In Distant Fields

by Charlotte Bingham

  But until that moment he was happy not to think of anything except that he was going to be a pirate, along with Teddy Heaslip, and James Millings, his sister Allegra’s beau, and their neighbours on the vast Bauders estate, Pug Stapleton and Bertie Milborne, and, of course, Harry Wavell, who was now limping about with a bandage around his ankle. And of course there would be Almeric, and Perry Catesby, and no doubt a whole host of people roped in from around and about the house. Tully Tuttle would be hard to keep out, and old Coggle and Flint, who had both sung in the church choir since they were knee high to a grasshopper.

  Oh, it would be a riot, would the Bauders’ version of The Pirates of Penzance. He could not wait to hear the orchestra playing the opening chords of the overture, and watch the heavy red curtains being drawn apart by the tall bewigged footmen to reveal the audience seated, the women fanning themselves, the men prepared to be bored, only shortly afterwards to find themselves becoming enchanted.

  It was a marvellous thing to be at home and part of this great, untidy band of good-hearted people all living and working together on the magic island that was called Bauders; all wanting nothing more than to make jolly music for the entertainment of friends and neighbours.

  But first the costumes had to be completed. The Duchess had already set up a sewing room on the first floor. Here everyone’s maids, once they were clear of their other duties, skipped along to help out with the sewing of the costumes. Twenty pirates’ costumes were being cut from sundry materials retrieved from around the place. Black patches were carefully designed, together with fearsome beards, made and dyed from remnants of coarse sheep’s wool.

  All the ladies of the chorus were destined to wear the prettiest little crinolines, the silk cut to be spread about their swaying hoops, their parasols made to match or tone with the dresses, so that they looked as fetching to the audience as they would look inviting to a band of pirates.

  ‘It’s the policemen’s uniforms we are going to be stuck for this year.’ Browne, who as the Duchess’s maid had naturally assumed the position of authority, was standing at the head of the cutting-out table, frowning round at Bridie and Tinker, and the rest of the maids, all of whom already had their heads bent and their sewing needles darting.

  ‘My George is a policeman; I dare say we could ask to borrow some of the old uniforms from the station, Miss Browne,’ stuttered one of the newest of the younger maids, looking up from her neat hemming, but only after having been nudged into having her hand held up for her by a neighbour at the table.

  Browne looked down the table at the flushed face of the young maid. It was years since she herself had felt nervous of anyone, even the Duke.

  ‘You are new, aren’t you, Findlay?’

  Miss Findlay nodded and blushed, frightened that she might have spoken out of turn.

  ‘And none the worst for that, Findlay,’ Browne told her in a purposefully kind voice. ‘No, you may indeed go to the police station and tell the men that we are badly in need of help on policemen’s uniforms – and singers, for that matter.’

  Browne nodded and turned away. They must have some singers down at the station; at least half of them would have been in the church choir when they were small. It was part of the reason the Reverend Mr Bletchworth and the Duchess were such friends. He could provide a choir for the castle, and she could provide cottages for the parents and children in the choir. It was an arrangement that suited everyone.

  ‘Very well, we will wait to hear from Findlay. Have you a bicycle?’

  Mary Findlay nodded.

  ‘Go at once then, and tell them we need to beg, steal or borrow uniforms.’

  Findlay bicycled off down to the park gates. The drive to the castle was so long, it would take her an hour to reach the old police station where her George worked. She bicycled harder and harder, knowing that on her depended so much; but more than that, she could not wait to tell George that he might be asked to be in the Duchess’s musical play, because if there was one thing that George Bite could do was sing. Not that he could not do other things, of course he could, but his singing voice was exceptionally strong. He might even get to sing the lead and make a name for himself. She pushed harder at the foot pedals, and then coming at last to a downhill section of the great tree-lined drive, she freewheeled all the way downhill to the police station where she knew George would be sitting twiddling his thumbs.

