Barnaby laughed and said, ‘She’s not really as bad as that.’

  ‘You’d know. I’ve only talked to her for five minutes, but I had an ingratiating smile all the time.’

  Barnaby put his head into the store-room and said: ‘I say, Miss Morfrey, come and talk to me for a moment in my room, we mustn’t disturb Mrs Prance.’

  She looked at him coolly.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m busy just now. I have my work to do. Oh, by the way, I gave Mr Stainer the twopence for that telephone call, you’ll be glad to hear.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “My God.”’

  ‘Yes, well, if you can manage to forget all that for the moment, and come and see me when you’re less busy, I shall be glad. It’s work I want to talk about.’

  He went back to his room, feeling annoyed with her. She was just like a child, carrying on with a silly little grievance and thinking that it gave her dignity. He wished now that he had never suggested her to Stainer.

  She came to him a quarter of an hour later, shut the door behind her, and said ‘Yes?’ He pointed to a chair without looking up. ‘Sit down, won’t you,’ he said, ‘I shan’t be a moment,’ and finished typing his letter. ‘Now we’ll both be annoyed,’ he thought.

  ‘It’s like this,’ he explained in his business voice: ‘Miss Silver, Mr Stainer’s secretary, is leaving at the end of the week to get married. We hoped she would be coming back to us almost at once, but for various reasons she isn’t. Knowing that you were fully qualified I suggested that you might be willing to see us through for a week or so until somebody suitable could be found. Obviously if you and Mr Stainer suited each other, there would be no need to look for anybody else, but of course I don’t know what your plans are about that. Stainer asked me to mention it to you, and if you were interested, he would see you and give you the details.’

  ‘I see. Do I carry the tea round in the evenings?’

  ‘Oh, has Silvie been bringing you tea?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How nice of her. It isn’t provided by the office, you know. We run it among ourselves.’

  ‘Oh!’ She blushed right up to the corners of her almond eyes; it was embarrassing to be in the presence of such humiliation. He kept his own eyes on his letter, saying, ‘Silvie manages our little club for us. Obviously we shall have to find somebody else. It’s a shilling a week, and that gives us a comfortable margin for visitors. Like yourself.’

  Still busy over his letter, he heard her say, ‘I have been quicker than I expected, and I shall have finished the work I came for this afternoon. I shan’t want any more tea, and I don’t think I want to come back.’

  ‘Right. I’ll tell Stainer.’ He looked up with the friendliest smile he could manage. ‘Come and say goodbye to me before you go. I liked our lunch together.’

  She almost ran out of the room. Damn the girl, he thought, why must she be so prickly, she’s got the hell of a life in front of her. That blasted aunt again.

  He was, as he had said, fairly busy. When Silvie brought his tea, he would ask her to ring up the secretary place, and have the candidates sent round in the morning. He dismissed all women from his mind, and went on with his work.

  It was about half-past three when Miss Morfrey came in again. She had a hat on and carried her bag. He got up, smiling and saying, ‘How nice of you.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ she said. ‘I mean not for good. At least, not if Mr Stainer thinks I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Oh, splendid. That’s grand.’ He beamed at her.

  ‘I’m afraid I was rather horrid just now,’ she said bravely.

  ‘We were neither of us very nice, considering how nice we can both be when we try. Let’s go out somewhere and try again one day, shall we?’

  ‘Yes, please. I should like it.’

  ‘Good. Come along and see Stainer. He’s a very nice fellow, terribly good at his job—which is always rather appealing, I think—and won’t really know what you look like until you’ve been here a year or so. Not that you’ll want to stay here all that time, of course.’

  Prosser’s went to the wedding in strength. Silvie was being married in her going-away dress; which, thought Barnaby absurdly, was just as well, because it allowed her legs to be seen, and assured Humby that he was getting the right bride. It also, he acknowledged, allowed her face to be seen, but it was legs which got Humby down. Uncle Jim led this radiant, divinely-legged creature up the aisle, and waited, breathing heavily, for the great moment when the clergyman asked (though he must have known by then) who was giving this woman away. Having discovered after a week’s intensive study of the marriage-service that men in his position get nothing from the author, Uncle Jim had improvised a response which left no room for doubt: clearing his throat loudly twice, tapping himself on the chest, and then, with an inclination of the right eye to the clergyman’s startled pair, blowing out his moustache in relief, and feeling (prematurely) for his pipe. A tug at the back of his coat from Auntie kept the proceedings from becoming too secular.

