The Old Alhambra

This tale is complete in Six Chapters which will be posted at approximately weekly intervals

This, the fifth chapter, is entitled

~ Blood Will Out ~

Readers should be aware that this is primarily a Ghost Story.

The TV/TG element is crucial to the plot but occupies a comparatively minor part of the text.

Those wishing to absorb a little of the ambience prior to reading should visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW4ThXetHkI&NR=1 and hear Helen Shapiro sing the last verse and refrain of the song that runs like a thread throughout the tale.

I'm a young girl, and have just come over,
Over from the country where they do things big,
And amongst the boys I've got a lover,
And since I've got a lover, why I don't care a fig.

The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking down at me,
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.

The boy that I love, they call him a cobbler,
But he's not a cobbler, allow me to state.
For Johnny is a tradesman and he works in the Boro'
Where they sole and heel them, whilst you wait.

Refrain

If I were a Duchess and had a lot of money,
I'd give it to the boy that's going to marry me.
But I haven't got a penny, so we'll live on love and kisses,
And be just as happy as the birds on the tree.

Refrain

'The Boy I Love' was composed by George Ware in 1885 and made popular by Marie Lloyd.

An interesting historical side note is that it was also apparently sung by Belle Elmore, the wife of Dr. Crippen.

Chapter Five ~ Blood Will Out ~

For eighteen hours he slept. Eighteen blessed hours. And if there were dreams to plague those hours he had no memory of them when he woke in the early afternoon stretched out across the bed where he had collapsed, fully clothed, the night before.

That he was thirsty was his first awareness .... his mouth thick and sticky with sleep. As he stretched pain from his wrist and knee jolted him back into full awareness of what had happened. Pain less acute now, more an aching stiffness in the joints, but enough to still his movements, enough for him to sink back on the pillows with a near silent exhalation of breath.

And lying there it all flooded back. The faces in the mirror. His own face which was not his own, and the terrifying other looking over his shoulder.

For long minutes he lay there, reliving those moments, that eternity. Reliving against all his efforts to banish the memory.

It was with a certain desperation that he finally wrenched himself back to the present with a determined effort to swing himself off the bed. Seeking the pain as a form of distraction to kill the past and its memories. Hobbling to the bathroom as if fleeing his devils. Shaving whilst the hot bath ran. Shaving painfully, carefully avoiding the grazed, raw patches. Seeing in the misting mirror a face still bearing traces of the make up he had so carefully applied. Seeing through eyes still outlined and shadowed and with lashes unnaturally dark and thick.

He lay in the bath until the water had cooled around him. Soaking for the heat to leech the stiffness away. Tried not to think. Tried in vain. Tried to concentrate on the everyday practicalities.

Work. Today was ....? Friday. Today must be Friday. Too late for work now even if he were fit. And he wasn't. So stiff could hardly move. He must ring the office and let them know. Explain. Perhaps after the weekend. Perhaps he could go .... ?

"No!" The voice screamed inside him. Screamed so loud that the noise escaped in a sobbing gasp. Not back again. Not back there.

He wrenched himself out of the bath, welcoming the hurt that drove thought away, that quieted, the memory. Towelled himself fiercely, inviting the distraction of the pain in injured knee and wrist.

He would explain. Would tell his office that he was hurt. Would be out of action for a week or two. Ask them to send someone else in the meantime. After all the job was nearly finished and ....

Christ! He had left all his notes, all his measurements behind .... along with Scrivener's folder. And his own surveyor's instruments in his case. It would be difficult .... impossible to explain .... "I saw this ghost .... A woman's face in a mirror ...."

He could imagine their reaction. His colleagues' "You should be so lucky...", "Pissed again ....", and "A phantom screw is better than none at all ...." And if they should ever find out he was wearing make up and .... Jesus!! He would never live it down. And as for the directors! Even if they overlooked his abandoning of notes and equipment .... for what ever reason .... rumours would percolate up to them. He would be finished. He could kiss goodbye to any promotion .... even if he escaped sacking .... and wherever he went the story would follow him.

He dressed, made coffee. Rang the company to say he had had an accident, had fallen, nothing serious, just needed rest over the weekend. Would be all right Monday.

Monday was an age away. Something would turn up. He would think of something before Monday. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof ....

