by Nicola Upson
In deference to the drop in temperature, the chink of glasses on the air had been replaced by the unscrewing of thermos flasks, and William welcomed her back with hot coffee and pastries. ‘Everything all right back there?’ he asked, unscrewing a silver hip flask and passing it over.
‘Fine, in a chaotic sort of way, and the costumes are wonderful,’ she said to Lettice and Ronnie, settling back in her seat to enjoy the performance. ‘I’ve just seen Archie in a whole new light – very ascetic.’
As twilight fell, and a flock of jackdaws flew noisily home to roost in the cliffs, oblivious to the story about to be played out in their honour, the shadows lengthened on the rocks and stage area. Moths, and a bat or two, fluttered past the lanterns which were dotted about the stage and, with the auditorium shrouded in dusk, the magnificent backdrop came into its own. Josephine didn’t envy any playwright the task of inventing lines which would compete with such splendour for the audience’s attention, but how Shakespeare would have loved this setting, she thought, watching as a small fishing boat followed its familiar course back to Newlyn, pulled on as if by a magnet. The moon seemed determined to play its part in the performance, effortlessly providing a light more intense and somehow more illusory than any lighting designer could devise, and she could only imagine how wonderful The Tempest must have been when it was played here. The goodwill of the elements seemed to underline the transient nature of the performance and intensify the anticipation amongst the audience, and their excitement was infectious. Josephine had seen many of the finest productions that London had to offer, in theatres peopled by stars of today and ghosts of past triumphs, and she had herself been the centre of attention at many of them – but tonight, caught up in the scent of the sea and the magic of the evening, she could not imagine a grander scene.
The call of a trumpet heralded the beginning of the play, and Archie had the unenviable task of appearing first on stage. Carrying a large, leather-bound book which looked like one of those hefty family Bibles found in every well-to-do Victorian household, he walked out to the circular patch of grass at the edge of the stage, where a church lectern awaited him. There had been no dimming of the auditorium lights, of course, no raising of a curtain – but even without the customary signals to an audience, he had their attention from the start. The outside world carried calmly on but, without the artificial trappings of a theatre building, there was a greater bond between the stage and the auditorium, as if by sharing the same sky the audience became part of the unfolding story. Archie spoke a little hesitantly at first, but soon shook off his nerves. The sound of the waves against the rocks below punctuated each line, giving a natural rhythm to the rather contrived words of the poem. It seemed to Josephine that the sea brought out a west-country softness to Archie’s voice that she had never noticed before, and she soon found herself enclosed in the world of the play. Suddenly the greensward was teeming with people, all making imaginative use of the theatre’s many entrances and exits and bringing Archie’s words vividly to life: monks walked purposefully across the forestage, carrying jugs of water and platters of bread for the large refectory table; bishop, prior and abbot filled in behind, leaning on the balustrade and pointing out to sea or towards the back of the auditorium; and the cardinal sat at the centre of it all, resplendent in red and issuing orders from the imposing granite throne which might have been created specially for this production, so well did it suit the setting. In fact, it was an excellent choice of play all round: the Minack stage lacked depth but it was broad and gave the impression of a spacious abbey hall, an image which was further strengthened by the stone pillars and floor around the throne; the performance itself relied on energy rather than on scenes of great intimacy which would have been ruined if the weather had been less kind; and, despite Lettice’s misgivings, the simplicity of the costumes worked beautifully with the timelessness of the setting. Relieved that she wouldn’t have to lie to fulfil her promise to Archie, Josephine asked William to point Morveth out to her, but there was no sign of her in the auditorium. It was always the same for directors, Josephine thought: you put in all the work, then were too busy on the night even to see the play, let alone enjoy it.
The ensemble effort delighted the audience, but the applause for Nathaniel’s performance as the eponymous jackdaw was particularly warm – partly, no doubt, because everyone sympathised with the circumstances which had brought about his change of role, but also because he managed to draw every ounce of humour and pathos from the thinly sketched part. For a while, he sat perched on the arm of the throne, dressed in a starkly beautiful black silk habit and a deep ash-grey hood which hid his blond hair and made his expression impossible to read. The only thing that marked him out as a bird was a subtle row of feathering down each sleeve, a restraint which – to Josephine’s relief – kept the production on the right side of farce; in fact, it gave the ecclesiastical thief a human air and added a satirical depth to the play that she doubted the original poem could claim.
