‘You cannot put hanging baskets outside the Inn in the middle of winter. Bethlehem’s not competing for the Best-Kept Village,’ screamed Meredith who, in charge of sets, was now dragging the manger an exciting shade of raspberry pink.
‘Well, your stable’s more like the braidle suite at the Ritz,’ screamed back Marigold who’d been unusually ratty of late.
‘This play is supposed to be topical. With a recession on, Mary and Joseph would have been able to get into any hotel they chose,’ snapped Meredith, twitching the pink damask curtains flanking the stable window into place. ‘But we’re not having those,’ he went on, tugging down a washing-line and four towelling nappies Rachel had strung across the set. ‘Baby Jesus has only just been born in this scene. There’s no way he’d have got through four nappies.’
‘Put those back,’ shouted Rachel furiously. ‘We’ve got a chance to tell millions of viewers, perhaps twelve million if it’s networked, that disposable nappies take five hundred years to biodegrade, whereas cotton towelling ones can be—’
‘Oh, shut up,’ screamed Marigold and Meredith in unison.
Kitty, who as usual had to do everything, had retreated to the kitchen to retype, on recycled paper, Georgie’s script which everyone kept changing.
Ten minutes later Lysander rushed in hidden inside the front half of the donkey with Jack and Maggie hanging, furiously growling, on the uninhabited back half.
‘Oh Kitty, Kitty,’ he cried despairingly from his furry depths, ‘the vicar and Meredith and Natasha all want to play my back half. I don’t want to be groped by any of them.’
Wrenching off the donkey’s head he fumbled for a cigarette. Even scarlet with indignation, his hair all ruffled, he looked adorable.
‘Don’t worry.’ Kitty handed him a lump of sugar on the flat palm of her hand as he had taught her. ‘Rannaldini’s due back tonight and he’ll change everyfink.’
‘Oh dear.’ Lysander’s face fell. ‘Then it won’t be nearly such fun.’
There had also been furious spats over the casting, with all the Paradise ladies angling for the coveted role of the Virgin Mary in order to wow Rupert Campbell-Black. Hermione got the part — natch — and insisted on four changes of blue silk robe and a becoming gold halo designed by David Shilling. In the only moment during the entire production when Hermione was in agreement with Rachel, they decided Mary must be seen to breast-feed the doll which had been flown down from Harrods with the Christmas caviar, to play Baby Jesus.
‘Trust the old tart to grab any chance to flash those great tits in public,’ grumbled Meredith.
Rannaldini had turned down the suggested role of Herod and was leaving the conducting of the orchestra (hand-picked members of the London Met) to Bob. Instead, he insisted on riding in on the viciously volatile Prince of Darkness as the First of the Three Kings.
He had co-opted Rachel, because of her long legs and because she looked disturbingly sexy with a cork moustache and beard, to play the Second King, but had vetoed Rachel’s suggestion that she should hand over a free-range turkey instead of frankincense. Lysander was able temporarily to forgive Rannaldini who, having cast Marigold, also because of her great legs, as the Third King, then because of Marigold’s nervous disposition, had signed up Arthur to play her horse.
Guy, who had a fine bass voice and a lifetime of singing loudly in the church choirs, was cast as St Joseph, which gave him a legitimate excuse to grow a beard and no longer use plastic razors, which took even longer than nappies to biodegrade.
At Hermione’s suggestion, the script had been rewritten to portray Joseph as ‘deeply in love with his young wife’ and now included several long clinches under the mistletoe and Guy’s repeatedly professed delight at being present at the birth.
‘Why don’t you have a bonk and make it really authentic?’ snapped Georgie, who was playing the chief shepherd and was fed up with her script being messed about. If Guy was absolutely not Hermione’s type, as Hermione had told Georgie after the church fête, she was concealing her prejudice extremely well.
Larry, who’d been cast in the key role as the innkeeper, kept cutting rehearsals due to the ‘pressure of work’ which explained Marigold’s increasing twitchiness.
The casting of the vicar reduced Meredith to more hysterics.
‘You can’t let that fat queen play Gabriel. Give Lysander the part. He’s got the angel’s face.’
‘Lysander’s tone-deaf and he really can’t act,’ said Georgie kindly.
‘Then he can play one of your shepherds,’ said Hermione pointedly. ‘He and you are such friends.’
‘Not any more,’ spat Lysander, glaring at Georgie.
It was at this point that he was demoted to the front legs of the donkey. Lysander, in fact, was feeling as though his life had been churned up like a ploughed field. After the things Georgie had said about his mother, he couldn’t bear to be in the same room with her, but he was desperate for Rupert to meet Arthur and increasingly felt the need to protect Kitty from everyone.
As Kitty had predicted, Rannaldini breezed in that evening, completely rewrote the script, re-arranged the music and, taking one look at the furry ox and the donkey, whose front legs were doing a soft-shoe shuffle at the time, replaced them with real animals to give the play authenticity. By the following day there were also live sheep. Maggie, Jack and Dinsdale had got parts as sheepdogs and even Tabloid was enrolled to guard the Inn. At Rachel’s prompting, chickens and a fearsome turkey were freely ranging the set.
‘Are we staging St Francis of Assisi as well?’ grumbled Meredith as he trod in a cowpat.
Sacked as the front of the donkey, Lysander was relegated to turning Rachel’s pages when she played the piano for early rehearsals. But he was so distracted by the sight of Kitty in the green dress he’d bought her that he totally ignored Rachel’s repeated nods and was demoted to shifting scenery.
Bob admired the green dress, too.
‘Kitty’s getting prettier,’ he observed.
‘Where?’ said Natasha, who was fed up with her tiny part in the angelic choir.
Suddenly Georgie realized that Kitty hadn’t got a part.
‘I’ll write you in as the innkeeper’s wife.’
‘Kitty’s forte is being a back-room girl,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘Who else could play the innkeeper’s wife? Natasha’s too young and pretty.’
‘What about Mother Courage?’ suggested Georgie. ‘She so longs to get on telly.’
‘Certainly not,’ Hermione was shocked. ‘Let’s keep it simple. Just our set. We don’t need an innkeeper’s wife. Your daily can sit in the audience, because the crew are bound to cut to them some time during the play. I hope Rupert Campbell-Black’s been invited to stay on for supper after the performance,’ she added to Bob.
‘Rupert won’t be able to refuse once he sees Brickie’s spread,’ said Guy, smiling warmly at Kitty.
‘Lully, lully, breast is best, lully, lully, baby rest,’ sang Hermione, flashing a blue-veined boob at her sleeping Harrods doll.
‘I still think Kitty should be in it,’ said Georgie stubbornly.
‘Kitty is needed at home,’ hissed Rannaldini, who was trying on a totally anachronistic purple velvet doublet. ‘Theengs are getting very slack ’ere. There are lights on everywhere, plants go unwatered.’ He pressed the earth of a huge ficus. ‘The second post hasn’t even been opened and I hardly think my study is the right place for a roll of lavatory paper.’