‘I’ll tell you what my guess is, Winty. He’ll take it all back to his iron bosom and lock it away in his Louis-the-Somethingth bureau and that’s the last any of us will ever see of young Hamnet Shakespeare’s cheverel glove.’

In this assumption, however, Peregrine was entirely mistaken.

II

‘But that’s all one,’ Marcus Knight read in his beautiful voice. ‘Put it away somewhere. I shall not look at it again. Put it away.’

He laid his copy of Peregrine’s play down and the six remaining members of the company followed his example. A little slap of typescripts ran round the table.

‘Thank you,’ Peregrine said. ‘That was a great help to me. It was well read.’

He looked round the table. Destiny Meade’s enormous black eyes were fixed on him with the determined adulation of some mixed-up and sexy medieval saint. This meant, as he knew, nothing. Catching his eye, she raised her fingers to her lips and then in slow motion, extended them to him.

‘Darling Perry,’ she murmured in her celebrated hoarse voice, ‘what can we say? It’s all too much. Too much.’ She made an appealing helpless little gesture to the company at large. They responded with suitable if ambiguous noises.

‘My dear Peregrine,’ Marcus Knight said (and Peregrine thought: ‘his voice is like no other actor’s). ‘I like it. I see great possibilities. I saw them as soon as I read the play. Naturally, that was why I accepted the role. My opinion, I promise you, is unchanged. I look forward with interest to creating this part.’ Royalty could not have been more gracious.

‘I’m so glad, Marco,’ Peregrine said.

Trevor Vere whose age, professionally, was eleven, winked abominably across the table at Miss Emily Dunne who disregarded him. She did not try to catch Peregrine’s eye and seemed to be disregardful of her companions. He thought that perhaps she really had been moved.

W. Hartly Grove leant back in his chair with some elegance. His fingers tapped the typescript. His knuckles, Peregrine absently noted, were like those of a Regency prizefighter. His eyebrows were raised and a faint smile hung about his mouth. He was a blond man, very comely, with light blue eyes, set far apart, and an indefinable expression of impertinence. ‘I think it’s fabulous,’ he said. ‘And I like my Mr W. H.’

Gertrude Bracey, patting her hair and settling her shoulders said: ‘I am right, aren’t I, Perry? Ann Hathaway shouldn’t be played unsympathetically. I mean: definitely not a bitch?’

Peregrine thought: ‘Trouble with this one: I foresee trouble.’

He said cautiously: ‘She’s had a raw deal, of course.’

Charles Random said: ‘I wonder what Joan Hart did with the gloves?’ and gave Peregrine a shock.

‘But there weren’t any gloves, really,’ Destiny Meade said, ‘were there, darling? Or were there? Is it historical?’