guess what sensation it had once recommended. ‘Go home –’ was chalked across one of the doors but somebody had rubbed out the rest of the legend and substituted graffiti of a more or less predictable kind. It was all very dismal.
But as Peregrine approached the doors he found, on the frontage itself high up and well protected, the tatter of a playbill. It was the kind of thing that patrons of the Players Theatre cherish and Kensington Art shops turn into lampshades.
THE BEGGAR GIRL’S WEDDING
In response to
Overwhelming Solicitation!! –
Mr Adolphus Ruby
Presents
A Return Performa –
The rest was gone.
When, Peregrine speculated, could this overwhelming solicitation have moved Mr Ruby? In the eighties? He knew that Mr Ruby had lived to within ten years of the turn of the century and in his heyday had bought, altered, restored and embellished The Dolphin, adding his plaster and jute caryatids, his swags, his supporting marine mammals and cornucopia, his touches of gilt and lolly-pink to the older and more modest elegance of wrought iron and unmolested surfaces. When did he make all these changes? Did he, upon his decline, sell The Dolphin and, if so, to whom? It was reputed to have been in use at the outbreak of the Second World War as a ragdealer’s storehouse.
Who was the ground landlord now?
He confronted the main entrance and its great mortice lock for which he had no trouble in selecting the appropriate key. It was big enough to have hung at the girdle of one of Mr Ruby’s very own stage-gaolers. The key went home and engaged but refused to turn. Why had Peregrine not asked the clerk to lend him an oil-can? He struggled for some time and a voice at his back said:
‘Got it all on yer own, mate, aincher?’
Peregrine turned to discover a man wearing a peaked cap like a waterman’s and a shiny blue suit. He was a middle-aged man with a high colour, blue eyes and a look of cheeky equability.
‘You want a touch of the old free-in-one,’ he said. He had a gritty hoarseness in his voice. Peregrine gaped at him. ‘Oil, mate. Loobrication,’ the man explained.
‘Oh. Yes, indeed, I know I do.’
‘What’s the story, anyway? Casing the joint?’
‘I want to look at it,’ Peregrine grunted. ‘Ah, damn, I’d better try the stage-door.’
‘Let’s take a butcher’s.’
Peregrine stood back and the man stooped. He tried the key, delicately at first and then with force. ‘Not a hope,’ he wheezed. ‘’Alf a mo’.’
He walked away, crossed the street and disappeared between two low buildings and down a narrow passageway that seemed to lead to the river.
‘Damnation!’ Peregrine thought, ‘he’s taken the key!’
Two gigantic lorries with canvas-covered loads roared down Wharfingers Lane and past the theatre. The great locked doors shook and rattled and a flake of plaster fell on Peregrine’s hand. ‘It’s dying slowly,’ he thought in a panic. ‘The Dolphin is being shaken to death.’
When the second lorry had gone by there was the man again with a tin and a feather in one hand and the key in the other. He re-crossed the street and came through the portico.
‘I’m very much obliged to you,’ Peregrine said.
‘No trouble, yer Royal ’Ighness,’ said the man. He oiled the lock and after a little manipulation turned the key. ‘Kiss yer ’and,’ he said. Then he pulled back the knob. The tongue inside the lock shifted with a loud clunk. He pushed the door and it moved a little. ‘Sweet as a nut,’ said the man, and stepped away. ‘Well, dooty calls as the bloke said on ’is way to the gallers.’
‘Wait a bit –’ Peregrine said, ‘you must have a drink on me. Here.’ He pushed three half crowns into the man’s hand.
‘Never say no to that one, Mister. Fanks. Jolly good luck.’
Peregrine longed to open the door but thought the man, who was evidently a curious fellow, might attach himself. He wanted to be alone in The Dolphin.
‘Your job’s somewhere round about here?’ he asked.
‘Dahn Carboy Stairs. Phipps Bros. Drugs and that. Jobbins is the name. Caretaker, uster be a lighterman but it done no good to me chubes. Well, so long, sir. Hope you give yerself a treat among them spooks. Best of British luck.’
‘Goodbye, and thank you.’
The door opened with a protracted groan and Peregrine entered The Dolphin.
II
The windows were unshuttered and though masked by dirt, let enough light into the foyer for him to see it quite distinctly. It was surprisingly big. Two flights of stairs with the prettiest wrought-iron balustrades curved up into darkness. At the back and deep in shadow, passages led off on either side giving entrance no doubt to boxes and orchestra stalls. The pit entrance must be from somewhere outside.
On Peregrine’s right stood a very rococo box-office, introduced, he felt sure, by Mr Ruby. A brace of consequential plaster putti hovered upside down with fat-faced insouciance above the grille and must have looked in their prime as if they were counting the doorsales. A fibre-plaster bust of Shakespeare on a tortuous pedestal lurked in the shadows. The filthy walls were elegantly panelled and he thought must have originally been painted pink and gilded.
There was nothing between Peregrine and the topmost ceiling. The circle landing, again with a wrought-iron balustrade, reached less than half-way across the well. He stared up into darkness and fancied he could distinguish a chandelier. The stench was frightful: rats, rot, general dirt and, he thought, an unspeakable aftermath of the hobos that the clerk had talked about. But how lovely it must have been in its early Victorian elegance and even with Mr Ruby’s preposterous additions. And how surprisingly undamaged it seemed to be.
He turned to the right-hand flight of stairs and found two notices. ‘Dress Circle’ and ‘To the Paris Bar’. The signwriter had added pointing hands with frills round their wrists. Upstairs first, or into the stalls? Up.
He passed by grimed and flaking panels, noticing the graceful airiness of plaster ornament that separated them. He trailed a finger on the iron balustrade but withdrew it quickly at the thick touch of occulted dust. Here was the circle foyer. The double flight of stairs actually came out on either side of a balcony landing that projected beyond the main landing and formed the roof of a portico over the lower foyer. Flights of three shallow steps led up from three sides of this ‘half-landing’ to the top level. The entire structure was supported by very elegant iron pillars.
It was much darker up there and he could only just make out the Paris Bar. The shelves were visible but the counter had gone. A nice piece of mahogany it may have been – something to sell or steal. Carpet lay underfoot in moth-eaten tatters and the remains of curtains hung before the windows. These must be unbroken because the sound of the world outside was so very faint. Boarded up, perhaps. It was extraordinary how quiet it was, how stale, how stifling, how dead.
‘Not a mouse stirring’ he thought and at that moment heard a rapid patter. Something scuttled across his foot. Peregrine was astonished to find himself jolted by a violent shudder. He stamped with both feet and was at once half-stifled by the frightful cloud of dust he raised.
He approached the Paris Bar. A man without a face came out of the shadows and moved towards him.
‘Euh!’ Peregrine said in his throat. He stopped and so did the man. He could not have told how many heart thuds passed before he saw it was himself.
The bar was backed by a sheet of looking-glass.
Peregrine had recently given up smoking. If he had now had access to a cigarette he