Maskerade

kneeling down, looking at something. In the darkness.
    She stepped back. The stair creaked.
    The figure jerked around. A square of yellow light opened in the darkness, its beam pinning her against the brickwork.
    “Who’s there?” she said, raising a hand to shade her eyes.
    “Who’s that ?” said a voice. And then, after a moment, “Oh. It’s…Perdita, isn’t it?”
    The square of light swung toward her as the figure made its way over the stage.
    “André?” she said. She felt inclined to back away, if only the brickwork would let her.
    And suddenly he was on the stairs, quite an ordinary person, no shadow at all, holding a very large lantern.
    “What are you doing here?” said the organist.
    “I…was just going to bed.”
    “Oh, yes.” He relaxed a little. “Some of you girls have got rooms here. The management thought it was safer than having you going home alone late at night.”
    “What are you doing up here?” said Agnes, suddenly aware that there was just the two of them.
    “I was…looking at the place where the Ghost tried to strangle Mr. Cripps,” said André.
    “Why?”
    “I wanted to make certain everything was safe now, of course.”
    “Didn’t the stagehands do that?”
    “Oh, you know them. I just thought I’d better make certain.”
    Agnes looked down at the lantern.
    “I’ve never seen one like that before. How did you make it light up so quickly?”
    “Er. It’s a dark lantern. There’s this flap, you see,” he demonstrated, “so you can shut it right down and open it up again…”
    “That must be very useful when you’re looking for the black notes.”
    “Don’t be sarcastic. I just don’t want there to be any more trouble. You’ll find that you start looking around when—”
    “ Goodnight , André.”
    “Goodnight, then.”
    She hurried up the rest of the flights and ducked into her bedroom. No one followed her.
    When she’d calmed down, which took some time, she undressed in the voluminous tent of her red flannel nightdress and got into bed, resisting any temptation to pull the covers over her head.
    She stared at the dark ceiling.
    “That’s stupid,” she thought, eventually. “He was on the stage this morning. No one could move that fast…”
    She never knew whether she actually got some sleep or whether it happened just as she was dozing off, but there was a very faint knock at the door.
    “Perdita!?”
    Only one person she knew could exclaim a whisper.
    Agnes got up and padded over to the door. She opened the door a fraction, just to check, and Christine half-fell into the room.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I’m frightened!!”
    “What of?”
    “The mirror!! It’s talking to me!! Can I sleep in your room?!”
    Agnes looked around. It was crowded enough with the two of them standing up in it.
    “The mirror’s talking ?”
    “Yes!!”
    “Are you sure?”
    Christine dived into Agnes’s bed and pulled the covers over her. “Yes!!” she said, indistinctly.
    Agnes stood alone in the darkness.
    People always tended to assume that she could cope, as if capability went with mass, like gravity. And merely saying briskly, “Nonsense, mirrors don’t talk,” would probably not be any help, especially with one half of the dialogue buried beneath the bedclothes.
    She felt her way into the next room, stubbing her foot on the bed in the darkness.
    There must be a candle in here, somewhere. She felt for the tiny bedside table, hoping to start the reassuring rattle of a matchbox.
    A faint glimmer from the midnight city filtered through the window. The mirror seemed to glow.
    She sat down on the bed, which creaked ominously under her.
    Oh well…one bed was as good as another…
    She was about to lie back when something in the darkness went:… ting .
    It was a tuning fork.
    And a voice said: “Christine…please attend.”
    She sat upright, staring at the darkness.
    And then realization dawned. No men, they’d said. They’d been very strict about that, as if opera were some kind of religion. It was not a problem in Agnes’s case, at least in the way they meant, but for someone like Christine…They said love always found a way and, of course, so did a number of associated activities.
    Oh, good grief. She felt the blush start. In darkness! What kind of a reaction was that?
    Agnes’s life unrolled in front of her. It didn’t look as though it were going to have many high points. But it did hold years and years of being capable and having