  ‘I don’t know what the world is coming to, really I don’t,’ George’s sergeant was saying to George and his friend Billy Andrews as Mary pushed open the police station door. ‘Last week Miss Ponting had Rosalinda, her pet goat, taken from out her front garden where she’d tethered same. Tied up to a ring near horse trough in the square is where she found her. Not withstanding that, yesterday someone decorated the top of the village post box with a chamber pot, if you would believe it.’

  ‘It was a prank, Sergeant.’

  ‘And a very nasty one too. Someone could have hurt themselves when they was posting of a letter. And as to that poor goat belonging to Miss Ponting, she needed milking – the goat did. Imagine that – a goat taken at milking time? The cruelty of it. Leathering, that is what pranksters like that need, a good leathering, and then we would have less crime here, and that is certain. Ah, now who is this, may I ask? Why it is Miss Findlay, if I am not mistaken.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Sergeant. I am come to ask your permission for George here to come to the castle, on behalf of the Duchess herself, speaking through Miss Browne.’

  ‘I see, Miss Findlay. And may I ask on what duty am I to send PC Bite?’

  ‘He is needed for … singing, now you come to ask, Sergeant Trump, singing in the musical play, which is all about policemen. You will all be needed, I hear, uniforms and all, and Miss Browne says any old uniforms, borrowed, or not needed, she will be most grateful to you, Sergeant Trump.’

  ‘And who will mind the station when we are all meant to be a-singing, may I ask, Miss Findlay?’

  Mary smiled. ‘Oh, I dare say some of the Duke’s men from the castle could stand in for you at the police station when you are needed up at the castle, Sergeant Trump.’

  ‘But will they not be needed for the singing?’

  ‘Most of them, unlike you, Sergeant are a little too – how shall I say? – too mature to be on the stage? After all, it takes young, fit men to sing in a musical play.’

  Mary was not so naïve that she was not aware that flattery could get her everywhere, and so it proved, because she returned up the long, long drive to the castle with not one fully uniformed policeman bicycling behind her, but two.

  Half an hour later the Duchess found herself staring from George Bite and Billy Andrews to Browne and a justifiably triumphant Mary Findlay.

  ‘Gracious, Browne. I know we needed policemen’s uniforms,’ she said in a faint voice, ‘but it seems that we have both the uniforms and the men.’

  ‘It is not just their uniforms, Miss Browne. They can both sing too,’ Mary told Browne in a proud whisper.

  Browne turned to the Duchess. ‘They can both sing, Your Grace.’

  Circe stared at them and, realising that both men were looking petrified by the sudden turn of events, soon set about putting them at their ease, discovering as she did so when she sat down to play a few simple scales for them, that they could not only sing, they could really sing.

  ‘Perfect. You are cast,’ she told them, standing up and shutting the piano lid, having followed up the scales with a number of standards. ‘And if there are any more like you at home, spread the word, we need all the policemen you can find for us!’

  PC Bite and PC Andrews cycled back down to the police station, their lives transformed. After all, it was one thing to sing in the church choir, but to sing up at the castle, and in one of the Duchess’s plays, that was indeed an honour.

  ‘Let us just hope that we can keep crime to the minimum, PC Bite, let us just hope that,’ the sergeant murmured quietly as he did up the gates to the police stati
on with the station handcuffs. ‘We must pray that there will be no more of these chamber pot and goat pranks during the time we are needed by Her Grace.’

  George nodded. He wasn’t much given to praying, but it seemed quite a good idea none the less.

  The rehearsal time for The Pirates of Penzance galloped, not cantered, through the weeks set aside for its preparation; so much so that it seemed to Kitty and Partita that no one would ever be able to get the production together, least of all their producer.

  ‘Mr St Clare will not have the ladies’ hoops swaying, in what he calls “a distressing manner”,’ Partita moaned to Kitty. ‘But, as I just said to Mamma, how can the chorus dance if their crinolines are never allowed to sway? I mean to say.’

  Kitty folded a letter she had just received from Violet and gave her mind to the matter. It was obviously serious.

  ‘Perhaps we should remove the hoops, and then he will feel less distressed?’

