Only a Dream Read online

He poured out what seemed to Isla to be an enormous amount of brandy into a tumbler and added just a splash of soda from the syphon that stood on the dressing table.

  Then with a gesture he directed her to get up from the stool where she was sitting and she took her place on the comfortable padded armchair and watched him as he powdered away the lines under his eyes.

  He darkened the skin under his chin and with a deft touch here and there made himself look ten years younger.

  Isla clapped her hands.

  “It’s so clever the way you do it. Papa.”

  “I have had enough practise!” he answered. “But, like you, I did not need it when I was younger.”

  “You must have been very very handsome when Mama fell in love with you!”

  For a moment her father smiled.

  Then he said quickly,

  “You understand exactly what you have to do?”

  She knew as he spoke that he did not want to talk about his youth or when he had first loved her mother.

  It was something they had both been reticent about.

  Isla had always thought that there must have been a great deal of opposition from their families.

  Perhaps when they finally married it was without parental approval and it had meant that they were more or less ostracised and on their own.

  She remembered the time she had said to her mother,

  “Tell me about your childhood. Mama, and when you grew older and met Papa.”

  Her mother had sometimes been beguiled into telling her how happy she had been when she had been very young, how she had believed that there were fairies hidden in the trees and elves burrowing underneath the ground.

  The conversation always ended in her reading Isla one of the books that she had loved when she had first been able to read.

  “I had such a job finding this one,” she said once inadvertently.

  “I thought you had brought it with you from your home,” Isla remarked.

  Her mother had not answered.

  When she was older, Isla thought that, although her mother would not say so, she and her father had eloped together!

  Keegan Kenway finished making up and as he did so there was the noise of voices outside in the passage.

  More quickly than he normally moved, he reached the door and turned the key just as somebody knocked on it loudly.

  Then a man’s voice asked,

  “Are you there, Kenway?”

  Without being told, Isla moved towards the chair behind the curtain. When she sat down, her father drew the curtain, making certain that it was closed at both ends.

  Then he walked towards the door and opened it.

  “I thought you must be either dead or drunk!” a man’s voice boomed jokingly.

  “Good evening, my Lord! Nice to see you!”

  “I am going to ask you and Letty to have supper with me after the show.”

  “I am afraid that is impossible!”

  “Why?”

  The monosyllable was crisp and rather aggressive, Isla thought.

  “Letty was taken ill last night,” she heard her father explain. “The doctor sent her to hospital.”

  “Good Lord! I had no idea of that! What are you going to do about your turn?”

  “I have a substitute, but I have to take her home directly after the show.”

  “Nonsense! Nonsense! That would be a waste of time and of her! Meet me at the Café Royale – private room, of course. We will have an amusing supper there.”

  “That is very kind of you, my Lord, but – ”

  “There are no ‘buts’ when I am concerned, my boy, and, by the way, I did not think flowers are very appropriate for a man, so I have a case of brandy for you in my carriage.”

  “Thank you, that is most generous of you,” Keegan Kenway replied.

  “You can thank me by coming to the Café Royale as soon as you can get away from your admirers. We will certainly paint the town red tonight!”

  Without being able to see him, Isla had the impression that the gentleman who was talking to her father dug him in the ribs.

  Then, laughing at his own joke, he left the dressing room and went down the passage.

  Keegan Kenway locked the door behind him.

  As he drew back the curtain, Isla rose to her feet and said,

  “We will not be going to the party, will we, Papa?”

  “You will not,” her father agreed. “I will take you home and join them later.”

  “Oh, no, Papa!” Isla exclaimed involuntarily.

  “I have to,” her father said roughly, “and Polegate is generous in his own way.”

  Isla thought of the case of brandy and sighed.

  She had thought, as she listened to Lord Polegate, that his voice sounded thick, rather as if he had already been drinking.

  She thought, however, that it would be a mistake to argue with her father.

  If he wanted to go to the party, then why should she stop him?

  The only thing she was determined about was that when she went home he would leave the money from the benefit with her.

  There was a knock on the door and they both started.

  “Five minutes, Mr. Kenway!” the call-boy’s voice shouted.

  “That means when the curtain goes up, does it not, Papa?” Isla asked.

  “That is right,” her father agreed. “But there is no hurry. We have nearly an hour before we go on.”

  “I wish I could see the stage.”

  “You will see all you want to,” her father replied.

  He spoke reassuringly. At the same time he picked up the glass of brandy and drank it all.

  There was another knock on the door and once again Isla hurried behind the curtain.

  Now, as her father answered the door, she knew that it was a very different kind of caller.

  “Why’re you locking yourself in, Keegan?” a woman asked.

  Her voice was somehow caressing. Equally Isla thought that she was not very well educated.

  “I am busy, Mimi,” her father answered. “I have some work to do.”

  “Work – be damned! You’re drinking, that’s what you’re up to!”

