LEWIS doesn’t know how to take the comment, which is fine by JULIE. CHERRY enters, bringing him a cake. She stuffs the cake in his mouth before he is even aware that she is there.

CHERRY: Surprise! Fairy cakes. My family brought them in for me. Yummy.

JULIE: Can I read the newspaper?

LEWIS can only nod. JULIE goes outside with it. Pause.

CHERRY: I’m not bothering you, am I?

He shakes his head.

Just between you and me, I’ve got a flick-knife. If Doug attempts any more arson, then he’s a goner. [Cheerfully she changes to another topic.] I was looking at the first scene, seeing I had nothing to do, which was totally unexpected after all this talk about how large my part was going to be, when I read the words that Henry says: ‘Woman’s constancy is like the Phoenix of Arabia. Everyone swears it exists but no one has seen it.’ By the way, I think your translation is wonderful. Do you believe women are like that? That they aren’t true and faithful? I am. With someone like you I could be true and faithful.

LEWIS almost chokes on his fairy cake. CHERRY slaps him heartily on the back.

Go down the wrong way, did it? [She sniffs the air.] What is that smell?

LEWIS smells it too.

Kerosene…

LEWIS: [realising] Doug!

There is a whoosh! as the kerosene explodes in flames outside.

DOUG: [from outside, exhilarated] It’s burning like a beauty! Someone get me a cat.

LEWIS: [jumping up] Not again! [Running outside, shouting] Get some buckets!

CHERRY is livid. She takes out her flick-knife and flicks it open. Its blade is ready for action.

CHERRY: If there is anything worse than the wrath of God, its the Wrath of Cherry.

She goes outside with great purpose.

SCENE FOUR

The theatre. ROY is depressed. LEWIS is at a loss.

ROY: I need some uppers.

Pause.

LEWIS: The thing is, Roy, it was always going to be a hard project to do and now that Doug is in the closed ward—

ROY: Put in by you-know-who.

LEWIS: He set fire to this place.

ROY: I thought you people were into ‘doing your own thing’, but when somebody else does it—Oh, no, shove him straight into C ward.

LEWIS: We could have died.

ROY: But we didn’t.

LEWIS: He wasn’t taking his pills.

ROY: I need some right now. [A beat.] It’s not the fact that you’ve let me down, Jerry, it’s more the fact that you’ve let everyone down. [He looks at the theatre.] This theatre could have been ringing with the music of the spheres, instead of that, a dreadful silence has descended upon us. I should have done it myself. I knew it from the first time I saw you.

LEWIS: It’s not my fault.

ROY: Oh, I get it; if the production had been a success it was all because of you. If it had flopped, it wasn’t your fault. How very, very directorial. Like Hitler, ‘Oh, my God, you mean to tell me we’re fighting on the Russian front and we’re losing? Why didn’t someone tell me we had three million troops in Russia?’ But I won’t go on, you’ll probably put me in a closed ward.