Lovers, Make Moan (Mrs. Bradley) Page 7

  For the purpose of this change, he had had a small square tent erected just off the O.P. side of the stage. Screened by the trees were three trestle tables to hold the props. These included the body-armour, helmet and sword-belt complete with retractable dagger worn by Pyramus in the workmen’s play and another belt with a dagger from Lynn’s collection of weapons. This belt was worn by young Yolanda Yorke in the hunting scene, and only then, so it remained on the trestle table for most of the play. Yorke shed his own sword-belt after the first scene until his re-entrance in the hunting scene, after which he kept it on for the rest of the play. Jonathan and Tom wore their sword-belts throughout the whole action.

  To conclude the practical side of producing, Brian arranged that the backdrop, whichever scene it represented, should always be sufficiently far forward to allow the actors to cross the stage out of sight of the audience when this was necessary. This was for the convenience of the workmen and the court party, for these entered sometimes from the prompt side and sometimes from O.P.

  “Well, I think we’ve thought of everything,” Brian Yorke had said at the conclusion of the all-too-immaculate dress rehearsal. “I don’t want anybody going up to the house except during the interval. Everything needed in the way of props will be in the wings. You’ll have to speed your armour up a bit, Rinkley. The others have only to collect their bits and pieces as Lion, Wall, and Moonshine and Thisbe has only to pin a skirt round herself and plonk a wig on her head, but you must get that body-armour on quicker and your sword-belt and helmet, too. Marcus, you could help him a bit couldn’t you? As Quince you’ve nothing to do except pick up your scroll.”

  “Some fool had moved my armour and belt from where I left them,” said Rinkley. “I wish to goodness people wouldn’t meddle with my props.”

  “I moved your armour and helmet and your sword-belt,” said Susan Hythe, his Thisbe. “You’d pinched nearly all the trestle table for them and you had pushed Moonshine’s dog and my mantle on to the ground, so I put our things back on the table and dumped your stuff.”

  “I’ll have a table to myself, and then perhaps you meddling moggies will leave my things alone.”

  “You mustn’t mind Rinkley,” said Yorke, when his leading man had gone. “That antique shop he and his wife used to run before she kicked him out and divorced him is absolutely booming and, of course, it’s hers, inherited from her father, so he’s got no claim on the profits and that makes him pretty sore.”

  “He’s overdrawn at the bank,” said Robina, whose husband was a bank manager. “I ought not to have let that out, so please forget it, but he is. I daresay that doesn’t make him any sweeter.”

  “He was in trouble some time back over seducing a minor, or so I heard,” said Susan when Yorke also had left them. “I would never have agreed to act opposite him if I had known that.”

  “I heard it, too, but I don’t believe there’s anything in it, or Brian would never have had him in the play. The Yorkes are nice people, but Valerie is very strait-laced. She didn’t want Rinkley in the play, you know, because of that scandal about a child that he was involved in. I don’t know any details, but—”

  “But I do,” said Robina. “However, to give the man his due, the case was thrown out by the magistrates for lack of any real evidence. Well, let’s go up to the house and get changed. A Greek tunic and sandals may have been suitable evening wear in Athens, but in England, even in June, they’re hardly adequate at this time of night.”

  “The dress rehearsal went off well, I thought,” said Caroline, as the three women, two young and one middle-aged, took the steep path up to the house.

  “Brian thinks it went far too well,” said Robina. “He prophesies disaster at the actual performances. He’s not calling a rehearsal for tomorrow. He says he shall spend the day in prayer. Which of you two is my son walking home tonight?”

  The girls giggled and Caroline said she thought it was her turn.

  Wednesday passed without incident and the performances on Thursday and Friday went off well, the Thursday performance having been attended by Dame Beatrice and Laura.

  “What did you think of the play?” asked Dame Beatrice, as they drove home through the starlit summer night with George, the chauffeur and handyman, at the wheel.

  “Better ask George first,” said Laura. “He saw it, too. What did you think of it, George?”

  “Very well dressed, Mrs. Gavin, but the acting a little uneven.”

