Angel with Two Faces

once a summer – she would have a theatre in her back garden.

As he continued down the cliff, and Miss Cade’s vision became his, he thought again how surprisingly natural the whole thing seemed once you got used to the idea. The stage was a beautiful stretch of greensward, bordered on either side by granite outcrops which formed natural wings, and, along the cliff edge, by recently constructed balustrades and walls with a solid stone throne on a dais as centrepiece. The natural curve of the slope had been carefully tiered and turfed to provide the seating, giving the audience a perfect view of the play of the moment as well as uninterrupted sightlines across some of the finest cliff scenery in Cornwall.

‘Archie! Over here.’ He looked to his right and acknowledged Lettice’s wave. She and Ronnie were both on their knees on the grass, in apparent supplication to the robed figure who stood above them on a stool. It was impossible for him to tell who it was because of the heavy cowl that draped the monk’s face, but it amused him to see his cousins in any sort of pious position, and he couldn’t resist making the most of it.

‘I thought the rest of the world knelt to you as far as theatre was concerned,’ he said mischievously. ‘Surely you’re not losing your touch?’

Ronnie, her mouth full of pins, was unable to offer any of her usual tart retorts, but Lettice smiled good- naturedly. ‘Actually, you’re not as far off as you may think,’ she said. ‘We could do with a bit of divine assistance, as it happens, and I’m never too proud to beg.’

‘I think it’s called praying, dear, when God’s at the other end of the call,’ Ronnie said as she placed the last of the pins in the hem of the habit. ‘Although I’ve never been too sure of the difference.’ She patted the monk’s thigh in a less than sacred fashion. ‘There you go, Brother – all done. Take that off again and we’ll get it sewn up for you. It’s not the place to trip over your skirt.’

The monk removed its hood and Archie was surprised to see that the brother in question was a woman – the costume had made it impossible to tell. He recognised her vaguely as one of the young farmers’ wives from the estate, and she smiled at him shyly before slipping behind one of the rocks to change.

He sat down on the grass next to Lettice and Ronnie and lifted his face to the sun. ‘I’m not looking forward to getting into one of those,’ he said. ‘Don’t monks have a summer wardrobe?’

‘You don’t have a wardrobe at all at the moment,’ said Lettice, unscrewing the top of a thermos flask and pouring three cups of strong-looking tea. ‘That’s what I meant about divine assistance – we haven’t got a costume for you.’

‘I thought you said Nathaniel’s would fit with a few minor adjustments?’

‘It would have done – you’re only slightly broader than him – but he can’t find it anywhere. Says he’s sure he left it in the vestry after the fitting but now it’s nowhere to be seen. It must have been put into the laundry by mistake.’

‘But he’s a curate, for God’s sake,’ Archie said, bewildered. ‘Surely you’re not telling me that he can’t lay his hands on a cassock?’

‘Oh, Archie – don’t be silly,’ said Lettice, a little impatiently. ‘You can’t just wear any old thing – it’s got to fit in with the scheme of the play.’

‘Quite right,’ Ronnie said, tongue in cheek. ‘Just think of what the critics would say – not to mention the Anglican’s Weekly.’ She received a glare of reproach from her sister, and added: ‘Lettice has a point, though. You’re the narrator and you’re on stage all the time, holding the thing together, so you’ve got to look the part.’

‘And we’ve still got time to run you something up from scratch if we get on with it now,’ Lettice said, reminding Archie of the spirit which had taken his cousins to the top of a very slippery profession. ‘When Janet’s hem is done, everyone else will be sorted. You’ll have to do the dress rehearsal in your own clothes, but come up to Minack House when it’s finished and we’ll have something for you. Rowena’s put her work room at our disposal.’

