Here's the second "half" of that chapter! The next chapter will be the final one. Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed so far; it has been really encouraging and I'm glad you are enjoying it.

I did not hear the footsteps on the stairs and so I jumped when the door opened and Helen asked me if I was not coming to bed. Then she looked at Papa, lying so still and so grey and she knew. She put her hands over her face, her eyes wide. Then slowly she knelt by my side and put her arms around me.

"Oh Gustave, I'm so sorry, so very sorry…"

She took over everything that night, and the next day. For me, it all felt like a dream. First the doctor arriving to confirm what we already knew, then the undertaker, all the tiresome formalities… I was hesitant about removing Papa's mask for our visitors, but both assured me that they had seen worse. I remember I knelt by the sofa where he was lying and kissed the deformed side of his face. To my surprise Helen did the same and when she rose, there were tears in her eyes.

I did not replace the mask.

"He's never wearing this thing again," I announced bitterly.

At some point the next morning I went out to the back yard and fired the white porcelain mask against the wall where it shattered. Then, with surprising calmness I got a dustpan and brush and swept up the pieces.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

In the days before the funeral, and even during it, I seemed to function like one of Phantasma's automatons. The telephone and the doorbell never stopped ringing, people came and went, neighbours, employees, old friends from college and George of course, soon to depart for his new life in California. The Trio came together, mourning for their beloved master and I tried to comfort a distraught Miss Fleck. We could not have got through it all without the practical help from Helen's sisters and other relatives. Poor Christine was bewildered by everything and Charlie didn't understand; today his memories of his Grandpa Erik are shadowy, being only three years old when he died.

"Thank you for coming" "Yes, it was very sudden, it was his heart you see" "No he hadn't been ill, yes it was a quick passing" "Yes, it's a very sad time for us" "No I don't think we need anything at the moment, thank you" "Everyone's been very kind"

Cliché after cliché, platitude after platitude… it was all I could do to keep myself together. George and other friends were wonderful in the way they tried to deflect the inevitable stream of nosy reporters who insisted on annoying me with their never ending questions.

"Mr Durand, is there any truth in the rumour that Mister Y was murdered by an organised crime gang who wanted control of Phantasma?" one of them asked and I felt like punching him. They were the last people I wanted to see but I somehow managed to get fob them off with bland, non-committal answers and finally they slunk away in disappointment.

Papa would have hated the funeral service but I wanted this much for him. What would he have made of the packed church, of all the people who came to bid farewell to him? Not just our own employees but workers and managers from rival parks, local traders, the staff from Mario's and all our old haunts…Even the mayor and several City Hall officials were there, to pay tribute to the immigrant who fled from persecution and prejudice in his native land to make an indelible contribution to his host country. Of course, there is another side to his story but why should the truth get in the way of a good myth?

Father Donovan, now in his late fifties and still a good friend of mine, led the ceremony, but I hardly heard any of it. It was too early to think of his spiritual condition, too soon to contemplate his eternal destiny. I could not think beyond this day, beyond getting through it without breaking down in tears.

Heart failure the doctor told us. But anyone could die of heart failure! This was Mister Y, the Opera Ghost.. It was so utterly banal. And I had been asleep when he slipped away… "It would have happened very quickly, sir, there wasn't anything you could have done. Please don't blame yourself," Dr Meyler told me gently yet firmly, and I knew I must accept that or go insane.

Even the cemetery was remarkably sunny for the middle of September. I kept expecting something to happen, some kind of sign. But the sky didn't darken overhead, there was no clap of thunder, no unearthly chorus singing his dark music. Nothing. Such strange thoughts kept me from grieving too much, in public anyway.

Other strange thoughts occurred to me as my wife and I stood by the fresh grave afterwards, the children having gone back to the house with their aunt and uncle. Did he know? Did he know that it would be that very evening? Was that why he wanted me with him? All the mysteries that have died along with him…

I knew that soon a gravestone would be erected here, bearing the name Erik Durand and it would be one grave in a whole row of graves, in a huge cemetery. And it dawned upon me, even then at the height of my grief that in death my father was, finally, just like everyone else.

When we got home from the funeral I became an automaton again, making small talk to our friends and neighbours, handing out plates of sandwiches, thanking everyone for coming …I have to admit, there were several times when I found myself thinking: Why couldn't he have been this popular when he was alive? To think he had only just begun to be famous for the music that he loved, not, as he put it, the "glorified noise" we used to write.

At last a blessed silence descended on the house, one which would become oppressive in the coming days. As the sun began to set, I took his hat and gloves from where Helen had put them, retreated to our bedroom and sat quietly on the bed, simply looking at these familiar, much loved articles and remembering. "Masquerade.. paper faces on parade.." I began to sing, but it would never sound the same coming from my lips.

Later that evening, I went to our balcony where we'd shared all our thoughts and dreams and sat on the bench, my initial shock wearing off to be replaced by heart wrenching grief and an unyielding lump in my throat. It was there that I finally allowed myself to cry for the man who was everything to me. Like when my mother died, my tears would not stop once they started only now I had no parent to comfort me, no-one to carry me to bed or tuck me in. I remember Helen holding me during those dark days while I reverted to some kind of child-like state, crying for my papa and wanting him so much it hurt.

Early one evening Christine timidly approached the armchair where I sat moping having given up trying to read the newspaper. When she asked me why I wouldn't play with her my heart broke. Gently, I lifted her on to my knee and held her close.

