Hector Fitzpitter, player-manager-author, sat on his trunk. It was his only possession apart from his hat, suit, shirt and the shoes in which he stood. He had been sitting in the same position for an hour and a half. Occasionally he made a slight concession to ache and cramp by gently lifting and relocating his numb buttocks slightly because the shiny, well-worn seat of his trousers was beginning to fray and might not survive a more energetic adjustment. The last of his coins had been expended earlier in the day on a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich.
‘You don’t have enough for ham,’ the restaurant owner had cautioned after he had calculated the pennies, halfpennies and solitary sixpenny piece which Hector had extravagantly spread across the counter top.
‘What have I enough for then?’ he had asked petulantly.
‘Cheese sandwich,’ came the disinterested reply, ‘and even then you’re short.’
Hector pretended he hadn’t heard, secretly hoping that the sandwich and tea would be forthcoming without further reference to financial discrepancy. The chest on which he sat contained his costumes, tattered and torn and sadly reduced to three in number, Iago, Falstaff and Tontagio, in The Bearded Monster of Tontagio, the eponymous role for which he was best known and indeed revered in smaller towns and villages. It was a fearsome part which left unsophisticated audiences cowering and abject as he ranted and raved all over the stage, directing his more savage outbursts towards the meeker-looking members of the audience who faithfully responded with screams and fainting fits.
He had written the play himself. Once, in his hey-day, he had fallen through a trapdoor. He had broken a leg and had penned the piece during the subsequent six weeks of hospitalisation and convalescence.
‘Would,’ said a particularly scurrilous provincial critic, ‘that he had broken his hand instead of his leg and spared us this infantile gibberish!’
Another called him the clown prince of balderdash and compared him with the village idiot on one of his worse days. The cruelest came from an amateur actor who wrote a weekly theatre column and who lambasted all visiting plays and players with unrefined vitriol and without exception, reserving his more generous encomiums for the annual offering of the local amateur drama group of which he was a member.
Said he, ‘Not satisfied with the immortal roles created by Shakespeare, Sheridan, O’Neill, et cetera, Fitzpitter dives deep into his psyche and surfaces covered in his own crud.’
Another wrote that Herbert Fitzpitter should be hung, drawn and quartered, ‘hung,’ he suggested, ‘for directing the play, drawn for taking the leading role and quartered for writing the damned thing!’
Hector Fitzpitter revelled in such notices, attributing the lack of appreciation to ignorance and jealousy. Now, virtually at the end of his career, his unpaid company scattered to the four winds and his pockets empty, he would surely have wept had it not been for the fact that he had never shed a genuine tear since he first embarked on an acting career at the tender age of seventeen, all of fifty years before his present predicament. A lesser man would have despaired and thrown himself at the mercy of the county.
For Hector his present plight was merely a temporary reversal, a minor stumbling-block on the long road to the recognition which surely lay around the corner. Meanwhile there was the question of board and lodgings. His leading lady and his several underlings knew how to look after themselves. They would regroup instinctively, aided by the theatre grapevine, at a specific venue during the first days of spring. All save he were now gone to ground in their own homes or other safe havens for the Christmas which was almost upon them. The spiritual balm of the season would quickly heal the trauma which they had all endured when The Bearded Monster of Tontagio closed prematurely. The proprietor of the theatre had confiscated the slender takings of the three nights before it folded, pointing out to Hector that the paltry amount would hardly pay for the electricity not to mention himself, the caretaker, the box-office staff, the cleaners and the general upkeep.
Wearily, Hector rose to his feet. He shivered as the north-eastern gusts reminded him that he should not have pawned his overcoat. Cutting as the gusts were they were not as damaging as the review of a local amateur.
‘The audience,’ wrote he, ‘few as they were from front seat to back, were soon drenched by the spume and spittle which accompanied the uncontrolled rantings of Mr Hector Fitzpitter.’
