Somewhere Deep In The Forest

22

Somewhere Deep In The Forest

    The dressing rooms were a seething mass of tulle, there were little kids with silver bladders everywhere, there were ballet mums everywhere, half the elves had lost their batteries and the other half had worn theirs out by playing with the switch Like You Were Told Not To, Patrick was tearing his hair in the balcony because one of his Third-Years hadn’t turned up and one of the others had taken Mothu’s ropes home for safety and left them there and the third had a bandaged hand and was useless, high up in the engineers’ stand Bill was bawling out a cack-handed cretin for not having checked all those spots this morning Like You Were Told To, Livia hadn’t turned up at all, Mac was screaming and sweating and tearing his hair and yelling for Georgy—

    And it wasn’t even Dress Rehearsal! It was the Tuesday of the first week of term, though, and Dress Rehearsal was scheduled for Thursday, and the First Night was Saturday, and Mac had definitely told everyone to BE HERE, he wanted to run through the whole thing in costume, and YES in sequence, what was the matter with you, did ya have cloth ears?

    Fortunately this shemozzle had been scheduled for daylight hours, so at least they could all see what they were doing. Doing wrong, in most cases.

    On what she persisted in referring to as “the bleachers”—well, they were bleached wood, what more did you want?—Jill Davis passed a greasy paper bag. “’Ave a chip,” she said comfortably. Jean-Paul took one happily. “This is so much more fun than that staff meeting we were supposed to go to,” he noted.

    Jean-Pierre gasped. “Pas vrai?” he said weakly.

    “No, you imbecile,” said Jill. “Go on, give ’im a chip!” she said to Jean-Paul. Meekly he passed the bag. Jean-Pierre took a limp frîte, perforce.

    From Jill’s other side Rod Jablonski from her department noted comfortably: “If we were going to have a staff meeting, we couldn’t, there’s more of us here than’d be at it.”

    “Three,” ascertained Jill, counting in her fingers. “Can’t count Jean-Pierre, he’s a supernumerary.”

    Jean-Pierre asked what this was but as no-one could think of the French word, not even Jean-Paul, no-one could tell him.

    “Ooh, look,” the good-looking blond Rod then said: “something’s happening!”

    They all watched with huge interest as Mac emerged from the staircase under the arch and strode onto the flagstones with empurpled face and neck. “What the fuck are you lot doing here?” he bellowed. “GET OFF!”

    Jill produced a large volume. “Act I, Scene 1...” she murmured. “I must have the wrong play, that isn’t the first line.”

    They all collapsed in giggles, even though it hadn’t been that witty, really.

    Mac glared but as it was obvious they weren’t going to move, and as he couldn’t scare fellow members of the academic staff away simply by bellowing at them as he would have done if they’d been clerical staff, librarians or merely students, he stomped off again, fuming. In fact Jill noted: “Note the smoke coming of the ears: a difficult effect to manage well, that.”

    They all collapsed in giggles again, even though it hadn’t been that witty, really.

    “Where the fuck IS SHE?” roared Mac terribly.

    “No idea,” said Adam.

    “Oh-cyune iday,” agreed Joel, looking at his watch. “She isn’t that late, really: not for Livia.”

    “Well, she is for me,” said Mac grimly. “And get that watch OFF, Thring, Puck does NOT WEAR A WATCH!” He strode off, fuming.

    “That line was rather good, one was about to congratulate him on it,” said Joel sadly.

    “Eh?” said Adam vaguely. “Oh: Livia.” He consulted Joel’s watch. “Late lunch,” he diagnosed.

    “Horizontal lunch, more like,” said Joel sourly.

    “Oh?”

    “Well, on her form thus far, dear lad!” he urged.

    “Mm-m… Who with, though, Joel?”

    “Anybody. Is Nigel here, yet?”

     Adam choked.

    “No, seriously, I believe Maurice rang her the other day.”

    “That conference must be over,” said Maurice’s nephew drily.

    “Ages ago, dear boy, where have you been?” gasped Joel. “—Don’t answer that.”

    Adam rejoined with a smile: “Did I tell you she tried out the microwave the other day?”

    Joel shut his eyes.

    “At least she knows not to put metal things in it, that’s a start.”

    “Well, go on, I can take it,” said Joel with his eyes shut.

    “It was some damned recipe of her mother’s, entailing half a shredded chicken and—uh—sliced tomatoes, or some such thing, in a flan dish.”

    “And?” said Joel faintly with his eyes shut.

    “Concrete,” said Adam briefly.

    Joel gave a surprized snort and opened his eyes.

    “I’m told microwaves do that.”

    “So what did you eat?”

    “Bread and cheese and a big bunch of grapes, fortunately I’d been to the Cheese Shop in town, and I’ve found a rather nice fruit stall, did I tell you?”

    Joel shook his head numbly. Adam tried to tell him where it was but Joel just went on shaking his head numbly.

    “Come here, idiot,” said Adam. He reset his little acorn cap at the correct angle, smiling into his eyes.

    “Phew!” gasped Joel, flapping his hand weakly over his heart.

    “I’d get Angie to put a tighter piece of elastic on that hat, if I was you, you don’t want it falling over your eyes when you’re jigging,” said Adam, unmoved.

    “Roger, Wilco,” agreed Joel.

    “Anyway,” said Adam, apparently continuing with his saga: “then Georgy admitted she much prefers bread and cheese and grapes to cooked food, in any case!” He beamed.

    “Just as well,” said Joel weakly.

    “Yes. Did I tell you,” he said with a reminiscent little smile, “that she refused to believe I eat salade de pissenlits?”

    Joel was well over that one. In all ’s as-pects. Well over. So he only said: “Yes. Five million times in the past two days.”

    Adam smiled smugly.

    “Seen any more of Sir Ralph?” he said nastily, hoping to wipe it off.

    “No, and she’s not going to,” he said grimly.

    “I hate to blight the hopes, or dash the expectations, or whatever they are, dear boy, but I have it on excellent authority that he has every intention of coming to the dress rehearsal with Tom. Barring—er—urgent ops, or some such.”

    “Tom was pulling your leg,” said Adam mildly, not rising to this bait.

    “No, he wasn’t—anyway, not my type, I wouldn’t have let him!” said Joel, sticking out a thin green leg and pouting at it.—Adam ignored this.—“No, he was quite cross, because evidently the Big, Bad, Bold Sir Ralph also fancies his pretty Jemima and offered to drive her to it in his new BMW.”

    “Oh? –That’s right, he has got a BMW, the other one’s got—um, well, he’s got one of those ridiculous toy four-by-four things, but a Jag as well, I think.”

    “Other what?” said Joel faintly.

    “Mm? Oh, the other medical gent from the top flats.”

    “Town—hou-ses,” corrected Joel, very loudly and slowly.

    Adam smiled. “Mm. Oh, well, if bloody Sir Ralph’s inflicting himself on Jemima, he can hardly inflict himself on Georgy, can he? Anyway, she’ll be busy prompting.”

    “That was more or less what the unfortunate Tom, said, too. In between the expletives,” he admitted.

    “Mm. Did he mention—?” Joel was nodding, lips pursed significantly. “Don’t do that,” said Adam, wincing. “Yes, well, there you are: if Ralph’s the type that gets pissed and corners sweet young sisters-in-law halfway up ladders, what sort of chance does Georgy stand with him?”

    “You’ll have to keep yer eye on her, dear boy,” he said airily, watching him narrowly out of the corner of his.

    Adam’s mouth firmed. “I intend to.”

    Joel refrained from crossing his fingers but it was a terrific effort, dears.

    “We’ll just put a big safety-pin in it for now,” said Angie firmly, putting a big safety-pin in a strategic part of a small silver fairy’s anatomy. The fairy stopped bawling and twisted to watch her interestedly.

    “Keep still, Karen,” said the fairy’s mother nervously. This fairy’s mother was not an experienced ballet mother, she was very young and untried and Karen was her only offspring; otherwise, of course, she’d have brought all necessities with her, probably down to the bloody sewing-machine, Angie noted in a sort of automatic mental aside.

    “There! Mum can sew it up for you when you get home!” she said cheerfully to the fairy.

    “Not Mum, Grandma,” corrected the fairy, slightly soggy but definite.

    “Uh—yes, Grandma. Good,” said Angie on a weak note. Boy, that ballet mother was a broken reed, all right! Sort of mother that if she’d been a hen, the other hens would have pecked her to death long since. –The usual ballet mothers were very like that, very like.

    The inept ballet mother led her offspring away and Angie turned to the next problem. A small tulle fairy that had left its ballet slippers at home. Yo, boy. Did it—? Rubber jandals, Mac’s anathema. Yo, boy. “You’ll have to go barefoot, um—Trudi,” she said. Bloody great mistake having any of the little fairies in tulle and ballet slippers anyway, in her opinion. She straightened its sash, settled its mother’s hash by reminding her that Mac had said any fairy seen in rubber jandals at rehearsals from last Friday on was out of the show, O,U,T, out, and sent them on their way rejoicing. And turned to the next problem. A silver lizard that couldn’t find its silver-lizard top. It looked bloody silly standing there in its silver-lizard tights and silver-lizard hood plus a pink tee-shirt, all right. Not to mention the tail that was attached to the tights. Yo, boy.

    “I see,” said a Jumblie humbly. “Blue hands.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Greg wearily.

    “Will it come off?” asked the other Jumblie.

    “Only after a hundred years,” said Greg wearily.

    The Jumblies giggled uncertainly.

    From the other side of the room Georgy called: “Greg, are you sure you’ve got the Jumblies’ colours round the right way?”

    The Jumblies giggled uncertainly.

    “NO!” he called.

    “Oh, well,” called Georgy: “never mind, Mac’ll never notice!”

    The Jumblies giggled uncertainly.

    “Go on, you’re done,” he said wearily. “NEXT!” he bellowed.

    An elf fronted up, looking expectant.

    “You’re an elf,” said Greg limply.

    “Yeth,” it said—it was a small elf, lacking some front teeth.

    “Elves’ MOTHERS are supposed to do their faces!” said Greg, getting rather loud.

    “My mother’th dead,” said the elf informatively.

    Greg gulped.

    “Who’s in charge of you, dear?” put in Maisie Pretty from the next make-up station. Maisie was, of course, Faculty Secretary to the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. It was, of course, just after two-thirty on a work-day afternoon.

    “Gramma,” said the elf, without visible emotion.

    “Well, Grandma has to do your make-up, then, dear,” said Maisie very firmly.

    “Gramma hathn’t got any make-up,” said the elf definitely.

    Maisie began: “But she has to—”

    But Greg said tiredly: “Never mind. I’ll do it. Um—you got any Number Nine, Maisie?”

    Maisie was not, of course, the sort of woman who asked strange young men with silver hair and earrings to call her by her first name, but by now she could take this sort of thing without a blink; so she handed him a stick of Number Nine and said he could keep it, dear, she had plenty.

    Greg made the elf up and showed it its face in a mirror—he’d learned to do that now, otherwise the little ones bawled. It beamed at its rubicund reflection, and went off, beaming. “Next,” he said wearily.

    A green lizard, taller than he was.

    “Sit,” he said wearily.

    The green lizard sat, looking expectant.

    “You could do this, it’s just plain green on the bits of your face that show,” said Greg weakly.

    “Mac said you had to,” the lizard replied.

    Greg sighed, and got on with it.

    “WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?” bellowed Mac.

    Adam shrugged. Joel shrugged. Everybody else just looked blank.

    “You seen ’er today?” he said suspiciously to Nigel.

    “No,” Nigel replied, looking sheepish.

