by Bruce Barber
the contadina’s song is heard,” she bellowed above the roar of many massed guitars. “Rude but made sweet by distance!”
“Contadin-o, I believe,” Keyes corrected at the top of his lungs.
“Bugger off!” Betty screamed, and veered away. Keyes hoped she was going home to bed, but he knew that would not be the case.
And suddenly there was silence, or what seemed like silence to Keyes after the effects of the band’s finale. All about him he could suddenly hear conversation. Because of the music it too was turned up – everybody was speaking fortissimo; everybody was also too drunk to notice or care.
“In the morning sometimes,” a tall woman from Communications confided to a small woman from Accommodations, “he still manages...”
“I’m not fond of hearing about marital difficulties.”
“Oh, the wearisome irruminations!” The tall woman was a foreigner, Romanian, Keyes guessed, with a curious way of expressing herself in English. It seemed to him entirely appropriate that she was in the Communications department, the theatre world being as it was.
“Especially in the evening,” the small woman said. “It puts me too much in mind of my own disappointments.”
“And you’ve never tried turning to someone else?”
“I won’t say never. I so much yearn to be want...” Her voice trailed off as she went away with her friend.
“Did she say want-ed?” Keyes wondered aloud.
“Want-on,” said Hobart Porliss, who was once again on hand, “was what I heard.”
“Did you? I was sure...”
“Doesn’t pay to be sure about things – you’ll only be disappointed.”
“Hobie,” Keyes said. “I’ve been wondering... why exactly were you out on the deck during the show the other night, when we found Wales?”
“Why were you?”
“Cigarette.”
‘Filthy habit – you should quit,” Porliss said. “Actually, I was looking for that truly awful bust of Shakespeare that was lying beside Alan. An iron insult against the Bard, that statue – I think, subconsciously, I misplaced it on purpose. I’m glad it turned up... George gave it to me, and I wouldn’t offend George for the world.”
“And a bust of Shakespeare can be wonderful company,” Keyes observed.
“Perhaps it’s just as well the police kept it then; there’s a lot to be said for the solitary life.”
“Is there?”
“Even for masturbation. Your hand won’t whine, nor will it look up in the middle of everything and say ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.”’
Keyes laughed. At the moment he liked the portly director, despite himself. “I wouldn’t know.”
“What a fraud you are, Keyes!”
“Not really,” Keyes said, defending himself. “It’s just that I don’t always speak quite from the heart.”
“Unlike the rest of us,” Porliss said, wheeling about and off, “so unlike the rest of us...”
Keyes found a post to lean against on the outskirts of a small group where O’Reilly was telling a story, in the spirit of the evening, about Alan Wales to Amalie Brown, the young actress playing Miranda in The Tempest. Damian Pace listened with a grimace on his swarthy face, remembering only too well the production of Richard III in which the incident occurred.
“This show was a real pig to begin with, very badly directed,” O’Reilly said, with a wicked side glance toward Ms. Brown’s escort, an intense assistant director. “I had nothing to do but stand onstage and look impressive. Anyway, Wales and I had a bet as to which of us could make the other one corpse first – ”
“Corpse?” asked Amalie, wrinkling her turned-up nose. This was her first year at Stratford, and, although she had an undeniable talent, she was very conscious of the things she did not know, and strove to learn them.
O’Reilly, happy to instruct the young, explained: “Corpsing, wench, means laughing out loud onstage when you’re not supposed to... it’s great fun when you can get someone else to do it.”
“Really, Seamus,” the assistant said. “Laughing in the middle of a show is very poor form – you shouldn’t be teaching Amalie your bad habits. Directors have enough trouble.”
“When they’re young, as you are, yes, I suppose they do,” O’Reilly said, miffed at having his story interrupted. “As I was saying, we had this bet on, and neither of us had managed to win. Then, one night near the end of the run, I was staring off into the wings, and there was Alan...” he trailed off, pausing to take a long sip of his whisky, “... with his pants down, mooning me; he had a lit cigar – ”
“But no one’s allowed to smoke backstage!” Amalie interrupted, obviously shocked at such a transgression. O’Reilly glared at her.
