INVISIBLE
in a
BRIGHT LIGHT
INVISIBLE
in a
BRIGHT LIGHT
SALLY GARDNER
First published in the UK by Zephyr, an imprint of Head of Zeus, in 2019
Text copyright © Sally Gardner, 2019
The moral right of Sally Gardner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781786695222
ISBN (E): 9781786695215
Jacket design © Helen Crawford-White
Theatre illustration © Getty Images
Endpapers: Map of Copenhagen Harbour, circa 1611
Author photograph © Lydia Corry
Head of Zeus Ltd
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Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Four Years Later
Endpapers
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About Zephyr
(Click or tap image to zoom)
This story, in various shapes and guises, has lived with me a long time. It took me ages to work out how a theatre, a ghost ship and a crystal chandelier might be connected. As often is the way with my writing, I found the answer in fairy tales.
I was a child when I first stumbled into the dark forest of the Grimm Brothers. I scared myself with their stories of heartless stepmothers, cruel sisters, wicked witches and silent women. I stayed on the edge of the woods, hungry for more stories. The older I became, the braver I became and by then the magic of the fairy tale had me spellbound. When finally I started writing, I set up home in the sorceress’s hut, deep in the ancient world of enchantment. I still live there today, hoping the wolves won’t get me.
But before I knew that was where I wanted to be, before I knew I could write, when I was twenty-four years old and still tangled in my dyslexia, I designed the costumes for Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado at the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen. It was one of the most magical experiences of my professional life. What fascinated me was the chandelier that hung in the auditorium and, between performances, rose into the dome of the opera house. I had never seen a light that shone as bright. Most become dulled by dust.
I asked if I might see it more closely. And so it was, on a wintry day, the designer and I climbed a wooden staircases to the very top of the opera house and found a door that looked as if it might open onto a broom cupboard. Instead, we found ourselves in the dome. All round this huge circular space were windows that looked out onto the copper roofs of Copenhagen. In the centre was the chandelier – a vast, brooding presence. We also discovered an old lady with a sewing machine, her chamois leather cloths hung up to dry, looking like birds on a wire. Her job, so she told us, was to keep the chandelier shining. No one knew she was there. I felt I had walked into a fairy tale.
It was this time in Copenhagen that inspired my story, Invisible in a Bright Light. I sincerely hope it weaves magic into your hearts.
Sally Gardner
Hastings
July 2019
‘Do you want to finish the game?’ says the man in the emerald green suit.
‘What game?’ asks the girl.
‘One thing is certain,’ he says, ignoring her question, ‘when you have finished the game, everything will have changed.’
Deep under the sea in the cave of dreamers hang the sleepers, suspended from boat hooks. Passengers and sailors alike, eyes closed, heads held high, their skin fish-flesh white. On and on, in neat rows they go until all that is left hanging from the hooks is empty clothes. Through these, fish swim and eels wriggle, causing trousers and petticoats to dance with the memory of their ghostly wearers.
At the entrance of the cave sits a man in a barnacle-encrusted chair. Before him is a desk. It is his three-piece suit of emerald green that has caught the girl’s attention, not his face as one might suppose, for it is a strange face. Behind him, neatly stacked, are hundreds of gleaming white candles.
‘You are stronger than I thought,’ says the man. ‘I wasn’t expecting to light another set of my candles. My candles are precious to me and I hate to waste them. Are you sure you want to carry on playing?’
Celeste is spellbound by the emerald green fabric. In it she sees her past all whirled together until it is a thing of threads and stitches.
‘Before we go any further, tell me your age again,’ says the man.
Only now does Celeste notice his face. She thinks he must be wearing a mask for she can’t see his eyes. Perhaps they’ve been washed away. Fish occasionally nibble at his shiny, bald head.
On the desk rests a ledger. It is like the one she remembers the clerk in the hat shop had when she and Anna went to pick up a parcel for Mother.
‘I asked you a question,’ he says.
Celeste doesn’t answer. She is studying the ring on his little finger. The stone is a bright emerald, the same colour as his suit. He dips a quill in the inkstand and tendrils of ink float away.
‘In other words, how old are you?’
‘You are asking the questions in the wrong order,’ says Celeste. ‘The first question should be, “what is your name?”’
The man is taken aback.
‘I ask the questions, not you.’
