Lovers Make Moan

Chapter 5

All Right on the Night

“And we will do it in action as we will do it before the duke.”

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Marcus Lynn was well satisfied with all the arrangements. To his mind, simple in all its workings except where finance and sheer business acumen were concerned, nothing could have been more pleasing than the woodland setting for the production, the splendid (albeit very expensive) designs the theatrical dressmakers had contrived for the costumes, the lighting and sound effects and the few but important theatrical properties which had been provided to augment the swords and daggers he had brought.

More than anything else, he was pleased with his Emma. He was fully aware that unkind opinion was convinced that he had married her for her money and he was honest enough with himself to admit that, to a large extent, this was true. However, the dowry the plain-featured and shy young woman had brought with her had given him the capital he needed in order (in his own words) to get going. It was now, however, but a drop in the ocean of his financial success, and he had paid it back in the form of a trust for her.

Moreover, he had been a kind and most considerate husband and although Emma had not provided him with the child he so desperately longed for, he had never held it against her. Even though medical opinion had informed him that it was not due to any deficiency on his part that no issue had come from the marriage, neither was there any physical reason why Emma should not conceive. After three years of frustration, they had adopted the boy Jasper, the son of a woman cousin of his who had had an affair with what Marcus vaguely referred to as ‘a lord’.

“When I buy stock it’s got to be pedigree,” he said to Emma.

“It’s a poor start for the boy, being illegitimate,” she said.

“We must do our best for him. He’s ten. He’s sure to know he is not our own.”

“Of course, but he also knows his mother is dead. That’s reason enough for us to have taken him on. No need for him to know about the rest of it. I don’t suppose she told him.”

“It will come out at some time or other.”

“Leave things alone,” said Marcus. “Our money will see him through.” This had been seven years ago. On the night of the play he said to her, “Not nervous about the show, are you?—or about Jasper’s performance?”

“Mrs Bradley won’t let me be nervous, and Jasper is used to being in the school plays, so he’ll be all right. Anyway, Barbara Bourton is so outstanding as Hermia that nobody is going to notice little me. I’m not surprised Jasper looks at her and nobody else. He’s completely moonstruck, poor boy.”

“You’ve got better speeches than hers in the opening scene and you say them well.”

“That’s Deborah Bradley’s doing. What I say really ought to be addressed to her, you know, not to Barbara Bourton. ‘Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue’s sweet air More tuneable than lark to shepherd’s ear, When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.’ I love those lines, don’t you, Marcus?”

“Oh, well, they’re Shakespeare, of course,” said Marcus, looking at her rather anxiously. “Not getting a ‘thing’ about Deborah Bradley, are you?”

So near midsummer day, the opening scenes of the play took place in daylight, but by the time the fairy scenes came on, so did the lamps among the trees, and effectively enough, although they were seen to greater advantage towards the end, when the wonderful summer night was brilliant with stars.

Dame Beatrice and Laura attended the first performance, for, as Laura pointed out, it was likely to be the best.

“They will all be nervous and on their toes,” she observed, “and will excel themselves in consequence. Nothing like being scared to death to bring out the best in people.”

“A strange philosophy, surely?” said Dame Beatrice.

“I don’t know so much. Look at people in the last war. They were so unexpectedly brave when it really came to the crunch.”

“I wonder how Rosamund will acquit herself this evening?”

“ ‘So wonder on, till Truth make all things plain’,” quoted Laura. “Not that I have any doubts. Rosamund was born minus nerves and plus the most immortal crust the Lord ever bestowed on a human being. As for Edmund, he will most likely babble everybody’s part as well as his own. They’ll probably have to gag him for the second performance.”

Dame Beatrice had declined an invitation to dine with her relatives, rightly supposing (as Laura put it) that they would have enough on their plates without the added distraction of having to entertain company. Jonathan was disappointed, but Deborah was grateful. She had not only Rosamund and Edmund to calm down and then dress in their fairy costumes, but she also had on her hands the two delightful, ebullient little boys, Ganymede and Lucien, full of fun, laughing and chattering, sometimes in English, sometimes in French, and abounding with what she classified as the joys of spring.

“We are not to be a trouble to you,” Ganymede, aged four, confided to her.

“Maman will demand a full report,” said Lucien, who was six. “Elle dit qu’il faut être très gentil chez vous.”

