Christine forgot to be cautious somewhere between her third strenuous journey from the shored boat to her dressing room and the fourth. It seemed that all she could concentrate on was the steady thump of her heart in her ears, the tightness gathering in her ribcage as her breathing slowly became shallower. Her muscles, it appeared, had not forgiven her in the slightest for the pains of the morning, and protested angrily with every wide, curving stair.
Were the books and paintings really all that precious to Erik? That was the question running through Christine's mind as she collapsed against the wall of her dark dressing room, eyelids clenched tightly in exhaustion until she could see stars. So the man couldn't sleep. All right, fair enough, he could be dreary and listless and dull and inattentive to his concerned visitor, but he didn't have to suffer from leg cramps for three days afterwards.
Feeling the beads of sweat near her temples begin to cool, Christine sighed, opening her eyes and pulling back the framed painting she had been clutching to her chest. She looked at it with the frown of an art critic.
It really was a very good piece of art. Not one of Erik's more inspired pieces- Christine could somehow feel the passion pour from certain paintings- but the overall effect was aesthetically pleasing.
Perhaps it was a little too ordinary, lacking the daring originality Christine had come to expect from Erik's compositions in whatever field he had chosen. This painting, with its pastel dancers in their floating blue skirts, was too timid in contrast to the bold, sweeping, swirling, dabbing, swiped statements of those Erik had taken with him to the mausoleum. There had still been a few left, recently rescued by Christine, of this striking variety, now leaning precariously against assorted pieces of furniture around her.
The pretty pastel dancers did not compare. This did not make the painting any less accomplished- or it wouldn't, at least, in anyone else's view.
Christine, still intrigued by the dramatic difference in the style, gazed closer into the painting, examining the dancers themselves. She could now see the detail in the dresses, could almost sympathise with the worn shoes of one. In fact, the faded slippers looked most familiar…
She smiled as she finally saw that which had been obvious, the link that joined this painting to the others. One of the two dancers was her. The memory was faint, clouded by a veil of years, but she could almost remember the name of the opera, could almost hear the music. She had been eleven, and she had been so proud to join Meg on stage. It had made no difference that the girls were placed in the back, squashed close to the velvet curtains for most of the performance. She was performing.
She had known her angel was watching her. She could feel his eyes burning into her skin even then.
Perhaps his style had changed as they had both grown older, Christine mused, staring at the beguiling innocence she saw before her. The music he had sung for her, had asked her to sing for him, certainly had. Things had grown darker as she had matured, become a woman, physically and later, emotionally. Perhaps the marked contrast between the paintings was inspired by the awakening of new emotions, interests, fascinations.
But whose?
Did it reveal something about her, that she found Erik's more recent artwork more admirable? The passion within the paintings certainly intrigued her. They reminded her of the night she had first, finally, met her angel, face to face, or face to mask. She could not clearly recall the music, the songs he had sung to her; she had felt possessed, displaced, like she was swept off in some fantasy, more of a dream than reality. All she could remember was passion, manifested so explicitly in Erik's paintings.
Not this painting, she corrected herself, shifting her thoughts back to what she cradled in her arms. She did not feel that she could connect with this painting.
She jumped, startled and dismayed as the door to her dressing room was suddenly flung open, revealing the unexpected figure of Monsieur Reyer.
Funny, she had been somehow expecting the Inspector. Still, she hoped her situation did not appear as surreptitious as it felt.
"Ah, our seconda donna!" Monsieur Reyer trilled, the thin smile on his lips entirely escaping his eyes. "I have been meaning to talk to you all afternoon, but I must have missed you at the chorus practise two hours ago?"
His disapproval radiated from behind his trim moustache. Christine turned her eyes to the floor and tried to think of some excuse for her absence, but somehow she could not seem to tie her thoughts together while this galling man berated her! After a few silent moments, feeling the guilt fade as her irritation became defiance, she looked back to the conductor and was startled to find that his attention had moved to the painting clenched in her white knuckles.
A cold ache of dread rushing through her throat, Christine attempted to drag the painting back in to her chest, away from view, but Monsieur Reyer had never been one for patient courtesy. He removed the framed work deftly from Christine's fingers before she could stop him, and held it out before him. She could do nothing but stare in mute apprehension as the man examined the painting closely, wandering distractedly into the brighter light of the corridor behind him.
Christine darted after him, breathless as her mind whirred fruitlessly- but no excuses or explanations were churned out. How could she explain her possession of the painting? Surely she could not say it was her work, for she could never have afforded the materials to create the painting. Meals and board were accompanied by a meagre salary for a lowly chorus girl at the Opera House, and most of the money earned was needed to buy new dancing shoes. But she could never name the true artist, or explain how she came to be holding the painting, all alone in a darkened dressing room.
"However did you come by this magnificent painting?" Monsieur Reyer finally asked, eyes still fixed upon the pastel images before him.
Panic shot through Christine as the damning question was finally asked. However, her lack of response did not seem to deter the supercilious conductor; his attention seemed entirely focussed on the painting.
"I do not recognise the costumes," he muttered, almost to himself, one long finger prodding the air above the canvas. "That is our stage, however. And that- is that Meg Giry? And yourself, Mademoiselle!"
His eyes finally lifted from the painting and he stared enquiringly at Christine, who nodded slowly in affirmation, wringing her fingers desperately behind her back.
