They tried several times, in an atmosphere of increasing tension. The amiable Jacko was called in to make an infinitesimal change in Gay’s make-up, and Martyn saw him blot away a tear. At this juncture a disembodied voice roared from the back of the circle: ‘Sister, have comfort. All of us have cause to wail the dimming of our shining star.’

Poole glanced into the auditorium. ‘Do shut up like a good chap, John,’ he said.

‘Pour all your tears! I am your sorrows nurse

And I will pamper it with la-men-ta-ti-ons’

The man called Jacko burst out laughing and was instantly dismissed to the dressing-rooms by Poole.

There followed a quarter of an hour of mounting hysteria on the part of Gay Gainsford and of implacable persistence from Adam Poole. He said suddenly, ‘All right, we’ll cheat. Shift the camera.’

The remaining photographs were taken with a great deal of trouble. Miss Gainsford, looking utterly miserable, went off to her dressing-room. The man called Jacko reappeared and ambled across to Miss Hamilton. There was an adjustment in make-up while Martyn held up the mirror.

‘Maybe it’s lucky,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to look like somebody else.’

‘Are you being nice or beastly, Jacko?’

He put a cigarette between her lips and lit it. ‘The dresses are good,’ he said. He had a very slight foreign accent.

‘You think so, do you?’

‘Naturally. I design them for you.’

‘Next time,’ she said gently, ‘you’d better write the play as well.’ He was a phenomenally ugly man but a smile of extraordinary sweetness broke across his face.

‘All these agonies!’ he murmured, ‘and on Thursday night everyone will be kissing everyone else and at the Combined Arts Ball we are in triumph and on Friday morning you will be purring over your notices. And you must not be unkind about the play. It is a good play.’ He grinned again, more broadly. His teeth were enormous and uneven. ‘Even the little niece of the great husband cannot entirely destroy it.’

‘Jacko!’

‘You may say what you like, it is not intelligent casting.’

‘Please, Jacko.’

‘All right, all right. I remind you instead of the Combined Arts Ball, and that no one has decided in what costume we go.’

‘Nobody has any ideas. Jacko, you must invent something marvellous.’

‘And in two days I must also create out of air eight marvellous costumes.’

‘Darling Jacko, how beastly we are to you. But you know you love performing your little wonders.’

‘I suggest then, that we are characters from Chekhov as they would be in Hollywood. You absurdly gorgeous, and the little niece still grimly ingénue. Adam perhaps as Vanya if he were played by Boris Karloff. And so on.’

‘Where shall I get my absurdly gorgeous dress?’