Death and the Chaste Apprentice

by Robert Barnard

  “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.

  Chapter 2

  The Shakespeare Bar

  GILLIAN 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.

  “I shall say nothing of Jason’s direction, nothing of his interpretation or of his understanding of my part in the play,” he announced solemnly when Gillian and Peter had settled themselves down at his table. “Not because it’s dreadful, you understand. But because you should come to your first rehearsal tomorrow with no trace of bias or parti pris.” He took a great draught of Saracen ale. “Let us instead while away the hours by ripping to shreds our fellow actors in this little-known masterwork.”

  Gillian smiled evilly, leaned forward, and the two went at it. Peter Fortnum, sitting on the edge of this gory arena, was interested and amused for a time, but his short career in the theater had left him with only a small circle of acting acquaintances, and after a time the names, their couplings and uncouplings, their tantrums and their delinquencies, began to pall. He was just beginning to wonder whet
her an obsessive interest in the marital affairs of the Galloways was not playing their game as they wanted it played when he heard muttered words of Russian from the table beside him. He pricked up his ears at once.

  Peter Fortnum was grateful to his minor public school for two things, and for only those two: These were the opportunities he had been given in the annual school play and the chance to learn Russian. Quite apart from anything else, the latter had given him quite spurious claims on any small parts going whenever anyone decided to do a Chekhov or a Gorki. He swung his chair around, chipping in a few words, and in no time at all he was sitting beside the star of Adelaide di Birckenhead and interpreting for her as she made her first real effort to communicate with the agent who had brought her to the West.

  Natalya Radilova was slim, dark haired, and beautiful. She was also very much at sea. It was only her second time in the West, and her attempts to discuss financial and other arrangements with her agent had been hindered by the fact that she knew no more than twenty or thirty words of English. She had in all their preliminary communications pretended to a “competent” knowledge of the language, but her letters to him had in fact been written by a friend.

  “I’ve arranged all this with your Ministry of Culture,” her agent said somewhat wearily.

  “Arrange it with me again,” said Natalya.

  The agent, Bradford Mallory (“Call me Brad”) was, like the Galloways, something of a theatrical throwback, though in his case, Peter suspected, it was much more of a conscious act, for it had the label “performance” stamped on it, as theirs had not. He wore a cloak, he said, “dear boy,” and he occasionally patted the hand of the other singer on his books whom he had brought to Ketterick. This was the young man whom Mallory had apparently rechristened—“rather witty, wouldn’t you say, dear boy?”—with the single name of Singh. An incredibly good looking young man, his Indian complexion had lightened from long, perhaps lifelong, residence in Britain. He said little, occasionally pouted, and sometimes smiled abstractedly at Mallory’s affectionate advances. But what he did most often was to look at his reflection in the mirror on the wall behind Brad Mallory. When he had a clear, uninterrupted view of himself, he would put his chin up to pose in his most attractive position, pat his immaculately cut hair, adjust his tie, and then smile a catlike smile when the image presented to him was at its most pleasing. He was, Brad Mallory said, the coming countertenor, and he was to sing in the concert on the opening night of the festival.

  As Peter Fortnum translated between Natalya and her agent—yes, she did know the role, yes, she did realize that, small though the theater was, the festival held a unique position in British musical life and success here could be a springboard for a very promising operatic career—he was conscious of a discordant presence in the vicinity, an intrusive note. The Australian voice has a cutting edge, admirable in the opera house but less well adapted to the social hobnobbing of a saloon bar. Des Capper was giving someone the benefit of his curious store of knowledge and opinions, which meant, in effect, he was giving them to everyone.

  “Do you know that in Queensland they’ve got this new law forbidding hoteliers from serving sexual perverts?” There was a dirty little snicker. “Be a bit of a problem here in festival time, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t afford to lose half my customers.” Peter half-turned his head and saw that it was the Galloways and Jason Thark whom Des was regaling with his muckiness. Peter’s glance caught him gesturing in the direction of Brad Mallory and Singh, and he immediately changed his tone. “Mind you, I’m tolerant. Live and let live, that’s my motto. I don’t know if you’ve read about it, but it’s been proved by scientists that sexual deviancy’s purely a matter of brain damage during childbirth. Just like spastics. I know all about what causes spastics. Well, it’s just the same with poofs, only more minor. It’s like this . . .”

  “Dear God!” breathed Mallory, raising his eyebrows to heaven with theatrical eloquence. “What have we done to deserve this antipodean clodhopper clumping all over our private lives and our personal sensibilities?”

  He put his hand warmly on Singh’s, but Singh’s smile did not suggest that he had heard or, if he had, that he had understood. He said in an English that was perfect yet oddly inflected, addressing Mallory alone:

  “Can we go up and watch the video? I’ve got Little Lord Fauntleroy. You said we could watch it later tonight.”

