And every night she worked at her craft. Every night her performance was the same, yet different, as part of her listened to the audience, felt the energy of the audience, adjusted to that other part of the full circle of her work: the audience. She felt them listen, felt them sigh inwardly, felt the silence. Sometimes they laughed: she timed when to wait, when to speak. Sometimes they coughed and shuffled: automatically she adjusted, drew them in again. With one part of her consciousness she felt them, worked with them; with the rest of her consciousness she was old Alice the tramp.

It was this, this art, that she had dedicated her life to.

Her agent, from whom she usually heard so little, rang her almost daily, told her how many people had praised her performance.

‘We know the National Theatre is interested,’ Emmy Lou told him.

‘AND I’ve got you an audition for a commercial this afternoon,’ replied her agent.

Emmy Lou sighed, but went along.

There she heard them talking about a new exciting filming process: they would soon only need a few shots of the actors against a particular computerised background, could fill in the rest of the performance on computers, would hardly need actors at all in the future, only their image, briefly.

She didn’t get the job, as usual.

It seemed strange to be praised in all the daily newspapers and yet still sign on at the dole office with the salesmen and the young West Indians and the university students and the frightened middle-aged men who had always been secure before: as if the two halves of her life didn’t connect, were disjointed. Pamela Angel paid their tube fares and said she hoped to give them all forty pounds at the end of the four-week run.

And every night she played Alice, the old lady with the plastic bags and the newspapers who had nearly been a schoolteacher.

The season was completely booked out by the end of the first week. It couldn’t be extended for more than a month because another small theatre company had booked the room above the pub. And it couldn’t transfer anywhere because the National Theatre were negotiating to buy the rights.

‘They’ll do it later,’ was all Pamela Angel would say to her cast. ‘They want to do it in the New Year, we’re still talking.’

*