Death Of A Hollow Man

Entr’acte (Saturday Morning, Causton High Street)

Causton was a nice little town, but small. People who could not adequately function without their Sainsburys or Marks and Spencers had to travel to Slough or Uxbridge. But those who stayed at home were capably if unadven-turously served. In the main street were a supermarket and a fishmonger’s, a dairy, a bakery, and a very basic greengrocer. Two butchers (one first class who hung his meat properly and could prepare it the French way), Mc-Andrew’s Pharmacy, which also sold perfumes and cosmetics, two banks, and a hairdresser’s, Charming Creations by Doreece. There were two funeral parlors, a bookshop, the wine merchant’s and post office, and a small branch library.

Causton also had three eating places: Adelaide’s, which produced every combination of fried food known to man from behind a phalanx of hissing tea urns, and the Soft Shoe Cafe, which served home-made cakes, cream teas, dainty triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and morning coffee. There was also a pub, the Jolly Cavalier (née the Gay Cavalier), which sold shepherd’s pie and goujons in a basket. And, of course, there was the theater.

Saturday, November 17, was a brilliant day. The pavement sparkled crystalline with frost, and people strode briskly about, visibly preceded by the white exhalations of their breath. Carol singers held forth. Deidre and her father stood, arm in arm, outside the fishmonger’s. She was worried about the cold air on his chest, but he had so wanted to come out and had seemed very calm and collected, so she wrapped him up in two scarves and a balaclava, and here they were. Mr. Tibbs held tightly onto the empty shopping basket and gazed at his daughter with the same mixture of pride in achievement, anxiety in case he might be found wanting, and simple love that might have been found on the face of a Labrador in a similar position. Together they studied the display.

Red mullet and a huge turbot flanked by two crabs rested on a swell of pale gray ice. Humbler creatures lay, nose to tail, on white trays, plastic parsley flowering in their mouths. Mr. Tibbs regarded this piscatorial cornucopia with deep interest. He was very fond of fish. Deidre opened her purse, guiltily aware that if it wasn’t for her involvement with the Latimer, her father could dine on fish every day of his life.

“D’you think … the herrings look nice, Daddy?”

“I like herrings.”

“I could do them in oatmeal.” Deidre smiled gratefully and squeezed his arm. “Would that be all right? With brown bread and butter?”

“I like brown bread and butter.”

They joined the queue. Deidre was so used to people ignoring her father, even when she knew those same people to be his former pupils, that she was quite overwhelmed when a woman next to them turned and said how nice it was to see him up and about and how well he was looking.

And he did look well, agreed Deidre, taking a sidelong glance. His eyes were clear and shining, and he was nodding in reply to the greeting and offering his hand. He evinced some concern when the plump, glittering herrings disappeared inside sheets of the Daily Telegraph, but relaxed again once they were safely in his basket. Then he shook hands with the rest of the queue, and he and his daughter left and made their way to the church.

After listening to the carols for a few minutes and putting something in the vicar’s box, they went to the bakery, where Deidre bought a large, sliced loaf of white bread, and a cheap sponge cake oozing scarlet confectioner’s jelly and mock cream, then they went home. Mr. Tibbs took to his bed, saying he was tired after his walk, and Deidre made some tea.

She made her own bed while waiting for the kettle to boil and, smoothing the coverlet, caught sight of herself in the wardrobe mirror. She avoided mirrors usually, except for the briefest of toilets in the morning. What was the use? There was no one special to make an effort for. This had not always been the case. Ten years ago, when she was eighteen and a boy at the office seemed to be interested, she had studied the magazines for a while and tried to do things with her dark curly hair that stuck out in all directions and her overly rosy complexion, but then her mother had died and she had got so involved with domestic affairs that the boy had, understandably, drifted off, and was now happily married with three children.

It wasn’t that she was a bad shape, thought Deidre, removing her glasses so that her image became a reassuring blur. She was quite tall and quite slim, although her bottom was a bit droopy. And she had nice eyes if only she didn’t have to wear the hideous glasses. Joyce had suggested contact lenses at one point, but the expense made them out of the question, and in any case Deidre feared her prescription was too strong. She had worn the glasses since she was three. At school a Catholic friend, knowing her loathing for the wretched things, had offered to petition Lucia, patron saint of the nearsighted, on her behalf. But although she assured Deidre a few days later that this had been done, the results were negligible. Either the deity had not been in the giving vein that day or, more likely, had sniffed out a heretical supplicant and resolutely withheld the influence. Deidre gave a brief sigh, put the glasses back on and, hearing the kettle whistle, hurried downstairs.

She took some tea and a piece of cake upstairs, waiting to make sure her father drank the warm brew. Suddenly he said, “How’s it all coming along, dear? Amadeus?”

