Death and the Chaste Apprentice (2 page)

“Oh.” Gillian Soames hardly bothered to keep the layers of meaning out of her voice. After a moment's hesitation she shook his hand because she could hardly avoid it. She did it in a manner that suggested she had already made up her mind he was a lousy replacement for dear old Arthur. “No, we're not the operatic lady and gentleman. We're both in
The Chaste Apprentice.
”

Des Capper's face fell, and his manner lost several degrees of ingratiation.

“Oh. Suppose I should have known. The operatic people tend to come larger, don't they? It's the lung capacity that does it, you know— It's the lung capacity that makes or breaks a singer. You must be Miss Soames and Mr. Fortnum, then?”

“That's right.”

“Playing Alison Greatheart and Peter Patterwit.”

“Right.”

“Most of the principals have been here a week or more.”

“The leads always come early. We are not leads.”

“Well, I'm sure you'll make something very nice of your respective roles,” said Des Capper, leading the way towards Reception and making no move to help Gillian with her suitcase. “It's not the size of the role that counts, you know. A good actor can make a marvelous thing out of a juicy little part. I've seen it happen.”

“We know,” muttered Gillian. “We
are
actors.”

“Just so long as you speak up and speak out,” Des went
on, disregarding her. “You can't get away with mumbling on this stage, oh, dear me, no.”

“I have appeared in five of the eight productions here,” said Gillian, acid-sweetly.

“Then you'll bear me out when I say speak up and speak out. The way some of these young actors produce their voices must have dear old Sir John Gielgud turning in his grave.”

“He's still alive.”

“That makes it worse. Personally I think it's all part of your mental approach to the part.” Des, ensconced behind the reception desk, absently shoved little cards in front of them to sign as he continued to lecture them on their profession. “Have you tried yoga? There's many actors that do. I've got a terrific book of yoga exercises I could loan you. Incredible. They've changed my life, I can tell you. . . . What? Room numbers? Oh, yes. Have you filled in the cards? Fine. You're 227, Miss Soames, and you're 234, Mr. Fortnum. Close without being adjacent.” He leered. “Can you find your own way? You should never pick up a heavy case like that, young man. You can do terrible damage to your dorsals that way. I've known people ruined by it, and an actor ought to be specially careful.” He came round from behind the desk and put himself in a posture of demonstration. “What you should do is
bend
the knees slightly, go
down
to it, then lift it smoothly like
this. . . .
Got it? Don't mind me telling you, do you?”

By now the nature of the new landlord of the Saracen's Head needed no further defining in either of their minds. He was that most loathsome of God's creations, the Australian know-all. They both gave him smiles that scarcely rose to the level of the perfunctory and set off in the direction of their rooms.

Or roughly speaking in the direction of their rooms. The
old inn was a maze of corridors, obscure passageways that ended in blank walls, inexplicable open areas that must once have served a purpose but which now seemed merely to be dumping places for unwanted pieces of furniture. The inn was innocent of lifts, which in any case would have been of limited use: The Saracen's sprawl was not vertical but horizontal. Discreet wooden arrows pointed in the direction of room numbers, which were allocated with the same beautiful lack of logic or pattern as the general layout of the place.

“I love it,” said Gillian as they toiled back along a passage that had led merely to a laundry cupboard. “Do you know, I've stayed here five seasons, and I still haven't fathomed it. And I still expect to hear Tom Jones and one of his doxies from one of the bedrooms.”

But it was not Tom Jones that they heard.

“And if you upstage me again at the end of Act One, by God I'll have your guts for garters.”

They were in one of those inexplicable open spaces, and the voice came from the bedroom or suite that led off from it. It was a male voice that was clearly accustomed to making itself heard in large spaces—a traditional theater voice. Gillian held up a finger and—still holding their cases, fearing they might have to make a hurried exit—they stood listening with the telling stillness of stage actors.

“Carston Galloway,” whispered Gillian.

