Death Of A Hollow Man Read online

  “How did it go, my lovely?”

  “Like an evening with the Marx Brothers. I’ve never known so many things go wrong. Fortunately Tim arrived in the break with his razor, which cheered Harold up. Until then he’d been grousing all night. Molto disastro, my darlings!”

  “What’s the razor for, anyway?”

  “You wait and see. If I tell you now, it’ll spoil the first night.”

  “Nothing could be spoiled for me that has you in it.” He took her hand. “What’s that big bag for?”

  “Wardrobe. Trousers to be let out. Broken zips. Some braid to replace.”

  “You do too much.”

  “Oh, Tom”—she nudged his feet off a low stool and sat on it herself, holding her other cold hand out to the fire—“don’t say that. You know how I love it.”

  He did know. Earlier he had been listening to a tape she had made of the arias sung by Katherina Cavalieri. Joyce had a beautiful voice, a rich, soaring soprano. A little blurred now in the higher register, but still thickly laced with plangent sweetness. The aria “Marten Aller Arten” had moved him to tears.

  His wife had been a student at the Guildhall School of Music when they had met and fallen in love. He had been a constable on the beat. When he had first heard her sing at a public performance in her final year, he sat there listening to the marvelous sounds, stunned and afraid. For a long while after that he had been unable to believe that she could really love the ordinary man he knew himself to be. Or that she would ever be safely his.

  But they had married, and for four years she had continued to sing, at first giving small, ill-attended recitals, then joining the chorus at the Royal National Opera House. Barnaby, learning fast, had reached the rank of detective sergeant when Cully was bom. Alternately bogged down in the office by administrative work or exhilaratingly abroad hunting an elusive prey, he worked long hours and used his time at home to eat and sleep. And as the months went by, to play with his increasingly delightful baby daughter. The fact that Joyce’s career had virtually come to a halt almost (as he admitted with shame much later) escaped his notice.

  Progress in the force had been slow—he had remained a sergeant for many years—and money tight, so when Cully was three, Joyce had got a job understudying in Godspell.

  But her husband was frequently on night duty, which meant engaging babysitters, and one or two unsettling experiences left her so full of guilt and anxiety that when she did get to the theater, she was quite unable to concentrate. So, pro tem, she joined the Causton Light Operatic Society to keep her voice supple; then, when that folded, the CADS. Not what she’d been used to, of course, but better than nothing. And she and Tom agreed it was only until Cully was old enough to be left by herself.

  But when that time came, Joyce found that the musical world had moved on and was full of bright, gifted, tough, and pushy young singers. And the years of more or less contented domesticity had blunted the knife edge of her ambition. She found she didn’t want to drag herself up to London and stand in a vast dim theater and sing to a faceless trio somewhere out there in the dark. Especially with a crowd of twenty-year-olds watching from the wings sharp as tacks with determination and buoyant with energy and hope. And so, gradually and without any fuss or visible signs of dismay, Joyce relinquished her plans for a musical career.

  But her husband never saw her playing with such perceptive truthfulness the modest parts that were her lot, or heard her lovely voice in the Christmas pantomime gloriously leading all the rest, without a terrible pang of sorrow and remorse. The pang had become muted over the years, given their continuing happiness, but now, “Marten Aller Arten” fresh in his ears and the great bag of alterations seen out of the corner of his eye, a sudden shaft of sadness, of pity at the waste, went through him like a knife.

  “Tom …” Joyce seized his other hand and stared intently into his face. “Don’t. It doesn’t matter. All that. It doesn’t matter. It’s you and me. And now there’s Cully. Darling … ?” She held his gaze forcefully, lovingly. “All right?”

  Barnaby nodded and allowed his face to lighten. What else could he do? Things were as they were. And it was true that now there was Cully.

  Their daughter had been obsessed with the theater since the age of four, when she had been taken to her first pantomime. She had been quickly on-stage when the dame had asked for children to watch for the naughty wolf and had had to be forcibly removed, kicking and screaming, when the scene was over. She had performed at her primary school with great aplomb (oak leaf/young rabbit), and had never looked back. Now in her final year reading English at New Hall, her performances in the ADC were formidable to behold.

