Death Of A Hollow Man

First Night

Everything was ready. Checked and counterchecked. Deidre sent her young assistants up to the clubroom for some orangeade or a cup of coffee, leaving Colin to set the pianoforte. It was already past the half, and a buzz of excited conversation came up from the dressing rooms.

“I shall come in on a wing and a prayer,” Boris was informing everyone.

“I thought you were an atheist.”

“No one’s an atheist on first nights, darling.”

“Where’s Nicholas?”

“He’s always here hours before anyone else.”

“Someone’s pinched my eyebrow pencil.”

“I’ve forgotten every line. You’ll all have to cover for me.

“Has anyone seen my stockings?”

“I hear Joyce’s daughter’s coming.”

“Oh, God. Well, I hope she keeps her opinions to herself. I can still remember what she said about Shop at Sly Corner. ”

“I thought Harold was going to go into orbit.”

“I mean—no one minds constructive criticism.”

“You’ve got my stockings.”

“No, I haven’t. They’re mine!”

“If any of the furniture collapses tonight, I shall dry up completely.”

“They are not yours. Look—here’s the stain where I upset my wet-white.”

“We’ve got an almost full house.”

“Oh, the master will be pleased. ‘A bum on every seat, my loveys.’ ”

“ ‘And mass genuflection.’ ”

“It’s nearly the quarter. Where on earth can Nicholas be?”

Nicholas was late for the most thrilling of reasons. Tim and Avery had just told him their secret, and he had been so excited and alarmed that he had stayed in the lighting box questioning them until the very last minute. The facts were these. Tim always designed his own lighting for each production, working at home with a model of the set. He was especially pleased with his plan for Amadeus, amber and rose for Schonbrunn, grays behind the whispering Venticelli, crepuscular violet when Mozart died. Harold, as always, would have none of it. (“Just who is directing this epic? No—I’m serious. I really want to know.”) That same night Tim carried out Harold’s lighting plot for the first time, and when he and Avery got home, Avery burst into tears, saying his beautiful set looked as if it were part of a sewer after its star product hit the fan.

It was then that Tim decided that he had had enough and put forward his proposition. It was simply that, on the first night, he would light the play from his own original plan. Once the curtain was up, there would be nothing Harold or anyone else could do about it, and he would hardly wish to make a scene during intermission. Of course, it would mean the end of their time at the Latimer, but both were prepared to face that and had already put out feelers toward a group in Uxbridge. They had sneaked into the theater on Sunday afternoon to reset everything and run through the new plot.

Now, Nicholas entered the dressing room bursting with suppressed information and squeezed into the only remaining space. Around him actors were nearly all in costume. Von Strack was pulling on white stockings, David Smy struggled with his cravat, the Venticelli—caped and masked and looking more like bats than grasshoppers— whirled about with seedily sinister affection. The air smelled of powder, after-shave, and hair spray. Nicholas got into his lace-trimmed shirt, picked up a tube of Kamera Klear, and rubbed some in, watching his pallid complexion turn a warm apricot. He wore very little makeup now, and looked back to his debut in The Crucible, where he sported heavy lake wrinkles and wisps of crinkly snow-white hair with not a little condescension.

On the other side of the room Esslyn was shaking powder onto his wig, and Nicholas, seeing in his mirror the other man’s reflection, was uncomfortably reminded of his own loose-lippedness. Behind Nicholas, the emperor Joseph, heavy in white satin and jeweled decorations, paced slowly up and down like a great glittering slug. Nicholas imagined the small rouged lips pushed forward and whispering what had once been his own secret into the collective company ear.

Esslyn, apparently unaware of his invisible horns, was looking especially pleased with himself, like a cat that has swallowed a particularly succulent canary. He lifted his hands and adjusted his wig, and Nicholas saw his rings sparkle. He wore six. Most were encrusted with stones, and one had short, savage spines and perched on his finger like an embattled baby porcupine. Now, he pushed a tin of Cremine that had had the temerity to stray onto his turf smartly aside and began to speak.

Even as he tuned in, Nicholas knew he would not like what the other man was going to say. There was relish in his voice; it curled with spite. He was talking about Deidre. Relaying something that she had told him in confidence but that he felt was too delightful not to pass on. Apparently she had received a telephone call at work last week from the police. It seemed her father had wandered off from the day center in the rain without a coat or even a jacket, and had been found half an hour later attempting to direct the traffic at the junction of Casey Street and Hillside.

