Things To Their Destruction Run

32

Things To Their Destruction Run

    On the Monday of the last week of the run the performance was enlivened by Snug having a tremendous sneezing fit in the middle of the mechanicals’ play. Hay fever, he revealed miserably afterwards to an empurpled Mac. Joel’s suggestion that Georgy had better take over his part for the rest of the week was received well by no-one. Especially not by Derry, who was there with the full intention of begging, bribing or otherwise persuading Livia into letting Georgy do one more show, but had lost his nerve.

    Adam was terrifically passionate in bed that night and the innocent Georgy took this as a sign that he’d suddenly realized how close they were to parting forever and was regretting this. He was very grumpy next morning but as she had to dash off to a lecture this didn’t really register.

    Tuesday evening’s performance was truly appalling. The cast was completely jaded. Georgy was kept extremely busy prompting. Even Joel had to be prompted once, but this faux pas was overshadowed by his bladder fight with a fairy and a rustic who wasn’t even meant to be on stage. The empurpled Mac rushed round during the next break between scenes viciously confiscating every single bladder—in person. He then made the discovery that silver plastic balloons were bloody hard to tear apart with the bare hands. This didn’t improve matters much, especially as he made it in front of Derry, who was again there with the intention of persuading Livia into letting Georgy do one more show, but had again lost his nerve.

    Mac promptly called a full-cast rehearsal for eight-thirty the following morning, regardless of the facts that they had a matinée that afternoon at two-thirty and that many of the cast had classes to attend during the morning.

    That night Adam was again terrifically passionate but this time Georgy began to feel slightly puzzled by it, as it was definitely a wordless passion. It was very demanding, too, and she didn’t particularly enjoy it—in fact her brain said inside her head, quite unbidden: “Is this an ‘exigent passion’? ...And if so, why?”

    She didn’t have much time to find out what he was going to be like next morning, because Ralph turned up at seven-thirty to offer her a lift into the City Campus and Adam accepted for both of them. The savvy Ralph took one look at the scowl, not to mention the blueness of the chin, and put Georgy firmly into the back of the car on the double excuse that Adam’s legs being longer, he needed the front seat, and that the sun visor in the front passenger’s seat had a mirror on its back. He then forced his own portable electric shaver on him, making a pale joke as he did so about having bought the company. Georgy didn’t get it and he hadn’t expected her to, but he could see that McIntyre did, and wasn’t admitting as much. Yes, well.

    Thanks to Ralph’s good offices Adam and Georgy were on time for the rehearsal but not many others of the cast were. Mac strode up and down the flagstones swearing fluently.

    By nine o’clock, although there was still no sign of his Egeus, Bottom, or Titania, Mac started anyway. Reading Egeus’s part grimly himself. This did have the advantage of injecting some modicum of sense into I, 1. In fact a fairy sitting behind Adam on the bleachers actually said to the fairy next to it: “Oh! I geddit!”

    The fairy next to it was Vicki Austin: she replied: “Yeah. Ginny’s read it, she reckoned he was her father.”

    Adam rolled his eyes madly.

    “Hey, Louise,” continued Vicki: “did you think my wings looked a bit wobbly last night?”

    “Um.... Never noticed,” reported Louise. “Why?”

    “The right one felt a bit wobbly: I hope it doesn’t come off during a performance,” said Vicki cheerfully.

    Louise giggled. “It might brighten it up!” she choked.

    “Ssh!” hissed Vicki in alarm.

    After a moment Adam registered that two young pairs of eyes were boring into his back in a sort of horror-struck silence. Not lèse majesté, no, more your naughty child afraid of being reproved for its naughtiness. God.

    By nine-thirty there was still no sign of Nigel, and Mac was again fuming. The more so as it had now dawned that there was no sign of the tall, skinny Starveling, either. Needless to say there was also no sign of Egeus or Livia. Adam’s drawled suggestion that he should simply skip I, 2 was not well received.

    “You read it, Big Mac,” urged Joel.

    Bill Michaels had appeared from the direction of the back drive, scratching the whiskers and yawning. “Yeah, give us all a treat,” he agreed. “—You want me to fix them lights on the balcony this morning, or not?”

    Mac hadn’t realized Bill was there in person for that purpose. “Uh—yeah,” he said weakly. “Ta. Uh—haven’t seen Patrick this morning, have you?” he added, rallying slightly.

    Bill rubbed the whiskers. “Yeah, I have, actually. Round eight-fifty-five. Disappearing in the direction of Lecture Theatre One for a Mech. One lecture at nine o’clock. Which is where ’e’s s’posed to be at nine o’clock of a working Wednesdee.” He eyed Mac blandly.

    “Well, who’s going to work the contraption?” demanded Mac aggrievedly.

    In response Bill and bellowed: “ANDY!”

    A head appeared over the balcony, chewing. “Yeah?” it said stolidly.

    “You and Dave got it all in hand up there?”

    Another head appeared beside the first, the hand that accompanied this second head lowering a Mad magazine. “Yeah,” it confirmed.

    “Yeah,” agreed Andy.

    If you were really well acquainted with the faint nuances of the engineering utterance you’d have spotted that both students considered their professor to have fallen out of his tree, but none of the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream perceived this.

    Dave then added: “Shane and Norm are helping out.” –Those really well acquainted with the engineering utterance would have perceived he was humouring an elderly professor who had fallen out of his tree.

    “Yeah, goodoh,” said Bill stolidly, swallowing a smile. “Oy, is that one of our Mads?” he added.

    Dave looked at its front cover in mild surprize. Stuck diagonally across this cover was a large piece of insulating tape.

    “Uh—yeah,” he admitted.

    “Mind ya don’t leave it lying round for this lot to pinch, then,” ordered Bill.

    “Righto,” said Dave obligingly. “Hey—Bill?”

    “Yeah?”

    “You want us to have a look at those lights?” said Dave on a hopeful note.

    “Uh—no. I’ll be with you in a jiff,” replied his professor, just managing not to gulp. “Oy, Big Mac, where are yer little fairies?” he added in a rude voice.

    “They’ll be here by ten,” responded Mac, scowling.

    “I geddit. So’s they can turn up at school in time for assembly and tell the teacher not to expect ’em for the rest of the day!”

    Mac took a deep breath. “Are you going to adjust those lights or not?”

    “Hold your horses,” replied Bill mildly. “Got an important message to deliver, first.”