He is unsettled by this girl. Seldom has he met a child with strength enough to move on to the final part of the game. Perhaps for once it will be played out to the bitter end. The thought delights him although he has no doubt who the winner will be. He persists with his questions.
‘Tell me your age.’
Again the girl answers with more energy than he would have thought possible. By this point in the game the player should be no more than a shadow.
‘My age?’ says Celeste. ‘I am eleven.’
‘I can smell a lie in the water,’ says the man. ‘I play you, girl, you don’t play me.’
The truth is Celeste can’t remember if she is about to be eleven or has just turned eleven or perhaps she is twelve. She is pondering this when the man in the emerald green suit turns over the page in the ledger. With his quill he points upwards. Celeste follows the tip of the feather. Above the heads of the sleepers hangs a glass chandelier in the shape of a galleon.
‘Seven hundred and fifty candles,’ says the man, ‘and not one of them is defeated by the seawater.’
For the first time Celeste can see clearly. The beams of light illuminate the faces of the sleepers whose names are on the tip of her tongue.
‘Look at me,’ says the man. ‘Look at me.’
The moment she does the names are gone and somewhere in the cave a ship’s bell sounds mournfully. Perhaps it’s a warning, she thinks. He begins to laugh, his laughter a wave that causes the sleepers to sway as one.
‘What if I don’t want to play your game?’ she says.
‘A brave question, if I may say so. It would be a pity after you have come so far. But I would understand, for the game only gets harder from now on.’ He leans back in his chair. ‘Do you want to know what happens if you retire from the game?’
‘Yes,’ says Celeste.
‘It’s simple. You join the first row of sleepers. It’s your decision. This part of the game is called the Reckoning and only I know the rules.’
‘Then it isn’t fair.’
‘I never said it was. I always win. I will help you this much – and I am being too generous. I have already been too generous in letting you have one of the sleepers. Not that she is of any use. I did tell you that at the beginning, before I lit the first set of candles. But that is by the by. Where was I? Yes. The player – that is you, Maria – was abandoned as a baby on the steps of the great opera house in the city of C—. There you were raised by the woman whose job it is to clean the crystal chandelier. When you were eight years old you were found to have a natural gift for dance and you were enrolled in the ballet school. To pay for your lessons you work – when you are not required to rehearse – for the famous singer, Madame Sabina Petrova.’
Maria? She is about to say, ‘I’m Celeste,’ when she senses rather than hears a voice, a voice in her head, ‘No – don’t tell him your name.’
She looks again at the sleepers with a sickening realisation that she knows the name of every one of them. They shouldn’t be there.
‘If you win the game,’ he says, ‘they will go home. If you lose, they lose. Forever.’
The man in the emerald green suit moves towards her with unnatural speed. He puts his hand to her face and closes her eyes.
‘Just to make sure, double sure,’ he says. ‘As I have done this once, let me do it again.’
And before she can say another word, all is forgotten.
‘Good,’ says the man, as he blows out the candles. ‘Very good. Let the Reckoning begin.’
Down she falls and down she falls, deep down to the bottom of the sea into the inky black. The darkness becomes a line between the words and the paper, where sea meets sky and still she falls until below her the city with its many domed roofs spreads out before her. She sees the horse-drawn trams, the carriages, the park and the harbour with its tall ships. Down she falls through the dome of the opera house, down she falls, past the crystal galleon and as she passes it she hears the sound of something coming adrift. Down, down she falls…
‘Wake up.’ Celeste felt the flick across her face. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere you lazy, useless girl.’
She wiped the dream from her eyes and climbed sleepily out of the costume basket with its comforting smell of old tinsel and greasepaint. Before her stood a ferocious-looking lady who Celeste knew must be a wardrobe mistress for she wore a grey dust-coat over her clothes, had a tape measure hanging round her neck and pins in her lapels. But it didn’t explain why she had seen fit to attack Celeste with a glove.
‘What did you do that for?’ said Celeste. ‘You have no right to hit me.’
‘No right?’ said the wardrobe mistress. She was twisted with rage and sourer than a lemon that had never seen the sun. ‘And who are you, a little rat, to talk to me in such a manner? Don’t you dare start giving yourself airs and graces.’
‘I’m not,’ said Celeste. ‘Mother would be furious if she knew you had struck me with a glove and talked to me so rudely.’
‘Mother? Mother – oh my word, what dream have you been in? You’re an orphan as well you know. Your mother – whoever she was – left you in a basket and forgot all about you.’
