Perfect Gallows (9 page)

March, April 1944

ONE

I
say by sorcery he got this isle,” croaked Samuel Mkele. “From me he got it. If thy greatness will revenge it on him—for I know thou darest, but this thing dare not …”

“Wake up, Stephano,” said Cousin Brown.

“Me? Oh, sorry,” said the flabby bald young man one along from Andrew. “Dreadfully sorry. Where are we?”

Andrew leaned across and pointed at the line.

“Oh, yes. That's most certain. What's most certain? I do wish I understood what was going on.”

“Caliban is persuading you to murder Prospero so that you can be king of the island,” said Cousin Brown. “He has just said that he is afraid to do it himself, but that you are not. You are drunk enough to agree.”

“Roger. Like this? That'sh mosht shertain!”

He glared at Cousin Brown with quivering jowls. She smiled encouragingly and nodded to Samuel to continue. The cast were new to each other as actors, though all, except Andrew, being local were at least acquainted in other ways. Cousin Brown was planning four open-air productions, two under the cedar on the vicarage lawn and two in a similar garden in a neighbouring village. There was no likelihood of attracting audiences the extra miles out to the stage in the garden at The Mimms. The read-through was taking place in the Village Institute, a barn-like hall used as a British Restaurant at mid-day and still smelling strongly of Woolton Pie and non-egg custard.

Most of the readers were as dire as Andrew had expected, or worse, stumbling, wooden, uncomprehending. Stephano (available after being invalided out of the navy—his unhealthy look was the result of his illness, Cousin Brown had whispered) had just shown a flash of promise and Trinculo (the old boy who with his daughter kept the post office) had the right clown face, bunch-cheeked and gleaming. Miranda was a strapping, freckled land-girl with hair between mouse and ginger who read in a whispering monotone. The courtiers and sailors, apart from the bosun, were all going to be played by women, some of whom gave every appearance of having been press-ganged—indeed Antonio, cast no doubt for her permanent sulk, seemed already on the edge of mutiny. Cousin Brown was playing Gonzago, which she read with energetic clarity, and since she had not yet managed to cast a Ferdinand or an Ariel she took those parts too.

The star turn was Samuel Mkele. He knew his lines, having played Caliban twenty years before and barely forgotten a word. When he was in a scene he rose from his chair and spoke with full energy, as though already on stage, accompanying the words with wild, expressive gestures. Andrew had intended to read his own part with some reserve, deliberately not committing himself to it. To do so, he felt, would be to fall in completely with Cousin Brown's plans, to accept her idea that he should stay at The Mimms the whole of the Easter hols (today was their first Friday, and the read-through had been timed to coincide with the arrival of his bus from Southampton) and make a start on the immense series of rehearsals which she said were going to be necessary to “lick the cast into shape”. Since his first dazed acceptance of Cousin Brown's proposal outside the police station that icy morning, the project had become more and more forbidding, in its absurdity, in its difficulty, but mostly in its boringness. She expected him out here not only all these hols, but almost every weekend of the summer term. Andrew had spent most of his bus-ride considering possible ways of explaining to Cousin Brown that he wasn't going to do it. The problem boiled down to one question, whether or not to tell her about Lily Butt.

