Lovers Make Moan

Chapter 4

Retractable Blade

“… we will do no harm with our swords.”

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You know, old boy,” said Rinkley to Brian Yorke, “that last scene needs all the aid it can get.”

“How can you say that, when it’s got yours?” asked Donald Bourton unpleasantly.

“No need to be sarky, old boy. I wasn’t meaning myself, but the supporting cast.”

“Meaning me, I suppose,” said Susan Hythe. “It might help if you didn’t breathe whisky fumes into my face through the supposed chink in the wall.”

“Not whisky fumes; the ardour of love, dear.”

“We’re all doing our best for you,” said Caroline Frome. “Nobody can make Wall really funny, so it isn’t my fault if I can’t get laughs.”

“You need not try to stick your finger in my eye when you make the chink. It’s wasted, anyway. The audience won’t spot it from the distance they’ll be away from us. As for Robina alternately dropping her dog and her lantern when she’s doing Moonshine, it’s abysmal.”

“Thanks very much!” said Robina Lester. “I’m only trying to back up your own feeble efforts to be funny.”

“The parts in the workmen’s play are meant to be crudely acted,” said her son David, who was Lion.

“Let’s take it through once more,” said Brian Yorke, “and, Susan darling, you fall across Pyramus when you kill yourself. You don’t just lie down in a graceful manner two yards away from him.”

“I should prefer to be further off still,” said Susan.

“And I don’t want that Two-Ton Tessie knocking all the breath out of me,” said Rinkley. “I’ve got a tender stomach.”

“As Mr Bradley found out, bless his heart,” said Robina viciously.

“Anyway, I’ve got a much better idea for that bit,” said Rinkley, ignoring her. “When Thisbe comes in and finds I’ve stabbed myself—incidentally, when are ‘props’ going to produce that sword? We need practice with it.”

“It will be available from tomorrow, I think. It won’t actually be a sword, but a dagger with a retractable blade,” said Marcus Lynn. “It’s very realistic, but quite harmless, of course. It’s a nice-looking thing, an exact replica of a sixteenth-century stiletto.”

“But do we want anything realistic in that particular scene?” asked Susan Hythe. “I thought it had to be completely farcical. What’s wrong with sticking the sword under our armpits? That’s the way it’s always done, I thought.”

“The audience like to see the dagger actually sticking in someone’s chest,” said David Lester.

“Yes, in tragedy plays, but not in comedy.”

“Well, anyway, I hope we can soon have the ‘props’ to practise with,” said Rinkley. “The costumes are one thing, but the ‘props’ are quite another.”

“There is the same objection to handing out either,” said Yorke, “before at least the last rehearsal but one. People play about with them and lose them or damage them. Marcus is spending a lot of money on the show as it is. We can’t let him in for replacements. Look, darlings, let’s just try the scene again, shall we?”

“We could do with a bit more sparkle from the court party,” said Rinkley. “Perhaps, Brian, you could suggest that their interjections as they watch our bucolic antics are supposed to be a facetious bandying of wit, not a serious criticism of our efforts.”

“Don’t he talk lovely!” said Tom Woolidge. “You leave it to Brian to instruct us, if you don’t mind, Rinkley. We want a balanced performance, not a one-man band consisting of you.”

“Sorry! Sorry! No intention of hurting your tender feelings. To go back to what I wanted to say, what about trying out a bit of business I thought up for where Thisbe comes in and finds me dead? You know the bit where she says, ‘A tomb must cover thy sweet eyes’—”

“I wish it would!” muttered Susan Hythe.

“—well, I think it would be much funnier if she paused at that point and Quince and Lion came on with a stretcher and carried me off on it before she finished the speech and killed herself.”

“But how would I do it if the dagger was still sticking in your chest?” asked Susan.

“Oh, good Lord! You’d have pulled it out, of course, the way we’ve rehearsed it without the dagger.” He turned to Yorke. “Now you see what I mean about having the ‘props’. This dumb young cluck hasn’t visualised the scene at all.”

“How can I visualise this change you’re suggesting, when we haven’t even tried it out?” demanded Susan angrily.

“So Quince and Lion pretend to stagger under my weight—” went on Rinkley, ignoring her as before.

“It wouldn’t be pretence,” murmured David.

“—and make a nice bit of business for themselves. We’ve got to get laughs somehow.”

