Death Of A Hollow Man

Rehearsals

The theater was perfectly situated in the very center of Causton, at the corner of the main thoroughfare. Actually it turned the corner, having originally been the last shop (a baker’s) on the High Street and the first, (haberdashery and sewing-machine repairs) on Carradine Road. Both shops went back a long way (the bread had been baked on the premises), and they each had several poky rooms above. Having the strong support of the then-mayor Latimer, the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society leased the two buildings and, with the aid of a grant from the council, the proceeds from various fund-raising activities, and a modest amount of professional help had gutted them both and transformed the shell.

They had built a stage with a plain proscenium arch, fitted a hundred dark gray plastic seats to a raked floor, and installed a simple lighting grid. There was a stage door and two large plate-glass doors that fronted the tiny foyer. This doubled as an office and had in it a desk, a chair, a telephone, an old filing cabinet, and a pay phone. There was also a board showing colorful photographs of the current production. A huge cellar running between both shops became the scene dock and dressing rooms. These were more than adequate except at Panto time or during the run of a play with an exceptionally large cast, such as Amadeus. Toilets for the actors were halfway along a corridor connecting the wings to the foyer.

Three quarters of the top floor was taken up by the club-room, which was open to the public at performance times, when coffee and glasses of wine were available. Plastic tables and chairs were scattered about, and there were a couple of settees, which, imperfectly disguised, performed onstage as often as some of the actors and, it must be said, frequently with more conviction. The rest of the upstairs space was taken up by two rest rooms for the audience and Tim’s lighting box, which had a notice on the door: private, keep out. The Latimer was carpeted throughout in charcoal haircord, and the walls were roughcast white.

Many of the CADS now looked back wistfully to those early days fifteen years past when, surrounded by rubble and timber and cables, and choking on brick dust, they had wrought out of chaos their very own theater. Things had been different then. Harold, for example. Beardless and slim in old corduroys, he had mucked in, getting filthy in the process, cheering them on when they were tired, holding the dream before their flagging spirits and their gritty, dust-filled eyes.

They had all seemed equal then, in those glorious early days. Each with his part to play, and no part more valuable than any other. But after the theater was officially opened and Mayor Latimer had made his long-winded speech, imbibed hugely, and vanished under the drinks table, things started to change, and it soon became plain that some were very much more equal than others. For gradually, sinuously, Harold had eased his way to the top, stepping firmly on the necks of those too timid, too dim, or just too lazy to complain until (no one could quite put their finger on the point of no return) a czar was born. And now, occasionally people joined the company who knew nothing of those grand pioneering times when each member could have his say and be treated with respect. Renegade newcomers who couldn’t care less about the past.

Like Nicholas, for instance, now approaching the Latimer stage door. As far as Nicholas was concerned, the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society came into existence during the rehearsals of French Without Tears and would die the death if his audition at Central was successful (as it must be, it must) with Amadeus. He fumbled in his pocket for the key. He had been given his own as soon as Colin became aware of his willingness to appear early, stay late, run about, fetch and carry, and generally make himself useful. Even now, in his illustrious position as what Esslyn grudgingly admitted to be second lead, Nicholas had arrived a good half hour before the stage management.

In fact, it was barely six o’clock when he entered the building, so he was not surprised to find himself immediately swallowed up by silence. He stood for a moment inhaling voluptuously, and although the air smelled of nothing more exotic than the peel of an orange left in a tin wastebasket, it became transmuted in his apprentice’s nostrils to something rare and ambrosial. Nicholas padded silently, happily down the stone stairs to the dressing rooms.

He flung his anorak down, slipped on Mozart’s brocade coat, and picked up his sword. Nicholas was a short man, barely five feet six, a fact that caused him considerable anguish—Ian Holm, Antony Sher, and Bob Hoskins notwithstanding. Even on a good day when the wind was southerly, the sword caused him problems, especially when getting up and down at the pianoforte. He had planned to take it home and practice wearing it about the place, but had foolishly asked Harold’s permission, which had promptly been refused. “You’ll only lose it, and then where shall we be?”

Now, Nicholas buckled it on and made his way toward the stage muttering the lines leading up to his move, anticipating the first night when he tripped over the thing and fell flat on his face, firmly putting this anticipation aside. A moment later, sneakers muffling his footsteps, he was on the set. He stood for a moment excitedly aware of that frisson—half terror, half delight—that seized him whenever he walked onto a stage, even when the theater was empty.

But in fact it wasn’t. There was a sound. Startled, he looked about him. All the seats were unoccupied. He turned, facing the way he had come, but there was no one in the wings. Then he crouched and looked along the raked floor of the auditorium, expecting to see Riley mauling some disgusting tidbit. But no cat. Then it came again. Squeaky. Almost rubbery-sounding in its effect. Such as might be made if you dragged your finger over a window-pane. What could it be? And where was it coming from? Having checked the stage, the wings, and the auditorium, Nicholas was quite baffled. Until he lifted up his head.

The sight that met his eyes was so surprising that it took him a couple of seconds to realize precisely what he was staring at. Someone was in Tim’s box. A girl. Nicholas swallowed hard. A naked girl. At least naked as far as he could see, which was to just below her waist. Below this the glass panel changed to solid wood. The girl had tumbling fair hair and narrow shoulders, and her back was pressed against the glass. When she arched it, as she now did, her skin imprinted uneven misty circles, like pearly flowers. Her arms were outstretched, and it was her fingers, clenching and unclenching against the glass, that had made the strange sound. He knew who it was. Even before she wrenched her body suddenly sideways, revealing one small pointed breast and a swooning profile. Her eyes (thank God) were closed. Cemented to the floor, he stared and stared, unable to drag his eyes away, and Kitty smiled, an intense, private smile gluttonous with satisfaction.

Whoever else was in the box must be either kneeling or crouching in front of her. Vivid pictures of what the lucky devil might be doing crowded Nicholas’s brain, and he was swept by a wave of lust so powerful that it left him with a bone-dry throat and gasping for air. When the wave had receded somewhat, he took several deep breaths and ruminated on the extreme awkwardness of his position. Not, he felt, since Oedipus had found himself at the crossroads had a chap been so severely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then the sound started again, and he watched Kitty slowly slide down the glass, her shoulder blades leaving two damp, equidistant tracks. She turned her head away again as she disappeared and laughed, a raucous, throaty chuckle quite unlike her usual tinkling carillon.