The evil thereof, the evil thereof. The evil.

The rest of Friday and the weekend passed in a turmoil of thoughts that twisted and turned trying to resolve the both problem of what to tell his employers and, increasingly, what was the significance of what he had seen and what the locket told.

Increasingly too, self questionings and doubts arose. In the safe familiarity of his own home what he had experienced, or thought he had experienced, in Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room seemed more and more improbable. He did not believe in ghosts. Surely it must have been an hallucination? He didn't do drugs but perhaps there were remnants of something in the old bricked up room. Maybe the candles? Could you release LSD that way? He knew sod all about it and .... Or perhaps he was just ill. Maybe the languor, the otherworldliness, that he had experienced later in the Quiet Woman was symptomatic of it. The strange conversation with the old woman when he must have been in a dreamlike state .... but which must have been real because she had given him .... given him the birth certificate. So she must have known who he was. So he must have told her, because otherwise she .... could not have known.

There were questions. Too many questions. And he was involved through his family. Through his grandmother. Something the old lady had said in 'The Quiet Woman' - 'Warned you to leave the Old Alhambra and its dead alone. You especially.' And even at their first meeting, the repeated 'Not you' s.'

His own father he had hardly known. He had died when he was about six. All he held onto was the remembrance of love and warmth. Of a quiet man, hazy now in his memory, but someone who had provided a bedrock of affection. Someone who even after his death had seemed to be still with them, still with his mother and him throughout the remaining years of his boyhood. She too had died when he was only fifteen, but he still treasured those precious formative years. It had been a blissfully happy childhood.

And grandmama had been there too in those distant days. His father's mother. She who had spoilt him outrageously or so his mother had always laughingly claimed. His grandmama who had always said that when he grew up he would have the girls falling over themselves to claim him. "With those eyes sweetheart they will lay themselves at your feet." And she used to wink at his mother and shake her head and say "Just like his father's. What girl could resist them?" And his mother had laughed in return and said "It takes more than just eyes Alice." And then they had both laughed although he had not known why.

And once, when his mother hadn't been there, his grandmama had added, "Just like my James's." And then had been silent for a long time, seemingly lost to the present, fallen into a reverie of other times, her own youth perhaps, until he had grown restless and tugged at her hand until he had her attention again, wanting her to return to him. And as she had chided him gently for his impatience, he had sensed a deep sadness in her that was beyond his understanding.

And her James, his grandfather, must be the man whose photograph was opposite her's in the locket. No. Not must be, for there could be other explanations. But probably. Perhaps more than probably because whoever it was so greatly resembled the old lady in 'The Quiet Woman' who had given him the birth certificate. The old lady with the faded violet eyes. Faded but not dulled by age. Which could burn still brightly in spite of her years. And when they did they could be his own .... The same distinctive violet, albeit now in her more reminiscent of a water colour.

Eyes the colour of fresh violets. Like his father's, like his grandfather's. The grandfather he had never known. James Edward Dearden. The grandfather whose name he bore.

Perhaps the answer lay in the other cuttings left behind in that room. Perhaps now he knew what he knew, or what he half guessed, the album of photographs would provide him with answers.

Perhaps, perhaps. But 'Do not meddle' she had said. And to meddle he would have to go back there. Back there into the Old Alhambra and into Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room. Back to where all his notes and equipment had been abandoned in his flight from the terror that lurked there.

Back to the Old Alhambra and its dead. Back to the murdered Beatrice and the vengeful spirit that was Lucy. Vengeful? Yes there had been hatred there, real all-consuming hatred. But why? What had become of her? And where did his parents come in to it all? What lay between Beatrice and his grandfather? Were they brother and sister? Identical twins or ....? And the old lady?

'Do not meddle,' she had said. 'Not you.'

And yet the questions nagged at him all through the weekend. Various permutations going through his mind. Possible answers, explanations, weighed and whirled round in his imaginings. At one stage he tried to write it all down. Put it into some sort of logical order. Found a degree of escape in seeing it rationalised on paper with alternative suggestions laid out clearly and methodically.

And as the weekend progressed so the terror faded slightly as on both conscious and unconscious levels his mind searched to rationalise the events that had so traumatised him.