“Well, so you are. I think you are both beautifully behaved,” said Deborah. “Now, when you are dressed, I would like you to sit and look at picture books and not to race around and get hot and dirty. I have to dress up, too, and so has Mr Bradley, so please help Rosamund to keep an eye on Edmund while Mr Bradley and I are upstairs.”

Jonathan and Deborah had decided, long before the dress-rehearsal, that the summer-house and the conservatory were too inadequate and inconvenient to serve as dressing-rooms for the rest of the cast, so the male actors had been allotted the dining-room and the females the small morning-room. Signora Moretti and her fairies had been given the entrance hall. It had the advantage of having a cloakroom of its own. This was a consideration which mattered a good deal when a dozen excitable children with doubtful control over their bodily functions had to be kept comfortable and free from anxiety.

As the auditorium was a small one, having been fashioned by the previous owner as a setting for private theatricals only, the number of tickets available had had to be limited to one hundred and twenty for each performance. Statistics showed that the first and third nights had been sold out, but that the attendance on the second night had slumped somewhat. This had been anticipated and disappointed nobody.

“The second night of a three-night amateur show is always the dud one,” said Brian Yorke philosophically. “The effervescence of the opening night has worn off and the keyed-up atmosphere of the third night hasn’t arrived. We must try to keep each other up to scratch, that’s all. One thing: Barbara is a professional and won’t let things slide. So long as the rest of us play up to her we shall be all right. Rinkley will pull off the workmen’s scenes and the fairies are a knock-out anyway. Signora Moretti will see to that. Her living depends on it.”

Prevented by Emma’s arguments from offering Deborah money or an expensive present, the grateful Marcus had approached Jonathan and suggested a handsome sum for the use of the sylvan and most appropriate setting for the play. Jonathan, who liked him, had laughed and slapped him on the back and had pointed out that he himself was the tenant, not the owner of the property.

“But my cousin gave full permission for the play to be staged here,” he said, “and it’s made a lot of fun for my wife and me.” Although he did not say so, he respected Marcus for choosing a minor part for himself which was well inside his scope instead of opting for a major rôle which, under the circumstances, could hardly have been refused him. As for the ‘gate-money’, he knew that Lynn had never expected to get back what he had spent on the play, let alone make a profit.

“It’s a bit of fun for Emma and the boy and me, too,” Marcus said. “I’m glad the boy is in it. Tosses off his lines as Egeus rather well, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure Yorke will give him a bigger part next time, when he’s got through his A-levels,” said Jonathan tactfully. “He has a good stage presence.”

“I reckon so. Lad’s got the breeding, you know. Son of a lord, even if he was born the wrong side of the blanket.”

There was to be an interval fairly early on in the play so that the elves and fairies, having danced and sung and, in the case of Peasblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed, said their first little bits of dialogue, could be removed, dressed in their ordinary clothes and claimed by their mothers. From the outset Deborah had insisted that the children’s parts were to finish at the end of the first scene in Act Three.

“After all,” she said, “their bedtime will be late enough anyway and it is far more important than scratching a donkey’s head. As for the fairy procession at the end, well, you will have to do without it. Nobody speaks except Oberon, Titania and Puck, so they will have to carry it on their own.”

“In any case,” said Emma Lynn, “nobody wants the job of minding little children from the end of the first scene in the third act right to the end of the play. Most of them would be asleep, anyway, or making themselves miserable and cross, poor little things.”

There had been a slight contretemps at the dress-rehearsal. It was not nearly enough to dispose of Brian Yorke’s superstitions, partly because its real significance, that the stage ‘props’ were sacred objects, did not appear until later, but mostly because, at the time it occurred, he knew nothing about it.

The two bloodhounds, bred and lent by Tom Woolidge, were not to make their brief appearance on stage until the hunting-scene in the fourth act. They were tied up outside the summer-house. This was in a little clearing in the woods and had a stoutly-railed verandah to which the dogs were tethered. They were gentle, amenable creatures, their evening meal and bowls of water were placed well within their reach, and no trouble of any kind was expected from them. Even if they bayed, they were far enough from the stage for this to be a matter of no great concern.