  At the expletive Isla started. She had never expected to hear a woman swear.

  Then she sensed that this caller was the type of person neither her father nor her mother wanted her to meet.

  “I am sorry, Mimi, but I really am busy,” she heard her father say. “Run along like a good girl and I expect I will see you later at Polegate’s supper party.”

  “You bet your life you will! And if you flirt with that fair-haired bitch, I’ll scratch her eyes out and make no mistake about it!”

  “You behave yourself,” Keegan Kenway said, “or you will not be asked again! Polegate is very particular about whom he invites.”

  “If he asks you, he asks me!” Mimi answered. “And you’d better make it clear to him or I shall!”

  “You go and make yourself look beautiful,” Keegan Kenway said. “You will be on soon. It would be a pity if his Lordship did not think you smart enough to grace his table.”

  Mimi gave a little scream.

  Then she said,

  “All right, ducks! You win! See you later!”

  Once again Keegan Kenway locked the door and then, as he pulled apart the curtain, he said as if he had to vent his anger on somebody,

  “I did say that you should not come here! It was a mistake and the sooner you go back home the better!”

  “I understand, Papa. At the same time I wish I could have seen the lady you called Mimi. Is she very pretty?”

  “A great many people think so,” her father replied reluctantly.

  There was silence.

  Then he said in one of his changes of mood,

  “Listen, my precious, you are old enough to understand that, whatever you hear or see tonight, you are to forget all about it.”

  “Of course, Papa.”

  “Your mother made a home for you and me,�
�� Keegan Kenway went on as if he were thinking it out for himself. “We had a little Paradise of our own. The sort of people you have just heard would spoil it and because it’s so small they would despise it.”

  “I know what you are saying, Papa. To us, big or small it is very precious and a house filled with love.”

  “That is what your mother said.”

  “And that is what it has always been to me,” Isla murmured.

  She would have kissed him and then remembered he had grease-paint on his cheeks.

  “Just think of tonight as an adventure,” he said, “that will never happen again.”

  There was a worried note in his voice, which made Isla answer,

  “Of course. Papa, and don’t worry about me. I understand these people are different from anybody I have met before. But I have read about them and, like people in books, they are interesting to study if not actually real.”

  Her father laughed.

  “You are a good girl, Isla. That is just the right way to think of them.”

  They sat talking and, although Nelly came back to see if Isla’s face was still all right, there were no more interruptions.

  Instead, when the door opened, Isla could hear the music and great bursts of applause and she could see some of what was going on.

  At last, after what seemed a long time, her father said that they should go down.

  He had hardly said the words before there was a knock on the door and the call-boy shouted,

  “Three minutes, Mr. Kenway!”

  Taking Isla by the hand, he helped her down the dirty stairs.

  Then he took her to the side of the stage from where she could see two performers giving a gymnastic display amid roars of applause from the audience.

  She caught a glimpse of men turning somersaults, spinning from one man’s shoulders to another. Then she saw there were five men, making a pattern while the central figure stood on his head, his feet spread out.

  As the curtain fell, he sprang down onto the stage while the audience applauded enthusiastically and they all made their bows.

  Then her father hurried Isla across the stage behind another curtain at the back of which there was a flight of wooden steps.

  He helped her up them into a huge gilded frame.

  It was only about five feet from the floor, but Isla felt, as she seated herself on a small stool, that she was very high up.

  The stage seemed a long way below her and the curtain that hid her was of thin transparent material so that she could see through it, although she knew that the audience would not be able to see her.

  She clasped her hands in her lap and waited.

  The heavy curtains were drawn back and the Chairman in flowing language announced her father.

  Keegan Kenway came onto the stage, his top hat at an angle, twirling his cane.

  The orchestra was playing the opening bars of Champagne Charlie and, as the welcoming applause died away, he started to sing.

  His voice had a lilt in it that was irresistible and, because the audience all knew and loved the tune, the whole theatre seemed to vibrate.

  He made it sound much more exciting and sensational than it really was and soon everyone seemed to be humming and whistling with him.

  When he had finished, the whole theatre seemed to erupt in applause.

  Knowing that she could not be seen, Isla was able to get a vague view of the vast auditorium where there were tables at which people were sitting and drinking.

  It seemed to her enormous and she remembered her father saying that eighteen hundred people could be accommodated with ease.

  Those who did not want to eat or drink were in the galleries, which she could see were packed and it was lit by four large chandeliers suspended from the central roof with smaller ones over the galleries.

  What she was trying to calculate was, if the theatre was full, how much the benefit would be.

  Admission was sixpence, balcony and stalls one shilling, private boxes ten shillings and sixpence.

  ‘Please God, let it be full tonight!’ Isla prayed.

  Then, as her father came forward to the centre of the stage, she kept very still, aware that in a second the thin curtain that hid her would be drawn to one side to reveal the frame.