Released, Nicholas exhaled very carefully, even though common sense told him the sound must be barely audible, (he was amazed they had not heard the beating of his heart), then he tiptoed off stage and bore his bulging groin off to the john. Once there, he stayed longer than was absolutely necessary, mulling over the best course of action and praying that Kitty’s playmate didn’t decide to come in for a pee. He had just decided to creep out to the street and make a great noise coming back in when he heard beneath him the slam of a door. He waited for another five minutes, then made his way back to the basement.

As he passed the ladies’ dressing room, he heard a clatter, as if someone was moving a bottle or jar. Nicholas opened the door. Kitty, demurely buttoned up in an apricot blouse and securely—nay, chastely—swathed in a long matching skirt chirruped with alarm, then said, “You made me jump.’’

“Sorry … hello.”

“Hello yourself.” Kitty frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”

“Mm?”

“You’re not getting a sore throat, are you?”

“Don’t think so.”

“You’re croaking.”

“Ah. Just the proverbial frog.” He cleared his throat once or twice. Then did a mock gargle. But the dryness at the sight of her remained. “That’s better.”

“It doesn’t sound better. You look a bit peaky actually, Nico … quite drained.” She narrowed her eyes at her reflection. “Now what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Nicholas turned his sudden laugh into a cough. “You first here, then? You and Esslyn?”

He linked the names automatically; then, finding ignorance established and Kitty misled, congratulated himself on his cleverness. But no sooner had he done this than a further thought developed. What if Kitty had actually been with Esslyn in the box? Stranger things had happened. Married couples were supposed to sometimes need peculiar settings or bizarre games to turn them on. Look at that Pinter play. Him coming home “unexpectedly” in the afternoons; her in five-inch heels. But surely that was only after decades of marital boredom? The Carmichaels hadn’t been together five minutes. Kitty was speaking again.

“Oh, Esslyn’s working till half six. So I came on early in my little Suzuki. I need lots of time to get ready. In fact—” she smiled, her lovely lips parting like the petals of a rose—“I thought I’d find you here when I arrived.”

“… Er … no …” stammered Nicholas. “Tried to get away, but it was one of the manager’s keen-eyed days.”

“Oh, what a shame.” Another smile, warmly sympathetic. “We could have gone over our lines together.”

Nicholas absorbed the impact of the smile, (a soft, feather-light punch to the solar plexus), and his knees buckled. He hung grimly on to the door handle. For the first time in his life he cursed the enthusiasm that had brought him to the Latimer long before anyone could reasonably have been expected to be present. Then he wondered how the hell, feeling like this, he was going to be able to concentrate onstage. Forcefully he reminded himself that this was only Kitty. Pretty, silly, ordinary Kitty. Her very silliness and the fact that she was an indifferent actress would normally have been enough to ensure his complete lack of interest. And if his mind could reason thus, reasoned Nicholas, why then should his viscera, still churning rhapsodically, not be brought under equally firm control? As he continued to argue against this onrush of carnality, Kitty picked up a wire brush and started to rearrange her hair. She brushed it up and away from her face, which looked even more piquant without the surrounding auerole of golden curls.

Nicholas told himself it was more pointed than heart-shaped. Sharp. A bit ferrety, really. Then she opened her mouth, filled the damp, rosy cavity with bobby pins, and started to pile the hair on top of her head. This movement pushed her bosom out. It strained against her blouse. Then, as Nicholas watched, every button burst its moorings. The fabric fell apart, and her small, exquisite breasts were revealed, double dazzling by being reflected in the mirror. She stood up and, with a light, thrillingly lascivious shrug, magically shed the rest of her garments except for silky, lace-topped stockings and thigh-high boots. Then she turned, placed one foot firmly on the seat of her chair and beckoned to him.

“Nico … ?” Kitty removed the bobby pins. “What on earth’s the matter with you tonight?”

“Ohhh. Nerves, I guess.”

“Right. You and me both. Oh, drat—” Kitty’s hair collapsed. “It’s going to be one of those days when it just won’t stay up.”

Nicholas, whose problem could hardly have been further removed from his companion’s, was temporarily distracted by something being shifted around in the adjacent scene dock. “Ah,” he murmured, “seems we’re not the only ones here early.”

“I’d like to have it cut”—Kitty reskewered the pins forcefully—“but Esslyn’d go mad. He doesn’t think a woman’s truly feminine unless she’s got long hair.”

“I wonder who it is.”

“Who what is?”

“In the workshop.”

“Colin, I suppose. He was moaning the other night about how much he had to do.”

“Par for the course.”

“Mmm. Nico …” Kitty put down her brush and turned to face him. “You won’t… well … go to pieces on the first night, will you, darling? I should be absolutely frantic.”

“Of course I won’t,” Nicholas cried indignantly. This insult managed to damp his ardor in a way that all the earlier rationalizations had failed to do. Silly cow. “You should know me better than that.”

“Only you’ve so many lines—”

“No more than in Night Must Fall.”

“—and Esslyn said … with your experience … you’d probably just dry up and leave me stranded. …”

“Esslyn can get stuffed.”

“Oohh!” Neat foxiness beamed. Then she cocked her head on one side conspiratorially. “Don’t worry. I shan’t pass it on.”

“You can pass it on as much as you like, as far as I’m concerned.”

Nicholas went out slamming the door. Patronizing bastard. “It won’t be me who goes to pieces on the first night, mate,” he muttered. In the men’s dressing room he slung his coat and sword, glanced at his watch, and discovered that, incredibly, barely twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the theater. He decided to pop along and have a look at the scene dock.

A man was there putting the finishing touches to a small gilt chair. He stood back as Nicholas entered, studying the tight hoop of the chairback, his brush dripping glittering gold tears onto an already multicolored floor. It was not the man Nicholas expected to see, but he experienced an immediate warmth, almost a feeling of kinship, toward the figure who was regarding his handiwork so seriously. Anyone who could make a cuckold out of Carmichael, thought Nicholas, was a man after his own heart.

“Hullo,” he said. “The boss not in yet?”

David Smy turned, his handsome, bovine face breaking into a slow smile. “No, just me. And you, of course. Oh”—his brush described a wide arc, and Nicholas, not wishing to be gilded, jumped briskly aside—“and the furniture.”

“R-i-g-h-t.” Nicholas nodded. “Got it.” Then he performed the classic roguish gesture seen frequently in bad costume dramas but rarely in real life. He laid his finger to the side of his nose, tapped it, and winked. “Just you and me and the furniture it is then, Dave,” he replied, and went back to the stage for some more practice.

