by Bruce Barber
down a little. The bruises she exposed were purplish and ugly.
“I think he was trying to kill me,” she said, in a voice that betrayed something like strain, at last. “Perhaps he might have... if not for Grace.”
“Grace?” Keyes remembered how distraught the dresser had been earlier in the evening.
“Yes. You know how she follows me about, hardly ever lets me out of her sight, especially during a show.”
“Why didn’t she get help?”
Sandra shrugged. “I don’t know; I guess she thought she didn’t have time.”
“From the sound of it, she was probably right.”
“Alan saw Grace, but Alan kept on throttling me. She tried to pull him off me, but he just called her a ‘dirty bitch,’ or something equally characteristic of Alan, and squeezed me harder. Grace grabbed at his belt... Alan let go of me. I fell over, and lay there trying to get my breath. When I got up again, Alan was flat on his back. Grace was standing over him with the knife in her hand.”
“But for God’s sakes, Sandra,” Keyes said, “you should have told somebody. He was trying to kill you, after all.”
“But we didn’t. All I could think about was my next scene. I told Grace to get rid of the knife. She ran off, and I went back into the theatre.”
“What did she do with it?” Keyes wondered.
“I don’t know... threw it in the lake, I think.”
Just like that, Keyes thought. Sandra said it so flatly, so easily, as if Grace had casually discarded a tissue or a cigarette butt. He could see it only too well in his mind’s eye – the terrified woman, thin and awkward, running with the bloody blade in her hand, then the sweeping movement of her arm as she rid herself of the evidence of her violence.
This image of Grace’s gesture and of the weapon tumbling over and over through the wet night air hung frozen in Keyes’ imagination; he remembered one of his dreams, and in that moment solved another of the Stratford mysteries.
“The swan,” he said under his breath, “the poor swan...”
“What did you say?” Sandra said. Her voice was the voice of a child, a very weary, very frightened child.
“Nothing,” Keyes said, “that matters.”
“It’s all so horrible,” Sandra said. “Poor Grace...”
“You could still go to the police...” Keyes began, but he knew this bit of advice would not be taken. The scandal of such a confession might mean the end of Sandra’s career. Neither she nor Grace would be able to live with a disaster like that.
For a little while they stayed where they were on the empty stage, with Sandra staring out into the empty house, and Keyes staring at Sandra.
Then she took a step toward the apron. Her shawl slipped slowly from her shoulders and fell in a heap beside her. For a moment Keyes thought she was going to fall. He sprang forward, steadied her. This time she allowed herself to be touched.
“Do you suppose you could take me home, love?” she murmured. “I’m so terribly tired.”
ACT FIVE
WHEN THE HURLY BURLY’S DONE
O, Sisters Three,
Come, come to me,
With hands as pale as milk;
Lay them in gore,
Since you have shore
With shears his thread of silk...
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1
(5:1) The Tempest
Keyes might have wept with joy, were he a weeping man. As it was, he settled for a smile which stretched from his left ear almost to the right ear of the woman in the neighbouring seat. For tonight he had struck gold.
Right from the start of the play, it was not his best friend Seamus dressed up in borrowed identity striding about on the stage; it was Prospero, the wronged Duke of Milan, heavy with dignity and aflame with rough magic. Beside the wizard was no giddy ingénue, but a fresh-faced and innocently nubile Miranda, moon-eyed at the wondrous alien creatures who had appeared on her island.
Everything that could possibly go right with the Festival’s closing production had done so, and Claude Keyes was remembering what had first brought him into this perpetually chaotic and often dangerous world so many years ago. If anything could have tempted him back into the heaven and hell that was the profession of acting, this Tempest was it.
But the past is past, he thought happily, and as he had rediscovered tonight that past had not been wasted. He had made his own small contribution to the theatre, then moved on, which was as it should be. But knowing that the theatre was still capable of transforming the realities of its patrons, as this production was doing, made him feel absurdly better about his friends, himself, the craft in general, and the violent events of the last week in particular. In a world that embraced only Macbeth, Keyes was not sure that he could exist; certainly he could not thrive. However, in any existence which could contain both the Scottish Play and The Tempest, all things were possible. Even happiness, and perhaps love.
