Caroline Graham - Death Of A Hollow Man

“Oh, what a shame.” Another smile, warmly sympathetic. “We could have gone over our lines together.”

Nicholas absorbed the impact of the smile, (a soft, feather-light punch to the solar plexus), and his knees buckled. He hung grimly on to the door handle. For the first time in his life he cursed the enthusiasm that had brought him to the Latimer long before anyone could reasonably have been expected to be present. Then he wondered how the hell, feeling like this, he was going to be able to concentrate onstage. Forcefully he reminded himself that this was only Kitty. Pretty, silly, ordinary Kitty. Her very silliness and the fact that she was an indifferent actress would normally have been enough to ensure his complete lack of interest. And if his mind could reason thus, reasoned Nicholas, why then should his viscera, still churning rhapsodically, not be brought under equally firm control? As he continued to argue against this onrush of carnality, Kitty picked up a wire brush and started to rearrange her hair. She brushed it up and away from her face, which looked even more piquant without the surrounding auerole of golden curls.

Nicholas told himself it was more pointed than heart-shaped. Sharp. A bit ferrety, really. Then she opened her mouth, filled the damp, rosy cavity with bobby pins, and started to pile the hair on top of her head. This movement pushed her bosom out. It strained against her blouse. Then, as Nicholas watched, every button burst its moorings. The fabric fell apart, and her small, exquisite breasts were revealed, double dazzling by being reflected in the mirror. She stood up and, with a light, thrillingly lascivious shrug, magically shed the rest of her garments except for silky, lace-topped stockings and thigh-high boots. Then she turned, placed one foot firmly on the seat of her chair and beckoned to him.

“Nico … ?” Kitty removed the bobby pins. “What on earth’s the matter with you tonight?”

“Ohhh. Nerves, I guess.”

“Right. You and me both. Oh, drat—” Kitty’s hair collapsed. “It’s going to be one of those days when it just won’t stay up.”

Nicholas, whose problem could hardly have been further removed from his companion’s, was temporarily distracted by something being shifted around in the adjacent scene dock. “Ah,” he murmured, “seems we’re not the only ones here early.”

“I’d like to have it cut”—Kitty reskewered the pins forcefully—“but Esslyn’d go mad. He doesn’t think a woman’s truly feminine unless she’s got long hair.”

“I wonder who it is.”

“Who what is?”

“In the workshop.”

“Colin, I suppose. He was moaning the other night about how much he had to do.”

“Par for the course.”

“Mmm. Nico …” Kitty put down her brush and turned to face him. “You won’t… well … go to pieces on the first night, will you, darling? I should be absolutely frantic.”

“Of course I won’t,” Nicholas cried indignantly. This insult managed to damp his ardor in a way that all the earlier rationalizations had failed to do. Silly cow. “You should know me better than that.”

“Only you’ve so many lines—”

“No more than in Night Must Fall.”

“—and Esslyn said … with your experience … you’d probably just dry up and leave me stranded. …”

“Esslyn can get stuffed.”

“Oohh!” Neat foxiness beamed. Then she cocked her head on one side conspiratorially. “Don’t worry. I shan’t pass it on.”

“You can pass it on as much as you like, as far as I’m concerned.”

Nicholas went out slamming the door. Patronizing bastard. “It won’t be me who goes to pieces on the first night, mate,” he muttered. In the men’s dressing room he slung his coat and sword, glanced at his watch, and discovered that, incredibly, barely twenty minutes had passed since he had entered the theater. He decided to pop along and have a look at the scene dock.

A man was there putting the finishing touches to a small gilt chair. He stood back as Nicholas entered, studying the tight hoop of the chairback, his brush dripping glittering gold tears onto an already multicolored floor. It was not the man Nicholas expected to see, but he experienced an immediate warmth, almost a feeling of kinship, toward the figure who was regarding his handiwork so seriously. Anyone who could make a cuckold out of Carmichael, thought Nicholas, was a man after his own heart.

“Hullo,” he said. “The boss not in yet?”

David Smy turned, his handsome, bovine face breaking into a slow smile. “No, just me. And you, of course. Oh”—his brush described a wide arc, and Nicholas, not wishing to be gilded, jumped briskly aside—“and the furniture.”

“R-i-g-h-t.” Nicholas nodded. “Got it.” Then he performed the classic roguish gesture seen frequently in bad costume dramas but rarely in real life. He laid his finger to the side of his nose, tapped it, and winked. “Just you and me and the furniture it is then, Dave,” he replied, and went back to the stage for some more practice.

After fifteen minutes or so sitting down at and getting up from the piano and striding about getting used to his sword, Nicholas went up to the clubroom to see who else had arrived. Tim and Avery sat at a table, their heads close. They stopped talking the moment Nicholas entered, and Tim smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We weren’t talking about you.”

“I didn’t expect you were.”

“Didn’t you really?” asked Avery, who always thought that everyone was talking about him the second his back was turned, and never very kindly. “I would have.”

“Oh, not your childhood insecurities, Avery,” said Tim. “Not on an empty stomach.”

“And whose fault’s that? If you hadn’t been so long at the post office—”

“Nico …” Tim indicated a slender bottle on the table. “Some De Bortoli?”

“Afterwards, thanks.”

“There won’t be any afterwards, dear boy.”

“What were you whispering about, anyway?”

“We were having a row,” said Avery.

“In whispers?”

“One has one’s pride.”

“More of a discussion,” said Tim. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you what it’s about.”

“We’re burning our boats.”

“Avery!”

“Well, if we can’t tell Nico, who can we tell?”

“No one.”

“After all, he’s our closest friend.”

Nicholas tactfully concealed his surprise at this revelation, and the silence lengthened. Avery was biting his bottom lip as he always did when excited. He kept darting beseeching little glances at Tim, and his fists opened and closed in purgatorial anguish. He looked like a child on Christmas morning denied permission to open its presents. Even his circle of curls danced with the thrill of it all.

Nicholas bent close to Avery’s ear. “I’ve got a secret as well. We could do a swap.”

“Ohhh … could we, Tim?”

“Honestly. You’re like a two-year-old.” Tim looked coolly at Nicholas. “What sort of secret?”

“An amazing secret.”

“Hm. And no one else knows?”

“Only two other people.”

“Well, it’s not a secret then, is it?”

“It’s the two other people that the secret’s about.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, go on, Tim,” urged Nicholas. “Fair exchange is no robbery.”

“Where do you find these ghastly little homilies?”

“Please …”

Tim hesitated. “You must promise not to breathe a word before the first night.”

“Promise.”

“He said that rather quickly. If you break it,” continued Avery, “you won’t get into Central.”

“Oh, God.”

“He’s gone quite pale.”