Death Of A Hollow Man (13 page)

“What fellows?”

“The ones that sound like an Italian dinner.”

“Oh—the Venticelli. Awful—in more ways than one.”

As Rosa retailed one or two of the more amusing incidents from the dress rehearsal, she could not help comparing Earnest’s innocent and rather touching curiosity with Esslyn’s grandiose self-absorption, always present but intensified to an incredibly high degree on the eve of a new production. The whole house had fizzed then with prima-donnaish emotion. In fact, all their married lives had been conducted with as much noise and flourish as a carnival procession. A fanfaronade of first nights, last nights, rehearsals, parties, and nonstop dramas both on and off the set.

Caught off guard and drawn carelessly into bitter recollection, Rosa corrected herself. All
her
married life. Esslyn, fortunate man, had inhabited another world for a large part of the working week. He went to the office, dined with clients, had drinks with acquaintances (never friends) who were not of the theater. Rosa had lost, through neglect and narrowing interests, the few women friends she had ever had. And so intertwined had her role as Mrs. Carmichael become with her many performances at the Latimer that it had grown to seem equally chimerical until the crunch came.

She had become aware quite early in the marriage that Esslyn was playing around. He’d said that sort of behavior was expected of a leading man in a theatrical company, and he would always come safely home. Rosa, furious, had yelled back that if all she’d wanted was something that would come safely home, she would have linked her future to a racing pigeon. However, as the years flew by and he always did come safely home, she became not just resigned to his philandering but also in a strange way rather proud of what she saw as his continuing popularity, like a mother whose child consistently brings home all the prizes. There was also a positive side to all this unfaithfulness, namely that he had less sexual energy to spare for his wife. Like many people who live in a cloud of high-flown romanticism, Rosa didn’t care for a lot of heavy activity in the bedroom. (Here again, as in so many other ways, dear Earnest was ideal, seeming quite happy to bounce about, gently and rather apologetically, in the missionary position, usually after Sunday lunch.) So, as far as Rosa was concerned, Esslyn’s announcement that he wanted a divorce had come out of the blue. He said he had fallen in love with the seventeen-year-old playing Princess Carissima in
Mother Goose,
and although within a few weeks the girl had found a boyfriend of her own age, passed her “A” levels, and sensibly taken herself off to university, Esslyn, having tasted the heady wine of freedom, had still pressed ahead.

Rosa’s reaction to his defection had frightened and amazed her. At first, so accustomed was she to living in a state of almost perpetual mimesis, she hardly recognized that a great core of real pain lay behind her shoutings and ravings and great sweeps of dramatic movement. Then, after she had been bought off and left White Wings, she had spent long, terrible weeks in her new flat picking over her emotions, struggling to separate the false regrets from the true, attempting to follow the wretched thread of her anguish to its source. During this time she would prowl about, her arms locked across her chest as if she were literally holding herself together; as if her whole body were an open wound. Gradually she started to understand her true feelings. To be able to examine them, test them, give them a name. The bleak, regretful sorrow that persistently invaded her mind she now recognized as a state of mourning for the child she’d never had. (Had not even realized she’d really wanted.) She carried this bereavement continually, like a small, cold stone, in her breast.

During this period she had forced herself, buttressed by natural pride and tremendous efforts of self-control, to continue her activities at the Latimer, and the second emotion was named for her the moment Esslyn announced Kitty’s pregnancy. Although Rosa was looking fixedly elsewhere, she could tell by the sideways stretch to his voice that he was smiling broadly. Hatred had rampaged then so furiously and with such power through her body that she felt had she opened her mouth she must have roared. She had been terrified, fearing this hot malevolence would control her. That she might simply go out one dark night and savage them both. Now, she no longer thought that. But the bruising embers still slumbered, and sometimes she would open the furnace door to peep and poke at them a little, and the burning would scorch her cheeks.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Oh.” Rosa turned her attention to the potatoes. “Yes, love. I’m fine.”

“Don’t let them catch.”

“I won’t.”

The potatoes looked and smelled wonderful; buttery deep brown with little crisp bits around the edges. Rosa gave them another minute, more to regain her equilibrium than because they needed it, then decanted them into a Pyrex dish and flung over some chopped parsley. They sat down. Earnest helped himself to the vegetables, then passed them to Rosa, who did the same.