  “I thought you knew all that,” continued Joyce. “Silly old bear.”

  Barnaby smiled. “Been a long while since anyone called me that.”

  “Do you remember when Cully used to? There was that program she loved on television …” Joyce sang, “ ‘Barnaby the bear’s my name… I forget the rest.”

  “Ah, yes. She was a little cracker when she was seven.”

  “She’s a little cracker now.” The conversation rested for a moment, then Joyce continued, “A message from Colin.” Barnaby groaned. “Could you paint the fireplace? Please?”

  “Joycey—I’m on holiday.” He always demurred when asked to help out with the set, and he always, work permitting, gave a bit of a hand.

  “I wouldn’t ask if you weren’t on holiday,” Joyce lied brazenly. “We can all chuck a bit of paint on flats, but this fireplace Colin’s made. It’s so beautiful, Tom—a work of art. We can’t let any old slap-happy Charlie loose on it. And you’re marvelous at that sort of thing.”

  “Soft soap and flannel.”

  “It’s true. You’re an artist. Do you remember that statue you did? For Round and Round the Garden?”

  “Only too well. And the letters to the local press.”

  “You could do it Saturday afternoon. Take a flask and some sandwiches.” She paused. “I wouldn’t ask if it were gardening weather.”

  ‘‘I wouldn’t do it if it were gardening weather.”

  ‘‘Oh, thank you, Tom.” She rubbed his hand against her cheek. “You are sweet.”

  Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby sighed, seeing the last few precious days of his annual vacation filling up with bustling activity. “Try telling them that at the station,” he said.

  Harold aimed his Morgan at the space between the gateposts topped with polystyrene lions at seventeen Madingley Close and bombed up to the garage. He encouraged the engine to give a final great, full-throated roar, then switched off and braced himself for the awkward business to follow. Getting in and out of the Morgan was not easy. On the other hand, driving along in it, handling it, being seen in it, was tremendous. Heads were turned as the scarlet hood flashed past, slaking temporarily Harold’s ultimately unquenchable thirst for admiration. The fact that his wife disliked the car added to his pleasure. He withdrew his keys and patted the dashboard appreciatively. One instinctively knew when something was right, mused Harold, having long ago taken this cunning adman’s lie to his heart.

  On the leather bucket seat next to him lay a sheaf of posters that Mrs. Winstanley would dish out to fellow members of the Townswomen’s Guild, her flower-arranging class, and the local shops. Apart from racking his brains promotionwise and being interviewed whenever he could create the opportunity, Harold had no truck with publicity. After all, he would tell any jibbers, you didn’t see Trevor Nunn popping in and out of his local newsagent’s with footage on the latest extravaganza. Briefly reflecting on that famous name, Harold swallowed hard on the bile of dissatisfaction. He had long been aware that if it had not been for his careless early marriage and the birth of three numbingly dull children now, thankfully, boring themselves and their consorts to death miles away, he would currently be one of the top directors in the country. If not (Harold had never been one to shirk hard truths) in the world.

  All you needed was luck, talent, and th
e right wife. Harold believed you made your own luck, talent was no problem. He had that, God knew, burgeoning from every pore. But the right wife … ah, there was the rub. Doris was a simple bourgeoise. A philistine. When they were first married (she had been a slim, shy, pretty girl), the children had kept her occupied, and she had had no spare time to take an interest in the Latimer. Later, when the young Winstanleys were growing up and following their own pursuits, her attempts to comment on the productions had been so inept that Harold had forbidden her to come to the theater except on first nights.

