by Jo Walton
“Where’s that?” Carmichael asked. Bannon pointed up and back. Carmichael stood and turned and looked up at a bowed box. Carmichael imagined it blowing up, turning Hitler and Mark Normanby into bloody bodies like Marshall’s, changing the history of the world.
“She was right, wasn’t she?” Bannon asked.
“I don’t know,” Carmichael said.
“ ‘To be or not to be,’ you don’t need to understand English to understand that. It is more than the language, it is the human condition. And besides, it’ll be a very visual production, the ballet, the swordfights—and we’re going to provide a special program in German explaining the plot.”
Carmichael turned to sit down again, and as he did so a girl and a man came down the stairs from the pass door. The girl was beautiful in a crisply aristocratic way, her blonde hair glossy, her features crisply defined. He had seen her, photographed in gentler focus, on the covers of magazines, and knew she was Viola Lark, previously Larkin, of the notorious Larkins of Carnforth. He thought now, as he had thought before, that there was something a little unstable about her. The man behind her looked like a bruiser; he wondered if he was a bodyguard.
She came directly towards them. She ignored Carmichael and Royston entirely. The man with her nodded to them in a friendly way. “Oh, Antony, Jackie said you were down here. I wanted to ask if it’s all right if Devlin sits in on the rehearsal today. He’ll be as silent as the grave, I promise.”
“Oh Viola, you know I don’t like this kind of thing,” Bannon said. “Yes, I suppose he can, but don’t make a habit of it. Pleased to meet you, Devlin.”
Devlin shook Bannon’s hand. “Oh, and these are Inspector Carmichael and Sergeant Um. Viola Lark and her boyfriend Devlin.”
Carmichael had been looking at Viola, and he saw fear in her eyes for a moment, before it was glossed over by an actor’s smooth confidence. She shook his hand without a tremor. “Devlin Connelly,” her boyfriend said, revealing a strong Irish accent. Carmichael shook his hand too.
“Did you know Lauria Gilmore?” he asked him, to be sure.
“I never had the pleasure, Inspector,” he said.
“I acted with her in The Importance of Being Earnest, but I didn’t know her well,” Viola said. There was no trace now of the nervousness or fear or whatever it had been. He almost wondered if he had imagined it.
“I saw that production,” Carmichael said. “Just after the war, wasn’t it? And you were Cecily?”
“That’s right,” she said. “I hadn’t really seen much of Lauria since. I was looking forward to working with her again, and horrified when I heard about the bomb.”
“We all were, Viola,” Bannon said.
Connelly, Carmichael noticed, was looking where he had been looking, up to the Royal Box. He saw Carmichael looking at him, and smiled. “Fancy place this,” he said.
“It’s one of the most beautiful theaters in London, I always think,” Bannon said. “Now, Inspector, have you finished with me? Because I really should be getting this rehearsal going.”
“I’m finished with you for the time being, but if I think of anything else I want to ask you, would it be all right if I came back? You’re a hard man to catch on the telephone.”
“I’m here most of the time. Fix it up with Jackie if you want to see me.” He turned away as if they had already left. “Now Devlin, you really must sit still here and be quiet, and not do anything to distract anyone. And if I find that Viola is nervous or off her form because she knows you’re here, I’ll send you out straight away. I won’t give warnings, I won’t hesitate.” Connelly was twice Antony’s size, and it was comical to see Bannon addressing him like a schoolboy.
“I’m hearing you clearly, Antony,” Connelly said. He sounded amused, and when his eyes met Carmichael’s there was a twinkle in them.
“Do we go out through the pass door, or can we get out at the front?” Carmichael asked.
“Just go back the way you came in, if you don’t mind,” Bannon said. “I could have them open up the front-of-house for you, but there isn’t really any point. Just straight along the corridor. Shall I send Jackie with you?”
“We can find our way,” Carmichael said. “Come on, sergeant. Good-bye Miss Lark, Mr. Connelly. Thank you, Mr. Bannon, you’ve really been most helpful.”
