Death Of A Hollow Man (8 page)

Nicholas went out slamming the door. Patronizing bastard. “It won’t be me who goes to pieces on the first night, mate,” he muttered. In the men’s dressing room he slung his coat and sword, glanced at his watch, and discovered that, incredibly, barely twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the theater. He decided to pop along and have a look at the scene dock.

A man was there putting the finishing touches to a small gilt chair. He stood back as Nicholas entered, studying the tight hoop of the chairback, his brush dripping glittering gold tears onto an already multicolored floor. It was not the man Nicholas expected to see, but he experienced an immediate warmth, almost a feeling of kinship, toward the figure who was regarding his handiwork so seriously. Anyone who could make a cuckold out of Carmichael, thought Nicholas, was a man after his own heart.

“Hullo,” he said. “The boss not in yet?”

David Smy turned, his handsome, bovine face breaking into a slow smile. “No, just me. And you, of course. Oh”—his brush described a wide arc, and Nicholas, not wishing to be gilded, jumped briskly aside—“and the furniture.”

“R-i-g-h-t.” Nicholas nodded. “Got it.” Then he performed the classic roguish gesture seen frequently in bad costume dramas but rarely in real life. He laid his finger to the side of his nose, tapped it, and winked. “Just you and me and the furniture it is then, Dave,” he replied, and went back to the stage for some more practice.

After fifteen minutes or so sitting down at and getting up from the piano and striding about getting used to his sword, Nicholas went up to the clubroom to see who else had arrived. Tim and Avery sat at a table, their heads close. They stopped talking the moment Nicholas entered, and Tim smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We weren’t talking about you.”

“I didn’t expect you were.”

“Didn’t you really?” asked Avery, who always thought that everyone was talking about him the second his back was turned, and never very kindly. “I would have.”

“Oh, not your childhood insecurities, Avery,” said Tim. “Not on an empty stomach.”

“And whose fault’s that? If you hadn’t been so long at the post office—”

“Nico …” Tim indicated a slender bottle on the table. “Some De Bortoli?”

“Afterwards, thanks.”

“There won’t be any afterwards, dear boy.”

“What
were
you whispering about, anyway?”

“We were having a row,” said Avery.

“In
whispers?”

“One has one’s pride.”

“More of a discussion,” said Tim. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you what it’s about.”

“We’re burning our boats.”

“Avery!”

“Well, if we can’t tell Nico, who can we tell?”

“No one.”

“After all, he’s our closest friend.”

Nicholas tactfully concealed his surprise at this revelation, and the silence lengthened. Avery was biting his bottom lip as he always did when excited. He kept darting beseeching little glances at Tim, and his fists opened and closed in purgatorial anguish. He looked like a child on Christmas morning denied permission to open its presents. Even his circle of curls danced with the thrill of it all.

Nicholas bent close to Avery’s ear. “I’ve got a secret as well. We could do a swap.”

“Ohhh … could we, Tim?”

“Honestly. You’re like a two-year-old.” Tim looked coolly at Nicholas. “What sort of secret?”

“An
amazing
secret.”

“Hm. And no one else knows?”

“Only two other people.”

“Well, it’s not a secret then, is it?”

“It’s the two other people that the secret’s about.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, go on, Tim,” urged Nicholas. “Fair exchange is no robbery.”

“Where do you find these ghastly little homilies?”

“Please
…”

Tim hesitated. “You must promise not to breathe a word before the first night.”

“Promise.”

“He said that rather quickly. If you break it,” continued Avery, “you won’t get into Central.”

“Oh, God.”

“He’s gone quite pale.”

“That was a stupid thing to say. Since when have you had crystal balls?”

“Why the first night?” asked Nicholas, recovering his equilibrium.

“Because after then everyone will know. Do you promise?”

“Cut my throat and hope to die.”

“You’ve got to go first.”

Nicholas told them his secret, looking from face to face as he spoke. Avery’s mouth opened like a starfish in an
ooo
of astonishment and pleasure. Tim went scarlet, then white, then red again. He was the first to speak.

“
In my box.
” Nicholas nodded affirmation. “Of all the fucking cheek.”

