Death and the Chaste Apprentice (3 page)

“I shall say
nothing
of Jason's direction, nothing of his interpretation or of his understanding of my part in the play,” he announced solemnly when Gillian and Peter had settled themselves down at his table. “Not because it's dreadful, you understand. But because you should come to your first rehearsal tomorrow with no trace of bias or
parti pris
.” He took a great draught of Saracen ale. “Let us instead while away the hours by ripping to shreds our fellow actors in this little-known masterwork.”

Gillian smiled evilly, leaned forward, and the two went at it. Peter Fortnum, sitting on the edge of this gory arena, was interested and amused for a time, but his short career
in the theater had left him with only a small circle of acting acquaintances, and after a time the names, their couplings and uncouplings, their tantrums and their delinquencies, began to pall. He was just beginning to wonder whether an obsessive interest in the marital affairs of the Galloways was not playing their game as they wanted it played when he heard muttered words of Russian from the table beside him. He pricked up his ears at once.

Peter Fortnum was grateful to his minor public school for two things, and for only those two: These were the opportunities he had been given in the annual school play and the chance to learn Russian. Quite apart from anything else, the latter had given him quite spurious claims on any small parts going whenever anyone decided to do a Chekhov or a Gorki. He swung his chair around, chipping in a few words, and in no time at all he was sitting beside the star of
Adelaide di Birckenhead
and interpreting for her as she made her first real effort to communicate with the agent who had brought her to the West.

Natalya Radilova was slim, dark haired, and beautiful. She was also very much at sea. It was only her second time in the West, and her attempts to discuss financial and other arrangements with her agent had been hindered by the fact that she knew no more than twenty or thirty words of English. She had in all their preliminary communications pretended to a “competent” knowledge of the language, but her letters to him had in fact been written by a friend.

“I've arranged all this with your Ministry of Culture,” her agent said somewhat wearily.

“Arrange it with me again,” said Natalya.

The agent, Bradford Mallory (“Call me Brad”) was, like the Galloways, something of a theatrical throwback, though in his case, Peter suspected, it was much more of a conscious act, for it had the label “performance” stamped
on it, as theirs had not. He wore a cloak, he said, “dear boy,” and he occasionally patted the hand of the other singer on his books whom he had brought to Ketterick. This was the young man whom Mallory had apparently rechristened—“rather witty, wouldn't you say, dear boy?”—with the single name of Singh. An incredibly good looking young man, his Indian complexion had lightened from long, perhaps lifelong, residence in Britain. He said little, occasionally pouted, and sometimes smiled abstractedly at Mallory's affectionate advances. But what he did most often was to look at his reflection in the mirror on the wall behind Brad Mallory. When he had a clear, uninterrupted view of himself, he would put his chin up to pose in his most attractive position, pat his immaculately cut hair, adjust his tie, and then smile a catlike smile when the image presented to him was at its most pleasing. He was, Brad Mallory said,
the
coming countertenor, and he was to sing in the concert on the opening night of the festival.

As Peter Fortnum translated between Natalya and her agent—yes, she did know the role, yes, she did realize that, small though the theater was, the festival held a unique position in British musical life and success here could be a springboard for a very promising operatic career—he was conscious of a discordant presence in the vicinity, an intrusive note. The Australian voice has a cutting edge, admirable in the opera house but less well adapted to the social hobnobbing of a saloon bar. Des Capper was giving someone the benefit of his curious store of knowledge and opinions, which meant, in effect, he was giving them to everyone.

“Do you know that in Queensland they've got this new law forbidding hoteliers from serving sexual perverts?” There was a dirty little snicker. “Be a bit of a problem here in festival time, wouldn't it? Couldn't afford to lose half my customers.” Peter half-turned his head and saw
that it was the Galloways and Jason Thark whom Des was regaling with his muckiness. Peter's glance caught him gesturing in the direction of Brad Mallory and Singh, and he immediately changed his tone. “Mind you, I'm tolerant. Live and let live, that's my motto. I don't know if you've read about it, but it's been proved by scientists that sexual deviancy's purely a matter of brain damage during childbirth. Just like spastics. I know all about what causes spastics. Well, it's just the same with poofs, only more minor. It's like this . . .”

