'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 Three — Faces in the Mirror.

The sound of the side door closing seemed loud, amplified by the sounding box of the great emptiness that the building contained. There was a sort of finality to it, emphasising his isolation from an outside world that suddenly seemed impossibly remote. Cocooned with the past in this high musty space with the memories of the long dead as his only companions.

And as the sound of the door shutting died away he heard, or imagined for a moment he heard, the echo again. Only this time not an echo, if it ever had been an echo, this time no words, but the distant faint trill of a girlish laugh, which in its dying fall provoked its own true, ever fainter, echoes from high above in the darkling gallery.

Angrily the man turned on his heel. Shook shoulders and head to dispel the feeling of lethargy that had kept him there those long moments during Mr. Scrivener's departure. Not just lethargy. Almost a foreboding. Christ! He was letting that loony old bat in The Quiet Woman get to him. She, together with the absurd theatrical reminiscences of that Guilgud manqué, Scrivener.

Work. He had a job to do. Best get on with it.

And so he did. All the rest of that afternoon, he measured and calculated, rechecked and recalculated. Explored and examined the empty carcase of what had once been a vibrant living theatre. A building that had once witnessed the hushed expectancy of audiences, the holding of breath, the gasps of excitement; that had heard the tears and the laughter and the applause. A building that must have been as close to living as any edifice of brick and stone, plaster and timber, can be.

No sound to disturb him now though. No more echoes or distant laughter to trouble his reason. Just the high vaulted silence such as fills an old cathedral. A deep silence hallowed by past generations of listeners. An expectant silence.

And sometimes, just sometimes, when he paused and looked about him, or when he turned a corner, he had the impression that he had just missed seeing something, someone. That if he had looked up, turned the corner, just that split second earlier he might just have glimpsed ....

But only sometimes. For the most part his afternoon passed in the routine that had become second nature to him in the three years since he had joined the company after leaving university. A professional absorption in work that was still new enough to be all engrossing. So much so that he did not remark at first the gradual dying of the natural light that filtered in. Was not aware of how the shadows were slowly reclaiming for their own the far recesses and crannies of the building; of how the few bare lamp bulbs glowed brighter in protest against the encroaching darkness.

If he had he might also have noticed that the darkness itself cloaked, was itself made deeper by, a certain fogginess, a foreign presence in the air that was perhaps more usual in the old days when chimneys of more than a million coal fires spewed out their filth into the London skies. The bygone pea-soupers that Holmes and Jack the Ripper would have known when hands could not be seen in front of faces. Now reborn inside this building, invading it and bringing with it a cold clamminess that crept into its very fabric.

Perhaps it was the increasing chill that first drew the man's attention to the passing of time. It was later than he had realised. Nearly time to exchange the dankness of his present surroundings for the warmth to be found, the surly barman not withstanding, in The Quiet Woman.

Tomorrow should finish it. Just the Dress and Upper Circles, the Gallery, and back of stage to do. If he started first thing he should be away by two o'clock. Possibly even before lunch. Perhaps it would be a good idea to check if one of his keys did fit Beatrice d'Auray's dressing room though. Otherwise he would have to get Mr. Scrivener back. Make him work for his living. If there was to be any breaking down of doors, let him do it.

He shivered. Christ it was getting cold though. And dark. Bugger this for a game of soldiers. The sooner he and the golden bombardier were reacquainted the better.

With this incentive urging him on, he headed backstage and through the wings towards the dressing rooms. No emergency lighting here but high up away to his right there was a small, dirty, skylight through which early evening light made a half hearted attempt at illumination.

At least Scrivener had been right about the corridor being opened up. Even if not all the rubble had been cleared away. Why was it that builders generally had a natural distaste for picking up what they had knocked down? As if it somehow reflected on their masculinity? It was probably against the brotherhood's rules. 'Thou shalt not tidy up any debris nor permit unto thy colleagues to so transgress, eschewing all consideration for the comfort or safety of thy fellow creatures, under pain of ..... '

.... But there was something odd, something unexpected. At the end of the corridor, about twenty paces away, he could see, through the rapidly gathering gloom, a thin line of light. A thin line of light marking the bottom of a door. A door on which the outline of a star could still be seen. A smear of tarnished gold on the panel's blackened surface.

The door to Beatrice d'Auray's Dressing Room.

The skylight's feeble glow hardly reached this end of the corridor and his own faint shadow stretching before him was hardly visible in the deep gloom, only serving to blank out the remaining light. The dank chill seemed more pronounced here and an overall pervasive mustiness assailed his nostrils. Perhaps not unsurprising in a place that had been bricked up for sixty years or so.

Perhaps.