“Oh …’’ Deidre looked at him, surprised and pleased. It had been so long since he had shown any interest in the drama group. She always talked to him about the current production, playing down her subservient role, telling him only about her ideas for the play, but not for months had he been responsive. “Well, we had the most appalling dress rehearsal yesterday. In fact, it was so bad, it was funny.” She retailed some of the highlights, and when she came to the collapsing table, her father laughed so much he almost spilled his tea. Then he said, “D’you know, I think I might come to your first night. That is,” he added, “if I don’t have one of my off days.”

Deidre picked up his cup and turned away. She felt the quick sting of tears, yet at the same time a flood of hope. This was the first time he had referred directly to his illness. And what a brave, lighthearted way to speak of it. “One of my off days.” What a calm, rational, intelligent, sane way to describe things. Surely if he could talk about his other self in this detached manner, he must be getting better. Going to the theater, mingling with other people, above all, listening to the glorious music, could surely do him nothing but good. She turned back, smiling happily.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said. “I think that’s a lovely idea.”

The Blackbird bookshop was, briefly, empty of customers. Avery sat at his beautiful escritoire near the door. The ship was on two levels connected by an ankle-snapping stone step glossy with use. There was a convex mirror over the step, revealing the only hidden corner, so that Avery had a comprehensive view. People still managed to pinch things, of course, especially during the Christmas rush. Avery got up, deciding to put away some of the volumes that browsers had left out any old way on the two round tables. The Blackbird’s stock was displayed under general headings, and customers occasionally replaced books themselves, often with hilarious results. Tutting loudly, Avery pulled The Loved One from the Romance shelf and A Room with a View from Interior Design.

“Look at this,” he called a moment later to Tim, who was stirring something on the hot plate, in the cubbyhole at the rear of the shop. “Forever Amber in Collecting for Connoisseurs.”

“I should leave it there, if I were you.”

“And A Severed Head under Martial Arts.”

“That’s nothing,” said Tim, lifting the spoon to his lips. “I found A Fatal Inversion under Pure Mathematics. In any case”—he sipped again—“I’m not sure that Martial Arts is an entirely inappropriate designation for Murdoch.”

“I don’t know why you’re stirring and tasting in that affected manner,” cried Avery, moving to the cubbyhole, “we all know what a cunning way Mr. Heinz has with a tomato.”

“You said I could have what I liked for lunch.”

“I must have been mad. Even a bay leaf would add a smidgen of veracity.”

“All right, all right.”

“Or a little yogurt.”

“Don’t make a meal of it.”

“No danger of that, duckie.” They both laughed. “What’s in the rolls?”

“Watercress and Bresse Bleu. And there are some walnuts. You can open the Chablis if you like.”

“Which one?” Avery started pulling bottles out of the wine rack under the sink.

“The Grossot. And give Nico a shout.”

“Isn’t he at work, then?” Avery opened the bottle, then pulled aside the thick chenille curtain and bawled upstairs.

“Says he couldn’t concentrate with the first night so close.”

“All those empty shelves. The housewives of Britain will be in a tizz. Nico …”

“Who were you waving to just now?”

“When?” Avery frowned. “Oh, then. Poor old Deidre and her papa.”

“God, what a life. Will you promise to shoot me if I ever get like that?”

Dazed with joy at this casual assumption that they would be together when Tim was old and gray, Avery took a deep breath, then replied crisply, “I shall shoot you long before you get like that if you bring any more muck into my kitchen.”

There was a clattering of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs, and Nicholas appeared. “What’s for lunch?”

“Cheese and whine,” said Tim. “You’d be better off upstairs, believe me.”

“I thought I smelled something nice.”

“There you are,” said Tim. “Someone else with a nose for a bargain.”

“Like Dostoevsky’s for a dead cert.”

“Clever dick.”

“Famous for it.”

“Be quiet,” said Tim. “You’re embarrassing Nicholas.”

“No, you’re not,” Nicholas replied truthfully, “but I am jolly hungry.”

“Oh, Lord …” A woman wearing a squashed felt hat was staring urgently in at the window. “Nico—run and put the catch down, there’s a love. And turn the sign. I know her of old. Once she’s in, you’ll never get her out.” When Nicholas returned, Avery added, “She’s very religious.”

“Obviously. What other reason would anyone have for wearing a hat like that?”

“D’you know,” said Avery approvingly, “I think we shall make something of this boy yet. Would you like a little wine, Nico?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Oh, don’t be so silly,” retorted Avery, splashing the Chablis into three large tumblers. “I hate people who say things like that. They’re always the sort who never mind how much trouble they give you. She came in the other day prosing on—”

“Who did?”

“Her out there. Came rushing up and asked me what I knew of the Wars of the Spanish Succession. I said absolutely nothing. I hadn’t stirred from the shop all day.” Avery looked at his companions. “Laugh, I thought they’d never stop.”

“Start.”

“Start what?”

“The joke is,” Nicholas explained patiently, “laugh, I thought they’d never start.”

“You’re making it up.” Nicholas reached out for a second roll and got his fingers slapped. “And don’t be such a pig.”

“Don’t mention pigs to me. Or meat of any kind.”

