At half-past six on the night in question, Anthony Gill, unable to eat, keep still, think, speak or act coherently, walked from his rooms to the Jupiter Theatre. He knew that there would be nobody backstage, that there was nothing for him to do in the theatre, that he ought to stay quietly in his rooms and presently dress, dine and arrive at, say, a quarter to eight. But it was as if something shoved him into his clothes, thrust him into the street and compelled him to hurry through the West End to the Jupiter. His mind was overlaid with a thin film of inertia. Odd lines from the play occurred to him, but without any particular significance. He found himself busily reiterating a completely irrelevant sentence: “She has a way of laughing that would make a man’s heart turn over.”

Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue. “Here I go,” he thought, turning into Hawke Street, “towards my play. It’s one hour and twenty-nine minutes away. A step a second. It’s rushing towards me. Tony’s first play. Poor young Tony Gill. Never mind. Try again.”

The Jupiter. Neon lights: i can find my way out—by Anthony Gill. And in the entrance the bills and photographs. Coralie Bourne with H. J. Bannington, Barry George and Canning Cumberland.

Canning Cumberland. The film across his mind split and there was the Thing itself and he would have to think about it. How bad would Canning Cumberland be if he came down drunk? Brilliantly bad, they said. He would bring out all the tricks. Clever actor stuff, scoring off everybody, making a fool of the dramatic balance. “In Mr. Canning Cumberland’s hands indifferent dialogue and unconvincing situations seemed almost real.” What can you do with a drunken actor?

He stood in the entrance feeling his heart pound and his inside deflate and sicken.

Because, of course, it was a bad play. He was at this moment and for the first time really convinced of it. It was terrible. Only one virtue in it and that was not his doing. It had been suggested to him by Coralie Bourne: “I don’t think the play you have sent me will do as it is but it has occurred to me—” It was a brilliant idea. He had rewritten the play round it and almost immediately and quite innocently he had begun to think of it as his own although he had said shyly to Coralie Bourne: “You should appear as joint author.” She had quickly, over-emphatically, refused. “It was nothing at all,” she said. “If you’re to become a dramatist you will learn to get ideas from everywhere. A single situation is nothing. Think of Shakespeare,” she added lightly. “Entire plots! Don’t be silly.” She had said later, and still with the same hurried, nervous air: “Don’t go talking to everyone about it. They will think there is more, instead of less, than meets the eye in my small suggestion. Please promise.” He promised, thinking he’d made an error in taste when he suggested that Coralie Bourne, so famous an actress, should appear as joint author with an unknown youth. And how right she was, he thought, because, of course, it’s going to be a ghastly flop. She’ll be sorry she consented to play in it.

Standing in front of the theatre he contemplated nightmare possibilities. What did audiences do when a first play flopped? Did they clap a little, enough to let the curtain rise and quickly fall again on a discomforted group of players? How scanty must the applause be for them to let him off his own appearance? And they were to go on to the Chelsea Arts Ball. A hideous prospect. Thinking he would give anything in the world if he could stop his play, he turned into the foyer. There were lights in the offices and he paused, irresolute, before a board of photographs. Among them, much smaller than the leading players, was Dendra Gay with the eyes looking straight into his. She had a way of laughing that would make a man’s heart turn over. “Well,” he thought, “so I’m in love with her.” He turned away from the photograph. A man came out of the office. “Mr. Gill? Telegrams for you.”

Anthony took them and as he went out he heard the man call after him: “Very good luck for tonight, sir.”

There were queues of people waiting in the side street for the early doors.

At six-thirty Coralie Bourne dialed Canning Cumberland’s number and waited.

She heard his voice. “It’s me,” she said.

“O God! darling, I’ve been thinking about you.” He spoke rapidly, too loudly. “Coral, I’ve been thinking about Ben. You oughtn’t to have given that situation to the boy.”

“We’ve been over it a dozen times, Cann. Why not give it to Tony? Ben will never know.” She waited and then said nervously, “Ben’s gone, Cann. We’ll never see him again.”

“I’ve got a Thing about it. After all, he’s your husband.”

“No, Cann, no.”

“Suppose he turns up. It’d be like him to turn up.”

“He won’t turn up.”

She heard him laugh. “I’m sick of all this,” she thought suddenly. “I’ve had it once too often. I can’t stand any more… Cann,” she said into the telephone. But he had hung up.

At twenty to seven, Barry George looked at himself in his bathroom mirror. “I’ve got a better appearance,” he thought, “than Cann Cumberland. My head’s a good shape, my eyes are bigger and my jaw line’s cleaner. I never let a show down. I don’t drink. I’m a better actor.” He turned his head a little, slewing his eyes to watch the effect. “In the big scene,” he thought, “I’m the star. He’s the feed. That’s the way it’s been produced and that’s what the author wants. I ought to get the notices.”

Past notices came up in his memory. He saw the print, the size of the paragraphs; a long paragraph about Canning Cumberland, a line tacked on the end of it. “Is it unkind to add that Mr. Barry George trotted in the wake of Mr. Cumberland’s virtuosity with an air of breathless dependability?” And again: “It is a little hard on Mr. Barry George that he should be obliged to act as foil to this brilliant performance.” Worst of all: “Mr. Barry George succeeded in looking tolerably unlike a stooge, an achievement that evidently exhausted his resources.”

“Monstrous!” he said loudly to his own image, watching the fine glow of indignation in the eyes. Alcohol, he told himself, did two things to Cann Cumberland. He raised his finger. Nice, expressive hand. An actor’s hand. Alcohol destroyed Cumberland’s artistic integrity. It also invested him with devilish cunning. Drunk, he would burst the seams of a play, destroy its balance, ruin its form and himself emerge blazing with a showmanship that the audience mistook for genius. “While I,” he said aloud, “merely pay my author the compliment of faithful interpretation. Psha!”

He returned to his bedroom, completed his dressing and pulled his hat to the right angle. Once more he thrust his face close to the mirror and looked searchingly at its image. “By God!” he told himself, “he’s done it once too often, old boy. Tonight we’ll even the score, won’t we? By God, we will.”

Partly satisfied, and partly ashamed, for the scene, after all, had smacked a little of ham, he took his stick in one hand and a case holding his costume for the Arts Ball in the other, and went down to the theatre.

At ten minutes to seven, H.J. Bannington passed through the gallery queue on his way to the stage door alley, raising his hat and saying: “Thanks so much,” to the gratified ladies who let him through. He heard them murmur his name. He walked briskly along the alley, greeted the stage-doorkeeper, passed under a dingy lamp, through an entry and so to the stage. Only working lights were up. The walls of an interior set rose dimly into shadow. Bob Reynolds, the stage-manager, came out through the prompt-entrance. “Hello, old boy,” he said, “I’ve changed the dressing-rooms. You’re third on the right: they’ve moved your things in. Suit you?”