“That’s all very well, but haven’t you forgotten that after Pyramus has stabbed himself and is supposed to be lying dead on the stage, he suddenly sits up and corrects something Theseus has said? That is what gets the laughs. It’s quite the funniest moment in the scene. It doesn’t need any embroidering. Besides, it’s been classic stuff ever since Aristophanes invented it,” said the director.

“So the Greeks had a word for it, had they?”

“As for most things. In The Frogs it comes when the corpse which is being carried down to the river Styx suddenly sits up and starts belly-aching about the two obols which have to be paid to the ferryman. It’s become a stock comedy situation and you must exploit it to the full.”

“If it’s as ‘stock’ as all that, it’s time it was improved upon a bit. Listen here: after I’m supposed to be dead, Thisbe comes in and finds me and makes her oration. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ending with: ‘So farewell, friends. Thus Thisbe ends. Adieu, adieu, adieu.’ ”

“Quite correct. And then she stabs herself with the dagger she pulls out of your body.”

“Then Theseus and Demetrius make their feeble little wisecracks—”

“And that’s your cue to sit up and correct them.”

“No. I’ve got a far better idea. When I die, Thisbe comes in and finds me. Well, now, instead of making her moan all in one speech, I want it cut at ‘a tomb must cover thy sweet eyes’, as I said. That’s the cue for Prologue and Lion, the only two men available, to come in with a stretcher and carry me off. Then Thisbe finishes the speech and, instead of my sitting up and correcting the court lot, I come rushing back on stage to do it, pursued by Prologue and he by the lion. What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s never done that way.”

“I don’t call that much of an argument. Ideas change.”

“There’s no exit line for Pyramus. Thisbe makes her speech either standing or kneeling beside the body, and then she pulls out the dagger and—”

“Well, at least let’s try it my way and see how it goes.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” said David Lester. “Gives me a bit more roaring to do and people do like to see somebody chasing somebody else. Look at all those car chases on TV. But instead of Quince as Prologue chasing Pyramus back on stage, I think he ought to come straight back after we’ve carried Pyramus off, or else he’ll be too puffed out to say that bit about a burgomask dance between two of our company. Then I chase Pyramus back on.”

“I don’t get puffed out by running a dozen yards across a lawn,” said Marcus Lynn indignantly. “I do my morning jogging like anybody else.”

“Sorry, sir. No offence,” said young David Lester. “I’ll tell you another thing which always goes down well. Remember Robertson Hare and his trousers? Well, how would it be if, as he runs, Pyramus drops his Greek tunic and displays broadly-striped short pants? Bound to raise mirth. Always does.”

“Especially if you could manage to get a hefty kick at the pants,” said Robina Lester nastily. Rinkley looked at her evilly, but said nothing.

“Well, that’s everything set up for the dress rehearsal, Jon,” said Brian Yorke some weeks later. “Hope you haven’t been too fussed with having the lighting and amplifier experts all over the place, and the noise, and all that.”

“Not a bit,” replied Jonathan. “As you know, Valerie very kindly took the kids off our hands while all the work was going on. We thought Rinkley would still be with you, but she phoned to say he had gone and that Yolanda was looking forward to having our two to play with.”

“Did Valerie tell you why Rinkley left our house?”

“No.”

“I had to kick him out. He made himself a nuisance. Got far too familiar with our kid. Nothing really wrong, you know, but I didn’t like it. He may be a very good actor, but I’ll see to it that he doesn’t get a part in our next production. Talk about abusing my hospitality! Anyhow, he knows what I think of him, and I expect he’ll watch his step from now on. One thing: we can trust the signora to keep an eye on the small fry. She’s a veritable dragon.”

“Rinkley needs a damn good hiding and he’ll get it if there’s any nonsense so far as I and mine are concerned. He doesn’t seem to be the only menace, though. Deb told me that Susan and Caroline have both had trouble with Bourton in that wood of ours. They are not in any of his scenes, but sometimes he’s off stage when they are. Add the time of evening and the pale moonlight and I suppose his sap rises and his hormones begin to function. Deb has the feeling that the girls were flattered at first and let him get away with situations which afterwards they regretted. They both hate his guts now.”

“Oh, well, Robina Lester is in that squad, and young David Lester hovers between Caroline and Susan, I think, so that should take care of things. There’s no real harm in Donald. He’s not like Rinkley.”