“So I said,” continued Esslyn, “trying to keep a straight face at the thought of that senile old fool out in the pouring rain, ‘How dreadful.’ And she said, ‘I know’— he paused then, giving them the benefit of his immaculate timing—‘he doesn’t know that area at all.’ ”

Spontaneously they nearly all roared. Nicholas included. True, he laughed less long and heartily than the others, but still, he did laugh. A moment later Deidre appeared in the doorway.

“A quarter of an hour, everyone.”

There was an immediate chorus of overloud and falsely grateful thank you’s. Only Esslyn, carefully applying lip liner, said nothing. It was hard to tell, thought Nicholas, whether she had overheard or not. Her high color would conceal a blush, and as her expression was always riddled with anxiety, this gave no clue, either. She stood poised in the doorway for all the world, as the Everards said the second she’d disappeared, as if she was about to break into a gallop. To do the dressing room credit, there was no laughter this time.

Someone got up and followed her out, and Nicholas nearly got up and followed him, he was so sick of them all. He felt he should try to make amends, and pictured himself approaching Deidre in the wings. But what could he say? I wasn’t one of those who laughed? Deeply embarrassing as well as untrue. I’m sorry, Deidre, I didn’t mean to be hurtful and I’m really sad about your father? Even stickier, and what if she hadn’t overheard at all? In that case, putting her so firmly in the picture would simply cause unnecessary pain. Then, to make himself feel better, he started to feel irritated with her. Honestly, he thought, for someone always dependent on the kindness of strangers, she could certainly pick her confidants. A callous sod like Esslyn was the last person she should be opening her heart to. What else did she expect? But shifting a fair proportion of his guilt onto Deidre’s already bowed shoulders made him feel even worse. He became aware that he was furious with Esslyn for catapulting him into this emotional distraction when all his thoughts should be channeled toward Act I, scene 1. Almost before he knew he meant to, he spoke.

“You know your trouble, Esslyn?” Esslyn’s hands were still. He looked inquiringly into his glass. “You’re too full of the milk of human kindness.”

There was an immediate hush. Blanched faces turned exaggeratedly to each other. Boris stopped pacing and stared aghast at the back of Nicholas’s head. Van Swieten said, “You fool.” Nicholas stared back at them all defiantly. This respect for Esslyn could be taken too far. He may have been the company’s leading man for fifteen years, but that didn’t make him God Almighty.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” asked Boris.

“I’ve spoken my mind,” said Nicholas. “Anyone’d think it was a hanging matter.”

“You’ve quoted from The Scottish Play.”

“What?”

“ ‘Yet I do fear thy nature,’ ” quavered Boris. “ ‘It is too full of the milk of human kindness—’ ”

“Shut up!” yelled Orsini-Rosenberg. “You’ll make it worse.”

“That’s right,” said Clive Everard. “Nicholas did it unknowingly.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How should I know?”

“I don’t suppose it matters.”

“It matters terribly,” called Van Swieten.

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

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

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

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

“What awful music. It simpers.”

“Salieri.”

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

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

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

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

“Hello, Doris.”

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

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

“You remember my daughter?”

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

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

“You made it then, Gavin?”

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

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

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

“What?” He stared at her blindly.

“You could have eaten her in the interval.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve forgotten where you are.”

“Row C in the middle.”

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

“So far.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Barnaby’s right Cully slid slowly downward, her shoulders beneath the black lace trembling slightly, and covered her face with her hands. Three seats in front and to the left, he saw Doris Winstanley glance anxiously at her husband. Harold’s profile was rigid, his lips clamped tightly together. Then a light so brilliant it seemed impossible the stage and four walls could contain it shone. This was accompanied by a stellar explosion of glorious sound from the C Minor Mass, then everything faded to a predawn gray. Esslyn finished his final speech, crammed his mouth with sweetmeats, and strode off.

Barnaby watched Harold propel himself up the aisle two steps at a time, then rose himself and turned to his daughter. “Would you like a drink?”

“Oh, Dad.” She got up slowly. “I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. What’s my eye makeup like?”

“Runny.”

“I’m not surprised. We did a cod panto at the Footlights last year, but it wasn’t a patch on that.” She followed him up the aisle. “It must be some sort of a record when you go to the theater and the best thing onstage is the lighting. Oh … oh …”

“Don’t start gurgling again.”

“I’m not …” She snuffled into her hanky. “Honestly.”

As they drew level with the back row of seats and the exit doors, Barnaby saw Mr. Tibbs. He was leaning forward, holding the back of the seat before him. He looked grubby and abstracted, like a saint at his devotions. Barnaby, who hadn’t seen him for nearly two years, was shocked at his physical deterioration. His skin was like tissue paper and salt white. Blue corded veins pulsed on his forehead. Barnaby greeted him and received a smile of singular sweetness in reply, although he was convinced the old man had no idea who it was that spoke to him. Three young people sitting between Mr. Tibbs and the wall kept saying “Excuse me” very politely, but he did not seem either to hear or to understand, and eventually they climbed over the row of seats in front and got out that way.