There had been more but Hector had not read on. Attacking an actor over the incidental discharge of a minute particle of saliva was akin to criticising a person for having a hump or a stammer. It just wasn’t done. He walked slowly down the street, dragging the cumbersome trunk behind him. Time was when he would have effortlessly borne it on his shoulder.
Hector was possessed of a large and ungainly frame. The excess flesh which once rippled on his torso now shuddered and trembled like a blancmange at the least exertion. He presented a formidable figure to those who encountered him for the first time. Younger actors feared him not at all.
‘Blubber!’ they would reply contemptuously when asked if the outsize player-manager-author might not be a dangerous adversary in a confrontation. Elaborating, they would explain that he was never less than a dangerous antagonist on the stage and finding himself with a naked sword in his hand was quite capable of slashing at anything that got in his way. Similarly when fisticuffs were demanded during a violent scene he was apparently the equivalent of a Jack Johnson and often knocked down younger opponents as though they were made of straw.
‘But,’ they would be quick to explain, ‘in real life he is a cowardly wretch who wouldn’t fight to save his life.’
‘In fact,’ one of Hector’s closest friends informed a curious reporter, ‘while the fellow would not hesitate for a moment to save a damsel in distress on the stage he would run a mile if called upon to do so in public.’
After several hundred yards of trudging he found himself at the front door of the lodgings which he had vacated that morning, having met half of his obligations before saying farewell and promising to pay the other half when funds came to hand as he put it to Mrs Melrick the accommodating landlady who tired easily of his many long-winded apologies.
She was anything but receptive to his second proposal of the day, board and lodgings until his ship came in. Rather curtly she pointed out that all of her lodgers without exception would be returning to their various homes for Christmas and since she expected to find herself with an empty house throughout Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the three days following, she had decided to stay with her son and daughter-in-law in a nearby town for the period of the closure.
‘I’m doing it for my son and grandson,’ she explained to Hector, despondent of face, his jaws resting on intertwined hands atop his now vertical trunk. His thoughts were elsewhere, his attention diverted to the unlikely prospect of alternative accommodation. The thought of sleeping out was an appalling one. He had resorted to it on occasion in his younger days and then only in summer time. At his present age and in winter time it would have been suicidal. His ears pricked suddenly when she referred to her daughter-in-law directly for the first time.
‘Bitch!’ she was saying.
Her remarks were not addressed altogether to Hector. Ruefully she recalled, for her own benefit, the inexplicable antics and tantrums of her son’s wife. From what he heard it was not difficult to gather that there was bad blood between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
‘It beats me,’ Hector cut across her ill-concealed disgruntlement, ‘how you’ve endured it for so long.’
‘God alone knows that,’ she replied vigorously, roused to full articulation by the obviously sincere commiseration from this unexpected quarter.
‘You know about her?’ Mrs Melrick asked.
‘Who doesn’t!’ came the ready reply.
‘She’s something isn’t she?’
Hector thought for a moment before responding.
‘She’s might pull the wool over my son’s eyes,’ the landlady warmed to her task, ‘but she won’t pull it over mine!’
‘She’s not worth it.’ Hector shook his head secondly. A great sorrow clouded his face.
‘She’s not fit to polish your shoes,’ he continued as Mrs Melrick opened the door wide so that he might follow her, trunk and all, into the kitchen. Over the tea which followed they spoke at length about the wickedness and countless misdeeds of her son’s wife. To add criminality to her natural sinfulness there was confirmation also that the awful creature was pregnant again.
‘What next!’ Hector asked as he lifted his eyes to heaven. He was enjoying the role no end. What a pity that playwrights, royalty-hungry, so-called moderns, could not write such parts! The exchanges between the pair lasted until the first of the boarders arrived for the evening meal.
‘See out there.’ Mrs Melrick pointed out the kitchen window to a tiny annex, erected by her late husband for their only son as a facility for his studies.
‘You can stay there until my return,’ his benefactress informed him. ‘There’s a divan and I’ll leave in a few blankets. You can eat here tonight and tomorrow night but after I’ve left you must fend for yourself. You must not come near the house.’
