Maskerade

Page 26

'Don't you think this is a marvellous dress!?'
'What?'
'This dress, silly!!' Agnes looked her up and down. 'Oh. Yes. Very nice,' she said, disinterest lying on her voice like rain on a midnight pavement. 'You don't sound very impressed!! Really, Perdita, there's no need to be jealous!!'
'I'm not jealous, I was thinking. . .' She'd only seen the Ghost for a moment, but he certainly hadn't moved like Walter. Walter walked as though his body were being dragged along by his head. But the certainty was as hard as marble now. 'Well, you don't seem very impressed, I must say!!'
'I'm wondering if Walter Plinge is the Ghost,' said Agnes, and immediately cursed herself, or at least pooted. She felt embarrassed enough about André's reaction. Christine's eyes widened. 'But he's a clown!!'
'He walks odd and he talks odd,' said Agnes, 'but if he stood up straight-' Christine laughed. Agnes felt herself getting angry. 'And he practically told me he was!'
'You believed him, did you?!' Christine made a little tutting sound that Agnes considered quite offensive. 'Really, you girls believe the strangest things!!'
'What do you mean, we girls?'
'Oh, you know! The dancers are always saying they've seen the Ghost all over the place-'
'Good grief! Do you think I'm some sort of impressionable idiot? Think for a minute before answering!'
'Well, of course I don't, but-'
'Huh!' Agnes strode off into the wings, concerned more with effect than direction. The background noise of the stage faded behind her as she stepped into the scenery store. It didn't lead anywhere except to a pair of big double doors opening to the world outside. It was full of bits of castles, balconies and romantic prison cells, stacked any old how. Christine hurried up behind her. 'I really didn't mean. . . look, not Walter. . . he's just a very odd odd-job man!'
'He does all kinds of jobs! No one ever knows where he is-they all just assume he's around!'
'All right, but you don't have to get so worked up-' There was the faintest of sounds behind them. They turned. The Ghost bowed. 'Who's a good boy, then? Nanny's got a bowl of fish eggs for a good boy,' said Nanny, trying to see under the big dresser in the kitchen. 'Fish eggs?' said Granny, coldly. 'I borrowed them from the stuff they've done for the swarray,' said Nanny. 'Borrowed?' said Granny. 'That's right. Come along, Greebo, who's a good boy then?'
'Borrowed. You mean. . . when the cat's finished with them, you're going to give them back?'
'It's only a manner of speaking, Esme,' said Nanny in a hurt little voice. 'It's not the same as stealing if you don't mean it. Come along, boy, here's some lovely fish eggs for you. . .' Greebo pulled himself further into the shadows. * * * There was a little sigh from Christine and she folded up into a faint. But she managed, Agnes noticed sourly, to collapse in a way that probably didn't hurt when she hit the ground and which showed off her dress to the best effect. It was beginning to dawn on Agnes that Christine was remarkably clever in some specialized ways. She looked back at the mask. 'It's all right,' she said, her voice sounding hoarse even to her. 'I know why you're doing it. I really do.' No expression could cross that ivory face, but the eyes flickered. Agnes swallowed. The Perdita part of her wanted to give in right now, because that would be more exciting, but she stood her ground. 'You want to be something else and you're stuck with what you are,' said Agnes. 'I know all about that. You're lucky. All you have to do is put on a mask. At least you're the right shape. But why did you have to go and kill people? Why? Mr Pounder couldn't have done you any harm! But. . . he poked around in odd places, didn't he, and he. . . found something?' The Ghost nodded slightly, and then held out his ebony cane. He grasped both ends and pulled, so that a long thin sword slid out. 'I know who you are!' Agnes burst out, as he stepped forward. 'I. . . I could probably help you! It might not have been your fault!' She backed
away. 'I haven't done anything to you! You don't have to be afraid of me!' She backed away further as the figure advanced. The eyes, in the dark hollows of the mask, glinted like tiny jewels. 'I'm your friend, don't you see? Please, Walter! Walter!' There was, far off, an answering sound that seemed as loud as thunder and as impossible, in the circumstances, as a chocolate kettle. It was the clank of a bucket handle. 'What's the matter Miss Perdita Nitt?' The Ghost hesitated. There was the sound of footsteps. Irregular footsteps. The Ghost lowered the sword, opened a door in a piece of scenery painted to represent a castle wall, bowed ironically and slipped away. Walter rounded a corner. He was an unlikely knight errant. For one thing, he had on evening dress obviously designed for someone of a different shape. He was still wearing his beret. He also wore an apron and was carrying a mop and bucket. But no heroic lance-wielding rescuer ever galloped over a drawbridge more happily. He was practically surrounded by a golden glow. '. . . Walter?'
'What's the matter with Miss Christine?'
'She. . . er. . . she fainted,' said Agnes. 'Er' Probably. . . yes, probably the excitement. With the opera. Tonight. Yes. Probably. The excitement. Because of the opera tonight.' Walter gave her a slightly worried look. 'Yes,' he said, and added patiently, 'I know where there's a medicine box shall I get it?' Christine groaned and fluttered her eyelashes. 'Where am I?' Perdita gritted Agnes's teeth. Where am I? That didn't sound the sort of thing someone said when they woke up from a faint; it sounded more like the sort of thing they said because they'd heard it was the sort of thing people said. 'You fainted,' she said. She looked hard at Walter. 'Why were you in here, Walter?'
'Got to mop out the stage-hands' privy Miss Nitt. Always having trouble I've been working on it for months!'
'But you're wearing evening dress!'