    He was now, of course, the cynosure of all eyes, the more so since he’d casually strolled onto the flagstones, i.e. Mac’s sacred stage. All eyes duly watched as he fumbled in the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper.

    “Dunno why ’e phoned us—prolly because he reckoned my secretary’d be the only one on deck at eight-thirty of a working Wednesdee,” he noted conversationally.

    “YES!” shouted Mac. “WHAT?”

    Bill read out carefully: “‘Memo to: Bill M. Timed at: 8.34.’ –Got a very exact mind, our secretary: comes of working for years with engin—”

    “YES! WHAT?” howled Mac, above the sniggerings of the assembled fairies and rustics on the bleachers.

    “‘Pls let Mac know Nigel can’t make it to play rehearsal, at service station this morning,’” read out Bill carefully. “‘From: Nig—’”

    “GIVE me that’“ screamed Mac, wrenching it off him. He read it over to himself, breathing heavily. “I see. Did he say when—or if—he might be able to turn up?”

    “Well, no. Not as far as is known. However, the message does say ‘morning’, and you can guarantee that that’s what he’ll have said.”

    Mac sighed. “Yeah. All right. -I’d better read his part, then,” he decided.

    “Yes, and darling Georgy had better read Starveling’s!” squeaked Joel.

    Mac’s lips tightened. “No. She’ll have to prompt the other buggers.” His eye roved round the assembled cast without hope. It fell on—

    “Get up,” he said evilly to his nephew. “You can read it. Ya may not be skinny enough, but you’ve got the height. And no—farting—around! Geddit?”

    “Yes,” said Adam dully, standing up, what time certain members of the assembled cast, not to mention certain ballet mothers who had now started to arrive, offspring in tow, gasped and whispered and nudged one another: “I get it.”

    “Aw, blow,” said Joel in an exact simulacrum of the local accent: “I wanted to do it.”

    There was a stunned silence.

    “Take a bow,” advised Mac nastily.

    Joel did. Certain members of the assembled cast clapped madly. Certain ballet mothers, largely those who had had run-ins with Mac, joined in. Joel bowed again.

    “THADD’LL DO!” bellowed Mac. “Get up the balcony, then,” he said grimly to his colleague.

    “Righto,” replied Bill amiably, ambling over to the staircase. It was not clear whether he had intended to take the wind out of Mac’s sails but this was certainly his effect.

    “All right,” said Mac grimly, doing his best to ignore the atmosphere of happy satisfaction from Bill’s audience: “we’ll do I, 2.”

    They embarked on I, 2. Adam was noticeably better than the official Starveling.

    “He even looks skinny,” said Louise to Vicki in a sort of stunned wonder.

    “Yeah,” agreed Vicki, also stunned. “I’m starving, ’ve you got anything to eat?” she added hopefully.

    Louise felt in her satchel. “Um—a banana,” she reported. “It’s a bit spotty.”

    “Never mind.”

    The two fairies divided the spotty banana happily.

    ... “‘I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow,’” pronounced Mac with a sort of bumbling self-satisfaction and the suggestion of a Zummerzet accent.

    Derry subsided onto the bottom bleacher with a sigh. “What’s going on?” he hissed to the fairies on the bleacher behind him.

    “I, 2,” explained Louise kindly to the great director.

    “Nigel has to work at the service station this morning!” hissed Vicki.

    Derry blenched slightly at the gusts of over-ripe banana. “I see,” he murmured. “What’s Adam doing?” he hissed.

    Politely not blenching at the gusts of mouthwash over last night’s hangover, Vicki murmured: “Starveling. Do you reckon he looks skinny, Derry?”

    Unmoved by being addressed by his first name by a red-headed Antipodean fairy who couldn’t act for toffee, the great director nodded firmly.

   “Yeah, r’I thought so, too,” agreed Vicki pleasedly, with the customary intervocalic R.

    Derry nodded again. As the scene had now finished—and Mac was shouting at Quince, who’d had to be prompted for two lines out of three—he added in a normal tone: “Your wings were a bit wobbly last night, weren’t they?”

    “Yeah,” said Vicki with mournful pride. “I reckon the right one’s loose.”

    “Mm. I’d get Pauline or Whatsisface with the silver hair to take a look at it, if I was you.”

    “Yeah, r’I might,” she agreed.

    Derry yawned. “Where’s Livia, or don’t I dare ask?”

    “Dunno,” said Vicki indifferently.

    “She hasn’t turned up,” elaborated Louise.

    “Do ya think Georgy might have to play Titania?” asked Vicki on a hopeful note.

    Derry got up. “I hope so.” He strode over to Mac and pulled him aside.

    By ten-thirty, having decided to skip the twilight procession, Mac was shouting and screaming at the fairies to get into position. –NO! THERE!

    He then became aware that half his cast’s attention had been diverted to the other side of the wood entirely and that his principals had all deserted the stage. “What the fuck—” he began dangerously.

    “Have a coffee,” said Jill smoothly. She held out a tray.

    Rod Jablonski also held out a tray. “Yeah. We heard a rumour that there might be a use for coffee round these here parts round about now,” he explained. “Eh, Maisie?”

    Maisie Pretty, very pink and giggly—the Michelangelic Rod was wont to have such an effect on ladies of a certain age—agreed to this and proffered another tray.

    “Some of us,” noted Mac evilly, glaring at her and ignoring the tray, “had heard a rumour to the effect that Dennis Barlow employs you to work in his office.”

    Maisie looked uncertainly at Jill and Rod.

    “Dennis is away this week: French Camp,” explained Jill briskly.

    “We know his French is rotten, but he volunteered for it,” explained Rod, less briskly. “Had something to do with the fact that this year they’re taking the jammy little buggers to Noumea for a week—or that’s what we’ve worked out; eh, Jill?

    “Mm. It took us some time but we finally managed it. Once it had dawned on us that ‘Noumea’ was the clue,” explained Jill kindly.

    Mac sighed. He took a coffee. “These are your department’s cups, aren’t they?” he said weakly.

    “While the cats are away,” summed up Rod. “Hullo, have a coffee,” he said to Derry.

    “Thanks.” Derry took a cup. “Life-saver,” he noted.

    Rod bowed modestly over his tray.

    “Do you act?” said the great director, eyeing his Michelangelic blond beauty with an acute directorial eye.

    “No,” replied Rod unemotionally. “Where’s Georgy?” he added to the company at large. “GEORGY!” he shouted before anyone could reply.

