'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 Four ~ The Gift of Remembrance ~

The silent scream came unbidden. Wrenched from him. Born of the terror that seized him. The mirror in front of him was suddenly frost-etched with fantastic fern and feather shapes, distorting, destroying the reflections, as his breath mist-plumed through the icy atmosphere and wreathed over its surface.

Equally unbidden was his body's reaction that jerked him upright, sending his chair tumbling over and over as he whirled round to face the horror behind him.

Fog had invaded the room, blurring its edges and thickening in its corners. In front of him tendrils of it had gathered, writhing and twisting into a thicker column. An amorphous mass whose insubstantial nature seemed just a veil concealing a more recognisable form. Concealing a being to whom the face glimpsed in the mirror gave identity.

His body's primitive reaction to absolute fear overrode now any remnant of a thought process. The fear unleashed adrenalin propelled him blindly towards the door. Towards the door, brushing through the fringes of the pillar of swirling fog before him.

As a boy he had once stayed overnight with a friend and they had had a pillow fight. One of the pillows burst and the boy's mother had next morning been furious. But what had stayed in his memory was not her anger but the feel of the cloud of soft goose down on his half naked body as it had drifted thickly around them. And for a moment it was like that. Just for a fleeting moment. But now the down was ice cold, like snow but colder; but not like snow because snow is too solid, too of this world. This was an ethereal, insubstantial, gossamer-fine sensation of a myriad touches which together made a definable entity.

Not like snow, not like down either because there was another difference. The smell of putrefaction. Seemingly as tangible as the column itself. A stench that wrapped itself around him, dragging at him, choking him, seizing him for its own.

And then he was through. Through to the door, grappling with the handle, wrenching it open, staggering outside into the corridor's welcoming darkness. Stumbling steps along the debris strewn passage.

And then he heard the voice singing. Pure and clear. The voice of a young woman in girlhood's innocence.

"The boy I love is up in the gallery."

The man's foot caught a small pile of bricks and he stumbled, bounced against a wall and sprawled full length, grazing his face in the rubble.

"The boy I love is looking down at me."

He picked himself up, a pain in his wrist and a deadness in his knee that presaged pain to come. Felt the warmth of blood trickling down his face.

"There he is, can't you see, a-waving of his handkerchief."

Every breath fed fire to his lungs although he had run but twenty yards. His heart pounded against his chest's walls as if trying to escape. Thin moonlight filtered through from the skylight lighting the last few yards to the door that led to the blessed outside.

"As merry as a robin that sings on a tree."

The song's dying fall echoing in his ears as he all but fell out through the door. The limpid, pure, voice still ran hauntingly through his head. Mocking him.

For a moment he leant against the wall of the old theatre filling his lungs with the evening air. Filling his lungs to clear them of the corruption that they had so recently inhaled. Never had London air seemed so fresh and wholesome. Then on again to put more distance between himself and .... that .... what ever it had been. He found he could no longer remember exactly .... only the horror of it. And that he knew he would always remember.

Back down the ginnel towards the road. And then the road itself with its street lights to welcome him and to his right the soft glow from the windows of "The Quiet Woman" and the slight creak from its inn sign as it eased itself slightly in the breeze. His breathing slowed to something approaching normality. And as the adrenaline rush slackened so he became yet more aware of the pain in wrist and knee. He could barely hobble now and glancing down he saw on his right trouser leg red brick smears, dark in the sodium street light against the white dust that coated his dishevelled suit. A hand to his neck and he felt the blood sticky on his fingers, a thin rivulet running still into his collar.

Badly though he needed a drink, he needed to spruce up first. What would he tell them? That he had been mugged? And by whom? Best to clean up and say nothing; best to ....

And then he remembered. He tentatively ran his tongue over his lips and tasted the perfumed waxiness of lipstick. Remembered his face in the mirror. His face and his hands. Remembered how .... how those hands, his hands, had so expertly applied ....

If the locals of 'The Quiet Woman' saw him made up as a woman, he could expect little sympathy. Jesus he could imagine the barman's reaction! And his chance of being accepted as a fare by a taxi was equally problematical. Not that there was much chance of finding a cruising taxi in this area. They probably only ventured here in twos.

His only chance would be to clean up first. He remembered that the loo was on the left of the horseshoe bar and he gently pushed open the door on that side and peered in. Three or four customers were sullenly clustered in a small group on the other side of the bar under the morose gaze of the barman. He slipped in and, trying to minimise his limp, hastened to the door of the gents' at the far end. He was fortunate in the lighting. At best bordering on the inadequate, several of the bulbs had in fact given up the unequal struggle against the encroaching shadows and fulfilled now only a symbolic rá´le. The barman did look up, but disinterestedly, and by that time the man, his right hand held high to shield the side of his face, was passing through the far door.

