Resonance (5 page)

It was so dark! A freezing void of blackness, pulling him down.

Something huge loomed. Trailing slime brushed his face. Then he was inhaling air. Gasping, he thrashed against the sheer cliff of the quay wall, his windmilling arms and legs churning the water, which went into his mouth and his eyes and caught against what little breath he had.

The slime-drenched wall of the quay slipped and slid under the numb scrabble of his fingers. Then he was under, his mouth filled with putrid water, the weight of his clothes pulling him down. He was blind in the dark. Which direction was up? Where was the surface?

He had never learned to swim.

His head hit stone, and he was out in the thrashing air again: the foam and the chaos. There was a crack of cold-dulled pain as his elbow hit stone. His ribs impacted with the brutal edge of a weed-slicked shelf.

The boat steps!

Joe flung out an arm, trying to grab hold. But his hand simply slithered back, completely numb of feeling. The water swelled, and he was rolled, helpless, from the steps, his arms and legs dead from the cold.

Sleet bit his lips as his face turned one more time to the wind.

As he sank, he saw boots carefully descending the steps. He saw the trailing billow of a royal-blue overcoat. A hand as black as coal reached, and was lost as water closed against the light.

J
OE OPENED HIS
eyes to something pallid and lifeless lying in front of his face. A dead fish. Vaguely disgusted, Joe tried to push it away. His fingers barely twitched, and he realised he was looking at his own hand. His gaze drifted past it to the mud-spattered hem of a royal-blue overcoat. A man was crouched on the filthy steps beside him, leaning away, straining to snag something from the water. He succeeded and sat back on his heels, looking down at what he'd retrieved. He grunted.

‘This is a good book,' he said. His voice was very deep and rich. When he turned, Joe recognised him as the carriage driver from the theatre. ‘This is yours, Matthew? I do not recall you being inclined to read.'

He held up Saul's dripping copy of
From the Earth to the Moon
. The book was swollen with water. A fat, bloated frog of a book. The sight of it made Joe giggle.

The carriage driver frowned and brought his face level with Joe's. ‘Matthew?'

‘Have t'get t'work …'

Clumsily, Joe attempted to push himself to his feet. He barely made it to his knees. The carriage driver stood to help. He had been taking the brunt of the wind, and as soon as he moved the cold sliced through Joe's soaked clothes, right down to the bone. Joe moaned, and the man took his arm. His grip was vice-like and devil-hot, a band of furnace-heat through the sodden fabric of Joe's jacket.

‘You need to get warm, Matthew. You have been away too long to suffer this cold without ill effect.'

Joe began to struggle up the steps. ‘Need … get … t'
work
,' he croaked. ‘'e'll leave …' thout me.' His lips were growing too numb to move.

The carriage driver supported him up the steps with an arm around his waist, Saul's sodden book in his free hand. ‘Come back to the hotel,' he urged. ‘Come talk to Cornelius.'

The heat from him was intense, unnatural, cloying. Even through the crippling pain of the cold, Joe felt suffocated by it. He elbowed his way free, gasping, and staggered towards the bridge. The man followed, his voice raised against the wind. ‘Matthew!' he cried. ‘He has been miserable since you left. Give him a chance. He meant none of what he said!'

Joe tried to run, but his legs were wet concrete; the man easily caught up. ‘Here,' he said. Joe flinched at a sudden whipping flutter of cloth. Then came beautiful warmth – glorious warmth – as the man's blue overcoat settled around
him like a cloak. The man tried to support him again, that strange, trapped feeling closing in. ‘Let go!' Joe yelled, shoving him away.

The carriage driver stepped back, his hands up in defeat. The wind tugged at his fine white shirt, fluttered his crimson necktie, jerked at the tails of his scarlet waistcoat. ‘Keep the coat,' he said.

‘Don't touch me again,' said Joe as he backed away, his hand up in warning.

‘Keep the coat,' repeated the carriage driver.

Joe backed across the bridge, then turned clumsily and stumbled his way down the quays towards the warren of Temple Bar. The man did not follow.

Auditions

H
ARRY FOUND
T
INA
in the wings, her arms grimly folded, watching the auditions from the shadows backstage. ‘Hey,’ he whispered. ‘How’s Joe feeling?’

Tina shrugged unhappily. ‘He says he’s grand. He says he just needs to lie down awhile.’

‘Nice of Miss Ursula to let him use her dressing-room.’

‘She’s a nice lady,’ murmured Tina. ‘Under it all …’

She drifted to silence, her eyes on the performers onstage, her mind miles away. She was obviously eaten up with worry.

Harry had been impressed by her lack of fussing. When Joe had turned up for morning break, and they’d seen the state his cousins had reduced him to, Harry had wanted to punch something. Despite his claims, Joe had looked anything but ‘grand’. He had looked so far from grand – his heated cheeks stark in his chalky face – that Harry had been scared for him. It was all too familiar: too uncomfortably close to memories of Harry’s brother Armin. Of Armin’s horrible last days.

‘Here we go,’ whispered Tina. A sister act, Milly and Patsy Harris, had taken to the stage. All frills and curls and bows,
they were just launching into a syrup-drenched rendition of
Old Dog Tray
. ‘Miss Ursula’s on after these two. She’s doing the Scottish play.’