    “Maybe she’s stuck in a traffic jam,” said Barbara Michaels helpfully.

    Mac gave her an evil look. “Maybe you wouldn’t like to be in this show.”

    “I wouldn’t, actually,” said Barbara hopefully,

    Mac ignored that. “Where’s Georgy?” he demanded angrily.

    Everyone looked blank.

    “WELL?” he screamed at Adam.

    “Where you sent her, I imagine,” said Adam, looking down his now slightly greenish nose at him.

    Mac stomped off, fuming.

    “Wonder where she is?” said Nigel ruminatively, not referring to Georgy.

    Nobody answered.

    “Maybe he’ll make Georgy read it,” he said hopefully.

    Nobody answered, but he got a couple of sour looks from Oberon and Quince.

    “This is awfully boring,” he said sadly.

    “Who ever said acting was fun?” noted Adam acidly. He sat down on a hard Windsor chair. “Where’s me Wilbur Smith?” he said glumly to Joel.

    Joel immediately produced two paperback books from a brown leather satchel he’d been clutching for so long that some of the cast had begun to wonder if Mac had made a slight change to his costume and he was going to carry it on with him. Under the goggling eyes of the assembled mechanicals and rustics in the male dressing-room—including Barbara and a squashed-looking, pudgy-faced girl who was the second female rustic and reputed to be about to embark on a Ph.D. in Middle English—they both sat down and began to read.

    After quite some time Barbara managed to say, squinting at Adam’s book: “It isn’t a Wilbur Smith, it’s Pride and Prejudice.” No-one managed to answer, though.

    “WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?” roared Mac terribly.

    “Darling!” panted Livia, all lit up, laden with flowers and chocolates, and accompanied by a grinning Maurice Black, who was carrying her huge make-up case—white leather with gold catches, new since the soapie—a flowing cloak in case Livia got chilly after the show, and a large mohair rug in case of what wasn’t clear but about which several onlookers were already speculating.

    “So sorry, Maurie’s watch stopped!” she gasped.

    “I bet,” said Mac grimly.

    Maurice just smiled blandly.

    “And you can get out of here, cast only in the dressing-rooms,” Mac added nastily to him.

    Maurice just smiled blandly.

    “Um—yes, maybe you’d better— Well, in a few minutes, darling; you ab-tho-lute-ly mutht help poor little me with all these lovely things!” trilled Livia.

    Maurice grinned blandly.

    “Livia, you are over an hour late for REHEARSAL!” said Mac, starting off steely and ending up just plain shouting.

    “Darling Mac, I thaid, Maurie’s watch—”

    “Look, Livia, there are at least three females in this show that can do your part better than you can, and if THIS HAPPENS AGAIN, I’LL GIVE IT TO ONE OF THEM!” shouted Mac.

    Livia pouted. “I pwomithe it won’t happen again, Mac darling. I shall wear my vewwy own reliable watch that Rudi gave me!”

    Mac took a deep breath. “Get dressed. I’m calling overture and beginners. And you—piss off,” he said to Maurice, turning on his heel and stomping off.

    Maurice just smiled blandly.

    “Have we missed much?” panted Polly, collapsing onto the bleachers next to Rod.

    “Nah. Well, Jill’s chips,” he conceded.

    “Mac shouting at us,” added Jill.

    “Also a man up in that balcon, tu vois?” said Jean-Pierre eagerly, leaning forward: “he ties ropes onto to that—eugh—machin!” His white teeth flashed at her.

    “Mothu,” said Polly.

    “No, only the davits as of this moment,” corrected Jill.

    “Eh?” Polly peered. “Ooh, help,” she muttered.

    “Where’s Mothu?” cried Katie Maureen hoarsely, pawing at her mother’s knee.

    “Um—he’s not up there, is he? Um—he must be actually in the balcony, darling,” she said weakly, hoisting her up. “Come and sit on Mummy’s knee.”

    Rod, who’d known Jake all his life, had been greeting Polly’s two little boys and Akiko, but at this he said eagerly: “Nah: you sit on Uncle Rod’s knee, eh?”

    Katie Maureen agreed and clambered onto his knee with equal eagerness.

    Polly distributed soft jubes to her children. Then she distributed soft jubes to those present who were apparently in their second childhood. Then there was a pause.

    “Tom’s lot have been playing this, that and the other for ages,” volunteered Jill.

    “Played every pre-baroque thing ever written. Even bloody Greensleeves,” grunted Rod.

    “We needn’t have hurried,” noted Polly.

    “You’re right, there,” he noted, kissing Katie Maureen’s curls.

    Another pause, and Polly passed the jubes again.

    “Where’s MOTHU?” demanded Katie Maureen aggrievedly.

    Rod sighed. “We’ve been wondering that. We reckon there’s a glitch,” he said, kissing her curls again.

    “Big glitch,” she said glumly.

    “Yeah.”

    “Spanner inna works,” she said glumly.

    Rod choked. “You’ve got it, sweetheart!” he gasped, hugging her.

    “See Tom play nice music,” she decided, struggling to get down.

    “Uh—why not, eh? Come on.” He got up, took her hand and they toddled off.

    “Michelango’s David leading a small red-headed gnome; that’s a sight you don’t see every day,” said Jill thoughtfully.

    Jean-Pierre gulped. Jean-Paul choked but looked apologetically at Polly.

    “Don’t look at me, it was Katie Maureen’s own idea to wear those overalls today,” she said. “She must be sweltering in them, but she screamed blue murder when we tried to get her out of them, didn’t she, Akiko?”—Akiko nodded, smiling.—“And before anyone asks, we made the mistake of letting her come to the barber’s when we took the boys to have their hair cut. Naturally she insisted on having hers just the same.”

    Jill gulped. “We get it.”

    “Just when the effects of the Dreaded Superglue Strike were wearing off,” said Polly detachedly.

    Jill swallowed. “Yeah,” she allowed weakly.

    “It’s better than the simpering-miss act that most of them go in for at that age,” said Polly detachedly.

    “Yes,” croaked the liberated Dr Davis weakly.

    “Hold it still!” snapped Livia.

    “Sorry, Oll— I mean Livia,” said Amy.

    Amy had been waiting for two hours for Livia to turn up—Amy was the sort of person who inevitably arrived an hour early for anything anyway—but nevertheless she was not managing to convey the impression that she and not Livia was the injured party. Not noticeably, anyway.

    “I think you could go, now, Maurie,” added Livia vaguely, staring intently at her reflection.

    Maurice thought so, too. “Righto. Looked like half the French Department out there on the seats; I’ll go and talk to them.”

    “Mm,” replied Livia vaguely.

    Maurice ambled off. When he got there, as Rod’s seat beside Polly was still vacant he took it, slid his arm round her—pointing out these seats were bloody uncomfortable without backs—and simply remained like that. He knew she wasn’t the sort of woman who would mind. And he also knew she wasn’t the sort of woman who would make anything of it where there wasn’t anything to make. Very nice, really. When Polly put a soft jube in his mouth he didn’t actually object, either.

    The trumpet blared, the banner tumbled down untidily from the balcony—the two banner-lowerers, though garbed in black jumpers with their faces blacked, being of course perfectly visible, as it was broad daylight—and the yellowish Theseus said, loudly but without visible emotion: “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace,” and they were off. Well, more or less.

    ... “Who is that girl?” said Polly in a puzzled voice, staring at the green-velveteen-draped Hippolyta.

    “Um... English major, I think. Did French Two last year,” replied Jill. “Dawkins?”

    “Something like that, mm. I seem to remember failing her in Linguistics One a few years back. Why on earth’s he got her in green?”

    “Um—all that was left?” offered Jill.

    “Shh!” hissed Jean-Paul. They goggled at him. “Notre pauvre copain does not know the plot,” he said: “he’s trying to listen.”

    They swallowed.

    “I’ll explain it to you the minute there’s a pause,” said Jill

    “There’ll be a pause any minute now, if they’re on form,” put in Maurice unkindly.

    Sure enough, there was. Everybody exeunted except Lysander and Hermia and there was dead silence.

    Dead silence except for Jill, Polly and Maurice summarizing the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Jean-Pierre’s benefit and Jean-Paul laughing himself silly, that was.

    “Through Athens I am thought as fair as she,” squeaked Helena.

    “Mummy, what’s that lady saying?” demanded Johnny Carrano loudly.

    “Um—I’m not sure, darling,” admitted his mother.

    “Mummy, where are the FAIRIES?” demanded Davey Carrano loudly.

    “Um—they’ll be here soon, darling. –Won’t they?” she hissed to Jill across Maurice.

    “Uh—” Jill consulted her book. “Nope. Not till Act Two. There’s a Bottomy bit next.”

    “Oh, that’s all right. It’s Nigel next, darling, he’s funny, remember? Bottom?” she said hopefully.

    “I wanna see a FAIRY!” he shouted.

    “Ssh!” hissed Polly, turning very pink and hurriedly hauling him onto her knee. “They’re running a bit late, Davey,” she said, hugging him. “You just watch the pretty ladies in their pretty dresses and—um—everything.”

    “I wanna see a FAIRY!” he shouted.

    “There’s one,” said Maurice drily. “Look, over there, old mate,” he said to the little boy, pointing at the far corner of the building.

    Davey and his twin looked, goggled and became transfixed. Sure enough, bits of fairies kept appearing and disappearing at the corner of the building, off to their left. So far left you couldn’t even call it stage right, really.

    After quite some time Akiko asked: “What-ah do the fairies ah-do there, Polly? This is not ur-how they rehearse?”

    “No,” replied Polly, swallowing. “Um—I think they might be just watching.”

    “Ah,” she said dubiously.

    “If we wait long enough,” said Jill happily, scrabbling in the bulging briefcase at her feet, “Mac’ll shoot up through a trapdoor—or, alternately, descend in the you-know-what—and clobber ’em. Anyone fancy a drink?”

    “Blessings on you,” said Maurice fervently, not even asking what it was.

     The efficient Dr Davis produced the plastic cups of her aged picnic set from her briefcase and the adults all sipped warm local Wild Duck. No-one even asked Jill where’d she’d got it, or why she’d got it, or what the Hell it was, not even the two Europeans, they were all just so relieved it was alcoholic.

    Pretty soon Rod came back with Katie Maureen and sat on the grass at Jill’s feet and claimed his share. Katie Maureen demanded and got a taste of Rod’s, they were all past caring about that. And—they noted dully as the entire proceedings halted, and Bill Michaels descended laboriously from his high perch on the electricians’ stand to their rear and adjusted something on Helena’s well-shaped pre-Raphaelite pink velveteen chest, it wasn’t even the end of Act I, Scene 1!

    “Does a straight flush beat a full house?” said Snug in confusion.

    The rest of the mechanicals and rustics began to explain it to him, very loudly, but at this moment a flying ASM came in and gasped: “Act I, Scene 2!”

    “Is that us?” said Barbara dubiously.

    “Might have been, about five hundred million years ago,” admitted Nigel gloomily, laying down his hand.

    “Hurry up!” gasped the ASM. “Mac’s furious!”

    They looked at her curiously.

    After a few moments Stephen said drily: “When isn’t he?”

    “We haven’t done anything,” Snug pointed out, sorting out Nigel’s hand. “Wouldn’t this beat my straight flush?” he said in confusion.

    “Come on,” replied Nigel resignedly, grabbing his arm.

    The rustics and mechanicals shuffled out to the cloisters without enthusiasm. The ASM hippity-hopped along beside Nigel, gasping at intervals: “Nigel! You’ve got jandals on! Don’t you think—?”

