The Kingdom of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page B

he moved well and held the eye. Sayers had an athlete’s physique, but clothes never sat on him the way they suited Caspar. Caspar dressed like a prince in disguise. Sometimes Sayers would catch sight of himself in a mirror and think that his hard-wearing checked suit and brogues made him look like a country farmer scrubbed up for a wedding.
    Sayers felt no reason to envy Caspar. But all the same, he could not like him.
    He appeared to be set on leaving the building.
    “Caspar!”
    Sayers called out his name, but too late. James Caspar had ducked out of the open scene dock and into the rain, slipping out like a cat through a kitchen door. He clearly had plans of his own for the scant hour or so between now and midnight.
    Well, so be it. Caspar was his own man. And if being his own man led him to miss the midnight special and so their first date in a new town…well, again, so be it. No one here was irreplaceable.
    And replacing James Caspar was a job that Sayers would have been more than happy to add to his duties.
    Sayers could hear the applause for Louise as he returned to the dressing-room corridor and rapped on the first of the doors. They loved her, all those misshapen miners and their hardworking women. All the shopgirls and the sweepers and the factory hands out there. Their applause echoed through the backstage spaces of the house like that of ghosts from some earlier time. He could picture Louise, giving her single bow and backing through the curtain that one of the stagehands had been assigned to hold open for her.
    When a shout came in response to his knock, he swung it open to find the Low Comedian and Ricks, the company’s First Heavy, already dressed for the street and removing the last traces of pancake from their faces.
    “Cabs at the stage door in twenty minutes,” Sayers repeated. “Make sure you’re ready.”
    “Cabs!” the Low Comedian said. “Does this mean the boss finally remembered what his pockets are for?”
    “It means we’ve a train that goes at midnight and if we miss it, no matinee tomorrow.”
    Usually, a run would end on a Saturday night and then the company would have all of Sunday to travel. All over the British Isles, stations like Crewe or the Exchange in Manchester would be abuzz with actors and stage workers, all meeting on the platforms and in the public rooms and catching up with the news as they awaited their connections. The public would turn out, just to see the spectacle of it all.
    But with half-week bookings—Monday to Wednesday in one town, Thursday to Saturday in the next—everyone had to scramble. And when the dates were so many miles apart, as sometimes they had to be, then there was little room for error in the acting-manager’s organization.
    As Sayers pulled the dressing room door shut and turned away, he had to step back for fifteen-year-old Arthur Steffens, the company’s callboy. Arthur had an armload of newspapers and was moving at his usual speed. He was always running five errands at once, being in no position to refuse any of them. Caspar used him more than anyone, and did not treat him well.
    “Arthur!” Sayers called after him.
    “Mister Sayers?”
    “Don’t waste your time looking for Mister Caspar when the cabs arrive. I just saw him leave the building.”
    “No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. Was there anything else, sir?”
    “If he comes back with his costume ruined, you can tell him it’ll come out of his wages.”
    The boy looked so stricken at the thought of the task that Sayers had to relent and let him off the hook.
    “All right, then, Arthur,” he said. “I’ll tell him myself. Get on with you.”
    Arthur scuttled off down the corridor, and Sayers moved along to the next dressing room. Without contriving it, he somehow reached the door in the same moment as Louise.
    “Miss Porter,” he said.
    “Mister Sayers,” she responded. Their formality was only half-serious. It was a joke that they’d been sharing for most of the year.