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Nobody was watching that night, it was too bitter for lovers. Nobody saw Charlotte Hancock open the door of her sepulchre, with the beating wings of pigeons applauding her vigour as she shambled out to meet the moon. Her husband Gerard was with her, he less fresh than she, having been dead thirteen years longer. Joseph Jardine, en famille, was not far behind the Hancocks, as was Marriott Fletcher, and A
So the show went on.
‘If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die —‘
Galloway could not be found at Curtain; but Ryan had instructions from Hammersmith (through the ubiquitous Mr Lichfield) to take the show up with or without the Director.
‘He’ll be upstairs, in the Gods,’ said Lichfield. ‘In fact, I think I can see him from here.’
‘Is he smiling?’ asked Eddie.
‘Gri
‘Then he’s pissed.’ The actors laughed. There was a good deal of laughter that night. The show was ru
‘They’re all sitting in the Gods,’ said Eddie, ‘but your friends, Mr Lichfield, do an old ham good. They’re quiet of course, but such big smiles on their faces.’
Act I, Scene II; and the first entrance of Constantia Lichfield as Viola was met with spontaneous applause. Such applause. Like the hollow roll of snare drums, like the brittle beating of a thousand sticks on a thousand stretched skins. Lavish, wanton applause.
And, my God, she rose to the occasion. She began the play as she meant to go on, giving her whole heart to the role, not needing physicality to communicate the depth of her feelings, but speaking the poetry with such intelligence and passion the merest flutter of her hand was worth more than a hundred grander gestures. After that first scene her every entrance was met with the same applause from the audience, followed by almost reverential silence.
Backstage, a kind of buoyant confidence had set in. The whole company sniffed the success; a success which had been snatched miraculously from the jaws of disaster.
There again! Applause! Applause!
In his office, Hammersmith dimly registered the brittle din of adulation through a haze of booze.
He was in the act of pouring his eighth drink when the door opened. He glanced up for a moment and registered that the visitor was that upstart Calloway. Come to gloat I daresay, Hammersmith thought, come to tell me how wrong I was. ‘What do you want?’
The punk didn’t answer. From the corner of his eye Hammersmith had an impression of a broad, bright smile on Galloway’s face. Self-satisfied half-wit, coming in here when a man was in mourning.
‘I suppose you’ve heard?’
The other grunted.
‘She died,’ said Hammersmith, begi
Galloway said nothing in reply to this news. Didn’t the bastard care? Couldn’t he see that this was the end of the world? The woman was dead. She’d died in the bowels of the Elysium. There’d be official enquiries made, the insurance would be examined, a post-mortem, an inquest:
it would reveal too much.
He drank deeply from his glass, not bothering to look at Galloway again.
‘Your career’ll take a dive after this, son. It won’t just be me: oh dear no.’
Still Galloway kept his silence.
‘Don’t you care?’ Hammersmith demanded.
There was silence for a moment, then Galloway responded. ‘I don’t give a shit.’
‘Jumped up little stage-manager, that’s all you are. That’s all any of you fucking directors are! One good review and you’re God’s gift to art. Well let me set you straight about that —‘
He looked at Galloway, his eyes, swimming in alcohol, having difficulty focussing. But he got there eventually.
Galloway, the dirty bugger, was naked from the waist down. He was wearing his shoes and his socks, but no trousers or briefs. His self-exposure would have been comical, but for the expression on his face. The man had gone mad: his eyes were rolling around uncontrollably, saliva and snot ran from mouth and nose, his tongue hung out like the tongue of a panting dog.
Hammersmith put his glass down on his blotting pad, and looked at the worst part. There was blood on Gallo-way’s shirt, a trail of it which led up his neck to his left ear, from which protruded the end of Diane Duvall’s nail-file. It had been driven deep into Galloway’s brain. The man was surely dead.
But he stood, spoke, walked.
From the theatre, there rose another round of applause, muted by distance. It wasn’t a real sound somehow; it came from another world, a place where emotions ruled. It was a world Hammersmith had always felt excluded from. He’d never been much of an actor, though God knows he’d tried, and the two plays he’d pe
The applause died, and as if taking a cue from an unseen prompter, Calloway came at him. The mask he wore was neither comic nor tragic, it was blood and laughter together. Cowering, Hammersmith was cornered behind his desk. Galloway leapt on to it (he looked so ridiculous, shirt-tails and balls flip-flapping) and seized Hammersmith by the tie.
‘Philistine,’ said Galloway, never now to know Hammersmith’s heart, and broke the man’s neck — snap! — while below the applause began again.
‘Do not embrace me till each circumstance
Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump
That I am Viola.’
From Constantia’s mouth the lines were a revelation. It was almost as though this Twelfth Night were a new play, and the part of Viola had been written for Constantia Lichfield alone. The actors who shared the stage with her felt their egos shrivelling in the face of such a gift.
The last act continued to its bitter-sweet conclusion, the audience as enthralled as ever to judge by their breathless attention.
The Duke spoke: ‘Give me thy hand;
And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.’
In the rehearsal the invitation in the line had been ignored: no-one was to touch this Viola, much less take her hand. But in the heat of the performance such taboos were forgotten. Possessed by the passion of the moment the actor reached for Constantia. She, forgetting the taboo in her turn, reached to answer his touch.
In the wings Lichfield breathed ‘no’ under his breath, but his order wasn’t heard. The Duke grasped Viola’s hand in his, life and death holding court together under this painted sky.