by Ngaio Marsh
“Not here, of course,” Knight said, waving his disengaged hand, “not now. But soon. And, in the meantime, a thought.”
“Oops!” Peregrine thought. “Here we go.”
“Just a thought. I throw it out for what it’s worth. Don’t you feel — and I’m speaking absolutely disinterestedly — don’t you feel that in your Act Two, dear Perry, you keep Will Shakespeare offstage for rather a long time? I mean, having built up this tremendous tension—”
Peregrine listened to the celebrated voice and as he listened he looked at the really beautiful face with its noble brow and delicate bone structure. He watched the mouth and thought how markedly an exaggerated dip in the bow of the upper lip resembled that of the Droushout engraving and the so-called Grafton portrait. “I must put up with him,” Peregrine thought. “He’s got the prestige, he’s got the looks and his voice is like no other voice. God give me strength.”
“I’ll think very carefully about it, Marco,” he said and he knew that Knight knew he was going to do nothing of the sort. Knight, in a grand seignorial manner, clapped him on the shoulder. “We shall agree,” he cried, “like birds in their little nest.”
“I’m sure of it,” said Peregrine.
“One other thing, dear boy, and this is your private ear.” He steered Peregrine by the elbow into a corridor leading off to the boxes. “I find with some surprise,” he said, muting the exquisite voice, “that we are to have W. Hartly Grove in our company.”
“I thought he read Mr. W.H. quite well, didn’t you?”
“I could scarcely bring myself to listen,” said Knight.
“Oh,” Peregrine said coolly. “Why?”
“My dear man, do you know anything at all about Mr. Harry Grove?”
“Only that he is a reasonably good actor. Marco,” Peregrine said, “don’t let’s start any anti-Grove thing. For your information, and I’d be terribly grateful if you’d treat this as strictly—very strictly, Marco—between ourselves, I’ve had no hand in this piece of casting. It was done at the desire of the Management. They have been generous to a degree in every other respect and even if I’d wanted to I couldn’t have opposed them.”
“You had this person thrust upon you?”
“If you like to put it that way.”
“You should have refused.”
“I had no valid reason for doing so. It is a good piece of casting. I beg you, Marco, not to raise a rumpus at the outset. Time enough when anything happens to justify it.”
For a moment he wondered if Knight was going to produce a temperament then and there and throw in his part. But Peregrine felt sure Knight had a great desire to play Will Shakespeare and although, in the shadowy passage, he could see the danger signal of mounting purple in the oval face, the usual outburst did not follow this phenomenon.
Instead Knight said: “Listen. You think I am unreasonable. Allow me to tell you, Perry—”
“I don’t want to listen to gossip, Marco.”
“Gossip! My God! Anyone who accuses me of gossip does me an injury I won’t stomach. Gossip! Let me tell you I know for a fact that Harry Grove—” The carpet was heavy and they had heard no sound of an approach. The worst would have happened if Peregrine had not seen a shadow move across the gilt panelling. He closed his hand round Knight’s arm and stopped him.
“What are you two up to, may I ask?” said Harry Grove. “Scandalmongering?”
He had a light, bantering way with him and a boldish stare that was somehow very far from being offensive. “Perry,” he said, “this is an enchanting theatre. I want to explore, I want to see everything. Why don’t we have a bacchanal and go in Doric procession through and about the house, tossing down great bumpers of champagne and chanting some madly improper hymn? Led, of course, by our great, great star. Or should it be by Mr. and Mrs. Greensleeves?”
He made his preposterous suggestion so quaintly that in spite of himself and out of sheer nerves Peregrine burst out laughing. Knight said, “Excuse me,” with a good deal of ostentation and walked off.
“ ‘It is offended,’ ” Grove said. “ ‘See, it stalks away.’ It dislikes me, you know. Intensely.”
“In that case don’t exasperate it, Harry.”
“Me? You think better not? Rather tempting though, I must say. Still, you’re quite right, of course. Apart from everything else, I can’t afford to. Mr. Greengage might give me the sack,” Grove said with one of his bold looks at Peregrine.
“If he didn’t, I might. Do behave prettily, Harry, And I must get back into the scrum.”
