Death Of A Hollow Man (15 page)

“It’s Boris who’ll bring trouble on our heads.”

“You must both go out and turn round three times and come back in,” said Von Strack.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Nicholas, but hesitantly. After all, if he was going to enter the profession, he should (longed to) embrace all its myths and mysteries. “It’s not as if I did it on purpose.”

“Come
on.”
Boris was already in the doorway. Nicholas hovered half out of his seat. “It’s the only way to avert disaster.”

“That’s true, Nicholas. There are terrible stories about what happens if you quote
The Scottish Play
and don’t put it right.”

“Oh … if you say so.” Nicholas joined Boris at the door. “Which way do we turn? Clockwise or anticlockwise?”

“How should I know?”

“I don’t suppose it matters.”

“It matters terribly,” called Van Swieten.

“In that case, we’ll turn three times each way.”

“But”—Boris had almost chewed off all his carmine lip rouge in his anxiety—“won’t that mean they cancel each other out?”

Colin had finished setting the pianoforte, and now disappeared behind his superb fireplace to check that the struts and weights that held it secure were firmly in position. Crouching down, he heard footsteps and, looking through the huge space beneath the mantel, saw Deidre almost run through the wings opposite. A second person followed and disappeared into the toilet, coming out again almost immediately. Colin was about to stand up and call across the stage when he was struck by something intensively furtive about the figure. It stood very still looking round the deserted wings, then it moved to the dark area at the back of the props table and bent down. A minute later it straightened up, glanced around once more, and hurried back into the bathroom. Colin crossed the stage and approached the table, but he had no time for more than a quick check (it all looked perfectly in order) when Deidre returned from the clubroom shepherding her giggling gaggle of assistants. She crossed to him and said, “Oh, Colin, would you call the five please? My father’s taxi’s due in a minute, and I have to get him to his seat.”

The foyer was packed. Tom Barnaby, accompanied by a tall girl, darkly beautiful, pushed his way toward the Winstanleys. He held a drink in one hand and a program in the other. Strings played over the P.A. system.

“What awful music. It simpers.”

“Salieri.”

“Ahhh …” said Cully, adding, “can you see the divine afflatus?”

“You behave yourself, my girl. Or I’ll take you home.”

“Dad,” Cully laughed delightedly—“you are a hoot. Look—there he is.”

Harold was in evening dress. A large yellow silk hanky peeped out of one jacket pocket. He also wore a maroon cummerbund and a dress shirt so stiffly starched you could have sliced tomatoes with the ruffles. He was welcoming the audience graciously. Harold adored first nights. They came closer to satisfying his longing for recognition than any other occasion. Mrs. Harold, in a black button-up cardigan unevenly spattered with pearls teamed with a tartan skirt of uncertain length drifted dimly in his glorious wake echoing the greetings, getting the names wrong, and wishing she were at her flower-arranging class.

“Hello, Doris.”

“Oh, Tom.” Relieved at the sight of a friendly face, Mrs. Winstanley thrust out her hand, and blushed when her companion was unable to take it. “Harold tells me you’ve done a wonderful job on the set.” Knowing it would never occur to Harold to do anything of the kind, Barnaby just smiled and nodded. “And I understand,” continued Doris, “that Joyce is singing better than ever.” She didn’t add, as she had been wont to do when they first met, “You must come and have a meal with us soon.” Harold had really torn into her as soon as they were alone, saying that when he wanted a great clod-hopping philistine of a policeman cluttering up his lounge, she would be the first to know.

Barnaby was aware of this attitude, which caused him not a little quiet amusement. Now, he talked to Doris about horticulture, having long ago recognized a passion as great as his own. In fact, all the shrubs in the Winstanleys’ garden were grown from cuttings from Arbury Crescent, and he kept some of his seeds back for Doris every year. Although she loyally pretended these gifts were unnecessary, Barnaby guessed that Harold’s dashing lifestyle left little money to spare for what he would regard as inessentials. Now, Harold’s wife turned on Barnaby’s companion a look of polite, slightly dazed inquiry.

“You remember my daughter?”

