They jockeyed about for star positions. Peregrine made the final decision in Knight’s favour. It really was better that way. Gertrude came on and then Emily: very nice as Joan Hart, and finally Harry Grove, behaving himself and giving a bright, glancing indication of Mr W. H. Peregrine began to feel that perhaps he had not written a bad play and that, given a bit of luck, he might, after all, hold the company together.

He was aware, in the back of his consciousness, that someone had come into the stalls. The actors were all on stage and he supposed it must be Winter Morris or perhaps Jeremy who often looked in, particularly when Destiny was rehearsing.

They ran the whole scene without interruption and followed it with an earlier one between Emily, Marcus and the ineffable Trevor in which the boy Hamnet, on his eleventh birthday, received and wore his grandfather’s present of a pair of embroidered cheverel gloves.

Marcus and Peregrine had succeeded in cowing the more offensive exhibitionisms of Trevor and the scene went quite well. They broke for luncheon. Peregrine kept Harry Grove back and gave him a wigging which he took so cheerfully that it lost half its sting. He then left and Peregrine saw with concern that Destiny had waited for him. Where then was Marcus Knight and what had become of his proprietary interest in his leading lady? As if in explanation, Peregrine heard Destiny say: ‘Darling, the King Dolphin’s got a pompous feast with someone at the Garrick. Where shall we go?’

The new curtain was half-lowered, the working lights went out, the stage-manager left and the stage-door banged distantly.

Peregrine turned to go out by front-of-house.

He came face to face with Mr Conducis.

II

It was exactly as if the clock had been set back a year and three weeks and he again dripped fetid water along the aisle of a bombed theatre. Mr Conducis seemed to wear the same impeccable clothes and to be seized with the same indefinable step backwards, almost as if Peregrine was going to accuse him of something.

‘I have watched your practice,’ he said as if Peregrine was learning the piano. ‘If you have a moment to spare there is a matter I want to discuss with you. Perhaps in your office?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Peregrine said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t see you had come in.’

Mr Conducis paid no attention to this. He was looking, without evidence of any kind of reaction, at the now resplendent auditorium: at the crimson curtain, the chandeliers, the freshly-gilt scrollwork, the shrouded and expectant stalls.

‘The restoration is satisfactory?’ he asked.

‘Entirely so. We shall be ready on time, sir.’

‘Will you lead the way?’