The clubroom was packed. Cully dug out a wisp of lace and a mirror from her jet-encrusted reticule, spat in the hanky, and wiped away a runnel of mascara. When Barnaby brought her wine, she nodded across at the lighting box on which Harold was tapping more and more urgently. Then he put his lips to the door jamb and hissed. The door remained closed. Clamping his successful impresario’s smile into position, Harold backed away and moved once more into the center of the room, where Cully caught his arm.

“Wonderful lighting,” she said. “Brilliant. Tell Tim I thought so.”

“There’s … there’s no need for that!” cried Harold, put-putting like a faulty two-stroke. “Tim is simply a technician. No more, no less. I design the lighting for my productions.”

‘‘Oh. Really?” Cully’s tone, though exquisitely polite, positively curdled with disbelief. Barnaby took her arm and hustled her away.

“I shan’t bring you out again.”

“You used to say that when I was five.”

“You don’t improve. Drink up.” Barnaby made an irritated tch as Cully lowered her delightful nose into the glass and sniffed. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. If you like paraquat and crushed bananas.” Sergeant Troy approached, trailing his resentful wife, and Barnaby forced a smile. “Enjoying yourself, Gavin?” “Not bad, is it, sir?” He spoke to Barnaby, but his eyes were on Barnaby’s companion. “I mean for amateurs.” He continued to stare until the chief inspector was forced to introduce them.

“Your daughter.” Barnaby appreciated Troy’s poleaxed demeanor. Each time Cully returned home, he was newly amazed that such an elegant, sassy creature should be the fruit of his loins. “I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before, Cully.”

“I’m at Cambridge. Final year.”

Yes, you would be, thought Mrs. Troy, reflecting tartly on the unequal distribution of gifts come christening time.

“Oh—this is my wife, Maure,” said Troy, and the two girls touched hands.

“More what?” said Cully.

“Troy,” said Maureen, with a flinty spark in her eye. Once more Barnaby led his daughter out of trouble. As they backed away, he nearly stepped on Tim, who nipped out of the box, looked quickly around the room, and hurried down the stairs. Meanwhile Harold had stormed through the wings shooting glances of disgust at the stage staff—who alone, during the disastrous first half, had hardly put a foot wrong—and was now in the men’s dressing room impresaroing like mad to powerful effect.

“Never … never in all my years in the business,” bawled Harold, “have I seen such a grotesque display of mind-boggling incompetence. Not to mention complete lack of verismo. All of you were corpsing. Except Salieri.”

“Do you mind?” said Nicholas angrily. “I certainly wasn’t.”

“We were thrown by the lighting,” said Emperor Joseph. Unfortunately adding, “Fabulous though it was.”

“You should be used to my lighting by now,” squawked Harold, puce with rage.

Nicholas, jaws agape, stared at his director. He had wondered how Harold would react to Tim’s defiant behavior. He had visualized everything from freezing instant dismissal to temper tantrums and violent exhibitionism. What he had never considered, would never have considered in a hundred years, was that Harold would calmly annex the new lighting and represent it as his own.

“All you’ll catch that way is flies, Nicholas,” said Harold. “I shall say nothing more now. You all know you’ve let me down. Yes—you too, Mozart. There’s no need to look at me like that. Where is your sword?”

“Oh.” Tardily, Nicholas realized why he had not fallen over it at the piano. “Sorry.”

“Sorry is not enough. I want an improvement—no, I want a transformation—from everyone here in Act Two. You can do it. I’ve seen you all turn in marvelous work. So go back out there and show them what you’re made of.” He spun around, and a moment later they heard him haranguing the distaff side next door.

“That’s all we need,” murmured Van Swieten. “A little touch of Harry on the night.”

“That man’s his own worst enemy.”

“And when you think of the competition.”

Boris made some tea in polystyrene cups, asking as he wielded the kettle, “D’you think I should make some for Esslyn and his crapulous cronies?”

“Where are they, anyway?”

“Last I saw, he was in the wings rubbishing Joycey yet again about the cakes. God, David—you messy devil—”

“Sorry.” David Smy seized a paper-towel roll and mopped up his tea. “I didn’t know it was there.”

“I saw them all go into the bog.”

“Ooo…” Boris waved a limp wrist. “Troilism, is it? Bags I Cressida?”

“Never. You can say all sorts about Esslyn, but I don’t think anyone seriously thinks he’s gay.”