There was something else besides. A sweetness. Not the strange earthy sweetness of decay, although that was there too, masking the other. This was like long dead flowers, and the man searched his memory for it for he had come across it, or something like it, recently .... in The Quiet Woman? .... The old lady's perfume? But no not quite. This was different. Old London street cries. “Who'll buy my sweet lavender?” Lavender. Old Norfolk Lavender. That was it. Underneath the mustiness, entwined within the long undisturbed decay, was the scent of lavender.

Looking down, the light under the door appeared merely as an unsubstantial glimmer. Merely an wavering reflection from uncarpeted floorboards grimed by decades of dust. From under a door that had been locked for forty years and more.

He sorted through the impressively heavy bunch of keys that Mr. Scrivener had handed him. There were several that might fit, in fact all, apart from the side door yale deadlock, were similar. Selecting one at random he grasped the doorknob as he bent forward to insert the key .... and the door swung open at the first pressure catching him off balance so that he staggered across the threshold, dropping the redundant keys, before coming to an ungainly halt several paces into the room.

Behind him the door clicked softly shut again.

Directly facing him there was a dressing table upon which two tall candles burnt in two tall candlesticks. On the dressing table, dominating it, there was a large mirror edged with defunct light bulbs. From each side of the mirror projected, like Ká¢li's arms, three candle holders each containing a lighted candle so that his own reflection appeared framed before him. His own reflection to welcome him. A long awaited guest.

There was little else. A small triangle of a washbasin in one corner. A straight backed chair to one side of the dressing table and a built in wardrobe that stretched the whole length of the wall to his right. There were a few autographed photographs of fellow artistes and entertainers on the walls. Faded and dog eared now, all that was left of a transient fame.

One small rug on the floor, its tired colours finally obscured by decades of dust.

The scent of lavender quite distinct now. In the ascendant above the mustiness, the damp, the insistent odour of camphor, the smell of candles.

The candles! That bloody man Scrivener, he who had said the door was locked, playing silly buggers! Christ who would have thought that the pathetic old bastard would regress to second childhood pranks and ....?”

But why? And when? He looked again. All the candles, the two tall ones and the shorter, smaller ones were new lit. Their domed tops still largely intact. Surely Scrivener wouldn't have come back just to ....? Anyway he would have heard him. Would have heard anybody, anybody at all. He could swear that no-one could have moved in the theatre without .... without his knowing.

The man sat down at the dressing table, pulling the chair round and fitting his legs under the knee hole between the fancy bowed drawers that flanked it. He looked into the mirror and saw only puzzlement in the face looking back. The side candles guttered slightly, the flames swaying in response to his breath.

It didn't make sense.

In his distraction his hands toyed with a small box lying to his right behind one of the tall candles. Turned it over, first one way and then the other. Round and over and back again. It was about the size of the cigarette boxes he had seen in friends' houses, once kept by their grandparents' generation for the convenience of visitors. They had been usually been in silver or in pewter, this was in old dark cedarwood. And this had a small key, so not for cigarettes ....

He idly turned the key and opened it.

A light tinkling melody. A musical box. Another childhood memory. He had always been charmed by them and .... and he recognised the tune. How could he not? It was the one Scrivener had spoken of. The words of the refrain formed in his brain.

Inside two keys. That was all. The box was empty except for two keys on a scarlet ribbon.

Keys were meant for locks. The dressing table drawers had key holes but they would accept neither of the two keys. They were all unlocked anyway and looked as if such had for a long time been their permanent state. Nothing in them to hide. Quite empty apart from the shallow centre drawer above his knees that contained a jumble of cosmetic and make-up products dating from the glory days.

He looked around him. Nothing evident. Unless one was for the built-in wardrobe? No. It was only a cheap painted structure with sliding doors. Unless .... On an impulse he rose, crossed to it, and slid the left hand side across. It was cheaply built and after half a century of disuse it took some effort. A wasted one. It was empty. He tried the right hand side but that was jammed solid. Immovable. Finally with one final despairing, futile, tug he turned away. It wouldn't budge. It was all a waste of bloody time.

It was getting late. He glanced at his watch. Quarter past six. He was late for his appointment with the pint at The Quiet Woman. He shivered. And the temperature was dropping too. Time to leave.

Put the candles out first. Don't want the bloody place burning down. Although there might be a lot to be said in favour of it. Not on his watch though. He turned back towards the dressing table and as he did so he kicked something that, with a metallic jingle, skidded across the floor coming to rest back against the wardrobe door.

The keys that he had dropped when he had first staggered into the room. He remembered Scrivener's strictures about locking up and went over to retrieve them. Straightening up from the right hand corner where they lay he saw that there was a gap of about one inch between the sliding door and the wardrobe frame. Odd he hadn't noticed it before. He slid his fingers into the gap and for a last farewell heave and .... the door slid smoothly away at the first touch of his fingers. Almost as if it had been waiting for him, wanting to atone for its past obduracy.