  The wedding was in Kensington, which was where Humby lodged, and Stainer was giving a little party for the bride at the Palace Hotel. Uncle Jim, pipe in mouth, glass in hand, drew Barnaby on one side by his middle button and said in a hoarse voice, ‘You a dowser by any chance?’

  Not being sure at first hearing if he were one or not, Barnaby said that he wasn’t.

  ‘Believe in dowsing?’ asked Uncle Jim, pointing at Barnaby with his pipe-stem.

  Feeling still a little out of touch with the conversation, Barnaby thought it safest to say with a laugh, ‘Well, what do you think?’

  Uncle Jim put his pipe back in his mouth and gave Barnaby a friendly punch in the chest. ‘Course you ain’t. Stands to reason it’s dead against nature. What’s the relation between a sprig of wood in a man’s hands and a spring o’ water twenty feet under the ground? Can you answer me that?’

  Barnaby said that he couldn’t.

  ‘If I’ve asked that question once, I’ve asked it a hundred times—a sprig o’ wood and a spring o’ water the way I put it—and nobody’s answered it proper.’

  ‘It does seem unanswerable,’ agreed Barnaby.

  ‘I won’t say if a man walked over a gold mine with a magnet is his ’and, there might be reperflections; but wood’s wood and water’s water, and wood never drew water nor water wood. You seen a dowser at work?’

  ‘Never, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Just a trick. ’E knows where it is before’and.’ He took the pipe from his mouth, stared round the room with his protruding blue eyes, and said, ‘There’s a lot of trickery going about.’

  ‘There is indeed.’

  ‘Ar. Lyn looked well.’

  It took a little time for Barnaby to identify Lyn with Silvie. He agreed enthusiastically.

  ‘Nice young chap she’s marrying. ’E agrees with me about this dowsing as they call it. I put it to ’im soon as I saw ’im. And ’e’s inventive, mind you. Up to all that sort of camboodlery. ’Ere’s your very good ’ealth, Mr—er.’

  ‘Thanks. Same to you. And Silvie—I mean Lyn—Lynette, and Humby—Spencer—— Oh, damn——The happy pair!’

  ‘That’s right.’ He drank, said ‘Dowsing!’ with great contempt, and took his opinion of it to the next unoccupied guest. It seemed to be on his mind.

  Silvie came up to him, saying, ‘You must meet Auntie, Mr Rush,’ and Auntie, smiles and tears, a little grey wisp of a woman, said, ‘Lyn will never forget what you did for her, Mr Rush, nor will I, nor will Spencer, we shall miss her terribly, but it’s always the way, isn’t it, when they grow up.’ Barnaby agreed; wondered if anybody had ever been told that she wouldn’t be losing a niece but gaining a nephew; and said, alternatively, that everybody loved—er—Lyn, and that it was lovely to see them so happy together. ‘And that’s the great thing, isn’t it, Mrs Silver?’

  Auntie nodded. ‘He’s a good young man,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have liked it if he hadn’t been.’

  Bride and bridegroom were catching the 3.20, and left the party while it was still warming up; but not before Barnaby had kissed the bride good-bye.

  ‘And remember, you’ve promised to let me come and see you in your new house.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Rush, will you really?’

  Latitudes of Mrs Willoughby Prance suddenly blotted out the bride. Silvie was smacked on the back, and a hearty voice said, ‘Well, good luck, Humberson, old chap. All the best.’ It can’t be natural, thought Barnaby. She must have gone into it carefully and decided that she would say it. Humberson! It meant nothing. He wondered if it would be helpful to tell Uncle Jim that Mrs Prance was a well-known dowser.