‘Miss Olsen,’ called a stagehand, ‘Madame Sabina wants you.’
Celeste was about to tell Miss Olsen that she was wrong, very wrong, when she looked down at the dress she was wearing. It was a thin, worn thing.
‘I wasn’t wearing this,’ she said. ‘I didn’t put this on this morning. No – these clothes are so old-fashioned. I was wearing a brand-new sailor dress and playing with my toy theatre.’
‘When you have quite finished making up fairy tales,’ said Miss Olsen, ‘Madame Sabina wants her glove and wants it now – in her dressing-room.’
‘Madame Sabina,’ repeated Celeste. In her dream the man in the emerald green suit had spoken of her. But that was a dream, it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. ‘Why do I have to take it to her? Madame Sabina is Mother’s understudy.’
Even as she said this she was aware that her memories were beginning to fall into forgetfulness and there was only this strange, disjointed now. The more she thought of the past, the more it disappeared. Down she falls and down she falls…
‘Did you hear me?’ said Miss Olsen. ‘How dare you talk of the great Madame Sabina Petrova like that.’
Celeste closed her eyes in hope that she might wake up, that everything would be as it should be. When she opened them she knew that something very strange had happened, was happening. The words of the man in the emerald green suit echoed in her head. ‘To pay for your lessons you work – when you are not required to rehearse – for the great singer.’
The only thing Celeste could remember for certain was her toy theatre.
‘Which city is this?’ she asked.
‘The city of C—, as you perfectly well know.’
‘There is no city of C—,’ said Celeste. ‘Where is Anna?’
‘Ridiculous girl, I know your game,’ said the wardrobe mistress.
‘Do you?’ said Celeste.
‘Yes, oh yes – you think I don’t know that you both live up there, in the dome.’
‘Do we?’ said Celeste.
‘I know everything,’ said Miss Olsen, ignoring her question. ‘I know what goes on behind the scenes and if you act the fool it won’t work with me. You are nothing more than a little rat.’
Celeste wanted to be gone from there. She needed time to think. It was easier to run the errand than argue with Miss Olsen. She took the glove and set off in what Miss Olsen considered the wrong direction and the wardrobe mistress stamped her foot.
‘Where are you going? You’re not to use that door. If I find that you’ve used that door I will tell Madame, so I will, and you…’ Her words were lost in the busyness of the theatre.
Celeste knew this theatre. Or perhaps she knew one similar for it felt familiar, yet it wasn’t. Somehow it was different and she thought it had to do with the light; it shone too brightly, illuminating her growing sense of panic. Where was she? She knew one thing to be a truth: that she had spent most of her life backstage in theatres, she had as good as grown up in the rabbit warrens of draughty passages with myriad doors to workshops, to the wardrobe department, the prop shop, the green room. Winding wooden staircases led up to the domes and the fly towers. She knew backstage and front of house better than the lines on the palm of her hand. The theatre was home to her. And, as if to prove to herself that she was right, she had relied on her instinct and taken what she hoped was the fastest route, even if it was strictly forbidden. The other way went down veiny corridors, took too long and was always full of people. Near the wig department, she stopped by a narrow door that you wouldn’t notice unless you knew it was there. It was only to be used by the directors and important people and it divided the back of the theatre from the front. As far as Celeste was concerned, they were two different worlds. She looked around to make sure she wouldn’t be seen. A blind man was coming towards her, his stick tapping each side of the corridor.
‘Out of the way,’ he shouted. ‘Out of the way.’
With a turn of the handle, she slipped through the forbidden door into the realm of thick, red carpets where the walls were decorated with murals of fairy tales. This was the part of the theatre that belonged to the audience. To Celeste’s relief it looked familiar. It was a place she was sure she knew. It would be inhabited by grand ladies in luxurious dresses with bustles, and trains that swished when they moved, and dainty shoes that a princess might wear, their hair sparkling with gems. They would be accompanied by gentlemen in evening dress with starched white waistcoats and collapsible top hats. In the intervals they would hover in this corridor in hope of glimpsing the king.
All Celeste had to do was let herself into the anteroom behind the Royal Box and run down the spiral staircase that led to the prompt side of the stage, then it was only a matter of a twist and a turn to the diva’s dressing-room. She smiled to herself, knowing she would arrive well before Miss Olsen who she imagined would have wheezed and plodded down two floors to the stage level, passing the wardrobe department where she would have been unable to resist checking on her seamstresses.