“Dear God!” breathed Mallory, raising his eyebrows to heaven with theatrical eloquence. “What have we done to deserve this antipodean clodhopper clumping all over our private lives and our personal sensibilities?”

He put his hand warmly on Singh's, but Singh's smile did not suggest that he had heard or, if he had, that he had understood. He said in an English that was perfect yet oddly inflected, addressing Mallory alone:

“Can we go up and watch the video? I've got
Little Lord Fauntleroy.
You said we could watch it later tonight.”

“And so we shall, dear boy, after one more little drinkie. It's my first chance to have a real talk to lovely, lovely Natalya, and she's full of questions that only I can answer.”

Singh pouted but let himself be bought another sweet sherry.

Over at the Galloways' table, the theater's most glamorous couple had been stimulated by the company—though Des Capper was not in himself stimulating—to stage a public version of their afternoon row. It was a cleaned-up version, much more elegant, suggesting that they carried the idea of rehearsals and trial runs into other areas of their lives.

“We've never had any secrets from each other, nor from anybody else,” Clarissa was proclaiming. “We take our pleasures when and where the fancy takes us. Of course it is a tiny bit unfair on Carston that all the people of real
weight
in the theater are men. Hardly any female producers, and the only kind of heterosex most of them are interested in is rape, and they're against it. And though Carston is not
averse
to men, as a variation, even he would hardly find the average impresario or producer attractive. Which leaves the balance of advantage very definitely on my side.”

“And puts
me
very much in my place,” said Jason Thark with a wide, untrustworthy smile. He was, in fact, a not unattractive man—broad shouldered, commanding. But he was—and he let you know it—a man to keep on the right side of.

“Darling, I'm honest with you, as with everyone else. You're really rather attractive, and I'd have slept with you even if you hadn't been our producer. On the other hand, that does add a sort of spice . . .”

Des Capper, watching them, had assumed an exquisitely misjudged air of being a man of the world.

“I've known plenty of couples in my time who had what they call nowadays an open marriage,” he put in, bending forward confidentially. “It's nothing new, oh, my word, no! I was in India just after the war, and what I could tell you about the Mountbattens' goings-on would make your hair curl!”

Clarissa regarded him with the sort of look she might use to wither a bit player who had interrupted her big speech five lines too early.

“Which is why Carston, poor darling,” she swooped on, “does
very
much prefer that we get work as a
couple
.”

“Though that's not so easy these days,” Carston confided genially. “Playwrights aren't writing bitch parts for women as they used to.”

“And why he himself has to make do for his sexual adventures with”—Clarissa's smile widened triumphantly as they were joined at their table by an inconspicuous young woman—“
awfully
promising young stage managers
like Susan here. Susan, dear, we were just saying what a
won
derful job you're doing.”

In the face of a smile which resembled that on the face of the tiger that had just swallowed the young lady of Riga, Susan Fanshaw sat down and said nothing. She was getting good at doing that with the Galloways. She had bought her own drink—for Carston Galloway was not a generous lover—and she had noted Clarissa eyeing her as she stood at the bar. Knowing Clarissa, she had realized she would be a target as soon as she joined them. She sat down with a mixture of unease and defiance. Jason Thark was more used to the Galloways and their social style, and he sat there, slumped, gazing about him with an easy tolerance. Des Capper, on the other hand, was beginning to feel ignored and made motions of moving on.

“Well, it's been nice having a chinwag,” he said with a little wave of his pudgy hand. “Better get along to have a chat with some of the others in my little flock.”

“Darlings, I had no idea he was a
cler
gyman!” floated Clarissa's voice after him, exquisitely modulated so that he could not avoid just hearing. “I would have tried to be polite to him if I'd known.”