  Some of the people in the theatre had seen the show before and, anyway, the rest knew what to expect, so there was a round of applause as soon as the picture became visible to the audience.

  Her father was still whistling Champagne Charlie and taking a few steps a little unsteadily.

  He was an experienced actor and Isla hoped that he was only acting.

  She had, however, a suspicion that the brandy he had been drinking continually in his dressing room contributed to making it more lifelike than it might have been otherwise.

  Then, as he sighed and hesitated as if not certain whether he would continue, he saw the picture just above him and stood still as if transfixed.

  As the audience clapped, Isla felt a little glow of satisfaction that she had pleased them.

  She felt that she could understand in a small way how exciting the theatre could be to those who played in it.

  Now the orchestra began to play a waltz and her father in his deep voice said as he looked up at the picture,

  “If only you could dance with me! If only I could forget everything but the enchantment of holding you in my arms, how happy it would make me!”

  Then, very softly, he began to sing almost as if he was talking to himself,

  “Dance with me! Dance with me under the stars,

  Dance with me in those magical hours,

  When you are close in my arms – ”

  He sang so beguilingly that Isla thought any woman who refused him would need to have a heart of stone.

  Then, as his voice was silent, the heavy curtains closed and she heard her father say below her,

  “Quickly! You are quite safe!”

  She moved towards him and he lifted her down, the music swelled and, as they began to dance, the curtains opened.

  The applause drowned the sound of the orchestra as her father waltzed her round and round.

  She thought that dancing with him was the most delightful thing she had ever done.

  She really felt as if she had wings on her feet and he too was dancing better than she had ever known him to when they had waltzed together in the small sitting room at home.

  They went round and round the stage until, as they stopped in the centre, he looked down at her face and she looked up at him.

  For a moment they were both absolutely still.

  Then he pulled her closer to him and, as she lifted her lips as he had told her to do, the curtain closed once more.

  Quickly she ran behind to the steps behind the frame, where stage-hands helped her up.

  The curtains opened and a little breathless, but sitting exactly as she had before, Isla was back as a picture.

  It was then that Keegan Kenway stood for some seconds with his back to the audience, until with a helpless gesture he walked to the front of the stage and started to sing,

  It Was Only a Dream!

  He did it so skillfully, putting, Isla thought, as she listened, more feeling into the words than she had heard him use before, that she almost felt like crying herself.

  She knew as he sang that her father was thinking of her mother and there was no doubt that tonight his voice was clearer than it had been for a long time.

  He put all the pathos, all the haunting despair, into the last few lines as he sang only a little above a whisper,

  It Was Only a Dream!

  Isla was certain that there was not a dry eye in the theatre, as the curtain closed and the applause rang out almost deafeningly.

  Her father lifted her down from the frame and going hand in hand in front of the curtain together, he bowed and she curtseyed.

  Then he took a call alone and there were whistles and shouts from the hall.

  “We want the dream! Bring o
n the dream!”

  Listening, Isla thought that her father would refuse.

  Then a man who she thought must be Charles Morton called out as he came back from between the curtains,

  “Take her on again – you have to!”

  He spoke sharply and it was an order and once again Keegan Kenway took Isla by the hand.

  There was no doubt, as the roar of applause swelled, that that was what the audience wanted.

  She curtseyed, smiled at them and curtseyed again.

  They disappeared behind the curtain, but the applause continued and Charles Morton said,

  “Start again with the waltz!”

  “An encore?” Keegan Kenway enquired.

  “You are a success, my boy,” Charles Morton smiled, “and your partner was an inspiration!”

  Keegan Kenway hesitated and Mr. Morton said,

  “All right, I’ll increase your benefit. I know that’s what you want, but get on with it!”

  The orchestra was playing the music of the dance and, as the curtains drew back, they were waltzing round and round the stage until they closed again.

  Isla ran to the steps and back into the frame and her father started to sing, It Was Only a Dream!

  It was then that Isla suddenly and unexpectedly felt that, although she had been a success, it was a mistake for her to be in the Music Hall.

  Chapter Three

  The curtain calls at the end of the show were ecstatic.

  A large number of the lady performers received bouquets and there was even a few for Keegan Kenway.

  There was also one for Isla, which she knew had been intended for Letty, but which she accepted gracefully.

  Charles Morton announced the benefit, which amounted to quite a considerable sum and the performers, as they left, were each handed their share in a packet.

  Isla saw with delight that her father’s was quite large.

  As they walked off the stage, they were surrounded by a number of people, some performers, some members of the audience, all congratulating him and asking who she was.

  Isla felt her father stiffen and, after being almost brusque to some of them, he hurried her out through the stage door.

  Outside, there was a huge crowd of admirers cheering and shouting and waving their hats when he appeared.

  Isla and her father walked down the narrow street to find their brougham and Isla was patted frequently on the shoulder or on her arm as the crowd wished her good luck.