Just then the three subjects of their conversation appeared in the doorway. They stood very still, their shadows taking a dark precedence, and the overheated, stuffy place suddenly seemed chilly. It was immediately obvious that something was very wrong. The Everards wore looks of sly anticipation, and Esslyn, eyes glittering, darted his head forward in an avid, searching way. The head seemed to Nicholas to have become elongated and slightly flattened. A snake’s head. Then he chided himself for such exaggerated speculations. A trick of the light surely, that was all. Pure fantasy. As must be the idea that Esslyn was looking at him. Searching him out. Nevertheless, Nicholas’s throat was dry, and he sipped his tea gratefully.

Esslyn sat down and started to retie his stock. Always self-contained, he now appeared almost clinically remote. But the overcareful movements of his hands, the tremor of his jaw only partially controlled by his clenched lips, and that terrible soulless glitter in his eye told their own tale. No one in the dressing room remained unaware that the company’s leading man was boiling with suppressed rage.

Boris collected the cups in painstaking silence, and the odd remark, uneasily spoken, shriveled as soon as uttered. When the buzzer sounded, there was an immediate exodus, with everyone easing their way cautiously around Esslyn’s chair. As he left, Nicholas looked back and caught a following glance so malign he felt his stomach kick. Convinced now that his earlier perceptions were not merely imagination, he hurriedly away, but not before he noticed that Esslyn had removed all his rings.

Why this should strike him as ominous, Nicholas could not understand. Perhaps it was simply that, given the man’s present volcanic mien, any slight deviation from the norm gave cause for concern. Nicholas joined the other actors in the wings and stood quietly, a little apart, running over his next scene and forcing his mind to reenter the eighteenth century.

With seconds to go, Deidre peeped out into the auditorium. She had taken her father a cup of coffee and had toyed with the idea of putting a little brandy in it (he had seemed so tense and still quite cold) but, not knowing how it might interact with his tablets, had decided against the idea. Now, she watched him, staring eyes unnaturally bright, perched on the very edge of his seat as if preparing for imminent departure. What a terrible mistake it had been to allow him to come. She had almost called a taxi during the intermission to take him home, but feared for his safety if he was left alone in the house until eleven o’clock.

Colin touched her arm and she nodded, her attention now all on the opening of Act II. Esslyn was already in position, a gray shape humped over the back of his chair. As she prepared to raise the curtain, he lifted his head and looked into the wings, and there was on his face an expression of such controlled ferocity that Deidre, in spite of the distance between them, automatically stepped back, bumping into Kitty. Then she cued Tim’s box, the house lights went down, and the play began.

Esslyn turned to the audience and said, “I have been listening to the cats in the courtyard. They are all singing Rossini.”

Silence. Not just lack of laughter. Or a stretch of time punctuated only by the odd cough or rustle or movement of feet, but absolute total silence. Esslyn stepped down to the footlights. His eyes, glittering pinpoints of fire, raked the audience, mesmerizing them, gathering them close. He spoke of death and hatred with terrible, thrilling purpose. In the back row Mr. Tibbs whimpered softly. His hair seemed to stir softly on his neck, although there was not the slightest breeze. In the wings knots of actors and stagehands stood still as statues, and Deidre rang the bell for Constanze’s entrance.

Most actors love a good row onstage, and the argument between Mozart’s wife and Salieri had always gone well. Now, Kitty screamed, “You rotten shit!,” and belabored her husband with her fists. She had her back to Deidre, who was thus facing Esslyn and watching in mounting horror as he seized his wife by the shoulders and shook her, not with the simulated fury that he had shown in rehearsals but in a wild rage, his lips drawn back in a snarl. Kitty’s screams, too, became real as she was whirled round and round, her hair a golden stream whipping across her face, her head on its slender support snapping back and forth with such force it seemed impossible her neck would not break. Then he flung her so violently from him that she staggered across the stage and was only halted by smacking straight into the proscenium arch.

Deidre, appalled, looked at Colin. Her hand hovered near the curtain release, but he shook his head. Kitty stood for a moment, winded, fighting for breath, then she sucked in air like a drowning man, took two steps, and fell into Deidre’s arms. Deidre led her to the only space in the crowded wings, next to the props table, and pulled up one of the little gilt chairs. She lowered the girl gently into it, handed her clipboard to Colin, and took Kitty’s hand in hers.

“Is she all right?” Nicholas came up and whispered. “What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s Esslyn. I don’t know … he seems to have had some sort of brainstorm. He just started throwing her about.”

“Christ.”

“Can you sit with her while I get some aspirin?”

“I’m on in two secs.”