Considering that they were both playing roles given to them at the last minute, Archie and Nathaniel soon developed a good rapport. Archie knew exactly when to pause in his narration to give his lead the space to improvise, and the spectators chuckled in delight as the jackdaw moved in and out of the monks, leaning over their shoulders to pick scraps of food and silver from the table and throwing his treasures out into the auditorium or over the balustrade to the sea. His antics escalated as the play went on and, at the words ‘The Devil must be in that little jackdaw,’ he set out to prove the point. At the rear of the stage, next to the cardinal’s chair, was a mock altar, full of silver plate and other gifts which the various orders had brought to ingratiate themselves with the Archbishop of Rheims. In a single bound, Nathaniel was among the riches, and unhooked a red velvet bag which draped sacrilegiously from the arm of a cross. He opened it and ran the contents through his fingers, allowing the audience to see the wealth of gold and silver coins inside, then he moved to the front of the stage and walked slowly along the first row of spectators. Josephine could tell from Archie’s uncertainty that he was as much in the dark as the rest of them about this particular scene, and she watched with interest as Nathaniel stopped in front of Jasper Motley, held the bag up high and allowed the coins to fall in a steady stream on to the vicar’s lap, where they glinted in the lantern light, as eloquent an accusation of greed as anything that could have been conveyed by words. The inference was obvious, even to those who had no knowledge of the rumours of corruption that circled the estate, and everyone’s attention was drawn from the stage to the front row as they waited to see what Motley’s reaction would be. It seemed to take him a moment to register the insult. When he did, he rose awkwardly to his feet, sending the money rolling back across the stage, and struck Nathaniel hard across the face with the back of his hand. As the audience looked on, stunned into silence, Archie and a couple of the monks moved forward to prevent the fight that was threatening, but there was no need for intervention. Motley turned and strode angrily up the steps without once looking back.
‘I don’t think that was in the script,’ Ronnie muttered.
‘No, there was far too much substance in it,’ agreed Josephine. ‘I think our young curate fancies himself as Hamlet’s Player King, except it’s obviously the conscience of the Church he’s after.’ She looked on while the vicar paused briefly at the top of the cliff, leaning heavily on a rock and struggling to get his breath; as the path took him out of sight, she noticed that Morwenna’s rug was still empty. It was a shame that Loveday was missing the performance she had so looked forward to, not to mention the added drama, but perhaps the effort of watching someone else in the role their brother should have taken had been too much for them both. One thing was certain, though – it was a more eventful piece with Nathaniel in the title role, and she looked forward to hearing what Archie had to say later.
Taking his cue from the jackdaw, who seemed remarkably undaunted by the incident, Archie carried on admir
ably with his narration. The six choirboys appeared next, clearly responding to a good shove from the wings; one carried a bowl of water and another held some soap, and the cardinal went through the ritual of washing his hands and removing his ring, which he placed conveniently in reach of the devil-ridden jackdaw. While no one but the audience was looking, the bird swooped down on the band of gold and took it off to the side of the stage, where he perched on a boulder and watched the chaos that broke out below when the theft was discovered. The monks ran to left and right, turning their pockets out and declaring their innocence to an enraged cardinal, while the servants and choirboys fell to their knees and scoured the floor for the missing ring. As the cardinal called for his bell, book and candle, ready to curse the thief, Nathaniel bounded across the stage and leapt quickly on to the balustrade. The audience gasped, but laughed in relief as he found his balance and stood there for a moment, holding the ring up in triumph. Then he turned his back to them, and the laughter took on a nervous edge as the jackdaw seemed to hover on the brink of disaster: after the last departure from the script, they no longer trusted that everything taking place on stage was solely for their entertainment. Josephine knew that what she was about to see was an illusion, but the power of the image – a black silhouette, framed by burning torches fixed to the stonework at the back of the stage – was so great that she could not help but feel a stab of apprehension. Nathaniel might be acting, but she could only imagine what was going through the young man’s mind as he stood on the very threshold that his friend had crossed just a matter of weeks before – the threshold of life and death – and she was suddenly relieved that Morwenna and Loveday were not here to witness the re-enactment of that choice. The audience had gone completely silent now, and the only noise came from the sea below. She counted three cycles of waves breaking and receding before Nathaniel raised his arms, ready to take flight or embrace his fate. Then the jackdaw stepped forward, out into oblivion.
Archie paused in his reading to give the trick time to play with the audience’s imagination, and looked down to his left to make sure that Nathaniel was safe. About half the backstage path was visible to him from where he was standing and, in the lantern light, he could just see a monk’s arm reaching out from the small recess under the stage to steady the actor as he hit the ground – but there was no need: Nathaniel had practised the jump fifty times or more during the afternoon, and he landed effortlessly on the narrow path, apparently oblivious to the danger that lay just a few inches in front of him. He crouched there for a moment to make sure of his balance, then looked back over his shoulder towards the stage and gave a jubilant thumbs-up sign. The hood had fallen back from his face and, in the light from the lanterns which lined the backstage path, it was obvious that his smile was a genuine one. For the moment, his troubles were forgotten in the exhilaration of performance.
Archie glanced back towards the audience to gauge their reaction, and he was not disappointed. The murmur of conversation and appreciative laughter which had under-scored the lightness of the play so far was now entirely absent, and there was a tension in the faces still fixed on the empty balustrade that not even the awkwardness of the conflict between curate and rector had created. Nobody seemed sure of what they had just seen, and those closest to Archie looked to him for guidance; when they noticed the faint smile on his lips, a ripple of relieved applause began in the front row and soon spread through the whole auditorium. One or two people – William and Josephine amongst them, he noticed – stood to show their appreciation, and he waited for everyone to settle down again before continuing to read from the poem. While the cast played out his words, he looked backstage again and was surprised to see that Nathaniel hadn’t moved from the spot: he was due back on stage any second, and should have walked over to the wings to wait for his cue. One of the lanterns had gone out, but the moonlight was strong enough for Archie to see that the smile which had so recently transformed the curate’s face seemed to have been extinguished along with the light.