So engrossed had he been in the play, he had forgotten for the most part to watch the audience, this having become one of his chief sources of amusement and instruction. He made the time to do this during the second act.
He found no face especially interesting until he scanned the less expensive section of the house. There, surrounded by empty seats, was Kiri Ellison. She was dressed conservatively, for her, in a plain dress that actually concealed much more of her skin than it exposed, and her hair was pulled back in a knot that was almost severe. The beauty thus revealed was magical in itself. Keyes glanced at her several times during the course of the play; she leaned forward, chin in hands, brows knit in concentration, her eyes widening from time to time in appreciation or understanding, especially during Miranda’s speeches.
He made a point of looking her way when the last couplet of the play was uttered:
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.
He saw her lean back in her chair for a moment, frowning. Then, her face cleared, her brows relaxed, and she, too was smiling.
Keyes looked for her outside afterwards, but she had disappeared.
(5:2) The river
He knew that there was to be a closing party at The Bells that night, but Keyes was in no hurry to get there, and so took the long stroll to town, via the river. The temperature had dropped, a hint of the winter waiting in weather’s Green Room, but it was a bracing crispness, clear and healthy. Near the spot where the bystander swan had met its fate, one of its brothers or sisters sailed sedately along, a rare black swan. Lamplight reflected from an eye, causing the bird to seem to wink at Keyes, who winked back.
Further along, at a poorly lit stretch behind a small bandshell, Keyes stopped to survey the sky. The chill clarity of the night seemed to have brought out an inordinate amount of hard, bright stars. Not only that, but he soon noticed something else which the coming change in season had summoned, a dim series of green blue lines appeared among the constellations, wavering rays of streaming light that formed a vaguely flowerlike pattern. Then, the flirtatious aurora borealis began to fade away again, after having appeared to Keyes for only a minute or two.
“Nice night,” Keyes whispered to no one at all.
(5:3) The Jester’s Bells
When he finally arrived at The Bells, it was to find it packed with people in costume. Keyes had forgotten about this aspect of the closing celebration, so wrapped up had he been in the triumphant Tempest. Until recently the end of the Festival season had coincided with Halloween, and when the season was extended to mid-November, the tradition of masquing at the wrap party had moved along with the date. A six-foot penis walked by Keyes, nodding its glans at him as it did so. The walking penis was being chased by Anne of Green Gables and a mummy.
Keyes found a place at the bar and ordered a beer.
“No drinks unless you’re in costume,” Bruno commanded. Suitably enough, Bruno was attired as Bacchus.
“But I don’t have one,” Keyes said. “I forgot...”
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br /> “No problem,” said Bruno, reaching under the bar. He produced a round, red nose of soft rubber, which he affixed to Keyes’ face, quickly and efficiently. Bruno continued drawing beer with his free hand, then slid the drink across the bar.
“It’s good on you, Claude,” Bruno said. “Very good. Looks as if it was made for you, or you for it.”
Keyes glanced at himself in the mirror behind the bar. He had to admit that Bruno was right. The red nose perched quite naturally on the lesser nose beneath and looked at home.
“Ever do any clowning?” Bruno asked. He was drawing more beers, but he seemed always able to do that for any number of customers without interrupting his train of thought or conversation.
“Not professionally,” Keyes replied, turning his head slightly to get the effect of the nose in the three-quarter view. “Only in my private life, Bruno.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” the bartender said, moving away.
Keyes took out his pack of cigarettes, which slipped from his hands to the floor. He bent to retrieve them. Suddenly a pair of cloven hooves appeared in his field of vision. As he straightened, he beheld the extravagantly hairy legs of some biped beast, and then an equally hirsute torso, bare beneath the coat which was being flung aside. O’Reilly’s outfit was completed by a pair of horns glued to his forehead.
“I see Great Pan is alive,” Keyes said.
“Lock up your wenches and livestock!” the actor bellowed as he reached out and tweaked Keyes’ rubber proboscis. “Well met, all!