that at all. It was one of Rob’s dreadful puns ...”
“Please don’t worry. There’s no harm done. I just brought this card round; it was wrongly delivered to us this morning.”
“What a way to repay a kindness,” the girl said, almost collapsing in giggles. “Do come in - you can’t stand there on the doorstep.”
“Well, I ...”
“I must make amends somehow - won’t you have a cup of tea or something?”
“Well, I didn’t mean ... But why not? Thank you.”
That was the start of a fairly close friendship. Rob explained that they’d only just moved in and hadn’t got things properly organised yet, so would I mind having it in the kitchen? Sheila had at least sorted that out. Of course I didn’t mind. They had a couple of stools in there, and Rob fetched a chair from a bedroom.
Sheila put on the kettle, commented that it was getting dark and switched on the light , which flickered a few times and then went out. “Damn!” said Rob. “It’s always doing that.”
Mounting a set of kitchen steps he jiggled the bulb which obligingly lit up again - for a few seconds. When he tried again there was a loud bang and everything went out. “Is it a fuse or a circuit breaker?” I asked.
Rob didn’t know; he hadn’t found it yet. However, as expected, the arrangement was much the same as in my own place and probably over the whole estate. With the main breaker re-set everything in the kitchen started up again except the light. The breaker on that circuit refused to close and there was evidently a persistent short, so for the time being they would have to rely on flashlights or reading lamps.
Just then there was a knock at the door: Lucy, coming to see why I was taking so long. After introductions Sheila apologised for the state of the lighting and explained what had happened, asking if we knew of a reliable electrician. “Not in the village,” said Lucy. “But we had the same trouble and Reg fixed it. You’ll do it for them, won’t you, dear?”
Women have been volunteering their menfolk for unwanted jobs ever since the marriage feast of Cana and probably long before, so that came as no surprise to me, and all the youngsters’ objections were overruled. “It’ll have to be tomorrow, though; I’ll need daylight.”
“Of course.”
There proved to be a fourth cupful of tea in the pot and Rob fetched another chair; the space was getting pretty crowded but with a bit of shuffling we managed. “You did remember to deliver the card, I hope,” said Lucy. I could see that she was bursting to know about Miranda Wayneflete and that was as close as she dare get to asking.
Fortunately Sheila needed no prompting and explained that they had been friends at drama school, but Miranda had married money and was off on a Mediterranean cruise. “The Wayneflete touch is a bit of swank. She’s the only Miranda we know and she’d normally sign herself just that. I don’t mind. Actually she’s been very kind; her husband had bought this place to let but he’s let us have it rent-free until we find somewhere more convenient that we can afford.”
“Drama school. So you’re actors, then?
“Well, resting at present. Just filling in with whatever jobs we can get.”
Something stirred at the back of my mind but didn’t gel until the next day. My uncle Ned had inherited a house in a remote northern valley and most years spent much of the summer there; winters were too bleak. He had become friendly with the innkeeper who had a young daughter with a progressive disease that would inevitably be fatal, probably sooner rather than later, and already limited her physical movements severely. She could read and manipulate television controls, but reception was at best patchy, and having read somewhere about “the magic of the theatre” she was longing to see a real live performance.
Taking her to an actual theatre was out of the question, and Ned had made enquiries about getting a small travelling company to perform in the village hall, but for several plausible reasons they regretfully turned him down. It occurred to me that perhaps our new friends might be prepared to put on a two-hander there. As I said, if not particularly lucrative it would help to keep their hands in, and with transport, food and accommodation all found, the fee would at least be a useful bit of pocket money.
They looked at each other, clearly interested but doubtful. “We’d have to think about it,” said Sheila, evidently the business manager of the partnership.
“Of course. And I’ll have to speak to my uncle. I imagine he’ll expect to pay the going rate, whatever that is. He’ll probably want a fairly short piece to avoid tiring the girl too much.”
“Sounds reasonable. How old is she, by the way?”
“About thirteen or fourteen, I believe. And quite bright - that’s what makes it such a tragedy.”