“I shall do everything that is expected of me, Perry dear. I nearly always do.”
Peregrine wondered if there was a menacing note behind this apparently frank undertaking.
When he returned to the foyer it was to find that the party had attained its apogee. Its component bodies had almost all reached points farthest removed from their normal behaviour. Everybody was now obliged to scream if he or she wished to be heard and almost everybody would have been glad to sit down. The personages were clustered together in a flushed galaxy and the theatre people excitedly shouted shop. Mrs. Greenslade could be seen saying something to her husband and Peregrine was sure it was to the effect that she felt it was time their guests began to go away. It would be best, Peregrine thought, if Destiny Meade and Marcus Knight were to give a lead. They were together on the outskirts and Peregrine knew, as certainly as if he had been beside them, that Knight was angrily telling Destiny how he felt about W. Hartly Grove. She gazed at him with her look of hypersensitive and at the same time sexy understanding but every now and then her eyes swivelled a little and always in the same direction. There was a slightly furtive air about this manoeuvre.
Peregrine turned to discover what could be thus attracting her attention and there, in the entrance to the passage, stood Harry Grove with wide-open eyes and a cheerful smile, staring at her. “Damn,” thought Peregrine. “Now what?”
Emily Dunne, Charles Random and Gertie Bracey were all talking to Jeremy Jones. Jeremy’s crest of red hair bobbed up and down and he waved his glass recklessly. He threw back his head and his roar of laughter could be heard above the general din. As he always laughed a great deal when he was about to fall in love, Peregrine wondered if he was attracted by Emily and hoped he was not. It could hardly be Gertie. Perhaps he was merely plastered.
But no. Jeremy’s green and rather prominent gaze was directed over the heads of his group and was undoubtedly fixed upon Destiny Meade.
“He couldn’t be such an ass,” Peregrine thought uneasily. “Or could he?”
His awareness of undefined hazards were not at all abated when he turned his attention to Gertie Bracey. He began, in fact, to feel as if he stood in a field of fiercely concentrated shafts of criss-cross searchlights. Like searchlights, the glances of his company wandered, interlaced, selected and darted. There, for example, was Gertie with her rather hatchet-jawed intensity stabbing her beam at Harry Grove. Peregrine recollected, with a jolt, that somebody had told him they had been lovers and were now breaking up. He had paid no attention to this rumour. Supposing it was true, would this be one more personality problem on his plate?
“Or am I,” he wondered, “getting some kind of director’s neurosis? Do I merely imagine that Jeremy eyes Destiny and Destiny and Harry ogle each other and Gertie glares hell’s fury at Harry and Marcus has his paw on Destiny and that’s why he resents Harry? Or is it all an unexpected back-kick from the Conducis champagne?”
He edged round to Destiny and suggested that perhaps they ought to make a break and that people were waiting for a lead from her and Marcus. This pleased both of them. They collected themselves as they did offstage before a big entrance and, with the expertise of rugby halfbacks, took advantage of a gap and swept through it to Mrs. Greenslade.
Peregrine ran straight into their child actor, Master Trevor Vere, and his mama, who was a dreadful lady called Mrs. Blewitt. She had to be asked and it was God’s mercy that she
seemed to be comparatively sober. She was dressed in a black satin shift with emerald fringe and she wore a very strange green toque on her pale corn hair. Trevor, in the classic tradition of infant phenomena, was youthfully got up in some sort of contemporary equivalent of a Fauntleroy suit. There were overtones of the Mod. His hair was waved back from his rather pretty face and he wore a flowing cravat. Peregrine knew that Trevor was not as old as his manner and his face suggested because he came under the legal restrictions imposed upon child performers. It was therefore lucky in more ways than one that he died early in the first act.
Mrs. Blewitt smiled and smiled at Peregrine with the deadly knowingness of the professional mum and Trevor linked his arm in hers and smiled, too. There are many extremely nice children in the professional theatre. They have been well brought up by excellent parents. But none of these had been available to play Hamnet Shakespeare and Trevor, it had to be faced, was talented to an unusual degree. He had made a great hit on cinema in a biblical epic as the Infant Samuel.