  “And so we shall, dear boy, after one more little drinkie. It’s my first chance to have a real talk to lovely, lovely Natalya, and she’s full of questions that only I can answer.”

  Singh pouted but let himself be bought another sweet sherry.

  Over at the Galloways’ table, the theater’s most glamorous couple had been stimulated by the company—though Des Capper was not in himself stimulating—to stage a public version of their afternoon row. It was a cleaned-up version, much more elegant, suggesting that they carried the idea of rehearsals and trial runs into other areas of their lives.

  “We’ve never had any secrets from each other, nor from anybody else,” Clarissa was proclaiming. “We take our pleasures when and where the fancy takes us. Of course it is a tiny bit unfair on Carston that all the people of real weight in the theater are men. Hardly any female producers, and the only kind of heterosex most of them are interested in is rape, and they’re against it. And though Carston is not averse to men, as a variation, even he would hardly find the average impresario or producer attractive. Which leaves the balance of advantage very definitely on my side.”

  “And puts me very much in my place,” said Jason Thark with a wide, untrustworthy smile. He was, in fact, a not unattractive man—broad shouldered, commanding. But he was—and he let you know it—a man to keep on the right side of.

  “Darling, I’m honest with you, as with everyone else. You’re really rather attractive, and I’d have slept with you even if you hadn’t been our producer. On the other hand, that does add a sort of spice . . .”

  Des Capper, watching them, had assumed an exquisitely misjudged air of being a man of the world.

  “I’ve known plenty of couples in my time who had what they call nowadays an open marriage,” he put in, bending forward confidentially. “It’s nothing new, oh, my word, no! I was in India just after the war, and what I could tell you about the Mountbattens’ goings-on would make your hair curl!”

  Clarissa regarded him with the sort of look she might use to wither a bit player who had interrupted her big speech five lines too early.

  “Which is why Carston, poor darling,” she swooped on, “does very much prefer that we get work as a couple.”

  “Though that’s not so easy these days,” Carston confided genially. “Playwrights aren’t writing bitch parts for women as they used to.”

  “And why he himself has to make do for his sexual adventures with”—Clarissa’s smile widened triumphantly as they were joined at their table by an inconspicuous young woman—“awfully promising young stage managers like Susan here. Susan, dear, we were just saying what a wonderful job you’re doing.”

  In the face of a smile which resembled that on the face of the tiger that had just swallowed the young lady of Riga, Susan Fanshaw sat down and said nothing. She was getting good at doing that with the Galloways. She had bought her own drink—for Carston Galloway was not a generous lover—and she had noted Clarissa eyeing her as she stood at the bar. Knowing Clarissa, she had realized she would be a target as soon as she joined them. She sat down with a mixture of unease and defiance. Jason Thark was more used to the Galloways and their social style, and he sat there, slumped, gazing about him with an easy tolerance. Des Capper, on the other hand, was beginning to feel ignored and made motions of moving on.

  “Well, it’s been nice having a chinwag,” he said with a little wave of his pudgy hand. “Better get along to have a chat with some of the others in my little flock.”

  “Darlings, I had no idea he was a clergyman!” floated Clarissa’s voice after him, exquisitely
modulated so that he could not avoid just hearing. “I would have tried to be polite to him if I’d known.”

  Des Capper, lips tightening, settled himself down at the next table. Nobody made any move to admit him, but somehow he managed to get himself in all the same.

  “All settled in nice and cozy?” he inquired to a quartet of frozen faces. “Are the Russian lady and the Indian gentleman finding everything to their liking? They’ve only to give a shout if not and I’ll personally see that something is done.”

  “Singh is English.” Bradford Mallory sighed. “As English as I am—and rather more so than you. Natalya has not, so far, been able to express any discontents she may have accumulated, but she has now acquired an interpreter, so if she feels you don’t warm the samovar sufficiently before you pop in the tea bag, she will be able—thanks to our charming young friend here—to expostulate with you on the subject.”

  Des Capper blinked, as if he had been hit with a dictionary. But he was unputdownable, at the same time giving the impression that he was registering all the snubs.

  “Ah—Mother Russia.” he said with a sigh.

  “Motherfu—? Oh, Mother Russia.”

  “Mother Russia. It’s an expression . . . sort of a nickname. It’s a country that has always held a fatal fascination for me. The Winter Palace, Anastasia, Battleship Potemkin . . .”

  “ ‘Lara’s Theme,’ Gorky Park,” murmured Brad Mallory.

  “Exactly. It’s a country of great elemental passions. I think I’d have been able to come to terms with it. The tragedy is, I’ve never been. I’d like to have told them a thing or two about how to run their agriculture. Ask the little lady”—he turned to Peter Fortnum, but he patted Natalya Radilova on the knee—“if they’ve ever been lucky enough to hear our great Joan Sutherland at the Bolshoi.”