Knowing where she was quietened Celeste’s worried mind. More important still, all was as it should be. Perhaps it was Miss Olsen who was losing her memory. She had heard it said that happened to grown-ups. A bit like losing your gloves, she supposed, or your hat. You keep on losing parts of your life until you forget who you are. Celeste told herself that would never happen to her. She remembered, yes, she did remember. It was just the dream that had confused her. She stood in front of the grand, gold-embossed doors that opened onto the Royal Box. Silently, she entered the anteroom and congratulated herself. She knew this theatre. She could see into the Royal Box and beyond to the auditorium with its white and gold walls and red plush seats. High above in the ornate ceiling, surrounded by painted fairies, was a large, circular space through which the glass chandelier would descend, as it always had done, twenty minutes before the audience was admitted.
She stopped for a moment to take in the magic of the auditorium. It had been silly to let a dream upset her.
Celeste had her hand on the banister of the spiral staircase when she became aware that someone was watching her. She spun round. In the shadows she could see only a pair of buttoned boots and two elegant hands resting on a gold-topped cane.
‘Do you often come this way?’ said a gentle voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Celeste, ‘but it’s the quickest way to Madame Sabina’s dressing-room.’
The owner of the boots and gold-topped cane laughed.
‘You shouldn’t be here either,’ said Celeste.
The gentleman stood and stepped into the light.
‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’
He didn’t look anything like the head on the coins, she thought, or the marble bust at the top of the stairs in the auditorium. All urgency left and curiosity took its place.
‘Why are you here alone?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t there be soldiers to protect you?’
‘Protect me from what? Dragon divas? I came to watch the dress rehearsal. I was told that Madame’s voice is transformed but I could hear no difference.’
Her large eyes took in the gentleman before her. She was standing upright, hands behind her back.
‘You were the little dancer in the first act. You were the best thing about the dress rehearsal.’
‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘I can’t dance.’
He laughed. ‘Now you are being modest. Were those real wings on your back?’ he asked.
Celeste said again, ‘I can’t dance, sir. Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else.’
‘There is no mistake. It was you and you flew – it was enchanting. And now you are dressed in the costume of a street urchin.’
Shyness overcame her.
‘No, sir. May I go, sir?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He put his long finger to his lips. ‘Not a word.’
‘Not a word,’ said Celeste. ‘And anyway, no one would believe me if I told them I’d met the king.’
Mr Gautier was a small man whose role as the director of the Royal Opera House made him appear bigger than he was. But today, as he sat down to eat his lunch, he felt the lack of every inch. For the first time he had to admit that if this morning’s dress rehearsal was anything to go by, the production of Frederick Massini’s new opera, The Saviour, was doomed to failure.
This time two years ago he had been full of excitement at the prospect of staging the opera. What had happened then had been a tragedy. Ellen Winther had been one of the greatest opera singers the city had ever produced but she, along with her husband and children, had been lost at sea. Not for the first time did Mr Gautier wonder if something in his fortunes had suffered a sea-change. Tonight’s Grand Opening should have been the jewel in the crown of the Royal Opera House’s autumn season. Instead, Madame Sabina Petrova was making everyone’s lives miserable. Sitting with Massini in the empty auditorium, the director had felt his age.
The dress rehearsal had started at ten o’clock. Immediately, the gauze that hung in front of the scenery had been badly torn by the batten of one of the main painted cloths. Mr Gautier had waved it aside as unimportant and the rehearsal continued. Madame Sabina refused to go on stage without it in place.
He had made a mistake when he’d told her the gauze was unnecessary and, if anything, distracted from the glorious sets. Madame had retorted that it made all the difference in the world to her, and that no one was there to see the scenery.
‘They are here to see me,’ she’d said. ‘The scenery doesn’t sing – I sing.’
Madame Sabina took to her dressing-room and refused to come out until Mr Gautier had apologised and assured her that the gauze would be in place when the curtain rose that evening.
‘Now, please,’ he’d begged, ‘we must finish the dress rehearsal. Imagine what tonight’s performance will be like if we don’t.’
To his complete surprise, she had said, ‘I don’t care. All I have to do is sing.’
When she had reappeared, she had just walked through her part. Then to the consternation of the conductor and the orchestra she had started to sing an aria from another opera altogether.
‘Stop, stop!’ shouted Mr Gautier. ‘Madame, what are you doing?’
