“All right, everybody, we’ll resume this at ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” Helena called, clapping her hands. “If anybody needs to share a cab, please let Geoffrey or Harry know.” She rose and walked up the aisle, lighting a cigarette.
“Helena?” Harry came hobbling up beside her. He had twisted his ankle in a pothole at lunchtime, and had spent the day on his feet. “We haven’t heard sirens yet, but the searchlights and sound locators have gone back up in Charing Cross Road. I was wondering if you’d prefer to have the cast stay over in here. We could open up a couple of the old practice rooms. I think there’s some bedding lying about.”
“You can discreetly ask the girls,” Helena suggested, sucking blessed smoke into her lungs, “but the boys can go home. There’s enough hanky-panky going on without putting the girls in temptation’s way.” She loosened her bandanna and shook out her hair. “If any member of the audience complains about having to sit for two hours on a narrow horsehair seat I shall ask them to try it for a fortnight.” She grabbed Harry’s hand. “Come on, you. Let’s lose the others, I don’t want to talk about work tonight. I’ll buy you a Scotch in that nancy-boy bar you like so much. If we get in before the raids start, they might lock us in all night.”
¦
Betty Trammel awoke with a dry mouth and a throbbing head. After the rehearsal, the ladies and gentlemen of the chorus had retired to the Spice of Life for drinks, and had stayed until closing time. The bombing raid had made travel impossible, and she had decided to sleep on a canvas camp bed in the upper circle practice room on the condition that her friend Sally-Ann slept in the room next to hers. She had no intention of staying alone in the theatre. Not that it frightened her, it took a lot to do that these days, but she wanted someone to talk to. She knew she had chosen the wrong time to return to England, but her course was set, and now she had to make the best of it. She decided to lie awake and listen to the night city while planning her next move. Instead she fell asleep almost instantly, and only woke because she found herself desperately thirsty.
The room’s single window was blacked out, and the street far below was so silent that she thought for a moment it must have snowed. Rubbing warmth into her goosefleshed arms, she swung her legs from the bed and made her way slowly towards the door, where she had left a torch. She knew there was a bathroom at the end of the corridor, and presumed she would find some potable water. The torch threw a dim yellow circle onto the brown walls. She paused before the room in which Sally-Ann slept and listened to her light snoring, then made her way through the darkness.
“
Betty shone her torch around the bathroom, checking that it was empty, then shut the door and locked it. To do so was an act of habit; at home she had three brothers. She set the torch down on the edge of the sink, beneath the bathroom mirror, with its thin beam pointing up. They weren’t allowed to turn on the lights when they used the lavatory up here because the windows weren’t covered, and Helena had warned them that any more fines would come out of their own pockets.
She ran the cold tap, listening to the ghostly sound of clanking pipes, then filled an enamel mug with water and drank deep. The water had been standing too long in the cistern, and tasted brackish. She made a face, then noticed the chiaroscuro effect of the torchlight on her reflected flesh.
Detective May was rather a dish, she thought, but obviously penniless, which was a pity because she’d been saving herself for a wealthy man. There was something appealing about the fact that he was so young and unsullied. He clearly found her attractive. Betty stuck out her tongue and examined its pale coat. Then she drew in a deep breath, and held it.
But someone continued breathing behind her.
She still had her mouth open in surprise when the great white mask of a face unfurled itself over her right shoulder. Its mouth was a tortured red gash, like an angry cut from a sword, the teeth unnaturally large and distorted. The eyes were wild and cloudy, scarred with shiny stretches of skin. Above his hairline she saw a scraped knob of gleaming, cracked bone. His sore red hands clawed out for her in a mannered pose, captured in the torch beam like a frame from some forgotten Chaney film, or a scene from the
She screamed so loudly that the sound of the torch being knocked over into the sink was lost. Her last sensation before losing consciousness was one of anger, that she could be so foolish as to strain her vocal cords in this manner, just days before her big night.
Bryant heard the scream and ran towards it with his hurricane lamp raised, but was forced to stop and retrace his steps when he realized that he had come out near the left-hand pass door, the one that was glued shut by years of paint. It took him another minute to climb the stairs to the rooms of the upper circle. Betty’s friend SallyAnn was awake and shrieking and clutching her shoulders, and waving her hands at the bathroom.
Bryant opened it and helped Betty to her feet. As he turned on the tap and splashed some cold water on her face, Sally-Ann grabbed his shoulder.
“Something ran up the stairs,” she yelled, pointing.
Bryant realized that he was meant to dash off after the villain, but didn’t much fancy it. He trotted to the bottom of the staircase and looked up into the pitch black. “What, up there?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, hurry, get him!” Sally-Ann’s panic had infected the revived chorine, and now they were both jumping up and down, flapping their arms about.
Bryant reluctantly mounted the stairs. The landing was so dark it gave him claustrophobia. With his lantern held high he walked cautiously forward, and found himself in the deserted brown corridor of the balcony offices. He raised the lamp in the opposite direction. Nothing that way either. But when he returned to his original position he was startled to see the broad back of a man disappearing round the bend in the corridor, no more than fifteen yards away.
Where the hell could he have come from? Bryant asked himself. The corridor was empty. How can he see in the dark? He set off in pursuit of the retreating form. He reached the turn, stopped and gingerly held the lamp out further, half hoping that whoever was up there would be scared away by the light. He wished May was here, lumbering along beside him, big and sensible and brave.
Having waved the tin lantern for long enough, he finally peered round the corner.
And found himself inches from a white staring face. He yelled, the face yelled, and he dropped the lamp in terror.
Luckily the lamp had a safety wick, so it didn’t splash burning oil everywhere, but it went out all the same. It took Bryant a full minute of fumbling in the dark with trembling fingers to get it lit again, and then he found himself sitting on the floor next to a fulllength mirror.
From somewhere up near the roof he heard boots scraping on iron rungs, then the slam of a steel door. Whoever he had been chasing was now locked outside on the roof with no way down. Thank God for that, he thought, smoothing his hair and straightening his clothes into a more ordered appearance. I can tell the girls I scared him off.
? Full Dark House ?
30
THE THREE HUNDRED
Thursday morning brought evidence of the previous night’s bombing, but the streets of central London were mostly quiet and unscathed. John May was alarmed to discover that he had somehow used up his week’s rations of everything except lard. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with lard beyond trying to swap it for something edible. On the second to last page of his ration book was a list of mysterious serial numbers and a government message that read: DO NOTHING WITH THIS PAGE UNTIL TOLD WHAT TO DO. It summed up the official attitude to everything.
But nobody seemed to mind. In 1939 it had been estimated that at least a quarter of the population of Britain was undernourished. Now, families were thinking carefully about nutrition, discovering vegetables they had hardly