  “Yes. I gather that the actress who took Hermia is a pro, or so my neighbour was telling me. Never a good idea to mix the breeds.”

  “I thought the tall, stooping, bearded youth in that opening scene was miscast as Egeus,” said Dame Beatrice, “but I believe he was chosen simply because it is a small part and he is still a schoolboy preparing for important examinations. I thought the sylvan setting was effective.”

  “But the amplifiers distorted the voices a bit,” said Laura. “The costumes were gorgeous, though. Take it for all in all, I thought it was a pretty good effort for a local dramatic society. The Pyramus and Thisbe scene was quite funny, but it’s a pity they had to miss out the fairies at the end. Those small fry really were rather scene-stoppers, didn’t you think?”

  “Delightful children, but it would have been far too late to keep them up, particularly as the play is to run for three nights. I think, too, that the rather self-satisfied man who took Pyramus was glad to see the finish of the play so soon after the conclusion of his own performance. Those overlong speeches by Oberon and Titania were cut to the barest minimum and Puck’s closing oration was limited also. Of course one missed ‘glimmering light, by the dead and drowsy fire’. I wonder what problems the director and producer had to solve in putting on the play?”

  On neither evening did a little changeling boy put in an appearance, although his father had brought him to the dress-rehearsal. A message came on the Thursday to say that the child was suffering from a mild stomach-upset, but that, if it cleared up in time, Narayan Rao would bring Sharma to the third night of the play.

  The body-armour which Rinkley donned as Pyramus was rather like a waistcoat worn back to front. He had to put his arms through the armholes and then Marcus Lynn had to lace him up the back. His helmet was a formidable although a lightweight affair which almost obscured his features, and his sword-belt, with the webbing pocket to hold the weapon, had to be slung over the left shoulder to place the dagger on the wearer’s right-hand side. The crimson-coloured belt itself came diagonally across the breastplate and showed up effectively against the bright silver of the armour.

  Although at the first full rehearsal Rinkley’s handling of the dagger had been the subject of criticism, at the Thursday and Friday performances, assured that the dagger could do him no harm, he had struck himself a convincing blow over the heart. The bit of by-play devised between himself and Marcus Lynn proved not only quite good knockabout farce, but was necessary from a practical point of view, for it had been made clear at the dress-rehearsal that Pyramus, having been laced into his breastplate by Quince behind the scenes, could not get out of it without the other’s assistance on stage. He had to get out of it in order to stab himself in a convincing manner, as an earlier demonstration had proved.

  “We ought to have been allowed to have the costumes earlier,” Yorke had said, “but Lynn wouldn’t release them in case we messed them up. He has spent a lot of money on the show, so I can’t blame him, but it isn’t until the costumes are actually worn on stage that one realises where the snags are going to come.”

  However, in this instance, both Lynn himself and Rinkley enjoyed inventing an extra bit of ‘business’ in removing the armour, and the audience seemed to relish the nonsense, too, when Marcus Lynn put up what appeared to be an epic struggle with knots in the laces of the corselet and finished up by putting his knee in the small of Rinkley’s back in a pantomime of an early Victorian tirewoman or lady’s maid dealing with her employer’s refractory pair of stays. This foolery evo
ked applause as well as laughter when, the recalcitrant fastenings having given way, Rinkley fell flat on his face, a circus trick he had been at some pains to bring off to perfection.

  “Well, you see,” he said, when Yorke congratulated him on the success of the workmen’s play, “in his comedy scenes you’ve got to help Shakespeare a bit, haven’t you? Left to himself, the poor chap had no sense of humour at all. Look at all that tiresome Lancelot Gobbo stuff and that rubbish about Malvolio and the cross-garters.”

  “Well, your improvisations certainly went down well,” said Yorke, “but don’t overdo them on the last night. There will be the bouquets to be presented to the leading ladies and the mayor is certain to want to say a few words, and Jonathan and Deborah are laying on a champagne supper for the whole cast up at the house, so nobody wants the play to go on until midnight.”