After fifteen minutes or so sitting down at and getting up from the piano and striding about getting used to his sword, Nicholas went up to the clubroom to see who else had arrived. Tim and Avery sat at a table, their heads close. They stopped talking the moment Nicholas entered, and Tim smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We weren’t talking about you.”

“I didn’t expect you were.”

“Didn’t you really?” asked Avery, who always thought that everyone was talking about him the second his back was turned, and never very kindly. “I would have.”

“Oh, not your childhood insecurities, Avery,” said Tim. “Not on an empty stomach.”

“And whose fault’s that? If you hadn’t been so long at the post office—”

“Nico …” Tim indicated a slender bottle on the table. “Some De Bortoli?”

“Afterwards, thanks.”

“There won’t be any afterwards, dear boy.”

“What were you whispering about, anyway?”

“We were having a row,” said Avery.

“In whispers?”

“One has one’s pride.”

“More of a discussion,” said Tim. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you what it’s about.”

“We’re burning our boats.”

“Avery!”

“Well, if we can’t tell Nico, who can we tell?”

“No one.”

“After all, he’s our closest friend.”

Nicholas tactfully concealed his surprise at this revelation, and the silence lengthened. Avery was biting his bottom lip as he always did when excited. He kept darting beseeching little glances at Tim, and his fists opened and closed in purgatorial anguish. He looked like a child on Christmas morning denied permission to open its presents. Even his circle of curls danced with the thrill of it all.

Nicholas bent close to Avery’s ear. “I’ve got a secret as well. We could do a swap.”

“Ohhh … could we, Tim?”

“Honestly. You’re like a two-year-old.” Tim looked coolly at Nicholas. “What sort of secret?”

“An amazing secret.”

“Hm. And no one else knows?”

“Only two other people.”

“Well, it’s not a secret then, is it?”

“It’s the two other people that the secret’s about.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, go on, Tim,” urged Nicholas. “Fair exchange is no robbery.”

“Where do you find these ghastly little homilies?”

“Please …”

Tim hesitated. “You must promise not to breathe a word before the first night.”

“Promise.”

“He said that rather quickly. If you break it,” continued Avery, “you won’t get into Central.”

“Oh, God.”

“He’s gone quite pale.”

“That was a stupid thing to say. Since when have you had crystal balls?”

“Why the first night?” asked Nicholas, recovering his equilibrium.

“Because after then everyone will know. Do you promise?”

“Cut my throat and hope to die.”

“You’ve got to go first.”

Nicholas told them his secret, looking from face to face as he spoke. Avery’s mouth opened like a starfish in an ooo of astonishment and pleasure. Tim went scarlet, then white, then red again. He was the first to speak.

“In my box.” Nicholas nodded affirmation. “Of all the fucking cheek.”

“Ever the mot juste, ” chuckled Avery, practically rocking on his seat with satisfaction. Nicholas thought he was like one of those weighted Daruma dolls that, no matter how hard you pushed them down, sprang straight back up again. “But … if you couldn’t see the man, how do you know it was David?”

“There was no one else in the place. Just me, Kitty— who surfaced in the dressing room about ten minutes later—and David in the scene dock. I know he and his dad are often early. But they’re never that early.”

“I thought you always kept your box locked,” said Avery.

“I do. But there’s a spare key on the board in the prompt corner,” said Tim, adding, “I shall take it home with me in the future. I must say,” he continued, “he’s a bit … lumpen … David. For Kitty, I mean.”

“Constanze’s bit of rough.” Avery giggled. “Must have given you quite a thrill, Nico. If you like that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” Nicholas said pinkly, “not really.”

“Still, he’s a nice lad,” continued Tim, “and I should think almost anyone’d be a relief after Esslyn. It must be like going to bed with the Albert Memorial.” He pulled back his cuff. “Nearly the quarter. Better go and check the board.”

He picked up his bottle and moved quickly to the door, Avery scuttling after. Nicholas, in hot pursuit, cried, “But what about your secret?”

“Have to wait.”

“I’ve got time. I’m not on for twenty minutes.”

“And I’m not on,” echoed Avery, “at all. I can tell him.”

“We tell him together.” Tim tried the door of his box, then got out his key. “At least David locked up after himself.”

He opened the door, and just for a moment the three of them stood on the threshold, Avery quivering like the questing beast. His button nose pointed (as well as it was able), and he sniffed as if hoping to detect some faint residual flavor of wickedness in the stuffy air.

“For heaven’s sake, Avery.”

“Sorry.”

The image of Kitty rushed back to Nicholas so vividly that it seemed impossible that the tiny place could have remained unmarked by her presence. Then he saw faintly on the glass the now barely visible tracks made by her dragging shoulder blades.

Avery said, “I wonder what made them choose here?”

“Sheer perversity, I should think. Well … see you later, Nicholas.”

Dismissed, Nicholas was just turning away when a thought struck him. “Oh, Avery … you won’t repeat what I’ve told you to anyone?”

“Me?” Avery was outraged. “I like the way you ask me. What about him?”

Nicholas grinned. “Thanks.”

Downstairs he collided with Harold, who arrived as he did everything else, Napoleonically. He started shouting as he entered the foyer, and didn’t stop until he had seen some flurry of movement, however unnecessary, in every corner of the auditorium. He called it keeping them on their toes. “So who’s ahead of the game?” he cried, subsiding into row C, lighting a Davidoff, and removing his hat. Harold had quite a collection of fur hats. This one was black and cream and yellowish-gray, and definitely the product of more than one animal. It had a short tail, squatted on his head like a ring-tailed lemur, and was known throughout the company as Harold’s succubus.

“Come on, Deidre!” he roared. “Chop-chop!”

The play began. The Venticelli loped down to the footlights and stood, secretively entwined, like a pair of gossipy grasshoppers. They were an unattractive pair, with pasty, open-pored complexions and most peculiar hair. Flossy and flyaway, it was that strange color—dirty blond with a pinkish tinge—that hairdressers call champagne. Their eyelids drooped in the lizardlike manner of the old, although they were barely thirty. They invariably seemed to be on the verge of imparting some distasteful revelation, and spoke in a sort of sniggering whisper. Harold was always having to tell them to project. Seemingly secure under Esslyn’s patronage, they discussed anyone and everyone vindictively, and their breath smelled dank and malodorous, like a newly opened grave. Now, having finished their opening dialogue and wrapped their cloaks tightly about them, they pranced off.

Esslyn took the floor and Nicholas in the wings watched the tall figure with a certain degree of envy. For there was no denying that his rival cut a splendid figure onstage. Take his face, for a start. High cheekbones, rather thick but beautifully shaped lips, and that rare feature, truly black eyes. Hard and bright, the pupils glittered like tar chippings. His jowls were always a faint steely blue, like those of the villains in gangster cartoons.

