‘It’s not him,’ she said. ‘Not the doctor. Oh, I know he’s simply filthy to work with and he does fuss me dreadfully but it’s not the doctor really who’s responsible for all my misery.’

‘No? Who is then?’

‘Uncle Ben!’ She made a small wailing noise that was muffled by his coat. He bent his head attentively to listen. ‘J.G., I’m just plain terrified of Uncle Ben.’

Parry Percival always enjoyed his arrival at the theatre when there was a gallery queue to be penetrated. One raised one’s hat and said: ‘Pardon me. Thanks so much,’ to the gratified ladies. One heard them murmur one’s name. It was a heartening little fillip to one’s self-esteem.

On this occasion the stimulant didn’t work with its normal magic. He was too worried to relish it wholeheartedly.

Ben, he thought hotly, was insufferable. Every device by which a second-leading man could make a bit-part actor look foolish had been brought into play during rehearsals. Ben had upstaged him, had flurried him by introducing new business, had topped his lines and, even while he was seething with impotent fury, had reduced him to nervous giggles by looking sideways at him. It was the technique with which a schoolmaster could torture a small boy, and it revived in Parry hideous memories of his childhood.

Only partially restored by the evidence of prestige afforded by the gallery queue he walked down the stage-door alley and into the theatre. He was at once engulfed in its warmth and expectancy.

He passed into the dressing-room passage. Helena Hamilton’s door was half-open and the lights were on. He tapped, looked in and was greeted by the smell of greasepaint, powder, wet-white and flowers. The gas-fire groaned comfortably. Martyn, who was spreading towels, turned and found herself confronted by his deceptively boyish face.

‘Early at work?’ he fluted.

Martyn wished him good evening.

‘Helena not down yet?’

‘Not yet.’

He hung about the dressing-room, fingering photographs and eyeing Martyn.

‘I hear you come from Down Under,’ he said. ‘I nearly accepted an engagement to go out there last year but I didn’t really like the people so I turned it down. Adam played it in the year dot, I believe. Well, more years ago than he would care to remember, I dare say. Twenty, if we’re going to let our back hair down. Before you were born, I dare say.’

‘Yes,’ Martyn agreed. ‘Just before.’

Her answer appeared to give him extraordinary satisfaction. ‘Just before?’ he repeated. ‘Really?’ and Martyn thought: ‘I mustn’t let myself be worried by this.’

He seemed to hover on the edge of some further observation and pottered about the dressing-room examining the great mass of flowers. ‘I’ll swear,’ he said crossly, ‘those aren’t the roses I chose at Florian’s. Honestly that female’s an absolute menace.’