The book arrived about a week before the dress rehearsal. Deidre found a small parcel neatly wrapped in brown paper on the floor in the foyer. It was directly beneath the mail slot set in the wooden surround of the plate-glass doors. She turned the parcel over, frowning. On the front, hand-printed in small capital letters, were the words Harold winstanley. She laid it on top of her basket and made her way to the clubroom to unload her two bottles of milk and tea and sugar replenishments. As she entered, Riley hurried forward to greet her. She put the milk bottles in a pan of cold water, then bent down and rubbed his ears. He permitted this for as long as it took him to realize that she was not bearing gifts, then stuck his tail in the air and wandered off. Deidre watched him go sadly, wishing he were not so stingy with his affections. Only Avery got the full treatment—purring, rubbing round the legs, little mms of satisfaction—but then, only Avery dished up the dinner. He bought fish trimmings or “cheeks” for the cat, which Riley would remove from his dish to consume at his leisure.
Deidre was always coming across the bluish-white pearly wings of bone that remained.
He was a handsome animal. White bib and socks, mixed whiskers, and a white tip to his tail. The rest of his coat, once black and gleaming like newly mined coal, now had a rusty tinge, which made him look a bit seedy. He was a full-blooded tom and had a hairless patch above one eye that was no sooner grown over than some old bold adversary clawed it back to its original glabrous state. He had brilliant emerald-green eyes, and when the theater was dark, you could see them walking about on their own between the lines of seats.
No one knew how old he was. He had appeared two years ago, suddenly strolling across the set during a run-through of French Without Tears. The immense, almost magical theatricality of this appearance had at once appealed to everyone. He had got a round of applause, a piece of haddock, (Deidre having been sent to Adelaide’s), and had been adopted on the spot. This, although he had not been able to say so in so many words, had not been his intention. For Riley was looking for a more orthodox establishment. He had been vastly deceived in the sitting room of French Without Tears, which had disappeared shortly after he had made its acquaintance, only to reappear in a totally different guise several weeks later. This was really not his scene. He wanted an ordinary, even humdrum, home, where the furniture was fairly stable with at least one human being more or less constantly in worshipful attendance. He often tried to follow Avery when he left the theater, but had always been firmly brought back. Deidre, who had always longed for a pet, would have loved to have taken him home, but her father was allergic to both fur and feather.
Now, having unpacked the tea and sugar and set out the cups, Deidre made her way to the auditorium to chalk up the stage for Act I. As Nicholas was already there going over his “opera” speech, she slipped silently into the back row to listen. It was a complicated piece, and Nicholas was making a mess of it. It started on a high point of anger, broke in the middle into giggling almost frenzied effusiveness, and ended on a note so elated as to be practically manic.
He had been going over it at home every night the previous week, and was agonizingly conscious that it wasn’t working. Now, he pumped amazement into his voice: “Astonishing device. A Vocal Quartet!” Following up with forced excitement: “On and on, wider and wider-all sounds multiplying and rising together …’’He plowed on, ending with an empty rhetorical shout: “… and turn the audience into God!”
Despair filled him. Nothing but ranting. But what was he to do? If emotion wasn’t there, it couldn’t be turned on like a faucet. A dreadful thought lurking always in the back of his mind leaped to the fore. What if he felt dry and stale like this on the first night? Without technique, he would be left clinging desperately to the text like an ill-equipped mountaineer on a rock face. He almost envied Esslyn his years of experience; his grasp of acting mechanics. It was all very well for Avery to describe their leading man’s performance as “just like an Easter egg, darling. All ribbons and bows and little candied bits and pieces with a bloody great hollow at the center.” Nicholas was not comforted, being only too aware that when his emotions let him down, he could offer neither ribbon nor bow, never mind anything as fancy as a candied trimming. Deidre came down the aisle.
“Hi,” said Nicholas morosely. “Did you hear all that?”
p> “Mm,” said Deidre, putting her basket on the edge of the stage and climbing up.
“I just can’t seem to get it right.”
“No. Well—you haven’t got the feeling, have you? And you’re just not experienced enough to put it over without.”
Nicholas, who had expected some anodyne reassurance, stared at Deidre, who crossed to the prompt corner and started to unpack her things. “If I could make a suggestion … ?”
“Of course.” He followed her around the stage as she crouched to re-mark the entrances and exits smudged or quite erased at the previous rehearsal.
“Well … first you mustn’t take the others into account so much when you’re speaking. Salieri … Van Swieten … they matter in Mozart’s life only so far as they affect income. They mean nothing to him as people. Mozart’s a genius—a law unto himself. You seem to be trying to relate to them in this speech, which is fatal. They are there to listen, to absorb. Perhaps to be a little afraid… .”
“Yes … yes, I see … I think you’re right. And God-how do you think he sees God?”
“Mozart? He doesn’t ‘see’ God as something separate, like Salieri does. Music and God are all the same to him. As for the delivery, you’re working the wrong way round. That’s why it sounds stale before you’ve even half got it right—”
“I know!” Nicholas smote his forehead. “I know. ”
“If you stop thinking about the words and start listening to the music—”
‘‘There isn’t any music.”
“—in your head, silly. If you’re making a passionate speech about music, you have to hear music. Most of the other set pieces either have music underneath them or just before. This is very … dry. So you must listen to all the tapes and see what evokes the emotion you need, then marry it in your mind to the lines. I don’t mean ‘must,’ of course”—Deidre blushed suddenly—“only if you like.”
“Oh, but I do! I’m sure that would … it’s a terrific idea.”
“You’re in the way.”
“Sorry.”
Nicholas looked down at Deidre’s bent head and chalky jeans. He had not, unlike most of the rest of the company, underestimated her proficiency behind the scenes. But he had never talked to her about play production, and although he was aware of her ambitions in that direction, had thought (also like the rest of the company) that she would be no better at it than Harold was. Now, he gazed at her rather as men gazed at girls in Hollywood films after they had taken off their glasses and let their hair down. He said, “It’s a wonderful play, don’t you think?”
“Very exciting. I saw it in London. I’ll be glad when it’s over, though. I don’t like the way things are going.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing specific. But there’s not a nice feeling. And I’m dying to get on to Vanya. I do love Chekhov, don’t you, Nicholas?” She regarded him with shining eyes. “Even The Cherry Orchard, after all Harold managed to do to it … there was still so much left.”