  “Good Lord, neither do I. This open-air stuff is pretty tough on the larynx. I just hope I don’t get one of my quinsies, that’s all.”

  6

  Last Performance

  First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself.

  On Saturday evening the cast assembled in high spirits. It was obvious that the adrenalin was flowing and Brian Yorke had more than a suspicion that in some cases the alcohol had flowed fairly freely, too.

  “I think we’re a bit above ourselves,” he said to Jonathan. “I hope the show is going to be all right. It’s not that I give a hoot for the mayor and corporation and all the rest of them, but we’ve done so well the last two nights that it would be a pity to spoil things now.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re well-rehearsed. As soon as we open, everything will be all right. Has everybody turned up?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve checked and the signora has counted her chicks and is busy getting them dressed and is screaming at them like a parrot turned sergeant-major. One thing—they’re used to it. That old lady is a tower of strength. I’d back her to control a caravan of camels if she had to teach them to dance.”

  “So the mayor and corporation are to honour us.”

  “Complete with the mayoress, the president of the golf club, the commodore of the yacht club, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, representatives of the local bench as well as the mayor, and there’s an even chance that the High Sheriff may turn up with the Chairman of Quarter Sessions. The Crossforest M.F.H. is bringing his wife and daughters and a whole bevy of Lynn’s business associates are coming. Emma Lynn is a bit worried in case she lets Marcus down in front of them, but she won’t. Oh, I was asked to tell you that either Dr. Fitzroy-Delahague or the gorgeous Jeanne-Marie is going to cut evening surgery and come along before we’ve finished, so that Ganymede and Lucien can be taken home. You and Deborah won’t be sorry, I guess.”

  “We shall, as a matter of fact. They’re charming little chaps. One thing: I don’t suppose the evening surgery will be overcrowded. On Saturdays I expect most people find something infinitely better to do than waste a non-working day in a doctor’s waiting-room. It’s weekdays—that is to say, work-days—which produce the pitiful patients.”

  “Is it a cynic that I see before me? Well, we’d better get changed, I suppose. We’re both on in the first scene, worse luck. I like to get the house warmed up a bit before I tread the boards. Talking of which, I do hope Lynn’s work-people haven’t ruined your lawn.”

  “Not mine, thank heaven; my cousin’s, and there will be time to smooth things over before he gets back from holiday. In any case, I don’t think much damage has been done.”

  At this point Deborah appeared.

  “I’m doing the children first,” she said. “Then I’ll dump them on Signora Moretti and get myself dressed. You had better get a move on, darling, hadn’t you? Peter Woolidge is tubbing Lucien and Ganymede, and while he’s drying them and dressing them I’ll tub Rosamund and Edmund.”

  “I’ll nip up to my dressing-room and get ready, then, and leave our bedroom all clear for you and the kids. What a help young Peter is. Are the kids behaving themselves?—ours, I mean.”

  “Wildly excited, of course. They’ve caught the general infection. Everybody is excited. By the way, Rosamund has made up her mind that she is to receive a bouquet, so what do we do about that?”

  “She’ll get one at the end of her scene with Puck. Lynn has laid it all on. I say! I hope the weather cools down a bit. What with the heat and the excitement, we don’t want bilious attacks. You know what kids are!”

  “Don’t worry. Ice-cream and sweets have been taboo since three o’clock this afternoon. When I’ve done the children I’ll push them along to the signora and have a look at you in your costume, shall I?”

  “You haven’t done that on the other two nights. Why this sudden thusness?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got a funny feeling that I don’t want to be far away from you this evening.”

  “There’s thunder in the air, perhaps.”

  “There can’t be. The air’s as clear as clear. It is hot, though. Do skip, darling. We’ve got to start on time, or nobody will get to bed tonight.”

  The evening certainly was warm, but not with the oppressiveness which presages thunder. As Deborah had indicated, there was none of the brooding tension which precedes a coming storm. In fact, as Valerie Yorke said to her husband, it was the kind of beautiful midsummer evening which must have given Shakespeare the urge to write the play.

