He moved in beside her. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s try it. The end of the first act,’ and at once she turned upon him a look of tragic and burning intensity. The elderly man wandered across and tweaked at her skirts. Without changing pose or expression, she said, ‘Isn’t it shameful the way Jacko can’t keep his hands off me.’ He grinned and ambled away. Adam Poole said ‘Right,’ the group froze in postures of urgency that led the eye towards the two central figures and the cameras clicked.

Martyn tried, as the morning wore on, to get some idea of the content of the play but was unable to do so. Occasionally the players would speak snatches of dialogue leading up to the moment when a photograph was to be taken, and from these she gathered that the major conflict of the theme was between the characters played by Adam Poole and Clark Bennington and that this conflict was one of ideas. About a particular shot there was a great deal of difficulty. In this Poole and Gay Gainsford confronted each other and it was necessary that her posture, the arrested gesture of her hand and even her expression should be an exact reflection of his.

To Martyn, Poole had seemed to be a short-tempered man, but with Gay Gainsford he showed exemplary patience. ‘It’s the old story, Gay,’ he said, ‘you’re overanxious. It’s not enough for you to look like me. Let’s face it,’ he hesitated for a moment and said quickly, ‘we’ve had all this, haven’t we—but it’s worth repeating—you can’t look strikingly like me, although Jacko’s done wonders. What you’ve got to do is to be me. At this moment, don’t you see, you’re my heredity, confronting me like a threat. As far as the photograph is concerned, we can cheat—the shot can be taken over your shoulder, but in the performance there can be no cheating, and that is why I’m making such a thing of it. Now let’s take it with the line. Your head’s on your arms, you raise it slowly to face me. Ready now. Right, up you come.’

Miss Gainsford raised her face to his as he leaned across the writing-desk and whispered: ‘Don’t you like what you see?’ At the same moment there was a cascade of laughter from Miss Hamilton. Poole’s voice cracked like a whiplash, ‘Helena, please,’ and she turned from Parry Percival to say, ‘Darling, I’m so sorry,’ and in the same breath spoke her line of dialogue: ‘But it’s you, don’t you see, you can’t escape from it, it’s you.’ Gay Gainsford made a hopeless little gesture and Poole said: ‘Too late, of course. Try again.’