    After a moment Adam laughed over his book.

    “What, what?” said Joel eagerly.

    Adam read out: “‘Eliza Bennet,’ said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her, ‘is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex, by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.’

    “‘Undoubtedly,’ replied Darcy, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed, ‘there is a meanness in all the arts which ladies condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.’

    “Miss Bingley was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to continue the subject.”

    Joel smiled. The slim, dark, middle-aged man standing over by the door, who bore a slight resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, laughed and came in. “That was delightful,” he said. “Isn’t her style deliciously spare?”

    “And deliciously dry,” agreed Adam, smiling back.

    “Yes. Er—look, I’m sorry,” said the Abe Lincoln look-alike weakly, “but according to the Medes and Persians of the bloody Registry, I’m timetabled to have a four o’clock tutorial in here.”

    Adam looked at Joel’s watch. “Oops.”

    “Mac assured us the room was ours—well, the rustics’—for the duration of the show,” offered Joel, not with any appearance of conviction.

    The Abe Lincoln look-alike ran his hand over his greying dark curls. “We were in the room next-door, earlier, only people kept coming through to get to the cloisters.”

    “Couldn’t you lock those glass doors?” said Joel, inadvertently revealing his knowledge of that room.

    “There doesn’t seem to be a key.”

    “Oops,” said Adam.

    “Well, come in here, it’ll only be infested with five thousand rustics again in about”—Joel looked at his watch—“fifteen mins.”

    “Thanks,” said the Abe Lincoln look-alike drily.

    At this point there was some scuffling in the corridor and a female head looked in, beginning: “Are we in here, Prof— Ooh!” it squeaked, catching sight of Adam.

    “Ill met by moonlight,” he said drily, and the head gasped and retreated. There came a terrific burst of giggly speculation from the corridor and then the head, accompanied by another head, reappeared. Both heads silently goggled.

    “I think you’ll have to ask Mac about the room,” admitted Adam. “We’re just the poor players.”

    “Do what we’re told, when we’re told,” explained Joel.

    “Yes. Well, there’s only four in the class and one of ’em’s in your thing, we won’t see much of her for the next few weeks,” the unfortunate academic conceded. “I suppose we’ll have to have it in my office.” He strode over to the aged blackboard and wrote on it very large: “Latin III in Prof Brownloe’s office. DO NOT REMOVE.”

    “They will, of course,” he said, “but let’s hope they’ll all have got the message by then.”

    “Should we spot an odd Latin III student, we’ll be sure to pass it on,” returned Adam courteously.

    “Thanks,” he said drily. “Come on,” he said to the two heads.

    They all disappeared but a voice could be heard asking agitatedly: “What about Jason, Professor Brownloe?” and he could be heard returning blandly: “What about him? I suppose he can read, can’t he?”

    “Must be the academic life,” decided Joel.

    “Hardens you, mm,” said Adam, returning to Pride and-Prejudice.

    “Mm,” agreed Joel, returning to Barbara Taylor Bradford.

    “There!” breathed Amy. “Love-ly!”

    Livia revolved slowly in front of the long mirror which she had insisted on having installed in the screened-off corner of the dressing-room which was for her exclusive use.

    “Yes, it’s super,” agreed Angie briskly.

    Livia revolved slowly in front of the long mirror.

    “You look wonderful, Oll— Livia, dear,” said Amy anxiously.

    Mac came in unannounced.

    “Doesn’t Livia look wonderful, Professor Mac?” said Amy anxiously. This was Amy’s own name for him, presumably created out of a desire to show respect combined with—something or other. With an acknowledgement of her familiarity with theatrical familiarities? God knew, though Adam and Joel had certainly speculated on it at length during those long idle moments waiting for Livia to arrive, or remember her lines.

    “Needs more spray,” Mac replied, eyeing Livia’s hair narrowly. He went out again.

    “Yes, I think so,” agreed Livia judiciously.

    Amy and Angie breathed stealthy sighs of relief.

    Amy then shrouded Livia in a large white sheet. Angie, who’d been wondering what the sheet was for ever since the moment when Amy had unpacked it from the bulging suitcase she’d arrived with, experienced a huge surge of satisfied curiosity, and saying weakly: “It is a bit windy, more spray’s a good idea. You look really lovely, Livia,” went out quickly before Amy could asphyxiate her with the gigantic bomb she was now aiming at Livia’s primrose bird’s nest. –Spangles, small fairy lights, and all. Did fresh hairspray electrocute you if it got mixed up with your fairy lights? wondered Angie on a hopeful note.

    “Georgy!” bellowed Katie Maureen hoarsely. Before anyone could move she was off across the patch of grass she and Rod had been reclining on, across the flagstones, and over at the painted bush that sheltered Georgy, pawing at her knee.

    “Hullo, Katie Maureen!” said Georgy’s bell-clear voice delightedly from behind the bush.

    “GET THAT KID OFF MY STAGE!” bellowed Mac terribly, rushing on from the arch.

    “It’s only the interval, she’s all right,” said Georgy, emerging from behind the bush carrying her.

    Mac began to point out that it wasn’t the interval, they weren’t having a proper interval between Acts I and II—

    “How’s she get in behind there without being spotted?” wondered Rod with interest.

    They all thought about it.

    “Puts a black bag over her head and crawls?” suggested Jill.

    “They lower her from the balcony on a rope,” decided Maurice. “Dressed entirely in black, of course.”

    “Perhaps it’s more like Japanese plays, where the scene shifters and so on are all entirely visible, perhaps she just walks on at the beginning,” said Polly. “You know, they dress in black clothes, but you can see them plain as day, it’s a convention.”

    They all looked hopefully at Akiko. “Yes, some-ah-times they duh-ress in black cuh-lothes,” she agreed. “Georgy is not-ah duh-ress in black cuh-lothes.”

    “She’s got a point, there,” noted Maurice, scratching his silver curls with his free hand. The one that wasn’t round Polly.

    They all looked dubiously at Georgy in her white broderie Anglaise blouse and stretch jeans.

    She had now been joined by Nigel, who had just gone off on “Hold, or cut bow-strings,” delivered in an authoritarian but at the same time bumbling and muddled sort of voice which most of his audience silently considered the line fully merited. They had clapped like anything. He was visibly admiring Katie Maureen and she was visibly playing up to him. Polly sighed.

    “Look out,” muttered Jill out of the corner of her mouth, as Mac strode over to them.

    “Look, since you’re here,” he said to Polly in not a particularly pleasant voice: “can your two boys be gumnut fairies? Just for today.”

    “No,” said Polly immediately.

    “Look, it’s only for today, our gumnuts have let us down!”

    Jill choked. Rod went into hysterics.

    Mac gave them a look of loathing. “Not for the performance, they’ll be back for that.”

    “NO!” said Polly.

    “But they’re the right size, and we need to get the moves right when Livia comes on, these cretins’ll get hopelessly confused if the gumnuts aren’t here!”

   Rod went into further paroxysms. Polly’s shoulders shook and she dug in her pocket for her hanky.

    “Look, SHUT UP, JABLONSKI!” shouted Mac.

    “I’m sorry, Mac,” said Polly, blowing her nose weakly. “But Jake’d have ten fits: you know his feelings on the subject of—uh—”

    “Bras,” said Jill helpfully.

    Rod went into a further paroxysm. Abruptly Maurice joined him.

    “Cross-dressing,” said Polly firmly, putting her hanky away.

    “They’re neuter costumes,” said Mac plaintively.

    “Rubbish, Mac, they’re flaming tulle tutus,” returned Polly without any appearance of animus.

    “Neuteur—teuteus!” gasped Rod.

    Jill went into hysterics.

    “Look, be a sport, Polly! –You’d like to be a fairy, wouldn’t you, Twinnie?” he said cunningly to the nearest twin.

    “YEAH! Be a fairy!” he shouted.

    “YEAH! Be a fairy!” shouted his twin.

    “You S,O,D, Mac,” said Polly conversationally. “All right. Yes—YES, SHUT UP, TWINS! You can be fairies, just for today.” She got up. “Where do we go?” she said resignedly.

    Georgy came up smiling, holding Katie Maureen’s right hand while Nigel held her left. “I’ll show you.”

    “Wanna be a FAIRY!” shouted Katie Maureen hoarsely.

    Dornford McIntyre actually blenched. Yes, before them all, he blenched. “No,” he croaked.

    “YEAH! I wanna be a FAIRY!” she bellowed.

    “Not today. You can come and see Egeus take his beard off, wouldja like that, eh?” said the tactful Nigel.

    “Aw—righto,” she decided. Nigel led her off, grinning.

    Mac swallowed. “He isn’t supposed to take—” He broke off.

    “It’s the lesser of the two evils,” said Georgy with a smile. “Come on, Polly. Come on, Davey and Johnny.” She led them off and they disappeared under the arch.

    “Aw, I wanna be a fairy,” said Maurice sadly.

    “I think the time for those decisions is long past, in your case, isn’t it?” returned Jill in a hollow voice.

    Rod choked.

    “Well, look, since I can’t be a fairy,” said Maurice with a grin, getting up, “what say I nip over to the Club and get us a bottle of something decent, eh?”

    “Now ya talking!” agreed Rod fervently.

    “Je vous aide,” decided Jean-Pierre, getting up. He rubbed his bum, grimacing, and said something sourly to Jean-Paul, at which they all choked, including Maurice. “Alors, tu parles français, Maurice?” he said to him, dropping the formal vous, as they strolled off towards the arch. Ignoring the fact that they had to cross the stage to get there and that at the back it was now screened off by huge black screens.

    Maurice agreed he did, a bit.

    He’d sounded like something off the streets of Paris—the back streets: Jill gulped, as the two elegant backs, the one shorter and clad in an azure blue silk shirt with heavy cream silk slacks, slightly grass-stained, aye-aye, the other taller and clad in a scarlet cotton shirt decorated with multi-coloured butterflies and orchids, with white cotton slacks, tray Club Med as Joel had already remarked, disappeared amongst the screens.

    “Aren’t they adorable!” gasped Maisie Pretty.

    “They are awfully nice costumes,” conceded Polly weakly, looking at her two little boys decked out in short fuzzy tutus, Johnny in the yellow one that had the big fluffy hat to match, and Davey in the scarlet one that had the little stemmed green-brown cap that was a bit like Joel’s acorn cap.

     Maisie plunged into explications which involved such points as the tutus’ being layered so that the upper layers of tulle were actually shorter than the middle ones, it wasn’t traditional but of course it was what gave them that powderpuff appearance—Polly swallowed—and that wasn’t it lucky, she’d just had enough of the green and brown shot silk left for the bodices, did Polly remember that dress, she’d worn it to the Faculty cocktail party the year that— Eventually Polly got the point: Maisie had made both little gumnut dresses with her own fair hands. There was quite an art to it, really. See, you started sewing the frills onto the wee panties from—

    “Yes,” said Polly weakly, spotting something protruding from the blonder twin’s wee panties. The bloody things were, of course, cut for two little girls. “Um—Johnny, sweetheart, tuck your penis up,” she said, kneeling. “That’s right, darling; the pants are a bit small, aren’t they?”

    Maisie swallowed but smiled gamely. In the background Amy, who had just emerged to say would Lady Carrano like to use Livia’s mirror, turned puce and didn’t manage even to smile.

    “Yeah, these pants are small for me,” agreed Johnny, wriggling.

    “Thank God your father’s not here,” she muttered.

    “We can tell Daddy all about it!” he said eagerly. “When he comes home for tea!”

    “Yeah,” agreed his mother in a hollow voice. “Won’t that be lovely?”

