The current production was a contemporary farce with plenty of comings and goings through various doors and the trousers of one of the actors being thrown out of a window. Aubrey Rock’s part was that of the grandfather who is struck on the head and as a result confuses the identity of everyone else thereafter. The role suited Aubrey because it allowed him to do a certain amount of stumbling and fluffing of his lines. His memory was deteriorating in his late fifties and although he was experienced enough never to “dry” — forget his part entirely — he did have trouble getting his cues exactly right. So he tended to approximate.
He was finishing a scene alone on stage with Sybil Simon. She had been hanging on desperately, listening intently to Rock’s speeches for any resemblance to the ones they had rehearsed. The trouble was, the local audience knew and loved Aubrey Rock. They watched his huge figure shambling about the stage, bald head gleaming, plump mouth drawn down in a droll pout, words exploding from him in machine-gun fashion, and they laughed.
Well, damn it, Aubrey Rock was funny. Even Sybil had to admit that. It was simply a pain working with him. And he would never change, because he thought he was doing fine.
“So I’ll leave you to sort out the lot of them,” Aubrey said. He was doing one of his lurching exits that always worked. “Tell them they’ll have to ship up or shape out. Or words to that effect.”
He was gone and Sybil was left alone on stage surrounded by his applause. She enjoyed it about as much as wading through a tide of dead fish. No question about it, no more fooling around, Lance was going to have to think of something.
Lance did. Or rather, he was quick to adopt an idea brought forward in a joking manner by Beverly Fragment, the thirty-year-old who was still able to play pretty-young-thing roles. Beverly, Sybil, and Lance were having a post-performance drink with Ken Lavender, the stage manager. They were sitting on the black wooden pews rescued from a deserted church now used as furniture in the pub around the corner.
“You saw him,” Sybil was saying. “You heard him. He was shuffling around like a trained bear and talking like an auctioneer. He’s crucifying me out there and I won’t have it.” She frowned into her mug of beer, causing the dark liquid to bubble and boil.
“They were laughing though,” Lavender said. The stage manager was a compact, carpenterish figure among these effete stage people.
“They’d laugh if he blew his nose without a handkerchief,” Sybil snapped. “But I’d rather he did the play.”
“I’ve tried to make him understand,” Lance said. “But it’s difficult. He’s been around so long.”
Beverly Fragment was writing on a scrap of paper. She sat up now and handed the paper to Lance Haldane. “Just dreaming,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be loverly—”
Haldane blinked at the ragged printing, then his expression cleared. “Fraggie darling,” he said, “I don’t know if you’re joking, but this could be the answer.”
“Of course I’m joking. It isn’t happening, is it?”
“But we can make it happen.”
“Tell everybody,” Lavender suggested.
Haldane displayed the paper. “This is Beverly’s little fantasy,” he said and went on to read it aloud. “ ‘The Prepington Repertory Theatre announces a special gala farewell performance marking the retirement of Aubrey Rock.’ ”
“As I said, just a dream,” Beverly said.
“It might work,” Haldane said.
Sybil snorted. “You’d never get Aubrey to hold still for it.”
“But what if we treated it as an honor and hit him with a fait accompli? Print up a hundred posters, arrange advertising in the paper, set up special interviews, invite the Mayor to attend.” Haldane made checkmarks in beer on the tabletop. “By the time Aubrey sees what’s happening, the bandwagon is rolling and can’t be stopped. He’ll have to smile and go along with it.”
“I like it,” Sybil said. “It has style.”
“Not bad,” Beverly Fragment said, “if I say so myself.”
Only the stage manager was doubtful. He was a practical man who dealt less with dreams than he did with scenery that would fall unless properly braced and nailed. “It sounds risky,” Ken Lavender said. “All kinds of room for the unexpected.”
A week later, Aubrey Rock drifted backstage on the way to his dressing room and surprised Lance and Sybil and Beverly huddled around a table. They made a production of dispersing and trying to hide a large sheet of yellow paper with black lettering on it. This only aroused Rock’s curiosity, which was what was intended all along.
“Oh, dear, the surprise is ruined,” Sybil said.
“What surprise?”
“Don’t tell him,” Beverly said. “Hide the poster.” Cleverly, she thus drew Aubrey’s attention to the poster in the manner of the circus clown who cries, “Don’t throw the water!”
“Well,” Lance said, “he has to find out eventually.” And he held up the brilliant poster announcing Aubrey Rock’s farewell performance at the Prepington Rep and the gala evening in his honor.
The old actor was speechless, but the others filled in with carefully rehearsed enthusiasm.
“Just think, the Mayor will be here! He’ll come on stage and present you with a scroll.”
“And other gifts too. I understand the merchants are getting up a fund.”
“No more than you deserve, Aubrey.”
Rock found his voice. “But I’m not sure—”
“Never you mind.” Haldane spoke with authority. “We’ve printed a hundred posters. They’re going up even as we speak.”
The cast did such a good job of enthusing that Aubrey Rock put on his makeup and did the performance on a wave of induced euphoria. It was not until he went home and sat over a few bottles of warm stout and did some thinking that he realized they had done him. Haldane and Sybil and the rest wanted him gone and had orchestrated his departure simply by the introduction of a fanfare of cheap trumpets.
Well, if they thought Aubrey Rock was going to leave quietly he would disabuse them of that misapprehension. Fortunately, since the gala farewell was still a couple of weeks in the future, he had time to think and plan. And that is just what Aubrey Rock did. Swallowing glass after glass of murky stout, he thought. Later, lying in bed with his Falstaff stomach awash, he planned.
The idea came to him in the morning, crisp and packaged like a laundered shirt after hours of processing in his subconscious. Rock fried himself an egg, two sausages, and a small tomato, breakfasted with his mind elsewhere, then put through a call to his friend Lewis Nunford in London. Nunford was intrigued and promised to cooperate.
In the fortnight that followed, Aubrey Rock went about his acting with more efficiency than he had shown in years. His cues were delivered accurately and on time. His mannerisms almost vanished as he submerged his own personality in that of the character he was playing. Haldane exhibited second thoughts.
“He’s so much better now. It seems a shame to unload him.”
Sybil Simon was quick to hold the ship on course. “A rush of blood to the head,” she said. “That’s all it is. He’ll be bumbling and shambling again in a month if we let him stay.”
Interest in the town of Prepington was high on the day of the Aubrey Rock farewell. He was the nearest thing to a famous actor ever produced in that community. He had never made it to London’s West End but he had done a few bit parts in old films that appeared occasionally on the box late at night. With a bit of luck, people said, their Aubrey might have been famous. So they bought their tickets and made their plans to fill the theater that night, never realizing that, with a bit of luck, Aubrey Rock was going to be a lot more famous than any of them ever imagined.