“Ever the
mot juste,
” chuckled Avery, practically rocking on his seat with satisfaction. Nicholas thought he was like one of those weighted Daruma dolls that, no matter how hard you pushed them down, sprang straight back up again. “But … if you couldn’t see the man, how do you know it was David?”

“There was no one else in the place. Just me, Kitty— who surfaced in the dressing room about ten minutes later—and David in the scene dock. I know he and his dad are often early. But they’re never
that
early.”

“I thought you always kept your box locked,” said Avery.

“I do. But there’s a spare key on the board in the prompt corner,” said Tim, adding, “I shall take it home with me in the future. I must say,” he continued, “he’s a bit … lumpen … David. For Kitty, I mean.”

“Constanze’s bit of rough.” Avery giggled. “Must have given you quite a thrill, Nico. If you like that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” Nicholas said pinkly, “not really.”

“Still, he’s a nice lad,” continued Tim, “and I should think almost anyone’d be a relief after Esslyn. It must be like going to bed with the Albert Memorial.” He pulled back his cuff. “Nearly the quarter. Better go and check the board.”

He picked up his bottle and moved quickly to the door, Avery scuttling after. Nicholas, in hot pursuit, cried, “But what about your secret?”

“Have to wait.”

“I’ve got time. I’m not on for twenty minutes.”

“And I’m not on,” echoed Avery, “at all. I can tell him.”

“We tell him together.” Tim tried the door of his box, then got out his key. “At least David locked up after himself.”

He opened the door, and just for a moment the three of them stood on the threshold, Avery quivering like the questing beast. His button nose pointed (as well as it was able), and he sniffed as if hoping to detect some faint residual flavor of wickedness in the stuffy air.

“For heaven’s sake, Avery.”

“Sorry.”

The image of Kitty rushed back to Nicholas so vividly that it seemed impossible that the tiny place could have remained unmarked by her presence. Then he saw faintly on the glass the now barely visible tracks made by her dragging shoulder blades.

Avery said, “I wonder what made them choose here?”

“Sheer perversity, I should think. Well … see you later, Nicholas.”

Dismissed, Nicholas was just turning away when a thought struck him. “Oh, Avery … you won’t repeat what I’ve told you to anyone?”

“Me?”
Avery was outraged. “I like the way you ask me. What about him?”

Nicholas grinned. “Thanks.”

Downstairs he collided with Harold, who arrived as he did everything else, Napoleonically. He started shouting as he entered the foyer, and didn’t stop until he had seen some flurry of movement, however unnecessary, in every corner of the auditorium. He called it keeping them on their toes. “So who’s ahead of the game?” he cried, subsiding into row C, lighting a Davidoff, and removing his hat. Harold had quite a collection of fur hats. This one was black and cream and yellowish-gray, and definitely the product of more than one animal. It had a short tail, squatted on his head like a ring-tailed lemur, and was known throughout the company as Harold’s succubus.

“Come on, Deidre!” he roared. “Chop-chop!”

The play began. The Venticelli loped down to the footlights and stood, secretively entwined, like a pair of gossipy grasshoppers. They were an unattractive pair, with pasty, open-pored complexions and most peculiar hair. Flossy and flyaway, it was that strange color—dirty blond with a pinkish tinge—that hairdressers call champagne. Their eyelids drooped in the lizardlike manner of the old, although they were barely thirty. They invariably seemed to be on the verge of imparting some distasteful revelation, and spoke in a sort of sniggering whisper. Harold was always having to tell them to project. Seemingly secure under Esslyn’s patronage, they discussed anyone and everyone vindictively, and their breath smelled dank and malodorous, like a newly opened grave. Now, having finished their opening dialogue and wrapped their cloaks tightly about them, they pranced off.

Esslyn took the floor and Nicholas in the wings watched the tall figure with a certain degree of envy. For there was no denying that his rival cut a splendid figure onstage. Take his face, for a start. High cheekbones, rather thick but beautifully shaped lips, and that rare feature, truly black eyes. Hard and bright, the pupils glittered like tar chippings. His jowls were always a faint steely blue, like those of the villains in gangster cartoons.

