Death Of A Hollow Man (16 page)

On Barnaby’s right Cully slid slowly downward, her shoulders beneath the black lace trembling slightly, and covered her face with her hands. Three seats in front and to the left, he saw Doris Winstanley glance anxiously at her husband. Harold’s profile was rigid, his lips clamped tightly together. Then a light so brilliant it seemed impossible the stage and four walls could contain it shone. This was accompanied by a stellar explosion of glorious sound from the C Minor Mass, then everything faded to a predawn gray. Esslyn finished his final speech, crammed his mouth with sweetmeats, and strode off.

Barnaby watched Harold propel himself up the aisle two steps at a time, then rose himself and turned to his daughter. “Would you like a drink?”

“Oh, Dad.” She got up slowly. “I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. What’s my eye makeup like?”

“Runny.”

“I’m not surprised. We did a cod panto at the Footlights last year, but it wasn’t a patch on that.” She followed him up the aisle. “It must be some sort of a record when you go to the theater and the best thing onstage is the lighting. Oh … oh …”

“Don’t start gurgling again.”

“I’m not …” She snuffled into her hanky. “Honestly.”

As they drew level with the back row of seats and the exit doors, Barnaby saw Mr. Tibbs. He was leaning forward, holding the back of the seat before him. He looked grubby and abstracted, like a saint at his devotions. Barnaby, who hadn’t seen him for nearly two years, was shocked at his physical deterioration. His skin was like tissue paper and salt white. Blue corded veins pulsed on his forehead. Barnaby greeted him and received a smile of singular sweetness in reply, although he was convinced the old man had no idea who it was that spoke to him. Three young people sitting between Mr. Tibbs and the wall kept saying “Excuse me” very politely, but he did not seem either to hear or to understand, and eventually they climbed over the row of seats in front and got out that way.

The clubroom was packed. Cully dug out a wisp of lace and a mirror from her jet-encrusted reticule, spat in the hanky, and wiped away a runnel of mascara. When Barnaby brought her wine, she nodded across at the lighting box on which Harold was tapping more and more urgently. Then he put his lips to the door jamb and hissed. The door remained closed. Clamping his successful impresario’s smile into position, Harold backed away and moved once more into the center of the room, where Cully caught his arm.

“Wonderful lighting,” she said. “Brilliant. Tell Tim I thought so.”

“There’s … there’s no need for that!” cried Harold, put-putting like a faulty two-stroke. “Tim is simply a technician. No more, no less.
I
design the lighting for my productions.”

‘‘Oh. Really?” Cully’s tone, though exquisitely polite, positively curdled with disbelief. Barnaby took her arm and hustled her away.

“I shan’t bring you out again.”

“You used to say that when I was five.”

“You don’t improve. Drink up.” Barnaby made an irritated tch as Cully lowered her delightful nose into the glass and sniffed. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. If you like paraquat and crushed bananas.” Sergeant Troy approached, trailing his resentful wife, and Barnaby forced a smile. “Enjoying yourself, Gavin?” “Not bad, is it, sir?” He spoke to Barnaby, but his eyes were on Barnaby’s companion. “I mean for amateurs.” He continued to stare until the chief inspector was forced to introduce them.

“Your daughter.” Barnaby appreciated Troy’s poleaxed demeanor. Each time Cully returned home, he was newly amazed that such an elegant, sassy creature should be the fruit of his loins. “I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before, Cully.”

“I’m at Cambridge. Final year.”

Yes, you would be, thought Mrs. Troy, reflecting tartly on the unequal distribution of gifts come christening time.

“Oh—this is my wife, Maure,” said Troy, and the two girls touched hands.

“More what?” said Cully.

“Troy,” said Maureen, with a flinty spark in her eye. Once more Barnaby led his daughter out of trouble. As they backed away, he nearly stepped on Tim, who nipped out of the box, looked quickly around the room, and hurried down the stairs. Meanwhile Harold had stormed through the wings shooting glances of disgust at the stage staff—who alone, during the disastrous first half, had hardly put a foot wrong—and was now in the men’s dressing room impresaroing like mad to powerful effect.

“Never …
never
in all my years in the business,” bawled Harold, “have I seen such a grotesque display of mind-boggling incompetence. Not to mention complete lack of verismo. All of you were corpsing. Except Salieri.”

“Do you mind?” said Nicholas angrily. “I certainly wasn’t.”

