They had built a stage with a plain proscenium arch, fitted a hundred dark gray plastic seats to a raked floor, and installed a simple lighting grid. There was a stage door and two large plate-glass doors that fronted the tiny foyer. This doubled as an office and had in it a desk, a chair, a telephone, an old filing cabinet, and a pay phone. There was also a board showing colorful photographs of the current production. A huge cellar running between both shops became the scene dock and dressing rooms. These were more than adequate except at Panto time or during the run of a play with an exceptionally large cast, such as Amadeus. Toilets for the actors were halfway along a corridor connecting the wings to the foyer.
Three quarters of the top floor was taken up by the club-room, which was open to the public at performance times, when coffee and glasses of wine were available. Plastic tables and chairs were scattered about, and there were a couple of settees, which, imperfectly disguised, performed onstage as often as some of the actors and, it must be said, frequently with more conviction. The rest of the upstairs space was taken up by two rest rooms for the audience and Tim’s lighting box, which had a notice on the door: private, keep out. The Latimer was carpeted throughout in charcoal haircord, and the walls were roughcast white.
Many of the CADS now looked back wistfully to those early days fifteen years past when, surrounded by rubble and timber and cables, and choking on brick dust, they had wrought out of chaos their very own theater. Things had been different then. Harold, for example. Beardless and slim in old corduroys, he had mucked in, getting filthy in the process, cheering them on when they were tired, holding the dream before their flagging spirits and their gritty, dust-filled eyes.
They had all seemed equal then, in those glorious early days. Each with his part to play, and no part more valuable than any other. But after the theater was officially opened and Mayor Latimer had made his long-winded speech, imbibed hugely, and vanished under the drinks table, things started to change, and it soon became plain that some were very much more equal than others. For gradually, sinuously, Harold had eased his way to the top, stepping firmly on the necks of those too timid, too dim, or just too lazy to complain until (no one could quite put their finger on the point of no return) a czar was born. And now, occasionally people joined the company who knew nothing of those grand pioneering times when each member could have his say and be treated with respect. Renegade newcomers who couldn’t care less about the past.
Like Nicholas, for instance, now approaching the Latimer stage door. As far as Nicholas was concerned, the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society came into existence during the rehearsals of French Without Tears and would die the death if his audition at Central was successful (as it must be, it must) with Amadeus. He fumbled in his pocket for the key. He had been given his own as soon as Colin became aware of his willingness to appear early, stay late, run about, fetch and carry, and generally make himself useful. Even now, in his illustrious position as what Esslyn grudgingly admitted to be second lead, Nicholas had arrived a good half hour before the stage management.
In fact, it was barely six o’clock when he entered the building, so he was not surprised to find himself immediately swallowed up by silence. He stood for a moment inhaling voluptuously, and although the air smelled of nothing more exotic than the peel of an orange left in a tin wastebasket, it became transmuted in his apprentice’s nostrils to something rare and ambrosial. Nicholas padded silently, happily down the stone stairs to the dressing rooms.
He flung his anorak down, slipped on Mozart’s brocade coat, and picked up his sword. Nicholas was a short man, barely five feet six, a fact that caused him considerable anguish—Ian Holm, Antony Sher, and Bob Hoskins notwithstanding. Even on a good day when the wind was southerly, the sword caused him problems, especially when getting up and down at the pianoforte. He had planned to take it home and practice wearing it about the place, but had foolishly asked Harold’s permission, which had promptly been refused. “You’ll only lose it, and then where shall we be?”
Now, Nicholas buckled it on and made his way toward the stage muttering the lines leading up to his move, anticipating the first night when he tripped over the thing and fell flat on his face, firmly putting this anticipation aside. A moment later, sneakers muffling his footsteps, he was on the set. He stood for a moment excitedly aware of that frisson—half terror, half delight—that seized him whenever he walked onto a stage, even when the theater was empty.
But in fact it wasn’t. There was a sound. Startled, he looked about him. All the seats were unoccupied. He turned, facing the way he had come, but there was no one in the wings. Then he crouched and looked along the raked floor of the auditorium, expecting to see Riley mauling some disgusting tidbit. But no cat. Then it came again. Squeaky. Almost rubbery-sounding in its effect. Such as might be made if you dragged your finger over a window-pane. What could it be? And where was it coming from? Having checked the stage, the wings, and the auditorium, Nicholas was quite baffled. Until he lifted up his head.
The sight that met his eyes was so surprising that it took him a couple of seconds to realize precisely what he was staring at. Someone was in Tim’s box. A girl. Nicholas swallowed hard. A naked girl. At least naked as far as he could see, which was to just below her waist. Below this the glass panel changed to solid wood. The girl had tumbling fair hair and narrow shoulders, and her back was pressed against the glass. When she arched it, as she now did, her skin imprinted uneven misty circles, like pearly flowers. Her arms were outstretched, and it was her fingers, clenching and unclenching against the glass, that had made the strange sound. He knew who it was. Even before she wrenched her body suddenly sideways, revealing one small pointed breast and a swooning profile. Her eyes (thank God) were closed. Cemented to the floor, he stared and stared, unable to drag his eyes away, and Kitty smiled, an intense, private smile gluttonous with satisfaction.
Whoever else was in the box must be either kneeling or crouching in front of her. Vivid pictures of what the lucky devil might be doing crowded Nicholas’s brain, and he was swept by a wave of lust so powerful that it left him with a bone-dry throat and gasping for air. When the wave had receded somewhat, he took several deep breaths and ruminated on the extreme awkwardness of his position. Not, he felt, since Oedipus had found himself at the crossroads had a chap been so severely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then the sound started again, and he watched Kitty slowly slide down the glass, her shoulder blades leaving two damp, equidistant tracks. She turned her head away again as she disappeared and laughed, a raucous, throaty chuckle quite unlike her usual tinkling carillon.
Released, Nicholas exhaled very carefully, even though common sense told him the sound must be barely audible, (he was amazed they had not heard the beating of his heart), then he tiptoed off stage and bore his bulging groin off to the john. Once there, he stayed longer than was absolutely necessary, mulling over the best course of action and praying that Kitty’s playmate didn’t decide to come in for a pee. He had just decided to creep out to the street and make a great noise coming back in when he heard beneath him the slam of a door. He waited for another five minutes, then made his way back to the basement.
As he passed the ladies’ dressing room, he heard a clatter, as if someone was moving a bottle or jar. Nicholas opened the door. Kitty, demurely buttoned up in an apricot blouse and securely—nay, chastely—swathed in a long matching skirt chirruped with alarm, then said, “You made me jump.’’