  He had briefly considered trading her in when Rosa had come on the market, seeing the latter as a far more suitable mate for a producer. (Sometimes he wondered if Doris was really grateful for, or even aware of, the status that his position as the town’s only theatrical impresario conferred.) However, after exposing this fleeting fancy to the cold light of reason, Harold had to admit that it was gravely flawed. Rosa was used to, nay, reveled in, her role as leading lady, and he could not see her deliberately lowering her wattage to show him to best advantage. Whereas Doris, in spite of her peculiar absorptions—pickling eggs, drying flowers, and stuffing innocent knitted creatures with chunks of variegated foam—did have the supreme virtue of dimness. Indeed, Harold was pleasureably aware that when he entered a room, she practically vanished into the woodwork like the moth Melanchra persicariae. And perhaps most important of all, she was not grasping. He had provided modestly for his wife and children, far more modestly, in fact, than he might have done. Over half the profits he made from his business went into his productions, so that whatever snipers might find to criticize in any other direction, they could never say the play was not well dressed.

  An amber rectangle of light fell across the windshield. “Harold?”

  Harold sighed, gave the mileage dial a final quick polish with his hankie, and called, “Give me a chance.”

  He struggled out of the cockpit. This was the cutoff point for him. The moment when he turned away from the full-blooded rumbustious razzle-dazzle rainbow ring of circus and stepped into the shady gray half-formed and quite unreal world of bread.

  “Your supper’s getting cold.”

  “Dinner, Doris.” Already consumed with irritation, he pushed past her into the kitchen. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “How has he been, Mrs. Higgins?” Deidre entered the kitchen quietly through the back door, and the elderly woman dozing by the fire jumped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “He’s been ever so good,” replied Mrs. Higgins. “Considering.”

  Deidre thought the “considering” uncalled for. They both knew that Mr. Tibbs wasn’t always ever so good and why. Deidre glanced at the mantelpiece. Mrs. Higgins’s envelope had gone, and Deidre spied it sticking out of the woman’s grubby apron pocket as she heaved herself to her feet. “Upsadaisy.”

  “Is he still asleep?”

  “No. Just chatting away to hisself. I made him a lovely plate of soup.”

  Deidre spotted the tin in the sink, said, “You’re so kind,” and helped Mrs. Higgins on with her coat. The thankfulness and gratitude in her voice were not feigned. If it were not for Mrs. Higgins, Deidre would have no life at all. No life, that is, apart from home and the Gas Board.

  Because where else would she find someone to sit with a befuddled old man for a couple of pounds? Not that the money was ever mentioned. The first time Mrs. Higgins came, Deidre had offered, only to be told, “Don’t you worry dear, I’d only be sitting next door on me tod watching the goggle box.” But the coins Deidre had left under the teapot disappeared, and so, always since then, had the manila envelope.

  When Mrs. Higgins had gone, Deidre locked and bolted the door, put some milk for her Horlicks on a very low heat, and climbed the stairs. Her father was sitting up ramrod straight in crisp pajamas under a large, dimmish print of “The Light of the World.” His gray, still faintly gingery mustache was soaked with tears of joy, and his eyes shone. “He is coming,” he cried as Deidre entered the room. “The Lord is coming.”

  “Yes, daddy.” She sat on the bed and took his hand. It was like holding a few slippery bones in a bag of skin. “Would you like another drink?”

  “He will take us away. Into the light.”

  She knew it was no good trying to settle him. He always slept upright, his back bolted into a perpendicular line against a cumulus of pillows. She patted his arm and kissed his damp cheek. He had been a little bit disturbed for several months now. The first indication that all was not well had occurred when she arrived home from the theater one night after set-building to find him in the street going from house to house, rapping on doors and offering the startled occupants a shovelful of live coals.

  Horrified and amazed, she had led him back home, replaced the coals on the kitchen fire, and questioned him gently, trying to find a rational explanation. Of course there had been none. Since then he had frequently been befuddled or confused. (Deidre always used these unemphatic terms, avoiding the terrible official definition. When one of the workers at the center where Mr. Tibbs spent his days had used the word, Deidre had screamed at her in fear and anger.)

