Page 118 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘End of the fog season.’

A tingle went over the nape of his neck. ‘It is.’

Mori touched their cups together and then sat back a little into a sunbeam, which showed all the red in his hair. It was the deep black red of church music coming up through the floor.

FORTY-EIGHT

London, April 1891

Thaniel let himself out the back door to breathe while he sipped at his tea. There was something silly about a man with hot tea in a china cup outside in hot weather, but the air in the theatre was getting pipe-smokey, even backstage. He propped himself against a poster for the show.

The air smelled of pollen and stone. He put his head back against the warm paper. The sky was just starting to turn mauve with the oncoming sunset. In another few months it would be back to Cornwall to beat the fog, but for now, London was warm and getting warmer, and the spring and the summer seemed like they would stretch out forever. He could have stayed there for a long time, but church bells started to sing out the hour.

After the quiet outside, the bustle in the narrow dressing rooms was much more colourful than it had been a few minutes ago. Because all the windows were open, it was balmy and the girls only had silk wraps on over their dresses. He was supposed to be in an evening jacket but he was down to his shirt and waistcoat, which he was enjoying, because nobody could tell him different. It was his show and he could conduct it how he wanted.

Arthur Sullivan flitted in. He moved fast for such a rounded man. There was sometimes a lasting impression that for whatever proportion he was made of muscle and bone, there was an equal measure of helium. Thaniel was still folding back his cuffs.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Sullivan said. ‘It’s always a hell of a lot easier conducting your own writing than someone else’s. You know how it’s meant to go. You know it’s good, don’t you?’

‘It’s all right,’ said Thaniel.

‘I think you’ll find it goes down a bit better than all right.’

‘Well, don’t hex it,’ he said, starting to feel embarrassed.

They were in a dressing room tucked off to the side of the Savoy Theatre. The corridor was alive with people tuning instruments and singers warming up. A strain from Mozart’s Requiem echoed along from another room. Arthur sat looking through the score with a pencil. He would be playing the piano.

Someone tapped on the door. Mori came in, speculatively. ‘Oh, good,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be the baritones again.’

Thaniel laughed. Mori had no sense of direction at all, although he seemed to enjoy the thrill of that. He kept going to churches to walk the mazes on the floors. He gave Thaniel a glass of wine, saw Arthur and then offered his own.

Arthur smiled and shook his head. ‘No, no, no, no need to be so polite, it’s quite …’ He trailed off and put the music aside. ‘Good grief. My dear fellow. It’s him, isn’t it?’ he said to Thaniel.

Mori looked between them, puzzled. The electric lights backstage brought out his colours and, even in evening clothes, he was brighter than everyone else. He’d taken off his jacket too, and all white suited him. So did his age. He was past that nearly feverish glow of younger health; the time in prison had eroded that and he was more faded, but there was real power across his shoulders now, and that old sense that he might only have been a trick of light in the dust was gone.

‘I hadn’t actually—’ Thaniel began.

Arthur took no notice and shook Mori’s free hand. ‘I’m Arthur, I’m playing the piano tonight—’

‘Yes,’ Mori said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it.’

‘Oh, but you usually sit in the front row on the left!’ Arthur burst out, as if it were the most significant thing he had discovered all year.

Mori looked down at his hand, which was still trapped in both of Arthur’s, but he was too polite to ask for it back.

‘God, it’s uncanny,’ Arthur said, studying him like he was in a glass case. ‘My dear fellow, I thought you seemed familiar when you spoke – you have the most remarkable voice, you know.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Mori said, starting to sound like he was enjoying the bizarreness of a whole conversation whose object had managed to remain obscure for so long. The laughter lines had deepened around his eyes. They were always there now, if he stood in bright light.

‘Have you heard the whole thing?’ Arthur went on.

‘No, just bits and pieces.’

Arthur laughed. ‘Sorry, this is ridiculous, but I feel I know you quite well. You learned your English from Nathaniel, of course? Hence the, ah, northerly inflection?’

‘That’s right.’ It was less than it had used to be. There was a faint accent under it now, one that could have been from anywhere. It brought a sharpness on a few words, usually the kind of words you read more often than said.

‘Arthur, he’s got no idea what you’re talking about,’ Thaniel broke in.