The Heart of the Dales (40 page)

‘Well, just make sure that you are there when I go on stage, Percy,' I told him. ‘The sound effects are pretty complicated in that last scene.'

‘No worries,' he said, blowing out a great cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘It's all in hand.'

I had to admit that I did worry. The final scene of the play involves me, playing Colonel Graham, bringing news to Mrs Hathaway, aka the Dame of Sark, that the island has been liberated and that her husband is safe and well. As the curtain rises on the final scene, Handel's
Water Music
is playing on the wireless and this is followed by the announcement from Alvar Liddell: ‘This is London. We are interrupting programmes with the great news that Berlin has fallen and that the German Armed Forces in Italy have surrendered unconditionally to Field Marshal Alexander.' Then the
Trumpet Voluntary
plays. I enter with the good news of the German surrender of the island but, during my conversation with the Dame, there is an explosion offistage. Mrs Hathaway switches on the wireless to listen to Winston Churchill announce: ‘The cease-fire began yesterday to be sounded all along the fronts, and our dear Channel Islands are also to be freed today.' Then the telephone rings with news that the young German soldier, who has been kind to Mrs Hathaway during the Occupation, has been blown
up while dismantling a mine in the harbour. So, in terms of sound effects, it was the most demanding part of the play and had only been rehearsed once properly at the dress rehearsal. I had a feeling that things might not go to plan.

In the dressing room, I found the male members of the cast, most of them in their German uniforms, in argumentative mood and far too involved to notice me. I stood in the doorway to listen.

‘The lights are too bloody bright,' complained Winco. ‘It's like flying a Hurricane into the sun out there. Couldn't see a blasted thing. Put me off my stride. Kept on forgetting my lines. Damned hot as well.' He dabbed at his make-up, which was indeed glistening.

‘And why don't they ask that man with the infernal cold to leave,' said Malcolm, the man playing the part of Major Lanz. ‘It's very disconcerting when you're trying to say your lines, with him sneezing and spluttering and coughing.'

‘You should complain,' moaned George Furnival. ‘If this Luger pistol was real, I'd shoot that ruddy woman on the front row. Every time I walkon stage she says, “Oh, it's him again.”'

‘And who gave permission for them to take photographs and blind people with the flashing?' asked Malcolm of no one in particular.

‘It's the last time I'm doing this,' said George Furnival. ‘I nearly did my back in getting the coffin up those stairs, and then that little lunatic who is supposed to be directing this farce and has now gone AWOL, says I couldn't put it on the stage. It would have been a really good way to close the play.'

‘Quite apart from giving yourself free advertising,' said Malcolm.

‘That's not the point!' snapped George. He caught sight of me standing by the door, smiling. ‘And you can take that silly grin off your face as well,' he said. ‘You've missed most of the rehearsals and now only arrive when it's nearly all over.'

‘Good evening, my happy band of fellow thespians,' I said cheerfully, heading for the corner where I relieved myself of my burden.

‘Don't get settled in there,' said George. ‘You're in the other dressing room.'

‘I'm all right here, thank you,' I replied. ‘I can squeeze in.'

‘No, no, you're not!' exclaimed George. ‘You're in dressing room two. It's the Germans in here. The British are next door.'

‘What?'

‘We can't be fraternising with the enemy,' he said. ‘We're on opposing sides. Getting pally with you lot will interfere with us getting into our roles as Nazis so you can clear off to the other dressing room.
Schnell!
It's Germans only in here.'

‘George,' I said, ‘may I remind you that this is a play. It is not for real.'

‘A play,' he snorted. ‘Is that what it is? I thought it was more of a fiasco.'

