Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [107]
Lesley bowed graciously. ‘Lovely to be here,’ she said. ‘My, but this theatre is much enlarged since my day. Is anyone else here from the 1790s?’
A solitary whoop floated down from the gods, just to prove that there’s always one in every crowd.
‘Not that I don’t believe you, sir, but you’re a bloody liar,’ said Lesley. ‘The old ham will be here by and by.’ She looked out past the lights into the stalls, searching for something. ‘I know you’re out there, you black Irish dog.’
She shook her head. ‘I’d just like to say, it’s good to be here in the twenty-first century,’ she said suddenly. ‘Lots of things to be grateful for: indoor plumbing, horseless carriages – a decent life expectancy.’
There was no obvious way to get from the stalls to the stage. The orchestra pit was two metres deep, and the lip of the stage opposite was higher than a man could reach.
‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for your entertainment, I give you my rendition of that lamentable scene from the story of Mr Punch,’ said Lesley. ‘I refer of course to his incarceration and, alas, impending execution.’
‘No,’ I yelled. I’d read the script. I knew what was coming next.
Lesley looked straight at me and smiled. ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘The play’s the thing.’ There was a crack of breaking bone, and her face changed. As her nose became a hooked blade, her voice rose to a piercing, warbling shriek.
‘That’s the way to do it!’ she screeched.
I was too late, but I threw myself into the orchestra pit just the same. The Royal Opera House doesn’t mess about with a quartet with a drum machine – you get a full-on orchestra seventy musicians strong, and the pit is built to match. I landed amid the horn section, who were not so dazed by the compulsion Henry Pyke had them under that they didn’t protest. I pushed my way through the violinists, but it was no good, even with a standing jump I couldn’t get my hands on the stage. One of the violinists asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing and, backed up by a bassist, threatened to kick my head in. They both had that same Friday-night, mean drunk look in their eyes that I was beginning to associate with Henry Pyke. I’d just grabbed a music stand to hold them at bay when the orchestra started up again. As soon as it did the two homicidal musicians ignored me, took up their instruments, took their places and, with a great deal of decorum, considering they were having a psychotic episode, started playing. I could hear the thing wearing Lesley’s body singing in its awful high-pitched voice:
Punch when parted from his dear,
Still must sing in doleful tune.
I couldn’t see what Lesley was doing, but judging from the song she was acting out the scene where punch watches a gallows being assembled outside his prison window. There were doors at either end of the orchestra pit – they had to reach backstage one way or the other. I elbowed my way through the musicians towards the nearest door leaving a trail of squawks, twangs, squeals and crashes behind me. The door led into another narrow breezeblock passageway with other, identical-looking passageways branching off left and right. Since I’d exited stage left, I guessed another left turn would get me backstage. I was right, only the Royal Opera House didn’t have a backstage, it had an aircraft hangar, a huge, high-ceilinged room at least three times the size of the main stage that you could have parked a Zeppelin in. All the stage managers, prompts and whoever else lurks out of sight during a performance had crowded into the wings, transfixed by whatever influence Henry Pyke was using on the audience. Getting away from that influence had given me a chance to cool down and think. The damage to Lesley had been done; if I stuck her with the tranquilliser now, her face would fall off. Rushing onto the stage wasn’t going to help – for all I knew, me blundering in was part of Henry Pyke’s script. I sidled among the stagehands and tried to get as close to the stage as I could