“Only three potatoes?”

“Well, you know …” She patted the folds of her tummy, concealed beneath the billowy robe.

“What nonsense,” cried Earnest. “If Allah had meant women to be thin, he’d never have invented the djellaba.”

Rosa laughed. He had surprised her more than once, had Earnest, with his witticisms. She helped herself to several more potatoes while Earnest congratulated himself, not for the first time, on his foresight in placing a regular order for the
Reader’s Digest.

Esslyn sat at the breakfast table with
The Times
and squares of Oxford marmalade-coated toast, patronizing his wife. “You’ll be perfectly all right. After all, you’re not actually overloaded with lines. Hardly any more than with Poppy Dickie.”

“I feel sick.”

“Of course you feel sick, my angel. You’re pregnant.” Esslyn folded back the business section before reverting to the matter in hand. “How on earth would you cope if you were tackling Salieri? I’m never off.”

“But you love it!”

“That’s hardly the point.” Esslyn abandoned his attempt to follow the fortunes of Rio Tinto Zinc and looked at his wife severely. “Apart from the satisfaction of knowing that one has given a great deal of pleasure to a great many people, if one has a talent, it is one’s duty to exercise it to the full. I hate waste.”

Kitty followed his glance, picked up her remaining square of toast—now a bit clammy and congealed—and chewed on it morosely. “I’d hardly call our audiences a great many people.”

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“Huh?”

“Try not to look so vacant, kitten.” Esslyn scraped back his chair. “What have you done with my briefcase?”

“I had it with some mushrooms and bacon before you came down.”

“Ah.” Esslyn crossed to the old deal dresser holding pretty blue-and-white jugs and plates, picked up his case, and put
The Times
into it. Then he returned to the table and brushed her cheek with his cool lips. “Back soon.”

“Where are you going?”

“Work. I have to call in”—he moistened his finger and pressed a crumb to it that had strayed from his plate— “something at the office.”

“But you never go in on Saturday,” exclaimed Kitty, turning down her pretty lips.

“Don’t whine, my precious. It doesn’t become you.” Esslyn deposited the crumb in the breadbasket. “I shan’t be long. Come and help me on with my coat.”

After she had wound Esslyn’s silk Paisley muffler perhaps a trifle too snugly around his neck and buttoned his coat on the wrong side, Kitty insisted on feathering her husband’s lips with many little kisses. Then she clip-clopped back to the kitchen and watched him back the BMW out of the double garage and down the drive. She opened the window, flinching a little in the sharp air, and waved. She listened, loving the machine-gun spatter of tires on gravel. There was something about that sound.

Why it should give her such intense satisfaction she could never understand. Perhaps it was simply a matter of luxurious association—all those wealthy cardboard cutouts in American soaps crunching grandly around pillared porticoes in their stretch limos. Or maybe it was because the sound reminded her of happy childhood holidays in Dorset with the cold waves dragging the pebbles to and fro. Or perhaps it was simply that the rattling gravel meant her husband had finally left the house.

Kitty gave a last wave for luck and went upstairs to their bedchamber, scene of mutual delights, where Salieri’s blue-and-silver coat, lace-ruffled shirt, and cream trousers were laid over a chair back. While everyone else had been happy to leave their costumes in the dressing room (which was, after all, securely locked), Esslyn had ostentatiously brought his back to White Wings, insisting that after such a dress rehearsal, he wouldn’t trust the stage management to look after a pair of worn-out jock straps.

He had tried the costume on before getting properly dressed this morning, strutting his stuff in front of the cheval glass, anticipating aloud the moment when he would stand up from his wheelchair, fling off his tattered old dressing gown, and take the audience’s collective breath away. Kitty only half listened. He had paraded a bit more, then said something in garbled French before changing into his business suit and properly subduing the day. Now Kitty scrunched the coat into a tight ball, threw it in the air, and kicked it as far as she could before tripping into the connecting bathroom.

She turned the necks of two golden swans and tipped some Floris Stephanotis bath oil into the steaming water. Then she poured a generous amount of the sweet-scented stuff into her cupped hand. She massaged her calves and thighs, then her stomach, and, last of all, her breasts. She closed her eyes, swaying with pleasure. Reflected in the dark glass wall tiles, four glittering bronzy Kittys swayed, too. Then, fully anointed, she turned off the taps and slid into the sunken circular bath.

