The hold-up had put her timing out. She arrived at the theatre to find the atmosphere a mixture of excitement, confusion, last-minute panic. Never mind, she could cope. Her first scene as Viola over, she tore back to the dressing-room to change to Cesario. 'Oh, get out, can't you? I want the place to myself.' That's better, she thought, now I'm in control. I'm the boss around this place, or very soon will be. Off with Viola's wig, a brush to her own short hair. On with the breeches, on with the hose. Cape set on my shoulders. Dagger in my belt. Then a tap at the door. What the hell now?
'Who is it?' she called.
'A packet for you, Miss Blair. It's come express.'
'Oh, throw it down.'
Last minute touch to eyes, then stand back, take a last look, you'll do, you'll do. They'll all be shouting their heads off tomorrow night. She glanced away from the mirror, down to the packet on the table. A square-shaped envelope. It bore the post-mark Eire. Her heart turned over. She stood there a moment holding it in her hands, then tore the envelope open. A letter fell out, and something hard, between cardboard. She seized the letter first.
Dear Jinnie,
I'm off to the U.S. in the morning to see a publisher who has finally shown interest in my scholarly works, stone circles, ring forts, Early Bronze Age in Ireland, etc., etc., but I spare you… I shall probably be away for some months, and you can read in your glossy magazines about a one-time recluse spouting his head off in universities to the American young. In point of fact it suits me well to be out of the country for a while, what with one thing and another, as they say.
I have been burning some of my papers before leaving, and came across the enclosed photograph amongst a pile of junk in the bottom drawer of my desk. I thought it might amuse you. You may remember I told you that first evening you reminded me of someone. I see now that it was myself! Twelfth Night was the bond. Good luck, Cesario, and happy scalping.
Love, Nick.
America From her viewpooint it might just as well be Mars. She took the photograph out of its cardboard covers and looked at it, frowning. Another practical joke? But she had never had a photograph taken of herself as Viola-Cesario, so how could he have possibly faked this? Had he snapped her when she wasn't aware of it, then placed the head on other shoulders? Impossible. She turned it over. He had written across the back, 'Nick Barry as Cesario in Twelfth Night. Dartmouth. 1929.'
She looked at the photograph again. Her nose, her chin, the cocky expression, head tip-tilted in the air. Even the stance, hand on hip. The thick cropped hair. Suddenly she was not standing in the dressing-room at all but in her father's bedroom, beside the window, and she heard him move, and she turned to look at him. He was staring at her, an expression of horror and disbelief upon his face. It was not accusation she had read in his eyes, but recognition. He had awakened from no nightmare, but from a dream that had lasted twenty years. Dying, he discovered truth.
They were knocking at the door again. 'Curtain coming down on Scene Three in four minutes' time, Miss Blair.'
She was lying in the van, his arms around her. 'Pam giggled a bit, then passed out cold. She'd forgotten all about it by the morning.'
Shelagh raised her eyes from the photograph she was holding in her hand and stared at herself in the mirror.
'Oh no…' she said. 'Oh, Nick… Oh my God!'
Then she took the dagger from her belt and stabbed it through the face of the boy in the photograph, ripping it apart, throwing the pieces into the waste-paper basket. And when she went back on to the stage it was not from the Duke's palace in Illyria that she saw herself moving henceforth, with painted backcloth behind her and painted boards beneath her feet, but out into a street, any street, where there were windows to be smashed and houses to burn, and stones and bricks and petrol to hand, where there were causes to despise and men to hate, for only by hating can you purge away love, only by sword, by fire.
The Way Of The Cross
THE REV. EDWARD BABCOCK stood beside one of the lounge windows of the hotel on the Mount of Olives looking across the Kedron Valley to the city of Jerusalem on the opposite hill. Darkness had come so suddenly, between the time of arrival with his small party, the allotting of rooms, unpacking, a quick wash; and now, with hardly a moment to get his bearings and study his notes and guidebook, the little group would be on him, primed with questions, each requiring some measure of individual attention.
He had not chosen this particular assignment: he was deputising for the vicar of Little Bletford, who had succumbed to an attack of influenza and had been obliged to stay on board the S.S. Ventura in Haifa, leaving his small party of seven parishioners without a shepherd. It had been felt that, in the absence of their own vicar, another clergyman would be the most suitable person to lead them on the planned twenty-four-hour excursion to Jerusalem, and so the choice had fallen on Edward Babcock. He wished it had been otherwise. It was one thing to visit Jerusalem for the first time as a pilgrim amongst other pilgrims, even as an ordinary tourist, and quite another to find himself in charge of a group of strangers who would be regretting the unavoidable absence of their own vicar, and would in addition expect him to show qualities of leadership or, worse, the social bonhomie that was so evident a characteristic of the sick man. Edward Babcock knew the type only too well. He had observed the vicar on board, forever moving amongst the more affluent of the passengers, hobnobbing with the titled, invariably at his ease. One or two even called him by his Christian name, notably Lady Althea Mason, the most prominent of the group from Little Bletford, and the doyenne, apparently, of Bletford Hall. Babcock, used to his own slum parish on the outskirts of Huddersfield, had no objection to Christian names-the members of his own youth club referred to him as Cocky often enough over a game of darts, or during one of the informal chats which the lads appeared to enjoy as much as he did himself-but snobbery was something he could not abide; and if the ailing vicar of Little Bletford thought that he, Babcock, was going to abase himself before a titled lady and her family, he was very much mistaken. Babcock had instantly summed up Lady Althea's husband, Colonel Mason, a retired army officer, as one of the old school tie brigade, and considered that their spoilt grandson Robin, instead of attending some private preparatory school, would have done better rubbing shoulders with the kids on a local council estate.
Mr and Mrs Foster were of a different calibre, but equally suspect in Babcock's eyes. Foster was managing director of an up-and-coming plastics firm, and from his conversation on the bus journey from Haifa to Jerusalem he seemed to think more of the possibilities of doing business with the Israelis than he did of visiting the Holy Places. His wife had countered the business chat by holding forth about the distress and starvation amongst Arab refugees, which, she insisted, was the responsibility of the whole world. She might have contributed towards this, thought Babcock, by wearing a less expensive fur coat, and giving the money saved to the refugees.
Mr and Mrs Smith were a young honeymoon couple. This had made them a special object of attention, giving rise to the usual indulgent glances and smiles-and even a few ill-judged jokes from Mr Foster. They would have done better, Babcock couldn't help telling himself, to have stayed in the hotel on the shores of Galilee and got to know each other properly, rather than trail around Jerusalem, the historical and religious importance of which they couldn't possibly grasp in their present mood.
The eighth, and oldest, member of the party was a spinster, Miss Dean. She was nearing seventy, she had informed them all, and it had been her life's dream to come to Jerusalem under the auspices of the vicar of Little Bletford. The substitution of the Rev. Edward Babcock for her beloved vicar, whom she alluded to as Father, had evidently spoilt her idyll.
So, thought the shepherd of the flock, glancing at his watch, the
position is not an enviable one, but it is a challenge, and one that I must face. It is also a privilege.
The lounge was filling up, and the clamour of the many tourists and pilgrims who were already taking their places in the dining-room beyond rose in the air with discordant sound. Edward Babcock looked out once more towards the lights of Jerusalem on the opposite hill. He felt alien, alone, and curiously nostalgic for Huddersfield. He
