Perfect Gallows by Peter Dickinson

three-pounds-something in the pewter tea-pot on the mantel­piece. He helped himself to a ten-bob note and two half-crowns—she never bothered to count what she’d put by—then went softly back into the hall, picked up his case and left. The children were still shrieking among the ruins.
    Cyril was delighted to see him, as flu was raging and last night they’d gone on with only five dwarfs, raising a bit of a laugh by saying the other two had gone to be Bevan boys. Two bob a performance and he could sleep under the makeshift stage, but keep a look-out for a stage-hand called Toby. He liked boys.
    There were matinées six days of the week and evening performances four. At least you got a full house matinées, shrieking kids bussed in for their Christmas treat from villages miles around, never mind it was only a church hall and not a real theatre. They understood about one line in three and drowned half those with squabbles over their sandwich-packs. The main cast was professional, but otherwise as makeshift as the theatre. Snow White was fifty, though she managed to look ten years younger under the greasepaint. Prince Charming had the voice of a bad-tempered mouse, having been cast for her legs. The Wicked Queen might once have had promise; now she brought sailors along, different ones each time, and chattered audibly with them in the wings. The Dame could perform with real gusto when he’d found enough to drink, but at that stage was apt to veer off into Aladdin or Jack and the Beanstalk .
    Evening performances were dire in a different way, the front seats only half full, with older and prissier children than the afternoon ones, balanced by a couple of dozen adults in the back rows who’d been attracted by the posters of Prince Charming, all thigh and tooth and bust; these became rowdy with boredom unless the Dame placated them with lines that tended to make the parents nearer the stage start hustling their children into overcoats and taking them away in mid-scene.
    For Andrew it was the appallingness that made it so satisfying. It was the real thing, the bottom rung. His chart of the future showed him climbing from the insignificance of Fawley Street to world-wide stardom, missing nothing on the way. He would never retire. He would die on stage (Our revels now are … ended …) but before that last, spell-binding instant he would dictate his autobiography, a summation of the theatre in this century, so it had to be all there—tolerant but telling anecdotes about famous colleagues, the applause of Broadway and the West End, the mad tycoons of Hollywood tamed, and so on, but also the dragon landladies of Doncaster, Blackpool nights, Hamlet on one cheese sandwich, and this, including the first tiny triumph that when Dopey came palely back from his sickbed the producer sent him packing because his replacement was getting laughs.
    Still, dire it was, reaching its nadir on Friday night with the back rows fuller and rowdier than usual. Just after the interval the Dame came weaving on and tapped Snow White on the shoulder just as she was reaching for a high note in “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. Snow White spun round and socked him.
    â€œLay off, you silly bitch,” said the Dame. “I got a nouncement.”
    The audience were yelling to Snow White to finish him off but he raised his arms in a priestly, compelling gesture and got them half-quieted.
    â€œAnnouncement from the management, ladies and gents,” he said. “Sirens have gone for an air-raid warning. Those as want to leave, nearest shelters are in Houndwell Park, left and left again as you go, duckies. Those as want to stay, well, we’re staying. We never closed, not for that fat bugger Goering, at any rate. Now, just to give them as are going time to clear out, before we get on with this elegant entertainment we are laying on for your benefit, you unappreciative drunken slobs, I’ll tell you a