Nicholas’s own face could not be more ordinary. It was an “ish” face. Brownish hair, grayish eyes, straightish nose. Only the fact that his even features were unevenly distributed gave it any distinction at all. Rather a lot of space between the tip of the nose and the top lip, which he thought made him look a trifle monkeyish, although Hazel at the checkout had pronounced it “very sexy.” A wide space also between his eyes, and a very wide one indeed after the eyebrows and before the hairline. So apart from being dwarfish and clumsy, with nondescript features, Nicholas reflected sourly, he would probably be completely bald before the age of twenty-one. He stared, aggrieved, at Esslyn’s crisp sloe-black hair. Not even a flake of dandruff.

“Cheer up,” whispered David Smy, arriving ready for his first entrance. “It might never happen.”

Nicholas barely had time to smile back before his companion went on. Poor old David, thought Nicholas, watching Salieri’s valet sidling across the boards with that constipated cringe that afflicts people who loathe acting and are coaxed onto a stage. Fortunately the valet was a nonspeaking part. The only time David had been given a line to say containing seven words, he had managed to deliver them in a different order every night of the run without repeating himself once.

“David…” Nicholas heard from the stalls. “Try not to walk as if you’ve got a duck up your knickers. Get off and come on again.”

Blushing, the boy complied. On reentering, he strode manfully to his position only to hear the Venticelli sniggering behind his back.

“My God—it’s the frog footman.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Dandini.”

“You’re both wrong,” mouthed Esslyn in a Restoration aside. “It’s the fairy Quasimodo.”

“For heaven’s sake, get on with it!” cried Harold. “I’m putting on a play here, not running a bear garden.” He sat back in his seat, and the rehearsals rolled on. Amadeus was not an easy play, but Harold had never been one to shirk a challenge to his directorial skills, and the fact that it had a large cast and thirty-one scenes did not deter him. Six keen fifth-formers from the local comprehensive had been recruited to help onstage management, and Harold watched them now drifting vaguely on and off the set with an exasperated expression on his face. It was all very well for Peter Shaffer to suggest that their constant coming and going should by a pleasant paradox of theater be rendered invisible. He wasn’t lumbered with a crew of sleepwalking zombies who didn’t know their stage right from a 97 bus. And Esslyn, who was onstage throughout and could have been a great help, was worse than useless. Years ago, Harold had made the mistake of saying that when he was in the business, no actor of any standing would demean himself by touching either stick or stone during a performance. All that was strictly stage management. Since then their leading man had steadfastly refused to handle anything but personal props.

“Deidre,” shouted Harold. “Speed this lot up. The set changes are taking twice as long as the bloody play.”

“If he’d read the author’s notes,” murmured Nicholas to Deidre, who had been testing a pile of newly stacked furniture in the wings for rockability and was now back in the prompt corner, “he’d know you’re supposed to carry on acting through the changes.”

“Oh, you won’t find Harold bothering with boring old things like author’s notes,” said Deidre, as near to malice as Nicholas had ever heard her. “He has his own ideas. I hate this scene, don’t you?”

Nicholas, poised for his entrance, nodded briefly. The reason they both disliked The Abduction from the Seraglio was the lighting. Futilely, when Harold had asked for crimson gels, Tim had attempted one of his rare arguments. In reply, speaking very slowly as if to an idiot child, Harold explained his motivation.

“It’s all about a seraglio. Right?”

“So far.”

“Which is another word for a brothel—right?”

Tim murmured, “Wrong,” but could have saved his breath.

“Which is another word for a red-light house. Ergo … surely I don’t have to further spell it out? I know it’s theatrical, Tim, but that’s the kind of producer I am. Bold effects are my forte. If what you want is wishy-washy naturalism, you should stay at home and watch the telly.”

Nicholas was always glad when the scene was finished. He felt as if he were swimming in blood. He came offstage dissatisfied with his performance and irritated with himself. Avery’s secret was nagging at his mind. He wondered what on earth it could be. Probably some piddling thing. Nowhere near as scandalously interesting as Nicholas’s own secret. He wished they’d either told him at once or not mentioned it at all. Perhaps he could persuade them to cough it up at the intermission.

Pausing only to give David Smy a very insinuating moue and a nudge in the ribs, Nicholas returned to the dressing room. Next time Colin came up from the paint shop, David approached his father and asked him if he thought Nicholas could possibly be gay.

Three rehearsals later, the difficulties with the razor had still not been sorted out. When the moment arrived to wield it and David stood deferentially by holding his tray with the water, wooden bowl of shaving soap, and towel, the action ground to a halt. Esslyn moved downstage and stared challengingly at row C. The Everards, lizard lids aflicker, capered behind. Tim and Avery, sensing a possible fracas, left the lighting box, and the stage staff gathered round. Harold rose and, with an air of quite awesome capability, took the stage.

“Well, my darlings,” he cried as he mounted the steps, “we have a wide-open situation here, and I’m offering it to the floor before I sound off with any of my own suggestions, which, I need hardly say, are myriad.” Silence. “Never let it be said that I’m not open to new ideas from whatever direction they may arise.” The silence took on an incredulous, slightly stunned quality, as if someone had thwacked it with a baseball bat. “Nicholas? You seem to be on the verge of suggestive thought.”

“He always is,” said Avery.

“Well…” said Nicholas, “I was wondering if it might not look very exciting done with Salieri’s back to the audience. An expansive movement”—he leaped to his feet to demonstrate—“like so—”

“I don’t believe this,” retorted Esslyn. “Is there nothing you wouldn’t do to sabotage my performance? Do you really think you could persuade me to play the most exciting moment of my entire career facing upstage?”

“What career?”

“Of course, everyone knows you’re jealous—”

“Me? Jealous? Of you?” The smidgen of truth in this assertion caused Nicholas to splutter like fat in a pan. “Hah!”

“I should climb back into your swamp, Nicholas,” snickered a Venticelli. “Before you have yet another brilliant wheeze.”

“Yes,” agreed his twin. “Back to the Grimpen Mire with you.”

“It’ll be a funny old day,” snapped Nicholas, “when I take any notice of a pair of bloody bookends.”

“Now, now,” beamed Harold. He adored displays of temperament by his actors, fatuously believing them to be sign of genuine talent. “Actually, Esslyn, you know it might look quite effective—”

“Forget it, Harold.”

