then with Cesario, and finally with Sebastian.”
“I really don’t remember...”
“You don’t need to. Just listen. Antonio also loves Sebastian...”
“Antonio?” Keyes put in timidly. He could remember Antonios in Shakespeare, but not an Antonio in Twelfth Night.
“Shut up and pay attention. Cesario, who is Viola in drag, loves Orsino. Malvolio loves Olivia, but not so much as he loves himself. Maria loves Sir Toby, and so does that silly ass Sir Andrew in his witless way. Sir Toby loves cakes and ale, or rather ale and cakes, and does so with a constancy that few men lavish on their ladies.”
“Seamus, I...” Keyes peeked at his watch.
“Never mind the time. I’m just getting to the point of all this; only Feste is not in love. Feste is Eros-proof, because Feste is a Fool, and it is a Fool’s high and lonely responsibility to be unlike the people around him. Like those mirrors in carnival shows, Feste must twist the other players, must distort their images, invert them... And do you know why?”
Keyes shook his head.
O’Reilly reached across the table and caught hold of his friend’s wrist.
“He does it to reveal the Truth.” A great grin of satisfaction spread across the actor’s time-rumpled face. “The Truth!”
“The truth,” Keyes echoed. Trapped, he saw that he might as well help O’Reilly’s argument to a hasty end. “And you think Wales isn’t doing that, revealing the truth, I mean.”
“He’s revealing only his arse. He hasn’t the foggiest notion of what the part is about, or what acting is about, or...”
“And the director? Does he feel the way you do?”
“He must,” O’Reilly said. “Porliss is pompous, but he’s not stupid. I think Wales must have something on him.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you about Hobart Porliss’ intelligence... Blackmail, you think?”
“Why not? Wales wouldn’t be the first whore to try it.”
Not until this moment did Keyes realize how serious his old friend was. He was used to O’Reilly’s exaggeration, but his shift of tone to simple candour startled Keyes.
“You really mean it, don’t you? You hate this kid.”
“You are too modest, sir,” O’Reilly said, returning to his more familiar and expansive manner. “I loathe him, despise him, execrate him...”
“Okay, okay,” Keyes said, breaking in on O’Reilly’s rage. “Alan Wales has ruined Twelfth Night for you.”
O’Reilly shook his head. “Not for me, Cousin. Just say that he has ruined Twelfth Night.”
He said these last words softly and with great feeling, as if he were speaking of a desecration, an altar bespoiled or a temple pulled down. O’Reilly was The Real Thing, an actor who lived for his art and doubtless would die for it, or because of it, or both. For the first time Keyes suspected that O’Reilly might almost kill for it.
“It’s atrocious,” O’Reilly said, “to use a part like that just to get somebody to look at your arse.”
“Seamus, I think we should...”
“To make matters worse, the dimwitted anthropophagus can’t sing.”
“Sing?” Keyes said.
“You have been away a long time, haven’t you? Feste has to sing. The Fool’s part is full of songs.”
“I do remember, now.” Rather tunelessly, Keyes brought forth a line to prove it: “For the rain it raineth every day...”
“That’s right,” O’Reilly said, “except you, bad as you are, are better than Wales – he runs off at the mouth like a sewage sandwich.” Then he threw back his head, opened his mouth wide, and in his big warm baritone, sang:
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath...
Keyes got to his feet, put a five-dollar bill on the table.
“I’ve got to go. Take it easy, Seamus. There’s always next year.”
O’Reilly seemed not to notice the money. He stared into his glass, which was empty again.
“That’s for my whiskey,” Keyes said.
The old actor nodded. “Next year, you say.”
“Sure. There’ll be other plays. There will probably be other Twelfth Nights for you, and other Sir Tobys as well. Not next year maybe...” Keyes was aware of how feeble it sounded.
“More Sir Tobys you think, do you?”
“I don’t like seeing you so grim.”
“Thank you, Claude, but grim is how I feel. Fare thee well, Cousin.”
Keyes hesitated a moment, then turned and made his way down the aisle between the bar and tables, toward the back door. He could heard O’Reilly’s big voice behind him, again singing one of Feste’s songs:
My shroud of white, stuck all, with yew,
O, prepare it!
