"Yes," Enderby said, with some bitterness. "Ape." April Elgar sat there in a mauve track or jump suit looking rested, as though after some great black night of black amation, her own kind, right. Baby, ah just died. "Goats and monkeys. Actor on his ass. Shakespeare reduced to the animalistic was bad enough. Now Shakespeare's reduced to me. Besides, I don't belong to the appropriate union."
"Ah, fuck that," somebody said.
"You're a poet," April Elgar said without warmth. "You got that in common."
"I fear," Enderby said, "I fear – You lot are actors, and that means you're superstitious. That fag Oldfellow would have made Shakespeare just vulgar. I'd make him absurd. I can't do it."
"Oh Jesus God." Jed Tilbury's black emotional lability began to show. "I got this job to do, can't you see that, man? I got to put this show on now Gus Toplady has slung. I got a career to think of, man." He began to cry. As Enderby had half-expected, April Elgar did a there there patting act and even kissed his limp hand. Call of the blood, fellow melanoid in distress. Just died. One of the girls from the secretarial concourse came pertly in to announce:
"Pete Oldfellow's still blacked out with concussion. Dick Corcoran has this broken arm they've set and cuts and bruises. And he's charged with drunk driving and damaging public property. A mailbox it was. That was the Illinois police on the line."
"Orange juice," Enderby said. "I should have warned him. I didn't think, blast it."
"What in the hell did they think they were doing?" Jed Tilbury cried. "Wearing those goddamn costumes too?"
"They might have been in drag," somebody said. "Fart in gales or whatever they're called."
"And the car," the girl said, "is a writeoff. Lucky to be alive, the police say."
"No sense," Jed Tilbury said with sad weight, "of professional responsibility."
"And," said the girl, "we have to tell the press and the radio and the TV. About cancellation."
"Yeah," bowed Jed Tilbury said, "we gonna cancel."
"Lifelong love and devotion," April Elgar said obscurely, though not, in a second or so, to Enderby. "Let's see some of that. We don't cancel. Stick your ass on the line. You going to do it."
"Oh God oh God," Enderby moaned. "What have I to lose? The ultimate tomfoolery."
"You just pretend," she said, "that you're acting a Baptist minister. The words are different, that's all." Most frowned, not understanding.
Jed Tilbury showed both relief and the concern of immediate problems. "We got to do a run through," he said. "Start now."
"No rehearsals," Enderby said. "I know my own lines."
"Yeah, but there been some changes -"
"About which I was not consulted. And I was barred from your bloody rehearsals. The joke, the man who wrote the bloody thing, that's all. Not one of you spoke up."
"That's not true," April Elgar said. "It doesn't matter, but that's not true."
"All right, thanks. So I get up on that stage as William Shakespeare, and you'd better all pray hard that the man himself doesn't punch through the bloody shoddy thing from the shades. Perhaps you'd better arrange a quick seance with Mrs Allegramente, if that's her real name, stupid bitch always going on about the sufferings of Northern Ireland, knows sod all about it. Get the enigmatic voice of the Bard on the hot line. Bugger everything and everybody." He got stiffly up, the minor poet daring to be Shakespeare, Marsyas who was flayed for his temerity, and then hurried stiffly out to the nearest toilet. There he was urgently drained like a sump. Awaiting him outside was April Elgar. She said:
"You'll be all right. Just be yourself. If they laugh, okay they laugh. I don't think they going to laugh. You care for Shakespeare, that's got to come out."
"That's the bloody trouble." And then: "What did you do last night?"
"No business of yours, sonny."
"Tell me."
"No, I don't tell you. You want to be jealous, okay you be jealous. Then you don't have to act jealous tonight. It's pretty hard to act jealous." And then: "You got no claim on me."
"Love," Enderby said heavily. "Love, love. No, no claim, you're right. Love. I'm going off now to get drunk."
"You better not."
"You've no claim on me. I do what I want. What time do I have to report for duty?"