"I'm just sad about Grandpa Erik, darling," I told her softly, kissing the top of her head. Her innocent face brought me to my senses at last. This could not continue. I could not go on grieving the way I did when Mother died. I was not a vulnerable child – I was thirty four years old with a wife and two small children, and now my six year old daughter needed me just as I once needed my papa.

"Maybe I could tell you a story?" I asked her gently, and she nodded, grinning.

"This is a story my mother used to tell me when I was your age, and her father told it to her when she was little," I explained, "It's about a girl called Little Lotte."

She put her head against my chest and I felt that familiar surge of love, and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Perhaps I did not truly grow up until that day.

Charlie was playing with his toys on the floor, still unable to comprehend all the sadness in the house, but when I asked him if he wanted a story he got up and came over to us eagerly, clutching his stuffed elephant. I lifted him on to my other knee and with my two precious children snuggled against me I settled back into my story.

"Little Lotte was beautiful, just like the two of you. She had yellow hair, yellow like the sun. She loved her doll and her violin. Every night, her father would tell her about the Angel of Music…"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I thought I would be miserable after writing about the death of my father. And yes, I do miss him and always will. But something unexpected has happened. Yesterday, while I was writing the doorbell rang and Helen went to answer it.

A few minutes later she put her head around the door.

"Gus, I think you'd better leave your attempt to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and come downstairs," she told me with excitement in her voice.

When we entered the sitting room, our visitor rose from the sofa, a younger man with my features and build. He is like me in so many ways, with the same temper and stubbornness - and that's the problem.

"Charles..." I breathed.

He nodded, smiling warily, still a bit sceptical but he's here…

I stepped towards him, and slowly we shook hands.

"I can't believe it.." I gasped.

"I had to come, Dad, I had to see what's gotten into you... Telephoning me out of the blue, telling me you love me?"

"That's because I do, son," I told him gently, putting my arms around him. Slowly, cautiously, he returned my embrace and I closed my eyes.

"Has my real father been kidnapped by aliens or something?" he asked teasingly.

"Let's just say I've been learning a few lessons from the past."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

At the end of the 1933 season I stood solemnly beside the Trio as Frank closed the gates of Phantasma for the last time, following several years of rapidly declining visitor numbers and profits. I cannot describe the hole that the loss of that place has left in my life and my heart. So many memories spread across those twenty six years! Even before I came here, I loved it, sitting under the oak tree on the lawn, looking through the brochure, or Mother and I on the deck of the ship, discussing what rides we would go on. Every inch of that place contained a memory; the newsstand where Mother bought me my first book in English, the Ghost Train that Papa and I went on during our first proper day together, the café where I used to work for all those happy summers, the Ferris wheel where I proposed to Helen…

The Trio stood in silence with their heads bowed, trying to comfort each other. Where else could they feel they belonged? This was part of them, their home, their workplace, their whole life. Miss Fleck, who was standing next to me, looked up at me with her eyes full of heart-breaking sadness and I silently embraced her, unable to express how I felt about my dear friend or her "brothers". We all knew it would be the beginning of the end for them.

There was Joe, the former manager who I first met during my first few days here, now getting on in years and as deaf as a post, but I remembered how kind he was to me and how much I l learnt under his employment. His wife, his sons and their families were there too, and I thought of how kind Frank had been to me when I was a child and how he helped me build a snowman during my first American winter.

Many former employees were there too and I thanked all of them individually for coming. Everyone had their own memories to share and we made it as happy an occasion as we could, despite the circumstances. Coney Island's glory days were long over but we hoped they would return some day. Everyone assembled there agreed that it was a good thing Mister Y did not live to see this day.

We moved out of Coney Island the following year, having seen the neighbourhood decline rapidly over the last few years. We both wanted a safer place for our children, further away from the city and all its problems. The success of my opera had led to commissions for a variety of musical pieces and it was clear that my future now lay entirely in the world of music. I did not abandon the Trio and helped them get other jobs in a circus, but I only saw them occasionally after Phantasma closed as they were travelling constantly. When the circus went bankrupt, they separated for the first time ever to work in various seaside theatres. Not that it mattered to them where they lived or worked. After that heart-breaking day, nothing was ever the same for them again.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The four of us, my wife and my grown up children made a rare family visit today to Papa's grave. We like to keep it tidy, although I would still dearly love to scratch out his birth name and engrave "Mister Y" on that headstone. The estimated year of his birth suggests that he was seventy-five when he died and I believe this to be fairly accurate, but it is ironic that he managed to live ten years longer than Raoul did. We paused there for a little while in that quiet place and I thought sadly of the mysterious, tortured man I feared, pitied, resented – and loved.

As a churchgoer, I have often been troubled by my father's contempt for spiritual matters when he was alive. Even now I cannot bear to contemplate his eternal destiny in any detail. One small comfort for me in the years following his death was the story in the Bible of the thief on the cross; the one who repents and is accepted by Christ at the eleventh hour. Surely God will show compassion on this lost child of his too? Surely the love my father bore for me and my family proves that he was not beyond hope? With all my heart I pray that he is finally reunited with Mother, never to be separated again. I wish I could offer a definite answer but I cannot. I can only leave Papa to God's justice, which is greater than man's.

After leaving my father's grave we stopped to pay homage at the three graves lying side by side, just as the occupants requested many years ago. A name is engraved on each headstone but these are their birth names, not the names I knew them as. The simple headstones do not do them justice, do not represent what my dear friends were to me or to the people that met them. Rejected by the world, my father gave them an environment where they would not just exist, but thrive, and in the memory of all four of them I will continue to visit and tend their graves for as long as I can.