Swan Song (5 page)

‘Don't be such a damned fool,' said Adam, more sharply than he had intended. ‘He's under contract.'

‘So am I,' Shorthouse countered unpleasantly. ‘But that's not going to stop me walking out if rehearsals continue on the present lines. I can assure you it isn't a personal matter: it's only Wagner I'm thinking of.'

The notion that Shorthouse might be thinking of anyone but himself was almost too much for Adam; he uttered an incoherent snorting sound. Barfield was unwinding a packet of chocolate. Pogner strode across the stage, muttering fiercely to himself, and Rutherston appeared, gesticulating at the electrician in his gallery. A horn-player in the orchestra pit was engaged in a prolonged Jeremiad about some infraction of Union rules.

Ten minutes later the rehearsal was under way again. The Guilds entered; the boatload of maidens arrived; the apprentices danced (‘like a Sunday School treat,' Rutherston remarked); and last of all came the Mastersingers, headed by a banner bearing an effigy of David and his harp. The chorus sang in honour of Sachs; as the acclamation died away, all was ready for the moving response of the cobbler-poet.

AND THAT WAS
when the real trouble started.

There was a minor hitch over positioning, followed by a misunderstanding as to the point in the score at which the music was to be recommenced. Shorthouse snapped at Peacock; Peacock snapped back at him, and then they went for one another, as Adam afterwards put it, ‘like a nationalization debate in the Commons'. Although it was an eruption which everyone had expected, the embarrassment was general, since the sight of two grown-up men bawling at one another like children is at the best of times dispiriting. No one, however, interfered; only, when Peacock finally stalked out, after smashing his baton on the conductor's desk in an access of blind fury, Adam went quietly after him. He heard the murmur of released tension as he left the stage.

Peacock was in the rehearsal-room. He stood quite still, gripping the lid of the piano with both hands and struggling to control his emotions. His bony, irregular, sensitive features betrayed the strain he was undergoing, and his eyes were momentarily vacant and unseeing. Adam hesitated for an instant in the doorway; then said briefly:

‘You have my sympathy.'

There was a considerable pause before Peacock replied. At last he relaxed and said with great bitterness:

‘I suppose I should apologize.'

‘Technically, yes,' Adam commented. ‘Humanly, no.
You must realize that everyone is on your side. Edwin is behaving intolerably.'

Peacock muttered.

‘I ought to be able to control a situation like that. After all, it's all part of my job . . .' He considered. ‘You've more experience of these things than I . . . Should I resign?'

‘Don't be a fool,' said Adam warmly. ‘Of course not.'

‘Naturally, I realize' – Peacock spoke with difficulty – ‘the line it's desirable to take. Genial but firm . . . The trouble is, my nerves won't let me do it. I suppose really I'm unfitted for this kind of work.' He looked so haggard that Adam was shocked. ‘But I've simply
got
to make a success of it. One way or another, it's going to affect the whole of my future career.'

There was a silence. ‘What about the rehearsal?' Adam asked.

‘Tell them it's over, will you? I can't face people at present.'

‘It would be better if you –'

‘For God's sake tell them it's over!'

Peacock checked himself abruptly, and a spasm of shame passed over his face. ‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout.'

‘I'll tell them,' said Adam, and hesitated.

‘For the love of heaven don't do anything rash,' he added, and returned to the stage.

There he made his brief announcement. Shorthouse, he observed, was not present to hear it.

People drifted away, chattering in a subdued fashion. The orchestra began to dismantle and pack up their instruments. Joan Davis accosted Adam.

‘How is he?' she asked.

‘I don't like it,' said Adam. ‘I don't like it at all. Where's Edwin?'

‘He left immediately after Peacock.'

Adam sighed. ‘Well, there's no point in lingering here. Let's go back to the hotel and get a drink.'

‘Do you think we should have a conference?'

‘A conference . . . I scarcely see what would come of it.'

Joan smiled wryly. ‘Nothing, in all probability. But it might clear the air.'

‘After dinner, then – preferably over a drink.'

‘I'll arrange something.' Joan nodded briskly, and went off to her dressing-room.

At the stage-door Adam met Shorthouse on the point of leaving.