Yolanda, in whose charge they were placed when they made their appearance, had always, at rehearsals, been zealous in her care of them. As her scenes were in company with her father and mother, she sat with her parents in the woodland wings on the O.P. side, but paid occasional visits to the summer-house to ensure that all was well with her charges.

At the dress-rehearsal she had been so much entranced with the Elizabethan costumes that she spent most of her time avidly watching the stage and it was not until about the middle of the third act, when she was finding the exchanges between the four lovers excessively boring, that she remembered the bloodhounds and went to visit them. She returned in short order and whispered agitatedly to her mother, “Mummy, the dogs have gone!”

Valerie Yorke drew her daughter further back from the stage and asked, “Darling, what do you mean?”

“I went to see whether they were all right and their leads were there, but they’d gone.”

“What about their collars? Have they slipped them?”

“No, their collars had gone, too. There were only the leads left. Anyway, I don’t think bloodhounds can slip their collars. Oh, Mummy, what shall we do?”

“Don’t worry, darling. I think I know where they are. We didn’t have Rosamund stay at our house for nothing.” She went to Deborah, who was offstage until the opening of the fourth act (from which the fairies had been dispensed) and gave her the news. Deborah’s conclusion was the same as her own, so they waylaid Puck as he came off the stage and Deborah said to him:

“These draperies of mine are a bit of a nuisance if I need to run. Could you belt up to the house and bring back the bloodhounds? I am sure my little wretches have collected them.”

Young Peter Woolidge bounded away and tore uphill through the woods and up to the house, where he found one of the dogs in bed with Rosamund, the other with Edmund. Before Peter led them back to where they should be, Valerie had followed him and addressed a stern admonition, backed up by threats of chastisement, to the chief culprit.

“The dogs are ‘props’. Don’t you know better than to meddle with props?” she demanded. “If you ever play about with any other props I’ll spank you hard.”

Rosamund apparently took these words to heart, for the Thursday and Friday performances passed off without a hitch, and Brian Yorke’s presages of disaster vanished and were replaced by a cautious optimism.

Rinkley proved himself not sensitive enough to realise that Bottom’s wood was an enchanted one and that Bottom, no more than Thomas the Rhymer, would never be quite the same man again after his encounter with the Queen of the Fairies. Rinkley had never read lines which, of all the cast, probably only Deborah knew.

‘Harp and carp, Thomas,’ she said;

‘Harp and carp along with me—

But if you dare to kiss my lips,

Sure of your body I shall be.’

‘Betide me weal, betide me woe,

That weird shall never daunten me.’

Syne he has kissed her rosy lips

All underneath the Eildon Tree.’

And so, thought Deborah, had it been with Bottom the Weaver, but there was no magic in Rinkley’s soul. He saw no poetry in the cloddish clown. As Pyramus, however, Rinkley excelled himself. At the first full rehearsal, when, not having been supplied with body-armour, he had pushed the retractable dagger somewhat gingerly against his breast, Yorke was heard to exclaim: “For God’s sake, man, put a jerk in it! You’re killing yourself, not brushing flies off a sleeping Venus!” But that was the only time Rinkley was faulted, so, finding that the dagger could be trusted, Pyramus thereafter tackled his suicide with a will and accomplished a back-fall on to the turf which might have been the pride of a professional tumbler.

“I’ve made a bruise on my chest, thanks to you,” he said to Yorke, after the first full rehearsal. “That dagger hurt me.”

“It was worth it. You were great, old boy, simply magnificent. Keep it up, because that scene is practically the climax of the play.”

Apart from his main task of welding his actors, with their varying talents, into a team, Yorke, as producer as well as director, had had other problems to solve. One was to decide how much scenery was needed in addition to that provided by the garden itself, and the other was how to bridge the distance the dressing-rooms were from the stage.

His first problem was solved easily and satisfactorily. The woods curved round towards the terrace, so all that was needed was a reversible wooden backdrop on one side of which was painted some Ionian pillars to represent the palace of Theseus and on the other a window in a plain wall to represent Quince’s cottage. For the woodland scenes another backdrop was painted with highly stylised trees which almost met the real ones, but leaving the actors with an obvious exit. Both backdrops were mounted on wheels and the scenes were changed, Chinese fashion, in full view of the audience.

