Death and the Chaste Apprentice

by Robert Barnard

  At long, long last Gottlieb called a break, and the tension dissolved. Peter’s immediate visual impression was one of sweat. The orchestral musicians, jostling their way out through the door at the back of the pit, were shining with it, and one of the younger men seemed close to tears. The chorus members were bathed in it and wiping their foreheads, and the principals were drenched and close to the breaking point. Backstage everything became a jumble as singers and players made for the Green Room in search of cold drinks or chocolate to revive their strength. Peter was conscious of the Mexican baritone standing by a wall, clenching and unclenching his fists and muttering furiously to himself in the manner of operatic baritones. He was conscious in a far corner of the room of Krister Kroll being collared by Des Capper. Des had been in the Green Room when they arrived, making himself at home and waiting for a victim. The chain-saw voice cut through to Peter:

  “You know, physiologically speaking there’s no such thing as a small or a large voice. It’s all a question of the diaphragm and the way you use it. If you’ll take a tip from me . . .”

  The American seemed to be a supernaturally nice person, for he was showing only small nervous signs of wanting to get away. Then Natalya Radilova arrived from the stage, and Peter darted away and took her aside.

  “The message came through for you,” he said in Russian. “It was ‘Best wishes for rehearsals and the first night.’ ”

  Natalya smiled, a smile apparently out of all proportion to the banality of the message. She squeezed Peter’s hand, and they found themselves a private corner of the Green Room.

  Once the chaos there had sorted itself out into groups, Peter and Natalya found themselves joined by Krister Kroll, still wiping the sweat from his open, engaging face.

  “Who is that creep who got hold of me?” he demanded. “That schmuck? That smart-ass? I have never heard such crap as that guy was spouting.”

  “It’s the landlord of the Saracen,” said Peter. “A loathsome Australian by the name of Capper.”

  “I’ve known plenty of Australian singers,” said Kroll, “and they’ve mostly been great people. But this, this—”

  “It’s not the nationality, it’s the type. As with Gottlieb. Keep away from Capper. He’s poison.”

  “Boy, am I glad I rented an apartment. I nearly went to the Saracen this time, to treat myself. But to have that creep giving me advice about breathing all day would—”

  But he stopped, because heads were turning in the direction of the door, and conversation was stilling so that people could hear what was going on there. Gunter Gottlieb, alone of the performers, did not require sustenance or refreshment. His heavy had procured a soft drink for himself and was standing massively behind Gottlieb, doubtless to prevent a stab in the back. But Gottlieb had captured a prize: the director of the festival, who had been sitting in on the rehearsal after checking receipts at the box office. He had been hauled to the Green Room by Gottlieb with an end in view.

  “Next year,” said Gottlieb in his unattractive clipped tones, “we do Fidelio. People are waiting for my Fidelio.”

  “It’s an idea,” said the director in a practiced neutral voice. He was a local man, but one with long experience in arts administration. “Though of course we have tended to stick with the Italians. But next year’s already tied up. We’re doing La Straniera.”

  “I change my mind,” said Gottlieb, putting aside La Straniera with a contemptuous sweep of the hand. “We do Fidelio.”

  “My dear chap, it’s not on. Even if the committee were to agree—which I wouldn’t bank on—it’s still not on. You don’t seem to understand the operatic world. All the worthwhile singers are booked up years in advance. All the principals for Straniera have been engaged. They’d hardly be suitable for Fidelio.”

  “I have my cast here,” said Gottlieb, drawing a sheet of paper out of his pocket. “With alternatives if my first choices are not available. It is clear, yes? If you can get neither of them, you come back to me. Understood?”

  “No, I’m sorry, old chap, it is not understood. There’s no question of our upsetting our existing arrangements—”

  It was at this point that Des bustled up.

  “I wonder if I could mediate. As a member of the festival committee I think we ought to try to come to some compro—”

  Gunter Gottlieb turned on him with a savage fury and pointed to the door.

