Phantom (64 page)

"Don't tell Mother, will you?" he whispered anxiously, as I held him over a sink ten minutes before that first public recital. I promised not to tell, rubbed his white face with a rough towel until some vestige of color returned to his cheeks, and then suffered agonies for him as he walked through the silent, crowded room to seat himself at that awesomely lonely piano. He looked so very young and vulnerable, and when he caught my eye I gave him a nod of encouragement that made him smile.

Christine's hand was in mine throughout that first performance and at the end, when the entire room got to its feet to applaud, I squeezed her fingers very hard while our eyes shared a knowledge that could never be voiced.

Ironically the very thing which should have driven us apart became the link that soldered us together. I thanked God for Charles many times over and not all my reasons for doing so were particularly noble.

The cat—that
damned
cat!—eventually deserted Christine and become positively devoted to him. It took to sleeping on his bed when he was about two years old, a practice I did absolutely nothing to discourage, in spite of Nanny's indignant protests about fleas.

"It's good for a child to have a pet," I said coolly, when called upon to give a ruling in the matter. Nanny subsided into furious silence and no doubt said a lot of hard things about eccentric Frenchmen in the servants' hall later, but I didn't care unduly.

As long as the animal resided in the nursery, it could not be with my wife, insinuating itself between us like some wretched sentinel.

Besides, it seemed oddly fitting that they should form a little menagerie up on the nursery floor.

They belonged together, in a strange way, did they not?

The cat… and the cuckoo… in one nest!

It lived to a rare old age, that cat, and finally died, with its customary inconsiderate perversity, sometime in the early morning of Charles's twelfth birthday.

You bloody thing
! I found myself thinking uncharitably.
He'd have been back at boarding school tomorrow
—
couldn't you have waited till then
?

I glanced at Charles, who was devastated, yet manfully trying to govern his tears in front of me.

"I'll get a box," I said grimly.

When I returned, I found that he had removed the animal's exotic collar.

"I expect Mother will want to keep this, won't she?"

"I daresay."
Damn! Damn, damn, damn
!

I watched him wrap the stiff animal tenderly in its blanket and lay it reluctantly in the box.

"It seems wrong, somehow," he murmured softly. "Such a plain, rough box—and no ceremony."

"It's only a cat!" I said, rather more shortly than I had intended. "We can hardly have a full requiem Mass, you know!"

He looked so hurt that I was immediately ashamed of giving way to my ugly resentment.

"Look, Charles, they breed them over here now. We can always get another one, if you really want—"

He turned away in silence, revolted no doubt by my clumsy, insensitive suggestion, and began to finger the jewels on the collar with the sort of reverence that is normally reserved for a rosary.

"These are real diamonds, aren't they, Dad?"

"I believe so," I said stiffly.

"There must be enough to make a pendant necklace," he continued thoughtfully. "May I draw some money from my account and have them made up for Mother?"

I swallowed hard as I hammered the lid on the box with grim finality and rather unnecessary vigor.

"It's your money, Charles," I said quietly. "You don't need to ask my permission how to use it."

We went down to breakfast side by side, having agreed not to break the news to Christine until the following day, when the animal would be safely buried and she could not ask to see it.

She was already seated at the table, waiting for us on this special day. Beside her plate was the single red rose that I always placed there on the anniversary of Charles's birth. I had thought it a romantic touch—a single red rose, the symbol of my unchanging love—but she wept so poignantly the first time I presented her with one that I had considered abandoning the idea there and then.

"If it upsets you—"

"No," she had said hastily, "it doesn't upset me at all, it was a lovely thought, Raoul. It just—just reminded me of a sad legend that I once heard."

"Oh, I see. One of your father's old tales, I suppose."

She looked down at the rose.

"That's right," she said softly, pressing the bloom lightly against her cheek, "one of Father's stories. Perhaps one day I'll tell it to you…"

I hadn't pressed her to tell and assumed the incident had slipped from her mind. At any rate, she never wept again when I gave her a red rose and the practice had slowly become a ritual between us over the years. I knew that she kept the petals long after the flower had faded and died…

Now she looked up and the smile that had been hovering on her lips was extinguished at the sight of Charles.