‘I am singing an aria that I am famous for. This opera of Massini’s has no memorable tunes at all.’
Frederick Massini had stormed out of the theatre.
Mr Gautier knew that if Sabina Petrova insisted on singing that particular aria, Massini’s opera would be a disaster. It was a song that had been made famous by Ellen Winther. It also happened to be the last song she’d sung on this stage.
He had asked to speak to Madame Sabina alone. He had waited in his office, pacing back and forth, wondering who had been responsible for making this woman into an unbearable monster.
‘It would be most inappropriate…’ he had said when she eventually arrived, but Madame Sabina wasn’t listening.
She demanded coffee and ‘some of those little pastries’. Mr Gautier, conscious of every wasted second, watched them tick-tock away, defeated by a flurry of china coffee cups and pastries, forks and napkins.
‘Don’t you want a pastry?’ she’d asked with the innocence of a lamb.
‘No.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The aria you sang…’
‘Beautiful, wasn’t it?’
‘That aria would remind His Majesty of the loss of his son. It was a tragedy, you will remember, that also took the life of Ellen Winther, one of the opera house’s most beloved singers. That was the last song she ever sang on this stage.’
‘Most beloved?’ repeated Madame Sabina. ‘I don’t think so. I am far more highly regarded than ever Ellen Winther was. Her voice was rather thin, I recall.’
‘Madame, I’m sure, like us all, you want to impress the king,’ said Mr Gautier, speaking slowly as if he was dealing with a toddler on the cusp of a tantrum.
‘Of course.’
Mr Gautier swallowed before saying, ‘Then I suggest you sing the role Massini has written for you. I believe the opera stands a chance of being a success but not if you refuse to sing the correct score or act the part.’
Madame Sabina had stood up, knocking what was left of the pastries onto the floor. She’d flounced out of his office.
But to his surprise his words worked for she returned to the stage and finished the first act, singing the right words to the right score. But this time, instead of wearing the costume designed for the part, she was dressed in a gown sprinkled with diamonds.
‘No, no, no!’ Mr Gautier had shouted. ‘You are supposed to be a poor, homeless woman in this scene.’
Madame Sabina replied that she would wear what she pleased and it was so very unpleasant to be dressed in a nasty, shabby costume.
Raising his arms to the domed ceiling of the opera house, Mr Gautier had given in. And so the dress rehearsal continued only to be interrupted again when one of the footlights spluttered and set fire to a piece of painted scenery. The flames were doused but the damage meant that the scene painters would be working until the curtain rose. The gas-lighter, whose job it was to light the production, had strode on stage, announcing the place was no better than kindling. It wasn’t safe, and he wasn’t going to be held responsible if a fire broke out.
Mr Gautier had thanked him for his concern and suggested the rehearsal continue as they were running out of time.
It was at the end of Act One, when he was hoping things might improve, that Camille, the ballet school’s second-best ballerina, had tripped as she made her entrance. She sprained her ankle. There was a pause while a replacement, the best dancer from the corps de ballet, was found. By then, the stage had been transformed into a forest and in a pool of light a young girl, no older than twelve, tiptoed onto the stage. There was a hush, then the orchestra soared and for a few minutes Mr Gautier was transported by the clever little dancer. He could have happily watched her all day. How much better to work with children than with monstrous adults.
‘If she can sing,’ said a voice from the row behind him, ‘you should give her the role of Columbine in the pantomime.’
Mr Gautier had turned, pleased to see his old friend, Quigley, the clown. He was dressed, as always, in his chequered Harlequin costume.
The director had made a note to find out about the little dancer.
At the end of the dress rehearsal he’d said, ‘Well done,’ to the rest of the company, though none of them were happy with how it had gone, and all complained bitterly about Madame Sabina. She had sent Miss Olsen to tell the director that she wouldn’t see him until she’d rested.
Lunch was brought to his office. He ate slowly. Better, he thought, to go into battle on a full stomach than an empty one. But he wasn’t hungry, and he got up from his desk, which was covered with papers and manuscripts, and went to the window. He looked out over the copper domes of the city and he knew that he had four hours before the critics came, the curtain rose and his opera was destroyed by the eager scratching of their fountain pens. Four hours. He felt not unlike a man about to go to his execution. Not even the enchanting little dancer at the end of Act One would be able to save The Saviour.