“We were thrown by the lighting,” said Emperor Joseph. Unfortunately adding, “Fabulous though it was.”

“You should be used to my lighting by now,” squawked Harold, puce with rage.

Nicholas, jaws agape, stared at his director. He had wondered how Harold would react to Tim’s defiant behavior. He had visualized everything from freezing instant dismissal to temper tantrums and violent exhibitionism. What he had never considered, would never have considered in a hundred years, was that Harold would calmly annex the new lighting and represent it as his own.

“All you’ll catch that way is flies, Nicholas,” said Harold. “I shall say nothing more now. You all know you’ve let me down. Yes—you too, Mozart. There’s no need to look at me like that. Where is your sword?”

“Oh.” Tardily, Nicholas realized why he had not fallen over it at the piano. “Sorry.”

“Sorry is not enough. I want an improvement—no, I want a transformation—from everyone here in Act Two. You can do it. I’ve seen you all turn in marvelous work. So go back out there and show them what you’re made of.” He spun around, and a moment later they heard him haranguing the distaff side next door.

“That’s all we need,” murmured Van Swieten. “A little touch of Harry on the night.”

“That man’s his own worst enemy.”

“And when you think of the competition.”

Boris made some tea in polystyrene cups, asking as he wielded the kettle, “D’you think I should make some for Esslyn and his crapulous cronies?”

“Where are they, anyway?”

“Last I saw, he was in the wings rubbishing Joycey yet again about the cakes. God, David—you messy devil—”

“Sorry.” David Smy seized a paper-towel roll and mopped up his tea. “I didn’t know it was there.”

“I saw them all go into the bog.”

“Ooo…” Boris waved a limp wrist. “Troilism, is it? Bags I Cressida?”

“Never. You can say all sorts about Esslyn, but I don’t think anyone seriously thinks he’s gay.”

Just then the three subjects of their conversation appeared in the doorway. They stood very still, their shadows taking a dark precedence, and the overheated, stuffy place suddenly seemed chilly. It was immediately obvious that something was very wrong. The Everards wore looks of sly anticipation, and Esslyn, eyes glittering, darted his head forward in an avid, searching way. The head seemed to Nicholas to have become elongated and slightly flattened. A snake’s head. Then he chided himself for such exaggerated speculations. A trick of the light surely, that was all. Pure fantasy. As must be the idea that Esslyn was looking at him. Searching
him
out. Nevertheless, Nicholas’s throat was dry, and he sipped his tea gratefully.

Esslyn sat down and started to retie his stock. Always self-contained, he now appeared almost clinically remote. But the overcareful movements of his hands, the tremor of his jaw only partially controlled by his clenched lips, and that terrible soulless glitter in his eye told their own tale. No one in the dressing room remained unaware that the company’s leading man was boiling with suppressed rage.

Boris collected the cups in painstaking silence, and the odd remark, uneasily spoken, shriveled as soon as uttered. When the buzzer sounded, there was an immediate exodus, with everyone easing their way cautiously around Esslyn’s chair. As he left, Nicholas looked back and caught a following glance so malign he felt his stomach kick. Convinced now that his earlier perceptions were not merely imagination, he hurriedly away, but not before he noticed that Esslyn had removed all his rings.

Why this should strike him as ominous, Nicholas could not understand. Perhaps it was simply that, given the man’s present volcanic mien, any slight deviation from the norm gave cause for concern. Nicholas joined the other actors in the wings and stood quietly, a little apart, running over his next scene and forcing his mind to reenter the eighteenth century.

With seconds to go, Deidre peeped out into the auditorium. She had taken her father a cup of coffee and had toyed with the idea of putting a little brandy in it (he had seemed so tense and still quite cold) but, not knowing how it might interact with his tablets, had decided against the idea. Now, she watched him, staring eyes unnaturally bright, perched on the very edge of his seat as if preparing for imminent departure. What a terrible mistake it had been to allow him to come. She had almost called a taxi during the intermission to take him home, but feared for his safety if he was left alone in the house until eleven o’clock.

Colin touched her arm and she nodded, her attention now all on the opening of Act II. Esslyn was already in position, a gray shape humped over the back of his chair. As she prepared to raise the curtain, he lifted his head and looked into the wings, and there was on his face an expression of such controlled ferocity that Deidre, in spite of the distance between them, automatically stepped back, bumping into Kitty. Then she cued Tim’s box, the house lights went down, and the play began.

