Cool Repentance (15 page)

'I said Julian was a kind of saint,' he went on. 'But haven't you ever noticed how saints can be curiously insensitive to the sufferings of lesser mortals caused by their own sanctity? I wrote rather a good play on the subject once, although I say so myself.
Holy Margaret.
They're reviving it at the National in the autumn: you should try to catch it. No, Christabel was Julian's obsession, just as she was mine. He'd never lost it. He jumped at the chance to succour her. As for the Blagges and Ketty, he just assumed they'd share his feelings, in so far as he thought about it at all. And he'd been brought up in a certain way, hadn't he? Kind as he is, to him, after all, and this is going to sound ghastly and old fashioned, but for him finally Blagges and Ketty were just servants. His servants.'

As you were both her servants: but Jemima left that thought unspoken too. As she drove back through the Lark woods and down the end of the Manor drive, she pondered on a number of things. She pondered on Christabel's enemies: there certainly were plenty of those to be found in and around Lark Manor. In particular she pondered on the whole matter of servants and the extraordinary intimacy which Cartwrights, Ketterings and Blagges had all shared in this beautiful Bridset valley, after Christabel's departure. Until Julian Cartwright, the master, one day shattered the whole thing by casually restoring Christabel to favour.

Mr Blagge, the father of Barry. Jim Blagge: 'a real killer'.
The
real killer? Jemima was still turning over the two phrases in her mind and picturing to herself Jim Blagge rowing his boat like Charon over the Styx - was it Jim Blagge Nat had seen through his binoculars, paying the penalty for it with his life? - when the telephone rang in her hotel suite.

It was Detective Inspector Harwood. He was proposing a cup of tea on his way home.

'Something to report to Jemima Shore Investigator,' he said jovially. 'Blagge, you know, the butler fellow from Lark Manor, the father of the late unlamented pop star, I believe, the one the good lady ran off with. We have a witness who saw him leaving the Watchtower Theatre.'

'To get Christabel Cartwright's shawl—' began Jemima, still rather confused by the way the telephone call had broken right into her own thoughts on the subject.

'No, no a second visit about an hour later,' Detective Inspector Harwood sounded increasingly jolly. 'More like eleven o'clock. While the Cartwright party were still carousing at the hotel. Now why, I wonder, did Mr James Blagge not mention that little fact in his statement to the police?'

Jim Blagge: a real killer? Jemima put the telephone quietly down and awaited the visit of Detective Inspector Harwood with something much closer to melancholy than the policeman's own cheerful mood.

11

Arrested Rehearsal

E
veryone was
in
a
very tense mood at the rehearsal of
The Seagull
which took place two days later. It was doubly unfortunate that Megalith's tight camera schedule demanded that this particular rehearsal be filmed. Jemima agreed to reason with Cy Fredericks on behalf of Boy Greville but without much hope of success: she was well aware that further postponement would be financially disastrous for Megalith on top of the delays already incurred by what Cy Fredericks termed rather crossly down the telephone 'these wretched deaths'.

It could never be said that the services of Spike Thompson and the rest of the crew all installed - more or less contentedly - at the Royal Stag were to be secured at light cost. Moreover the profits of Flora's Kitchen would, Jemima felt, bear some close relation to the losses incurred by Megalith Television, since none of the crew condescended to eat anywhere else once it was discovered that Flora's Kitchen was listed in the
Good Food Guide
as 'expensive but worth it - if you have the money and decide to lavish it on lavish Bridset food given pseudo-Fl
orentine names and served in pse
udo-Florentine surroundings'. Spike Thompson and the rest of the crew found it, on behalf of Megalith, a decision easy to make: so after a bit Moll and Poll, with fine appreciation of the workings of the market, thoughtfully put up their prices.

