He had a light, bantering way with him and a boldish stare that was somehow very far from being offensive. “Perry,” he said, “this is an enchanting theatre. I want to explore, I want to see everything. Why don’t we have a bacchanal and go in Doric procession through and about the house, tossing down great bumpers of champagne and chanting some madly improper hymn? Led, of course, by our great, great star. Or should it be by Mr. and Mrs. Greensleeves?”
He made his preposterous suggestion so quaintly that in spite of himself and out of sheer nerves Peregrine burst out laughing. Knight said, “Excuse me,” with a good deal of ostentation and walked off.
“ ‘It is offended,’ ” Grove said. “ ‘See, it stalks away.’ It dislikes me, you know. Intensely.”
“In that case don’t exasperate it, Harry.”
“Me? You think better not? Rather tempting though, I must say. Still, you’re quite right, of course. Apart from everything else, I can’t afford to. Mr. Greengage might give me the sack,” Grove said with one of his bold looks at Peregrine.
“If he didn’t, I might. Do behave prettily, Harry, And I must get back into the scrum.”
“I shall do everything that is expected of me, Perry dear. I nearly always do.”
Peregrine wondered if there was a menacing note behind this apparently frank undertaking.
When he returned to the foyer it was to find that the party had attained its apogee. Its component bodies had almost all reached points farthest removed from their normal behaviour. Everybody was now obliged to scream if he or she wished to be heard and almost everybody would have been glad to sit down. The personages were clustered together in a flushed galaxy and the theatre people excitedly shouted shop. Mrs. Greenslade could be seen saying something to her husband and Peregrine was sure it was to the effect that she felt it was time their guests began to go away. It would be best, Peregrine thought, if Destiny Meade and Marcus Knight were to give a lead. They were together on the outskirts and Peregrine knew, as certainly as if he had been beside them, that Knight was angrily telling Destiny how he felt about W. Hartly Grove. She gazed at him with her look of hypersensitive and at the same time sexy understanding but every now and then her eyes swivelled a little and always in the same direction. There was a slightly furtive air about this manoeuvre.
Peregrine turned to discover what could be thus attracting her attention and there, in the entrance to the passage, stood Harry Grove with wide-open eyes and a cheerful smile, staring at her. “Damn,” thought Peregrine. “Now what?”
Emily Dunne, Charles Random and Gertie Bracey were all talking to Jeremy Jones. Jeremy’s crest of red hair bobbed up and down and he waved his glass recklessly. He threw back his head and his roar of laughter could be heard above the general din. As he always laughed a great deal when he was about to fall in love, Peregrine wondered if he was attracted by Emily and hoped he was not. It could hardly be Gertie. Perhaps he was merely plastered.
But no. Jeremy’s green and rather prominent gaze was directed over the heads of his group and was undoubtedly fixed upon Destiny Meade.
“He couldn’t be such an ass,” Peregrine thought uneasily. “Or could he?”
His awareness of undefined hazards were not at all abated when he turned his attention to Gertie Bracey. He began, in fact, to feel as if he stood in a field of fiercely concentrated shafts of criss-cross searchlights. Like searchlights, the glances of his company wandered, interlaced, selected and darted. There, for example, was Gertie with her rather hatchet-jawed intensity stabbing her beam at Harry Grove. Peregrine recollected, with a jolt, that somebody had told him they had been lovers and were now breaking up. He had paid no attention to this rumour. Supposing it was true, would this be one more personality problem on his plate?
“Or am I,” he wondered, “getting some kind of director’s neurosis? Do I merely imagine that Jeremy eyes Destiny and Destiny and Harry ogle each other and Gertie glares hell’s fury at Harry and Marcus has his paw on Destiny and that’s why he resents Harry? Or is it all an unexpected back-kick from the Conducis champagne?”
He edged round to Destiny and suggested that perhaps they ought to make a break and that people were waiting for a lead from her and Marcus. This pleased both of them. They collected themselves as they did offstage before a big entrance and, with the expertise of rugby halfbacks, took advantage of a gap and swept through it to Mrs. Greenslade.
Peregrine ran straight into their child actor, Master Trevor Vere, and his mama, who was a dreadful lady called Mrs. Blewitt. She had to be asked and it was God’s mercy that she seemed to be comparatively sober. She was dressed in a black satin shift with emerald fringe and she wore a very strange green toque on her pale corn hair. Trevor, in the classic tradition of infant phenomena, was youthfully got up in some sort of contemporary equivalent of a Fauntleroy suit. There were overtones of the Mod. His hair was waved back from his rather pretty face and he wore a flowing cravat. Peregrine knew that Trevor was not as old as his manner and his face suggested because he came under the legal restrictions imposed upon child performers. It was therefore lucky in more ways than one that he died early in the first act.
Mrs. Blewitt smiled and smiled at Peregrine with the deadly knowingness of the professional mum and Trevor linked his arm in hers and smiled, too. There are many extremely nice children in the professional theatre. They have been well brought up by excellent parents. But none of these had been available to play Hamnet Shakespeare and Trevor, it had to be faced, was talented to an unusual degree. He had made a great hit on cinema in a biblical epic as the Infant Samuel.
“Mrs. Blewitt,” said Peregrine.
“I was just hoping for a chance to say how much we appreciate the compliment,” said Mrs. Blewitt with an air of conspiracy. “It’s not a big role, of course, not like Trev’s accustomed to. Trev’s accustomed to leading child-juves, Mr. Jay. We was offered—”
It went on predictably for some time. Trevor, it appeared, had developed a heart condition. Nothing, Mrs. Blewitt hurriedly assured Peregrine, to worry about really because Trev would never let a show down, never, but the doctor under whom Trev was and under whom she herself was—a monstrous picture presented itself—had advised against another big, emotionally exhausting role—
“Why bring that up, Mummy?” Trevor piped with one of his atrocious winks at Peregrine. Peregrine excused himself, saying that they must all be getting along, mustn’t they, and he wanted to catch Miss Dunne before she left.
This was true. He had thought it would be pleasant to take Emily back to their studio for supper with him and Jeremy. Before he could get to her he was trapped by Gertrude Bracey.
She said: “Have you seen Harry anywhere?”
“I saw him a minute or two ago. I think perhaps he’s gone.”
“I think perhaps you’re right,” she said with such venom that Peregrine blinked. He saw that Gertrude’s mouth was unsteady. Her eyes were not quite in focus and were blurred with tears.
“Shall I see if I can find him?” he offered.
“God, no,” she said. “I know better than that, I hope, thank you very much.” She seemed to make a painful effort to present a more conventional front. “It doesn’t matter two hoots, darling,” she said. “It was nothing. Fabulous party. Can’t wait to begin work. I see great things in poor Ann, you know.”
She walked over to the balustrade and looked down into the lower foyer which was populous with departing guests. She was not entirely steady on her pins, he thought. The last pair of personages was going downstairs and of the company only Charles Random and Gertrude remained. She leaned over the balustrade, holding to it with both hands. If she was looking for Harry Grove, Peregrine thought, she hadn’t found him. With an uncoordinated swing she turned, flapped a long black glove at Peregrine and plunged downstairs. Almost certainly she had not said goodbye to her host and hostess but, on the whole, perhaps that was just as well. He wondered if he ought to put her in a taxi but heard Charles Random shout: “Hi, Gertie love. Give you a lift?”