“Oh, God—he’s turned vegetarian.” Avery blanched. “I knew all those beans would go to his head.”

“That would make a change,” said Tim. “What’s up, Nicholas?”

“The first-night frantics, I’ll be bound,” said Avery. “If you’re worried about your lines, I’ll hear them after we close.”

Nicholas shook his head. He knew his lines and no longer feared (as he had in The Crucible) that they would vanish once and for all the moment he stepped onstage. What was disturbing him were his pre-first night dreams. Or rather dream. He was now quite used to having some sort of nightmare before the opening of a play, and had discovered most of his fellow actors had similar experiences. They dreamed they had learned the wrong part or their costume had vanished or they stepped onstage into a completely strange drama or (very common) they were in a bus or car that went past the theater again and again and refused to stop. Nicholas’s dream fell into this last category, except that he was traveling under his own steam to the Latimer. On roller skates. He was late and flying along, down Causton High Street, knowing he would only just make it, when his feet turned into the butcher’s shop. No matter how hard he fought to carry straight on, that is where they would go.

Inside the shop everything had changed. It was no longer small and tiled with colorful posters, but vast and cavernous; a great warehouse with row after row of hanging carcasses. As Nicholas skated frantically up and down the aisles trying to find a way out, he passed hundreds of slung-up hares with their heads in stained paper bags, lambs with frills around newly beheaded necks, and huge sides of bright red marbled meat rammed with steel hooks. Sweating with fear, he would wake, the reek of blood and sawdust seemingly in his nostrils. He had had this dream now every night for a week. He just hoped to God once the first night was over, he never had it again.

He described it lightheartedly to his companions, but Tim picked up the underlying unease. “Well,” he said, “there’s only two more to go. And don’t worry about Monday, Nico. You’re going to be excellent.” Nicholas looked slightly less wan. “Avery was in my box last night, and he cried at your death scene.”

“Ohhh.” Nicholas’s face was ecstatic. “Did you really, Avery?”

“That was mostly the music,” said Avery, “so there’s no need to get above yourself. Although I do think, one day, if you work very hard, you are going to be quite good. Of course, appearing opposite Esslyn, anyone would look like the new Laurence Olivier. Or even the old one, come to that.”

“He’s so prodigiously over the top,” said Tim. “Especially in the Don Giovanni scene.”

“Absolutely,” cried Nicholas, and Tim watched with approval as some color returned to his cheeks. “That’s my favorite. ‘Makea this one agood in my ears. Justa theesa one …’ ” His voice throbbed with exaggerated Italianate fervor. “ ‘Granta thees to me.’ ”

“Oh! Can I play God?” begged Avery. “Please?.”

“Why not?” said Tim. “What’s different about today?”

Avery climbed onto a stool and pointed a chubby Blakean finger at Nicholas. “‘No … I do not need you, Salieri. I have … Mozart!’” Demon-king laughter rang out, and he climbed down holding his sides. “I’ve missed my vocation—no doubt about it.”

“Didn’t you think,” said Nicholas, “that there was something funny about the whole dress rehearsal?”

“Give that man the Barbara Cartland prize for understatement.”

“I mean funny peculiar. I can’t believe all those upsets were accidental, for a start.”

“Oh, I don’t know. One sometimes has glorious evenings like that,” said Tim. “Remember the first night of Gaslight?’’

“And the Everards. They’re getting more and more contemptuous,” continued Nicholas. “That remark about the manhole cover. I don’t know how they dare.”

“They dare because they’re under Esslyn’s protection. Though what he sees in them is an absolute mystery.”

p>

“Don’t talk to me,” said Nicholas, sulkily sidetracked, “about mysteries.”

“You’re not going to start on that again,” said Avery. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see why I should let it drop. You promised if I told you my secret, you’d tell me yours.”

“And I will,” said Tim. “Before the first night.”

“It’s before the first night now. ”

“We’ll tell you on the half, honeybun,” said Avery. “And that’s a promise. Just in case you tell someone else.”

“That’s ridiculous. I trusted you, and you haven’t told anyone else … have you?”

“Naturally not.” Tim was immediately reassuring, but Avery said nothing. Nicholas looked at him, eyebrows raised interrogatively. Avery’s watery pale blue eyes wavered and slid around, alighting on the remaining crumbs of cheese, the walnuts, anything, it seemed, but Nicholas’s direct gaze. “Avery?”

“Well …” Avery gave a shamefaced little smile, “I haven’t really told anyone. As such.”

“Oh, Christ—what do you mean, ‘as such’?”

“I did sort of hint a bit… only to Boris. He’s the soul of discretion, as you know.”

“Boris? You might as well have had leaflets printed and handed them out in the High Street!”

“There’s no need to take that tone,” Avery shouted, equally loudly. “If people don’t want to be found out, they shouldn’t be unfaithful. And anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. If you hadn’t passed it on in the first place, no one else would know at all.”

