— Save them. Might come in handy this winter when the miners are on strike and the Arabs are squeezing our liquid assets.
There were bawls of appreciation, and even scattered clapping, for this.
‘Right,’ said Hood. ‘I’ve seen enough. I’m leaving.’ He hitched forward and started to rise.
But Mr Gawber was asleep. He slept upright, facing the stage, holding the pound of chocolates on his lap, like a train passenger in a tunnel. His posture was attentive; only his eyes, tightly shut, indicated his slumber.
— Speaking of Arabs. Hear about the one that was trying to get back? Goes into an airline booking office and hands over a hundred quid for his ticket. Feller at the desk says ‘You’re ten p. short.’ So this Arab walks outside and stops a City gent. ‘May I have ten p. sir? I want to go back to Arabia.’ ‘Here’s a pound,’ says the gent, ‘take nine more of the buggers with you.’
Hood folded his arms angrily.
There was some business with the electric blender. The woman left the top off and switching it on sent the mixture flying in blobs that plastered the kitchen and shot into their faces. The jokes were about food — the shortage of sugar, the cost of flour, the hoarding of butter; and the audience reacted as if their own grievances were being accurately represented.
— Three weeks on the Costa Packet. Isn’t it smashing to be back? Imagine, a cup of tea without grease in it!
— And no enterovioform for dessert anymore.
— Blimey, they even put garlic in the cornflakes.
— Wasn’t it shocking? Why did we do it?
— Perversion, that’s Europe. But I’ve been looking forward to this. High tea. Good English food after all that Spanish muck.
Mr Gawber swayed in sleep. Hood was restive; the stupid happy faces of the audience, the idiocy on-stage, the gaping at food, the ineffectual humour put him in the mood of the sharpest rage. He could destroy them for this fooling. They were acting out their strength, celebrating their petty hatred. But the worst of this malice was the acceptance of things as they are, the assumption of oily foreigners, the assumption of greed, the assumption of funny little England. That and the moronic display of food stacked, burned, thrown about — which titillated the audience like naked flesh. Hood saw it as the coarsest pornography — hunger’s greedy ridicule.
He wanted to wake up Mr Gawber and tell him he was going; he could wait in the lobby until it was all over. And he had half-risen to leave when a boy made his appearance on stage — a handsome boy in an old army shirt and woollen cap and boots.
— You mean, while we were in Majorca you were sleeping in the garage?
— Yeah. I’m a squatter.
— Spanish style? Well, there’s a time and place for that.
— He means he’s moved in.
— He can bloody well move out. He’ll rust me mower.
— You can’t throw me out like that. Anyway, maybe I can help.
Hood sat down. The boy, unseen by the man, winked at the woman, who was obviously attracted to him. The man gave in and allowed the boy to help with the dishes. This was the beginning of a prolonged and punning flirtation, with winks for emphasis, that lasted throughout the first act. The audience screamed at the farce the woman made of the cooking and barked at the sexual innuendo. But Hood was looking closely at the boy, studying the face, the ears, the set of the mouth.
The woman tossed a bowl into the sink, splashing and soaking the boy’s shirt.
— Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You’re drenched.
— That’s okay. It’ll dry.
— Here, take that off. Can’t have you catching cold.
— I’ll get you one of my shirts. Won’t be any worse than the one you’re wearing.
The man plucked at the boy’s shirt, but the boy objected and covered himself. The man snatched and with fumbling fingers worked at the buttons. He opened the wet shirt and shook loose two well-developed breasts, nodding softly in the man’s astonished face.
That was the end of the first act.
Mr Gawber woke and smiled, ‘Disappointing.’
‘Who did you say the girl was?’
‘Araba Nightwing. Client of mine. Awfully nice girl. She’s going to play Peter Pan in the Christmas pantomime.’
‘I’d like to meet her.’
‘Would you?’ Mr Gawber seemed surprised. ‘I can arrange that. It’s the least I can do after putting you through this. We’ll go backstage afterwards. But I think it’s only fair to say that her company can be rather, um, frenzied. How about a tub of ice-cream?’
He hailed a woman passing with a tray and bought two ice-creams. He gave one to Hood and said, ‘Or more than frenzied, if there’s a word for it. It’s the profession, you know. All that publicity. Money, then unemployment. It does things to them. They never stop acting — it’s very trying. They cry and it’s not sad. They laugh and you wonder why. I’d applaud if only they’d stop, but they take it as encouragement. Norah loves them, poor old thing. I always think they could have puppets instead of actors. Big puppets, of course.’
‘The Japanese have them,’ said Hood, digging at the ice-cream.
‘You don’t say,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘I thought it was my own invention. Big puppets, absolutely life-like. I’d feel better about it. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing somehow.’
‘It’s a good idea.’
There was a thump behind the curtains. Mr Gawber laughed. ‘Oh, I say!’
Hood said, ‘I hate this play.’
‘Then we shall go,’ said Mr Gawber, crushing his empty ice-cream tub and shifting in his seat.
‘No,’ said Hood, ‘I want to meet that actress.’
‘She’s got quite a reputation.’
The warning bells rang at intervals of a minute and then the lights dimmed, the chatter ceased, and the curtain rose. Mr Gawber went to sleep at once. The second act was a reversal of the first: now the boy was exposed as a girl in a tight-fitting dress. The woman was angry. The man flirted. There were whispers.
— She’ll have to go.
— But you wanted her to stay!
— That was when she was a boy.
— But you’ve got to admit she knows how to cook.
The cooking, the preparations for tea, had gone on. The woman made mistakes; it was the girl who made the cakes, the scones, the kippers and poached eggs. This amazed and delighted the audience: cakes baked before their eyes, an egg poached on stage, the scones brought steaming from the oven. The food was theatre. A little cheer went up each time a new item appeared and was set out on the table. And it was the cooking that won the woman over. At the end of the play they sat around the table, the woman champing on a cake, the man leering, the girl looking at once seductive and demure.
— We dreamed about this in Spain.
— A real English tea!
— Kippers, cakes and scones.
— Toast.
— No garlic.
— And a bit of crumpet.
‘Awfully disappointing,’ said Mr Gawber, blinking as the curtain came down.
There were five curtain calls, and then the audience was depleted, but smiling in the glare of lights. They filed out with mincing stateliness, as they had entered. Hood noticed how fat and satisfied they looked, repeating the lines of the play with sleek self-assurance, laughing through down-turned mouths in hearty contempt.