“Cully?”
Last time Doris had met Barnaby’s daughter, the child had sported a green and silver crest of hair, was covered in black leather, and hung with chains. Now, she had on an acid-yellow evening dress, strapless with a puffball skirt caught in above her knees. Slender black-silk-stockinged legs ended in high-heeled suede shoes with embroidered tongues. Her shoulders were draped with very old lace sparkling with brilliants, and her hair, blue-black like hothouse grapes, was scraped into a tight coil on the top of her head secured by an ivory comb. “I hardly knew you, dear.”

“Hullo, Mrs. Winstanley.” Cully shook hands. “Hullo, Harold.” She was wondering how anyone could bring herself to put that cardigan on even once, never mind year after year. Leaving his daughter after a stern warning glance had failed to connect, Barnaby pushed his way over to the door, where a youngish man accompanied by a vapidly pretty girl was entering the foyer.

“You made it then, Gavin?”

“We did, sir.” Detective Sergeant Troy pulled down the cuffs of his sports jacket nervously. “This is my wife, Maure.” Mrs. Troy moved her foot. “Ooh. Sorry. Maureen.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Maureen shook hands. She didn’t seem especially pleased. Barnaby guessed she was about as fed up as Doris Winstanley, but without the necessity to conceal the fact. He always put a CADS poster in the staff canteen without ever making a point of his connection with the company, but his sergeant, hearing him mention Joyce’s rehearsals, had put two and two together, and tickets had been purchased. Barnaby could imagine the conversation in the Troy household. Gavin believing that keeping in with the old man couldn’t be bad; Maureen picturing just what sort of draggy old time she was letting herself in for. She smiled now, a glum, restrained smile, and said she couldn’t half get outside a lager and lime. Embarrassed, her husband eased her nearer the auditorium steps. As he did so, he caught sight of Cully, who was making her way toward the swing door opening onto the corridor that led backstage. After a few moments Maureen set him in motion again with a savage poke in the small of his back.

“It’s a pity you didn’t bring a knife and fork,” she said as they took their seats.

“What?” He stared at her blindly.

“You could have eaten her in the interval.”

Mr. Tibbs was late, and Deidre was in a ferment of agitation. She was already regretting that she had accepted, even encouraged, his wish to attend the first night. It seemed to her now the height of foolishness. If he had a bad turn or became frightened, there would be no one to help him. She wished now she had thought of putting him next to Tom, but a gangway seat on the back row had seemed the better idea. She had been afraid he might feel threatened, surrounded by rows and rows of strangers. She clutched a program, painfully aware of the insignificant position of her own name, and the prominence of Harold’s, which could not have been bolder unless burning with letters of fire.

She glanced at her watch. Where on earth could he be? She had booked a taxi for a quarter to eight, and the journey was a few minutes at the most. Then she saw a cab drawing up at the curb and hurried out into the cold night air. Mr. Tibbs alighted.

“Oh, Daddy,” she cried, “I was so worried—” She broke off, gaping. Her father was wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt and cream cotton trousers and carrying a linen jacket over his arm. She had left him wearing a thick tweed suit with a cardigan for extra warmth and five pounds tucked in the breast pocket. At least, she thought, watching him hand over the note, he had remembered to switch the money. As the driver wound up his window, Deidre tapped on it and said, “Isn’t there any change?”

“Do me a favor,” said the man. “I had to sit ticking over for ten minutes while he changed all his clothes!”

Deidre took her father’s arm, ice-cold and slightly damp, and led him through the now almost deserted foyer to his seat in row P. Fortunately the auditorium was warm, and she would make sure he got a hot drink during intermission. She left him sitting up very straight and staring with febrile intensity at the rich red curtains.

In the foyer Barnaby nodded to Earnest and followed his daughter toward the wings, easing himself past Harold, who was being gracious to a heavyweight couple in full evening regalia.

The ladies’ dressing room was only being used by four people and, the actress playing Katherina Cavalieri also being part of the stage staff, now held only three. Joyce Barnaby in a puritan gray dress and snowy-white fichu was pressing powder on her nose. Kitty twitched and twirled about in her seat, clattering her bottles and jars and mumbling her opening lines with so much fervor they might have been a rosary. Rosa sat, apparently serene, in the chair nearest the electric fire. She had dressed and made up with sublime disregard as to the requirements of her character. Far from appearing plain and severe, her face, splendidly orchidaceous, could have been that of a tum-of-the-century
poule de luxe.
Eyelids shimmered like the insides of a mussel shell, and her plummy lips glistened. She wore a large hat from which a bunch of cherries hung down, lying against her damask cheek. Perfect speckled crimson ovoids, they could have been the eggs of some fabulous bird. There were two magnificent bouquets from Harold for his leading ladies. Joyce (small parts/wardrobe) had a bunch of wintersweet and hellebores tied with
a
velvet ribbon from her husband. On the back of a chair between Rosa and Joyce hung Kitty’s “baby.”