And there behind it, also waiting for him was another door, another wardrobe door. Wheels within wheels, doors behind doors. Only this was a heavy mahogany affair. A fine example of solid mid Victorian workmanship which must have been easier to build round than to remove. Two large clenched-fist brass handles and between them an ornate brass escutcheon waiting, waiting ..... waiting for a key.

He knew without thinking. How could it be otherwise? He knew. Without willing it his hand brought out the red ribbon and its two keys and as if it were a daily routine, as familiar to him as opening his own front door, he slid the larger of the two keys in the lock and, seemingly without conscious effort on his part, it turned.

The camphor of old mothballs, the scent of past fineries, of old lace and silks and satins, flowed out and wrapped him in perfumes of another age. There hung before him a whole row of dresses. Long Edwardian styles in satin and silks, lavishly adorned with ivory lace. Above ornate hats with ostrich feathers caressing their crowns and below a jumble of elaborate shoes; delicate, ridiculous, shoes which would never have survived fifteen minutes of London pavement duty. At one end of the rack there was a solitary frock-coat matched in the shelf above by a shiny top hat and a silver topped ebony cane, whilst below, nesting amongst the high heels, a pair of patent leather men's shoes. And behind the shoes .... in the far left hand corner .... something more substantial ....

An old gladstone bag. The leather polished to a deep mahogany colour that still gleamed dully through the fine dust. He reached down, brushing aside the hanging silk and satin of the skirts, releasing more musty camphor and perfume mix, and pulled it out through the entangling shoes and into the room.

The two straps were already unbuckled and, kneeling besides it on the floor, he slipped the smaller scarlet ribboned key into the solid brass lock. Slipped it in and turned it as with unconscious familiarity. Inside his hands found files, bundles of letters, and a heavier hard backed book or an album possibly, and underneath that ....

He stood up and, grasping the bag's leather handles, moved back to the dressing table's pool of light. Placing the bag on the floor he sat again on the old straight backed chair and pulled out the top files. Press cuttings. Yellowing pages, faded print and grainy indistinct illustrations. All carefully preserved witnesses to the career of Beatrice d'Auray. And beneath them an album full of photographs of her. Posed studio photos of her both as a straight singer and as a male impersonator. Sepia, selenium toned, hand tinted, even a couple of early colour photos. In coy, serious, laughing, flirtatious attitudes. Always glamorous.

And others less formal. Photographs taken of her amongst friends, by friends. At parties, on picnics, on the beach, on boats. Less glamorous perhaps but always vivacious, always at the centre. A princess surrounded by courtiers. Photogenic she certainly must have been, not perhaps a classical beauty, if indeed such a thing exists, but striking certainly and possessing a magnetism that could still be felt in these old faded images.

And often appearing with her, sometimes even in the studio portraits, another girl. Younger, prettier perhaps, with delicate features and a fine boned, heart shaped face. A fawn with a fawn's long sweeping eyelashes. Not quite a background figure but seemingly, even in the studio photographs of just the two of them, a secondary presence.

Under one such image had been scrawled 'Myself and Lucy - Brighton 1939'. He remembered that Scrivener had mentioned a Lucy ... Lucy .... something or other. The name escaped him but he was sure it was a Lucy something.... Perhaps in the files, in the press cuttings? He picked up the top file, opened it and as he did so a brown foolscap envelope slipped out and fell at his feet. Bending to pick it up he saw 'BLOODY GREASEPAINT!!!!' written on it in large angry letters.

Again he shivered. God it was cold. The temperature seemingly in free fall. He thought of the warmth of 'The Quiet Woman's bar and the pint of bombardier awaiting him. All this was nothing to do with him. Curiosity was one thing but this was interfering with more pressing pleasures. He slipped the envelope into his inside pocket. Something to read over his pint. Or two. And the rest could wait. Or he could give it all to Scrivener to add to his theatrical memorabilia. Bugger all to do with him.

He started to shovel the files back into the bag, hesitated, and then responding to a sudden inner prompting replaced them on the desk and, lifting the bag onto his knees, peered into its dark recesses, his hand ferreting about until his fingers encountered something hard, thin, metallic .... a chain. A thin, almost weightless chain that as he drew it out he felt was attached to something a little heavier .... something that swung as a pendulum as it emerged into the candlelight. Swung, and in swinging slowly turned, splintering the light from the candles and throwing it back into the room.

A locket. Oval, about an inch by one and a half, in finely chased gold. He cradled it in the palm of his hand staring at it. Why he did not know but he felt that he had seen it before, that he had always known of it, that he always knew he would find it again; that he knew it had been in the bag. There. That it had been waiting for him.

Time slowed, stopped.

No movement in the room save for the slight flickering of candle flames and their dancing reflections from the locket. No sound but his own breathing.

