Death Of A Hollow Man Page 6

  Whoever else was in the box must be either kneeling or crouching in front of her. Vivid pictures of what the lucky devil might be doing crowded Nicholas’s brain, and he was swept by a wave of lust so powerful that it left him with a bone-dry throat and gasping for air. When the wave had receded somewhat, he took several deep breaths and ruminated on the extreme awkwardness of his position. Not, he felt, since Oedipus had found himself at the crossroads had a chap been so severely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then the sound started again, and he watched Kitty slowly slide down the glass, her shoulder blades leaving two damp, equidistant tracks. She turned her head away again as she disappeared and laughed, a raucous, throaty chuckle quite unlike her usual tinkling carillon.

  Released, Nicholas exhaled very carefully, even though common sense told him the sound must be barely audible, (he was amazed they had not heard the beating of his heart), then he tiptoed off stage and bore his bulging groin off to the john. Once there, he stayed longer than was absolutely necessary, mulling over the best course of action and praying that Kitty’s playmate didn’t decide to come in for a pee. He had just decided to creep out to the street and make a great noise coming back in when he heard beneath him the slam of a door. He waited for another five minutes, then made his way back to the basement.

  As he passed the ladies’ dressing room, he heard a clatter, as if someone was moving a bottle or jar. Nicholas opened the door. Kitty, demurely buttoned up in an apricot blouse and securely—nay, chastely—swathed in a long matching skirt chirruped with alarm, then said, “You made me jump.’’

  “Sorry … hello.”

  “Hello yourself.” Kitty frowned at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Mm?”

  “You’re not getting a sore throat, are you?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “You’re croaking.”

  “Ah. Just the proverbial frog.” He cleared his throat once or twice. Then did a mock gargle. But the dryness at the sight of her remained. “That’s better.”

  “It doesn’t sound better. You look a bit peaky actually, Nico … quite drained.” She narrowed her eyes at her reflection. “Now what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” Nicholas turned his sudden laugh into a cough. “You first here, then? You and Esslyn?”

  He linked the names automatically; then, finding ignorance established and Kitty misled, congratulated himself on his cleverness. But no sooner had he done this than a further thought developed. What if Kitty had actually been with Esslyn in the box? Stranger things had happened. Married couples were supposed to sometimes need peculiar settings or bizarre games to turn them on. Look at that Pinter play. Him coming home “unexpectedly” in the afternoons; her in five-inch heels. But surely that was only after decades of marital boredom? The Carmichaels hadn’t been together five minutes. Kitty was speaking again.

  “Oh, Esslyn’s working till half six. So I came on early in my little Suzuki. I need lots of time to get ready. In fact—” she smiled, her lovely lips parting like the petals of a rose—“I thought I’d find you here when I arrived.”

  “… Er … no …” stammered Nicholas. “Tried to get away, but it was one of the manager’s keen-eyed days.”

  “Oh, what a shame.” Another smile, warmly sympathetic. “We could have gone over our lines together.”

  Nicholas absorbed the impact of the smile, (a soft, feather-light punch to the solar plexus), and his knees buckled. He hung grimly on to the door handle. For the first time in his life he cursed the enthusiasm that had brought him to the Latimer long before anyone could reasonably have been expected to be present. Then he wondered how the hell, feeling like this, he was going to be able to concentrate onstage. Forcefully he reminded himself that this was only Kitty. Pretty, silly, ordinary Kitty. Her very silliness and the fact that she was an indifferent actress would normally have been enough to ensure his complete lack of interest. And if his mind could reason thus, reasoned Nicholas, why then should his viscera, still churning rhapsodically, not be brought under equally firm control? As he continued to argue against this onrush of carnality, Kitty picked up a wire brush and started to rearrange her hair. She brushed it up and away from her face, which looked even more piquant without the surrounding auerole of golden curls.

