“Actually,” said Donald Bourton, “I could fill in for him, you know, if it ever came to the crunch. He is in scenes with Titania and Puck, but never with Oberon. I’ve always wanted to play Bottom.”
“But your fatal good looks have always been against you,” said his wife, giving him a playful flick on the cheek.
“Well, yes, Oberon would be a better swop,” said Yorke seriously. “There’s really no need for anybody except Puck to appear at the end of the play. There won’t be any fairies, anyway, because all the kids will be in bed, and there’s not much point in having Oberon and Titania without their fairy train and a torchlight procession and all that. You might have to double up for Lysander or Demetrius or me, Donald, as well, so you might as well learn the whole play.”
“I know it already,” said Donald. “One of these days I’ll do you a one-man show. Well, no, not quite a one-man show. I must be allowed a partner, for what says the play? ‘Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.’ ”
“One of these days Bradley will boot that fellow into the harbour,” said Marcus Lynn to Brian Yorke.
“Not until the play is over, I trust,” said Brian. “Bourton can’t swim.”
Chapter 3
Mouths of Babes
“I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice.”
« ^ »
We can only stay a week,” said Rosamund importantly.
“Dear, dear! How sad for Mrs Gavin and me,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Yes, I think it is, but, you see, we are going to be in a real grown-up play, and we’ll be wanted for rehearsals. All Signora Moretti’s dancing class are in it, but the rest of them only dance and sing. We have real parts. We speak.”
“Very impressive. Congratulations,” said Laura Gavin.
“I am an elf,” said Edmund.
“Great! What do you have to say?” asked Laura.
“And I and I and I. Where shall we go, go, go?”
“You only say it once,” said his sister.
“I say it all. I am going to have paint all over my face, so nobody knows it’s me,” Edmund confided to Dame Beatrice.
“He thinks so,” said Rosamund. “I am a fairy. There are three elves and a fairy. I am called Peasblossom.”
“A delightful name,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Yes. I ought to be in white, like garden peas, but Signora Moretti said I shall have a pink tunic and pink shoes and a lovely pink hat. Signora said I shall. The other elves—not Edmund—are called Ganymede and Lucien. They are black. Well, they are not really black, they are more brown, and they laugh all the time. Their father and mother are doctors and they are lethal.”
“I hope not,” said Laura. “You mean they are legal—legal immigrants.”
“Ganymede is called Moth and Lucien is Mustardseed. He will be all in yellow with pom-poms on his hat. I would rather be in pink than yellow.”
“Pink is for embarrassment, yellow for cowardice,” said Laura. “What about the other two?”
“Lucien is to be all different colours and have wings. He is to be like a butterfly. I think that’s silly, because moths aren’t like butterflies, are they?—well, not really.”
“As you say. What about Edmund?”
“I shall have a crown,” said Edmund.
“No, you won’t. You are called Cobweb.” Rosamund turned to Dame Beatrice. “He thinks he will have a crown, but he will have a silver tunic with sparkles on it like dewdrops and a kind of angel thing on his head with tinsel all over it in crisscross.”
“A halo in the form of a cobweb,” suggested Laura.
“What’s a halo?”
“A nimbus. A kind of angel thing, as you said.”
“Edmund had one on his head at Christmas when he was an angel in the cavity play.”
“Nativity play.”
“Nativity play. He had a halo and he was an angel.”
“So he is an old hand so far as the stage is concerned,” said Dame Beatrice admiringly.
“He was naughty. He picked up the Baby Jesus and threw it at one of the shepherds.”
“It was only a doll,” said Edmund. “I wanted it to be a real Baby Jesus and it wasn’t. It was only a doll.”
“You were right to discard it. Never accept inferior substitutes for the real thing,” said Dame Beatrice.
“I like pigs better than sheep,” said Rosamund. “Uncle Carey has got millions and millions of pigs. The sow hadn’t got enough teats for all the little pigs, so Aunt Jenny had to feed the littlest one out of a bottle. It was called Runt, but I called it Grunt. It waxed and grew fat, Uncle Carey said, and now it follows Aunt Jenny all over the house and won’t have anything to do with the other pigs. Aunt Jenny says it thinks it’s one of us.”
“I hope it’s house-trained,” said Laura.
“No, it isn’t. You can’t house-train a pig, Uncle Carey says, any more than you can house-train a horse. I would love a little tiny horse for a pet.”
“You’ve been round and about quite a bit, haven’t you, these last weeks?”
“Oh, yes, it’s been lovely, and Mummy sends us postcards from all the places where the ship calls. We went to Scotland for a fortnight, too, didn’t we?”
“Oh, yes, to my brother’s house. I took you, didn’t I? I’m sorry I couldn’t stay,” said Laura.
“If he’s your brother, why is his name Menzies?”
“It used to be my name before I married. Women change their surnames when they marry. Before your Aunt Deb married your Uncle Jon her name was Miss Deborah Katherine St Piran Cloud.”
“That’s a nice name. Will you let me do it on your typewriter?”
“Yes, if your fingers aren’t sticky. What did you do in Scotland after I left?”
“We crawled on our bellies and saw the deer, and a wild cat killed one of the chickens.”
“What else?”
“We ate our porridge standing up.”
“Where is The Dream to be staged?”
“In our garden. It’s an annual event, but we’ve never been in it before. Generally it’s done in the Town Hall, but this time it’s to be outdoors, so I think that’s why Uncle Jon and Auntie Deb and us are in it, because they want to use our garden. Well, they’d have to let us be in it, wouldn’t they?”
“To think that one so young can be so cynical!”
“What’s cynercal?”
“According to the Oxford Dictionary, it means being incredulous of human goodness,” said Dame Beatrice.
“What’s incredilous?”
“Incredulous,” said Laura.
“Incredulous. What is it?”
“Not believing, O Socrates.”
“What’s Sockertees?”
“Oh, my God!”
“Is that swearing?”
“No, it’s a cry for help, in this instance.”
“Are you sorry we’re only staying a week?”
“Ask me that again when the week is up,” said Laura. “Let’s go and look for bluebells in the woods.”
“We’re not allowed to pick the wild flowers. Mummy says we’re conversationists.”
“One of you is, at any rate, and who said anything about picking them? Anyway, I rather fancy you mean conservationists.”
“Yes. Wild flowers are not very interesting when you’re not allowed to pick them, though, are they? Why is it all right for Jasper Lynn to pick the wild flowers if we mustn’t?”
“Who is Jasper Lynn?”
“A big boy. He belongs to Mr and Mrs Lynn and he picked the wild flowers to give to Mrs Bourton and he’s Egeus. It is only a little part and a girl was going to have it, but when Mrs Lynn said Jasper must be in it, Mr Lynn said, ‘only a little part then, he’s got his A-levels’, so Mr Yorke said, ‘what about Egeus? We could paint some wrinkles on him and give him a beard’.”
“So Jasper is Egeus. Does he want the part? It’s not a very attractive one, to my way of thinking—just a bossy old father objecting to his daughter marrying the man of her choice,” said Laura.