The second problem was also easily solved. Except for the donning of his accoutrements by Pyramus, which could be done in the wings, the only necessary changes of costume should have been for Theseus, Hippolyta, Philostrate and Egeus for the hunting-scene, but this also involved a change back again for the last scene of all. Faced with the fact that the dressing-rooms were up at the house, Yorke had compromised. He allowed Philostrate and Egeus no change of costume at all and himself as Theseus a pair of thigh-length boots to wear over his elegant Tudor hose. He gave the only real change of costume to Hippolyta who, for this scene, was to appear as the goddess Artemis with bow and arrow.

For the purpose of this change, he had had a small square tent erected just off the O.P. side of the stage. Screened by the trees were three trestle tables to hold the props. These included the body-armour, helmet and sword-belt complete with retractable dagger worn by Pyramus in the workmen’s play and another belt with a dagger from Lynn’s collection of weapons. This belt was worn by young Yolanda Yorke in the hunting scene, and only then, so it remained on the trestle table for most of the play. Yorke shed his own sword-belt after the first scene until his re-entrance in the hunting scene, after which he kept it on for the rest of the play, Jonathan and Tom wore their sword-belts throughout the whole action.

To conclude the practical side of producing, Brian arranged that the backdrop, whichever scene it represented, should always be sufficiently far forward to allow the actors to cross the stage out of sight of the audience when this was necessary. This was for the convenience of the workmen and the court party, for these entered sometimes from the prompt side and sometimes from O.P.

“Well, I think we’ve thought of everything,” Brian Yorke had said at the conclusion of the all-too-immaculate dress rehearsal. “I don’t want anybody going up to the house except during the interval. Everything needed in the way of props will be in the wings. You’ll have to speed your armour up a bit, Rinkley. The others have only to collect their bits and pieces as Lion, Wall and Moonshine and Thisbe has only to pin a skirt round herself and plonk a wig on her head, but you must get that body-armour on quicker and your sword-belt and helmet, too. Marcus, you could help him a bit couldn’t you? As Quince you’ve nothing to do except pick up your scroll.”

“Some fool had moved my armour and belt from where I left them,” said Rinkley. “I wish to goodness people wouldn’t meddle with my props.”

“I moved your armour and helmet and your sword-belt,” said Susan Hythe, his Thisbe. “You’d pinched nearly all the trestle table for them and you had pushed Moonshine’s dog and my mantle on to the ground, so I put our things back on the table and dumped your stuff.”

“I’ll have a table to myself, and then perhaps you meddling moggies will leave my things alone.”

“You mustn’t mind Rinkley,” said Yorke, when his leading man had gone. “That antique shop he and his wife used to run before she kicked him out and divorced him is absolutely booming and, of course, it’s hers, inherited from her father, so he’s got no claim on the profits and that makes him pretty sore.”

“He’s overdrawn at the bank,” said Robina, whose husband was a bank manager. “I ought not to have let that out, so please forget it, but he is. I daresay that doesn’t make him any sweeter.”

“He was in trouble some time back over seducing a minor, or so I heard,” said Susan when Yorke also had left them. “I would never have agreed to act opposite him if I had known that.”

“I heard it, too, but I don’t believe there’s anything in it, or Brian would never have had him in the play. The Yorkes are nice people, but Valerie is very strait-laced. She didn’t want Rinkley in the play, you know, because of that scandal about a child that he was involved in. I don’t know any details, but—”

“But I do,” said Robina. “However, to give the man his due, the case was thrown out by the magistrates for lack of any real evidence. Well, let’s go up to the house and get changed. A Greek tunic and sandals may have been suitable evening wear in Athens, but in England, even in June, they’re hardly adequate at this time of night.”

“The dress rehearsal went off well, I thought,” said Caroline, as the three women, two young and one middle-aged, took the steep path up to the house.

“Brian thinks it went far too well,” said Robina. “He prophesies disaster at the actual performances. He’s not calling a rehearsal for tomorrow. He says he shall spend the day in prayer. Which of you two is my son walking home tonight?”

The girls giggled and Caroline said she thought it was her turn.

Wednesday passed without incident and the performances on Thursday and Friday went off well, the Thursday performance having been attended by Dame Beatrice and Laura.

“What did you think of the play?” asked Dame Beatrice, as they drove home through the starlit summer night with George, the chauffeur and handyman, at the wheel.