  Nicholas told himself it was more pointed than heart-shaped. Sharp. A bit ferrety, really. Then she opened her mouth, filled the damp, rosy cavity with bobby pins, and started to pile the hair on top of her head. This movement pushed her bosom out. It strained against her blouse. Then, as Nicholas watched, every button burst its moorings. The fabric fell apart, and her small, exquisite breasts were revealed, double dazzling by being reflected in the mirror. She stood up and, with a light, thrillingly lascivious shrug, magically shed the rest of her garments except for silky, lace-topped stockings and thigh-high boots. Then she turned, placed one foot firmly on the seat of her chair and beckoned to him.

  “Nico … ?” Kitty removed the bobby pins. “What on earth’s the matter with you tonight?”

  “Ohhh. Nerves, I guess.”

  “Right. You and me both. Oh, drat—” Kitty’s hair collapsed. “It’s going to be one of those days when it just won’t stay up.”

  Nicholas, whose problem could hardly have been further removed from his companion’s, was temporarily distracted by something being shifted around in the adjacent scene dock. “Ah,” he murmured, “seems we’re not the only ones here early.”

  “I’d like to have it cut”—Kitty reskewered the pins forcefully—“but Esslyn’d go mad. He doesn’t think a woman’s truly feminine unless she’s got long hair.”

  “I wonder who it is.”

  “Who what is?”

  “In the workshop.”

  “Colin, I suppose. He was moaning the other night about how much he had to do.”

  “Par for the course.”

  “Mmm. Nico …” Kitty put down her brush and turned to face him. “You won’t… well … go to pieces on the first night, will you, darling? I should be absolutely frantic.”

  “Of course I won’t,” Nicholas cried indignantly. This insult managed to damp his ardor in a way that all the earlier rationalizations had failed to do. Silly cow. “You should know me better than that.”

  “Only you’ve so many lines—”

  “No more than in Night Must Fall.”

  “—and Esslyn said … with your experience … you’d probably just dry up and leave me stranded. …”

  “Esslyn can get stuffed.”

  “Oohh!” Neat foxiness beamed. Then she cocked her head on one side conspiratorially. “Don’t worry. I shan’t pass it on.”

  “You can pass it on as much as you like, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Nicholas went out slamming the door. Patronizing bastard. “It won’t be me who goes to pieces on the first night, mate,” he muttered. In the men’s dressing room he slung his coat and sword, glanced at his watch, and discovered that, incredibly, barely twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the theater. He decided to pop along and have a look at the scene dock.

  A man was there putting the finishing touches to a small gilt chair. He stood back as Nicholas entered, studying the tight hoop of the chairback, his brush dripping glittering gold tears onto an already multicolored floor. It was not the man Nicholas expected to see, but he experienced an immediate warmth, almost a feeling of kinship, toward the figure who was regarding his handiwork so seriously. Anyone who could make a cuckold out of Carmichael, thought Nicholas, was a man after his own heart.

  “Hullo,” he said. “The boss not in yet?”

  David Smy turned, his handsome, bovine face breaking into a slow smile. “No, just me. And you, of course. Oh”—his brush described a wide arc, and Nicholas, not wishing to be gilded, jumped briskly aside—“and the furniture.”

  “R-i-g-h-t.” Nicholas nodded. “Got it.” Then he performed the classic roguish gesture seen frequently in bad costume dramas but rarely in real life
. He laid his finger to the side of his nose, tapped it, and winked. “Just you and me and the furniture it is then, Dave,” he replied, and went back to the stage for some more practice.

  After fifteen minutes or so sitting down at and getting up from the piano and striding about getting used to his sword, Nicholas went up to the clubroom to see who else had arrived. Tim and Avery sat at a table, their heads close. They stopped talking the moment Nicholas entered, and Tim smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We weren’t talking about you.”

  “I didn’t expect you were.”

  “Didn’t you really?” asked Avery, who always thought that everyone was talking about him the second his back was turned, and never very kindly. “I would have.”

  “Oh, not your childhood insecurities, Avery,” said Tim. “Not on an empty stomach.”