“Get one of the ASMs, then. Kitty, I shan’t be a minute, okay?”

“ .. my back … ahh … God …”

Deidre ran to the ladies’ dressing room. The first-aid box kept always on the windowsill in the far corner behind the costume rail as not there. Frantically she started searching, pulling the actresses’ day clothes—Rosa’s fur coat, Joyce’s looped gray wool—flinging various dresses and skirts aside. She knelt down, hurling shoes and boots out of the way. Nothing. And then she saw it. Sticking out from behind Rosa’s wig stand. She grabbed the box and the aspirin, struggling with the screw top. It seemed impossibly stiff. Then she realized it was a “child proof” cap that you needed to push down first. Even as she shook out three tablets, she recognized the futility of what she was doing. Aspirins were for trivial ailments. A headache, a rise in temperature. What if Kitty’s spine was damaged? What if every second’s delay increased the dreadful danger of paralysis? At the least, she might be about to lose the baby … Deidre suddenly felt afraid. She should have ignored Colin and stopped the play. Asked if there was a doctor in the house. It would be her fault if Kitty never walked again. She forced this dreadful possibility from her mind and murmured, “Water … water.” There were various mugs and polystyrene beakers scattered about, all with dirty brown puddles in the bottom. Deidre seized the nearest mug, rinsed it out, half filled it with cold water, and ran back to the wings.

The first thing she heard was Nicholas’s voice from the stage. This meant the first scene was over, the set change effected, and scene 2 well under way. She had been longer than she thought. She hurried over to the props table, but the chair where she had left Kitty was empty. Deidre crossed to Colin, who, on her mouthed “Where is she?” mouthed back “Toilet.”

Kitty was walking up and down the tiled floor when Deidre entered. Walking stiffly, stopping every few steps to ease her shoulders, but still, thank God, walking. Deidre preferred the aspirin and the mug, only to be met with a flood of invective the like of which she’d never heard in her life. The fact that it was aimed at Kitty’s husband and Deidre just happened to be in the firing line hardly lessened the shock. The language left her face burning, and she “sshh’d” in vain. Some of the words were familiar from the text of Amadeus, and one or two more from the odd occasion when Deidre had been compelled to use a public lavatory, the rest were totally unfamiliar. And they had a newly minted ring, as if normal run-of-the-mill abuse could not even begin to do justice to Kitty’s fury, and she had been compelled to create powerfully primed adjectives of her own.

“Please …” cried Deidre in an urgent whisper. “The audience will hear you.”

Kitty stopped then, adding just one more sentence in a very quiet voice. “If he lays a finger on me again,” she said, “I’ll fucking kill him.”

Then, still moving slowly and stiffly, she went, leaving Deidre staring after her openmouthed, the three aspirins, already sweatily crumbling, in the palm of her hand.

Barnaby and Troy, like the rest of the audience, were aware of the extraordinary change that had come over Amadeus in the second half. It seemed to them at the time that this was entirely due to the actor playing Salieri.

In Act I he had given a capable if rather stolid performance. In Act II his whole body seemed alive with explosive energy, which it seemed to barely contain. You would not have been surprised, thought Barnaby, if sparks had flown when he clapped his hands or struck the boards with his heel. The very air through which he stalked, trailing clouds of inchoate rage, seemed charged. Maureen Troy thought she might not have missed Coronation Street for nothing, and Barnaby became aware that his daughter was now sitting up and leaning forward in her chair.

Salieri’s startling transformation did not help the play as a whole. The rest of the cast, instead of interacting with him as they had done previously (albeit with varying degrees of convincingness), now seemed to have become quite disengaged, moving cautiously within his orbit and avoiding eye contact even when indulging in direct speech.

Nicholas waited for his cue, gazing into the brilliantly lit arena. He was tense but not alarmed. He responded to the crackling energy that, even in the wings, he could feel emanating from Esslyn, in a very positive way. He felt his own blood surge in response. He knew he could match, even overmatch, the other man’s power. His mind was clear; his body trembled pleasingly with anticipation. He stepped onstage and did not hear Emperor Joseph whisper as he drifted by, “Watch him.”

And if he had heard, Nicholas would have paid no mind. He had no intention of pussyfooting about. For him, always, the play came first. So he stepped boldly up to Salieri, and when Esslyn said, “I commiserate with the loser” and held out his hand, Nicholas gladly offered his own. Esslyn immediately stepped in front of the boy, masking him from the audience, gripped Nicholas’s hand in his own, and squeezed. And squeezed. Harder. And harder.

