‘So to commemorate their bicentennial, they will be playing opposite each other for the first time!’
They respectively bowed and curtsied once more as the audience applauded and the curtains closed, jammed, opened slightly and closed again.
There was a moment’s pause and then the curtains reopened, revealing Richard at the side of the stage. He limped up and down the boards, eyeing the audience malevolently past a particularly ugly prosthetic nose.
‘Ham!’ yelled someone at the back.
Richard opened his mouth to speak and the whole audience erupted in unison:
‘ When is the winter of our discontent?’
‘Now,’ replied Richard with a cruel smile, ‘is the winter of our discontent…’
A cheer went up to the chandeliers high in the ceiling. The play had begun. Landen and I cheered with them. Richard III was one of those plays that could repeal the law of diminishing returns; it could be enjoyed over and over again.
‘… made glorious summer by this son of York,’ continued Richard, limping to the side of the stage. On the word ‘summer’ six hundred people placed sunglasses on and looked up at an imaginary sun.
‘… and all the clouds that lower’d upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean, buried… ’
‘When were our brows bound?’ yelled the audience.
‘Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,’ continued Richard, ignoring them completely. We must have been to this show thirty times and even now I could feel myself mouthing the words with the actor on the stage.
‘… to the lascivious pleasing of a lute… ” continued Richard, saying ‘lute’ loudly as several other members of the audience gave alternative suggestions.
‘Piano!’ shouted out one person near us. ‘Bagpipes!’ said another. Someone at the back, missing the cue entirely, shouted in a high voice ‘Euphonium!’ halfway through the next line and was drowned out when the audience yelled: ‘Pick a card!’ as Richard told them that he ‘was not shaped for sportive tricks…’
Landen looked across at me and smiled. I returned the smile instinctively; I was enjoying myself.
‘I that am rudely stamp’d…’ muttered Richard, as the audience took its cue and stamped the ground with a crash that reverberated around the auditorium.
Landen and I had never wanted to tread the boards ourselves and had never troubled to dress up. The production was the only show at the Ritz; it was empty the rest of the week. Keen amateur thespians and Shakespeare fans would drive from all over the country to participate, and it was never anything but a full house. A few years back a French troupe performed the play in French to rapturous applause; a troupe went to Sauvignon a few months later to repay the gesture.
‘… and that so lamely and unfashionable, that dogs bark at me…’
The audience barked loudly, making a noise like feeding time at the dogs’ home. Outside in the alley several cats new to the vicinity momentarily flinched, while more seasoned moggies looked at each other with a knowing smile.
The play went on, the actors doing sterling work and the audience parrying with quips that ranged from the intelligent to the obscure to the downright vulgar. When Clarence explained that the King was convinced that ‘… by the letter “G” his issue disinherited shall be… ’ the audience yelled out:
‘Gloucester begins with G, dummy!’
And when the Lady Anne had Richard on his knees in front of her with his sword at his throat, the audience encouraged her to run him through; and just before one of Richard’s nephews, the young Duke of York, alluded to Richard’s hump: ‘Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me; because that I am little, like an ape, he thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders–‘ the audience yelled out: ‘Don’t mention the hump, kid!’, and after he did: ‘The Tower! The Tower!’
The play was the Garrick cut and lasted only about two and a half hours; at Bosworth field most of the audience ended up on the stage as they helped re-enact the battle. Richard, Catesby and Richmond had to finish the play in the aisle as the battle raged about them. A pink pantomime horse appeared on cue when Richard offered to swap his kingdom for just such a beast, and the battle finally ended in the foyer. Richmond then took one of the girls from behind the ice-cream counter as his Elizabeth and continued his final speech from the balcony with the audience below hailing him as the new King of England, the soldiers who had fought on Richard’s side proclaiming their new allegiance. The play ended with Richmond saying: ‘God say Amen!’
‘Amen!’ said the crowd, amid happy applause. It had been a good show. The cast had done a fine job and fortunately this time no one had been seriously injured during Bosworth. Landen and I filed out quickly and found a table in a cafe across the road. Landen ordered two coffees and we looked at one another.
‘You’re looking good, Thursday. You’ve aged better than me.’
‘Nonsense,’ I replied. ‘Look at these lines—!’
‘Laughter lines,’ asserted Landen.
‘Nothing’s that funny.’
‘Are you here for good?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. I dropped my gaze. I had promised myself I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving, but—
‘It depends.’
‘On—?’
I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
‘—on SpecOps.’
The coffee arrived at that point and I smiled brightly.
‘So, how have you been?’
‘I’ve been good,’ he said, then added in a lower tone, ‘I’ve been lonely, too. Very lonely. I’m not getting any younger, either. How have you been?’
I wanted to tell him that I’d been lonely too, but some things can’t easily be said. I wanted him to know that I still wasn’t happy with what he had done. Forgive and forget is all very well, but no one was going to forgive and forget my brother. Anton’s dead name was mud and that was solely down to Landen.
‘I’ve been fine.’ I thought about it. ‘I haven’t, actually.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I’m having a shitty time right now. I lost two colleagues in London. I’m chasing after a lunatic who most people think is dead, Mycroft and Polly have been kidnapped, Goliath is breathing down my neck and the Regional Commander at SpecOps might just have my badge. As you can see, things are just peachy.’
‘Compared to the Crimea, this is small beer, Thursday. You’re stronger than all this crap.’
Landen stirred three sugars into his coffee and I looked at him again. ‘Are you hoping for us to get back together?’
He was taken aback by the directness of my question. He shrugged. ‘I don’t think we were ever truly apart.’
I knew exactly what he meant. Spiritually, we never were.
‘I can’t apologise any more, Thursday. You lost a brother, I lost some good friends, my whole platoon and a leg. I know what Anton means to you, but I saw him pointing up the wrong valley to Colonel Frobisher just before the armoured column moved off. It was a crazy day and crazy circumstances, but it happened and I had to say what I saw—!’
I looked him squarely in the eye.
‘Before going to the Crimea I thought that death was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. I soon realised it was only for starters. Anton died; I can accept that. People get killed in war; it’s inevitable. Okay, so it was a military debacle of staggering proportions. They also happen from time to time. It’s happened many times before in the Crimea.’
‘Thursday!’ implored Landen. ‘What I said. It was the truth!’
I rounded on him angrily.
‘Who can say what the truth was? The truth is whatever we are most comfortable with. The dust, the heat, the noise! Whatever happened that day, the truth is now what everyone reads in the history books. What you told the military inquiry! Anton may have made a mistake, but he wasn’t the only one that day.’