  “Yes,” agreed Brian. “It’s a nuisance we’re on stage as soon as the play opens because, before that, we’ve got to be on hand, with Lynn and Emma and the Bradleys, to receive the Duke of Plaza Toro and suite—i.e. the mayor, mayoress et al. I hope to goodness they’ll get here on time. We must open at half-past seven if any of the cast are ever going to get home tonight.”

  “It’s a pity local notables have to see us in costume before the play begins.”

  “Never mind. It can’t be helped. You look stunning and so does everybody else. Even Emma looks beautiful tonight. By the way, I see that Narayan Rao has turned up with his kid. I had better go out there and greet him. It’s all good for race relations.”

  Narayan had been given a chair on the O.P. side from which he could get a view of the stage. Sharma was asleep at his feet on a ground-sheet covered by a blanket. He wore a wreath of flowers and looked angelic.

  “If he wakes when he is picked up, he will not cry,” said Narayan. “As soon as you have finished with him, I will take him home. My good friend Bourton was anxious that he should appear, but I do not want him to stay up too long.”

  “When you’ve taken him home, why don’t you come back and see the rest of the play? There is a seat reserved in the auditorium.”

  “Thank you, but I think not.”

  The last performance was heralded, as the others had been, by an excerpt from Mendelssohn rendered by the Ladies’ Orchestra, and then on came Theseus and his party to open the play. The first performance had been better than might be expected from amateurs, the second, although sagging a little, had been adequate, but this last performance began by being spectacular and ended in a way which, although the audience did not know it at the time, was sensational.

  The opening scene, set against a painted background of Ionian columns which purported to represent the palace of Theseus, went exceptionally well. Brian Yorke, in the snowy tunic, gold sandals and belt, gilded sword and purple cloak of Theseus, looked and sounded like a true duke of Athens, and his wife Valerie made a handsome appearance as Hippolyta, although she had little to say. Their leggy nine-year-old, young Yolanda as Philostrate, made the briefest of appearances, having been sent off early in the scene on being commanded to “stir up the Athenian youth to merriments,” and although, at the first rehearsal, she had sneaked back on stage, this had been vetoed and her big moment was when she led in the pedigree bloodhounds (by kind permission of their breeder, Tom Woolidge, who hoped to sell them to Marcus Lynn after the show), so, off-stage, Yolanda spent much of her time with them, especially after their kidnapping
by Rosamund.

  Emma Lynn, reassured by the compliments of the High Sheriff at the reception given before the show and by the encouragement she received from her husband and Deborah, spoke Helena’s lines with a passion and a confidence which surprised everybody, and when she made her exit on the line, “‘To have his sight thither and back again’,” there was spontaneous applause.

  In the workmen’s scene which followed, Robina Lester began by reverting to the over-acting which the company hoped had been quashed at rehearsals, but she was soon called to order by receiving a sharp kick on the ankle from Susan Hythe, who was standing next to her. In fact, by the time, in the second act, that Peter Woolidge as Puck had performed his preliminary acrobatics and Rosamund had faultlessly enunciated the fairy’s speech, the audience had fallen under the spell of the night, the garden, the woodland setting, and the play itself.

  Little Sharma Rao was released into Deborah’s charge at the appropriate time and toddled hand-in-hand with her while she delivered her rebellious speech to Oberon. The child, fat, brown and solemn, wore a golden tunic and on his head was a charmingly lop-sided chaplet of yellow flowers. He was on stage for a very short time and then Deborah took him back to his father in the wings. Narayan vacated the chair he had been given and, so far as anybody knew, took the baby boy home as soon as he had dressed him. At any rate, that is what everybody assumed, supposing that anybody thought anything about it at all.

  Narayan must have seen Rinkley in the first scene in which the workmen appeared, and Rinkley must have known that Narayan was there because nobody could have been unaware of the presence of the baby boy who so trustingly committed himself to Deborah’s care for the short time that he was on stage, but nobody saw or heard any exchange between the two former litigants and it came out later that when Narayan took his child home he certainly did not return to see the rest of the play and could have had no hand in what happened before it ended.