This was so obviously true that Nicholas could think of nothing to say in reply. Furiously he pushed back his chair and, without even thanking them for the lunch, clattered back upstairs.

“Some people,” said Avery, and looked nervously across the table. But Tim was already stacking the glasses and plates and taking them over to the sink. And there was something about the scornful set of his shoulders and his stiff, repudiating spine that warned against further overtures.

Poor Avery, cursing his careless tongue, tidied and bustled and kept his distance for the rest of the afternoon.

Colin Smy was replacing the blocks of wood in the trestle table, and Tom Barnaby was painting the fireplace. It was a splendid edifice, which Colin had made from a fragile frame of wooden struts covered with thick paper. It had then been decorated with whorls and loops and arabesques and swags made from heavily sized cloth. It now looked, even without the benefit of lighting, superb. Tom had mixed long and patiently to find exactly the right faded brickish red, which, together with swirls of cream and pale gray, gave a beautiful marbled effect. (In the Penguin Amadeus the fireplace had been described as golden, but Harold hoped he had a bit more about him than to slavishly copy other people’s ideas, thank you very much.)

Although Barnaby ritually grumbled, there had been very few productions over the past fifteen years that he hadn’t spent at least an hour or two on, sometimes even tearing himself away from his beloved garden. Now, looking around the scene dock, he remembered with special pleasure a cutout garden hedge, all silver and green, which had represented the forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and how it had shimmered in the false moonshine.

Barnaby derived great nourishment from his twin leisure activities. He was not greatly given to self-analysis, believing the end result, given man’s built-in capacity for self-deception, to be messy and imprecise, but he could not but observe, and draw conclusions from, the contrast the fruitfulness of his off-duty time and the aridity of much of his working life. Not that there was no call for imagination in his job: The best policemen always had some (not too much) and knew how to use it. But the results when it was applied were hardly comparable to those of his present occupation.

If he failed, the case would be left as a mass of data awaiting a lucky cross-reference from some future keen eyed constable eager for promotion. If he succeeded, the felon would end up incarcerated in some institution or other, while Barnaby would experience a fleeting satisfaction before facing once more, for the umpteenth thousandth time, the worst humanity had to offer, which, if you caught it on a bad day, could be terrible indeed.

So was it any wonder, he now reflected, that in what little spare time he had, he painted pictures or stage scenery or worked in his garden? There, at least, things grew in beauty, flowered, withered, and died all in their proper season. And if freakish Nature cut them down before their allotted span, at least it was without malice aforethought. “You’ve done a grand job there, Tom.”

“Think so?”

“Our Fuehrer will be pleased.”

Barnaby laughed. “I don’t do it for him.”

“Which of us does?”

They worked on in a companionable silence surrounded by fragments from alien worlds. There was the bosky world (spotted toadstools from The Babes in the Wood), the chintzy (fumed oak from Murder at the Vicarage), and the world of pallid chinoiserie (Teahouse of the August Moon—paper screens). Barnaby glanced up and caught the shy eye of a mangy goose peering through the frame of a french window (Hay Fever).

Colin finished hammering four new blocks into the trestle, then upended it, saying, “That’ll do it. They can dance on that with hobnail boots and it should hold.”

“Who do you think took the others out?” said Tom, Joyce having described the scene to him.

“Oh, some silly bugger. I shall be glad when this play’s over and done with. Every rehearsal something goes wrong. Then it’s Colin do this, Colin fix that. …” Barnaby selected an especially fine brush for one of the curlicues and stroked the paint on carefully. Colin’s automatic grumbling flowed peacefully around his ears. The two men had worked together, on and off, for so long that they had now reached the stage of feeling that really they’d said all they had to say and, apart from certain ritualistic remarks, kept a silence as comfortable as a pair of old slippers.

Barnaby knew all about his companion. He knew that Colin had brought up his son, motherless since the age of eight. And that he was a gifted craftsman who carved delicate, high-stepping animals full of lively charm. (Barnaby had bought a delightful gazelle for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday.) And that Colin loved David with a protective devotion that had not grown less as the boy developed into a young man more than capable of taking care of himself. The only time Barnaby had seen Colin lose his temper was on David’s behalf. He thought how fortunate it was that Colin was rarely in the wings at rehearsal and so missed most of the sniping that David was having to put up with. Now, knowing of the younger Smy’s reluctance to perform, Barnaby said, “I expect David’ll be glad when next Saturday comes.”

Colin did not reply. Thinking he had not heard, Barnaby repeated his remark, adding, “At least he hasn’t got any lines this time.” Silence. Barnaby took a sideways look at his companion. At Colin’s stocky frame and tufty hair, black when they had first met, now brindled silver like his own. Colin’s usual expression of sturdy self-containment was slightly awry, and a second, much less familiar, lurked beneath. Barnaby said, “What’s up?”

“I’m worried about him.” Colin looked sharply at Barnaby. “This is just between us, Tom.”

“Naturally.”