Celeste stood in a corner of the diva’s dressing-room, once more foxed by the strangeness of everything. What she saw was nearly right and at the same time all wrong. Her confidence was beginning to fade. Perhaps it was possible that children, like grown-ups, could lose their memories. She seemed to have lost hers. She knew she had it before she went to sleep, before she woke up in the costume basket. But where could it be? The trouble was that if she thought back further than waking up, there was nothing, a long corridor of nothing, with only a vague sense of those she loved. What they looked like she had no notion – even thinking of them made them into ghosts. What didn’t leave her was a sense of emptiness, as if a part of her was missing. It was no good telling herself that this was a dream. Dreams weren’t solid, they didn’t have furniture you could touch, they didn’t have a wardrobe mistress and a glove in them. All the dreams she could remember had been wishy-washy and lacking reason.
The one thing she was sure of was the theatre. She remembered its corridors and staircases and where they led. There it was, a silver fish of something, someone half-remembered and instantly forgotten. She closed her eyes in hope of catching it. No use, it vanished, a vital piece of information swimming away from her. If only she could reel it in then this dressing-room, the diva and everything else might begin to make sense.
The dressing-room was the largest and the grandest in the Royal Opera House. Its furnishings were lavish: a piano, a day-bed, a huge dressing-table covered with paint and brushes and expensive bottles from a famous perfumery. An elaborate gilded mirror doubled the size of the room. One of the button-back armchairs was occupied by an overfed and under-loved girl with mouse-coloured hair who made the art of sitting look clumsy. This, apparently, was Hildegard, the diva’s daughter. Celeste had no memory of her mother’s understudy ever mentioning a child. Then again she had little memory of anything before the dream.
The soprano, resplendent in a kimono, was taking no notice of her daughter. She was more interested in who had sent flowers and the many gifts that had arrived. One of these was a box of chocolates tied with an extravagant bow. Her daughter asked if she could have them and her mother waved an unconcerned hand.
The girl took the box and sat down again. She removed the lid and let out a sigh of pleasure – there were so many chocolates to choose from. She started to eat them one by one, throwing papers onto the floor.
There was a timid knock on the door and the wardrobe mistress crept in.
Madame Sabina said, ‘Where have you been, Olsen? I need my corset loosening.’ Then to Celeste, ‘You, girl, pick up those wrappers.’
Miss Olsen gave Celeste a push and she did as she was told. At that moment the director strode in. He had decided over lunch to tell the diva exactly what he thought. Nothing else had managed to pierce her armour-plated skin.
‘I hope, Madame,’ he said, barely containing his anger, ‘that tonight you will grace us with your voice. The dress rehearsal was a farce – you made no effort. How is the conductor to know when to bring the orchestra up if you will not sing?’
‘Do not be so petty, so small-minded,’ said Madame Sabina. ‘No one cares about your directions. There was no point in exhausting myself with them. I know how my voice sounds, but your production…’ She shrugged. ‘The audience have paid a lot of money to hear me sing. And no, Gautier, I am not going to move about the stage. I am the great Sabina Petrova – I stand, I sing, I look wonderful. That is what I do.’
Mr Gautier was shaking with rage.
‘If you would only do what is asked of you, we would have an opera of startling originality.’
‘Rubbish. Absolute rubbish. Don’t you agree, Miss Olsen?’
Miss Olsen said nothing.
‘At least,’ said Mr Gautier, ‘you will wear the costumes that have been designed for your role.’
‘No,’ said Madame Sabina. ‘No and no again. My costumes have been created for me in Paris and are embroidered with diamonds – real diamonds.’
Celeste was picking up wrappers as, chocolate by chocolate, Hildegard discarded them. She looked up to find the girl staring at her.
‘How old are you?’ Hildegard asked, quietly enough not to be heard in the argument between the adults.
Again Celeste’s dream came back to her. Wasn’t that the question the man in the emerald green suit had asked? This time she didn’t hesitate.
‘Twelve,’ she said.
‘I’m thirteen,’ said the girl. ‘Eeurgh!’ She dropped a half-eaten chocolate to the floor. ‘I don’t like orange creams.’
For a moment, Celeste had a great desire to put the half-eaten chocolate in her mouth. She was so hungry. A glance from Miss Olsen made her reconsider and along with the crumpled wrappers, it went in the wastepaper basket. Perhaps, she thought, the empty feeling was nothing more than hunger. But in her heart she knew it wasn’t.