Distracted, he stumbled over the next line and lost his place on the page. It took him a few seconds to find the right section, and the actors paused awkwardly while he tried to catch up with them. When he spoke again, the words were rushed and indistinct; the rhythm and the timing that he had worked so hard to perfect were, he knew, entirely lost, but he was more concerned now with what was going on behind the scenes. He looked again at Nathaniel, and immediately abandoned any thought of continuing with the play. The curate was staring straight ahead towards the recess under the stage. As Archie watched, the arm that had been there before to steady him reached out again, but this time it was not to ensure Nathaniel’s safety. Nathaniel took two steps backwards, and the figure hidden from view moved out a little further from its hiding place, far enough for Archie to make out a brown hood in the light of the remaining lantern. Behind him, he was aware that the audience had begun to fidget. One or two of the actors were walking over to see what he was looking at, but everything happened so quickly that even Archie doubted what he was seeing. Nathaniel moved back as far as he could, but found himself trapped against the wire fence. There was nowhere else for him to go, no way of escape from whoever was threatening him. Archie began to run, calling out as he went, but the curate had his hands pressed over his ears as though he were trying to blot out some insidious, demonic song that only he could hear, and the words of warning drifted uselessly out to sea.
Even as he made for the perilous steps which would take him down to the backstage path, Archie knew that he would not reach Nathaniel in time. Inevitably, the fence started to give under the strain. Desperately, the curate looked up, but the moment for rescue was long gone. Before Archie had a chance to set foot on the top step, the wire snapped completely and Nathaniel fell backwards, his hands clutching frantically at empty air.
The bulk of the cliff hid his dreadful descent, but Archie’s mind played tricks on him, convincing him that he could see Nathaniel’s body plummeting downwards, his arms outstretched and his black costume billowing out behind him. The image stayed with him, lurid and sensational, like the suicide engravings so popular in cheap Victorian street literature, where fallen women chose death off Westminster Bridge rather than face the misery of their everyday lives. But there was no choice involved here, and Archie tried to rid himself of that haunting mental picture and concentrate instead on the person responsible for it. He was halfway down the steps by now, but the path was suddenly plunged into darkness as the hooded figure kicked the two remaining lanterns over the edge after his victim. Disoriented, Archie clung to the rock for a second, trying to get his balance on the steps. Without the comforting flicker of the storm lamps, the power of the landscape and the immensity of the sea were overwhelming. He called out for more lights and continued down carefully, a step at a time, but he knew pursuit was hopeless; already, he could hear footsteps receding along the path, footsteps more familiar with the layout of the Minack than he was, or driven to desperation by an urgent need to escape. The whole incident had lasted barely fifteen seconds, but it was long enough to take him to a different world: the colour and artifice of the play were long gone, and he was left alone with the solid darkness of the cliffs, with the certainty that somewhere far beneath him, where fringes of white foam played around the Minack rock, lay Nathaniel’s broken body.
Chapter Eleven
It was Rowena Cade who met Archie at the top of the steps with two storm lanterns. She peered past him down to the backstage path and the look of horror on her face told him that she could see the broken fence, but he was grateful that she also seemed to sense the importance of remaining calm; it was going to be virtually impossible to control such a large crowd, and the main thing was to avoid alarming them for as long as possible to allow him to take charge of the situation. The cast on stage were looking at each other in bewilderment, and other actors drifted out gradually from the dressing area or various hiding places behind the rocks where they had been awaiting their next
cue. As they each removed their cowls and became individuals again, Penrose realised the futility of searching for Nathaniel’s assailant: the Minack’s layout was such that he or she could easily have taken the steps around the auditorium and left the theatre without being seen by anyone, or, in the confusion of the comings and goings on stage, it would even have been possible for someone to blend into a group of identically dressed actors without drawing particular attention. The hooded figure he had seen could be standing just a few feet away or could be long gone; either way, the priority now was to locate Nathaniel.
There was a murmur of conversation among the audience, and some people had got to their feet to try to see what was happening. Penrose held up his hand for silence and asked everyone to stay where they were for the time being, and there was a note of authority in his voice that made them reluctant to question his instructions – all except William, who strode anxiously over to see if he could help. Penrose took him and Miss Cade to one side and spoke quickly and firmly. ‘Nathaniel’s gone over into the zawn,’ he said, choosing his words carefully. ‘How much time do we have before the tide comes in?’
‘Not long,’ she replied. ‘An hour or two before full tide, but the water will already be high up the rocks.’
‘Then we can’t wait for help. I need ropes and as much light as you can find. Will you sort that out for me, and bring everything down by the side steps? And the police need to be called immediately – make sure to tell them I need full back-up, with forensics and a photographer.’
