Come here, will you? On stage.’
The steps halted.
‘Look here! I say! Look, for God’s sake come up. I’ve fallen through the stage. I’ll drown. Why don’t you answer, whoever you are?’
The footsteps started again. A door opened nearby. Pass-door in the prompt side box, he thought. Steps up. Now: crossing the stage. Now.
‘Who are you?’ Peregrine said. ‘Look out. Look out for the hole. Look out for my hands. I’ve got gloves on. Don’t tread on my hands. Help me out of this. But look out. And say something.’
He flung his head back and stared into the shaft of light. Hands covered his hands and then closed about his wrists. At the same time heavy shoulders and a head wearing a hat came as a black silhouette between him and the light. He stared into a face he could not distinguish.
‘It doesn’t need much,’ he chattered. ‘If you could just give me a heave I can do it.’
The head was withdrawn. The hands changed their grip. At last the man spoke.
‘Very well,’ said a voice. ‘Now.’
He gave his last frog leap, was heaved up, was sprawled across the edge and had crawled back on the stage to the feet of the man. He saw beautiful shoes, sharp trouser ends and the edge of a fine overcoat. He was shivering from head to foot.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t be more grateful. My God, how I stink.’
He got to his feet.
The man was, he thought, about sixty years old. Peregrine could see his face now. It was extremely pale. He wore a bowler hat and was impeccably dressed.
‘You are Mr Peregrine Jay, I think,’ said the man. His voice was toneless, educated and negative.
‘Yes – I – I?’
‘The people at the estate agents told me. You should have a bath and change. My car is outside.’
‘I can’t get into anyone’s car in this state. I’m very sorry, sir,’ Peregrine said. His teeth were going like castanets. ‘You’re awfully kind but –’
‘Wait a moment. Or no. Come to the front of the theatre.’
In answer to a gesture, Peregrine walked through the pass-door down into the house and was followed. Stagnant water squelched and spurted in his shoes. They went through a box and along a passage and came into the foyer. ‘Please stay here. I shall only be a moment,’ said his rescuer.
He went into the portico leaving the door open. Out in Wharfingers Lane Peregrine saw a Daimler with a chauffeur. He began to jump and thrash his arms. Water splashed out of him and clouds of dust settled upon his drenched clothes. The man returned with the chauffeur who carried a fur rug and a heavy mackintosh.
‘I suggest you strip and put this on and wrap the rug round you,’ the man said. He stretched out his arms as if he were actually thinking of laying hands on Peregrine. He seemed to be suspended between attraction and repulsion. He looked, it struck Peregrine, as if he were making some kind of appeal. ‘Let me –’ he said.
‘But, sir, you can’t. I’m disgusting.’
‘Please.’
‘No, no – really.’
The man walked away. His hands were clasped behind him. Peregrine saw, with a kind of fuddled astonishment, that they were trembling. ‘My God!’ Peregrine thought, ‘this is a morning and a half. I’d better get out of this one pretty smartly but how the hell –’
‘Let me give you a hand, sir,’ said the chauffeur to Peregrine. ‘You’re that cold, aren’t you?’
‘I can manage. If only I could wash.’
‘Never mind, sir. That’s the idea. Leave them there, sir. I’ll attend to them. Better keep your shoes on, hadn’t you? The coat’ll be a bit of help and the rug’s warm. Ready, sir?’
‘If I could just have a taxi, I wouldn’t be such an infernal nuisance.’
His rescuer turned and looked, not fully at him but at his shoulder. ‘I beg you to come,’ he said.
Greatly worried by the extravagance of the phrase Peregrine said no more.
The chauffeur went ahead quickly and opened the doors of the car. Peregrine saw that newspaper had been spread over the floor and back seat.
‘Please go,’ his rescuer said, ‘I’ll follow.’
Peregrine shambled across the portico and jumped in at the back. The lining of the mackintosh stuck to his body. He hitched the rug around him and tried to clench his chattering jaw.
A boy’s voice in the street called, ‘Hey, look! Look at that bloke!’ The caretaker from Phipps Bros had appeared at the top of his alley and stared into the car. One or two people stopped and pointed him out to each other.
As his master crossed the portico the chauffeur locked the theatre doors. Holding Peregrine’s unspeakable clothes at arm’s length he put them in the boot of the car and got into the driver’s seat. In another moment they were moving up Wharfingers Lane.
His rescuer did not turn his head or speak. Peregrine waited for a moment or two and then, controlling his voice with some success, said:
‘I’m giving you far too much trouble.’
‘No.’
‘If – if you would be so very kind as to drop me at The Unicorn Theatre I think I could –’
Still without turning his head the man said with extreme formality, ‘I really do beg that you will allow me to –’ he stopped for an unaccountably long time and then said loudly, ‘– to rescue you. I mean to take you to my house and set you right. I shall be most upset otherwise. Dreadfully upset.’
Now he turned and Peregrine had never seen an odder look in anyone’s face. It was an expression almost, he thought, of despair.
‘I am responsible,’ said his extraordinary host. ‘Unless you allow me to make amends I shall – I shall feel – very guilty.’
‘Responsible? But –’
‘It will not take very long I hope. Drury Place.’
‘Oh lord!’ Peregrine thought, ‘what poshery.’ He wondered, suddenly, if perhaps the all too obvious explanation was the wrong one and if his rescuer was a slightly demented gentleman and the chauffeur his keeper.
‘I really don’t see, sir –’ he began but an inaudible conversation was taking place in the front seat.
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the chauffeur and drew up outside the estate agents. He pulled the keys out of his pocket as he entered. The clerk’s face appeared looking anxiously and crossly over the painted lower pane of his window. He disappeared and in a moment came running out and round to the passenger’s side.
