The Cheese Shop And The Palace Of Theseus

5

The Cheese Shop And The Palace Of Theseus

    It was incredibly humid. Adam’s thin cream silk short-sleeved shirt clung to him, and he wished he hadn’t worn it. He also wished he hadn’t decided to wear it tucked into the cream trousers. He also wished he hadn’t worn the trousers, heavy silk though they were. There was nothing he could do about this last. There was something he could do about the shirt, he could haul it out of the pants and let it hang, at least maybe that way he’d get a bit of a draught round his ribs. But the shirt would be hideously crushed, and Adam recognized sourly that his personal vanity was too great to admit of his walking round the city in a crumpled shirt. Even though no-one at all had recognized him or, in the case of the lackadaisical staff in the one or two shops he’d ventured into, even appeared aware of his existence. Possibly he had become invisible. In that case, why was invisibility such a sticky, sweaty, hot state?

    The cream silk shirt was held in place not only by the tight-waisted, if extremely pleated and trendy trousers, but also by a narrow coral belt in a heavy cotton weave. With a narrow gold buckle. When Adam left his parents’ house he had also been wearing, in a flippant sort of way, a jaunty coral silk scarf, rolled thin and tied cowboy-style under the left jaw. Jauntily. And flippantly. Also tightly. By the time he’d walked up Ridge Road to the bus stop on the highway he’d taken that off. Either it was a damn sight less humid in Tayxas or Arizona or them thar places, or else cowboys were bloody tough. Or else the whole jauntily tied scarf thing was a myth: which on second thoughts Adam decided it was. Like trendy sweat-bands for tennis; which might have kept the sweat out of the eyes if you were thick enough to play the game with great energy on a steaming hot day, but which made the head very hot. Especially the really trendy ones in that sort of stretch-nylon towelling stuff that matched your incredibly trendy wristbands and socks. Which respectively made the wrists and feet very hot.

    By the time he got to the top of Ridge Road—a long road; his parent’s place being about halfway down it, and all the sections one fifth to one quarter of an acre in size, such being the New Zealand norm for suburban sections—Adam also was wishing, and very fervently, that he’d had the sense to accept his parents’ offers of either of their cars. Melinda’s was smaller and easier to park. Adam didn’t admit he always felt nervously that he might be squashed by a big bus or lorry when he was in a small car. Added to which the squitty little thing didn’t have a crash-bag. Christopher had already informed his son that there was nowhere to park in town and you had to use a parking building—no, you had to park it yourself, the attendant only took your money: what did he think this was, Los Angeles? Adam didn’t admit he was terrified of driving off the edges of parking buildings, and anyway got claustrophobia in them. Added to which, though it was larger than Melinda’s, Christopher’s car didn’t have a crash-bag either. Adam thought longingly of his own nice, comfortable Mercedes: it had a crash-bag. And it was an automatic. And very often it also had a driver: he didn’t really enjoy driving. And a friend of his, that he’d done some television work with, had a family of hopeful sons who were studying at L.S.E. and places like that (having taken one look at their father’s example and decided never to go into the dramatic profession), and who were only too grateful to earn a few pounds driving Adam. Since they’d known him for years they weren’t at all impressed by his being Adam McIntyre, either, and Adam found this very restful.

    But Roger, Alaric and Jack were all thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, in nice cold London, where it was probably pouring cats and dogs at this very moment, and so was dear Myrtle. –The car: no-one knew he called her this; she was a sort of purplish shade—well, the purplish side of maroon, really: she’d been customized for an Arab lady and Adam didn’t know the details but the Arab gentleman had decided he didn’t want her, after all. And she’d been in the showroom the day Adam had gone there and the man had offered him a very good price and besides, that was the day on which Adam had decided he needed a car. His friends were all convinced that the car was one more thing that Adam had let himself be talked into by a stronger personality, but this was not entirely true: there had been some hard sell, because of his guilt feelings about his image, but the salesman had not misread the sheepish, soppy expression that had come over Adam’s face the moment he set eyes on Myrtle. Adam had fallen in love with Myrtle at first sight.

    Theoretically it should have been possible to hire a Mercedes with a crash-bag. There were several hire-car firms listed in the Auckland yellow pages. Well, three. But the first one Adam tried didn’t answer and the second one said brightly that they could do him— A great long list of Japanese names. Or if he wanted something larger they had a nice Holden Commodore? Adam didn’t know what that was but he thanked them very politely and hung up. He didn’t try the third firm, he wasn’t the sort of person who went determinedly through an entire listing in order to find a firm that would condescend to satisfy his wants, he was more the sort of person that felt depressed and gave up after two abortive tries. And he was definitely the sort of person who felt that if people purported to be selling something, be it goods or services, they should attempt to satisfy your wants, not let you crawl to them on your hands and knees begging for anything they cared to throw in your direction. He realized that this was doubtless a very spoilt and old-fashioned attitude.

    By the time he’d got to town and had wandered disconsolately into a couple of shops he was also beginning to realize it wasn’t an attitude that prevailed in New Zealand. Well, it couldn’t be, could it, or someone would at least have said as he stood hesitating by the men’s toiletries counter, “Can I help you?” Instead of filing their nails and giggling at the other end of the counter with another girl in a black dress who must also be an employee.

    He wandered into another big shop. By Christ, it was air-conditioned! The first one he’d struck. Adam began to feel better. The ground floor of the big shop seemed to be divided into boutiques—rather like a large American-style hotel. How odd. He looked at the men’s watches on display in the jeweller’s boutique nearest the entrance but they were junk, so he didn’t go in. He wandered on. A place that cut keys, how odd, right at the foot of the escalator. Was there a lift? Adam hated both escalators and lifts but if the lift had an attendant— He couldn’t see a lift. He wandered on. Women’s lingerie. Boring: positively deadly. Years out of date. And nasty cheap nylon and scratchy nylon lace— Good God! He translated the price on the nasty negligée into pounds but it still came out as Good God. For a scratchy nylon negligée? He wandered on…

    Christ, a delicatessen! He looked in the window. We-ell... He went in. The place was nearly empty but over at the far counter a woman was being served with coffee beans, he could smell them, and at the nearer counter a man with a strong Hungarian accent was asking for speck. That was mildly... Adam went nearer and looked hard at the cheeses. Oh. Ugh. The plump woman serving the man with speck finished serving him and turned to Adam. She was wearing a tight pink dress, very much draped round the bust, with heavy makeup and lots of gold costume jewellery. Her fingernails were also bright pink but in a shade that clashed. Nevertheless Adam took his sunglasses off and said: “Er—yes. I wonder if you have any ripe Brie?”

    “Brie?”

    “Yes. A nice ripe one.”

    “This one’s very nice.” She produced a small round packet. Cardboard. It had picture of a cow and a legend that said “Pukeana Dairy Co. New Zealand Brie.” Well, that was fair enough.

    “Um—no, that wasn’t what I… Don’t you have a round of Brie?” he said in a voice that he could hear was getting rather weak. How damned silly.

    “This Danish one’s very popular.” Another small cardboard box. Adam had once injudiciously bought one of those from a supermarket at home. It wasn’t Brie, it was salted soap, packed in airtight plastic.

    “No—I—er—I meant French Brie,” he said weakly.

    “Oh. Um—” She gave him a suspicious look. “How much did you want?”

    Christ, thought Adam, what does she mean? Pounds, shillings or ounces? No, hang on, they’re all metricated out here, Mother said; merde, comment dit-on ‘grammes’ en anglais? he thought madly.

    She was giving him an odd look, so he said weakly: “Oh, just a nice slice—you know.”

    At that a miracle occurred. She went further down the counter, scuffled under its glass top amongst huge rounds of Dutch-looking things, and produced a wheel of Brie. Well, it was the right shape and colour. When she brought it to him he could see, because it had been cut, that it wasn’t very ripe. However, the label was a genuine French one.

    “Like this?” she said, positioning a large knife over it.

    Adam swallowed. “Er—no; about twice that, if I may.” –There, he thought crossly, I’m begging for it! But there seemed no other way of ever getting any Brie at all in this place.

    “This?”

    That accent would be fiendishly difficult: they lowered the short I so that it came out a centred, neutral sort of vowel: not quite “thus.”

    “Er, a little more, please,” he said weakly.

    With a look of heavy patience she adjusted the knife again.

    “Yes, thank you very much,” said Adam, though he could see it was several ounces under the size of what he usually bought.

    She cut it off, wrapped it in grease-proof paper, weighed it and said in a warning voice: “It’s over six dollars.”

    Pounds, shillings, or ounces, thought Adam again. What would happen if at this juncture he said: “No, that’s far too dear, take off about a fifteen degree wedge, would you?”

    “That’s quite all right,” he said limply. By the time she’d announced its final price—just over seven dollars, actually—placed it in a small plastic bag and placed the result in a small paper bag printed with what presumably was the store’s logo, Adam had just about lost his nerve entirely. Certainly to the extent of not asking about Roquefort. But he did just manage to croak in answer to her “Anything else?” that he’d like some coffee beans.

    “Robert Harris?”

    No, Adam McIntyre, thought Adam madly. “I’m sorry, is that a brand?”

    “Yes: Robert Harris or—”

    On second thoughts he thought he had heard of Robert Harris but he definitely hadn’t heard of the other one, and he never bought packaged beans, he just went to his little coffee shop where they had them in big sacks. He’d once been in a radio thing with a Frenchwoman, and she’d put him onto this shop.

    “Well—either, really, but I’d like Italian, please.” That wasn’t the only thing to say that got you really dark, strong beans, but at his little shop it was what you said, and they understood you. “Very dark,” he said feebly.

    “We’ve got French roast,” she offered.

    “I see. Is that—um—dark?”

    She marched away from the counter without saying anything. He stared after her limply. However, she went to the coffee counter, so that was promising. When she got there she stared at him. Suddenly Adam realised— He pursued her.

    “Yes, those would do splendidly,” he said as she indicated the “French roast” beans. They were quite dark... Well, they were the darkest there.

    “Just the beans?”

    “I’m sorry?” replied Adam limply.

    “Do you want them ground, or just the beans?” she translated laboriously.

    “Oh—no: just the beans, thank you,” he agreed limply.

    After that he definitely didn’t have the stamina to ask about ham, or smoked salmon. He just took his parcels, paid over an extortionate amount in dollars, and tottered out. Without a plastic carrier-bag: though the little foreign man who’d bought the speck had got one without even having to ask.