    Georgy emerged timidly from behind her bush. “Are we having a break?” she ventured.

    “It looks like it,” admitted Mac grimly. “—That does not mean that assorted cretins can go off to the CAFF!” he shouted.

    Assorted cretins crept back.

    “What is this French Camp ?” asked Derry with interest as Jill was relieved of her last cup and set her tray down on a convenient bleacher.

    “Mm?” Jill had been watching Adam’s lips narrowing and his nostrils flaring as Georgy took a cup of what the Michelangelic Roderick had assured her was “nice and milky” coffee, smiling up into his speedwell-blue eyes as she did so. “Uh—oh. Youse lot from foreign climes wouldn’t know, of course.”

    “Knock it off, Bognor,” he replied genially.

   Jill scratched her neat fawn waves. “Uh—hard to explain. Longstanding tradition, apparently. The German Department does it, too. Only they call theirs German Camp,” she explained kindly. “Some time during the first month of term assorted students are dragged off to—er—a camping venue, where in the company of various lecturers, usually dragooned, they’re expected to speak a foreign language for the week. –In the case of French Camp, French,” she elaborated kindly.

    “Oh. Isn’t Noumea a bit far?” said the great director in confusion.

    “Not from Auckland by a large plane, Derry: no,” returned Jill kindly.

    “What I mean is,” said the great director weakly, “a bit dear.”

    “Well, certainly for ninety-nine percent of the student body, yes. Only those with rich daddies, or possibly sugar-daddies,” allowed Jill fairly, “enrolled for it this year. It’s only for Second-Years and up anyway, mind you.”

    “Er—I see,” he said weakly.

    “He doesn’t really,” she said to Rod.

    “No. ’E’s prolly got that Pommy notion that the kids come to varsity to work. Or even learn.”

    “Absolutely. Why don’t you tell him about Orientation Week, Rod?” she suggested kindly.

    “Yes, tell me!” said Derry eagerly. –Certain of his audience perceived that in spite of Rod’s unencouraging initial response, he had not given up on the idea that the blond Michelangelic one might act.

    “No, don’t,” said Mac disagreeably. “Once these two get going,” he explained to the great director, “we’ll be here all day.”

    “Aren’t you planning to be here all day anyway?” asked Jill courteously.

    Her audience went into terrific sniggers. Not excluding Maisie Pretty, who nearly dropped her tray. Could it be that she was not particularly fond of Mac? certain of the audience wondered.

    “‘Thank you for bringing my cast and crew coffee, Jill!’” squeaked Georgy.

    “Shut up,” returned Mac immediately, as their audience choked. “Drink that up and go and have a piss: you’re on in two minutes.”

    “Me?” said Georgy weakly. “I thought you were going to read it.”

    “NO!” he shouted terribly. “And GET ON WITH IT!”

    They all got on with it.

    ... “I’m dying,” Derry reported to Jill at around eleven-thirty.

    “The nearest Gents’ is over—”

    “Not that, idiot!” he choked. “No, I’ve gotta have her.”

    “Pity certain others don’t share them sentiments,” she noted, eyeing Starveling sourly. They were now up to II, 1, Mac having decreed, very shortly and loudly that there would be NO BREAK between acts—and Adam had just said in the voice of a tall, thin, timorous and very conventional tailor: “‘I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.’”

    “Mm. At this moment,” he said, eyeing Adam grimly, “I’d vote to leave the killing in. And I know who I’d throw to the bloody lions first.”

    “Quite.”

    Derry sighed heavily.

   There was a long silence on the bleachers. Apart from the noise of fairies who had stolen off to the Caff regardless chewing with their mouths slightly open.

    Eventually Derry said dully: “Don’t suppose I could bribe him with the offer of Starveling as well as Oberon?”

    “Uh—well, he does appear to be enjoying the part,” croaked Jill. “Um—it’s the sort of thing Olivier might have done on stage, in his heyday, isn’t it?”

    “His entire career was his heyday!” replied Derry crossly.

    “You could try,” put in Rod.

    “Mm. –Look, what is your name?” said the great director abruptly.

    “Not Lysander,” explained Jill kindly.

    “No, I’m thinking of using that Gwillim kid for that,” he explained, unmoved.

    “It’s not bloody well Demetrius, either,” said Rod grimly, realizing with something very like horror that the great director was serious.

    “Rod Jablonski,” explained Jill helpfully.

    “Rod, then,” said Derry pleasedly. “Look, just come over—”

    Jill groaned. “I don’t think it’s sunk in,” she said to the Michelangelic one.

    “It can’t have.”

    “SHUT UP!” bellowed Mac at this point.

    Derry lowered his voice very slightly. “Rod, if you could just read—”

    “He’s not a student, Derry,” explained Jill, very, very kindly. “I know his jeans bely it—not to say the eternally youthful Michelangelic appearance—but he is actually a full lecturer. Em-ployed,” she clarified kindly.

    Rod got up. “I gotta go. Got a class at twelve,” he explained. He gathered up a tray of coffee cups. “See ya.”

    Derry scrambled up and panted in his wake.

    “Interesting,” noted Jill to herself.

    Adam had come off. He sat down beside her. “What the fuck’s Derry up to now?”

    “Don’t panic, he doesn’t want the Michelangelic Roderick for Oberon,” she said nastily.

    Adam glared.

    “Only for Demetrius,” explained Jill kindly. “Provided he can read, one gathers. Though I believe even illiteracy is not an insuperable problem in the world of fillum?”

    Lips tight, nostrils flared, Adam got up and stalked off.

    Jill raised her eyebrows very high, and sniffed faintly.

    It was nearly one-thirty. Students in quest of lunch had been trickling through the quad for some time, apparently blind to the ropes and signs which indicated there was no thoroughfare. None of them had been bold enough actually to walk across Mac’s sacred stage, however. Bill had long since fixed the lights on the balcony and gone. Patrick had turned up and been glared at briefly by Mac but hadn’t appeared to notice the glare, and there were those present who had noted pleasedly that he probably really hadn’t. One of these had given up on the entire thing and, rubbing her bum with considerable force, had gathered up Angie and carted her off to the Club. Angie had suggested they just eat and drink, and oddly enough Jill hadn't objected. So they were now consuming chicken salad, French bread and Riesling without so much as breathing the word “play”, or, indeed, the word “appalling.”

