The Moon At Midnight

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Is anyone else coming to the show, Aunt Mattie?’

  Mattie pulled up at the traffic lights and looked back at the two of them sitting together on the back seats.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, Peter and Rusty Sykes are both coming. And they’re bringing Tam and Flavia.’

  Kim and Jenny turned towards each other. This time both their eyes registered exactly the same thought – that was all they needed. First they had to keep their coats buttoned up to stop John Tate seeing the length of their skirts and telling Kim’s parents, and now they would have to compete for attention with blasted Flavia Sykes – always and ever known as the Beauty of Bexham even though she now lived in Churchester.

  ‘Oh no, not Flah-viah.’

  Kim pulled a face at Jenny. No one could compete with Flavia Sykes. She was not just beautiful, she was stunning, possessing as she did the kind of beauty that made people stop talking and stare at her whenever she came into a room. When she walked along the quays at Bexham, tossing back her red hair, and pretending to stare out to sea at some faraway ship on the horizon, the whole of the harbour came to a standstill, and that was no exaggeration.

  ‘By the way, no one’s to mention Cuba tonight, do you understand?’ Once again Mattie glanced in her driving mirror as she addressed the girls in the back seat. ‘Did you hear that, Sholto? No mention of the crisis,’ she added, looking sideways at her son, and he nodded slowly.

  ‘Why can’t we mention Cuba, Aunt Mattie?’ Kim asked, all innocence.

  ‘Because it will spoil the evening, Kim darling, that’s why.’

  ‘A prefect at school told me we were either very brave, or very stupid, going to the theatre tonight,’ Sholto informed his mother after a short pause. ‘He said that most people want to stay at home in case there’s a nuclear war. He told everyone in my form to say goodbye to me – for ever. “Tate’s going up to London to be sure to be in the middle of the Big Bang,” he said to everyone.’

  ‘What nonsense, Sholt.’ Mattie changed gear over-loudly. ‘Such talk is – that is just cowardly talk. War should never stop one doing things, not ever. During the last war we always went straight ahead with whatever we wanted to do. We wouldn’t let Hitler and the Nazis stop us going to the theatre, or out to dinner, and when bombs dropped one just carried on dancing and singing. That’s what you do, you just carry on with what you’re doing, no matter what. To do otherwise is to give in to the enemy.’

  There was a much longer silence in the car now during which Kim bossed her eyes at Jenny. She found she could hear just so much about the last war. Her parents, Walter and Judy, hardly seemed to mention anything else. And, really, when all was said and done what did the war have to do with anything? Kim stared at Jenny and then taking a handkerchief out of her pocket she rubbed it lightly under one of her cousin’s eyes.

  ‘Smudge!’ she hissed as Jenny tried to dodge her ministrations, before rubbing the handkerchief lightly under her own eyes. Really, they would both have to learn how to deal with mascara better.

  Happily once they arrived at the theatre the foyer was so crowded John Tate didn’t seem to notice that both the girls were remaining firmly buttoned up in their winter coats, seeming simply relieved to see them arrive safely and on time. As his daughter, Jenny lived in dread of her father’s conservatism, and as his niece Kim was only too impatient of it, but even so, after Mattie’s reaction to the length of their cocktail dresses, they did not dare risk taking off their coats. Instead they edged into their seats and sat back, waiting excitedly for the curtain to go up, Kim finding herself half hoping that Max would be so bad she would, at long, long last, be able to cut him down to size.

  * * *

  Max peered through the spyhole at the side of the stage. The last few nights had proved to be more awful than ever, the audiences sitting staring quietly at the stage, giving every appearance of attending a funeral rather than a comedy. They actually seemed physically unable to do anything except titter politely, until finally, and astonishingly, getting to their feet at the end, and cheering the cast to the echo.