The suit was not a problem. The dust brushed off, more or less, and even the red smears on the knee responded largely to persuasive rubbing, albeit the trousers were ruined forever with small tears underneath the marks. His face proved less responsive to treatment. A contributing factor being that effectively all had to be done with his left hand alone. He padded the missing patches of skin and attendant scratches with wet tissues from the dispenser and cautiously wiped away the surrounding dried blood. The result wasn't pretty but it would no longer frighten the horses.

His make-up was in a different league of obduracy. He was acutely aware that he had applied it himself. That his own hands had expertly feminised his face. Try as
he might to obliterate the memory of what had happened, what he had done, whilst seated before the mirror, and great the horror that had followed and overshadowed it, the knowledge gnawed away at him. The knowledge that he had watched his hands at work and in some way had approved of what they did.

And the make-up was surprisingly difficult to remove. The three soap dispensers were all empty. The water was only a couple of degrees above lukewarm and the lipstick in particularly was possessed of a surprising tenacity. He had seen claims that various brands were 'kiss-proof' but such was proving to be the understatement of the all time. The rubbing required left his lips redder than the colouring itself. The eye shadow was almost as tricky. In some ways more so as by then his one good hand was also trembling as reaction set in.

Finally it was done. Done to the best of his ability. He was beginning to care less and less about the finer details. One final check in the loo mirror and .... Christ! He had forgotten the locket. He eased it over and off his neck and slipped it into a jacket pocket before re-entering the flawed but comfortable world of the bar of 'The Quiet Woman' that he had left but a few short hours ago.

Both hands flat on the counter. Then one moving to grasp the other just above the throbbing wrist in an effort to still the trembling that affected them both.

The barman took some time in considering the appearance of the new customer and the probable inconvenience that such would afford him but finally ventured across and adopted an attitude that might be interpreted by the charitably disposed as non-committably helpful.

"A cognac. A double please. Neat." If there was a flicker of interest in the barman's expression it was hidden as he turned to select a glass and to give it a double thrust against the optic. But as he took the money he bestowed a grudging degree of recognition.

"Took yer time," he said. "Gone off the bitter 'ave yer?"

The customer sipped the brandy, sipped and then sipped again, feeling the the neat spirit burn down throat and gullet.

"In a minute, in a minute .... after .... but this first ...."

Curiosity lurked in the barman's dark eyes. "Looks like you needed that. Work took a bit longer than expected did it? A bit more complicated like was it?"

The man swallowed the remaining brandy and shook his head. He had nothing that he wanted to share. Nothing that he could share. It wasn't something that could be discussed, explained, rationalised. And even if it were .....

"I'll have that pint now", he said. On its arrival he waited until the barman turned away before lifting it carefully in both hands and counted it a minor victory that he managed to carry it, with only slight spillage, to a table in an alcove were at least there was a small circle of illumination.

For a while he sat there, without touching the drink. Truth to tell he did not want it. Waves of tiredness swept over him and all he wanted was sleep. His only sensible course of action was to ring for a taxi and go home. But he could not face being on his own for fear that the longed-for, care-charmer sleep would not come to blot out what lurked behind his eyelids. Or for fear that sleep would come and bring with it only the re-enactment of the living nightmare.

His chair scraped back as he straightened his leg to ease the the nagging pain in his knee and as his body adjusted he was aware of the bulk of the envelope in his inside pocket. Not really knowing why, perhaps seeking distraction, perhaps putting off the time when he would have to move, he pulled it out.

The flap was just tucked in but the questing fingers of his left hand had some difficulty in extracting the tightly fitting wad of paper that the envelope contained. It consisted mainly of sheets that had been torn from magazines: a few of them cuttings that had been carefully selected but the majority pages that had been ripped out hastily, in anger. Many had words or sentences underlined, some few had violent red strokes running down by the side of whole paragraphs. At first sight they could have been taken for press cuttings, written accolades to pander to the ego of a star, but there was anger, rage almost, in the ferocity of those red vertical lines, and when he looked more closely, the articles weren't really reviews of performances ....

The magazines were all from the theatrical world with names like 'Stage', 'Spotlight', and 'Greasepaint'. The latter was particularly well represented with a regular column entitled 'Gossip from the Green Room' seemingly having merited the bulk of the red line treatment.

The man thumbed through them. Most seemed to date from the late summer and autumn of 1941 although there were a few that reached back to the turn of that year. The poor quality war time paper had not aged well and the print face was small to take best advantage of paper's restricted availability, so that reading it required effort and some concentration.