“Well,” said Jonathan, deciding to change the subject as he looked down towards the bay, for he and Yorke were standing on the top terrace, “everything seems to be in order. We are quite ready except for the chairs for the audience, and I’m told they’re coming tomorrow morning.”

“You have to hand it to Lynn. He said everything would be ready in time for the dress rehearsal and everything is ready, as you say.”

“That’s the beauty of having a business tycoon in charge of the arrangements, I suppose.”

“He’s done us proud in the matter of costumes, too. No expense spared and everybody delighted—and that’s a miracle in itself. He’s behaved like a gentleman and togged up the other girls as handsomely as he has his wife. How do you like your own outfit?”

“I hardly know myself in it. It was a great idea to have the court party in Elizabethan costume and the workmen in Greek tunics and sandals. As for the fairy costumes, they are out of this world.”

“Well, they would be, wouldn’t they?” said Deborah, joining them on the terrace. “Is the weather going to hold up?”

“I do hope so, but it’s plaguey hot. Could end in a thunderstorm, I suppose.”

“Not in June,” said Jonathan confidently.

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed. What a self-possessed young damsel your little Rosamund is. She really makes something special of that little scene with Puck.”

“We’re lucky with that young Peter Woolidge. Not only is he marvellous in the scene with Rosamund, but his acrobatics, swinging on branches and so forth, are most spectacular.”

“Well, he’s a trained gymnast, you know.”

“How did your daughter take it when she knew you had changed her part?”

“Yolanda? Absolutely delighted. She said, ‘So now I can wear boys’ clothes and ride a pony’. I said no to the pony. I told her that the hunting-party were to come in on foot but that she would be leading a couple of bloodhounds. She was more than satisfied with that and now that she’s tried on her doublet and hose she’s in the seventh heaven. Have the ‘props’ turned up, do you know?”

“All locked away in a cupboard—swords and things and, of course, the Pyramus and Thisbe retractable dagger—and Lynn has the only key. The dagger is marvellous. Out of curiosity I tried it, first on the cellar door—I was born with a big bump of caution!—and then on myself with Lynn and his boy watching. I must say it works like a charm and really stays put. Most realistic and convincing.”

“Lynn had it specially made by a theatrical expert. Goodness knows what this production must have cost him.”

“Well, he’s made one gain out of it. Emma is a different woman since the first read-through. She absolutely blossoms now.”

“Thanks to Deborah’s coaching!”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Deborah. “She only needed a bit of encouragement.”

As, in Brian Yorke’s experience, a dress rehearsal always takes at least twice as long as the actual performance, the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream had been told to arrive not a minute later than six o’clock. The rehearsal was held on a Tuesday. This was so that on the Wednesday all that had gone wrong (and its name, thought Brian resignedly, would undoubtedly be legion) could be put right before the first public performance on the Thursday.

Marcus Lynn had engaged his own experts and came along with them at three in the afternoon to make a final test of the lighting and the sound. Deborah gave them tea at half-past four and at five Valerie Yorke brought back Rosamund and Edmund, accompanied by Ganymede and Lucien. Signora Moretti brought her dancing class, too, for the children were to be rehearsed first so that they could be in bed at a reasonable time.

Nobody made any objection to this arrangement. Young Peter Woolidge good-naturedly turned up early, having begged time off work, and played his little scene with Rosamund and, as Deborah was playing Titania, there was no difficulty about rehearsing the four who appeared in her scene with Bottom. Rinkley himself did not appear and it was not absolutely necessary that he should. He would play the scene at its proper place in the play with Deborah speaking the little that the children had to say. When the fairy songs and dances had been rehearsed, the signora would take most of her pupils back to her dance academy where their parents would collect them. Rosamund and Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed remained, of course, at the house.

The children had already seen Bottom wearing the ass’s head, for Rinkley, as well as they, had had to get used to it. It and Pyramus’s dagger were the only ‘props’ which had appeared at previous rehearsals, so there was no anxiety that at the dress rehearsal or the actual performances there would be any youthful hysteria either of laughter or fear. While the children were rehearsing, the rest of the company put on their costumes. Puck, who wore nothing but a pair of green and brown tights and a becoming cap reminiscent of the horns of a faun, had already assumed these for the scene with Rosamund. Deborah had time to change while the first scene was being played after the dancing-class had departed, and the rehearsal proper began in good time. To Brian Yorke’s superstitious horror, it went off without a hitch.

