Cool Repentance (20 page)

It all amounted to this, said Matt Harwood: many people had had Opportunity and Method to kill Nat Fitzwilliam. Only Jim Blagge had had Motive. Only Jim Blagge had had close physical contact with Nat Fitzwilliam on the night concerned. Only Jim Blagge admitted paying Nat Fitzwilliam a late-night threatening call. Jemima was really the only person in Larminster who had any doubts about Jim Blagge's guilt.

Curiously enough, this was not actually true. There was another keen-eyed observer in Larminster who was not quite satisfied that Jim Blagge had murdered Nat Fitzwilliam. This was seventy-nine-year-old Nicola Wain. The old actress, with only her role in
Widow Capet to
consider, was left with a good deal of liberty on her hands as rehearsals of
The Seagull
grew more intense. Knitting, as Old Nicola often remarked, gave her plenty of time for thinking 'and also watching all you naughty boys and girls'. It also gave her plenty of time to figure things out, movements, noises, statements which did not add up.

The room to which she had moved at the Royal Stag, a room about which she constantly complained to anyone who would listen ('No bathroom
en suite,
well, dear, at my age . ..') lay at the top of the service staircase on the first floor. Admittedly the room's single window overlooked the back of the hotel instead of the pretty square which was Larminster's chief beauty and contained the Watchtower Theatre, set among mature trees, in one corner of it. Even Mrs Tennant, the manageress of the Royal Stag, who was an optimist, had had to agree that the view from Old Nicola's room - over the back entrance of the hotel and the courtyard which served as a car-park - was not inspiring. On the other hand she had firmly rebutted the notion that the service stairs, adjoining Old Nicola's room, would prove to be an unpleasant source of nocturnal disturbance.

'No one uses them at night,' Mrs Tennant had assured her querulous guest, at the time of her arrival. 'But we just can't lock them, dear, because of the Fire Regulations. You never know when someone might not need access. In an emergency, that is.'

'Exactly,' Old Nicola had grumbled at the time, as though an emergency was just the kind of needless disturbance she gloomily predicted. Yet in its own way, Old Nicola's sojourn in her little first-floor room had not been unrewarding. Either Mrs Tennant's reassuring remarks about the service stairs not being used except in an emergency had turned out to be inaccurate or perhaps the occasion when they had been used recently had been considered an emergency by the person concerned. Either way, Old Nicola was really quite pleased with the new piece of information which had come her way as a result of her room's geographical location.

As the dress rehearsal of
The Seagull
approached and everyone else grew more and more frantic, Old Nicola began to reach a certain rather interesting conclusion. For, as she told herself, there was really nothing wrong with 'these poor old wits' - wits which had certainly kept her afloat in her own profession, by fair means or foul, for over sixty years.

It remained for Old Nicola to decide exactly what use she should make of this discovery. After a period of thought, spent by the old woman knitting ostentatiously in the lounge at the Royal Stag - the sight of the battered plastic bag from which the knitting emanated began to madden even the good-natured Mrs Tennant - Old Nicola went upstairs to her room. Once there, she locked the door, and placed her knitting, bag and all, in the solitary armchair as carefully as if it had been a child. Then Old Nicola sat down at the tiny writing-desk and began to write a letter.

Although Old Nicola had frequently complained to Mrs Tennant about the size of the desk and the inadequate light above it, on this occasion she looked positively happy as she penned the words in handwriting which, as she often told herself, was really quite remarkable for her age. She did not however think that the person to whom she was addressing the letter would feel quite so happy at receiving it - despite the care with which it was written, and the clarity of the handwriting.

14

Happy Ending

The dress rehearsal of
The Seagull
was not going to be filmed for television. Too like the real thing the next night to be dramatically interesting, Guthrie decided.

'Unless there's a disaster,' contributed Cherry brightly. 'We don't want to miss that, do we?'