'Yes then I got to be a waiter afterwards because we're short-handed and there's no one else to be a waiter when they have drinks and sausages on poles before the opera.' No one could have moved that fast. True, Walter and the Ghost hadn't both been in the room at the same time, but she'd heard his voice. No one could have had time to duck around behind the piles of flats and turn up at the opposite side of the room in seconds, unless they were some sort of wizard. Some of the girls did say the Ghost could almost seem to be in two places at once. Perhaps there were other secret places like the old staircase. Perhaps he- She stopped herself. Walter Plinge wasn't the Ghost, then. There was no sense in trying to find some excitable explanation to prove wrong right. She'd told Christine. Well, Christine was giving her just a slightly bemused look as Walter helped her up. And she'd told André, but he hadn't seemed to believe her so probably that was all right. Which meant that the Ghost was. . . . . .someone else. She'd been so certain. 'You'll enjoy it, mother. You really will.'
'
'Tain't for the likes of us, Henry. I don't see why Mr Morecombe couldn't give you tickets to see Nellie Stamp at the music hall. Now that's what I call music. Proper tunes you can understand.'
'Songs like “She Sits Among the Cabbages and Leeks” are not very cultural, mother.' Two figures wandered through the crowds heading for the Opera House. This was their conversation. '
'S a good laugh, though. And you don't have to hire suits. Seems daft to me, havin' to wear a special suit just to listen to music.'
'It enhances the experience,' said young Henry, who had read this somewhere. 'I mean, how does the music know?' said his mother. 'Now, Nellie Stamp-'
'Come along, mother.' It was going to be one of those evenings, he knew it. Henry Lawsy did his best. And, given the starting point, it wasn't a bad best. He was a clerk in the firm of Morecombe, Slant & Honeyplace, a somewhat oldfashioned legal partnership. One reason for its less-than- modern approach was the fact that Messrs Morecombe and Honeyplace were vampires and Mr Slant was a zombie. The three partners were, therefore, technically dead, although this did not prevent them putting in a proper day's work-normally during the night, in the case of Mr Morecombe and Mr Honeyplace. From Henry's point of view the hours were good and the job was not onerous, but he chafed somewhat about his promotion prospects because clearly dead men's shoes were being fully occupied by dead men. He'd decided that the only way to succeed was to better himself by Improving His Mind, which he tried to do at every opportunity. It is probably a full description of Henry Lawsy's mind that if you had given him a book called How to Improve Your Mind in Five Minutes, he would have read it with a stopwatch. His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people. Mr Morecombe had given him two opera tickets as a reward for sorting out a particularly problematical tort. He'd invited his mother because she represented 100 per cent of all the women he knew. People tended to shake Henry's hand cautiously, in case it came off. He'd bought a book about the opera and read it carefully, because he'd heard that it was absolutely unheard-of to go to an opera without knowing what it was about, and the chance of finding out while you were actually watching it was remote. The book's reassuring weight was in his pocket right now. All he needed to complete the evening was a less embarrassing parent. 'Can we get some peanuts before we go in?' said his mother. 'Mother, they don't sell peanuts at the opera.'
'No peanuts? What're you supposed to do if you don't like the songs?' Greebo's suspicious eyes were two glows in the gloom. 'Poke him with a broom-handle,' suggested Granny. 'No,' said Nanny. 'With someone like Greebo you have to use a little bit of kindness.' Granny closed her eyes and waved a hand. There was a yowl from under the kitchen's dresser and a sound .of frantic scrabbling. Then, his claws scoring tracks in the floor, Greebo came out backwards, fighting all the way. 'Mind you, a lot of cruelty does the trick as well,' Nanny conceded. 'You've never been much of a cat person, have you, Esme?' Greebo would have hissed at Granny, except that even his cat brain was just bright enough to realize this was not the best move he could make.
'Give him his fish eggs,' Granny said. 'He might as well have them now as later.' Greebo inspected the dish. Oh, this was all right, then. They wanted to give him food. Granny nodded at Nanny Ogg. They held out their hands, palm-up. Greebo was halfway through the caviar when he felt It happening. 'Wrrroowlllll-' he wailed, and then the voice went deeper as his chest expanded, and rose physically as his back legs lengthened under him. His ears flattened against his head, and then crept down the sides. '-llllwwaaaa-'
'The jacket's a forty-four-inch chest,' said Nanny. Granny nodded. '-aaaaoooo-' His face flattened. His whiskers spread out. Greebo's nose developed a life of its own. '-oooooss. . . sshit!'
'He certainly gets the hang of it quicker these days,' said Nanny. 'You put some clothes on right now, my lad,' said Granny, who had shut her eyes. Not that this made much difference, she had to admit later. Greebo fully clothed still managed to communicate the nakedness beneath. The insouciant moustache, the long sideburns and the tousled black hair combined with the well-developed muscles to give the impression of the more louche kind of buccaneer or a romantic poet who'd given up on the opium and tried red meat instead. He had a scar running across his face, and a black patch now where it crossed the eye. When he smiled, he exuded an easy air of undistilled, excitingly dangerous lasciviousness. He could swagger while asleep. Greebo could, in fact, commit sexual harassment simply by sitting very quietly in the next room. Except as far as the witches were concerned. To Granny a cat was a damn' cat whatever shape it was, and Nanny Ogg always thought of him as Mister Fluffy. She adjusted the bow-tie and stood back critically. 'What do you think?' she said. 'He looks like an assassin, but he'll do,' said Granny. 'Oh, what a nasty thing to say!' Greebo waved his arms experimentally and fumbled with the ebony cane. Fingers took a bit of getting used to, but cat reflexes learned fast. Nanny waved a finger playfully under his nose. He took a half-hearted swipe at it. 'Now you just stay with Granny and do what she tells you like a good boy,' she said. 'Yess, Nan-ny,' said Greebo reluctantly. He managed to grip the stick properly. 'And no fighting.'