Up the hill they strode, arm in arm again; it could have been their honeymoon. The house was a brick-and-frame mansion overlooking the promenade and the sea. The heating bill alone would be astronomical, let alone the selling price.
Brenda seemed to inhabit the place without servants. She opened the door herself — a mahogany door with a hemispherical fanlight of stained glass. When they were seated in front of an open fire, Whitman saw that bringing Amanda had been a mistake. The women represented that English phenomenon, different classes. They could never be more than polite to each other.
Furthermore, as he watched Brenda pour the wine, he noticed she had to get out another glass. The occasion had been intended, obviously, as a tête-à-tête. Her nose was probably so far out of joint that it would take all Dr. Mark Whitman’s professional skill to reset it. Never mind, they would have a drink and push off. Big Brenda, the Black Widow of Brighton, was only a chance acquaintance anyway. She had put him in touch with the drama group and thanks very much, but he owed her no eternal gratitude.
Accepting a glass of wine, Whitman became aware of music playing faintly in the background. It was the infectious, frenetic rhythm of The Quintet of The Hot Club of France playing ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’ “Great stuff,” he said. “I haven’t heard Django in a long time.”
“I particularly like Grapelly’s violin,” Brenda said. “My late husband knew him. Whenever the group was in this country, he stayed with us.”
Whitman was beginning to see Brenda in a different light. “I owe you something for sending me to The Lion.” He went on to explain how he had met Amanda and the others, ending with the possibility that he might be given a part. “So you may be responsible for keeping me here in England, Mrs. Belziel.”
“If that’s the case, I’m pleased,” she said.
Amanda became silent while the older people talked. Every now and then she shook her silver hair as if this was the only way she could clear her vision. When Whitman looked at her, she smiled and pretended to drink. Eventually she asked where the loo was and excused herself.
A brief silence followed the girl’s departure from the room. Then Brenda said with what Whitman could now identify as characteristic bluntness, “That one is a bad apple, Mark. Be careful.”
“She’s a kid. Anyway, I’m not involved.”
“Don’t be. I know her. Well, I know of her — she’s notorious around here. She’s been picked up more than once for shoplifting. Her driving license was suspended not long ago — that was for leaving the scene of an accident. Her family managed to get her off, but now they’ve washed their hands. She lives with one of the boys in the drama group.”
“Jeremy Lake. How do you know all this?”
“I move around the center of town quite a lot. Especially since I’m alone. I decided after my husband died not to become the ghost of this castle. I talk to people. I’m a gossip.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’m only with her because she latched onto me this afternoon when I was talking to the director. Norrie Mikeljohn. From now on I’ll only see her at rehearsals.”
She touched his arm. “I think we’ve started a new life for you here, ex-Doctor Whitman.”
When Amanda did not return, Brenda went to look for her. “You never know with these kids. She may have overdosed and be lying on the floor.”
It was sad but true, Whitman thought as he sat by himself. There was something clinical and sinister about the dope-takers beyond their furtive behavior forced on them by the law. Needles and smoke were not nice. Drinking was as natural as breathing, part of the life process. To ingest a moderate amount of alcohol this way, in company, that was how we were meant to get high. Not by snorting a pinch of powder up your nose. He thought that was a sad, perverse way to behave.
Brenda came back in a hurry. She spoke quickly, keeping her voice low. “Amanda was on the phone and I heard what she was saying. Something is going on. I don’t know what it is but she told somebody you’ll do perfectly.”
“Did she say that?”
“She said, ‘We can send him to see her tomorrow.’ ”
“To see who?”
“I didn’t hear any more.”
Amanda came into the room in a cloud of fresh scent. She did not sit down. “I’m tired now, Mark. If you want to stay, I can get back by myself.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“That’s a good idea, if you’re auditioning in the morning.”
“Am I?”
“That was my impression. Jeremy was saying they’d like to see you at the pub at nine o’clock.”
Whitman arrived at The Lion at nine feeling hung over and suspicious. His grim mood did not seem to bother anybody. Mikeljohn gave him a copy of the play and asked him to read a few key speeches. When he had done so, the director said, “Not bad, Mark. When we start rehearsing I’d like more disenchantment. Amanda, where’s that coffee?”
Before he handed back the playbook, Whitman noticed it was out of the public library and nobody else in the place had a copy. What kind of fool did they take him for?
They sat at the back of the room around a couple of tables, drinking coffee from plastic cups. There were donuts but not enough to go around. “What’s your opinion then, Mr. Whitman?” Mikeljohn asked. “Do you think you’d like to join us?”
“That’s whut ah’m here fur,” Whitman drawled like a television hillbilly.
Through the laughter Mikeljohn intoned, “Mr. Treasurer, collect one new membership.”
“Two pounds, please,” Jeremy said apologetically.
Whitman paid with a fiver and there was a lot of commotion over putting together the change. Then Amanda got up from the table. “I’m off,” she said. “Well done, Mark.”
“You can’t leave,” Mikeljohn protested. “What about Auntie Jane?”
“I’m sorry, somebody else will have to go. I’m busy for the rest of the day.” She thudded out of the room on white training shoes.
The director addressed Jeremy. “Can you go up and see her?”
“You know better than that. I’m too young — she thinks I’m her long-lost Robbie.”
“I’d go myself except I have to see the arts council about the grant. Without that, we fold.”
“What’s the problem?” Whitman asked. “Can I help?”
“You might at that. We have a difficult and darling patron, dear old Jane Reedie — Auntie Jane she’s known as, when we aren’t calling her rude names.” Mikeljohn glanced at Jeremy. “What say you? Should we risk sending Whitman into the pit on his first day?”
“Why not? He’s a member now, let him have his baptism.”
“Right. You’re on, then, Marko.”
Whitman felt pleased to be called Marko. Mikeljohn was clearly a manipulator, but there was magnetism in those deadly eyes.
It seemed that Jane Reedie had been a member of the group for decades. Now she was senile and lived alone in an apartment above a shop in The Lanes, surrounded by her treasures. She seldom took part in theatrical activities now, sometimes not even making it to the annual general meeting. But still she paid her dues and was good for the odd touch when the group was hard up.
Now she had agreed to lend them some of her costume jewelry for use as props in a Victorian melodrama they would be staging soon. But, being Auntie Jane, she could not be counted on to bring this stuff around. Somebody would have to collect it. Whitman would have to go.