The production was saved, as ever, by the remarkable improvised efforts of Mrs Cleaver-Canning. In Scene Five, Winco, no doubt still dazzled and disconcerted by the stage lights, missed out half his lines with the result that we were into the final scene a good five minutes earlier than we should have been. Percy, no doubt still squatting on his stool like a gnome with his bottle of brown ale, missed the cue for both Handel's
Water Music
and the
Trumpet Voluntary.
When Mrs Cleaver-Canning switched on the wireless, no voice of Alvar Liddell came across the airwaves. Undaunted and with the aplomb of a seasoned actor, she blamed the batteries and did a very fair summary of what the announcer would have said had the wireless worked. Luckily, I was alert to what was happening and I entered on cue with the news that Mrs Hathaway's husband was safe and well, and that the Germans had handed in their guns and were now clearing the mines in the harbour. This was the point when there was to have been the loud explosion but, of course, nothing was heard. There was still no sign of Percy who should have been positioned in the wings, controlling the sound effects. I looked desperately at Mrs Cleaver-Canning.

‘What was that?' she exclaimed, ad-libbing and staring into the wings with an excessively dramatic gesture.

‘What?' I replied nervously, following her gaze.

‘I thought I saw a flash.'

‘A flash?' I repeated.

‘From the harbour.'

‘The harbour?'

‘Yes, the harbour,' she said, slowly and deliberately. ‘Could it have been a mine exploding?'

‘A mine?'

‘Please don't keep repeating me, Colonel,' said Mrs Cleaver-Canning. ‘Did you not inform me that you had instructed the Germans to dismantle the mines in the harbour?'

‘I did?'

‘Yes, you did,' she said. ‘Perchance one has exploded.'

‘Ah yes,' I said, ‘I believe it could have been a mine.' Some of the audience, aware that things were not going exactly to plan, began to titter. Please let this end, please let this end, I kept repeating to myself. I was frozen to the spot and quite unable to keep up with Mrs C-C. Then I caught sight of a small woman in black, sitting in the very centre of the front row. She had a crab-apple-sour mouth and was holding a small notebook. I knew at once it was the feared theatre critic, Marcia McCrudden.

‘What's the time?' asked Mrs Cleaver-Canning.

‘W-what?' I stuttered. Someone in the audience, quite close to the front, chuckled, which added further to my discomfiture and, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the theatre critic scribbling something in her notebook.

‘I asked if you could tell me the time, Colonel,' she said.

‘The time?' I repeated. I knew I was beginning to sound like a parrot.

‘We're forgetting Mr Churchill,' announced Mrs Cleaver-Canning.' She fiddled with the knobs on the wireless. ‘You don't mind, do you?'

‘No, I'd like to hear it,' I replied, knowing full well that there was no chance of that. I looked despairingly into the wings but there was still no sign of Percy. Where the devil was he? He should be getting ready to play the broadcast.

‘Flat batteries, I'm afraid,' said Mrs Cleaver-Canning, banging the top of the cabinet with the flat of her hand. ‘Everything seems to stop working in wartime. Perhaps you know what Mr Churchill would have said, Colonel Graham, had we been able to listen to it on the wireless?'

‘Erm, erm,' I stuttered. ‘I'm… I'm…'

‘No?' she said. ‘Well, I imagine he would have announced the cease-fire, informed us that the dear Channel Islands have been liberated, that the war is over and that the cause of freedom has triumphed over the scourge of tyranny.'

‘I guess he would,' I mumbled.

Following the Prime Minister's broadcast, the telephone should have rung. The stage was deathly silent. Mrs Cleaver-Canning and I looked at each other for a moment.

She then picked up the receiver. ‘Oh, it seems to be working again,' she said. ‘I think I'll ring Major Lanz and see what that explosion was.' She dialled a number. ‘Hello, hello, is that Major Lanz? A soldier? What? One of ours? One of yours? What happened? Was there a fight? A mine? The English colonel's here. I'll tell him.' She replaced the receiver. ‘A young German soldier's been killed by a mine down at the harbour.'

‘Oh,' was all I could manage to say.

At this point Percy finally arrived, offistage right. The next moment, the wireless came to life with a loud rendering of Handel's
Water Music
, the telephone rang and a loud explosion could be heard offistage. Through all the cacophony, Mrs Cleaver-Canning bravely and very loudly declaimed the final words of the play.

‘It goes on, Colonel Graham,' she said. ‘It goes on. When will it ever stop?'