On a sudden impulse: ‘What the hell is the matter with you, Edwin?' he demanded.

Shorthouse looked at him queerly, almost blankly. His thin grey hair was dishevelled, and there was sweat on his cheeks and forehead. It came to Adam, with a sudden twinge of horror, that the man might be growing insane. Irrationally, and quite unexpectedly, Adam had a feeling of pity.

But it was wiped away when Shorthouse spoke – thickly, as though the movement of his mouth were painful to him.

‘I shall telephone Levi,' he said, ‘and get that little whipper-snapper kicked out.'

‘Don't be a fool, Edwin.' Adam spoke sharply. ‘Even if Levi agreed, it'd be the beginning of the end for you. You can't antagonize people beyond a certain point without suffering for it.'

But Shorthouse, surprisingly, took no offence. ‘Suffering,' he repeated dully. ‘People don't realize how
I
suffer already . . .' He paused: then, collecting himself, blundered out into the early darkness.

Adam followed him shortly afterwards.

Dennis Rutherston, the inevitable hat perched on the back of his head, leaned back and stared fixedly at the pale amber of the whisky in his glass.

‘Why worry?' he said. ‘It'll smooth itself out. These things always do.'

‘I'm sorry,' Adam interposed with unwonted vigour. ‘But I don't agree.'

They were in the bar of the Randolph Hotel, seated round a table near the door – Adam, Elizabeth, Joan, Rutherston, Karl Wolzogen, and John Barfield. It was eight o'clock of the same evening, and the after-dinner crowd had not yet collected. None the less, a few persistent drinkers shared the room with them. At a neighbouring table, a tall, dark man with a green scarf round his neck was holding forth learnedly on the subject of rat-poisons to a neat middle-aged gentleman of military aspect and an auburn-haired youth with unsteady hands and a rose in his buttonhole. The place was predominantly blue and cream. It was blessedly warm after the cold outside. The clink of glasses, the angry fizzing of a beer-machine behind the bar, and the bell of the cash-register mingled agreeably with the hum of conversation.

Adam was argumentative. ‘This thing is cumulative,' he stated, wagging his forefinger at them by way of warning. ‘It isn't sporadic. And in Edwin's case it seems to be complicated by self-pity. But what it amounts to in the end is this: that either Edwin or Peacock will have to go if we're to open at all.'

‘. . . red squill,' said the dark man at the next table. ‘It causes a very painful death.'

Rutherston sighed. ‘Well, what do you suggest?' he asked. ‘A deputation to Levi?'

‘We've been over all this ground already.' Joan Davis, whom the events of the afternoon had made a trifle reckless in the matter of smoking, lit a new cigarette from the end of the old. ‘Levi would never agree to getting rid of Edwin. Edwin's still box-office, remember. No operatic management can afford to annoy him.'

‘Well, for that matter,' said Adam irritably, ‘no operatic management can afford to annoy us.'

‘Dear Adam.' Joan patted his hand affectionately. ‘Are
you suggesting that we threaten to walk out if Edwin isn't removed? Because I, for one, don't feel much like dealing with an action for breach of contract.'

There was a silence, which was broken at last by Karl Wolzogen.

‘Ach!' he snorted. ‘That fool! Art means nothing to him. The
Meister
means nothing to him. At the age of four I was presented to the
Meister,
in Bayreuth. It was the year before his death. He was abstracted, but kind, and he said –'

The others, though sympathizing with Karl's enthusiasm for this elevating, if precocious experience, had all of them heard about it several times before. They hastened to bring the conversation back to the problem of Shorthouse.

‘Well, have
you
any views, John?' Joan demanded.

Barfield, who was eating ginger biscuits from a paper bag on the table in front of him, choked noisily as a crumb lodged in his windpipe.

‘It seems to me that there's only one answer,' he announced when he had recovered. ‘And that is –'

‘Zinc phosphide,' said the dark man at the next table. ‘A singularly effective poison.'

Barfield was momentarily unnerved by the appositeness of this.

‘I was going to say,' he proceeded cautiously, ‘that we shall simply have to let Peacock go.'

There were cries of protest.

‘All right, all right!' he added hastily. ‘I know it's unjust. I know it's detestable. I know the heavens will cry aloud for vengeance. But what other solution
is
there?'