“The cigar was shoved up his arse!” he said with gleeful malice.
Damian Pace shook his head ruefully. Ms. Brown flushed, sputtered, and nearly choked on the beer she had the misfortune to drink at that moment.
“Oh, my God!” she said when she recovered. “Alan Wales won the bet then?”
“Certainly not!” O’Reilly said. “l am a professional. Damian was standing next to me so I nudged him and whispered ‘Look at that asshole in the wings.’ Poor Damian corpsed and almost forgot his next lines. The director gave him a terrific lecture, and Alan caught hell from stage-management. It was a wonderful night.”
A solemn shadow passed over O’Reilly’s face. “I suppose I’ve won that bet, after all...”
“Why is that?” asked the innocent actress.
“Alan has certainly corpsed now,” O’Reilly answered quietly.
Amalie Brown excused herself to find a secluded corner, where she sat for the rest of the night, a large glass of beer in each hand. Keyes assumed she was pondering her future with this particular crew of people.
Later in the evening, Keyes heard Sandra’s voice from the stage, alternating with O’Reilly’s, then recognized with pleasure a project that the two actors were developing, and had talked about previewing. It was a two-hander with the working title of Cain and Eve, dramatizing excerpts from the works of Lord Byron, specifically exchanges between male and female characters.
O’Reilly might have been born to bring Byron and his words to life, while Sandra’s deft and delicate handling of the various women at times rendered Keyes breathless with awe, reminding him of how truly gifted she was, and of other things about her.
SANDRA
My office is
Henceforth to dry up tears, not to shed them;
But yet, of all who mourn, none mourn like me,
Not only for myself, but him who slew thee.
Now, Cain! I will divide thy burden with thee.
O’REILLY
Eastward from Eden will we make our way;
’Tis the most desolate, and suits my steps.
SANDRA
Lead! Thou shalt be my guide, and may our God
Be thine! Now let us carry forth our children.
O’REILLY
And he who lieth there was childless. I
Have dried the fountain of a gentle race,
Which might have temper’d this stern blood of mine,
Uniting with our children Abel’s offspring!
O Abel!
SANDRA
Peace be with him!
O’REILLY
But with me!
This was well-received by the crowd, even though by the end O’Reilly was beginning to show signs of over-indulgence. A line of text from some other long-lost triumph slipped into his speech, and this he managed to spoonerize. The result was his loud demand of Sandra, “What fuel crate has brought you here?”
The audience howled with laughter and applauded enthusiastically. Sandra, to Keyes’ surprise, slammed her notebook shut and stalked away in anger. Normally, she would simply have shot back some quick and witty response, in character and without missing a beat. Keyes supposed her to be much more upset than she would ever let on in public over the death of Wales. O’Reill
y bowed uncertainly, and made his exit as well. He looked as if he had no idea what had just happened.
Finally Keyes caught sight of George Brocken, who had in fact been present all along, if elusive. He was in a far corner of the room, well away from the bar, and away from the stage too. Propped against a wall with a glass in his hand, he was watching the crowd as it milled back and forth before him. Somehow he seemed out of context, like a crow among pigeons.
“Mr. Brocken,” Keyes said. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Brocken looked at him. There was no expression in his eyes, not even curiosity.
“I have a drink,” he said. “Besides, my mother taught me not to drink with strangers.”
“I’m Claude Keyes. I was in the company years ago. You were around then, too, but I didn’t work in any of the shows you designed.”
“Are you the writer Hobie told me about?”
“I write. What did he tell you about me?”
“Just gossip,” Brocken said, smiling ever so slightly.
“What sort of gossip?”
Brocken looked back at the milling crowd. “I can’t remember. Something about you and Sandra, I think. I don’t pay much attention to Hobart, especially when he’s gossiping.”
“That’s very shrewd of you,” Keyes said.
“Oh, I’m nothing if not shrewd.” He turned again to Keyes and his eyes suggested that he was indeed very shrewd.
“Did you want something? Or are you like Hobart... just here to gossip?”
“As a matter of fact, I do want something... or rather I want to talk to you about something.”
Brocken waited. His gaze did not shift or change in character. It was intensely shrewd.