  “Out! Out! Out!” he bellowed. “I do not take advice from taverners! Get out and do not come near this theater ever again, is understood? You come near one of my rehearsals ever again and I have you removed, thrown out on your fat bottom. Is understood?”

  Des had retreated three steps. When the heavy advanced from behind Gottlieb’s back, he spluttered back any riposte and turned to slink out.

  “No offense,” he was heard to mutter.

  Gunter Gottlieb turned back to the festival director, iciness reasserting itself.

  “Is all your committee fools? They must learn to know their place. Now, as to Fidelio, I have a designer in mind . . .”

  “Oh, my God,” said Peter, pushing back his chair. “This bear garden makes life with Jason Thark seem a haven of rest. I must be getting back to the Saracen.”

  “Peter,” wailed Natalya in Russian, “you’re forsaking me. I have that dreadful finale to get through.”

  “Sorry, love. Duty calls. I was only given till four. They’ll probably all be crying out for some fresh and engaging humor from Peter Patterwit. . . .”

  But they weren’t, and he spent most of the rest of the afternoon and early evening lounging around, not unhappy to have escaped from the Alhambra. Gunter Gottlieb’s plans for the festival were inevitably the topic of conversation in the Shakespeare Bar that evening. Gillian and Peter went out and bought a Chinese takeaway, enduring with sweet smiles the murderous glances from Des as they marched through Reception with the little cardboard boxes. Des, understandably, was looking murderous all evening. When they had eaten their fill in Gillian’s room, they went down to the Shakespeare and found Natalya, Ronnie Wimsett, and Krister Kroll at a table together. The last named kept looking round nervously for routes of escape should Des feel impelled to come over and offer further advice on what he should do with his diaphragm. Gillian and Peter joined them, and soon they were well at it.

  “It would change the whole character of the festival,” Ronnie Wimsett said when he was told of Gottlieb’s demands. He was a serious-minded, private young man, but he had come to feel passionately about the festival, to appropriate it in some way as a part of himself, as Gillian had. “The two things go together—Jacobean drama and nineteenth-century Italian opera. People like the music critic of the Observer sneer because it’s not ear-wrenching stuff, but in fact it’s wonderfully direct and passionate, really theatrical. And it’s what people expect of Ketterick, what gives it its character. Give Gottlieb his way and it’ll become just like any other festival. We’ll be doing The Marriage of Figaro and Pallyarse and Smellyhands, and they’ll be his Figaro and his Pallyarse. When that happens, we’ll be just like any other festival. The next thing will be, he’ll start dictating what plays are done, to tie in with his opera of the year.”

  “Still, the guy, though scary, has a way with him,” said Krister Kroll ruefully. “What’re the odds that Ketterick will not be doing La Straniera next year?”

  “Never having heard it,” said Gillian, “I can’t weep bitter tears about the specific loss.”

  “Oh, it’s great Bellini, and practically unknown. Even Beefy and Scrawny haven’t recorded it.”

  Beefy and Scrawny, it was explained, were the currently highest paid tenor and soprano in the world.

  “It’s the principle I’m concerned about,” said Ronnie.

  “It’s the personal level that concerns me,” said Kroll. “It won’t be the death of the festival if I don’t come back, and I certainly won’t while that monster is in charge. I’m a peaceful guy, but some of the things he said to me . . .�
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  Natalya Radilova, who was beginning to follow bits of conversation in English, went off into a bitter tirade in Russian. Peter paraphrased for her.

  “She’s complaining about my not being there when she did her big final scene this afternoon. He was vile to her apparently. It’s a difficult scene— It’s where she brings her husband’s head in on a platter and goes mad over it.”

  “My God!” said Gillian. “I thought this was supposed to be ‘opera semiseria.’ I’d really hate to see a serious one.”