Lily lived a few doors down from his new lodgings in Itchen Way. She was a bus conductress, a dyed blonde with green eyes, no chin, and a small mouth made up into a scarlet pout. She had a big bust and wide hips, and strapped her uniform belt in as tight as she could to show them off. Off duty she let her hair down over one eye, like Veronica Lake. Andrew had spotted her in the street almost as soon as he moved into Itchen Way. A week later the three-speed on Dad's old bike had finally jammed so he'd had to take the bus to school. It had been Lily's. He caught it the rest of the week, worked out the return times and caught them too. Thursday, standing on the platform, waiting for the stop, he'd asked her if she'd like to go to the Saturday hop with him. She'd stared and started to laugh. She was twenty-three and he didn't look more than sixteen. But he'd laughed with her and her tone had changed. Later she swore that she'd only agreed as a way of getting into the hop and picking up a Yank—they wouldn't let girls in alone so as to keep the tarts out—but he knew it wasn't true. He had made it happen. He had made her see, not an optimistic little twerp, but what? … amusement, fun, fizz, novelty … Adrian. At any rate she had stayed with him all evening, dancing closer and closer and when the doors closed she had taken him into the bus depot by a side door and used the back seat of her bus. She'd obviously done it before, often, with lots of blokes, but he didn't mind. Despite the cold and the smell of sweat and oil and Craven A it was much better than the brothel. Andrew had only gone back there twice more after that first time with the black girl before realizing that wasn't what he wanted. Paying was cheating, cheating your own powers, your private magic, the magic that had made Lily say yes. Not that she wasn't almost a tart herself. She wouldn't have had much time for Andrew if he hadn't been able to afford her tickets for the Saturday hops, and drinks and fags when you could get them, and visits to the flicks other evenings. He needed Cousin Brown's allowance for that, which was one of the things that were going to make it difficult to explain. But he had come to the reading certain that he was going to back out of doing any more than he absolutely had to.

In his opening scenes, with Miranda and then with Ariel, Andrew had expressed this lack of commitment in his voice, simply reading his lines in almost impersonal tones. But then he had called Caliban from his cave and everything had changed. Samuel had risen from his chair into a half crouch and with spread hands and bulging eyes had croaked his first curses with such energy that Andrew had been forced to respond, to rise too, and gesture and answer with equivalent power. The current had immediately flowed between them, that thrill of contact and response which Andrew had read about but only partly and faintly experienced in school plays when one of the other boys had been sparked by Andrew's own energies to act above himself for a few lines, or even a whole scene. This was different. The energies didn't have to be supplied, because they were there already. As Caliban had slunk back to his chair the rest of the cast clapped.

“There!” said Cousin Brown. “Now you can see what it is all going to be like, if only we put our backs into it. Enter Ariel. ‘Come unto these yellow sands … '”

It had somehow been impossible to go back. From then on, without trying to match Samuel's total involvement, Andrew spoke his lines with definite commitment. Tedious though the whole idea had seemed, he was going to do his best to make the play work. If it meant spending most of the hols here, just getting back to see Lily once or twice a week, missing some Saturday hops next term, well, too bad. He was, he realized, a bit bored with Lily anyway. She was too easy. She was like the sailors in the back rows at the panto, who had laughed at anything the Dame gave them.

“… As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free,” he said and snapped the book shut, smiling.

“Capital!” cried Cousin Brown. “Absolutely capital! You know, in spite of everything we are really going to make a go of this. Now, one of the convenient things about
The Tempest
is that apart from Caliban and Ariel there are three sets of characters who do not meet until the final scene, and this means they can rehearse quite independently. So now we will split up and make some preliminary arrangements, to see what will suit everybody best. Prospero and Miranda, if you would go over and wait under the memorial tablet …”

Andrew rose and crossed to the far wall, where a panelled plaque declared that this Institute had been given to the village as a memorial to the glorious dead by the generosity of Sir Arnold Wragge of The Mimms. In a useless, momentary attempt to harden himself against his own terrors Andrew forced himself to look at the list of names. A dagger marked the ones who were missing, presumed killed. There were four others, besides Lieutenant Charles Wragge.

“Such a stupid waste,” sighed a voice.

He turned. It was the Miranda girl.

“Hello,” he said. “I'm Andrew Wragge.”

“I know. I'm Jean Arthur.”

He laughed with surprise. She blushed.

“I was trying to remember where I'd seen your face,” he said. “Why aren't you in Hollywood?”

“Oh, it's stupid. Don't tease me. Mr Mkele was terribly good, wasn't he?”

“Yes.”

“So were you. And Miss Elspeth's clever, putting on that man's voice. I'm terrible. I wish I'd never agreed. I know I'm going to let you all down.”

“There's lots of time.”

“I just can't think of myself saying the stupid sort of things I'm supposed to.”

“It isn't you saying them, it's Miranda. That's what makes it exciting. I mean let's say you're actually not the type to keel over at the sight of a handsome shipwrecked prince …”

“I'm certainly not!”