“I was looking at some of your drawings this afternoon,” Keyes continued.
“Is that so? Did you like them?”
Keyes hadn’t really thought about the drawings that way. He had been too astonished at their content, or at least by the content of one of them to bother about their style. Certainly he didn’t like them as well as he liked the Kirkpatricks, or the Heeleys...
“They are very... deft,” he said.
Brocken barked a short laugh. “As much as that? What do you really want, Mr. Keyes?”
“It’s difficult to say. It was the Macbeth designs I saw.”
Brocken nodded. “At Smoke and Mirrors. Charming women. Hobart says they’re lovers.”
“Are they?”
“No. Hobie thinks everybody is gay because he is. Both of them have been married and have children.”
“All the more reason perhaps,” Keyes speculated.
“That’s as may be, but I have personal and incontrovertible evidence otherwise...”
Keyes was not deaf to the note of masculine pride which accompanied Brocken’s statement.
“...well, this is a theatre party after all,” Keyes muttered.
“Are you perhaps planning a book about my sex-life, Mr. Keyes?”
“No... what I’ve really been trying to get around to is – Alan Wales.”
Keyes felt a new rigidity in the man standing beside him.
It was almost as if some internal drill sergeant had suddenly called Brocken to attention.
“What about Alan Wales?” the designer said carefully.
“It was your drawing of him that made me want to talk to you.”
“I see. And not just because you admired its brilliant technique.”
“No,” Keyes admitted. “It was the pose. I found Wales, you know... after his death.”
“Ah, so you’re the one. I didn’t remember the name. Not very pleasant stumbling on a corpse... or ‘corse,’ as the Bard might say.”
“It made me sick,” Keyes said, “literally.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Brocken said in an exasperated voice.
“The body...” Keyes paused. Even mentioning it made him a bit queasy. “The pose, the position of it, the gesture – it was exactly like your drawing.”
“You’re very observant,” Brocken said quietly. “I’m not used to such observation among my critics or admirers. People have commented on Damian’s clothes...”
“Brave Macbeth.”
“And Sandra’s frocks, and Seamus’ robe, but Alan’s soldier suit? Not a word has been said about that.”
“Until now,” Keyes said.
Brocken looked away and took a couple of beats before he spoke.
“As you say,” he replied, “until now. A pity, too, because I’m quite proud of that costume. I worked on it every bit as hard as I worked on the principals. He’s Act I, Scene 2... right after the witches. The bloody man, as Duncan calls him, announces the wars, the struggle, the violence that is to follow.”
“Mr. Brocken, I –”
“Call me George. Anybody with an eye as sharp as yours should call me George.”
For the first time since their interview had begun, Keyes saw that Brocken was drunk. This didn’t surprise him; everyone else was also drunk. What surprised him was how little Brocken showed it.
“Yes... well then, George, it occurred to me –”
Brocken interrupted. “It occurred to you that you were not the ‘first one’ to find the body after all.”
“Something like that. He – Alan Wales – was so like your drawing. He can’t have fallen that way by accident, can he?”
“Have you told anyone about this?”
Keyes shook his head. “For some reason I wanted to talk to you before...”
“Before what?”
“Before I went to the police, I guess.”
“’What do you suppose they will make of it?”
“No idea,” Keyes admitted.
“I’ve a hunch they won’t understand it very well,” Brocken said quietly. Then he added, “Oh, they’ll understand as much as you do... as much as you do at this moment, I mean.”
“That you were there before me... that you...”
“I didn’t kill him, so don’t bother to suggest that. I did get to him before you did, and I did... move things about a little.”
“Things!”
“Him, then. I couldn’t bear seeing it all wrong.”
“It!?”
“The costume. Not once had that silly twit Wales managed to get into it properly. I dressed him myself the week before we opened, Grace took a crack at instructing him, and always by the time he went on, he had it all wrong again. The baldric...” Brocken broke off and rubbed his eyes as if to rid himself of the fatal vision of a baldric badly worn.
Keyes said nothing, but wished he had another drink.
