Well, ballet belonged to the world of the imagination, which Stubbington had ceased to believe in. He would go to it, if only as a protest against everything that Stubbington stood for. He would be late, for it was already seven minutes to four, but still, even if they were only doing one of their three pieces it would be life and beauty in a day of death.
“Good old Stubbington,” he said, “once famed as the rottenest borough in England, now, without much question, the deadest. Forwards, to its champion morgue, the Stokeley-Pitte.”
He had called it Stubbington’s champion morgue, but when he drew near to it a few minutes later, he felt that few cities could have a morgue more gloomy; the supreme Morgue, “Death’s high capital and kingly seat,” would not seem a more awful negation of life. There it was in the cold and wet, vast, mean and hideous, with little suggestions of Gothic, and little hints of Byzantine, the foul day dying, the streets unlighted, though there were lights in some of the windows. The wind was rising and the rain becoming worse. Leaves were blowing about and some little boys had recently been at the posters near the door and had torn them into streamers which now lay and sometimes flopped on the pavement. Across the road from the hall a small, much battered car was parked. The house seemed to be deserted; the lights were on in the porch, but no signs showed of audience, and no noise came from within.
“I suppose the Circassians realised what they were coming to,” he said, “and cancelled the engagement.”
He walked to the entrance. The porch was covered in at the sides with panes of white and yellow glass, placed alternately; beyond the porch, in a gloomy passage, were a table and chair, the table bearing books of tickets and a paper of tax stamps. A woman was talking volubly and bitterly in French, not far away. Frampton beat with his foot upon the floor for the ticket-seller, but nobody answered. The draughts were running along the corridor and causing the frame of a picture to clack upon the wall. The picture was a much-foxed engraving of a whiskered man in uniform, General Stokeley-Pitte, no doubt. The window of the passage had had a stone through it; the rain had come in there in a long, dark smear down the wall. At the back of the house something whined and sobbed. It didn’t sound cheerful enough to be a dog in pain; Frampton thought it must be the hot-water system refusing duty.
The door at the end of the passage, which opened into the auditorium, suddenly pushed back; a young, fresh-coloured man, whom Frampton remembered to have seen more than once in Stubbington Market Place, came towards him.
“Is the show cancelled?” Frampton asked, “or can I have a ticket?”
“They’ve only just come,” the lad said. “They don’t know if they’ll dance or not. They don’t talk no known Christian language. Then there’s some mistake about the tickets. You see, they’ve got the wrong days on ’em. But Mr. What’s-his-name’ll be here in a minute; he’s the one that’ll know.”
After the lad had gone on, the tirade in French was taken up suddenly by a second voice, and rose to a crescendo, ending suddenly in what seemed like a slap. Almost at once, a foreign-looking man came out of a room, swaying upon his feet, being a little drunk. He called Frampton: “Tomás, Tomás,” then, finding that it was not Tomás, he made a gesture of apology and swayed back. The lad returned a minute later, bearing a spanner and a coil of insulated wires.
“I can’t make out if they mean to dance,” he said. “They don’t talk human speech at all. And these tickets; they’ve made a fair old muddle, if you ask me. These are next week’s tickets for Sulhampton. And they never got their posters out here till this morning. That don’t do, not in Stubbington, for people make their plans ahead.”
“Have you an audience waiting to see the show?” Frampton asked, for it was an hour and more after the advertised time of the performance.
“Oh yes, sir,” the lad said, “there’s some of ’em waiting. But excuse me, sir; perhaps this is Mr. What’s-his-name.”
“Who is Mr. What’s-his-name?”
“The sort of manager. Perhaps this is him on the pavement.”
It was not Mr. What’s-his-name, but two young women, who asked if they were too late. When told that they were not, they said that they had run almost all the way, having only just seen the poster. “But,” they added, “what a day for the dancers.”
The lad said that it was indeed a day, and that Mr. What’s-his-name would be in in a moment. Perhaps they would go into the hall and sit down. He could come to them about their tickets later. The elder woman asked if those were not the tickets on the table? He said no, those were the tickets for next week; but Mr. What’s-his-name would be in in a minute. Would they just take a seat? They went into the hall. Frampton saw that the elder woman took a shrewd look at him. She knew, plainly, that he was the wicked Mr. Mansell of Mullples.
Frampton walked in after them and took a seat in the front row, opposite the middle of the stage. The lad, who had followed him, bent at a projector. Frampton looked about him at the patient victims of muddle, sitting waiting for the show. There were about thirty, all told. Just behind him a young man and woman were smoking cigarettes and making audible comment on those present. In a minute the projector began to cast bright lights in different colours on to the curtain. A second lad, who had been grovelling on the floor with wires, now rose to his feet and wiped his hands, with the remark that she should go now, a fair treat; and he would run in and tell Mr. What’s-his-name. From behind the lowered curtain there came an intermittent noise of planing.
At this moment the door opened; a big, square, black-haired, military-looking man came in; he was a red-faced, healthy fellow, with long black moustaches, waxed at the ends. He reminded Frampton of a light-heavyweight boxer whom he had seen years before.
“This is Mr. What’s-his-name,” he told himself.
The man walked with a slight limp on to the stage, where coloured lights played all over him.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I regret that you’ve been inconvenienced owing to the delays. The performance will begin in wan minute from this.”
His speech, with its strong Irish accent, convinced Frampton that this was the boxer, Tiger Mick, or Mike the Tiger, or Tiger Mike.
Having spoken, Mr. What’s-his-name went out into the passage, Frampton followed to buy his ticket, and two tickets for the seats adjoining his. He found the ex-boxer seated at the table unpacking a new set of tickets from a paper.
“And what can I do for you, sorr?” he asked, looking up.
Frampton bought his tickets and then said:
“Excuse me, but I think you once won me a five-pound note. Didn’t you once box a Carib called The Mill Wheel?”
“Ah, were you there, sorr?” the man said, smiling. “And ye backed me? Indade, I’m glad. But that was before the War. I got a bullet in me leg and limped after. Now I run this Noah’s Ark, and there’s damn few doves in it, believe me.”
“Perhaps I can have a word with you later,” Frampton said. “I’ll get back to my seat.”
He got back, but found that he need not have hurried. The projector was squirting coloured light most oddly.
“What it wants really,” the electrician was saying, “is a new one. This one gets as hot as hot. One of these days it’ll go.”
The couple in the row behind Mansell lit up new cigarettes from a briquet. They had been smoking for the last twenty minutes, but at this moment, the lad, who seemed now to be door-keeper and in charge of the front of the house, interfered. He left the projector and came to the couple.
“Beg pardon, sir; beg pardon, miss,” he said, “but smoking’s not allowed in here.”