But fear, whether rational or not, still welled up inside him whenever his thoughts strayed, as they constantly did, to a remembrance of that room, and the faces in the mirror. Fear that had a physical presence and left a burning, bitter, taste at the back of his throat.

In the end the choice was stark and knife edged. On Monday morning his firm rang. An unexpected but high priority project had been scheduled for him for Tuesday and it was made abundantly clear to him that he had to wrap up the Old Alhambra job on the Monday. No leeway. No argument.

And it was the fear that clinched it. All his instincts screamed 'No'. Loss of job, of career even, were as nothing compared with having to return to that decaying theatre and what it contained. But something deep down told him that if he did not go, if he let fear of that nature triumph, then everything would be changed. That if he bowed to that fear of the unknown, it would scar him so deeply that throughout his life, even when the fear itself had finally faded, the scar of bowing to it would always remain deep within him.

And so he went back to the Old Alhambra.

A sunny bright day as he walked down Havelock Road past the yet-to-open 'Quiet Woman'. Warm for early November. Left down the little ginnel, into the cold shadow of the theatre's side. Mr. Scrivener's keys not needed, the side door still slightly ajar from his precipitous departure on the Thursday evening.

The building silent apart from his footsteps echoing in its high ceilinged emptiness. Light streaming through skylights in the outer corridors and diffusing into the vastness of the auditorium. He saw the lantern torch standing abandoned on one corner of the stage with his work case standing alongside it. Just as he had left it before he had ventured down the corridor to test the lock of Beatrice's d'Auray's dressing room.

The man hesitated. Every fibre of his being anxious just to complete the work he had come to do, the work that was his priority, and leave. Just a morning's work. Treat it as routine.

And yet deep down the knowledge that it was not quite so simple. What had driven him back was not the work but the need to prove to himself that he could return. and return not just to the theatre but to where his demons lurked. Best get it over with. Now. In the brightness of the morning rather than the encroaching dusk of a wintry evening. Otherwise he would not be able to work. Not be able even to carry out the mechanical tasks that awaited him. Not with that unresolved.

Armed this time with the heavy torch, he once again he picked his way down the rubble strewn corridor that led to the dressing rooms; that led to Beatrice d'Auray's room at its furthermost end.

Its door slightly open but no chink of light showing from it his time. Inside silent darkness so that he had to stand there for a couple of minutes to allow his eyes to accustom to it before he could tentatively enter, half feeling his way.

The mirror a glow of silver barely reflecting onto the oblong of the dressing table beneath it. He paused again in the centre of the room and slowly, as his eyes adjusted further, shadows formed. Dark forms that he recognised as the dim shapes of the folder of cuttings and of the album.

He clicked on the torch and swept its beam round the room. The chair lying on its side where it had tumbled as he had spasmed upright and turned towards the face .... the thing .... he had seen reflected in the mirror. Otherwise the room at peace and showing no signs of the horror that had filled it before. Only the strangely comforting old fashioned scents of lavender and camphor on the air.

A rather ordinary, tawdry, little room showing age and neglect. Perhaps it all had been an hallucination, an over fevered reaction to tiredness and .... maybe he had been ill .... maybe the golden bombardier had been off .... maybe ....

No. It had happened. The door to the wardrobe within a wardrobe was open, the dresses of silk and satin, bedecked with lace and feather, hanging motionless therein.

No. It had happened. The candles on the dressing table had burnt down to within an inch of their ends, those flanking the mirror mere stubs with wax sculpted where it had run over the side holders. None of them completely burnt out but all extinguished leaving just an inch or so to burn.

The man picked up the chair and straightened it in front of the dressing table. Stood there leaning on spread fingers looking down at the album and folders. The sensible course would be to collect them and go. Read them at leisure. Leave this now seemingly unremarkable room that would forever haunt his imaginings; leave it to its past and whatever had emerged into the present from its secret places.

Leave it.

He pulled back the chair and sat down. Placed the torch on its base into lantern mode. The battery was running low, the light yellowing. He should have recharged it over the weekend but it would do. He wasn't going to need it for much longer.

