Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

‘N o, Grace, you shall have to explain it to me again. I think you are teasing me.’

Nikolai stared at Grace over his half-moon reading glasses, the script of Dick Whittington open on his lap, wearing an expression of profound bafflement.

‘Now you are laughing at me, which is no way to teach a poor student!’ He held up his hands. ‘Start from the beginning. It is a Christmas entertainment, yes?’

Grace set down her teacup. The morning light, sparkling with frost, poured in through the windows of the morning room in Lassiter Court, over Grace’s deserted writing desk, the wastepaper bin, the pale Turkish rugs on the polished parquet floor, the elegant art nouveau furnishing, and lapped around her neat ankles.

The week since Nikolai had arrived in Highbridge had passed very quickly. Lillian had taken him on tours of the local beauty spots, and he had found time to sit and discuss the theatre with Grace. Grace discovered that talking about writing was a great deal more fun than actually trying to do it, and as they talked she found herself beginning to uncoil creatively, just a little. She had been like a spring wound too tight, she thought, locked solid with the tension.

With rehearsals fast approaching, their topic today was pantomime, which Nikolai found a great deal more challenging than Chekhov or Ibsen.

‘Yes, we open on Boxing Day – that’s the day after Christmas – and hopefully we’ll run until at least the end of January. Mid-February, perhaps, if it goes really well. The director is Archibald Flynn. He’s directed a dozen pantos in the North-West over the years, it was an absolute coup to get him, and we have Terrence Fortescue as choreographer.’ Nikolai nodded. ‘Lillian has got Josie Clarence as the principal boy and Harold Drabble as the dame. He’s marvellous. “Ooh, where’s my tiffin?” Then there’s King Rat, of course. He’s marvellously evil, the children love him apparently, and Fairy Bow Bells. Gordon, who will play Alderman Fitzwarren, will double up as the King of Zanzibar.’

Nikolai leant forward, positioning himself on the edge of the green leather sofa, his brow deeply furrowed. ‘This is very strange. I believe you are still speaking English, but I find once again I am at a loss to understand many of the words you are saying. And I do not think Zanzibar has a king.’

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter.’

‘It might to the people of Zanzibar.’

‘I doubt they’ll hear about it,’ Grace said. ‘Panto is a British tradition. The key thing is just not to think about it too much.’

‘That will be hard,’ Nikolai said seriously. ‘I think too much about everything.’ He rubbed his hand over his neatly trimmed black beard. ‘Lillian has promised she will attempt to teach me frivolity, but I am not sure even she could do that. Director and choreographer . . . These words at least I can comprehend, but the rest?’

Grace smiled.

‘Remember, the principal boy is a girl and the dame is a man. The story’s based on a fairy tale, or a folk tale, in this case, but always involves lots of local gossip and everyone talks to the audience. That script you have there is a sort of guideline. And it’s mostly in rhyming couplets. Oh, the audience talks back, too, and joins in with some of the songs. In Dick Whittington , Dick and his cat sail off to Zanzibar and save it from a plague of terrible rats, then return so Dick can marry his true love, Alice, in the nick of time and save his old boss Fitzwarren from bankruptcy.’

‘This sounds . . . highly experimental,’ Nikolai said doubtfully. ‘I have believed my own work was avant-garde, but it appears I have been outpaced by pantomime.’

‘They are always trying something new on stage, so I suppose it is experimental in a way. No two shows are the same. But it’s as old as the hills, too.’

‘Fascinating,’ he said, his rich voice seeming to come up from his boots. ‘Fascinating.’

The old front doorbell sounded with a clang, and Nikolai glanced at his watch.

‘Ahhh, it is time for my interview! I am to meet a Mr Wilbur Bowman, as I am an “Interesting Visitor to Highbridge”.’ His dark eyes twinkled. ‘Will I like him, Grace?’

Grace smiled. ‘Yes, I’m sure you will. Wilbur is an old friend.’

Hewitt showed Wilbur into the room, and Grace settled in the window seat while the two men talked. She half-listened, and half-read the translation of The Cherry Orchard that she and Nikolai had been meaning to discuss before they got caught up by pantomime.

It was one thing to think about plays in the abstract, but as they had talked about the panto, she had seen herself walking the passageways of the actual theatre: heard the chatter coming from the rehearsal rooms, the scraps of song, the sawing and hammering coming from the workshops; seen the bundles of costumes; smelt the sawdust and starch. She felt a deep pang under her ribs. The Empire was her theatre. Surely Jack could cope with having her back as his assistant? Yes, he wanted her to write, but she was beginning to feel as if he had, in an excess of delicacy, exiled her.

‘Marakovia is a wonderful country, small, but poised between many great nations,’ Nikolai was saying, waving one of his black Turkish cigarettes in the air. ‘We export plum brandy and romanticism, what little we do not consume at home.’

