The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

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      Mangon ran over to them. One of the vans was full; he recognized all Madame Gioconda’s possessions – the rococo wardrobe and dressing table, the couch, the huge Desdemona bed, up-ended and wrapped in corrugated paper – as he looked at it he felt that a section of himself had been torn from him and rammed away callously. In the bright daylight the peeling threadbare flats had lost all illusion of reality; with them Mangon’s whole relationship with Madame Gioconda seemed to have been dismantled.

      The last of the workmen came out with a gold cushion under his arm, tossed it into the second van. The foreman sealed the doors and waved on the driver.

      ‘W … wh … where are you going?’ Mangon asked him urgently.

      The foreman looked him up and down. ‘You’re the sweeper, are you?’ He jerked a thumb towards the station. ‘The old girl said there was a message for you in there. Couldn’t see one myself.’

      Mangon left him and ran into the foyer and up the stairway towards Studio 2. The removers had torn down the blinds and a grey light was flooding into the dusty auditorium. Without the flats the stage looked exposed and derelict.

      He raced down the aisle, wondering why Madame Gioconda had decided to leave without telling him.

      The stage had been stripped. The music stands had been kicked over, the stove lay on its side with two or three old pans around it, underfoot there was a miscellaneous litter of paper, ash and empty vials.

      Mangon searched around for the message, probably pinned to one of the partitions.

      Then he heard it screaming at him from the walls, violent and concise.

       ‘GO AWAY YOU UGLY CHILD! NEVER TRY TO SEE ME AGAIN!’

      He shrank back, involuntarily tried to shout as the walls seemed to fall in on him, but his throat had frozen.

      As he entered the corridor below the stage shortly before eight-twenty, Mangon could hear the sounds of the audience arriving and making their way to their seats. The studio was almost full, a hubbub of well-heeled chatter. Lights flashed on and off in the corridor, and oblique atmospheric shifts cut through the air as the players on the stage tuned their instruments.

      Mangon slid past the technicians manning the neurophonic rigs which supplied the orchestra, trying to make the enormous triple-bass case as inconspicuous as possible. They were all busy checking the relays and circuits, and he reached the cue-box and slipped through the door unnoticed.