At least Spike Thompson proved a tower of strength during the filming of the rehearsal. Guthrie and Jemima felt deeply grateful to him for the usual mixture of unflappability and ferocious energy which he displayed -and he cut a reassuringly urban and flamboyant figure as he darted behind the camera and then away, in his scarlet polo-necked jersey beneath the black leather jacket. The sound engineer on the other hand was in a highly neurotic mood - possibly induced by a prolonged diet of over-rich food - causing him to groan over tragic noises of interference
from the Larminster traffic, inaudible to anyone else; he also grumbled perversely about the isolation of the theatre and its proximity to the shore. At one point he even complained that he was picking up the cry of a seagull.

'Isn't he rather overdoing it in his appreciation of Emily Jones's performance as Nina?' murmured Guthrie to Jemima. 'Every time she declaims, "I'm a seagull", I suppose he mistakes it for the real thing.'

Everyone - except possibly Spike - was in a tense mood, and everyone had their problems. The Megalith lighting crew, for example, had not formed a notably high opinion of the lighting system at the Watchtower, nor had they exactly sworn brotherhood with the theatre's stagehands. Guthrie Carlyle reminded himself that his problems lighting the Parthenon for his non-controversial programme,
The Elgin Marbles -Ours or Theirs?
had been worse, the Greek crew getting thoroughly excited over something; possibly the non-controversial subject matter, possibly the length of the lunch-hour, he never dared enquire.

'On the other hand at least the Parthenon itself stayed put,' he reflected gloomily. It was fair to say that within the Watchtower theatre no one very much stayed put, even someone like Old Nicola, who had no part to play in the rehearsal itself. Lacking a role in
The Seagull,
she had nevertheless infiltrated rehearsals early on, accompanied by her ancient grey plastic bag full of knitting. Even Nat Fitzwilliam had lacked the requisite energy to stop her; and under the new regime of Boy Greville, any threat of removal was met by: 'Oh that poor sweet Nat! What a little genius, wasn't he just? He didn't mind Old Nicola being here, but if you feel differently dear, if you don't quite feel the confidence yet dear, never you mind, you just tell Old Nicola first thing and she'll go quietly.'

So Old Nicola knitted on, regaling listeners with anecdotes of bygone
Seagulls,
mainly featuring her own performances. She claimed to have played Nina and Masha on alternate nights in one season at Stratford.

'And I bet she got the two parts mixed up half the time,' Christabel had been heard to comment. 'Fiendish to play with. She always was, even when she just had one part to remember.' She spoke just within earshot of the older woman, whose hearing, where her own interests were concerned, remained quite acute.

Now the presence of the television crew galvanized Old Nicola into fresh activity. Somehow she always managed to be sitting knitting in exactly the path of the camera and had to be moved at the last minute. In moving, she showed an infallible instinct for selecting a seat which would prove to be in the direct path of the next shot.

'Off you go, my old darling. On your way again,' Spike would shout blithely. Guthrie felt less tolerance.

'Can't we lose her?' he muttered desperately. 'Like forever?'

'By putting her head in her own grey plastic bag?' suggested some other member of the crew enthusiastically. Jemima heartily agreed with the sentiments: she was being personally badgered by Old Nicola to interview her for television on
My Wonderful Long Years in the British Theatre:
'You could just let the cameras roll and Old Nicola would give it to you; no need for any of your cutting and editing, I can assure you; Old Nicola knows by this time just what interests an audience.' But she declined to join in the jolly discussions about Old Nicola's possible fate; supersti-tiously, she remembered wishing some dreadful doom to overtake Nat Fitzwilliam. Old Nicola, for all her cunning and trouble making, looked quite physically frail: another 'wretched death', even the natural death of an old lady, was the last thing that Megalith needed.

Boy Greville clearly felt that he had problems enough as director today, without tackling Old Nicola. The extreme agitation which he displayed in private life on matters such as his health, gave way to such a violent nervosity in public when he was working, that Jemima wondered at first how any of his productions ever succeeded in opening. Yet Boy Greville had an excellent reputation as a director over a number of years, and actors were said to like working with him. Jemima could only suppose that they exerted themselves extra frantically on his behalf, in order to try and alleviate at least some of the worst of his sufferings.