    He wandered sadly round the ground floor of the store. All boutiques... Mainly women’s clothes, really vile. A staircase! He looked up. It led to a mezzanine floor which seemed to be occupied by a coffee bar. Ma had warned him about New Zealand coffee. Like English coffee at its worst, was the phrase she’d used. Still—a cold drink? Adam mounted the stairs.

    It was one of those serve-yourself places and in mid-afternoon it appeared to expect that you would only wish to serve yourself with huge hunks of elaborate gateaux. At far end of the counter it had drinks in a sort of presumably refrigerated cubby-hole. Adam looked at them sadly. Nothing there looked as if it had ever been near a—well, an orange or a tomato, to start with. Limply he took a pineapple juice.

    When he got to the cash register the girl there asked him if that was all. Adam wondered frantically if you weren’t supposed just to buy a drink—perhaps the place had a cover charge, or something?

    “Yes: thank you. Er—unless you do sandwiches?” he said with a sudden ray of hope.

    She peered vaguely down the long glass counter. “Are there any there?”

    “No.”

    “Aw. Well, they’ve all gone, then. –Just the juice?”

    Adam agreed.

    Left to himself he would have gone along to the far end of the mezzanine floor and sat at a table right by the balcony, looking down on the shoppers, which he felt might be rather fun, but as he picked up the tray he’d optimistically acquired at the far end of the counter, another girl popped up beside the one at the cash register and saying brightly: “Just for one, is it?” came round the end of the counter and tore the tray out of his grasp.

    There was no-one behind Adam. He felt like saying there were another five hundred of ’em, but didn’t. She led him firmly to a dark table against the wall and set the tray down before a seat which faced the wall. Adam sat down obediently and thanked her. He remembered that Ma had said you mustn’t tip anybody in New Zealand, and didn’t. He waited until she’d disappeared and then changed to a seat with its back to the wall, but there was still nothing to see. Well, two plump middle-aged women further down, one elderly gent alone at a table for eight, and two giggling, lumpy girls of about fifteen at a table by the balcony, who never looked down once. Nobody noticed he was Adam McIntyre; indeed, nobody noticed him at all, and Adam had been quite confident they wouldn’t, otherwise he’d have stayed facing the wall. He’d got over the short-lived stage of wishing they would recognize him on such public occasions.

    The mezzanine was dim: dark maroon carpet, darker maroon vinyl upholstery, and very dim lights against its dull cream walls. It would not have been true to say that Adam was happy, but sipping his iced pineapple juice, which wasn’t bad, in the air-conditioning, he didn’t feel positively unhappy.

    In fact when he’d finished he felt good enough to dash up a tiny staircase which said: “Exit” and open the door at its top, instead of meekly going back the way he’d come.

    The exit opened onto a remarkably grimy back street which seemed to feature the backs of—cinemas? Yes, possibly; also something that looked like a warehouse, anyway it was remarkably grimy; plus cars parked end-to-end, and, at its far end, a couple of glossy boutiques. He glanced at them unenthusiastically. Then his eye was caught by—

    He hurried over to the second-hand bookshop. Of course it wasn’t air-conditioned, but soon he was immersed. The stock was junk. Likewise crap. Adam remained immersed in the junk, likewise crap for some time. Nobody asked him if they could help him, which was wonderful, he hated bookshops where they did that and if they did rarely went back to them. It had never occurred to him that this was diametrically opposed to his attitude to other shops. But then perhaps second-hand bookstores were diametrically opposed to other shops.

    The girl who eventually sold him a very battered hardback Cruel Sea (not a first edition, but he’d never had a copy of his own), a thing by H.E. Bates that dated from about the same period and appeared to be about the war in Burma and not in the least like his later books, an ancient and fuzzy and probably not good text of The Christ of Cynewulf which for family reasons he’d been unable to resist, and a thing full of ill-focussed black and white photographs of clumsily made ships in bottles with detailed but barely semi-literate instructions on how to make them for Dad, was so mild and unassuming-looking and, in her Roman sandals, limply flowered almost-Laura Ashley print and limp, straight fawn hair, so like the girls Adam was used to seeing serving in second-hand bookshops that he said as he paid for his purchases: “I don’t suppose you could tell me how to get to the university from here, could you?”—and gave her a charming smile.

    “Yes,” she said, with a twinkle, “it’s easy.”—Well, she had him taped, acknowledged Adam.—“You go along to the end of this road—turn right when you go out the door,” she added quickly: Adam nodded; “then turn right, go up to the end of the street and you’ll see the park in front of you across the road.”—Adam nodded again.—“Cross straight over—and be careful of the traffic coming down on your right, they drive like maniacs,”—Adam nodded again.—“And just go straight up through the park, it’s at the top, you can’t miss it!” She beamed. Adam beamed back. “No, hang on: bear sort of leftish when you get to the top of the park,” she added.

    “Oh,” he said.

    “You’ll see the clock tower when you get there: you can’t miss it!” she added bracingly.

    “Oh, good. To the left?”

    “Mm!” she said, nodding hard.

    “Good; thanks so much,” said Adam. He picked up his parcels.

    “Hang on: would you like a bag for those?” she asked.

    “Yes, I would, very much: thank you,” said Adam fervently.

    She felt under the counter, producing a very much crumpled plastic supermarket bag of the thin variety that splits and dumps your purchases all over the pavement in the sleet. He thanked her again, bade her a polite farewell and went to the door.

    “Right!” she reminded him.

    “Yes: thanks!” he called. He went out, and turned right.

    In the stuffy little bookshop silence fell. The girl who’d been looking intently through the entire collection of paperback detectives had got to M. She sat down on the floor to look at the Ms: for some obscure reason there were shelves of them. The elderly man who was looking at the classics section went on looking at it, though not looking hopeful about it.

    “Did that bloke buy anything?” asked the proprietor, descending the little staircase that led to the Foreign Languages, Spiritualism and Unsorted areas.

    “Yes. Four,” replied the girl at the counter in a strangled voice. “Did you see who it was?” she hissed.

    “Which four?” He inspected her ledger with interest.

    “It was Adam McIntyre!” she hissed.

    Her partner had seen that for himself. “I don’t care who it was, we’re not gonna make our fortunes out of him. Didn’t buy The Mistake, did ’e?”

    They looked at The Mistake, and sighed. The Mistake was a large, handsome volume: full calf, stamped in a profusion of gold leaf, top and bottom edges gilt, lovely marbled end-papers. Sadly, its content didn’t live up to the promise of its exterior: it was merely some obscure nineteenth-century cleric’s essays. It had cost them a packet and so they were offering it for sale at a packet.

    “It was sitting right here,” she said sadly.

    Refraining—though with a certain effort—from suggesting that maybe the bloke hadn’t made as much out of that dumb action movie as the media claimed, her partner merely sniffed.

    The park wasn’t very big but its lower edges were very steep. Adam climbed slowly, sweating. The park sloped to the west, so it was very warm indeed in late afternoon. What with the heat and the fact that when he got to the top there was no clock tower in sight, only more park, he felt rather confused. He wandered on tentatively and felt even more confused: the large, quite old trees in the park seemed to be a mixture of English oaks and—banyans? he thought dazedly, encountering a Moreton Bay fig and—since there was no audience—frankly gaping at its gnarled grey elephantine roots.

    He paused in its ample shade and looked around again. Thank God! That must be— Ooh, Victorian Gothic! Lovely example: how foully Betjeman-ish in every line, squiggle and excrescence! Adam headed for it eagerly—though not very fast, he was now out of the trees and the park had taken on a formal, boring, English-municipal-gardens look and was in the full blaze of the late afternoon sun and—the more so since New Zealand was on Summer Time—very, very hot.

    “NO!” screamed Mac. “God Almighty,” he groaned to himself. “Georgy! Are you getting this down?” he called from his position in the body of the hall, about ten feet from where the footlights would have been if they’d been going to do the production there.

    “Yes!” called Georgy from her position about ten feet further back still, cross-legged on the floor. Since Mac hadn’t turned round, she went on transferring notes from little bits of paper in her jeans pockets to her clipboard. Georgy’s clipboard was frightfully organized. It wasn’t the sort of organisation that anyone but its originator could have followed, but it was very organized.

    “Big badder,” Katie Maureen said to her.

    “Mm,” agreed Georgy absently.

    Katie Maureen waved the borrowed big badder in a vague way but as it was very warm in the hall and she was rather tired after her pedalling in Mothu earlier, didn’t attempt anything else. Which was just as well: Georgy thought she was very sweet but wasn’t at all sure that she’d be capable of controlling a Carrano infant of three. She didn’t know Polly Mitchell Carrano very well and had been staggered to find herself appointed child-minder after Polly’s cousin, Ginny Austin, had come in, very teary-looking, gasped: “Polly, I can’t manage my wings!” and burst into tears. Polly had said she’d come and look, where were they? And when Ginny had said over at the Art School, they weren’t quite finished, Polly had gulped and asked if she could possibly leave Katie Maureen somewhere, because talk about you-know-whats in china shops. Ginny had immediately said Georgy would keep an eye on her, she was sure. Polly had asked Georgy very nicely if she’d mind, and added with her lovely smile just to say, if the thought gave her the cauld grues. At which Georgy had naturally laughed and said of course she wouldn’t mind. Afterwards realising that she’d been manipulated—but quite nicely.

    “Boys was bad,” said Katie Maureen in a sleepy voice.

    “Mm, well, not as bad as they can be,” said Georgy, glancing at the tribe of hairy rustics off to their left, pushing and shoving and muttering amongst themselves. They had had their rehearsal, and some had gone, but these ones hadn’t: possibly they were the boyfriends of the girls who were the fairies in Oberon’s train—in a giggling, whispering group on the other side of the hall—or the girls who were now on stage as court ladies and being screamed at by Mac.

    “Fight wiv badders,” said Katie Maureen.

    “Yes, that was very bad!” agreed Georgy, smiling at her.

    Suddenly Katie Maureen gave a yawn.

    Ooh, she was just like a dear little cat or something! Georgy didn’t know what exactly Katie Maureen was like but she was swept by a wave of emotion and wanted very much to pick her up and cuddle her as she might have a little cat. She was very fond of little cats but Mrs Harris had a budgie, and wasn’t.

    Being Georgy, she didn’t pick her up at all, but just said shyly: “Are you tired, Katie Maureen?” Not daring to call her “dear”, let alone “darling”, as she would have liked to, because Katie Maureen hardly knew her, really. And there was no need to patronise a person, just because she happened to be very young and small: you could still treat her like a human being.

    Katie Maureen had strong fits of wanting to be treated like a human being. However, she was very sleepy, so she merely gave another yawn and said: “Tuckered out.”

    “Yes!” gasped Georgy.

    “Make me a wee bed.”

    “What?” said Georgy faintly.

    “Make me a wee bed: you know: wee bed!”

    “Um—well…” On the floor nearby there was a discarded length of very old grey-blue velveteen that Mac had thought Pauline might do something with for Theseus, until he’d draped it over his shoulder and looked at it against his yellowish complexion. “Um—would this do?” She folded it up a bit.

    “Thass a good wee bed.” Katie Maureen curled up on it. “I have to have a wee piller,” she said.

    Georgy looked round desperately. “Um—well, I don’t think—”

    “We alluz have wee pillers at Play Group!” said Katie Maureen crossly.

    Georgy said: “Hang on!”—leapt up, went over to one of the rustics and said to him without pausing to think: “Can I borrow your top for the little girl for a pillow? She wants to have a nap.”

    He gave her the sweat-shirt that he’d been wearing knotted round his waist but said in a numb sort of voice: “I gotta have it back, though.”

    “Ask for it when ya want it,” said Georgy tersely, going off with it, quite forgetting to thank him.

    She folded it up into a pad. “Here, Katie Maureen,” she said, putting it under her head. It must have been all right, even if it did smell of hairy rustic, because she put her head on it obediently and closed her eyes.

    Georgy watched her cautiously. After a while she whispered: “Are you asleep, Katie Maureen?”

    “’Course not!” said Katie Maureen scornfully, opening one hard grey-green eye. “I’m havin’ a wee lie-down!”

    “Oh—good,” said Georgy numbly.

    On stage the court ladies shuffled and bumped into one another. Mac attempted to get them to look less wooden. They merely looked hot. And wooden.

    Finally he groaned, and said: “All right, we’ll try it with the whole lot of ya. –NO: STAY THERE!” he bellowed. The departing court ladies stopped. “OY! YOU LOT! GEDDUP HERE!” he bellowed. Several large, hairy rustics detached themselves from the group—thus revealing themselves as large, hairy court gentlemen attendant upon Theseus—and shuffled up on stage.

    “Right!” cried Mac. “Theseus!” Nothing happened. “THESEUS!” he roared.

    A yellowish one detached himself from the body of rustics in the hall. “Me?” he said in surprize.

    “YES, you! Geddup there!”

    Theseus got.

    “Right, now— NO!” howled Mac. “Theseus and male attendants this side, Hippolyta’s ladies on that side! –YOU, dear!” he screamed at a court lady. “Are you or are you not one of Hippolyta’s attendants?”

    “Um—I’m a court lady,” she replied cautiously.

    “YES!” screamed Mac. “Go over THERE! Stage LEFT!”

    Looking bewildered, she stumbled over to the other ladies.

    “Right: now we’ll just— Hang on,” discovered Mac, “where’s Hippolyta? HIPPOL— Oh, there you are!” he said as a rumpled figure in jeans and a loose purple sleeveless cotton-knit top appeared from behind the court ladies. “What the fuck were ya doing back there, you’re the flaming bride, you’re supposed to be the centre of attention!”

    “Am I? Um—where shall I stand, then?”

    “Have you forgotten everything I told you before Christmas?” screamed Mac.

    Manifestly she had. Yes.

    “Over THERE!” he screamed.

    Hippolyta went over there. She looked in a puzzled way at the floor of the stage.

    “NOW WHAT THE CHRIST?” screeched Mac.

    “Um—well, um, didn’t you say I had to stand on my chalk mark? There isn’t a chalk mark,” mumbled Hippolyta.

    “That was LAST YEAR, when we were working out the— Oh, never mind!” Mac bounded up the short fight of steps and onto the stage. “Here!” he said, grasping her by the shoulders and pushing her savagely into place. “Stand here! And for Chrissakes look proud and happy, you’re engaged to the fucking duke, not attending your own funeral!”

    “Yes,” Hippolyta agreed in a small voice. She’d been Cousin in Everyman and Mac had made her kiss Everyman, even though it wasn’t in the book. On the lips, because he’d said that was what they always did in the Middle Ages. Hippolyta was terrified Mac was going to make her kiss Theseus. She didn’t manage to look proud and happy—or even regal, which would have done, at a pinch—she only managed to look terrified. And hot.

     Mac pushed Theseus and his attendants into place. “Look regal!” he snapped at Theseus. “And happy!” Theseus gulped.

    “Where’s Philostrate?” Mac then demanded angrily.

    After a bit of pushing and shoving amongst the hairy court gentleman, a stoutish one was pushed to the front. “Um—me,” he admitted.

    Glaring, Mac demanded : “Where the fuck’s your bloody staff?”

    “Um—down there. Do I need it now?

    “No, of course not, you’re only the Master of the Flaming Revels, what the fuck ’ud you need your staff for at court?”

    “Um—shall I get it, then?”

    “YES!” roared Mac.

    Philostrate descended from the stage by the simple method of jumping heavily from it. The hall reverberated, the floor shook, and Katie Maureen opened her eyes.

    “Hoon,” muttered Georgy, glaring, as he reclaimed his broomstick from the two rustics who’d been playing at single-stick, or possibly billiards, with it.

    “Have a wee nap,” said Katie Maureen groggily.

    “Yes; close your eyes,” said Georgy anxiously.

    “Wan’ my big badder,” she croaked.

    “Here.” Georgy handed it to her politely so as she could take its handle but Katie Maureen grabbed the bladder itself, cradled it to her bosom, and closed her eyes. Georgy watched her anxiously.

    “GEORGY!” bellowed Mac.

    Georgy gasped, and grabbed up her clipboard.

    “Get these moves down!” he bellowed.

    Georgy nodded wildly and waved her clipboard. This was apparently satisfactory, for Mac returned to his hot wooden court and their hairy, yellowish duke.

    The rehearsal ground on. “Right,” decided Mac at last. “We’ll do it with— EGEUS!” he bellowed. “Where the fuck’s he GONE?”

    A short, solid rustic detached himself from the group. “I was trying on my beard,” he said meekly, “but I’m here now.”

    “Well, get up here with the rest of— LOVERS!” roared Mac. “LOVERS! We’re rehearsing BEGINNERS, are you all DEAF?”

    Two more rustics stumbled up onto the stage. Two girls followed them.

    “Not YOU!” screamed Mac.

    Helena stopped in surprise. “I’m a lover.”

    “Are you a beginner, though, dear?” asked Mac evilly.

    “Yeah,” muttered Georgy sourly to herself. “They all are. Rank beginners. And rank amateurs. And rotten.”

    “Um—aren’t I?” squeaked Helena.

    “You come on later, dear. Later,” sighed Mac. “When Hermia and Lysander are walk-ing a-lone. Geddit?”

    “Um—yes,” she squeaked. –Her speaking voice was almost as faint as her stage voice, so why had Mac picked her? Well, it could have had something to do with the appendages to which Bill Michaels would shortly be pinning a dinky wee mike, reflected Georgy drily.

    “But I could be—um—ready,” she squeaked.

    “All right,” he said, sighing. “Be ready: geddup there: be ready.”

    He began to rehearse Act I, Scene 1. He hadn’t got very far before a group of hot-looking people in tee-shirts and jeans came in carrying strangely-shaped cases. The tall, skinny man in specs who appeared to be their leader went up to Mac and said: “Oy, are you lot still here?”

    “STOP!” roared Mac. “STOP! I said STOP!” he screamed.

    Egeus stopped.

    “You’re early,” Mac then said to the tall, thin man.

    “No, we’re not: you’re late,” he replied mildly.

    Mac looked at his watch. “You’ll just have to hang on.”

    “Well, all right. Only I warn you, the crumhorns can’t hang round after six, they’ve got an appointment with an arty evening wedding in Little Fittledean.”

    “Howick,” corrected a man carrying a long, odd case, with a grin.

    “Yeah. Joe’s coming, too,” said another one carrying a ditto.

    “Yeah,” agreed a man who was getting a lute out of a case.

    “Oh. Well, this shouldn’t take long. Look, tune up or something, and I’ll just run these cretins through their scene,” said Mac.

    “It’s your funeral,” said the tall, thin man. Georgy knew who he was: his name was Tom, he was newly married to nice Jemima Anderson from the Department of Linguistics. She didn’t know Jemima very well, their Departments belonged to different faculties (English being in the Faculty of English and Humanities, and Linguistics being in the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics) and were housed in different buildings. But she thought she was very nice from what she’d seen of her.

    Tom Overdale, who wasn’t carrying a strangely shaped case because he was a counter-tenor, led his Early Music group over to the left of the hall (audience’s left). At a cautious distance from the rustics they all sat down on a cluster of wooden benches and began to open their instrument cases, blow into the instruments, or twang on them.

    Mac started Egeus off again. He thought better of it, and turned to bellow for Georgy to prompt. Then he registered that Georgy was baby-sitting a Carrano infant, and thought better of it.

    Mac shouted and screamed. Occasionally he prompted, very loudly and crossly. The actors mumbled and fluffed, and stumbled over their feet. The court ladies looked wooden. And hot. The court gentlemen looked rustic. And hot. The musicians twanged and looked at their watches. Pretty soon one of them got out a pack of cards. Pretty soon Tom picked up someone’s recorder and began to play, very quietly but with terrible persistence: “Here we go round the mulberry bush.” Over and over and over. The rustics pushed, shoved, barged into one another and generally rioted hoonishly. Every so often Mac bellowed at them. Oberon’s fairies giggled and ceased whispering in order to talk quite loudly and giggle more. Georgy wrote laborious notes and watched Katie Maureen anxiously. Outside, even though it was only late January and many families were still on holiday, the rush hour was pretty well under way and the noise of traffic deepened. The sun sank slightly, though not that much, as they were on Summer Time. Dust motes danced in the hot air of the hall…

    Into this scene of merry mayhem came Adam McIntyre, crushed silk semi-tropical gear and all, six-foot-two of spoilt male beauty, vain as a peacock and nervous as Hell. With his sunglasses on.

    Nobody noticed him.

    Adam looked at the hoonish gang over to his left with distaste. He looked at the absorbed, giggling girls on the benches over to his right with equal distaste. The musicians, beyond the hoons, provoked the fleeting, gloomy thought that God: Uncle Mac had live musicians. Uncle Mac was in the usual producer’s position, standing up in front of a battered Windsor chair ten feet from the footlights, screaming. Adam was damned if he was going to interrupt that; let him get the scene over with.

    Some way behind his uncle was a girl with a flood of lovely, deep auburn curly hair down her back, sitting cross-legged on the floor, bent over something. Next to her was a sleeping red-headed cherub who must be her child. Adam felt he could approach this young mother. She was probably the wife of one of the cast. He went up to her. She was writing on a clipboard, so maybe they’d made her an A.S.M. or something in Wardrobe, or something.

    “Hullo,” he said, taking his sunglasses off.

    Georgy looked up. Her heart raced frantically, she felt as if it was going to burst out of her chest. “Hullo,” she replied.

    Adam saw she had a very sweet oval face. Lovely grey-green eyes. No makeup; she could have done with just a little. Very delicate features. He felt his pulses quicken a little, which was absurd: some little Anty-podean housewife!

    She didn’t say anything else. And she didn’t look in the least interested, or surprized to see him, or— In fact she looked as if she was about to get on with whatever it was she’d been doing with the clipboard, so he said idiotically: “I’m Adam McIntyre.”

    “I can see that,” replied Georgy in a hard voice. She was furious with herself. Going all stupid and trembly because he was a Big Star! Crikey, she was bad as—no, worse—worse than Tanya from Hair 2000!

    Adam was swept by a wave of anger. For two pins he’d have slapped her face. He felt more put-down than he’d ever been in his life. Not that he’d expected— But Jesus! Common courtesy, at least! His fists clenched and his nostrils flared. He had an absurd impulse to put his sunglasses back on, but repressed it angrily.

    “Act One, Scene One,” he said in a sneering voice. “Is that progress?”

    “It is compared to last week,” replied Georgy flatly.

    Adam drew a tight breath.

    After a moment she said: “I’ll tell Mac you’re here, if you like.”

    “No,” he said heavily. “Don’t interrupt the scene.”

    She didn’t reply; just turned back to her clipboard. Adam’s lips tightened. His nostrils flared again.

    After some time, during which Mac roared, one of the musicians went on playing “Here we go round the mulberry bush” until Adam could have screamed, and everybody else shuffled, giggled, and generally carried on, he said with difficulty: “May I sit down?”

    “I’m not stopping you,” she replied in feigned surprise, not looking up.

    Adam gritted his teeth. After a moment he said quietly: “I wouldn’t want to disturb your baby.”

    Georgy looked up. She went bright pink and said: “She isn’t mine. I’m keeping an eye on her. You can sit down, it’s all right.”

    Adam looked at the dusty floor, then carefully sat down on a vacant corner of the grey-blue velveteen. This put him between the cherub and the cross minder. He clasped his knees, staring fixedly at the stage.

    Georgy looked down blindly at her clipboard. Her hands had gone all trembly: she couldn’t write.

    Soon Adam glanced at her cautiously. A lovely profile—very delicate—but why was she so angry with him? Why had she hated him on sight? The thought occurred that maybe she’d seen that bloody film—or not bothered to see it, more like—and despised him on the strength of it. The thought also occurred that this was justified, but he shoved it down angrily. Everyone had to make a living, didn’t they? Why should he be supposed to be more principled, not to say less in need of daily nourishment, than the rest of the world? After a considerable period of angry brooding, and some glancing at Georgy’s uncommunicative profile, he looked to his right. The sleeping cherub with its silver balloon seemed strangely familiar. Was he imagining things? No—surely?

    Very quietly he said to the cross girl: “That isn’t little Katie Maureen Carrano, is it?”

    “The syntax of that sentence makes it almost impossible to formulate an affirmative reply, do you realize that?” she replied in a high, tight voice. “The answer is yes, it is Katie Maureen.”

    Adam’s nostrils flared and he said angrily: “I’m flattered that you’ve bothered to notice my syntax!”

    “SHUT UP!” roared Mac, not looking round.

    Georgy flinched, and gulped. Adam whispered: “I’m sorry.”

    Georgy was furious to find her eyes had abruptly filled with tears. She didn’t say anything, just blinked, and stared blindly at the stage.

    Adam hugged his knees tightly. He stared blindly at the stage. Soon Mac got into a wrangle with Theseus over how he should come off. Theseus kept trying to tell him that when they did it in the real place, he wouldn’t be able to come off there. Mac kept saying yes, he would, where’d he think he— Mac scrambled up the steps onto the stage and began pushing and shoving at Theseus and his hairy gentlemen. The musician with the recorder started playing “Nymphs and shepherds come away.”

    Suddenly the cross girl on Adam’s left gave a startled giggle.

    “What?” he said blankly.

    “Listen to what he’s playing,” she whispered. “On the recorder!” she added on an impatient note.

    Adam listened. He smiled slowly. As he was looking straight into her face as he did so, he smiled straight into her face. She went very pink and smiled back. Adam’s blood raced.

    “Anything less nymph-like!” he whispered.

    “I know!” she gasped.

    Grinning, he said: “Or less courtly, come to that.”

    “Yes, they’re dreadful, aren’t they? When we did Twelfth Night the courtiers were dreadful in that, too. Well, the whole thing was dreadful, actually,” she admitted.

    Adam was trying not to laugh. “You’re—er—a permanent member of the company, are you?”

    “Is that what you say in England?” she replied abruptly.

    “Uh—yes. I suppose so,” he said lamely.

    “It sounds like something out of The Good Companions,” she said dispassionately.

    Adam replied with a spurt of annoyance: “It probably is something out of The Good Companions!”

    “Yes,” she agreed calmly. “Well, I don’t know that there is a permanent company. Mac makes me help—I’m in his department.”

    “Oh—a don?” he said in amazement.

    “That sounds like something out of D.L. Sayers!” replied Georgy with satisfaction.

    “I’m sorry if I’m shocking your Antipodean sensibilities,” he said tightly. “Or is it widening your horizons?”

    “No: fulfilling—expectations!” choked Georgy, going into a wheezing paroxysm.

    “Very funny,” he said acidly when she’d stopped.

    He’d sounded just like his father when his arthritis that he wouldn’t admit he had was playing up. Georgy winced.

    They were silent. Adam stared glumly at his shouting, sweating uncle. He’d put her back up again: damn!

    Georgy stared blindly at her clipboard, not seeing it. Why had she said that? She hadn’t meant to be rude, it had just seemed to—to come out! Not that she cared if he did think she was rude, anyway. So there.

    Mac descended the steps heavily. “Go ON!” he shouted irritably over his shoulder. Georgy and Adam glanced nervously at Katie Maureen, but she dozed on peacefully. Adam wanted to say what a cherubic thing she was, but didn’t dare: the girl would probably wither him utterly. Besides thinking he was... soft, or wet, or something.

    The actors played the scene through in front of a scowling, silent Mac. Soon only Lysander and Hermia were officially left on stage, though as there was no scenery most of the bodies of the rest of the beginners could be seen protruding from the inadequate wings. Lysander recited his lines woodenly. Hermia recited hers mechanically. They both took ages to pick up their cues. From the prompt side Helena prompted helpfully. And more loudly than she normally spoke her lines.

    “Pace! Pace!” hissed Adam through his teeth, in agony. Out of the corner of his eye he sensed movement. He looked to his left and was astounded to see that on a page of her clipboard headed “I,1: H & L,” she was writing in very large letters: “PACE”.

    “Are you an A.S.M.?” he whispered.

    “No: assistant producer,” she whispered back, eyeing Mac nervously. “Dogsbody,” she added hoarsely.

    “Yes!” choked Adam.

    “QUIET!” bellowed Mac, not turning round. The general hubbub in the hall did not diminish, in fact the recorder player started playing “The more we are to-ge-ther, the mer-ri-er we’ll be,” rather slowly. But the girl on Adam’s left went very red. He had a ridiculous impulse to put his hand gently over hers and give it a reassuring squeeze.

    There was a pause in the dialogue.

    “Get on!” hissed Georgy, sotto voce.

    “Get ON!” howled Mac.

    Helena appeared cautiously from the prompt side. “I’m on the wrong side, aren’t I?”

    “All right, get on the RIGHT side!” bellowed Mac.

    Helena scurried across the stage.

    “Give her the line,” said Mac wearily. “—LYSANDER! Give her her fucking cue!”

    “Oh—um—I’ve forgotten—um…”

    Georgy sighed heavily.

    “‘Look, here comes Helena,’” murmured Adam.

    “Fancy,” she muttered, not looking at him.

    “Look, here comes Helena,” said Lysander limply.

    “Not ‘Look, here COMES Helena,’ boy, you’re not bloody Larry Olivier,”—Georgy winced and glanced hurriedly at Adam and away again—“you’re supposed to be speaking ENGLISH!” screamed Mac. “‘Look, here comes Helena,’” he said in a conversational tone.

    “Look, here comes— I mean, here comes Helena.”

    “Geddon with it,” said Mac glumly.

    “Um—ooh, that’s me!” said Hermia with a giggle.—The first sign of animation she’d shown.—“Um…” She spoke the line.

    “Who’s going to prompt, though, if I’m acting?” said Helena in a confused voice in response to her cue.

    “I’ll prompt! Get ON with it!” screamed Mac.

    Helena said something inaudible. Adam glanced at his cross girl. She wrote very large on her clipboard: “Remind Bill about Helena’s MIKE.”

    Adam smiled. He reached across and before she realized what he was doing, took the biro out of her hand and wrote neatly underneath her note: “So I should think.” She went into a fit of giggles. Adam grinned, very pleased with himself.

    Finally she gasped: “Sign that, and I’ll retire on the proceeds!”

    “Bitch,” replied Adam conversationally with a grin, as he would have done to any of his female acquaintances at home.

    She went very red and said in a stifled voice, avoiding his eye: “I’m sorry.”

    “I was only teasing,” he murmured, rather shaken.

    “Oh,” she said in a tiny voice.

    Adam didn’t dare to say anything else: in the first place it’d make it worse, and in the second he’d already made enough of a fool of himself. He glared at the stage.

    The wooden Lysander, the mechanical Hermia and the inaudible Helena finished the scene before the ominously silent Mac. Neither Adam nor Georgy spoke.

    “All right: shove off,” said Mac tiredly. “See Georgy about your next rehearsal. And be—on—time.”

    They stumbled over to the steps.

    The tall, thin Tom went up to Mac. “Please, sir, is it us now, sir?” he squeaked.

    “Very humorous, Overdale,” said Mac sourly.

    Not a whit abashed, he merely squeaked: “Ooh, sir; thank you, sir!” in reply. “Come on, you lot,” he said to his musicians.

    “This’ll be good,” sighed Adam.

    At this his cross girl, who’d been turning over pages on her clipboard so that it now displayed a large timetable spattered with red stars, black stars, bits crossed out and copious marginal notes, said crossly: “It will, you’ll see!”

    Before he had time to reply, Hermia and Helena came up to them and simultaneously turned bright puce. –Lysander had temporarily been kidnapped by one of the giggling girls from the group over at the right of the hall.

    “Heck!” gulped Hermia, bright puce.

    Helena just stared with her mouth open. She was bright puce, though.

    “All right, it’s a giraffe,” said Georgy tiredly.

   The expression had also been adopted by Adam’s family, but he’d never heard anyone else use it: he flung back his head and gave a startled laugh.

    “Ooh, it is you!” gasped Hermia.

    Helena just stared.

    “Before you get carried away, what about making sure you know when your next rehearsal is?” said Georgy. She was rather pink, she hadn’t meant to say that about the giraffe, it had just come out; and when she’d heard it come out she certainly hadn’t expected Adam McIntyre to react like he had.

    “We sometimes say ‘call’ in England,” murmured Adam with a teasing look. Georgy managed to ignore that.

    “Um—Friday afternoon?” suggest Hermia.

    “No, Joanna, it was changed to Friday morning at nine o’clock. He’s going to take you all right through your bits for words.”

    “Not moves?” croaked Lysander, coming up and goggling at Adam.

    “No. Moves are on... Monday at nine o’clock, he wants to get them finalized before your first rehearsal in the quad.”

    “When’s that?” croaked Lysander.

    “I don’t know, Tony, we haven’t worked out a timetable yet. And it depends a bit on the electricians.”

    “Aw, them,” he said glumly.

    “Yes, well, Monday at nine, has everyone got that straight?”

    They all nodded dumbly.

    Then Helena squeaked: “What about Titania’s fairies?”

    “Tomorrow morning, half past eight, but he won’t need you, Jos, it’s fairy moves only.”

    “No, but my sister’s a green fairy!” she squeaked, bright puce again.

    “Oh. Well, half-past eight, tell her. And, um, he’s getting a bit fed-up with fairies missing rehearsal and being late and that, so tell her she’d better be on time or she might be out of the show,” said Georgy—not in a hard voice, merely as of one imparting information. Adam repressed a smile.

    “Yes—righto!” gasped Helena, casting a fleeting look at Adam.

    “Could you introduce me to our young lovers, do you think?” he said to Georgy with a laugh in his voice.

    “Oh—um—yes!” she gasped, turning very pink. “Um—this is Joanna, she’s Hermia, and Jos—she’s Helena, and Tony—he’s Lysander.”

    Adam scrambled up with some care—Katie Maureen was still asleep and the whole exchange had taken place in lowered voices (except for Helena: she didn’t need to lower hers)—and shook hands. Theirs were all horrible: warm and plumpish and very, very damp.

    “Where did Demetrius go?” Georgy then said to Lysander.

    “Tim? Uh—dunno.”

    “Well, if he misses the rehearsal, Mac’ll give his part to that male fairy with the moustache, like he said,” Georgy reminded him.

    “I’ll tell him!” he croaked in horror.

    “Yes, do that.”

    “Is that all, Georgy?” asked Hermia.

    “Yes. And I’ve got your phone numbers, so I’ll ring you if Mac changes the time, or anything.”

    “Yes—ta,” said the two girls.

    “What about me an’ Tim, though?” croaked Lysander in horror.

    Georgy sighed. “Well, I could leave a message with your mother again, I suppose.”

    “She’s hopeless,” he said glumly.

    “She goes out a lot, doesn’t she?” she murmured.—Helena and Hermia glanced longingly at Adam. He smiled at them. They turned puce, gave him timid smiles, and looked hurriedly away.

    “Yeah, to all her bowls stuff,” Lysander was agreeing glumly.

    “Mm. Well, you’d better ring me at home, I think. Um—early morning, before seven-thirty, or evenings after seven, I’m usually home. But if there are any changes, I’ll leave a message with Mum, so just tell her who you are and she’ll tell you.”

    “Righto! Thanks! Um, I haven’t got your number!” he gasped.

    “It’s in the book, it’s the Puriri exchange.”

    “Yes—um—but aren’t there millions of Harrises?” he gulped.

    “Not in Ridge Road. Um—well, it’s Puriri 57-763, but I can never remember what number you have to dial to get Puriri from town,” admitted Georgy.

    “Two-two,” said one of the girls.

    “Mm,” murmured Adam.

    “Yeah,” agreed Lysander, writing on his left wrist with a black felt marker. Possibly he didn’t intend to bathe until the show was over, reflected Adam.

    “Okay, then?” said Georgy in a kind voice. Adam reflected with some amusement that though she was so gauche, you could tell she was used to dealing with young people—dim young people—in her professional life.

    “Yeah—ta!” gasped Lysander/Tony.

    “Yes; thanks, Georgy,” agreed Hermia/Joanna and Helena/Jos.

    “See ya!” she replied, smiling at them.

    “Bye-bye,” murmured Adam.

    “See ya!” they gasped, turning puce and staggering off. They got as far as the door before the two girls went into terrific giggling fits.

    “God,” said Adam weakly, sitting down beside her again—she’d remained seated throughout the entire exchange. “You’d think they’d never seen a giraffe before in their lives!”

    Georgy replied composedly: “They haven’t, Mr McIntyre, this is the Antipodes.”

    “Call me Adam, for God’s sake,” he said, smiling.

    “Righto,” she agreed, going very pink and looking away from him.

    It had now dawned on Adam that she was very shy, as well as very gauche. He still wasn’t too sure that she hadn’t hated him on sight, but he felt a bit better. He looked at Katie Maureen, who had whimpered a bit in her sleep as the lovers shuffled off, and murmured: “She’s still asleep.”

    “Yes. –Ssh!” she commanded, leaning forward eagerly.

    On stage the musicians had finished dragging chairs and music stands into position, and twanging and blowing, and were about to burst into something. Adam braced himself.

    The tall, thin man came over to the edge of the stage and said to Mac, who was now sitting on his Windsor chair: “We’ll do the first bit first, shall we? Will that be less confusing for you?” His voice was very kind.

    Adam gave a smothered choke of laughter. He glanced to his left and saw that she was smiling, too.

    “Yeah—uh—hang on, we’ll time it,” said Mac. “GEORGY!” he bellowed, not turning round. “CUMMERE!”

    “I can’t: what about Katie Maureen?” said Georgy in a strangled whisper, looking helplessly up into Adam’s face.

    Adam felt his colour rise. His heart hammered like crazy—how damned ridiculous, he thought angrily, at the same time unable to look away from her anxious face. He was about to tell her not to worry, he’d keep an eye on the kid, when his uncle turned round and said loudly: “What the fuck are you doing here?”—glaring at him.

    Not unnaturally, several heads turned. The fairies immediately squeaked and gasped. The sudden cessation of high-pitched girlish giggling and mindless chatter attracted the attention of the remaining rustic hoons, over on the left. They turned, and gaped.

    Mac got up, sighing ostentatiously. Slowly he crossed the ten feet of floor to his nephew.

    “I got bored playing Cheese Shop downtown, so I thought I might as well stroll up here: aren’t I supposed to be in this thing?” drawled Adam, not getting up.

    “Well, get up, now you are here. I suppose I’d better introduce you, or this lot’ll go barmy,” replied Mac sourly.

    Even though Georgy knew Mac and his nephew had already seen each other, she didn’t feel this was very nice between uncle and nephew when one of them was a stranger and didn’t know anybody, and so she swallowed nervously, and glared at the floor.

    “If you insist, Nunky, dear,” said Adam, equally sourly, getting up.

    “Yeah—uh— Come up on the bloody stage, might as well do it properly. –I need you,” he added in threatening tones to Georgy, grabbing his nephew’s arm.

    “I can’t!” squeaked Georgy; but Mac was leading Adam away.

    Georgy looked at Katie Maureen. Oh, dear, she was fast asleep, still. But she couldn’t leave her in the middle of the hall like this—someone might step on her—or—or anything! Or she might wake up and be frightened. Oh, dear: wasn’t Mac a—a pig!

    Mac led Adam up onto the stage. The tall, thin Tom looked very bored, and gave a loud sigh.

    “All right!” said Mac loudly. He didn’t have to shout, for once he had the breathless attention of the assembled multitude. “Yes, this is him. And no, he won’t be acting today. And the first clown that asks him for his autograph gets the boot. Geddit? The—boot.”

    “What about the second clown?” asked Adam with interest.

    Everybody gasped and burst into delighted laughter.

    Except Georgy, who thought to herself with a sort of gloom which she retained from analysing that (a) it was a magnificent piece of upstaging, (b) he was a professional, wasn’t he? and (c) now Mac’d be in an even worse mood than he’d been for the last few weeks: he hated being upstaged and especially by anyone younger, or more attractive, or cleverer than he was himself. Georgy wasn’t at all sure about the third category but she could see that Adam McIntyre more than fitted the first two. Oh, dear.

    Adam surveyed his laughing audience with the extra-modest version of his charming smile. It wasn’t apparent to any of the young people in the hall, but he wasn’t looking at any of them. The one person he was looking at—though he didn’t allow this to become apparent, either—hadn’t laughed. He felt unaccountably depressed and wished crossly that he hadn’t come up to the university at all, but had gone straight home, preferably to a long, cool shower. Say, thirty or forty minutes’ worth.

    “Oh, and he wants you to call him Adam,” added Mac, when the laughter had died down. “And just remember what I said before on the subject of bringing five million of yer dearest friends and relations along to gawp at ’im: if I spot one body that’s not supposed to be here, we’ll have a closed set. Geddit?”

    Everybody looked sheepish.

    “GEDDIT?” he roared.

    “Yes,” they muttered, shuffling.

    “Come on,” he said to Adam, propelling him off the stage.

    “Can we start?” said Tom in a bored voice.

     Mac paused at the top of the steps. “Yes. And that reminds me: LISTEN, YOU LOT!” he roared over the growing hubbub. “We’re going to time the musicians, and I want silence while we do it! Geddit? SILENCE! Anyone that kicks up a row is out of the show! And don’t hang round in the hopes of talking to Adam afterwards, because you won’t, we’re gonna walk through a few of his moves with his fairies, since they’re here.”—The fairies gave delighted gasps.—“All right?” he said in a threatening voice. Everybody nodded hard. “Don’t start until I say,” he said to Tom, propelling his nephew down the steps.

    There was dead silence in the hall as Adam came over to Georgy. “I think if we pick her up very carefully she may not wake up,” he said, smiling at her. “Or I could stay here with her, if you like.”

    “Um—no: thanks, but— I mean, I’m supposed to be in charge of her!” gasped Georgy, very pink.

    “Mm; well, shall I?” He went down gracefully on one knee.

    “All right,” said Georgy limply.

    Adam lifted Katie Maureen up very carefully and stood up easily with her. The thought crossed Georgy’s mind that he must have learnt how to do all that sort of thing, and of course everyone knew he did ballet exercises, it had been in that magazine— Very pink, Georgy scrambled up with her clipboard. The silver bladder had slipped from Katie Maureen’s grasp. She picked it up in a numbed, automatic sort of way.

    Mac had come up to them. “Come on, half of those idiots have got to push off to a bloody wedding at six o’clock,” he said irritably.

    “Yes! I’m just—”  gasped Georgy.

    “A couple of chairs might help, Nunky, dear,” murmured Adam.

    Mac obtained a couple of chairs by the simple expedient of marching up to a couple of goggling rustic boons and saying: “Oy: you two: see those two chairs? Over here, double-quick time!”

    Adam ushered Georgy into the chair next to Mac’s. He sat on her other side. He couldn’t have said whether this was because he wanted to be next to her or because he didn’t want to be next to his uncle. Or both. Katie Maureen stirred and whimpered.

    “Ssh,” he whispered, cradling her against his chest.

    Georgy found there was a lump in her throat. She swallowed, and looked away. Stupid, sentimental idiot! Why go all soppy just because he— Besides, she betted that inside he was thinking what a perfect picture he made!

    “Get the bloody stopwatch out,” groaned Mac.

    “What? Oh!” Blushing, Georgy extracted the stopwatch from her jeans pocket.

    “Ready now?” said Tom from the stage in a nasty voice.

    “Yeah: geddon with it!” replied Mac irritably.

    Tom turned away, raised his right hand, and the group swung into—

    “Dowland?” breathed Adam, beaming at Georgy„

    She nodded, eyes very bright. “He arranged it,” she breathed, nodding towards the conductor.

    It was very nice, very nice, he’d used several well-known pieces... Very nice.

    When the musicians had finished, and Tom turned and bowed with an ironic glance at Mac, Adam balanced Katie Maureen carefully on his knees, and clapped a little. There was a sort of startled jolt in the hall; then all the students clapped, too.

    “Thanks,” said Tom, grinning at Adam.

    “No: thank you,” he replied with one of his rare genuine smiles, gently picking Katie Maureen up again. She muttered something, and buried her face in his crushed silk shirt.

    “Well?” said Mac grumpily to Georgy.

    “Twelve minutes and—um—forty-three seconds.” She wrote it down carefully.

    “Can your Twilight Procession twilight procesh in that time, or shall I make it longer?” enquired Tom of Mac, with a bored look on his face.

    “Um—dunno. Um—I think that’ll do. Might have to cut it back a bit,” he replied.

    “Not if they’re twilight proceshing all the way from the Old Block, surely?” asked Tom.

    “I timed that, Tom. It took me under a minute,” said Georgy.

    “Yes, but there’s only one of you, Georgy,” he replied with a twinkle.

    “Oh! Yes!” gasped Georgy in confusion.

    “Mm,” murmured Adam with his cheek against Katie Maureen’s. Georgy glanced at him uncertainly.

    “We’ll have to time them, and work it out,” said Mac.

    “I still think it’d be better to save all this twilight proceshing until your actual ‘Enter Oberon and Titania at different doors mad as fire with their sleeves rolled up,’” drawled Tom. –Adam chuckled.

    “So do I,” said Georgy in an anxious voice. “It’ll give the fairies more time to get dressed; and clear the dressing-rooms for the Act One beginners, too. And it won’t really be twilight at eight o’clock, will it?”

    “Well, whadd’ll we start with, instead?” said Mac in a grumpy voice. Those who knew him well realized he must have been having second thoughts, himself, and drew stealthy breaths of relief.

    “How about this?” said Tom. He turned round, waved at his musicians, and they burst into something that wasn’t Dowland, though it did sound a bit like him. In fact it sounded a bit like almost everybody that had been around at that period and Adam, listening carefully, decided it was. The piece ended with a little break, and then a short very crumhorny thing that was distinctly ducal, and then a blare of trumpets. Well, one trumpet.

    “Curtain up!” said Tom, turning and facing them.

    “Down: that’ll be when they let the big banner down from the balcony,” said Mac.

    “Yes: it’s super, Tom!” approved Georgy.

    “Yeah: quite effective,” decided Mac. “Did you time that?” he demanded.

    “Yes.” Georgy duly reported the duration.

    “Time for them to stop rustling lolly papers and wake up,” explained the conductor modestly.

    “Yes. All right. I’ll think about it. What’s next?” demanded Mac.

    Tom scratched his head. “We’ve got a bit of incidental stuff... I think I’ll need to get together with Georgy and time the moves in situ, though. And I’ve had a bit of a think about Puck’s theme.”

    “Ooh, what, Tom?” asked Georgy, leaning forward eagerly.

    Absurdly, Adam’s whole body was flooded by a hot wave of jealousy. He held Katie Maureen against his shoulder, and leaned his cheek against her satin one, and tried to tell himself he was being an idiot. All these people out here: their lives were fixed, set in their own little orbits, moving on their predestined courses—no earthly reason to think his presence here should impinge on their busy, complete, and utterly alien lives. He was... comet dust across their closed little universe, thought Adam, knowing he was being both fanciful and not particularly elegant in his choice of expression but mentally thanking God that at least his father wasn’t capable of reading his thoughts. Though sometimes he felt he was. Long-distance, too.

    Tom’s musicians burst into Kemp’s Jig.

    “Ooh, Kemp’s Jig!” said Georgy.

    “We thought that,” said Tom, turning with a grin, when they’d finished.

    “Joel’ll love it,” Adam said to him.

    “Good, I thought he might. Does he still sing?”

    “Only the occasional croak as Jacques; his boy-soprano days are long since over,” said Adam, smiling.

    “I’ve got an absolutely ancient record he did—must have been about twelve. One of the first Early Music things I ever bought. Full Fathom Five, and—”

    “Nymphs and Shepherds?” suggested Adam with a sudden little laugh. “Yes,” he said as Tom grinned and nodded: “I’ve got that, too.”

    “That was too long: how long was it?” said Mac to Georgy.

    Georgy hadn’t neglected to time it. She told him.

    “Too long,” he said to Tom.

    “We thought it could sort of—er—come and go, as and when,” replied Tom in a timid voice. “When Puck sort of comes and goes, as it were,” he added, not in a timid voice.

    Adam choked.

    “They’ll have to sit where they can see the staircase,” Georgy warned Mac.

    “That’s glaringly apparent,” he replied sourly.

    “Ah, but is the staircase?” said Tom with a wink at Georgy. Georgy put her hand over her mouth. A squeak escaped from behind the hand. Adam smiled.

    “You’ll have to go on the bank, there isn’t anywhere else,” said Mac sourly.

    “We’d better do a few experiments,” said Tom to Georgy.

    “Righto,” she agreed, making a note.

    “Can we GET ON?” demanded Mac loudly.

    Katie Maureen at this whimpered and stirred, and gave a little protesting cry.

    “There, then!” said Adam, lowering her gently onto his knee and smiling anxiously at her. “Are you awake now, Katie Maureen?”

    Mac sighed loudly.

    “Wee nap,” croaked Katie Maureen groggily.

    “That’s right, Katie Maureen: you had a wee nap,” said Georgy anxiously. “You’re with Georgy—remember? And Adam, you know Adam, don’t you?” she added uncertainly. He’d recognized her, but that didn’t mean that Katie Maureen, who was only three, would recognize him.

    As she said his name Adam’s heart raced. He didn’t dare to glance at her, just went on looking at Katie Maureen.

    “Where’ my badder?” she said in a grumpy voice.

    It was at Georgy’s feet. Quickly she picked it up and gave it to her.

    “My badder,” she said, hugging it to her bosom and glaring.

    “Yes: that’s right,” said Georgy. “It’s yours.”

    “A pretty silver bladder,” approved Adam, smiling anxiously at her.

    “’Es. –Adam,” she ascertained.

    “Yes, that’s right!” said Georgy in huge relief: “It’s Adam! –She does remember you!” she said to him, beaming.

    Adam’s heart raced frantically. He managed to say: “Unmemorable giraffe that I am.”

    “Well, you probably are, to a three-year-old,” allowed Georgy. She then went very pink and wished she hadn’t said it—it had just come out—but to her surprize he looked rather pleased.

    “Nodda ’raffe,” croaked Katie Maureen groggily.

    “No, not really,” agreed Georgy weakly.

    “I seen a ’raffe,” she volunteered, blinking.

    “Have you, darling?” said Adam gently, smiling at her. “Was it at the zoo?”

    “I been a zoo. Big ’raffe. –Where’s Mummy?”

   Georgy swallowed. Oh, help. He was raising his eyebrows at her over Katie Maureen’s head, that didn’t help. “Um—she’s gone to look at Ginny’s fairy wings,” she said weakly. “Um—I expect she’ll be back soon, Katie Maureen.”

    “Ginny’s a fairy,” she said to Adam.

    “Is she? That’s nice.”

    Mac sighed loudly again.

    Katie Maureen peered at him. “Big Mac,” she ascertained.

    Georgy went into a snorting fit of hysterics. She couldn’t help herself. Tears oozed out of the corners of her eyes. “Yes! Ow—help!” she gasped.

    Tom had come down from the stage. “That was a good one, eh?” he observed.

    “Yes!” said Adam in a strangled voice. “You’re quite right, Katie Maureen: that is Big Mac!”

    Tom squatted at Adam’s knee. “Tom’s gonna make some nice music, now, Katie Maureen,” he said.

    “Tom,” she ascertained.

    “Mm,” he said.

    “’Port car.”

    “Yes: the M.G.’s parked down the road,” he agreed.

    “C’n I go in your ’port car, Tom?”

    “Not today, lovey, Mima’s coming with me. You could go in it another day, eh?”

    “Aw. Righto,” she replied.

    Grinning, Tom stood up. “Now I’ll make some lovely music. –C,H,E,R,U,B,I,C, ain’t she?” he said to them. “Note the pink-pearl sheen of the skin.” He went back to the stage, whistling softly.

    Tom made some lovely music. In fact he and a stout little boy of about ten or eleven sang an arrangement, which Adam guessed was Tom’s own arrangement, of You Spotted Snakes With Double Tongue: Tom did the first verse, the little boy did the second verse, and they and a female alto did the choruses. Adam and all the students clapped again. So did Katie Maureen, very enthusiastically.

    “No wrong notes!” she said pleasedly to Adam.

    “Er—no: I do believe you’re right. Christ, can three-year-olds have perfect pitch?” he said to Georgy.

    “Yes, I think it’s something you’re born with. But actually I believe her father’s very musical, I think she might have picked up the phrase from him.”

    “No,” said a contralto voice from behind them: “from a friend of ours and his little girl. It signifies extreme approbation, but I wouldn’t vouch for its musical correctness.”

    “That’s because you’ve got cloth ears,” said Tom, coming down the steps again.

    Lady Carrano murmured agreement with this insult, smiling at him, but her voice was drowned by her offspring’s hoarse shriek of: “Mummy! You been A-AGES! I was lonely!”

    “Yes,” said Adam, lifting her up with a smile and rising smoothly: “lonely: as in F,A,S,T  A,S,L,E,E,P.”

    “I see,” said Polly, coming around his chair and smiling at them all. “Yes, all right, sweetheart, I’m here, now. –Thanks so much for keeping an eye on her, Georgy; I’m sorry I was so long: Ginny got into a state about her wings. And then Anna was showing me her lovely flowers and—um—I sort of got carried away,” she said with a guilty smile.

    “How many did you buy?” asked Tom with interest.

    Georgy went very pink, but Lady Carrano only replied serenely: “None, because I couldn’t think exactly what to use them for: but I think Jake might have ideas about someone’s new bedroom, when I tell him about them;”—she glanced at her infant cherub who was now, very red in the face, struggling to free herself from Adam’s grasp—“but I did put in an order for a couple of the caterpillars, I couldn’t resist him!” she added with a gurgle.

    “Oh, one for each twin,” recognized Tom.

    “No, you idiot! One for Katie Maureen’s Play Group, and one for our nursery. Katie Maureen, would you like a great caterpillar like in Alice in Wonderland?”

    “PUMMEE DOWN, ADAM!” roared Katie Maureen.

    “No respecter of persons,” noted Tom.

    “That makes two of you, then,” said Georgy before she could stop herself.

    Tom merely winked, as Polly said: “Yes, put her down, Adam: come on, Mischief.”

    “I’m NODDA MISCHIEF!”

    “No. Would you like a great big caterpillar you could have rides on? A nice big squidgy one?” Polly picked her up.

    “Gray big piller-cat,” she replied with satisfaction.

    Adam coughed suddenly. Georgy went very pink.

    “Go rides in Mothu,” said Katie Maureen.

    Georgy gave a horrified gasp.

    “Not in the air: Bill was there,” explained Polly briefly.

    “Oh!” she said, sagging in her seat.

    “Yes, you did have a ride in Mothu, didn’t you, sweetheart?” said Polly. “And I tell you what: Ginny says Patrick’s going to make his wings move!”

    Ginny had been waylaid by one of Oberon’s fairies, who had tugged her into a giggling, whispering huddle, regardless of the fact that, unlike her twin, Ginny was neither a giggler nor a whisperer. She now came up to them and said in a strangled voice, quite obviously forcing herself not to stare at Adam: “Yes. When you pedal it its wings’ll move.”

    “Flap a wings,” said Katie Maureen.

    “Yes: that’s right!” beamed Ginny.

    “Big moff,” said Katie Maureen, yawning.

    “Mm,” agreed Polly, kissing her. “Did she sleep for ages, Georgy?”

    “Um—yes. Well, most of the time you were away, really.”

    “Is this good or bad, one wonders? She’ll probably be horribly perky tonight and demand to grace the dinner table,” said her mother with a shudder. She then introduced Ginny and Adam gracefully. Georgy watched enviously, it was the sort of thing she couldn’t do to save her life.

    Tom then squeaked: “I haven’t been introduced, either, Polly!”

    “Tom can sing,” Katie Maureen said earnestly to Adam.

    “There, what more introduction do you need?” gurgled Polly.

    “Be a urf,” Katie Maureen explained earnestly to Adam. He looked helplessly at Polly.

    “Vocalised L. Local dialect,” she said briefly.

    “Lowered E: local dialect of the under twenties and/or moronic,” Tom added, less briefly.

    “A tall elf who can sing? I’m very glad to meet you, Tom!” choked Adam, holding out his hand.

    “Tom Overdale,” said Tom, grinning, shaking it. “Likewise.”

    “Come on, Katie Maureen,” Polly then said: “we’d better go, we’ll be late, and Daddy’ll be wondering where we are.”

    “Go a copter!” she cried.

    “Not today, we’ve got the car, remember?”

    At this Mac looked up from his papers and said in a grumpy voice: “Well, for Christ’s sake take the Coast road, then.”

    “Mac! I didn’t know you cared!” gasped Polly.

    “You’ve got a garage full of my silver bladders,” he reminded her with a smile.

    “MY BADDER!” screeched Katie Maureen.

    “Oh! Here!” gasped Georgy, bounding up and retrieving it.

    “Thank you, Georgy; but it isn’t hers, it’s one Mac lent her,” said Polly, smiling at her.

    “MY BADDER!”

    “No, sweetheart, your big badder’s at home, Akiko’s looking after it, remember?”

    “My badder,” she muttered, pouting.

    “Mm,” said Polly, nuzzling her ear. “Come on. –Thanks again, Georgy, I’d never have coped with her in the studio with all those soldering-irons and things.”

    “No,” agreed Georgy with a shudder. “That’s okay, Polly.”

    “Dinner on Saturday, Adam, remember?” Polly added with a smile.

    Twinkling, he returned: “I’m looking forward to it. In fact it’s what’s keeping me relatively sane.”

    Polly laughed, said she’d see him then, bade the company a fond farewell, and ordered Katie Maureen to say “Bye-bye, and thank you, Georgy.”

    Katie Maureen did, decided she wanted to stay with Georgy, and was borne firmly away, shouting: “Pummee DOWN! Wanna stay wiv GEORGY! MUMMY! Pummee DOWN!”

    “Isn’t she an adorable little thing?” said Adam with a laugh.

   Georgy eyed him sourly. Although she quite agreed with him, she couldn’t have said that aloud to save her life.

    “Which one?” drawled Tom.

    “Katie Maureen, of course,” contributed Ginny. Tom immediately looked very squashed. Ginny choked.

    “Do those wings fit?” demanded Mac out of the blue.

    “Um—yes; I wasn’t— I kept getting my hair caught in them, and I couldn’t make them flap a bit, like you said!” she gasped, very red.

    “Vibrate, not flap,” he replied in an annoyed voice.

    “Yes. Greg’s going to tie black strings to my elbows, he reckons that’ll help,” said Ginny dubiously.

    “See it does. I don’t want the audience laughing themselves sick just before a crucial turning-point in the plot,” said Mac nastily.

    “Not to mention just before my scene,” added Adam drily.

    “No!” the poor child gasped, redder than ever.

    “Don’t worry, I was once on stage in The Importance when the unfortunate Lady Bracknell flourished her parasol and a huge black rubber spider fell out of it.”

    “Ooh!” gasped Ginny with a horrified laugh.

    “Mm. I swear the bloody audience never took its eyes off that ruddy parasol for the rest of the play. Not to mention the fact that we had to play out the scene with the spider centre-stage.”

    Ginny and Georgy giggled delightedly.

    “Who was playing Lady B.?” asked Mac.

    Adam raised his eyebrows languidly. He named the theatrical Dame in question.

    “Ooh, heck!” gasped Georgy, clapping her hand over her mouth.

    “Help,” said Ginny weakly.

    “Mm. Upstaged by a rubber spider,” said Adam dreamily.

    They all collapsed in helpless laughter.

    “I’d have put her down as the sort that woulda bashed the bloody thing to death with the parasol and swept it under a convenient rosebush without turning a hair,” Tom admitted weakly.

    “Yes!” choked Georgy.

    “Yes—but she—loathes—spiders!” gasped Adam.

    “That—isn’t—funny!” choked Georgy, shaking helplessly.

    “No!” gasped Ginny.

    “Someone must have had it in for her, all right,” said Tom.

    “Mm. Well, what with the upstaging and that dear little trick of speaking her line before you’ve finished yours—” Adam shrugged. They were all looking at him in horror. He shrugged again.

    “Gor, the Big World,” said Tom.

    “Talking of the big world, your musicians seem to have pushed off into it. Is that all you’ve done?” demanded Mac.

    Aggrievedly Tom replied: “Some of us is only underpaid primary-school teachers wot have to do their lesson plans in the hols, ya know. Plus and paint their house, and tend their vege garden. Plus and start their term in February instead of March like youse spoilt Varsity types.”

    “You chose it,” retorted his former professor heartlessly.

    “True, oh, king. Well, we have worked out a nice little theme for the kids to descend to in their Mothu contraption. But that only needs a recorder: eerie, see?”

    “Well, go on, then!” snapped Mac.

    Tom gave a shrill whistle. One of the remaining musicians on stage replied: “Now?”

    “Now as ever was.”

    The musician played her recorder. It was rather an eerie little tune; faerie, indeed.

    “Good,” said Mac.

    “Yeah. We’ll get hold of Patrick and see if his technical morons can manage to lower away in time with the tune without actually being prodded from behind with cattle goads,” promised Tom.

    “Do that,” grunted Mac.

    Tom then waved at his remaining musicians, and shouted: “ALL OUT!”

    “Damn, I thought you might sing again,” said Adam.

    “Sing what?” he replied blankly.

    Adam replied with his most attractive smile: “Anything!”

    “Well, there is a little anything for a certain point in the last act where the stage directions say ‘Oberon leading, the fairies sing and dance’—”

    “But I can’t sing!” gasped Adam.

    “So we were advised. But ya do ballay-ee, don’tcha?” he leered.

    Adam groaned.

    “Spangled tights,” said Tom with relish.

    Adam put his hand over his face.

    “‘Hi, diddly-de-dee, An actor’s life for me!’” sang Tom, dancing away.

    “He’s awful!” gasped Ginny, giggling helplessly.

    “We don’t know that: we haven’t seen him dance yet,” said Georgy sourly.

    “Ooh, that one was below the belt,” groaned Adam.

    Georgy winced. “So are the tights,” she muttered, burying herself in her clipboard.

    Adam looked at her uncertainly. She didn’t look up. The red-headed kid who was going to be a fairy said: “Mrs Pretty said the green ones were—um—very pretty.”

    “Green one— How many changes do I have?” said Adam in a hollow voice.

    “Changes of costume, do you mean?” replied Georgy, not looking at him.

    “Of course.”

    “Three.”

    “What about the unity of—”

    “This isn’t fucking Racine!” howled Mac.

    To Adam’s bewilderment the little red-head and his cross girl both choked, and shook helplessly.

    “Mac,” he began unwisely, “it’s supposed to take place—”

    “Bullshit! Why do ya suppose Shakespeare spread out your flaming scenes?” howled his uncle.

    “Innate artistry? Sense of dramatic timing? Taste? To let me double as Theseus?” suggested Adam wildly. The red-headed fairy giggled delightedly.

    “No: to let you have three different costumes, each more weird and wonderful than the last,” said Georgy, looking at her wristwatch. “It’s getting late, if you want to rehearse Oberon’s fairies, Mac: some of them have got evening jobs.”

    “Blast!” he said, looking at his own watch. “Look, go and get rid of the rest of them, wouldja? They’re driving me crackers with all that hoonish carry-on.”

    “What are they all, Mac? Hoonish courtiers?” asked Adam, getting up resignedly as Georgy went over to the shuffling, shoving hairy ones.

    “No. Rustics. Well, mostly.”

    “In Shakespeare’s cast list—” began Adam unwisely.

    “Yeah, you were there, I suppose. Complete with Dame Whatsername and her bloody spider. –They’re country cousins come to town, geddit? They lend verisimilitude, ya clot. Not to say give the thicko audience a lead by laughing at the funny bits.”

    “You’re not trying to tell me that you have that lot on stage all the time?” said Adam faintly, following him numbly.

    “NO!” replied Mac crossly. “Well, not all the time. Most of the time when Bottom and Co. are on.”

    “Livia’s going to love that,” warned Adam. “Upstaged by a crowd of shuffling hoonish rustics.”

    “Not in her scenes, you idiot!” retorted his uncle.

    “Glad to hear it,” said Adam faintly.

    “They come on with Quince and his lot in their first scene, he’s sort of choosing his cast from the crowd, it makes it more—”

    “No, he isn’t, he’s got his list and—”

    “Who’s producing this show, you or me?”

    “You are, Mac,” sighed Adam. “—Thank God,” he muttered.

    Ignoring this last, Mac fronted up to the fairies, who fell into an awestruck silence, goggling at Adam, and said in an evil voice: “Right! Anybody here who isn’t one of Oberon’s fairies?”

    After a certain amount of blushing and shuffling and trying not to look at someone, someone said in a small voice: “Me.” A short, plump girl shuffled to the front of the fairy crowd. As, like the fairies, she was dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, it would have been well-nigh impossible for her to have been identified as an alien, and Adam thought silently that she might just as well have shut up about it. True, she might not know the moves; but on the evidence so far he’d take a hefty bet that none of the rest of ’em would, either.

    “Then push off,” Mac ordered her.

    “I can’t,” she said in a strangled voice. “I’m giving my sister a lift.”

    “Me,” said a quite tall, quite pretty fairy. Also in jeans, but a tight blue tee-shirt as opposed to her sister’s looser white one, printed in red with the mysterious legend “University of Michigan.” Was there one? Adam wondered wildly.

    “Oh. All right,” said Mac tiredly. He took another look at the short, plump one. “You can be Oberon’s Robin,” he decided.

    “But I’m doing a B.Com.!” she squeaked in horror.

    “That doesn’t matter, dear, robins don’t speak. Are you free until Term begins?” he added by the way.

    “Um—yes. Well, sort of. Um—not Saturday mornings, I’ve got a—”

    Mac didn’t wait to hear what Saturday morning job she had, he said: “Right. That’s settled, then. Give all your details to Georgy after rehearsal. –That’s Georgy, over there,” he added loudly, pointing her out carefully. –He wasn’t that thick; and he had been producing the annual outdoor summer productions for something like twenty years, after all.

    “Yes,” said the newly appointed Robin weakly.

    Adam began unwisely: “Robins aren’t noct—”

    But Mac replied tersely: “Shuddup. This is fairyland. –Have you got any plain yellow flatties, or ballet slippers?” he added to the Robin.

    “No!” she gasped in horror.

    “Well, tell Georgy: see what she can do for you. –All right, everybody; have you all got your labels?” Most of them had, yes. They’d learned that by now. “Make her a label!” he added irritably to the Robin’s sister.

    “Um—yes. Righto. –Hang on, Phil,” she said to the Robin, scrabbling in a bulging, multicoloured but grimy backpack. –Phyllis? Phyllida? wondered Adam wildly.

    The fairies, to his amusement, were now solemnly attaching crumpled labels to their chests. A lot of the labels merely bore the legend “Blue fairy” but some, he saw with a sinking feeling, bore more arcane symbols, such as “Silver lizard”, “Green lizard” (these were both thin, tall girls), or “Ladybd 1” (shortish, plumpish), and “Ladybd 2” (shorter, plumper). One pretty little thing was labelled “Oberon’s Blue bird” (“Blue bird”, two words) and he couldn’t help thinking it’d be a pity to shroud that one in whatever abortion of a pantomime-suit Mac had got dreamed up for her. He tried not to look at the unfortunates who were labelled merely “Oberon’s Grot.” He betted they would be, poor girls.

    “Where’s your bloody leader?” grumbled Mac.

    “Here,” said a voice from the back.

    “All right, get ’em up on stage and— No, hang on,” he said. They all hung on. “Remember the way we rehearsed that first entrance?” he said.

    “Yee-uss!” they all chorused obediently, nodding fervently, and staring at Adam.

    “Well, forget it,” said the heartless Mac: “we’re not gonna do it, we’re doing the Twilight Procession then instead.”

    All the fairies looked horribly disconcerted.

    “All right, everybody up on stage: prompt side,” ordered Mac. “Not you, imbecile!” he added irritably to his nephew, grabbing his arm.

    “Aren’t I an everybody?” said Adam meekly.

    “No, ya flaming nong, you’re the bloody Big Star,” replied Mac irritably. “When I want you on stage, I’ll tell ya. Geddit?”

    “Yes,” said Adam meekly, hiding a smile. “What’ll you say, Mac? –Just so’s I’ll recognize it’s meant for me,” he explained meekly.

    “I’ll say ‘Get fucking on, Oberon,’ that’s what I’ll say,” replied his uncle grimly.

    “‘Get fucking on, Oberon’; I’ll remember that.”

    “Look, you’re supposed to be setting these clowns a good example and behaving like a bloody professional!” said his uncle exasperatedly, swiping a hand across his sweating forehead.

    “Oh, I see! In that case, I’ll go and sit down in a quiet corner and smoke me fags and read me paperback until me call,” said Adam immediately.

    “They do do that,” agreed Ginny, coming up to them and, though going rather pink, smiling bravely at Adam. “I read it in a book. –Georgy says do you want the male fairies, too?” she said to Mac.

    “Yes!” he said loudly.

    Ginny trotted off obediently.

    “Those are going to be my male fairies?” said Adam faintly, as three hoonish ones detached themselves from the remnants of the group at the far side of the hall.

    “They’ve got pricks and balls, what the Christ more do you want?” replied his uncle irritably.

    “Grace? Deportment? Some notion of how to get on and off a stage?” replied Adam faintly. “Couldn’t you at least have found me some ballet boys, Nunky mine?”

    “No. This is New Zealand, in case you’d forgotten. There’s about three ballet boys in the flaming country that are capable of getting onto a stage without falling over their flat, hairy feet, and they’re all fully employed as of this moment,” said Mac sourly. “On tour in the fucking South Island in fucking Cats, if you’re interested,” he added sourly.

    “Oh. What about that modern dance company you mentioned?”

    “On tour. Australia,” said Mac tersely. “These’ll do. We’ve had ’em in togs, at least they’ve got—”

    “Pricks and balls, you mentioned them, yes,” sighed Adam.

    “No. Bodies,” replied Mac on a sour note.

    “Did you audition them in their bathers?” he asked in fascination.

    “Why not? And don’t say ‘bathers’ out here, people’ll think you’re a raving queer as well as a raving Pom,” said his uncle with sour satisfaction.

    “I thought the accepted phrase in such liberated academic precincts as these was ‘a raving gay’?” murmured Adam.

    Mac ignored this and strode off to the usual producer’s position. Adam sighed, and sat down on a bench vacated by the fairies amidst a clutter of bulging satchels, all grimy, and of a remarkable variety of styles, shoes, rubber flip-flops and abandoned books. Most very evidently not textbooks. Unless they studied Victoria Holt in Mac’s English Department.

    “RIGHT!” shouted Mac. “We’ll take your first entrance as we rehearsed it.”

    The fairy leader emerged from the group that was bulging out of the wings on the prompt side. “You said we weren’t gonna—”

    “I wanna look at it!” howled Mac. “It might do for your second entrance with Oberon—geddit?”

    “Oh. Righto. Um—what about the Robin?”

    “She comes on with Oberon,” said Mac tiredly.

    “Oh. Righto.”

    “And this time I want to see the ladybirds,” he said heavily.

    “Yes. Righto.”

    There was a whispered consultation in the wings. Bits of fairies bulged from them, only to disappear again. Adam sighed. He looked wistfully over to where Georgy had reseated herself beside Mac’s Windsor chair. As the hall was now empty apart from a few hoonish rustics over on the far left under the long windows, presumably the boyfriends of the girl fairies, he didn’t quite have the guts to walk across the wide expanse of dusty floorboards and sit down next to her. Anyway, he supposed glumly, he’d be on in a minute. Ugh. Although it was only a piddling little rehearsal of moves in a piddling little amateur summer production in piddling little New Zealand, Adam felt that familiar sinking feel in his gut. He sat very still, staring at the stage.