He reached for the album, carefully stationed it in front of him and opened it. Idly turned its pages until he found a full page photograph of Beatrice d'Auray, the smudged and grainy reproduction of which had appeared in the press cutting that he had examined first in the Old Alhambra and so many times since. This original had been hand coloured, expensively so as it was in surprisingly pristine condition, and must have been taken with a large format camera for it was needle sharp. His eyes sought first the locket nestling below the lace in the swell of her breasts. Crystal clear the smooth oval of it lay. Identical to ....

He took the locket from his pocket and held it against the photograph. Identical. But identical was not necessarily the same and there must be many lockets that looked just like that. Still in the circumstances ....

He clicked it open and again gazed at the two faces therein. At his grandfather and the woman, his grandmother. His grandfather whom he so resembled; his grandfather whose looks were his inheritance. Whose eyes ....

.... Whose eyes, those curiously violet eyes were also shared with .....

Whoever had hand tinted the eyes had really been a little over the top even allowing for an understandable desire to please a client by emphasising a best feature. No eyes could be quite like those in the murdered woman's photograph. Not quite so outrageously violet ....

The man propped the album, open at the photograph, upright against the mirror's base, and gazed over it into the mirror. Violet eyes gazed back. Eyes really quite wasted on a mere man. Or so everyone said.

If it were Lucy Sheldon who had murdered Beatrice, perhaps her reappearance to him made some fragmentary beginnings of sense, if he were indeed of the same blood. Although it was very tenuous. What was he? A great-nephew? And what could have driven Lucy to murder and why should the malice last through the generations?

Unless Beatrice had had a child? Scrivener had said that there was a rumour that she was pregnant when murdered, but before then perhaps .... If his father were her first child and .... and the man who he had thought to be his grandfather, the man in the locket, and his grandmother had just looked after him .... even before the murder .... so that it would not interfere with her stage career?

And then afterwards had perhaps raised him as their own ....?

But it still left questions, too many questions, unanswered. Perhaps in the other press cuttings there was something?

And so the man read them. Carefully, looking for what was not said as much as for what was. Trying to read them through the eyes of a contemporary, of a fellow professional of those times. and the more he read, the more he became familiar with the subject, the more he became attuned to the gossip, the more he was convinced that there was something. A regular contributor to the "Gossip from the Green Room" writing as 'Ariel' seemed to be always sniping at Beatrice. Nothing said outright but her reviews always disparaging and hardly a month passed without there being some throw-away sneering mention of her. Hints that she was living on borrowed time, that her better days were behind her, that she had always been overrated, that her performance depended on others.

Whatever the truth of the insinuations, they had spread like a slow infection to other columnists in other stage magazines. There were suggestions that she was becoming unreliable, and what could you expect with her record of burning the candle at both ends? Nothing definite, nothing specific, was alleged, just the slow drip, drip, of innuendo.

And there was something else too. Something unsavoury. Not even hinted at but there nonetheless. That she was a cheat. That her act was founded on a lie.

The man read and re-read. Trying to see behind the faded print to the facts behind the damaging evasions.

And as he read, lost in that long ago, war time, theatrical world, gradually there came to him an inkling of what was being suggested, As he entered more and more into the behind-the-scenes gossip, there came to him, through more a process of osmosis than by any conscious deduction, an understanding of the calumny that was being aired. Or rather two. The first that Beatrice d'Auray, and her act, were suffering from an over indulgence in alcohol, and the second that ....

But surely that could not be true .... not if Scrivener's version of events was correct ....

Not if she was pregnant! And it left in ashes his theory about his own father being ....

And yet ....

He turned back to the photograph in the album. Held the open locket up against it.

The lantern's battery was fading fast. The yellow glimmer barely sufficient now to discern the faces in the locket let alone determine their detail. But the idea excited him. Perhaps that was were the truth really lay ....

In which case ....

He needed more light .... he needed ....

In his work case there was a box of matches, legacy of a celebratory cigar, and these served to light the candle stubs. Two on the dressing table and the six flanking the mirror. To give him light enough to see. He needed just a moment to see if .... if it were feasible, conceivable, that ....

Just a minute and then he could leave the room for ever. Put it all behind him, all that had occurred here. All cleansed with the knowledge of the locket's secret solved. Then he could truly leave the Old Alhambra to its dead. Then he could in time forget, freed of the burden of his morbid curiosity.