'I can't go on with this sort of thing much longer,' he had been heard to groan to Tobs, who at his tender age was having undeniable problems with the character of Dr Dorn: 'The strain on me, personally: you can't imagine—' Tobs straightened up the painful hunched back with which he was attempting to convey Dr Dorn's burden of years, and tried to comfort his director.

Today however the strain was universal. Emily Jones wept a little, and her voice, always a little too high when she was nervous, did take on a kind of bird-like screech in Nina's speech with its reiterated phrase 'I'm a seagull' which gave all too much point to Guthrie's aside.

No doubt the television cameras were adding to the production's troubles by making everyone additionally nervous but it was difficult to believe that anything by Boy Greville, adapted at the last minute from a production by Nat Fitzwilliam, could ever have gone very smoothly. Nat's 'underwater' conception still haunted the production in the shape of certain costumes, as well of course as the set itself, with its unlikely-looking plaster rocks and realistic-looking - because it was real -fisherman's netting. At least Boy had got rid of the sand from the set, which was driving everybody mad, including Mrs Nixon and Joan who were in charge of cleaning the theatre.

There were a number of good reasons why the set could not be replaced. There was the time element: the Larminster Festival was due to open with the production of
The Seagull
at the Watchtower in under a week's time. There was the expense element: the finances of the 
Watchtow
er were shaky enough already, despite contributions from friendly local magnates such as the Cartwrights and the work of the Festival Committee, without the expense of scrapping one whole set and building a new one.

'Committee wouldn't stand for it. Nor would the Chairman,' Major Cartwright, who was the Chairman, told Cherry. He had taken a marked fancy to her, choosing to use her as his conduit of information to Megalith as a whole. His passion was expressed in a series of invitations to meals at expensive restaurants rather further afield than Flora's Kitchen. To the Royal Harbour Hotel at Lar Bay, the Queen Mar)' at Bridchester, Giovanni e Giovanna, improbably to be found just outside the tiny rustic village of Deep Larkin, Major Cartwright drove Cherry at high speed in his Bentley without speaking. The food was always delicious. All this atoned to Cherry, in some measure at least, for the failure of Julian Cartwright to cast any glances at all in her direction.

'Just have to grin and bear it. That's what
I
always say anyway about a night
at
the theatre.' So the Major closed the subject of any possible further expense on the Larminster production of
The Seagull.

Leaving aside the humorous properties of the play itself - and Nat Fitzwilliam had given the company several interesting lectures on 'Chekhov and the Harmonious Laughter of the Future' - Cherry thought the Major would probably find a good deal to grin about
in
The Seagull
production, if that was what he wanted. There might have been even more, if Boy Greville had not insisted on altering at least some of the more ludicrous 'underwater' costumes, where it could be done cheaply.

Thus Emily as Nina was no longer dressed as a mermaid and Vic Marcovich as Trigorin had thankfully got rid of his Neptune's trident, as well as adding extra garments of a rather more conventional nature to the brief golden loincloth required by Nat. No one had ever discovered why Trigorin was to be played as a sea-god: and now it was too late to find out. Ollie Summertown, however, still wore Konstantin's original white sailor-suit, although with the short trousers lengthened (he rather fancied himself in it, he told Cherry, what with his new Bridset tan, and was sorry that his knees were not after all to make their debut on television). And Tobs clung to his sou'wester and oilskins which he had decided lent to Dr Dorn what he described as 'an old tar's dignity - I'm a kind of ship's doctor I think'.

Christabel too still wore her original costume. Since this was made of becoming white muslin, over a large hoop skirt, it did give her a suitably nineteenth-century air, especially once the festoons of dark-green seaweed were ripped off the skirt and bodice. Christabel therefore looked appropriately Chekhovian and even elegant,
at
a distance: the special grace which she brought to every stage movement was underlined by the sway of her huge skirt.