by MARY HOCKING
Age! Hester thought, glaring around her; why do our lighter notes no longer sound? She walked towards the lobby, aware that she herself was not approaching her task with notable lightness of heart.
The main entrance to the building opened into the small lobby; to the left a few steps led down to the foyer and to the right stairs tunnelled up to the gallery. Anyone standing in the lobby commanded a good view of the people in the foyer. From this vantage post Hester was aware of a regrettable affinity with Captain Bligh on the look-out for mutineers on the lower deck. Obviously she was the kind of person who should not be entrusted with too much authority. Behind her the telephone rang. She approached it in nervous anticipation. The one question which hung heavy over anyone doing front-of-house was the identity of the stage manager.
‘Who is that?’ The voice at the other end of the line betrayed equal apprehension.
‘Hester Pascoe.’
‘Ah, my favourite front-of-house lady.’
‘Flattery will get you a long way, George,’ Hester said, unconvinced but pleased nonetheless. ‘Are there any particular problems?’
‘Apart from the fact that we shall soon be wading knee-deep back here, you mean? Well, yes. The producer wants a prompt start and a quick interval – so wheel them in pronto, there’s a love, otherwise I’ll have him crying all over me.’
‘We’re likely to have latecomers on a night like this. What about them?’
‘Hold them back and give me a ring. I’d like a minute for things to settle. You’re going to ring the bell at five to, aren’t you?’
Hester enjoyed ringing the bell and was quite sorry it had to be tolled only the once. The foyer cleared quickly and there were no strays in the toilets. As she approached the stairs up to the bar she encountered the producer who said, ‘All clear up there.’
Hester phoned the stage manager, noting with pride that the time was a minute to eight. She turned away from the phone to find herself confronted by a large man with a broken nose and an angry expression. Obviously he had anticipated making a quick get-away because he had no raincoat. He stood before her, steam rising menacingly from his large frame. Hester recognized that bane of the front-of-house person, the policeman going off-duty whose car is trapped in the car park.
‘The curtain has only just gone up,’ she said, sorry to note an ingratiating intonation in her delivery.
He regarded her with dislike, his wrath tempered by the knowledge that he had no authority to use the theatre’s car park during performances.
‘You can’t expect me to wait until the interval.’
They both knew that this was exactly what the theatre management did expect, but Hester felt there were people better equipped than herself to remind him of the fact. She went up to the bar. The bar staff showed little inclination to quit their entrenched position and immediately busied themselves polishing glasses. Fortunately by the time she returned to the foyer one of the refreshment ladies had admitted responsibility.
Another problem was waiting in the presence of Charles Venables.
‘You are very late,’ she told him severely.
‘Yes.’ He shifted from one wet foot to the other, looking like a schoolboy who has been caught out of bounds – if there were any bounds nowadays for schoolboys.
Hester went to the phone and he said, ‘Er, perhaps you had better wait a moment’ and made an awkward movement of one hand in the general direction of the ladies’ toilets. Hester raised an eyebrow. Charles turned away, muttering about programmes, his ears red. The door to the toilets opened and Shirley Treglowan emerged, remarkably refreshed by the rain, looking flushed, triumphant and guilty – a young person capable of almost Mozartian diversity, Hester thought as she obtained the resigned approval of the stage manager to let them into the auditorium. ‘The bloody door knob has come off already, so what does another diversion matter?’
As she opened the inner doors to the auditorium, Hester was aware of that scuffling and throat-clearing which indicate that an audience has not settled down. Rain drummed on the corrugated iron roof. Then Valentine’s voice rang out with a confident expectation of attention. Notice was given that from now on the audience would be expected to bend their minds to what was happening on stage. Not a head turned as Charles and Shirley slunk like thieves in the night towards their places.
Hester closed the doors softly. This was the time when she usually read a book. This evening she sat quietly, reflecting on the humbling discovery that Valentine appeared better able to handle authority than Hester Pascoe.
Charles looked forward to talking to Shirley during the interval about the producer’s interpretation, which he felt was at variance with Valentine’s playing of Hedda. It was apparent that Valentine had taken a strong dislike to Hedda. This was a ruthless portrayal of a woman with too little to occupy her time and no constructive idea as to how her situation might be remedied. Hers was the desperation of the woman who knows that she is being destroyed but cannot summon either the will or the courage to break out of the system which holds her. Eventually, when she has closed every door on herself, there will be only one course left to her.
From the performance of the rest of the cast, Charles guessed that the producer looked upon Hedda as the true sister of Nora and all other gallant women who refuse to be confined in a doll’s house. The pistol shot was a declaration of independence. Valentine had told Charles she thought that by this stage neither Hedda nor her creator had the faintest idea what was to become of her. ‘I don’t believe in that pistol shot any more than Desdemona’s handkerchief.’
Charles had overlooked the fact that Shirley often worked backstage at the theatre. As they made their way into the foyer during the interval he was surprised to find that she had definite ideas of her own about production if not interpretation.
‘I can’t think what he was doing allowing Tesman to mask Hedda like that,’ she said.
