Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  The only person I feel sorry for – and even a little guilty towards – is Frankie. I could not have wished for a better agent, and this new phase of mine hardly seems a decent reward for his assiduousness over the years. After the rich pickings of Millie! in particular, a mere opera libretto will scarcely keep him in cigarettes for a week. Still, he’s done very nicely out of my Champions Press books and if he dies a pauper as well as emphysemic it won’t be my fault.

  And now it is The Night and the car park is full and Haysel Hall is itself filling up nicely. You can tell they’re the right sort of people because of their collective smell drifting up into the ancient rafters. This is a complex fragrance with top notes of Guerlain and mothballs, some spicy middle notes of gin-based juniper, and bass notes of foie gras discreetly emitted and filtered through upholstery. I prowl around restlessly backstage in my plus-fours and Duke of Edinburgh wig, wishing everyone good luck and constantly testing myself on my lines. It all takes me back to school theatricals. I don’t think I’ve worn this much slap since I was fifteen. I risk a quick peep at the auditorium and to my relief I see Derek is there. What’s more, he seems not to have anybody with him, unless his guest is either the oxidised-looking parson on his left or the mountainous lady in peach taffeta on his other side. As I have hinted earlier, one never knows with Derek. I now realise Pavel Taneyev was never going to be here in any case. Max tells me he’s playing Rachmaninov in Boston tonight.

  The orchestra is now assembling out there beyond the curtain. Their random tootlings and tunings are laid over the soft hum of the audience’s conversations and provide that pulse-quickening atmosphere of pleasurable anticipation. In the occasional barking laugh I think I detect signs of pre-Christmas jollity. No doubt some of the audience came on directly from an office party. Suddenly there is a burst of applause as the leader of the orchestra takes his seat, followed by even louder clapping as Max mounts the podium. An expectant hush falls. Then as Marta’s overture strikes up Ken appears in the Green Room and says, ‘Places, everyone, please.’ I walk out to my chair at left front. (This of course means the righth-hand side of the stage as seen by the audience. We actors have our own point of view.) The music on the other side of the heavy curtain sounds very loud and close. Also thumpy. Right below me I’ve got the three timps and two squeezed-together bassoons, and beyond them the double basses, so I’m getting mostly bottom notes from my perch. Behind me on the set I see Diana, Charles, the Queen and a drugged corgi take their places in the drawing room at Balmoral. The dog is doped because for some reason it became hysterical when it caught sight of the mannequins of the two princes and obviously something drastic had to be done. The sight of them set it off barking furiously from the moment it was delivered backstage and I remember Adrian said some brave soul was going to push half a Valium tablet up the animal since this route provided the quickest absorption. This must have been done, because I’ve seen Josh’s doggy pyjama bag look livelier than this animal. It looks to me as though the Queen may have something genuine to fuss over while she’s on her knees on the hearthrug. She might even have to give it mouth-to-muzzle before this scene’s finished, something that I’m sure wouldn’t faze the real Mrs Windsor for a moment. And then woops, right on cue as the orchestra plays the last five bars of the overture, the curtain is slowly rising and leaving me stranded on the edge of a dark abyss, dazzled by footlights.

  But I don’t have time to be terrified. There comes a rat-like scutter from the violins over on the right and the sad leitmotiv on a muted solo trumpet. Unaccompanied, Tizia sings her opening words as a great dramatic sigh: ‘This place is gloomy as a tomb’. Ostentatiously but I hope silently, I turn the pages of The Field with what I hope is an expression of moody resignation on my face. Glued to one of the pages is a sheet of white paper on which some thespian humorist has written in large felt-tip letters YOUR WIG IS BEGINNING TO ITCH, and no sooner have I read this than it does. But no! I mustn’t lose track of what Tizia’s singing because here she is with the heavy men in heavy tweeds – not an easy word for an Italian to sing, incidentally. Go, Samper. ‘Oh Christ!’ I hear myself declaim disgustedly at the darkness beyond the footlights, ‘Here we go again!’ And out of the dark comes a gratifying titter of amusement. Hey, there are live people out there! By the time the scene ends with my slamming the magazine down on the chair, declaring ‘I’m off to the gun-room for a Scotch’ and slipping behind the curtain, I feel sure everything’s going to be fine. This audience appears responsive and willing to be amused.

  By the interval at the end of the first Act I’m certain in my heart that we have a hit on our hands. The applause has been spontaneous and enthusiastic. Because I’m made up I can’t sidle around the auditorium and bar like a legendary Middle Eastern monarch in disguise, listening to what the common folk are saying, but Max and Marta both come backstage beaming with encouragement and satisfaction. I catch hints that there have actually been one or two gratifying cries of ‘Shame!’ that I must have missed. The subtlety of my concept will inevitably be too much for people of modest mental gifts. Also, even more than a decade after she died, Diana is still held in misplaced reverence by many of weaker intellect – which is after all what my opera is about. So I’m gratified rather than worried by the odd shriek of dissent. I just wish my blasted wig would stop itching.