  “And whose fault’s that? If you hadn’t been so long at the post office—”

  “Nico …” Tim indicated a slender bottle on the table. “Some De Bortoli?”

  “Afterwards, thanks.”

  “There won’t be any afterwards, dear boy.”

  “What were you whispering about, anyway?”

  “We were having a row,” said Avery.

  “In whispers?”

  “One has one’s pride.”

  “More of a discussion,” said Tim. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you what it’s about.”

  “We’re burning our boats.”

  “Avery!”

  “Well, if we can’t tell Nico, who can we tell?”

  “No one.”

  “After all, he’s our closest friend.”

  Nicholas tactfully concealed his surprise at this revelation, and the silence lengthened. Avery was biting his bottom lip as he always did when excited. He kept darting beseeching little glances at Tim, and his fists opened and closed in purgatorial anguish. He looked like a child on Christmas morning denied permission to open its presents. Even his circle of curls danced with the thrill of it all.

  Nicholas bent close to Avery’s ear. “I’ve got a secret as well. We could do a swap.”

  “Ohhh … could we, Tim?”

  “Honestly. You’re like a two-year-old.” Tim looked coolly at Nicholas. “What sort of secret?”

  “An amazing secret.”

  “Hm. And no one else knows?”

  “Only two other people.”

  “Well, it’s not a secret then, is it?”

  “It’s the two other people that the secret’s about.”

  “Ah.”

  “Oh, go on, Tim,” urged Nicholas. “Fair exchange is no robbery.”

  “Where do you find these ghastly little homilies?”

  “Please …”

  Tim hesitated. “You must promise not to breathe a word before the first night.”

  “Promise.”

  “He said that rather quickly. If you break it,” continued Avery, “you won’t get into Central.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “He’s gone quite pale.”

  “That was a stupid thing to say. Since when have you had crystal balls?”

  “Why the first night?” asked Nicholas, recovering his equilibrium.

  “Because after then everyone will know. Do you promise?”

  “Cut my throat and hope to die.”

  “You’ve got to go first.”

  Nicholas told them his secret, looking from face to face as he spoke. Avery’s mouth opened like a starfish in an ooo of astonishment and pleasure. Tim went scarlet, then white, then red again. He was the first to speak.

  “In my box.” Nicholas nodded affirmation. “Of all the fucking cheek.”

  “Ever the mot juste, ” chuckled Avery, practically rocking on his seat with satisfaction. Nicholas thought he was like one of those weighted Daruma dolls that, no matter how hard you pushed them down, sprang straight back up again. “But … if you couldn’t see the man, how do you know it was David?”

  “There was no one else in the place. Just me, Kitty— who surfaced in the dressing room about ten minutes later—and David in the scene dock. I know he and his dad are often early. But they’re never that early.”

  “I thought you always kept your box locked,” said Avery.

  “I do. But there’s a spare key on the board in the prompt corner,” said Tim, adding, “I shall take it home with me in the future. I must say,” he continued, “he’s a bit … lumpen … David. For Kitty, I mean.”

  “Constanze’s bit of rough.” Avery giggled. “Must have given you quite a thrill, Nico. If you like that sort of thing.”

  “Oh,” Nicholas said pinkly, “not really.”

  “Still, he’s a nice lad,” continued Tim, “and I should think almost anyone’d be a relief after Esslyn. It must be like going to bed with the Albert Memorial.” He pulled back his cuff. “Nearly the quarter. Better go and check the board.”

  He picked up his bottle and moved quickly to the door, Avery scuttling after. Nicholas, in hot pursuit, cried, “But what about your secret?”

  “Have to wait.”

  “I’ve got time. I’m not on for twenty minutes.”

  “And I’m not on,” echoed Avery, “at all. I can tell him.”

  “We tell him together.” Tim tried the door of his box, then got out his key. “At least David locked up after himself.”

