Caroline Graham
Death Of A Hollow Man
To Beryl Arnold with love
Curtain Raiser
“You can’t cut your throat without any blood.”
“Absolutely. People expect it.”
“I disagree. There wasn’t any blood in the West End production.”
“Oh, Scofield,” Esslyn murmured dismissively. “So mannered.”
The Causton Amateur Dramatic Society (CADS) were taking a break during a rehearsal of Amadeus. The production was fairly well advanced. The Venticelli were finally picking up their cues, the fireplace for the palace at Schonbrunn was promised for the weekend, and Constanze seemed at long last to be almost on the point of starting to learn at least one or two of her lines, while remaining rather hazy as to the order in which they came. But the sticky question as to how Salieri should most effectively cut his throat had yet to be solved. Tim Young, the only member of the company to shave the old-fashioned way, had promised to bring his razor along that very evening. So far, there was no sign of him.
“You … um … you can get things, can’t you? That make blood? I remember at the Royal Shakespeare Company—”
“Well, of course you can get things, Deidre,” snapped Harold Winstanley. (He always reacted very abrasively to any mention of the RSC.) “I don’t think there are many people present who are unaware of the fact that you can get things. It’s just that I do try to be a tiny bit inventive … move away from the usual hackneyed routine. Comprenez?” He gazed at the assembled company, inviting them to admire his superhuman patience in the face of such a witless suggestion. “And talking of routine—isn’t it time we had our coffee?”
“Oh, yes, sorry.” Deidre Tibbs, who had been sitting on the stage hugging her corduroyed knees in a rather girlish way, scrambled to her feet.
“Chop-chop, then.”
“If you think Scofield was mannered,” said Donald Everard, picking up Esslyn’s put down, “how about Simon Callow?”
“How about Simon Callow?” shrilled his twin.
Deidre left them happily trashing their betters and made her way up the aisle toward the clubroom. Deidre was the assistant director. She had been general dogsbody on dozens of productions until a few weeks ago, when, fortified by a couple of sweet martinis, she had shyly asked the committee to consider her promotion. To her delight they had voted, not quite unanimously, in her favor. But the delight was short-lived, for it seemed that her role vis-à-vis the present state of play at the Latimer was to be no different from that at any time previously. For Harold would brook no discussion (his own phrase) on points of production, and her few tentative suggestions had either been ignored or shot down in flames. In the clubroom she took the mugs from their hooks and placed them very carefully on the tray to avoid clinkage, then turned on a thin thread of water and filled the kettle. Harold, quick to describe himself as a one-man think tank, found the slightest sound disturbing to his creative flow.
Of course, as a director, Deidre admitted sadly to herself, he had the edge. Twenty years earlier, before settling down in the little market town of Causton, he had acted at Filey, produced a summer season at Minehead, and appeared in a Number One Tour (Original West End Cast!) of Spider’s Web. You couldn’t argue with that sort of experience. One or two of them tried, of course. Especially newcomers, who still had opinions of their own and hadn’t divined the pecking order. Not that there were many of these. The CADS were extremely selective. And Nicholas, who was playing Mozart while darkly awaiting the results of an audition from the Central School of Speech and Drama. He argued sometimes. Esslyn didn’t argue. Just listened attentively to everything Harold said, then went his own unsparkling way. Harold consoled himself for this intransigence by directing everyone else to within an inch of their lives.
Deidre spooned cheap powdered coffee and dried milk into the mugs and poured on boiling water. One or two little white beads bobbed to the surface, and she pushed them down nervously with the back of a spoon, at the same time trying to remember who took sugar and who was sweet enough. Best take the packet and ask. She went cautiously back down the aisle, balancing her heavy tray. Esslyn had got onto Ian McKellen.
“So—quite against my better judgment—I allowed myself to be dragged along to this one-man effort. Nothing but showing off from start to finish.”
“But,” said Nicholas, his gray eyes innocently wide, “I thought that’s what acting was.”
The Everards, poisonous brown-nosers to the company’s leading man, cried, “I know exactly what Esslyn means!”
“So do I. McKellen has always left me stone cold.” Deidre slipped in her question about the sugar.
“Heavens, you should know that by now, poppet,” said Rosa Crawley. “Just a morceau for me.” She dragged the words out huskily. She was playing Mrs. Salieri, and had never had such a modest role, but in Amadeus it was the only mature feminine role available. Obviously servants and senior citizens were beneath her notice. “You’ve been keeping us sustained through so many rehearsals,” she continued. “I don’t know how you do it.” There was a spatter of mechanical agreement in Deidre’s direction, and Rosa trapped a small sigh. She knew that to be gracious to bit players and stage management was the sign of a real star. She just wished Deidre would be a bit more responsive. She accepted her chipped mug with a radiant smile. “Thank you, darling.”
Deidre parted her lips slightly in response. Really, she was thinking, with a waistline like a Baleen whale, even one morceau was one too many. To add to her annoyance, Rosa was wearing the long fur coat she (Deidre) had bought from Oxfam for The Cherry Orchard. It had disappeared after the closing-night party, and wardrobe had never been able to lay hands on it again.
“Oh, my God!” Harold glared into his mug, blue glazed with h.w. (dir) on the side in red nail polish. “Not those bloody awful ferret droppings again. Can’t somebody produce some real milk? Please? Is that too much to ask?”
Deidre handed out the rest of the mugs, following up with the sugar bag, avoiding Harold’s eye. If real milk was wanted, let someone with a car bring it. She had enough stuff to lug to rehearsals as it was.
“I’m a bit worried about the idea of a razor at all,” said Mozart’s Constanze, returning to the point at issue, “I don’t want a fatherless child.” She made a face into her mug before leaning back against her husband’s knee. Esslyn smiled and glanced around at the others as if asking them to excuse his wife’s foolishness. Then he drew the nail of his index finger delicately across her throat, murmuring, “A biological impossibility surely?”
“One of the problems about a lot of blood,” said Joyce Barnaby, wardrobe mistress/keeper of the cakes/singing noises off, “is getting Esslyn’s shirt washed and ironed for the next night. I hope we’re going to have more than one.”
“Molto costoso, my darling,” cried Harold. “You all seem to think I’m made of money. The principals’ costumes cost a bomb to hire as it is. All very well for Peter Shaffer to ask for ten servants all in eighteenth-century costume …”
Joyce sat back placidly in her seat, picked up Katherina Cavalieri’s braided skirt, and continued turning up the hem. At least once during the rehearsals of any production, Harold railed about how much they were spending, but somehow, when things were urgently needed, the money was always there. Joyce had wondered more than once if it came out of his own pocket. He did not seem to be a wealthy man (he ran a modest import-export business), but threw himself so completely into the theater, heart, body, mind, and spirit, that none of them would have been surprised, if he had thrown his profits in as well.