Final Curtain. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ way down the aisle and turned it towards him. ‘I’m afraid it won’t explain itself,’ she said. ‘It’s merely a sort of plot of what I hope to do.’

      ‘Ah, yes!’ He put his hand in his tunic and drew out a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez and there, in a moment, was Macbeth, with glasses perched on his nose, staring solemnly at his own portrait. ‘Such a clever lady,’ he said. ‘Very clever!’ Troy put the drawing away and he got up slowly. ‘Off, ye lendings!’ he said. ‘I must change.’ He adjusted his cloak with a practised hand, drew himself up, and, moving into the spot-light, pointed his dirk at the great naked canvas. His voice, as though husbanded for this one flourish, boomed through the empty theatre.

      ‘“Well, may you see things well done there: adieu!

      Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!”’

      ‘“God’s benison go with you!”’ said Troy, luckily remembering the line. He crossed himself, chuckled and strode off between the monoliths to the door behind the stage. It slammed and Troy was alone.

      She had made up her mind to start at once with the laying out of her subject on the big canvas. There would be no more preliminary studies. Time pressed and she knew now what she wanted. There is no other moment, she thought, to compare with this, when you face the tautly stretched surface and raise your hand to make the first touch upon it. And, drawing in her breath, she swept her charcoal across the canvas. It gave a faint drumlike note of response. ‘We’re off,’ thought Troy.

      Fifty minutes went by and a rhythm of line and mass grew under her hand. Back and forward she walked, making sharp accents with the end of her charcoal or sweeping it flat across the grain of the canvas. All that was Troy was now poured into her thin blackened hand. At last she stood motionless, ten paces back from her work, and, after an interval, lit a cigarette, took up her duster and began to flick her drawing. Showers of charcoal fell down the surface.

      ‘Don’t you like it?’ asked a sharp voice.

      Troy jumped galvanically and turned. The little girl she had seen fighting on the terrace stood in the aisle, her hands jammed in the pockets of her pinafore and her feet planted apart.

      ‘Where did you come from?’ Troy demanded.

      ‘Through the end door. I came quietly because I’m not allowed. Why are you rubbing it out? Don’t you like it?’

      ‘I’m not rubbing it out. It’s still there.’ And indeed the ghost of her drawing remained. ‘You take the surplus charcoal off,’ she said curtly. ‘Otherwise it messes the paints.’

      ‘Is it going to be Noddy dressed up funny?’

      Troy started at this use of a name she had imagined to be Miss Orrincourt’s prerogative and invention.

      ‘I call him Noddy,’ said the child, as if guessing at her thought, ‘and so does Sonia. She got it from me. I’m going to be like Sonia when I’m grown up.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Troy, opening her paint box and rummaging in it.

      ‘Are those your paints?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Troy, looking fixedly at her. ‘They are. Mine.’

      ‘I’m Patricia Claudia Ellen Ancred Kentish.’

      ‘So I’d gathered.’

      ‘You couldn’t have gathered all of that, because nobody except Miss Able ever calls me anything but Panty. Not that I care,’ added Panty, suddenly climbing onto the back of one of the stools and locking her feet in the arms. ‘I’m double jointed,’ she said, throwing herself back and hanging head downwards.

      ‘That won’t help you if you break your neck,’ said Troy.

      Panty made an offensive gargling noise.

      ‘As you’re not allowed here,’ Troy continued, ‘hadn’t you better run off?’

      ‘No,’ said Panty.

      Troy squeezed a fat serpent of Flake White out on her palette. ‘If I ignore this child,’ she thought, ‘perhaps she will get bored and go.’

      Now the yellows, next the reds. How beautiful was her palette!

      ‘I’m going to paint with those paints,’ said Panty at her elbow.

      ‘You haven’t a hope,’ said Troy.

      ‘I’m going to.’ She made a sudden grab at the tray of long brushes. Troy anticipated this move by a split second.

      ‘Now, see here, Panty,’ she said, shutting the box and facing the child, ‘if you don’t pipe down I shall pick you up by the slack of your breeches and carry you straight back to where you belong. You don’t like people butting in on your games, do you? Well, this is my game, and I can’t get on with it if you butt in.’

      ‘I’ll kill you,’ said Panty.

      ‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Troy mildly.

      Panty scooped up a dollop of vermilion on three of her fingers and flung it wildly at Troy’s face. She then burst into peals of shrill laughter.

      ‘You can’t whack me,’ she shrieked. ‘I’m being brought up on a system.’

      ‘Can’t I!’ Troy rejoined. ‘System or no system –’ And indeed there was nothing she desired more at the moment than to beat Panty. The child confronted her with an expression of concentrated malevolence. Her cheeks were blown out with such determination that her nose wrinkled and turned up. Her mouth was so tightly shut that lines resembling a cat’s whiskers radiated from it. She scowled hideously. Her pigtails stuck out at right angles to her head. Altogether she looked like an infuriated infant Boreas.

      Troy sat down and reached for a piece of rag to clean her face. ‘Oh, Panty,’ she said, ‘you do look so exactly like your Uncle Thomas.’

      Panty drew back her arm again. ‘No, don’t,’ said Troy. ‘Don’t do any more damage with red paint, I implore you. Look here, I’ll strike a bargain with you. If you’ll promise not to take any more paint without asking, I’ll give you a board and some brushes and let you make a proper picture.’

      Panty glared at her. ‘When?’ she said warily.

      ‘When we’ve asked your mother or Miss Able. I’ll ask. But no more nonsense. And especially,’ Troy added, taking a shot in the dark, ‘no more going to my room and squeezing paint on the stair rail.’

      Panty stared blankly at her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said flatly. ‘When can I paint? I want to. Now.’

      ‘Yes, but let’s get this cleared up. What did you do before dinner last night?’

      ‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. Dr. Withers came. He weighed us all. He’s going to make me bald because I’ve got ringworm. That’s why I’ve got this cap on. Would you like to see my ringworm?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I got it first. I’ve given it to sixteen of the others.’

      ‘Did СКАЧАТЬ