    “Mummy, my pants are too small, too,” announced Davey.

    Polly looked hurriedly, but he wasn’t sticking out of them. “They look all right, Davey,” she said weakly.

    “Yeah, but they’re tight!” he grumbled. “My balls are squashed!

    “So are mine!” agreed Johnny, wriggling.

    Maisie was very pink but she put her hand over her mouth and her shoulders shook. Amy, however, just turned pucer than ever.

    “Well, fairy dresses are like that, you both wanted to be fairies, you’ll just have to put up with it!” said Polly wildly.

    Davey wriggled. “I’m all right,” he said in a macho voice.

    “Yeah, me too,” said his twin stoutly. “I can be a fairy for hours an’ hours!”

    Greg came up with his make-up sticks and said to Polly, smiling: “They’ll be okay, their balls haven’t dropped yet, won’t do ’em any harm.”

    “Greg, dear!” gasped Maisie, turning maroon. Amy disappeared precipitately behind Livia’s screen.

    “At this rate,” the twins’ mother returned on a grim note: “they may never drop. Is that M,A,K,E  U,P?”

    “Yep. Gotta have round pink cheeks to be a gumnut fairy!” he said, winking. “Won’t they like it?”

    “On the contrary, they’ll adore it,” said their mother in a hollow voice.

    Sure enough, the twins adored it. They shot into Livia’s enclosure and admired themselves in the big mirror—there was an ecstatic gasp of: “Oh! Aren’t they a-dor-able!” in a strong English accent, not Amy’s, more your Sloane Ranger—and had to be removed forcibly from in front of it when it was time for the Twilight Procession to twilight procesh.

    Jill rubbed her ear. “You’re right, that’s a fairy,” she conceded to the excited Katie Maureen. She glanced at her cousin in his rôle of Puck. “Actually, it’s two fairies.”

    Polly was investigating the book. “This is only Act II, Scene 1!” she hissed.

    “So?” returned Jill.

    “We’ll be here for hours, yet!” she hissed.

    “So?”

     Polly sighed.

    … “‘A merrier hour was never wasted there!’” cackled Joel

    Jean-Pierre, who had actually been listening, smiled.

    Behind their party, a cluster of ballet mums rustled and peered anxiously over their shoulders in the direction of the Old Block.

    Joel cast a glance in the direction of the Old Block. Those who were actually listening or still awake noticed that he looked distinctly nervous

    “‘But room, fairy,’” he said bossily, “‘here comes Oberon!’” He flourished his hand—not the one with the bladder, the other one—and did a sort of bow and scrape in the direction of the Old Block.

    The musicians struck up, Puck and his fairy looked determinedly towards the Old Block, and nothing happened.

    “Johnny’s wet his pants with excitement,” predicted Polly glumly. “I knew I should have stayed with them.”

    “Adam’s split his tights?” suggested Jill delicately.

    “The Dong’s nose won’t light up,” decided Rod.

    “Eh?” said Maurice.

    “It’s all very—er—Learish,” said Jill weakly. “You’ll see.”

    “Not to mention Alice-ish. Maybe the caterpillar’s stuck in the staircase,” said Polly.

    “Eh?” said Maurice.

    “You’ll see,” they said.

    “What’ll we do?” gasped Michelle.

    “We’ll have to go out through the cloisters,” decided Adam. “Well, first we’ll go out through the cloisters and play the bloody scene and then I’ll tear a strip off Mac for not making sure this bloody door was unlocked for us.”

    “Yeah,” agreed Michelle with feeling.

    “Too right,” said Phil with feeling from under her robin’s beak.

    “Ers,” agreed a sepulchral voice from within the Dong’s nose.

    Oberon, Oberon’s Robin, Oberon’s leading fairy and attendant train of fairies, elves and grotesques retreated down the corridor from the locked main back door of the Old Block, complete with its notice which said: “No Entrance To Quad. Play In Progress,” and made their way to the cloisters. It only entailed going down a corridor and through the big double doors to the cloisters, which were unlocked, but their progress was slow: for a start, the Dong had virtually no forward vision, and the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo had to be edged along sideways: no peripheral vision. And for a second, there were an awful lot of them and the procession, which was all in its prescribed order, had to sort of turn within itself and they hadn’t practised that.

    “Tell Tom to strike up again, for God’s sake,” said Adam, when they got there.

    “Me?” said Michelle faintly.

    “You or Robin or Bluebird or the Dong, if ya like, who cares? Only someone tell him, or we’ll be here all night,” said Adam grimly.

    “I will!” gasped a larger elf. She shot out.

    “That’s funny,” said Jill, “I thought they were starting from the Old Block.”

    “They were supposed to: something’s gone wrong,” said Polly calmly.

    Maurice had his arm round Polly again. “You’re right: they are all Learish,” he conceded.

    “All Learish and all muddled,” agreed Jill.

    “Better have another drink,” decided Maurice.

    They did that.

    … “And here my mistress. Would that he were gone,” said the fairy at last. On the bleachers, those who had forgotten she was there, what with the excitement of the Dong with lighted nose and the elves with lighted horns and Adam’s spangled privates, jumped.

    Tom’s musicians struck up again.

    “Dowland?” murmured Jean-Pierre, leaning forward with a puzzled look.

    “Queen Elizabeth’s Galliard, yes,” agreed Polly.

    “Pour des fées?” he murmured. “Bof! Pourquoi pas?” He drained his plastic cup of champagne.

    “Here come your kids. No wonder Mac was keen to get ’em,” said Jill in a hollow voice.

    “Yeah,” said Polly faintly.

    “Look, Katie Maureen,” said Rod to the little girl, who was once again on his knee: “there’s Davey and Johnny, see? In the red and yellow dresses, like little fuzzy gumnuts?”

    “Attached to Livia’s wand by two bloody silver streamers and leading the flaming procession, yeah,” said Polly with a wince, averting her eyes from Johnny’s pants.

    Rod was urging Katie Maureen to see her brothers. Katie Maureen was refusing to believe the gumnuts were they.

    “NO! It’s GIRLS!” she roared.

    “Not with a prick sticking out from under its tutu, it’s not,” said Rod with a grin.

    Polly groaned.

    “Yeah, so he has,” agreed Maurice with interest.

    “Should have put a bit of silver paint on it, everything else is smothered in it,” said Jill detachedly.

    Everybody choked, except the innocent Katie Maureen, who merely muttered: “It is so girls.”

    ... “She does look lovely,” murmured Polly, looking admiringly at Livia’s flood of crinolined silver satin.

    “And she sounds diabolical!” hissed Rod.

    “Ssh,” she said weakly.

    “Can’t act,” said Maurice comfortably.

    “No,” they all agreed faintly as Livia lisped: “Thet your heart at retht, The fairyland buys not the child of me.”

    Jill snatched the book off Polly. “‘Fairy land’,” she ascertained through her teeth.

    “Oh, well,” murmured Polly, but her voice was drowned by her red-headed offspring’s bellow of: “RANJIT! HULLO, RANJIT!”

    Rod grabbed her hurriedly as she was about to precipitate herself off his knee. “Ya can’t join in, precious, not when they’re acting,” he said weakly.

    From his position by Livia’s skirts, young Ranjit Singh smiled sheepishly at Katie Maureen.

    “Is that our Puriri Junior Tennis Champion?” asked Jill weakly.

    “Yeah, he’s out of the March Junior Tournament for this year,” replied Rod, hanging on like grim death to the squirming Katie Maureen. “He’s got matinées of this crap—help!—two Saturdays in a row. –You can’t join in, lovey!” he said desperately.

    Polly drained her champagne. “Oh, let her, who cares?”

    Weakly Rod let her go.

    The rest of the scene was enlivened by Katie Maureen’s interested investigation of Ranjit’s costume—Ranjit, who was about twelve, fending her off with smiling but evident embarrassment—by Katie Maureen’s attempt to take a bladder off a small silver fairy—the latter defending herself vigorously—by Katie Maureen’s loud re-discovery of Georgy behind her bush, by the twins’ abruptly deserting their posts and joining Katie Maureen, only to be retrieved by the enterprising Michelle and dumped at Livia’s skirts again—this regardless of the fact that Michelle was Oberon’s leading fairy and at this moment all of Oberon’s fairies were supposed to be ignoring all of Titania’s fairies, being partisan in their bosses’ rows—and finally, the scene having cleared very, very slowly, and boredom having driven Katie Maureen out from behind Georgy’s bush, by her suddenly bursting into terrified tears as Adam sneered: “‘Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove Till I torment thee for this injury!’”

     Whereupon Adam abruptly stopped being Oberon, knelt and picked her up and said: “It’s all right, darling, it’s only Adam dressed up: see? Just Adam.” He delivered her to her mother, grinning.

    “You can keep it,” said Polly faintly, putting a hand over her face.

    Rod said eagerly: “I’ll take her!”

    Adam looked with some interest at the strikingly handsome blond young man who obviously loved little kids, and put Katie Maureen gently on his knee.

    “Ta,” he said. “Nice, isn’t it?”

    “Very,” agreed Adam with a smile.

    “Oh, you haven’t met,” realized Polly. “This is Rod Jablonski from the French Department, Adam; he’s a very old friend of Jake’s.”

    Georgy had emerged from behind her bush with an uncertain look on her face. At this point she stopped stock still in the middle of the flags, biting her lips. Nearby, Joel goggled at her in astonishment.

    At one point it had felt as if whenever Georgy mentioned her place of work the bloody name “Rod” came up. “Oh, yes,” said Adam in a terrifically neutral voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

    “Yeah? All to me discredit, I hope?” said Rod with a friendly grin, but looking slightly puzzled.

    “Enough,” replied Adam neutrally.

    There was a puzzled silence.

    “Um—I’ll collect the twins and cart this lot away. I’m sorry to have spoilt your scene, Adam,” said Polly weakly.

    “Not at all. It could hardly have got worse. You realize we couldn’t get through the bloody door our procession’s supposed to bloody well emerge from?”

    “Um—we did notice something,” said Polly feebly.

    “Total cock-up, eh?” said Rod, persevering.

    Adam’s glance just flickered over him. “More or less.”

    Mac broke the further puzzled pause by stomping out on stage yelling: “Polly! Take that bloody brat of yours and shove off!”

    At this Livia rushed on, all flowing crinoline and fairy lights, gasping: “No! Mac, tho unreasonable! The little girl didn’t do anything at all! It doesn’t matter a bit, Polly, darling, we understand, she’s only a baby! –Adam, darling, your entrance! What on earth happened?”

    “Fairy QUEE-EEN!” screeched Katie Maureen, stretching out her arms.

    “Yes!” beamed Livia. “Isn’t she a-dor-able! Yes, darling, I’m the fairy queen!” She pirouetted before the goggling Katie Maureen, crinoline swinging out madly.

    Mac sighed and ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, what the fuck did happen to you lot?” he said to his nephew.

    “What the fuck happened to that bloody door, you mean!” said Adam, very loudly indeed.

    There was a short silence.

    “I told Georgy—”

    “You did not!” cried Georgy angrily, suddenly popping up at his side like a jack-in-a-box. “I reminded you, and you said you were taking care of it personally!”

    “You put far too much rethponthibility on this little girl’s shoulders, Mac, darling,” Livia reproved him. “One can hardly hold her to blame for everything: after all, is she the producer?” Before the empurpled Mac could reply she said to Georgy: “I think it looks rather nice, don’t you?” and pirouetted again.

    “Yes, Angie was quite right to put that extra—um—bit in it,” agreed Georgy.

