The Flyman, Chapter One

The beginning of the Severn Series

CHAPTER ONE

 

The rain came down red and Severn was gone.

The police asked me lots of questions, both at the theatre and, later, down at the police station but I couldn’t tell them much more than that. No, that’s not true. I could have told them heaps more, but I didn’t. Anyway, I wasn’t sure myself. No, don’t tell anyone anything. Just answer their questions, get out of here, find Severn and hope the answers are wrong.

“Tell me again, Miss Lowe, take it slowly.” The policeman, a detective inspector I think he said he was, kept tapping his pen against the table. It was driving me crazy. The policewoman sitting by the door smiled. That was driving me crazy too.

 “What do you know about this Severn?”

I have to think about the answer. I know things about Severn that nobody knows but I hardly know him at all. And I desperately want to keep on learning.

So, really slowly like the cop wants, I start from the beginning again.

“I met Severn two weeks ago when we packed in.” It feels like forever.

“Packed in?” the cop inquires.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Pack-in. It’s theatre-speak, Get used to it!” This guy was so dumb.

“All right, Miss Lowe,” the cop snapped. “There’s no need to get abusive. Let’s just get on with it so we can all go home.”

“Yeah, well don’t butt in then!” Ok, it was well after midnight and I was tired and cranky, but he really was a jerk. “I told you, I met him at pack-in. That’s when we set up the show in the theatre.” I added the last bit slowly, just in case he was as stupid as he looked in his prissy black jacket and his ugly blue tie,

Then, as he still looked blank, I explained.

“Until pack-in the show is all over the place. The actors will have been rehearsing in one place, the orchestra somewhere else and the dancers somewhere else again. The props and the wardrobe have been made at the main rehearsal rooms over the last few months and the sets have been made in a hired warehouse. At least that’s how our company usually works.”

The cop was rapidly taking notes.

“On pack-in day the set and all the technical stuff such as the lights and the sound gear arrives at the theatre and the crew take over; rigging, wiring, hauling things into place. It’s organised chaos. I love it.”

“Why were you there?”

“Mum’s been in the society for years. Even before she went to Australia and met Dad. When they split up she came home and joined up again. I go with her.”

“You act?”

“No, I’m the family disappointment. Backstage, that’s my job. I’m doing theatre arts at school but only because it’s easy, not because I ever want to act!”

He was actually writing this down, he really was a jerk!

“But you were at this show?” he asked, looking up from his paper.

“Yeah, I just told you, I work backstage. My theatre arts teacher also happened to be the choreographer for this year’s show and she talked to the stage manager who agreed I could work as floor crew, moving bits of set on and off stage when the scenes change.

This year’s production is the biggest show we’ve done. The director decided to have all the scene changes happening with the curtains up but in a black-out and there’re about twenty-one scene changes so they needed a lot of crew. That’s how come Severn and his lot were there at all. We didn’t have enough people to move all the sets by ourselves, or do the complicated lighting the show needs, so the stage manager rang somebody who rang somebody else who suggested Seth Borman.

“Seth Borman,” the cop repeated as he wrote the name on his piece of paper.

“That’s what I said.”

The cop glared at me.

“It was a good idea,” I continued. “Even if it is costing the society an arm and a leg. He runs a professional travelling stage crew. Technical wizards.”

“And Severn was one of these?” the cop asked.

“Yeah,” I snapped back. “I was just getting to that.” I carried on.

“Seth Borman’s the leader. The head flyman.” I could see the cop’s eyebrow start to rise with a question so I jumped in first. “Flymen are the guys who work on a little platform about fifteen metres above the stage, hauling the big backdrop cloths and bits of set in and out. They are immensely strong. Seth Borman has an upper body to die for,” I added wistfully.

The cop glared at me again. I continued.

“There are six more of them. The women, Olivia and Meredith, work floor crew like I do. So does Aiden, Meredith’s twin brother. The older guy, Finn, is the floor electrician. The guy in charge of lighting is a strange little dude they call the Reverend. He’s about five foot nothing tall and wears a huge black floor-length coat that makes him look like a miniature version of Darth Vader. I’ve never seen him without a can of coke in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other.

Severn operates the sound board.

I didn’t notice him for the first four days.