“That’s an awfully bad omen,” he said to Deborah when, well before eleven o’clock, she was dispensing snacks, cheese and wine to a relaxed and self-congratulatory company.

“Oh, nonsense, Brian,” Deborah cheerfully assured him. “See how happy and relaxed everybody is. It’s all going to be marvellous.”

“Well, I hope so,” he said dolefully, “but the dress rehearsal ought to be a complete shambles if the show is to be any good. That is theatrical tradition.” At this point the statuesque, flawlessly-proportioned Dr Jeanne-Marie Fitzroy-Delahague, who was there to collect her two little coffee-berries, came up to Brian and said:

“I know of a Hindu baby boy, Sharma Rao. His parents will lend him to be your changeling child. You wish that?”

“Well, we don’t have to show the changeling child, you know, Doctor. He is referred to, but he doesn’t actually need to be among those present,” explained Yorke. “Still, it would be marvellous to have him. The only trouble is that he will steal the scene. You know what the professionals say: never play a scene with a child or an animal. I’m sorry for you,” he added, turning to Deborah. “First you will get Sharma and then you will get Ganymede, Lucien, Edmund and tiny Sarah, the new Peasblossom. You’ll be upstaged the whole blinking time.”

“You don’t want Narayan Rao should bring Sharma?” asked Jeanne-Marie.

“Good heavens, of course we want Sharma! ‘A little Indian boy to be my henchman’,” said Donald Bourton, the Oberon, who, with Barbara, had come up to thank Deborah and say goodnight. “We shall love to have him. How old is he?”

“Almost two, and a lovely, fat, heavy boy. You need not hold him in your arms, he walks well,” said Jeanne-Marie, looking at Deborah’s slim body. “Mr Yorke, you must arrange for one of your actors to collect him from his father who will be seated, with your permission, on the stage at the edge of the woods. You provide them with chairs, please?”

“Of course. Only too glad. Thanks a lot, Dr Delahague. Oh, damn! Oh, damn!” he added softly when Jeanne-Marie, all beaming smiles, had gone with Deborah upstairs to collect her sons. “That’s the sort of complication I’ve been dreading. I knew something like this would happen when the dress-rehearsal went so well. Rao can’t know Rinkley’s in the cast, so what do I say to him?”

“Well,” said Donald Bourton, “can’t you plead the lateness of the hour, the cold night air—that sort of thing—if you want to put Rao off?”

“A highly-educated, sensitive and very intelligent Hindu would see through those sort of reasons before they were out of my mouth. After all, we’ve got other kids in the show who aren’t all that much older than Sharma. Narayan would simply think I didn’t want him and his son—and you know what Indians think about sons, particularly the first-born.”

“What is the trouble about Rinkley?” asked Jonathan.

“A law-suit about a car-accident. Nothing much, but judgment was given against Rao and in Rinkley’s favour.”

“Tell Rao simply and straightforwardly that Rinkley is in the play, then. Make no comment, and leave the rest to Rao. Look here, I know the chap personally, and a very charming fellow he is. Would you like me to put it to him?” asked Tom Woolidge.

“I say! Would you?”

“Well, you know, I don’t think Rao would come within a mile of the play if he knew Rinkley was in it,” said Bourton. “If he did come, not knowing, and they ran into one another, as they might quite easily do—well, night is night, and woods are woods, and (not to put too fine a point on it) we don’t want murder, instead of two fake suicides, to end the play, do we?”

“It wouldn’t end the play,” said Yorke, with a nervous smile. “It ends with Puck making friends with the audience.”

“Yes, but in Puck’s last speech it says that the midnight owl puts the wretch that lies in woe in remembrance of a tomb. A lot of that last speech is macabre in the extreme.”

“Anyway,” said Yorke, “to talk a different kind of shop, that retractable dagger worked a treat, didn’t it? I know it worked in the other rehearsals, so I betted something would go wrong with it tonight. What did you think of that scene now it’s in costume, Donald?”

“Don’t know. I was up here for nature’s purposes while that bit was being played. I galloped back only just in time to go on for the ending of the play. How did Rinkley’s new bit of business go?”