Everyone sat up. Confrontation between the CADS director and his leading man was unheard of. Harold directed Esslyn. Esslyn went his own way. Harold ignored this intransigence. It had been ever thus. Now, every eye was on Harold to see what he would do. And he was worth watching. Various emotions chased over his rubicund features. Amazement, disgust, rage, then finally (after a great struggle), compliance.

“Obviously,” he said, presaging the frankly incredible, “I would never force an actor to do something that was totally alien to his way of working. It would simply look wooden and unconvincing.” Then, quickly: “Does anyone else have any ideas?”

“What happened about those bag things,” asked Rosa, “that we talked about earlier on?”

“They didn’t work. Or rather,” continued Harold, evening the score, “Esslyn couldn’t make them work.”

“You don’t pull off a trick like that the first time,” retorted Esslyn. “You have to practice, which I could hardly do with you yelling ‘Molto costoso ’ in my face every time I asked for another.”

“Then you’ll have to mime streaming with blood,” said Rosa, smiling sweetly. “I’m sure if anyone can do it, you can.”

“Ouch!” said Kitty, exchanging a rueful, collusive glance with her husband. It was a complicated glance, and managed to suggest not only that Rosa was jealous of her husband’s present happiness but also that she was not quite right in the head. The assistant director cleared her throat.

“Whoops,” whispered Clive Everard. “Page the oracle.”

“The problem’s as good as solved.”

“Perhaps,” Deidre began hesitantly, “we could cover the blade with Scotch tape. I’m sure it wouldn’t show from the front.”

There was a pause, then a deep sigh from Harold. “At last.” He nodded, a wry, reproachful nod. “I was wondering who would be the first to think of that. Got some here, I trust, Deidre?”

“Oh, yes …” She took the razor from David’s tray, holding it carefully by the handle, and bore it off to her table. There she tipped her carrier bag onto its side. The tape rolled out, closely followed by a grudgingly provided bottle of milk. She saved the milk just in time, sat down beneath the anglepoise lamp, picked up the tape, and started scratching at it to find the ends. Then she cut off a strip and laid it lengthwise against the cutting edge. It was too short (she should have measured before she started) as well as being too narrow to wrap over the steel completely. She hesitated, wondering if it was necessary to take the first piece off before trying again, and decided she wouldn’t dare come so close to that gleaming steel. Even at the thought, her hands started to sweat. She felt all hot and bothered, as if everyone was watching her, then glanced up and discovered she was right.

“Shan’t be a sec,” she called cheerily. The tail of the tape had vanished, and she started scratching again. “More haste, less speed.”

“I always find,” Rosa returned the call, “that folding the end bit over every time is a great help.”

“Oh, what a good idea,” Deidre ground out, “I must remember that.” Holding the razor firmly, she attached the tape to the handle end and wound the reel round and round, up and down the blade until it was well and truly covered. Then she cut off the tape. The result was dreadful. Very uneven and bumpy, with half a dozen thicknesses in one place and two or three in others, all of which would be clearly visible from the stalls in that intimate theater. Oh, God, thought Deidre, what on earth am I going to do? The thought of trying to remove the tape again terrified her. Even supposing she could find the tag end.

“What’s the problem, Deidre?” David Smy put his valet’s tray down and pulled up one of the little gold chairs.

“It’s all gone wrong.” Deidre blinked hard behind her lenses thick as bottle glass. “I had a terrible job getting it on. Now, I’m frightened to try and take it off in case I cut myself.”

“Let’s have a look.”

“Be careful.” Deidre handed the razor over.

“Got some scissors? No … smaller than those.’’ When Deidre shook her head, David produced a Victorinox Swiss army knife and eased out a tiny pair of clippers. Deidre watched his brown fingers tipped with clean, short nails, which had dazzlingly white half-moons. He handled things so precisely, almost gracefully, and without any floundering or wasted movements. Snip, snip, and the tape was off. Deidre unrolled more. David measured the blade against it, cut off two lengths, and, with Deidre holding the handle, folded them very carefully over the length of the blade, first one side, then the other. Then he ran the razor hard down the prompt copy. It fell apart. “That should do it.”

“David. You mustn’t say that. Not even in fun. We’ll have to put some more on.”

“If you insist.” His slow smile was reassuring. “I was only pulling your leg.”

“I should hope so.” After a few moments she smiled rather nervously in return. David recovered the blade, and this time produced no more than a faint indentation when he pressed the page.

“Come on, Deidre—chop-chop. We could all have cut our throats ten times over by now.”

“Sorry, Harold.”

“You go when you’re ready,” said David. “You don’t want to let that lot run you about. Load of wankers.” Then he added hastily, “Pardon my French.”

“Oh, if it’s French,” Deidre murmured apologetically, “it’s right over my head, I’m afraid. Well … let’s see how this goes down.” She handed the razor to Esslyn, who received it warily. “You could try it out on your thumb first.”

“I shall certainly try it out on someone’s thumb,” Esslyn replied crisply, handing it straight back. Obligingly Deidre illustrated its newly rendered bitelessness. Esslyn said, “Hm,” and sawed tentatively, then more firmly, back and forth across his knuckles. “Seems okay. Right … Harold?”

Esslyn waited until everyone’s attention was on him, then stood, center stage, in a martyr’s pose, hands across his breast, eyes on a glorious horizon, looking for all the world, as Tim said later, like Edith Cavell in drag. He spoke loudly, in a doom-laden voice: .. and in the depth of your downcastness you can pray to me … And I will forgive you. Vi saluto!” Then, throwing his head back and holding the razor in his right hand, he drew it quickly across his throat. One sweeping dramatic movement from ear to ear. There was a terrible silence, then someone murmured, “My God.”

“Works, does it?”

“You could practically see the blood,” squawked Don Everard.

“They’ll be carrying people out.”

Esslyn smirked. He liked the idea of people being carried out. Harold swung around, letting his satisfied smile embrace them all. “I knew that would work,” he said, “as soon as I thought of it.”

“I really believe that’s the secret of our success,” chipped in Nicholas, “an ideas man at the helm.”

“Well, of course that’s not for me to say,” demurred Harold, who never stopped saying it.

“Wasn’t it Deidre,” David Smy said loudly, “who thought of it?”

“David,” whispered Deidre across the table, “don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

“It was Deidre,” said Harold, “Who vocalized it. I thought of it weeks ago, when the production was in the planning stage. She simply caught my idea on the ether, as it were, and vocalized it. Now, if the stage management have stopped showing off, we really must get on …”

But the rehearsal was further delayed by Kitty, who, whitefaced, was now clinging to her husband, her arms around his waist, her head buried in his chest… it looked so real…” she mewed, ‘‘I was fwightened …”

‘‘There, there, kitten.” Esslyn patted her as if soothing a fretful animal. ‘‘There’s absolutely nothing to be frightened about. I’m quite safe. As you can see.” He let loose a smug, apologetic look over her head.

