Fault in the Structure

Laura looked suspiciously at her employer, convinced that she was being teased, but unable to see the point of the teasing.

CHAPTER 14

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There are enough pickers and stealers in this town.

Among few sets of people do envy and jealousy flourish more lushly and with more rapid growth than among the members of an amateur dramatic and operatic society. This generalisation does not apply to those who are given the leading roles, of course. So far as the Chardle group was concerned, the three leading women players were well satisfied with the parts which Denbigh had allotted them. Laura was delighted to have been given Mrs Peachum, Sybil Gartner had expected to play Polly and had not been disappointed and, although she had her detractors, Melanie Cardew, that raddled tragedy queen, was pleased at first and (although nothing would have induced her to say so) surprised at having been asked to play Lucy Lockit, a part which, except for her defection, would have been offered to Marigold Tench, who had a better voice.

That Polly Peachum had been given to Sybil nobody queried. It was known (for she frequently referred to the fact) that she took singing lessons and (like Cora Bellinger, whose voice could bring down plaster from the ceiling) was ‘studying for opera’. Besides this, she knew that she had a good stage presence. She was, in fact, a personable enough young woman although she had hard eyes and an obstinate chin. However, she also had an attractive figure, including what Damon Runyan would describe as ‘bumps here and there where a doll is entitled to have bumps’, and there was no doubt that, as Laura put it, she could out-voice the rest of the company even when she was singing pianissimo, for hers was a high, clear soprano, piercing rather than sweet, and of undoubted power.

Over Laura’s own part in the production there had also been no envious murmurings. For one thing, there was no other obvious choice for Mrs Peachum and, for another, the character, dominant in the first Act, does not appear at all during the rest of the performance, a fact to deter the exhibitionists, the self-assertive and the merely vain. What was more, in Denbigh’s production it was decreed that whoever played Mrs Peachum should take over the dull and thankless office of prompter for the last two Acts. The Lucy Lockit, who did not come on stage until Act Two, was to occupy the prompter’s stool for Act One before handing over to Mrs Peachum at the first interval while the stage was being re-set for the scene at the Newgate tavern, but that ended her responsibility.

Unlike Sir Nigel Playfair’s classic revival of The Beggar’s Opera in the 1920s, which was produced against only one background, the Chardle production was to enjoy various changes of scene, for with amateurs, as Denbigh knew, every dog must have his day and this applied as much to the stage carpenters and the scene-painters as to the actors themselves, so that the scene was to be changed not only between the Acts, but even between the two scenes in Act Two and the three scenes in Act Three. This took time, a fact which became of considerable importance later.

Apart from those allotted to Laura, Sybil and Melanie, there were only minor roles for the women and, once the three principal male roles were settled, the men were in like case. There was no obvious candidate, moreover, for the principal male part, that of the highwayman Macheath, so, after some misgivings, Denbigh had chosen young Cyril Wincott, but more for his tall figure and handsome countenance than because of his dramatic and musical gifts. The choice was put down by his detractors to favouritism on the score that Cyril was a schoolmaster and therefore in Denbigh’s camp, but this was untrue.

Cyril’s position, therefore, was a less happy one than Sybil’s or Laura’s, for whereas they had no detractors, Cyril had more than one. The president of the society, Hamilton Haynings, the possessor of a foghorn bass-baritone whose resonance, his critics agreed among themselves, would have been better employed on a tug on the Thames rather than in the confined space of the Chardle town hall, had expected to be able to pull his rank and obtain the leading man’s part. He had been fobbed off (in his own opinion) with Lockit, Lucy’s jailor father, and his lines had been cut to restrict him to very short appearances with his daughter, with Macheath and with Peachum, Polly’s father. He was given no solo at all and his only contribution to the musical side of the affair was a bawling duet in which, Denbigh privately considered, his voice could do little harm.

Peachum, a meaty part which, in lieu of playing Macheath, Hamilton would have accepted with good grace, had been given to James Hunty, the possessor of a baritone voice of good although untrained quality which he himself considered would have suited the part of Macheath far better than did Cyril’s light and pleasant tenor.

‘Macheath was never meant for a tenor,’ he said plaintively to Marigold Tench who, bitterly regretful of her walk-out from a meeting earlier on, persisted in haunting the rehearsals in a sick mood of masochistic self- punishment.

‘You couldn’t play Macheath, not with your waistline,’ said Marigold, displaying the reverse of the medal and turning sadistic. There were also others, as Laura soon found out, who were restless and dissatisfied. She had been mistaken, for one thing, in assuming, on too little evidence, that young Stella Walker was pleased with the two tiny parts of Jenny Diver and Diana Trapes. She was soon in the same camp as the blonde woman who had opted for a pantomime. The blonde, like Marigold, also insisted upon turning up at rehearsals, ostensibly to work out the costumes which would be required. She also decided to assist Farrow by turning over the pages of the score for him. It was in manuscript and not easy for the pianist to follow. Moreover, it was on separate sheets of paper which were madly inclined to flutter to the floor when anybody handled them with insufficient care. After the first two rehearsals, in fact, Ernest, living up to his name, learnt the tunes by heart and thus rendered the blonde’s officious assistance unnecessary. Apart from this, Haynings tackled her with so much belligerence that she thought it well to apologise and to behave herself at all subsequent rehearsals, which she still insisted upon attending.

It had been arranged that, until the cast was word-perfect and had learnt the songs, Denbigh would not take over the rehearsals. The ‘words’ rehearsals for the society’s productions had usually taken place in Clarice Blaine’s house with coffee and biscuits to follow, but she had issued no invitation to the cast of The Beggar’s Opera to invade her drawing-room. This attitude was to mark her resentment at being turned down as stage manager and her dire disapproval of the piece, but her excuse (for even this autocratic lady felt bound to explain so blatant a departure from custom) was that she had no piano, an excuse which, at a words-only rehearsal, hardly made sense.

All the rehearsals, until Denbigh took them over, were held, therefore, in the small, draughty hall of a local primary school, the hiring of which was cheap because its amenities were so few. Ernest, who had not dared to complain about Mabelle van Pieter’s behaviour at the piano, did complain bitterly (and with reason) about the instrument itself. It was out of tune, two of the notes made no sound at all and it was on castors so that, if anybody leaned against it, and this usually meant a soloist who had come over to expostulate with the pianist, it made a disconcerting right-angled turn and left the embarrassed and fuming Ernest playing on air instead of on the keyboard.