'Don't we?' Jemima sounded cold. It was now impossible to enter Cherry's bedroom at the Royal Stag for the reek of fruit - nectarines and peaches - and flowers - mainly fat richly-scented crimson roses sent down from Major Cartwright's greenhouse and garden at Larksgrange. The Major had also started to quote poetry to Cherry over the dinner-table although otherwise his conversation remained strictly gastronomic. In the cosy depths of Giovanni e Giovanna the previous evening, he had recited Tennyson's Song from
The Princess:
'Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white
...'

At the end: 'I wrote that,' said the Major sternly. Cherry, despite months spent working on
Tennyson: The Tortured Years
had not contradicted him, which Jemima told her was very disloyal. Jemima feared the worst: was Flowering Cherry's long quest for the Substantial Older Man in danger of coming to a happy ending?

'We haven't missed many disasters yet,' was Guthrie's gloomy comment. He had just learned from London that the first of his non-controversial programmes about the Elgin Marbles -
Ours or Theirs? -
was held to be such political dynamite by the Greek government that they had locked up an entire Megalith crew (coincidentally out in Greece at the time the programme was shown, harmlessly filming
Sappho: A Woman for Our Time).
Most unfairly, he felt, Cy Fredericks blamed the entire expense of bailing this crew
out of prison on Guthrie. As a
punishment he was threatening to pare down Guthrie's editing time for
In
a Festival Mood: Part IV: A
Seagull
-by-the-Sea.

Only Spike was blithe. This was because in the absence of any filming, he had a free evening which meant he could get over at last to The French Lieutenant for dinner. Its prices sounded promising - if not from Megalith's point of view. He took Jemima's refusal to accompany him (conscientiously she felt she must attend the dress rehearsal) in good part. Spike took food almost as seriously as Major Cartwright: in a way it was a pity they could not eat together as their tastes in this matter at least were very similar.

Guthrie, Cherry and Jemima sat together centrally, but towards the back of the wide amphitheatre, which fanned out from four sides of the pentagonal stage. Gregory came and sat beside Jemima. A good many rows nearer the front sat Julian Cartwright, Blanche and Regina. Ketty was with them.

Gregory whispered to Jemima that he was most surprised to see Julian. 'He never used to come anywhere near a dress rehearsal in the old days. Not invited for one thing. Didn't want to come either, I dare say. Made a polite supporting appearance at the first preview, if there was one, and then a gracious supporting appearance at the First Night. Otherwise he left it at that - apart from picking up a good many bills for large dinners at expensive restaurants when required. As a matter of fact I never thought even in those days Julian was really all that much in love with the theatre as a whole. It was Christabel he loved. When he secured her by marriage, that patient courtship paid off, the
raison d'etre
for all that theatre-going had vanished.'

Gregory smiled. He added, still in a low voice: 'Ironically enough, I always thought that made Julian rather a good sort of husband for a leading actress. Certainly better than an actor would have been - no competition, no rival First-Night nerves in the home. Until events proved me wrong.'

But Julian
was
a good husband, thought Jemima; it was Christabel who had not been a good wife. What was more, she guessed that Julian's presence tonight was due to a laudable desire to support Christabel yet again on the eve of her come-back to the stage.

The lights dimmed, to a sharp cry from Boy Greville - he had warned Jemima earlier that dress rehearsals had an extraordinary effect on the nerves in his spinal cord and he often found himself going into spasms just as they started. His production of
The Seagull
was clearly to be no exception to this painful rule.

Apart from the physical agonies suffered by the director, the first act of the dress rehearsal really went remarkably well. Boy Greville had to lie flat on the thick soft pile carpet of the auditorium. Gallantly, he observed that it was one of the great consolations of his affliction that theatre floors, especially modern ones like the Watchtower, provided an ideal arena for recuperation. He spoke warmly of the Olivier at the National in this context as though recommending an expensive private nursing-home.

'Like dock leaves growing near nettles,' Cherry piped up: her new passion for imparting pieces of country lore, where previously she had concentrated on literature was, Jemima thought, another bad sign.