  “No, that’s just another example of the amiable Gunter’s influence,” explained Kroll. “There are two manuscript endings, and they’d chosen the first. In that, some functionary comes along and explains that for unspecified reasons Adelaide’s marriage has been invalid all along. Adelaide goes off to be Roberto il Bruce’s queen amid general rejoicing, with only the baritone throwing a fit. That Mexican is awfully good at throwing fits. Anyway, along comes Gottlieb at the first rehearsal and says: ‘No, we do the second.’ In that one Adelaide hacks her husband’s head off and then stabs herself after some fearsome coloratura. That’s what Natalya is having to do. The annoying thing is that, as usual, Gottlieb is right. It’s a much more effective conclusion.”

  Natalya went on at length in Russian. Peter explained. “Natalya says it is ridiculously difficult to do because it’s so way out—so gory and savage. The audience will reject it at the drop of a hat, because it just seems impossibly savage.”

  Once again a familiar voice came from behind Peter’s shoulder. He was beginning to feel he had a minor devil following him around.

  “You wouldn’t say it was impossible if you’d seen some of the things I saw in 1947, at the time of independence. Some of those poor bloody Indians had been so hacked about that their own mothers wouldn’t have known them.”

  “Was this when you were viceroy?” Gillian asked sweetly. But Des did not appear to be listening. He was gazing ahead dreamily.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve seen some sights, don’t you worry.” His eyes were on a far table, where Gunter Gottlieb was pontificating to the Mexican baritone and Brad Mallory. “I learned all you need to know in India about how to even scores.”

  Chapter 5

  The Alcove

  A MIST HUNG OVER Ketterick and the London suburbs around it as the first day of the festival dawned. During breakfast, though, it began to lift, and by ten the town was bathed in gentle sunshine from a pale blue sky.

  The visitors were arriving, that was for sure. By now Ketterick was securely established in the festival catalog, cunningly poised to take advantage of that moment, around May to June, when longen folk to goon on artistic pilgrimages. By car and coach, by late-arriving trains from Newcastle, Bath, and Manchester, even by bicycle they came, changing the character of the complacent suburb. Some of the visitors were regulars, with their diaries already filled in and their seats booked; some came on spec and sat around in parks and squares going through the festival brochure to see what they might take in. There was the Play of Daniel in the ruins of Walsey Abbey, three miles out of town; there was Bruno Brazen, the well-known American organist and showman in St. Margaret’s Church; there was a wispy French soprano singing wispy French songs; there was Morris dancing in the Queen’s Square and a superb black dance group from Leeds in the Civic Hall. Tonight there was The Chaste Apprentice at the Saracen’s Head and a popular operatic concert. Both these events were booked solid, but for the disappointed there was a beer race in the Ketterick football stadium. There was—as there was on that other pilgrimage, to Canterbury—something for everybody.

  At one time or another during the day most of the new arrivals strolled into the Saracen’s Head to look at the wonderful courtyard and stage. One of the hazards of this was that Des Capper was liable to sidle up with a proprietary air and ply them with information, advice, and cures for constipation. One of the American visitors, a lecturer in Renaissance studies at Kent State University, called him “a true English innkeeper” and “a real Harry Bailly after Chaucer’s own heart”; but most of the rest sensibly ducked off to one or other of the bars. These were kept very busy, and Mrs. Capper in the Shakespeare was rushed off her feet, though help from her husband got she none.

  If they were lucky, these stray visitors saw scraps of last-minute rehearsal. In the true spirit of the Elizabethan troupe, the cast was quite unembarrassed about putting finishing touches to the performance before future members of the audience, who marveled at the contrast between their apparel of jeans and T-shirts and their talk of ruffles and codpieces. The brothel scene had caused particular difficulty, being such a whirl of activity, and the casual dropper-in might see Peter Patterwit open that unedifying scene with Doll, the whore, indulging in some typically sparkling Jacobean wit:

  DOLL: You, goodman swineface.

  PETER: What—will you murder me?

  DOLL: You remember, slave, how you abused me t’other night in a tavern?

  PETER: Not I, by this light.

  DOLL: No, but by candlelight you did . . .

  Oddly enough, such samples did not put off most of the visitors. Somehow the setting and atmosphere (or the “ambience,” as several of them preferred to put it) were so exactly right for the play that many of them dashed straight off to the festival box office to see what tickets were available for later performances.

