donkeys, drays, buggies and bicycles, but almost devoid of people. On the near corner a boy tossed a silver coin over and over. Even the town’s few coach drivers must have had tickets to the show. As he approached the Theatre Royal he saw the ‘Sold Out’ banner plastered across the placard outside the box office window. The office itself appeared deserted at first, but he made out the rounded form of Burt Tompkins holding his ear to the wall that backed onto the auditorium. Kemp rapped the glass with his knuckles, giving the old man a start that caused him to drop the small metal cylinder he’d been using to listen to the entertainment.
Once Tompkins had regathered himself he said, ‘Sorry Col, the house is full.’
‘Do us a favour, Burt. Can’t I stand up the back?’
‘Back’s already full of folks standing. The old girl wasn’t built to fit the whole town.’
‘There must be room for one more.’
‘If you had a ticket, perhaps.’
‘You know I don’t have a ticket, Burt.’
‘I’m sorry, Col.’
‘Jesus, Burt.’
Tompkins removed his round spectacles and rubbed the lenses with his checked handkerchief.
‘I meant to get a ticket,’ Kemp said, ‘but with Lou—,’ the name caught in his throat but he pushed it out with a second effort, ‘with Louisa expecting . . .’
Tompkins returned his specs to the bridge of his nose and leant in to the pane of glass that separated them. ‘I didn’t tell you, but you might be able to get in by the stage door around back. Plenty of hubbub back there, but if you look as if you belong . . .’
‘Thanks, Burt.’
‘Give my love to Louisa.’
Kemp placed his palm on the glass and nodded.
The rear of the theatre on Market Street was indeed a hive of activity. The backstage area must not have been large enough to house Rickards’ entire company and the overflow went about their business in the open air under the glow of several large lanterns. A small-waisted woman with a powdered face sang scales, holding the hem of her blue dress and her many petticoats up from the reach of the dust and dirt. A man in a black tuxedo handed an accordion to a boy standing inside a covered wagon, before inspecting the teeth of two well-fed ponies with jewel-encrusted bridles.
Kemp looked around for an excuse to enter the theatre. Wooden crates were scattered here and there, stalks of hay sprouting from the openings. He placed the lid back on one of these crates, lifted it and made for the stage door.
‘Who’s that for, then?’
Kemp turned and saw an old man standing near the ponies, a body brush in one hand and his eyebrows raised.
‘Fresh chains for Mr Sandow,’ he replied.
‘Well then,’ the man said, ‘schnell, schnell.’
Kemp put the empty crate down inside the corridor and took the stairs two at a time, turning right, away from the sound of a contralto on stage, who was singing what sounded like ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’, and merged into a crowd of men in the wings. The contralto was joined by the woman in the blue dress he had seen warming up outside. They performed a duet of ‘Life’s Dream is O’er’ which, though sung in perfect harmony, made him grit his teeth. He pressed his back to the wall of the auditorium and tried not to listen to the lyrics. Standing on his toes he could see the twenty-piece orchestra crammed into the theatre’s tiny pit and believed he could hear the discomfort in their performance. He scanned the audience, every face familiar, until he spotted Milly Bannerman seated at the end of the very last row of the stalls. Jolly was standing immediately behind, his hands clamped on his wife’s shoulders, his eyes closed, head swaying with the music.
The master of ceremonies came forth and shook the hands of both singers. ‘Miss Nita Leete and Miss Ray Jones!’ he said and clapped theatrically as they skipped off the stage like May queens. The man, dressed in a crimson topcoat, now gestured for the audience to quieten down. Kemp wondered if this was Harry Rickards himself or just another paid performer. It was the kind of question he would lean across and whisper to Louisa. She would know no more than him, but she would find some detail—the frayed hem of the man’s coat, the knot of his bootlace—to support a theory either way.
‘The penultimate act this evening,’ the master of ceremonies was saying, ‘is another taste of fine culture. The finest theatre from Mother England’s finest poet. A superb vignette from The Bard’s great pastoral play, The Winter’s Tale. A story for the fireside on a chilly January eve—January in the Northern Hemisphere, of course. A tale of jealousy, rage, loss, deception, but also, as we shall witness, magic, transformation and reunion. The perfect apéritif before another statue comes to life.’ He raised his hand to his lips. ‘But I have said too much. Ladies, gentlemen, I give to you the Gates Family Players and the concluding scene of The Winter’s Tale.’
The crowd clapped politely as the master of ceremonies backed away from the front of the stage and passed a shuffling figure who, despite being robed in white cloth and sporting a long grey beard, clearly counterfeit, could not have been past twenty years of age. There were a few hoots of recognition from the crowd and someone shouted, ‘Atta boy, Jesse!’, though this meant nothing to Kemp.
In one hand this figure carried a large hourglass hung from a chain and in the other a book.
Young Father Time stopped at the centre of the stage and began to read off a sheet of paper stuck to the cover of the book:
‘I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour
O’erwhelm custom. Your patience this allowing,
I turn my glass —’
He paused to upend the hourglass.
‘and give my scene such growing
As you had slept between: Leontes leaving,
The effects of his fond jealousies so grieving
That he shuts up himself. Yea, of this allow,
If ever you have spent time worse ere now;
If never, yet that Time himself doth say
He wishes earnestly you never may.’
With this, the figure shuffled back to the wings and two stage hands rolled out a backdrop painted to resemble the nave of a chapel, with real velvet curtains hung across a niche. Four men and two women, one quite old,