Wilbur made a note, then asked. ‘Isn’t it rather unusual for an aristocrat like you to become involved in the theatre?’

Nikolai shrugged.

‘My family would have preferred a military career for me, that is true. But the heart wants what it wants, Mr Bowman. My mother was a very clever woman and gathered the most gifted and artistic of our people around her, so my youth was full of books, ideas, dreams – the sort of things military men tend to hate.’ He laughed softly and Wilbur’s pen scurried across the page. ‘I was educated in Paris before the war, then Germany after it, then in 1920 I returned to Marakovia with a mission to bring fresh ideas of modernity and democracy to the people of my country, through drama and song.’

‘And am I right in thinking, sir,’ Wilbur asked, ‘that you are a cousin of the current king, and have always acted as a sort of uncle to Crown Prince Stefan? He is quite a young man, I believe.’ He flicked back a page in his notebook. ‘Only twenty-two.’

‘That is correct.’ Grace blinked while Nikolai tapped the ash off his cigarette. She had had no idea that Nikolai was that close to his country’s royal family.

‘Crown Prince Stefan is due to visit England next year,’ Wilbur said. ‘Do you intend to see him while he is here?’

‘I would always be delighted to see Stefan,’ Nikolai said, and Grace abandoned Chekhov entirely. ‘But his uncle, the king’s younger brother, does not approve of me. I am certain, however, that Stefan, when his time comes, will always lead his people with wisdom and kindness.’

Wilbur’s pencil bounced across the page.

‘That’s interesting, Your Excellency, but you didn’t answer my question.’

‘Do call me Nikolai.’

Wilbur smiled slightly. ‘So, Nikolai, is it fair to say your efforts to share the ideas you gathered abroad with your people met with . . . some resistance?’

‘Not from the people, nor from Stefan.’ Nikolai put out his cigarette, got up from his chair and wandered over to the window, his hands in his pockets. ‘Stefan came, in disguise, to several of my performances.’ He turned round, frowning. ‘Though I would rather, for his sake, you did not say that in your newspaper.’

Wilbur’s pencil hovered over his pad. ‘I might say he seemed supportive of your efforts?’

Nikolai nodded. ‘Yes, you may say that.’

‘Are you a communist?’

Nikolai laughed out loud, which made Grace jump, and Chekhov slid to the floor.

‘No, dear boy, I am a democrat, a meritocrat! I believe in offering children a free education, for example, and opening up the institutions of my country to people without an illustrious pedigree such as my own, but I am no communist.’

‘But it was your ideas which led—’

‘Yes. These modest proposals of mine . . . The king’s brother saw in my attempts to lift up the lower classes of my country, not ambition and fellowship, but sedition. He forced the king’s hand. I was ordered to cease my writing, my play-making, or leave the country. I chose to leave.’

The sun was casting its last rays outside the window, outlining him with a slightly melancholic glow. Grace sighed.

‘And now you’re in Highbridge?’

‘I am!’ Nikolai beamed suddenly and spread his arms wide. ‘What a wonderful city you have! So many places of culture and learning, such lovely scenery.’ Wilbur said nothing and kept writing. ‘I am ambitious to try something here myself, but first I shall immerse myself in the study of this extraordinary theatrical form you have here – the pantomime.’

Wilbur’s pencil slipped.

‘You want to study panto?’ he asked, blinking.

‘Naturally,’ Nikolai said. ‘It is remarkable, democratic, daring, improvisatory.’

You haven’t lived, Grace thought, until you’ve heard someone say ‘improvisatory’ with such relish in a Marakovian accent.

‘Lillian is producing Dick Whittington ,’ Nikolai went on, ‘and I have begged to be allowed to watch rehearsals. I am certain I shall learn a great deal.’

‘“Ooh, where’s my tiffin?”’ Wilbur murmured under his breath; then he closed his notebook and returned it to his pocket. ‘Thank you, Your Excellency – my apologies . . . Nikolai. That’s all I need. My editor will love that bit about you studying pantomime. If the photographer could visit you perhaps this afternoon?’

‘Why not take the photograph at The Empire?’ Grace said. ‘Perhaps Nikolai could stand next to one of the new posters for Dick Whittington with Lillian and Jack.’

Nikolai beamed. ‘An excellent idea, Grace!’

‘And no doubt Mr Treadwell would be glad to see the poster in the paper,’ Wilbur added with a slight smile, and Grace blinked innocently at him. ‘No, that is a good notion, Mrs Treadwell.’

‘Shall we go now?’ Nikolai said. ‘You can put your bicycle in the back of Lillian’s car, Mr Bowman, and I shall drive you in.’

Wilbur agreed, and within a few minutes the two men were waving goodbye from Lillian’s car as it disappeared down the driveway. Grace watched them go, her fingertips on the glass of the window, the longing to go with them so strong it made her bones ache.