Spring by Vina Jackson

Author:Vina Jackson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-01-16T15:32:04+00:00

6

Subterranean

I had mentioned the discovery of Joan’s erstwhile association with the theatre to Clarissa, and enquired whether there was any way that Gwillam and I might obtain access to some of the Princess Empire’s records to investigate further. At first, she had appeared reluctant. An initial sweep through personnel records proved inconclusive as only the previous ten years’ were held.

‘Might they be kept anywhere outside the theatre?’ Gwillam asked. ‘In storage?’

It appeared not and, apart from profuse bundles and dusty folders of mementos of previous shows, past programmes, photographs, cuttings, stage notes and financial papers, it seemed that the theatre had not retained anything of a practical nature about the people who had worked there over the decades and any information that might once have been retained had by now been disposed of or even destroyed. Living memories are seldom documented.

The news was immensely disappointing to Gwillam, as if a promising line of enquiry had been nipped in the bud. I was in two minds. After all, Joan was a relative of Iris’s and the abrupt severance of my ties with Iris had made Joan’s memory more distant, less immediate. In addition, all the events of the past few weeks, the questioning of relationships, the new bonds I was forging, the complications of sex, all of this still left me bewildered and confused.

Clarissa promised she would ask further questions of some of the older stage hands when the opportunity presented itself, and a week later she called me down to her office and informed me that someone who had once worked in the props department had a vague memory of Joan and there was a remote possibility she had left something of hers behind. She had, it appeared, departed the theatre’s employment under something of a cloud all those years back, and not bothered to gather all her belongings in the rush to leave.

Clarissa suggested Gwillam and I come to the theatre the following Sunday morning and we would go hunting for the possible papers or clothing Joan had abandoned; the older backstage guy who had come up with the information was unsure what exactly Joan might have left behind, the news of its existence having only reached him second-hand.

It was a rainy early winter morning, the leaden sky heavy with rolling masses of low clouds, and a bitter chill clouded our breath. Clarissa was alone at the stage door in the small alley that bordered the theatre and opened the door for us. The building was in eerie darkness, a sight I hadn’t come across before, with just the faint glow of security lights flickering across the narrow corridors surrounding the auditorium, leading past a series of doors to the backstage areas. She had warned us to each bring an electric torch, but the illumination our trio of amateur explorers thus provided was notably insufficient, barely forming a slither of light in front of our feet before being smothered by the surrounding obscurity. I felt as if I were

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