Nicholas’s mouth stretched involuntarily wide in silent pain. His hand felt as if it were being wrapped in a bunch of savagely sharp thorns. Esslyn was smiling at him, a broad jackal grin. Then, just as Nicholas thought he might faint with agony, Esslyn suddenly let go and sauntered to the back of the stage. Nicholas gasped out a reasonable approximation of his next few lines and managed to get across to the piano and sit down. The Venticelli entered, and Mozart, who had no more to say, took this opportunity to examine his hand. It was already puffing up. He straightened the fingers gently one at a time. The back of the hand was worse than the palm. Covered in tiny blue bruises, with the skin actually broken in several places. The whole hand looked and felt as if someone had been trying to hammer thumbtacks into it. At the end of the scene he made his exit. Colin approached him in the wings. “Deidre thinks we ought to stop it.”

Nicholas shook his head. “I can cope. Now I know.”

“Let’s have a look.” Colin stared at the hand and drew in his breath sharply. “You can’t go on like that.”

“Of course I can.” Nicholas, having got over the immediate shock of the attack, was now, despite the pain, rather relishing this opportunity to display his cool professionalism. He was a trouper. And troupers trouped no matter what. Deidre touched his arm and whispered, “What happened?”

“His rings.” Nicholas held out his hand. “I thought he’d taken them off, but he’d just turned them round.”

“Bloody hell,” muttered Boris, peering over Deidre’s shoulder. “You won’t play the violin again in a hurry.”

“But why?” asked Deidre, and Nicholas shrugged his ignorance.

Onstage Salieri shouted his triumph. “I filled my head with golden opinions—yes, and this house with golden furniture!” and the whole set was suffused with soft, rich amber light. Gilded chairs and tables were carried on. Beside Nicholas, Joyce Barnaby stood holding a three-tier cake stand painted yellow. Like everyone else, she looked anxiously at him.

Nicholas nodded reassuringly back, attempting to appear both calm and brave. In fact, he was neither. He felt intensely excited, rather alarmed, and very angry. He strove to suppress the anger. The time to let that rip would be afterward. Now, he had to face the challenge of the next half hour. He would have more scenes alone with Salieri, but only one where they had physical contact (another handshake), and that handshake he would make sure to avoid. And the man could hardly do him any serious physical harm in front of a hundred people.

In the audience, his exquisite daughter raptly attentive by his side, Barnaby’s nostrils widened and twitched. The smell in the theater was a smell he recognized. And so he should. It had been under his nose for a large part of his working life. A hot, burned smell, ferocious and stifling. The whole place stank of it. The smell of violence. He withdrew the larger part of his attention from the play and glanced about him. Everyone was still and quiet. He could see Harold’s profile, bulging with pleasure mixed with disbelief. His wife looked simply frightened. Others sat eyes wide, unblinking. One woman savaged her bottom lip, another had both fists knuckling her cheeks. Barnaby turned his head slightly. Not every gaze was out front. Sergeant Troy, alert—even wary—was also looking about him.

Behind them in the back row Mr. Tibbs gripped the back of the seat in front of him and pushed away from it so hard that it seemed his backbone must impress the wall behind. His face showed terrible anticipation mixed with a craven appeal for mercy. He looked like a child, innocent of wrongdoing, who awaits harsh punishment.

Barnaby redirected his attention to the stage and the source of his unease. Esslyn was like a man possessed. He seemed to be never still. Even when he withdrew to the back of the stage and rested in the shadows, energy seemed to pulse through and around him as if he stood on a magnetic field. Barnaby would be glad when the play was over. Although he could think of no reason why Joyce should be at risk, he would be happy to see Amadeus concluded and whatever raging grievance Esslyn had sorted out in the proper manner. It was obviously something to do with Kitty.

She reentered now, bulkily pregnant, leaning heavily on Mozart’s arm. She looked neither crushed nor beaten. Her curtsey to Salieri was a mere ironic sketch, her mouth a hard line and her eyes flashing. When she said, “I never dream, sir. Things are unpleasant enough to me awake,” her voice, though raw and bruised, surged with acrimony. Barnaby glanced at his watch (about twenty minutes to go) and attempted to relax, giving himself up to the ravishing music of The Magic Flute. How entrenched, how impregnable must Esslyn’s malice be that it could remain undiminished in the presence of such glorious sound.

Now, clad in a long gray cloak and hat, the top half of his face concealed by a mask, Salieri, harbinger of doom, moved stealthily across the stage to where Mozart, madly scribbling over sheets of paper, was working, literally, to a deadline, composing his own requiem.