The door opened. Cully put her head round briefly, said “Neck and leg break,” and vanished. Barnaby was close behind. “Good luck, everyone.” Joyce slipped out into the corridor and hugged him. He kissed her cheek. “Good luck, Citizen of Vienna, Maker of the Cakes, and Noises Off.”

“I’ve forgotten where you are.”

“Row C in the middle.”

“I’ll know where not to look, then. Is Cully behaving herself?”

“So far.”

Barnaby found the men’s dressing room charged with emotion. Only Esslyn, wearing the memories of past first nights like invisible gongs, appeared calm. Other actors were laughing insecurely or prowling about or wringing their hands or (in the case of Orsini-Rosenberg) all three at once. Colin called “Beginners: Act One,” and pressed the buzzer. Emperor Joseph shouted, “The bells! The bells!,” and let forth screams of maniacal laughter. Barnaby mumbled, “The best of British,” and withdrew, backing into Harold, who then leaped into the center of the room with a clarion call of ill-reasoned confidence.

“Well, my darlings—I know you’re all going to be superb…

Barnaby melted away. Passing through the wings, he saw Deidre already in position in the prompt corner. In the light from the anglepoise lamp he thought she appeared distressed. Colin stood by her side. Barnaby gave them both the thumbs-up. He spotted Nicholas waiting behind the archway through which he would make his first entrance. The boy’s face looked gray in the dim working light and was pearled with transparent beads of sweat. He bent down, picked up a glass of water, and drank, then he clutched the struts of the archway with shaking hands. Better you than me, mate, thought the chief inspector. He had just made his way to row C and settled next to his daughter when Harold followed, flinging open the pass door to the left of the front row with a quite unnecessary flourish, then turning to face the audience as if expecting a round of applause simply on the grounds of his existence. Then he sat in the center of the row, and the play began.

Things went wrong from the word go, and everyone, as they came off, blamed the lighting. Tim and Avery, now sweating in the box, had been so totally wrapped up in their daringness and so entranced by the fact that they were, at long last, going to do their very own thing, that they had taken no account of the effect a whole new spectrum of light and color might have on the cast. Actors became slow and muddled, as well they might. Even Nicholas, who was prepared for the change, was badly thrown and found it hard to recover. And his first scene, full of four-letter words, nearly brought him to a standstill.

At first the residents of Causton, determined to show that they were as
avatit garde
as the next man, boldly took this profanity in their stride, but when Mozart said he wanted to lick his wife’s arse, one honest burgher, muttering loudly about “toilet humor,” got up and stomped out, his good lady bringing up the rear. Nicholas hesitated, wondering whether to wait until they had disappeared or carry straight on. His indecision was not helped by hearing Harold clearly call “peasants!” after the departing couple. As Nicholas stumbled again into speech, all the Rabelaisian relish had vanished from his voice. He felt morbidly self-conscious, almost apologetic, as if he had no right to be on a stage at all. He was sharply aware of Kitty, floundering unsupported by his side, proving the truth of Esslyn’s snide predictions. After his first exit, he stood in the wings sick with disappointment, listening to Salieri, word perfect, roll smoothly and woodenly on.

For the first time ever, Nicholas asked himself what the hell a grown man was doing standing drenched in nervous sweat, wearing ludicrous clothes, his face covered with makeup, and a daft wig on his head, waiting to step through a canvas door into a world having only the most tenuous connection with reality.

Act I did not improve. The tape of Salieri’s march of welcome as reworked by Mozart started too soon. Fortunately the lid of the pianoforte hid the fact that Nicholas had not had time to actually reach the keys. At least, he thought as he sat down, I haven’t fallen over my sword.

In the
Seraglio
scene Kitty, rushing across the stage crying, “Well done, pussy-wussy,” to her Wolfgang, caught her foot in a rug and ended up hanging onto the Emperor’s arm in an effort to remain upright. Franz Joseph laughed and broke up everyone else. Only Esslyn and Nicholas remained in character and straightfaced.