  It was as if, while they themselves were unable to find anything in the show remotely funny at a time of such crisis, the audiences were nevertheless determined to sit out this new much praised musical revue, sketch after sketch, no matter what, in true British style. Of course the cast realised that the thunder of applause at the end could not possibly result from enjoyment, but from recognition of the strain through which the silent reception had put the five young performers on stage. It was not the cast’s fault, the end of show applause of the past days seemed to be saying to Max and Joe and Maisie and the others, they could not be blamed for the fact that the show was busy satirising a life which, now that they were faced with losing the world to nuclear war, seemed even more precious than anyone could possibly have imagined.

  ‘You’re looking a trifle grey, dear boy. Heard or seen something we haven’t?’

  Max turned from the spyhole and smiled at Guy Litton, the oldest member of the cast, who was still busying himself with his silk knitted tie.

  ‘No, no, not at all.’ Max cleared his throat nervously, then breathed in and out very, very slowly. ‘No, actually, Guy, the reason for my deathly shade of white is that my whole family’s in tonight.’ He nodded at the spyhole through which he had been busy observing what seemed like half of Bexham making their way to their seats. ‘Of course they couldn’t come to the first night when it was still funny, could they? Oh no, they had to come tonight when the bomb’s about to drop and the show’s about as funny as nuclear fallout.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters which night one’s family comes,’ Joe opined gloomily. ‘The whole Martino family came to the first night, and they didn’t just hate it, they loathed it. My father’s now cut me off without a penny and will have nothing more to do with me, and my mother and brothers all think I’m depraved.’ He took Max’s place at the spyhole. ‘So all in all, my living has not been in vain. God, they look a right lot tonight, don’t they? Is there anyone out there not dressed in black?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’ Max cleared his throat once more, and adjusted his tie. ‘Oh well, here goes, plenty to look forward to.’

  ‘Or, as my father would say being foreign and therefore speaking English correctly – ’ Joe assumed a thick Italian accent,‘“plenty to which to look forward, dear boy”’

  ‘Quite so.’

  * * *

  God bless all the young from Bexham, that’s all Max could think as he played and sang sketch after sketch to the sound of their enthusiastic youthful laughter. The two boys, Tam Sykes and Sholto, Max’s half-brother, appeared to be busting their guts, they were laughing so much.

  The only trouble was that the theatre was so small that it was also too apparent who wasn’t laughing, and he could see that among those with the stoniest faces were his stepfather and mother.

  Oh come on, Ma, laugh, just once, won’t you?

  Max stared down at his mother as he performed a sketch entitled ‘Not With A Whimper If We Can Help It’, doing it probably better than he’d ever done it, so determined was he not to be thrown by the all-enveloping gloom in the auditorium.

  Of a sudden he saw Mattie beginning to crack up, and finally start to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and laughed, and gradually the rest of the audience, obviously becoming infected by her, started to join in, until their laughter became one great gale of mirth. For the first time for days, it seemed that the people out front were seeing the joke on stage, in all its stark entirety.

  ‘At least someone’s still alive out there,’ Will Roger, the shortest and tubbiest of the cast ad-libbed. ‘There’s hope for tomorrow. If we’re still here.’

  Not surprisingly this silenced the audience once again, and the curtain slowly fell, still to silence. Behind its cover the five actors pulled over-sombre faces at each other.

  ‘Well done, Will,’ Maisie congratulated him, sighing theatrically. ‘Just when we had them,
too.’

  She had hardly finished speaking when a tumult of applause broke out quite spontaneously, unheralded by any particular group or claque, and when the curtain rose again for their calls, to their intense amazement the audience was on its feet.

  ‘Would you believe it?’ Joe said under his breath as he took a bow. ‘I thought they’d all gone home.’

  It seemed as if they were going to take even more calls than usual, so unceasing was the applause, as if the audience was unwilling to leave, preferring to remain in the theatre, in the land of never-never, rather than face the terrifying prospect of a future that promised extinction. Then as suddenly and surprisingly as it had begun it stopped, and all at once the theatre emptied, not as usual to the sound of excited conversation but only to the tread of hundreds of pairs of feet hurrying to the nearest exit.