“It makes it a bit easier, too. I’d imagined someone younger. Any ideas, Rob?”
“Hmm ... ‘Village wooing’?”
“Possible ... about an hour ... two short intervals ... two sets ... Is that going to be a problem? What’s the set-up in this hall, Reg?”
“I’ve never been there. But probably pretty basic.”
“Then we’d better assume a bare stage. We’ll need a double-sided backcloth and something to support it ... a couple of deckchairs for the ship ... a table to serve as the shop counter ...”
And so it went on. To cut a long story short, by the end of the evening they had not only accepted the suggestion but seemed quite excited about it. My only worry then was that Uncle Ned might not like it; I could imagine how disappointed they would be. I already knew the play so I could describe it to him, and much to my relief he jumped at the idea.
I made up a kind of folding screen painted with a ship’s rail against a background of sea and sky on one side and on the other the stacked shelves of a village shop. We could take the deck chairs for the first scene and clutter for the shop could be provided locally. With four people and all this clobber to take besides normal luggage for a weekend, we should obviously need something much bigger than our car to carry it, so I arranged to borrow Bill Mundy’s van and everything seemed set.
Bill and his wife were away for a week but due back a couple of days before we were to set off. However, the day before that, Lucy (who to my disgust had started dabbling in Twitter) received a tweet that she translated as “Sorry to let you down. Stuck in Sidmouth: sick Transit. Gloria Mundy.” I suspect that the last touch was an embellishment by Lucy herself for Rob’s benefit, but if so it fell flat as he knew no Latin, not even that familiar tag. Anyway, the message was clear. Luckily I was able to hire a van easily enough.
The journey was quite good, although I was a bit doubtful about some of the roads we had to use. Jack Birtwhistle, the innkeeper, was accommodating Rob and Sheila; Lucy and I were of course staying with Uncle Ned several miles up the valley and much less handy for the hall, but Jack’s wife opened it up and we unloaded the stuff for the play.
As expected, the facilities were indeed basic, but just about adequate. There was no way of rigging a curtain even if we had one, but if the lights were put out briefly at the end of each scene the cast could disappear into the dressing room for the interval.
The play went off quite well, and the villagers who came to the performance seemed pleased with it. Young Jenny, the invalid, was evidently delighted although of course very limited in the appreciation she could show. Molly, her mother, assured us that she was utterly thrilled and would have loved to see it again. Hearing this, Rob and Sheila briefly conferred and ran through it again for her benefit.
A few days after returning home, we had a letter from Molly Birtwhistle thanking us for the treat put on for Jenny and assuring us that it had given her a real lift. It was a pity that we hadn’t thought to record the performance as Jenny would have loved to hear it yet again. That might have been a hint, but I didn’t feel we could impose on Rob and Sheila to make good the omission. Luckily, however, I happened to have a recording made years before by a couple of friends who ran a tiny theatre on Mull, so I sent a copy.
F
ive months later we had another letter from Molly; Jenny had passed away in her sleep. She had practically worn out the cassette with playing it over and over again, but it had made a world of difference to her as she no longer fretted over her disabilities.
She had been well liked in the community and everyone had wished to pay their respects. Enclosed was a photograph of her, lying as it were in state. She was smiling.
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SVETLANA
It was years - no, decades - since I’d seen or heard anything of Dmitri Grigoriev. In fact I’d met him only once, at a Harwell conference in the Cold War era: even then, relations at a technical level with Russians were quite cordial. He was the interpreter and minder, presumably KGB, for a visiting Soviet professor. I couldn’t remember what that particular conference had been about, but I did recall him as a cheerful, affable fellow, liked by everyone, though of course there was no telling whether that was his real character or just a façade. Actually, I suppose much the same could be said about any of us.
Given such a lapse of time, an e-mail from him came as a complete surprise, and I still wonder how he found my address, but it hardly matters. After some preliminaries, the gist of it was to ask whether some IAEA papers on thorium as a nuclear fuel, under what appeared to be my name, were indeed mine. That took me back quite a
Skiddlethorpe and other stories Page 8