There was a sudden rustling of silks as Phyllis Wyvern came swishing down the steps from the landing, her feet appearing first at the perimeter of Romeo’s spotlight, and then her dress.
Her costume was absolutely gorgeous, a fawn-colored creation, wide at the hem, tight as blazes at the waist, and shockingly low at the neck. The precious stones that lined the collar and sleeves glittered madly as she passed through the glare of Romeo’s spotlight, and a gasp went up from the audience at the unaccustomed splendor that had materialized so suddenly in their midst.
Into her braided hair was woven a chaplet of flowers—real flowers, by the look of them—and I bit my lip in admiration. How young and beautiful, and how timeless she seemed!
The real Juliet, if ever there was one, would have spit in envy.
Down and down she came, and at last onto the foyer floor, her pointed slippers making a menacing sound on the tiles: like a pair of snakes tiptoeing on their rib ends.
Ned Cropper shrank back a little as she swept past him towards the front door.
She’s leaving! I thought. She’s walking out!
I twisted round in my chair, fighting to remain seated, as Phyllis Wyvern, having reached the scaffolding, seized hold of the ladder, placed a delicately slippered foot on the first rung, and began to climb.
Up and up she went, her Elizabethan dress, even in the darkness, shooting off sparks of light like a comet ascending the heavens.
At the top, she stepped off onto the plank flooring and edged her way along to where Gil Crawford stood watching her approach, his mouth open.
Clinging to the scaffold’s railing with one hand, Phyllis Wyvern hauled off and, with the other, slapped Gil hard across the face.
The sharp crack of it echoed back and forth across the foyer, refusing to die.
Gil’s hand flew to his cheek, and even in the near darkness, I saw the flash from the whites of his terrified eyes.
She hitched up the hem of her dress and maneuvered back to the ladder, which she managed to climb down with surprising grace.
Looking neither to the right nor the left, Phyllis Wyvern processed—there’s no other word for it; she looked as if she were walking in state up the center aisle of Westminster Abbey—she processed across the foyer to the foot of the west staircase, which she climbed, skirt still hitched in one hand, to the landing, where she turned and struck a pose at the railing of her make-believe bedroom balcony.
After a heart-stopping pause, the second spotlight came on with an audible clack, catching her in its beam like some exotic moth.
She clasped her hands to her breast, took a shuddering breath, and spoke her first line:
“Ay me!” she said.
“She speaks!” said Romeo.
“O, speak again, bright angel!” he went on, rather hesitantly,
“For thou art as glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
As is a wingèd messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturnèd wondering eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him …”
I couldn’t help thinking of Gil Crawford’s eyes.
“O Romeo, Romeo!” she cooed. “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”
And so on. The rest of the performance was just a lot of that moon-June-balloon stuff—a load of old mulch, really—and I found myself wishing they had chosen a more exciting scene from the play, one of those involving toxicology, for instance, which are the only really decent parts of Romeo and Juliet.
We had been made to listen to the play in its entirety on one of Father’s compulsory Thursday wireless nights, during which I had formed the opinion that while Shakespeare was good with words, he knew beans about poisons.
The difference between poisons and narcotics seems to have escaped him, and he was in an utter muddle when it came to those vegetable and mineral irritants that act upon the brain and spinal cord.
In spite of all the wordy hocus-pocus about gathering herbs by moonlight, Juliet’s symptoms indicated the use of nothing more mystifying than plain old hydrocyanic acid administered in drinking water.
For ever and ever, Amen.
By now, Phyllis Wyvern and Desmond Duncan were taking their bows. Joining hands like Hansel and Gretel, they took a couple of steps towards the audience, then backed away, and then advanced again, like waves lapping at the sands.
Flushed with pleasure, or something, they were both perspiring freely, their makeup, at close range, suddenly ghastly in the overhead lights.
Phyllis Wyvern was so close to Ned that his mouth gaped open like a flounder on a fishmonger’s stall, so that Mary had to nudge him in the ribs.
I looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark figure vanishing into the shadows at the head of the stairs, just above Juliet’s makeshift balcony.
It was Dogger, and I realized with a start that he had been there all along.
ELEVEN
WITH THE FOYER LIGHTS switched back on, I had my first chance to have a glance round at the entire audience.
There in the back row, with a happy look on his face, sat Dieter. Beside him, chewing on a mint, was Dr. Darby, and behind him, Mrs. Mullet with her husband, Alf.
Each of them seemed caught up in a trance, blinking round in silly wonder, as if they were surprised to find themselves still in their same old bodies.
Theater, I suppose, is a form of mass mesmerism, and if that’s the case, Shakespeare, despite his chemical shortcomings, was surely one of the greatest hypnotists who ever lived.
I had seen a spell woven before my eyes, broken by a slap, then woven again as easily as a granny darns a sock. It was marvelous—a blooming wonder, actually—when you came to think about it.
The actors now had gone to remove their makeup, and the ciné crew vanished to the upper reaches of the house to do whatever they do after a performance. They had not stayed to mingle with the audience, but that, perhaps, was part of the spell.
A gust of cold rushed suddenly into the foyer. Someone had opened the front door for a breath of fresh air, given a gasp, cries had gone up, and now everyone, including me, was crowding for a look outside.
A sharp wind had arisen during the performance and piled a waist-deep snowdrift at the door.
It was easy enough to see that tractor or no tractor, sleigh or no sleigh, no one was going to get home to Bishop’s Lacey tonight.
Still, Dieter was brave enough to give it a try. Bundling up in his heavy coat and scaling the white mountain that had appeared so suddenly, he was soon lost in the darkness.
“Better ring up Tom McGully to bring his snowplow,” someone said.
“No use doing that,” came a voice from the far corner, “as I’m already here.”
A nervous laugh went up, as Tom came forward and peered out the door with the rest of us.
“It’s a mort o’ snow,” he said, somehow making it official. “A mighty mort o’ snow.”
The hands of several ladies flew to their throats. The men exchanged quick glances, their faces expressionless.
Ten minutes later, Dieter was back, caked with the stuff, shaking his head.
“Tractor doesn’t start,” he announced. “Battery’s dead.”
The vicar, as usual, had taken charge.
“Ring up Bert Archer at the garage,” he had told Cynthia. “Tell him to bring his wrecker. If you can’t get through to Bert, leave a message with Nettie Runciman at the exchange.”
Cynthia nodded grimly and plodded off towards the telephone.
“Mrs. Mullet … I saw her here somewhere … Mrs. Mullet, do you think it would be possible to lay on some tea, and perhaps some cocoa for the little ones?”
Mrs. Mullet made for the kitchen, happy to be one of the first enlisted. As she vanished into the passageway, Cynthia reappeared.
“The line is dead,” she announced in a monotone.
“Well, then,” the vicar said, “as it seems we’re here for the duration, we shall just have to make do, shan’t we?”
It was decided with surprisingly little fuss that preference would be given to those with children, who would be allowed, wherever room permitted, to bunk in among the ciné crew who had already been assigned digs on the first floor.
Somewhere during the process, Father had put in a brief appearance, and with a couple of pointed fingers and a few words to the vicar, had mobilized the operation as if it were a precision military exercise. He had then re-vanished into his study.
Those who could not be accommodated upstairs would bunk down in the foyer. Pillows and blankets that had not been used since Harriet was alive would be brought out of their storage presses and handed out to the makeshift refugees.
“It shall be just like old times,” the vicar told them, rubbing his hands together vigorously. “Not unlike the bomb shelters during the war. We shall make a great success of it; a grand adventure. After all, it isn’t as if we haven’t done it before.”