  Act 2 goes even better. The soloists and the chorus have now settled down and all stiffness has vanished. In fact the only thing growing stiffer will be the corgi from Act 1, which for yet unexplained pharmaceutical reasons has expired. It is lying in state beneath the stage in a small aluminium trunk marked ‘Wigzamillion Ltd, Covent Garden’. From time to time I wonder how we will break the news to its owner, the Rev. Daphne Pitt-Bull. ‘The Lord hath called him hence,’ maybe? I do hope she doesn’t become violent. Anyone whose unconscious replaces birthing with birching wants watching. Ken has already adapted the remaining scene involving the Queen and the hearthrug so Mrs Windsor will now be sitting in a chair with a channel changer, trying to find Neighbours on a TV placed sideways on to the audience so no one will see that the screen is actually blank.

  As the final Act begins the cast evidently feels we’re home and dry. Their optimism boosts my own confidence still further. Surely these professionals wouldn’t get something like that wrong? As if in instant confirmation the paparazzis’ chorus is encored, just as ‘It’s truly a pathetic world’ was in the previous Act, precisely as I’d predicted. And yet I’m still a bit uneasy. This last Act is definitely the hardest of the three to bring off. So far, there have been plenty of laughs at Diana’s expense, several of which might even have seemed rather cruel, but darling Tizia has played her so sympathetically that she has smiled with them in charming self-deprecation. She really is just right for Diana: about the same age, remarkably similar in looks under a blonde wig, and with the right degree of good-humoured common touch. But now things are about to turn more serious. ‘She whom the gods want to cut down to size / Allows commoners’ hands to grope royalty’s thighs.’ (Scriptwriting just is a gift that some have and some don’t.) There is the final Vatican scene to come yet, dangling the idea that Diana may seriously have considered converting to Catholicism under the spiritual guidance of Mother Teresa. And following on from that there is the proposition that many of Diana’s devotees are prepared to consider her as a kind of honorary saint. How receptive will the audience be to this notion, I wonder? But even though I have always thought Suffolk should erect roadside signs on its borders: ‘You are now entering Suffolk. Please put your watches back twenty years,’ today’s newspapers do nevertheless penetrate and I have discovered that Diana’s unofficial cult at Le Roccie has been very well reported in the British media. There have been interviews ad nauseam with Baggy and Dumpy and their now-sighted child. In this context it was never conceivable that Fleet Street would be able to resist punning on the word ‘vision’ or making abundant references to miracles. Nor did they. The upshot is that I hope most of the au
dience are conscious of a vaguely mystical overtone sounding above the worldly pleasure of this evening’s entertainment. I confidently expect they will also be aware that the accidental onlie begetter of the Tuscan branch of the Diana cult was none other than the librettist of the very opera they are now watching, and Samper is modestly prepared to take several curtain calls at the end.

  As a result of all this I am acutely conscious that for the work to end in a proper blaze of grandeur there must be absolutely no more laughter in the last twenty minutes. People must leave the Haysel feeling exalted, conceding the bogus nature of the Diana myth yet having thrilled to her apotheosis as an icon and to the magnificent music that accompanies it. So as you may imagine, I’m a bit on tenterhooks. I am also still onstage in my relentlessly itching wig, unobtrusively prominent in my corner at the front. By now I represent the Windsor clan out of its collective depth. I have a shotgun (also borrowed from the Rev. Pitt-Bull) which I am mechanically cleaning with a rod and a swab soaked in Young’s ‘303’ gun oil, a brown liquid that goes milky when diluted and has a pungent antiseptic smell. The cultural and emotional gap between what I’m doing and Diana’s religious transfiguration centre-stage could hardly be more marked. At this very moment Diana is facing the audience with her right arm lifted, gazing upwards into a single spot while the rest of the stage is softly lit. Beside her stands the diminutive figure of Mother Teresa in her familiar habit, a quarter turned and holding Diana’s other hand. Marta’s music here really is sensational. At cue 81 the second violins and the violas are briefly muted, the first violins alone are marked senza sordini. I might once have joked about a possible element of Parsifal in this last Act, and although there’s no trace of Wagner there is a radiant devotional atmosphere in common. A touch of Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle, perhaps? Just the faintest hint, maybe, although there’s not a harmonium in sight. Even the most delicate suggestion of Elgar’s Gerontius as he speeds through oblivion towards that brief, searing glimpse of his maker? There are no Elgarian inflections in Marta’s score; yet she has somehow managed to produce a contemporary version of what secular humility might feel like when it was not mere depression or self-disgust. ‘Nothing but doubt in my wasted life,’ Diana laments. ‘Good-time mother, failed wife.’