“He’s got involved with some girl. And she’s married. He hasn’t been himself for some time. A bit … quiet … you know?” Barnaby nodded, thinking that David was so quiet anyway, it would take a father to spot the silence deepening. “I thought it might be that,” continued Colin. “I’d be really delighted to see him settled—after all, he’s nearly twenty-seven. So I said, ‘Bring her home then and let’s have a look at her,’ and he said she wasn’t free. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Well … I suppose there isn’t a lot of point.”

“Not what you hope for them though, is it, Tom?”

“Oh,” said Barnaby, “I shouldn’t worry too much. Things might still work out.” He smiled. “They don’t mate for life these days, you know.”

“I pictured him going out with some nice local girl. A bit younger than himself, perhaps courting in the front room on the settee like me and Glenda used to. And grandchildren. What man our age hasn’t pictured his grandchildren?” Colin sighed. “They never turn out like you think, do they, Tom?”

Barnaby pictured his little girl, now nineteen. Tall, clever, malicious, stunningly attractive, with a heart of purest platinum. He could not help being proud of her achievements, but he knew what Colin meant.

“That they don’t,” he said. “Nothing at all like you think.”

Earnest Crawley was carving the joint. He worked like a surgeon, unemotionally but with great precision and a certain amount of eclat, wielding the long, shining knife like a scimitar and laying the slices of meat tenderly on the hot plates.

Rosa browned the potatoes on top of the stove. She wore a loose, flowing garment, the cuffs of which sailed dangerously close to the fragrant, spitting fat.

“How are them fellas getting on with their part then, love?”

“What fellows?”

“The ones that sound like an Italian dinner.”

“Oh—the Venticelli. Awful—in more ways than one.”

As Rosa retailed one or two of the more amusing incidents from the dress rehearsal, she could not help comparing Earnest’s innocent and rather touching curiosity with Esslyn’s grandiose self-absorption, always present but intensified to an incredibly high degree on the eve of a new production. The whole house had fizzed then with prima-donnaish emotion. In fact, all their married lives had been conducted with as much noise and flourish as a carnival procession. A fanfaronade of first nights, last nights, rehearsals, parties, and nonstop dramas both on and off the set.

Caught off guard and drawn carelessly into bitter recollection, Rosa corrected herself. All her married life. Esslyn, fortunate man, had inhabited another world for a large part of the working week. He went to the office, dined with clients, had drinks with acquaintances (never friends) who were not of the theater. Rosa had lost, through neglect and narrowing interests, the few women friends she had ever had. And so intertwined had her role as Mrs. Carmichael become with her many performances at the Latimer that it had grown to seem equally chimerical until the crunch came.

She had become aware quite early in the marriage that Esslyn was playing around. He’d said that sort of behavior was expected of a leading man in a theatrical company, and he would always come safely home. Rosa, furious, had yelled back that if all she’d wanted was something that would come safely home, she would have linked her future to a racing pigeon. However, as the years flew by and he always did come safely home, she became not just resigned to his philandering but also in a strange way rather proud of what she saw as his continuing popularity, like a mother whose child consistently brings home all the prizes. There was also a positive side to all this unfaithfulness, namely that he had less sexual energy to spare for his wife. Like many people who live in a cloud of high-flown romanticism, Rosa didn’t care for a lot of heavy activity in the bedroom. (Here again, as in so many other ways, dear Earnest was ideal, seeming quite happy to bounce about, gently and rather apologetically, in the missionary position, usually after Sunday lunch.) So, as far as Rosa was concerned, Esslyn’s announcement that he wanted a divorce had come out of the blue. He said he had fallen in love with the seventeen-year-old playing Princess Carissima in Mother Goose, and although within a few weeks the girl had found a boyfriend of her own age, passed her “A” levels, and sensibly taken herself off to university, Esslyn, having tasted the heady wine of freedom, had still pressed ahead.

Rosa’s reaction to his defection had frightened and amazed her. At first, so accustomed was she to living in a state of almost perpetual mimesis, she hardly recognized that a great core of real pain lay behind her shoutings and ravings and great sweeps of dramatic movement. Then, after she had been bought off and left White Wings, she had spent long, terrible weeks in her new flat picking over her emotions, struggling to separate the false regrets from the true, attempting to follow the wretched thread of her anguish to its source. During this time she would prowl about, her arms locked across her chest as if she were literally holding herself together; as if her whole body were an open wound. Gradually she started to understand her true feelings. To be able to examine them, test them, give them a name. The bleak, regretful sorrow that persistently invaded her mind she now recognized as a state of mourning for the child she’d never had. (Had not even realized she’d really wanted.) She carried this bereavement continually, like a small, cold stone, in her breast.

