“Deidre.” Nicholas followed her around in the wings, where, clipboard in hand, she started to check the props for Act I. “Why on earth … I mean … you should be with another company. Where you can really do things.”
“There isn’t one. The nearest is Slough.”
“That’s not far.”
“You need your own transport. At night, anyway. And I can’t afford to run a car. My father’s— He can’t be left alone. I have to pay someone to sit with him on theater evenings. …”
“Oh, I see.” What he did see—a sudden yawning abyss of loneliness, creative imagination starved of expression, and stifled, unrealized dreams—made him deeply, ashamedly embarrassed. He felt as if he were with one of those awful people who, uninvited, hitch up their clothes and show you their operation scar. Aware of the unfairness of this comparison and the banality of his next remark, Nicholas mumbled, “Bad luck, Deidre,” and retreated to the stage. Here, more for the sake of bridging an awkward moment than anything else, he picked up the parcel. “Someone sending Harold a bomb?”
“Heavily disguised as a book.” Nicholas eased the brown paper lightly Scotch-taped folds and attempted to peer inside.
“Don’t do that,” called Deidre. “He’ll say someone’s been trying to open it. And he’s bound to blame me.”
But Harold seemed to notice nothing untoward about his parcel. He arrived rather later than usual and was changing into his monogrammed directing slippers when Deidre gave him the book. There had been a time when Harold had always removed his footwear during rehearsals, explaining that only by doing so could he arrive at the true spirit of the play. Then he had seen a television interview with a famous American director during which the great man had stated that people who took off their shoes to direct were pretentious pseuds. Harold, naturally, did not agree, but just in case other members of the same company had also been viewing, he covered up his feet forthwith. As he took the parcel, Rosa, noticing, called out, “Oohh, look … Harold’s got a prezzie.” And everyone gathered around.
The “prezzie” proved to be a bit of a letdown. Nothing unusual or exciting. Nothing to do with Harold’s only real passion in life. It was a cookbook. Floyd on Fish. Harold gazed at it blankly. Someone asked who it was from. He spun the pages, turned the book upside down, and shook it. No card.
“Isn’t there something written inside?” nudged an Everard. Harold turned the first few pages and shook his head. “How extraordinary. ”
“Why on earth should anyone send you a recipe book?” asked Rosa. “You’re not interested in cooking, are you?” Harold shook his head.
“Well, if you’re going to start,” said Avery, “I shouldn’t start with that. The man’s basically unsound.”
“Gosh, you are a snob,” said Nicholas.
“Right, young Bradley. That’s the last time you sit down at my table.”
“Oh! I didn’t mean it, Avery—honestly.” Half-frantic, half-laughing, Nicholas continued, “Please. I’m sorry …”
“I shall think of it,” said Harold, “as a gift from an unknown admirer. And now we must get on. Chop-chop, everyone …”
He put the parcel inside his hat. The momentary warmth that its appearance had engendered (it had been years since anyone had given him a present) had vanished. In its place was a faint unease. What a peculiar thing for anyone to do. Spend all that money on a book, then send it anonymously to someone for whom it could be of no interest whatever. Ah, well, thought Harold, he certainly didn’t have time to ponder on the mystery at the moment. The mystery of the theater—that was his business. That was what he had to kindle. And plays did not produce themselves.
“Right, my darlings,” he cried, “from the top. And please … lots and lots of verismo. Nicholas, you remember— Where is Nicholas?”
Mozart stepped out from the wings, “Here I am, Harold. ”
“Don’t forget the note I gave you on Monday. Resonances. Okay? That’s what I want—plenty of resonances. You’re looking blank.”
“Sorry, Harold?”
“You know the meaning of the word ‘resonances,’ I assume?”
“Um… Don Quixote’s horse, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, God!” cried Harold. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”
A week passed. None of the rehearsals went well, and the first couple of run-throughs were absolutely dreadful. But it was at the dress rehearsal (so everyone later told Barnaby) that things really came to a head.
As Esslyn strode around the stage with his spring-heeled tango dancer’s walk in his blue-and-silver coat, so his performance grew in glossy fraudulence. He had stopped acting with—indeed, he hardly even looked at—his fellow players and strutted and posed in splendid isolation. Backed up by his myrmidons, he continued to snipe at David and Nicholas.
Nicholas was coping with all this very well. His earlier talk with Deidre had been the first of several, and he was now groping his way toward what he believed would be a truthful, intelligent, and lively rendering of the part of Mozart. He was halfway through the opening scene and playing to the back of Salieri’s neck when Esslyn suddenly stopped what he was saying and strolled down to the footlights.
“Harold?” Harold, his face marked with surprise, climbed out of his seat and walked forward. “Any particular stress on che gioia?”
“What?”
“Sorry. To be frank, my problem is … I’m not quite sure what it means.” Silence. ‘‘Perhaps you could enlighten me?” Long pause. “I’d be most grateful.”
“Now who’s being cattivo, ” murmured Clive.
“Don’t you know?” said Harold.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been saying those lines over and over again for the last six weeks and you don’t know what they mean?”
“So it appears.”
“And you call yourself an actor?”
“I certainly call myself as much of an actor as you are a director.”
An even longer pause. Then, softly on the air, it seemed to everyone present, came a feint reverberation, like the roll of distant drums. Harold said, very quietly, “Are you trying to wind me up?”
“Didn’t think it was necessary,” muttered Donald. “Thought he ran on hot air.”
“Of course not, Harold. But I do think—”
“I’m not going to translate it for you. Do your own homework.”
“Well, that seems a bit—”
“All right, everyone. Carry on. And no interval. We’ve wasted enough time as it is.”
Esslyn shrugged and sauntered back to his previous position, and the reverberations rippled away into a silence shot with disappointment. The second confrontation, you could almost see everyone thinking, and it’s over before it really gets going. But their frustration was short-lived, for a few minutes later Esslyn stopped again, saying, “Do you think it’s true he’s never really laid a finger on Katherina?”
“Of course it’s true!” shouted back Harold. “Why on earth should he tell himself lies?”
Then there was a query on court etiquette, on the timing of the Adagio in the library scene, and on the position of the piano-forte. Harold once more made his way to the footlights, this time with a savage tic in one eyelid.
“If you’ve noticed all these hiccups before,” he said icily, “may I ask why you left it till this late stage to say so?”
“Because I’m not in charge. I was waiting for you to pick them up. As you’re obviously not going to, I feel, for the good of the play and the benefit of the company, I have to say something.”