‘No show without Belch,’ said Galloway, trying to warm up the atmosphere a little. Someone grunted: and the small half-circle of onlookers began to disperse. Show over.
‘OK, OK,’ said Galloway, picking up the pieces, ‘let’s get to work. We’ll run through from the top of the scene. Diane, are you ready?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. Shall we run it?’
He turned away from Olivia’s garden and the waiting actors just to gather his thoughts. Only the stage working lights were on, the auditorium was in darkness. It yawned at him insolently, row upon row of empty seats, defying
him to entertain them. Ah, the loneliness of the long-distance director. There were days in this business when the thought of life as an accountant seemed a consummation devoutly to be wished, to paraphrase the Prince of Denmark.
In the Gods of the Elysium, somebody moved. Galloway looked up from his doubts and stared through the swarthy air. Had Eddie taken residence on the very back row? No, surely not. For one thing, he hadn’t had time to get all the way up there.
‘Eddie?’ Galloway ventured, capping his hand over his eyes. ‘Is that you?’
He could just make the figure out. No, not a figure, figures. Two people, edging their way along the back row, making for the exit. Whoever it was, it certainly wasn’t Eddie.
‘That isn’t Eddie, is it?’ said Galloway, turning back into the fake garden.
‘No,’ someone replied.
It was Eddie speaking. He was back on stage, leaning on one of the hedges, cigarette clamped between his lips.
‘Eddie. .
‘It’s all right,’ said the actor good-humouredly, ‘don’t grovel. I can’t bear to see a pretty man grovel.’
‘We’ll see if we can slot the mallet-business in somewhere,’ said Calloway, eager to be conciliatory.
Eddie shook his head, and flicked ash off his cigarette.
‘No need.’
‘Really —‘
‘It didn’t work too well anyhow.’
The Grand Circle door creaked a little as it closed behind the visitors. Galloway didn’t bother to look round. They’d gone, whoever they were.
‘There was somebody in the house this afternoon.’
Hammersmith looked up from the sheets of figures he was poring over.
‘Oh?’ his eyebrows were eruptions of wire-thick hair that seemed ambitious beyond their calling. They were raised high above Hammersmith’s tiny eyes in patently fake surprise. He plucked at his bottom lip with nicotine stained fingers.
‘Any idea who it was?’
He plucked on, still staring up at the younger man; undisguised contempt on his face.
‘Is it a problem?’
‘I just want to know who was in looking at the rehearsal that’s all. I think I’ve got a perfect right to ask.’
‘Perfect right,’ said Hammersmith, nodding slightly and making his lips into a pale bow.
‘There was talk of somebody coming up from the National,’ said Galloway. ‘My agents were arranging something. I just don’t want somebody coming in without me knowing about it. Especially if they’re important.’
Hammersmith was already studying the figures again. His voice was tired.
‘Terry: if there’s someone in from the South Bank to look your opus over, I promise you, you’ll be the first to be informed. All right?’
The inflexion was so bloody rude. So run-along-little-boy. Galloway itched to hit him.
‘I don’t want people watching rehearsals unless I authorize it, Hammersmith. Hear me? And I want to know who was in today.’
The Manager sighed heavily.
‘Believe me, Terry,’ he said, ‘I don’t know myself. I suggest you ask Tallulah — she was front of house this afternoon. If somebody came in, presumably she saw them.’
He sighed again.
‘All right .. . Terry?’
Calloway left it at that. He had his suspicions about Hammersmith. The man couldn’t give a shit about theatre, he never failed to make that absolutely plain; he affected an exhausted tone whenever anything but money was mentioned, as though matters of aesthetics were beneath his notice. And he had a word, loudly administered, for actors and directors alike: butterflies. One day wonders. In Hammersmith’s world only money was forever, and the Elysium Theatre stood on prime land, land a wise man could turn a tidy profit on if he played his cards right.
Galloway was certain he’d sell off the place tomorrow if he could manoeuvre it. A satellite town like Redditch, growing as Birmingham grew, didn’t need theatres, it needed offices, hypermarkets, warehouses: it needed, to quote the councillors, growth through investment in new industry. It also needed prime sites to build that industry upon. No mere art could survive such pragmatism.