While Geoffrey poured the drinks, Charles moved over to the shelves to inspect a theatrical model he had noticed when he came in. It was a stage set of uneven levels and effectively placed columns. Plastic figures were grouped on the rostra.
Geoffrey answered the unspoken question as he handed Charles his sherry. ‘Set for The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I’m directing it for the Backstagers in the new year.’
‘You’re a meticulous planner.’
‘I think as a director you have to be. In anything to do with the theatre, in fact. You have to have planned every detail.’
‘Yes, 1 could tell that from your Trigorin.’
‘I’m not sure whether that’s meant to be a compliment or not, Charles.’
‘Nor am I.’
Geoffrey laughed.
‘No, Geoffrey, what I mean is, you had more stagecraft than the rest of the company put together, but occasionally one or two tricks — like that very slow delivery on key lines, separating the words, giving each equal emphasis — well, I was conscious of the artifice.’
Geoffrey smiled, perhaps with slight restraint. ‘Don’t waste it, Charles. Keep it for the Critics’ Circle. Professional criticism.’
The record had ended. The stylus worried against the centre groove. Geoffrey seemed suddenly aware of it and, with a look at Charles, he switched off the cassette player. He replaced the disc in its sleeve and marshalled it into a rack.
The conversation clipped. Charles found himself asking about the previous night’s television. Dear, oh dear. Slip-pine into commuter habits. ‘Did you get back in time for your ration of rape and murder in 1, Claudius last night?’
‘No. I was back in time but I left Vee to watch it on her own. I did some work on Leontes. Trying to learn the bloody lines.’
‘Shakespearean verse at its most tortured. How do you learn them? Have you any magic method?’
“Fraid not. It’s just read through, read through. Time and again.’
‘It’s the only way.’
At that moment Vee called from downstairs to say the meal was ready.
There was quite a crowd in the Back Room before the Critics’ Circle. And for once they had a topic of conversation other than the theatrical doings of the Breckton Backstagers.
Denis and Mary Hobbs had been burgled. They had come home from their weekend cottage at about midnight the previous night and found the house full of police. A burglar had smashed one of the diamond panes in a downstairs front window, reached through and opened it, gone upstairs and emptied the contents of Mary’s jewel box.
That’s what’s so horrible about it,’ she was saying into her fourth consolatory double gin, ‘- the idea of someone in your house, going through your things. It’s ghastly.’
‘Were they vandals too? Did they dirty your bedclothes and scrawl obscenities on your walls?’ asked sour Reggie hopefully.
‘No, at least we were spared that. Remarkable tidy burglars, closed all the cupboards and doors after them. No fingerprints either, so the CID. boys tell us. But After her proprietory reference to the police force, she warmed to her role as tragic queen. ‘… that only seems to make it worse. It was so cold-blooded. And the idea of other people invading our privacy — ooh, it makes me feel cold all over.’
‘Did they get much?’ asked Reggie, with morbid interest.
‘Oh yes, there was quite a lot of good stuff in my jewellery box. Not everyday things — I dare say a lot of them I don’t wear more than twice a year. But I’d got them out of the bank for this Masonic do of Denis’s last Monday and it didn’t seem worth putting them back, because next week there’s this dinner-dance thing at the Hilton — did I tell you about that?’
The snide expressions on the faces of the surrounding Backstagers suggested that Mary missed no opportunity to give them details of her posh social life. Anyway, the question seemed to be rhetorical. The role was shifting from tragic queen to wonderful person.
‘Oh, I don’t care about the stuff as jewellery. I’m not materialistic. But they’re presents’ Den’s given me over the years, birthday, Christmases and so on. That’s the trouble-the insurance will cover the value in money terms, but it can never replace what those things mean to me.
‘It serves us bloody right,’ said her husband. ‘We’ve talked enough times about having a burglar alarm put in. But you put it off. You think it’ll never happen to you.’
‘Do the police reckon there’s a chance of getting the culprits?’
‘I don’t know. Never commit themselves, the buggers, do they? But I think it’s unlikely. They seem to reckon the best chance was missed when Bob first saw the light.’
‘What light?’
‘Oh, didn’t you hear?’ You tell them, Bob.’
Robert Chubb took his cue and graciously moved to centre stage. ‘I was the one who discovered the ghastly crime. Proper little Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps I should take it up professionally.
‘I’d been sorting through some stuff in the office last night after I handed the bar over to Reggie and I was walking home past Denis and Mary’s at about ten-fifteen, when I saw this light.’
Years of amateur dramatics would not allow him to miss the pregnant pause. ‘The light was just by the broken win(low. It shone on the jagged glass. I thought immediately of burglars and went back to the office to phone the police. Incidentally — ’ he added in self-justification, in case Denis’s last remark might be construed by anyone as a criticism, ‘the boys in blue told me I was absolutely right not to try to tackle the criminal. Said they get as much trouble from members of the public who fancy themselves as heroes as they do from the actual crooks.
‘Anyway, my intervention does not seem to have been completely useless. They reckon the burglar must have seen me and that’s what frightened him off. He appears to have scampered away in some disarray.’
‘Yes,’ Mary Hobbs chipped in, temperamentally unsuited to listening to anyone for that length of time. ‘He left his torch behind in the window sill. The police are hoping to be able to trace him through that.’
Robert Chubb, piqued at losing his punch-line, changed the subject. Like a child who dictates the rules of the game because it’s his ball, he brought them back to his dramatic society. ‘Oh, Charles, about the World Premieres Festival, did you bring along that play of yours? The committee would really like to have a look at it. Need a good new play, you know.’
Embarrassed at the fact that he actually had got it with him, Charles handed over the script with some apology about it being very light.
‘Oh, the lighter the better. I’m sure it has the professional touch. And, talking of that, I do hope that in your criticism this evening you will apply professional standards to The Seagull. We always do and hope others will. So please don’t pull your punches.’
‘All right. I won’t.’
As soon as Charles started speaking to the rows of earnest Backstagers in the rehearsal room, it was clear that they did not like being judged by professional standards.
He began with a few general observations on Chekhov and the difficulties that his plays presented. He referred to the years of work which had gone into the Moscow Arts Theatre’s productions. He then went into detail on Chekhovian humour and stressed the inadvisability of playing Russian servants as mugging Mummerset yokels.
He moved on from this to the rest of the cast. He gave a general commendation and then made detailed criticism. He praised Charlotte’s controlled innocence as Nina and the technical skill of Geoffrey’s Trigorian. He faulted Clive Steele’s Konstantin for lack of discipline and regretted that the part of Madame Arkadina was beyond the range of all but a handful of the world’s actresses. But, rather against his better judgement and to sugar the pill, he congratulated Mary Hobbs on a brave attempt.
He thought he had been fair. Out of deference to their amateur status and because he had no desire to cause unpleasantness, he had toned down the criticism he would have given a professional cast. He thought his remarks might have been overindulgent, but otherwise unexceptionable.