Dandy Gilver and a Spot of Toil and Trouble

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think his ghost has come back either. And if it did, ghosts don’t need keys.’ Thus I threw her off the scent and the sight of Grant busy in one of the pews halfway forward did the rest of the job.

  ‘Delia?’ she said. I surmised that Grant’s shift from lady’s maid to member of the players was complete.

  ‘I thought I’d just run up some bolsters to soften these hard benches,’ Grant said. ‘There was a trunk full of mattress ticking in the attic – I found it when I was searching for set dressing. We got a good lot of that too, by the way.’

  Minnie and I feasted our eyes. Every pew was covered with a plump bolster of unbleached striped ticking. They looked a little like sacks of meal but a lot more inviting than the hard wood designed to keep servants alert during a sermon.

  ‘What are they stuffed with?’ said Minnie.

  ‘Clean straw,’ said Grant, ‘as they would have been in Shakespeare’s own time. Miss Penny is adding a line at the top of her lecture about you trying to recreate the atmosphere down to the last little detail. We were thinking of nosegays on the benches during the play. They would have had nosegays at the Globe.’

  ‘What will I do with these?’ said Minnie, nodding her chin at her armload of cushions.

  ‘They’re rather modern,’ Grant said. ‘I’ll take care of them for you.’

  Minnie, for the second time, let the cushions drop and started hurrying out again, her little dog torn between his love for his mistress and the reappearance of this pile of bedding at his feet.

  ‘Early dinner,’ Minnie said. ‘Patch! Leave those be. Come here, you brigand! Six o’clock if you can believe it, but the dress needs to start at seven to make sure there’s time. Leonard tells me all sorts of things can go wrong during “the dress”. They last all night sometimes.’ And the door closed behind her.

  ‘You’re getting very keen on all of this,’ I said to Grant. She simpered, taking it as a compliment.

  ‘Grant, I give you my word that I shan’t be cross, but did you encourage one of your apparitions to do a little extra haunting last night?’

  ‘In Mrs Rynsburger’s bedroom?’ said Grant. ‘Of course not. I would never go along with anything so unprofessional.’

  ‘That is not the word I’d have chosen.’

  ‘Oh, but it’s extremely unprofessional to go larking about in a costume offstage,’ Grant said. ‘I told them to get straight to the wardrobe room and hang them up properly. I worked quickly on them but that’s not to say I didn’t work hard.’

  ‘You are certainly working hard,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think a nice walk would do you good this afternoon?’

  ‘A walk?’ she said, making a kind of screech out of the word. ‘I don’t have time for a nice walk. I’ll barely have time between the tech and the dress to swallow a bite of supper, madam. Walk where?’ she added, which rather spoiled the effect. I was sure that if the destination had offered any scope for drama Grant would have fitted it in.

  ‘Just to the Post Office to send a telegram to Gilverton,’ I said. ‘But no matter. I’ll go.’

  It was what I needed. A stroll down the lanes to the little sub-Post Office at Annanbridge would have given me just the time required to sort through the deluge of snippets and stories and start to see the pattern that was in there. Somewhere. But it was not to be. Alec sat down next to me at the scratch luncheon Minnie had laid out in the great hall and whispered urgently in my ear, putting his lips so close to my head that his breath tickled.

  ‘Come to the rehearsal after lunch, Dandy, and watch me until I go off for the last time and after the rehearsal come to my room and … help me. I don’t think I can do it. I think I’ll forget my lines, or fall over my feet or perhaps just faint dead away. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘Once the audience is in and the stars are shining down and the footlights up.’

  ‘Audience?’ said Alec, paling. ‘Promise me you’ll watch. I’m on right after lunch and the very next line is mine, then I’m a king in that dratted procession of dead kings that makes me want to scream, then third murderer again in Act IV, scene 2, then nothing but lurking about as a soldier with a bough in front of my face and even I can’t muck that up surely, so you don’t need to watch till the bitter end.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Because we actually have a job to do, beyond swanning about in doublet and hose, Alec. And I was planning to get on with it.’ His face beseeched me silently although he did not speak. ‘Oh all right then. When exactly can I duck away?’