“By the way, it looks as if I might have to bring you out a Ferdinand from school. My cousin Elspeth doesn't seem to have found anyone round here. What do you fancy, blond or dark?”

“Neither.”

“Bald is going to be difficult.”

She took him seriously for an instant, then laughed with his laughter. The tension between them altered. He realized that in spite of her robust, no-nonsense look she was probably very shy, and had actually forced herself to speak to him in much the same manner that he had been forcing himself to read the list of names. When she laughed her green eyes crinkled at the corners. He felt a tingle of interest.

“I suppose you're going to have to wear a beard to make yourself look old,” she said.

He shrank, craned, thinned his lips, put a tic into his cheek. “A beard!” he spat. “What do I want with a beard? D'yer think I'm Father Christmas, gel?”

She backed off a whole step from his glare.

“But that's Sir Arnold!” she whispered.

He straightened and became easy-going confident Adrian. Cousin Brown had a very good eye, he thought. There was something Miranda-like there, a directness, an unhandled innocence, a sense of never having seen—well, looked at—a man. Her shyness was like her uniform, an outside layer, contrasting with what lay underneath, making it seem more exciting—if you could get there.

“I've half a mind to play Prospero like that,” he said.

“Isn't Prospero supposed to be a nice old man?”

“I wouldn't fancy a dad like that—peeping round rocks, planning everything for me, rubbing his hands because it's working out the way he wants it.”

“Oh … I haven't seen Daddy for more than three years. Three and a half now, I suppose. He was caught at Dunkirk.”

“Mine was caught at Singapore.”

“Oh, isn't it ghastly!”

“Worse for a girl, I expect. What about your mum?”

“She's all right. I suppose.”

The change in tone, from yearning warmth to chill was very marked. You didn't talk about Jean's mother. What had she done? Taken a lover, probably. Andrew considered a moment whether to mention what had happened to Mum. No, save it up. He'd be seeing quite a bit of Jean. No point in wasting ammo.

“Where are you working?” he said.

“At Mimms Home Farm.”

“Handy for rehearsals—you and me and Caliban.”

“It's only just behind the plantation, though it's more than a mile round by road.”

“What's it like, being a Land Girl?”

“All right, I suppose. Better than being an AT or something.”

“They have quite a bit of fun, I gather.”

She blushed, and then, visibly, forced herself to keep the conversation going.

“Not my kind of fun. I was in a hostel at first with eight other girls. All they could talk about was the boys they'd met at the last hop. I hated that, so I put in to be a cow-girl. You mostly have to live on the farm for that, because of early milking. Mrs Althorp—she's the tenant at Home Farm—wanted a girl. Really she should have had two. We aren't supposed to be alone, but she persuaded them Dolly counted and I said I didn't mind.”

“It sounds a bit lonely.”

“Well, I suppose so. Mostly I'm so busy I don't notice. I hope Miss Elspeth isn't going to be much longer. She did say half past six, and I promised I'd be back to clear up after milking.”

“How are you going?”

“I've got a bike.”

“OK. You push off. I'll explain. It's just you and me and Ferdinand and we haven't got him anyway. I'll come over to the farm tomorrow and see if we can fix some times. Otherwise we'll just have to say our lines to and fro between the udders.”

“You appear to have made an excellent start with Miranda,” said Cousin Brown. “Oh, do get on, Brutus, it is not that steep. How I long for my Lagonda at times like this. I noticed you jollying her up. She is going to need a good deal of that. But she has the potential, don't you agree?”

“I said I'd go over to the farm tomorrow and try and fix something up about rehearsals.”

“Ah, now. I was in any case going to talk to you about the farm. You will no doubt consider that you should be doing some war-work during your holidays.”

“I suppose so.”

“Mrs Althorp, Jean's employer, is a somewhat intransigent woman. She has come through a difficult time with her husband's death, and other things, so one must not blame her too much. I have had trouble persuading her to release Jean for what I would regard as a minimum of rehearsals, but if you were to work, say a few mornings a week, at the farm, then we would be in a position to argue that we had made up for Jean's lost time, and we could get that first difficult scene at least blocked in before you need to go back to Southampton. That would be a satisfactory solution, don't you agree?”