    The front row of the bleachers was now empty apart from Joel and a green lizard who were sharing a yoghurt muesli bar and audibly wondering whether Nigel was going to turn up at all.

    “Yes; and what about the boy with the funny beard?” added a ballet mother, leaning forward eagerly.

    “Egeus,” identified the lizard immediately.

    “SHUT UP!” bellowed Mac.

    The ballet mother continued to lean forward eagerly. The ballet mothers on either side of her did the same.

    “Big Mac will have to play the part,” decided Joel. “Either in ‘your straw-colour beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-ingrain beard, or your French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.’”

    The lizard and the ballet mothers giggled helplessly.

    “I SAID, SHUT UP!” bellowed Mac.

    Joel rose gracefully. “Mac, darling, even though ’tis true, ’tis true, ’tis very true that it lacks but thirty of the hour, some of us would like to feed our rumbling tums before the actual performance. Which, as you may not have remembered, starts in an hour’s time.”

    “Yes,” agreed Adam, popping out from the staircase.

    Mac hurled his last night’s notes to the ground. “All right, all right, all RIGHT!” he screamed. “Fuck off and stuff your flaming faces! See if I fucking well care! –God!” he added to himself, mopping his streaming brow.

    Georgy popped out from behind her bush. “I did ring Wallace Briggs’s number, but their answering-machine’s on.”

    “Well, you’ll just have to play it, then, won’t you?” he said nastily.

    “Yes,” she said in a squashed voice.

    “WELL?” shouted Mac terribly to the assembled cast. “What are you waiting for? I said, FUCK OFF! –And beginners be back in HALF AN HOUR!” he added terribly.

    The cast slunk off. Brightening both noticeably and audibly when they were still well within earshot, however. In fact Vicki Austin could be heard saying cheerfully to her twin: “Polly and Jake have still got a garage full of bladders, eh?”

    “Yes,” agreed Ginny.

    “Good; I bet he’ll change his mind and start screaming for them tonight,” said Vicki cheerfully.

    “Yes. Um—could you do my line this arvo, do you think, Vicki?”

    “Um... Why?”

    The longer-haired twin replied mournfully: “Otherwise I’ll miss my Greek tutorial. And I really want to go.”

    “Oh all right,” decided Vicki cheerfully. “It’s only a kids’ matinée, eh?”

    At this point Mac opened his mouth to scream at the pair of them, but thought better of it. “God,” he muttered again, mopping his forehead with his large and grimy handkerchief.

    “Amateurs,” noted Joel.

    Mac took a deep breath.

    “Hullo,” said a cheerful voice from behind them and from an area which was supposedly cordoned off. “Which of you lot’s Prof. McIntyre?”

    Mac swung round, glaring. “Me. Why?”

    The newcomer was a tall, long-legged, brown-haired girl in jeans and a red tee-shirt. She looked rather like Barbara Michaels—cheerful and unassuming. Not to say no respecter of persons, noted Joel instantly with glee.

    “I’ve got a message for you from Wal Briggs.”

    Mac turned purple. “About flaming time!” he choked.

     She looked mildly surprized. “I couldn’t get here before, I hadda do a title search.”

    Adam came up to his uncle’s elbow. “I thought Wal didn’t do conveyancing?”

    “No,” she agreed, not evincing any surprize or awe at being thus addressed by the famous Adam McIntyre in person.—Not to say in the white double-strapped trou’ and the blue silk blouse, dears, noted Joel with glee.—“He’s taken on a nutter that reckons the Church of England haven’t got any right to charge him ground rent for his section, because his grandma was an Arawa and he thinks he’s got a tribal claim to it.”

    “The Arawa aren’t actually a tribe,” noted Georgy detachedly.

    The girl looked at her with interest. “No,” she agreed. “I don’t think that’s dawned on Wal, yet. But anyway, he thought we’d better establish whether the Church does actually own the land at all before we go any furth—”

    Mac bellowed terribly: “WHAT’S THE MESSAGE?”

    Unmoved, the girl replied: “Livia Wentworth can’t make it today because she’s got a migraine.”

    “JESUS!” he shouted.

    “We thought ya might ring the office and when nobody had, Wal said I’d better get on up here,” she added, still unmoved. “Only I hadda do the search first.”

    “Do they own it?” asked Georgy eagerly.

    The girl shrugged. “The records only go back to 1875. It looks as if they probably did then. Um—well, that’s it, then,” she said to Mac. “Sorry. Have you got an understudy?”

    Mac sighed. ‘‘Yeah. –Thanks,” he said dully.

    “That’s okay.”

    She made to depart but Adam said quickly: “No, wait. Have you had lunch yet?”

    “No, because I’ve been toiling up through the park to deliver messages for Wal, haven’t I?” she replied without emphasis.

    “Well, come over to the Club and have some with us,” he said, smiling.

    “Yes, do,” agreed Georgy, also smiling at her.

    “I’m not a member,” she said cautiously.

    “Nor am I. But Georgy and Mac will sign us in!” said Adam cheerfully.

    “Darlings, what about One?” cried Joel aggrievedly.

    “We’ll smuggle you in under our skirts. Come on, for God’s sake, I’m starving,” replied Adam crossly. “Coming?” he added to Wal’s law clerk.

    “Um—well, righto,” she agreed. “Ta.”

     To the accompaniment of only slight grumbles from Mac, they went.

    Joel, for one, was wondering silently whether Adam had done it out of the K. of his H., which he didn’t for one moment believe, actually, dears—wouldn’t recognize if if he fell over it; or in order not to have to have a tête-à-tête lunch with Georgy. Well, anyone’s guess, really. Because in case no-one had noticed, One’s own presence could also have acted as a buffer. Or, possibly not. He had a fair idea that Adam had realized that, given the choice, one would choose curling-edged sarnies in the Caff with the green lizard any time over playing gooseberry to them two. And especially ong ce momong, dears.

    They got back to the quad to find a cheerful-looking Nigel in yellow shorts and a green singlet arranging armchairs in front of the first row of bleachers, helped by Rod Jablonski and watched by Egeus with—

    “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO YOURSELF?” screamed Mac.

    Watched by Egeus with his right arm in a sling. He turned, looking apologetic. “I fell off our roof first thing this morning, I was getting my little sister’s ball—”

    “CHRIST!” shouted Mac.

    “Mum tried to ring you, only your secretary didn’t seem to be there,” said Egeus apologetically.