“I did not upstage you. You seem not to want to acknowledge that there
is
anyone else onstage.”

“I am perfectly willing to cooperate with real company players. They wouldn't try to ruin each other's performances.”

“Oh God, don't talk to me about your performance. Talk to your little backstage drab about that.”

“Darling Clarissa,” whispered Gillian.

“I suppose that
swoop
to the front was something you arranged with dear Jason in bed?”

“Darling, we have
quite
other things to think about when we are in bed.”

“Crap. Sex may be important to you—God knows, I've reason enough to know that it is—but nothing is more important to you than the shoddy little theatrical victories you arrange for yourself. So don't feed me that shit about sex being all in all.”

“I love your exquisitely modulated guttersnipe language.”

The Galloways were doing their daily exercises. They were famous in theatrical circles for the fearlessly open way in which they conducted their sex lives. The odd thing was that for all their openness and honesty, their emotional lives were just as great a mess as if they had been secret about it.

“I've always been so
sorry
for you,” said Clarissa in a lethal purr. “There are so few female directors. And the ones there are direct practically nothing but all-female plays. It does frustrate your instinct to pay back in kind. So you have to content yourself with ingenues and assistant stage managers . . . nobodies. Still, I suppose they renew your youth, which heaven knows has lasted longer than most people's youth.”

“My God! Coming from you . . .”

Gillian shook her head at Peter Fortnum, and together they stole down the corridor. A floorboard creaked under them, as floorboards could be relied upon to do at the Saracen when one was trying to be circumspect. It was unlikely that the Galloways in full flood would notice or care.

“Par for the course,” said Gillian when they were out of earshot. “We can expect a feast of that in the next week or two. Ever worked with them before?”

“No,” admitted Peter. “I've mostly been in pretty experimental stuff. Disused warehouses and upstairs rooms in pubs. That's not really their line, is it?”

“Oh, dear me, no. The thought of Clarissa in a Hackney pub is practically lèse majesté. Revivals of
Lady Windermere
or
The School for Scandal
—all powdered wigs and rustling taffeta—that's the Galloways' line. I believe Rattigan was about to write something for them when he died, and they certainly created some minor roles in late Coward. They're a practically extinct theatrical breed.”

“The giant egos?”

“Well, that particular form of giant ego. Nowadays it takes different forms. The day giant egos are extinct in the theater we may as well all shut up shop and go home. . . . Good Lord, we're here. Do you think we'll ever find our way here again—or find our way out, for that matter?”

They put their keys in their doors and swung them open. Each discovered they were in unlovely little boxes clearly furnished with castoffs from other rooms.

“It's all right,” said Peter cheerfully. “I never expected anything better.”

“It's
not
how dear old Arthur used to organize things. All the actors were given good rooms. Still, at least we've got a view of the courtyard and the stage.”

They went to the window of Gillian's room. At the far end of the courtyard the stage was a little further towards completion—that great projecting space that would so cruelly expose any faults in their techniques, any immaturities or imperfections. Peter drew his eyes away, almost in fear. Down in the front part of the courtyard Des Capper was oozing forward again, this time to welcome a woman and two men, who had been disgorged from a taxi, and had come in to view the great space.

“Probably the operatic lady and gentleman,” said Peter. “And if so, they're
not
large.”

“Have you ever known that sort of blowhard to get things right?” Gillian asked bitterly. “Is that young one Indian? He looks rather plump, an incipient fatty. No
doubt Des Capper will put that down to his lung capacity. Actually the woman looks decidedly presentable. I say—just look at Des! Look at the way he's fawning and scraping! It's a fair bet they're the stars of whatever it is, isn't it? Isn't he odious? Stomach turning! Look, he's even rubbing his hands. He's one of the most ghastly men I've met.”

“He doesn't seem much of a replacement for your Arthur,” agreed Peter. “I wonder why they appointed him.”

“Appointed? I thought he must have bought the place or something.”