“I still think it’s a mistake, but Lynn, as Quince, seems to like it and what pleases him has to please the rest of us. They bring a stretcher on and plant Pyramus on it. I wonder whether that’s rather inartistic. If the scene has to be done their way, I’m sure it would be better to have Quince take the shoulders and Lion the feet, and lug the body off that way.”

“Why did they change the scene, anyway?” asked Bourton.

“They both wanted more ‘business’ attached to that bit. Quince, after that idiotically punctuated speech as Prologue, doesn’t get much of a look-in, and, of course, Rinkley dearly likes being put on the stretcher and carried off in stately fashion. He has even contrived to add to the comedy by modestly straightening his tunic as his supposed corpse is being carried off to the sound of the Dead March rendered by the Ladies’ Orchestra. Then the stretcher also pleases young David Lester. He said he barred taking up Rinkley’s legs and having Pyramus’s buskins kicking him in the face. Rinkley and Lynn made another small amendment, too.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, in the earlier rehearsals it hadn’t crossed my mind or, I’m sure, Rinkley’s, that, as Pyramus, he would be wearing body armour and the dagger couldn’t be expected to pierce it.”

“All part of the fun to pretend it could, I should have thought.”

“Well, perhaps, but it seems the dagger itself didn’t take to the idea. Rinkley told me that he had experimented by laying the armour on the table and striking it with the dagger, but apparently the thing wouldn’t work on metal. It folded back into itself all right, but then, he said, it just fell over. On the wooden table-top it was all right and when he tried it (rather gingerly) on himself without the armour it worked like a charm, and so it did at the dress rehearsal itself, although I’ve told him to put still more force behind it—or, at least, pretend to.”

“So I suppose he came on in the armour and when he found Thisbe’s ‘mantle good, all stained with blood’, he made a great business of divesting himself of the armour before committing suicide.”

“Oh, my word, yes. He and Lynn between them made almost an extra scene for themselves and I must say it was quite amusing. Lynn is so pleased with his share in it that I can’t very well tell them to cut it shorter.”

“Oh, well, if it amuses the audience, I suppose it’s all right to let them get away with it.”

“The play takes quite long enough as it is. We don’t want people slipping away before the end because they have trains to catch or something of that sort. Nothing is more unnerving than to see your audience sneaking off before the end of the show.”

“Not to worry. They won’t. In these days of the ubiquitous automobile, very few people have trains to catch and the local buses don’t run as late as the play does, anyway. Let it rip. If those two can get some fun out of Shakespeare’s clowning, good luck to them, says I.”

“You’ll speak to Narayan Rao, then?”

“Of course I will. In any case, he may have forgiven Rinkley by this time.”

“I doubt it. These motoring cases can be the very devil when a cross-summons is brought. After all, Rao only lost on a technicality. I don’t know the details, but I believe it was touch and go how the verdict went.”

“But it was the court’s decision, not Rinkley’s. Surely Narayan realises that.”

“I don’t suppose it compensates him, any more than it compensated Rinkley in the other case he was involved in, that wretched charge of molesting a child, although he got off.”

“One thing, it doesn’t matter two hoots whether we have a little changeling boy on stage or not. I should think the signora would be thankful not to have another small child to look after, particularly one she doesn’t know.”

“Dr Jeanne-Marie has committed us now, I’m afraid, if Narayan agrees.”

“Oh, well, I’ll speak to Narayan. That will settle it one way or the other. It will be up to him to bring the kid or to opt out.”

“See that you make quite sure to mention Rinkley. But I do wish Dr Jeanne-Marie hadn’t stuck her oar in. I’ve got enough problems without having a race-relations squabble on my hands.”

“Narayan’s case would have had just the same result if Narayan had been an Englishman, you know.”

“I doubt very much whether Narayan sees it quite like that. The ethnic minorities are very sensitive, I believe.”

“Anyway, I’ll talk to him and see how it goes. He’s a nice chap. I don’t suppose he bears Rinkley any real malice.”

“That’s your guess, not mine.”

“What does Marcus think of the play? Has he said anything—made any comments?”

“He seems well satisfied, I think. He has certainly done us proud over the whole production. Your supposedly diamond dewdrop get-up looked fantastic under the lights. Now our only query seems to be the weather. Fate must have something up its sleeve. That dress rehearsal went ever so much too well.”