Now if she could act like that, thought Nicholas, when she’s onstage with me, I’d be a happy man. He glanced across at Kitty’s lover to see how he was reacting to this little display, but David was continuing his conversation with Deidre and affecting not to notice. Nicholas observed the rest of the company. Most were looking indifferent, one or two embarrassed, Boris ironical, Harold impatient. The Venticelli, to Nicholas’s surprise, appeared jealous. He was sure this was not romantic resentment. In spite of their affectations and flouncings and toadily awful obsequiousness, Nicholas did not believe they were sexually interested in Esslyn. In fact, they both struck him as almost asexual. Dry and detached and probably more interested in making mischief than in making love. No, Nicholas guessed they were simply peeved that the object of their sycophancy was being so crass and ungrateful as to show public affection for another.

Then, eyes traveling on, Nicholas received a shock. Sitting a little behind the others and surely believing herself to be unobserved, Rosa was staring at Esslyn and his wife. Her face showed pure hatred. Not a muscle moved, and the emotion was so concentrated, so extreme, that she might have been wearing a mask. Then she noticed Nicholas’s gaze, dropped her rancorous eyes, and immediately became herself again. So much so that by the time, half an hour later, she made her usual flurried departure (trailing her scarf, dropping her script, whirling her Madame Ranevskaya coat about, and crying “Night-night, my angels”), he was almost convinced that he had imagined it.

The book arrived about a week before the dress rehearsal. Deidre found a small parcel neatly wrapped in brown paper on the floor in the foyer. It was directly beneath the mail slot set in the wooden surround of the plate-glass doors. She turned the parcel over, frowning. On the front, hand-printed in small capital letters, were the words Harold winstanley. She laid it on top of her basket and made her way to the clubroom to unload her two bottles of milk and tea and sugar replenishments. As she entered, Riley hurried forward to greet her. She put the milk bottles in a pan of cold water, then bent down and rubbed his ears. He permitted this for as long as it took him to realize that she was not bearing gifts, then stuck his tail in the air and wandered off. Deidre watched him go sadly, wishing he were not so stingy with his affections. Only Avery got the full treatment—purring, rubbing round the legs, little mms of satisfaction—but then, only Avery dished up the dinner. He bought fish trimmings or “cheeks” for the cat, which Riley would remove from his dish to consume at his leisure.

Deidre was always coming across the bluish-white pearly wings of bone that remained.

He was a handsome animal. White bib and socks, mixed whiskers, and a white tip to his tail. The rest of his coat, once black and gleaming like newly mined coal, now had a rusty tinge, which made him look a bit seedy. He was a full-blooded tom and had a hairless patch above one eye that was no sooner grown over than some old bold adversary clawed it back to its original glabrous state. He had brilliant emerald-green eyes, and when the theater was dark, you could see them walking about on their own between the lines of seats.

No one knew how old he was. He had appeared two years ago, suddenly strolling across the set during a run-through of French Without Tears. The immense, almost magical theatricality of this appearance had at once appealed to everyone. He had got a round of applause, a piece of haddock, (Deidre having been sent to Adelaide’s), and had been adopted on the spot. This, although he had not been able to say so in so many words, had not been his intention. For Riley was looking for a more orthodox establishment. He had been vastly deceived in the sitting room of French Without Tears, which had disappeared shortly after he had made its acquaintance, only to reappear in a totally different guise several weeks later. This was really not his scene. He wanted an ordinary, even humdrum, home, where the furniture was fairly stable with at least one human being more or less constantly in worshipful attendance. He often tried to follow Avery when he left the theater, but had always been firmly brought back. Deidre, who had always longed for a pet, would have loved to have taken him home, but her father was allergic to both fur and feather.

Now, having unpacked the tea and sugar and set out the cups, Deidre made her way to the auditorium to chalk up the stage for Act I. As Nicholas was already there going over his “opera” speech, she slipped silently into the back row to listen. It was a complicated piece, and Nicholas was making a mess of it. It started on a high point of anger, broke in the middle into giggling almost frenzied effusiveness, and ended on a note so elated as to be practically manic.

He had been going over it at home every night the previous week, and was agonizingly conscious that it wasn’t working. Now, he pumped amazement into his voice: “Astonishing device. A Vocal Quartet!” Following up with forced excitement: “On and on, wider and wider-all sounds multiplying and rising together …’’He plowed on, ending with an empty rhetorical shout: “… and turn the audience into God!”

Despair filled him. Nothing but ranting. But what was he to do? If emotion wasn’t there, it couldn’t be turned on like a faucet. A dreadful thought lurking always in the back of his mind leaped to the fore. What if he felt dry and stale like this on the first night? Without technique, he would be left clinging desperately to the text like an ill-equipped mountaineer on a rock face. He almost envied Esslyn his years of experience; his grasp of acting mechanics. It was all very well for Avery to describe their leading man’s performance as “just like an Easter egg, darling. All ribbons and bows and little candied bits and pieces with a bloody great hollow at the center.” Nicholas was not comforted, being only too aware that when his emotions let him down, he could offer neither ribbon nor bow, never mind anything as fancy as a candied trimming. Deidre came down the aisle.

“Hi,” said Nicholas morosely. “Did you hear all that?”

p> “Mm,” said Deidre, putting her basket on the edge of the stage and climbing up.

“I just can’t seem to get it right.”

“No. Well—you haven’t got the feeling, have you? And you’re just not experienced enough to put it over without.”

Nicholas, who had expected some anodyne reassurance, stared at Deidre, who crossed to the prompt corner and started to unpack her things. “If I could make a suggestion … ?”

“Of course.” He followed her around the stage as she crouched to re-mark the entrances and exits smudged or quite erased at the previous rehearsal.

“Well … first you mustn’t take the others into account so much when you’re speaking. Salieri … Van Swieten … they matter in Mozart’s life only so far as they affect income. They mean nothing to him as people. Mozart’s a genius—a law unto himself. You seem to be trying to relate to them in this speech, which is fatal. They are there to listen, to absorb. Perhaps to be a little afraid… .”

“Yes … yes, I see … I think you’re right. And God-how do you think he sees God?”