Effort and concentration that were really beyond him. He reached tentatively for his drink. Sipped it without enthusiasm. Tasted still the waxiness on his lips. So much so that he checked its rim for lipstick traces before lowering gently it back onto the table. It was increasingly difficult to keep his eyes from closing, increasingly difficult to ....

But then it wasn't. Then he was again fully awake. In that moment, as his head nodded, he saw .... the face that he had been trying to erase from his consciousness gazing back at him in sepia intensity from the old yellowing pages. By some fluke it alone of the few images there had retained a clarity and crispness that made it instantly recognisable. But even if it too had been blurred and indistinct he would have seen it; have known it for what it was. Known her for who she was.

The face seen in the mirror looking over his shoulder. Gazing into his eyes. A face then contorted in malice. The face of Lucy Sheldon.

It was as if he were suspended from reality, isolated from the world of men. The face in the photograph so very beautiful with that entrancing lift of an eyebrow, that tilt of one corner of her mouth presaging a smile. So very beautiful and yet capable of twisting beyond recognition into a mask of unimaginable malevolence.

The image was implanted in an article in 'The Spotlight' dated March 1941, entitled the 'New Generation of Nightingales', which promoted Lucy as one of the brighter stars of tomorrow. It was all harmless enough at first sight. Certainly Lucy must have been greatly encouraged and flattered by all its talk of her 'realising her true potential' and 'the pure lyrical quality of her voice'. But there was something else, something that was not really apparent on first reading but which on a second, and even more strongly on a third became more tangible .... something which hinted an unwritten something else. Just the odd unnecessary word or phrase.

Something to account for the red question mark that, presumably, Beatrice d'Auray had placed alongside the text. Beatrice herself was never mentioned, but there was the snide inference that Lucy Sheldon's future was in her own hands, that she could do better, would do better, if she could cast off old influences, that in some vague way she was being held back, that her talent was being sacrificed to sustain others less gifted. Nothing as blunt, as definite as that, but something was there. something that doubtless would have been more obvious to the theatrical world of the day.

And then, right at the end of the article when the focus had shifted from Lucy to general trends in entertainment including a certain renaissance in the old Music Hall styles, there was the mention of how some of the old favourites were enjoying a renaissance. The example cited being George Ware's 'The Boy I Love' which had been so effectively being reborn as Lucy Sheldon's signature tune.

Only that must be wrong. Or at least didn't tie in with what Mr. Scrivener had told him. Had made a point of telling him, even pointing out the song's unsuitability for a male impersonator. And claiming to have the old playbill to prove it.

Not that it mattered. Christ his one aim now in life was not to hear of Lucy Sheldon ever again. To erase her from his memory. Above all to efface her image from his memory. Not, he feared, that he ever would but ....

He shuffled the assorted cuttings and torn pages back into some semblance of a rectangle, started to fold them before seeing by his foot a page that had escaped. Painfully he leant down to retrieve it and was about to add it to the rest when he saw Beatrice d'Auray looking back at him from it. Although the low contrast, fuzzy outlines of the reproduction had drained the quality from the carefully posed studio original, there was no mistaking her striking features. Shown not as a male impersonator though but as an Edwardian beauty with an elaborate hairstyle and her dress high on her throat in a cascade of lace.

And below the lace, where the material swelled down to her breasts, lay a locket. Just discernible in the faded 3" x 2 ½" image was a locket. Easy to convince himself that it was the same as the one now nestling in his own pocket but in truth difficult to be sure. Apart from the poor quality of the image, it was partially hidden by the lace and ....

He felt in his pocket for, and brought out, the one that had so recently adorned his own neck. Turned it over in his one good hand, held it close to the printed image. It could be but .... so could many others. Perhaps in the original photograph. Perhaps in the album he had left behind in her dressing room, it might be possible to see, to judge, to decide, but not here.

Idly his fingers clicked on the catch and again he saw the two faces looking out at him. The two strangers who weren't really strangers at all. Not to him. Not to Beatrice d'Auray either. If it were indeed her locket then they must have been people important to her, dear to her. Parents perhaps? No their clothing was wrong for them to be older .... they must have been her contemporaries. He stared at them again until they began to swim before his eyes, merging one into the other. God he was tired.

If only he had brought the album that might have helped, If only he had brought the other press cuttings and the letters, maybe amongst them there was a clue. Maybe .... but he felt that there was more to it than that. A memory going back far further than that. Stretching back to something that he had always known. Something that was enlarged, reinforced, by all this but which had always existed.

His mind searched back in time trying to find the elusive thread. Searching, searching for the faces, for he was gripped increasingly by the certainty that he knew them. Or knew at least the woman. The man too although there was confusion there, less clarity. But the woman .... she he knew in another context.