"My dear… your eyes!"

He bent down to kiss her cheek with admirable nonchalance.

"It's nothing," he said carelessly, "too much riding in the wind yesterday, that's all… I say, you don't mind if I have kippers, do you, Mother? It's my last day at home… and it is my birthday!"

"Oh, Charles!" she exclaimed, with indulgent, halfhearted protest. "What horribly British tastes that school is breeding in you!"

She sat down again at the table, amused, adoring, and skillfully distracted from a line of questioning that might have proved awkward, watching him pick the tiny bones from that objectionable fish, without the faintest suspicion that anything was wrong.

It must have nearly choked him to swallow that kipper for her sake, but he never hesitated; he ate like a starving schoolboy who has nothing but birthday presents on his mind.

Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I watched him with quiet respect and it crossed my mind, not for the first time, that Erik would have been proud of him.

Charles was away at school when Christine died, four years later.

She had been ill for a long time with a gradual wasting sickness that was eventually diagnosed as cancer, but the end came with an unexpected suddenness that found us quite unprepared.

Stunned and numbed with shock, I unlocked the drawer in the table at the side of her bed and removed the contents, which she had made me promise to bury with her.

The drawer was full of pressed rose petals. It seemed to me that for every red bloom that I had ever given her, she herself must have added a white, and the crisp, dried petals were mingled irretrievably together, giving off a faint, lingering perfume as they crumbled to powder in my hand.

Beneath the petals lay the necklace of diamonds which had once been a cat's collar, its gold clasp nestling inside a wedding ring. Lifting the ring out and examining it, I found it to be a simple gold band that looked as new and unworn as it must have done on the day it was purchased in France all those years ago. It was very small, the same size as the ring I had first bought her, which had had to be cut from her hand as her fingers swelled during her pregnancy.

At the bottom of the drawer was a small piece of paper, evidently cut from the score of an opera which I finally recognized as
Aida
.

My heart foreseeing your condemnation, into this tomb I made my way by stealth, and here, far from every human gaze, in your arms I wished to die…

. With the scrap of paper in my hand I went slowly down to the library and took out Charles's well thumbed copy of
Faust
. I was reasonably certain of the quotation for which I searched, but wanted to be quite sure there was no mistake in the wording. When I found it, I copied it neatly down onto a slip of paper and looked at it for a moment.

Holy Angel, in heaven blessed, my spirit longs with thee to rest.

Returning to the drawing room, where the open coffin lay in the semigloom of a single candelabrum, I placed the wedding ring on her little finger, fastened the necklace around her pale, shriveled throat, and tucked the two quotations into the dazzling satin folds of the lining. Then I scattered the remains of the rose petals all around her.

When it was done I had a strange feeling of peace, as though I had completed the final act of some lifelong quest. I had held her in trust for seventeen years until death chose to reunite her with the one to whom she truly belonged. There was an aching sadness which I knew would never leave me… and yet there was also a sense of release, a sudden lifting of guilt.

I myself placed the lid upon the coffin, that no undertaker might be tempted by the fortune in stones which would be laid to rest with her.

It rained heavily during the committal, as it always seems to do on such occasions in England. The fresh white roses were bruised and splashed with mud as the coffin was lowered into that gaping maw in the ground.

Beneath a black umbrella Charles held my arm in a fiercely protective grip, as though he feared I might do something very stupid in my grief. His face was white and tragic, but the eyes that rested on mine were full of compassionate understanding.

I remember that when the service was over, he led me very carefully back to our carriage, just as though I were a blind and crippled man…

The final curtains have been taken, the lights have been lit throughout the auditorium, and people are shuffling from their seats, stretching surreptitiously in their stiff dress suits and high-necked evening gowns. The unseemly rush for cloaks and carriages is about to begin, but I, who have nowhere to hurry to now, continue to sit unmoving in the very armchair where Erik must once have sat to look down on Christine.