  As the audience left, rather than amble off to their dressing rooms to discuss the night’s performance the quintet of performers stood their ground, remaining in line behind the dropped curtain, staying there even as the safety curtain slowly descended and its final thump as it hit the stage announced the close of play. It was, for a few seconds, as if the players had become statues, as if molten lava had encased them, and they were doomed to stay as they were, for ever.

  * * *

  At home in Bexham Lionel sat in front of his television not really taking in anything, hoping only that his daughter and son-in-law were enjoying Max’s musical revue as much as he had, while secretly dreading that they might not, and by not being able to do so would once again wound Max.

  He did not want his grandson hurt, couldn’t help it: what hurt Max hurt Lionel. He sighed, thinking of how much his late wife Maude would have loved the boy. Max and Maude would have been cracking together. He would probably have had to prevent Maude climbing up on stage to dance the Black Bottom or something with Max. Given her head Maude could be irrepressible. He stared ahead of him, not really concentrating.

  And then suddenly – there it was.

  There before him was film of the ship in which the world’s fortunes were vested, a large but otherwise quite unremarkable freighter steaming slowly but remorselessly across the ocean, its deadly cargo all but out of sight, except – according to the newsreader – for what appeared on deck to be the nose cone of one ICBM protruding from its huge canvas covering. As Lionel sat watching these fateful images, he felt his blood run cold.

  Mattie knew that John had really done his very best to enjoy Max’s show, laughing whenever he found it remotely possible, but it was quite clear, even at the interval, that he was also profoundly shocked by it, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. There were sketches in it that made fun of the war, of the pathetic nature of civil defence, of boring vicars; indeed when the show wasn’t making fun of everything that the Tates themselves happened to hold sacred, it was making fun of their whole way of life.

  In John’s defence even Mattie thought it rather shocking, most especially to anyone who had fought in the war, and lost their friends fighting the Nazis. And yet, another part of her thought that the new generation must be allowed to have a go at all that the middle-aged, middle-browed professed to hold dear, or else there really wasn’t much point to being young. Surely they would have been just the same had there not been a war?

  Certainly it was quite clear from their delighted expressions that all the rest of their party, while not understanding everything, had nevertheless determinedly enjoyed every minute, and the fact that they were now eagerly crowding backstage to congratulate Max made Mattie feel really quite proud. One thing was quite clear, to his mother anyway, no matter what John or the rest of the audience felt about the material in the show: Max had proved that he was really talented. He had been right to take the gamble and leave university early. This must prove to be an opportunity in a lifetime. As she walked round to the stage door Mattie made a mental note to tell him so, but then his dressing room was so crowded, she was finally swept away to meet the rest of the cast without having been able to say what she really felt. Only Rusty’s son, Tam Sykes, bringing up the rear, seemed able to express what he thought.

  ‘Fantastic, Max. Really.’ Tam shook Max by the hand. He was only seventeen, younger by quite a bit than Max, which meant that while they were all growing up in Bexham, Max had become Tam’s total hero.

  ‘I’m just so sorry you all came tonight.’ Max’s expression was doleful. ‘It’s gone so much better than tonight – but, you know, the Cuban crisis – it really hasn’t helped one bit. Actually, apart from you lot, I really thought the audience was made up of corpses.’

  ‘But they really enjoyed it, Max, really.’

  Max stared at Tam in his dressing room mirror. ‘You should have been here at the first night, really you should. It went like a bomb – I didn’t say that.’ He pulled a face, and as they both laughed they could hear the rest of the Bexham party calling in at the other dressing rooms, congratulating the rest of the cast.

  ‘They loved it, Max, really.’ Tam managed to look both earnest and protective of his older friend at the same time. ‘Really, they did, they loved it.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have known it, not if you were on stage, Tam, really you wouldn’t. I just wish you’d been here on another night.’

  ‘They loved it, really they did. I’m telling you. Your mum bust a gut, I thought she’d be carried out, and so did Flavia, she laughed that much.’

  ‘Sounded more like hysteria to me.’ Max towelled his face off, and stared at himself in the mirror.

