Solly had not liked bringing up the matter of the fee, and in his relief he replied as though the presence of Molly and the little Cobblers backstage were all that was needed to make life perfect. He then brought up the matter of Mr Snairey. Cobbler opened his mouth very wide, so that Solly was able to see the pillars of his throat, and laughed in a wild and hollow manner.
“I know it’s a nuisance,” said Solly, “but Mrs Forrester has asked him, and he has accepted, and it was only with some difficulty that we persuaded her that Snairey’s choice of music might be, well, undistinguished. You don’t think you could get along with him, I suppose, just for the sake of peace?”
“My dear fellow,” said Cobbler, “my whole life is moved by the principle that the one thing which is more important than peace is music. It is because I believe that that I am poor. It is because I believe that that many people suppose that I am crazy. It is because I believe that that I have just said that I will take care of the music for your play. I shall get no money out of it, and my experience of theatre groups leads me to think that I shall get little thanks for it. If, as you suggest, I get along with old Snairey for the sake of peace, it will be your peace, and not mine. I have not often heard him attack anything which I would dignify with the name of music, but when I have done so, that music has been royally—indeed imperially and even papally—bitched. I shall have nothing to do with him, in any circumstances whatever.”
“That creates rather a situation,” said Solly.
“If I’m to be captain of music I must be allowed to pick my own team.”
“Yes; I see that, of course.”
“And you also see, if I mistake not, that you will have a terrible row with Mrs Forrester, and another with old Snairey. Let me give you a piece of advice, Bridgetower; don’t borrow trouble. To a surprising extent trouble is a thing one can allow other people to have, if one doesn’t throw oneself in its path. You have already the harried look of a man who regards himself as the Lamb of God who takes upon him the sins of the whole world. That’s silly. Now let me tell you what to do: go back to Mrs Forrester and tell her—in front of witnesses, mind—that I’ll do it, but I won’t have Snairey. Then let her deal with Snairey. He’s senile, anyhow. Promise him a couple of seats for the play and he’ll be all right. Pass the buck. It’s the secret of life. You can’t fight every battle and dry every tear. Whenever you’re dealing with something that you don’t really care about, pass the buck. You’ve got me to do your music; that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Very well then, let Mrs Forrester clean up the mess.”
He turned again to the keyboard, and began to improvise very rapidly in the manner of Handel, singing the words “Pass the buck” in a bewildering variety of rhythms and intonations. Solly, sensing that the interview was over, left the house, and for some distance down the street he could hear the extemporaneous cantata, for piano and solo voice, on the theme “Pass the buck”.
Solly gave Nellie Cobbler’s message, in front of witnesses as he had been told to do, at the very next rehearsal; he chose a moment when she was already distracted by other worries, said his say, and hurried off to attend to something else. He felt that he was behaving meanly, but comforted himself with the assurance that in certain complex situations perfect honour and fair dealing were out of the question. And he had, indeed, enough to worry him. Larry Pye, who had not read The Tempest, was discovering from the rehearsals which he occasionally overheard that there were magical devices in the play which he was expected to supply. His technique in meeting this problem was in the best Cobbler tradition of passing the buck. “You plan ‘em, and I’ll make ‘em,” said he, and Valentine had asked Solly, as her assistant, to see what he could do.
Solly’s first move when confronted with a problem was to seek help from books. The Waverley Library, he discovered, was fairly well stocked with books about magic as anthropologists understand the word, and it could provide him with plenty of material about medieval sorcery; it also contained books by Aleister Crowley and the Rev. Montague Summers which assured him feverishly that there was plenty of magic in the world today. But of practical illusion it yielded only The Boy’s Book of Magic and two books by Professor Louis Hoffmann, who wrote about card tricks in an intolerably facetious style and obscured his already obscure explanations still further with Latin quotations and badly drawn diagrams. After two days of poring over these works Solly reported to Valentine that Shakespeare’s blithe direction “with a quaint device the table vanishes” was still impossible of realization by any means which he could discover.
“Oh, never mind then,” said she; “we’ll just use the old pantomime tipover trick. It is really the simplest when it’s well done. I merely thought you might find something better.”
So she had known a way of doing it all the time! For five minutes Solly was convinced that he hated Valentine.
He could not hate her for long, however. He was compelled, many times at each rehearsal, to admire the firmness, the good humour, the speed without haste, the practical knowledge of the stage, and the imagination which she applied to the task of training the actors of the Salterton Theatre to do what they had never done, or dreamed of doing, before in their lives. She very soon discovered what each actor might reasonably be expected to give, and then set to work to make sure that he gave it all. It was she who revealed to the world, and to Mr Leakey himself, that Mr Leakey could be quite funny if he didn’t try to be his very funniest. It was she who found out that Mr Shortreed had a large bass voice, and could outroar Professor Vambrace. It was she who demonstrated that The Torso, having once been made to cry, could stand perfectly still on the stage and look unexpectedly distinguished as well as merely pretty. And it was she who allowed it to be seen, tactlessly, in Nellie’s opinion, that Griselda Webster was a slacker, unwilling to make a sustained effort.
It was she, moreover, who dealt with the difficult problem created by Mrs Crundale. This lady might have been an artist of some attainment if she had not married Mr Crundale, and devoted her best efforts to furthering his career as a bank manager. The costumes which she designed for The Tempest were charming and imaginative. It was true that all the Reapers were expected to reveal a great deal more muscular shoulder and leg than they were likely to possess, and that costumes which she had designed for emaciated people seven feet tall had to be adapted for plump people considerably shorter after the casting had been done. But this was not the crux of the problem presented by Mrs Crundale. The crux was simply that she had designed costumes for Ariel, all the goddesses and the Nymphs which required that their bosoms be bare, not partly or fleetingly, but completely and indeed aggressively. She had shown these designs to almost everyone connected with the play and everyone had obediently admired them, while wondering what was to be done.
Mrs Crundale’s position was clear, and had been clear for years. She was an Artist, and to her the human body was simply a Mass, with a variety of Planes; twelve years ago she had explained this thoroughly after a nice-looking rugby player from Waverley had spiritedly declined her invitation to pose for a portrait in the nude. Nobody connected with the Little Theatre quite liked to explain to Mrs Crundale that the breasts of several well-known young ladies of Salterton, though undoubtedly Planes, had other connotations, and could not fittingly be unveiled at a public performance. But Valentine did so.
“These dresses will look charming when they are standing still, Mrs Crundale,” said she, “but when the girls dance your line will be completely spoiled. I suggest that you revise these slightly, giving some concealment for a strapless brassiere underneath.”