt rustle of satin and dazzle of sequins. ‘Right!’ she said. ‘Just give me ten minutes with Her Majesty the Queen in there, and I’ll be—’

Her abrupt silence made Joe look up sharply. She’d gone very still, her expression puzzled.

‘Tina?’

She didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes lifted to the darkened theatre behind him, a frown growing between those forthright eyebrows. She seemed to be listening to some faint, disturbing sound that only she could hear.

It was a look Joe hadn’t seen in years, and it caused an all too familiar tightening in his belly, an old creeping feeling on the back of his neck. He glanced over his shoulder to the top of the steps, where Tina’s attention was focused. There was nothing there. Just row upon row of shadowy seats and the bright, distant rectangle of the foyer door.

He was about to whisper,
What do you see?
when shapes moved within that bright rectangle – the distinctive shadow play of a person walking across the reflective floor of the foyer.

For a moment, Joe’s heart shrivelled with the fearful conviction that it was Mickey the Wrench come to beat his share of the shilling and six from Joe’s hide. But the figure that came to the foyer door had nothing like Mickey’s
bulldog silhouette. This man was tall and lean, and as he came into the auditorium, Joe saw him take a top hat from his head.

With the use of a cane, the man began to make his way down the steps. As he descended through the darkness towards them, Tina took a step back, as if afraid. Joe put himself between her and the approaching stranger. His hand tightened on the handle of his lunch-pail. He found himself thinking,
Stay away from her!

The man came to the edge of the shadows. He put a gloved hand on the gate that led from the dress circle into the stalls, but he did not step into the light.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said.

At the sound of his voice, Joe felt his inexplicable aggression drain away, leaving just a dull and dreamy unease. He heard the click of Tina’s high-heeled boots as she stepped forward.

‘I’m looking for the manager,’ said the man.

Joe felt his arm float upwards, his finger pointing. ‘Mr Simmons is in his office. That door, then up the stairs.’

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘I am much obliged.’ He did not turn to leave, however, and there followed a strained silence as he observed them from the shadows. After a moment, he lifted his cane and pointed to the reflections still shivering across Tina’s face and hair. ‘What a bewitching effect,’ he murmured. ‘Quite …
moving
. You are an artiste, dear? You “tread the boards”, as they say?’

There was a rustle by Joe’s left ear, but no reply. ‘She’s a seamstress,’ he said. ‘She makes costumes.’ Then, almost as if someone else were speaking: ‘She’s very good at it – there’s no one better.’

The man was silent for a moment. ‘And you?’ he asked doubtfully. ‘
You
are an artiste?’

Joe snorted.

‘He’s a cab-man,’ said Tina. ‘He works in the depot out back, fixing the cabs and helping with the driving.’

At that, the man seemed to abruptly lose interest, and he turned without another word and walked away. There was a brief moment of light as he let himself into the corridor that led to Mr Simmons’ office; then the door closed softly behind him, and all was shadow once more.

Joe hunched his shoulders, trying to rid himself of a discomfort he couldn’t quite define. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘He was a queer duck.’

‘There’s rumours of an impresario,’ said Tina distantly. ‘Come to fund a run of extravaganzas. I wonder if that was him.’

She didn’t look too happy at the possibility. Joe couldn’t say he disagreed.