    Livia was very lit up. “Darling! Not extra ‘bit’! Extra breadth—extra gore, if you like!” she cried.

    “Yes,” agreed Georgy weakly. “It looks wonderful, Livia.”

    Livia pirouetted again. “Exactly!”

    —Meanwhile Maurice had muttered in Polly’s ear: “‘Gore’? I swear I haven’t heard that word since 1953,” and Polly had choked.

    “Look, when everyone’s finished handing out bouquets,” said Mac weakly—he shot a look at his nephew and added sourly: “or brickbats—can we get on?”

    Polly sighed and got up. “Yes. I think the dress looks wonderful, Livia.”

    “It is rather nice, isn’t it?” she laughed. “And I’ve got four more lovely ones to go, you know!”

    “Yes. I’d love to stay, but really— Come on, Katie Maureen, we’ve outstayed our welcome,” she said.

    “NO-OO! WANNA SEE MOTHU-OO!” she bellowed.

    “Oh, blow,” said Polly. She looked apologetically at Mac. “I did promise her she could see Mothu, Mac. Um—is he on soon?”

    Jill had foreseen this and had been checking the book. “No,” she announced definitely.

    Maurice took it off her. He investigated. “Oh—shit,” he said lamely. “Act III. Look, Mac, couldn’t you telescope it a bit?”

    “Tel— THIS IS SHAKESPEARE!” shouted Mac.

    “No, it isn’t: it’s a right shemozzle,” muttered Jill.

    “WANNA SEE MOTHU-OO!” bellowed Katie Maureen.

    Polly sighed and sat down again. “I did promise. All right—all RIGHT, Katie Maureen, just LISTEN! If you’re very good and stay here with Mummy,”—“An’ Rod,” she muttered—“and Rod,” said Polly weakly, “you can see Mothu, but you’ll have to wait—see? And be very, very good and not interrupt the people out there.”

    Katie Maureen pouted.

    “Are you going to be good?” said Polly sternly.

    “Yes. See Mothu,” she muttered.

    “Good girl,” said Polly weakly. “That’s right.” She looked up at Mac apologetically. “I don’t think she understands what acting is, Mac.”

    “Yeah. Okay,” said Mac heavily, “But keep her off my stage—all right?” He glared, and turned on his heel. “LIVIA!” he bellowed, not turning round. “Get over here, your change is coming up!”

    “Yes, the white satin one, next,” Georgy reminded her, scooting back to her bush.

    “Yes. That’s lovely, too, Polly, not as queenly as this one, but more feminine,” she said eagerly.

    “LIVIA!” screamed Mac from the hinterland.

    “Coming, darling!” she called. She gave an arch giggle. “What a dear old bear it is!” she trilled. “Enjoy, darlings!” She gathered up her crinoline and rustled off.

    “Phew,” said Rod faintly.

    Everybody grinned except Adam—and Katie Maureen, who merely got on his knee again.

    Jill consulted the book. “‘My gentle Puck—’” she said suggestively to Adam.

    “Up yours, Davis,” he returned grimly. He strode onstage bellowing: “‘My gentle Puck, come hither!’”

    Joel bustled up, managing to look both slavish and worried, and the scene continued.

    “What’ve I done?” Rod muttered in Jill’s ear after some time.

    “Me spies have suggested that someone’s mentioned your name once too often,” she hissed.

    “Oh.” Rod’s cerulean blue eyes travelled thoughtfully in the direction of Georgy’s prop bush. His perfect mouth twitched a little.

    After some time Jill murmured: “Won’t do McIntyre any harm to know he’s not the only beautiful boy around that thinks Georgy’s not half bad.”

    “Idiot,” he said mildly.

    “Well, let’s face it, what competition’s he had a sight of so far? Mac?”—He choked.—“Bloody Quince?” added Jill.

    “Stephen’s all right,” said Rod tolerantly.

    “That puts it rather well,” she agreed.

    “Do I take a bow?” he murmured.

    “No. You’re only a symbol. Symbols can’t take bows.”

    At this Maurice leaned forward and said: “Symbol of what, for God’s sake?”

    Jill rolled her eyes wildly. “The man’s blind, must be what getting bashed on the shoulder does to you. Symbol of male beauty, obviously!” she hissed.

    “Oh,” said Sir Maurice without interest. “That.” He sat back and gave Polly a bit of a squeeze. She didn’t object, but then he hadn’t thought she would. “C’n I’ve a jube?” he said plaintively.

    Polly put another jube in his mouth. He hadn’t thought she wouldn’t.

    “There, now!” Maisie Pretty beamed. “Weren’t they good boys?”

    Abruptly Polly, who had of course known the Secretary to the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics for many years, was all but overwhelmed by a dreadful desire to tell the woman that her boss had been out there frothing at the mouth looking for her two seconds back. She refrained, but reflected that her refrainer level or stress level, or whatever the current in-phrase was for whatever-it-was, must have shot up to bursting point.

    “They were very good; you were two clever boys, darlings,” she said to the twins, now beaming and back in their everyday garments and—sort of scrubbed-looking: how the Hell had Maisie managed that in a crowded dressing-room amidst a mass of panting flesh and heaving tulle? –Don’t ask. “Thanks very much, Maisie,” she added weakly.

    Maisie assured her it was no trouble—the little angels!

    The twins began to tell their mother excitedly how they’d been fairies. Polly made appropriate noises and began—or re-commenced, more accurately—to wonder exactly how she was going put it to Jake. Airy rubbishing of his fears? Say Mac bullied her? Combination of the two? Say Mac blackmailed her by asking the twins themselves! Ah-hah! What was more, it had the merit of being true. As far as it went. With any luck he’d be so steamed up he wouldn’t spot that it needn’t have gone that far and even if it had, it didn’t really have to have wented. As it were.

    ... “So good night, with lullaby,” sang the tall green counter-tenor elf, the short stout soprano elf, and the silver alto fairy for the final time in Tom’s sufficiently complex arrangement for three voices.

    “Lovely,” pronounced Jill.

    “Worth coming for that alone,” agreed Rod, clapping madly.

    Jean-Paul and Jean-Pierre, clapping madly, agreed that it was “pas terrible,” which from two francophones was high praise.

    Katie Maureen also clapped, and pronounced: “No wrong notes,” with great satisfaction, so it must really have been good.

    “Yeah: we could go home now,” noted Jill.

    Maurice groaned.

    “Ssh!” hissed Polly leaning forward crossly.

    They goggled at her, but all was explained as a green and gold fairy with large wings sprouting from a long mass of red-gold curls stepped forward and recited carefully: “Hence away; now all is well. One aloof stand sentinel.”

    “Hullo, Ginny!” screamed Katie Maureen.

    “Look! Ginny’s a fairy!” yelled Davey, in case they hadn’t got the point.

    Ginny grinned at them, wiggled her wings carefully—Johnny screamed: “Her wings can move! Mummy! Her wings can move!”—and exited, walking rather carefully under the weight not to say the responsibility of the wings.

    The small silver fairy that might have been supposed to be standing sentinel took up his post at the foot of Titania’s bower with his silver bladder raised but very soon sat down and nodded over his—or more probably her, most of them being little ballet girls—bladder, and Polly and Akiko, being the more feminine of those present over the age of three, smiled and silently pointed him out to each other.

    During the remainder of Act II the audience got very restless but Johnny enlivened it for them. Akiko was nominally keeping an eye on him but she had borrowed Jill’s book and was frowning over it in an endeavour to figure out what on earth the lovers were up to—It was relatively easy to figure out which girl was which as Mac had them colour-coded, Helena, more wimpish, being pink and pre-Raphaelite, and Hermia, more laddish and determined, being blue and pre-Raphaelite—but only the most dedicated Shakespearean could have figured out which was Demetrius and which was Lysander and who the Hell they were in love with, not to say why. Helena was twittering incomprehensibly (though audibly, thanks to Bill’s mike) “Is’t not enough, is’t not enough, young man, That I did never, no, nor never can”—enough to put any earnest young would-be Shakespearean scholar off—and Johnny went up to Livia in her garlanded bower, downstage audience’s left, and said loudly and cheerfully: “Hullo, Queen Livia. Are you asleep?” There was a strangled giggle from within the bower, and Akiko leapt up with a gasp and grabbed him.

    Apart from that the general consensus was that it was one of the most boring scenes in Shakespeare. Maurice had once seen Timon on stage in London and he maintained that nothing was as boring as any part of that you liked to nominate, but he had to admit that that scene as played by the University Drama Club on a warm afternoon in the first week of March in full daylight ran it pretty bloody close.

    “NO!” screamed Livia. “The WHITE one, what’s the MATTER with you, Amy?”

    Amy burst into tears, sobbing out an apology, in which inevitably self-exculpation and the humidity played their part.

    “How can you possibly have another migraine?” shouted Livia.

    “I—don’t—kno-ow, but I have! I mean, I can feel I’m go-ing to-oo!” wailed Amy.

    “Shut up,” said Livia through her teeth.

    Amy continued to wail.

    “SHUT UP AND GET OUT!” shouted Livia.

    Angie stuck her head round the screen. “What’s up?”

    “She’s getting another one of her bloody migraines and she’s ironed the wrong dress!” said Livia angrily.

    Angie began to point out that the dresses were numbered, only a cretin could have got them in the wrong order, but thought better of it.

    “I—forgot—there were two—white—ones!” wailed Amy.

    “Yes. You’d better go outside and get a breath of fresh air,” said Angie.

    “I—feel—dre-ead-fu-hul!” sobbed Amy.

    She certainly looked it, she was sort of yellowish and flickering round the edges. “Yes. MAISIE!” shouted Angie.

    Maisie bustled up.

    “Amy’s coming down with a migraine, do you think you could take care of her?”

    Illness of any kind or nasty accidents or, indeed, death, were as meat and drink to Maisie. After a terrific lot of tutting—which Angie had foreseen and was able to ignore—she led Amy off. Whether in the direction of the Doctor’s surgery, which being up the staircase was certainly nearest, or the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics’ sickroom, or Maisie’s car and thence the hotel—all of which had been put forward during the tutting—Angie didn’t bother to ascertain.

    “Does it need iron— Crikey,” she said.

    “What’ll I do, there’s my hair as well, Mac’ll be fu-ri-ous if I’m late for this act!” wailed Livia, looking as if she was about to burst into tears.

    Angie removed a giant plastic bag and narrowly inspected the crumpled wads of white gauze it had been shielding. At least it had been hanging up, that was something. Amy must have fallen out of her tree: what had she imagined it was on this rack for— Oh. Its label had fallen off. That did not mean, however, that in the natural, or at least the Pythagorean, order of things “4” followed immediately after “2”. Well, possibly she had thought it was a petticoat. Or possibly she hadn’t thought at all. Angie fluffed it out and made a face.

    “An-gie!” called an anxious voice from the hinterland.

    “I’ll have to go, Livia: Moth and Mustardseed have to be got into their ruddy contraption without ruining their costumes.”

    “But I can’t possibly iron this dress and change my hair and make-up and everything, Angie, I have to be in my bower for the beginning of Act III!”

    Reflecting grimly that even though it didn’t look nearly as romantic they should have used nylon tulle and not white muslin for the flaming dress’s top layer and let Mac choke himself to death over it if he wanted to, Angie said: “Bugger, I’d forgotten that.”

    Livia clutched her arm desperately. “Get me dear little Georgy!”

    For a split second the mad suspicion flickered across Angie’s mind that possibly Livia, alone of the cast, was unaware that it was Georgy on whom their Oberon’s roving fancy had— No, rubbish. “Um—well, she’s pretty busy, Livia, but I’ll find someone reliable. Plug that iron in, that’ll be a start,” she recommended grimly.

