Ngaio Marsh - Killer Dolphin

The laughter ran up to a falsetto climax and somewhere in the shadows Harry Grove said delightedly: “Oh dear me, dear me, how very entertaining. The King Dolphin in a rage.”

“Harry,” Peregrine said, turning his back on the stage and vainly trying to discern the offender. “You are a professional actor. You know perfectly well that you are behaving inexcusably. I must ask you to apologize to the company.”

“To the whole company, Perry dear? Or just to Gertie for laughing about her not being a woman scorned?”

Before Peregrine could reply Gertrude re-entered, looking wildly about the house. Having at last distinguished Grove in the back stalls, she pointed to him and screamed out with a virtuosity that she had hitherto denied herself: “This is a deliberate insult.” She then burst into tears.

There followed a phenomenon that would have been incomprehensible to anybody who was not intimately concerned with the professional theatre. Knight and Miss Bracey were suddenly allied. Insults of the immediate past were as if they had never been. They both began acting beautifully for each other: Gertrude making big eloquent piteous gestures and Marcus responding with massive understanding. She wept. He kissed her hand. They turned with the precision of variety artists to the auditorium and simultaneously shaded their eyes like comic sailors. Grove came gaily down the aisle saying: “I apologize. Marcus and Gerts. Everybody. I really do apologize. In seventeen plastic and entirely different positions. I shall go and be devoured backstage by the worm of contrition. What more can I do? I cannot say with even marginal accuracy that it’s all a mistake and that you’re not at all funny. But anything else. Anything else.”

“Be quiet,” Peregrine said, forcing a note of domineering authority which was entirely foreign to him. “You will certainly go backstage, since you are needed. I will see you after we break. In the meantime I wish neither to see nor hear from you until you make your entrance. Is that understood?”

“I’m sorry,” Grove said quietly. “I really am.” And he went backstage by the pass-door that Mr. Conducis had used when he pulled Peregrine out of the well.

“Marco and Gertie,” Peregrine said, and they turned blackly upon him. “I hope you’ll be very generous and do something nobody has a right to ask of you. I hope you’ll dismiss this lamentable incident as if it had never happened.”

“It is either that person or me. Never in the entire course of my professional experience—”

The Knight temperament raged on. Gertrude listened with gloomy approval and repaired her face. The rest of the company were still as mice. At last Peregrine managed to bring about a truce and eventually they began again at: “ Who is this comes hopping up the lane ?”

The row had had one startling and most desirable effect. Gertrude, perhaps by some process of emotive transference, now gave out her offstage line with all the venom of a fishwife.

“But darling ,” reasoned Destiny Meade, a few minutes later, devouring Peregrine with her great black lamps. “ Hopping . Me? On my first entrance? I mean—actually? I mean what an entrance ! Hopping !”

“Destiny, love, it’s like I said. He had a thing about it.”

“Who did?”

“Sheakespeare, darling. About a breathless, panting, jigging, hopping woman with a white face and pitchball eyes and blue veins.”

“How peculiar of him.”

“The thing is, for him it was all an expression of sexual attraction.”

“I don’t see how I can do a sexy thing if I come on playing hopscotch and puffing and blowing like a whale. Truly.”

“Destiny: listen to what he wrote. Listen.

‘ I saw her once

Hop forty paces through the public street ;

And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted ,

That she did make defect perfection ,

And, breathless, power breathe forth .’

“That’s why I’ve made her fall off her horse and come hopping up the lane.”

“Was he sort of kinky?”

“Certainly not,” Marcus interrupted.

“Well, I only wondered. Gloves and everything.”

“Listen, darling. Here you are. Laughing and out of breath—”

“And hopping. Honestly !”

“All right ,” said Marcus. “We know what you mean, but listen. You’re marvellous. Your colour’s coming and going and your bosom’s heaving. He has an entirely normal reaction, Destiny darling: you send him. You do see, don’t you? You send me .”

“With my hopping?”

“ Yes ,” he said irritably. “That and all the rest of it. Come on, darling, do. Make your entrance to me.”

“Yes, Destiny,” Peregrine said. “Destiny, listen. You’re in a velvet habit with your bosom exposed, a little plumed hat and soft little boots and you’re lovely, lovely, lovely. And young Dr. Hall has gone out to help you and is supporting you. Charles—come and support her. Yes: like that. Leave her as free as possible. Now: the door opens and we see you. Fabulous. You’re in a shaft of sunlight. And he sees you. Shakespeare does. And you speak. Right? Right, Destiny? You say—go on, dear.”

“ Here I come upon your privacy, Master Shakespeare, hopping over your doorstep like a starling .”

“Yes, and at once, at that very moment, you know you’ve limed him.”

“Limed?”

“Caught.”

“Am I keen?”

“ Yes . You’re pleased. You know he’s famous. And you want to show him off to W.H. You come forward, Marco, under compulsion, and offer your help. Staring at her. And you go to him, Destiny, and skip and half-fall and fetch up laughing and clinging to him. He’s terribly, terribly still. Oh, yes , Marco, yes. Dead right. Wonderful. And Destiny, darling, that’s right . You know? It’s right. It’s what we want.”

“Can I sit down or do I keep going indefinitely panting away on his chest?”

“Look into his face. Give him the whole job. Laugh. No, not that sort of a laugh, dear. Not loud. Deep down in your throat!”

“More sexy?”

“Yes,” Peregrine said and ran his hands through his hair. “ That’s right. More sexy.”

“And then I sit down?”

“Yes. He helps you down. Centre. Hall pushes the chair forward. Charles?”

“Could it,” Marcus intervened, “be left of centre, dear boy? I mean I only suggest it because it’ll be easier for Dessy and I think it’ll make a better picture. I can put her down. Like this.” He did so with infinite grace and himself occupied centre stage.

“I think I like it better the other way, Marco, darling. Could we try it the other way, Perry? This feels false, a bit, to me.”

They jockeyed about for star positions. Peregrine made the final decision in Knight’s favour. It really was better that way. Gertrude came on and then Emily, very nice as Joan Hart, and finally Harry Grove, behaving himself and giving a bright, glancing indication of Mr. W.H. Peregrine began to feel that perhaps he had not written a bad play and that, given a bit of luck, he might, after all, hold the company together.

He was aware, in the back of his consciousness, that someone had come into the stalls. The actors were all on stage and he supposed it must be Winter Meyer or perhaps Jeremy, who often looked in, particularly when Destiny was rehearsing.

They ran the whole scene without interruption and followed it with an earlier one between Emily, Marcus and the ineffable Trevor in which the boy Hamnet, on his eleventh birthday, received and wore his grandfather’s present of a pair of embroidered cheveril gloves. Marcus and Peregrine had succeeded in cowing the more offensive exhibitionisms of Trevor and the scene went quite well. They broke for luncheon. Peregrine kept Harry Grove back and gave him a wigging which he took so cheerfully that it lost half its sting. He then left and Peregrine saw with concern that Destiny had waited for him. Where then was Marcus Knight and what had become of his proprietary interest in his leading lady? As if in explanation, Peregrine heard Destiny say: “Darling, the King Dolphin’s got a pompous feast with someone at the Garrick. Where shall we go?”