-oom-BAH-oom-BAHhhh. . . oom. . . om. . .
The tuba player tapped a trombonist on the shoulder.
‘hey, Frank, there’s a monkey where old troublemaker should be-‘
‘shutupshutupshutup!’
Satisfied, the orang-utan raised his arms.
The orchestra looked up. And then looked up a bit more. No conductor in musical history, not even the one who once fried and ate the piccolo-player’s liver on a cymbal for one wrong note too many, not even the one who skewered three troublesome violinists on his baton, not even the one who made really hurtful sarcastic remarks in a loud voice, was ever the focus of such reverential attention.
On stage, Nanny Ogg took advantage of the hush to pull the head off a frog.
‘Madam!’
‘Sorry, thought you might be someone else. . .’
The long arms dropped. The orchestra, in one huge muddled chord, slammed back into life.
The dancers, after a moment’s confusion during which Nanny Ogg took the opportunity to decapitate a clown and a phoenix, tried to continue.
The chorus watched in bemusement.
Christine felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to see Agnes. ‘Perdita! Where have you been!?’ she hissed. ‘It’s nearly time for my duet with Enrico!’
‘You’ve got to help!’ hissed Agnes. But down in her soul Perdita said: Enrico, eh? It’s Senor Basilica to everyone else. . .
‘Help you what!?’ said Christine.
‘Take everyone’s masks off!’
Christine’s forehead wrinkled beautifully. ‘That’s not supposed to happen until the end of the opera, is it?’
‘Er. . . it’s all been changed!’ said Agnes urgently. She turned to a nobleman in a zebra mask and tugged it desperately. The singer underneath glared at her.
‘Sorry!’ she whispered. ‘I thought you were someone else!’
‘We’re not supposed to take them off until the end!’
‘It’s been changed!’
‘Has it? No one told me!’
A short-necked giraffe next to him leaned sideways. ‘What’s that?’
‘The big unmasking scene is now, apparently!’
‘No one told me!’
‘Yes, but when does anyone ever tell us anything? We’re only the chorus. . . here, why is old Troublemaker wearing a monkey mask. . . ?’
Nanny Ogg pirouetted past, cannoned into an elephant in evening dress and beheaded him by the trunk. She whispered: ‘We’re looking for the Ghost, see?’
‘But. . . the Ghost is dead, isn’t he?’
‘Hard things to kill, ghosts,’ said Nanny.
The whisper spread outwards from that point. There is nothing like a chorus for rumour. People who would not believe a High Priest if he said the sky was blue, and was able to produce signed affidavits to this effect from his white-haired old mother and three Vestal virgins, would trust just about anything whispered darkly behind their hand by a complete stranger in a pub.
A cockatoo spun around and pulled the mask off a parrot. . .
Bucket sobbed. This was worse than the day the buttermilk exploded. This was worse than the flash heat wave that had led a whole warehouse full of Lancre Extra Strong to riot.
The opera had turned into a pantomime.
The audience was laughing.
About the only character still with a mask on was Senor Basilica, who was watching the struggling chorus with as much aloof amazement as his own mask could convey -and this, amazingly enough, was quite a lot.
‘Oh, no. . .’ moaned Bucket. ‘We’ll never live it down! He’ll never come back! It’ll be all over the opera circuit and no one will ever want to come here ever again!’
‘Ever again wha’?’ mumbled a voice behind him.
Bucket turned. ‘Oh, Senor Basilica,’ he said. ‘Didn’t see you there. . . I was just thinking, I do hope you don’t think this is typical!’
Senor Basilica stared through him, swaying slightly from side to side. He was wearing a torn shirt.
‘Summon. . .’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Summon. . . summon hit me onna head,’ said the tenor. ‘Wanna glassa water pliss. . .’
‘But you’re. . . just about. . . to. . . sing. . . aren’t you?’ said Bucket. He grabbed the stunned man by the collar to pull him closer, but this simply meant that he dragged himself off the floor, bringing his shoes about level with Basilica’s knees. ‘Tell me. . . you’re out there. . . on the stage. . . please!!!’