    She strode out. Her eye fell on Vicki Austin. “Can you iron?”

    “Um—yes,” said Vicki, goggling at her.

    “Right, well— No, hang on, have you ever ironed muslin?”

    “Um—I don’t think so. Um—is it cotton?”

    “Modern kids,” groaned Angie.

    “I’ll give it a go,” offered Vicki cheerfully.

    “No, you won’t, not on one of Livia’s costumes. Um—look, find someone who knows how to iron muslin and get them in here pronto!”

    “Righto,” said Vicki. Since she was necessarily wearing her costume of spangled white bathing-suit over the aluminium frame that was supporting her high shoulder-wings, she ambled off with the wings on.

    Angie swallowed. Oh, well. “No, Nicole,” she said firmly to Mustardseed’s mother, “she has to put the crash-helmet on first. Then the yellow hat fits over it.”

    “Like a mustard seed,” agreed Mustardseed, who might have been only nine and small for her age, but was far brighter than her mother. This didn’t stop her mother from being a very pushy ballet mother indeed, which was largely how Mustardseed had landed the part. Pushy and whiney—an odd combination, but Nicole managed it.

    “Or a jockey,” agreed Moth, who was all ready, crash-helmet and all, her mother was a superior ballet mother.

    “Yes,” agreed Angie somewhat weakly: Moth’s mother didn’t look as if she’d ever had a tenner on a gee-gee in her life.

    Mustardseed put her crash-helmet on and directed her mother loudly as to the yellow hat that fitted over it.

    “Good,” said Angie briskly. “Come on, girls. –Sorry, Mac said no mothers in the balcony,” she added firmly if mendaciously. Well, it was true that Mac would have said it if he’d thought of it.

    “Will you be all right, dear?” asked Nicole anxiously.

    “Course! I’ve done it mill-yuns of times!” returned her offspring with complete scorn.

    “When I was Peter Pan we didn’t even have to wear crash helmets,” added Moth sturdily.

    That wasn’t above ruddy great paving-stones, thought Angie, not saying it.

    “Yeah, I was Wendy: that was ace, eh?” agreed Mustardseed.

    Angie led the girls off, followed by the mothers’ voices crying anxiously: “Don’t forget, dear: “And I,” and look at the audience, and smile!”—Moth’s mother; and: “Don’t look down, dear, and keep smiling!”—Mustardseed’s mother.

    On the way to the balcony Mustardseed informed Angie in a macho tone that her big cousin in Australia, well, he did bungee jumping, and he was gonna teach her when she went over there next Christmas. Moth immediately countered with an uncle who had a hang-glider and was gonna teach her and her brother next year. Angie would have taken a large bet that both these stories were wishful thinking but she was quite sure that both Mustardseed and Moth would take bungee jumping and hang-gliding in their stride. So to speak.

    … “Polly’ll do your dress, she knows loads about muslin and all those old-fashioned materials, Aunty Vi taught her!” panted Vicki, entering Livia’s enclosure without ceremony. “Which is it?”

    Livia gulped, and swung round as Lady Carrano came in, saying cheerfully: “Lead me to it. I can do muslin, and organdie, and real lace, and tatted lace, and real linen: ironing the contents of old Aunty V’s linen cupboard was one of my main occupations after school in my teenage years. –Aren’tcha glad you never had to board with her?” she added in an aside to her young cousin.

    “Heck, yeah!” breathed Vicki in horror.

    “No, really, Polly—!” gasped Livia, very pink under the Max Factor.

    “Someone has to do it, and I’m the only one with experience. Though Joel did offer, he’s got an Aunty Emmy with antimacassars,” said Polly cheerfully, spitting on the iron.

    Livia gulped. “Darling, what can one say? A trillion thanks—heartfelt!”

    “Can I do anything?” asked Vicki, looking at Livia with interest.

    “Well—well, yes, dear, actually, if you wouldn’t mind—”

    In some awe Vicki assisted Livia to whitewash the back of her neck and the larger portion of her back, and her legs. Before they started Livia suggested tactfully that possibly the wings—? So Vicki simply divested herself of the bathing-suit and wing-frame, and did the whitewashing in nothing but her tights, Livia remarking cheerfully that after all they were all girls together and besides, you know: the theatre—! Since she’d seen Livia’s soapie, Vicki, who of course hadn’t thought twice about removing her clothes, agreed to this last in rather a weak voice.

    Then Vicki assisted Livia into her corset, which had to be worn under the flimsy dress so as to achieve the correct line—that was, push Livia up and pinch Livia in. Then the “dress”, which was actually in several separate parts: first she stepped into the gi-nor-mous layered nylon tulle petticoat which was worn instead of a crinoline, to give a softer look in this scene and also enable Livia to recline comfortably in the bower, and then the voluminous muslin skirt which Polly had ironed was “whisked” over her head—that was, held up valiantly by both Polly and Vicki so that Livia could insert herself into it safely. Then the bodice, which had to be laced up the back—Vicki performed this service competently enough but experienced a strong surge of unreality, it was like something out of that old film, Gone With The Wind, Mum had the video, it was ace, and Twin had read the book, but Vicki had given up, it was too long. Then the sleeves, which Polly had also ironed, and not without difficulty: they were huge puffs which more or less covered Livia’s upper-arms from about the level of the very low top of the bodice to the elbow.

    Finally the garlands, which were detachable and stored separately, had to be attached to the skirt. They were very pretty, composed of flowers in palest pink, palest yellow, white, and lots of little pale green leaves, and if you didn’t know, you would never have guessed that they were held on with big patches of Velcro. –The bower was of course draped in similar garlands, though of a coarser design.

    In the previous scenes Livia’s hair had been very much gelled and sprayed in order to stand out and up, rather, and of course had had spangles and fairy lights through it, but for the white gauze dress and the pink gauze one which would follow it she wore it in a softer style, the change to which entailed extensive brushing and gelling and teasing and spraying. Then a wreath for her hair: more pale pink, pale yellow and white with tiny green leaves but because she was the queen there were also glistening silver spikes as of—well, possibly a coronet—sticking up out of it.

    After she’d exited—having thanked her two extempore dressers profusely—there was a short silence in the extempore dressing-room.

    Then Vicki said: “Gosh.”

    And Polly said: “Yeah.”

    There was another short silence.

    Then Vicki said with feeling: “I never realized they put make-up on their backs and legs as well!”

    Polly swallowed. “Nor did I. Um—well, maybe for the cameras...”

    Vicki swallowed.

    “I think we’ve led sheltered lives,” decided Polly feebly.

    “Too right!” said Vicki fervently.

    The cousins’ eyes met. They both collapsed in helpless giggles.

    “MOTHU-OO!” bellowed Katie Maureen.

    “Yes, soon,” agreed Polly faintly.

    “LOOK, LOOK!” she bellowed. “THERE HE IS! KONICHIWA, MOTHU-SAN!” She struggled wildly to get off Rod’s knee.

    “It’s all right,” said Polly weakly, “I think she only wants to bow.”

    Rod set her down, looking dubious. Sure enough, she only wanted to bow to the suspended but motionless Mothu.

    “When’s he gonna FLY?” demanded Johnny aggrievedly.

    “I was wondering that,” admitted Maurice.

    “Ssh!” hissed Polly.

    “LOOK!” bellowed Katie Maureen. “HE’S FLYING!”

    The twins were much more sophisticated than their little sister. After all, they were five, and had started school. “He is not!” they both cried scornfully.

    Katie Maureen immediately held out her arms like an aeroplane and made loud aeroplane noises. Fortunately she only swooped about in front of Rod’s legs, she didn’t actually encroach on the flagstones.

    Onstage, the embattled Quince continued gamely: “Pyramus, you begin: when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake,”—waving at Georgy’s bush—“and so every one according to his cue.”

    “Look, Katie Maureen,” said Polly weakly, pointing to the staircase, the middle window of which was now spotlighted (unconvincingly, it being still broad daylight): “there’s Joel.”

    Katie Maureen continued making loud aeroplane noises.

    Joel began gamely: “‘What hempen homespuns—’”

    “It’s interesting,” said Rod, looking at him thoughtfully: “how would they have drawn attention to him in Shakespeare’s day? I mean, they used to do the plays in the daytime, couldn’t have used spotlights.”

    “Flourish of trumpets?” suggested Jill.

    “Burbage would have let off a cracker?” suggested Maurice.

    “Burbage wouldn’t have needed to!” said Polly with feeling.

    “Yes, this is true, I think,” agreed Jean-Pierre, leaning forward to agree with her across Jean-Paul, Jill, Rod and Maurice: “he would have entered and immediately all eyes would—eugh…”

    “‘Have been rivetted to him’ is the usual cliché,” said Jill kindly.

    “Yes: all eyes would have been rivetted to him,” he said.

    “Would Burbage have played Puck, though? Wasn’t he fat?” said Polly.

    Rod sniffed slightly. “Woulda played Oberon, wouldn’t ’e? –In green tights.”

    “With spangles,” added Jill in a terrifically neutral voice but with a very rude gesture.

    They all collapsed in mad giggles as Mac shot out from under the arch and bellowed: “WILL YOU LOT SHUT UP!”

    “We’re giving it a real Shakespearean flavour, Mac: rumblings from the groundlings,” explained Jill kindly.

    Mac glared.

    “Have a jube,” said Polly pacifically.

    Mac glared.

    “Just be thankful we haven’t got a bear,” advised Maurice.

    Mac glared.

    “I could be a bear!” said Rod pleasedly. He got up, removed the belt from his jeans, attached it to the perfect column of his throat, did a clumsy dance, waving vaguely with his hands as if they were paws and growling a bit, and said: “Come on, Akiko: I’m a dancing bear, you can be me bear-leader.” –Polly and Jill choked.

    Giggling like crazy—though with a sideways look at Mac—Akiko got up and grasped Rod’s lead. He began to dance again, this time growling terrifically. The twins screamed with laughter. Katie Maureen stopped being an aeroplane and started being a bear.

    Onstage the rustics had ground to a halt. They looked at one another uncertainly. Georgy emerged from behind her bush or brake, looking fed up. Joel leaned out of his staircase window, looking bored.

    “LOOK, WILL YA CUT IT OUT!” roared Mac.

    “Lends verisimilitude,” explained Rod, momentarily ceasing to be a bear.

    “More, more! Be a bear, Rod!” cried the twins. Rod recommenced dancing and growling. He didn’t really look like a bear, he looked like a blond Michelangelo’s David in jeans and a tight white tee-shirt doing a clumsy dance, but never mind. In fact one or two of those present thought that that made it better.

    “Cut it OUT! I wanna get on with my REHEARSAL!” screamed Mac.

    Rod stopped growling. He undid his belt and replaced it round his waist. “We’re only hanging on until Mothu flies, can’t ya speed it up a bit?”

    “Yeah, make Mothu fly!” cried the twins, jigging up and down and clutching at Mac’s jeans.

    He shook them off, grimacing. “He’ll fly soon.” He gave their elders an unlovely look. “If these cretins’ll ever shut up long enough to let us get that far, that is.”

    “We’ll be good,” said Polly resignedly. She scooped up Katie Maureen. “Sit on my knee, Katie Maureen; Mothu will fly very soon. First we have to watch Nigel and his friends being funny. You wait, Joel’s going to put a donkey’s head on Nigel, won’t that be funny?”

    “Well, just keep it down,” ordered Mac in a steely voice.” He turned to go but added nastily to Polly: “And see ya do push off after Mothu’s done his bit. –No, hang on: wait until the scene ends, then ya can get up and make a bloody row and shove off: geddit?”

