A Christmas Gift. Ruby Jackson

stayed where she stood for a moment, somehow unable to move.

      ‘Come on, old girl. We’re alive and we’re needed.’

      Still she stood. ‘I’m terrified, Sebastian. Look around. Oh God, it’s terrible. There must be people lying dead or injured all over London.’

      He shook her until her eyes filled with tears and then he held her tightly against him. ‘We have a job to do, Sally. Sobbing in the street won’t help anyone. The injured, the bereaved – they need cheering up. Our remit, remember, is to do our level best to raise the morale of our fellow man – or woman. Come on, Sally, square shoulders and let’s do what we’re good at.’

      He took her hand and almost pulled her along, tripping over unnoticed, unexpected debris; a door, which they managed to avoid, a chimneypot, bricks, two leather-bound books, large and small fragments of sometimes still-burning wood, and bizarrely, a well-used frying pan with a fried egg welded to it by even greater heat than that which had originally cooked the egg. Each sad sight only added to Sally’s grief. Had Sebastian released her hand for a second she would have taken flight but, mercilessly, he clung to her, ignoring her sobs.

      They reached the old theatre to find only Max and Lalita in possession.

      Sally was both frightened and delighted to meet the répétiteur, although she was unsure what the word meant. She was also very much looking forward to meeting a Mexican as she had no real idea of what a Mexican woman would look like, all her knowledge of the country having come from American cowboy films. She had expected that she might be of medium height, plump with tanned skin, shiny, long, black hair, and flashing dark eyes. Lalita was tall and slender, her skin was lightly tanned and her thick, dark hair was fastened into a gleaming knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were as blue as Sally’s own. Probably somewhere in her fifties, she retained some of the stunning beauty she must have had as a young woman.

      ‘Thank you both for coming,’ said Max gravely. ‘We have discovered a Primus stove, two bottles of beer, some rather stale bread and three sausages. I suggest we eat, drink and be as merry as we can be until the others arrive – if they do. If they don’t arrive, Lal will work with you, Sally darling; I want to turn you into a nice wee Scotch lassie for a heather-in-the-hills number.’

      Lalita’s skills were more than adequate to the task. First, she questioned Sally as to her knowledge of Scottish accents, pointing out that they were many and varied. She learned that Sally had spent only a few days in Scotland and that her knowledge of accents was taken from wireless broadcasts.

      ‘I can say “Och aye the noo,”’ she told Lal who laughed.

      ‘Best forget that one, Sally; we’re not doing pantomime. Now, vowel sounds. Repeat after me …’

      And so began a gruelling crash course, repeating or trying to repeat the sounds that Lal was making. She had taken French at school and so could ‘roll her r’s’ quite well but had to learn how to modulate them. In the limited time available Lal strove to teach Sally to create a sound that could be recognized as vaguely Scottish.

      Two hours later, both were exhausted but rather pleased with Sally’s new accomplishment.

      Despite the traffic restrictions, almost every member of the troupe had managed to reach the theatre, each and every one with alarming, often hair-raising tales of their difficulties.

      ‘A miracle; no other word for it. St Paul’s is still gloriously there.’ Sybil Tapper, choreographer and former ballerina, born, brought up, and trained in the city, brought the latest news.

      Even those who were not Londoners by birth felt the symbolic power of the cathedral’s survival.

      ‘One in the eye for old Hitler; this failure must dent his pride, but I wouldn’t call it a miracle.’ The company’s pianist, Sam Castleton, grey with fatigue under his smoke-grimed face, told them of the hours he and others like him had spent helping the fire service by carrying buckets, wash-basins, anything that could hold water, from any source they could find, forming immense human chains of men, women and even children from every stratum of society. All night they had fought, passing the containers from hand to hand until the water reached the fires that were bursting out in various parts of the great monument.

      ‘Poor old Thames must be near bone dry, and the buggers have hit water mains. God knows how the hospitals are coping.’

      Max stood up and clapped his hands loudly so as to still the chattering. ‘No point in starting anything now. I want everyone home before dark. Go over your pieces at home, try them out in the shelters if we have another night like last night, and tomorrow, if you judge you can’t be here by ten at the latest, don’t even try. We’ll do a show with whoever turns up. Now go.’

      ‘Come on, Sally, you look as if you’re about to drop.’ Sebastian surreptitiously examined Sally as she allowed the wall to support her. She was deathly pale so that her beautiful blue eyes seemed larger and brighter than ever. They made him think of cold spring water coursing down the stream at the bottom of his late grandfather’s orchard. The sun made each clear droplet sparkle and somehow the greyish stones on the bed of the stream changed colour, now green, now blue, and then neither green nor blue. One day, he vowed, he would gaze into Sally’s lovely eyes and discover what colour they actually were.

      ‘Come along,’ he repeated, for all the world like an exasperated schoolteacher dealing with a recalcitrant pupil, ‘I’ll get you home somehow and there must be soup. Grandmamma swears by soup.’

      Sally was not listening; he doubted that she understood one word but she pushed herself off the wall and turned towards the door, unable to do anything but what she was told.

      ‘See you tomorrow,’ he yelled. ‘New Year’s Eve. Who’s for the Savoy?’

      ‘Do shut up, Seb,’ the others yelled back in unison but Sally smiled and that was all he cared about. He heard her wince with fatigue as he opened the outside door but she recovered.

      ‘All right?’

      ‘Yes, thank you, Sebastian.’

      He put his arm around her as a prop. ‘Lal worked you too hard today.’

      Lal? That was it. She would ask now – anything to take her mind away from the terrifying events that were taking place all around her. ‘Sebastian, what exactly is a répétiteur?’

      ‘What lively questions you do ask. It’s the brilliant person who repeats everything for the singer or the actor. He/she is a voice coach, and accent coach, but the most sought after are those who are also stunningly good musicians. If a singer or a dancer is having trouble with a particular phrase, the répétiteur plays it over and over until the performer sings or dances or speaks it properly. Invaluable. Some focus on opera or acting; some are all-rounders, like Lal, who can sound as if she’s never left the East End of London one minute and become a sophisticated Russian princess the next.’

      ‘I never realised it was all so difficult.’

      ‘Nothing that’s worthwhile is easy. But perhaps today, two hours of concentrated Lalita Cruz was overkill.’

      She tried to smile. ‘No, Sebastian. She’s amazing. I appreciated so much individual attention.’

      ‘Which Max is getting now.’

      ‘He doesn’t need …’ began Sally and then, aware of Sebastian’s meaning, blushed.

      ‘You didn’t hear the door lock behind us? You didn’t wonder how they managed to reach the theatre early and to find a Primus stove, not to mention sausages?’

      Sally said nothing. Too much had happened and, at this particular moment, all she wanted was to get to her boarding house and fall into bed, preferably after a hot bath.

      How dark it was. Not that daylight in London was a patch on the clear air of the Kent countryside she and her friends had loved to cycle through. In London one always had to peer to find the kerb of a pavement, and now, after