The argument had now lost any politeness. Mr Gautier’s patience had already been overstretched that day and his voice became louder and angrier.
Celeste watched Hildegard stick out her tongue and put another chocolate on it, closing her mouth around it and licking her lips. What Celeste would give for just one of those chocolates.
Suddenly the girl’s mouth stopped moving, her hands went instinctively to her throat, her face turned the colour of a beetroot.
‘She’s choking!’ Celeste shouted to make herself heard.
‘Quiet!’ said Madame Sabina, turning on Celeste. ‘Quiet. It is not your place to speak.’
She was about to turn back to the director when he cried, ‘My God – Hildegard!’
Knocking over a vase of red roses he swiftly lifted her by her ankles so that all her petticoats and bloomers could be seen, transforming her, Celeste thought, into a white rose. Miss Olsen slapped her hard on her back. Hildegard’s arms flopped in front of her blue-tinged face and now it was her mother who was shouting.
‘Call for help!’
Miss Olsen gave Hildegard another slap and something flew from her mouth. She took a great gasp of air and Mr Gautier laid her down on the day-bed. The poor girl couldn’t stop coughing and Miss Olsen poured her a glass of water.
‘Oh, Hildegard, darling,’ said Madame Sabina, wiping the hair from her daughter’s face. ‘My little mouse, this is too terrible. What did you eat? Was it a nut, my love?’
‘No, Mama,’ said Hildegard between bouts of coughing and sips of water. ‘It was something hard, very hard.’ Celeste picked up the offending item. Covered in chocolate, a ring lay in the palm of her hand. An emerald ring, just like the one in her dream.
‘Bring it here,’ ordered Madame Sabina, once more in control. ‘No, stupid girl, it looks disgusting – wash it first.’
Celeste washed it, hoping that what she was holding might really be nothing more than a nut, that it was her imagination that had turned it into something else. But it was clearly a gold ring, set with an emerald. She took it to Madame Sabina.
‘Let me see, Mama,’ said Hildegard, weakly.
Madame Sabina held the ring up to the light.
‘It’s an emerald, darling,’ she said, ‘set in gold.’ A smile crossed her thin lips. ‘I would say it’s rather valuable.’ The fact that it had nearly choked her daughter became of little consequence. ‘You,’ she said to Celeste, ‘you – whatever your name is – smash all the chocolates and see if there are more gems.’
Miss Olsen oversaw the process and when Celeste had broken and discarded every chocolate in the box, said, ‘No, Madame, they are just chocolates.’
‘Bring me that box,’ said Madame Sabina. ‘Is there no card? Nothing to say who it is from?’
Hildegard pointed to the inside of the lid where a ribbon held an envelope in place. With very little grace, Madame Sabina tore it open and pulled out the card. There was a moment’s silence in which the soprano’s face clouded with fury. The box dropped to the floor. She glared again at the card then tore it into four pieces and let them fall on top of the box.
‘Out,’ she shouted. ‘Out, all of you. I don’t want to see any of you.’
‘But Mama, you can’t mean me,’ said Hildegard as Madame took her daughter’s hand and threw her out along with everyone else. They heard the key being turned in the lock.
Hildegard started to cry and Miss Olsen took her to a nearby dressing-room.
Celeste had picked up the empty box and the pieces of torn card as she left the room and was waiting for instructions.
‘Give me those,’ said Mr Gautier. He took the fragments of card and pieced them together. ‘To Hildegard from Papa,’ he read aloud. ‘I always thought the father was dead.’ He seemed to notice Celeste then for he said, ‘You danced beautifully this morning. And now I have to somehow worm my way back into that room and calm the dragon.’ He smiled at her.
Miss Olsen returned and, taking Celeste by the arm, pulled her aside.
‘You are wanted by the dancing master in the rehearsal room,’ she said.
‘Why?’ asked Celeste.
‘Try not to be more stupid than you already are. You know perfectly well why.’
‘But I don’t.’
‘Just because you have been picked to dance in tonight’s performance don’t think you will be given any more privileges,’ said Miss Olsen. ‘You’ll still be working for me and Madame.’
Celeste felt panic rise in her. It was one thing for the king to mistake her for a dancer, quite another for Miss Olsen.
‘I can’t dance,’ she said.
‘I would agree with that,’ said Miss Olsen. ‘But Mr Gautier doesn’t, so go. And don’t be late for your costume fitting. It must be perfect for tonight’s performance.’
