“Oh,” Rosa exuded kind concern. “You poor lamb. I’ve got some twizzies. Hang on.” She riffled in her box. “Have you put anything on it?”
“No. Just given it a rinse.”
“Here we are.” Rosa picked up some tweezers smeared with greasepaint. “Let’s have a look, then.”
Nicholas handed over his thumb while eyeing the surgical appliance with some disquiet. “Shouldn’t we sterilize them or something?”
“Good Lord, Nicholas. You want to enter the profession, you’ll have to learn to take something like this in your stride.”
Nicholas, who had never seen the willingness to embrace septicemia as one of the more obvious qualities a young actor might find useful, jibbed at this robust assertion.
“There.” Rosa extracted the splinter with surprising gentleness, then rummaged in her handbag, produced a grubby Band-Aid, and peeled off the shiny backing. “How did you come to pick it up, anyway?” Nicholas told her. “Oh, how you exaggerate.”
“I do not. He went straight for the jugular.” But even as he spoke, Nicholas was aware of a watering down of his conviction. The cozy air of normalcy in the dressing room and the fact that no one in the wings had noticed anything untoward were encouraging a slight feeling of unreality about his recollections. But there was one thing that was true and very real. Nicholas said, “And he shook the living daylights out of Kitty.”
“Did he?” Rosa smiled and wrapped the Band-Aid extra tenderly around her companion’s thumb. “Naughty boy.” Nicholas rightly assumed that this reproof was intended for Esslyn rather than himself, although it seemed astonishingly mild under the circumstances. “I expect he discovered,” continued Rosa creamily, “that she was having an affair.”
“Bloody hell! How did you know that?”
“Common knowledge, darling.”
Nicholas, swamped by guilt, sat contemplating his throbbing hand. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t told Avery and Tim, it would never have got out. So much for Avery’s promises. And for all he knew, Tim had blabbed as well. They were both as bad as the other. “Pair of gossipy old queens,” he muttered.
“Sorry?”
“Tim and Avery.”
“Well, really, darling,” continued Rosa, “if you feel like that about homosexuals, you may just be entering the wrong profession. I understand there’s at least one in every company.”
Nicholas stared at her severely, no longer grateful for the Band-Aid. How would she know what there was in every company? Swathed in her nylon wrapper with its collar of molting cerise ostrich feathers. Playing the leading lady, regurgitating chunks of past performances, trailing shreds of ersatz glamor as false and tawdry as last year’s tinsel. The Latimer, thought Nicholas savagely, was the perfect place for her, along with the other poseurs and has-beens and never-would-be’s and deadweights. Conveniently he forgot past kindnesses. The patience and encouragement shown to a neophyte who hadn’t known a claw hammer from a codpiece. The support and refuge offered when he had suddenly left home. He only knew that he was sick of the whole narcissistic bunch. He jumped up, startling Rosa.
“I’m going to watch the end. Coming?”
“I don’t think so, angel,” replied Rosa, batting her false lashes, gluey with mascara. “I have seen it all before.” In the wings actors were gathering for the call. Nicholas, last in the queue (Esslyn being already in situ), lined up by Emperor Joseph and said, “What a night.”
“Carry on up the Schonbrunn, lover.”
David Smy passed them carrying his valet’s tray with the razor, wooden dish of soap, folded towel, and china bowl complete with rising steam. One of the ASMs pushed Salieri’s wheelchair on, and David followed. He put his tray down on a little round table, took his master’s will as instructed, and retired to the back of the stage to amend his signature. Salieri picked up the razor, stepped down to the footlights, and spoke, directly and passionately, to the audience.
“Amici cari. I was born a pair of ears. It is only through hearing music that I know God exists. Only through writing music that I could worship …”
In the wings Joyce prepared to step forward. Behind her the Venticelli hovered ready for their final entrance.
“… To be owned … ordered … exhausted by an Absolute … And with it all meaning …”
Maureen Troy, although not actually sorry the end was nigh, found herself experiencing a shade of disappointment. Because she definitely fancied that bloke playing the wop. Just her mark. Tall, dark, and handsome, and old enough to have a grown-up daughter in the cast if Maureen’s program was anything to go by. Maybe the evening wasn’t going to be a total bust after all. Her husband’s shifty glances in Cully Barnaby’s direction had not gone unnoticed, and two could play at that game. Maybe she could wangle an invite round the back and introduce herself.
“…now I go to become a ghost myself. I will stand in the shadows, when you come to this earth in your turn …”
Cully, on the other hand, had been impressed by Mozart. Obviously inexperienced and somewhat all over the place, he had still given an energetic and very sensitive performance, with touches of real pathos. She found herself wondering about the actor. How old he was. How serious about the theater.
“And when you feel the dreadful bite of your failures— and hear the taunting of unachievable uncaring God—I will whisper my name to you. Salieri: Patron Saint of Mediocrities!”
Tim in his box said, “Truth will out.” Avery smiled, and Harold ran over his first-night speech. Tom Barnaby still sensed a slide toward misrule and sat upright and unrelaxed. In the back row Mr. Tibbs had lost the theater entirely, and wandered in a dark wood pursued by demons and the howling of wolves.
“And in the depths of your downcastness you can pray to me. And I will forgive you. Vi saluto. ”
Esslyn lifted the razor and, with one dramatic sweep, drew it across his throat. It left a bright red line. He stood for a moment frowning down at the blade, unexpectedly scarlet. He swayed forward, then jerked himself upright as if with great effort. The keeper of the cakes bustled cheerfully on with the breakfast tray. Salieri took a step to meet her. She stared at him, her mouth shaped in a silent O, then she dropped the tray and caught him as he fell. Then she screamed. Shrieks of pure terror. Over and over again. While the bright blood flowed over her snowy fichu and dove-gray skirt onto the boards beneath.
Enter the Broker’s Men
Barnaby was out of his seat and onto the stage within seconds. Troy followed hard on his heels.
“Get the curtain down!” Deidre looked blindly at and through him. “Get it down.”
There was a sweep of velvet plush as Colin released the holding mechanism cutting off the grisly tableau from the audience’s startled and excited gaze. Barnaby looked to his wife. She was standing absolutely rigid, her face blank, her eyes tightly closed. Esslyn, his life ebbing, hung around her neck with almost balletic grace, like a dying swan.
Troy slipped his hands under the man’s armpits and lowered him with infinite pointless care to the floor. Barnaby stepped outside the curtain. No need to say, “Could I have your attention please?” The conversation ceased as if by magic.
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” he said calmly. “If you’d remain in your seats for a few moments, please. Do we have a doctor present?”
No one spoke. Tim had put up the house lights, and Barnaby noticed Harold’s empty space and the swinging door by row A. Cully’s seat was also unoccupied. He stepped back onto the stage where Sergeant Troy, knife-creased trousers stained crimson, was kneeling, his head turned to one side, his ear almost touching Esslyn’s lips. The sergeant’s mouth was pursed, and his brow pleated with the effort of concentration. He felt an exhalation; cold, infinitely frail, and heard one exhausted sound. The narrow red line was now a gaping incision, and Esslyn’s eyes were glazed. A moment later his life was over. A great crack of thunder, ludicrously apt, was heard, then the patter of rain on the roof. Troy stood up.