“Mozart? He doesn’t ‘see’ God as something separate, like Salieri does. Music and God are all the same to him. As for the delivery, you’re working the wrong way round. That’s why it sounds stale before you’ve even half got it right—”

“I know!” Nicholas smote his forehead. “I know. ”

“If you stop thinking about the words and start listening to the music—”

‘‘There isn’t any music.”

“—in your head, silly. If you’re making a passionate speech about music, you have to hear music. Most of the other set pieces either have music underneath them or just before. This is very … dry. So you must listen to all the tapes and see what evokes the emotion you need, then marry it in your mind to the lines. I don’t mean ‘must,’ of course”—Deidre blushed suddenly—“only if you like.”

“Oh, but I do! I’m sure that would … it’s a terrific idea.”

“You’re in the way.”

“Sorry.”

Nicholas looked down at Deidre’s bent head and chalky jeans. He had not, unlike most of the rest of the company, underestimated her proficiency behind the scenes. But he had never talked to her about play production, and although he was aware of her ambitions in that direction, had thought (also like the rest of the company) that she would be no better at it than Harold was. Now, he gazed at her rather as men gazed at girls in Hollywood films after they had taken off their glasses and let their hair down. He said, “It’s a wonderful play, don’t you think?”

“Very exciting. I saw it in London. I’ll be glad when it’s over, though. I don’t like the way things are going.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing specific. But there’s not a nice feeling. And I’m dying to get on to Vanya. I do love Chekhov, don’t you, Nicholas?” She regarded him with shining eyes. “Even The Cherry Orchard, after all Harold managed to do to it … there was still so much left.”

“Deidre.” Nicholas followed her around in the wings, where, clipboard in hand, she started to check the props for Act I. “Why on earth … I mean … you should be with another company. Where you can really do things.”

“There isn’t one. The nearest is Slough.”

“That’s not far.”

“You need your own transport. At night, anyway. And I can’t afford to run a car. My father’s— He can’t be left alone. I have to pay someone to sit with him on theater evenings. …”

“Oh, I see.” What he did see—a sudden yawning abyss of loneliness, creative imagination starved of expression, and stifled, unrealized dreams—made him deeply, ashamedly embarrassed. He felt as if he were with one of those awful people who, uninvited, hitch up their clothes and show you their operation scar. Aware of the unfairness of this comparison and the banality of his next remark, Nicholas mumbled, “Bad luck, Deidre,” and retreated to the stage. Here, more for the sake of bridging an awkward moment than anything else, he picked up the parcel. “Someone sending Harold a bomb?”

“Heavily disguised as a book.” Nicholas eased the brown paper lightly Scotch-taped folds and attempted to peer inside.

“Don’t do that,” called Deidre. “He’ll say someone’s been trying to open it. And he’s bound to blame me.”

But Harold seemed to notice nothing untoward about his parcel. He arrived rather later than usual and was changing into his monogrammed directing slippers when Deidre gave him the book. There had been a time when Harold had always removed his footwear during rehearsals, explaining that only by doing so could he arrive at the true spirit of the play. Then he had seen a television interview with a famous American director during which the great man had stated that people who took off their shoes to direct were pretentious pseuds. Harold, naturally, did not agree, but just in case other members of the same company had also been viewing, he covered up his feet forthwith. As he took the parcel, Rosa, noticing, called out, “Oohh, look … Harold’s got a prezzie.” And everyone gathered around.

The “prezzie” proved to be a bit of a letdown. Nothing unusual or exciting. Nothing to do with Harold’s only real passion in life. It was a cookbook. Floyd on Fish. Harold gazed at it blankly. Someone asked who it was from. He spun the pages, turned the book upside down, and shook it. No card.

“Isn’t there something written inside?” nudged an Everard. Harold turned the first few pages and shook his head. “How extraordinary. ”

“Why on earth should anyone send you a recipe book?” asked Rosa. “You’re not interested in cooking, are you?” Harold shook his head.

“Well, if you’re going to start,” said Avery, “I shouldn’t start with that. The man’s basically unsound.”

“Gosh, you are a snob,” said Nicholas.

“Right, young Bradley. That’s the last time you sit down at my table.”

“Oh! I didn’t mean it, Avery—honestly.” Half-frantic, half-laughing, Nicholas continued, “Please. I’m sorry …”

“I shall think of it,” said Harold, “as a gift from an unknown admirer. And now we must get on. Chop-chop, everyone …”

He put the parcel inside his hat. The momentary warmth that its appearance had engendered (it had been years since anyone had given him a present) had vanished. In its place was a faint unease. What a peculiar thing for anyone to do. Spend all that money on a book, then send it anonymously to someone for whom it could be of no interest whatever. Ah, well, thought Harold, he certainly didn’t have time to ponder on the mystery at the moment. The mystery of the theater—that was his business. That was what he had to kindle. And plays did not produce themselves.

“Right, my darlings,” he cried, “from the top. And please … lots and lots of verismo. Nicholas, you remember— Where is Nicholas?”

Mozart stepped out from the wings, “Here I am, Harold. ”

“Don’t forget the note I gave you on Monday. Resonances. Okay? That’s what I want—plenty of resonances. You’re looking blank.”

“Sorry, Harold?”

“You know the meaning of the word ‘resonances,’ I assume?”

“Um… Don Quixote’s horse, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, God!” cried Harold. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

A week passed. None of the rehearsals went well, and the first couple of run-throughs were absolutely dreadful. But it was at the dress rehearsal (so everyone later told Barnaby) that things really came to a head.

As Esslyn strode around the stage with his spring-heeled tango dancer’s walk in his blue-and-silver coat, so his performance grew in glossy fraudulence. He had stopped acting with—indeed, he hardly even looked at—his fellow players and strutted and posed in splendid isolation. Backed up by his myrmidons, he continued to snipe at David and Nicholas.

Nicholas was coping with all this very well. His earlier talk with Deidre had been the first of several, and he was now groping his way toward what he believed would be a truthful, intelligent, and lively rendering of the part of Mozart. He was halfway through the opening scene and playing to the back of Salieri’s neck when Esslyn suddenly stopped what he was saying and strolled down to the footlights.

“Harold?” Harold, his face marked with surprise, climbed out of his seat and walked forward. “Any particular stress on che gioia?”

“What?”

“Sorry. To be frank, my problem is … I’m not quite sure what it means.” Silence. ‘‘Perhaps you could enlighten me?” Long pause. “I’d be most grateful.”

“Now who’s being cattivo, ” murmured Clive.

“Don’t you know?” said Harold.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been saying those lines over and over again for the last six weeks and you don’t know what they mean?”

“So it appears.”

“And you call yourself an actor?”

