'Tsk,' Bill said.

'Paper-clips,' Wally said, kneeling to pick up one from the floor. He took Bill's arm and drew him away from the window to a place where the actor would not be upset by the sight of schoolchildren. As Wally had a much caricatured tendency to furtiveness, a habit of bringing his mouth up to your ear to communicate to you the most public facts, his behaviour did not seem unusual. 'We've had a major problem with the paper-clips, frere,' he hissed to Bill, still holding his arm tightly. 'I wondered if I could get your advice.'

'You want to talk to me about paper-clips?' paper-clips?'

'You don't have time for that sort of stuff? OK, I understand. So how is the suit? Is it too hot?' He began patting at Bill's sculpted foam rubber like a tailor, shifting the shoulders, smoothing the chest.

'Stop it, frere. I've got to talk to you about the set.'

'The set. Of course. Let's get out of here.'

Bill didn't move. 'I don't like that platform. It's lethal.'

Claire Chen placed her phone on the cradle. 'Oh great ...'

Wally winked at Claire and made a face and pushed his hair back from his hair line so it stood high on his head. He raised his ginger eyebrows at her, rolled his eyes, trying to signal that he did not want Bill looking in her direction.

To Wally, Claire said, 'What?'

To Bill, 'Who was the macho man who didn't need the rails?'

'It's OK,' Wally said. 'Just leave this stuff to me.'

'It is not OK,' Claire said, 'to say one thing at a company meeting and then come in here half an hour before the curtain in a funk.'

'A what?' Bill said, stepping towards her.

'A funk,' she said, picking up a phone. 'h.e.l.lo, Feu Follet.'

'It's OK,'Wally said.

But it was not OK Bill was staring out the window past Claire's bare back.

'Oh, I see,' he said. 'Very nice. You've got rug rats. I see. So,' he said to Wally, 'get rid of them.'

'Frere, you know that ain't possible.'

'Well I'm not playing to them.'

'Talk to Felicity,' Claire said, her hand across the mouthpiece.

Bill looked at Wally, his black eyes fast and anxious. 'Please, frere. This is press night.' press night.'

'Talk to Felicity,' Claire said, holding the phone under her smooth round chin. 'Sorry, could you hold. It's not just rug rats,' she said, 'it's other stuff. For G.o.d's sake, Bill, surely you you can go into her room. can go into her room. Please?' Please?'

'What's that meant to mean?' Bill said. You could see his colour glowing through his make-up. The second phone began to ring. Wally answered it and put it on hold.

Claire took the phone from Wally. 'I want to know,' she said, 'is Felicity playing First Witch or not? If I have to do her lines as well, I want to know. Surely you can go in and ask her. Isn't that clear enough?'

'No.' Bill found a paper-clip and began twisting it. 'It is not clear.'

'It's your baby, isn't it?' Claire said, and held his eye.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said, still looking hard at Bill. 'h.e.l.lo, Feu Follet.'

'No,' Bill said to Claire as she hung up, 'it's not not my baby not necessarily.' my baby not necessarily.'

'Not necessarily?' necessarily?' Claire said. Claire said.

Wally stared at the strong body, the intelligent face with its sensual lips, at this young man who had been graced by G.o.d in so many ways, not least with the pleasure of holding Felicity Smith in his arms.

'What?' Bill demanded of him. His lips had lost their shape. 'What's so weird about that? It's true. All I said was, not Bill demanded of him. His lips had lost their shape. 'What's so weird about that? It's true. All I said was, not necessarily.' necessarily.'

Wally hesitated. 'Did you talk to the Gardiacivil? Did they frighten you, mo-ami?' he asked. 'They don't know anything. They're only penguins. They're not doctors.'

'No one frightened me,' Bill said. 'What's everyone acting so weird about?' He picked up a paper-clip from the floor and handed it to Wally. 'If anyone is frightened, it's you two. Look at you.'

'The curtain's up in fifteen minutes,' Claire said. 'If you want to change the platform you've got twelve minutes to do it.'

'You want to talk about this platform?' Wally said.

'Sure,' Bill said.

'Well come on, mo-ami.' Wally cuffed him lightly on the head he could not help it. 'We'll sit up there together.'

'I don't have a problem sitting on it,' Bill said, rubbing his head and frowning. 'I have a problem fighting on it.'

'I know,' Wally said, 'I know.' As he walked out across the cobbled path and pushed through the velvet curtain into the sweet pine smell of the deep, sawdust-covered stage, he took his tension in his shoulders, pulled his biceps in against his ribs, and when he began his ascent towards the platform he was a production manager going to fix a problem. He had no intention of quarrelling with an actor before a curtain.

6.

