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charleygirlTitle: Beyond the Green Baize Door 37/?
Author: charleygirl
Word Count: 2157
Rating: G
Genre: General, Drama
Characters Involved: Meg Giry, Raoul de Chagny, Christine Daae, Madame Giry, Erik the Phantom
Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is the creation of Gaston Leroux but probably these days copyright to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Summary: Raoul discovers the consequences of his plan to end the Phantom's reign.
MONSTERS AND ANGELS
The room into which Christine led them was dimly lit by gas lamps turned down and a candelabrum on the table by the bed. It was quite obviously a man’s room: Meg could make out dark, heavy furniture and rich, intricately-patterned rugs and it was evident that the owner of the house had seen no reason not to make himself comfortable in his isolation. The focal point was the carved mahogany bedstead, and it was on this, amongst the red and black sheets, that they found the wounded Phantom, Madame Giry sitting at his side.
There was a vaguely familiar smell in the air; Meg recognised the metallic tang of blood, and something else, something more difficult to identify but which told of illness and infirmity. The bedside table was littered with medical detritus, old and new bandages, antiseptic and glasses of water. Though she had barely been five years old when it happened, she found herself reminded of the night they found her father coughing, a bloodstained handkerchief in his grasp. She knew her mother thought that she had forgotten the experience, and had allowed the misapprehension to persist in order to lessen the pain, but in truth it was imprinted upon her mind’s eye. Meg would never forget how weak her Papa appeared, old before his time as consumption slowly but surely wasted him away.
Christine went immediately to Erik, taking his hand in both of hers. She glanced back at them, almost defiantly. Meg tried to reconcile the quiet, shy Christine with whom she had been friends for so long with the woman she saw before her now; it was almost as though the trials of the past few weeks had forced her to discover the confidence that she had always lacked. “Are you happy now, Raoul?” Christine asked, her dark eyes hard. “You have what you wanted: the Phantom of the Opera is helpless before you. What do you wish to do, call the police or finish him off yourself?”
Meg glanced at Raoul. The vicomte looked appalled, his face drained of colour. For a moment Meg thought he might faint and wondered whether he had ever seen an injured man before. He swallowed several times, almost forcing himself to move closer to the bed, stepping cautiously as though he expected it all to be a pretence, that the Phantom might suddenly jump up and grab him by the throat. As Meg watched the unsteady rise and fall of Erik’s chest, she realised that the Opera Ghost was long gone, in his place an all too mortal man struggling to cling onto life.
“I didn’t...” Raoul swallowed again, passing a hand across his forehead. Meg exchanged a worried glance with her mother and wondered if he was about to be sick. “I didn’t think, didn’t believe that... he played the ghost so well! It almost didn’t seem as though he was...”
“Human?” said Christine sharply.
“Yes! No. I don’t know! All the threats, the tricks... none of it seemed real. It was as if we were all caught up in some dreadful play and there was only one way we could be free, that if only we could win he would just disappear like the villain in a story book!”
“Erik isn’t a monster, a troll that lives under a bridge! He’s a man, Raoul, and he can be hurt just as easily as you or I. Have you never wondered why he became the Phantom?” she asked. When Raoul didn’t answer, she did something which surprised them all: biting her lip, she gently set Erik’s hand down upon the coverlet and reached over, curling her fingers around the edge of his mask. Slowly, almost reverently, the porcelain was carefully lifted and set aside, and there, finally revealed to them all, was the Phantom’s face.
It was a horrible sight; Meg covered her mouth to stifle her gasp. Her mother’s expression did not change, and she realised that Madame Giry must have seen the twisted, ravaged features before. Meg made herself look, to take in the visible muscles and blood vessels, the razor-sharp bones which almost cut through the translucent skin. He had no right eyebrow, just the ridge where it should have been, less pronounced than that on the good side of his face. Half of his nose had failed to develop and the lid of his eye, which she remembered was a pale blue in contrast to the dark brown of the other, was dragged downwards by the deformity of his cheek. His lips, which opened slightly as he tried to draw in sufficient air, were purple and bloated, flaring out towards the distortion. Despite the shock, and the sadness which filled her heart, all Meg could think was that Joseph Buquet’s descriptions had been completely wrong.
