“Didn’t you get as far as the third page?” asked Deborah, as Jonathan turned round. “Simon suggests that we use their house for any part of the time we choose. There’s the sea and the use of his boat, and he’ll put you up for guest membership of the golf-club and he reminds us that Aunt Adela doesn’t live all that far away. He is certain she and Laura will take the children off our hands for a fortnight when we feel we must have a break.”
“He’s more certain about that than I am. Besides, with Laura in charge of them, the children would probably break their necks.”
“Her own children didn’t.”
“Look, Deb, it’s an absolute imposition and it’s definitely not on. I’ll write straight back and say so.”
“We are going to the Cotswolds,” said Rosamund to her brother.
“What’s Cotswolds?”
“Where Uncle Jon and Aunt Deb live. You went there for three weeks last summer. Don’t you remember? You ran down the hill and fell over.”
“Jack an’ Jill went up the hill to fetcher pailer water. Jack fell down an’ broke his crown an’ Jill came tumberling after. Did they really?”
“They did, if it says so. It’s printed in your book, so it must be true. They wouldn’t print anything that wasn’t true.”
“Was Jack a king?”
“He must have been if he had a crown. I expect he cried when he broke it. I cried when I broke my best dolly.”
“If I was a king I wouldn’t break my crown. I would wear it every day and every night.”
“You couldn’t wear it in bed and you couldn’t wear it all day.”
“I could! I could!”
“You would have to take it off to wash your hair.”
“Kings don’t wash their hair and they don’t get soap in their eyes.”
“Neither would you if you kept your eyes shut. Anyway, we’re going to stay with Uncle Jon and Auntie Deb in the Cotswolds. Mummy said so. She said Auntie Deb must have talked Uncle Jon into having us.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“Yes, you do. There are dogs and rabbits and horses and a little donkey and geese and chickens and there’s almost sure to be a hound puppy like last time, and there’s the duck-pond and we can look for frogs and newts and those big snails Uncle Jon says you can eat, and we can dig up worms for the ducks and go into the woods and look for badger holes with the gamekeeper and find empty birds’ nests and paddle in the brook.”
“Will Uncle Jon give me a puppy of my very own if I go?”
“Cook says ‘them as don’t ask don’t want, and them as does ask shan’t have’, so I don’t know.”
“Cook is mistaken in her first premise, and her second argues little faith in the efficacy of prayer,” said Simon, who had caught the end of the children’s conversation.
“Cook says prayers are only a way of asking God for the things nobody else will give you,” said his daughter.
“You are not to go into the kitchen and bother Cook.”
“I didn’t. I only heard what she said to Carrie. Are we really going to have a lot of new clothes?”
“Well, if you are going to stay with other people while we go on our second honeymoon, you must be kitted out decently, I suppose.”
“What’s a second honeymoon?”
“A compensation for the first one, which is hardly ever a success.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“The bride is nervous, the groom inadequate.”
“Is it compensation to give us a lot of new clothes?”
“No. It is for the sake of appearances. The compensation will be in the form of new toys. We shall take you to London to choose them for yourselves.”
“Can we eat at a real hotel?”
“Certainly. It will be part of the compensation.”
“Cook says conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
“Cook has an extraordinary faculty for hitting a nail on the head. When did she say that?”
“It was when Carrie’s brother had to marry his young woman.”
“I doubt whether that was a question of conscience, but we must give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I cannot prove who plastered one of my best shirts with your mother’s lipstick.”
“We were playing murders, so there had to be blood.”
“I appreciate that and as you were having a birthday party and there were guests present, I forbore to ask any questions.”
“Cook says you shouldn’t tell tales out of school.”
“Nor in it, either. You remember that.”
“So I didn’t tell you it was Bayard Thompson put the lipstick on your shirt.”
“Well, it’s all fixed, it seems,” said Simon, a few weeks later. “There was only a fortnight unaccounted for, but the Yorkes are going to fill in in return for use of this place for the play. What’s more, the dancing-class lady, Signora Moretti, is undertaking to coach the Midsummer Dream fairies in dance and song, so Rosamund and Edmund will be in the play to that extent. I have only one misgiving. There are to be three performances and all of them in the evening. Lynn, the financier chap, is going to be Yorke’s ‘angel’, so the costumes will be lavish, the lighting professional, amplifiers hitched up among the trees and the Ladies’ Orchestra to supply the music. Heaven only knows what else he seems prepared to pay for. One thing: he can afford it.”
“What are your misgivings?”
“The lateness of the hour at which the performances will close. The children will be kept up until eleven at night or later.”
“No, as a matter of fact, they won’t. I was talking to the signora when I took the children to dancing class last Saturday and she has made it a condition that the younger children will not be in the concluding scene at all. It can be played by Oberon, Titania and Puck, with members of the Ladies’ Choral supplying the song and leaving out the last fairy dance. The small children will be released at the end of the first scene in the third act.”
“Even then I suppose it will be long past their usual bedtime.”
“It won’t hurt them for just three nights and they can sleep on in the mornings. It will mean a fat fee for Signora Moretti if the children appear. We can’t do her out of it. It’s not as though the play itself is something from which the children can take any harm, and they’ll adore being in it.”
Chapter 2
Read-Through
“Is all our company here?
—You were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip.”
« ^ »
Cast it yourself,” said Donald Bourton. “You know what a lot of time got wasted and what ill-feeling there was when we had a casting committee last October for the Christmas play. No two members agreed about anything and the result was very nearly a fiasco. You’re producing and directing and it was you who got Lynn to put up the money. You ought to have your own way about allotting the parts.”
“That’s all very well, but it’s not so easy to take matters into one’s own hands with an amateur cast. With professionals you can say take it or leave it, but with people who are doing it for free, and with all the vested interests lined up against you, it’s not so simple. At least to have a committee does spread the load.”
“And mucks up the production. Anyway, it seems to me that this time there is only one vested interest to consider, and that’s Lynn himself. I take it that he’s not financing us purely out of the goodness of his heart.”
“No. He expects fat parts for himself, his wife and, to a lesser degree because the boy is doing his A-levels this year, something for his son.”
“Oh, well, he who pays the piper calls the tune. You’ll have to guide his choice a bit, that’s all.”
“It’s all very well to talk. He’s short and stout, as you know, and will probably want to play one of the lovers. He’s already bespoken a part for his spouse. He’s read the play and thinks she would make a good Hermia. I wanted your Barbara for that.”