Full Dark House(13)

This was not to be a late-nineteenth-century production of the kind usually associated with Jacques Offenbach; there were no monobosoms, trains, boned corsets and fans to restrict the movement of the dancers, leaving them with only the jumps and lifts of a traditional ballet corps. Instead their gestures were to be free and unrestricted, but this created problems in the finite space, especially now that the wings had been deepened. Tanya wondered how she could augment her moves without antagonizing everyone. The wings, necessary to hide the ranks of dancers from the audience’s view while they were queuing to go on, ate into the performance space, reducing the area in which they could operate.

It was while she was sponging the sweat from her long neck that she heard the noise. It sounded like someone coughing, or barking hoarsely. The pitch was low and indistinct, emanating from the chest, like the racketing of the homeless man who bedded down behind the protective canopy of the theatre after it closed. He always arrived as the last of the players left, and scrunched himself up behind a section of board in the corner of the main entrance, beyond the reach of the ARP patrols. He was not like the young men she used to see sleeping rough in Soho Square before the war. He reeked of the night’s dark recesses, reminding her that the lost and the lonely were easy prey in a time of hostilities. He smelled, she noticed, how the whole of London was starting to smell, of uncleanliness, of fatigue, of death.

Tanya allowed her towel to fall and tilted her head. The sound was usually deadened in here, but tonight she sensed something else. The house lights were down and only the stage remained illuminated, a miasma of emerald and crimson. She wondered if the homeless man had managed to find his way in somehow, and was waiting for her to leave the warmth and safety of the set.

It came again, the strange coughing noise. A muttered phrase, a warning. She could almost make out words, but where were they coming from? The triple-decked theatre was a whispering gallery; you could tell where sounds originated because the air was so dead and echoless.

‘Who’s there?’ she called at last. ‘Geoffrey, if that’s you it’s not amusing.’

She knew most of the others didn’t like her. There was very little dancing in this production, and of the three classically trained ballerinas featured, only she had a solo. The others watched her working hard, thinking that she was trying to steal the limelight, and resentment accumulated like stormclouds; she was used to that. She was damned good and she had the solo, and if the rest of them didn’t like it they could go to hell.

She realized that she had been rehearsing alone for over three hours, only breaking for half a sandwich. Like all dancers, so much of her body fat had been converted to muscle that she needed to eat regularly. Tanya enjoyed the solitude of practice, but now her body was resisting her commands.

She left from the upstage right exit. One part of the set was fixed, the carmine cretonne mask of a gigantic demon, its lips arched wide in the rictus of a satanic scream. The mouth was so large that several dancers could enter through it at once. The designs were too grotesque for her tastes, inappropriate to the times. People were scared enough. The artist was newly exiled from Eastern Europe, and it showed.

Tanya was dressed in a sweat-soaked blouse and slacks, but decided not to suffer the cold water of the dressing room. Most of the backstage corridor lights had been turned off hours ago in order to comply with government restrictions on electricity, and she didn’t want to stay any longer than necessary. She felt even queasier now, and wondered if she had eaten something that disagreed with her.

As she looked up at the darkened tiers, she felt the building closing in. Something about its shape induced a sensation of claustrophobia. Although the corridors burrowing through its brickwork had been repainted a cheerful yellow, they were still cramped and confining after the expanse of the stage. The sides and understage areas were a nightmarish maze of columns and tunnels, with wiring strapped in loose bundles along the ceilings and walls. There was nowhere to store anything. It was all too elaborate, even for the grand opera it had been built to contain. The electricians were forever leaving boxes and cables lying around. Her supple limbs were her greatest asset, and needed to be protected from such dangers. It would take only one fall to end her career. She wasn’t getting any younger. Who knew how many seasons she had left?

At least the Palace was still open. Other theatres were going dark. Bombs were keeping the audiences away. Hardly any of the central playhouses had adequate emergency exits. If the war lasted much longer she doubted there would be a play left running in the entire West End.