‘She won’t be chosen,’ said Harry. Tina frowned at him, and he shrugged. ‘She won’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve been watching all morning. They’re only going for the dog and pony acts – the tumblers, the contortionists – the real carnie entertainment. That couple who sing opera? Out. The man who recites poems? Out! The only artiste chosen who had anything like a bit of the highbrow to him was the piano player.’

‘Professor Henman?’

Harry nodded. ‘If your Miss Ursula presents them with Shakespeare, she’s—’

‘Next!’ came the call from the auditorium.

The little girls onstage faltered in mid-song. Their mother fluttered anxiously in the far wings. ‘W … would you like a different tune, sir?’ called Milly, peering past the brightness of the limes to the darkness beyond. ‘We do a lovely version of—’

‘You’re too young. Next!’

‘We—’

‘NEXT, damn your eyes! NEXT!’

The little girls leapt in shock at the unexpected roar. Patsy burst into tears, and they fled to their mother’s scandalised arms.

‘Never mind, m’dears,’ whispered Miss Ursula as they stumbled past her in the far wings. ‘It has happened to the best of us.’ She spread her arms, and the glitter on her magnificent costume haloed her in light as she swept onto the stage.

‘Oh God,’ groaned Harry. ‘She’s ancient! What’s she thinking in that dress?’

‘Shh, Harry. Listen to her.’

The old lady stopped mid-stage, her kohl-ringed eyes glaring out at the surrounding darkness. There was silence. She lifted her arm. ‘Come,’ she ordered. ‘Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts; unsex me here. Fill me from my crown unto my toe, top-f of direst cruelty.’

She paused, searching the dark air of the auditorium, as if waiting for the spirits to come forth as ordered, and she looked so compelling that Harry felt himself lean forward – drawn in.

Miss Ursula pressed her hand to her heart. ‘Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, so that no compunctious visitings of nature shall shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts. Take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature’s mischief.’

Another long silence followed as the old woman awaited an answer from the ringing void. The light from her dress shivered against her papery skin and gave her face all the authority of age as, once again, she held her arm out to the darkness and commanded it.

‘Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry unto me, “Hold.”’

A whisper came from the darkness. ‘No.’

The old woman paused, frowning as if uncertain of what she had heard.

‘No,’ whispered the voice in the darkness again, and then, as if in panic, it shouted: ‘No! No! Off!’

Tina stepped forward, Harry at her side, both of them appalled by this terrible reaction to what had been a mesmerising performance.

‘Get off!’ cried the now unmistakable voice of Lord Wolcroft. ‘Get off the stage, you old
crone
! AND TAKE OFF THAT DAMNED DRESS!’

Miss Ursula froze for the briefest of moments. Then she graced her audience with a stiff bow and swept from the stage.

‘Miss U,’ cried Tina, rushing to her. But Miss Ursula simply held a hand out in dismissal, and then continued on down the steps to the backstage corridor, where her costume caught whatever dim light it could and cast it in glitter onto the shabby ceiling and walls before she rounded the corner and was out of sight.

‘Poor lady,’ whispered Tina. ‘Poor, poor …’ She made a helpless gesture. Then, suddenly, she was angry – she was raging – and Harry had to step away from her as she kicked the sandbags with a ferocity he hadn’t witnessed in her before.

Harry cast about for words of comfort, but before he could even speak Tina had contained herself, her arms wrapped tight around her chest, her breathing deep in the light-filtered half dark.

‘Joe knew,’ she said. ‘He told me Miss U was too old. He said that’s all the world can see of her now. How old she is. And he was
right
.’

She compressed her mouth and eyes against more rage. ‘Joe,’ she whispered.

‘He’ll be fine,’ soothed Harry.

‘Have you
seen what they did to him
?’

‘He’ll be
fine
, Tina. He’s a tough guy.’

‘He’s never going to escape them, Harry. I don’t think he knows how much he
needs
to escape. How much
I
need him to—’ She cut herself off, took another deep breath, as if telling herself to calm down. ‘You’ve no idea the kind of place Joe lives, Harry; the place we both come from. You can’t imagine the people we grew up with, the street we grew up on. It’s like a trap, and everyone he knows is caught in it. They all say they hate it, but they’d rather see each other
dead
than free of it.’

‘You did okay,’ said Harry quietly.

‘But I had
Fran
, didn’t I? I had the Lady Nana. No one tells them what to do. They just said, “Feck the lot of yehs,” and we dragged ourselves out of there. But Joe … poor Joe. He has no one. Only stones weighing him down. Only a snare he can’t seem to—’

She made a sharp noise suddenly, and turned for the steps.

‘Tina, where are you going?’

‘This is not going to happen anymore, Harry. I’ve decided. Joe’s not going back. I’m not letting him. I’m going to his gaff right now, while he’s asleep. I’m going to get his things. I’m bringing them back here, and he’s
never
going back.’

‘Say! You can’t just make the chap’s decisions like that!’

‘Oh, can I not?’

Harry rushed to the top of the steps. ‘Tina!’ he hissed. ‘
Tina
, you’re making a huge mistake.’

But she was already gone.