For two weeks, the Gazelles, a troupe of acrobats in gold and scarlet, had filled the Queen’s Palace stage with flying bodies. Though they were great applause getters, the stagehands hated them.
The Gazelles were the only act to use the bridges, two sections of the stage floor that could be raised and lowered to create spectacular visual effects. Because the bridges were labor intensive, they were used mainly at Christmastime, when the theatres staged big pantomime pageants. Now, to the delight of the audience, the troupe had choreographed a routine in which they leapt and somersaulted from one bridge to the other while the bridges continuously rose and fell. It was an exciting change from bouncing around on a flat stage floor.
But the bridges were operated with huge, geared wooden drums, located under the stage and turned by hand crank—something the crew was loathe to do. It was one thing to raise them once during a turn; to do it over and over for eight minutes was exhausting. The Gazelles had to “sweeten” the crew with beer money to work the drums for their twelve weekly performances. And now, for Thursday night’s show, Stewart Caves, one of the stagehands that was to operate the bridges, hadn’t shown up.
He was probably drunk somewhere in Piccadilly, Layton told Cissie, who was standing stage right and was angry.
“Caves has made a total bollocks of the act, that clot!”
Cissie ran the performances with the accuracy of a Swiss watch and absolutely hated when things were at sixes and sevens. The Gazelles were the third act on the top half of the bill, and time was running out to find a replacement.
“I will stand in for old Caves,” said Layton with a smile.
“Then pull your finger out, me boy. Your reward will be a Guinness tonight—and maybe a slap and a tickle later on if you do a good job of it.”
Since joining the variety theatre, he had grown ever more fascinated with the technical workings. The architect in him wanted to understand how everything worked, from flying the cloths to lighting the stage with the new electric spotlights and working the traps in the understage.
Five minutes before the Gazelles were due on, Layton walked down the black metal spiral stair to the understage. The other operator, Alfie Elkins, was at the stage right crank, out of view. The band room and the orchestra pit were directly beside the understage, and Layton could hear the music as if he were in the front row of the stalls.
When the snappy, fast-paced intro for the Gazelles began, he placed his hands on the wooden handle and began to crank the drum. Like a watch gear, the drum was shaped like a wheel, with heavy wooden spoke teeth around its circumference. These teeth turned another wheel, connected by a shaft to the ram that lifted the bridge. Once the bridge was raised to full height, Layton lowered it by cranking in the other direction.
Directly above him, he heard and felt the continuous thumping of the acrobats.
But in the noise and the chaos, Layton didn’t hear someone come up from behind.
Two hands grabbed the sides of his head and squeezed with enormous force, like the clamps of a vise. The pain was so intense that Layton thought his eyes would pop out of their sockets. He let go of the crank and tried to cry out but found himself paralyzed from the neck down; he couldn’t raise his arms to defend himself. His vision blurred and swam; his head was jerked in the direction of the still-spinning spokes.
They blurred before Layton’s eyes, and he knew what was about to happen. In a fraction of a second, he had to make a decision: give up and have his head squashed like a watermelon, or save himself, no matter the cost. In the end, it was easy. He grabbed the crank and held on, winning himself a precious few seconds. On instinct, he yanked off his right boot and lunged forward, jamming it into the gears and bringing the wheel to a halt. With a muffled curse, his assailant rammed his head against the edge of the wheel and let go. Layton dropped to the floor like a stone.
He woke up facedown on the wooden floor. Leo, one of the Gazelles, swam into his vision, screaming and cursing.
“You stupid bastard, you screwed up the whole act! You threw off our timing. We crashed into each other like ten pins! Why’d you stop cranking?”
The pain in Layton’s skull radiated down to his feet and back up like an electrical current. The strain was too much, and Layton curled up in a ball, holding his head, trying to gather his wits about him. The entire Gazelle troupe had arrived now, and they were cursing him up and down. Henry Wilding, the stage manager, joined them.
“Frank, what the hell happened? Are you sick, man?” he yelled.
“Bollocks, he’s sick!” screamed Ralph, another Gazelle. “I did a triple somersault right smack into the stage floor. Almost broke me goddamn neck!”
Grabbing on to the wheel, Layton pulled himself up to face the angry mob. Leo was poking him in the chest, screaming at the top of his lungs, his face beet red. Layton could feel saliva spraying him in the face as the man raged.
“The whole house was laughing their bleedin’ heads off at us. We’re pros, goddammit! We can’t be laughed off stage. I’ll see you in court, Owen.”
Standing was too much. Layton knelt down on the wood plank floor, clutching his head in agony.