  ‘At Exit Lady Macduff pursued by murderers,’ Alec said.

  ‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘Now let go of my arm so I can eat some luncheon, would you?’

  The soup was tasty but terribly hearty with it and the slices of buttered bread piled high on platters all up and down the table were such as would fill a ploughman at noon with a jug of beer to wash it down. I wished I had had the forethought to join the American ladies in Bluey’s book room, for surely they were not spooning up this broth – so thick it was more of a stew really – nor tearing into these hunks of bread. The players did not seem to mind. Even the grand Miss Byrne made a good effort and did not push back her chair and light a cigarette until she had scraped the bottom of her bowl and consumed the crust, which had defeated me.

  Leonard and Alec alone seemed too nervy to apply themselves. Leonard kept hopping up to look out of the window and Alec simply sat and stared at some of the young actors – thanes and the like – who were chatting in an easy way on the other side of the long board. Perhaps he thought he could absorb their training, or at least their years of calm experience, if he watched them closely. Of course they saw him at it and that only made them loll further back and speak in lazier drawls, as though they felt not a whit of anxiety about the opening night soon to be upon them.

  Moray Dunstane and Max Moore – Duncan and Macbeth themselves – sat at head and foot and silently regarded one another. Perhaps they could not shake off the mantle of King and Pretender and prattle about shaving strops and railway tickets the way the youngsters were.

  ‘There won’t be enough,’ Leonard said to the company at large as he sat down again after one of his trips to the window.

  No one answered and so I took pity on him. ‘Enough what, Mr …? Enough what?’

  ‘Branches,’ he said. ‘Boughs. Greenery. I’ve sent a couple of lads to hack some branches off those trees at the edge of the field. I thought it would be much better than the card and wool affairs we brought with us, but there’s too much branch per leaf and they’re going to be too heavy.’

  ‘Did Bluey give his permission?’ I said mildly. I did not know if Bluey was as peculiar as Hugh about the pruning, thinning, pollarding and coppicing of his trees, but if anyone had taken an axe to the edge of the park at Gilverton to make Birnam Wood out of it, Hugh would have set about the man with a horsewhip.

  ‘He didn’t mind as long as it’s the lane side and doesn’t leave bare patches visible from the house,’ Leonard said. ‘But they’re making a mess of it!’ He hopped up again and went to lean out of the casement, where this time I joined him.

  It was easy to diagnose the problem as I squinted across the breadth of the field at the two young men in shirtsleeves who were grappling with some large branches of elm. They were actors, not farmhands, and they had no idea until they started whacking, just how solid a real branch is compared with what Leonard had called the ‘card and wool affairs’. They were struggling to get them across the top of the gate and, even when the heftier of the two lads managed to pivot his over and send it into the field, it landed so heavily that it crushed and snapped all the little leafy twigs. They were left behind when he started dragging and what remained was no cover at all for a soldier on the move.

  ‘Paddy! Francis! Open the gate, you fools!’ Leonard yelled out of the window and once again I had cause to note that the training of the theatrical voice is a wo
nder. ‘Why on earth are you trying to seesaw them over? Use the gate!’ High above us another window opened and Ottoline’s voice, querulous and thin, came wafting down.

  ‘Who is shouting so?’ she said. ‘And what are those ruffians doing?’

  ‘Ottoline?’ I called, leaning out and craning up. I could not see her but I thought I knew roughly where she must be. ‘It’s Birnam Wood, coming to Castle Bewer in readiness for Dunsinane. Bluey has given permission, I believe. There’s no need to worry.’

  Leonard’s yelling had finally attracted the attention of the lunching players and a few of the young men and girls were now at the other open windows along the length of the hall, jeering and catcalling. It was the strangest jeering I had ever heard though, being completely couched in the words of the play.

  ‘Your leafy screens throw down and show like those you are!’ yelled Robert.

  ‘Ring the alarum bell,’ cried George. ‘Blow wind, come wrack.’

  ‘Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane, and thou opposed being of no woman born!’