    Mac breathed heavily.

    “Um—it’s a clean break,” the luckless one ventured.

    “Get off home,” said Mac tiredly.

    “But who’ll—”

    “I’ll do it! GET OFF HOME!” he shouted.

    “It doesn’t hurt much,” said Egeus bravely.

    Everyone could see this was a lie, he was sort of blueish round the mouth.

    “Go,” said Mac heavily. “There is no way you’re doing two shows the day you busted your bloody arm.”

    “Ooh, humanitarian!” sighed Joel admiringly.

    “Um—yeah. Um—all right, then. –It’s all right, Mum, he says I don’t have to go on,” he suddenly said to a woman who was sitting on the front bleacher and whom everyone had taken for a ballet mother.

    “Good,” she said, getting up and avoiding Mac’s eye. “Come on, then. You can take some aspirin and have a nice lie-down.”

    Egeus mooched off glumly at her side.

    “Christ,” muttered Mac.

    “Can you do it without the book?” asked Adam interestedly.

    “I don’t know!” he said impatiently. “Go and GET DRESSED! –And you,” he said evilly to Nigel: “I wanna word with you.”

    “Look, I hadda do it, Rog’s mechanic’s off sick, and—”

    “Go and get DRESSED!” howled Mac.

    “They want these chairs,” explained Nigel.

    Mac registered what his Bottom was doing. “What the fuck—?”

    Rod Jablonski had been at the other end of the front row. He strolled up, grinning. “Word seems to have got out that Georgy’ll be doing Titania this arvo: there’s been quite a demand for these here armchairs. So me and Nige thought we might make you a fast buck or two—eh, Nige?”

    Mac replied grimly: “Just make sure they do all pay for their bloody seats, that’s all.” He grabbed Nigel by the arm and pulled him fiercely in the direction of the stairwell.

    “Shall us?” said Joel graciously to Adam, offering his arm.

    “Why not?” Adam took the arm and they minced off.

    This entire scene had been played under the goggling eyes of a stand full of giggling, whispering, rustling, pushing secondary-school kids. Girls, mostly; apparently boys’ schools didn’t go in much for Culcha, in the Anty-podes. Though actually Adam and Joel could both have guessed that.

    Dr Jablonski went on unemotionally setting out chairs and hitting up the gathering band of his colleagues for the dough.

    “It’s Georgy!” gasped Elspeth, high on the bleachers.

    Whetu choked on a chocolate peanut. She was eating chocolate peanuts even though she’d been told times without number by her mother that chocolate made her put on weight and by Elspeth that you could choke to death on peanuts. It was the shape: see that little hook, there? It got stuck in your throat and you choked to death. As Whetu had also heard the other very popular myth about peanuts that was current amongst their young-teen peer group, to wit that it was the skins you choked to death on, she had got rather confused. But anyway, she’d never personally heard of anyone that had choked to death on them.

    Elspeth was also eating chocolate peanuts: in fact they were her chocolate peanuts. Quickly she banged her choking friend on the back before she could choke to death.

    “Help, yeah!” gasped Whetu. “It is!”

    The two friends watched with their chocolate-peanutty mouths open as Georgy silently directed her fairies to their places with her wand. Merely smiling as she did so, she hadn’t yet been officially spotted.

    “Here’s Adam,” noted Elspeth tepidly as his procession came on.

    “Yeah,” agreed Whetu without much interest—the gilt had worn off that particular piece of gingerbread. The more so as Adam had said in their hearing that actually he couldn’t throw a child of two over his shoulder and that all that King Fu in the film had been his double. Calling it “King” Fu, be it said, with malice aforethought which the innocent pair hadn’t spotted.

    “Ooh, look!” Elspeth then cried as the Dong wove into sight. “It’s the Dong With the Luminous Nose!”

    “Eh?” said Whetu.

    New Zealand education being what it was, that was pretty much the reaction of the rest of the matinée audience to Adam’s Learish company. Oddly enough, however, a goodly proportion of them recognized Alice in Wonderland. Though it would be fair to say that only Elspeth spotted that the caterpillar was minus his hookah.

    Derry was again high in the electricians’ stand. Bill had considerately ordered the boys to pull the tarp over a bit, so as the thinning spot on his head wouldn’t burn. Possibly he wasn’t aware that Derry was sensitive about this thinning spot but Derry himself would not by now have risked 10 P on it.

    “Always hams it up for the matinée audiences,” Bill noted comfortably as Nigel stumbled over his own feet and exited to howls of laughter from the kids on “Enough: hold, or cut bow-strings.”

    Derry grunted.

    “She’s as good as ever,” offered Bill.

    “Shut up,” he snarled.

    “Wasn’t this what you wanted?” asked Bill in confusion. “How much didja slip Livia to have that migraine, by the way?”

    “Nothing. Shut up,” he snarled.

    “It can’t be pure coincidence. Or have you got a direct line to Upstairs?” asked Bill, squinting at the sky. “Because if ya have, you can tell me who’s gonna win—”

    Derry produced a snarling sound through his teeth.

    “I only asked! I’m only a humble Tech Boy, ya know—”

    “Cut it out, Bill,” said Derry tiredly.

    Bill sighed. “The alternative is to sit here mumchance, brooding lugubriously on the might-have-been,” he noted.

    “Let’s do that,” said Derry grimly.

    They did that.

    … “It was ace!” gasped Elspeth, clapping madly.

    “Yeah!” agreed Whetu, clapping madly. –On the bus going home she was to ask in puzzled tones: “Who got who, in the end, anyway?” and Elspeth was to admit: “I’m not sure.” But for the nonce, it was ace. And Georgy was definitely whatever the superlative of ace was. You’d kinda forgotten she was even Georgy, eh?—Ye-ah! Hey, it was weird, eh, Elspeth?—Elspeth supposed it was but she also supposed real acting was like that. This stopped Whetu in her tracks for a moment but soon she was declaring that Joel had also been ace. Hey, it was funny when he was teasing that man in the wood, eh? Elspeth agreed enthusiastically.

    It would remain a mystery, never to be elucidated even by their experienced parents, exactly how the pair of them had gathered from this particular production in broad daylight on the flagstones of the City Campus’s quadrangle that there was a wood involved at all, but nevertheless they’d got it. Such was the magic of real acting.