Nicholas worked in a cold fever of exhilaration. Even though he had spent the evening in a more or less constant state of anxiety, there had been enough luminous moments to convince him that, as far as Mozart was concerned, he was on the right track. Whole sections had almost played themselves and seemed to be newly created moment by moment, as if the whole grinding discipline of rehearsal had never been. I can do it! Nicholas thought, dazed with jubilation. A dark figure moved in the doorway of his pathetic apartment and came to stand behind him.

Afterward, recounting the scene for Barnaby’s benefit, Nicholas found it impossible to describe precisely the exact moment when the simulated terror with which he had acknowledged Salieri’s phantasmagoric appearance fled and the real thing took its place. Perhaps it was when Esslyn first laid a bony hand upon his shoulder and breathed searing, rancorous breath over his cheek. Perhaps it was when the other man cut their first move and flung aside a chair that Nicholas had cunningly re-sited as a possible barrier between them. Or was it when he whispered, “Die, Amadeus … die”?

Automatically at this point Nicholas, as he had done at each rehearsal, dropped to all fours and crawled underneath the shrouded table that doubled as a writing desk and bed. The table was permanently set flush to the proscenium arch, and Colin had stapled the heavy felt cover to the floor on either side. So when Esslyn crouched at the entrance and his cloak blotted out the opening like great gray wings, Nicholas was trapped.

He crawled back as far as he was able in the dark, tiny space. He felt suffocated. What air there was, was thick with the musty staleness of the cloth and the reek of jackal breath. Esslyn curled back his lips in a hideous parody of a smile. And Nicholas realized that his earlier conviction (that he could come to no harm under the gaze of a hundred assorted souls) was a false one. He believed now that Esslyn would not be bound by the normal man’s rational fear of discovery. Because Esslyn, Nicholas decided, was stark staring bonkers.

Now, the other man’s hand, knuckledustered with silver spikes and hard, violating stones, reached for Nicholas’s throat. And Nicholas, cutting the rest of the scene, yelled Kitty’s cue: “Oragna figata fa! Marina gamina fa!” He heard her footsteps on the other side of the cloth and her first line, “Wolfie?” Esslyn withdrew his hand, his arm, his shoulders, and, finally, his vile grimace. By the time Nicholas crawled out, Salieri had retreated once more to the shadows.

“Stanzerl …” Nicholas clung to Kitty. She supported him, helping him to climb onto the table, arranging his pillows. His death scene (his marvelous death scene on which he had worked so hard) went for nothing. He gabbled the lines, his eyes constantly straying over Kitty’s shoulder to the figure, furled all in gray, waiting in the dark. When Nicholas had died and been thrown without ceremony into his pauper’s grave (a mattress concealed behind the fireplace) he lay there for a few moments, then crawled off into the wings. He found his way to the chair by the props table and fell into it, resting his head against the wall.

Expecting instant attention and sympathy, he was surprised when no one paid him any mind, then realized that they could hardly have known what was going on beneath a covered table. Time enough to tell them afterward. He became aware that his other hand, or at least the thumb, was hurting like hell. He held it up, but the light was so dim that he could see only the outline. He hurried downstairs, on the way up passing Deidre, who cried, “Watch out!” and held a kettle of steaming water out of his way.

In the bright lights of the men’s dressing room, he discovered a great splinter rammed down the side of his nail. The surrounding flesh already had a gathered, angry look. He held it under the hot tap for a few moments, then looked around for a pair of tweezers. Occasionally an actor would have some for applying wisps of false hair or eyebrows. But he had no success. He tried next door, knocking first.

“Oh,” Rosa exuded kind concern. “You poor lamb. I’ve got some twizzies. Hang on.” She riffled in her box. “Have you put anything on it?”

“No. Just given it a rinse.”

“Here we are.” Rosa picked up some tweezers smeared with greasepaint. “Let’s have a look, then.”

Nicholas handed over his thumb while eyeing the surgical appliance with some disquiet. “Shouldn’t we sterilize them or something?”

“Good Lord, Nicholas. You want to enter the profession, you’ll have to learn to take something like this in your stride.”

Nicholas, who had never seen the willingness to embrace septicemia as one of the more obvious qualities a young actor might find useful, jibbed at this robust assertion.

“There.” Rosa extracted the splinter with surprising gentleness, then rummaged in her handbag, produced a grubby Band-Aid, and peeled off the shiny backing. “How did you come to pick it up, anyway?” Nicholas told her. “Oh, how you exaggerate.”

“I do not. He went straight for the jugular.” But even as he spoke, Nicholas was aware of a watering down of his conviction. The cozy air of normalcy in the dressing room and the fact that no one in the wings had noticed anything untoward were encouraging a slight feeling of unreality about his recollections. But there was one thing that was true and very real. Nicholas said, “And he shook the living daylights out of Kitty.”

