Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Introductions were made—as were snap judgments—on all sides. The average age of the Great Foss Players was sixty-five to the famous five’s sixteen, and the divide was stark. One or two of the more maternal figures made an effort to engage the five and were rewarded with enthusiastic responses from Ricco and Isabel. Grace, an upright woman wearing tweeds with an air of a dog trainer about her, got off on the wrong foot with Billy by picking Sid up on his use of the word ain’t .
“What are you, the vocabulary police?” Billy snarled.
“I was simply correcting his usage, there is no need to be rude.”
“Rude is picking on the way someone talks.”
“In my day, we respected our elders!”
“In my day, you have to earn it.”
“Insolent boy!” Grace expostulated.
Billy merely glared at her with a bored hostility, which raised her hackles even further.
“Billy, can I have a quick word?” Harriet asked quietly. He shrugged and followed her to the side of the stage. When they were out of earshot, she said, “I know it’s hard, but please try not to antagonize the other actors.”
“She started it, snobby cow.”
“I know, but equally you are quick to take offense. You need to learn to rise above these things or you’ll have raged yourself into a heart attack by the time you’re thirty.” Billy made to protest, but she cut him off. “Please, for now, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. We’ve literally just met these people. They’re probably as wary of us as we are of them.”
“Is this how it’s going to be from now on? You taking their side all the time?”
“That is not what I’m doing, nor will I. You lot are my top priority. But in the interest of actually making this production, we need to work together and that means swallowing down some of our annoyances.”
“Right. We’ll just let them walk all over us, then, yeah?”
Harriet narrowed her eyes at her charge. “All I’m asking is that you take a breath before you speak. They have experience that we need.”
Billy grumbled but grudgingly agreed to try. Harriet could feel a hot flush rising up through her body, prickling over her collarbone and up her throat. Not now!
As more chairs were ferried up onto the stage, widening the circle, Harriet excused herself and sought refuge in the makeshift coffee room to gather herself. She ripped off her first and second cardigans as though they were on fire, followed by her cotton Liberty print scarf, which felt like boiling lasagna sheets draping over her décolletage. Leaning on the counter with one hand and fanning herself with a copy of the play with the other, she looked up at her reflection in the mirror. A crimson-faced version of herself stared back, her throat puce and glistening. She was out of her depth with this play malarkey; Gideon’s arrival was liable to shine a spotlight on her ineptitude. Was she really up to this? Every part of her was sweating, even her earlobes. She hiked up the hem of her long linen pinafore dress and began to fan beneath it—no lady-garden anywhere deserved to be this hot.
“Ahem!”
Harriet whirled around to find Toad of Toad Hall himself standing in the doorway.
“Sorry to disturb your, um, ruminations,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
She pulled the book out from under her pinafore and went back to fanning her face, which was now blushing on top of sweating.
“No need to apologize, I was simply taking a moment to regroup.”
“Ah, yes. Good idea. I was wondering how you intend to proceed?”
“Oh. Um.” Gawd! I don’t clucking know! “What would be your suggestion?”
“Far be it from me to tread on your delicate little toes,” he wheedled.
His slippery charm was making her nauseous. She pasted on a smile and imagined vomiting on his shoes.
“Please, tread away.”
“Well, if it were me,” he began faux humbly, “I would begin by putting together the cast. Really, nothing can progress until we know who within the production is who. The scenery and even the costumes can get away with being stylistically barebones, but the cast must be fully flesh.”
She shuddered at the way he rolled his tongue around the word flesh .
“Right. Yes. Let’s do that,” she agreed.
“Excellent!” The hand rubbing went into overdrive. “Let’s get this show on the road…or should I say, the stage!” He chortled. “Come, come, good woman, Charles Dickens awaits us!”
“You go on ahead, I’ll be out in two minutes.”
Gideon bowed and left the room. Harriet pressed first one and then the other cheek against the cold brick wall for a full minute each before heading back out to the stage.
Gideon clapped his hands, and the chatter around the circle quieted. Leo had left his drawings to join them. The famous five sat close to each other, but Sid had plonked himself between two doting women—Odette, whose long white-and-smoky-gray plaits did not look like they belonged with her impossibly smooth complexion, and Prescilla, who wore a pale-pink-and-mint-green sari with a granny square cardigan and held a Chanel handbag on her lap. These women were hell-bent on pinching Sid’s cheeks and feeding him chocolate eclairs; his gleeful expression implied he felt he was winning at life.
