Mr Graves said, 'Good morning,' carried his pitiful, narrow-chested pride downstairs; at least he could claim that, if he had been always too late for what he really wanted, he had never accepted substitutes.
'I'll come with you to the office,' Anne said, 'straight away,' taking the agent's arm, turning her back on the bathroom where the dark pinched man stood waiting with his pistol, going downstairs into the cold overcast day which smelt to her as sweet as summer because she was safe again.
4
'What did Aladdin say When he came to Pekin?'
Obediently the long shuffling row of them repeated with tired vivacity, bending forward, clapping their knees, 'Chin Chin.' They had been rehearsing for five hours. 'It won't do. It hasn't got any sparkle. Start again, please.'
'What did Aladdin say...'
'How many of you have they killed so far?' Anne said under her breath. 'Chin Chin.'
'Oh, half a dozen.'
'I'm glad I got in at the last minute. A fortnight of this! No thank you.'
'Can't you put some Art into it?' the producer implored them. 'Have some pride. This isn't just any panto.'
'What did Aladdin say...'
'You look washed out,' Anne said.
'You don't look too good yourself.'
'Things happen quick in this place.'
'Once more, girls, and then we'll go on to Miss Maydew's scene.'
'What did Aladdin say When he came to Pekin?'
'You won't think that when you've been here a week.' Miss Maydew sat sideways in the front row with her feet up on the next stall. She was in tweeds and had a golf-and-grouse-moor air. Her real name was Binns, and her father was Lord Fordhaven. She said in a voice of penetrating gentility to Alfred Bleek, 'I said I won't be presented.'
'Who's the fellow at the back of the stalls?' Anne whispered. He was only a shadow to her.
'I don't know. Hasn't been here before. One of the men who put up the money, I expect, waiting to get an eyeful.' She began to mimic an imaginary man. 'Won't you introduce me to the girls, Mr Collier? I want to thank them for working so hard to make this panto a success. What about a little dinner, missy?'
'Stop talking, Ruby, and make it snappy,' said Mr Collier.
'What did Aladdin say When he came to Pekin?'
'All right. That'll do.'
'Please, Mr Collier,' Ruby said, 'may I ask you a question?'
'Now, Miss Maydew, your scene with Mr Bleek. Well, what is it you want to know?'
' What did Aladdin say?'
'I want discipline,' Mr Collier said, 'and I'm going to have discipline.' He was rather under-sized with a fierce eye and straw-coloured hair and a receding chin. He was continually glancing over his shoulder in fear that somebody was getting at him from behind. He wasn't a good director; his appointment was due to more 'wheels within wheels' than you could count. Somebody owed money to somebody else who had a nephew... but Mr Collier was not the nephew: the chain of causes went much further before you reached Mr Collier. Somewhere it included Miss Maydew, but the chain was so long you couldn't follow it. You got a confused idea that Mr Collier must owe his position to merit. Miss Maydew didn't claim that for herself. She was always writing little articles in the cheap women's papers on: 'Hard Work the only Key to Success on the Stage.' She lit a new cigarette and said, 'Are you talking to me?' She said to Alfred Bleek, who was in a dinner-jacket with a red knitted shawl round his shoulders, 'It was to get away from all that... royal garden parties.'
Mr Collier said, 'Nobody's going to leave this theatre.' He looked nervously over his shoulder at the stout gentleman emerging into the light from the back of the stalls, one of the innumerable 'wheels within wheels' that had spun Mr Collier into Nottwich, into this exposed position at the front of the stage, into this fear that nobody would obey him.
'Won't you introduce me to the girls, Mr Collier?' the stout gentleman said. 'If you are finishing. I don't want to interrupt.'
'Of course,' Mr Collier said. He said, 'Girls, this is Mr Davenant, one of our chief backers.'
'Davis, not Davenant,' the fat man said. 'I bought out Davenant.' He waved his hand; the emerald ring on his little finger flashed and caught Anne's eye. He said, 'I want to have the pleasure of taking every one of you girls out to dinner while this show lasts. Just to tell you how I appreciate the way you are working to make the panto a success. Whom shall I begin with?' He had an air of desperate jollity. He was like a man who suddenly finds he has nothing to think about and somehow must fill the vacuum.
'Miss Maydew,' he said half-heartedly, as if to show to the chorus the honesty of his intentions by inviting the principal boy.
'Sorry,' Miss Maydew said, 'I'm dining with Bleek.'
Anne walked out on them; she didn't want to high-hat Davis, but his presence there shocked her. She believed in Fate and God and Vice and Virtue, Christ in the stable, all the Christmas stuff; she believed in unseen powers that arranged meetings, drove people along ways they didn't mean to go; but she was quite determined she wouldn't help. She wouldn't play God or the Devil's game; she had evaded Raven, leaving him there in the bathroom of the little empty house, and Raven's affairs no longer concerned her. She wouldn't give him away; she was not yet on the side of the big organized battalions; but she wouldn't help him either. It was a strictly neutral course she steered out of the changing-room, out of the theatre door, into Nottwich High Street.
But what she saw there made her pause. The street was full of people; they stretched along the southern pavement, past the theatre entrance, as far as the market. They were watching the electric bulbs above Wallace's, the big drapers, spelling out the night's news. She had seen nothing like it since the last election, but this was different, because there were no cheers. They were reading of the troop movements over Europe, of the precautions against gas raids. Anne was not old enough to remember how the last war began, but she had read of the crowds outside the Palace, the enthusiasm, the queues at the recruiting offices, and that was how she had pictured every war beginning. She had feared it only for herself and Mather. She had thought of it as a personal tragedy played out against a background of cheers and flags. But this was different; this silent crowd wasn't jubilant, it was afraid. The white faces were turned towards the sky with a kind of secular entreaty; they weren't praying to any God; they were just willing that the electric bulbs would tell a different story. They were caught there, on the way back from work, with tools and attaché cases, by the rows of bulbs, spelling out complications they simply didn't understand.
Anne thought: can it be true that that fat fool... that the boy with the hare-lip knows... Well, she told herself, I believe in Fate, I suppose I can't just walk out and leave them. I'm in it up to the neck. If only Jimmy were here. But Jimmy, she remembered with pain, was on the other side; he was among those hunting Raven down. And Raven must be given the chance to finish his hunt first. She went back into the theatre.
Mr Davenant—Davis—Cholmondeley, whatever his name was, was telling a story. Miss Maydew and Alfred Bleek had gone. Most of the girls had gone too to change. Mr Collier watched and listened nervously; he was trying to remember who Mr Davis was; Mr Davenant had been silk stockings and had known Callitrope, who was the nephew of the man Dreid owed money to. Mr Collier had been quite safe with Mr Davenant, but he wasn't certain about Davis... This panto wouldn't last for ever and it was as fatal to get in with the wrong people as to get out with the right. It was possible that Davis was the man Cohen had quarrelled with, or he might be the uncle of the man Cohen had quarrelled with. The echoes of that quarrel were still faintly reverberating through the narrow back-stage passages of provincial theatres in the second-class touring towns. Soon they would reach the third companies and everyone would either move up one or move down one, except those who couldn't move down any lower.