To picture Bill and Wally as they climbed up the set of the Scottish Play, you need first to know that the theatre was constructed in the largest of the old Circus School rings. The ceiling was a good forty feet from the sawdust ring and around the ring were seats not the original bleachers, which had been termite-infested, but in the original configuration, that human circle which the Voorstand Sirkus abandoned but which gave the much humbler circuses of Efica their live, electrically charged audiences.

Many of the Feu Follet actors had some sort of connection with the indigenous circus and my mother used to like to shape her plays so that they used or developed, wherever possible, these disappearing skills. Our Shakespeare had tumbling, slack ropes, posturing, trapeze and general acrobatics, and in the case of the Scottish Play she had designed a kind of jungle gym which could suggest a room in the palace, say, but also a scaffolding on which some fight scenes could be ch.o.r.eographed.

The idea was that Macbeth would work himself into higher and higher and more 'dangerous' positions until, on a platform just under the lighting rig, in his final conflict with Macduff, he would tumble and fall, not into their normal safety net there was not room to stretch it but into an eight-by-eight footer they had borrowed from the Theatre for the Deaf.

Wally, as everybody knew, was never happy with heights. He, the 'Human Ball' 'Human Ball', was observed to avoid long ladders and lighting rigs whenever possible, and even though he had been aware of the safety problems with Bill's platform, he had not climbed to inspect it himself, but had sent Sparrowgra.s.s Glashan to deal with it instead.

But now, of course, he had no choice. He climbed, following the glow-tape in the gloom.

On the platform, forty feet above the audience, breathing the hot air under the cobwebbed corrugated roof, he searched for the new black safety wires he had ordered to be strung around the perimeter of the platform. With the lights on pre-set, it was gloomy up here. There was glow-tape marking the platform perimeters, but the wires were painted black. He searched for them with his hand, a little giddily.

'How's that?' he said, finding a wire and tw.a.n.ging it, as if he were touching it only for the purpose of demonstrating its strength. 'Does that solve your safety problem?'

Bill ran his hand over the wires. He knelt so he could inspect the point where they were anch.o.r.ed to the wall. He leaned against them, gingerly at first and then more aggressively. He bounced once or twice, like a boxer against the ropes, but when he had done with his tests he withheld his judgement. Instead he turned, and looked down into the gathering audience.

'There's no point you being angry,' he said at last. 'Obviously, there's something wrong with that baby and denial isn't going to help anyone.'

'How's the wire, mo-ami?'

'Tray bon, thank you.'

'That's good,' Wally said, and turned to leave.

'It might might be Vincent's baby,' the actor said. 'No one can say it isn't.' be Vincent's baby,' the actor said. 'No one can say it isn't.'

Wally was kneeling on the platform, getting ready to descend.

Bill said, 'You needn't look at me like I'm so weird.'

Wally rose. 'Listen, frere you've got a show to do in ten minutes.'

'What's the matter with you?' Bill said. 'Who are you to look so f.u.c.king righteous?'

Wally knew better than to argue with him, especially not now he was like a drunk, full of chemicals ten minutes before the curtain on press night.

'Mollo-mollo,' he said.

'Mollo bulls.h.i.t,' Bill said. 'Why is everyone pretending there's nothing wrong?'

'If there's something wrong, mo-frere,' Wally said (gently he hoped), 'she's going to need you. You can't afford to be afraid.'

Bill stared at Wally, his black eyes suddenly br.i.m.m.i.n.g with poisonous emotion. The look was intense, unwavering.

He jumped. The platform shook. Wally put his hand out to hold the wire.

'Look at you, you old t.w.a.t,' Bill said. 'Don't lecture me about fear. You're too p.i.s.s-weak to even check the scaffold. You sent the Sparrow here instead.'

'You knew it was fixed? You knew?'

'Don't lecture me about fear.' Bill jumped again. The whole platform kicked and swayed, listing over nearly twenty degrees before coming back to a shuddering horizontal. 'What ever made you think you had all this wisdom to impart to me?'

Wally put his arms out, found a wire, steadied himself, looked down into the half-full house. There he saw a familiar beard-fringed countenance scowling up from the front row. It was Vincent, stewing in his own negativity.

When he saw Vincent's defeated face, something changed in Wally. He was still afraid, it's true. He hated heights, feared the giddy emptiness of air. But when he realized that Vincent had already abandoned me and my mother to the whims of fate, he went a little crazy.

Wally loved my maman, and it was this powerful and secret emotion that moved him now. When he began to speak to Bill he no longer cared that they were only minutes from the curtain.

'It's true I don't like heights,' he said to Bill, and something in his manner transmitted itself to the actor who extended a placating arm.

'Come on, mo-ami ...'

'What is love?' Wally said.

'I'm sorry ...'