There had been other conditions but, by and large, Hector felt that he had not been mistreated. The following day he would enquire as to the whereabouts of the local presbytery. He had always found, so long as one didn’t overdo it, that Presbyterians were a most reliable source of food and small amounts of cash and, surely if they had been supportive in the past on everyday occasions, was it not likely that they would be even more charitable at Christmas!
Father Alphonsus Murphy had once seen Hector Fitzpitter on the stage. He had been holidaying at the time in a nearby seaside resort and finding himself with nothing better to do, forked out a florin he could ill afford to see the great man’s version of Iago. He had intended after the holiday to repair to the diocesan retreat house for a few days’ meditation and a subsequent revelation of his transgressions, minor and all that they were, but decided against it after he had endured two and three-quarter hours in the stuffy marquee which Hector Fitzpitter had rented for the season
‘I felt,’ he confided to one of his curates some time later, ‘that my experience in that marquee was sufficient atonement for anything I might have done since my last visit to the retreat house.’
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ Hector Fitzpitter opened rather grandly.
‘No need. No need!’ Father Murphy put him at his ease.
‘Perhaps you’ve seen me on the stage Father?’
Father Murphy decided to ignore the question. Instead he asked if he might be of some assistance to his urbane visitor.
‘You can indeed Father,’ came the deferential reply.
After providing a résumé of his recent misfortunes in a style not unfamiliar to his listener, Hector asked if it might be possible to borrow a modest sum of money, to be repaid in full without fail as soon as the touring season commenced in the forthcoming spring.
‘We are not in the business of lending,’ Father Murphy reminded him, ‘but if you are not averse to a day’s work I can provide same and pay you when the job is done.’
‘Work!’ Hector recoiled instinctively as images of shovel and pick-axes assailed him.
‘Don’t be alarmed.’ Father Murphy had experienced countless reactions of a similar nature. ‘Your qualifications for the sort of work I have in mind are impeccable. In fact, I know of nobody off-hand who could do a better job.’
‘You want me to read the lesson.’ Hector’s face beamed as he saw himself addressing a record audience and, more importantly, a captive audience. Father Murphy scowled uncharacteristically at the awful prospect.
‘I merely want you,’ he said icily, ‘to play the role of Santa Claus tomorrow night. I will supply you with hat, beard and coat. After you’ve eaten I will take you, in advance, to the laneway where you will be delivering gifts to the underprivileged children of the parish.’
Hector smiled. The prospect appealed to him.
‘And I will be paid?’
‘Yes,’ Father Murphy assured him. ‘You will be paid the moment you finish your rounds. Now you may go around the back and tell the housekeeper that I said you were to be fed. I’ll expect you to present yourself here tomorrow night at eight o’clock.’
Later, as they drove slowly up the laneway which ended in the open countryside, Father Murphy handed him a pencil and some paper with instructions to write down the name of the owner of each house so that there would be no instances of wrong delivery. Each parcel of gifts would bear the name of the recipient on the outside. By the simple expedient of requesting the house-owner’s name the parcels would find their way into the right hands.
‘Let me warn you,’ Father Murphy’s voice assumed a cautionary tone, ‘in the very last house you are likely to meet with trouble so you would be best advised not to enter. When your knock is answered you will hand over the gifts to whatever person opens the door. Then, if you have any sense, you will make yourself scarce!’
‘You’re not trying to tell me that my life will be in danger Father?’
‘Not your life,’ Father Murphy forced a laugh, ‘but the fact is that the parish’s biggest bully and its most foul-mouthed drunkard, one Jack Scalp, lives in that house and if he happens to be at home when you call he will most certainly attempt to assault you. By not entering the house you will be in no danger whatsoever. Just turn and leave when your job is done and here,’ said Father Murphy, ‘is a half-crown. It’s Christmas time and you could do with a drink, I dare say, only don’t let me see you with a sign of drink on you tomorrow night or I’ll clear you from the door!’
Hector sat upright in the car, a look of affront on his face.