“I certainly call myself as much of an actor as you are a director.”

An even longer pause. Then, softly on the air, it seemed to everyone present, came a feint reverberation, like the roll of distant drums. Harold said, very quietly, “Are you trying to wind me up?”

“Didn’t think it was necessary,” muttered Donald. “Thought he ran on hot air.”

“Of course not, Harold. But I do think—”

“I’m not going to translate it for you. Do your own homework.”

“Well, that seems a bit—”

“All right, everyone. Carry on. And no interval. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

Esslyn shrugged and sauntered back to his previous position, and the reverberations rippled away into a silence shot with disappointment. The second confrontation, you could almost see everyone thinking, and it’s over before it really gets going. But their frustration was short-lived, for a few minutes later Esslyn stopped again, saying, “Do you think it’s true he’s never really laid a finger on Katherina?”

“Of course it’s true!” shouted back Harold. “Why on earth should he tell himself lies?”

Then there was a query on court etiquette, on the timing of the Adagio in the library scene, and on the position of the piano-forte. Harold once more made his way to the footlights, this time with a savage tic in one eyelid.

“If you’ve noticed all these hiccups before,” he said icily, “may I ask why you left it till this late stage to say so?”

“Because I’m not in charge. I was waiting for you to pick them up. As you’re obviously not going to, I feel, for the good of the play and the benefit of the company, I have to say something.”

“The day you have any concern for the rest of the company, Esslyn, will be the day pigs take to the skies.”

After this, as if the earlier interruptions had been just appetizers, the merest titillations, things started to go more splendidly wrong. Kitty’s padding would not stay up. The more it slid about, the more she grabbed at it. The more she grabbed at it, the more she giggled, until Harold stood up and yelled at her when she promptly burst into tears.

“It’s not so easy,” she wept, “when you’re already pregnant in the first place.”

“How many places are there, for godsake?” retorted Harold. “Wardrobe!” He stood tapping his foot and sucking his teeth until Joyce had secured Baby Mozart. Then the manuscript paper was not in its place on the props table. Or the quill pen. Or Kitty’s shawl. Deidre apologized and swore they had been there at the start of rehearsal. Salieri’s wheelchair jammed, and gold railings, not quite dry, imprinted themselves on the emperor Joseph’s white satin suit.

But the most dramatic, alarming, and ultimately hilarious contretemps was that the trestle table holding the bulk of the audience for the first night of The Magic Flute collapsed. It was piled high with sausage-chewing, pipe smoking Viennese rabble. Belching, joshing, pushing each other about, and generally overacting, all this to the loud accompaniment of rustic accents. These were mainly “Zummerset,” but one conscientious burgher who had really done his homework kept shouting, “Gott in Himmel!”

Then, as the glorious “Heil sei euch Geweihten” soared above their heads, the trestle creaked, groaned, and gave way, tumbling the by now hysterical peasantry into a large heap in the center of the stage. Everyone except Harold thought this wondrously droll. Even Esslyn jeered with cold delicacy into his lace cuff. Harold rose from his seat and smoldered at them all.

“I suppose you think that’s funny?”

“Funniest thing since the Black Death,” replied Boris.

“Right,” said his director. “Colin. ” A helpful soul repeated the cry, as did someone in the wings followed by someone in the dressing rooms, then finally a faint echo was heard under the boards of the stage.

“Good grief,” grumbled Harold as he stomped down yet again, “it’s like waiting for the star witness at the Old Bailey.”

Colin arrived with a woodshaving curt on his shoulder as if to designate rank, a hammer in his hand, and his usual air of a man dragged away from serious work to attend to the whims of playful children.

“You knew how many people this table had to hold. I thought you said you were going to reinforce it.”

“I did reinforce it. I nailed a wooden block in each corner where the struts go in. I’ll show you.” Colin picked his way over the still-supine actors, lifted the table, then said, “Stone me. Some silly sod’s taken them out again.”

“Ohhh, God!” Harold glared at his actors, one or two of whom were still weeping quietly. “You have no right to be in a theater, any of you. You’re not fit to sweep the stage. Better make some more, Colin. Now, please, let us get on.”

He was walking back to his seat when Clive Everard, hardly bothering to lower his voice, said, “That man couldn’t direct his piss down an open manhole.”

Harold stopped, turned, and replied forcefully into the shocked silence, “I hope you don’t see yourself appearing in my next production, Clive.”

“Well … I did rather fancy Telyegin… .”

“Well,” repeated Harold, “I suggest you start fancying yourself in an entirely different company. Preferably on an entirely different planet. Now, I want to get to the end of the play with—no—more—interruptions.”

And they just about did. But by this time nerves were in shreds. Umbrage had been given and taken and returned again with interest. More props had erred and strayed in their ways like lost sheep. The scenery had learned the wisdom of insecurity, and at least one door left the set almost as smartly as the actor who had just pulled it to behind him. As the final great funeral chords of music died away, actors gathered onstage, drifting into despondent clumps. Harold, after making one grand gesture of despair, flinging his arms above his head like an imperial bookmaker, joined them.

“There’s no point in giving notes,” he said. “I wouldn’t know where to start.” This admission, the first such that had ever passed his lips, seemed to shake Harold as much as his companions. “You’re all as bad as one another, and a disgrace to the business.” Then he left, striding out into the winter night in his embroidered directing slippers, not even waiting to put on his coat.

No sooner had he left than the atmosphere lightened. And as tension was released, laughter broke out, and some healthy moaning on the lines of who did Harold think he was, and it was only a bit of fun, for heaven’s sake, it’s not as if we’re getting paid.

“Personally,” said Boris, “I’m sick of saying ‘Heil, Harold.’ ”

“No one can do a thing right it seems to me,” said Rosa. “We might as well be in the Kremlin.”

“I wouldn’t mind if he were competent,” whispered a Venticelli.

“Quite,” agreed the other. Then, aside to Esslyn: “The peasants are revolting.”

There was a bit more Bolshevik rumbling, then Riley strolled down the aisle and jumped onto the stage. Several of the fifth-formers who didn’t know his nasty little ways, and Avery, who did, said, “Aahhh …”

The cat took a crouching position. His haunches quivered, his shoulders contracted, then started to jerk. He made several loud gulping noises and a strangulated cough, then deposited a small glistening heap of skin and bones and fur and blood on the boards and walked off. There was a long pause broken by Tim.

“A critic,” he said. “That’s all we need.”

“Ah, well,” said Van Swieten, “let’s look on the bright side. Everyone knows a bad dress rehearsal means a good first night.”