“Better ask George first,” said Laura. “He saw it, too. What did you think of it, George?”

“Very well dressed, Mrs Gavin, but the acting a little uneven.”

“Yes. I gather that the actress who took Hermia is a pro, or so my neighbour was telling me. Never a good idea to mix the breeds.”

“I thought the tall, stooping, bearded youth in that opening scene was miscast as Egeus,” said Dame Beatrice, “but I believe he was chosen simply because it is a small part and he is still a schoolboy preparing for important examinations. I thought the sylvan setting was effective.”

“But the amplifiers distorted the voices a bit,” said Laura. “The costumes were gorgeous, though. Take it for all in all, I thought it was a pretty good effort for a local dramatic society. The Pyramus and Thisbe scene was quite funny, but it’s a pity they had to miss out the fairies at the end. Those small fry really were rather scene-stoppers, didn’t you think?”

“Delightful children, but it would have been far too late to keep them up, particularly as the play is to run for three nights. I think, too, that the rather self-satisfied man who took Pyramus was glad to see the finish of the play so soon after the conclusion of his own performance. Those overlong speeches by Oberon and Titania were cut to the barest minimum and Puck’s closing oration was limited also. Of course one missed ‘glimmering light, by the dead and drowsy fire’. I wonder what problems the director and producer had to solve in putting on the play?”

On neither evening did a little changeling boy put in an appearance, although his father had brought him to the dress-rehearsal. A message came on the Thursday to say that the child was suffering from a mild stomach-upset, but that, if it cleared up in time, Narayan Rao would bring Sharma to the third night of the play.

The body-armour which Rinkley donned as Pyramus was rather like a waistcoat worn back to front. He had to put his arms through the armholes and then Marcus Lynn had to lace him up the back. His helmet was a formidable although a lightweight affair which almost obscured his features, and his sword-belt, with the webbing pocket to hold the weapon, had to be slung over the left shoulder to place the dagger on the wearer’s right-hand side. The crimson-coloured belt itself came diagonally across the breastplate and showed up effectively against the bright silver of the armour.

Although at the first full rehearsal Rinkley’s handling of the dagger had been the subject of criticism, at the Thursday and Friday performances, assured that the dagger could do him no harm, he had struck himself a convincing blow over the heart. The bit of by-play devised between himself and Marcus Lynn proved not only quite good knockabout farce, but was necessary from a practical point of view, for it had been made clear at the dress-rehearsal that Pyramus, having been laced into his breastplate by Quince behind the scenes, could not get out of it without the other’s assistance on stage. He had to get out of it in order to stab himself in a convincing manner, as an earlier demonstration had proved.

“We ought to have been allowed to have the costumes earlier,” Yorke had said, “but Lynn wouldn’t release them in case we messed them up. He has spent a lot of money on the show, so I can’t blame him, but it isn’t until the costumes are actually worn on stage that one realises where the snags are going to come.”

However, in this instance, both Lynn himself and Rinkley enjoyed inventing an extra bit of ‘business’ in removing the armour, and the audience seemed to relish the nonsense, too, when Marcus Lynn put up what appeared to be an epic struggle with knots in the laces of the corselet and finished up by putting his knee in the small of Rinkley’s back in a pantomime of an early Victorian tirewoman or lady’s maid dealing with her employer’s refractory pair of stays. This foolery evoked applause as well as laughter when, the recalcitrant fastenings having given way, Rinkley fell flat on his face, a circus trick he had been at some pains to bring off to perfection.

“Well, you see,” he said, when Yorke congratulated him on the success of the workmen’s play, “in his comedy scenes you’ve got to help Shakespeare a bit, haven’t you? Left to himself, the poor chap had no sense of humour at all. Look at all that tiresome Lancelot Gobbo stuff and that rubbish about Malvolio and the cross-garters.”

“Well, your improvisations certainly went down well,” said Yorke, “but don’t overdo them on the last night. There will be the bouquets to be presented to the leading ladies and the mayor is certain to want to say a few words, and Jonathan and Deborah are laying on a champagne supper for the whole cast up at the house, so nobody wants the play to go on until midnight.”

“Good Lord, neither do I. This open-air stuff is pretty tough on the larynx. I just hope I don’t get one of my quinsies, that’s all.”