‘My dear Father Murphy,’ said he, ‘I have never drunk before a performance and I don’t propose to start now.’
That night Hector slept soundly. He spent most of the following day walking up and down the laneway rehearsing his lines and his movements. He would have been happier with a dress rehearsal but given the circumstances he realised it would be out of the question. During his travels he kept an eye out for Jack Scalp. He had already developed a mental picture of the scoundrel and felt that he would instantly recognise him should their paths cross. He had made up his mind to ignore Father Murphy’s warning and was determined to force his way into the kitchen if necessary. If needs be he would exercise his acting skills to their fullest. They had saved him in the past and, with simple presence of mind, would do so again. He drank not at all on Christmas Eve, resolving to splurge on a bellyful of booze as soon as he received his wages. He ate sparingly from the few provisions which Mrs Melrick had left out for him on the wickerwork table in the annex. He made a final inspection of the laneway before calling to the presbytery where Father Murphy awaited him.
‘It’s a pretty large bag as you can see,’ the cleric advised him, ‘and there are thirteen households in all. Tarry awhile in the kitchen of each before passing on to the next and take special care at the thirteenth for it is there, as I have told you, that Jack Scalp resides.’
‘I’ll take care,’ Hector promised. If Father Murphy had noticed the contemptuous note in his voice he kept it to himself.
‘I will drive you as far as the entrance to the laneway,’ he told Hector. He stood by fingering his chin while his protégé fitted the false off-white beard. An elastic band held it firmly in place. Next came the boots which were a size too large but better too large than too small he thought. Then came the hat and finally the long red coat which reached down to his toes.
‘Is there a life-size mirror?’
‘’Fraid not,’ Father told him, ‘we don’t indulge in such vanities in this presbytery but you can take it from me that you look the part.’
Father Murphy wondered if he should inform him of the incident which had occurred on the previous Christmas Eve but decided against it. He had already told him to be on his guard. Anyway no great damage had been done, just a bloody nose and that had stopped bleeding after a few moments. The elderly member of the St Vincent de Paul Society who had filled the role at the time had been drinking all afternoon and when he had pushed Mrs Scalp aside in order to confront her husband he realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew. A string of expletives directed towards him had the effect of momentarily paralysing him. He immediately dropped his bag and made for the door. In vain did Mrs Scalp try to restrain her drunken husband. He knocked her to the floor and landed a solid punch on the somewhat outsize, puce-coloured proboscis of Father Christmas. The blow might have been followed by another but Jack Scalp tripped across a beer crate and fell in a heap on the floor. His intended victim emitted a cry of relief and never drew breath until he arrived at the presbytery, his artificial beard well and truly bloodied. He collapsed onto a chair, gasping for whiskey. His account of the incident differed greatly from the actual facts. He had, according to himself, fought a heroic fight and was forced to retreat lest he do further damage and maybe even be the cause of widowing poor Mrs Scalp who was fully exonerated for not taking sides.
Hector was rapturously received by the parents and children in the first house he entered. Whiskey and wine were pressed upon him so that he found himself unable to resist. It was the same at all the other homes. His best efforts to refuse the liquor which was so generously pressed upon him were to no avail. Glass after glass of whiskey found its way to his palate and later to his brain. He was, as he would say later, almost suffocated with alcohol.
‘You’re a big, brave man,’ one poor woman had said to him, ‘what’s a little drop of drink to you?’
He was never possessed of the mettle to refuse drink when kindly souls insisted he partake. In one house a selection of sandwiches awaited him and in another a plate of crackers and cheddar. ‘The poor are so open-hearted,’ he would say later to Father Murphy, ‘they would give you their hearts.’
Father Murphy concurred. He had more than adequate proof of the veracity of Hector Fitzpitter’s conclusions.
Children sat on Hector’s lap and plied him with dainties. A few days hence and the cupboards would be bare once more all along the little laneway but here was Christmas and it was a time for giving and no better man to receive than this outstanding representation of Santa Claus, undoubtedly the most colourful ever to visit the laneway. Hector was quite overcome in the face of such bounty, such cordiality, such love! In some of the houses there were sessions of hymn-singing and in others storytelling. Hector Fitzpitter never played so many roles in so short a time.
