Free A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene Page B

please.’
    ‘What did Aladdin say …’
    ‘How many of you have they killed so far?’ Anne said under her breath. ‘
Chin Chin
.’
    ‘Oh, half a dozen.’
    ‘I’m glad I got in at the last minute. A fortnight of this! No thank you.’
    ‘Can’t you put some Art into it?’ the producer implored them. ‘Have some pride. This isn’t just any panto.’
    What did Aladdin say …
’
    ‘You look washed out,’ Anne said.
    ‘You don’t look too good yourself.’
    ‘Things happen quick in this place.’
    ‘Once more, girls, and then we’ll go on to Miss Maydew’s scene.’
    ‘What did Aladdin say
    When he came to Pekin?’
    ‘You won’t think that when you’ve been here a week.’
    Miss Maydew sat sideways in the front row with her feet up on the next stall. She was in tweeds and had a golf-and-grouse-moor air. Her real name was Binns, and her father was Lord Fordhaven. She said in a voice of penetrating gentility to Alfred Bleek, ‘I said I won’t be presented.’
    ‘Who’s the fellow at the back of the stalls?’ Anne whispered. He was only a shadow to her.
    ‘I don’t know. Hasn’t been here before. One of the men who put up the money, I expect, waiting to get an eyeful.’ She began to mimic an imaginary man. ‘Won’t you introduce me to the girls , Mr Collier? I want to thank them for working so hard to make this panto a success. What about a little dinner, missy?’
    ‘Stop talking, Ruby, and make it snappy,’ said Mr Collier.
    ‘What did Aladdin say
    When he came to Pekin?’
    ‘All right. That’ll do.’
    ‘Please, Mr Collier,’ Ruby said, ‘may I ask you a question?’
    ‘Now, Miss Maydew, your scene with Mr Bleek. Well, what is it you want to know?’
    ‘What
did
Aladdin say?’
    ‘I want discipline,’ Mr Collier said, ‘and I’m going to have discipline.’ He was rather undersized with a fierce eye and straw-coloured hair and a receding chin. He was continually glancing over his shoulder in fear that somebody was getting at him from behind. He wasn’t a good director; his appointment was due to more ‘wheels within wheels’ than you could count. Somebody owed money to somebody else who had a nephew … but Mr Collier was not the nephew: the chain of causes went much further before you reached Mr Collier. Somewhere it included Miss Maydew, but the chain was so long you couldn’t follow it. You got a confused idea that Mr Collier must owe his position to merit. Miss Maydew didn’t claim that for herself. She was always writing little articles in the cheap women’s papers on: ‘Hard Work the only Key to Success on the Stage.’ She lit a new cigarette and said, ‘Are you talking to
me
?’ She said to Alfred Bleek, who was in a dinner-jacket with a red knitted shawl round his shoulders, ‘It was to get away from all that … royal garden parties.’
    Mr Collier said, ‘Nobody’s going to leave this theatre.’ He looked nervously over his shoulder at the stout gentleman emerging into the light from the back of the stalls, one of the innumerable ‘wheels within wheels’ that had spun Mr Collier into Nottwich, into this exposed position at the front of the stage, into this fear that nobody would obey him.
    ‘Won’t you introduce me to the girls, Mr Collier?’ the stout gentleman said. ‘If you are finishing. I don’t want to interrupt.’
    ‘Of course,’ Mr Collier said. He said, ‘Girls, this is Mr Davenant, one of our chief backers.’
    ‘Davis, not Davenant,’ the fat man said. ‘I bought out Davenant.’ He waved his hand; the emerald ring on his little finger flashed and caught Anne’s eye. He said, ‘I want to have the pleasure of taking every one of you girls out to dinner while this show lasts. Just to tell you how I appreciate the way you are working to make the panto a success. Whom shall I begin with?’ He had an air of desperate jollity. He was like a man who suddenly finds he has nothing to think about and somehow must fill the