  ‘Kitty,’ Partita sat down, ‘that is the whole point of the chorus. We must cause distress, or else it will all seem so dull. That is the whole point of the chorus dancing – it is to cause some kind of distress, if possible to everyone!’

  Partita laughed, and after only a small delay as the penny dropped, Kitty too laughed, realising what Partita meant.

  ‘Oh dear, are we about to sink?’

  ‘Our producer, Mr St Clare, is about to sink the whole operetta, not us.’ Partita turned from her dressing mirror and faced Kitty. ‘Mamma is trying to persuade him. She is not stuffy like him. I mean, either our crinolines cause ripples of excitement to go through the audience when we dance onto the stage, and they sway about showing our pantalettes, or they do not. Mamma knows what is wanted, and she is becoming irritated by Mr St Clare. Everyone knows the producer has to let us do what is wanted in a production of this kind. I mean, it is hardly the end of the world if someone glimpses our pantalettes.’

  Tinker gave her young mistress a stern look. ‘Pantalettes is to be worn, not seen, Lady Tita, and that’s my last word on the matter.’

  Kitty was busily pinning up her hair, preparatory to performing the first of the dress rehearsals while Tinker was redressing Partita’s straw hat with small artificial violets.

  ‘Gracious, Tinker, it’s hardly the cancan.’

  ‘Oh, I do not think there is much that is very gracious about the French cancan, Lady Tita.’

  ‘No, but it is exciting, Tinker, and that’s what we want to be.’

  Kitty was hardly listening, thinking only of the letter that had arrived from her mother. It seemed that Violet was going away from London for a while. It would be better. She would write to Kitty very soon with all her plans. Meanwhile she sent her all her love. For a second and then a third time, Kitty now reread, ‘I send you, darling Kitty, all my love.’ She suddenly felt all too homesick for the mother she had once had, the one who had lived in South Kensington, whose whole life had been Kitty, not the one who was in love with Dr Charles and going away to the – where was it? – oh, yes, the Lake District.

  She went for a long walk, alone in the park, returning later in time to watch Valentine Wynyard Errol performing.

  There was no doubt at all he occupied the stage as if it was second nature to him, unlike the line of real and pretend policemen, marching and singing behind him, who all looked awkward, some of them smiling self-consciously at the few people who were making up the rehearsal audience, others trying to hide themselves at the back of the stage. Nevertheless it had to be said they all looked more or less authentic, whatever their stage presence, because somehow or another, someone must have begged, stolen or borrowed their uniforms, with the result there were now ten policemen singing and marching with only a very occasional dirty look thrown at them from the conductor of the newly returned orchestra.

  The pirates were called next to rehearse their opening number, and in contrast to the policemen, they occupied the stage as if they were born to it, boisterous, exuberant, their only difficulty seemed to be in not falling over each other’s feet, not because they were clumsy, or their feet were inordinately large, but from laughing.

  Almeric, eye patch securely in place, was a magnificent Pirate King. He seemed to be born to the role, singing of his delight in sailing under the black flag and spurning a sanctimonious part in society in favour of sallying forth to sea as a pirate king to pillage and plunder.

  Pug Stapleton, Julian Sykes, James Millings, Teddy Heaslip, Peregrine and Gus, not to mention Bertie Milborne, were, among others, all part of Peregrine’s faithful band, but of course it was Harry Wavell who, bandaged ankle and all, was busily intent on stealing the show.

  ‘If Harry does not stop coming on so much the star, mark my words, before tomorrow evening, he will be lowered into the moat and left there,’ Valentine whispered to Partita, as the second dress rehearsal of the day began.

  Partita laughed, making a strangely exultant sound, because quite suddenly the whole miracle of the production overcame her – the whole magic of it, the whole excitement – and she wanted to jump on stage and join the pirates and Livia Catesby, who was starting to sing ‘Mabel’. Partita wanted to dance and dance because somehow, this morning and this afternoon, The Pirates of Penzance had begun to knit itself together. Despite some of the bolts of silk arriving from London for the costumes not quite matching other bolts of silk, despite the chorus – most of whom had been recruited from the servants’ hall – having the most terrible difficulty with their musicality, despite poor Bertie making a dreadful muddle of his role and holding everyone up – something about which he was even now being teased, despite everything, Partita knew that the production was going to be thrilling, all except for Livia, who was even now starting to sing – and failing horribly.