Nicholas’s own face could not be more ordinary. It was an “ish” face. Brownish hair, grayish eyes, straightish nose. Only the fact that his even features were unevenly distributed gave it any distinction at all. Rather a lot of space between the tip of the nose and the top lip, which he thought made him look a trifle monkeyish, although Hazel at the checkout had pronounced it “very sexy.” A wide space also between his eyes, and a very wide one indeed after the eyebrows and before the hairline. So apart from being dwarfish and clumsy, with nondescript features, Nicholas reflected sourly, he would probably be completely bald before the age of twenty-one. He stared, aggrieved, at Esslyn’s crisp sloe-black hair. Not even a flake of dandruff.

“Cheer up,” whispered David Smy, arriving ready for his first entrance. “It might never happen.”

Nicholas barely had time to smile back before his companion went on. Poor old David, thought Nicholas, watching Salieri’s valet sidling across the boards with that constipated cringe that afflicts people who loathe acting and are coaxed onto a stage. Fortunately the valet was a nonspeaking part. The only time David had been given a line to say containing seven words, he had managed to deliver them in a different order every night of the run without repeating himself once.

“David
…” Nicholas heard from the stalls. “Try not to walk as if you’ve got a duck up your knickers. Get off and come on again.”

Blushing, the boy complied. On reentering, he strode manfully to his position only to hear the Venticelli sniggering behind his back.

“My God—it’s the frog footman.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Dandini.”

“You’re both wrong,” mouthed Esslyn in a Restoration aside. “It’s the fairy Quasimodo.”

“For heaven’s sake, get on with it!” cried Harold. “I’m putting on a play here, not running a bear garden.” He sat back in his seat, and the rehearsals rolled on.
Amadeus
was not an easy play, but Harold had never been one to shirk a challenge to his directorial skills, and the fact that it had a large cast and thirty-one scenes did not deter him. Six keen fifth-formers from the local comprehensive had been recruited to help onstage management, and Harold watched them now drifting vaguely on and off the set with an exasperated expression on his face. It was all very well for Peter Shaffer to suggest that their constant coming and going should by a pleasant paradox of theater be rendered invisible.
He
wasn’t lumbered with a crew of sleepwalking zombies who didn’t know their stage right from a 97 bus. And Esslyn, who was onstage throughout and could have been a great help, was worse than useless. Years ago, Harold had made the mistake of saying that when he was in the business, no actor of any standing would demean himself by touching either stick or stone during a performance. All that was strictly stage management. Since then their leading man had steadfastly refused to handle anything but personal props.

“Deidre,” shouted Harold. “Speed this lot up. The set changes are taking twice as long as the bloody play.”

“If he’d read the author’s notes,” murmured Nicholas to Deidre, who had been testing a pile of newly stacked furniture in the wings for rockability and was now back in the prompt corner, “he’d know you’re supposed to carry on acting through the changes.”

“Oh, you won’t find Harold bothering with boring old things like author’s notes,” said Deidre, as near to malice as Nicholas had ever heard her. “He has his own ideas. I hate this scene, don’t you?”

Nicholas, poised for his entrance, nodded briefly. The reason they both disliked
The Abduction from the Seraglio
was the lighting. Futilely, when Harold had asked for crimson gels, Tim had attempted one of his rare arguments. In reply, speaking very slowly as if to an idiot child, Harold explained his motivation.

“It’s all about a seraglio. Right?”

“So far.”

“Which is another word for a brothel—right?”

Tim murmured, “Wrong,” but could have saved his breath.

“Which is another word for a red-light house. Ergo … surely I don’t have to further spell it out? I know it’s theatrical, Tim, but that’s the kind of producer I am. Bold effects are my forte. If what you want is wishy-washy naturalism, you should stay at home and watch the telly.”

Nicholas was always glad when the scene was finished. He felt as if he were swimming in blood. He came offstage dissatisfied with his performance and irritated with himself. Avery’s secret was nagging at his mind. He wondered what on earth it could be. Probably some piddling thing. Nowhere near as scandalously interesting as Nicholas’s own secret. He wished they’d either told him at once or not mentioned it at all. Perhaps he could persuade them to cough it up at the intermission.

Pausing only to give David Smy a very insinuating moue and a nudge in the ribs, Nicholas returned to the dressing room. Next time Colin came up from the paint shop, David approached his father and asked him if he thought Nicholas could possibly be gay.