It was well on the road to midnight when he reached the last house. Drunk as he was he had not forgotten Father Murphy’s warning. He drew himself up to his full height. He had played a bear once in A Winter’s Tale and for a moment was tempted to roar like one. He resisted the urge and gently knocked at the door. None came to answer. He listened for a while but could hear nothing. He knelt and placed an ear against the keyhole. After a short spell there came the most unpropitious sounds. No actor, he told himself, could create such heart-rending whimperings. Faint and childlike, they seemed to emanate from the very depths of human despair. Hardened as he was Hector Fitzpitter found himself physically bereft of strength so moved was he by the broken whinings, eerie and awesome. They succeeded in transmitting a devastating anguish to his heart, an anguish that he had never before experienced. The salt tears coursed down his face and into his adopted beard as he silently rose to his feet determined to put an end to the pitiful ejaculations which so provoked his newly found humanity.
He knocked loudly upon the door and, upon receiving no response knocked as loudly as his clenched fists would allow. It was opened by a child, a tear-stained, grimy, undernourished little girl who looked at him with wonder-filled eyes. Behind her stood an equally famished little boy and then, suddenly, there were four more boys and girls, so obviously neglected and deprived, so stunted and wan of face that they looked as if they were all the same age.
‘It’s Santa Claus,’ one whispered. Then in subdued confirmation all mentioned the name revered by children everywhere.
Cautiously Hector made his way into the kitchen. There was little light save that shed by a paraffin lamp with its wick turned down almost fully. There was no trace of a fire although the night was cold. There was no sign of the mother. The father, Jack Scalp, sat in a corner, his legs stretched in front of him, empty beer bottles all around and a partly filled noggin of whiskey clutched in one of his grimy hands. He snored fitfully. The little girl who had opened the door pressed a finger to her lips entreating silence from the visitor.
‘Where is your mother?’ Hector asked in a whisper.
‘He put her out.’ Every one of the six pointed a finger at their sleeping father.
‘Why?’ Hector asked.
‘No why,’ the girl who had opened the door replied.
‘He does it all the time,’ another whispered.
‘If he wakes he’ll beat us again,’ said another still.
‘For no reason of course?’ Hector suggested. A chorus of affirmative whispers greeted his question.
‘I have presents for everybody,’ he informed the delighted children. How their faces transformed at the news.
‘How little it takes,’ Hector told himself between sobs and sighs, ‘to please a child!’
He looked from one to the other of the angelic faces and was appalled by the bruises and bloodstains thereon. Hector Fitzpitter would never have the slightest compunction about kicking a fellow-thespian in the rear or socking him one to the jaw but to molest a child in such a fashion smacked of base cowardice and naked savagery.
‘Your deliverance is at hand,’ he announced solemnly to the children, now making not the least effort to lower his tone. He gathered them round him, quite overcome by the angelic radiance of their faces.
‘I want you,’ Hector informed them as he allowed his hands to linger on each individual head and face, ‘to go and find your mother. I want you to bring her here no matter how she protests. Tell her that it was I, Santa Claus, who sent you. Go now.’
In a flash the children departed.
‘Now my fine fellow,’ Hector addressed the snorting drunkard in the corner, ‘let us determine the quality of thy kidney. Awake fellow!’ he bawled, ‘awake to meet thy just deserts for as sure as there are stars in the heavens outside justice will be done in this house. Awake lout!’ he roared at the top of his voice.
Blearily, angrily, torrents of the vilest curses exploding from his beer-stained mouth, Jack Scalp struggled to his feet. Upon beholding Santa Claus and nobody else he squeezed upon his whiskey noggin and would have smashed it against Hector’s head had not the actor seized the hand that would smite him and brought its owner to his knees. Possessed of hitherto untapped strength Hector seized Jack Scalp by the throat and lifted him to his feet.