Bannon looked blank, as if he wasn’t at all sure how he might have helped. Viola Lark looked arrogant and impervious. He wondered how she had wound up involved with Connelly, who at least seemed as if he had a sense of humor.
They walked to the steps and through the pass door. Carmichael turned around for a last glance at the Royal Box and the assassination that had been averted by Gilmore’s incompetence. “Well,” Royston said as the door closed behind them. “Well!”
19
I had no trouble getting Devlin past the doorman. He’d seen me getting out of the car enough times, and we wandered up to him hand in hand. He didn’t even ask his name. I showed him my dressing room, and Mollie’s, which was empty because Mollie wasn’t due in until the afternoon. We were doing my mad scenes and the Ophelia scenes that morning, so we didn’t need Gertrude. Mollie had a little posy by her mirror, white carnations and a bit of fern, and Devlin asked about that. “By first night all our dressing rooms will look like flower shops,” I said. “I don’t know who sent Mollie that, some admirer probably.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded, and walked behind me down the corridor.
As soon as we came out into the wings I knew it was a bad day to have brought Devlin into the theater. There was a change in the atmosphere, an awkwardness in the way people were standing about that told me something was wrong. Pat was leaning against a flat smoking. His eyes rested on Devlin a moment as we came past, and I saw admiration but also something else, a kind of speculation. “Where’s Antoine?” I said. Pronouncing his name as if it were French was the way we’d been teasing Antony the last couple of days.
“Ask Jackie,” Pat said.
Jackie was making notes. She looked up when she heard her name. “He’s in the pit,” she said. “You’d better go down if you want him.”
I took Devlin back and down the stairs through the pass door. Antony was sitting in the front row, casually, with a couple of men next to him. As we walked towards them I looked back at Devlin and saw that he was looking up at the boxes, calmly assessing already.
I don’t know what I said to Antony after he told me they were policemen. I felt sick, and I just acted over it all as best I could. At least the stage gives you practice for that sort of thing. They went quite quickly, thank heavens, and before I knew it I was in position with Pat, and Devlin was sitting with Jackie in the front row of the stalls.
I knew my lines quite thoroughly by this time. Antony had been lighting all morning, which had put him into a foul mood, like always. He wanted me to run through my soliloquy first and then go straight on with Ophelia. He was considering having Ophelia watch me all the time, to make him generally less sympathetic, and so Pat stood at the back of the stage ominously when I came down to the front to address the audience. I had to hold a prop rose and twist it in my hands. The rose had come, a ghastly silk thing, and Antony had me make various moves with it.
“How does it look, Jackie?” he called. I looked out into the pit. I couldn’t see Jackie or Devlin now; we had the proper stage lights that make everything else seem like the inside of a dark hollow shell.
“Ghastly,” Jackie called back. “You can tell it’s a fake. Fake flowers are never convincing. We could have a real one if you like.”
“The trouble with a real one is that it might die on stage, and also it would be different every night, with thorns in different places. The thorns on this are quite blunt,” I said, in an ordinary voice but pitched to carry.
“There’s color matching too,” Antony said. “Well, let’s have the speech.”
Three words in, he stopped me and rearranged my hands. I began again; this time I got to the
second line. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of impression this was making on Devlin. He had seen me act, but acting is different from taking direction. I did what Antony asked, even when he snapped, changing my emphases until they were just as he wanted.
Then I did the speech again from the top, only being stopped twice, while he arranged Pat. “This is the heart of the play,” Antony said. It was also the bit of the play everybody knows by heart, and therefore the most tedious. It would have been hard to make it sound fresh and natural in any conditions, and that morning, with Devlin out there, I couldn’t leave myself behind and sink into Hamlet as I usually did.
“Once again, from the top, both of you, and don’t forget to move forward, Viola,” Antony said.
As I started again, I felt all the audience attention, such as it was, leave me. I kept on, but the auditorium felt hollow. It’s a truism that it’s different acting with an audience, and with a full house rather than an empty house, but I’d never before felt the difference made by losing the attention of a bare half-dozen people.