“Did he?” Rosa smiled and wrapped the Band-Aid extra tenderly around her companion’s thumb. “Naughty boy.” Nicholas rightly assumed that this reproof was intended for Esslyn rather than himself, although it seemed astonishingly mild under the circumstances. “I expect he discovered,” continued Rosa creamily, “that she was having an affair.”

“Bloody hell! How did you know that?”

“Common knowledge, darling.”

Nicholas, swamped by guilt, sat contemplating his throbbing hand. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t told Avery and Tim, it would never have got out. So much for Avery’s promises. And for all he knew, Tim had blabbed as well. They were both as bad as the other. “Pair of gossipy old queens,” he muttered.

“Sorry?”

“Tim and Avery.”

“Well, really, darling,” continued Rosa, “if you feel like that about homosexuals, you may just be entering the wrong profession. I understand there’s at least one in every company.”

Nicholas stared at her severely, no longer grateful for the Band-Aid. How would she know what there was in every company? Swathed in her nylon wrapper with its collar of molting cerise ostrich feathers. Playing the leading lady, regurgitating chunks of past performances, trailing shreds of ersatz glamor as false and tawdry as last year’s tinsel. The Latimer, thought Nicholas savagely, was the perfect place for her, along with the other poseurs and has-beens and never-would-be’s and deadweights. Conveniently he forgot past kindnesses. The patience and encouragement shown to a neophyte who hadn’t known a claw hammer from a codpiece. The support and refuge offered when he had suddenly left home. He only knew that he was sick of the whole narcissistic bunch. He jumped up, startling Rosa.

“I’m going to watch the end. Coming?”

“I don’t think so, angel,” replied Rosa, batting her false lashes, gluey with mascara. “I have seen it all before.” In the wings actors were gathering for the call. Nicholas, last in the queue (Esslyn being already in situ), lined up by Emperor Joseph and said, “What a night.”

“Carry on up the Schonbrunn, lover.”

David Smy passed them carrying his valet’s tray with the razor, wooden dish of soap, folded towel, and china bowl complete with rising steam. One of the ASMs pushed Salieri’s wheelchair on, and David followed. He put his tray down on a little round table, took his master’s will as instructed, and retired to the back of the stage to amend his signature. Salieri picked up the razor, stepped down to the footlights, and spoke, directly and passionately, to the audience.

“Amici cari. I was born a pair of ears. It is only through hearing music that I know God exists. Only through writing music that I could worship …”

In the wings Joyce prepared to step forward. Behind her the Venticelli hovered ready for their final entrance.

“… To be owned … ordered … exhausted by an Absolute … And with it all meaning …”

Maureen Troy, although not actually sorry the end was nigh, found herself experiencing a shade of disappointment. Because she definitely fancied that bloke playing the wop. Just her mark. Tall, dark, and handsome, and old enough to have a grown-up daughter in the cast if Maureen’s program was anything to go by. Maybe the evening wasn’t going to be a total bust after all. Her husband’s shifty glances in Cully Barnaby’s direction had not gone unnoticed, and two could play at that game. Maybe she could wangle an invite round the back and introduce herself.

“…now I go to become a ghost myself. I will stand in the shadows, when you come to this earth in your turn …”

Cully, on the other hand, had been impressed by Mozart. Obviously inexperienced and somewhat all over the place, he had still given an energetic and very sensitive performance, with touches of real pathos. She found herself wondering about the actor. How old he was. How serious about the theater.

“And when you feel the dreadful bite of your failures— and hear the taunting of unachievable uncaring God—I will whisper my name to you. Salieri: Patron Saint of Mediocrities!”

Tim in his box said, “Truth will out.” Avery smiled, and Harold ran over his first-night speech. Tom Barnaby still sensed a slide toward misrule and sat upright and unrelaxed. In the back row Mr. Tibbs had lost the theater entirely, and wandered in a dark wood pursued by demons and the howling of wolves.

“And in the depths of your downcastness you can pray to me. And I will forgive you. Vi saluto. ”

Esslyn lifted the razor and, with one dramatic sweep, drew it across his throat. It left a bright red line. He stood for a moment frowning down at the blade, unexpectedly scarlet. He swayed forward, then jerked himself upright as if with great effort. The keeper of the cakes bustled cheerfully on with the breakfast tray. Salieri took a step to meet her. She stared at him, her mouth shaped in a silent O, then she dropped the tray and caught him as he fell. Then she screamed. Shrieks of pure terror. Over and over again. While the bright blood flowed over her snowy fichu and dove-gray skirt onto the boards beneath.