Read Online Death Of A Hollow Man by Caroline Graham - Free Book Online

arch, fitted a hundred dark gray plastic seats to a raked floor, and installed a simple lighting grid. There was a stage door and two large plate-glass doors that fronted the tiny foyer. This doubled as an office and had in it a desk, a chair, a telephone, an old filing cabinet, and a pay phone. There was also a board showing colorful photographs of the current production. A huge cellar running between both shops became the scene dock and dressing rooms. These were more than adequate except at Panto time or during the run of a play with an exceptionally large cast, such as Amadeus. Toilets for the actors were halfway along a corridor connecting the wings to the foyer.
    Three quarters of the top floor was taken up by the club- room, which was open to the public at performance times, when coffee and glasses of wine were available. Plastic tables and chairs were scattered about, and there were a couple of settees, which, imperfectly disguised, performed onstage as often as some of the actors and, it must be said, frequently with more conviction. The rest of the upstairs space was taken up by two rest rooms for the audience and Tim’s lighting box, which had a notice on the door: private, keep out. The Latimer was carpeted throughout in charcoal haircord, and the walls were roughcast white.
    Many of the CADS now looked back wistfully to those early days fifteen years past when, surrounded by rubble and timber and cables, and choking on brick dust, they had wrought out of chaos their very own theater. Things had been different then. Harold, for example. Beardless and slim in old corduroys, he had mucked in, getting filthy in the process, cheering them on when they were tired, holding the dream before their flagging spirits and their gritty, dust-filled eyes.
    They had all seemed equal then, in those glorious early days. Each with his part to play, and no part more valuable than any other. But after the theater was officially opened and Mayor Latimer had made his long-winded speech, imbibed hugely, and vanished under the drinks table, things started to change, and it soon became plain that some were very much more equal than others. For gradually, sinuously, Harold had eased his way to the top, stepping firmly on the necks of those too timid, too dim, or just too lazy to complain until (no one could quite put their finger on the point of no return) a czar was born. And now, occasionally people joined the company who knew nothing of those grand pioneering times when each member could have his say and be treated with respect. Renegade newcomers who couldn’t care less about the past.
    Like Nicholas, for instance, now approaching the Latimer stage door. As far as Nicholas was concerned, the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society came into existence during the rehearsals of French Without Tears and would die the death if his audition at Central was successful (as it must be, it must) with Amadeus. He fumbled in his pocket for the key. He had been given his own as soon as Colin became aware of his willingness to appear early, stay late, run about, fetch and carry, and generally make himself useful. Even now, in his illustrious position as what Esslyn grudgingly admitted to be second lead, Nicholas had arrived a good half hour before the stage management.
    In fact, it was barely six o’clock when he entered the building, so he was not surprised to find himself immediately swallowed up by silence. He stood for a moment inhaling voluptuously, and although the air smelled of nothing more exotic than the peel of an orange left in a tin wastebasket, it became transmuted in his apprentice’s nostrils to something rare and ambrosial. Nicholas padded silently, happily down the stone stairs to the dressing rooms.
    He flung his anorak down, slipped on Mozart’s brocade coat, and picked up his sword. Nicholas was a short man, barely five feet six, a fact that caused him considerable anguish—Ian Holm, Antony Sher, and Bob Hoskins notwithstanding.