The candles flared and guttered, casting a light that was more of a living thing than that given out by the lantern. The movement of its varying intensity on the photograph imparted to it the semblance of life also. It seemed to be looking back at him. Violet eyes looking into violet eyes but not a one way transmission any longer. The woman in the photograph studying him as he studied her.

And it seemed that she who so resembled the man in the locket also resembled him. That if he turned his head just so .... and if he perhaps were made up as she was, blemishes hidden, cheekbones emphasised, the jaw line minimised, eyes and eyelids accentuated ....

Just so ....

His hands moved over his face in long practised motions. They dipped into jars, squeezed tubes, unscrewed bottles, manipulated lip sticks and mascara brushes. The finger tips rubbed in, and smudged, and blended colours, and smoothed down. Tweezers plucked elegance into eyebrows as eyes under identical eyebrows smiled back their approval.

And what had at first seemed a mere tentative exploring of possibilities, then a burgeoning curiosity as to how much of a resemblance existed between the two faces, the one in the photograph, the one in the mirror, both two dimensional representations, became something more ....

.... It became a celebration of the discovering of a sameness. A sameness that spanned the generations. A sameness that spanned, that transformed, gender.

The man no longer knew what had triggered it. It was by no conscious will of his that it had started and now he was lost in it. He possessed no knowledge of these arts, his hands knew not these skills, and yet it was his hands, that moved at ease like butterflies across his face, transforming it to match the face in the photograph that watched and waited. And in watching seemed to smile a welcome.

Where the earrings came from he had no idea. It did not occur to him to wonder, to question. It just seemed natural that they where there, just where his hand fell naturally when it reached for them, when it picked them up and with a familiar turn of the head and accompanying twist of the fingers, secured them in place.

He smiled. Patted his earlobes gently in a familiar gesture, to assure that the earrings were hanging down evenly close to his neck.

God! His hair was a sight! He really should keep it cut better if the wig were to fit without stray hairs of his getting in the way. There were several to chose from in the wardrobe, including the one that he had worn when the photograph was taken. Real human hair and it had cost a fortune even though it was second hand .... well almost new really. Lucky to get it but he had been a good customer of theirs for sometime and when it was offered he was flush with the proceeds from that run at the Palladium and ....

Ease it on .... front to back and then tuck in all the stray hair .... So!

He ran his hands through it at the sides, carrying it back over his ears. Brushed it lightly, teasing its fullness out. Smiled at his image in the mirror, in the photograph.

Such a pretty dress that. Quite his favourite. That had been bought with the cash from the Palladium booking too. He should wear it more often .... after all it wasn't a museum piece. It was made to be worn and ....

The man got up and crossed again to the wardrobe where with a sure hand he moved hangers to and fro until the dress had been located and space created for its withdrawal. It was indeed gorgeous and worth every penny that it had cost. Made a girl feel special it did. Only for special occasions though. Like today ....

Only a girl needed special undies for a special dress .... not that undies had to be period of course .... except the petticoats and they were such fun .... really feminine.... all that silk and lace swirling about one's legs. Otherwise .... well the poor dears didn't even have bra's .... and well how did they manage? Although .... well in his case it wasn't so crucial .... still wearing a bra did give one that extra feminine thrill.

There they all were, in the drawers of the wardrobe. A feast of lace and silk and satin. He knew where everything was and what exactly he would find.

Carefully he made a matching selection of panties, bra, and garter belt in matching peach from the top drawer were they nested layered in tissue paper. Waiting for him. Biding their time knowing that he would return to claim them.

Carefully he dressed, sliding into the precious intimate garments, feeling them caress his limbs, his body welcoming their touch, feeling its beauty enhanced, feeling itself prepared for the dream of a dress. The special dress that he, that Beatrice had worn for her photograph. A dress of which that no hand tinted photograph could give more than a faint illusory impression. A creation in lemon silk with a white facing. Fine hand embroidery in gold thread at its edges, the skirts sweeping the floor, the Nottingham lace at the throat reaching high to the neck, so that the dress encompassed him. Swallowed and possessed him.

One thing only missing.

The locket.

Gently he lowered over his head, Swept his hair back and over allowing its chain access too his neck. Centred it on his breasts,

The locket. Back where it belonged. All made complete again. Whole.