Des Capper, lips tightening, settled himself down at the next table. Nobody made any move to admit him, but somehow he managed to get himself in all the same.

“All settled in nice and cozy?” he inquired to a quartet of frozen faces. “Are the Russian lady and the Indian gentleman finding everything to their liking? They've only to give a shout if not and I'll personally see that something is done.”

“Singh is English.” Bradford Mallory sighed. “As English as I am—and rather more so than you. Natalya has not, so far, been able to express any discontents she may have accumulated, but she has now acquired an interpreter, so if she feels you don't warm the samovar sufficiently before
you pop in the tea bag, she will be able—thanks to our
char
ming young friend here—to expostulate with you on the subject.”

Des Capper blinked, as if he had been hit with a dictionary. But he was unputdownable, at the same time giving the impression that he was registering all the snubs.

“Ah—Mother Russia.” he said with a sigh.

“Motherfu—? Oh, Mother
Russia
.”

“Mother Russia. It's an expression . . . sort of a nickname. It's a country that has always held a fatal fascination for me. The Winter Palace, Anastasia,
Battleship Potemkin . . 
.”

“ ‘Lara's Theme,'
Gorky Park
,” murmured Brad Mallory.

“Exactly. It's a country of great elemental passions. I think I'd have been able to come to terms with it. The tragedy is, I've never been. I'd like to have told them a thing or two about how to run their agriculture. Ask the little lady”—he turned to Peter Fortnum, but he patted Natalya Radilova on the knee—“if they've ever been lucky enough to hear our great Joan Sutherland at the Bolshoi.”

“Tell this stupid peasant to take his fat hand off my knee,” said Natalya Radilova in Russian.

“Ah—she understood me. What did she say?”

“She asked you to take your hand off her leg,” said Peter diplomatically.

Des Capper burst out into a chilling mine-host laugh.

“Well, well, well. No offense meant and none taken, I hope. I know they're a little puritanical still in these Iron Curtain countries. Me, I believe in being broad-minded. There's more than one kind of partnership, eh, sir?” Des gave a broad and repulsive wink at Brad. “If you ask me, the Russkies could take a few tips from your country, young man,” he added, turning to Singh, who was lost in rapturous contemplation of the mirror image of himself sipping sweet sherry.

“Singh is English,” breathed Mallory.

“The Indians know a thing or two about sexual tricks, eh? Not that we were in a position to cast the first stone as far as moral habits were concerned. We, the Raj, the ruling class, I mean. As I was saying at the next table, I was there in '46-7, aide-de-camp to the Viceroy—”

“
Aide-de-camp
, now?”

“That's right. And some of the goings-on and permutations and possibilities that I saw while I was with the Mountbattens you wouldn't believe. Still, when you went out among the natives—as I did, because I've got what you might call an inquiring mind, as you may have noticed—you saw things you'd never even
read
about. Even an old soldier like me had his eyes opened, I can tell you. Ever since then India has always exercised—”

“A fatal fascination?”

“It has. It's been calling me back—”

“Please. That chair. Madam—you are my soprano?”

The voice—clipped, exact, icy—seemed to come from a great height. The young man was no more than six feet, but he seemed as high as the Matterhorn, and as daunting. He took Natalya Radilova's hand and, bending over, implanted on it a kiss, much as if he were stamping her passport.

“Gunter Gottlieb,” murmured Brad Mallory with a pretense of enthusiasm.

It was a name more often breathed with devotion, even fanaticism, but that was always by people who did not know him, or need to. Orchestral musicians usually crossed themselves as they uttered the name or spat. Gunter Gottlieb had only recently become a name to conjure with in British musical life. He had been appointed conductor of the Midland Symphony Orchestra at the early age of twenty-seven. It was not, then, an orchestra with a great name. Mahler said that tradition is slovenliness; with the Midland Symphony Orchestra slovenliness was a tradition.
Not any more. In a matter of months that mediocre band had been transformed by a mixture of sackings, threats, taunts, hectoring, and rehearsals that became torture sessions lasting well beyond the limits of endurance.