  He opened the door, and just for a moment the three of them stood on the threshold, Avery quivering like the questing beast. His button nose pointed (as well as it was able), and he sniffed as if hoping to detect some faint residual flavor of wickedness in the stuffy air.

  “For heaven’s sake, Avery.”

  “Sorry.”

  The image of Kitty rushed back to Nicholas so vividly that it seemed impossible that the tiny place could have remained unmarked by her presence. Then he saw faintly on the glass the now barely visible tracks made by her dragging shoulder blades.

  Avery said, “I wonder what made them choose here?”

  “Sheer perversity, I should think. Well … see you later, Nicholas.”

  Dismissed, Nicholas was just turning away when a thought struck him. “Oh, Avery … you won’t repeat what I’ve told you to anyone?”

  “Me?” Avery was outraged. “I like the way you ask me. What about him?”

  Nicholas grinned. “Thanks.”

  Downstairs he collided with Harold, who arrived as he did everything else, Napoleonically. He started shouting as he entered the foyer, and didn’t stop until he had seen some flurry of movement, however unnecessary, in every corner of the auditorium. He called it keeping them on their toes. “So who’s ahead of the game?” he cried, subsiding into row C, lighting a Davidoff, and removing his hat. Harold had quite a collection of fur hats. This one was black and cream and yellowish-gray, and definitely the product of more than one animal. It had a short tail, squatted on his head like a ring-tailed lemur, and was known throughout the company as Harold’s succubus.

  “Come on, Deidre!” he roared. “Chop-chop!”

  The play began. The Venticelli loped down to the footlights and stood, secretively entwined, like a pair of gossipy grasshoppers. They were an unattractive pair, with pasty, open-pored complexions and most peculiar hair. Flossy and flyaway, it was that strange color—dirty blond with a pinkish tinge—that hairdressers call champagne. Their eyelids drooped in the lizardlike manner of the old, although they were barely thirty. They invariably seemed to be on the verge of imparting some distasteful revelation, and spoke in a sort of sniggering whisper. Harold was always having to tell them to project. Seemingly secure under Esslyn’s patronage, they discussed anyone and everyone vindictively, and their breath smelled dank and malodorous, like a newly opened grave. Now, having finished their opening dialogue and wrapped their cloaks tightly about them, they pranced off.

  Esslyn took the floor and Nicholas in the wings watched the tall figure with a certain degree of envy. For there was no denying that his rival cut a splendid figure onstage. Take his face, for a start.
High cheekbones, rather thick but beautifully shaped lips, and that rare feature, truly black eyes. Hard and bright, the pupils glittered like tar chippings. His jowls were always a faint steely blue, like those of the villains in gangster cartoons.

  Nicholas’s own face could not be more ordinary. It was an “ish” face. Brownish hair, grayish eyes, straightish nose. Only the fact that his even features were unevenly distributed gave it any distinction at all. Rather a lot of space between the tip of the nose and the top lip, which he thought made him look a trifle monkeyish, although Hazel at the checkout had pronounced it “very sexy.” A wide space also between his eyes, and a very wide one indeed after the eyebrows and before the hairline. So apart from being dwarfish and clumsy, with nondescript features, Nicholas reflected sourly, he would probably be completely bald before the age of twenty-one. He stared, aggrieved, at Esslyn’s crisp sloe-black hair. Not even a flake of dandruff.

  “Cheer up,” whispered David Smy, arriving ready for his first entrance. “It might never happen.”

  Nicholas barely had time to smile back before his companion went on. Poor old David, thought Nicholas, watching Salieri’s valet sidling across the boards with that constipated cringe that afflicts people who loathe acting and are coaxed onto a stage. Fortunately the valet was a nonspeaking part. The only time David had been given a line to say containing seven words, he had managed to deliver them in a different order every night of the run without repeating himself once.

  “David…” Nicholas heard from the stalls. “Try not to walk as if you’ve got a duck up your knickers. Get off and come on again.”

  Blushing, the boy complied. On reentering, he strode manfully to his position only to hear the Venticelli sniggering behind his back.