‘When the candles burn low, and the company’s gone.
In the silence of night as I sit here alone—
I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair—
My Fanny I see in my cane-bottom’d chair.’
A spotlight streamed down from the flies, dramatically picking out the chair. Thackeray reacted with as neat a side-step as you could hope to see outside a prize-ring. He smiled in the shadows. Who would have believed it was his first night as a scene-shifter? An instant later the smile froze and he was almost bowled over. Not by the massive and unexpected roar from the audience, but by the sight which provoked it. The young woman in the chair was wearing nothing at all.
Thackeray clapped his hand to his forehead. Thirty years in the Force had to have some relevance to this situation. His first impulse was to restore order by snatching the chair back into the darkness, but that involved the considerable risk of ejecting the sitter. That was unthinkable. Then he considered treating the audience like a runaway horse, and leaping protectively in front of the chair with arms outspread and waving. In uniform he could have brought himself to do that; not in yellow satin and white stockings.
Before he could think of another expedient, someone mercifully brought down the curtain. A coat was tossed to the young woman and she got up, put it round her shoulders and walked past Thackeray and off the stage, as unconcerned as if she were shopping in the Strand. He felt a trembling sensation in the region of his knees. What in the name of Robert Peel was he participating in?
‘Look alive there!’ someone shouted. ‘Transformation scene!’
Other liveried figures were already struggling with scenery and scrambling up the fly-ladders. ‘Carry out your orders like the rest, whatever happens,’ Cribb had said—but could he have envisaged anything so unspeakable as what had just taken place?
‘The winch, man!’ a voice bellowed. ‘You’re wanted on the winch!’
In a ferment of scandalised confusion, he reeled to the wings and took his place at the handle, beside another of the heavy contingent.
‘All right. She comes down about fifteen turns of the handle till she’s nice and central,’ explained his companion. ‘When I release the catch I want you to take the strain. Hold on as if it’s your own mother up there. Right?’
Thackeray nodded. The catch was released. He braced and gripped the handle grimly. The seam down the back of his jacket began to part under the strain. By Jove, it was harder work letting Albert’s mother down gently than winching her up. Even before the fifteen turns were made, Harry in the fly-gallery pulled on his guy-rope to produce a lateral swing on the balloon-car. At the same time the curtain went up, the band played and the lime-boys directed a brilliant blue light on to the gauze-cloth suspended across the stage.
Albert’s mother, soon oscillating convincingly against an azure background, launched powerfully into Nellie Power’s song.
‘Up in a Balloon, girls, up in a Balloon,
Sailing through the air on a summer afternoon.
Up in a Balloon, girls, up in a Balloon,
What a happy place, now, to spend your honeymoon.’
Unfortunately either the pendulum motion or the awfulness of the lyric had upset the second passenger. As a pianissimo passage sought to convey the airy delights of ballooning, a dismal whining was plainly audible from above. Beaconsfield’s face peered dolefully over the rim of the car.
‘She’s secure now,’ said Thackeray’s companion. ‘You can help with the scene-removing. There’s no sitting about when the transformation scene’s on, you know.’
Behind the gauze-cloth an exotic scene was almost mounted. A drop decorated with a crudely painted skyline of cupolas and minarets was already in place and a border representing Eastern arches had been flown from the grid. Thackeray joined two men struggling with a profile flat, a piece of shaped scenery representing a section of wall surmounted by palm trees. On the other side of the gauze-cloth Albert’s mother gamely started the fourth verse of ‘Up in a Balloon’.
‘That’s safely home,’ said one of the men, addressing Thackeray. ‘Just secure it, will you, while me and my mate get the small props in place? There’s all them potted plants to go yet.’
He found himself standing alone behind two pieces of scenery with a length of sashcord in his hand, attached to the left-hand flat. It was a long time since he had felt so inadequate.
‘Why, if it ain’t the feller with the beaver again,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Having trouble, are you, Dad?’
It was difficult to look round when one was providing the only support for a large piece of scenery, but he thought he recognised the voice of the red-headed chorus girl. Unless she had found some more clothes he was not inclined to conduct a conversation with that young woman anyway.
‘You don’t know what you’re about, do you?’ she continued. ‘Here. Give the throwline to me.’ She wedged herself in front of him, took it from his hand and tossed it neatly over a cleat, high on the right-hand flat. Then she brought the line back across the join and fastened it below, over two cleats, one on either flat. ‘You tie it with a slippery-hitch like this, so as it’s easy to break when you need to strike the scene.’
‘I’m obliged to you.’
‘You can step away now. It won’t fall down. That is, unless you’ve a mind to remain here pressing yourself against me.’
The very idea! He backed away like a horse from the halter. He could now see her red hair and a good deal more of her besides. She was dressed in a sequinned waistcoat and diaphanous harem trousers. ‘I think I may be wanted on the winch,’ he said.
‘About time,’ said his companion testily, when he got there. ‘I can’t turn this blooming thing on my own, you know.’
Ahead of them, the swinging motion of the balloon-car had stopped and Albert’s mother was completing her final chorus. As the applause—there was not much of it—died away, the blue lights went out and the scene behind the gauze cloth was illuminated. Albert’s mother leaned precariously over the edge of the car.
‘Gentlemen, just look at what my gas-balloon has caught on—
A palm-tree in Morocco in the harem of a sultan!’
‘Right. Lift her clear. Fifteen turns!’ said the man on the winch.
As Albert’s mother ascended into the flies so did the gauze-cloth. Five young women, dressed like the one Thackeray had seen, performed what passed for an Arabesque dance among the props and scenery. Now that the initial shock was over, he could bring himself to look at the scene. The audience, from what he could hear, actually seemed quite friendly-disposed towards the dancers. He supposed that if one had a well-developed imagination—and people of that class unquestionably would have—one might even make a mental journey to Morocco and observe the performance without reference to British standards of decorum. If he tried hard, even a man of his upbringing might manage it. But a nudge in the ribs brought him firmly back to London.
‘Unwind her slowly now.’
Albert’s mother descended, and so did the gauze. Thackeray remained firmly at the winch; others could change this scene. Unbelievably soon, it was time for another couplet:
‘Sometimes, you know, the weather is a menace.
A powerful breeze has blown me over—Venice!’
‘Marvellous!’ exclaimed Thackeray, as the floating city was revealed, complete with moving gondolas.
‘Just turn the handle, mate, or they won’t see anything of it. Blimey, if you think that’s a scene, you ought to go to Drury Lane. They run everything from race-horses to railway-engines across that stage.’