“Can you imagine having to live with this every day of your life? Madame Giry told me that when the gypsies displayed him in the freak show they called him the Living Corpse,” Christine said. “It may not excuse his behaviour, but I understand him now. I know why he had to demand respect. He had no choice, for no one would ever give him the chance to earn it. His face has always provoked nothing but horror, and I am ashamed to say that it did so in me when first I saw it. I was frightened, but this haunted face holds no horror for me now.”
“Oh, God.” The vicomte seemed to lose the strength to stand; hurriedly, Madame Giry pushed him into the chair beside the bed, pressing a glass of water into his hand. He took a sip and ran trembling fingers over his chin before raising his head to look at Christine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Christine. I’m a fool.”
“You didn’t pull the trigger, Raoul,” Meg reminded him, and Christine’s eyes turned to her, widening in surprise.
Raoul shook his head. “Maybe not, but I placed the marksman in the pit and gave the order to shoot.” He glanced at the wounded man, at the scarlet stain that was spreading through the bandages, and quickly looked away. “I’m to blame. Andre and Firmin wouldn’t even back me up. God help me, I’ve never fired a shot in anger. I’ve never even killed a rabid dog, let alone another man.”
Madame Giry rested a hand on his shoulder. “Erik is not dead yet, Monsieur. I was about to fetch a doctor, a man I hope I can trust. He will not like it, but we have no choice. Will you look after the girls while I am gone?”
The vicomte watched Christine for a long moment, a strange expression on his face. When he spoke, his words surprised Meg. “Madame, my carriage will still be waiting on the Rue Scribe,” he said. “Consider it at your disposal.”
The ballet mistress demurred, but he waved aside her objections.
“If speed is of the essence it is the best way,” he told her, and at last she nodded.
“Very well. If you will accompany me to dispel any confusion on the part of your driver..?” With Raoul’s agreement, they both moved towards the door. Madame stopped to kiss her daughter on the forehead, murmuring, “Meg Giry, we will discuss your disobeying my instructions later.”
She moved away, the keys attached to the chatelaine at her waist jangling; the sound was unnaturally loud in the quiet of the sick room. So far below the Opera the silence was heavy, almost tangible. It seemed as though they were completely cut off, cocooned from the outside world, and it felt both comforting and unnerving. To live down here, all alone, for so many years would test the strength of anyone; it was understandable that the man who had been forced to spend his life hidden from the sight of others was touched by madness.
The vicomte stood aside to allow Meg’s mother to precede him into the hall, and as he turned to follow Christine said softly,
“Thank you, Raoul.”
He glanced back, a smile touching his face, before he bowed slightly and was gone, the door closing behind him.
“He’s a good man,” Meg said when they were alone. “He doesn’t always succeed but he does try, you have to admit that.”
Christine sighed. She had taken up Erik’s hand again and was staring at his long, thin fingers, caressing his knuckles almost unconsciously with her thumb. “I know. He deserves so much more than I can give him.”
________________________________________
The time passed slowly, measured out by the ticking of the heavy ornamental clock on the mantelpiece.
After rising briefly to lock the front door, Christine seemed disinclined towards conversation, her attention entirely devoted to her fallen Angel of Music. Barely even aware of Meg’s presence, she tended to him, bathing his face and tucking more blankets over him when he began to shiver. Once he stirred, his eyes opening and making Meg jump; the sudden animation of his macabre face was so very like a corpse returning to life that she had to breathe deeply to bring her racing heart under control.
“...Chris...tine?” he whispered, muddled gaze searching her anxious face.
Christine raised his hand to her lips. “I’m here, Angel.”
For a moment it looked as though he was trying to say something, but further speech seemed to be beyond him; with a faint sigh he nodded and let his eyes fall closed once more. Christine watched him sadly, brushing back his hair and tracing a feather-light touch across his distorted cheek, before she stood, crossing the room to the empty fireplace. Rubbing her upper arms and hugging herself as though she were terribly cold, she paced back and forth, eventually dropping to a crouch and beginning to lay out logs and kindling in the grate. Silently, Meg joined her, kneeling companionably at her side. When there was a tolerable blaze, Christine said,
“Have you ever been in love, Meg?”