Around the rim, carpeted in ivory velour, were creams and unguents, several bottles of nail polish, her copy of
Amadeus,
and a telephone covered with mock ermine. She picked up the receiver, dialed, and a male voice said, “Hullo.”

“Hullo yourself, scrumptious. Guess what? He’s gone to work.” The voice rumbled, and Kitty said, “I couldn’t let you know. I didn’t know myself till he was halfway through his boiled egg and soldiers. I thought you’d be pleased … Oh… . can’t you?” She pouted prettily. “Well, I haven’t. In fact, I’ve got nothing on at all at the moment. Listen.” She splashed the water with her hand. A chuckle came down the line, and Kitty laughed, too. The same raunchy, harsh sound that Nicholas had heard in the lighting box. “I shall just have to settle for the Jacuzzi then, darling. Or a go on the exercise bike.” Another snort. “But it won’t be the same. See you Monday, then.”

Kitty hung up, and as she did so, the flexible cord caught on her script and it fell into the bath. Kitty sighed, and her lovely coral lower lip pushed forward delightfully, half covering the twin lascivious peaks of the upper. Sometimes, she thought, life was just too too much. Paul Scofield, clutching his shabby shawl, glared up at her from beneath the blue water like some astonishing new specimen of marine life. She poked him crossly with her toe, leaned back, closed her eyes, rested her head on the herb-filled pillow, and thought of love.

Harold was meeting the press. The real press, not just the regular, potbellied, beer-swilling hack from the
Causton Echo
who had interviewed Harold during the run of
The Cherry Orchard,
then described the play as “an epic agricultural drama by Checkoff.” Although, to be fair to the man, this might have been due to Harold referring to the play simply as
The Orchard.
He always tried to shorten titles, believing this made him appear more
au fait
with theatrical parlance. He had spoken of
Rookers (Rookery Nook), Once (in a Lifetime), Night (Must Fall),
and
Mother (Goose).
“This
Mother’s
going to be quite a show,” he had confided to the local inkslinger, who had, perhaps fortunately, replaced the missing noun before submitting his copy.

But today, aahh, today Harold was meeting with Ramona Plume from the features page of the
South East Bucks Observer.
Naturally he had always let them know about his work, but the response until now had been, to say the least, tepid. However, two letters, followed by a diligence of phone calls extolling the dazzlingly inventive nature of the current production, had finally produced a response. Anticipating a photographer, Harold had dressed accordingly in a longish gray overcoat with an astrakhan collar, shining black knee boots, and a Persian lamb hat. The weather was bitterly cold, and hailstones like transparent marbles were bouncing about on the pavement. A pigeon, its wing feathers stiff with ice, regarded him glumly from the Latimer doorway.

They were late. Harold had rather ostentatiously looked at his watch, shaken it, lifted one of his earflaps, and listened, then started to pace tubbily up and down, looking like a cross between Diaghilev and Winnie the Pooh. The pigeon, perhaps thinking a spot of exercise might warm up the feathers, left the doorway and joined him. Harold was very much aware that people were noticing him, and favored the occasional passerby with a gracious nod. Most of them would know who he was—he had, after all, been the town’s theater director for many years—the others, as became plain from their glances and whispered comments, recognized his quality. For Harold walked in an aura of barnstorming splendor. In him the strenuous creative struggle of rehearsal, the glamor of first nights, and the glittering aftermath of post-performance soirees were made manifest.

Sometimes, to underline the extraordinary superiority of his position, Harold would torture himself, just a little, with one of his most magnetic and alarming daydreams and, to pass the time, he slipped into it now. In this dream he would fantasize, rather like Marie Antoinette milk-maiding about at the Trianon, that he was living in Causton as a nonentity. Just another middle-aged dullard. He saw himself at the Rotarians with other drearies, pompously discussing local fund-raising or, worse, serving on the parish council, where an entire evening could be frittered away delving into the state of the drains. Activities generating a self-righteous glow while filling in an abyss of boredom. On Sunday he would clean the car (a Fiesta), and in the evening there would be television with programs of interest noted well in advance. After this would come the writing of a why-oh-why letter to the
Radio Times
, pointing out some faulty pronunciation or error in period costume or setting, and a temporary leg up, status-wise, in the community if it was actually printed.