A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [11]
“Well, Mr. Fielding, how is it going?” Netheridge asked. “Do you have everything you require? Is there anything else we can provide for you?”
Caroline felt her throat tighten.
“We have read through the script a couple of times, to see how it works,” Joshua replied. “That is customary for a new piece. What seems powerful on the page does not always translate to natural speech.”
Netheridge grinned but he did not interrupt.
It was Paterson who spoke. “Is that the beginning of an excuse to say you cannot perform it?”
Joshua swung around in his chair to face him. “No, Mr. Paterson. If that was what I had meant to say, I would’ve been plainer about it. Mr. Netheridge deserves the truth, as far as we can discern it.”
“The truth is that Alice has some rather impractical dreams, and it would be better if you didn’t indulge her in them,” Paterson said bluntly.
Caroline remembered Alice’s face as she sat in the audience and listened to her words read on the stage: the awe, the excitement and hope, the embarrassment. Joshua must make the play work, she decided, although she had no idea how.
“As I see it, it is a work that needs some attention. Possibly the order of certain scenes should be changed, so that we can give it the passion and drive it requires to move it from one medium to another,” Joshua answered Paterson quietly but firmly.
“So are you saying you can do it?” Netheridge asked directly.
Joshua hesitated for only a second, but Netheridge saw it. His jaw hardened. “You doubt it!” he challenged him. “Be honest, man. Alice is my only child. She’s willful, a dreamer, perhaps a little naïve, but I’ll not have her made a fool of, by you or anyone else.”
Paterson smiled, and the tightness in his shoulders eased a little. The shadow of a smile softened his face.
Netheridge looked at Joshua. “Are you prepared to work at this thing and make it right? Give me a straight answer, man.”
Joshua took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The clock on the mantelpiece over the fire moved two seconds. “Yes, I am.”
“Right! Then what is it you want from me, Mr. Fielding? The party is set for Boxing Day, December twenty-sixth. Can’t change that now,” Netheridge said with a frown.
“I understand,” Joshua replied. “We will have to work very hard. I will need the time with no interruption, other than for meals. Possibly I might request to eat in the theater room, if the cook would be kind enough to make something simple that can be served there. And perhaps Mrs. Netheridge would help my wife to find a few articles we might borrow as props to dress the stage?”
“Done,” Netheridge said. “She’ll be delighted. What else?”
“A good supply of paper and ink, more than I thought to bring with me. But most of all I would appreciate your assistance and even support in explaining to Miss Netheridge that all this is necessary if we are to make the play a success—”
“A success?” Paterson interrupted. “We’re doing this as a Christmas gift for Alice, not to see it performed on the London stage. How on earth can you judge what is a success? If it pleases her that’s all that matters. If it isn’t going to work, then perhaps the most honest thing would be to tell her so now, to save her from being humiliated in front of her friends, and her family’s friends, the people she will mix with long after you all have gone back to London, or wherever it is you come from.” There were two spots of pink in his cheeks, and he had moved a step closer to them.
“I judge a success as something that entertains and enthralls an audience, Mr. Paterson,” Joshua replied, his voice gathering emotion. “Something that suspends their disbelief for an hour, makes them laugh or cry, think more deeply about their lives or create new dreams in their minds. And a failure is something that bores them, has no integrity within itself, and does not for a moment take