  ‘What?’ came the cry from above. ‘What are you shouting out of the windows for all the world to hear?’

  ‘Otto,’ I called again. ‘Close your casement and don’t worry about it. They won’t be long.’

  ‘She’s deaf,’ said Leonard. ‘She won’t hear you.’

  ‘Macduff was from—’ shouted Roger, who had the lustiest voice of all.

  ‘Stop it!’ I told him, pulling my head in and going over to where he stood.

  ‘Macduff was from his mother’s—’

  ‘You’re being naughty and childish,’ I said and I went so far as to wag my finger.

  ‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped!’ Roger finally managed to get out, louder than ever despite the fact that he was giggling. I heard, from above, Ottoline’s window slamming shut.

  ‘That’s not even anything to do with the branches!’ I said. ‘And Mrs Bewer should not have to listen to such puerile nonsense.’

  ‘She’s as deaf as a post,’ Leonard said again. ‘I’m surprised she heard a thing.’

  ‘And,’ said Roger, ‘the Bard’s timeless—’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ I said. ‘It was pure mischief.’

  The whole company was giggling now, even Moray and Sarah were smiling, although they were too dignified to be throwing lines around.

  Then Leonard, practically falling out the window, started yelling again. ‘Paddy, look! Stop! Look behind you! Francis, it’s going to go!’ I turned back to see what was happening. Even Alec was roused from his meditations by the new note in Leonard’s voice.

  One of the two young men, sweating and struggling like a plough ox on a steep field, had dragged an enormous bough all the way to the drawbridge. It began to skew as he slowed and then to teeter on the edge of the outermost planks, before the inevitable happened and it fell with an almighty splash into the green water. The players gathered above hooted and clapped and Leonard screamed down at the boy with all restraint gone, his pale face turned a blotchy red and a hank of hair falling over his eyes as he shook his fists. ‘Get it out! Get it out and get it dried!’

  The two lads looked at one another and then coming to a silent agreement they jumped in.

  Then all hell broke loose. One of them came up spluttering and swearing about the cold of the water, whipping his hair out of his eyes and laughing as he cursed. He looked around for his mate, still laughing at first and then with growing alarm on his face.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘I forgot! It’s deep. It’s not an ornament. It’s ten feet deep and more.’

  Finally, the lad came up, coughing and retching and only managing to say ‘I can’t swim!’ before he went down again.

  Otto was screaming and wailing up at her window, sounding utterly panicked now, as the first lad took a deep breath and, with a kick like a fish, plunged under the water.

  Penny came into view across the bridge from under the gatehouse arch, picking her way between the branches abandoned there and turning to look up at us.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she shouted.

  ‘He’s drowning!’ Tansy Bell shouted down. ‘Francis is drowning.’

  Penny kicked off her shoes without another thought. She ignored her grandmother’s voice from above begging: ‘Penny, no! No! Everyone stop. It has to stop!’ and Alec’s voice from beside me shouting: ‘No, Penny. Use a branch or fetch help!’ But just as she took a little run backwards, ready to dive, Paddy Ramekin’s head came up again and, with it this time, Francis too, retching and spluttering, to a great cheer from the players.

  ‘Don’t jump in,’ Paddy told Penny. ‘Here, help me get him on the bank.’

  Ottoline was still screaming like a kettle up in her room. She sounded hysterical and, even though I shouted up with my familiar voice and Roger shouted too with his tremendous bellow: ‘He’s not drowned, Mrs Bewer, He’s fine,’ it just carried on and on as if she would never cease.

  Down by the moat, Francis had been hauled on to the bank. The next order of business was to eject all the water he had consumed. This filled the watching players with hilarity but did not strike me as a spectacle I wished to witness.

  ‘I better go up and see if Ottoline is all right,’ I said.

  I met Bluey on my way. He cut an odd figure, drifting along the gallery outside his book room with a clutch of silver lockets swinging from one fist and a faraway look in his eye.

