The choice had been made by Tamsin, who immediately saw that John Trent was up there. She appropriated the chair next to his at the end of the front row.
‘We thought you had gone home,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We had to get out of our cabin before ten this morning, so we left soon after breakfast and I took my parents home and came back here, but I’m afraid I can’t stay to the end.’
‘We didn’t think we should see you again.’
‘Oh, these bad pennies, you know. Hullo, isn’t that your clinging vine in the doorway?’
‘Oh, dear, yes. We hoped he had moved on.’
‘It doesn’t look like it, and he is headed this way. He’s got two people with him.’
Adam, who was coming towards the platform, was waylaid by Peggy. They heard her say: ‘Sorry, but your ticket doesn’t entitle you to sit up there. This way, please.’ The middle-aged couple who had accompanied him were already being directed by the caretaker to the second row down below. Adam shrugged his shoulders and took a seat in the body of the hall as near to the door as he could get, and the couple got up and joined him, but, a few words having been exchanged, they returned to the more central seats in the second row to which they had first been directed, and the bulk of the audience began to come in.
Like many amateur performances, the show started late, Mick having mislaid a shoe, but by twenty minutes past three the two musicians had taken their places and soon the company was rendering the first of three folk- songs with Pippa at the piano, her flute in its case resting on the chair next to Peggy, who was accompanying on the violin.
The audience was not a large one, although a certain amount of money had been taken at the door, but the applause was more generous than Giles had expected it to be. The songs went down well, the dances even better, and it was a flushed and happy company which gathered in the dressing-room at the end of the dance in which Mick had been ritually slain and the bloody head carried round in triumph, a considerable alteration to the original version, but one well received by the audience.
John Trent, among others, missed this grand finale and Adam Penshaw saw even less of the show than John, for he stayed only for the three opening songs and the two folk-dances which followed them. John stayed until four o’clock and then took advantage of his place at the end of the row near the platform steps, which he had chosen so that he could slip away without disturbing anybody, gave Tamsin’s hand a squeeze and made an unobtrusive exit in the middle of three sea-shanties which preceded the hornpipe. The songs were to give Mick time to take off the beard he wore as a morris and sword dancer (different in colour and shape from the one which Pippa so much disliked on herself) and get into the blonde wig, black stockings and a skirt borrowed from Peggy, ready to dance as a bumbboat woman between Giles and Plum, the two sailors. The choruses were left therefore to the depleted choir consisting of Peter, Ronnie, Willie and Peggy, with Pippa, also singing, at the piano.
Under cover of the sea-shanties Tamsin murmured to Hermione, who was seated between her and Isobel, ‘John asked for my address.’
‘Did you give it to him?’
‘Yes. he said he would write.’
‘Pity he has to go home.’
As soon as the performance was over and the audience were beginning to leave the hall, the performers, pleased with themselves, remained in the dressing-room while the audience was dispersing. The hall being clear except for the chairs and a certain amount of litter, the caretaker came round to say that the photographer was ready. Giles went out to speak to him and learned that he wanted to take several pictures from which the editor of the local paper would make a selection.
As the company, including Pippa as the hobby horse, were still in their sword-dance costumes, that group was taken first and was to be followed by the folk-dancers. This involved only four of the company: Giles, Willie, Peggy, and Mick in his impersonation of a girl. The first three had little alteration to make in their costumes, but it was different for Mick.
‘I’ll be a minute or two getting my beard off and myself into the petticoats,’ he said. ‘Tell the chap I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Well, while you’re changing, the rest of us can begin clearing the hall. It’s wanted for the Youth Club tonight and the caretaker has to get the floor and the platform swept and the table-tennis trestles and boards out. I promised we would stack up the chairs and move the piano to where he wants it, so we can save a bit of our own time if we start the chores now. The photographer will have to wait,’ said Giles.
This business of changing his clothes took Mick so long, apparently, that when all the chairs were stacked, the platform cleared and the piano moved, he still had not joined the others.
‘He must have stuck too much glue on that beard, or something,’ said the photographer, who was becoming restless. ‘Could one of you go and hurry him up a bit? I’ve got another assignment to cover.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Peggy immediately. She darted away before anyone else could offer to go, and banged the heavy door shut behind her. Ten more minutes went by and the photographer said that he proposed to make do with the pictures he had already taken, and promptly removed himself and his camera. Giles, who had bounded towards the dressing-room, returned to find him gone. He had news for his team.
‘Not a sign of either of them,’ he said. ‘Mick must have got changed, because his girl-outfit has gone and his flannels and bells and things are on the floor in the little washroom. I can’t think what has happened.’
‘I can,’ said Pippa and Willie in unison. They looked at one another and Willie continued, ‘She was always after him. I reckon it was a put-up job between them. He is a weak, soft-hearted fellow, so she’s had her own way at last and taken him off with her. She swore to Judy that she would have him all to herself one day, and I think she’s proved herself right.’
‘Well, some girls in one of the forest cabins have offered to take Pippa for the night,’ said Giles to the others, ‘but the rest of us have got to get to the next hostel and that’s forty miles off. Be hanged to those two idiots! They’ll have either the tandem or Peggy’s own bike and one of ours. They must have slipped out by the back door. It was open when I went in.’
The bicycles had been left in an unlocked shed near the main door of the hall, so the party went out that way. The tandem was gone, but the trailer which held the properties was still there.
‘We’ll have to leave it here for a day or two,’ said Giles to the caretaker. ‘I’ll get it picked up as soon as I can. Willie, you’ll have to put up the saddle on Peggy’s bike and ride that, I’m afraid. It’s no good cursing. Come on, or we shall hardly make the hostel by ten and that’s the deadline.’
‘What’s that on your shoe?’ asked Peter. Giles glanced down and said, ‘Looks as though I trod on a tube of red greasepaint in the changing-room. Somebody must have dropped it. Come on! Come on! Pippa, you know the way to the forest and they gave you the number of the cabin, didn’t they? Be seeing you!’
‘I want to go with you.’
‘No, no. You be a good girl and go to that forest cabin for the night. They’ll be expecting you. We shall be better on our own. We’re going to scorch. You would never be able to keep up.’
‘Oh, all right.’ She mounted her bicycle, waved good-bye and cycled northwards to where Erica was preparing a hot supper for the four young women and the two visitors they expected, for Peggy had also been offered a bed in the cabin.
‘I’m sorry for those boys,’ Tamsin had said, ‘but we’re doing our bit, anyway.’
‘Oh, who cares about boys?’ retorted Isobel. ‘They are simply little things which are sent to try us. You’d know, if you had them in school, as I have.’
‘I have them on building-sites, and I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Erica.
‘Fancy John turning up like that! ’ said Tamsin. ‘I was awfully glad.’
‘A marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place,’ said Hermione. Tamsin picked up a lump of dough from Erica’s pastryboard and flung it at her.
Chapter 11: BLOOD-CAP
« ^ »
Innocent and ignorant of what had actually happened to Mick and Peggy, and attaching quite the wrong explanation to the wide-open back door which led out of their changing-room, Giles and the others pedalled away
