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“Piano!” shouted out one person near us. “Bagpipes!” said another. Someone at the back, missing the cue entirely, shouted in a high voice “Euphonium!” halfway through the next line and was drowned out when the audience yelled: “Pick a card!” as Richard told them that he “was not shaped for sportive tricks . . .”
Landen looked across at me and smiled. I returned the smile instinctively; I was enjoying myself.
“I that am rudely stamp’d . . .” muttered Richard, as the audience took its cue and stamped the ground with a crash that reverberated around the auditorium.
Landen and I had never wanted to tread the boards ourselves and had never troubled to dress up. The production was the only show at the Ritz; it was empty the rest of the week. Keen amateur thespians and Shakespeare fans would drive from all over the country to participate, and it was never anything but a full house. A few years back a French troupe performed the play in French to rapturous applause; a troupe went to Sauvignon a few months later to repay the gesture.
“. . . and that so lamely and unfashionable, that dogs bark at me...”
The audience barked loudly, making a noise like feeding time at the dogs’ home. Outside in the alley several cats new to the vicinity momentarily flinched, while more seasoned moggies looked at each other with a knowing smile.
The play went on, the actors doing sterling work and the audience parrying with quips that ranged from the intelligent to the obscure to the downright vulgar. When Clarence explained that the king was convinced that “. . . by the letter ‘G’ his issue disinherited shall be . . .” the audience yelled out:
“Gloucester begins with G, dummy!”
And when the Lady Anne had Richard on his knees in front of her with his sword at his throat, the audience encouraged her to run him through; and just before one of Richard’s nephews, the young Duke of York, alluded to Richard’s hump: “Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me; because that I am little, like an ape, he thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders—!!!” the audience yelled out: “Don’t mention the hump, kid!,” and after he did: “The Tower! The Tower!”
The play was the Garrick cut and lasted only about two and a half hours; at Bosworth field most of the audience ended up on the stage as they helped reenact the battle. Richard, Catesby and Richmond had to finish the play in the aisle as the battle raged about them. A pink pantomime horse appeared on cue when Richard offered to swap his kingdom for just such a beast, and the battle finally ended in the foyer. Richmond then took one of the girls from behind the ice-cream counter as his Elizabeth and continued his final speech from the balcony with the audience below hailing him as the new king of England, the soldiers who had fought on Richard’s side proclaiming their new allegiance. The play ended with Richmond saying: “God say Amen!”
“Amen!” said the crowd, amid happy applause. It had been a good show. The cast had done a fine job and fortunately this time no one had been seriously injured during Bosworth. Landen and I filed out quickly and found a table in a café across the road. Landen ordered two coffees and we looked at one another.
“You’re looking good, Thursday. You’ve aged better than me.”
“Nonsense,” I replied. “Look at these lines!—”
“Laughter lines,” asserted Landen.
“Nothing’s that funny.”
“Are you here for good?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t know,” I answered. I dropped my gaze. I had promised myself I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving, but—
“It depends.”
“On?—”
I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
“—on SpecOps.”
The coffee arrived at that point and I smiled brightly.
“So, how have you been?”
“I’ve been good,” he said, then added in a lower tone, “I’ve been lonely too. Very lonely. I’m not getting any younger, either. How have you been?”
I wanted to tell him that I’d been lonely too, but some things can’t easily be said. I wanted him to know that I still wasn’t happy with what he had done. Forgive and forget is all very well, but no one was going to forgive and forget my brother. Anton’s dead name was mud and that was solely down to Landen.
“I’ve been fine.” I thought about it. “I haven’t, actually.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m having a shitty time right now. I lost two colleagues in London. I’m chasing after a lunatic who most people think is dead, Mycroft and Polly have been kidnapped, Goliath is breathing down my neck and the regional commander at SpecOps might just have my badge. As you can see, things are just peachy.”
“Compared to the Crimea, this is small beer, Thursday. You’re stronger than all this crap.”
Landen stirred three sugars into his coffee and I looked at him again.