The company advised Boy to think of himself, and not worry about the production. 'Lie back and enjoy it, like rape,' added Vic Marcovich. In view of what was known about Boy's general passivity, and in view of Vic's special relationship to Boy's wife Anna Maria, this jocular remark if well meant, was felt to be in rather poor taste.

Still, the play went on. In their efforts to atone to Boy for this latest blow of fate, the actors did as well, even better perhaps, than if their director had attended the rehearsal in the more conventional upright position. As a result, the performance was singularly free from those petty theatrical disasters of the sort to be expected and even welcomed at a dress rehearsal because they seemed to promise a trouble-free First Night. 'Dangerously smooth,' Vic Marcovich described it. 'Hope it's not a bad omen for tomorrow.'

In particular Christabel shone. In view of what happened later, the few people who had been present would remember this last shimmering of her talent with agonized regret for what might have been. Guthrie announced in the first break that Christabel was using her voice as if it were a musical instrument whose range was being explored for the first time at the hands of a master. 'A clarinet perhaps,' he suggested enthusiastically, the image clearly taking hold. Jemima, trusting that he would not expect her to incorporate any such sentiment in her commentary, did not speak. She was still deeply moved by what had happened on stage, and wanted to collect her wits before joining the unofficial Critics' Forum.

'Violin!' cried Cherry.

'Bassoon maybe? Christabel's voice is quite deep.' This was Gregory. Cherry shot him a reproachful look. Jemima felt grateful.

All the same, Christabel's voice was peculiarly sonorous and varied that evening. Her performance radiated exactly the kind of automatic careless charm, followed by sudden vulnerability and frightened hungry reclaiming of the wandering Trigorin, which the part of Arkadina, the actress playing the actress, had always seemed to Jemima to require. Gone were all the hesitations and nerves of previous rehearsals. Christabel Herrick was back. Christabel Cartwright was forgotten.

Even Old Nicola, never one to shower a fellow-actor with compliments, acknowledged that. But then Old Nicola was in an unwontedly seraphic humour that evening. Her knitting too was less maliciously orientated, less audacious in its attacks on the ankles and elbows of passersby. It remained incarcerated in the old grey plastic bag at her feet most of the time. Old Nicola did not even attempt to knit during the first three acts of
The Seagull.

'Just as well. I would have murdered her if she had,' muttered Guthrie.

'You keep threatening that kind of thing,' complained Jemima. 'You know Cy's strong views about a director's individual responsibility. If anyone does in Old Nicola we shall have our programme cancelled and it will be all your fault.'

Guthrie snorted. But really, it had to be admitted that Old Nicola was not in a tiresome mood at all, and as a result no one had any proper excuse for wanting to murder her. If she was not, all the same, an absolutely ideal member of a small audience, this was because Old Nicola had a habit of chuckling audibly whenever she herself perceived one of the jokes. These perceptions of Old Nicola's concerning the humorous side of Chekhov had not by any means been shared by the late Nat Fitzwilliam nor by Boy Greville subsequently.

Old Nicola had nevertheless proved quite remorseless in her note-giving after rehearsals: 'You naughty boy, you should really listen to Old Nicola, you know. I've known them all in my day, Stanislavsky, Komisarjevsky, all the Russians. I even went to Moscow. Have I ever told you about the time I was in the audience when Stalin came to the theatre. Now when Stalin laughed, you see, everyone had to laugh
...'

But neither Nat Fitzwilliam nor Boy Greville, disappointingly, was prepared to show undue interest in Stalin's contribution to Russian humour. Besides, Old Nicola's reminiscences were growing more daringly fantastic every day. Since she even claimed to have been bandaged by Chekhov's own hands ('He was a perfect duck, Chekhov, he was a doctor you know, and when I accidentally tripped over at a rehearsal and fell
...'),
perhaps too much credence was not to be given to her memories.

Now her chuckles punctuated the performance like a persistent low cough, irritating when the performance flagged, unnoticeable when it was at its height. During the second break, on the eve of the last act, Old Nicola first went and exchanged some remarks with Blanche, then sidled up to Jemima. Gregory had moved and was chatting to Julian and the girls.