    Jill was consulting the book. “Is that the same as when this act ends?”

    “NO!” he bellowed.

    “Oh. –Help, this is only Act III, Scene 1,” she said.

    “Tell us about it,” agreed Maurice.

    “Just SHUT UP!” shouted Mac, stomping off. “Get on with it!” he said angrily to the rustics as he passed them. He hadn’t paid any attention to Georgy but nevertheless she shot back into the brake, as he strode under the arch and disappeared up the staircase.

    “Where the fuck’s Adam got to?” he demanded of Joel.

    “Doubtless hiding in the male dressing-room with Pride and Prejudice, and would I were with him.” He hung out of the window. “I’ve missed my cue. And you can’t have Quince call Georgy’s bush Bottom’s brake, because he’s got to come off over here to get his ass’s head.”

    “Bugger.” He elbowed Joel aside. “QUINCE!” he bellowed.

    Stephen leapt a foot.

    “Georgy’s bush can’t be the brake, you’ll have to wave at the archway!” yelled Mac.

    Georgy popped out from behind the bush. “I said that, and you said—”

    “SHUT UP AND GET BACK THERE, NO-ONE’S SUPPOSED TO SEE YOU!” screamed Mac.

    “Have a jube,” sighed Polly. This time both Maurice and Rod allowed her to put jubes in their mouths. So did the twins but this was less worthy of note. Katie Maureen refused a jube and appeared to be fast lapsing into scowling sulks.

    Onstage Joel was saying rather weakly from his window: “Sorry, Nigel, love, but could you possibly give me my cue again?” and Nigel was saying confusedly: “Um—yeah. Um—where the Hell were we?”

    The male rustics, though they weren’t supposed to, had abandoned their dressing-room and shuffled out to the cloisters. From there they had by degrees emerged onto the lawn behind the musicians. Most of them had thence sort of oozed onto the edge of the upper lawn near the stone steps or onto the steps themselves, and were waiting hopefully for Nigel to assume his ass’s head. Their favourite bit in the whole play.

    Having earlier discovered this fact, Mac had unhesitatingly condemned them as mindless hoons—though other heads present at the scene had silently thought that of course the rustics’ instincts were perfectly correct: it was the dramatic linchpin of the whole thing and the scene that everybody remembered years after all memory of the rest of the effort they had witnessed had vanished. But privately he was silently meditating having the rustics come out and sit on the steps during the show for Nigel’s scenes. There were only two things stopping him: Livia’s probable, in fact near-certain reaction to such a suggestion, and the Registrar’s mutterings about egress and fire regulations. Mac didn’t see how a large open space like the quad could possibly burst into flames, but it would be dreadful if the kybosh was put on open-air productions because of some footling Admin query about egress. There was a third point, which was the rustics’ behaviour while they were watching, but Mac was fairly confident of his ability to settle that one.

    So Adam had the dressing-room to himself apart from a more literate rustic who was sitting quietly reading a copy of Nature which had stamped on its cover in huge red letters: “FACULTY OF LIFE SCIENCES COMMONROOM. DO NOT REMOVE.”

    After a short period of pretending he hadn’t noticed this Adam gave up pretending he hadn’t noticed it and wasn’t bursting with rude curiosity about the appellation and said: “Excuse me, which sciences does the Faculty of Life Sciences actually include?”

    The rustic looked up with a start. “Eh? –Oh,” he said, looking at the cover of his magazine with a grin: “Botany and Zoology, mainly. And Marine Biology, that’s quite a big department these days. We used to have Microbiology, but the Med. School’s taken them over.”

    “I see. That was all called Science in my day,” said Adam meekly.

    The rustic merely winked.

    “Er—what about Anthropology?” said Adam meekly.

    “Nope. Faculty of Anthropology, Maori and Archaeology.”

    “Ah.” Adam thought about it. “I see, the basis for agglomeration is a purely pragmatic one.”

    “Not so much the basis for agglomeration, more the basis for agglutination,” said the literate rustic, returning to his Nature. Adam swallowed, and was silenced.

    “MOTHU-OO-OO!” screamed Katie Maureen on four syllables.

    The adults winced and held their breaths as Mothu descended jerkily. From inside him, Moth and Mustardseed waved and beamed with complete insouciance. Above, Patrick leaned over the balcony anxiously, at intervals crying over his shoulder: “Turn it!” but it was probable—well, possible—that during the actual performances he would not do this.

    “He’s flying, he’s flying!” screamed the twins, puce with excitement and jumping up and down.

    Katie Maureen, also puce, struggled madly and Polly set her down, pretty sure that— Sure enough, she only bowed. Repeatedly. It was quite embarrassing, actually. Or it would have been if Polly hadn’t been rather full of mixed Wild Duck, jubes and Dom Pérignon (Maurice had expensive tastes and the Club had learned to get in a few bottles for those of his ilk).

    Mothu touched ground. Two green tulle fairies, who had been told off to do so, immediately leapt forward and grasped his either end. Moth and Mustardseed clambered out—they were supposed to leap, but it is difficult to leap from a moth-winged pedal car, even after you’ve undone your seatbelt, when you’re wearing a crash helmet and encumbered with huge bobbing antennae and floating wings (Moth) or a spherical yellow upper garment which allows of limited movement only from the elbows (Mustardseed). It didn’t matter, the audience, now heavily supplemented by ballet mothers because many of their little dears were on again, was clapping like mad and it was quite a while before “All” could take a deep breath and bow and say “Where shall we go?”

    “Home, thank God,” muttered Polly.

    ... “Aw-uh, isn’ he gonna fly again?” demanded Davey in a high-pitched wail as the stage cleared.

    “MOTH-U-OO!” screamed Katie Maureen, turning purple.

    “Hang on!” bellowed Patrick from the balcony.

    They all jumped, and looked up eagerly.

    “Up,” said Patrick. “TURN IT, YOU MORON!” he screamed.

    The empty Mothu rose slowly. The kids watched avidly. So did the adults.

    Finally he was drawn in and disappeared into the balcony. There was a collective sigh.

    “I’m gonna go and take a dekko at those davits,” said Rod with a determined look round his perfect mouth. He rose and unceremoniously disappeared.

    Jean-Pierre leaned forward and said, apparently to anyone who might be interested: “But he’s so beautiful and so macho, how terrible!”

    “We did try to tell you,” said Polly feebly, as Jean-Paul was frankly sniggering.

    “How can one possibly be interested in—eugh—these mechanical things?” said Jean-Pierre plaintively.

    “Kiwi-male thing,” said Maurice tersely. “Confirms his mental image of who he is.” He paused. “Of who he thinks he is,” he amended drily.

    Mac strode out, glaring. “Go on, push off.”

    “‘Thank you for letting your boys be fairies, Polly,’” said Polly pointedly. Akiko gave a strangled squeak.

    Mac glared.

    “‘Thank you for ironing Livia’s five million yards of white muslin, Polly,’” said Polly pointedly.

    Mac glared.

    “‘Thank you for providing a garageful of silver bladders, Polly,’” said Polly pointedly.

    Mac glared. He waited for her to say “Thank you for that cool $5,000 you gave me to chuck away on costumes, Polly,” but she didn’t. “Go on, go,” he said weakly. “And for God’s sake don’t bring them to the actual performance.”

    “Thought you’d got ’em Little Lord Fauntleroy suits specially for it?” put in Jill.

    “LOOK, CLEAR OFF, DAVIS!” shouted Mac.

    “I’m going, I’m going: my stomach acids won’t stand another minute of—” She saw that Livia had re-emerged onto the flags and was coming towards them and broke off abruptly. “Anyway, my bum’s gone to sleep,” she added weakly.

    Polly stood up and rubbed hers violently. “So’s mine. I hope you’re going to provide padded velvet armchairs for the official party at the Opening Night, Mac,” she said. “May boys can’t possibly be expected to sit on the bleachers in their Little Lord Fauntleroy suits, you know.”

    “WILL YA GET OUT OF IT, POLLY MITCHELL!” screamed Mac, bright puce, and forgetting quite a lot of things besides the obvious one in the heat of the moment.

    “But darling, I wath jutht going to athk them to my dressing-room!” objected Livia, taking his arm and beaming at them all. “Wasn’t that pretty?” she added to them before Mac could draw breath. “Ithn’t my bower a-dor-a-ble?”

    Nigel came up to her side, grinning, with his ass’s head tucked under his arm. “It is with you in it, yeah,” he said blatantly. Livia smirked.

    Several persons glanced at Maurice but he was unmoved.

    “Look— LEAVE THAT HEAD ALONE!” Mac bellowed at the twins. They flinched, and retreated from Nigel’s side.

    “Aw, come on, Mac,” he said. He put the head on, and knelt. The twins and Katie Maureen proceeded to inspect him narrowly, squeaking delightedly as he showed them the slot in the neck he could look through. Livia began to urge the others to come to her dressing-room.

    “Livia—” said Mac through his teeth. “LIVIA!” he shouted: “this is not an interval! We’re merely between scenes.”

    “Yes, darling, but I’m not on in the next—”

    “NO!” shouted Mac. “They’re GOING!”

    “Yes, we are, actually,” agreed Polly, looking at her watch. “Come on, children, we’ll see if we can beat Daddy home— Ouch!” she gasped as Maurice bounded out of his seat and grabbed her arm.

    “Don’t imagine I poured that fizz into you so as you and your kids could end up a motorway statistic,” he said grimly.

    “What did you pour it into her for, Maurice?” asked Jill with terrific interest.

    Maurice ignored that. In fact you’d have sworn he hadn’t even heard it. “You’re not driving anywhere,” he said firmly.

    “Well, someone’s got to. And Akiko’s had as much to drink as me.”

    —In the background Jean-Paul and Jean-Pierre were murmuring words like “très macho” and “le type Kiwi-male” but the others almost managed to ignore this except for Jill’s shaking shoulders and smothered snorts. You would have sworn, however, that Maurice had neither heard nor understood a single word of it.

    Maurice decided briskly that someone would have to ring the Carrano Building and get either Jake or a driver. Failing that—Jill having pointed out meanly that there might be no-one there, it was nearly six—Polly’s driver would have to come down from Pohutukawa Bay and collect them. Maurice then strode off in search of a phone. Well, towards the S.C.R., but it was true it had a phone.

    “So macho,” sighed Jean-Pierre, sagging all over the bleachers with his hand to his flowery scarlet shirt.

    “Just as well,” said Jill on a grim note.

    “What?” croaked Jean-Paul, gaping at her.

    “Well, he’s right, she has had too much to drink. I’m working it out: by my calculations she’s drunk a sixth of a bottle of Wild Duck, plus a sixth of two bottles of champagne, that makes half a bottle of alcohol inside her. Weighed down by three soft jubes.”

    “Three sixths... You’re right,” conceded Jean-Paul.

    “Well, drunk or not, you needn’t wait here,” said Mac nastily.

    “Mac, dar-ling!” protested Livia.

    “Where can we wait?” asked Jean-Paul sadly.

    Mac didn’t much like Frogs or gays. This was not particularly apparent in his manner to Jean-Paul, as he didn’t much like anybody. So the nasty look he gave him was a pretty standard one. “Should I give a fuck?”

    “Not to me,” said Jean-Paul with a shudder. Jean-Pierre gave a shout of laughter.

    “JUST GO!” shouted Mac.

    “Darling, they can’t go, they’re waiting for Maurie!” protested Livia.

    “Well, he’s gone to the S.C.R. Go—there,” said Mac, very clearly.