“True love?” Meg asked, though she was not entirely surprised by the question.
“If there is such a thing, yes.”
Meg sat back on her heels, holding out her chilled hands to the fire. “I don’t think so,” she said truthfully. “I’m not sure I know what love feels like.”
“I did think I knew, for a while,” Christine mused. She drifted back to her feet and began to fold the pile of bloodstained clothing which had been haphazardly thrown across the armchair. “I thought it would feel safe, secure, as if nothing in the world could hurt me. When I found a place I could be as happy and protected as when my father was alive, I believed I’d found love.”
“You don’t believe that any longer, though, do you?” Meg’s eyes followed her friend as she worked her way around the room, tidying the bedside table and smoothing down the sheets. She recalled all the times Christine had been nervous before a performance; where others might have been physically sick from stage fright, she always put her store of energy into something practical. Meg knew that she herself became an even worse chatterbox than usual when anxiety struck, rambling on and on about inconsequential subjects, but Christine would clean the dancers’ dressing room, put away discarded props and costumes almost mechanically; before one particularly important show she had even swept the floor and had to be stopped from polishing the ballerinas’ street shoes.
“I wanted to be safe,” she said now, a roll of bandages in her hands. “I wanted it so badly after Papa died. Raoul could keep me safe, I knew that; he was always rescuing me from one scrape or another when we were children. When Joseph Buquet died and then the chandelier came down I was so terrified I didn’t know what to do. The thought that Erik had killed someone, for me...! Raoul offered me an escape, a way out of the madness and I accepted. I thought my problems would be over, that I would finally be free from the uncertainty that had haunted me for so long.
“But I was wrong. I tried to fit in, I tried so hard, but I couldn’t do it. There was always something calling me back. Even so far away from the Opera, when I could no longer hear his voice in my head, I was drawn to my Angel.” Christine sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand stealing towards Erik’s once more. “Is that love, do you think? Do you love someone when the thought of being apart from them for even a few moments feels as though there is a great aching chasm at the bottom of your soul?”
“That sounds like love to me,” said Meg, and Christine bowed her head, looking away.
“I know,” she whispered, “and you have no idea how much that scares me.”
Author: charleygirl
Word Count: 2157
Rating: G
Genre: General, Drama
Characters Involved: Meg Giry, Raoul de Chagny, Christine Daae, Madame Giry, Erik the Phantom
Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is the creation of Gaston Leroux but probably these days copyright to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Summary: Raoul discovers the consequences of his plan to end the Phantom's reign.
MONSTERS AND ANGELS
The room into which Christine led them was dimly lit by gas lamps turned down and a candelabrum on the table by the bed. It was quite obviously a man’s room: Meg could make out dark, heavy furniture and rich, intricately-patterned rugs and it was evident that the owner of the house had seen no reason not to make himself comfortable in his isolation. The focal point was the carved mahogany bedstead, and it was on this, amongst the red and black sheets, that they found the wounded Phantom, Madame Giry sitting at his side.
There was a vaguely familiar smell in the air; Meg recognised the metallic tang of blood, and something else, something more difficult to identify but which told of illness and infirmity. The bedside table was littered with medical detritus, old and new bandages, antiseptic and glasses of water. Though she had barely been five years old when it happened, she found herself reminded of the night they found her father coughing, a bloodstained handkerchief in his grasp. She knew her mother thought that she had forgotten the experience, and had allowed the misapprehension to persist in order to lessen the pain, but in truth it was imprinted upon her mind’s eye. Meg would never forget how weak her Papa appeared, old before his time as consumption slowly but surely wasted him away.
Christine went immediately to Erik, taking his hand in both of hers. She glanced back at them, almost defiantly. Meg tried to reconcile the quiet, shy Christine with whom she had been friends for so long with the woman she saw before her now; it was almost as though the trials of the past few weeks had forced her to discover the confidence that she had always lacked. “Are you happy now, Raoul?” Christine asked, her dark eyes hard. “You have what you wanted: the Phantom of the Opera is helpless before you. What do you wish to do, call the police or finish him off yourself?”