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones
Shall be thrown...
Unfortunately, his friend’s aria was abruptly drowned out by raucous, donkey-like laughter from the section of the pub which Keyes was passing, marked off by partitions and waist-high railings, for the playing of darts. The voices belonged to young and cocky men, among them the arse-twitching Alan Wales.
Keyes was somewhat shocked to see Wales raise a hand and fling at the dartboard, not a dart, but a bone-handled hunting knife. It struck the bullseye with a loud thunk and quivered in the cork, dwarfing the other, smaller missiles.
Keyes glanced toward the bartender, who shook his head in disgust, but made no move to interfere with or censure Wales’ unsportsmanlike and dangerous violation of the rules of the game. Evidently it was still true, as it had been in Keyes’ own day, that actors enjoyed a degree of licence in Stratford not granted to ordinary citizens. It was acknowledged by all, if sometimes grudgingly, that they were a breed apart, entitled on occasion to special treatment.
After all, the city’s tourist-based economy depended on them.
(1:3) The home of Betty Beardsley, a Bed & Breakfast
Keyes was uncomfortably aware of how little booze it took to make him drunk these days as he did a slow, stately saunter along Ontario Street in the lessening rain. At this careful pace, it took him twenty minutes, rather than the usual ten, to reach Betty Beardsley’s Bed & Breakfast.
This was in a house of the variety known in Stratford as a Queen Anne’s Box, presumably because of the vaguely classical pediment on its gable. There were of course other interpretations for the label, some of which were quite rude. A large verandah had been wrapped about the front of the B& B in the decade before the First World War. A balcony had sprung up on the roof of this porch in the decade after. The latest renovation, executed by Betty herself, was one which amused Keyes, though several other more conservative neighbours had complained: the original sedate brick was painted a dazzling yellow, and most of the wooden trim done in an equally bright blue.
Keyes came upon his hostess in the front foyer. Betty Beardsley stopped fussily straightening pictures to look at her guest, then sighed a sigh so heavy that a casual witness could be forgiven for inferring that she had just received news of immense import, perhaps direct from the oracle at Delphi. Betty was thin and bony to a point just short of emaciation. She had, in Keyes’ opinion, an elegant face, a creased gauntness set off by a shaggy thatch of prematurely white hair. There was almost always a cigarette between her lips and a drink of something close to hand.
“Well,” she said, “don’t you look stunning – just about as charming as this hall... but that’s what I get for decorating it pissed! What should I do, Claude? Re-paint? Re-paper? Or just sell the whole damned thing and be done with it!”
“Whatever keeps you out of the pool hall, Betty. How’s the new mural coming?”
“Fucking terribly, thank you! I’d advise to you keep out of my way – I’m in an unholy mood, so don’t do anything to irritate me; don’t even
sneeze!”
“Don’t worry – I’ll be quiet as a mime troop with laryngitis. Tonight before the show I intend to have a drink, a hot bath, and several fantasies of times past, specifically about Goldie Semple in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
“In your dreams!”
“Exactly – best place in the world to find gold of any kind.”
“You’re a strange man, Keyes, even in the circle of friends I keep,” Betty said, as she took down a reproduction – a fifteenth century St. Sebastian with too many arrows – sneered at it, then moved it to a spot on the far wall, beside one of her own works; it looked just as bad there. She stood back to stare at it. “Why did I buy this thing?”
“Probably because it was cheap,” Keyes observed as he mounted the stairs leading to his room, leaving Betty to cuss elaborately about the insufferability of paying guests.
Keyes reached the pleasant little room which currently served him as home – it was painted a soft blue-grey, with matching draperies of a slightly darker hue; the furnishings were typical of a certain kind of Stratford B & B: garage-sale or auction specials, but only in the best of condition and in good taste. Here and there were small objets d’art of the same stamp. There was also something which had not been there this morning, Keyes discovered quite painfully with the big toe of his right foot: a heavy doorstop, the hostess’ solution to a door that refused to remain open when room-airing time came about.
Keyes reached down to grab his injured toe, and cursed the offending object. And the small and consummately ugly cast iron bust of the Bard himself did offend.
Below, Betty heard the thump of