‘Like what?’ Charles asked, mystified.
‘And then, setting the chairs in a straight line so that poor old Brack had either to say all his lines out front as though Hedda wasn’t there, or let us see the back of his head most of the time.’
‘Would you like coffee?’ Charles asked austerely.
‘Please.’
When he returned she was talking to a haggard blonde who had played Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire and had the distracted air of having become detached from reality ever since.
‘Oh yes,’ the blonde said wearily, ‘they are all quite mad about her. Definitely the flavour of the month.’ She turned to the Director of the theatre who was standing alone staring glassily at a damp patch over the kitchen door. ‘I must say Tesman rose to the occasion when the door knob came off – just as if knobs came off doors all the time in his house.’
An alarming crimson tide suffused the Director’s face. ‘Well, they don’t come off doors all the time in this theatre.’
‘He’ll have someone’s head on a charger before the night is out,’ Shirley told Charles.
‘Really?’
She sipped her coffee, looking around for more people with whom to gossip and failing to find a likely candidate returned her attention to Charles. ‘What did you think of that book I lent you?’
‘It was amusing enough. I noted from the jacket that someone had suggested it might be a masterpiece. Personally, I found it rather like a packet of Rice Krispies – a lot of snap and crackle but little in the way of sustenance.’
‘That’s just what I felt only I could never have put it like that.’ She gazed at him admiringly.
He began to talk to her about the producer’s interpretation of the play and she listened with avid attention while her coffee grew cold.
The box office manager, who had left the theatre ten minutes ago, returned to tell Hester that the car park was awash. ‘Better warn them when they leave that they’ll have to wade to their cars.’
‘Oh goodness!’ Hester had worn her only respectable pair of sho
es in honour of this occasion.
‘It’s not so bad if you go out of the dressing-room exit; but we can’t have the audience tramping around back-stage.’
‘No, of course not,’ she said cheerfully. ‘They their worldly task hast done so home must go and take their chance.’
She clanged the bell vigorously and watched her charges in the foyer troop back to the theatre. Then she checked that both toilets were empty before going up to the bar. Only three people remained there. She stood at the head of the stairs looking at them. A lurid flash of lightning heralded her arrival. The effect was remarkable. She could see herself in their eyes, hunched in her puce velvet jacket, like one of those small, malevolent creatures that decorate the fringes of medieval pictures of the gateway to the underworld. The woman cringed and lowered her eyes; the pop-eyed old man drained his drink. They went past her with averted eyes. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of the show,’ she said, feeling they deserved a reward for good behaviour. Neither had the spirit to respond. One man remained. He looked at her brazenly and she bared her teeth at him in a basilisk smile. He poured a good half glass of whisky down his throat and headed for the stairs. She stood to one side so that she could follow close on his heels. He went at a good pace across the foyer and then darted into the Gents. Hester stood outside, snapping with frustration. He was there so long she began to think he was afraid to come out.
‘Is there anyone else there?’ she asked when he eventually emerged.
He shook his head and looked around furtively as if seeking another avenue of escape, then resigned himself to the second half of Hedda. She closed the pen doors behind him. One minute behind time, damn and blast him! Undoubtedly in a sheep dog trial she would be disqualified for taking a nip here and there.
‘Sorry,’ she said to the stage manager, ‘One stray sheep.’
Her shepherding duties over, Hester went to the broom cupboard and then began to sweep the foyer floor. When her cleaning duties were finished, she counted the refreshment money. She was on her third recount when the auditorium door opened and closed behind Norah Kendall.
‘Are you all right?’ Hester asked, seeing that she looked very pale.
‘I keep falling asleep and it is maddening Hesketh.’
‘One way and another, I would hardly have thought it was a time to sleep. Shall I get you a coffee, or I expect that the bar could provide something more stimulating.’
‘No, I’ll just sit here with you if I’m not in the way. I’ve got a bit of a headache, I expect it’s the storm.’
‘I hope it’s going to blow over. Veronica is staying with me and we planned to do a long walk tomorrow.’
‘You’ll be able to go for a swim instead.’
Norah wore the emerald green sheath which Hester remembered as her going-away dress. It hung more loosely on her now; she had lost weight since her wedding. In spite of this, and her evident tiredness, she seemed in good heart.
‘The vengeful creature was burning a manuscript when I took my leave. Does that chill your blood?’
‘I always keep a second copy to meet just such an emergency. And when I go away I take it with me in case the house catches fire.’
‘Do you really expect the house to catch fire?’
‘The part of me that decides how much insurance to pay doesn’t.’
‘What a lot of different people you are, my old Hester.’
‘I encounter more than one Norah Kendall.’
Norah flushed and there was an awkward silence. Hester realized that now, if ever, she should say something and knew that there was nothing to say. She put the refreshment money in the paper bag provided and scribbled a note for the treasurer to the effect that her maths was not up to standard – a fact of which he was already aware.
‘We had a letter from Samantha this morning,’ Norah said. ‘She is going to Spain to stay with a friend who has a villa there.’
‘I would have thought that was a bit like slumming for Samantha.’