“Sorry, but someone else to see you, Antony,” Jackie called.
I stopped on “sea of troubles,” absolutely amazed. Jackie never interrupted like that.
“Is this Piccadilly Circus?” Antony asked, with rhetorical fury. He went stamping down through the wings and the pass door, calling for house lights.
I realized then that someone must have come in through the pass door and down the steps, someone who had taken all the attention. I should have stayed where I was, but I was curious as to who it could possibly be, so I followed Antony. Pat gave me a grin and trailed along behind me.
There were three men. One of them was bland and English, one of them had only one arm and a very German face, and the third man was the one who knew how to make an unlit entrance well enough to take everyone’s eyes from the stage. He was over six feet tall and wearing a black German uniform with silver eagles on the shoulders—and one thing you absolutely have to give the Nazis, whatever you think of them, they do have a simply splendid sense of style. His face was chiseled, and his hair was graying a touch at the temples in a most distinguished way. Yet, although he was a splendid physical specimen, he chilled me entirely.
We got down just as Antony was shaking hands, and though he didn’t look pleased, he had to introduce us as well. “This is my star couple, my Hamlet and my Ophelia, Viola Lark and Pat McKnight,” he said. “Viola, this is Mr. Um, of the Foreign Office, and Herr Schnell, of—the German Embassy, is it? And this is Captain Keiler of the SS.”
Pat and I shook hands with Mr. Um and with Herr Schnell. The latter shook left-handed, as his right arm was an empty sleeve pinned to his side. I noticed several ribbons and medals on his uniformed chest but didn’t recognize them. Then it was Keiler’s turn. His eyes reminded me of the boy in the fairy tale who has swallowed a splinter of magic ice and is slowly turning to ice from the inside out.
“Heil Hitler!” he snapped, then he clicked his heels together and bowed over my hand. “Lady Viola, I know your sister Lady Celia of course. She tells me she has not seen you for a long time, and she longs to see you act.”
The Lady Viola bit was a mistake all Continentals tended to make, and I have to say Pip, Celia that is, hadn’t done a thing to discourage it. Dodo told me that when they went over there for the wedding Mamma nearly had apoplexy because they were calling Pip Lady Carnforth, which is Mamma’s own title, and when Mamma straightened them out on that, they started calling Pip Lady Celia, though of course she’s only an honourable, like all of us. I wondered if Pip was sick of it now, after ten years in Germany. “How kind of her,” I said. “What a pity she won’t be here to see me play Hamlet in front of the Fuhrer.”
Captain Keiler’s blue eyes registered a little confusion. “But she will,” he said. “She accompanies Reichsmarshall Himmler, naturally. Had you not been told?”
“I’m always the last to know anything,” I said, with a foolish little laugh, thinking that I must tell Siddy and Uncle Phil at once, and feeling a tremendous sense of relief because now it would all have to be canceled. Devlin and Loy might want to go ahead with the assassination, but Siddy and Uncle Phil were in charge and wouldn’t risk hurting Pip. “I’m delighted to hear this news now.” I smiled a genuine smile at Captain Keiler, whose expression softened a little before he looked back to Antony.
Mr. Um of the Foreign Office chose this moment to assert himself. “We’ve come to look over the security arrangements,” he said.
Herr Schnell nodded. “We’ve come to ensure the security arrangements are adequate.”
“We have come to take over the security arrangements,” Captain Keiler said, clarifying.
Antony frowned. “There have never been any problems with security in the Siddons.”
“There have never been the Fuhrer, the Reichsmarshall, and the Prime Minister of England together in the Siddons before,” Captain Keiler said. He was smiling now as if someone had issued him a smile and told him to wear it along with the eagles and the creased pants. “The usual arrangements are doubtless adequate for the usual situation, but this is to be an unusual situation. I would like you to show me what is proposed, and if I have any changes to make, I will make arrangements. To begin with, where will the Fuhrer be sitting?”
“Do we have to do this now?” Antony asked. “We were in the middle of rehearsal.”
“Carry on with your rehearsal,” Captain Keiler said, generously. “I need someone to show me, only, and I will not disturb.”
