The foyer was packed. Tom Barnaby, accompanied by a tall girl, darkly beautiful, pushed his way toward the Winstanleys. He held a drink in one hand and a program in the other. Strings played over the P.A. system.
“What awful music. It simpers.”
“Salieri.”
“Ahhh …” said Cully, adding, “can you see the divine afflatus?”
“You behave yourself, my girl. Or I’ll take you home.”
“Dad,” Cully laughed delightedly—“you are a hoot. Look—there he is.”
Harold was in evening dress. A large yellow silk hanky peeped out of one jacket pocket. He also wore a maroon cummerbund and a dress shirt so stiffly starched you could have sliced tomatoes with the ruffles. He was welcoming the audience graciously. Harold adored first nights. They came closer to satisfying his longing for recognition than any other occasion. Mrs. Harold, in a black button-up cardigan unevenly spattered with pearls teamed with a tartan skirt of uncertain length drifted dimly in his glorious wake echoing the greetings, getting the names wrong, and wishing she were at her flower-arranging class.
“Hello, Doris.”
“Oh, Tom.” Relieved at the sight of a friendly face, Mrs. Winstanley thrust out her hand, and blushed when her companion was unable to take it. “Harold tells me you’ve done a wonderful job on the set.” Knowing it would never occur to Harold to do anything of the kind, Barnaby just smiled and nodded. “And I understand,” continued Doris, “that Joyce is singing better than ever.” She didn’t add, as she had been wont to do when they first met, “You must come and have a meal with us soon.” Harold had really torn into her as soon as they were alone, saying that when he wanted a great clod-hopping philistine of a policeman cluttering up his lounge, she would be the first to know.
Barnaby was aware of this attitude, which caused him not a little quiet amusement. Now, he talked to Doris about horticulture, having long ago recognized a passion as great as his own. In fact, all the shrubs in the Winstanleys’ garden were grown from cuttings from Arbury Crescent, and he kept some of his seeds back for Doris every year. Although she loyally pretended these gifts were unnecessary, Barnaby guessed that Harold’s dashing lifestyle left little money to spare for what he would regard as inessentials. Now, Harold’s wife turned on Barnaby’s companion a look of polite, slightly dazed inquiry.
“You remember my daughter?”
“Cully?” Last time Doris had met Barnaby’s daughter, the child had sported a green and silver crest of hair, was covered in black leather, and hung with chains. Now, she had on an acid-yellow evening dress, strapless with a puffball skirt caught in above her knees. Slender black-silk-stockinged legs ended in high-heeled suede shoes with embroidered tongues. Her shoulders were draped with very old lace sparkling with brilliants, and her hair, blue-black like hothouse grapes, was scraped into a tight coil on the top of her head secured by an ivory comb. “I hardly knew you, dear.”
“Hullo, Mrs. Winstanley.” Cully shook hands. “Hullo, Harold.” She was wondering how anyone could bring herself to put that cardigan on even once, never mind year after year. Leaving his daughter after a stern warning glance had failed to connect, Barnaby pushed his way over to the door, where a youngish man accompanied by a vapidly pretty girl was entering the foyer.
“You made it then, Gavin?”
“We did, sir.” Detective Sergeant Troy pulled down the cuffs of his sports jacket nervously. “This is my wife, Maure.” Mrs. Troy moved her foot. “Ooh. Sorry. Maureen.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Maureen shook hands. She didn’t seem especially pleased. Barnaby guessed she was about as fed up as Doris Winstanley, but without the necessity to conceal the fact. He always put a CADS poster in the staff canteen without ever making a point of his connection with the company, but his sergeant, hearing him mention Joyce’s rehearsals, had put two and two together, and tickets had been purchased. Barnaby could imagine the conversation in the Troy household. Gavin believing that keeping in with the old man couldn’t be bad; Maureen picturing just what sort of draggy old time she was letting herself in for. She smiled now, a glum, restrained smile, and said she couldn’t half get outside a lager and lime. Embarrassed, her husband eased her nearer the auditorium steps. As he did so, he caught sight of Cully, who was making her way toward the swing door opening onto the corridor that led backstage. After a few moments Maureen set him in motion again with a savage poke in the small of his back.
“It’s a pity you didn’t bring a knife and fork,” she said as they took their seats.
“What?” He stared at her blindly.
“You could have eaten her in the interval.”
Mr. Tibbs was late, and Deidre was in a ferment of agitation. She was already regretting that she had accepted, even encouraged, his wish to attend the first night. It seemed to her now the height of foolishness. If he had a bad turn or became frightened, there would be no one to help him. She wished now she had thought of putting him next to Tom, but a gangway seat on the back row had seemed the better idea. She had been afraid he might feel threatened, surrounded by rows and rows of strangers. She clutched a program, painfully aware of the insignificant position of her own name, and the prominence of Harold’s, which could not have been bolder unless burning with letters of fire.
She glanced at her watch. Where on earth could he be? She had booked a taxi for a quarter to eight, and the journey was a few minutes at the most. Then she saw a cab drawing up at the curb and hurried out into the cold night air. Mr. Tibbs alighted.
“Oh, Daddy,” she cried, “I was so worried—” She broke off, gaping. Her father was wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt and cream cotton trousers and carrying a linen jacket over his arm. She had left him wearing a thick tweed suit with a cardigan for extra warmth and five pounds tucked in the breast pocket. At least, she thought, watching him hand over the note, he had remembered to switch the money. As the driver wound up his window, Deidre tapped on it and said, “Isn’t there any change?”
“Do me a favor,” said the man. “I had to sit ticking over for ten minutes while he changed all his clothes!”
Deidre took her father’s arm, ice-cold and slightly damp, and led him through the now almost deserted foyer to his seat in row P. Fortunately the auditorium was warm, and she would make sure he got a hot drink during intermission. She left him sitting up very straight and staring with febrile intensity at the rich red curtains.
In the foyer Barnaby nodded to Earnest and followed his daughter toward the wings, easing himself past Harold, who was being gracious to a heavyweight couple in full evening regalia.
The ladies’ dressing room was only being used by four people and, the actress playing Katherina Cavalieri also being part of the stage staff, now held only three. Joyce Barnaby in a puritan gray dress and snowy-white fichu was pressing powder on her nose. Kitty twitched and twirled about in her seat, clattering her bottles and jars and mumbling her opening lines with so much fervor they might have been a rosary. Rosa sat, apparently serene, in the chair nearest the electric fire. She had dressed and made up with sublime disregard as to the requirements of her character. Far from appearing plain and severe, her face, splendidly orchidaceous, could have been that of a tum-of-the-century poule de luxe. Eyelids shimmered like the insides of a mussel shell, and her plummy lips glistened. She wore a large hat from which a bunch of cherries hung down, lying against her damask cheek. Perfect speckled crimson ovoids, they could have been the eggs of some fabulous bird. There were two magnificent bouquets from Harold for his leading ladies. Joyce (small parts/wardrobe) had a bunch of wintersweet and hellebores tied with a velvet ribbon from her husband. On the back of a chair between Rosa and Joyce hung Kitty’s “baby.”