  As soon as he heard her Harry could not believe his bad luck. He stood up. The key love affair in the opera is between the bashful and beautiful Mabel and the noble and ever honourable Frederic, and features one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most beautiful and touching love duets, when, having learned that because of being born in a Leap Year, far from being twenty-one and thus free from his contract with the Pirates, according to the Pirate King poor Frederic is in fact only five and a quarter years old. Mabel assures him she will wait for him to be twenty-one, even though that particular birthday will not fall until 1940.

  Mr St Clare, realising the extent of the crisis, stopped rehearsals and Dr Jones was once more called, this time to pronounce Livia’s throat badly inflamed and not likely to get better for days.

  ‘What to do?’ Livia asked hoarsely, tears in her eyes. ‘Who can take my place?’

  Harry turned to Partita, who turned to Kitty.

  ‘She can,’ Partita announced blithely. ‘She sings like a bird.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think—’

  ‘Well, we do!’

  ‘We don’t have very long to get it done,’ Harry warned Kitty as soon as they started to rehearse. ‘In tact, we only have today and tomorrow.’

  ‘I do learn quickly,’ Kitty reassured him. ‘I have been told it comes from being an only child – so much attention from one’s mother, you know. I can memorise a page after only two readings.’

  ‘I am more worried about me letting you down. You have a really exceptional voice.’

  ‘Oh, no, you go too far. I have an average voice I know because my father told me so.’

  ‘Your father must be tone deaf. Or stone deaf. Lady Partita is right, you do sing like a lark.’

  That was about all the time they had for conversation, since every waking moment for the rest of the forty-eight or so hours left to them was spent in rehearsing, long after the others had all packed up and left.

  ‘You have surprised me, Harry,’ Roderick St Clare informed him the next morning, after the first rehearsal of the day. ‘I had utterly despaired of you ever getting the remotest likeness to Frederic, yet here you are giving an altogether attractive performance of the young blade. I shall eat my words. Munch, mun
ch.’

  Roderick raised two perfectly shaped eyebrows at Harry, then, walking away with quick, light steps, went to start berating the chorus of policemen, whom he did not consider were cutting what he called ‘the mustard’.

  ‘I still feel woefully unprepared,’ Harry confessed. ‘My fault – not yours, I hasten to add—’

  ‘Yes, but forgive me,’ Kitty interrupted. ‘Because you must remember as the leader of the chorus I’m familiar with all the parts. It is finally easier for me than for anyone.’

  ‘You have already come up trumps, Miss Rolfe.’

  Kitty tipped her head to one side and smiled at him. ‘We’ll see about that, Mr Wavell. After the curtain falls.’

  Kitty need not have worried, although she did of course.

  As if in a magical moment that had somehow been brought about by the mutual wills of everyone at Bauders, the young that night sang and danced their way into the hearts of their audience. Partita’s dearest wish that the ladies of the chorus should prove exciting came true; and the voices of Almeric and Peregrine, Harry and Kitty could not be faulted, even by Mr St Clare. It was a rare and beautiful evening and one that promised to be repeated, time and time again, in the years to come.

  ‘So much to look forward to with such talented young men and women,’ was the agreed verdict of all Circe’s friends.

  ‘As good as anything you will see anywhere.’

  ‘Without doubt that is the very best amateur production of Pirates that I have seen,’ Ralph Wynyard Errol told the Duchess as he joined the enthusiastic applause that the packed auditorium was bestowing on the cast as they took their bows, their faces glowing in the warm colour of the footlights. ‘The singing was first class, but the acting! The acting, which is usually so sadly neglected, it was simply first rate.’

  ‘I agree,’ General Sir Tommy Sykes, who was sitting on the other side of Circe, announced, clapping his white-gloved hands slowly but with great appreciation. ‘In the wrong hands this sort of comic operetta can be most frightfully tedious.’