“Didn't you see the plaque outside? It said the Saracen was one of the Beaumont chain of hotels. He called himself the landlord, but he must be some kind of manager.”

“Really? Well, someone who's appointed can be sacked. The festival committee ought to do something about it. There must be some way he can be got rid of.”

She said it casually. Others in the course of the next week or two were to say or think the same thing with more vehement emphasis.

G
ILLIAN AND PETER
went out for their meal that evening. There was a little bistro called The Relief of Mafeking, Gillian said, where you could get a wholesome nosh-up for £2.95. In fact, they found the price had gone up way beyond the rate of inflation, as it did with most good things once they caught on, but it was a satisfactory bargain all the same. Even actors in work—and Peter was only intermittently so—had to watch their pennies.

“I never eat at the Saracen before I've got my first paycheck,” Gillian explained over the chicken casserole, “and then only every three or four days. It's very pricey, though the food is marvelous.” She added darkly: “Mind you, it's probably shark meat and kangaroo steaks nowadays.”

She did not actually sing “Change and decay in all around I see,” but the dust of mortality was definitely in the air. She had hit on the phrase The Great Australian Blight, G.A.B. for short, and she used it rather frequently in the course of the meal.

Later, with an agreeable sense of wallet and purse hardly
at all depleted, they dawdled back to the Saracen's Head. They paused outside the Alhambra, a tiny theater, Victorian Moorish in design, a thing of many domes and minarets, which had been rescued from the degradation of Bingo when the festival first got under way. Here they inspected the poster for that year's operatic offering at the Ketterick Festival.

“
Adelaide di Birckenhead
,” read Gillian, shaking her head. “Never heard of it. Not that that says anything. Since they did
Anna Bolena
five years ago I haven't heard of any of them. They deliberately go in for the unknown, as we do on the drama side. The critics feel they have to come if it's the first performance for umpteen hundred years.”

“
Adelaide di Birckenhead
has just got to be early Romantic.”

“I should think so. It almost always is. You're right. ‘
Opera semiseria di Gaetano Donizetti
.' I presume that means we only have to take it semiseriously, which is a blessing. Who's in it? Oh—a Russian-sounding lady. She's never been here before. The tenor and baritone are old festival standbys, but they don't usually stay at the Saracen's. The American tenor's rather dishy, but the Mexican's a nasty piece of work. God—I'm dying for a drink. Let's get back and see if I can find anyone I know.”

The fact that the Shakespeare Bar at the Saracen was the one used by the festival people had nothing to do with any desire to pay tipsy tribute to the Swan of Avon. All the actors and singers who stayed at the inn had rooms on that side, the side where the balconies had been bricked in. The rooms on the other three sides had to be vacated for the duration of the festival, on the orders of the fire chief, so that members of the audience seated on the balconies could have unimpeded exit in the event of fire (in which case they would undoubtedly have been lost and frizzled in the maze of corridors). The Shakespeare was a big, warm, scarlet-velvet bar, with sofas and easy chairs,
and its only disadvantage, that particular year, was its closeness to Reception. Des Capper alternated between the desk and the Shakespeare, where he hovered from table to table like an unappetizing headwaiter, determined to give more of his personal attention than anyone actually wanted.

At the bar a gaunt, harassed woman with pulled-back hair was worked off her feet. As she waited to be served, Gillian was delighted to see that there was someone she knew there. Ronnie Wimsett had been in two earlier Ketterick productions with Gillian, and his Theodorus Witgood in
A Trick to Catch the Old One
the previous year had been much admired. He was a rather plain young man by actors' standards, though wholesome and presentable in a middle-class sort of way. One's first instinct on meeting him was to put him down as a bank clerk or a clothes store assistant. It was only after talking to him for some time that one realized this was the chameleon's self-protection. He had a talent for imitation and deadpan comedy that lit up his face and voice and a rubbery looseness of body that made him wonderful in farce. He was well into rehearsals, for he played the chaste apprentice himself.