    Adam had duly congratulated Georgy after her performance, giving her a kiss and a hug. Not in front of the audience of kids, which was just as well, Georgy would probably have died of embarrassment on the spot, but upstairs in the cloisters. In front of Patrick O’Reilly and the engineering students, but then, it was the lesser of the two evils. He had then slyly reminded her that there’d be another performance tonight, in case she’d forgotten.

    “Tonight? Won’t Livia do it?” gasped Georgy in horror.

    “I doubt it. Not if she’s been spoiling herself in bed all day with chocolates and weak tea.”

    Georgy looked at him dubiously.

    “That’s Livia’s version of a migraine. I gather it comes upon her every so often that she deserves a little rest and a little treat.”

    “Oh, pooh!” said Georgy crossly. “You’re making it up!”

    Adam’s shoulders shook slightly. “No, honest, darling: she was notorious for it during that bloody soapie of hers.”

    Georgy swallowed.

    “Look, we’ll pop over to the S.C.R. for a nice revivifying drink, and then we’ll grab a bite somewhere in town—okay? Less exhausting than dashing home to the Coast.”

    “Yes,” said Georgy with a tiny smile.

    “What?”

    “You said ‘to the Coast’ to the manner born,” she murmured.

    “Did I?” he said in a terrifically casual voice. “Perhaps I’m getting used to the whole idea, then!” He gave a tiny laugh. Under cover of it he watched Georgy narrowly.

    Georgy didn’t realize he was being terribly subtle. Or that he was in a shocking state of nerves, not to say indecision, which was getting exponentially worse as every day fled by and his point of departure got nearer and nearer.

    “Yes,” she said simply. “Not Chinese, I don’t think I could act on top of Chinese food. Or Indonesian,” she added quickly.

    “Indonesian?” said Adam blankly. He felt very dashed indeed, but didn’t let it show.

    “Yes; you know: the MeKong, that’s Indonesian.”

    Adam had thought it was Chinese, too. “Oh. Um—well, one of the steak houses?”

    “Yes, I could do with a nice piece of steak,” said Georgy with a sigh.

    Adam put his arm round her shoulders. “Mm.”

    “You were awfully good as Starveling!” she said, beaming up at him. “I laughed and laughed!”

    “Really?” he said, himself giving a startled laugh.

    “Yes.” Georgy’s face lit up: she said without pausing to consider her words: “Adam, why don’t you do Starveling in Derry’s film as well as Oberon?”

    The thought that he might do so had fleetingly crossed Adam’s mind. But he’d never done anything approaching a character part on celluloid, and the idea of possibly making a terrific fool of himself in a very, very minor rôle...

    “Out of the question. Derry would never wear it in the Bard: smacks of crude crowd-pulling,” he said, making an awful face.

    “Oh,” said Georgy, very dashed, swallowing hard. “But—but they doubled the parts all the time in Shakespeare’s time, didn’t they?”

    Adam withdrew his arm from her shoulders. “Possibly. But I’d like to know how the Devil they managed that damned tight last change, in Shakespeare’s time!”

    “The same as Mac did, I suppose,” said Georgy faintly. “With Starveling in a big back cloak over the Oberon costume. After all, he only has to carry a lantern to be Moonshine.”

    Adam shrugged. “Given that they probably did the mechanicals’ play in masks in Shakespeare’s time, anyone at all could have played Moonshine.”

    “He has lines, the audience would notice if it wasn’t the same voice; why do you imagine the Elizabethan audience was stupider than modern ones?” retorted Georgy crossly.

    He shrugged again. “Few audiences could be stupider than this afternoon’s, I’ll give you that, not even in Shakespeare’s time.”

    Georgy realized he picked up her phrase “in Shakespeare’s time” and was quoting it back at her, but for the life of her she couldn’t see why. She said in a small voice: “I’d better get changed.”

    “Yes, very well. Run along,” agreed Adam tiredly.

    Tears dazzled in Georgy’s eyes. She bit her lip and hurried off to the female dressing-room.

    Adam hadn’t noticed the tears. But he had noticed Georgy contradicting him and what was more very probably being right where he had very probably been wrong. He sighed heavily, and made his way very slowly along the balcony, past Mothu, now neatly parked with his wings folded, and down the cloisters to the male dressing-room.

    “WHERE IS HE?” shouted Mac furiously.

    No-one in the male dressing-room knew where Starveling was: they all looked blank.

    Mac stomped out, breathing hard.

    “Deal,” Snug prompted Bottom.

    Nigel dealt.

    ... “Well, LOOK FOR HIS NUMBER!” shouted Mac furiously.

    Encumbered as she was by pale grey satin, Georgy nevertheless leapt up and began searching through the pages on her clipboard.

    ... “You NEVER told me!” shouted Mac furiously down the phone.

    “Yes, I did, Mac,” replied the voice of Starveling in nervous tones. He was normally nervous anyway, that and his physique being why Mac had chosen him for the part. “I told you ages ago: the wedding was today and we leave for the Bay of Islands tomorrow. Just for a few days. You’re lucky to have caught me, actually—”

    Mac slammed his receiver down. He marched furiously back to the male dressing-room.

    “Why the fuck do bloody students have to get MARRIED!” he shouted.

    No-one in the male dressing-room replied.

    His eye fell on Nigel. “Why didn’t YOU tell me?” he shouted.

    Nigel looked up from his poker hand, mildly surprized. “I hardly know him, isn’t he doing English?”

    The male students looked at Mac curiously.

    Mac rounded on Quince. “All right, why the fuck didn’t YOU tell me?” he snarled.

    Stephen looked mildly surprized. “I didn’t know he was getting married, I hardly know him. He’s not the same year as me.”

    Breathing heavily, Mac rounded on his nephew. “You’ll have to do it!”

    Adam sighed. “Very well, Nunky dear.”

    “Well? GET DRESSED!” shouted Mac, glaring at his dressing-gown.

    Adam stood up very slowly. He removed his dressing-gown very slowly. Underneath it he was fully clad in the garments of Robin Starveling, the tailor.

    The male dressing-room had of course been waiting for this moment and they all broke down in helpless sniggers. Even Stephen. Breathing heavily, Mac strode out.