  I am staring sightlessly into the breech of the gun – and it is even possible that my eyes are a little blurred with the emotion of the moment – when to my horror I hear from somewhere out in the hushed audience a sudden murmur and a couple of distinct titters. I can’t believe it. I glance up sharply, trying to see out into the auditorium, not daring to wipe my eyes. I am still in my role as the Duke and the Duke’s severe eyes don’t water. The titters coalesce, then grow in strength. This is awful. Frowning and stern I turn on my seat to check the stage and practically faint with dismay. A large penguin has waddled up behind Diana and is caressing her bottom with its flippers. I glance aghast at Max but he is so intent on the score and watching his prima donna’s mouth that he seems not to have noticed. The music and the aria proceed for a few more bars. The penguin’s beaked head peers roguishly from beneath Tizia’s raised arm. By now there are sounds of open merriment from the audience while others try to shush the offenders. The shushers must be puzzled by the incongruous apparition but are presumably assuming it’s a scripted, if esoteric, intrusion. Maybe penguins had a spiritual significance for the Princess? But then comes the awful moment that finally breaks any remaining spell. The penguin slides a flipper coquettishly beneath Tizia’s arm and her aria abruptly ends in a helpless wail of laughter as the great soprano hugs the flipper and spins around in convulsions of ticklishness. Oh, this is terrible! I can’t bear it – my poor, poor opera, the atmosphere spoiled, the tension released, the whole evening ruined! Max is now standing helplessly with his arms spread as if in supplication. The music falters and poops out with some last ridiculous notes from the two bassoonists who can’t see the stage. The audience is split into two factions. Half are laughing helplessly as at some uproarious farce. The other half are vainly trying to quell them and hang on to any shreds of the former intense mood. Furious with hurt I spring to my feet and stride with my gun towards the grotesque intruder determined, whether in my role as the Duke or as the librettist, to declare open season on penguins. At least – that is my intention. But what I haven’t noticed is that one of my feet is entangled in a fold of the overlong side curtain which is itself trapped beneath a leg of the chair I’m sitting on. I give a great lurch and feel myself losing balance. I grab at the back of the chair but miss and trip backwards over the footlights with a squeak and fall, still clutching the shotgun, into the nest of kettledrums below.

  Yes, yes, yes: I suppose the sight and sound of an armed Duke of Edinburgh toppling backwards into some very expensive percussion might at any other time be thought mildly amusing. But frankly there is no excuse whatever for opera-goers and presumed music lovers to lose all sense of proportion as these boors do. It is as I feared, and this country no longer has any right to claim a serious interest in the arts. My deafening descent is greeted with near hysteria by the audience, damn their eyes, as I writhe in agony trying to extricate my right buttock from the timp whose skin I have burst through, bruising my thigh on the steel tuning rim and almost certainly cracking some ribs on that of its neighbour. I am not sure whether the tears I shed are of rage or pain but they might equally be those of humiliation. The timpanist is separating himself from the wreckage of his chair. Some of the nearest musicians behave gallantly and come to my assistance but even at this moment I notice that one of them, a cellist, now and then turns sharply away with her shoulders shaking. I shall not forget her. And neither shall I forget the audience, slumped in their seats, their stupid faces buried in their arms or wadded-up coats. They are what I see most clearly as I am helped back on my feet, shedding a tangle of bent music stands. To hell with my ideal of impassioned detachment.

  ‘Bring me that fucking penguin!’ I demand as soon as I am free, my hand pressed to my side and my wig askew. But the rogue bird has disappeared. Max is now up on the stage talking to Tizia who has recovered her composure, marvellous trouper that she is. Reeking of gun oil I myself clamber painfully back over the footlights with the aid of a chair. Marta is also here, white faced and in tears, poor thing. She slips a commiserating arm sheathed in midnight blue material around me and I’m afraid the famous Samper composure cracks because I let out an involuntary yell of pain. My side hurts so badly I can only take shallow breaths. ‘My poor Gerry,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry. You’re hurting.’ And only then does the treasonous idea flit across my mind that her own tears might also have been those of mirth. But no – surely not. No composer could laugh at the deliberate trashing of her new masterpiece. For I won’t believe that bloody penguin’s intrusion was anything other than purposeful and malicious. I am about to quiz Ken and some members of the cast pretty damned fiercely about how they could have allowed it to happen. It just isn’t plausible that all these professionals were so entranced by TS-P’s aria they never noticed someone hanging around in a goddamn penguin suit before he casually sauntered onstage. I’m about to demand that somebody gets on a mobile phone and calls out a police dragnet to hunt down and preferably shoot this prankster when Max turns to the audience and raises both arms. A chastened hush falls.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he says in his almost unaccented English. ‘I do not understand what has happened but I assure you an inquiry will be made. Not only do I apologise to you all but I deeply regret the disgraceful interruption of this beautiful new work.’ (Several cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ from the auditorium.) ‘But too many people, first among them the composer herself, have worked too hard for this evening simply to be thrown away and the performance abandoned. After discussion, Marta and I have agreed that the atmosphere of these closing scenes has been too far destroyed for us to resume them from that point. We have decided that the only proper thing to do is to start again from the beginning of the last Act.�
�� (Here there is a spatter of applause that quickly swells into general approbation.) ‘Thank you for your encouragement and patience, ladies and gentlemen. Can we now pretend that the final interval has just started for the first time? This will give us the opportunity to reorganise a section of the orchestra and also enable those who sadly can’t spare any extra time to leave. But I do most earnestly beg all of you who can to stay to hear this important work through to the end. I promise you will find it worth your while. Thank you again.’