His brain was not functioning properly. Just a mass of wadding into which thoughts wandered, circled around, and finally disappeared or were transmuted into irrelevancies which in turn were absorbed into a woolly nothingness. Exhaustion swept over him. His eyes closed. The fingers of his hand holding the locket loosened their grip so that, still open, it half slipped onto the image of Beatrice d'Auray lying on the table in front of him.

He was conscious of the of the pain in his wrist and knee but even that seemed far away. Something that belonged to being awake. The warmth of the bar surrounded him, enfolded him, so that he became a world within a world, existing within himself.

Into this private world there came a voice. Another presence that spoke to him, which he acknowledged, to which he responded at some semi-conscious level. A thin, dry, sandpaperish voice.

"I warned you. Warned you to leave the Old Alhambra and its dead alone. You especially."

Through closed eyelids he could see her. Sitting opposite him as she had earlier that same day. Earlier when time could be measured by such words.

"Yes. But then I did not know .... And it was a job." He was not sure if he spoke the words or if they were only in head but the woman must have heard for she nodded an acknowledgement.

"You know now," she said. "You found the locket."

Her perfume hung in the air between them. And perhaps his eyes were open after all because he could see her quite clearly now. See a look of what might be compassion in those faded violet eyes.

"The locket only asks questions," he said.

"Only one question. A question to which you know the answer. Or should. Give that answer to the locket and it will give you answers in return. Then you will know, although ...."

"I need to know."

".... for you best not to know. Best not to meddle with the dead and their secrets."

"I need to know who the couple are though .... the couple in the locket."

"Then be content with that. Do not meddle further. Leave the Old Alhambra to its dead. There is nothing there for you. Not for you."

A thin blue veined hand stretched out, a fold of paper held between long nails of blood.

"This will unlock the locket's secret. Then with its answers you can then perhaps guess the other darker secrets that lie beyond. Be content with that. Do not pry beyond."

God he was tired. He had difficulty in focussing on her so that she seemed to be increasingly indistinct. He tried to summon up the effort to concentrate, to fight off the fatigue, but ....

A hand was gently shaking his shoulder.

Her voice, she herself, fading, just the remembrance of words in his mind. "Leave the Old Alhambra to its dead."

The shaking rougher now. His eyes opening to the shadowed half light of the bar.

Another voice. "'Ere mate. Wake up. Your taxi's 'ere."

The barman bending over him, shaking him.

"I sent for a taxi for you mate. You looks done in. You need to get 'ome an' rest."

Then gruffly, as if regretting any suggestion of charitable concern, "Don't do the place no favours, 'avin people pass out over their drink. Better send you home now than 'ave an ambulance take you to 'ospital later."

The man nodded his understanding. "Thanks. I don't know ...." He swivelled in his seat, flinching as pain lanced up from knee and wrist. "You're right. I need to go home. I need to sleep."

"Maybe 'ospital wouldn't be such a bad idea mate. Looks like yer've had an argument with a JCB. I don't know what 'appened in there, but if I were you I'd ....

"No. Just sleep. I'll be all right. Thank you."

He slipped the locket back into his side pocket and, adding the cutting with Beatrice d'Auray's image to the other papers, slid them inside his jacket. Hobbled to his feet.

"Yer've forgotten something." This time the barman's stubby fingers with their bitten finger nails proffered the folded paper. So it hadn't been a dream. She had been there and ....

"Thank you."

Holding it in his right hand he allowed himself to be shepherded out of the pub and into the taxi, the barman assuring the cabbie that "'Es not pissed. Sober as a bleedin' judge 'e is. Just bin in a bit of an accident."

The paper was of a thick, almost parchment quality, a long oblong folded into four. It was dark inside the cab but the street lights gave enough intermittent light to reveal that it was a birth certificate and when the cab stopped at some lights he was able to make out its contents.

Could read the name of the child and of its parents.

And then he knew. Knew without any doubt that the parents named were the man and the woman whose portraits were in the locket. Knew without any doubt because the woman was his grandmother.

And simultaneously, as if this knowledge was the key to unlock his visual memories, he knew too whom the man resembled. Same bone structure, same everything. He was the masculine counterpart of Beatrice d'Auray.

Sitting back as weariness again claimed him, the faces floated in his mind's eye. The faces of Lucy and of Beatrice, of the man, Beatrice's male alter ego, and the woman, his grandmother. Added to them came his remembrance of this last, as an old frail lady who had enchanted his distant childhood.

The faces in his imagination. Coming close, parting, merging, distancing. Old faces, youthful faces, faces clear in the memory, faces blurred by time. And joining them another face. The face of another old lady. And he saw then that she belonged there with them. Bone structures do not wither with age. Time's betrayal is of the flesh.

The old lady in The Quiet Woman was also a double. A double of Beatrice d'Auray as she would have been in old age.