During this period she had forced herself, buttressed by natural pride and tremendous efforts of self-control, to continue her activities at the Latimer, and the second emotion was named for her the moment Esslyn announced Kitty’s pregnancy. Although Rosa was looking fixedly elsewhere, she could tell by the sideways stretch to his voice that he was smiling broadly. Hatred had rampaged then so furiously and with such power through her body that she felt had she opened her mouth she must have roared. She had been terrified, fearing this hot malevolence would control her. That she might simply go out one dark night and savage them both. Now, she no longer thought that. But the bruising embers still slumbered, and sometimes she would open the furnace door to peep and poke at them a little, and the burning would scorch her cheeks.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Oh.” Rosa turned her attention to the potatoes. “Yes, love. I’m fine.”

“Don’t let them catch.”

“I won’t.”

The potatoes looked and smelled wonderful; buttery deep brown with little crisp bits around the edges. Rosa gave them another minute, more to regain her equilibrium than because they needed it, then decanted them into a Pyrex dish and flung over some chopped parsley. They sat down. Earnest helped himself to the vegetables, then passed them to Rosa, who did the same.

“Only three potatoes?”

“Well, you know …” She patted the folds of her tummy, concealed beneath the billowy robe.

“What nonsense,” cried Earnest. “If Allah had meant women to be thin, he’d never have invented the djellaba.”

Rosa laughed. He had surprised her more than once, had Earnest, with his witticisms. She helped herself to several more potatoes while Earnest congratulated himself, not for the first time, on his foresight in placing a regular order for the Reader’s Digest.

Esslyn sat at the breakfast table with The Times and squares of Oxford marmalade-coated toast, patronizing his wife. “You’ll be perfectly all right. After all, you’re not actually overloaded with lines. Hardly any more than with Poppy Dickie.”

“I feel sick.”

“Of course you feel sick, my angel. You’re pregnant.” Esslyn folded back the business section before reverting to the matter in hand. “How on earth would you cope if you were tackling Salieri? I’m never off.”

“But you love it!”

“That’s hardly the point.” Esslyn abandoned his attempt to follow the fortunes of Rio Tinto Zinc and looked at his wife severely. “Apart from the satisfaction of knowing that one has given a great deal of pleasure to a great many people, if one has a talent, it is one’s duty to exercise it to the full. I hate waste.”

Kitty followed his glance, picked up her remaining square of toast—now a bit clammy and congealed—and chewed on it morosely. “I’d hardly call our audiences a great many people.”

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“Huh?”

“Try not to look so vacant, kitten.” Esslyn scraped back his chair. “What have you done with my briefcase?”

“I had it with some mushrooms and bacon before you came down.”

“Ah.” Esslyn crossed to the old deal dresser holding pretty blue-and-white jugs and plates, picked up his case, and put The Times into it. Then he returned to the table and brushed her cheek with his cool lips. “Back soon.”

“Where are you going?”

“Work. I have to call in”—he moistened his finger and pressed a crumb to it that had strayed from his plate— “something at the office.”

“But you never go in on Saturday,” exclaimed Kitty, turning down her pretty lips.

“Don’t whine, my precious. It doesn’t become you.” Esslyn deposited the crumb in the breadbasket. “I shan’t be long. Come and help me on with my coat.”

After she had wound Esslyn’s silk Paisley muffler perhaps a trifle too snugly around his neck and buttoned his coat on the wrong side, Kitty insisted on feathering her husband’s lips with many little kisses. Then she clip-clopped back to the kitchen and watched him back the BMW out of the double garage and down the drive. She opened the window, flinching a little in the sharp air, and waved. She listened, loving the machine-gun spatter of tires on gravel. There was something about that sound.

Why it should give her such intense satisfaction she could never understand. Perhaps it was simply a matter of luxurious association—all those wealthy cardboard cutouts in American soaps crunching grandly around pillared porticoes in their stretch limos. Or maybe it was because the sound reminded her of happy childhood holidays in Dorset with the cold waves dragging the pebbles to and fro. Or perhaps it was simply that the rattling gravel meant her husband had finally left the house.

Kitty gave a last wave for luck and went upstairs to their bedchamber, scene of mutual delights, where Salieri’s blue-and-silver coat, lace-ruffled shirt, and cream trousers were laid over a chair back. While everyone else had been happy to leave their costumes in the dressing room (which was, after all, securely locked), Esslyn had ostentatiously brought his back to White Wings, insisting that after such a dress rehearsal, he wouldn’t trust the stage management to look after a pair of worn-out jock straps.

He had tried the costume on before getting properly dressed this morning, strutting his stuff in front of the cheval glass, anticipating aloud the moment when he would stand up from his wheelchair, fling off his tattered old dressing gown, and take the audience’s collective breath away. Kitty only half listened. He had paraded a bit more, then said something in garbled French before changing into his business suit and properly subduing the day. Now Kitty scrunched the coat into a tight ball, threw it in the air, and kicked it as far as she could before tripping into the connecting bathroom.