“Mrs. Blewitt,” said Peregrine.
“I was just hoping for a chance to say how much we appreciate the compliment,” said Mrs. Blewitt with an air of conspiracy. “It’s not a big role, of course, not like Trev’s accustomed to. Trev’s accustomed to leading child-juves, Mr. Jay. We was offered—”
It went on predictably for some time. Trevor, it appeared, had developed a heart condition. Nothing, Mrs. Blewitt hurriedly assured Peregrine, to worry about really because Trev would never let a show down, never, but the doctor under whom Trev was and under whom she herself was—a monstrous picture presented itself—had advised against another big, emotionally exhausting role—
“Why bring that up, Mummy?” Trevor piped with one of his atrocious winks at Peregrine. Peregrine excused himself, saying that they must all be getting along, mustn’t they, and he wanted to catch Miss Dunne before she left.
This was true. He had thought it would be pleasant to take Emily back to their studio for supper with him and Jeremy. Before he could get to her he was trapped by Gertrude Bracey.
She said: “Have you seen Harry anywhere?”
“I saw him a minute or two ago. I think perhaps he’s gone.”
“I think perhaps you’re right,” she said with such venom that Peregrine blinked. He saw that Gertrude’s mouth was unsteady. Her eyes were not quite in focus and were blurred with tears.
“Shall I see if I can find him?” he offered.
“God, no,” she said. “I know better than that, I hope, thank you very much.” She seemed to make a painful effort to present a more conventional front. “It doesn’t matter two hoots, darling,” she said. “It was nothing. Fabulous party. Can’t wait to begin work. I see great things in poor Ann, you know.”
She walked over to the balustrade and looked down into the lower foyer which was populous with departing guests. She was not entirely steady on her pins, he thought. The last pair of personages was going downstairs and of the company only Charles Random and Gertrude remained. She leaned over the balustrade, holding to it with both hands. If she was looking for Harry Grove, Peregrine thought, she hadn’t found him. With an uncoordinated swing she turned, flapped a long black glove at Peregrine and plunged downstairs. Almost certainly she had not said goodbye to her host and hostess but, on the whole, perhaps that was just as well. He wondered if he ought to put her in a taxi but heard Charles Random shout: “Hi, Gertie love. Give you a lift?”
Jeremy was waiting for him but Emily Dunne had gone. Almost everybody had gone. His spirits plummeted abysmally. Unpredictably, his heart was in his boots.
He went up to Mrs. Greenslade with extended hand.
“Wonderful,” he said. “How can we thank you.”
FOUR
Rehearsal
“ Who is this comes hopping up the lane?”
“Hopping? Where? Oh, I see. A lady dressed for riding. She’s lame, Master Will. She’s hurt. She can’t put her foot to the ground.”
“She makes a grace of her ungainliness. There’s a stain across her face. And in her bosom. A raven’s feather in a valley of snow.”
“Earth. Mire. On her habit, too. She must have fallen.”
“Often enough, I dare swear.”
“She’s coming in at the gate.”
“Will! Where ARE you. WILL!”
“We’ll have to stop again. I’m afraid,” Peregrine said. “Gertie! Ask her to come on, will you, Charles?”
Charles Random opened the door on the Prompt side. “Gertie! Oh, dear.”
Gertrude Bracey entered with her jaw set and the light of battle in her eyes. Peregrine walked down the centre aisle and put his hands on the rail of the orchestral well.
“Gertie, love,” he said, “it went back again, didn’t it? It was all honey and sweet reasonableness and it wouldn’t have risen one solitary hackle. She must grate. She must be bossy. He’s looking down the lane at that dark, pale creature who comes hopping into his life with such deadly seduction. And while he’s quivering, slap bang into this disturbance of—of his whole personality—comes your voice: scolding, demanding, possessive, always too loud. It must be like that, Gertie. Don’t you see? You must hurt. You must jangle.”
He waited. She said nothing.
“I can’t have it any other way,” Peregrine said.
Nothing.
“Well, let’s build it again, shall we? Back to ‘Who is this,’ please, Marco. You’re off, please, Gertie.”
She walked off.