    The evening’s performance was enlivened by Georgy’s forgetting her lines twice and by Vicki Austin’s right wing coming off as Titania’s train of fairies turned to exeunt on her “We shall chide downright if I longer stay” in II,1. Vicki picked it up with complete insouciance and exited with it tucked under her arm. Mac wasn’t much appeased by his bathing-suited fairy’s self-possession, because of course Pauline and Greg were nowhere to be found, and on being appealed to, Patrick, swallowing like anything, pointed out that it was aluminium framing, you’d need aluminium solder to solder that, and actually they didn’t have any on hand in the workshop.

    Bill, on being further appealed to, pointed out that Patrick was right, but that someone could nip downtown and buy some aluminium solder tomorrow, if Greg and Pauline didn’t have any left. And that it cost a bomb, so it had better be at the English Department’s expense. Mac wasn’t much appeased by that, either.

    Adam wasn’t terribly passionate that night: after two shows, not to mention the awful rehearsal all morning, he was too tired. He just pulled on a condom, got into Georgy without saying anything, especially not was she ready, and fucked hard for the space of about two seconds, thereupon coming cataclysmically. And falling asleep like a stone.

    In the morning, however, he was very passionate and urgent. Too urgent, as it turned out.

    “What is if?” he mumbled, as Georgy suddenly sat bolt upright with a cry of dismay.

    “We forgot to use a condom!” she gasped, bursting into terrified tears.

    “What? Oh, God,” he muttered. He sat up groggily. “Now look, darling— Don’t cry, sweetheart, it’s all ri—”

    “It isn’t, it isn’t!” wept Georgy.

    Adam wasn’t capable of the precise arithmetic in the stress of the moment. “It is all right, darling: there are ways—”

    “No!” wailed Georgy. “I’m scared, Adam!” The sobs increased.

    “Don’t cry. –Don’t CRY!” he shouted. “You can use the morning-after pill; for God’s sake, stop CRYING!”

    Georgy gulped and sniffed. “What?” she said faintly.

    “You’ve never heard of it,” he diagnosed grimly.

    Georgy just stared.

    Adam got out of bed. “Who’s your doctor, again? Bruce— Bruce—” He snapped his fingers. “Ariadne’s partner.”

    “No!” gasped Georgy in horror. “Not him!”

    “I’m sure you said he—”

    “I can’t tell him something like that!” she wailed, bursting into tears and throwing herself face downwards onto the bed.

    “Stop HOWLING, woman! He’s a bloody doctor, for Christ’s sake, he’s heard it all and then some!”

    “Not—from—me!” wailed Georgy.

    “Christ!” he cried.

    The sobs redoubled themselves.

    Adam wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and marched out grimly to the passage. Grimly he dialled…

    “Oh, not at all a problem!” said Ralph genially.

    Adam could hear the fellow was only waiting to hang up to laugh himself sick. “Thanks, Ralph,” he said grimly.

    “Er—could one just whisper a word of caution in the direction of not allowing oneself, irresistible though I am sure the delightful Georgy is, to get carried aw—”

    “NO!” shouted Adam.

    Ralph laughed a little. “It’s happened to all of us in our time, dear lad. In fact, to think only of my own generation, I’d need all the fingers and all the toes to count the shot-gun weddings—”

    He stopped, as Adam had hung up with a crash. “What does that prove, I wonder?” he murmured. The bowl of small Singapore orchids on his desk didn’t answer. Ralph shrugged. “Very little, probably,” he decided.

    … “WHAT?” screamed an empurpled Mac later that day.

    Adam shrugged. “You heard. She’s a bit seedy, the doc’s making her lie down for the rest of the day.”

    “Who’ll prompt?” he shouted.

    Adam shrugged again.

    “I can’t do it if I have to do bloody Egeus!” he shouted.

    “It’s only an arm, for God’s sake; drape a cloak over it. The boy’s perfectly willing to—”

    “Yeah, r’an’ then he claims umpteen thou’ in compo!” snarled his uncle.

   Not enquiring as to the precise derivation of that last word, Adam replied coldly: “Balls,” and stalked off to the male dressing-room.

    The sun shone in a forget-me-not sky dotted with puffs of white, the wind blew but for once not too hard, the birds no doubt sang but it was a bit hard to hear them over the usual roar of downtown traffic, and Jill and Rod strolled slowly through the quad. Well, why not? It was Friday arvo, they’d both finished classes for the week—she’d just had a small French Three literature tutorial in the Old Block and he’d just had an even smaller French Honours language tutorial in the Old Block—and they both felt like a bit of a laugh before a drink in the Club or the S.C.R. and a weekend of well-earned rest.

    “Shit, they’re still at it,” he noted.

    “I told you they would be,” replied Jill placidly.

    They strolled over to the bleachers and sat down in the sun, about four rows up. Rod opened his briefcase and produced a packet of salt and vinegar potato crisps.

    “Ta,” said Jill gratefully.

    They munched.

    The lovers fluffed and fumbled. Occasionally the large figure on the flags before them screamed at them.

    After a while Jill said thoughtfully: “Does your wife know you stuff your face with sodium, msg, and saturated fats on Friday afternoons?”

    “No,” he replied placidly.

    “Thought not.”

    They munched.

    The lovers fluffed and fumbled. Occasionally the large figure on the flags before them screamed at them.

    After a while Jill said thoughtfully: “That’s not Mac, is it, Rod?”

    “Mm?” he said through a mouthful of sodium, msg and saturated fats. “Uh—no, nor it is. Derry Dawlish.”

    “Mm.”

    “Doesn’t seem to be doing much good, does ’e?” he noted.

    “No.”

    They munched.

    The lovers continued to fluff and fumble. Derry continued to scream at them.

    After a while Jill said thoughtfully: “Know what line it brings to mind?”

    “Uh—‘It is a far, far better thing?’”

    “No. –Not a bad try.”

    “‘Hullo, I must be going?’” he suggested, grinning.

    “An even better try. But no: something rather more... Ugh, look out!”

    Mac had emerged from the stairwell, followed by a pouting Adam. “I keep telling him,” he said loudly to Derry, completely ignoring the fact that the lovers were squeaking their lines all round him as he spoke: “that if he did Starveling for the last couple of nights he can do him tonight and tomorrow!”

    “Quite. –STOP! –Quite,” agreed Derry, as the lovers, looking bewildered, stopped.

    “I’m fed up,” said Adam crossly. “It was never in our agreement.”

    To this the great producer-director returned smoothly, before the purple-faced Mac could utter: “Where is Georgy this afternoon?”

    Rod nudged Jill hard. They both collapsed in sniggers.