Esslyn turned to the audience and said, “I have been listening to the cats in the courtyard. They are all singing Rossini.”

Silence. Not just lack of laughter. Or a stretch of time punctuated only by the odd cough or rustle or movement of feet, but absolute total silence. Esslyn stepped down to the footlights. His eyes, glittering pinpoints of fire, raked the audience, mesmerizing them, gathering them close. He spoke of death and hatred with terrible, thrilling purpose. In the back row Mr. Tibbs whimpered softly. His hair seemed to stir softly on his neck, although there was not the slightest breeze. In the wings knots of actors and stagehands stood still as statues, and Deidre rang the bell for Constanze’s entrance.

Most actors love a good row onstage, and the argument between Mozart’s wife and Salieri had always gone well. Now, Kitty screamed, “You rotten shit!,” and belabored her husband with her fists. She had her back to Deidre, who was thus facing Esslyn and watching in mounting horror as he seized his wife by the shoulders and shook her, not with the simulated fury that he had shown in rehearsals but in a wild rage, his lips drawn back in a snarl. Kitty’s screams, too, became real as she was whirled round and round, her hair a golden stream whipping across her face, her head on its slender support snapping back and forth with such force it seemed impossible her neck would not break. Then he flung her so violently from him that she staggered across the stage and was only halted by smacking straight into the proscenium arch.

Deidre, appalled, looked at Colin. Her hand hovered near the curtain release, but he shook his head. Kitty stood for a moment, winded, fighting for breath, then she sucked in air like a drowning man, took two steps, and fell into Deidre’s arms. Deidre led her to the only space in the crowded wings, next to the props table, and pulled up one of the little gilt chairs. She lowered the girl gently into it, handed her clipboard to Colin, and took Kitty’s hand in hers.

“Is she all right?” Nicholas came up and whispered. “What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s Esslyn. I don’t know … he seems to have had some sort of brainstorm. He just started throwing her about.”

“Christ.”

“Can you sit with her while I get some aspirin?”

“I’m on in two secs.”

“Get one of the ASMs, then. Kitty, I shan’t be a minute, okay?”

“ . .
my back …
ahh … God …”

Deidre ran to the ladies’ dressing room. The first-aid box kept always on the windowsill in the far corner behind the costume rail as not there. Frantically she started searching, pulling the actresses’ day clothes—Rosa’s fur coat, Joyce’s looped gray wool—flinging various dresses and skirts aside. She knelt down, hurling shoes and boots out of the way. Nothing. And then she saw it. Sticking out from behind Rosa’s wig stand. She grabbed the box and the aspirin, struggling with the screw top. It seemed impossibly stiff. Then she realized it was a “child proof” cap that you needed to push down first. Even as she shook out three tablets, she recognized the futility of what she was doing. Aspirins were for trivial ailments. A headache, a rise in temperature. What if Kitty’s spine was damaged? What if every second’s delay increased the dreadful danger of paralysis? At the least, she might be about to lose the baby … Deidre suddenly felt afraid. She should have ignored Colin and stopped the play. Asked if there was a doctor in the house. It would be her fault if Kitty never walked again. She forced this dreadful possibility from her mind and murmured, “Water … water.” There were various mugs and polystyrene beakers scattered about, all with dirty brown puddles in the bottom. Deidre seized the nearest mug, rinsed it out, half filled it with cold water, and ran back to the wings.

The first thing she heard was Nicholas’s voice from the stage. This meant the first scene was over, the set change effected, and scene 2 well under way. She had been longer than she thought. She hurried over to the props table, but the chair where she had left Kitty was empty. Deidre crossed to Colin, who, on her mouthed “Where is she?” mouthed back “Toilet.”

Kitty was walking up and down the tiled floor when Deidre entered. Walking stiffly, stopping every few steps to ease her shoulders, but still, thank God, walking. Deidre preferred the aspirin and the mug, only to be met with a flood of invective the like of which she’d never heard in her life. The fact that it was aimed at Kitty’s husband and Deidre just happened to be in the firing line hardly lessened the shock. The language left her face burning, and she “sshh’d” in vain. Some of the words were familiar from the text of
Amadeus,
and one or two more from the odd occasion when Deidre had been compelled to use a public lavatory, the rest were totally unfamiliar. And they had a newly minted ring, as if normal run-of-the-mill abuse could not even begin to do justice to Kitty’s fury, and she had been compelled to create powerfully primed adjectives of her own.