Tasha saw him first. When it comes to men, she always does. She’s got some sort of inbuilt radar detector that homes in on good-looking men. Mind you, it must be a sending as well as receiving device because they home in on her just as fast.

Tasha was in the show as a dancer. She clicked around backstage in tap shoes and a scarlet bathing costume covered in ostrich feathers, all up in front and out behind. I hate Tasha, she’s such a bitch.”

“Tasha? Would that be Natasha Moreland?” The cop looked up at me. I nodded. “You said you hate Natasha?” he inquired, tapping his pen again. “Why is that?”

“No, no,” I backtracked fast. “I don’t hate her really, I just said that, you know, like you do, I don’t mean it. She’s my friend, actually. She’s just, you know, so pretty and everything, And she knows it. She knew it that night, that’s for sure.”

It was during interval at the final dress rehearsal. We had gone out into the alleyway at the stage door to get some fresh air. It was even darker outside than it had been backstage. We were standing by the open stage door where there was still a bit of light, watching Aiden and Finn playing hackey. I barely noticed Severn and the Reverend leaning against the fire escape off to one side, sharing a can of coke. Until Tasha nodded her head in their direction.

“They’re a weird unit, those two.”

“You reckon?” I replied automatically as I stole a glance in their direction. They made an interesting study.

Severn, the taller and probably the elder, stood shyly, shoulders hunched and arms folded protectively across his chest. He had one leg folded over the other so he kind of resembled a nesting stork. In complete contrast was the Reverend. Younger, smaller but full of confidence. He stood firmly, his head back, his shortish brown pony tail bobbing against the collar of his oversize coat as he punctuated a sentence with much waving of the coke can.

“Nicely put together though,” I finally answered.

“Hmmm,” Tasha snorted. “More your type.”

Tasha always says that when she means she doesn’t fancy a guy herself. Mind you, she’s often right. She was this time. Tasha is into bodies. Big work-out-at-the-gym-every-night type bodies. She was already torn between Seth Borman and the leading man who was the only other import into the company. He’d been brought in from Auckland especially to play the lead as none of our men came up to scratch. A move that was causing ripples of discontent.

I looked again at Severn’s long, slender body packed so nicely into his black jeans and long-sleeved black T-shirt with the show’s logo and the word “crew” in red so it won’t show up on stage, and agreed. Kind of cute.

“Definitely.”

“So let’s do it.” Tasha was into direct action. She pushed herself away from the wall which had been propping her up, flicked her scarlet ostrich plumes and clicked her way across the alley. I followed bemused.

“Spare any of that coke for a gasping dancer?” She broke into their conversation, whipping the can from the Reverend’s hand before he could reply. She took a drink and handed it to me before turning back to them. “I’m Tasha, this is Riley. You can talk to us, we don’t bite.”

The Reverend tilted his head back and managed to look down at her from below. He gave a maliciously sweet smile. “We do.” With a wicked giggle he plucked the can from my hand, drained it, crushed it and tossed it into the nearby rubbish bin. “They call me the Reverend. This is Severn.”

“Why?” Tasha sounded confused.

“Because he is.”

“Not him. You. Why the Reverend?”

“Because I am.”

Beside him Severn sniggered. I looked up at him and he flashed me a smile. Without speaking he reached over and felt in one of the Reverend’s voluminous pockets, pulled out another can of coke, broke it open and passed it to me.

“You’re floor crew, right?” he finally spoke, his voice a light tenor that matched his laugh.

“Yeah. Why Seven?” If Tasha didn’t want to know, I did. “Is it because there’s seven of you?”

“No. Not the number seven. With an R, like the English river.”

“Oh, right.” I felt stupid. I also felt the all-too-embarrassing heat of a blush creeping up my neck and into my face. I gave a quick prayer of thanks that it was dark in the alley. Cover it up. “What are you? Follow spot or something? You’re not on the floor, I would have seen you.”

“Nah,” he shook his head with a slight grin. I was sure he had seen my face go red. “I’ve passed you lots of times. You’re right, I’m not floor crew, I’m sound, but I’ve been backstage every night with the radio mics.” He laughed self-depreciatingly. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

Now I felt guilty, like I’d snubbed him on purpose but I was saved from having to reply by a call from the stage door.

“Act two beginners on stage!”

I took another quick gulp from the can before handing it back as we headed back into the backstage gloom.