When she finished, there was a smattering of polite applause, and Miss Aurelia stood with her head cocked for a few moments, checking the piano with her fingers for dust, waiting to be coaxed into an encore. But the audience, knowing better than to encourage her, settled quickly back into their seats, and some of us crossed our arms.
As the house lights went down, I turned round for one last look at the audience. A couple of latecomers were just taking their seats on the aisle. To my horror, I saw that they were Gordon and Grace Ingleby, she in her usual dreadful black outfit, he with a bowler hat, for God's sake! And both of them looking less than happy to be there.
At first, I felt anger rushing up and fluttering within my chest. Why had no one warned them? Why had no one cared enough to keep them away?
Why hadn't I?
Crazily, the thing that popped into my mind was something Daffy once told me: It is the duty of a constitutional monarch to warn and advise.
If His Royal Majesty, King George the Sixth, had been among us this evening, he would be bound to take them aside and say something about the puppet with their dead child's face. But he was not.
Besides, it was already too late.... The hall was in total darkness. No one but me seemed to have noticed the Inglebys.
And then the show began. Because of the interminable Misses Puddock, I suppose, Rupert had decided to cut out the Mozart sketch and go straight for the main feature.
The red velvet curtains opened, just as they had in the afternoon, revealing the widow's cottage. The spotlight came up to illuminate Nialla in her Mother Goose costume. Grieg's 'Morning' floated in the air, painting haunting images in the mind of dark forests and icy fjords.
'Once upon a time, in a village not far away,' Nialla began, 'there lived a widow with a son, whose name was Jack.'
And in came Jack: the Jack with Robin Ingleby's face.
Again, the audible sucking-in of breath as some of the audience recognized the dead boy's features. I scarcely dared turn and look, but by pretending my skirt had become pinched in the folding mechanism of the chair, I was able to twist round in my seat just far enough to sneak a look at the Inglebys. Grace's eyes were wide and staring, but she did not cry out; she seemed frozen to the spot. Gordon was clutching at her hand, but she took no notice.
On the stage, the puppet Jack shouted: 'Mother, are you at home? I want my supper.'
'Jack was a very lazy boy,' said Mother Goose. 'And because he refused to work, it was not long before his mother's small savings were completely gone. There was nothing to eat in the house, and not so much as a farthing left for food.'
As the gasps and the murmurs died down, the show went on. Rupert was in fine form, the puppets so convincing in their movements and so perfectly voiced that the audience soon fell under his enchantment--as the vicar had suggested they would.
Lighted by the colored lamps of the stage, the faces of the people around me were the faces in a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, red, overheated, and fiercely intent upon the little wooden actors. As Aunt Felicity crunched excitedly on a digestive mint, I noticed that even Father had a half-amused look on his face, though whether it was caused by the puppets or his sister, I could not decide.
The business of the cow and the beans and the kick in the pants was greeted with even more raucous laughter than it had been at the afternoon performance.
Mouths (including even Daffy's) fell open as the beanstalk grew while Jack slept, and the audience began nudging one another with delight. By the time Jack climbed the beanstalk into the giant's kingdom, Rupert had all of Bishop's Lacey eating out of his hand.
How was Mutt Wilmott reacting to this success? I wondered. Here was Rupert, obviously at his best in a live (so to speak) performance, with no television apparatus--wonderful as it was--standing between him and his audience. When I turned to look, I saw that Mutt was gone, and the vicar had taken his chair.
More oddly, Gordon Ingleby, too, was no longer present. His chair stood empty, but Grace still sat motionless, her vacant eyes fixed on the stage, where the giant's wife had just hidden Jack in her great stone oven.
'Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum!' the giant roared as he came into the kitchen. 'I smell the blood of an Englishman!'
'Jack leapt out of the oven ...,' said Mother Goose.
'Master! Master!' cried the charming puppet harp, plucking at its own strings in agitation. This was the part I liked best.
'... grabbed the golden harp, and took to his heels, with the giant close behind!'
Down the beanstalk came Jack, the green leaves billowing round him. When the vegetation thinned out at last, the scene had changed to his mother's cottage. It was a marvelous effect, and I couldn't for the life of me see how Rupert had done it. I would have to ask him.
'Mother! Mother! Fetch the axe!' Jack shrieked, and the old lady came hobbling round from the garden--oh, so slowly!--with the hatchet in her hand.
Jack threw himself at the beanstalk with all his might, the axe flying fast and furious, the beanstalk shrinking back again and again as if in agony from the wickedly glinting blade.
And then, as it had done before, the beanstalk sagged, and crumpled to the ground.
Jack seemed to be looking up as, with a sound like thunder, the giant came crashing down from the sky.
For a few moments, the monster lay twitching horribly, a trickle of ruby blood oozing from the corner of its mouth, its ghastly head and shoulders filling the stage with flying sparks, as smoke and little flames rose in acrid tendrils from its burning hair and goatee. But the blank eyes that stared out unseeing into mine were not those of the hinged giant, Galligantus--they were the glazed and dying eyes of Rupert Porson.
