Tom McCarthy - C

MR. SIMEON CARREFAX

cordially invites you to the

VERSOIE DAY SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF’S

ANNUAL PAGEANT

on

Saturday June 25th

1911

AT 3 IN THE AFTERNOON

for

ENTERTAINMENT and CLASSICAL INSTRUCTION, suitable for all Classes

“Damn weather gods!” Carrefax snaps to Widsun. “Toying with us. Like wanton flies, in shambles-no, like wanton boys in sport. What was it…?”

“ ‘As flies to wanton boys are-’ ” Widsun begins, but Carrefax cuts him off:

“I’m working on a patent for a way of using radio to sense the weather in advance. The waves travel through it, after all. Why aren’t you in your costume?”-this to Serge, who’s come to ask him something.

“I don’t put my mask on till later. But Miss Hubbard wants to know what volume to set the amplification to.”

“Amplification-what?”

“Who’s this one meant to be, then?” Widsun asks.

“Ascalaphus,” says Serge.

“He’s the witness, isn’t he? Sees her eating grapefruit or something…”

“Witness indeed,” Carrefax replies. “Pomegranate. Tell her to set it to medium and watch out for my signals. Go!”

Serge scuttles back to Schoolroom One, where discarded clothes are strewn across a floor stripped of all its chairs save one, in which his mother sits stitching last-minute pleats and scales and feathers into costumes, turning their placid wearers one way, then another. Miss Hubbard stands beside the window, running the chorus through their lines, conducting them in unison while simultaneously getting individual actors to recite their phrases, the resulting cacophony flustering her into mixing up the words herself.

“ ‘Near Enna walls-this damsel to-Pergusa is-’ No, start again. Where’s your owl head?” she asks Serge.

Serge points to a corner. The mask is staring at him with large golden eyes whose centres are pierced by holes, like gramophone discs.

“Father says to play it medium, and to watch for his-”

“Not now, Serge. Take the mask out to the Mulberry Lawn. Set it with the other props behind the sheet. Don’t stop! ‘Near Enna walls…’ ” She leads the chant again. Behind her, through the window, Serge catches a glimpse of Bodner pushing a wheelbarrow full of flowers and foliage towards the stage.

At two o’clock small specks of rain dot Maureen and Frieda’s tablecloth. It holds off, though: by quarter to three the air is blustery and slightly chill but dry. The path’s gravel crunches with arrivals; murmurs of greeting grow into a loud mesh of general chatter punctuated by clinks of cups on saucers and the odd peal of women’s laughter. At five to, Miss Hubbard leads the players from the schoolrooms to the Mulberry Lawn to “aahh!”s of appreciation and gasped “Oh, look!”s as parents recognise their disguised sons and daughters-exclamations which prompt her to throw her arms out in an attempt to shield the actors from being gazed upon before their time. She blushes as she bustles them behind the sheet which, strung between the same two trees as it was when serving as a screen for Widsun’s films, makes for a larger back-, or, rather, side-, stage area than the free-standing folding screens used in previous years’ Pageants.

An electric crackle whips the assembled crowd into attentiveness. It repeats, twice, then gives over to music that starts out loud but almost immediately drops in volume until it’s barely audible, then climbs back to the same level as the general conversation. Miss Hubbard peers out nervously from behind the sheet, scanning the crowd for Carrefax. He, meanwhile, ushers people to their seats. Once they’re all settled in, he raises his hands and stands before them on a grass stage across whose floor lie variously coloured strips of silk; the music stops abruptly and he says:

“Ladies and gentlemen: our classical cycle-The Versoie Mysteries-enters another phase, just as our human cycles do. Today’s story is Persephone’s-but is it not also our own? Are we not the stuff of dreams, such dreams as… aren’t we all-?”

Another crackle interrupts his speech. Electric birdsong spills through the sheet and fills the air. Carrefax waits for it to stop; it doesn’t; he creeps over to the chair that’s been kept for him in the audience’s front row. Beside him sits his wife; beside her, Widsun. Standing behind the sheet, Serge watches Miss Hubbard send onto the stage first the chorus, then, hot on their tails, the non-speaking extras. Not quite under her jurisdiction since she’s not his teacher, he creeps round to the sheet’s side and watches them take up their positions: the chorus in a line at stage left, the extras moving from stage left to right mock-hacking at the ground with cardboard pitchforks. Miss Hubbard then nudges into this scene the slightly older Amelia, who moves about it slowly carrying a large handful of poppies. On a cue from Serge’s father, the chorus begin chanting:

Dame Ceres first to break the earth with plough the manner found;

She first made corn and stover soft to grow upon the ground;

She first made laws…

Their eyes dart nervously from side to side. Their strange voices, imperfectly synchronised, are buffeted by the breeze; words blow and slip away. Carrefax conducts them from his seat, urging them to speak louder. Ceres/Amelia waves her hand vaguely in the direction of the pitchfork-wielding extras and they pull from their farmers’ robes golden confetti which they toss into the air; it billows up and flashes brightly, carrying far across the lawn. The audience “aahh!”s.

“Melissas,” Carrefax explains, to no one in particular. “Honey-silk harvest.”

“Dame Ceres looks like Mrs. Carrefax,” a random lady murmurs.

It’s true: Amelia’s hair is thick and brown. She has a languid look. Serge turns his head towards his mother, but his eye is caught by Widsun next to her, who’s making hand signs. He’s not using the vigorous language that his mother and Bodner sign in, but more surreptitious signals formed by simply opening and closing the fist that rests across his lap in bursts either long or short. His eyes are pointed at the stage, but his hand is facing Sophie, who’s kneeling six or seven yards away from him at her own post just off stage left, behind an array of phials and bottles lined up in a box (she gave up playing on-stage roles two years ago to take up the post of stage and special-effects manager), and using the same barely perceptible Morse to signal back at him.

Little round Giles is sent out from behind the sheet now, as a chubby Cupid whose bow-free hand is held firmly by his stage-mother Venus, in reality his older sister Charity. In a weird voice that seems to buzz, she starts charitably goading him, suggesting that while the powers on earth obey his “mighty hand” (chuckles from audience), he should expand his sphere of influence into the underworld and thus “advance thy empire.”

“That’s Bismarck talking to the Kaiser,” Widsun mumbles to Carrefax without breaking off his signals to his daughter.

Giles/Cupid takes a wooden, rubber-suction-pad-tipped arrow from a quiver slung across his shoulder; his sister/mother helps him place it in his bow and draw the string back. His hands fall away but hers have got the object firmly: with an elastic pyongg the arrow flies out, arcing above the Mulberry Lawn’s far edge and dropping out of sight among the undergrowth beside the stream.

“Now death itself’s infected by desire,” Carrefax explains.

There’s a pause. Performers and audience both look in the direction of the arrow, as though expecting something to emerge from where it fell. After a few seconds’ silence a sheep’s bleat carries to the lawn from Arcady Field. Everyone laughs.

“Let’s hope it didn’t hit one,” a man jokes, unnecessarily.