  So on Monday afternoon Jill brought him his tea. Silvie must have coached her, for she knew how he liked it.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘All right. It’s quite ordinary.’

  ‘A thought has just occurred to me. I’ve been given two seats for Wilson Kelly’s first night. On Wednesday. What I should like is for you to come with me, if you think it would amuse you. I haven’t been to a first night for months.’

  ‘I’ve never been.’

  ‘Oh, well, you must go once to see how you like it.’

  ‘You really want to take me?’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘I should love it. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Good. It’s eight o’clock, so we shan’t have much time for dinner. I’d suggest a drink, only you don’t. Let’s have supper afterwards instead, shall we?’

  ‘Could it be some cheap place, and we each pay our own?’

  ‘If you like. I’ll try and think of somewhere. We shall both be looking extremely lovely, so it mustn’t be too cheap. Shall I call for you, or meet you there?’

  ‘I’ll be at the theatre at five minutes to eight.’

  ‘Right. The Belvedere. Stalls, fifth row. I’ll give you your ticket to-morrow, in case we lose each other.’

  The tickets were from Chloe. She had rung up on Thursday, cancelling their lunch; giving the sort of reason which seems, on these occasions, wholly reasonable to a woman but inadequate to the man, leaving him with the conviction, undoubtedly well-founded, that she has preferred to lunch with somebody else. On the Saturday he had had a loving, apologetic letter from her, enclosing the tickets as a consolation prize, and saying, ‘Do come, darling, and then I shall be sure of seeing you.’ He knew —who didn’t?—that she had been a friend of Kelly’s, guessed that he had given her the tickets, guessed that she was going with Everard. So, being still ruffled over his cancelled lunch, he decided to take Jill with him. If it made her jealous, all the better.

  4

  ‘All right, old girl, then I’ll call for you on Wednesday. You wouldn’t care to go to a first-night, I suppose?’

  ‘Whose is it, darling?’

  ‘Wilson Kelly. Feller with a long nose. I met him once. Crashing bore I thought him, but that’s not to say he can’t act.’

  ‘Oh, I adore Wilson Kelly! Oh, do lets!’

  ‘Right. I’ll be along at 7.30. We’ll have a couple of rousers, and then push on to supper somewhere afterwards.’

  ‘Lovely, darling. And you will introduce me to him, won’t you? Because I simply adore him.’

  ‘He’s about ninety, you know. Feller with a long nose. About ninety. Still, I suppose he can act. Right, old girl. I’ll fix it.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  1

  The Belvedere had given up making history, and was now condemned to live on it. In the days when theatres were few, and mostly in control each of its own actor-manager-proprietor, the Belvedere was famous. Old actors in clubs still talked of its first nights, which had deepened the tragedy of Spion Kop or heightened the glory of Mafeking, to young actors who had heard of neither of these places, nor of the plays by which (apparently) they should be remembered. Vaguely they had supposed that all old plays were called Sweet Lavender or Colleen Bawn, and all actor-managers Sir Henry. They cared, as the old actors often pointed out to them, nothing for the traditions of the stage. They played golf, a game inimical to the art of acting. Probably they had never even heard of The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith. They hadn’t. Who was Mrs Ebbsmith?

  Since those great days (and how easily old days become great days) the glory of the Belvedere had departed. It was now one of six theatres in the hands of a syndicate. When approached humbly for the loan of one of its five theatres, the managing director would end his depressing narrative of their commitments with the words: ‘Of course you could have the Belvedere, old man’; and in reply to the unspoken comment would remind his hearer reproachfully of the famous 400-night run of Hearts Are Trumps in ’98. ‘Besides,’ he would add, ‘if you’ve got the play, old man, you know as well as I do, you can put it on in a mission-hall at Wapping Old Stairs, and people will come.’ Convinced, as always, that he had got the play, the suppliant then made terms for a lease of the Belvedere, terms higher than he would expect to pay for a mission-hall in Wapping, certainly, but not unreasonable in view of the number of bank-accounts the rent would pull up at before reaching the actual owner of the theatre. And since, as consideration from the front row of any dress circle makes clear, most of the heads at a first night are of Boer War vintage, one could hope at least that the Belvedere would give its latest victim the fashionable opening for which it had always been famous. And that was something.

