Part 2 (1/2)

'Tsk,' Bill said.

'Paper-clips,' Wally said, kneeling to pick up one from the floor. He took Bill's arm and drew him away from the window to a place where the actor would not be upset by the sight of schoolchildren. As Wally had a much caricatured tendency to furtiveness, a habit of bringing his mouth up to your ear to communicate to you the most public facts, his behaviour did not seem unusual. 'We've had a major problem with the paper-clips, frere,' he hissed to Bill, still holding his arm tightly. 'I wondered if I could get your advice.'

'You want to talk to me about paper-clips?' paper-clips?'

'You don't have time for that sort of stuff? OK, I understand. So how is the suit? Is it too hot?' He began patting at Bill's sculpted foam rubber like a tailor, s.h.i.+fting the shoulders, smoothing the chest.

'Stop it, frere. I've got to talk to you about the set.'

'The set. Of course. Let's get out of here.'

Bill didn't move. 'I don't like that platform. It's lethal.'

Claire Chen placed her phone on the cradle. 'Oh great ...'

Wally winked at Claire and made a face and pushed his hair back from his hair line so it stood high on his head. He raised his ginger eyebrows at her, rolled his eyes, trying to signal that he did not want Bill looking in her direction.

To Wally, Claire said, 'What?'

To Bill, 'Who was the macho man who didn't need the rails?'

'It's OK,' Wally said. 'Just leave this stuff to me.'

'It is not OK,' Claire said, 'to say one thing at a company meeting and then come in here half an hour before the curtain in a funk.'

'A what?' Bill said, stepping towards her.

'A funk,' she said, picking up a phone. 'h.e.l.lo, Feu Follet.'

'It's OK,'Wally said.

But it was not OK Bill was staring out the window past Claire's bare back.

'Oh, I see,' he said. 'Very nice. You've got rug rats. I see. So,' he said to Wally, 'get rid of them.'

'Frere, you know that ain't possible.'

'Well I'm not playing to them.'

'Talk to Felicity,' Claire said, her hand across the mouthpiece.

Bill looked at Wally, his black eyes fast and anxious. 'Please, frere. This is press night.' press night.'

'Talk to Felicity,' Claire said, holding the phone under her smooth round chin. 'Sorry, could you hold. It's not just rug rats,' she said, 'it's other stuff. For G.o.d's sake, Bill, surely you you can go into her room. can go into her room. Please?' Please?'

'What's that meant to mean?' Bill said. You could see his colour glowing through his make-up. The second phone began to ring. Wally answered it and put it on hold.

Claire took the phone from Wally. 'I want to know,' she said, 'is Felicity playing First Witch or not? If I have to do her lines as well, I want to know. Surely you can go in and ask her. Isn't that clear enough?'

'No.' Bill found a paper-clip and began twisting it. 'It is not clear.'

'It's your baby, isn't it?' Claire said, and held his eye.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said, still looking hard at Bill. 'h.e.l.lo, Feu Follet.'

'No,' Bill said to Claire as she hung up, 'it's not not my baby not necessarily.' my baby not necessarily.'

'Not necessarily?' necessarily?' Claire said. Claire said.

Wally stared at the strong body, the intelligent face with its sensual lips, at this young man who had been graced by G.o.d in so many ways, not least with the pleasure of holding Felicity Smith in his arms.

'What?' Bill demanded of him. His lips had lost their shape. 'What's so weird about that? It's true. All I said was, not Bill demanded of him. His lips had lost their shape. 'What's so weird about that? It's true. All I said was, not necessarily.' necessarily.'

Wally hesitated. 'Did you talk to the Gardiacivil? Did they frighten you, mo-ami?' he asked. 'They don't know anything. They're only penguins. They're not doctors.'

'No one frightened me,' Bill said. 'What's everyone acting so weird about?' He picked up a paper-clip from the floor and handed it to Wally. 'If anyone is frightened, it's you two. Look at you.'

'The curtain's up in fifteen minutes,' Claire said. 'If you want to change the platform you've got twelve minutes to do it.'

'You want to talk about this platform?' Wally said.

'Sure,' Bill said.

'Well come on, mo-ami.' Wally cuffed him lightly on the head he could not help it. 'We'll sit up there together.'

'I don't have a problem sitting on it,' Bill said, rubbing his head and frowning. 'I have a problem fighting on it.'

'I know,' Wally said, 'I know.' As he walked out across the cobbled path and pushed through the velvet curtain into the sweet pine smell of the deep, sawdust-covered stage, he took his tension in his shoulders, pulled his biceps in against his ribs, and when he began his ascent towards the platform he was a production manager going to fix a problem. He had no intention of quarrelling with an actor before a curtain.

6.

To picture Bill and Wally as they climbed up the set of the Scottish Play, you need first to know that the theatre was constructed in the largest of the old Circus School rings. The ceiling was a good forty feet from the sawdust ring and around the ring were seats not the original bleachers, which had been termite-infested, but in the original configuration, that human circle which the Voorstand Sirkus abandoned but which gave the much humbler circuses of Efica their live, electrically charged audiences.

Many of the Feu Follet actors had some sort of connection with the indigenous circus and my mother used to like to shape her plays so that they used or developed, wherever possible, these disappearing skills. Our Shakespeare had tumbling, slack ropes, posturing, trapeze and general acrobatics, and in the case of the Scottish Play she had designed a kind of jungle gym which could suggest a room in the palace, say, but also a scaffolding on which some fight scenes could be ch.o.r.eographed.

The idea was that Macbeth would work himself into higher and higher and more 'dangerous' positions until, on a platform just under the lighting rig, in his final conflict with Macduff, he would tumble and fall, not into their normal safety net there was not room to stretch it but into an eight-by-eight footer they had borrowed from the Theatre for the Deaf.

Wally, as everybody knew, was never happy with heights. He, the 'Human Ball' 'Human Ball', was observed to avoid long ladders and lighting rigs whenever possible, and even though he had been aware of the safety problems with Bill's platform, he had not climbed to inspect it himself, but had sent Sparrowgra.s.s Glashan to deal with it instead.

But now, of course, he had no choice. He climbed, following the glow-tape in the gloom.

On the platform, forty feet above the audience, breathing the hot air under the cobwebbed corrugated roof, he searched for the new black safety wires he had ordered to be strung around the perimeter of the platform. With the lights on pre-set, it was gloomy up here. There was glow-tape marking the platform perimeters, but the wires were painted black. He searched for them with his hand, a little giddily.

'How's that?' he said, finding a wire and tw.a.n.ging it, as if he were touching it only for the purpose of demonstrating its strength. 'Does that solve your safety problem?'