“I don’t envy Sarah the weight of that skirt,” Rosa clucked across at Joyce. “I remember when I was playing Ranevskaya—”
‘‘Will my padding be ready soon, Joyce?” asked the second Mrs. Carmichael, collecting many a grateful glance by this intercession. When Rosa started on her Ranevskaya, everyone ran for cover. Or her Mrs. Alving. Or even, come to that, her Fairy Carabosse.
“And the music?” asked Nicholas. “When are we having the music?”
“When I get a forty-eight-hour day,” came back Harold, whippet quick. “Unless”—he positively twinkled at the absurdity of the idea—“you want to do it yourself.”
“Okay.”
“What?”
“I don’t mind. I know all the pieces. It’s just a question of-”
“It’s not ‘just a question of’ anything, Nicholas. The stamp of any director worth his salt must be on every single aspect of his production. Once you start handing over bits here and pieces there for any Tom, Dick, and Harry to do as they like with, you might as well abdicate.” It was an indication of Harold’s standing within the company that the verb struck no one present as inappropriate. “And rather than worry about your padding, Kitty, I should start worrying about your lines. I want them spot on by Tuesday. Dead-Letter Perfect. Got that?”
“I’ll try, Harold.” Kitty’s voice just hinted at a lisp. Her d’s were nearly t’s. This pretty affectation plus her tumble of fair curls, smooth, peachy complexion, and exaggerated Cupid’s bow mouth created an air of childlike charm so appealing that people hardly noticed how at variance it was with the sharp gleam in her azure eyes. As she spoke, her delicious bosom rose and fell a shade more rapidly, as if indicating an increased willingness to please.
Harold regarded her sternly. It was always a complete mystery to him when anyone connected with the CADS declined to commit his every waking moment to whatever happened to be the current production, in deed while at the theater and in thought while absent. Avery had once said that had it been within his power, Harold would have ordered them to dream about the Latimer. And Kitty, of all people, Harold was now thinking, had enough time on her hands. He wondered what she found to do all day, then realized he had wondered aloud. Kitty demurely lowered her glance, as if the question had been faintly naughty.
Deidre started to reclaim the mugs. Several still held coffee, but no one insisted on a divine right to full rations. She looked elsewhere when collecting Kitty’s, for Esslyn had now stopped caressing his wife’s throat and had slipped his fingers into the neck of her drawstring blouse, where they dabbled almost absentmindedly. Rosa Crawley also looked elsewhere at this evidence of her onetime husband’s insensitivity, and blushed an ugly crimson. Harold, oblivious as always to offstage dramas, called across to his designer, “Where on earth is Tim?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you should know. You live with him.”
“Living with someone,” riposted Avery, “doesn’t give you psychic powers. I left him filling in the Faber order, and he said he’d only be half an hour. So your guess is as good as mine.” Although he spoke stoutly, Avery was, in fact, consumed with anxious fears. He couldn’t bear not to know where Tim was and what he was doing and whom he was doing it with. Each second spent in ignorance of this vital information seemed like a year to him. ‘‘And don’t expect me to stay late,” he added. “I’ve got a daube in the oven.”
“Daubes pay for a long simmer,” suggested wardrobe. Fortunately her husband was not present, or he might well have choked to hear the casual way in which Joyce, whose culinary disasters went from strength to strength, claimed kinship with a man whose cooking was legendary. Every member of the CADS had angled and wangled and hinted and nudged their way toward a possible invitation to dine chez Avery. Those who succeeded ate at humbler tables for weeks afterward, recreating their triumphs and doling out gastronomic recollections a crumb at a time to make them last. Tom Barnaby, a Detective Inspector in the Causton CID, would listen with increasing wistfulness as his wife regaled him with such tales of haute cuisine.
Now, Avery replied crisply, “Long simmers, Joycey darling, must stop at precisely the right moment. The line between a wonderful, cohesive stew with every single item still quite separate yet relating perfectly to the whole and a great sloppy mess is a very narrow one indeed.”
“Bit like a theatrical production, really,” murmured Nicholas, lobbing a subversively winning smile across at his director. Catching the smile but quite missing the subversion, Harold nodded pompously back.
“Well …” Colin Smy got to his feet and struck a no-nonsense pose as if to emphasize both his importance to and difference from the surrounding actors. “Some of us have got work to do.” Having thrown his dart, he gave it a moment to sink in, standing chunkily on slightly bowed legs. He wore jeans and a tartan shirt and had rough, wiry hair cut very short. Tufts of it stuck up here and there, and this, combined with a great deal of snapping energy, made it, someone had once said, like having a rather ferocious fox terrier charging around the place. Now, he disappeared into the wings, calling pointedly over his shoulder, “If I’m wanted, you’ll find me in the scene dock. There’s plenty going on down there, if anyone’s interested.”
No one seemed to be, and the hammering that shortly reached their ears remained aggrievedly solitary. Over their heads Deidre turned on hot water and scrubbed at the mugs, clattering them crossly and adding yet more chips. Not a single person ever came up to give her a hand, with the exception of David Smy, who was often waiting around to drive his father home. She knew this was her own fault, for not putting her foot down long ago, and this made her crosser than ever.
“Well, I think we should give Tim five more minutes,” Emperor Joseph was saying back in the stalls, “and then get on.”
“No doubt you do,” replied Esslyn, “but I have no intention of ‘getting on’ until we have this practical problem solved. It’s all very well to say these things can be left till the last second …”
“Hardly the last second,” murmured Rosa.
“… but I’m the one who’s going to be out there facing the serried ranks.” (Anyone’d think, observed Nicholas to himself, that we were going on at the Barbican.) “It’s horrendous enough, God knows, a part that size.” (What did you take it on for, then?) “But after all, Salieri’s attempted suicide is the high point of the play. We’ve got to get it not only right but brilliantly right.”
Nicholas, who had always regarded Mozart’s death as the high point of the play, said, “Why don’t you use an electric razor?”
“For Christ’s sake! If this is the sort of—”
“All right, Esslyn. Simmer down.” Harold soothed his fractious star. “Honestly, Nicholas—”
“Sorry.” Nicholas grinned. “Sorry, Esslyn. Just a joke.”
“Stillborn, Nico,” said Esslyn loftily, “like all your jokes. Not to mention your …” He buried his lips in the golden fronds tenderly curling on Kitty’s neck, and the rest of the sentence was lost. But everyone knew what it might have been.
Nicholas went very white. He said nothing for a few moments, then spoke overcalmly, picking his words with care. “It might not seem like it, but I am concerned about this problem. After all, if Esslyn doesn’t have enough time to get used to handling what’s going to be a very vital prop, the whole business is going to look completely amateurish.” There was a crescendoed hum, and breaths were held. Harold got to his feet and fixed his Mozart with a rabid eye.