Seated himself again. Smiled into the mirror. Saw his hand reach out and lift the lid of the music box. The box she had given him. As a token. Heard again the tinkling chime of the melody:

The boy I love is up in the gallery
The boy I love is looking down at me.
There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.

The years seem to roll away. Back beyond to happier times, before this dreadful war started. To that long summer when he had first met and courted Katherine. The Spring, so full of promise then, when their son was born. Katherine had known of course, had known from the outset. How could it be otherwise? And had accepted it because she loved him for what he was without reservation.

Of course she had demurred at first when he had started to build a stage career round it, refining the amateur act that he had resurrected from his school days. But what harm could there be in it? And it had brought in some much needed cash for the young family when work was not all that easy to find. And then when the imperfections inherent in his voice began to be too obvious with the strain imposed on it, he had tried to be clever and had embarked on a double bluff career as a 'male impersonator'.

And it had worked. Especially when he had teamed up with Lucy so that he could concentrate more on the patter leaving the straight contralto singing more and more to her. Relying on her more and more. God she had the voice of angel did Lucy. Perhaps it really was her that had made the difference. Whatever the reason things had certainly taken off.

The room seemed darker now. The candles wavering, flickering, as they burnt out. Bloody War! Power cuts and no bloody candles to be had. Not for love nor money. It had been different that summer of 1939 at the Palladium. Before the lights went out all over Europe. Before he had packed Katherine and James off to stay with her parents in the countryside to escape the bombing.

He shivered. Two of the mirror's candles flared in dying and the darkness crept closer.

He had felt lost when they had gone. Living alone in digs in wartime was a desperately lonely existence. More and more he had lived as a woman. The one thing he was good at and at least it saved him from accusations of cowardice. "Why aren't you in uniform mate?" Fine bloody soldier he'd have made. When called up for his medical the M.O had taken one look at him and said that he'd let him know when things had got really serious and they'd run out of four by two's for the three-o-threes.

The music box slowed and stopped. Idly he wound it up again.

The boy I love is looking down at me,

Her song really. Before he had taken a fancy to it and claimed it as his own. Still felt guilty about that. Felt guilty about her too, but she had been so pretty and warm and alive. And Katherine so far away and transport so difficult in wartime. Even if he could have got away from the theatre with twice nightly shows seven days a week. Not to mention bleedin' matinées.

He peered into the mirror. Half light suited him, he thought wryly. Hid the wrinkles; hid the ravages of the drink that he had turned to in his loneliness. Turned to to assuage the guilt he felt about his infidelities. About his treatment of Lucy. About what he had promised her. About the lies he had told to her and to Katherine.

Too late now.

The darkness was falling. Falling inside the little shabby room. Only the tall, free standing, side candles now waging a losing battle against the dying of the light. The mirror itself dark now and in it his reflection fading, dying with the light itself.

Then the smell of lavender in the air. And although the room behind him was lost in the mirror's darkness he knew that he was not alone. Was not surprised. Had always expected, known, that she would come.

Just as she had done all those years before.

Cold now. Then it had been different. In the warmth of their love. But now bitter cold. Breath frosting as he turned in his chair. Turned to see the swirl of darker darkness thicken in the murk of the room. The column form and twist into a figure, into a girl. A girl he had once held in his arms. Had once loved.

A girl who had once loved him. Loved him perhaps too well.

As beautiful as he remembered her to be. As beautiful as the image he had held deep within himself for all those years. Only no warm love now in her eyes but hatred as of ice.

And in her hand a knife. The knife he also remembered. Had cause to remember. Had cause to curse.

Half rising from the chair, turning, he watched as in slow motion as her hand descended towards him, the knife a long glitter in the candlelight. Saw in her eyes a fulfilment. A laying to rest of her pain.

And then pain, his pain, seized him. A searing, stifling, pain that welled up in an agony that stilled all movement. He felt himself falling back towards the dressing table as the darkness closed in, became complete.

And in that fleeting moment, James Edward Dearden, the young James Edward Dearden, knew with brilliant clarity, the answers to all his unanswered questions. To all the questions that had brought him to this place.

That same fleeting moment in which they all became quite irrelevant.