As the girls went off up the cliff, laden with everything they needed to perform the impossible, Archie finished his tea and watched the bustle of activity on stage. Jago Snipe had arrived now and was setting about the unenviable task of unloading scenery from his van at the top of the cliff. He watched as the undertaker carried the simple refectory benches which Archie had seen in his workshop down the narrow path to the stage, putting them in place one by one under Morveth’s direction. He was a strong man, more than used to lifting heavy wood, and he made the shifting of the scenery look easy, but there was a poignancy to his solitary task – a task which he seemed to be pursuing with a fierce concentration, as if it could take his mind off the fact that his son was supposed to be helping him. Where was Christopher, Archie wondered? He had been sincere in his reassurances to Jago the day before: a lot of missing-person cases had come his way in the course of his career and, while some of them had ended in tragedy, many had concluded with nothing more serious than an embarrassed son or daughter returning home, hungry and contrite. From what Archie had seen of him, Christopher was not the sort of boy who had either the courage or the selfishness to stay away for long, but he had been brought up to respect life and death and, if Jacks was to be believed, Archie wasn’t surprised that guilt over his part in the last morning of Harry’s life – as childish and out of character as it had been – would sit heavily on his conscience.

A steady trail of people made its way down the cliff, indicating that the bus laid on by Poltroon’s, the local garage, to transport villagers and estate workers to and from the Minack had completed its first journey. The early arrivals were those involved in the production, either as cast or crew, and Archie was surprised to see that Joseph Caplin and Kestrel Jacks – neither of whom he would have had down as aspiring entertainers – were among the crowd. Clearly William’s powers of persuasion were not confined to family, he thought wryly as he got up to join everyone.

‘You can have half an hour to settle in, and then I want you all back here in your costumes ready to start,’ Morveth was saying, and he was amused to note that she had not lost her touch: most of the villagers – himself included – had been taught by Morveth Wearne at one stage or another, and they filed off now as dutifully as they had ten, twenty or thirty years ago in the playground.

‘This brings back a few memories,’ he said, and she smiled warmly at him.

‘As far as I remember, drama was never your favourite subject, so it’s nice of you to help us out now.’

The ‘us’ wasn’t intentional, he knew, but the idea that he was an outsider doing a favour struck him all the more forcefully for the casual way in which it had been expressed, and he was irrationally irritated by it. ‘It’s the least I can do while I’m at home,’ he said, unable to avoid placing a slight emphasis on the final word, ‘and some would say I’ve chosen drama for a profession.’

Morveth did not flinch at the rebuke, and seemed amused rather than embarrassed by his offence. ‘Then come home more often, Archie,’ she said, with that quiet way of defusing any antagonism which had served her so well in teaching. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you that resting is part of the job?’

Suddenly, he felt like a petulant ten-year-old, inclined to unreasonable tantrums, and could only smile in defeat. ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said, ‘but only if you don’t put me through this again. What do you want me to do?’

‘Well, I gather your costume’s still to come, so you’ve got some time while the others get changed. Why don’t you make sure you’re familiar with the stage? You’ll be standing there,’ she continued, pointing to a circle of grass, stage right, which stood about a foot higher than the rest of the performance area, forming a natural platform, ‘and you won’t be going backstage like the others, so you don’t need to worry about all the entrances and exits, but I promised Miss Cade faithfully that everyone would know what was safe and what wasn’t. After last year…’ She tailed off, knowing that the story was legendary enough for her not to have to repeat it. ‘If there’s any time left, have a look through the script – but don’t worry too much. We’ll have long enough to run through it carefully.’

Morveth disappeared to make sure that everyone had found their costumes, and Archie walked over to the rear of the stage. He was familiar with the Minack, having been to the productions which his cousins had taken part in, and he knew what to expect when he looked over the balustrade, but the sudden drop to the rocks below still made his heart stop. About eight feet beneath him, there was a narrow path – accessed by two sets of steps – which ran behind the stage area and which the actors used for most of their entrances and exits. Beyond that path, and with only a fragile-looking wire fence in between, the ground simply fell away into nothingness. He leaned further over and looked down into the zawn, a rift in the cliffs which – at high tide, as it was now – was filled with an angry, churning sea. No wonder the balustrade and pillars had been added, he thought; the stage must be eighty or ninety feet above the rocks, and an actor making a wrong move or getting carried away with his performance faced a perilous fall. Apart from anything else, it wasn’t good for the nerves of an audience to spend the entire