All evening she imagined him, exhorting the chorus and standing behind the stage, singing and shaking his hands in the air, possessed by a will to electrify the show and sweep it to the heights. When she went to bed in the silence of their empty suburb, she could imagine the day when Guy would be too busy ever to come home at all. They might meet occasionally for an instant or two, but he would disappear from her life. He would have no part in it. He would simply have no time for anything that was important to her.
Next evening, staff cars took the players and their friends to Tatoi, where the main hangar had been rigged out as a theatre. The wind, sweeping over the dark reaches of the airfield, was wet with sleet. The women were not dressed against the dank and icy chill inside the hangar and the officer-in-charge, noticing that the visitors were shivering, sent to the store and fitted them all out with fur-lined flying jackets.
The curtain went up and the boys and girls, feverish from their all-night effort, burst into uproarious song:
Just as Harriet had imagined, Guy’s hands could be seen waving wildly behind the two lines of the chorus.
The concert-party jokes were applauded with good-natured resignation. In spite of all the work, the first half of the show was neither better nor worse than most shows of its kind. It was Maria Marten that turned the entertainment into a triumph.
Maria, played by Yakimov, was met with unbelieving silence. Wearing false eyelashes, a blond wig, a print dress and sun-bonnet, he looked like a wolf disguised as Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, but a wolf imitating outrageous, salacious girlhood. When he tripped to the footlights, put forefinger to chin and curtsied, a howl rose from the back of the hangar. The men, who had respectfully applauded the real women, were released into a furore of bawdry by the travesty of femininity. Yakimov acknowledged the shouts and whistles by fluttering his eyelashes. The howls were renewed. A full three minutes passed before anyone could speak.
Alan, a monstrous and sombre mother-figure, opened the play, saying: ‘You have not been well of late, Maria dear! What ails thee, child?’ to which Maria, in a light epicene voice, coyly replied: ‘Something strange has happened to me, mother dear.’ This produced a stampede over which could be heard cries of ‘Watch it, girl’, ‘Up them stairs’, and ‘Meet me behind the hangar and I’ll see what I can do’.
The text, concocted by the players themselves, had been bawdy enough in its original, but under the stimulus of rehearsals, much more had been added. While Yakimov held the stage, there was a cross-talk of ribaldry between actors and audience. Maria’s violent death brought a sense of loss to both.
Her burial by William Corder, played by Ben Phipps, was followed in tense silence. Phipps made heavy weather of digging the grave but filling it in, he said: ‘This is easier work than the other,’ and the tension lifted. Someone shouted: ‘Don’t forget to camouflage it,’ and uproar broke out again. The villain, peering villainously through his spectacles, found he had lost his pistol. Then a terrible realization came: he had buried it with the body. The audience groaned. Someone asked: ‘Did you sign for it, chum?’ Corder, lacking courage to reopen the grave, sloped off.
In the next act Corder, splendidly attired in a frock coat, his top-hat balanced on his arm, stood posed beside a potted palm. ‘Well, here I am in London, and all is well,’ he told the audience; but it was not well for long. Guy, stating that he was a Bow Street Runner, visited Corder and extended evidence of guilt: the pistol found in the grave. Corder repudiated it. In a rich voice of doom Guy declared: ‘Here are your initials on the butt: W.C.’ The rest was lost in catcalls. Corder, on the gallows, the rope about his neck, was permitted to make a last defiant speech. Not a sound came from the audience. Purged of pity and terror, it had shouted itself mute.
A party was given for the visitors in the officers’ mess. Harriet had seen Charles Warden in one of the front seats. Not knowing whether he had joined the party or not, she kept her back to the room, feeling his presence behind her while she listened to Mrs Brett. Mrs Brett, having gathered Surprise and the other pilots about her, wished to make evident how much she knew of their flying conditions. ‘It’s disgraceful the way they won’t let you have an airstrip near the frontier. That long haul – 200 miles, isn’t it? – and all that snow and heavy cloud! No wonder the squadron’s falling below strength.’
Surprise gave his carefree laugh: ‘Is it falling below strength?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Mrs Brett assured him. ‘And I’m told there’s a shortage of spare parts. Is there a shortage of spare parts?’
‘We manage.’
‘Perhaps you do, but it’s a serious situation.’ Mrs Brett ducked her head in disgust but Surprise, an aristocrat of war from whom nothing could be demanded but his life, laughed again.
There was a touch on Harriet’s arm. Prepared for it, she turned and faced Charles with a sociable smile. ‘How did you enjoy Maria Marten?’ she asked.
‘Well … it was very funny. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.’
‘Not even at school?’
‘Certainly not at school. I want to apologize – I could not come to luncheon that Sunday. Something kept me. I would have telephoned but the exchange could not find your number.’
‘We have no number.’
‘I had to stand by, I’m afraid. Someone flew in from Cairo H.Q.’
‘Someone important?’
‘Very important.’
‘I suppose I mustn’t ask who?’
‘I’d better not say; though I imagine everyone’ll know soon enough.’
‘Is something happening?’
‘It looks like it. Will you meet me tomorrow?’
‘You mean you’ll tell me then?’
‘I can’t.’ He was annoyed by her flippancy and said: ‘I may not be here much longer.’
‘Where will you go? Back to Cairo?’
‘No. Will you have lunch tomorrow?’
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘The day after, then?’
‘I would rather not.’
As he began to argue, she slipped past him and went to Guy who, relaxed and genial, was entertaining the senior officers with a description of the Maria Marten rehearsals. He put an arm round her shoulder and introduced her with pride: ‘My wife.’
She looked back to where she had left Charles, but he was not there. She could not see him anywhere in the room. Her spirits dropped. The party had lost its buoyancy. She felt it was time to go home.
When Toby Lush entered the Billiard Room, Miss Gladys tittered flirtatiously: ‘Why, Mr Lush, this is an honour! An honour indeed! We don’t get you in often, do we?’
Toby spluttered and sniggered, doing his best to respond in kind, but the sight of Harriet quite unmanned him and Miss Gladys had to ask: ‘Are you wanting his lordship?’
‘Um, um, um.’ Toby seemed not to know what he wanted. To gain time, he champed on his pipe, but the question had to be answered and he mumbled: ‘Perhaps he’d give me a minute – if he’s not too busy, that is.’
‘Sit down, do. I’ll see how things are in the inner office.’
Miss Gladys went off and Toby sat on the edge of Harriet’s desk: ‘Didn’t know you worked here. Employed by old Pinkers, eh?’
‘No. Alan Frewen.’
‘Ah!’
Harriet had not spoken to Toby or Dubedat since the School closed, but had heard they were working for Cookson and had seen them driving round Athens in the Delahaye.