Meg glanced at Raoul. The vicomte looked appalled, his face drained of colour. For a moment Meg thought he might faint and wondered whether he had ever seen an injured man before. He swallowed several times, almost forcing himself to move closer to the bed, stepping cautiously as though he expected it all to be a pretence, that the Phantom might suddenly jump up and grab him by the throat. As Meg watched the unsteady rise and fall of Erik’s chest, she realised that the Opera Ghost was long gone, in his place an all too mortal man struggling to cling onto life.
“I didn’t...” Raoul swallowed again, passing a hand across his forehead. Meg exchanged a worried glance with her mother and wondered if he was about to be sick. “I didn’t think, didn’t believe that... he played the ghost so well! It almost didn’t seem as though he was...”
“Human?” said Christine sharply.
“Yes! No. I don’t know! All the threats, the tricks... none of it seemed real. It was as if we were all caught up in some dreadful play and there was only one way we could be free, that if only we could win he would just disappear like the villain in a story book!”
“Erik isn’t a monster, a troll that lives under a bridge! He’s a man, Raoul, and he can be hurt just as easily as you or I. Have you never wondered why he became the Phantom?” she asked. When Raoul didn’t answer, she did something which surprised them all: biting her lip, she gently set Erik’s hand down upon the coverlet and reached over, curling her fingers around the edge of his mask. Slowly, almost reverently, the porcelain was carefully lifted and set aside, and there, finally revealed to them all, was the Phantom’s face.
It was a horrible sight; Meg covered her mouth to stifle her gasp. Her mother’s expression did not change, and she realised that Madame Giry must have seen the twisted, ravaged features before. Meg made herself look, to take in the visible muscles and blood vessels, the razor-sharp bones which almost cut through the translucent skin. He had no right eyebrow, just the ridge where it should have been, less pronounced than that on the good side of his face. Half of his nose had failed to develop and the lid of his eye, which she remembered was a pale blue in contrast to the dark brown of the other, was dragged downwards by the deformity of his cheek. His lips, which opened slightly as he tried to draw in sufficient air, were purple and bloated, flaring out towards the distortion. Despite the shock, and the sadness which filled her heart, all Meg could think was that Joseph Buquet’s descriptions had been completely wrong.
“Can you imagine having to live with this every day of your life? Madame Giry told me that when the gypsies displayed him in the freak show they called him the Living Corpse,” Christine said. “It may not excuse his behaviour, but I understand him now. I know why he had to demand respect. He had no choice, for no one would ever give him the chance to earn it. His face has always provoked nothing but horror, and I am ashamed to say that it did so in me when first I saw it. I was frightened, but this haunted face holds no horror for me now.”
“Oh, God.” The vicomte seemed to lose the strength to stand; hurriedly, Madame Giry pushed him into the chair beside the bed, pressing a glass of water into his hand. He took a sip and ran trembling fingers over his chin before raising his head to look at Christine. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Christine. I’m a fool.”
“You didn’t pull the trigger, Raoul,” Meg reminded him, and Christine’s eyes turned to her, widening in surprise.
Raoul shook his head. “Maybe not, but I placed the marksman in the pit and gave the order to shoot.” He glanced at the wounded man, at the scarlet stain that was spreading through the bandages, and quickly looked away. “I’m to blame. Andre and Firmin wouldn’t even back me up. God help me, I’ve never fired a shot in anger. I’ve never even killed a rabid dog, let alone another man.”
Madame Giry rested a hand on his shoulder. “Erik is not dead yet, Monsieur. I was about to fetch a doctor, a man I hope I can trust. He will not like it, but we have no choice. Will you look after the girls while I am gone?”
The vicomte watched Christine for a long moment, a strange expression on his face. When he spoke, his words surprised Meg. “Madame, my carriage will still be waiting on the Rue Scribe,” he said. “Consider it at your disposal.”
The ballet mistress demurred, but he waved aside her objections.
“If speed is of the essence it is the best way,” he told her, and at last she nodded.
“Very well. If you will accompany me to dispel any confusion on the part of your driver..?” With Raoul’s agreement, they both moved towards the door. Madame stopped to kiss her daughter on the forehead, murmuring, “Meg Giry, we will discuss your disobeying my instructions later.”