  ‘In fact, Mr Higgs,’ said Wilson Kelly, ‘since we can’t at the moment have possession of the Haymarket, I would as lief be at the Belvedere as anywhere. Curiously enough, it is the theatre at which I made my first appearance on the London stage.’

  Remembering the seven provincial towns at which Kelly had first met his beloved wife, Mr Higgs did not think it was as curious as all that, but he admitted that it was interesting.

  ‘You might mention it in your speech,’ he suggested solemnly, ‘as a rather romantic coincidence.’

  ‘Well, that will be as it comes, and of course there may be no occasion for it. I find, Mr Higgs, that it is always better to leave these things to the inspiration of the moment; one generally thinks of something. You are quite decided not to take a call yourself?’

  ‘Quite. You’ll do it so much better, both as author and manager.’

  ‘Very well, I shall tell them that you are not in the house; but I hope none the less that you will arrange to be there.’

  ‘Oh, I shall be there all right, tucked away at the back.’

  ‘Then I shall be very much obliged, Mr Higgs, if you will be so kind as to keep a stern eye on me, and tell me afterwards if I stray in this or that scene from your conception of the character. It is difficult to get a candid opinion from those whom one employs in the theatre, and the critics, of course, with no previous knowledge of the play or of what was in the author’s mind, are of little assistance, kind though they are to those of us who have established our credentials. For myself, if I can satisfy my author, that is all that I ask. Then I know that I am right.’

  Young Mr Higgs assured him earnestly that he could not imagine Uncle Dudley played anyhow else or by anybody else, that for him Uncle Dudley was Wilson Kelly and Wilson Kelly Uncle Dudley, and it was impossible to distinguish between them. Having said this, he took a taxi to Berkeley Square, and ordered flowers for all the women in the cast as a tribute from a part-author, and an extra basket of exotic growth as a love-offering from Bunny. To which, later, he added a large box of chocolates.

  As he dressed, he was wishing that he were to be alone at the theatre. Funny how women never liked a man to be alone. His aunts had always been like that. And Gwynneth up at Cambridge. And that ghastly Lorimer girl he’d been such a fool about. All of them just the same: a sort of jealousy, a hatred of uncertainty: ‘I don’t care who you’re with as long as I know who you’re with’—and of course in his aunts’ case and Claudia’s a real anxiety lest he should be lonely. Good lord, it was much more lonely with anybody but the right person than it was alone. What was there lonely about being alone, when you had the whole world to think about, or the one person to think about? That would make rather a good line in a play: I don’t care who you’re with as long as I know who you’re with. Ought I to keep a note-book? Samuel Butler did. Well, if it’s worth remembering, I shall remember it. He felt rather proud of noticing this about women, and told himself that he must always notice things. Well, I do, he thought, I know all about that crowd at the theatre. Damn this Claude, he’ll spoil our little supper together, I suppose we’re bound to have him. What about Ruby? Better be four than three, only I suppose she’ll be booked. Sure to. Oh, well, I suppose I’ve got to meet the brother some time, and we can have supper just as easily to-morrow. If this blasted play runs as long as that.

  His tie in his hands, his chin held up in front of the glass as he began to make the knot, he stopped suddenly, stared at himself in amazement at himself, and dashed downstairs to the telephone. For a moment he hesitated between two numbers; then dialled . . .

  ‘Belvedere stage door,’ said a voice.

  ‘Hallo, Rogers, this is Carol Higgs speaking.’

  ‘Good evening, sir. And I’ll take the opportunity of wishing you once more the best of luck.’

  ‘Thanks very much. I say, has Miss Lancing come in yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The newer they are to it, the earlier they come.’

  Carol laughed and said, ‘Ask her if she could speak to me for a moment.’

  ‘Right, sir. Hold on.’

  He waited. It was a long way up to Claudia’s dressing-room. I mustn’t forget to tip Rogers, he thought. My God, I’m going to spend a lot to-night.