"That opera was performed around five years ago, Monsieur," she said finally, trying to distract the conductor's thoughts from dangerous areas. "I believe that you came here only three years ago, and would therefore be unfamiliar with the costumes."
Monsieur Reyer nodded, satisfied with that explanation for the moment, gazing back to the painting itself and tracing the images with his bony finger. Christine stood behind him, almost twitching, feeling an urge to grab the framed canvas, remove it from his meticulous inspection.
"Wait a moment." Monsieur Reyer stuck his index finger into the air, beckoning Christine to come closer with the arrogant ease of the stringent conductor that he was.
Christine acquiesced with a slight feeling of unease at this unexpected summons. When she stood close enough to see the painting from over the man's narrow shoulder, she focussed on what lay beneath Monsieur Reyer's pointing finger:
Erik.
He had left his signature. But surely- surely nobody else knew of the Opera Ghost's proper name, nobody except her and the Giry's. Surely Monsieur Reyer could not understand the implications of the name, the signature, printed so neatly in the left corner of the painting. He couldn't realise the enormity of that signature's presence in the arms of Christine Daaé.
"That handwriting seems quite familiar," Monsieur Reyer said ponderously; it was clear that he was now inescapably interested in the identity of the mysterious artist.
Christine felt a true fear knotting itself in her stomach. How many letters had the man been shown, damning letters stained with a violent crimson ink, threats and blackmail scratched out in that same familiar handwriting of the painting's signature? Would Monsieur Reyer see that the same hand had signed both compositions, one adorned with the cold O.G., one written by a man?
No. It seemed that the man did not recognise the handwriting, familiar though it was. Luck was on Christine's side. She didn't bother to breath a sigh of relief.
"Who did you say was the artist?"
Christine breathed through her nose for a moment, and then threw on a casual tone, relaxed her posture with some effort.
"A friend, a little-known artist. He is fascinated by the opera, especially the elaborate costumes of the dancers. I am the model for his artwork."
There. Quite a tidy explanation; she was pleased with herself.
Monsieur Reyer looked rather impressed, a fact which dug itself into Christine's nerves; the haughty conductor had never given the chorus girl a second glance for all her vocal talent, but now it seemed he was impressed by her passive achievements through another's talent!
"It is a marvellous painting," he murmured, voice clouded with contemplation. "Tell me," he said, turning to look into Christine's wary eyes. "Has the man produced many such works?"
Christine nodded silently, wondering what kind of awful hole she was digging for herself now. Erik's genius had proven troublesome in the Opera House even after the musical prodigy had left his awed domain. She twisted her fingers, knotting and bending until her knuckles cracked, as Monsieur Reyer's eyes filled with an intrigued aspiration.
"I don't know whether you were aware of it, but my brother, Gaston Reyer, is a rather prolific art dealer," Monsieur Reyer said calmly, long fingers wound tightly around the painting as he adopted the manner of a crafty tradesman. Christine felt a little calmer herself as she finally began to understand the conductor's true concerns.
"Is he, Monsieur?" she asked wide-eyed, adopting a faintly childish tone. She felt that she should play along to this whim; she wanted to continue distracting Monsieur Reyer from the dangerous truth.
"Yes, indeed." Monsieur Reyer looked pleased with Christine's apparent interest in this matter; she could almost see the man begin to inwardly congratulate himself on a successful enterprise. "When I discover a new talent, I feel bound to send a sample to my brother." His eyes glowed, moustache bristling with promise. "If my brother deems the painting worthy, he offers to buy, this work and others in its stead. You must understand that there is a lot to be made from such a business."
Christine sucked in her breath. Money. A potentially safe, legal, steady source of money. Erik's paintings could buy them a new freedom.
Freedom from dependence on the Phantom's black past.
She hated to part with any object carrying an attachment to Erik, but it seemed that Fate, or opportunity, had decided.
It wasn't too hard to finalise the deal; the painting was already firmly grasped within Monsieur Reyer's arms, all that was further required was her own signature on a bit of paper. The conductor did not seem overly concerned that the artist was not available to give his own, personal consent; Christine had the impression that he believed this was an opportunity not to be missed, not for all the protocol in the world.
Once the man had left, a jaunty step livening his exit, Christine wandered wearily back into her dressing room and slid into the closest chair. She held one hand to her head as she gazed at the frames of other paintings leaning against her walls. She felt a rather strange combination of pride and dismay, but tried to reassure herself that there had really been no other choice.
All in all, it had been an arduous day.
She wondered what Monsieur Reyer would do if he found true examples of Erik's artistic genius. She could only imagine his excitement.
A/N: I really haven't seen many impressions of Monsieur Reyer in phanphic, so it was really quite an amusing task to give him a bit of character in my story. We're not given much of an insight into the long-suffering conductor in the book/musical/movie, so I felt like I could take certain liberties.
Incidentally, the name of his brother, Gaston, came to me after listening to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack on my ipod all the way home on the tram. That's really not what makes this interesting, but all the time I was listening to those songs, I just kept thinking how closely that classic fairytale and POTO are related. It's like the POTO musical is the grown-up version of the Disney movie in some respects… but our beast is infinitely better (or worse, I suppose) looking. :) Not to mention more violent.
Oh, and I think Gaston is an absolutely hilarious character.
Big clap and cheer to my wonderful reviewers (and to you un-fully-recognised readers who decide to follow the story silently. Shame. :))
Hope you liked this one! The Beast returns in the next instalment…
-Froody