Charles leans over and lays his hand on mine. He does not speak, for he knows instinctively that there are times when it is better to say nothing, that sympathy can be more easily expressed in touch than in meaningless words. He waits instead, with a quiet patience quite alien to his age, while I collect myself in slow degrees and prepare to leave box five for the last time. I shall not come here again. The memories are too deeply painful, and yet I do not regret this time of reflection, this cauterizing of an old, unhealed wound.

The crowds on the
grand escalier
have begun to disperse, and I can see Charles looking around with undisguised admiration.

"What a magnificent building!" he says with awe, as we step out into the cool evening air. "I wonder if the men who built it are still alive to marvel at their great achievement."

"Erik has been dead for seventeen years," I hear myself murmur softly.

"Erik? Was he a friend of yours, Dad?"

The flicker of eager interest in his voice makes the corners of my lips lift in a sad, ironic smile.

"Your mother knew him rather better than I."

"Was he an architect?"

"Architect, musician, magician, composer—a genius in very many fields… so I was once told."

The interest becomes a faintly puzzled frown.

"I wonder why Mother never spoke of him. It's a pity he died, isn't it? I'd have liked to know him."

"Yes…" Our cab draws slowly out into the crowded street, and glancing out, I am afforded a receding view of the Opera's imposing baroque facade. "Yes, my dear boy… I rather think that you would."

We are silent for a time, and after what he considers to be a decent interval, Charles begins on the subject I've been half expecting. That dog we knocked down earlier is an ownerless stray… can't we take it back to England with us and give it a home? I make some feeble protest about the new importation regulations—six months' detention and isolation at a place provided by the owner—but Charles is wearing his mulish look and I know there's no point in arguing. In his eyes I, too, am really another lost dog now, something to be cared for and coaxed back to happiness… So how can I fault such an open heart?

The Opera House dwindles in the distance until it seems no bigger than a doll's house in the shadows… a diminutive lost kingdom shrouded by the thick Parisian mist.

Seventeen years, Erik—too long for bitterness, too long for hate. Your genius was not wiped from this earth without trace, and I have brought him here tonight, like a young pilgrim to a shrine, in final payment of a long-outstanding debt.

I, who shared so unwillingly in your tragedy, now find myself, by some ironic twist of fate, left alone to glory in your triumph. This brilliant, loving boy, who calls me father in his innocence, has taught me so many things I might never have grasped about love. I see the world through his eyes now, I glimpse my appointed place in the grand order of things. Like a weary sparrow I can look with fond pride on the giant I have raised as my own. My feathers have grown sparse and shabby in a difficult quest, but I am warmed and comforted by his presence now. I dread the day when I must lose him to the fame and glory that unquestionably await.

His sons will continue the proud Chagny line and I shall take my secret with me to the grave without resentment… almost without regret.

The cuckoo, you see… The cuckoo is a beautiful bird!

It would not be possible to end this book without gratefully acknowledging the various sources which were of inspiration to me during its writing, from the wonderful musical of Andrew Lloyd Webber right back to the original silent film. In the course of my research I discovered many different phantoms—Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, and Michael Crawford all adding their own interpretations to a character who has intrigued audiences for much of this century. Perhaps the most faithful representation of Le-roux's original book is the 1967 full-length cartoon. Unexpectedly moving in its final scenes, this adaptation, like the Lloyd Webber musical, allows the Phantom that crucial moment of sacrifice and redemption which other versions have consistently denied him.

When I came to read the Leroux novel, hoping to learn much more about this extraordinary character, I found that the book opened more questions for me than it actually answered. Why, for instance, did Raoul remain so jealous and uncertain of Christine's affection, even after he knew the truth about Erik's hideous disfigurement? Why did Christine insist on returning to Erik, for days at a time, when Raoul was so desperately eager to take her away from danger? Pity and fear hardly seem adequate explanations for her behavior. Was it possible that Raoul was nearer to the truth than he suspected in his angry assertion that