“I knew there would be photographs, you see... of the corpse. There always are. Bad enough to have him appear that way out there on the wet pavement, but in the newspapers! That costume was all right. It was even quite successful, but Wales made it look terrible. And by getting himself killed, he made it look even worse. I had to do something about it.”
“That’s craziness, George,” Keyes said.
“Is it?” Brocken replied brightly. “It may be, but it is, nevertheless, what I do. It is my job to get the costumes right.”
“Onstage, yes, but...”
Brocken wasn’t listening now, not to Keyes anyway.
“I forgot about the drawing at Smoke and Mirrors,” he said. “They’ve had it for months. The cutters worked from a later version.”
Keyes started to say something, then stopped himself.
Brocken looked at him and smiled as broadly as his tight features would allow. “I really am flattered, you know. What an eye you have!”
“Flattered!”
“So much of a designer’s work goes unnoticed. It’s very discouraging at times.”
“But George, the police...”
“Oh, them. They’ll never find the drawing. Even if they did, they wouldn’t see what it meant. Jo at Smoke and Mirrors has an excellent eye; so has Frankie – and they haven’t notice
d.”
“They didn’t see the corpse,” Keyes said grimly.
“Of course they did. Everybody did. The photographs were in all the papers, as I knew they would be, the less gory ones, anyway. You were the only one with the intelligence and the... the connoisseurship to make the connection. I’m very impressed.”
“He did look more... more dramatic than I’ve heard he ever was onstage,” Keyes murmured.
“You see?” Brocken crowed. “He was wearing his costume properly. That’s why he looked ‘dramatic.”’
“But someone must be told about all this.”
“Who? The police?” Brocken asked. “’Why should they know? I moved things about a little. I made some alterations, aesthetic adjustments. I made Alan Wales look better for the photographers. That’s all.”
“You made yourself look better, too... better as a designer anyway.”
“Not better than I am,” Brocken said. “I just set matters right. I had nothing to do with the silly twit’s death.”
“I wish you’d stop calling him that.” Keyes said. “Nothing?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“What were you doing out there in the first place?”
Brocken frowned. “You are tenacious. Hobie was terribly upset because he’d misplaced a gift I’d given him. He gets very wrought-up about little things, and he is my friend, so I was out there looking for it.”
“Well, you found it... the Shakespeare thing.”
“That I did.”
“So why didn’t you take it? Certainly not because you were worried about tampering with evidence...”
Brocken shrugged. “Symmetry, I suppose. It looked to me like Shakespeare was deep in conversation with Wales. Why disturb them?”
Somehow Keyes knew that Brocken was telling the truth.
“I think I’m going to need another drink,” Keyes said.
“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Brocken said sympathetically. “And you know, I think I need one, too.”
He took Keyes’ arm and led him through the crowd toward the bar.
“We should have lunch together sometime,” he said. “Most people in the theatre are blind, don’t see anything except what looks back at them from the mirror. But you – you have an eye!”
After a brief drink with Brocken, Keyes decided to make his escape. It was about 1:30 a.m., and the affair was hitting its full stride. There was little talk about Wales, or the late Ricardo, or of anything else of any consequence. There was now other business afoot, that of courting serious derangement of the senses and of finding companionship for the long night’s journey into morning. Neither of these activities currently interested Keyes, and so he slipped out without anyone being the wiser.
The collapse of his theory concerning Brocken had not cured him of the desire to know what had really happened. If anything, his curiosity was now keener.
He walked past Dead Swan Isle, pausing there once more, this time to look up at the clear night sky, in time to see a star detach itself from its fellows and fall dying toward the horizon. The falling star triggered a series of impressions similar to those which had led him to suspect Brocken. He was perhaps not so quick to trust his impressions this time, but still...
A love-hate scene played before the opening curtain of Macbeth... tales of abuse... sequins... lost Shakespeares... and Kiri Ellison.
He quickened his pace, hoping to reach The Gilded Lily before it shut its doors for the night.
(4:3) The Gilded Lily
The Lily had not quite folded its ragged petals, although the serving of alcohol had officially ceased an hour earlier. Keyes had never been inside the place at such a late hour, or on a Saturday night. The bar bore even less