Why it should give her such intense satisfaction she could never understand. Perhaps it was simply a matter of luxurious association—all those wealthy cardboard cutouts in American soaps crunching grandly around pillared porticoes in their stretch limos. Or maybe it was because the sound reminded her of happy childhood holidays in Dorset with the cold waves dragging the pebbles to and fro. Or perhaps it was simply that the rattling gravel meant her husband had finally left the house.
Kitty gave a last wave for luck and went upstairs to their bedchamber, scene of mutual delights, where Salieri’s blue-and-silver coat, lace-ruffled shirt, and cream trousers were laid over a chair back. While everyone else had been happy to leave their costumes in the dressing room (which was, after all, securely locked), Esslyn had ostentatiously brought his back to White Wings, insisting that after such a dress rehearsal, he wouldn’t trust the stage management to look after a pair of worn-out jock straps.
He had tried the costume on before getting properly dressed this morning, strutting his stuff in front of the cheval glass, anticipating aloud the moment when he would stand up from his wheelchair, fling off his tattered old dressing gown, and take the audience’s collective breath away. Kitty only half listened. He had paraded a bit more, then said something in garbled French before changing into his business suit and properly subduing the day. Now Kitty scrunched the coat into a tight ball, threw it in the air, and kicked it as far as she could before tripping into the connecting bathroom.
She turned the necks of two golden swans and tipped some Floris Stephanotis bath oil into the steaming water. Then she poured a generous amount of the sweet-scented stuff into her cupped hand. She massaged her calves and thighs, then her stomach, and, last of all, her breasts. She closed her eyes, swaying with pleasure. Reflected in the dark glass wall tiles, four glittering bronzy Kittys swayed, too. Then, fully anointed, she turned off the taps and slid into the sunken circular bath.
Around the rim, carpeted in ivory velour, were creams and unguents, several bottles of nail polish, her copy of Amadeus, and a telephone covered with mock ermine. She picked up the receiver, dialed, and a male voice said, “Hullo.”
“Hullo yourself, scrumptious. Guess what? He’s gone to work.” The voice rumbled, and Kitty said, “I couldn’t let you know. I didn’t know myself till he was halfway through his boiled egg and soldiers. I thought you’d be pleased … Oh… . can’t you?” She pouted prettily. “Well, I haven’t. In fact, I’ve got nothing on at all at the moment. Listen.” She splashed the water with her hand. A chuckle came down the line, and Kitty laughed, too. The same raunchy, harsh sound that Nicholas had heard in the lighting box. “I shall just have to settle for the Jacuzzi then, darling. Or a go on the exercise bike.” Another snort. “But it won’t be the same. See you Monday, then.”
Kitty hung up, and as she did so, the flexible cord caught on her script and it fell into the bath. Kitty sighed, and her lovely coral lower lip pushed forward delightfully, half covering the twin lascivious peaks of the upper. Sometimes, she thought, life was just too too much. Paul Scofield, clutching his shabby shawl, glared up at her from beneath the blue water like some astonishing new specimen of marine life. She poked him crossly with her toe, leaned back, closed her eyes, rested her head on the herb-filled pillow, and thought of love.
Harold was meeting the press. The real press, not just the regular, potbellied, beer-swilling hack from the Causton Echo who had interviewed Harold during the run of The Cherry Orchard, then described the play as “an epic agricultural drama by Checkoff.” Although, to be fair to the man, this might have been due to Harold referring to the play simply as The Orchard. He always tried to shorten titles, believing this made him appear more au fait with theatrical parlance. He had spoken of Rookers (Rookery Nook), Once (in a Lifetime), Night (Must Fall), and Mother (Goose). “This Mother’s going to be quite a show,” he had confided to the local inkslinger, who had, perhaps fortunately, replaced the missing noun before submitting his copy.
But today, aahh, today Harold was meeting with Ramona Plume from the features page of the South East Bucks Observer. Naturally he had always let them know about his work, but the response until now had been, to say the least, tepid. However, two letters, followed by a diligence of phone calls extolling the dazzlingly inventive nature of the current production, had finally produced a response. Anticipating a photographer, Harold had dressed accordingly in a longish gray overcoat with an astrakhan collar, shining black knee boots, and a Persian lamb hat. The weather was bitterly cold, and hailstones like transparent marbles were bouncing about on the pavement. A pigeon, its wing feathers stiff with ice, regarded him glumly from the Latimer doorway.
They were late. Harold had rather ostentatiously looked at his watch, shaken it, lifted one of his earflaps, and listened, then started to pace tubbily up and down, looking like a cross between Diaghilev and Winnie the Pooh. The pigeon, perhaps thinking a spot of exercise might warm up the feathers, left the doorway and joined him. Harold was very much aware that people were noticing him, and favored the occasional passerby with a gracious nod. Most of them would know who he was—he had, after all, been the town’s theater director for many years—the others, as became plain from their glances and whispered comments, recognized his quality. For Harold walked in an aura of barnstorming splendor. In him the strenuous creative struggle of rehearsal, the glamor of first nights, and the glittering aftermath of post-performance soirees were made manifest.
Sometimes, to underline the extraordinary superiority of his position, Harold would torture himself, just a little, with one of his most magnetic and alarming daydreams and, to pass the time, he slipped into it now. In this dream he would fantasize, rather like Marie Antoinette milk-maiding about at the Trianon, that he was living in Causton as a nonentity. Just another middle-aged dullard. He saw himself at the Rotarians with other drearies, pompously discussing local fund-raising or, worse, serving on the parish council, where an entire evening could be frittered away delving into the state of the drains. Activities generating a self-righteous glow while filling in an abyss of boredom. On Sunday he would clean the car (a Fiesta), and in the evening there would be television with programs of interest noted well in advance. After this would come the writing of a why-oh-why letter to the Radio Times, pointing out some faulty pronunciation or error in period costume or setting, and a temporary leg up, status-wise, in the community if it was actually printed.
It was usually at this point that Harold, his face sheened with the cold sweat of terror, stopped the panorama, leaped down from the tumbril, and hotfooted it back to reality. Now, he was helped on his way by the sight of a shabby Citroen 2CV parking at the corner of Carradine Street on a double yellow line. He collected himself and hurried forward.
“You can’t stop there.”
“Mr. Winstanley?”
“Oh.” Harold adjusted his hat and facial expression. He said, disbelievingly, “Are you from the Observer?” She hardly looked old enough to be in charge of a paper route, let alone a feature column.
“That’s right.” Ramona Plume pointed at the windshield as she scrambled out. A large disc was stamped PRESS. “I’m okay for a few minutes, surely?”