Antony looked at Jackie. “I’ll show you,” she said. “To answer your question, the Fuhrer will sit up there.” She indicated the Royal Box.
“Ah yes,” Mr. Um put in. “And we have arranged for flags to be hung in front of it, there, over the shield, and flowers along the top.”
“The British flag and the German to be exactly the same size,” Herr Schnell put in anxiously. “That has been agreed.”
“Yes, that’s entirely agreed, old chap, exactly the same size,” Mr. Um said, reassuringly, just as Siddy and Loy had already told me.
Keiler didn’t seem interested in flags; he was looking up assessingly, trying to see if there was anywhere underneath to put a bomb, probably. It was then I remembered Devlin, and looked around for him. He had done the sensible thing and stayed where he was. He smiled at me quite calmly when our eyes met. If that had been me, I’d probably have done something stupid like made a dash for it when the Germans came in, but Devlin sat tight, unruffled.
“I’ll take you up, shall I?” Jackie asked.
“Afterwards I will need to see where he will come in, and where he will leave, and where all the exits are,” Captain Keiler said. He turned to Antony. “From Wednesday I will be posting guards of our own at the doors, you understand, all doors, so tell your actors to have their cards with them for coming and going. Also”—he turned back to me—“Herr Schnell, with your permission, allow me to invite Lady Viola to the reception at the Embassy on Tuesday evening. It will be a simple reception for welcoming the Fuhrer and Herr Reichsmarshall Himmler, and of course Lady Celia will be there, and I believe some others of your beautiful sisters.”
“I think an invitation has been sent to—sent already,” Herr Schnell said. He obviously knew the proper form of my name, but equally obviously didn’t want to use it and risk embarrassing Keiler. “If not, then that oversight will be corrected immediately.”
“Thank you, I’m honored,” I said, which was about the only possible thing to say in the circumstances, unless I decided to cackle like Richard III and shout that they wouldn’t be inviting me if they knew what I knew.
“If you’ll come this way,” Jackie said, and shepherded them along. Devlin drew his feet back as they passed him, but not an eye hesitated over him. He wouldn’t be able to scout out the theater. But it wasn’t necessary any longer. They’d have to bomb them in Covent Garden, and that wouldn’t be my affair. Devlin would let me go home. I wondered if he would wan
t to keep seeing me.
“All these terrible interruptions, Piccadilly Circus is nothing to it,” Pat murmured in my ear, unkindly imitating Antony. I would normally have laughed, but I didn’t have it in me at that moment.
“Come on, let’s get back to it,” was all Antony said. The rehearsal dragged on, with me at my least inspired, until Antony let us go for lunch. Devlin came out with me. There was a German soldier standing next to the doorman at the stage door. He was very young, and he had a rifle. He looked at our papers conscientiously and let us pass.
“I have to speak to Siddy, soon,” I said to Devlin as we walked out onto the Strand. It was a beautiful day, the kind of day when you want to get out of London and walk out in the hills somewhere.
“You’ll be seeing her, and all of them, tomorrow,” Devlin said. “Coltham again, for the weekend.”
“Rehearsals!” I said. “What are you thinking?”
Devlin just blinked at me.
“You think I’m the kind of person who has country house weekends and doesn’t need to work, but you’re totally wrong. I gave that up years ago. Why don’t you see that, when you see me working like a dog?”
“Where’s your schedule?” he asked, without answering.
I took it out of my bag. The next day, Saturday, was impossible, I was needed at the theater all day and on into the evening. “You’ve Sunday afternoon free,” he observed. Antony was rehearsing the Players. “I’ll take you down to Coltham in time for tea. You’ll see Siddy. But I heard what you want to tell her, and I can assure you she knows already.”
I rolled my eyes because I didn’t believe him.
20
It almost isn’t worth driving back to the Yard from here, sir,” Royston said.
“If we leave the car we’ll only have to come back for it,” Carmichael said, opening his door. “Penn-Barkis told me off for letting you use it on Sunday, you know.”
