Free Death Of A Hollow Man by Caroline Graham Page B

Kitty rushed back to Nicholas so vividly that it seemed impossible that the tiny place could have remained unmarked by her presence. Then he saw faintly on the glass the now barely visible tracks made by her dragging shoulder blades.
    Avery said, “I wonder what made them choose here?”
    “Sheer perversity, I should think. Well … see you later, Nicholas.”
    Dismissed, Nicholas was just turning away when a thought struck him. “Oh, Avery … you won’t repeat what I’ve told you to anyone?”
    “Me?” Avery was outraged. “I like the way you ask me. What about him?”
    Nicholas grinned. “Thanks.”
    Downstairs he collided with Harold, who arrived as he did everything else, Napoleonically. He started shouting as he entered the foyer, and didn’t stop until he had seen some flurry of movement, however unnecessary, in every corner of the auditorium. He called it keeping them on their toes. “So who’s ahead of the game?” he cried, subsiding into row C, lighting a Davidoff, and removing his hat. Harold had quite a collection of fur hats. This one was black and cream and yellowish-gray, and definitely the product of more than one animal. It had a short tail, squatted on his head like a ring-tailed lemur, and was known throughout the company as Harold’s succubus.
    “Come on, Deidre!” he roared. “Chop-chop!”
    The play began. The Venticelli loped down to the footlights and stood, secretively entwined, like a pair of gossipy grasshoppers. They were an unattractive pair, with pasty, open-pored complexions and most peculiar hair. Flossy and flyaway, it was that strange color—dirty blond with a pinkish tinge—that hairdressers call champagne. Their eyelids drooped in the lizardlike manner of the old, although they were barely thirty. They invariably seemed to be on the verge of imparting some distasteful revelation, and spoke in a sort of sniggering whisper. Harold was always having to tell them to project. Seemingly secure under Esslyn’s patronage, they discussed anyone and everyone vindictively, and their breath smelled dank and malodorous, like a newly opened grave. Now, having finished their opening dialogue and wrapped their cloaks tightly about them, they pranced off.
    Esslyn took the floor and Nicholas in the wings watched the tall figure with a certain degree of envy. For there was no denying that his rival cut a splendid figure onstage. Take his face, for a start. High cheekbones, rather thick but beautifully shaped lips, and that rare feature, truly black eyes. Hard and bright, the pupils glittered like tar chippings. His jowls were always a faint steely blue, like those of the villains in gangster cartoons.
    Nicholas’s own face could not be more ordinary. It was an “ish” face. Brownish hair, grayish eyes, straightish nose. Only the fact that his even features were unevenly distributed gave it any distinction at all. Rather a lot of space between the tip of the nose and the top lip, which he thought made him look a trifle monkeyish, although Hazel at the checkout had pronounced it “very sexy.” A wide space also between his eyes, and a very wide one indeed after the eyebrows and before the hairline. So apart from being dwarfish and clumsy, with nondescript features, Nicholas reflected sourly, he would probably be completely bald before the age of twenty-one. He stared, aggrieved, at Esslyn’s crisp sloe-black hair. Not even a flake of dandruff.
    “Cheer up,” whispered David Smy, arriving ready for his first entrance. “It might never happen.”
    Nicholas barely had time to smile back before his companion went on. Poor old David, thought Nicholas, watching Salieri’s valet sidling across the boards with that constipated cringe that afflicts people who loathe acting and are coaxed onto a stage. Fortunately the valet was a nonspeaking part. The only time David had been given a line to say containing seven words, he had managed to deliver them in a different order every night of the run