‘They’d have known soon enough.’
‘Why?’ said Elizabeth with great determination. ‘I want to know why you think you have to… w H Y.’
‘It’ll have great moral effect,’ said Theodore.
‘That’s no justification.’
‘I can assure you it’s necessary.’
‘Necessary for what?’
‘For the revolution.’
‘What will it achieve for the revolution?’
‘Don’t argue with her, Theodore,’ said Alexander. ‘You won’t get anywhere, and the thing has to be done whatever anybody thinks about it.’
Elizabeth looked steadily up at him. ‘To shoot an unarmed man is a terrible thing to do, and for you to shoot that man is revolting.’ She was wise enough to say no more of not believing in his ability to kill in cold blood. ‘You’ll be using your position to get close to him without him suspecting anything, so you won’t be giving him any sort of chance. And what’s he ever done to you or anyone else to justify the least violence against him? He’s always treated you kindly, too kindly for your own good perhaps, but I’d be willing to swear he’s never done you an injury. And this is how you repay him.’ She looked away and paused and then spoke in a new tone. ‘I’ve been in love with you for two years while knowing you’re rather a fraud. Now I think you’re rather evil. But I still love you. I don’t suppose you can be bothered to try to imagine what that’s like, so I’ll tell you – it’s hell.’
Bursting abruptly into tears, Elizabeth turned and ran towards the house. Alexander gave a cheer and clapped his hands, but so quietly that she could not have heard. The other two had moved a little way off and Theodore was talking in gentle, serious, explanatory tones while Nina listened attentively, nodding her head from time to time, by the look of her not far from tears herself.
17
The music recital, which included works by Dowland, Purcell, Sullivan, Elgar, the composer of ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay’, Noel Coward, Duke Ellington (taken to have been an English nobleman of some sort), Britten and John Lennon, fell a long way short of the disaster Theodore had feared. The audience remained good-natured throughout and even applauded after several of the items. They disappointed the organisers, however, by talking loudly and continuously from start to finish, or rather for all but the first five minutes, when the strangeness of the experience almost silenced them. Somebody pointed out afterwards that they had not been told of the custom of keeping quiet at such shows; somebody else said this might have been just as well. The performance the following evening of ‘Look Back in Anger’ was an out-and-out success. Only very rarely in the past could the theatre have rung with so much happy, hearty laughter. Afterwards the members of the cast had been chaired round the neighbouring streets by an enthusiastic crowd.
The night after that (Thursday) was to see the production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ that had earlier interested Alexander. He made preparations to attend. These included obtaining through unofficial channels not only a ticket but something called a dinner jacket and a dickey with a small black bow-tie clipped to it, made specially for the occasion like the church clothes. He also got one of the servants to make him up a bouquet of flowers from the garden and arranged for its delivery at the theatre. A couple of days earlier to do as much might have seemed too troublesome, but the recent decline in his passion for Mrs Korotchenko, consequent on her persuasions in the matter of her daughter, had allowed his interest to move in other directions.
He changed in Theodore’s office, had a pint of best bitter and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich at the Marshal Stalin in St John’s Street and strolled round the corner to the theatre. It was a fine September evening, unusually hot and sticky for the time of year. A few people passed in the streets; most had already gone to their homes or to the lodgings that served as their homes in this cut-off island. Two military policemen, noticeable for their blue cross-belts and gaiters, moved slowly by in step, hands clasped behind backs. All was quiet. And yet in seventy-two hours, more like seventy-six hours to be exact, the revolution was to be launched and everything would be changed, set off by his shooting of his father. Was he going to be able to do it? He must; not to would be admitting to himself, and to others, that he was a trifler, a poseur, a booby. No going back now.
The foyer of the theatre was crowded with expectant English, none of whom had attended the play the previous evening (it had been a question of one or the other), but they had obviously heard all about it. Some were reading parts of the programme aloud for the benefit of illiterates among their hearers. A doubt or two was expressed whether a story of the kind summarised there could be very funny, but the doubters cheered up a little on finding that the characters called Mercutio and the Nurse were considered by experts to demonstrate Shakespeare’s powers of comedy at their best.
The appearance of many of the men present would have struck most observers as odd. The dinner jackets they wore were just that; inefficiency and shortages had prevented the matching trousers from being ready in time. There were those like Alexander who had managed to find something not too incongruous among their own (usually very small) stocks of clothes; others had settled for tweed-like patterns or corduroys of various colours. The women looked strange too, though collectively rather than singly. A further set of shortages had caused them all to be wearing the same dress, a garment with a narrow and on-the-short-side skirt (to save material), no sleeves (same reason; hard on the not-so-young) and an unfetching round neck. By a stroke of petty lavishness, at the last minute so to speak total uniformity had been averted; exactly half the dresses were electric blue and the others emerald green, giving their wearers the appearance of opposing teams about to engage in some little-known sport. Not many younger people turned up and those that had were mostly in the bar downstairs. Nothing stronger than beer and stout was on sale, but a certain amount of spirits was being drunk, having been illegally distilled and brought along in pocket-flasks, or rather small bottles of all sorts. Here and there a mild rowdiness was beginning to show itself.
The ringing of a bell immediately produced something of a hush. When a bell rang, it meant authority was calling for attention, and plenty of those in bar and foyer could vividly remember the time when it had been wise to respond to that call without reserve. But the word soon got round that taking one’s seat was as much as was asked for. This process went on longer than would once have usual, given the number of parties and couples with no member able to read. In the end it was done and there fell another relative silence, in which this time an immense rustling of paper could be heard as several hundred boxes of chocolates, one to each seat, were torn open and their contents explored. A Russian researcher of unusually wide reading had come across the remark (sarcastically intended) that chocolates seemed to be compulsory at English theatrical performances. Those of tonight contained sweet pastes of uncertain flavouring, but they went down well enough with men and women who had had an early supper of (typically) cabbage soup, belly of pork with boiled beets, and stewed windfalls. After another pause the house lights were dimmed.
A tubby old man came on to the stage in front of the curtain. His painted face and his clothes, which were hard to imagine as the attire of any person in the real world, combined with the circumstances to suggest at once that here was an actor. Applause, led by a small claque, greeted him and he bowed. Confirmation of his histrionic status was soon given by his manner of speech, monotonous but unnatural, the voice dropping at the end of every line of verse. When he came to the words ‘the hour’s traffic of our stage’ there was of course nobody to remark this notice that the text of the production had been cut by something like half or the metrical deficiency of the altered line. The man soon finished his say and, to more applause, withdrew. The curtain rose.