“Time is of the essence, good people,” Gideon began. “Therefore, auditions will be held tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock sharp! Mallory!” He held out his hand, and Mallory pulled a clipboard out of a voluminous carpetbag and handed it to him. He took it without thanking her and waved it in the air. “Here is the signup sheet. Use it, please. No slot, no audition. The cast list will be ready to view on Monday evening and will be non-negotiable.”
Harriet raised her hand. “Just one moment, please, Gideon. Tomorrow is Saturday and my students have jobs and commitments on the weekends; morning auditions may not work for them.”
Gideon looked affronted, as though he couldn’t imagine anything more important than auditioning. Before he could formulate a comeback, she addressed her students.
“Guys, would early evening auditions work better for you?”
“I could be here by six,” said Billy, and Carly and Leo nodded in agreement.
“I finish at six but could get here for half past?” said Ricco.
“I could do half five,” Isabel said, her hand half raised when she spoke, as though she were in class.
“That’s settled, then.” Harriet gave Gideon her warmest smile. “Why don’t we start the auditions at four o’clock for those who can do earlier, and the f—”—it was on her tongue to say the famous five but she stopped herself just in time—“five others, six if Sid wants to attend, can come later.”
Gideon made some throaty noises but agreed.
“Fine. Auditions to begin at four p.m. tomorrow.”
“Who decides who gets which part?” asked Isabel.
Gideon smiled cordially. “Myself, Harriet, and James…er, may I call you James?” He looked at James, who nodded. “I thank you.” He gave a small bow and smiled wetly. “We will have the final say over the casting, but in the interest of democracy, anyone may voice an opinion and be assured that it will be considered.”
Isabel nodded and Gideon carried on speaking.
“In addition to acting parts, I suggest we have four members of the chorus, taking alternate lines of narration throughout each act. It gives the narration a wonderfully otherworldly feel, as though a host of departed ghosts are looking down and chronicling us mere mortals below.”
There were murmurs of agreement, and Harriet was pleased to see the famous five nodding.
“Why don’t we do a read-through now, with all of us present?” asked Harriet, keen to keep this feeling of harmony going.
“An excellent idea!” Gideon crooned. “Perhaps, James, you would be so kind as to read the role of Scrooge…”
“Oh, I won’t be in the play,” James protested.
“You don’t need to be, this is merely a chance for us to bond through the words of Dickens. The theater is a sacred space, and we must become intimately acquainted with both the literature and each other if we are to dwell in its bosom.”
James nodded and shifted awkwardly in his chair. Sid sniggered loudly at the word “bosom,” and Grace tutted. Billy sucked in a breath, but Harriet caught his eye and he let it out in a huff.
“Now if we could have…you.” Gideon pointed at Ricco. “Yes, you, young man…”
“This is Ricco,” Harriet said helpfully when Ricco said nothing.
“Excellent! Ricco, if you would read for Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, and I will be one of the ‘portly gentlemen,’ if you, Douglas, might read for the other?”
Douglas, a man with jowls like a British bulldog and a pair of round-rimmed spectacles balanced on the top of a sparse yet unrepentant comb-over, nodded with enthusiasm.
“And perhaps, I don’t see why not, in this day and age. Yes, then.” Gideon was a man who spoke out his inner monologue. “Perhaps, you, Carly, my dear, would like to read for everyone’s favorite underdog, Bob Cratchit?”
“I don’t have to be Bob in the actual play, though, do I?”
“No, Carly.” Gideon gave her a grandfatherly smile.
“All right, then.”
“Marvelous. Now for the chorus, I suggest we travel clockwise around the circle, with all those who have not been assigned a character reading one sentence each of the narration. And last but not at all least, Grace, would you please be the voice of the stage directions?”
Grace gave a self-satisfied nod.
After a brief rustling of pages, the stage went silent and Gideon, using his cane as a conductor’s baton, signaled that they should begin.
Marley was dead: to begin with.
There is no doubt whatever about that.
And so they went around and around the circle. Harriet felt a shiver down her spine. Gideon was right, having all their voices speak the lines in their different tones and accents was powerful; it lent the prose an almost religious quality. She could imagine how it would feel to be sat in the audience listening to their incantations fill the auditorium. For the first time since she’d been hurled into this crazy endeavor, she could believe they’d actually make it to the stage.