‘No rush,’ he said. ‘I’m not back at the rushing stage yet.’
‘You’ve got a very distinguished limp,’ she said. ‘And I just love the stick.’
‘He’s embarrassed by the stick,’ said Ellie, sitting at his other side so that he felt pleasantly squeezed. ‘I suspect he feels it detracts from his macho image.’
‘Pete. Baby!’ said Chung, putting her hand on his knee and looking deep into his eyes. ‘What’s a stick but a phallic symbol? You want a bigger one maybe? I’ll look in our props cupboard. And think of all the wild, wild men who’ve been lame. There was Oedipus, now he was a real motherfucker. And Byron. God, even his own sister wasn’t safe –’
‘Unhappily Peter is both an orphan and an only child,’ interrupted Ellie.
‘Aw shit. Pete, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But there’s plenty of others without the family hang-ups. The Devil, for instance. Now he was lame.’
And Peter Pascoe, up to this moment more than content to accept this heavy-handed ribbing as a fair price for the privilege of being sandwiched between Ellie whom he loved, and Chung whom he lusted after, knew that he was betrayed.
He began to rise but Chung was already on her feet, her face alight with a let’s-do-the-show-in-the-barn glow.
‘The Devil,’ she throbbed. ‘Now there’s an idea. Pete, honey, give me a profile. Fan-tastic. And with the limp, per-fection! Ellie, you know him best. Could he do it? Or could he do it?’
‘He’s got many diabolic qualities,’ admitted Ellie.
This had gone far enough. There were some advantages to having a stick. He brought it down savagely on Hedda Gabler’s coffee table, which he could do with a clear conscience as it belonged to him. Chung collected props like old Queen Mary collected antiques – she admired them into gifts. But she wasn’t going to make a gift out of him.
Ellie was much to blame, but not as much as himself. He’d forgotten the golden rule – any friend of Ellie’s was guilty until proven innocent, and probably longer. He’d been as suspicious as Ellie had been enthusiastic when the newly appointed Director of the Civil Theatre had clarioned her commitment to socially significant drama. But her beauty and charisma had made a rapid conquest of him. Her paymasters, the Borough Council, were less easy targets. Their stuff was brass not flesh and there was much concern lest they had taken a lefty viper to their righteous bosoms. But when her Private Lives (transplanted to Skegness and Huddersfield) had been a box office success surpassed only by her Gondoliers of the Grand Union Canal, the city fathers, realizing their clouds of doubt had brass linings, had relaxed and drifted with the cash-flow.
But it was her latest project aimed at God as well as Mammon which should have set his storm warning flashing.
Chung had proposed a huge outdoor production of the Mediaeval Mysteries. It was to be an eclectic version, though with a jingoistic concentration on the York and Wakefield cycles, it would run for seven days in early summer, and all the Powers that Were looked upon the project and saw that it was good. The clergy approved because it would make religion ‘relevant’, the Chamber of Commerce because it would pack the town with tourists, the Community Leaders because it would revitalize cultural identity by employing vast numbers of locals as performers, and the City Council because the locals wouldn’t expect to be paid. Some mutterings about idolatry and blasphemy came from a few inerrantist outposts, but these were drowned in the great surge of approval.
At first it was assumed that Chung would cast her resident company in the main speaking parts, perhaps importing a middling magnitude telly star to give some commercial clout to Jesus, but here she took everyone by surprise.
‘No way,’ she told Ellie. ‘My gang are going to be planted deep in the crowd scenes. That’s where you need the professional stiffening in this kind of caper. Stars I can create!’ So the great hunt had started. Every amateur thespian in the area started sending press-cuttings to the Kemble. Aged Jack Points, stripling King Lears, Lady Macbeths of the Dales, infant prodigies, Freds ’n’ Gingers, Olivier lookalikes, Gielgud soundalikes, Monroe mouealikes, Streep stripalikes, the good, the bad, and the unbelievable were ready to stride and strut, fume and fret, leap and lounge, mouth and mumble, emote and expire before Chung’s most seeing eye.
But for the most of them, their rehearsals were in vain. Chung saw to it that all their cuttings were returned with thanks, for she knew how precious are the records of praise, but the accompanying message was, why don’t you go and get lost in the crowd scenes? For Chung had not been wasting her short time in this city. She was gregarious, went everywhere, forgot nothing. Those who met her were charmed, shocked, intrigued, revolted, amused, amazed, entranced, entramelled, but never indifferent. And though many would have loved it, few realized they had already been on Chung’s casting couch. By the time she broached the Mysteries project, her mental cast list was almost complete.
Her intimates had been invited to help in snaring the more unwilling victims. Pascoe had been vastly amused when Ellie let drop some hilarious hints of Chung’s remorseless quest, never for one moment suspecting that he might be himself a target!
But now his defences were fully aroused. He swung his stick at the coffee table again.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘I won’t do it!’
The women looked at each other with barely concealed amusement.
‘Do what, honey?’ asked Chung with solicitous innocence.
It was time to be clear beyond even the muddying powers of these practised pond-stirrers.
He said slowly, ‘I am not going to be the Devil in your Mysteries. Not now. Not ever. No way.’
He examined his statement carefully. It seemed pretty limpid.
Now the women were looking at each other in amazement.
‘But, Peter, of course you’re not! Where did you get that idea from?’ said Chung with the wide-eyed surprise of one who suspects this is no longer Kansas.
‘Peter, for heaven’s sake, what’s got into you?’ demanded Ellie with the exasperation of a wife being shown up in front of her friends.
It was time for continued firmness. He heard himself saying, ‘But you were talking about my limp … and the Devil being lame … and me fitting the part …’
‘Just a gag. Pete. What do you take me for? Hell, with luck, by the time the show goes on you’ll hardly be limping at all. I mean, you’re going back to work tomorrow, aren’t you? Do you think I’d take the piss out of anyone who was really disabled? Besides, you’re far too nice and amiable. The man I’ve got in mind looks as proud and prickly as Lucifer, not your type at all!’
He had a feeling that, though not yet quite sure what the wrong was, he was sinking deeper and deeper in it. But that didn’t matter. He needed to be absolutely clear that this was no set-up.
‘And you definitely do not want me now, nor ever will want me, to perform an acting role in this or any of your dramatic productions?’
‘Pete, I swear it, hand on heart.’
She performed the oath very solemnly, then observing the direction of his gaze, squeezed her left breast voluptuously and laughed.
‘Happy now, Pete?’ she asked.
‘Chung, I’m sorry, it’s this long convalescence all plastered up. You know, like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, you start getting paranoiac.’
‘I forgive, I forgive.’ Then she added in alarm, ‘Hey, but you’re not backing off altogether! Pete, you promised the first thing you did when you got back to work would be to get yourself seconded to my “Mysteries” committee to make sure we get full cooperation