Peter Robinson: Past Reason Hated

Banks sat beside Sandra. Their seats, compliments of James Conran, were front and centre, about ten rows back. Further ahead, Banks could make out Susan’s blonde curls. The director himself sat beside her, occasionally leaning over to whisper in her ear. He could also see Marcia talking animatedly to a grey-haired man beside her.

It was almost seven thirty. Banks eyed the moth-eaten curtain for signs of movement. Much as he enjoyed Shakespeare, he hoped the performance would not last too long. He remembered an actor telling him once in London that he didn’t like doing Hamlet because the pubs had always closed by the time it was over. Banks didn’t think Twelfth Night was that long, but a bad performance could make it seem so.

Finally, the lights went off abruptly, there being no dimmer switch in the Eastvale Community Centre, and the curtains began to jerk open. Rusted rings creaked on the rail. The audience clapped, then made themselves as comfortable as they could in the moulded-plastic chairs.

If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die…

So spoke the Duke, and the play was underway. The set was simple, Banks noticed. A few well-placed columns, drapes and portraits gave the impression of a palace. Banks recognized the music, played on a lute, as a Dowland melody, fitting enough for the period.

Though he was no Shakespeare expert, Banks had seen two other performances of Twelfth Night, one at school and one in Stratford. He remembered the general plot but not the fine details. This time, he noticed, too many cast members shouted or rushed their lines and mauled the poetry of Shakespeare’s language in the process. On the other hand, the groupings and movements on stage constantly held the attention. The way people faced one another or paced about as they talked kept everything in motion. From what little he knew of directing, Banks assumed that Conran himself was responsible for this. Occasionally, a member of the audience would shift in his or her seat, and there were quite a few present suffering from coughs and colds, but on the whole most people were attentive. When an actor or actress hesitated over lines, waiting for a prompt, nobody laughed or walked out.

Faith and Teresa were good. They had the poise and the skill to bring off their roles, even if it was difficult to believe in Faith’s masquerade as a man. In their scenes together, though, there was an obvious tension, perhaps because Faith knew who had told Banks about her row with Conran, and Teresa knew who had told him about her jealousy over Caroline Hartley. Ironically, this seemed to give an edge to the performances, especially to Viola’s initial rudeness on their first meeting. The ambiguity of their relationship – Viola, dressed as a man, courting Olivia on her brother’s behalf – soon absorbed Banks. To hear Faith complimenting Teresa’s beauty was an odd thing indeed, but to watch their love blossom was even stranger.

For Banks, this had a dark side, too. He couldn’t help but think of Caroline and Veronica, knowing, as the characters themselves did not, that both Viola and Olivia were female. Maria, the role that Caroline would have played, was an added reminder of the recent tragedy.

During the intermission, Banks felt distracted. He left Sandra chatting with some acquaintances and nipped out on to North Market Street for a cigarette in the icy cold The dim gaslights glinted on the snow and ice, and even as he stood, a gentle snowfall began, flakes drifting down like feathers. He shuddered, flicked his half-smoked cigarette end into a grate and went back inside.

The vague connection between the play and reality was beginning to make Banks feel very uneasy. By the fourth act, his attention began to wander – to thoughts of his recent interviews with Faith and Teresa and the pile of unread paperwork in his in-tray, including a report on the arrest of the vandals that Susan had stayed up half the night to prepare. Then his attention would return to the play in time to hear the Clown and Malvolio chatting about Pythagoras’s opinion of wild fowl, or Sebastian in raptures about the pearl Olivia had given him. He couldn’t maintain lasting concentration. There was something in his mind, a glimmer of an idea, disparate facts coming together, but he couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t see the complete picture yet. There was an element still missing.

By the final act, Banks’s back and buttocks hurt, and he found it difficult to keep still in the hard chair. Surreptitiously, he glanced at his watch. Almost ten. Surely not long to go. Even before he expected it, true identities were revealed, everybody was married off, except for Malvolio, and the Clown began to sing:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

Then the music ended and the curtains closed. The audience applauded; the cast appeared to take bows. Soon the formalities were all over and everyone shuffled out of the hall, relieved to be leaving the hard seats.

‘Time for a drink?’ Banks said to Sandra as they fastened their coats on the front steps.

Sandra took his arm. ‘Of course. Champagne. It’s the only civilized thing to do after an evening at the theatre. Except go for dinner.’

‘There aren’t any restaurants open this late. Maybe Gibson’s Fish and-’

Sandra pulled a face and tugged his arm. ‘I’ll settle for a lager and lime and a packet of cheese and onion crisps.’

‘A cheap date,’ Banks said. ‘Now I know why I married you.’

They set off down North Market Street to the Queens’ Arms, which was much closer to the front exit of the community centre than was the usual cast watering-hole out the back, the Crooked Billet.

It was only twenty past ten when they got there, enough time for a couple of pints at least. The pub was quiet at first, but many of the theatre goers following Banks and Sandra seemed to have the same idea about a drink, and it soon got crowded. By then, Banks and Sandra had a small, dimpled, copper-topped table near the fireplace, where they warmed their hands before drinking.

They discussed the play against a background buzz of conversation, but Banks still felt uneasy and found it hard to concentrate. Instead, he couldn’t help but put together what he knew about the Caroline Hartley murder, trying different patterns to see if he could at least discover the shape of the missing piece.

‘Alan?’

‘What? Oh, sorry.’

‘What the hell’s up with you? I asked you twice what you thought about Malvolio.’

Banks sipped some beer and shook his head. ‘Sorry, love. I feel a bit distracted.’

‘There’s something bothering you, isn’t there?’

‘Yes.’

She put her hand on his arm. ‘About the case? It’s only natural, after seeing the play, isn’t it? After all, Caroline Hartley was supposed to be in it.’

‘It’s not just that.’ Banks couldn’t put his thoughts into words. All he could think of was the woman who walked strangely in the snow and Vivaldi’s burial music for a small child. And there was something about the play that snagged on his mind. Not the production details or any particular line, but something else, something obvious that he just couldn’t bring into focus. Faith and Teresa? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt not only puzzled but tense, too, the kind of edginess one has before a storm breaks. Often, he knew, that feeling signalled that he was close to solving the case, but there was even more this time, a sense of danger, of evil he had overlooked.

Suddenly he became aware of someone tapping him on the shoulder. It was Marcia Cunningham.