'When you love,' he answered, 'you don't care. If you're thinking about your own prestige, your own position, that's not love.' Wally was grinning now. He was bright red and sweating, he had purple fungicide between his toes. The long hair on the back of his head was lifting off his neck. He went to the edge and stood with his toes sticking out over the edge of the platform. Down below, directly below, was the eight-by-eight foot net he had finally 'borrowed'.

'Give me your hand,' Bill said.

Wally's big pale lips twisted in a smile, a kind of grimace. 'I'm here for the long haul.'

'Sure you are.'

'You want to know what love is?' Wally said.

'Wally,' Bill said, 'don't do this to me.'

But Wally did do this. Showed him exactly what his love was made of. First he grinned, showed his two gold teeth to Bill, then he winked, then he knelt and slipped under the bottom wire.

That's how it is when you have three men around one woman a general excess pa.s.sion, foolishness, misunderstanding the half-a.s.sembled audience, imagining the show had begun, stood in their seats and cheered.

7.

When Wally leaped, what Vincent saw was suicide, gentian violet between its naked toes. He saw the red waistcoat, the huge bunioned feet daubed violet, the violiniste production manager descending like some dreadful c.o.c.k from heaven.

If he had been previously aware of the eight-by-eight foot safety net, he now forgot it, and he was in any case too depressed to accommodate the notion that the leap might be a declaration of love.

When the audience applauded, Vincent was shocked. When Wally bounced off the net and bowed to him, Vincent felt out of joint, confused, angry. The violiniste's arm was broken it was hanging like a rag but he was grinning and running from the stage like some s.p.a.ce creature. s.p.a.ce creature. Vincent could not hope to understand. He looked around, surprised to see the Vincent could not hope to understand. He looked around, surprised to see the Neufzine Neufzine critic, a woman not normally sympathetic to the Feu Follet, smiling broadly and applauding. Then the drums started and Vincent gave himself over to his greater fear the one that had obsessed him all afternoon, the one that had hung around him like a cloud since he had seen the Gardiacivil banging at my mother's door that his 'son' was somehow monstrous. critic, a woman not normally sympathetic to the Feu Follet, smiling broadly and applauding. Then the drums started and Vincent gave himself over to his greater fear the one that had obsessed him all afternoon, the one that had hung around him like a cloud since he had seen the Gardiacivil banging at my mother's door that his 'son' was somehow monstrous.

It is clear enough by now that I am not Vincent Theroux's son, but at the time nothing was so simple. My maman had imagined both of her lovers to be, in different ways, my father. Bill, her public man, was strong and beautiful. Vincent, her secret lover, was rich and intellectual. And if she had conceived me with Bill, it was Vincent she had discussed me with most often. Vincent was married already, but he wanted me, more than anything he could imagine. Bill was only twenty-two, but Vincent wanted the role. wanted the role.

My maman wanted me too, but after Lear Lear, after Mother Courage Mother Courage, after the tour to Nez Noir. She scheduled me, rescheduled. She named me Tristan* in the summer of 366, even as she postponed me. I was Tristan before my egg was. .h.i.t, Tristan before they knew if I was a boy or a girl. in the summer of 366, even as she postponed me. I was Tristan before my egg was. .h.i.t, Tristan before they knew if I was a boy or a girl.

The moment I was conceived, I was Vincent's little liefling. He treasured me, the idea of me, just as he might a folk painting, offered by a dealer by transparency, purchased on recommendation, presently being crated in another country. Ever since the day he had seen the small phial of urine turn a gorgeous lilac colour, he had drawn on this reservoir of wonder and joy which was nothing less than my existence. He treasured me, the idea of me, just as he might a folk painting, offered by a dealer by transparency, purchased on recommendation, presently being crated in another country. Ever since the day he had seen the small phial of urine turn a gorgeous lilac colour, he had drawn on this reservoir of wonder and joy which was nothing less than my existence.

And he had maintained this feeling until he had one hour before the curtain of the Scottish Play met the Gardiacivil knocking on my maman's door. I am not suggesting that the sight of uniforms alone depressed him, but the Gardiacivil were no friends of the Feu Follet and he knew they were not delivering flowers. Indeed, they brought with them an administrator from the Mater Hospital and, it was this gen, kneeling on the top step so his fat lips were level with the keyhole, who gave Felicity Smith, actor-manager, a legal warning that she would be held legally responsible for the death of the child should she refuse to provide it with the proper care for its condition.

'What condition?' Vincent asked.

But the three men had that dull, flat-faced look of policemen at murder scenes. They drew a line around themselves and their terrifying secret.

'Are you the father, Mr Theroux?'

Vincent was a married man, a public figure, the chief executive of Efica's largest pharmaceutical manufacturer.