‘I don’t think she’s fussy so long as the sun shines.’
‘The last time we talked about Samantha your voice reached high C every time her name was mentioned, now you sound most equable.’
‘I seem to have discovered an unexpected strain of sweetness in myself. Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I am far from laughing at you.’
‘Hester, I would like . . .’ Whatever it was that she would have liked to say to Hester was interrupted by the refreshment ladies who had finished in the kitchen. ‘Don’t forget to put the milk order out, will you?’ one of them said to Hester as she bustled past.
‘That’s Millie Perkins, isn’t it?’ Norah said. ‘Bossy little piece.’
‘I’d better go and do it now. It is the one thing I tend to forget.’
The refreshment ladies opened the side door and rain surged in. Hester had to lean against it to close it after them. When she returned to the foyer Norah said, ‘Are you joining us on the pilgrimage to Walsingham?’
‘Yes, I thought the opportunity of observing the behaviour of pilgrims at first hand shouldn’t be passed over.’
‘That’s not quite the right spirit. Does it mean you are going to put us in a book?’
‘A short story is all you’ll get from me.’
‘I am told we may have to double up. Will you share a room with me?’
‘If it has to be anyone, I’d as soon it was you.’
‘Thank you for that grudging acceptance, my lover.’
‘Unless, of course, you can persuade Hesketh to join you.’
‘Hesketh? On a pilgrimage! That would be material for a volume of short stories.’
‘Yes.’ Hester wrinkled her nose, wondering if she could do it anyway without the material involvement of Hesketh. It certainly opened up a lot of interesting possibilities – a guide to the Retreat Houses of England written by a character very much resembling Hesketh would be really quite wicked.
‘The worst part of it all,’ Norah was saying, ‘will be the long coach journey with young Alan Judge being the life and soul of the party.’
‘And frequent stops for people who are travel-sick. There must be somewhere nearer than Walsingham where one can be a pilgrim.’
‘It has to be Walsingham because Laura once had an “experience” there. Why Laura should expect to have two revelations when St Paul only had one, I can’t imagine.’ She sighed and said without undue remorse, ‘How I do lack charity to that woman.’
‘And what about Shirley Treglowan?’ Hester asked. ‘Is she coming?’
Norah was surprised. ‘I shouldn’t imagine so for one moment.’
‘I was just thinking that she might bring Charles. Charles on a pilgrimage would be even better value than Hesketh.’
‘Charles Venables, do you mean? Why ever would Shirley bring him?’
‘They are here together this evening, she hanging on his every word.’
‘I have always thought of Charles Venables as neuter.’
‘So have I. But when I looked at him this evening I began to wonder. He had those rather protruding eyes which I associate with sexually aroused males.’
‘Thyroid, more like, in his case.’
‘Maybe, but I never cease to wonder at the capacity of ordinary people to surprise.’
Norah smiled to herself.
Smile if you will, Hester thought, but don’t imagine you have any secrets from me. I know just where you are at this stage of the affair – suspended somewhere out of time in a place where you fondly imagine you cannot be hurt or yourself hurt any other person. And a hard coming to earth you’ll have of it, my dear.
Their silence lasted until the gun shot rang out distantly. ‘Well, that’s that,’ Hester said. When she opened the outer auditorium doors the applause had started; after a few moments there was a great crescendo in which thunder joined whole heartedly. Someone in the gallery shouted ‘Bravo!’ A triumph for Valentine.
The storm continued during the night. Micha
el, who had come to meet Valentine, found the fire brigade pumping out water from the car park. When it was possible to reach his car, the engine would not start. Hesketh responded to the situation with an unexpected display of histrionic virtuosity, insisting on carrying Norah to his two-seater while declaiming ‘Lord Ullin’s Daughter’.
‘The Bar’s gain is the theatre’s loss,’ Valentine said to him as she and Michael waded towards the street.
By way of an encore he called after them, ‘ “There’s a power of deep rivers with floods in them where you do have to be lepping the stones and you going to the south, so I’m thinking the two of them will be drowned together in a short while surely”.’
‘It seems to have been worse in other parts of the country,’ Michael said to Valentine at breakfast the next morning. ‘Serious flooding in Norfolk. A month too early.’ The pilgrimage had been arranged before he came to the parish and he would have welcomed an opportunity to cancel it. ‘At least it’s not like a retreat. As far as I can gather I don’t have to do much except be there.’
‘And be jolly. I am assured it is very jolly. We all go to the pub in the evening and the locals are so surprised that vicars can be jolly – although this has been going on for so many years one would think the locals would have ceased to be surprised by anything.’
‘You are coming, then?’
A place had been booked for the new vicar and his wife, but when Valentine heard of this she had made it quite clear that she had no intention of taking part. Now, she said, ‘Why not? I, too, have a soul. Don’t you want me to come?’
‘Of course I want you to come.’
How easily you have learnt to lie in this far country which you now inhabit, she thought.
‘I have to go to the Diocesan meeting,’ he said. ‘And this afternoon I thought I would call on Hester. She has Veronica staying with her.’
‘I thought they spent all their time out walking.’