As soon as I was offistage, I hurried to the dressing room and changed quickly, keen to be on my way. Percy was the one who had now ‘done a runner' and couldn't be found. Raymond, who had surfaced just in time to observe my dismal performance, was being comforted by Mrs Cleaver-Canning
with the aid of a wet flannel and Winco's brandy flask. I decided to slope off before the post-mortem but as I reached the stage door George Furnival appeared like the pantomime villain.

‘Well, that was a bloody masterful performance of yours tonight,' he said.

‘Thank you for those few kind words of encouragement, George,' I replied. ‘If Winco had not cut short half his words, and if Percy had provided the sound effects as he should have done, I would –'

‘It's all very well you blaming others,' he interrupted. ‘You know what my old dad used to say?'

‘No, I don't and I'm really not that interested,' I told him.

‘A good workman never blames his tools.'

‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?' I asked.

‘Well, I thought you were supposed to be good with words. You could have made a bit up instead of leaving it all to Margot. You could have done a bit of improvisation.'

‘Improvisation?' I repeated. ‘Ah yes, improvisation. You mean like introducing a coffin into the play? Goodnight George.'

I left him open-mouthed, and headed for the stage door.

It was a bright but chilly November afternoon as I drove along a narrow ribbon of empty road beneath a pale cloudless sky on my way back to the office from Willing forth, a small rural village set in the depths of the Dales. The countryside was looking as though it were ready to settle down for the winter. In the corners of fields, where the sun had not reached, I could still see traces of the morning's hoar frost. The heather on the moors beyond was now dead, and appeared like a dark troubled ocean. Here and there, the colour was broken by clumps of ochre-coloured bracken that were still standing.

Suddenly, as I turned a sharp bend, a small boy, perhaps ten or eleven, ran across the road straight in front of me, his elbows moving like pistons. I slammed my foot on the brake and screeched to a halt, missing him by a whisker. The boy scrabbled over the dry stone wall encrusted with lichen, and shot across the fields like a hare pursued by hounds.

A moment later three other boys, much bigger in build, emerged from a small copse at the side of the road, red in the face with exertion and panting like greyhounds. They stopped at the roadside when they caught sight of me, said something to each other and then moved off down the road away from me, looking back occasionally to see if I were still there.

I sat for a moment with my hands resting on the steering wheel, thinking what might have happened had I been travelling down that road a few seconds earlier.

Then I started forwards again, driving extra slowly and keeping my eyes peeled just in case there should be a recurrence of the incident. Half a mile along the road I spotted the boy who had run out in front of me; he was sitting on the grass verge. I pulled over and wound down the car window.

‘Whatever were you playing at, running out in front of me like that?' I asked him angrily and, as I did so, immediately recognised who it was. His wavy red hair was the giveaway.

‘I was in an'urry,' the boy replied, refusing to look at me but staring down mulishly at his feet.

‘I could see that,' I said, ‘but you might have got yourself killed – Terry Moss up!'

At the sound of his name, the boy looked up, surprise showing on his little sharp face. I had met this young lad a couple of years before when I had gone out to Willing forth Primary School at the request of the head teacher, Miss Pilkington, who wanted my advice on how to deal with a particularly disruptive pupil – one Terry Moss up.

He had come from a deprived background, where there had been some abuse and certainly a great deal of neglect, but was now being fostered by a local doctor and her husband who were trying their best, under difficult circumstances, to give the boy some affection and stability. When he had started at the school, Terry had been rude, very naughty and destructive, shouting out in class and refusing to do his work but Miss Pilkington had persevered. After showing incredible patience and tolerance and investing a great deal of her own time, she had made real progress with Terry, and the boy's behaviour had improved by leaps and bounds.

The head teacher had discovered that the boy had a natural way with animals. He was the only pupil that the school cat would allow to stroke her, and he liked nothing better than feeding the birds at playtime; they would fly down to him in the small playground as if knowing that they had nothing to fear. On a visit to a farm, he had been fascinated by the cows and the sheep, and was determined that when he left school he would work on the land and one day have a smallholding of his own.

‘Do you remember me, Terry?' I asked him now.