  He still had lengthy periods of marvelous clarity. There was just no way of knowing when they would arise or for how long they would last. The previous Sunday had been a lovely day. They had gone for a walk in the afternoon, and she had been able to tell him all about Amadeus, exaggerating her role in the production as she always did to make him proud of her. In the evening they had had a glass of port and some lumpy home-made cake, and he had sung songs that he remembered from his childhood. He had been over forty when Deidre was bom, so the songs were very old ones. “Red Sails in the Sunset,” “Valencia,” and “Oh, Oh, Antonio.” He had put on his bowler hat and tapped and twirled his stick, shuffling in a sad, transmogrified echo of the routines he had leaped through when, years before, he had so delighted Deidre and her mother. His hair had been reddish gold then, and his mustache had gleamed like a ripe chestnut. They both wept before going to sleep last Sunday.

  Deidre crossed to the window to draw the curtains, and stood for a moment looking up at the sky. There was a brilliant moon and a cavalcade of scudding clouds. Gabriel, her guardian angel, lived up there. As well as on the earth walking, bright and shining, just an immortal breath away, keeping a loving eye on the Tibbses’ worldly concerns. When she was a little girl, Deidre would whip around quickly sometimes, as she did in a game of statues, hoping to catch sight of his twelve-foot wings before he put on his invisible cloak. Once, she was convinced she had found the outline of a golden footprint before hearing, over her head, a rushing, beating swoosh of sound, like the passing of a thousand swans.

  As well as the archangel, everyone had a star to watch over them. When she had asked her father which was hers, he had said, “It’s always the star that shines the brightest.” They all looked the same tonight, thought Deidre, letting the curtain fall, and rather cold. She remembered the milk and hurried down to the kitchen just too late to stop it boiling over.

  She refilled and replaced the pan, then took her script for the next production, Uncle Vanya, from the dresser. It has been dissected and reassembled, interleaved with blank pages, as had all the copies of plays on which she had been assistant stage manager. Deidre worked long and ardently on every one before the first rehearsal. She would read and reread the play, getting to know the characters as well as if she had lived with them. She struggled to realize the subtext and sense the tempo. Her head buzzed with ideas on staging, and she used long rolls of thin cardboard to design her sets. She was as enthralled by Uncle Vanya as she had been by The Cherry Orchard, intoxicated by Checkhov’s particular ability to produce a seemingly natural world full of precisely observed, psychologically real human beings, then reconcile this world with the urgencies of dramatic necessity.

  Now, becoming aware that she was hungry, she closed Uncle Vanya and put the book aside. She hardly ever managed to eat on theate
r evenings, not if she wanted to be on time. She found a bit of salad dressing in the fridge together with a small, hard piece of leftover beef and two slices of beetroot, and while spreading margarine on the stretchy white bread that was all her father’s gums could tackle, she slipped into a frequent and favorite reverie in which she reviewed edited lowlights from the latest rehearsal, rewriting the scenario as she went along.

  DEIDRE: I think the Venticelli are far too close to Salieri in the opening scene. They wouldn’t huddle in that intimate way. And they certainly wouldn’t be touching him.

  ESSLYN: She’s quite right, Harold. They’ve been getting more and more familiar. I thought if someone didn’t say something soon, I’d have to myself.

  HAROLD: Right. Stop nudging the star, you two. And thanks, Deidre. Wish I’d taken you aboard years ago.

  OR

  HAROLD: Coffee all around, I think, Deidre.

  DEIDRE: Do you mind? Assistant directors don’t make coffee.

  (genial laughter)

  HAROLD: Sorry. We’re so used to you looking after us.

  ROSA: We’ve been taking you too much for granted, darling.

  ESSLYN: And all the time you’ve been hiding all these dazzling ideas under your little bushel.

  Harold: Careful—I’m turning green.

  (more genial laughter, kitty gets up to make the coffee.)

  OR

  HAROLD: (SLUMPED IN A CHAIR IN THE CLUBROOM)

  Now the others have gone, I don’t mind telling you, Deidre, I just don’t know what I’d have done without you on this production. Everything you say is so fresh and original, (heavy sigh). I’m getting stale.