She turned the necks of two golden swans and tipped some Floris Stephanotis bath oil into the steaming water. Then she poured a generous amount of the sweet-scented stuff into her cupped hand. She massaged her calves and thighs, then her stomach, and, last of all, her breasts. She closed her eyes, swaying with pleasure. Reflected in the dark glass wall tiles, four glittering bronzy Kittys swayed, too. Then, fully anointed, she turned off the taps and slid into the sunken circular bath.

Around the rim, carpeted in ivory velour, were creams and unguents, several bottles of nail polish, her copy of Amadeus, and a telephone covered with mock ermine. She picked up the receiver, dialed, and a male voice said, “Hullo.”

“Hullo yourself, scrumptious. Guess what? He’s gone to work.” The voice rumbled, and Kitty said, “I couldn’t let you know. I didn’t know myself till he was halfway through his boiled egg and soldiers. I thought you’d be pleased … Oh… . can’t you?” She pouted prettily. “Well, I haven’t. In fact, I’ve got nothing on at all at the moment. Listen.” She splashed the water with her hand. A chuckle came down the line, and Kitty laughed, too. The same raunchy, harsh sound that Nicholas had heard in the lighting box. “I shall just have to settle for the Jacuzzi then, darling. Or a go on the exercise bike.” Another snort. “But it won’t be the same. See you Monday, then.”

Kitty hung up, and as she did so, the flexible cord caught on her script and it fell into the bath. Kitty sighed, and her lovely coral lower lip pushed forward delightfully, half covering the twin lascivious peaks of the upper. Sometimes, she thought, life was just too too much. Paul Scofield, clutching his shabby shawl, glared up at her from beneath the blue water like some astonishing new specimen of marine life. She poked him crossly with her toe, leaned back, closed her eyes, rested her head on the herb-filled pillow, and thought of love.

Harold was meeting the press. The real press, not just the regular, potbellied, beer-swilling hack from the Causton Echo who had interviewed Harold during the run of The Cherry Orchard, then described the play as “an epic agricultural drama by Checkoff.” Although, to be fair to the man, this might have been due to Harold referring to the play simply as The Orchard. He always tried to shorten titles, believing this made him appear more au fait with theatrical parlance. He had spoken of Rookers (Rookery Nook), Once (in a Lifetime), Night (Must Fall), and Mother (Goose). “This Mother’s going to be quite a show,” he had confided to the local inkslinger, who had, perhaps fortunately, replaced the missing noun before submitting his copy.

But today, aahh, today Harold was meeting with Ramona Plume from the features page of the South East Bucks Observer. Naturally he had always let them know about his work, but the response until now had been, to say the least, tepid. However, two letters, followed by a diligence of phone calls extolling the dazzlingly inventive nature of the current production, had finally produced a response. Anticipating a photographer, Harold had dressed accordingly in a longish gray overcoat with an astrakhan collar, shining black knee boots, and a Persian lamb hat. The weather was bitterly cold, and hailstones like transparent marbles were bouncing about on the pavement. A pigeon, its wing feathers stiff with ice, regarded him glumly from the Latimer doorway.

They were late. Harold had rather ostentatiously looked at his watch, shaken it, lifted one of his earflaps, and listened, then started to pace tubbily up and down, looking like a cross between Diaghilev and Winnie the Pooh. The pigeon, perhaps thinking a spot of exercise might warm up the feathers, left the doorway and joined him. Harold was very much aware that people were noticing him, and favored the occasional passerby with a gracious nod. Most of them would know who he was—he had, after all, been the town’s theater director for many years—the others, as became plain from their glances and whispered comments, recognized his quality. For Harold walked in an aura of barnstorming splendor. In him the strenuous creative struggle of rehearsal, the glamor of first nights, and the glittering aftermath of post-performance soirees were made manifest.

Sometimes, to underline the extraordinary superiority of his position, Harold would torture himself, just a little, with one of his most magnetic and alarming daydreams and, to pass the time, he slipped into it now. In this dream he would fantasize, rather like Marie Antoinette milk-maiding about at the Trianon, that he was living in Causton as a nonentity. Just another middle-aged dullard. He saw himself at the Rotarians with other drearies, pompously discussing local fund-raising or, worse, serving on the parish council, where an entire evening could be frittered away delving into the state of the drains. Activities generating a self-righteous glow while filling in an abyss of boredom. On Sunday he would clean the car (a Fiesta), and in the evening there would be television with programs of interest noted well in advance. After this would come the writing of a why-oh-why letter to the Radio Times, pointing out some faulty pronunciation or error in period costume or setting, and a temporary leg up, status-wise, in the community if it was actually printed.

It was usually at this point that Harold, his face sheened with the cold sweat of terror, stopped the panorama, leaped down from the tumbril, and hotfooted it back to reality. Now, he was helped on his way by the sight of a shabby Citroen 2CV parking at the corner of Carradine Street on a double yellow line. He collected himself and hurried forward.

“You can’t stop there.”

“Mr. Winstanley?”

“Oh.” Harold adjusted his hat and facial expression. He said, disbelievingly, “Are you from the Observer?” She hardly looked old enough to be in charge of a paper route, let alone a feature column.