    “Good idea,” said Jill. “Come on, you lot.”

    They all got up, gathered up Polly’s children, and went.

    “Get off, you’re not in this scene,” said Mac to Livia.

    “Darling, I thought I’d watch Adam.”

     Mac took a deep breath.

    “This time I won’t walk across the scene when he goes aside, I swear it, darling!” she said quickly.

    Mac took another deep breath. “See you don’t. And for God’s sake don’t sit on that fucking splintery bench in that dress.”

    Livia rearranged the rug that Maurice had been sitting on. “Of course not, darling.” She sat down on the rug, looking expectant. “I’m ready, darling.”

    Behind her, assorted ballet mothers rustled excitedly. This was the opportunity to get that autograph off Livia that Mac had strictly forbidden them to get. They knew, of course, that Livia was far from averse to handing out autographs. Far from.

    Mac breathed deeply and strode off. “ADAM!” he shouted. “Blast it, where is he?” he said as Georgy appeared from behind her bush.

    “I don’t know. –I’m sorry, Mac, I’ve got to go to the Ladies’ before this next scene, I’m bursting!” she added desperately, turning very red.

    “JEE-SUS!” shouted Mac, tearing his hair.

    Georgy shot off like a rocket.

    “ADAM!” shouted Mac. “ADAM!” he shouted. “Oh, there you are, what the fuck have you been doing?” he said disagreeably.

    “Having a very interesting conversation with a literate rustic. Mainly about quasars.”

    Mac glared.

    “Not to mention signing autographs for half the university, I think those Latin III kids must have finished their class and spread the word.”

    “I told you not to—”

    “Nunky, my image! How could I refuse?”

    “Get ON!” shouted Mac.

    “I can’t get on, Georgy’s disappeared and they haven’t played my music.”

    Mac strode back onto the flags. “Tom! TOM! OVERDALE!” he screamed.

    Joel strolled up to Adam’s side. “Situation Normal, All—”

    “Quite.”

    “Opening Night this Saturday,” noted Joel.

    “Quite.”

    Mozart was tinkling from the player, the sitting-room Venetians were tilted against the westering sun, and Gretchen was reading a book with a well-bedewed tumbler at her elbow. Jill stood there, breathing heavily.

    “Vell?” said Gretchen, looking up from her book.

    “Don’t ask.”

    “Ja, that bad? Vhere iss Joel, does he not come to dinner with us tonight?”

    “Don’t be funny,” advised Jill grimly.

    Gretchen looked at her watch. She looked dumbly at Jill.

    “When I left,” she said clearly, “they’d only just started Act III! Get it?”

    “I shall not go to the Opening Night,” decided Gretchen.

    “Yes, you will, we can’t let Joel down.”

    Gretchen groaned.

    “And you’d better have bloody put that casserole in the oven,” warned Jill grimly.

    “Ja, natürlich,” she said, returning to her book.

    Jill marched out to the kitchen.

    “Vell?” said Gretchen as she returned.

    “I forgive you. Provisionally.”

    Gretchen put down her book with a resigned look. “You had better tell me, no doubt you vill feel better vhen it’s off your chest. But since you are on your feet get me another gin and tonic, I feel as if I shall need one.”

    Jill got her a drink. On second thoughts she got one for herself, too. “Well, for a start, Livia was half an hour late. No, I tell a lie: the thing had been due to start for half an hour by the time she finally turned up, so she must have been at least an hour late.”

    “So?”

    Jill breathed heavily through her nose.

    “Ja, very frustrating,” said Gretchen quickly.

    “And for a second thing, Maurice Black was with her.”

    “So?”

    “Look, aren’t you interested?” she yelled.

    “Ooh, you haff noticed at last,” said Gretchen.

    “Well, too bloody bad, you’re going to get the lot, anyway!”

    Gretchen groaned, but that didn’t stop Jill. Not for an instant. She gave her the lot.

    There was a thoughtful silence.

    “Well?” said Jill weakly, having run out of steam.

    She held up a hand. “Vait.”

    Jill waited with a dubious look on her face.

    “I haff it!—Vhy ve can’t go to it.—Food poisoning! Ve both come down with it, because ve haff eaten the same food!” she said brilliantly. “—No?” she said sadly.

    “No; but by God, I’m tempted,” admitted Jill.

    Ralph Overdale pulled his BMW over courteously but making bloody sure he wasn’t pulling it over into the flaming great ditch that decorated the side of Elizabeth (more generally known as Waikaukau Junction) Road. “After you,” he said out of his window, smiling.

    Adam leaned out of his Laser’s window and said: “Thanks very much. Look, you don’t happen to know of anywhere around here where we could get a hot meal, do you?”

    “Not in the depths of Puriri County at ten o’clock of a Tuesday night, I’m very much afraid,” replied Sir Ralph politely, sounding as if he was trying not to laugh. “Though I’m unreliably informed that the fish and chips shop in Sir John Marshall Avenue is the good one.”

    “Ross and Ngaio think so, too,” said Georgy dubiously.

    “Not fish and chips on top of Livia’s five infernal fairy costumes drawn out over nine hours, darling, I couldn’t,” said Adam in a hollow voice.

    “Not nine,” said Georgy, swallowing. “We started at two-thirty. I mean, we were supposed to.”

    “Been dress-rehearsing?” asked Sir Ralph, this time not sounding polite and sounding as if he was definitely laughing.

    Adam groaned.

    “Look, I haven’t eaten, either. Come on up to my place and take pot-luck,” he said.

    Adam hesitated.

    “We could bring some grapes,” said Georgy on a hopeful note.

    “And you’ll avoid Mrs Whatsername’s Conservative Horribles,” Sir Ralph reminded them.

    Adam gave in. “That’s very decent of you, Overdale—if you’re sure?”

    Sir Ralph was sure. He motioned them on.

    During the ninety minutes or so that followed Ralph Overdale obtained a lot of information about the play, Mac, Adam and Georgy, most of that which fell into the last two categories being imparted involuntarily and much of it not even verbally; there were very few flies indeed on the fast-moving Sir Ralph.

    Adam was aware of some of this, but not all of it. Ralph was aware of this.

    Georgy wasn’t particularly aware of anything and by eleven-thirty she was yawning uncontrollably—for assorted reasons, all of which Sir Ralph catalogued quite clearly in his very clever head.

    He showed them politely to his door and stood at the top of his steps watching them descend, cross the short upper sweep and ascend Mrs Mayhew’s steps. He thought he would go to the dress rehearsal. And wasn’t Derry Dawlish due any day now? That could be interesting...

    “Well?” said Dorothy next day with a lurking twinkle.

    “I’m sorry!” gasped Ginny Austin, very red. “I know I said I’d be at work last night by seven at the latest, but—”

    “Not that: we never expected you to make it. No, how did it go? No, put it another way,” she said before their blushing student helper could answer: “was it or was it not a total balls-up?”

    “Um—well, not total... Um, well, more or less,” she admitted weakly. “I mean, Adam and Joel were good, and Nigel was good except when Livia tickled him;”—Dorothy waggled her eyebrows frantically at Janet; Janet gulped—“and Stephen, I mean Quince, he was quite good... Only Livia was awfully late and then she was terrible. I mean, she didn’t forget her lines, she’s learned them, now, only—um—well, in her last scene Mac stopped her and said she was a feather-headed imbecile and did she have the slightest idea what she was squawking about, and she burst into tears and— Um, well, anyway, it was pretty late by then and we were all pretty tired, really. We all had to stay, I mean the fairies, we’re all in that last bit with Oberon and Titania,” she finished weakly.

    “And how was Adam?” asked Dorothy.

    “Um—well, like I said, he was good.”

    “Not actorially—is that a word?”

    “Dramaturgically,” said Janet.

    “Ooh, ta. Ooh, ya can see she’s done English at varsity, eh?” said Dorothy. “Yeah, well, not that: in himself.”

    “Oh,” said the red-headed twin blankly. “Um—all right, I suppose.”

    Dorothy closed her eyes and waved her gently away.

    “Um, shall I help Bridle unpack those books like Janet said?”

    Dorothy went on waving her away. “Go, go. –I suppose you do realize, Doctor Watson,” she said to Janet once Ginny had gone: “that once Bridie gets that kid into her clutches, we won’t get a single second of work out of either of ’em for the rest of the morning?”

    Resignedly Janet replied: “We won’t get a second of work out of Bridie until Adam McIntyre’s gone back to England, anyway. And probably not for ages after that: she’s started a new album.”

    Dorothy groaned.

    “She’s been twisting Ginny’s arm to get her his—”

    “Discarded underpants? Lock of the love-locks? Old lunch papers?” said Dorothy wildly.

    “Autograph.”

    Dorothy groaned.

    “Anyway, why are you so interested in how he is in himself, Dorothy?” asked the genuinely innocent Janet.

    “Fellow feeling with Mrs Harris,” said Dorothy deeply.

    “What? Oh,” said Janet.

    Dorothy just waved her away. They were all so young... It wasn’t just years, either.

    After a period of just plain staring out of her window she roused herself and went out to the Overdues desk.

    “Didn’t Polly Carrano have an Overdue the other day?” she said.

    Rosemary was on duty, and young though she was she perfectly understood this obscure terminology. “Yes,” she said, fishing under the counter, “only you said not to send it, we might need to ask Sir Jake to endow a Lady Carrano Memorial Wing.” She handed Dorothy an envelope.

    “Quite right,” approved Dorothy, ambling off with it.

    ... “Hullo, Polly: thank God you’re there,” she said.

    “I’m only here because I forgot to put the answering machine on,” replied Lady Carrano.

    “Then I’m in luck. I’m ostensibly ringing you about an overdue book.”

    “Oh, yes, Mr Rowl. I couldn’t get through it, isn’t that sad? Like Veronica when she went back to Biggles.”

    Perfectly understanding this arcane utterance, Dorothy replied: “Never mind, that was only the excuse. What is going on between Adam Love-locks and little Georgy Harris?”

    Polly groaned. “It’ll end in tears, you know, dear,” she croaked.

    “I thought so.”

    “They won’t be told, you know,” croaked Polly.

    “No. I know she wasn’t at that bloody awful do of yours, so she’d have missed the pink suit, but wouldn’t you think— Oh, well. She’ll just have to live through it, I suppose. Her sister was in here the other day with a face like a fiddle.”

    “Yes, evidently Mrs Harris has been earbashing her about it, poor Ngaio. What does she imagine she can do?”

    “Dunno. Don’t imagine she does imagine, actually.”

    “No. Well, given that she tried to force Georgy into the arms of Martin Ramsay, I imagine she’s a bear of rather restricted imagine.”

    “God,” said Dorothy in awe.

    “Oh, even less imagine than Him,” Lady Carrano assured her. “It makes you wonder what on earth her own sex life must have been like, doesn’t it?”

    “Quite.” Dorothy scowled. “Poor bloody little Georgy. Let’s just hope it gives her a taste of freedom so that she doesn’t return to the parental nest, eh?”

    “I’m hoping that with all my fingers and toes crossed, Dorothy,” Polly assured her fervently. “Do you think a patrilineal Judaeo-Christian God’ll notice that?”

    “Probably ignore your every digit deliberately, if you keep on being rude about His lack of imagine. –Oh, well; how about the play itself?” asked Dorothy with a smile.

    “Keep right away, Dorothy. It isn’t worth it. Not even for Adam’s legs in tights, which I must say are really something. And not even for his spangled genitals, which I must say are pretty damn good, too.”

    Somewhat weakly the Puriri County Librarian concluded: “Blimey. It must be bad.”