‘My strength is as the strength of ten,’ he roared quoting Tennyson, ‘because my heart is pure.’
For the first time in his life Jack Scalp started to experience real fear. That he was in the presence of a madman he had absolutely no doubt. Hector flung him violently into the corner he had just vacated and stomped around the kitchen like one berserk. Suddenly he stopped.
‘Do you know me?’ he asked the cowering figure, askew in his corner.
Fearfully Jack shook head. He would have taken flight but that he was paralysed with fear.
‘I,’ said Hector, ‘am the Bearded Monster of Tontagio. I have killed seventeen men in my time and maimed a hundred others. Make your peace with God while you may, you scurvy wretch, lest I send you to your maker this instant.’
So saying, Hector entered fully into the role he had created and played a thousand times. He stalked round the kitchen, striking further terror into his victim with maniacal roars of laughter.
‘Rise!’ he commanded. Jack Scalp staggered to his feet, drooling now, certain that his demise was at hand. From an inside pocket in the great red coat Hector withdrew Mrs Melrick’s turf-shed hatchet and flung it at the cowering creature in the corner, making sure that he barely missed his head. Then seizing him by the throat he spread-eagled him across the kitchen table and choked him to within a breath of suffocation until the table collapsed beneath the squirming, wriggling child-beater.
Hector lifted him to his feet and slapped his face several times before seizing him by the throat yet again. Red froth bubbled from the monster’s mouth as he applied the pressure to his victim’s throat. Hector had bitten his tongue, just enough to assure that his spittle would be suitably coloured. Once again he flung the drooling drunkard to one side before presenting another terrifying facet of the monster’s make-up. He started to smite upon his chest as though he were a gorilla. The grunting and screeching, the hysterical jabbering and high-pitched screaming which accompanied these most recent gestures were diabolical in the extreme. Jack Scalp fainted.
‘Awake villain!’ Hector Fitzpitter roared, ‘awake to thy fate!’
With that he poured the remains of the abandoned whiskey noggin over the prostrate drunkard’s face. Stuttering and begging forgiveness Jack Scalp crawled cravenly around the kitchen, sometimes seizing the trouser legs of his tormentor as he begged for mercy.
‘I am tempted to kill you,’ Hector spoke in what he believed were spine-chilling tones, the same tones that had sent faint-hearted rustics scampering for the exits before the enactment of another gruesome murder on the stage.
‘Spare me. Spare me!’ Jack screamed. ‘Spare me and I will change my ways.’
‘On your knees then.’ Hector stood by with hands behind his back.
‘Say after me,’ he commanded, ‘I will never from this moment forth molest my wife or children again.’
He waited as Jack Scalp repeated the words.
‘I will never,’ Hector continued, ‘to the day I die, taste an intoxicating drink. I will be a model husband and father and I will devote the remainder of my life to the welfare of my children.’
‘If you fail to honour your promises on this most sacred of nights I, the Monster of Tantagio, will return,’ Hector’s ominous tones were terrifying in the extreme, ‘and I will split you right down the middle with this hatchet I hold in my hand.’
Silently Hector lifted his empty sack and disappeared into the night. There was no applause, no standing ovation, no cries of author! Yet Hector knew in his heart of hearts that he had given the finest performance of his career. Actors are never fully satisfied, no more than playwrights are after a play has been performed, but Hector had accomplished what all actors aspire to and few achieve. He had given the perfect performance. It mattered not that there was no audience and that there were no critics. He had fulfilled his lifelong dream and developments thereafter would prove him right. Early on the morning of Christmas Day, Jack Scalp presented himself to Father Murphy and took a lifetime pledge against intoxicating drink. It was a pledge he would keep. Never again would he spit at, shout at or molest in any way whatsoever his long-suffering wife and family. He turned into a model father and became one of the parish’s most respected figures. Hector Fitzpitter’s acting improved. He benefited greatly from his performance at the abode of Jack Scalp. During the following summer a new version of his masterpiece was warmly received by audiences and critics alike.