A short barrel-chested young man dressed in dark breeches and a waistcoat emerged from the backstage shadows beyond the storeroom. A stubby clay pipe wreathed curls of smoke around his mop of black hair and his thick mousetache . He held a dripping paint brush, paint speckling his rolled up shirt sleeves.
'Gimlet!' Josie threw herself at the stocky character and hugged him. She was grateful for the distraction. 'What have you been up to?have you finished the new backdrop for the underworld?'
Josie had been watching Gimlet's preparation of the scenery for Cardamom's new act. Her guardian had decided on the theme of Dante's inferno.
Dancers would be dressed as imps and demons, while Cardamom would perform tricks that would baffle the Devil himself. Gimlet had set out to work on creating the backdrop: flames and furnaces with fearsome, satanic faces staring out from rocky caverns.
'Steady,' Gimlet laughed, holding the wet brush away from Josie's hair. 'I need to put the finishing touches to the scene. I might be living on this theatre for the next few weeks!'
'You already do Gimlet,' Cardamom teased.
'It beats making coffins,' Gimlet said.
Josie felt herself shudder. Stage sets and funeral boxes. Gimlet had told her he supplied caskets for undertakers when work in the theatre was sock or during an epidemic. What a life, she thought. 'Come on. Let's get this greasepaint off. Its time to go home.'
YOU ARE READING
Mortlock
AdventureJosie is a knife thrower in a magician's stage act. Alfie is an undertaker's assistant. They are both orphans and they have never met, but they are about to be given a clue to the secret of their shared past. A past which has come to seek them out. ...