She moved away, the keys attached to the chatelaine at her waist jangling; the sound was unnaturally loud in the quiet of the sick room. So far below the Opera the silence was heavy, almost tangible. It seemed as though they were completely cut off, cocooned from the outside world, and it felt both comforting and unnerving. To live down here, all alone, for so many years would test the strength of anyone; it was understandable that the man who had been forced to spend his life hidden from the sight of others was touched by madness.
The vicomte stood aside to allow Meg’s mother to precede him into the hall, and as he turned to follow Christine said softly,
“Thank you, Raoul.”
He glanced back, a smile touching his face, before he bowed slightly and was gone, the door closing behind him.
“He’s a good man,” Meg said when they were alone. “He doesn’t always succeed but he does try, you have to admit that.”
Christine sighed. She had taken up Erik’s hand again and was staring at his long, thin fingers, caressing his knuckles almost unconsciously with her thumb. “I know. He deserves so much more than I can give him.”
________________________________________
The time passed slowly, measured out by the ticking of the heavy ornamental clock on the mantelpiece.
After rising briefly to lock the front door, Christine seemed disinclined towards conversation, her attention entirely devoted to her fallen Angel of Music. Barely even aware of Meg’s presence, she tended to him, bathing his face and tucking more blankets over him when he began to shiver. Once he stirred, his eyes opening and making Meg jump; the sudden animation of his macabre face was so very like a corpse returning to life that she had to breathe deeply to bring her racing heart under control.
“...Chris...tine?” he whispered, muddled gaze searching her anxious face.
Christine raised his hand to her lips. “I’m here, Angel.”
For a moment it looked as though he was trying to say something, but further speech seemed to be beyond him; with a faint sigh he nodded and let his eyes fall closed once more. Christine watched him sadly, brushing back his hair and tracing a feather-light touch across his distorted cheek, before she stood, crossing the room to the empty fireplace. Rubbing her upper arms and hugging herself as though she were terribly cold, she paced back and forth, eventually dropping to a crouch and beginning to lay out logs and kindling in the grate. Silently, Meg joined her, kneeling companionably at her side. When there was a tolerable blaze, Christine said,
“Have you ever been in love, Meg?”
“True love?” Meg asked, though she was not entirely surprised by the question.
“If there is such a thing, yes.”
Meg sat back on her heels, holding out her chilled hands to the fire. “I don’t think so,” she said truthfully. “I’m not sure I know what love feels like.”
“I did think I knew, for a while,” Christine mused. She drifted back to her feet and began to fold the pile of bloodstained clothing which had been haphazardly thrown across the armchair. “I thought it would feel safe, secure, as if nothing in the world could hurt me. When I found a place I could be as happy and protected as when my father was alive, I believed I’d found love.”
“You don’t believe that any longer, though, do you?” Meg’s eyes followed her friend as she worked her way around the room, tidying the bedside table and smoothing down the sheets. She recalled all the times Christine had been nervous before a performance; where others might have been physically sick from stage fright, she always put her store of energy into something practical. Meg knew that she herself became an even worse chatterbox than usual when anxiety struck, rambling on and on about inconsequential subjects, but Christine would clean the dancers’ dressing room, put away discarded props and costumes almost mechanically; before one particularly important show she had even swept the floor and had to be stopped from polishing the ballerinas’ street shoes.
“I wanted to be safe,” she said now, a roll of bandages in her hands. “I wanted it so badly after Papa died. Raoul could keep me safe, I knew that; he was always rescuing me from one scrape or another when we were children. When Joseph Buquet died and then the chandelier came down I was so terrified I didn’t know what to do. The thought that Erik had killed someone, for me...! Raoul offered me an escape, a way out of the madness and I accepted. I thought my problems would be over, that I would finally be free from the uncertainty that had haunted me for so long.
“But I was wrong. I tried to fit in, I tried so hard, but I couldn’t do it. There was always something calling me back. Even so far away from the Opera, when I could no longer hear his voice in my head, I was drawn to my Angel.” Christine sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand stealing towards Erik’s once more. “Is that love, do you think? Do you love someone when the thought of being apart from them for even a few moments feels as though there is a great aching chasm at the bottom of your soul?”
“That sounds like love to me,” said Meg, and Christine bowed her head, looking away.
“I know,” she whispered, “and you have no idea how much that scares me.”