In that pause, in those seconds .... no minutes, he felt the locket draw the warmth from his hand. Become a centre of warmth itself. Comforting, familiar.

Familiar because it was as if it were expected. And because he knew .... he knew what was in it. He knew if he opened it he would find ....

But he dare not. Could find neither the will to put it down, to drop it back in the gladstone bag, nor the will to open it, to see what he knew he would see. Not that he feared what was in it. But that he feared knowing. Feared the confirmation that he knew. Because if he did know ....

And then the slow realisation that he had no longer any choice. And with the realisation time moved on again and he turned the locket in his fingers feeling for the small raised ridge at the side that served as a catch. Found it and pressed it and the locket opened to reveal, as somehow he knew it would, two hand tinted photographs each framed in a plaited lock of hair. A man and a woman in their twenties, he late, she early, forever now in their twenties, looking out at him one on each side of the locket. Looking out at him from the open locket, looking forever into each others eyes when the locket was closed.

He had known they would be there. He felt he should know them. Felt he did know them but .... the woman was neither Beatrice nor Lucy if the photographs in the album bore any resemblance to reality. And the man? Perhaps he had featured amongst the lesser characters but .... but both seemed familiar .... . At the fringes of memory.

The man closed the locket again. Closed his eyes as if to erase the images. Closed his eyes to escape from the unreality of this world of memories, others' long dead memories, into which he had been drawn. Still saw against the inner dark velvet of his eyelids the two portraits which seemed now to be gazing into his own soul.

He turned the locket round in his hand, flicking it over with his thumb, again and again. A mechanical repetitive action which brought a sort of comfort. He found that if he concentrated on it, on the simple action, it dispelled the thoughts that seemed to crowd at the door of his consciousness.

Turning, turning, round and round, the locket warm and comforting in his hand. His fingers ceaselessly moving, feeling the gold worn smooth by the wearing. By being worn close to another skin, close to a smooth skin down in the long vee of a neck.

Turning, turning, round and round, until his hands stilled and then moved upwards spreading the chain wide. Moved upwards and back over, slipping it over his head, back over his head, settling it around his neck. letting it fall so naturally into place. So familiar ....

And his eyes were now open again. Open and looking at himself in the mirror. His own eyes looking back at him out of a candlelit reflection. The backs of his hands were towards the mirror, his fingers pointing inwards resting on the thin golden chain. pinning it to the bone at the base of his neck. As a woman might do. Checking the lie of the locket, admiring it, admiring herself.

He moved his head slightly to one side to see the effect. As a woman preening herself. The reflected eyes of a deep violet blue, so much his best feature, smiled back at him confirming the rightness of what they saw.

He watched his hands leave his neck, forsaking the locket's chain, and touch his cheek in a delicate feminine gesture as his head turned slightly in the other direction.

Perhaps it was the quality of the candlelight but the mirror now seemed to throw his face into soft focus gentling the profile, refining the bone structure. The man felt a deep feeling of detachment invade his body. He saw his face but not as his face, but rather as the face of someone he might have been. Perhaps was in some other parallel dimension. He watched as the hands in the mirror moved to open the centre drawer, even moved his chair back slightly to ease their access. Watched as they brought forth the cosmetics therein. saw them unscrew, open jars and dip inside. He even leant forward and obligingly smelt the contents proffered.

He felt less cold now. More a sort of insulating numbness. And through and over-riding the scents of the cosmetics the smell of lavender hung heavy in the air. He watched the hands in the mirror move to his face's reflection. Felt his hands touch his face. Felt the coldness of cream, the softness of powder, closed his eyes to give those hands access to the lids, opened them to welcome the brush that teased out his lashes' length, pouted his lips and with his tongue aped that other mirrored tongue and tasted their new waxiness.

The mirror seemed cloudy now, the edges indistinct. Only his face .... no not his face .... but her face that was also his .... looked back at him. Smiled back at him. Greeting him, acknowledging her.

And then of a sudden the numbness faded and the coldness returned. But another level of coldness. An iciness that caught the breath in his throat. Not permeating but instant. Paralysing him. Replacing the sweet lavender with a stench of decay that pinched his nostrils in sickening disgust.

And with it there was a swirl in the cloud at the mirror's edge, a thinning in the veil through which he saw .... Dear God .... through which he saw another face. A face as of smoke that drifted, indistinct. A face that formed and reformed, swirled in the mirror's thinning cloud, and then reshaped, became ever more solid.

A face of someone looking over his shoulder. Looking over his shoulder into the reflection of his eyes. Into his eyes, into his soul. A face he knew from the album photographs. But a face so very different from that portrayed there. The beauty that had then so captivated now transformed into a twisted mask of hatred in which blazed eyes of a malevolence beyond mortal imaginings.