“That’s right.” Ramona Plume pointed at the windshield as she scrambled out. A large disc was stamped PRESS. “I’m okay for a few minutes, surely?”

“A few …” Harold led the way to the Latimer’s glass doors. “The story I have to tell, my dear, will take a lot longer than a few minutes.”

As the girl followed him into the foyer, she laughed and said, “Is he with you?” jerking her head at the pigeon. Harold tightened his lips. Ms. Plume opened a small leather case slung on a thin strap across her chest. Harold, who had assumed this to be a handbag, watched disconcertedly as she undid a flap, pressed a button, and started a tape. He leaped into speech. “I first thought of producing Ama—”

“Hang on. Just rewinding.”

“Oh.” Miffed, Harold strolled over to the photograph board and stood in a proprietorial stance, one arm draped across the top. “I thought—when your colleague turns up— the first set of photographs might be here?”

“No piccies.”

“What!”

“It’s Saturday. Nobody free.” She tossed back a long fall of blond hair. “Weddings. Dog Shows. Pudding and Pie. Scouts’ Xmas Fair.”

“I see.” Harold bit back a sharp rejoinder. It never did to antagonize the press. And he had plenty of stills, including a recent one of himself wreathed in a Davidoffian haze directing Nicholas in Night Must Fall.

Ms. Plume poked a microphone not much bigger than a toothbrush at him, saying, “I understand from your letter that this is the Latimer’s ninetieth production?”

Harold smiled and shook his head. There was an awful lot of ground to be covered before they discussed the precise place of Amadeus in the Winstanley pantheon. He took a deep breath. “I always knew,” he began, “that I was destined for—”

“Just a sec.” She dashed into the street, looked up and down, and dashed back. “They’re getting very sniffy at the office about paying fines.”

“As I was saying—”

“Are the programs done yet?”

‘‘What for?”

“Amadeus, of course.”

“I should hope so. It’s the first night on Monday.”

“Could I have one?”

“What … now?”

“In case I have to zip off. Get the names right—that’s the main bit, isn’t it? With Amdram.”

Amdram! Harold went to the filing cabinet, feeling sourly that the way things were going it might be a good idea to skip his formative years. He took two first night tickets from the cash box and slipped them into a program, saying, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the play at all?”

“I’ll say. Saw it at the National. That Simon Callow. Amaayzing.”

“Well, of course Peter Hall and I do approach the text from an entirely different—”

“Did you see Chance in a Million?”

“What?”

“On the telly. Simon Callow. And Faust. Totally in the nudies at one point.”

“I’m afraid I-”

“Amaayzing.”

“You seem very young,” said Harold acerbically, “to be a reporter.”

“I’m their cub.” The cuddliness of the noun did not mollify, especially when she added, “I always get the short straw.”

“Look. If we could go on to my next—”

A black and yellow shape peered through the doors. The girl gave a piercing squeal and flew across the carpet. “I’m coming .. . Don’t book me … please .. . Press. Press!” She waved her microphone at the phlegmatic profile and disappeared into the street. Harold hurried after and caught up with her as she climbed back into the car. She wound the window down. “Sorry it was a bit rushed.”

“There’s some tickets inside the program.” He dropped it into her lap as she took first gear. “Front row. Do try to come. …”

On the way back to Slough the Observer’s cub drew into a rest area, changed her tape of Bros for the Wedding Present, and checked her appointments list. In half an hour Honey Rampant, the TV personality, was opening a garden center. There’d probably be snacks and munchies, so Ms. Plume decided to drive straight there instead of stopping for a sandwich. Before driving off again, she tore up the front-row tickets for Amadeus and threw the fragments out of the car window.

PLAYBILL

AMADEUS by PETER SHAFFER

THE VENTICELLI: Clive Everard

Donald Everard

VALET TO SALIERI: David Smy

COOK TO SALIERI: Joyce Barnaby

ANTONIO SALIERI: Esslyn Carmichael

TERESA SALIERI: Rosa Crawley

JOHANN KILIAN VON STRACK: Victor Lacey

COUNT ORSINI-ROSENBERG: James Baker

BARON VAN SWIETEN: Bill Last

CONSTANZE WEBER: Kitty Carmichael

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART: Nicholas Bradley

MAJOR-DOMO: Anthony Chailis

JOSEPH II, EMPEROR OF AUSTRIA: Boris Kent

KATHERINA CAVALIERI: Sarah Pitt-Keighley

CITIZENS OF VIENNA: Kenney Badel, David smy, Sarah Pitt-Keighley, Joyce Barnaby, Kevin Latimer, Noel Armstrong, Alan L Hughes, Lucy Mitchell, Guy Catchpole, Phoebe Glover

DESIGN: Avery Phillips

LIGHTING: Tim Young

WARDROBE: Joyce Barnaby

STAGE MANAGER: Colin Smy

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER: Deidre Tibbs

DIRECTED BY Harold Winstanley