There was a clattering of footsteps on the uncarpeted stairs, and Nicholas appeared. “What’s for lunch?”
“Cheese and whine,” said Tim. “You’d be better off upstairs, believe me.”
“I thought I smelled something nice.”
“There you are,” said Tim. “Someone else with a nose for a bargain.”
“Like Dostoevsky’s for a dead cert.”
“Clever dick.”
“Famous for it.”
“Be quiet,” said Tim. “You’re embarrassing Nicholas.”
“No, you’re not,” Nicholas replied truthfully, “but I am jolly hungry.”
“Oh, Lord …” A woman wearing a squashed felt hat was staring urgently in at the window. “Nico—run and put the catch down, there’s a love. And turn the sign. I know her of old. Once she’s in, you’ll never get her out.” When Nicholas returned, Avery added, “She’s very religious.”
“Obviously. What other reason would anyone have for wearing a hat like that?”
“D’you know,” said Avery approvingly, “I think we shall make something of this boy yet. Would you like a little wine, Nico?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Oh, don’t be so silly,” retorted Avery, splashing the Chablis into three large tumblers. “I hate people who say things like that. They’re always the sort who never mind how much trouble they give you. She came in the other day prosing on—”
“Who did?”
“Her out there. Came rushing up and asked me what I knew of the Wars of the Spanish Succession. I said absolutely nothing. I hadn’t stirred from the shop all day.” Avery looked at his companions. “Laugh, I thought they’d never stop.”
“Start.”
“Start what?”
“The joke is,” Nicholas explained patiently, “laugh, I thought they’d never start.”
“You’re making it up.” Nicholas reached out for a second roll and got his fingers slapped. “And don’t be such a pig.”
“Don’t mention pigs to me. Or meat of any kind.”
“Oh, God—he’s turned vegetarian.” Avery blanched. “I knew all those beans would go to his head.”
“That would make a change,” said Tim. “What’s up, Nicholas?”
“The first-night frantics, I’ll be bound,” said Avery. “If you’re worried about your lines, I’ll hear them after we close.”
Nicholas shook his head. He knew his lines and no longer feared (as he had in The Crucible) that they would vanish once and for all the moment he stepped onstage. What was disturbing him were his pre-first night dreams. Or rather dream. He was now quite used to having some sort of nightmare before the opening of a play, and had discovered most of his fellow actors had similar experiences. They dreamed they had learned the wrong part or their costume had vanished or they stepped onstage into a completely strange drama or (very common) they were in a bus or car that went past the theater again and again and refused to stop. Nicholas’s dream fell into this last category, except that he was traveling under his own steam to the Latimer. On roller skates. He was late and flying along, down Causton High Street, knowing he would only just make it, when his feet turned into the butcher’s shop. No matter how hard he fought to carry straight on, that is where they would go.
Inside the shop everything had changed. It was no longer small and tiled with colorful posters, but vast and cavernous; a great warehouse with row after row of hanging carcasses. As Nicholas skated frantically up and down the aisles trying to find a way out, he passed hundreds of slung-up hares with their heads in stained paper bags, lambs with frills around newly beheaded necks, and huge sides of bright red marbled meat rammed with steel hooks. Sweating with fear, he would wake, the reek of blood and sawdust seemingly in his nostrils. He had had this dream now every night for a week. He just hoped to God once the first night was over, he never had it again.
He described it lightheartedly to his companions, but Tim picked up the underlying unease. “Well,” he said, “there’s only two more to go. And don’t worry about Monday, Nico. You’re going to be excellent.” Nicholas looked slightly less wan. “Avery was in my box last night, and he cried at your death scene.”
“Ohhh.” Nicholas’s face was ecstatic. “Did you really, Avery?”
“That was mostly the music,” said Avery, “so there’s no need to get above yourself. Although I do think, one day, if you work very hard, you are going to be quite good. Of course, appearing opposite Esslyn, anyone would look like the new Laurence Olivier. Or even the old one, come to that.”
“He’s so prodigiously over the top,” said Tim. “Especially in the Don Giovanni scene.”
“Absolutely,” cried Nicholas, and Tim watched with approval as some color returned to his cheeks. “That’s my favorite. ‘Makea this one agood in my ears. Justa theesa one …’ ” His voice throbbed with exaggerated Italianate fervor. “ ‘Granta thees to me.’ ”
“Oh! Can I play God?” begged Avery. “Please?.”
“Why not?” said Tim. “What’s different about today?”
Avery climbed onto a stool and pointed a chubby Blakean finger at Nicholas. “‘No … I do not need you, Salieri. I have … Mozart!’” Demon-king laughter rang out, and he climbed down holding his sides. “I’ve missed my vocation—no doubt about it.”
“Didn’t you think,” said Nicholas, “that there was something funny about the whole dress rehearsal?”
“Give that man the Barbara Cartland prize for understatement.”
“I mean funny peculiar. I can’t believe all those upsets were accidental, for a start.”
“Oh, I don’t know. One sometimes has glorious evenings like that,” said Tim. “Remember the first night of Gaslight?’’
“And the Everards. They’re getting more and more contemptuous,” continued Nicholas. “That remark about the manhole cover. I don’t know how they dare.”
“They dare because they’re under Esslyn’s protection. Though what he sees in them is an absolute mystery.”
p>
“Don’t talk to me,” said Nicholas, sulkily sidetracked, “about mysteries.”
“You’re not going to start on that again,” said Avery. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see why I should let it drop. You promised if I told you my secret, you’d tell me yours.”
“And I will,” said Tim. “Before the first night.”
“It’s before the first night now. ”
“We’ll tell you on the half, honeybun,” said Avery. “And that’s a promise. Just in case you tell someone else.”
“That’s ridiculous. I trusted you, and you haven’t told anyone else … have you?”
“Naturally not.” Tim was immediately reassuring, but Avery said nothing. Nicholas looked at him, eyebrows raised interrogatively. Avery’s watery pale blue eyes wavered and slid around, alighting on the remaining crumbs of cheese, the walnuts, anything, it seemed, but Nicholas’s direct gaze. “Avery?”
“Well …” Avery gave a shamefaced little smile, “I haven’t really told anyone. As such.”
“Oh, Christ—what do you mean, ‘as such’?”
“I did sort of hint a bit… only to Boris. He’s the soul of discretion, as you know.”
“Boris? You might as well have had leaflets printed and handed them out in the High Street!”
“There’s no need to take that tone,” Avery shouted, equally loudly. “If people don’t want to be found out, they shouldn’t be unfaithful. And anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. If you hadn’t passed it on in the first place, no one else would know at all.”