  If Des was a hazard for the occasional visitor, he was an ever-present danger to the performers and residents. It was, after all, his first festival, and he naturally wanted to see everything he could. Unfortunately, he wanted to be part of everything, too, and there was abundant evidence that despite his recent rebuff at the Alhambra, the start of festivities had gone to his head. He was liable to pop up everywhere, poking his nose in and having his little word of worthless commendation or erroneous advice to all and sundry. Few were polite back, but he gave no sign to their faces of having registered their contempt.

  Constance Geary’s part as Old Lady Sneer was not a large one. She played a cousin of Sir Pecunius Slackwater, dragged into the marriage negotiations. Her performance was already a matter of well-routined gestures and intonations, and she left it to younger generations to overrehearse. She sat around in various parts of the Saracen’s Head, holding court and allowing visitors to buy her drinks. Sometimes she could be found on her own in the little alcoves and open spaces that the inn abounded in, quite happy with her memories and her gin bottle. She also noticed a lot more than might have been thought, though she would have been hard put to order it in any way in her mind. It was nearly lunchtime, in one of those alcoves, apparently deep in thought after a copious swig from her bottle, that she saw Des Capper coming.

  “All on your own-e-o?” he asked with his horrible brand of jocularity.

  “Trying to be,” said Connie.

  “They can get tiresome, can’t they, actors?”

  “We can. But then so can most people.”

  “What I mean is,” said Des, leaning closer, Connie thought to catch the smell of her breath, “you can have too much of them. They tend to emote is how I’d put it. Those Galloways, for example. Always at it, aren’t they?”

  “At it? You mean like Alice?”

  “At each other’s throats might be a better way of putting it. Morning, noon, and night. And both of them having a bit on the side and talking about it openly. Jeez, I don’t know; it’s not my idea of a marriage.”

  “My dear man, I’ve known more different kinds of marriage than I’ve had hot dinners. There are as many recipes for a good one as there are for a bad one.”

  “What makes them stay together, that’s what I wonder? Why stick it out?”

  “I imagine it must be because they rather like it.”

  Des looked at her, then shook his head with wonderment. “Then there’s young Peter Fortnum. He’s up to something, that I do know.”

  Connie Geary paused, looking at him contemplatively. She took her bottle out of her handbag, had a swig, and replaced
it. Then she looked at Des again. “I presume we are now changing the subject, am I right? Because Peter Fortnum hardly comes under the heading of actors who emote. Indeed, he is an exceedingly quiet young man, which is pleasant but unusual. A youthful Alec Guinness, no less. So we are now discussing what he is up to, and I must confess I have no idea. Do you mean to ask if he is sleeping with the charming but impenetrable Russian lady?”

  “Oh, as to that, maybe, but I think not,” said Des, rubbing his hands together. “But there’s something going on, and I think it might be a sight more interesting than them sleeping together.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. At my age there are a lot of things more interesting than sex, though I’m not sure there ought to be at theirs. Have you any idea what it is?”

  “Oh, I’ve ideas all right. There’s no flies on me, you know. I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “This is fascinating,” said Connie. She sat there hoping she would remember enough of this conversation for it to form a vital piece in the complaint to the committee when the present festival was over. She even decided to stop sipping from her bottle, to keep her head clear. “Is there anyone else at the Saracen in whom you are taking a special interest?”

  “Oh, lots,” said Des, leering. “A student of the human condition, that’s me.” He leaned forward. “Know how that Kraut conductor gets his girls?”

  “He’s Austrian. Not that anyone imagines that makes much difference after the Waldheim business.”

  “Right. Same difference, that’s what I say. Well, do you know how he gets his girls?”

  “Animal magnetism?”

  “His heavy recruits them for him. Just like that. He puts the proposition, then they’re taken up to his room for a quick you-know, then they’re out. He picks them out from among Krauty’s fans. Doesn’t pay them, either. I expect they form themselves into a sort of club or have a special tattoo or something.”