‘I think that part would best suit me,’ said Hieronymus brazenly. After some more wrangling, they agreed that Agatha Wood-Turner, Christina and Blanche would make suitable angels.
Hieronymus made some notes on a pad as they went on with their plans.
‘Dr Maltravers, would you dragoon a few senior students to fill the other roles? We need the Devil, the Serpent and few extras to stand around and look either sinister or beatific.’
Loftus also grudgingly agreed to knock together some simple scenery, pointing out that the materials were almost impossible to obtain in these hard times. The meeting broke up after half an hour and the members drifted away. Peter Partridge and Maltravers went back to the Common Room to put the kettle on, and by the time they had brewed another pot and started an argument about Christopher Marlowe’s death, Christina had arrived.
As they sat drinking their rationed tea, she handed them each a chocolate biscuit, with ‘US Army’ printed on the wrapper. The blonde offered no explanation, but the treat was accepted graciously. But she did have something to say about the meeting they had just left.
‘I’m sure I’ve read something about this play somewhere, not all that long ago.’
‘Harry said it was in the Q. J. Hist,’ said Peter. ‘We all read that; perhaps what you saw was in there?’
She shook her golden curls. ‘I’ve never looked at any issues from half a century ago. He said it was in the 1890s. No, I’ve read a much shorter piece somewhere else. I think it was a commentary on medieval writings that had some stigma attached. I’m sure there was a reference to The Play of Adam. The name stuck in my memory.’
Loftus shrugged. ‘As Blanche said, half our library was destroyed, so it would be a devil of a job to follow that up.’
Christina agreed. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway, but I was just curious. Next time I go up to town, I’ll call in at the London Library to have a root around.’
‘Take your tin hat and gas mask, then,’ advised Peter. ‘Though these days, it’s probably more dangerous down here than in the City!’
The following week, the attractive Miss Ullswater took the train up to Waterloo. Looking through the carriage windows at the hundreds of bombed-out buildings on the way through South London, she could only be thankful that the History, Language and Theology Departments had been evacuated early in the war to Waverley, even if the old Victorian mansion was gloomy and inconvenient.
After her business at the surviving part of the mother college in Lambeth was done, she went across to St James’s Square in the heart of the West End, to what was left of the venerable London Library, for which she had a personal subscription at four guineas a year. Founded as an independent institution in 1841, it had been bombed earlier that year and much of the most precious material had been evacuated to safety deep in the countryside. However, many of the periodicals from recent years were still there and as her speciality was quite circumscribed, she knew which journals she would have been combing for her thesis in the past eighteen months. Going down into the dank subterranean chambers that held the stacks of past issues, too deep for even the air-raid sirens to penetrate, she scanned the shelves for her familiar old favourites.
Thankfully, these half-dozen regular academic publications had annual index lists, which indicated the titles and authors of each new paper published during that year. In her document case she had her own draft thesis with all the references she had culled from the journals and now she systematically revisited each one in the indices. Though the article she sought was nothing to do with her own particular field of expertise, she recalled that it had immediately followed one of them, and that it had caught her eye and she had read it out of curiosity.
It took her forty-five minutes to find it again, but her methodical mind was used to such literary dredging exercises and with a quiet whoop of triumph, she moved along the stacks to find the correct book, the 1936 volume of the Transactions of the British Society for Medieval Studies. Taking it to a nearby table, Christina sat down and read the article again. Then she took a pad from her case and started making some notes.
‘Now then, Hieronymus,’ she murmured to herself, ‘let’s see if I can put the wind up you with this message from the past!’
The next meeting of ‘The Play of Adam Steering Committee’, as the pompous Dr Drabble insisted on calling it, was held a few days before the performance. They quickly went over the relatively straightforward arrangements, as everyone claimed that they were already word-perfect in their short parts. The costumes were simple, mostly cloak-like drapes made from odd lengths of fabric, Peter Partridge’s stock of blackout curtain material being prominent. Loftus’s scenery was primitive in the extreme, but he claimed this was quite authentic: a few cardboard trees straight out of the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as a plywood mountain and part of a castle left over from a pantomime put on for local children the previous year. After they had hammered out the few glitches with only a mild degree of the bickering traditionally associated with all academic committees, Harry Drabble shuffled his papers together as a signal that he had had enough.
‘I think I can safely say that I have guided us all to a satisfactory conclusion on all matters that will ensure our venture is a success,’ he said, in his best Winstonian impression.
‘All he needs now is a bloody cigar,’ muttered Peter to Blanche, who was sitting next to him before the magisterial desk. As Harry began to rise in his seat, Christina Ullswater put up a finger and smiled sweetly at him.
‘Excuse me, Dr Drabble, but before we break up, I think there is one matter that should be brought to your attention.’
Hieronymus sank back into his chair and stared suspiciously at her.
‘And what might that be, Miss Ullswater?’ he grunted.
‘Did you know that The Play of Adam is alleged by some to be cursed?’
‘Nonsense! Where on earth did you get that idea?’ rumbled Harry.
‘From the Transactions of the BSMS. It discusses, amongst other plays, this one you found in the Bodleian.’
The other four members, whom Christina had briefed beforehand, sat back to enjoy Drabble’s discomfiture.
‘There was nothing about this in the article I showed you,’ he said dismissively.
‘No, but that was only based on a copy of the seventeenth-century translation.’ Christina handed across a short transcript she had typed up from her study of the article in the London Library. ‘The original parchment still exists and that has a postscript by the author that warns of the perils of performing the play.’
Drabble put his half-glasses back on his nose and scanned the brief extract, before handing it back.
‘Very interesting, Miss Ullswater. You are to be complimented on digging up such an obscure gloss on the Oseney play,’ he said patronisingly. ‘In fact, I might mention it to the audience in my introduction before the actual performance, just to lighten the proceedings.’
‘Do we know what sort of ill fortune followed exhibitions of this drama?’ asked Agatha Wood-Turner, being deliberately provocative.
When Christina admitted that there was no information on this point, Harry Drabble snorted his derision. ‘Interesting, of course – but a lot of nonsense! Like the old chestnut about it being unlucky to mention Macbeth, and having to call it “The Scottish Play” instead.’
‘I never understood the origin of that,’ ventured Blanche Fitzwilliam. ‘But I know several actors who are very serious about sticking to the tradition.’
‘No mystery about it,’ advised Loftus. ‘When a lousy play nose-dived at first night or was pulled after a short run, it was common for the theatre management to rustle up a quick Macbeth to fill in, as every actor worth his salt knew it off by heart, so to mention the play when something else was running was held to be a bad omen.’