"You and me," she said, "are going to eat lunch, right. A couple martinis, okay. Then we go through the script. Then you have a little sleep. Then we come back here together. We give 'em all hell, you and me. Cabbages, sheep's heads, you got to despise them. Okay?"
Enderby sat in what had been, and might be again (emerging from blackout was the news), Pete Oldfellow's dressing room. He felt absolutely stone cold and indifferent as Pete Oldfellow's dresser, a retired minor actor new to the job, breathed Southern Comfort onto him. He sat and saw himself in a mirror framed with hot bulbs. Wig, beard secured with strong spirit gum. The Burbage portrait stared grimly back, though without earrings. Codpiece, hose, shirt, jerkin, ruff. Outside in the corridor there was scurrying and he could almost smell the sweat of nerves, as in a stable. A calm voice over a loudspeaker said: "Fifteen minutes." The dresser said: "Your teeth okay? That bottom set looks kind of wobbly to me." Enderby realized that he had left his tubes of toothglue back in his hotel bathroom. He gnashed at the mirror. They'd hold. The door opened and April Elgar came in in scarlet silk, café au lait bosom achingly on show. Her ink hair flashed with stage gems. She held out an envelope.
"Give 'em hell," she said. "My momma sent this. Enclosed, just for you. She sends her warm affection, happy in the Lord. We got a full house, baby. Don't open it now." Enderby propped the letter against a Max Factor makeup outfit. "There he goes." They heard the faint voice of Jed Tilbury addressing the audience, apologizing for absence unavoidable of Pete Oldfellow and begging indulgence, part of William Shakespeare being taken at short notice by play's author the distinguished British. The audience's angry response did not come through. Soon, however, the farting of trombones and thuds of drums did. Overture and beginners. "Luck," she said and was off.
"You wanna a drop of this?" the dresser asked, bringing from a cupboard a fluted bottle of Southern Comfort. He was an undistinguished man on whom rested impertinently the distinguished though raddled mask of the late John Barrymore. Enderby could reply only with a headshake. He had no saliva and the mechanism of speech had totally to be remastered. He looked down with difficulty at sturdy legs in gooseturd hose. From these the power of locomotion had entirely departed. The feet just about worked still, however, and on these he slid towards the door. The door opened and Jed Tilbury, dressed presumably for Aaron the Moor, nodded at him. Enderby nodded back and said:
"Aaargh."
Enderby was pushed by men in stagehand undress into total blackness. From his right an orchestra boomed and screeched to its final chord or what passed for one. Farther right there was meagre and dutiful applause. Enderby saw below the young bald Pip Wesel dimly lighted wagging a stick with a glowworm stuck to its end at dimly lighted music stands. There was a faint response to the stick and Enderby heard sung faintly from ubiquitous loudspeakers words he had himself composed:
"Bringing the maypole home
Bringing the maypole home
Bringing the maypole home
Bringing the maypole home"
He now saw a woman in a kind of nightgown rocking a kind of cradle. That would be Anne Shakespeare, NéE Hathaway. He saw her more clearly as dimmers undimmed. He presumed he had to have a colloquy with her. To his surprise he found he could walk. He walked towards her. She was downstage in a pool of pink light. He spoke words:
"Aye, they're bringing the maypole home. You remember?" He saw there was a kind of casement standing on little wheels, unsupported by a wall. He went to this object to pretend to look out of it. "A night spent in the woods, cider and cold meat and hot lechery. You overbore me as Venus overbore Adonis. I was cozened, caught, caged in a loveless marriage. I have a mind to go." These words, so far as he could remember, were not in the script. It seemed to him that he was probably improvising them. "Aye, a mind to leave you." He blinked at the cradle-rocking Anne, who was not being played by the mistress of Toplady. There were coughs and rustles from the audience. Enderby spoke out more boldly. "I have my destiny to fulfil, my star to follow." He peered through nonexistent glass and saw nothing. "More than my star – my constellation – she is bright this night. Cassiopeia is roaring lionlike in the heavens – an inverted W signifying my name. Will and Will in overplus. My name in the sky."