    “She’s not feeling too good, if it’s any of your damn business,” he said sulkily.

    “Oy, oy?” muttered Rod.

    Jill’s eyes bulged. “Oy, oy, indeed.”

    They were not left in their state of ignorant but excited speculation long, because down on the flags Mac was saying very loudly and crossly: “This bloody idiot did it without a condom a couple of days back and then she had to take the morning-after pill,”—here Rod had a helpless spluttering fit—“and she’s been feeling seedy ever since!”

    “Good God,” noted Derry.

    “She— If you want to know,” cried Adam angrily, “there’s nothing wrong with her! It was fifty to one she wasn’t pregnant but he gave her the bloody thing anyway and she’s been capitalizing on it ever since!”

    “Ouch,” noted Rod.

    “Is this fit for these children’s ears?” wondered Jill.

    “Must be, or they wouldn’t do it, surely?”

    “Anyway, I’m not doing bloody Starveling again, and that’s final!” added Adam loudly.

    “You were damn good in it, Adam,” said Derry.

    Adam looked sulky.

    “Best butter,” murmured Jill.

    “With jam,” muttered Rod, lifting his lip slightly.

    “Yes, you were,” Mac was agreeing hurriedly. “Damn good.”

    Jill stood up abruptly—wobbling, rather, on the narrow bleacher. “You were so good that Elspeth’s and Whetu’s classmates won’t believe it was you!” she called loudly.

    “Eh?” said Rod.

    She sat down again. “Yes. Hamish Macdonald rang me on Wednesday evening: killing himself over it. Give us another crisp?”

    Rod passed her the bag.

    On the flags Derry and Mac were spreading the best butter—and jam—around liberally. Shyly the lovers joined in, assuring Adam he’d been really good. They at least were sincere: dear, innocent little souls, as Jill noted in an undertone.

    Finally Adam, still sulky, conceded that he’d do it for the last two performances. –Rod rolled his eyes terrifically.

    “Look, Adam,” Derry then said, taking him confidentially by the arm: “think about the film again, mm? Starveling’s a dear little cameo, and it’d break the monotony of the Oberon thing for you. It’d be a terrific drawcard! Well, something like Larry Olivier in his heyday,” he continued with what the two on the bleachers now perceived ecstatically was completely misguided enthusiasm. “You know, when he did— Well, I forget, but it was some terrifically light comedy thing at the same time as he was playing—”

    “No!” said Adam angrily, pulling his arm away.

    “—something really heavy,” said Derry weakly. “But dear boy, it’d be the most tremendous drawcard, surely you can see that?” He waved a large arm in a large gesture. “‘Adam McIntyre in character’—well, something like that, we’d work out the publicity very carefully, of c—”

    “NO!” shouted Adam furiously.

    “—course,” finished Derry limply. “Now, Adam, just think about it! Your public have never seen you in a real character rôle, it would—”

    “I SAID NO!” shouted Adam terribly.

    “Dearest boy, if it was good enough for Larry Olivier—”

    “I’m not another Olivier and I never will be!” cried Adam furiously.

    “Oy, oy,” noted Rod.

    “I’m a hack ex-rep jack-of-all-trades with a flair for minor caricature, and if you can’t see that, Derry, let me tell you that the critics from The Sunday Times and The Observer won’t be so flatteringly blind!” cried Adam. He turned on his heel and strode off.

    “English papers, would those be?” wondered Rod.

    “Shut up,” replied Jill tensely, as Mac and Derry got their heads together. … “Damn, missed it,” she said, as Mac, nodding, and looking determined, strode off, and Derry called his lovers to order.

    “I thought I caught something about Iago,” said Rod weakly.

    Jill’s jaw sagged.

    “Only I don’t see where the Hell that can come into— Ow!” he gasped as her fingers met in the flesh of his Michelangelic arm.

    “Yes!” she hissed. “Next year’s show! Mac’s planning to do Othello as his swan-song!”

    “Heck,” he gulped. “Ya don’t mean—”

    “Yes! He must be intending to bribe Adam with the offer of Iago!” said Jill, eyes shining.

    “He won’t— Well, surely... I mean, for cripes’ sake... Would that be his cup of tea, though, Jill?” he said weakly. “I mean, Olivier played the title rôle, didn’t he?”

    Jill smiled smugly. “Mark my words. He’ll want it. Peach of a part. –Got any more chips?”

    Numbly Rod produced another bag.

    They munched.

    The lovers fluffed and fumbled. Occasionally the large figure on the flags before them screamed at them.

    After a while Rod said thoughtfully: “Anyway, what were ya gonna say, back there?”

    “Huh?”

    “Some quotation this do reminds you of.”

    “‘All other things to their destruction run,’” quoted Jill drily.

    “Well, you’re right, there, at least insofar as—” Rod stopped with his mouth slightly open.

    On the grassy plateau above them and to their right Adam had suddenly burst out of the cloisters, followed by a panting Mac.

    Mac was crying: “Don’t be a fool, boy, you told me years back you’d give your right arm to—”

    And Adam was shouting: “No! Once and for all, I’ve had enough of your bumbling amateur actors and your inept amateur productions, and your bloody awful Antipodean humidity, and I’m going HOME! And don’t ever ask me to read a single line in any of your rotten shows again, because I WON’T! And stuff your bloody Iago!”

    He strode very fast across the grass, wrenched open the heavy back door of the Old Block, and disappeared, crashing the door to noisily behind him.

    On the flags Derry said tiredly to the open-mouthed and silent Demetrius: “Get on with it. Take it from: “‘Lysander, speak again.’”

    “Um—yes. Um, ‘Lysander, speak—’ Um, sorry, Derry. Um—”

    “Let’s go,” said Jill with a groan, getting up. “Even Gretchen’s coleslaw’s beginning to seem desirable in comparison to this.”

    Rod got up, grinning. “Yeah, well, come and have a drink, first.”

    They walked slowly across the quad towards the tiny passage that led to the S.C.R.

    “Um—Jill,” he said with a laugh in his voice, “if a Good Keen Colonial bashful ignoramus might dare to breathe a word in your Cantabrian shell-like?”

    “What?” asked Jill, trying not to laugh.

    “Doesn’t that quote go on: ‘Only our love hath no decay?’” he said, blue eyes twinkling madly, the grin spreading from Michelangelic ear to Michelangelic ear.

    Jill bit her lip. “Chance’d be a fine thing,” she managed.