  ‘Was that my mother yelling?’ he said as he saw me. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Everyone was yelling,’ I said. ‘Ottoline was screeching. She thought one of the actors had drowned, jumping into the moat after an elm branch.’

  Bluey blinked and frowned, as who could not, for the tale made no sense to anyone who had not seen it happen. But he was consumed with the question of where to hide the trinkets and he did not pursue it beyond saying: ‘Ah. Well, Mama doesn’t think much of the moat water, you know. At least for swimming. She forbade Penny from it when she was a child. Never did me any harm, I must say, and I spent most of my summers in there, like a tadpole.’

  ‘Hang one on Beulah’s picture frame,’ I said nodding at the lockets. ‘It’s got lots of knobs and twiddles, hasn’t it? And the silver won’t be visible against the gilt unless one looks for it. I think it would be a neat trick to hide one where everyone will look but no one will see. Adds to the fun.’

  ‘Do you think we’re mad, Dandy?’ Bluey asked, giving me a frank look. ‘Do you think there’s any chance it’ll work?’

  He spoke so honestly that I wanted to give an honest reply, rather than reassurances. But even when I thought about it coldly I found myself nodding. ‘I think it will work,’ I said. ‘The lunches, teas and suppers, the lectures, the play itself. I was down on the idea of Macbeth as much as you when Leonard first revealed the truth but it seems very fitting somehow.’

  ‘That’s hardly an endorsement of one’s home!’ said Bluey. ‘That Macbeth fits in nicely.’

  ‘Would it help to know the Annandales are envious of your originality?’ I said. ‘I mean, of course, Mespring is pretty swish, but a castle is a castle is a castle. A moat and a drawbridge and stone spiral staircases have their own romance. And there’s going to be so much more for everyone to do here than just shuffle around and feel awed by the Old Masters. I think it’s going to be marvellous, actually.’

  I was soon to wish I had not used up so much of my cheer on him, for when I knocked gently and entered Ottoline’s bedroom I saw that I would need it all.

  She was lying down on her chaise with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth and was a very peculiar colour, rather yellow in streaks but with hectic patches under her eyes. I hurried over and laid a hand on her forehead.

  ‘You’re ice cold,’ I said. ‘Let me ring—’ I remembered that there were no bells, ‘Well, let me run and fetch some tea and a hot bottle for you. He’s fine, Ottoline. They fished him out and he’s quite fine.’

  ‘What
?’ she said, struggling to sit up. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I think his name is Francis,’ I told her. ‘He plays one of the minor lords – or are they all thanes? I never know. And probably a porter, doctor and king too. Shall I go and fetch Patch for you to hug? Nothing like a dog to warm one up.’ I was chafing her hands and I thought I could feel a little life come back into them. ‘I don’t know how they keep it all straight in their heads, do you?’

  Only then did I remember that I was supposed to be in quite another room, chafing other hands, and offering assurances that it was easy, not doubts that it was possible. Well, Alec would just have to do without me in the face of Otto’s greater need.

  ‘No need for that,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling a little better now.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘I got the wind up.’ She did sound more like her old self. ‘Watching those silly boys racketing about.’

  ‘It was very foolish of him to jump in without knowing how deep it was. It’s extremely deep, isn’t it? Bluey said he was forbidden it when he was a child.’

  ‘Very deep,’ Otto agreed. ‘But Bluey is swaggering. He always hated cold water anyway. He wouldn’t swim at the seaside either. Or not until the first time we went all the way to Eastbourne anyway. Oh, I would have loved to move to Eastbourne, Dandy. Sea breezes and warm sunshine and never dark at teatime the way it is here in the winter.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I began, then I thought the better of it. The chances of Alec or me finding the Cut Throat now that the great treasure hunt was splashed all over the press seemed vanishingly thin. Minnie’s dream of selling it and furnishing a quiet little life in Edinburgh for her and Bluey was fading fast. Ottoline in rooms in Eastbourne with a companion seemed even less likely. As I looked at her lying there, however, at least it appeared that her remaining days would be without upheaval, for she could surely not last until after Richard’s century and the time it would take for the bills to arrive and their due date fall for paying.