Body on the Stage Read Free Page A

here
before, Dennis?” asked Nick.
    “No, this is my first time.”
    Quiet sniggers greeted his words
and he felt himself blushing.
    “Don’t worry, mate,” said Tony,
grinning. “We’ll be gentle!”
    Dennis followed them out of the
kitchen, through a narrow room lined with tongue and groove boards
where a long mirror circled with light-bulbs reflected their
passing.
    “Make-up room,” said Gazza, a
man of few words. Dennis sniffed to catch the legendary smell of
the greasepaint but could only detect dust and a faint trace of
perfume.
    They made their way through a
door onto the stage and headed to the right, where large black
folding doors were pushed back against the wall allowing access to
a concrete block room filled with stacked bits of scenery. Dennis
looked around with interest at the variety of storage techniques,
noting the racks mounted on the walls, pipes hanging from the
ceiling, and numerous recycled cupboards and shelves.
    “Don’t you ever throw anything
away? Some of this stuff looks a hundred years old!”
    Fenton looked shocked. “Throw it
away? Not if there’s a chance it can be reused for another show.
Some of these tree cut-outs have been around longer than I have –
my dad made them for a pantomime before I was born. These old bits
and pieces look fine under stage lights with a fresh coat of
paint.” He showed Dennis a tall piece of plywood, painted like grey
stone blocks and shaped with battlements at the top. “See that
tower? My mum lowered her hair from that window playing Rapunzel
when she was fifteen. After that it showed up in Camelot, Robin
Hood, and half a dozen ballets.”
    “This truck nearly took my
fingers off once,” said Nick, pointing out a heavy platform on
giant castors suspended against the wall at the side of the stage.
“I was only ten and forgot to keep out of the way.”
    “Er, what’s that for,
exactly?”
    “A truck is a wheeled base that
goes on and off stage, usually with scenery on it. See the rake on
this stage? You don’t want to get your fingers in front of a truck
wheel when it gets away from the crew and starts heading for the
audience, believe me!”
    They climbed down a set of rough
wooden stairs to the workshop floor, where small drifts of glitter
looked strangely out of place among the baulks of timber and heavy
iron fittings.
    “I see they swept up well,”
muttered Gazza.
    “The tool room’s secure,” said
Tony, checking the padlock. “None of them got at the power tools so
that’s good.”
    Dennis had a vision of
five-year-olds wielding electric saws among their companions. “Does
that ever happen?” he asked, faintly apprehensive of the
answer.
    “Not if we catch them first and
put the fear of God into them,” said Gazza with satisfaction. “The
trick is to let them know if they touch things they’re not supposed
to, a great rain of unpleasant stuff will come down on their heads
very heavily until they have to dig their way out.” He pushed his
cap to the back of his head. “We generally don’t have too much
trouble.”
    “And only a few wet themselves
when they get the lecture,” said Nick, grinning.
    “Right, gentlemen,” said Tony,
pinning sheets of paper onto a corkboard. “Here’s our schedule for
the next few months. We’ve got a nice long lead-in to this one as
the guys have to train at the gym to get buffed up. Won’t it be
nice to see actors doing more hard work than we do for a change?
I’ll put an order in for the supplies we need first thing Monday
and we should be able to make a start next weekend. Sound
good?”
    Grunts of assent from Gazza and
Fenton.
    “I’ll be there,” said Nick, “as
long as work doesn’t stuff things up by calling me in.”
    “If you think I’ll be any use,”
said Dennis, “I’m happy to show up.”
    “Right then,” said Tony. “See
you all next week, same time, same Bat-channel.”
    They made their way back to the
Green Room, where a group of five athletic men