Even in his stunned state, Enrico Basilica a.k.a. Henry Slugg recognized what might be called the essential dichotomy of the statement. He stuck to what he knew.
‘Summon bashed me inna corridor. . .’ he volunteered.
‘That’s not you out there?’
Basilica blinked heavily. “M not me?’
‘You’re going to sing the famous duet in a moment!!!’
Another thought staggered through Basilica’s abused skull. “M I?’ he said. “S good. . . ‘ll look forwa’ to that. Ne’er had a chance to hear me befo’. . .’
He gave a happy little sigh and fell full-length backwards.
Bucket leaned against a pillar for support. Then his brow furrowed and, in the best traditions of the extended double-take, he stared at the fallen tenor and counted to one on his fingers. Then he turned towards the stage and counted to two.
He could feel a fourth exclamation mark coming on any time now.
The Enrico Basilica on stage turned his mask this way and that. Stage right, Bucket was whispering to a group of stage-hands. Stage left, Andr� the secret pianist was waiting. A large troll loomed next to him.
The fat red singer walked to centre-stage as the prelude to the duet began. The audience settled down again. Fun and games among the chorus was all very well-it might even be in the plot-but this was what they’d paid for. This was what it was all about.
Agnes stared at him as Christine walked towards him. Now she could see he wasn’t right. Oh, he was fat, in a pillow-up-your-shirt sort of way, but he didn’t move like Basilica. Basilica moved lightly on his feet, as fat men often do, giving the effect of a barely tethered balloon.
She glanced at Nanny, who was also watching him carefully. She couldn’t see Granny Weatherwax anywhere. That probably meant she was really close.
The expectancy of the audience dragged at them all. Ears opened like petals. The fourth wall of the stage, the big black sucking darkness outside, was a well of silence begging to be filled up.
Christine was walking towards him quite unconcerned. Christine would walk into a dragon’s mouth if it had a sign on it saying ‘Totally harmless, I promise you’. . . at least, if it was printed in large, easy-to-understand letters.
No one seemed to want to do anything.
It was a famous duet. And a beautiful one. Agnes ought to know. She’d been singing it all last night.
Christine took the false Basilica’s hand and, as the opening bars of the duet began, opened her mouth
‘Stop right there!’
Agnes put everything she could into it. The chandelier tinkled.
The orchestra went silent in a skid of wheezes and twangs.
In a fading of chords and a dying of echoes, the show stopped.
Walter Plinge sat in the candlelit gloom under the stage, his hands resting on his lap. It was not often that Walter Plinge had nothing to do, but, when he did have nothing to do, he did nothing.
He liked it down here. It was familiar. The sounds of the opera filtered through. They were muffled, but that didn’t matter. Walter knew all the words, every note of music, every step of every dance. He needed the actual performances only in the same way that a clock needs its tiny little escapement mechanism; it kept him ticking nicely.
Mrs Plinge had taught him to read using the old programmes. That’s how he knew he was part of it all. But he knew that anyway. He’d cut what teeth he had on a helmet with horns on it. The first bed he could remember was the very same trampoline used by Dame Gigli in the infamous Bouncing Gigli incident.
Walter Plinge lived opera. He breathed its songs, painted its scenery, lit its fires, washed its floors and shined its shoes. Opera filled up places in Walter Plinge that might otherwise have been empty.
And now the show had stopped.
But all the energy, all the raw pent-up emotion that is dammed up behind a show-all the screaming, the fears, the hopes, the desires-flew on, like a body hurled from the wreckage.
The terrible momentum smashed into Walter Plinge like a tidal wave hitting a teacup.
It propelled him out of his chair and flung him against the crumbling scenery.
He slid down and rolled into a twitching heap on the floor, clapping his hands over his ears to shut out the sudden, unnatural silence.
A shape stepped out of the shadows.
Granny Weatherwax had never heard of psychiatry and would have had no truck with it even if she had. There are some arts too black even for a witch. She practised headology-practised, in fact, until she was very good at it. And though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a large and terrible monster, will endeavour to convince him that monsters don’t exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick.