Death at the Dolphin
Ngaio Marsh
The restoration of a bombed-out London theatre ends in violent death – and one of Marsh’s most vivid and dramatic novels.When the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre is given to Peregrine Jay by a mysterious wealthy patron, he is overjoyed. And when the mysterious oil millionaire also gives him a glove that belonged to Shakespeare, Peregrine displays it in the dockside theatre and writes a successful play about it.But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, the glove is stolen. Could it be that oil and water don’t mix? Inspector Roderick Alleyn is determined to find out…
NGAIO MARSH
Death at the Dolphin
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_fd4a514c-017d-5639-9c37-7280bd9fb7fd)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HARPER
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1967
Copyright © Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1966
Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006167914
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007344772
Version: 2016–09–22
DEDICATION (#ulink_9f5684d6-379b-5a52-ad38-5f9adfe783d6)
For Edmund Cork in gratitude and with affection
CONTENTS
Cover (#uf025278b-9b40-52ee-8981-c36149546e57)
Title Page (#u57879292-7acb-5203-a676-9df52194c4cd)
Copyright (#uc93362f6-49da-590f-b3fd-a876a6699e2a)
Dedication (#ua82b6fdb-89ab-51e5-981f-3db66f153917)
Cast of Characters (#u9aed7df5-300a-570f-bb70-01e5319503e8)
1. Mr Conducis (#ua5e3826d-2f81-53ab-9158-9965848ba1db)
2. Mr Greenslade (#uac326c1e-84fb-5a9e-b2c1-351786eede00)
3. Party (#u10f1fba0-ad1d-5e84-a2eb-00e955c44396)
4. Rehearsal (#litres_trial_promo)
5. Climax (#litres_trial_promo)
6. Disaster (#litres_trial_promo)
7. Sunday Morning (#litres_trial_promo)
8. Sunday Afternoon (#litres_trial_promo)
9. Knight Rampant (#litres_trial_promo)
10. Monday (#litres_trial_promo)
11. The Show Will Go On (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CAST OF CHARACTERS (#ulink_aac975d3-03c8-5751-95ad-6d182ac6d758)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_23f36ccc-b224-56b6-b76c-c1728e557d76)
Mr Conducis (#ulink_23f36ccc-b224-56b6-b76c-c1728e557d76)
‘Dolphin?’ the clerk repeated. ‘Dolphin. Well, yerse. We hold the keys. Were you wanting to view?’
‘If I might, I was,’ Peregrine Jay mumbled, wondering why such conversations should always be conducted in the past tense. ‘I mean,’ he added boldly, ‘I did and I still do. I want to view, if you please.’
The clerk made a little face that might have been a sneer or an occupational tic. He glanced at Peregrine, who supposed his appearance was not glossy enough to make him a likely prospect.
‘It is for sale, I believe?’ Peregrine said.
‘Oh, it’s for sale, all right.’ The clerk agreed contemptuously. He re-examined some document that he had on his desk.
‘May I view?’
‘Now?’
‘If it’s possible.’
‘Well – I don’t know, really, if we’ve anybody free at the moment,’ said the clerk and frowned at the rain streaming dirtily down the windows of his office.
Peregrine said, ‘Look. The Dolphin is an old theatre. I am a man of the theatre. Here is my card. If you care to telephone my agents or the management of my current production at The Unicorn they will tell you that I am honest, sober and industrious, a bloody good director and playwright and possessed of whatever further attributes may move you to lend me the keys of The Dolphin for an hour. I would like,’ he said, ‘to view it.’
The clerk’s face became inscrutable. ‘Oh, quite,’ he muttered and edged Peregrine’s card across his desk, looking sideways at it as if it might scuttle. He retired within himself and seemed to arrive at a guarded conclusion.
‘Yerse. Well, OK, Mr er. It’s not usually done but we try to oblige.’ He turned to a dirty-white board where keys hung like black tufts on a piece of disreputable ermine.
‘Dolphin,’ said the clerk, ‘Aeo, yerse. Here we are.’ He unhooked a bunch of keys and pushed them across the desk. ‘You may find them a bit hard to turn,’ he said. ‘We don’t keep on oiling the locks. There aren’t all that many inquiries.’ He made what seemed to be a kind of joke. ‘It’s quite a time since the blitz,’ he said.
‘Quarter of a century,’ said Peregrine, taking the keys.
‘That’s right. What a spectacle! I was a kid. Know your way I suppose, Mr – er – Jay?’
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the clerk suddenly plumping for deference, but establishing at the same time his utter disbelief in Peregrine as a client. ‘Terrible weather. You will return the keys?’
‘Indubitably,’ said Peregrine, aping, he knew not why, Mr Robertson Hare.
He had got as far as the door when the clerk said: ‘Oh, be-the-way, Mr – er – Jay. You will watch how you go. Underfoot. On stage particularly. There was considerable damage.’
‘Thank you. I’ll be careful.’
‘The hole was covered over but that was some time ago. Like a well,’ the clerk added, worrying his first finger. ‘Something of the sort. Just watch it.’
‘I will.’
‘I – er – I don’t answer for what you’ll find,’ the clerk said. ‘Tramps get in, you know. They will do it. One died a year or so back.’
‘Oh.’
‘Not that it’s likely to happen twice.’
‘I hope not.’
‘Well, we couldn’t help it,’ the clerk said crossly. ‘I don’t know how they effect an entrance, really. Broken window or something. You can’t be expected to attend to everything.’
‘No,’ Peregrine agreed and let himself out.
Rain drove up Wharfingers Lane in a slanting wall. It shot off the pavement, pattering against doors and windows and hit Peregrine’s umbrella so hard that he thought it would split. He lowered it in front of him and below its scalloped and beaded margin saw, as if at rise of curtain in a cinema, the Thames, rain-pocked and choppy on its ebb-tide.
There were not a great many people about. Vans passed him grinding uphill in low gear. The buildings were ambiguous: warehouses? Wharfingers offices? Farther down he saw the blue lamp of a River Police Station. He passed a doorway with a neat legend: ‘Port of London Authority’ and another with old-fashioned lettering ‘Camperdown and Carboys Rivercraft Company. Demurrage. Wharfage. Inquiries.’
The lane turned sharply to the left; it now ran parallel with the river. He lifted his umbrella. Up it went, like a curtain, on The Dolphin. At that moment, abruptly, there was no more rain.
There was even sunshine. It washed thinly across the stagehouse of The Dolphin and picked it out for Peregrine’s avid attention. There it stood: high, square and unbecoming, the object of his greed and deep desire. Intervening buildings hid the rest of the theatre except for the wrought-iron ornament at the top of a tower. He hurried on until, on his left, he came to a pub called The Wharfinger’s Friend and then the bomb site and then, fully displayed, the wounded Dolphin itself.
On a fine day, Peregrine thought, a hundred years ago, watermen and bargees, ship’s chandlers, business gents, deep-water sailors from foreign parts and riverside riffraff looked up and saw The Dolphin. They saw its flag snapping and admired its caryatids touched up on the ringlets and nipples with tasteful gilt. Mr Adolphus Ruby, your very own Mr Ruby, stood here in Wharfingers Lane with his thumbs in his armholes, his cigar at one angle and his hat at the other and feasted his pop eyes on his very own palace of refined and original entertainment. ‘Oh, Oh!’ thought Peregrine, ‘and here I stand but not, alas, in Mr Ruby’s lacquered high-lows. And the caryatids have the emptiest look in their blank eyes for me.’
They were still there, though, two on each side of the portico. They finished at their waists, petering out with grimy discretion in pastry-cook’s scrolls. They supported with their sooty heads and arms a lovely wrought-iron balcony and although there were occasional gaps in their plaster foliations they were still in pretty good trim. Peregrine’s doting fancy cleaned the soot from upper surfaces. It restored, too, the elegant sign: supported above the portico by two prancing cetaceous mammals, and regilded its lettering: ‘The Dolphin Theatre’.
For a minute or two he looked at it from the far side of the lane. The sun shone brightly now. River, shipping and wet roofs reflected it and the cobblestones in front of the theatre began to send up a thin vapour. A sweep of seagulls broke into atmospheric background noises and a barge honked.
Peregrine crossed the wet little street and entered the portico.
It was stuck over with old bills including the agents’ notice which had evidently been there for a very long time and was torn and discoloured. ‘This Valuable Commercial Site’, it said.
‘In that case,’ Peregrine wondered, ‘why hasn’t it been sold? Why had no forward-looking commercial enterprise snapped up the Valuable Site and sent the Dolphin Theatre crashing about its own ears?’
There were other moribund bills. ‘Sensational!’ one of them proclaimed but the remainder was gone and it was anybody’s guess what sensation it had once recommended. ‘Go home –’ was chalked across one of the doors but somebody had rubbed out the rest of the legend and substituted graffiti of a more or less predictable kind. It was all very dismal.
But as Peregrine approached the doors he found, on the frontage itself high up and well protected, the tatter of a playbill. It was the kind of thing that patrons of the Players Theatre cherish and Kensington Art shops turn into lampshades.
THE BEGGAR GIRL’S WEDDING
In response to
Overwhelming Solicitation!! –
Mr Adolphus Ruby
Presents
A Return Performa –
The rest was gone.
When, Peregrine speculated, could this overwhelming solicitation have moved Mr Ruby? In the eighties? He knew that Mr Ruby had lived to within ten years of the turn of the century and in his heyday had bought, altered, restored and embellished The Dolphin, adding his plaster and jute caryatids, his swags, his supporting marine mammals and cornucopia, his touches of gilt and lolly-pink to the older and more modest elegance of wrought iron and unmolested surfaces. When did he make all these changes? Did he, upon his decline, sell The Dolphin and, if so, to whom? It was reputed to have been in use at the outbreak of the Second World War as a ragdealer’s storehouse.
Who was the ground landlord now?
He confronted the main entrance and its great mortice lock for which he had no trouble in selecting the appropriate key. It was big enough to have hung at the girdle of one of Mr Ruby’s very own stage-gaolers. The key went home and engaged but refused to turn. Why had Peregrine not asked the clerk to lend him an oil-can? He struggled for some time and a voice at his back said:
‘Got it all on yer own, mate, aincher?’
Peregrine turned to discover a man wearing a peaked cap like a waterman’s and a shiny blue suit. He was a middle-aged man with a high colour, blue eyes and a look of cheeky equability.
‘You want a touch of the old free-in-one,’ he said. He had a gritty hoarseness in his voice. Peregrine gaped at him. ‘Oil, mate. Loobrication,’ the man explained.
‘Oh. Yes, indeed, I know I do.’
‘What’s the story, anyway? Casing the joint?’
‘I want to look at it,’ Peregrine grunted. ‘Ah, damn, I’d better try the stage-door.’
‘Let’s take a butcher’s.’
Peregrine stood back and the man stooped. He tried the key, delicately at first and then with force. ‘Not a hope,’ he wheezed. ‘’Alf a mo’.’
He walked away, crossed the street and disappeared between two low buildings and down a narrow passageway that seemed to lead to the river.
‘Damnation!’ Peregrine thought, ‘he’s taken the key!’
Two gigantic lorries with canvas-covered loads roared down Wharfingers Lane and past the theatre. The great locked doors shook and rattled and a flake of plaster fell on Peregrine’s hand. ‘It’s dying slowly,’ he thought in a panic. ‘The Dolphin is being shaken to death.’
When the second lorry had gone by there was the man again with a tin and a feather in one hand and the key in the other. He re-crossed the street and came through the portico.
‘I’m very much obliged to you,’ Peregrine said.
‘No trouble, yer Royal ’Ighness,’ said the man. He oiled the lock and after a little manipulation turned the key. ‘Kiss yer ’and,’ he said. Then he pulled back the knob. The tongue inside the lock shifted with a loud clunk. He pushed the door and it moved a little. ‘Sweet as a nut,’ said the man, and stepped away. ‘Well, dooty calls as the bloke said on ’is way to the gallers.’
‘Wait a bit –’ Peregrine said, ‘you must have a drink on me. Here.’ He pushed three half crowns into the man’s hand.
‘Never say no to that one, Mister. Fanks. Jolly good luck.’
Peregrine longed to open the door but thought the man, who was evidently a curious fellow, might attach himself. He wanted to be alone in The Dolphin.
‘Your job’s somewhere round about here?’ he asked.
‘Dahn Carboy Stairs. Phipps Bros. Drugs and that. Jobbins is the name. Caretaker, uster be a lighterman but it done no good to me chubes. Well, so long, sir. Hope you give yerself a treat among them spooks. Best of British luck.’
‘Goodbye, and thank you.’
The door opened with a protracted groan and Peregrine entered The Dolphin.
II
The windows were unshuttered and though masked by dirt, let enough light into the foyer for him to see it quite distinctly. It was surprisingly big. Two flights of stairs with the prettiest wrought-iron balustrades curved up into darkness. At the back and deep in shadow, passages led off on either side giving entrance no doubt to boxes and orchestra stalls. The pit entrance must be from somewhere outside.
On Peregrine’s right stood a very rococo box-office, introduced, he felt sure, by Mr Ruby. A brace of consequential plaster putti hovered upside down with fat-faced insouciance above the grille and must have looked in their prime as if they were counting the doorsales. A fibre-plaster bust of Shakespeare on a tortuous pedestal lurked in the shadows. The filthy walls were elegantly panelled and he thought must have originally been painted pink and gilded.
There was nothing between Peregrine and the topmost ceiling. The circle landing, again with a wrought-iron balustrade, reached less than half-way across the well. He stared up into darkness and fancied he could distinguish a chandelier. The stench was frightful: rats, rot, general dirt and, he thought, an unspeakable aftermath of the hobos that the clerk had talked about. But how lovely it must have been in its early Victorian elegance and even with Mr Ruby’s preposterous additions. And how surprisingly undamaged it seemed to be.
He turned to the right-hand flight of stairs and found two notices. ‘Dress Circle’ and ‘To the Paris Bar’. The signwriter had added pointing hands with frills round their wrists. Upstairs first, or into the stalls? Up.
He passed by grimed and flaking panels, noticing the graceful airiness of plaster ornament that separated them. He trailed a finger on the iron balustrade but withdrew it quickly at the thick touch of occulted dust. Here was the circle foyer. The double flight of stairs actually came out on either side of a balcony landing that projected beyond the main landing and formed the roof of a portico over the lower foyer. Flights of three shallow steps led up from three sides of this ‘half-landing’ to the top level. The entire structure was supported by very elegant iron pillars.
It was much darker up there and he could only just make out the Paris Bar. The shelves were visible but the counter had gone. A nice piece of mahogany it may have been – something to sell or steal. Carpet lay underfoot in moth-eaten tatters and the remains of curtains hung before the windows. These must be unbroken because the sound of the world outside was so very faint. Boarded up, perhaps. It was extraordinary how quiet it was, how stale, how stifling, how dead.
‘Not a mouse stirring’ he thought and at that moment heard a rapid patter. Something scuttled across his foot. Peregrine was astonished to find himself jolted by a violent shudder. He stamped with both feet and was at once half-stifled by the frightful cloud of dust he raised.
He approached the Paris Bar. A man without a face came out of the shadows and moved towards him.
‘Euh!’ Peregrine said in his throat. He stopped and so did the man. He could not have told how many heart thuds passed before he saw it was himself.
The bar was backed by a sheet of looking-glass.
Peregrine had recently given up smoking. If he had now had access to a cigarette he would have devoured it. Instead, he whistled and the sound in that muffled place was so lacking in resonance, so dull, that he fell silent and crossed the foyer to the nearest door into the auditorium. There were two, one on each side of the sunken half-landing. He passed into the circle.
The first impression was dramatic. He had forgotten about the bomb damage. A long shaft of sunlight from a gap in the roof of the stage-house took him by surprise. It produced the effect of a wartime blitz drawing in charcoal and, like a spotlight, found its mark on the empty stage. There, in a pool of mild sunlight, stood a broken chair still waiting, Peregrine thought, for one of Mr Ruby’s very own actors. Behind the chair lay a black patch that looked as if a paint pot had been upset on the stage. It took Peregrine a moment or two to realize that this must be the hole the clerk had talked about. It was difficult to see it distinctly through the shaft of light.
Against this one note of brilliance the rest of the house looked black. It was in the classic horseshoe form and must have seated, Peregrine thought, about five hundred. He saw that the chairs had little iron trimmings above their plushy backs and that there were four boxes. A loop of fringe dangled from the top of the proscenium and this was all that could be seen of the curtain.
Peregrine moved round the circle and entered the O.P. box, which stank. He backed out of it, opened a door in the circle wall and found an iron stair leading to the stage.
He climbed down. Even these iron steps were muffled with dust but they gave out a half-choked clang as if he were soft-pedalling them.
Now, he was onstage, as a man of the theatre should be, and at once he felt much easier; exhilarated even, as if some kind of authority had passed to him by right of entry. He peered through the shaft of sunshine which he saw was dense with motes that floated, danced and veered in response to his own movement. He walked into it, stood by the broken chair and faced the auditorium. Quite dazzled and bemused by the strange tricks of light he saw the front of the house as something insubstantial and could easily people it with Mr Ruby’s patrons. Beavers, bonnets, ulsters, shawls. A flutter of programmes. Rows of pale discs that were faces. ‘O, wonderful!’ Peregrine thought and in order to embrace it all took a pace backwards.
III
To fall without warning, even by the height of a single step, is disturbing. To fall as he did now, by his height and the length of his arms into cold, stinking water, is monstrous, nightmarish, like a small death. For a moment he only knew that he had been physically insulted. He stared into the shaft of light with its madly jerking molecules, felt wood slip under his gloved fingers and tightened his grip. At the same time he was disgustingly invaded, saturated up to the collarbone in icy stagnant water. He hung at arm’s length.
‘O God!’ Peregrine thought, ‘why aren’t I a bloody Bond? Why can’t I make my bloody arms hitch me up? O God, don’t let me drown in this unspeakable muck. O God, let me keep my head.’
Well, of course, he thought, his hands and arms didn’t have to support his entire weight. Eleven stone. He was buoyed up by whatever he had fallen into. What? A dressing-room turned into a well for surface water? Better not speculate. Better explore. He moved his legs and dreadful ambiguous waves lapped up to his chin. He could find nothing firm with his feet. He thought: How long can I hang on like this? And a line of words floated in: ‘How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?’
What should he do? Perhaps a frog-like upward thing? Try it and at least gain a better finger hold? He tried it: he kicked at the water, pulled and clawed at the stage. For a moment he thought he had gained but his palms slid back, scraping on the edge and sucking at his soaked gloves. He was again suspended. The clerk? If he could hang on, would the clerk send someone to find out why he hadn’t returned the keys? When? When? Why in God’s name had he shaken off the man with the oil can from Phipps Bros? Jobbins. Suppose he were to yell? Was there indeed a broken window where tramps crept in? He took a deep breath and being thus inflated, rose a little in the water. He yelled.
‘Hallo! Hallo! Jobbins!’
His voice was silly and uncannily stifled. Deflated, he sank to his former disgusting level.
He had disturbed more than water when he tried his leap. An anonymous soft object bobbed against his chin. The stench was outrageous. I can’t, he thought, I can’t stay like this. Already his fingers had grown cold and his arms were racked. Presently – soon – he would no longer feel the edge, he would only feel pain and his fingers would slip away. And what then? Float on his back in this unspeakable water and gradually freeze? He concentrated on his hands, tipping his head back to look up the length of his stretched arms at them. The details of his predicament now declared themselves: the pull on his pectoral muscles, on his biceps and forearms and the terrible strain on his gloved fingers. The creeping obscenity of the water. He hung on for some incalculable age and realized that he was coming to a crisis when his body would no longer be controllable. Something must be done. Now. Another attempt? If there were anything solid to push against. Suppose, after all, his feet were only a few inches from the bottom? But what bottom? The floor of a dressing-room? An understage passage? A boxed-in trap? He stretched his feet and touched nothing. The water rose to his mouth. He flexed his legs, kicked, hauled on the edge and bobbed upwards. The auditorium appeared. If he could get his elbows on the edge. No.
But at the moment when the confusion of circle and stalls shot up before his eyes, he had heard a sound that he recognized, a protracted groan, and at the penultimate second, he had seen – what? A splinter of light? And heard? Somebody cough.
‘Hi!’ Peregrine shouted. ‘Here! Quick! Help!’
He sank and hung again by his fingers. But someone was coming through the house. Muffled steps on the rags of carpet.
‘Here! Come here, will you? On stage.’
The steps halted.
‘Look here! I say! Look, for God’s sake come up. I’ve fallen through the stage. I’ll drown. Why don’t you answer, whoever you are?’
The footsteps started again. A door opened nearby. Pass-door in the prompt side box, he thought. Steps up. Now: crossing the stage. Now.
‘Who are you?’ Peregrine said. ‘Look out. Look out for the hole. Look out for my hands. I’ve got gloves on. Don’t tread on my hands. Help me out of this. But look out. And say something.’
He flung his head back and stared into the shaft of light. Hands covered his hands and then closed about his wrists. At the same time heavy shoulders and a head wearing a hat came as a black silhouette between him and the light. He stared into a face he could not distinguish.
‘It doesn’t need much,’ he chattered. ‘If you could just give me a heave I can do it.’
The head was withdrawn. The hands changed their grip. At last the man spoke.
‘Very well,’ said a voice. ‘Now.’
He gave his last frog leap, was heaved up, was sprawled across the edge and had crawled back on the stage to the feet of the man. He saw beautiful shoes, sharp trouser ends and the edge of a fine overcoat. He was shivering from head to foot.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t be more grateful. My God, how I stink.’
He got to his feet.
The man was, he thought, about sixty years old. Peregrine could see his face now. It was extremely pale. He wore a bowler hat and was impeccably dressed.
‘You are Mr Peregrine Jay, I think,’ said the man. His voice was toneless, educated and negative.
‘Yes – I – I?’
‘The people at the estate agents told me. You should have a bath and change. My car is outside.’
‘I can’t get into anyone’s car in this state. I’m very sorry, sir,’ Peregrine said. His teeth were going like castanets. ‘You’re awfully kind but –’
‘Wait a moment. Or no. Come to the front of the theatre.’
In answer to a gesture, Peregrine walked through the pass-door down into the house and was followed. Stagnant water squelched and spurted in his shoes. They went through a box and along a passage and came into the foyer. ‘Please stay here. I shall only be a moment,’ said his rescuer.
He went into the portico leaving the door open. Out in Wharfingers Lane Peregrine saw a Daimler with a chauffeur. He began to jump and thrash his arms. Water splashed out of him and clouds of dust settled upon his drenched clothes. The man returned with the chauffeur who carried a fur rug and a heavy mackintosh.
‘I suggest you strip and put this on and wrap the rug round you,’ the man said. He stretched out his arms as if he were actually thinking of laying hands on Peregrine. He seemed to be suspended between attraction and repulsion. He looked, it struck Peregrine, as if he were making some kind of appeal. ‘Let me –’ he said.
‘But, sir, you can’t. I’m disgusting.’
‘Please.’
‘No, no – really.’
The man walked away. His hands were clasped behind him. Peregrine saw, with a kind of fuddled astonishment, that they were trembling. ‘My God!’ Peregrine thought, ‘this is a morning and a half. I’d better get out of this one pretty smartly but how the hell –’
‘Let me give you a hand, sir,’ said the chauffeur to Peregrine. ‘You’re that cold, aren’t you?’
‘I can manage. If only I could wash.’
‘Never mind, sir. That’s the idea. Leave them there, sir. I’ll attend to them. Better keep your shoes on, hadn’t you? The coat’ll be a bit of help and the rug’s warm. Ready, sir?’
‘If I could just have a taxi, I wouldn’t be such an infernal nuisance.’
His rescuer turned and looked, not fully at him but at his shoulder. ‘I beg you to come,’ he said.
Greatly worried by the extravagance of the phrase Peregrine said no more.
The chauffeur went ahead quickly and opened the doors of the car. Peregrine saw that newspaper had been spread over the floor and back seat.
‘Please go,’ his rescuer said, ‘I’ll follow.’
Peregrine shambled across the portico and jumped in at the back. The lining of the mackintosh stuck to his body. He hitched the rug around him and tried to clench his chattering jaw.
A boy’s voice in the street called, ‘Hey, look! Look at that bloke!’ The caretaker from Phipps Bros had appeared at the top of his alley and stared into the car. One or two people stopped and pointed him out to each other.
As his master crossed the portico the chauffeur locked the theatre doors. Holding Peregrine’s unspeakable clothes at arm’s length he put them in the boot of the car and got into the driver’s seat. In another moment they were moving up Wharfingers Lane.
His rescuer did not turn his head or speak. Peregrine waited for a moment or two and then, controlling his voice with some success, said:
‘I’m giving you far too much trouble.’
‘No.’
‘If – if you would be so very kind as to drop me at The Unicorn Theatre I think I could –’
Still without turning his head the man said with extreme formality, ‘I really do beg that you will allow me to –’ he stopped for an unaccountably long time and then said loudly, ‘– to rescue you. I mean to take you to my house and set you right. I shall be most upset otherwise. Dreadfully upset.’
Now he turned and Peregrine had never seen an odder look in anyone’s face. It was an expression almost, he thought, of despair.
‘I am responsible,’ said his extraordinary host. ‘Unless you allow me to make amends I shall – I shall feel – very guilty.’
‘Responsible? But –’
‘It will not take very long I hope. Drury Place.’
‘Oh lord!’ Peregrine thought, ‘what poshery.’ He wondered, suddenly, if perhaps the all too obvious explanation was the wrong one and if his rescuer was a slightly demented gentleman and the chauffeur his keeper.
‘I really don’t see, sir –’ he began but an inaudible conversation was taking place in the front seat.
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the chauffeur and drew up outside the estate agents. He pulled the keys out of his pocket as he entered. The clerk’s face appeared looking anxiously and crossly over the painted lower pane of his window. He disappeared and in a moment came running out and round to the passenger’s side.
‘Well, sir,’ he obsequiously gabbled, ‘I’m sure I’m very sorry this has occurred. Very regrettable, I’m sure. But as I was saying to your driver, sir, I did warn the viewer.’ He had not yet looked at Peregrine but he did so now, resentfully. ‘I warned you,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes,’ Peregrine said. ‘You did.’
‘Yes, well, thank you. But I’m sure –’
‘That will do. There has been gross negligence. Good morning.’ The voice was so changed, so brutally icy that Peregrine stared and the clerk drew back as if he’d been stung. They moved off.
The car’s heating system built up. By the time they had crossed the river Peregrine was a little less cold and beginning to feel drowsy. His host offered no further remarks. Once when Peregrine happened to look at the rear-vision glass on the passenger’s side he found he was being observed, apparently with extreme distaste. Or no. Almost with fear. He looked away quickly but out of the tail of his eye saw a gloved hand change the angle of the glass.
‘Oh well,’ he thought bemusedly, ‘I’m bigger and younger than he is. I suppose I can look after myself but how tricky it all is. Take away a man’s clothes, after all, and you make a monkey of him. What sort of public image will I present, fleeing down Park Lane in a gent’s mack and a fur rug, both the property of my pursuer?’
They were in Park Lane now and soon turned off into a side street and thence into the cul-de-sac called Drury Place. The car pulled up. The chauffeur got out and rang the bell of No.7. As he returned to the car, the house door was opened by a manservant.
Peregrine’s host said in a comparatively cheerful voice: ‘Not far to go. Up the steps and straight in.’
The chauffeur opened the door. ‘Now, sir,’ he said, ‘shan’t be long, shall we?’
There really was nothing else for it. Three impeccable men, an errand boy and a tightly encased lady carrying a little dog, walked down the footpath.
Peregrine got out and instead of bolting into the house, made an entrance of it. He ascended the steps with deliberation leaving a trail of filthy footprints behind him and dragging his fur rug like a ceremonial train. The manservant stood aside.
‘Thank you,’ Peregrine said grandly. ‘I have fallen, as you see, into dirty water.’
‘Quite so, sir.’
‘Up to my neck.’
‘Very unfortunate, sir.’
‘For all concerned,’ said Peregrine.
His host had arrived.
‘First of all, of course, a bath,’ he was saying, ‘and something to defeat that shivering, Mawson?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘And then come and see me.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The man went upstairs. Peregrine’s host was now behaving in so normal a manner that he began to wonder if he himself had perhaps been bemused by his hideous experience. There was some talk of the efficacy of Epsom salts in a hot bath and of coffee laced with rum. Peregrine listened in a trance.
‘Do forgive me for bossing you about like this. You must be feeling ghastly and really, I do blame myself.’
‘By why?’
‘Yes, Mawson?’
‘If the gentleman will walk up, sir.’
‘Quite so. Quite so. Good.’
Peregrine walked up and was shown into a steaming and aromatic bathroom.
‘I thought pine, sir, would be appropriate,’ said Mawson. ‘I hope the temperature is as you like it. May I suggest a long, hot soak, sir?’
‘You may indeed,’ said Peregrine warmly.
‘Perhaps I may take your rug and coat. And shoes,’ said Mawson with an involuntary change of voice. ‘You will find a bath wrap on the rail and a hot rum and lemon within easy reach. If you would be good enough to ring, sir, when you are ready.’
‘Ready for what?’
‘To dress, sir.’
It seemed a waste of time to say: ‘In what?’ so Peregrine merely said ‘Thank you’ and Mawson said ‘Thank you’ and withdrew.
It was rapture beyond compare in the bath. Essence of pine. A lovely longhandled brush. Pine-smelling soap. And the hot rum and lemon. He left off shivering, soaped himself all over, including his head, scrubbed himself scarlet, submerged completely, rose, drank and tried to take a responsible view of the situation. In this he failed. Too much had occurred. He realized after a time that he was becoming light-headed and without at all fancying the idea took a hard-hitting cold shower. This restored him. Rough-dried and wrapped in a towelling bathrobe he rang the bell. He felt wonderful.
Mawson came and Peregrine said he would like to telephone for some clothes though when he thought about it he didn’t quite know where he would ring. Jeremy Jones with whom he shared a flat would certainly be out and it wasn’t the morning for their charlady. The Unicorn Theatre? Somebody would be there, of course, but who?
Mawson showed him to a bedroom where there was a telephone.
There were also clothes laid out on the bed. ‘I think they are approximately your size, sir. It is hoped that you will have no objection to making use of them in the meantime,’ said Mawson.
‘Yes, but look here –’
‘It will be much appreciated if you make use of them. Will there be anything else, sir?’
‘I – honestly – I –’
‘Mr Conducis sends his compliments, sir, and hopes you will join him in the library.’
Peregrine’s jaw dropped.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mawson neatly and withdrew.
Conducis? Conducis! It was as if Mawson had said ‘Mr Onassis’. Could this possibly be Mr Vassily Conducis? The more Peregrine thought about it the more he decided that it could. But what in the wide world would Mr Vassily Conducis be up to in a derelict theatre on the South Bank at half past ten in the morning when he ought to have been abominably lolling on his yacht in the Aegean? And what was he, Peregrine, up to in Mr Conducis’s house which (it now dawned upon him) was on a scale of insolently quiet grandeur such as he had never expected to encounter outside the sort of book which, in any case, he never read.
Peregrine looked round the room and felt he ought to curl his lip at it. After all he did read his New Statesman. He then looked at the clothes on the bed and found them to be on an equal footing with what, being a man of the theatre, he thought of as the décor. Absently, he picked up a gayish tie that was laid out beside a heavy silk shirt. ‘Charvet’ said the label. Where had he read of Charvet?
‘I don’t want any part of this,’ he thought. He sat on the bed and dialled several numbers without success. The theatre didn’t answer. He put on the clothes and saw that though they were conservative in style he looked startlingly presentable in them. Even the shoes fitted.
He rehearsed a short speech and went downstairs where he found Mawson waiting for him.
He said: ‘Did you say: Mr Conducis?’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Vassily Conducis. Will you step this way, sir?’
Mr Conducis stood in front of his library fire and Peregrine wondered how on earth he had failed to recognize a face that had been so widely publicized with, it was reported, such determined opposition from its owner. Mr Conducis had an olive, indeed a swarthy complexion and unexpectedly pale eyes. These were merely facial adjuncts and might, Peregrine afterwards thought, have been mass produced for all the speculation they inspired. The mouth, however, was disturbing, being, or so Peregrine thought, both ruthless and vulnerable. The chin was heavy. Mr Conducis had curly black hair going predictably grey at the temples. He looked, by and large, enormously expensive.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Yes. Come in.’ His voice was a light tenor. Was there a faintly foreign inflection? A slight lisp, perhaps.
As Peregrine approached, Mr Conducis looked fixedly at his guest’s hands.
‘You are well?’ he asked. ‘Recovered?’
‘Yes, indeed. I can’t thank you enough, sir. As for – well, as for lending me these things – I really do feel –!’
‘Do they fit?’
‘Yes. Very well.’
‘That is all that is necessary.’
‘Except that after all they are yours,’ Peregrine said and tried a light laugh in order not to sound pompous.
‘I have told you. I am responsible. You might –’ Mr Conducis’s voice faded but his lips soundlessly completed the sentence: ‘– have been drowned.’
‘But honestly, sir!’ Peregrine launched himself on his little speech. ‘You’ve saved my life, you know. I would have just hung on by my fingers until they gave out and then – and then – well, finally and disgustingly drowned as you say.’
Almost soundlessly Mr Conducis said: ‘I should have blamed myself.’
‘But why on earth! For a hole in The Dolphin stage?’
‘It is my property.’
‘Oh,’ Peregrine ejaculated before he could stop himself, ‘how splendid!’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I mean: how splendid to own it. It’s such an adorable little playhouse.’
Mr Conducis looked at him without expression. ‘Indeed?’ he said. ‘Splendid? Adorable? You make a study of theatres, perhaps?’
‘Not really. I mean I’m not an expert. Good lord, no! But I earn my living in theatres and I am enormously attracted by old ones.’
‘Yes. Will you join me in a drink?’ Mr Conducis said in his wooden manner. ‘I am sure you will.’ He moved to a tray on a sidetable.
‘Your man has already given me a very strong and wonderfully restoring hot rum and lemon.’
‘I am sure that you will have another. The ingredients are here.’
‘A very small one, please,’ Peregrine said. There was a singing sensation in his veins and a slight thrumming in his ears but he still felt wonderful. Mr Conducis busied himself at the tray. He returned with a steaming and aromatic tumbler for Peregrine and something that he had poured out of a jug for himself. Could it be barley water?
‘Shall we sit down,’ he suggested. When they had done so he gave Peregrine a hurried, blank glance and said: ‘You wonder why I was at the theatre, perhaps. There is some question of demolishing it and building on the site. An idea that I have been turning over for some time. I wanted to refresh my memory. The agents told my man you were there.’ He put two fingers in a waistcoat pocket and Peregrine saw his own card had been withdrawn. It looked incredibly grubby.
‘You – you’re going to pull it down?’ he said and heard a horribly false jauntiness in his own unsteady voice. He took a pull at his rum. It was extremely strong.
‘You dislike the proposal,’ Mr Conducis observed, making it a statement rather than a question. ‘Have you any reason other than a general interest in such buildings?’
If Peregrine had been absolutely sober and dressed in his own clothes it is probable that he would have mumbled something ineffectual and somehow or another made an exit from Mr Conducis’s house and from all further congress with its owner. He was a little removed however from his surroundings and the garments in which he found himself.
He began to talk excitedly. He talked about The Dolphin and about how it must have looked after Mr Adolphus Ruby had gloriously tarted it up. He described how, before he fell into the well, he had imagined the house: clean, sparkling with lights from chandeliers, full, warm, buzzing and expectant. He said that it was the last of its kind and so well designed with such a surprisingly large stage that it would be possible to mount big productions there.
He forgot about Mr Conducis and also about not drinking any more rum. He talked widely and distractedly.
‘Think what a thing it would be,’ Peregrine cried, ‘to do a season of Shakespeare’s comedies! Imagine Love’s Labour’s there. Perhaps one could have a barge – Yes. The Grey Dolphin – and people could take water to go to the play. When the play was about to begin we would run up a flag with a terribly intelligent dolphin on it. And we’d do them quickly and lightly and with elegance and O!’ cried Peregrine, ‘and with that little catch in the breath that never, never comes in the same way with any other playwright.’
He was now walking about Mr Conducis’s library. He saw, without seeing, the tooled spines of collected editions and a picture that he would remember afterwards with astonishment. He waved his arms. He shouted.
‘There never was such a plan,’ shouted Peregrine. ‘Never in all London since Burbage moved the first theatre from Shoreditch to Southwark.’ He found himself near his drink and tossed it off. ‘And not too fancy,’ he said, ‘mind you. Not twee. God, no! Not a pastiche either. Just a good theatre doing the job it was meant to do. And doing the stuff that doesn’t belong to any bloody Method or Movement or Trend or Period or what-have-you. Mind that.’
‘You refer to Shakespeare again?’ said Mr Conducis’s voice. ‘If I follow you.’
‘Of course I do!’ Peregrine suddenly became fully aware of Mr Conducis. ‘Oh dear!’ he said.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘I’m afraid I’m a bit tight, sir. Not really tight but a bit uninhibited. I’m awfully sorry. I think perhaps I’d better take myself off and I’ll return all these things you’ve so kindly lent me. I’ll return them as soon as possible, of course. So, if you’ll forgive me –’
‘What do you do in the theatre?’
‘I direct plays and I’ve written two.’
‘I know nothing of the theatre,’ Mr Conducis said heavily. ‘You are reasonably successful?’
‘Well, sir, yes. I think so. It’s a jungle, of course. I’m not at all affluent but I make out. I’ve had as much work as I could cope with over the last three months and I think my mana’s going up. I hope so. Goodbye, sir.’
He held out his hand. Mr Conducis, with an expression that really might have been described as one of horror, backed away from it.
‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘I have something that may be of interest to you. You can spare a moment?’
‘Of course.’
‘It is in this room,’ Mr Conducis muttered and went to a bureau that must, Peregrine thought, be of fabulous distinction. He followed his host and watched him pull out a silky, exquisitely inlaid, drawer.
‘How lovely that is,’ he said.
‘Lovely?’ Mr Conducis echoed as he had echoed before. ‘You mean the bureau? Yes? It was found for me. I understand nothing of such matters. That is not what I wished to show you. Will you look at this? Shall we move to a table?’
He had taken from the drawer a very small wooden Victorian hand-desk, extremely shabby, much stained, and Peregrine thought, of no particular distinction. A child’s possession perhaps. He laid it on a table under a window and motioned to a chair beside it. Peregrine now felt as if he was playing a part in somebody else’s dream. ‘But I’m all right,’ he thought. ‘I’m not really drunk. I’m in that pitiable but enviable condition when all things seem to work together for good.’
He sat before the table and Mr Conducis, standing well away from him, opened the little desk, pressed inside with his white, flat thumb and revealed a false bottom. It was a commonplace device and Peregrine wondered if he was meant to exclaim at it. He saw that in the exposed cavity there was a packet no bigger than a half-herring and much the same shape. It was wrapped in discoloured yellow-brown silk and tied with a morsel of tarnished ribbon. Mr Conducis had a paper knife in his hand. ‘Everything he possesses,’ Peregrine thought, ‘is on museum-piece level. It’s stifling.’ His host used the paper knife as a sort of server, lifting the little silk packet out on its blade and, as it were, helping Peregrine to it like a waiter.
It slid from the blade and with it, falling to one side, a discoloured card upon which it had lain. Peregrine, whose vision had turned swimmy, saw that this card was a menu and bore a date some six years past. The heading: ‘The Steam Yacht Kalliope. Off Villefranche. Gala Dinner’ floated tipsily into view with a flamboyant and illegible signature that was sprawled across it above a dozen others. A short white hand swiftly covered and then removed the card.
‘That is nothing,’ Mr Conducis said. ‘It is of no consequence.’ He went to the fire. A bluish flame sprang up and turned red. Mr Conducis returned.
‘It is the packet that may be of interest. Will you open it?’ he said.
Peregrine pulled gingerly at the ribbon ends and turned back the silk wrapping.
He had exposed a glove.
A child’s glove. Stained as if by water it was the colour of old parchment and finely wrinkled like an old, old face. It had been elegantly embroidered with tiny roses in gold and scarlet. A gold tassel, now blackened and partly unravelled, was attached to the tapered gauntlet. It was the most heartrending object Peregrine had ever seen.
Underneath it lay two pieces of folded paper, very much discoloured.
‘Will you read the papers?’ Mr Conducis invited. He had returned to the fireplace.
Peregrine felt an extraordinary delicacy in touching the glove. ‘Cheverel,’ he thought. ‘It’s a cheverel glove. Has it gone brittle with age?’ No. To his fingertip it was flaccid: uncannily so as if it had only just died. He slipped the papers out from beneath it. They had split along the folds and were foxed and faded. He opened the larger with great care and it lay broken before him. He pulled himself together and managed to read it.
This little glove and accompanying note were given to my Great-Great-Grandmother by her Beft Friend: a Mifs Or Mrs J. Hart. My dear Grandmother always infifted that it had belonged to the poet. N. B. mark infide gauntlet.
M. E. 23 April 1830
The accompanying note was no more than a slip of paper. The writing on it was much faded and so extraordinarily crabbed and tortuous that he thought at first it must be hieroglyphic and that he therefore would never make it out. Then it seemed to him that there was something almost familiar about it. And then, gradually, words began to emerge. Everything was quiet. He heard the fire settle. Someone crossed the room above the library. He heard his own heart thud.
He read:
Mayde by my father for my sonne on his XI birthedy and never worne butte ync
Peregrine sat in a kind of trance and looked at the little glove and the documents. Mr Conducis had left the paper knife on the table. Peregrine slid the ivory tip into the gauntlet and very slowly lifted and turned it. There was the mark, in the same crabbed hand. ‘H.S.’
‘– But where –’ Peregrine heard his own voice saying, ‘– where did it come from? Whose is it?’
‘It is mine,’ Mr Conducis said and his voice seemed to come from a great distance. ‘Naturally.’
‘But – where did you find it?’
A long silence.
‘At sea.’
‘At sea?’
‘During a voyage six years ago. I bought it.’
Peregrine looked at his host. How pale Mr Conducis was and how odd was his manner!
He said: ‘The box – it is some kind of portable writing desk – was a family possession. The former owner did not discover the false bottom until –’ He stopped.
‘Until –?’ Peregrine said.
‘Until shortly before he died.’
Peregrine said: ‘Has it been shown to an authority?’
‘No. I should, no doubt, get an opinion from some museum or perhaps from Sotheby’s.’
His manner was so completely negative, so toneless that Peregrine wondered if by any extraordinary chance he did not understand the full implication. He was wondering how, without offence, he could find out when Mr Conducis continued.
‘I have not looked it all up but I understand the age of the boy at the time of his death is consistent with the evidence and that the grandfather was in fact a glover.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the initials inside the gauntlet do in fact correspond with the child’s initials.’
‘Yes. Hamnet Shakespeare.’
‘Quite so,’ said Mr Conducis.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_7d6d0ce0-d1dc-5374-9277-7cdfa11c6a0a)
Mr Greenslade (#ulink_7d6d0ce0-d1dc-5374-9277-7cdfa11c6a0a)
‘I know that,’ Peregrine said. ‘You don’t need to keep on at it, Jer. I know there’s always been a Bardic racket and that since the quarto-centenary it’s probably been stepped up. I know about the tarting-up of old portraits with dome foreheads and the fake signatures and “stol’n and surreptitious copies” and phoney “discovered” documents and all that carry-on. I know the overwhelming odds are against this glove being anything but a fake. I merely ask you to accept that with the things lying there in front of me, I was knocked all of a heap.’
‘Not only by them, I understand. You were half-drowned, half-drunk, dressed up in a millionaire’s clobber and not knowing whether the owner was making a queer pass at you or not.’
‘I’m almost certain, not.’
‘His behaviour, on your own account, seems to have been, to say the least of it, strange.’
‘Bloody strange but not, I have decided, queer.’
‘Well, you’re the judge,’ said Jeremy Jones. He bent over his work-table and made a delicate slit down a piece of thin cardboard. He was building a set to scale for a theatre-club production of Venice Preserved. After a moment he laid aside his razor-blade, and looked up at Peregrine. ‘Could you make a drawing of it?’ he said.
‘I can try.’
Peregrine tried. He remembered the glove very clearly indeed and produced a reasonable sketch.
‘It looks OK,’ Jeremy said. ‘Late sixteenth century. Elaborate in the right way. Tabbed. Embroidered. Tapering to the wrist. And the leather?’
‘Oh, fine as fine. Yellow and soft and wrinkled and old, old, old.’
‘It may be an Elizabethan or Jacobean glove but the letter could be a forgery.’
‘But why? Nobody’s tried to cash in on it.’
‘You don’t know. You don’t know anything. Who was this chum Conducis bought it from?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘And who was M.E. whose dear grandma insisted it had belonged to the poet?’
‘Why ask me? You might remember that the great-great-grandmother was left it by a Mrs J. Hart. And that Joan Hart –’
‘Née Shakespeare, was left wearing-apparel by her brother. Yes. The sort of corroborative details any good faker would cock up. But, of course, the whole thing should be tackled by experts.’
‘I told you: I said so. I said: wouldn’t he take it to the V. and A. And he gave me one of his weird looks; furtive, scared, blank – I don’t know how you’d describe them – and shut up like a clam.’
‘Suspicious in itself!’ Jeremy grinned at his friend and then said: ‘“I would I had been there”.’
‘Well, at that, “it would have much amazed you”.’
‘“Very like. Very like” What do we know about Conducis?’
‘I can’t remember with any accuracy,’ Peregrine said. ‘He’s an all-time-high for money, isn’t he? There was a piece in one of the Sunday supplements some time back. About how he loathes publicity and does a Garbo and leaves Mr Gulbenkian wondering what it was that passed him. And how he doesn’t join in any of the joy and is thought to be a fabulous anonymous philanthropist. A Russian mum, I think it said, and an Anglo-Rumanian papa.’
‘Where does he get his pelf?’
‘I don’t remember. Isn’t it always oil? “Mystery Midas” it was headed and there was a photograph of him looking livid and trying to dodge the camera on the steps of his bank and a story about how the photographer made his kill. I read it at the dentist’s.’
‘Unmarried?’
‘I think so.’
‘How did you part company?’
‘He just walked out of the room. Then his man came in and said the car was waiting to bring me home. He gave me back my revolting, stinking pocket book and said my clothes had gone to the cleaner and were thought to be beyond salvation. I said something about Mr Conducis and the man said Mr Conducis was taking a call from New York and would “quite understand”. Upon which hint, off I slunk. I’d better write a sort of bread-and-butter, hadn’t I?’
‘I expect so. And he owns The Dolphin and is going to pull it down and put up, one supposes, another waffle-iron on the South Bank?’
‘He’s “turning over the idea” in his mind.’
‘May it choke him,’ said Jeremy Jones.
‘Jer,’ Peregrine said. ‘You must go and look at it. It’ll slay you. Wrought iron. Cherubs. Caryatids. A wonderful sort of potpourri of early and mid-Vic and designed by an angel. O God, God when I think of what could be done with it.’
‘And this ghastly old Croesus –’
‘I know. I know.’
And they stared at each other with the companionable indignation and despair of two young men whose unfulfilled enthusiasms coincide.
They had been at the same drama school together and had both decided that they were inclined by temperament, interest and ability to production rather than performance in the theatre. Jeremy finally settled for design and Peregrine for direction. They had worked together and apart in weekly and fortnightly repertory and had progressed to more distinguished provincial theatres and thence, precariously, to London. Each was now tolerably well-known as a coming man and both were occasionally subjected to nerve-racking longueurs of unemployment. At the present juncture Peregrine had just brought to an auspicious opening the current production at The Unicorn and had seen his own first play through a trial run out of London. Jeremy was contemplating a décor for a masque which he would submit to an international competition for theatrical design.
He had recently bought a partnership in a small shop in Walton Street where they sold what he described as: ‘Very superior tatt. Jacobean purses, stomachers and the odd cod-piece.’ He was a fanatic on authenticity and had begun to acquire a reputation as an expert.
Jeremy and Peregrine had spent most of what they had saved on leasing and furnishing their studio flat and had got closer than was comfortable to a financial crisis. Jeremy had recently become separated from a blonde lady of uncertain temper: a disentanglement that was rather a relief to Peregrine who had been obliged to adjust to her unpredictable descents upon their flat.
Peregrine himself had brought to uneventful dissolution an affair with an actress who had luckily discovered in herself the same degree of boredom that he, for his part, had hesitated to disclose. They had broken up with the minimum of ill-feeling on either part and he was, at the moment, heartfree and glad of it.
Peregrine was dark, tall and rather mischievous in appearance. Jeremy was of medium stature, reddish in complexion and fairly truculent. Behind a prim demeanour he concealed an amorous inclination. They were of the same age: twenty-seven. Their flat occupied the top storey of a converted warehouse on Thames-side east of Blackfriars. It was from their studio window about a week ago, that Peregrine, idly exploring the South Bank through a pair of fieldglasses, had spotted the stage-house of The Dolphin, recognized it for what it was and hunted it down. He now walked over to the window.
‘I can just see it,’ he said. ‘There it is. I spent the most hideous half-hour of my life, so far, inside that theatre. I ought to hate the sight of it but, by God, I yearn after it as I’ve never yearned after anything ever before. You know if Conducis does pull it down I honestly don’t believe I’ll be able to stay here and see it happen.’
‘Shall we wait upon him and crash down on our knees before him crying, “Oh, sir, please sir, spare The Dolphin, pray do, sir”.’
‘I can tell you exactly what the reaction would be. He’d back away as if we smelt and say in that deadpan voice of his that he knew nothing of such matters.’
‘I wonder what it would cost.’
‘To restore it? Hundreds of thousands no doubt,’ Peregrine said gloomily. ‘I wonder if National Theatre has so much as thought of it. Or somebody. Isn’t there a society that preserves Ancient Monuments?’
‘Yes. But “I know nothing of such matters”,’ mocked Jeremy. He turned back to his model. With a degree of regret to which wild horses wouldn’t have persuaded him to confess, Peregrine began packing Mr Conducis’s suit. It was a dark charcoal tweed and had been made by a princely tailor. He had washed and ironed the socks, undergarments and shirt that he had worn for about forty minutes and had taken a box that Jeremy was hoarding to make up the parcel.
‘I’ll get a messenger to deliver it,’ he said.
‘Why on earth?’
‘I don’t know. Too bloody shy to go myself.’
‘You’d only have to hand it over to the gilded lackey.’
‘I’d feel an ass.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Jeremy briefly.
‘I don’t want to go back there. It was all so rum. Rather wonderful, of course, but in a way rather sinister. Like some wish-fulfilment novel.’
‘The wide-eyed young dramatist and the kindly recluse.’
‘I don’t think Conducis is kindly but I will allow and must admit I was wide-eyed over the glove. You know what?’
‘What?’
‘It’s given me an idea.’
‘Has it, now? Idea for what?’
‘A play. I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘One must never discuss too soon, of course,’ Jeremy agreed. ‘That way abortion lies.’
‘You have your points.’
In the silence that followed they both heard the metallic clap of the letter box downstairs.
‘Post,’ said Jeremy.
‘Won’t be anything for us.’
‘Bills.’
‘I don’t count them. I daren’t,’ said Peregrine.
‘There might be a letter from Mr Conducis offering to adopt you.’
‘Heh, heh, heh.’
‘Do go and see,’ Jeremy said. ‘I find you rather oppressive when you’re clucky. The run downstairs will do you good.’
Peregrine wandered twice round the room and absently out at the door. He went slowly down their decrepit staircase and fished in their letter box. There were three bills (two, he saw, for himself), a circular and a typed letter.
‘Peregrine Jay, Esq. By Hand.’
For some reason that he could not have defined, he didn’t open the letter. He went out-of-doors and walked along their uneventful street until he came to a gap through which one could look across the river to Southwark. He remembered afterwards that his bitch-muse as he liked to call her was winding her claws in his hair. He stared unseeing at a warehouse that from here partly obscured The Dolphin: Phipps Bros, perhaps, where the man with the oil-can – Jobbins – worked. A wind off the river whipped his hair back. Somewhere downstream a hooting set up. Why, he wondered idly, do river-craft set up gaggles of hooting all at once? His right hand was in his jacket pocket and his fingers played with the letter.
With an odd sensation of taking some prodigious step he suddenly pulled it out of his pocket and opened it.
Five minutes later Jeremy heard their front door slam and Peregrine come plunging up the stairs. He arrived, white-faced and apparently without the power of speech.
‘What now, for pity’s sake,’ Jeremy asked. ‘Has Conducis tried to kidnap you?’
Peregrine thrust a sheet of letter paper into his hand.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Bloody read it, will you. Go on.’
Dear Sir, Jeremy read. I am directed by Mr V. M. G. Conducis to inform you that he has given some consideration to the matter of The Dolphin Theatre, Wharfingers Lane, which he had occasion to discuss with you this morning. Mr Conducis would be interested to have the matter examined in greater detail. He suggests, therefore, that to this end you call at the office of Consolidated Oils, Pty Ltd, and speak to Mr S. Greenslade who has been fully informed of the subject in question. I enclose for your convenience a card with the address and a note of introduction.
I have ventured to make an appointment for you with Mr Greenslade for 11.30 tomorrow (Wednesday). If this is not a convenient time perhaps you will be good enough to telephone Mr Greenslade’s secretary before 5.30 this evening.
Mr Conducis asks me to beg that you will not trouble yourself to return the things he was glad to be able to offer after your most disagreeable accident for which, as he no doubt explained, he feels a deep sense of responsibility. He understands that your own clothes have been irretrievably spoilt and hopes that you will allow him to make what he feels is a most inadequate gesture by way of compensation. The clothes, by the way, have not been worn. If, however, you would prefer it, he hopes that you will allow him to replace your loss in a more conventional manner.
Mr Conducis will not himself take a direct part in any developments that may arise in respect of The Dolphin and does not wish at any juncture to be approached in the matter. Mr Greenslade has full authority to negotiate for him at all levels.
With Compliments,
I am,
Yours truly,
M. SMYTHIMAN
(Private Secretary to Mr Conducis)
‘Not true,’ Jeremy said, looking over the tops of his spectacles.
‘True. Apparently. As far as it goes.’
Jeremy read it again. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘at least he doesn’t want you to approach him. We’ve done him wrong, there.’
‘He doesn’t want to set eyes on me, thank God.’
‘Were you passionately eloquent, my poor Peregrine?’
‘It looks as if I must have been, doesn’t it? I was plastered, of course.’
‘I have a notion,’ Jeremy said with inconsequence, ‘that he was once wrecked at sea.’
‘Who?’
‘Conducis, you dolt. Who but? In his yacht.’
‘Was his yacht called Kalliope?’
‘I rather think so. I’m sure it went down.’
‘Perhaps my predicament reminded him of the experience.’
‘You know,’ Jeremy said, ‘I can’t really imagine why we’re making such a thing of this. After all, what’s happened? You look at a derelict theatre. You fall into a fetid well from which you are extricated by the owner who is a multi-millionaire. You urge in your simple way the graces and excellence of the theatre. He wonders if, before he pulls it down, it might just be worth getting another opinion. He turns you over to one of his myrmidons. Where’s the need for all the agitation?’
‘I wonder if I should like M. Smythiman if I met him and if I shall take against S. Greenslade at first sight. Or he against me, of course.’
‘What the hell does that matter? You place far too much importance upon personal relationships. Look at the fatuous way you go on about your women. And then suspecting poor Mr Conducis of improper intentions when he never wants to look upon your like again!’
‘Do you suggest that I accept his gorgeous apparel?’ Peregrine asked on an incredulous note.
‘Certainly, I do. It would be rude and ungenerous and rather vulgar to return it with a po-faced note. The old boy wants to give you his brand new clobber because you mucked up your own in his dirty great well. You should take it and not slap him back as if he’d tried to tip you.’
‘If you had seen him you would not call him an old boy. He is the uncosiest human being I have ever encountered.’
‘Be that as it may, you’d better posh yourself up and wait upon S. Greenslade on the stroke of 11.30.’
Peregrine said, after a pause, ‘I shall do so, of course. He says nothing about the letter and glove, you observe.’
‘Nothing.’
‘I shall urge S. Greenslade to get it vetted at the V. and A.’
‘You jolly well do.’
‘Yes, I will. Well, Jer, as you say, why make a thing? If by some wild, rapturous falling-out of chance, I could do anything to save the life of The Dolphin I would count myself amply rewarded. But it will, of course, only be a rum little interlude and, in the meantime, here’s the latest batch of bills.’
‘At least,’ Jeremy said, ‘there won’t be a new one from your tailors for some time to come.’
II
Mr S. Greenslade was bald, pale, well-dressed and unremarkable. His office was quietly sumptuous and he was reached through a hinterland of equally conservative but impressive approaches. He now sat, with a file under his hand, a distinguished painting behind him, and before him, Peregrine, summoning all the techniques of the theatre in order to achieve relaxation.
‘Mr Jay,’ Mr Greenslade said, ‘you appreciate, of course, the fact that your meeting yesterday with Mr Conducis has led to this appointment.’
‘I suppose so. Yes.’
‘Quite. I have here a digest, as it were, of a – shall I say a suggestion you made to Mr Conducis as he recollects it. Here it is.’
Mr Greenslade put on his spectacles and read from the paper before him.
‘Mr Jay proposed that The Dolphin Theatre should be restored to its former condition and that a company should be established there performing Shakespeare and other plays of a high cultural quality. Mr Jay suggested that The Dolphin is a building of some cultural worth and that, historically speaking, it is of considerable interest.’
Mr Greenslade looked up at Peregrine. ‘That was, in fact, your suggestion?’
‘Yes. Yes. It was. Except that I hate the word culture.’
‘Mr Jay, I don’t know if you are at all informed about Mr Conducis’s interests.’
‘I – no – I only know he’s – he’s –’
‘Extremely wealthy and something of a recluse?’ Mr Greenslade suggested with a slight, practised smile.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’ Mr Greenslade removed his spectacles and placed them delicately in the centre of his writing pad. Peregrine thought he must be going to make some profound revelation about his principal. Instead he merely said: ‘Quite’ again and after a dignified silence asked Peregrine if he would be good enough to tell him something about himself. His schooling, for example, and later career. He was extremely calm in making this request.
Peregrine said he had been born and educated in New Zealand, had come to England on a drama bursary and had remained there.
‘I am aware, of course, of your success in the theatrical field,’ said Mr Greenslade and Peregrine supposed that he had been making some kind of confidential inquiries.
‘Mr Jay,’ said Mr Greenslade, ‘I am instructed to make you an offer. It is, you may think, a little precipitant. Mr Conducis is prepared to consider the rehabilitation of the theatre, subject, of course, to favourable opinions from an architect and from building authorities and to the granting of necessary permits. He will finance this undertaking. On one condition.’ Mr Greenslade paused.
‘On one condition?’ Peregrine repeated in a voice that cracked like an adolescent’s.
‘Exactly. It is this. That you yourself will undertake the working management of The Dolphin. Mr Conducis offers you, upon terms to be arrived at, the post of organizing the running of the theatre, planning its artistic policy, engaging the company and directing the productions. You would be given a free hand to do this within certain limits of expenditure which would be set down in this contract. I shall be glad to hear what your reactions are to this, at its present stage, necessarily tentative proposal.’
Peregrine suppressed a frightening inclination towards giving himself over to maniac laughter. He looked for a moment into Mr Greenslade’s shrewd and well-insulated face and he said:
‘It would be ridiculous of me to pretend that I am anything but astonished and delighted.’
‘Are you?’ Mr Greenslade rejoined. ‘Good. In that case I shall proceed with the preliminary investigations. I, by the way, am the solicitor for a number of Mr Conducis’s interests. If and when it comes to drawing up contracts I presume I should negotiate with your agents?’
‘Yes. They are –’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Greenslade, ‘Messrs Slade and Opinger, I believe?’
‘Yes,’ said Peregrine, wondering if at any stage of his tipsy rhapsody he had mentioned them to Mr Conducis and rather concluding that he hadn’t.
‘There is one other matter.’ Mr Greenslade opened a drawer in his desk and with an uncanny re-enacting of his principal’s gestures on the previous morning, withdrew from it the small Victorian writing desk. ‘You are already familiar with the contents, I understand, and expressed some anxiety about their aunthenticity.’
‘I said I wished they could be shown to an expert.’
‘Quite. Mr Conducis has taken your point, Mr Jay, and wonders if you yourself would be so obliging as to act for him in this respect.’
Peregrine, in a kind of trance, said: ‘Are the glove and documents insured?’
‘They are covered by a general policy but they have not been specifically insured since their value is unknown.’
‘I feel the responsibility would be –’
‘I appreciate your hesitation and I may say I put the point to Mr Conducis. He still wishes me to ask you to undertake this mission.’
There was a short silence.
‘Sir,’ said Peregrine, ‘why is Mr Conducis doing all this? Why is he giving me at least the chance of undertaking such fantastically responsible jobs? What possible motive can he have? I hope,’ Peregrine continued with a forthrightness that became him very well, ‘that I’m not such an ass as to suppose I can have made an impression in the least degree commensurable with the proposals you’ve put before me and I – I – ‘ He felt himself reddening and ran out of words. Mr Greenslade had watched him, he thought, with renewed attention. He now lifted his spectacles with both hands, held them poised daintily over his blotter and said, apparently to them:
‘A reasonable query.’
‘Well – I hope so.’
‘And one which I am unable to answer.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I will,’ said Mr Greenslade, evenly, ‘be frank with you, Mr Jay. I am at a loss to know why Mr Conducis is taking this action. If, however, I have interpreted your misgivings correctly I can assure you they are misplaced.’ Suddenly, almost dramatically, Mr Greenslade became human, good-tempered and coarse. ‘He’s not that way inclined,’ he said and laid down his spectacles.
‘I’m extremely glad to hear it.’
‘You will undertake the commission?’
‘Yes, I will.’
‘Splendid.’
III
The expert folded his hands and leant back in his chair.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think we may say with certainty this is a glove of late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century workmanship. It has, at some time, been exposed to saltwater but not extensively. One might surmise that it was protected. The little desk is very much stained. Upon the letters H.S. inside the gauntlet I am unable to give an authoritative opinion but could, of course, obtain one. As for these two, really rather startling documents: they can be examined and submitted to a number of tests – infra red, spectography and so on – not in my province, you know. If they’ve been concocted it will certainly be discovered.’
‘Would you tell me how I can get the full treatment for them?’
‘Oh, I think we could arrange that, you know. But we would want written permission from the owner, full insurance and so on. You’ve told me nothing, so far, of the history, have you?’
‘No,’ Peregrine said. ‘But I will. With this proviso, if you don’t mind: the owner, or rather his solicitor on his behalf, has given me permission to disclose his name to you on your undertaking to keep it to yourself until you have come to a conclusion about these things. He has a – an almost morbid dread of publicity which you’ll understand, I think, when you learn who he is.’
The expert looked very steadily at Peregrine. After a considerable silence he said: ‘Very well. I am prepared to treat the matter confidentially as far as your principal’s name is concerned.’
‘He is Mr Vassily Conducis.’
‘Good God.’
‘Quite,’ said Peregrine, doing a Greenslade. ‘I shall now tell you as much as is known of the history. Here goes.’
And he did in considerable detail.
The expert listened in a startled manner.
‘Really, very odd,’ he said when Peregrine had finished.
‘I assure you I’m not making it up.’
‘No, no. I’m sure. I’ve heard of Conducis, of course. Who hasn’t? You do realize what a – what a really flabbergasting thing this would be if it turned out to be genuine?’
‘I can think of nothing else. I mean: there they lie – a child’s glove and a letter asking one to suppose that on a summer’s morning in the year 1596 a master-craftsman of Stratford made a pair of gloves and gave them to his grandson who wore them for a day and then –’
‘Grief filled the room up of an absent child?’
‘Yes. And a long time afterwards – twenty years – the father made his Will – I wonder he didn’t chuck in a ghastly pun – Will’s Will – don’t you? And he left his apparel to his sister Joan Hart. And for her information wrote that note there. I mean – his hand moved across that bit of paper. If it’s genuine. And then two centuries go by and somebody called E. M. puts the glove and paper in a Victorian desk with the information that her great-great-grandmother had them from J. Hart and her grandmother insisted they were the Poet’s. It could have been Joan Hart. She died in 1664.’
‘I shouldn’t build on it,’ the expert said drily.
‘Of course not.’
‘Has Mr Conducis said anything about their value? I mean – even if there’s only a remote chance they will be worth – well, I can’t begin to say what their monetary value might be but I know what we’d feel about it, here.’
Peregrine and the expert eyed each other for a moment or two. ‘I suppose,’ Peregrine said, ‘he’s thought of that but I must say he’s behaved pretty casually over it.’
‘Well, we shan’t,’ said the expert. ‘I’ll give you your receipt and ask you to stay and see the things safely stowed.’
He stooped for a moment over the little, dead wrinkled glove. ‘If it were true!’ he murmured.
‘I know, I know,’ Peregrine cried. ‘It’s frightening to think what would happen. The avid attention, the passionate greed for possession.’
‘There’s been murder done for less,’ said the expert lightly.
IV
Five weeks later Peregrine, looking rather white about the gills and brownish under the eyes, wrote the last word of his play and underneath it: ‘Curtain.’ That night he read it to Jeremy who thought well of it.
There had been no word from Mr Greenslade. The stage-house of The Dolphin could still be seen on Bankside. Jeremy had asked at the estate agents for permission to view and had been told that the theatre was no longer in their hands and they believed had been withdrawn from the market. Their manner was stuffy.
From time to time the two young men talked about The Dolphin but a veil of unreality seemed to have fallen between Peregrine and his strange interlude: so much so that he sometimes almost felt as if he had invented it.
In an interim report on the glove and documents, the museum had said that preliminary tests had given no evidence of spurious inks or paper and so far nothing inconsistent with their supposed antiquity had been discovered. An expert on the handwriting of ancient documents, at present in America, would be consulted on his return. If his report was favourable, Peregrine gathered, a conference of authorities would be called.
‘Well,’ Jeremy said, ‘they haven’t laughed it out of court, evidently.’
‘Evidently.’
‘You’ll send the report to the man Greenslade?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Jeremy put his freckled hand on Peregrine’s manuscript.
‘What about opening at The Dolphin this time next year with The Glove, a new play by Peregrine Jay?’
‘Gatcha!’
‘Well – why not? For the hell of it,’ Jeremy said, ‘let’s do a shadow casting. Come on.’
‘I have.’
‘Give us a look.’
Peregrine produced a battered sheet of paper, covered in his irregular handwriting.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I know what would be said. That it’s been done before. Clemence Dane for one. And more than that: it’d be a standing target for wonderful cracks at synthetic Bardery. The very sight of the cast. Ann Hathaway and all that lot. You know? It’d be held to stink. Sunk before it started.’
‘I for one don’t find any derry-down tatt in the dialogue.’
‘Yes: but to cast “Shakespeare”. What gall!’
‘He did that sort of thing. You might as well say: “Oo-er! To cast Henry VIII!” Come on: who would you cast for Shakespeare?’
‘It sticks out a mile, doesn’t it?’
‘Elizabethan Angry, really, isn’t he? Lonely. Chancy. Tricky. Bright as the sun. A Pegasus in the Hathaway stable? Enormously over-sexed and looking like the Grafton portrait. In which I entirely believe.’
‘And I. All right. Who looks and plays like that?’
‘Oh God!’ Jeremy said, reading the casting list.
‘Yes,’ Peregrine rejoined. ‘What I said. It sticks out a mile.’
‘Marcus Knight, my God.’
‘Of course. He is the Grafton portrait and as for fire! Think of his Hotspur. And Harry Five. And the Mercutio. And, by heaven, his Hamlet. Remember the Peer Gynt?’
‘What’s his age?’
‘Whatever it is he doesn’t show it. He can look like a stripling.’
‘He’d cost the earth.’
‘This is only mock-up, anyway.’
‘Has he ever been known to get through a production without creating a procession of dirty big rows?’
‘Never.’
‘Custombuilt to wreck the morale of any given company?’
‘That’s Marco.’
‘Remember the occasion when he broke off and told latecomers after the interval to sit down or get the hell out of it?’
‘Vividly.’
‘And when the rest of the cast threw in their parts as one man?’
‘I directed the fiasco.’
‘He’s said to be more than usually explosive just now on account of no knighthood last batch.’
‘He is, I understand, apoplectic, under that heading.’
‘Well,’ said Jeremy, ‘it’s your play. I see you’ve settled for rolling the lovely boy and the seduced fair friend and “Mr W. H.” all up in one character.’
‘So I have.’
‘How you dared!’ Jeremy muttered.
‘There have been madder notions over the centuries.’
‘True enough. It adds up to a damn’ good part. How do you see him?’
‘Very blond. Very male. Very impertinent.’
‘W. Hartly Grove?’
‘Might be. Type casting.’
‘Isn’t he held to be a bad citizen?’
‘Bit of a nuisance.’
‘What about your Dark Lady? The Rosaline? Destiny Meade, I see you’ve got here.’
‘I rather thought: Destiny. She’s cement from the eyes up but she gives a great impression of smouldering depths and really inexhaustible sex. She can produce what’s called for in any department as long as it’s put to her in basic English and very slowly. And she lives, by the way, with Marco.’
‘That might or might not be handy. And Ann H.?’
‘Oh, any sound unsympathetic actress with good attack,’ Peregrine said.
‘Like Gertie Bracey?’
‘Yes.’
‘Joan Hart’s a nice bit. I tell you who’d be good as Joan. Emily Dunne. You know? She’s been helping in our shop. You liked her in that TV show. She did some very nice Celias and Nerissas and Hermias at Stratford. Prick her down on your list.’
‘I shall. “See, with a blot I damn her”.’
‘The others seem to present no difficulty but the spirit sinks at an infant phenomenon.’
‘He dies before the end of Act I.’
‘Not a moment too soon. I am greatly perturbed by the vision of some stunted teenager acting its pants off.’
‘It’ll be called Gary, of course.’
‘Or Trevor.’
‘Never mind.’
‘Would you give me the designing of the show?’
‘Don’t be a bloody ass.’
‘It’d be fun,’ Jeremy said grinning at him, ‘face it: it would be fun.’
‘Don’t worry, it won’t happen. I have an instinct and I know it won’t. None of it: the glove, the theatre, the play. It’s all a sort of miasma. It won’t happen.’
Their post box slapped.
‘There you are. Fate knocking at the door,’ said Jeremy.
‘I don’t even wonder if it might be, now,’ Peregrine said. ‘However, out of sheer kindness I’ll get the letters.’
He went downstairs, collected the mail and found nothing for himself. He climbed up again slowly. As he opened the door, he said: ‘As I foretold you. No joy. All over. Like an insubstantial pageant faded. The mail is as dull as ditchwater and all for you. Oh, sorry!’
Jeremy was talking on the telephone.
He said: ‘Here he is, now. Would you wait a second?’
He held out the receiver with one hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Mr Greenslade,’ he said, ‘wishes to speak to you. Ducky – this is it.’
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_87ccda2d-bf4a-544e-b67d-a40c8d37a143)
Party (#ulink_87ccda2d-bf4a-544e-b67d-a40c8d37a143)
‘A year ago,’ Peregrine thought, ‘I stood in this very spot on a February morning. The sun came out and gilded the stage tower of the injured Dolphin and I lusted after it. I thought of Adolphus Ruby and wished I was like him possessed. And here I am again, as the Lord’s my judge, a little jumped-up Cinderella-man in Mr Ruby’s varnished boots.’
He looked at the restored caryatids, the bouncing cetaceans and their golden legend, and the immaculate white frontage and elegance of ironwork and he adored them all.
He thought: ‘Whatever happens, this is, so far, the best time of my life. Whatever happens I’ll look back at today, for instance, and say: “Oh that was the morning when I knew what’s meant by bliss”.’
While he stood there the man from Phipps Bros came out of Phipps Passage.
‘Morning, guvnor,’ he said.
‘Good morning, Jobbins.’
‘Looks a treat, dunnit?’
‘Lovely.’
‘Ah. Different. From what it was when you took the plunge.’
‘Yes: indeed.’
‘Yes. You wouldn’t be looking for a watchman, I suppose? Now she’s near finished-like? Night or day. Any time?’
‘I expect we shall want someone. Why? Do you know of a good man?’
‘Self-praise, no recommendation’s what they say, ainnit?’
‘Do you mean you’d take it on?’
‘Not to deceive yer, guvnor, that was the idea. Dahn the Passage in our place, it’s too damp, for me chubes, see? Something chronic. I got good references, guvnor. Plenty’d speak up for me. ‘Ow’s it strike yer? Wiv a sickening thud or favourable?’
‘Why,’ said Peregrine. ‘Favourably, I believe.’
‘Will you bear me in mind, then?’
‘I’ll do that thing,’ said Peregrine.
‘Gor’ bless yer, guv,’ said Jobbins and retired down Phipps Passage.
Peregrine crossed the lane and entered the portico of his theatre. He looked at the framed notice:
DOLPHIN THEATRE
REOPENING SHORTLY
UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
It hung immediately under the tatter of a Victorian playbill that he had seen on his first remarkable visit.
THE BEGGAR GIRL’S WEDDING
In response to
Overwhelming Solicitation!! –
Mr Adolphus Ruby
When the painters cleaned and resurfaced the façade, Peregrine had made them work all round that precarious fragment without touching it. ‘It shall stay here,’ he had said to Jeremy Jones, ‘as long as I do.’
He opened the front doors. They had new locks and the doors themselves had been stripped and scraped and restored to their original dignity.
The foyer was alive. It was being painted, gilded, polished and furbished. There were men on scaffolds, on long ladders, on pendant platforms. A great chandelier lay in a sparkling heap on the floor. The two fat cherubim, washed and garnished, beamed upside-down into the resuscitated box-office.
Peregrine said good morning to the workmen and mounted the gently curving stairs.
There was still a flower-engraved looking-glass behind the bar but now he advanced towards himself across shining mahogany, framed by brass. The bar was all golden syrup and molasses in colour. ‘Plain, serviceable, no tatt,’ Peregrine muttered.
The renovations had been completed up here and soon a carpet would be laid. He and Jeremy and the young decorator had settled in the end for the classic crimson, white and gilt and the panelling blossomed, Peregrine thought, with the glorious vulgarity of a damask rose. He crossed the foyer to a door inscribed ‘Management’ and went in.
The Dolphin was under the control of ‘Dolphin Theatres Incorporated’. This was a subsidiary of Consolidated Oils. It had been created, broadly speaking, by Mr Greenslade, to encompass the development of the Dolphin project. Behind his new desk in the office sat Mr Winter Morris, an extremely able theatrical business manager. He had been wooed into the service by Mr Greenslade upon Peregrine’s suggestion, after a number of interviews and, he felt sure, exhaustive inquiries. Throughout these preliminaries, Mr Conducis had remained, as it were, the merest effluvium: far from noxious and so potent that a kind of plushy assurance seemed to permeate the last detail of renaissance in The Dolphin. Mr Morris had now under his hand an entire scheme for promotion, presentation and maintenance embracing contracts with actors, designers, costumiers, front of house staff, stage crew and press agents and the delicate manipulation of such elements as might be propitious to the general mana of the enterprise.
He was a short, pale and restless man with rich curly hair, who, in what little private life belonged to him, collected bric-à-brac.
‘Good morning, Winty.’
‘Perry,’ said Mr Morris as a defensive statement rather than a greeting.
‘Any joy?’
Mr Morris lolled his head from side to side.
‘Before I forget. Do we want a caretaker, watchman, day or night, stage-door-keeper or any other lowly bod about the house?’
‘We shall in a couple of days.’
Peregrine told him about Mr Jobbins.
‘All right,’ said Mr Morris. ‘If the references are good. Now, it’s my turn. Are you full cast?’
‘Not quite. I’m hovering.’
‘What do you think of Harry Grove?’
‘As an actor?’
‘Yes.’
‘As an actor I think a lot of him.’
‘Just as well. You’ve got him.’
‘Winty, what the hell do you mean?’
‘A directive, dear boy: or what amounts to it. From Head Office.’
‘About W. Hartly Grove?’
‘You’ll probably find something in your mail.’
Peregrine went to his desk. He was now very familiar with the looks of Mr Greenslade’s communications and hurriedly extracted the latest from the pile.
Dear Peregrine Jay,
Your preliminaries seem to be going forward smoothly and according to plan. We are all very happy with the general shaping and development of the original project and are satisfied that the decision to open with your own play is a sound one, especially in view of your current success at The Unicorn. This is merely an informal note to bring to your notice Mr W. Hartly Grove, an actor, as you will of course know, of repute and experience. Mr Conducis personally will be very pleased if you give favourable attention to Mr Grove when forming your company.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
STANLEY GREENSLADE
When Peregrine read this note he was visited by a sense of misgiving so acute as to be quite disproportionate to its cause. In no profession are personal introductions and dear-boy-manship more busily exploited than in the theatre. For an actor to get the ear of the casting authority through an introduction to régisseur or management is a commonplace manoeuvre. For a second or two, Peregrine wondered with dismay if he could possibly be moved by jealousy and if the power so strangely, so inexplicably put into his hands had perhaps already sown a detestable seed of corruption. But no, he thought, on consideration and he turned to Morris to find the latter watching him with a half-smile.
‘I don’t like this,’ Peregrine said.
‘So I see, dear boy. May one know why?’
‘Of course. I don’t like W. Hartly Grove’s reputation. I try to be madly impervious to gossip in the theatre and I don’t know that I believe what they say about Harry Grove.’
‘What do they say?’
‘Vaguely shady behaviour. I’ve directed him once and knew him before that. He taught voice production at my drama school and disappeared over a weekend. Undefined scandal. Most women find him attractive, I believe. I can’t say,’ Peregrine added, rumpling up his hair, ‘that he did anything specifically objectionable in the latter production and I must allow that personally I found him an amusing fellow. But apart from the two women in the company nobody liked him. They said they didn’t but you could see them eyeing him and knowing he eyed them.’
‘This,’ said Morris, raising a letter that lay on his desk, ‘is practically an order. I suppose yours is, too.’
‘Yes, blast it.’
‘You’ve been given a fabulously free hand up to now, Perry. No business of mine, of course, dear boy, but frankly I’ve never seen anything like it. General management, director, author – the lot. Staggering.’
‘I hope,’ Peregrine said with a very direct look at his manager, ‘staggering though it may be, I got it on my reputation as a director and playwright. I believe I did. There is no other conceivable explanation, Winty.’
‘No, no, old boy, of course not,’ said Winter Morris in a hurry.
‘As for W. Hartly Grove, I suppose I can’t jib. As a matter of fact he would be well cast as Mr W. H. It’s his sort of thing. But I don’t like it. My God,’ Peregrine said, ‘haven’t I stuck my neck out far enough with Marcus Knight in the lead and liable to throw an average of three dirty great temperaments per rehearsal? What have I done to deserve Harry Grove as a bonus?’
‘The Great Star’s shaping up for trouble already. He’s calling me twice a day to make difficulties over his contract.’
‘Who’s winning?’
‘I am,’ said Winter Morris. ‘So far.’
‘Good for you.’
‘I’m getting sick of it,’ Morris said. ‘Matter-of-fact it’s on my desk now.’ He lifted a sheet of blotting paper and riffled the pages of the typewritten document he exposed. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘he’s signed and he can’t get past that one. We almost had to provide an extra page for it. Take a gander.’
The enormous and completely illegible signature did indeed occupy a surprising area. Peregrine glanced at it and then looked more closely.
‘I’ve seen that before,’ he said. ‘It looks like a cyclone.’
‘Once seen never forgotten.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ Peregrine said, ‘recently. Where, I wonder.’
Winter Morris looked bored.
‘Did he sign your autograph book?’ he asked bitterly.
‘It was somewhere unexpected. Ah, well. Never mind. The fun will start with the first rehearsal. He’ll want me to rewrite his part, of course, adding great hunks of ham and corn and any amount of fat. It’s tricky enough as it is. Strictly speaking a playwright shouldn’t direct his own stuff. He’s too tender with it. But it’s been done before and by the Lord I mean to do it again. Marco or no Marco. He looks like the Grafton portrait of Shakespeare. He’s got the voice of an angel and colossal prestige. He’s a brilliant actor and this is a part he can play. It’ll be a ding-dong go which of us wins but by heaven I’m game if he is.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Morris. ‘Live for ever, dear boy. Live for ever.’
They settled at their respective desks. Presently Peregrine’s buzzer rang and a young woman provided by the management and secreted in an auxiliary cubby-hole said: ‘Victoria and Albert for you, Mr Jay.’
Peregrine refrained from saying: ‘Always available to Her Majesty and the Prince Consort.’ He was too apprehensive. He said: ‘Oh yes. Right. Thank you,’ and was put into communication with the expert.
‘Mr Jay,’ the expert said, ‘is this a convenient time for you to speak?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I thought it best to have a word with you. We will, of course, write formally with full reports for you to hand to your principal but I felt – really,’ said the expert and his voice, Peregrine noticed with mounting excitement, was trembling, ‘really, it is the most remarkable thing. I – well, to be brief with you, the writing in question has been exhaustively examined. It has been compared by three experts with the known signatures and they find enough coincidence to give the strongest presumption of identical authorship. They are perfectly satisfied as to the age of the cheverel and the writing materials and that apart from salt-water stains there has been no subsequent interference. In fact, my dear Mr Jay, incredible as one might think it, the glove and the document actually seem to be what they purport to be.’
Peregrine said: ‘I’ve always felt this would happen and now I can’t believe it.’
‘The question is: what is to be done with them?’
‘You will keep them for the time being?’
‘We are prepared to do so. We would very much like,’ said the expert and Peregrine caught the wraith of a chuckle in the receiver, ‘to keep them altogether. However! I think my principals will, after consultation, make an approach to – er – the owner. Through you, of course and – I imagine this would be the correct proceeding – Mr Greenslade.’
‘Yes. And – no publicity?’
‘Good God, no!’ the expert ejaculated quite shrilly. ‘I should hope not. Imagine!’ There was a long pause. ‘Have you any idea,’ the expert said, ‘whether he will contemplate selling?’
‘No more than you have.’
‘No. I see. Well: you will have the reports and a full statement from us within the next week. I – must confess – I – I have rung you up simply because I – in short – I am as you obviously are, a dévoté.’
‘I’ve written a play about the glove,’ Peregrine said impulsively. ‘We’re opening here with it.’
‘Really? A play,’ said the expert and his voice flattened.
‘It isn’t cheek!’ Peregrine shouted into the telephone. ‘In its way it’s a tribute. A play! Yes, a play.’
‘Oh, please! Of course. Of course.’
‘Well, thank you for telling me.’
‘No, no.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘What? Oh, yes. Of course. Goodbye.’
Peregrine put down the receiver and found Winter Morris staring at him.
‘You’ll have to know about this, Winty,’ he said. ‘But as you heard – no publicity. It concerns the Great Person so that’s for sure. Further it must not go.’
‘All right. If you say so: not an inch.’
‘Top secret?’
‘Top secret as you say. Word of honour.’
So Peregrine told him. When he had finished, Morris ran his white fingers through his black curls and lamented. ‘But listen, but listen, listen, listen. What material! What a talking line! The play’s about it. Listen: it’s called The Glove. We’ve got it. Greatest Shakespeare relic of all time. The Dolphin Glove. American offers. Letters to the papers: “Keep the Dolphin Glove in Shakespeare’s England.” “New fabulous offer for Dolphin Glove!” Public subscriptions. The lot! Ah Perry, cherub, dear dear Perry. All this lovely publicity and we should keep it secret!’
‘It’s no good going on like that.’
‘How do you expect me to go on? The Great Person must be handled over this one. He must be seen. He must be made to work. What makes him work? You’ve seen him. Look: he’s a financial wizard: he knows. He knows what’s good business. Listen: if this was handled right and we broke the whole story at the psychological moment: you know, with the publicity: the right kind of class publicity … Look –’
‘Do pipe down,’ Peregrine said.
‘Ah! Ah! Ah!’
‘I’ll tell you what my guess is, Winty. He’ll take it all back to his iron bosom and lock it away in his Louis-the-Somethingth bureau and that’s the last any of us will ever see of young Hamnet Shakespeare’s cheverel glove.’
In this assumption, however, Peregrine was entirely mistaken.
II
‘But that’s all one,’ Marcus Knight read in his beautiful voice. ‘Put it away somewhere. I shall not look at it again. Put it away.’
He laid his copy of Peregrine’s play down and the six remaining members of the company followed his example. A little slap of typescripts ran round the table.
‘Thank you,’ Peregrine said. ‘That was a great help to me. It was well read.’
He looked round the table. Destiny Meade’s enormous black eyes were fixed on him with the determined adulation of some mixed-up and sexy medieval saint. This meant, as he knew, nothing. Catching his eye, she raised her fingers to her lips and then in slow motion, extended them to him.
‘Darling Perry,’ she murmured in her celebrated hoarse voice, ‘what can we say? It’s all too much. Too much.’ She made an appealing helpless little gesture to the company at large. They responded with suitable if ambiguous noises.
‘My dear Peregrine,’ Marcus Knight said (and Peregrine thought: ‘his voice is like no other actor’s). ‘I like it. I see great possibilities. I saw them as soon as I read the play. Naturally, that was why I accepted the role. My opinion, I promise you, is unchanged. I look forward with interest to creating this part.’ Royalty could not have been more gracious.
‘I’m so glad, Marco,’ Peregrine said.
Trevor Vere whose age, professionally, was eleven, winked abominably across the table at Miss Emily Dunne who disregarded him. She did not try to catch Peregrine’s eye and seemed to be disregardful of her companions. He thought that perhaps she really had been moved.
W. Hartly Grove leant back in his chair with some elegance. His fingers tapped the typescript. His knuckles, Peregrine absently noted, were like those of a Regency prizefighter. His eyebrows were raised and a faint smile hung about his mouth. He was a blond man, very comely, with light blue eyes, set far apart, and an indefinable expression of impertinence. ‘I think it’s fabulous,’ he said. ‘And I like my Mr W.H.’
Gertrude Bracey, patting her hair and settling her shoulders said: ‘I am right, aren’t I, Perry? Ann Hathaway shouldn’t be played unsympathetically. I mean: definitely not a bitch?’
Peregrine thought: ‘Trouble with this one: I foresee trouble.’
He said cautiously: ‘She’s had a raw deal, of course.’
Charles Random said: ‘I wonder what Joan Hart did with the gloves?’ and gave Peregrine a shock.
‘But there weren’t any gloves, really,’ Destiny Meade said, ‘were there, darling? Or were there? Is it historical?’
‘No, no, love,’ Charles Random said. ‘I was talking inside the play. Or out of wishful thinking. I’m sorry.’
Marcus Knight gave him a look that said it was not usual for secondary parts to offer gratuitous observations round the conference table. Random, who was a very pale young man, reddened. He was to play Dr Hall in the first act.
‘I see,’ Destiny said. ‘So I mean there weren’t really any gloves? In Stratford or anywhere real?’
Peregrine looked at her and marvelled. She was lovely beyond compare and as simple as a sheep. The planes of her face might have been carved by an angel. Her eyes were wells of beauty. Her mouth, when it broke into a smile, would turn a man’s heart over and although she was possessed of more than her fair share of common sense, professional cunning and instinctive technique, her brain took one idea at a time and reduced each to the comprehensive level of a baby. If she were to walk out on any given stage and stand in the least advantageous place on it in a contemptible lack of light and with nothing to say, she would draw all eyes. At this very moment, fully aware of her basic foolishness, Marcus Knight, W. Hartly Grove and, Peregrine observed with dismay, Jeremy Jones, all stared at her with the solemn awareness that was her habitual tribute while Gertrude Bracey looked at her with something very like impotent fury.
The moment had come when Peregrine must launch himself into one of those pre-production pep-talks upon which a company sets a certain amount of store. More, however, was expected of him, now, than the usual helping of: ‘We’re all going to love this so let’s get cracking’ sort of thing. For once he felt a full validity in his own words when he clasped his hands over his play and said:
‘This is a great occasion for me.’ He waited for a second and then, abandoning everything he had so carefully planned, went on. ‘It’s a great occasion for me because it marks the rebirth of an entrancing playhouse: something I’d longed for and dreamed of and never, never thought to see. And then: to be given the job I have been given of shaping the policy and directing the productions and – as a final and incredible bon-bouche – the invitation to open with my own play – I do hope you’ll believe me when I say all this makes me feel not only immensely proud but extremely surprised and – although it’s not a common or even appropriate emotion in a director-playwright – very humble.
‘It might have been more politic to behave as if I took it all as a matter of course and no more than my due, but I’d rather, at the outset, and probably for the last time, say that I can’t get over my good fortune. I’m not the first dramatist to have a bash at the man from Warwickshire and I’m sure I won’t be the last. In this piece I’ve – well you’ve seen, I hope, what I’ve tried to do. Show the sort of combustion that built up in that unique personality: the terrifying sensuality that lies beyond the utterly unsentimental lyricism: gilded flies under daisies pied and violets blue. His only release, his only relief, you might say, has been his love for the boy Hamnet. It’s his son’s death that brings about the frightful explosion in his own personality and the moment when Rosaline (I have always believed the Dark Lady was a Rosaline) pulls Hamnet’s glove on her hand is the climax of the entire action. The physical intrusion and his consent to it brings him to the condition that spewed up Timon of Athens and was seared out of him by his own disgust. I’ve tried to suggest that for such a man the only possible release is through his work. He would like to be an Antony to Rosaline’s Cleopatra, but between himself and that sort of surrender stands his genius. And – incidentally – the hard-headed bourgeois of Stratford which, also, he is.’
Peregrine hesitated. Had he said anything? Was it any good trying to take it further? No.
‘I won’t elaborate,’ he said. ‘I can only hope that we’ll find out what it’s all about as we work together.’ He felt the abrupt upsurge of warmth, that is peculiarly of the theatre.
‘I hope, too, very much,’ he said, ‘that we’re going to agree together. It’s a great thing to be starting a playhouse on its way. They say dolphins are intelligent and gregarious creatures. Let us be good Dolphins and perform well together. Bless you all.’
They responded at once and all blessed him in return and for the occasion, at least, felt uplifted and stimulated and, in themselves, vaguely noble.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘let’s look at Jeremy Jones’s sets and then it’ll be almost time to drink a health to our enterprise. This is a great day.’
III
Following the reading there was a small party, thrown by the Management and thrown with a good deal of quiet splendour. It was held in the circle foyer with the bar in full array. The barman wore a snowy white shirt, flamboyant waistcoat and gold albert. There was a pot-boy with his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders like the one in Our Mutual Friend. The waiters were conventionally dressed but with slightly Victorian emphasis. Champagne in brassbound ice buckets stood along the mahogany bar and the flowers, exclusively, were crimson roses set in fern leaves.
Mr Greenslade was the host. Apart from the Company, Jeremy, Winter Morris, the publicity agents and the stage director and his assistant, there were six personages of startling importance from the worlds of theatre finance, the Press and what Mr Morris, wide-eyed, described as ‘the sort you can’t, socially speaking, look any higher than.’ From a remark let fall by Mr Greenslade, Peregrine was led to suppose that behind their presence could be discerned the figure of Mr Conducis who, of course, did not attend. Indeed it was clear from the conversation of the most exalted of the guests that Mr Conducis was perfectly well-known to be the presiding genius of The Dolphin.
‘A new departure for V.M.C.’ this personage said. ‘We were all astonished,’ (who were ‘we’?) ‘Still, like the rest of us, one supposes, he must have his toys.’
Peregrine wondered if it would have been possible for him to have heard a more innocently offensive comment.
‘It’s a matter of life and death to us,’ he said. The personage looked at him with amusement.
‘Is it really?’ he said. ‘Well, yes. I can see that it is. I hope all goes well. But I am still surprised by the turn of V.M.C.’s fancy. I didn’t think he had any fancies.’
‘I don’t really know him,’ said Peregrine.
‘Which of us does?’ the personage rejoined. ‘He’s a legend in his own lifetime and the remarkable thing about that is: the legend is perfectly accurate.’ Well-content with this aphorism he chuckled and passed superbly on leaving an aftermath of cigar, champagne and the very best unguents for the Man.
‘If I were to become as fabulously rich as that,’ Peregrine wondered, ‘would I turn into just such another? Can it be avoided?’
He found himself alongside Emily Dunne who helped in Jeremy’s shop and was to play Joan Hart in The Glove. She had got the part by audition and on her own performance, which Peregrine had seen, of Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had a pale face with dark eyes and a welcoming mouth. He thought she looked very intelligent and liked her voice which was deepish.
‘Have you got some champagne?’ asked Peregrine, ‘and would you like something to eat?’
‘Yes and no, thank you,’ said Emily. ‘It’s a wonderful play. I can’t get over my luck, being in it. And I can’t get over The Dolphin either.’
‘I thought you looked as if you were quite enjoying it. You read Joan exactly right. One wants to feel it’s a pity she’s Will’s sister because she’s the only kind of woman who would ever suit him as a wife.’
‘I think before they were both married she probably let him in by the side-window when he came home to Henley Street in the early hours after a night on the tiles.’
‘Yes, of course she did. How right you are. Do you like cocktail parties?’
‘Not really, but I always hope I will.’
‘I’ve given that up, even.’
‘Do you know, when I was playing at The Mermaid over a year ago, I used to look across the river to The Dolphin and then, one day, I walked over Blackfriars Bridge and stood in Wharfingers Lane and stared at it. And then an old, old stagehand I knew told me his father had been on the curtain there in the days of Adolphus Ruby. I got a sort of thing about it. I found a book in a sixpenny rack called The Buskin and the Boards
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