Marcus Knight cast up his eyes in elaborate resignation, raised his arms and let them flop.
“Very well, dear boy,” he said, “as often as you like, of course. One grows a little jaded but never mind.”
Marco was not the only one, Peregrine thought, to feel jaded: Gertie was enough to reduce an author-director to despair. She had after a short tour of the States become wedded to Method acting. This involved endless huddles with whoever would listen to her and a remorseless scavenging through her emotional past for fragments that could start her off on some astonishing association with her performance.
“It’s like a bargain basement,” Harry Grove said to Peregrine. The things Gertie digs up and tries on are really too rococo. We get a new look every day.”
It was a slow process and the unplotted pauses she took in which to bring the truth to light were utterly destructive to concerted playing. “If she goes on like this,” Peregrine thought, “she’ll tear herself to tatters and leave the audience merely wishing she wouldn’t.”
As for Marcus Knight, the danger signals for a major temperament had already been flown. There was a certain thunderous quietude which Peregrine thought it best to disregard.
Really, for him, Peregrine thought, Marco was behaving rather well, and he tried to ignore the little hammer that pounded away under Marco’s oval cheek.
“Who is this—”
Again they built up to her line. When it came it was merely shouted offstage without meaning and apparently without intention.
“Great Christ in Heaven!” Marcus Knight suddenly bellowed. “How long must this endure! What, in the name of all the suffering clans of martyrdom, am I expected to do? Am I coupled with a harridan or a bloody dove? My author, my producer, my art tell me that here is a great moment. I should be fed, by Heaven, fed: I should be led up to. I have my line to make. I must show what I am. My whole being should be lacerated. And so, God knows it is, but by what!” He strode to the door and flung it wide. Gertrude Bracey was exposed looking both terrified and determined. “By a drivelling, piping pea-hen!” he roared, straight into her face. “What sort of an actress are you, dear? Are you a woman, dear? Has anybody ever slighted you, trifled with you, deserted you? Have you no conception of the gnawing serpent that ravages a woman scorned?”
Somewhere in the front of the house Harry Grove laughed. Unmistakably, it was he. He had a light, mocking, derisive laugh, highly infectious to anybody who had not inspired it. Unhappily both Knight and Ger
trude Bracey, for utterly opposed reasons, took it as a direct personal affront. Knight spun round on his heel, advanced to the edge of the stage and roared into the darkness of the auditorium. “Who is that! Who is it! I demand an answer.”
The laughter ran up to a falsetto climax and somewhere in the shadows Harry Grove said delightedly: “Oh dear me, dear me, how very entertaining. The King Dolphin in a rage.”
“Harry,” Peregrine said, turning his back on the stage and vainly trying to discern the offender. “You are a professional actor. You know perfectly well that you are behaving inexcusably. I must ask you to apologize to the company.”
“To the whole company, Perry dear? Or just to Gertie for laughing about her not being a woman scorned?”
Before Peregrine could reply Gertrude re-entered, looking wildly about the house. Having at last distinguished Grove in the back stalls, she pointed to him and screamed out with a virtuosity that she had hitherto denied herself: “This is a deliberate insult.” She then burst into tears.
There followed a phenomenon that would have been incomprehensible to anybody who was not intimately concerned with the professional theatre. Knight and Miss Bracey were suddenly allied. Insults of the immediate past were as if they had never been. They both began acting beautifully for each other: Gertrude making big eloquent piteous gestures and Marcus responding with massive understanding. She wept. He kissed her hand. They turned with the precision of variety artists to the auditorium and simultaneously shaded their eyes like comic sailors. Grove came gaily down the aisle saying: “I apologize. Marcus and Gerts. Everybody. I really do apologize. In seventeen plastic and entirely different positions. I shall go and be devoured backstage by the worm of contrition. What more can I do? I cannot say with even marginal accuracy that it’s all a mistake and that you’re not at all funny. But anything else. Anything else.”
“Be quiet,” Peregrine said, forcing a note of domineering authority which was entirely foreign to him. “You will certainly go backstage, since you are needed. I will see you after we break. In the meantime I wish neither to see nor hear from you until you make your entrance. Is that understood?”