An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [46]
It was obvious they would have to abandon the run of Caesar and Cleopatra and close the theatre until an actor could be found to portray Hook. St Ives’s leg was fractured in two places. It would be at least six weeks before he was out of plaster. They had four days in which to find a replacement. It was a catastrophe.
The recriminations were heated. Caesar had no business to be coming downstairs three minutes after the commencement of Act Four. Why hadn’t he been called earlier? St Ives freely admitted his nerves were in fragments, what with Dawn Allenby’s recent caper and the tragic death earlier that morning of the boy who had severed an artery on Haggerty’s steps, but why had nobody reprimanded the stage-door keeper for listening to the wireless during a performance? St Ives swore he distinctly heard the strains of Come Back to Sorrento as he came round the bend of the stairs. Who was supposed to be responsible for the university students? Why hadn’t somebody checked that they hadn’t left their spears for all and sundry to trip over?
Bunny was so choked at what he termed veiled inferences and an unfair proportioning of blame that he stalked out of Rose’s office. He fled to the prop-room, where he found John Harbour and Babs, huddled whispering round the fire with Freddie Reynalde. Dotty and Grace had gone in the ambulance with St Ives and Desmond Fairchild was in the Oyster Bar making the most of the unexpected drinking time.
Harbour had been in the middle of telling Freddie that in his opinion it was almost a blessing that the theatre would have to close. It was ghastly for poor Richard, breaking his leg and all that, but at least it meant there would be an extension of rehearsals for Peter Pan. The production was a shambles at the moment. Babs said it was all very well but had he forgotten their leading man was flat on his back in Sefton General?
They stopped talking when Bunny came in, shocked into silence at the expression on his face. He was pressing his fists against his stomach as though he had suffered an internal injury. ‘I’ve given the best years of my life,’ he faltered, and was unable to say more. He turned away from them and struggled for control. Discomfited, they stared at his heaving shoulders.
He was tracked down almost immediately by Meredith, sent by Rose to fetch him back.
‘I’m not coming,’ he replied, his voice wobbling with emotion. ‘I’m thinking of handing in my resignation.’
‘Don’t talk rot,’ said Meredith and, taking him by the arm, frog-marched him along the corridor.
Five minutes later John Harbour was dispatched to the Oyster Bar to tell Desmond Fairchild he was wanted in Rose’s office.
Desmond took his time, and when he finally arrived and the proposition was put to him, he shook his head. He had no ambitions to play Hook and certainly not at four days’ notice. He hadn’t been offered the part in the first place and was more than content in the role of Smee.
He stood there in his camel-hair coat, tapping a cigarette on his thumbnail. ‘Sorry, Squire,’ he said, ‘but I know my limitations.’ He smiled spitefully.
Meredith telephoned several numbers without success. George Rudd was on tour; Michael Lamonte, according to his lady friend, was filming at Pinewood; Berenson had left the business for school-teaching and wasn’t about to throw it up, thank you, for all the tea in China, and did Meredith realise it was gone midnight?
An actor who had written to Meredith on many occasions – always enclosing, as his wife was at pains to point out, his page number in Spotlight and a stamped addressed envelope, without ever once receiving so much as an acknowledgement in return – was unfortunately dead. Bunny remembered Cyril Someone-or-other who had been fearfully good in a revival of ‘Sheppy’ at Watford before the war. Meredith reminded