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drink, provided a car to take it and her to the theatre. She asked the driver where church parade was held and learned that it took place in the gardens surrounding the Pump Room. She felt a slight wistfulness to be there, and a whiff of regret at going out of the bright day into the theatre’s semi-darkness . Never had she been stage-struck; in her youththe theatre had merely meant work. Any play Miles was in was of interest to her but mainly on his account; and one did not, merely by attending a dress rehearsal, become part of the little closed world of a play’s production.
    Miles was not in his dressing room and his dresser did not know where he was. She deposited her supplies of food and then went to the front of the house where she had a long and what she found to be depressing conversation with Frank Ashton, who assured her how honoured he was to be presenting Miles, and in a play which was to re-open this wonderful old theatre. Everything was so splendidly worth-while – ‘whatever happens.’ She wondered if he knew what could happen in the way of monetary loss to himself, poor, pleasant, inexperienced young man; but she loudly agreed with him about the worth-whileness and expressed great optimism – and even more when the play’s young author arrived to sit beside Frank Ashton.
    Time passed. Long after the rehearsal was due to start the curtain remained down and the silence was only broken by sporadic hammering. Jill returned to Miles’s dressing room and found him arguing fairly fiercely with Peter Hesper about Cyril-Doug Digby’s make-up, which both of them seemed to have worked on. She persuaded them to eat a few sandwiches and then, on being assured by Peter that the rehearsal would now start, went back to the auditorium. Forty-five minutes later, the rehearsal did start.
    The television play, like so many television plays, had begun with a noisy party presumably intended to establish important characters but actually, Jill often thought,establishing nothing but a noisy party. As no stage production could afford the cost of a score of players to be seen for only three minutes, the stage adaptation began at the end of the party when only characters who would pull their weight later were still lingering. After some complicated exposition which Jill, in spite of having read the script, found hard to follow, Cyril-Doug arrived with credentials from his allegedly dead mother and Miles came to believe he had a son. This scene was well written and Jill thought Cyril-Doug was surprisingly good, if difficult to hear. Peter interrupted the rehearsal to tell him to speak up, after which Cyril shouted and was less good. Still, by the time the curtain fell on the short first act Jill felt unexpectedly optimistic. She would go round and tell Miles so.
    But as she reached the back of the stalls she was intercepted by a short, bald-headed, rubber-featured man who embraced her warmly.
    ‘Tom, darling! Were you there for the whole act? I thought it held splendidly.’ She then whispered, ‘Take care. Frank Ashton and the author are in the front row of the dress circle.’
    ‘Admirable first act,’ said Tom Albion, loudly and clearly. ‘Even better than I thought it was.’ He then steered Jill out of the stalls and added, ‘Actually, it is a little better, but then you know how abysmally bad I thought the script was. Why, why, did we let Miles get involved with this play?’
    ‘I don’t attempt to dictate to him,’ said Jill.
    ‘ I do – but I don’t have much luck; anyway, not whenyour dear husband’s notorious kindness of heart is involved. But never mind. As you know, I’m keeping a film offer on ice for him.’
    ‘You’re a money-grubbing old ghoul, Tom – just ill-wishing this show because you want him to do the film.’
    ‘I should be a bad agent if I didn’t want him to. And not so much of your money-grubbing, my girl. It’ll be a worth-while film and this is hardly a worth-while