‘Zinc phosphide,' Elizabeth suggested. It was her first contribution to the discussion.

‘It would be nice,' said Joan wistfully, ‘if we could poison him just a little – just so as to make him unable to sing.'

And perhaps it was at this point that the conference drifted away from the subject of Shorthouse. Certainly it
had become apparent by then that no fresh light on the matter was forthcoming. At about nine the party broke up, and Adam walked back to the ‘Mace and Sceptre' with Elizabeth and Joan.

It was after eleven when he discovered that his pocket-book was missing. Elizabeth was already in bed, and Adam was undressing. The process of disburdening his pockets revealed the loss, and he remembered that during the evening he had paid for drinks out of an accumulation of change.

‘Damn!' he said, irresolute. ‘I believe I left it in my dressing-room at the theatre. I really think I'd better go and fetch it.'

‘Won't tomorrow do?' said Elizabeth. Adam thought that she looked particularly beautiful tonight, with her hair glowing like satin in the light of the bedside lamp.

He shook his head. ‘I really shan't feel happy unless I go and get it. There's rather a lot of money in it.'

‘But won't the theatre be locked up?'

‘Well, it may be. But the old stage-doorkeeper sleeps there, and he may not have gone to bed yet. I'll try, anyway.' He was dressing again as he spoke.

‘All right, darling.' Elizabeth's voice was sleepy. ‘Don't be long.'

Adam went over and kissed her. ‘I won't,' he promised. ‘It's only three minutes' walk.'

When he got outside, he found that the moon was gibbous, very pale, and with a halo encircling it. Its light illuminated the whole of the south side of George Street, and at the end, at the junction with Cornmarket, he could see the steady green of the traffic signals. A belated cyclist pedalled past, his tyres crackling on the ice which flecked the surface of the road. Adam's breath steamed in the cold air; but at least the wind had dropped.

He crossed Gloucester Green. There were still a few cars parked there, the pale moonlight on their metal roofs striped with the yellower rays of the street-lamps. It was very quiet, save for the persistent coughing of a belated
wayfarer stationed ouside the little tobacconist's shop on his left. Adam paused for a moment to read the concert announcements posted on a nearby wall, and then walked on into Beaumont Street.

He had no difficulty in entering the opera-house – indeed, the stage-door stood wide open, though the little foyer inside, with its green baize notice-board and its single frosted bulb, was deserted. By about twenty-five past eleven he had retrieved his pocket-book and was preparing to depart.

His dressing-room was on the first floor, and his decision to go down in the lift must therefore be ascribed solely to enjoyment of the motion. He pressed the button, and the apparatus descended. He climbed in, and traversed the short distance to the ground floor. Then, feeling this short journey to be inadequate, he ascended again, this time to the second floor. Through the iron gates he could see the long, gloomy corridor of dressing-rooms, the gleam of the telephone fixed to the wall at the far end, and the rectangle of yellow light which came from the open door of the stage-doorkeeper's bedroom. After a moment, the stage-doorkeeper himself shuffled out of it. He was an old man named Furbelow, with wispy hair and steel-rimmed spectacles. Adam, sensing perhaps that his presence required some explanation, opened the lift gates and greeted him.

‘Ah, sir,' said the old man with some relief. ‘It's you.'

Adam accounted dutifully for his late visit. ‘But I'm surprised,' he added, ‘to find you still up.'

‘I'm always up till midnight, Mr Langley, and I keep the stage-door open till then. But it's cold down below, so I comes and sits up 'ere during the last part o' the evening.'

‘I should have thought it was equally cold up here, if you keep the door of your room open.'

‘I as to do that, sir, when the electric fire's on. Them things exude gases,' said Furbelow a shade didactically. ‘You ‘ave to ‘ave ventilation when they're alight.'

Adam, though doubting if there was much basis for this assertion, was not sufficiently interested in the stage-doorkeeper's domestic affairs to argue about it. He said goodnight and left the theatre. As he was walking away, a car drew up, and its occupant, a man, hurriedly entered the stage-door. Adam experienced a mild curiosity, but he did not linger, and by the time he had arrived back at the hotel the incident was forgotten.