The Living Dead

'Yes, I've spent many happy hours in this theatre, down the years, and frankly it pains me to carry this burden of news.'

'What news?'

'Mr. Calloway, I have to inform you that your Twelfth Night will be the last production the Elysium will see.'

The statement didn't come as much of a surprise, but it still hurt, and the internal wince must have registered on Calloway's face.

'Ah . . . so you didn't know. I thought not. They always keep the artists in ignorance don't they? It's a satisfaction the Apollonians will never relinquish. The accountant's revenge.'

'Hammersmith,' said Calloway.

'Hammersmith.'

'Bastard.'

'His clan are never to be trusted, but then I hardly need to tell you that.'

'Are you sure about the closure?'

'Certainly. He'd do it tomorrow if he could.'

'But why? I've done Stoppard here, Tennessee Williams—always played to good houses. It doesn't make sense.'

'It makes admirable financial sense, I'm afraid, and if you think in figures, as Hammersmith does, there's no riposte to simple arithmetic. The Elysium's getting old. We're all getting old. We creak. We feel our age in our joints: our instinct is to lie down and be gone away.'

Gone away: the voice became melodramatically thin, a whisper of longing.

'How do you know about this?'

'I was, for many years, a trustee of the theatre, and since my retirement I've made it my business to—what's the phrase?—keep my ear to the ground. It's difficult, in this day and age, to evoke the triumph this stage has seen . . .'

His voice trailed away, in a reverie. It seemed true, not an effect.

Then, business-like once more: 'This theatre is about to die, Mr. Calloway. You will be present at the last rites, through no fault of your own. I felt you ought to be . . . warned.'

'Thank you. I appreciate that. Tell me, were you ever an actor yourself?'

'What makes you think that?'

'The voice.'

'Too rhetorical by half, I know. My curse, I'm afraid. I can scarcely ask for a cup of coffee without sounding like Lear in the storm.'

He laughed, heartily, at his own expense. Calloway began to warm to the fellow. Maybe he was a little archaic-looking, perhaps even slightly absurd, but there was a full-bloodedness about his manner that caught Calloway's imagination. Lichfield wasn't apologetic about his love of theatre, like so many in the profession, people who trod the boards as a second-best, their souls sold to the movies.

'I have, I will confess, dabbled in the craft a little,' Lichfield confided, 'but I just don't have the stamina for it, I'm afraid. Now my wife—'

Wife? Calloway was surprised Lichfield had a heterosexual bone in his body.

'—My wife Constantia has played here on a number of occasions, and I may say very successfully. Before the war of course.'

'It's a pity to close the place.'

'Indeed. But there are no last-act miracles to be performed, I'm afraid. The Elysium will be rubble in six weeks' time, and there's an end to it. I just wanted you to know that interests other than the crassly commercial are watching over this closing production. Think of us as guardian angels. We wish you well, Terence, we all wish you well.'

It was a genuine sentiment, simply stated. Calloway was touched by this man's concern, and a little chastened by it. It put his own stepping-stone ambitions in an unflattering perspective. Lichfield went on: 'We care to see this theatre end its days in suitable style, then die a good death.'

'Damn shame.'

'Too late for regrets by a long chalk. We should never have given up Dionysus for Apollo.'

'What?'

'Sold ourselves to the accountants, to legitimacy, to the likes of Mr. Hammersmith, whose soul, if he has one, must be the size of my fingernail, and grey as a louse's back. We should have had the courage of our depictions, I think. Served poetry and lived under the stars.'

Calloway didn't quite follow the allusions, but he got the general drift, and respected the viewpoint.

Off stage left, Diane's voice cut the solemn atmosphere like a plastic knife.

'Terry? Are you there?'

The spell was broken: Calloway hadn't been aware how hypnotic Lichfield's presence was until that other voice came between them. Listening to him was like being rocked in familiar arms. Lichfield stepped to the edge of the stage, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial rasp.

'One last thing, Terence—'

'Yes?'

'Your Viola. She lacks, if you'll forgive my pointing it out, the special qualities required for the role.'

Calloway hung fire.

'I know,' Lichfield continued, 'personal loyalties prevent honesty in these matters.'

'No,' Calloway replied, 'you're right. But she's popular.'

'So was bear-baiting, Terence.'

A luminous smile spread beneath the brim, hanging in the shadow like the grin of the Cheshire Cat.

'I'm only joking,' said Lichfield, his rasp a chuckle now. 'Bears can be charming.'

'Terry, there you are.'

Diane appeared, over-dressed as usual, from behind the tabs. There was surely an embarrassing confrontation in the air. But Lichfield was walking away down the false perspective of the hedges towards the backdrop.

'Here I am,' said Terry.

'Who are you talking to?'

But Lichfield had exited, as smoothly and as quietly as he had entered. Diane hadn't even seen him go.

'Oh, just an angel,' said Calloway.

The first Dress Rehearsal wasn't, all things considered, as bad as Calloway had anticipated: it was immeasurably worse. Cues were lost, props mislaid, entrances missed; the comic business seemed ill-contrived and laborious; the performances either hopelessly overwrought or trifling. This was a Twelfth Night that seemed to last a year. Halfway through the third act Calloway glanced at his watch, and realized an uncut performance of Macbeth (with interval) would now be over.

He sat in the stalls with his head buried in his hands, contemplating the work that he still had to do if he was to bring this production up to scratch. Not for the first time on this show he felt helpless in the face of the casting problems. Cues could be tightened, props rehearsed with, entrances practised until they were engraved on the memory. But a bad actor is a bad actor is a bad actor. He could labour till doomsday neatening and sharpening, but he could not make a silk purse of the sow's ear that was Diane Duvall.

With all the skill of an acrobat she contrived to skirt every significance, to ignore every opportunity to move the audience, to avoid every nuance the playwright would insist on putting in her way. It was a performance heroic in its ineptitude, reducing the delicate characterization Calloway had been at pains to create to a single-note whine. This Viola was soap-opera pap, less human than the hedges, and about as green.

The critics would slaughter her.

Worse than that, Lichfield would be disappointed. To his considerable surprise the impact of Lichfield's appearance hadn't dwindled; Calloway couldn't forget his actorly projection, his posing, his rhetoric. It had moved him more deeply than he was prepared to admit, and the thought of this Twelfth Night, with this Viola, becoming the swan-song of Lichfield's beloved Elysium perturbed and embarrassed