  ‘Look, Max, the man sitting next to me – I thought he’d be sick he laughed so much. It just took a bit longer for them, you know, for the penny to drop, because they’re all so much older. The girls loved it, Kim and Jenny, they told you, didn’t they? They laughed, and laughed, all the way through.’

  ‘They were alone, my friend, quite alone.’

  ‘I laughed.’

  Tam was beginning to both look and sound desperate. He scratched his auburn-haired head and stared at Max in the mirror. God, he so admired Max, he didn’t want him to think that none of them had enjoyed the show, that would be so awful. But he could see Max was looking unconvinced, pale, tired, taking down a clean shirt from his wardrobe while sporting a vest that looked as dejected as its owner.

  ‘I really wanted you all to see the show at its best.’

  ‘We did, really we did.’

  Max shook his head. ‘No, Tam, you didn’t. If only you’d been here on the first night.’

  ‘I was at school, we were all at school. We came as soon as we could, half term – we weren’t allowed out for the first night. I asked our head of house, but there was no way we were going to be allowed out until half term.’

  ‘You weren’t alone, don’t worry. Even my mother and John didn’t bother to come to the first night.’

  Tam dropped his eyes. He and Max had grown up together so he knew all too well of the ongoing battle for approval that Max had waged within his family, but younger though he was by three years, Tam had always sensed that Max would never, ever win that particular battle. Max’s stepfather and mother were nice people, but everyone could see Jenny and Sholto would always come first with them, and Max second, because John and Mattie didn’t share Max. Max had only ever been part of Mattie, the baby she’d had during the war, long before she’d married John Tate.

  ‘Your mother was really ill with the flu, Max, really she was. I know she was, because my mum told me. For a moment, Farnsworth thought she was going to be a goner, she was that bad.’

  Tam was improvising madly, and they both knew it, which was probably why Max was looking determinedly unconvinced.

  ‘Yes, I heard. My grandfather told me.’

  He said nothing more, but once again Tam sensed that if Max had chosen to go on to say something more it would have been but even so, even if she did have flu she might at least have made an effort to come to the first night, flu or no flu.

  ‘Come on, let’s go to the pu
b.’

  ‘Can’t – still under age.’ Tam looked embarrassed. At seventeen he was so tall he knew he would pass as older, but his father would have a twin fit at just the thought of it. Nowadays, Peter Sykes was a respected member of Churchester society. Tam owed it to him to behave, and he knew it.

  ‘I’ll get you in.’

  ‘The parents would have a fit. Anyway, they’re setting up a lot of wine and sandwiches at the Savoy. Come and join us, won’t you?’

  ‘No, really. I can’t.’

  ‘Please? Everyone’s going to be there.’

  ‘If only they’d been in last week.’

  Out of the blue, Tam pulled his tie round so it lay across his back, after which he put his arm under his left leg, stretching his hand out to Max.

  ‘I’ve been sent here, sir, to ask the President of the Bar Sinister Club to join us all at the hotel. My mum said specially to tell you. Won’t be the same without you, really it won’t.’

  Tam always knew that finally he could get Max by going through their Sinister Club routine.

  When he was growing up in Bexham Max had found out from Tam’s mother that Tam, like Max, had been born, as the old people in the village still called it, out of wedlock. So as the old coats of arms proudly displayed a ‘bar sinister’ proclaiming royal bastardy, Max formed a club for two – the Bar Sinister Club. They would meet under the chestnut tree on the village green, and having exchanged strange and sinister handshakes they would go off to Max’s house to eat toasted marshmallows – which never quite seemed to – and drink ginger beer laced with lager, which usually made Tam feel quite sick. Despite this, and also because of it, Tam had grown up hero-worshipping the older boy. They were as close to each other as it was possible to be, each feeling for the other in a way that Tam sometimes thought they might never feel for anyone in their own families. It was not just that they were both ‘born bastards’, as Max always loved to put it, seeming to relish the word, but also because they both seemed to look at the world in the same odd, upside down sort of fashion, loving to turn everything on its head, irreverence their creed.