Poppy by M.C. Beaton

Author:M.C. Beaton [Beaton, M. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472101259
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 1982-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The interview with Mr. Lewis and Mr. Pettifor was not exactly easy.

“I don’t know why you want to come back,” said Mr. Benjamin Lewis, examining his cuff links. “You’ve gone and turned into a lady, and although we like to pretend to the contrary, we don’t have ladies in the Lewis girls.”

Made courageous by despair, Poppy faced up to him. “I didn’t want to come back as a Lewis girl,” she said.

“Then what?” asked Mr. Pettifor. The theater was dark and quiet. Poppy had caught both men just at the end of rehearsals, and they were standing on the darkened stage, which was lit only by a shaft of dusty sunlight that had filtered somehow through the filthy glass dome on the roof.

“The lead,” said Poppy quietly, “and the money that goes with it.”

“See here,” cried Mr. Pettifor, very much the outraged dormouse. “You ain’t got the training. You got to work your way up. You got—”

Mr. Lewis silenced him with a wave of his hand, his eyes still fixed curiously on Poppy. “Run round to the King’s Arms, Mr. Pettifor,” he said, “and fetch that pianist, Alfred Jones.”

Mr. Pettifor opened his mouth, thought the better of it, and scuttled off into the blackness of the wings.

“There’s a new musical comedy, written by a young Australian fellow called Cyril Mundy. It’s the same mixture as before, some damned mittel-European country that no one’s ever heard of, and some prince masquerading as a student. So the story line’s nothing.” He leaned forward. “But the lyrics are good, and the music’s funny. Sort of haunts you once you’ve heard it. I’m worried about putting it on, ’cause it’s not quite in our usual line, and you have to hear the tunes more than once for them to catch on. That’s risky for us.

“Now, when that there Alfred gets back, I want you to sing one of the numbers for me, Poppy. It’s one about the girl feeling she’s been abandoned by her sweetheart. If you can make me cry, I’ll hire you.”

He walked over to the piano, which had been left in a corner of the stage after rehearsals, and picked up a pile of music and came back with it, kneeling in the center of the stage in the dusty sunlight and flicking through it until he found the right sheet, which he handed mutely to Poppy.

Poppy emptied her mind of every thought and every hurt feeling, and concentrated solely on the music, and all at once she knew she could do it. She was being asked to sing about lost love and rejection, and who better than Poppy to do that?

“All right,” said Benjamin Lewis when Mr. Pettifor arrived back with the pianist. “Mr. Pettifor and I are going to sit right at the back of the pit, and we want to hear every word, and we want to feel our hearts break. I can’t be bothered fiddling around with the lights, so you’ll need to use that bit o’ sunlight.

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