whenââ
âTomorrow?â
âYes, if I feel OK. Come round when you . . . Evening. Eight or . . .â
âOK. Iâll be there. Archer Street. Youâll be all right now?â
âLike hell.â The phone went dead.
Before Charles left the house in Pangbourne, he took the envelope of photographs out of his inside pocket and looked at them. With Steenâs death they had changed. Already they had the air of curios or souvenirsâoddities from another age. The erotic quality had drained from them and they seemed like sepia prints in an album of someone elseâs relations. Mildly interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.
He looked around for somewhere to destroy them. The trouble with architect-designed houses on estates is that they have nothing like an open fire. The central heating was fired by oil. (Miles had already spoken gloomily of the inevitable price rises which the Middle East situation must precipitate. As he said portentously, âYou know, Pop, the days of cheap fuel are over.â) The cooker was electric. There was no convenient stove to consume the evidence.
Charles took a giant box of matches from the kitchen and went out into the garden. The forty-foot long area was neatly organised. A potting shed of conspicuous new timber, a patio area protected by a screen of latticework bricks, a path of very sane crazy paving winding diagonally across the lawn, a meticulous row of cloches. Only the winter shagginess of the grass gave any hint of rampant nature or humanity.
It had started to rain. Big heavy drops that were cold as they fell, penetrating, on his head and shoulders. In the far corner of the garden Charles saw what he was looking for. Neatly screened by another low wall of lattice-work bricks were a compost heap, bound in by wooden slats, and an empty metal incinerator. He lit the photographs one by one and let the flimsy black rectangles of ash drop into the bin. Finally he burnt the envelope, then stirred the dampening fragments into a black unrecognisable mash.
X
Second Act Beginners
THE OBITUARY APPEARED in The Times the next day, Tuesday 11th December.
MR MARIUS STEEN
Impresario and Showman
Mr Marius Steen, CBE. the impresario, died on Sunday. He was 68. Born in Warsaw in 1905, his full name was Marius Ladislas Steniatowski, but he shortened it for convenience when his parents came to England in 1921. His father was a tailor and for some years the young Steen helped him in his business. But already the attraction of entertainment was strong; Steen spent most of his limited pocket-money on tickets for the music hall and in 1923 launched himself as Mario, the Melodic Whistler. In spite of changes in name and act, he was never a success as a performer, but became increasingly interested in the business of promotion and management. The first act he managed was Herbert and his Horrible Dogs in 1924.
Soon he was progressing from individual acts to the presentation of complete shows. Though he started with wrestling and all-girl revues, by 1930 he was presenting variety bills at music halls all over the country. Through the Thirties he centralised his activities on London and, in 1935, had his first major success with the spectacular revue Go With The Girls . None of these early productions had a great deal to recommend them artistically, but Steen always maintained that success must be measured by public reaction alone. And by that criterion his shows were highly successful.
Steen continued presenting revues, with an increasing reliance on scripted comedy rather than just dancing girls, until the outbreak of war. Then he moved into the cinema and, with his customary unflagging energy, set up a series of films in keeping with the jingoistic spirit of the times. Of these the most memorable was Brothers in Battledress , directed by William Hankin.
After the war Marius Steen continued to put on shows and gradually he forsook revue for musicals and
âTomorrow?â
âYes, if I feel OK. Come round when you . . . Evening. Eight or . . .â
âOK. Iâll be there. Archer Street. Youâll be all right now?â
âLike hell.â The phone went dead.
Before Charles left the house in Pangbourne, he took the envelope of photographs out of his inside pocket and looked at them. With Steenâs death they had changed. Already they had the air of curios or souvenirsâoddities from another age. The erotic quality had drained from them and they seemed like sepia prints in an album of someone elseâs relations. Mildly interesting, but ultimately irrelevant.
He looked around for somewhere to destroy them. The trouble with architect-designed houses on estates is that they have nothing like an open fire. The central heating was fired by oil. (Miles had already spoken gloomily of the inevitable price rises which the Middle East situation must precipitate. As he said portentously, âYou know, Pop, the days of cheap fuel are over.â) The cooker was electric. There was no convenient stove to consume the evidence.
Charles took a giant box of matches from the kitchen and went out into the garden. The forty-foot long area was neatly organised. A potting shed of conspicuous new timber, a patio area protected by a screen of latticework bricks, a path of very sane crazy paving winding diagonally across the lawn, a meticulous row of cloches. Only the winter shagginess of the grass gave any hint of rampant nature or humanity.
It had started to rain. Big heavy drops that were cold as they fell, penetrating, on his head and shoulders. In the far corner of the garden Charles saw what he was looking for. Neatly screened by another low wall of lattice-work bricks were a compost heap, bound in by wooden slats, and an empty metal incinerator. He lit the photographs one by one and let the flimsy black rectangles of ash drop into the bin. Finally he burnt the envelope, then stirred the dampening fragments into a black unrecognisable mash.
X
Second Act Beginners
THE OBITUARY APPEARED in The Times the next day, Tuesday 11th December.
MR MARIUS STEEN
Impresario and Showman
Mr Marius Steen, CBE. the impresario, died on Sunday. He was 68. Born in Warsaw in 1905, his full name was Marius Ladislas Steniatowski, but he shortened it for convenience when his parents came to England in 1921. His father was a tailor and for some years the young Steen helped him in his business. But already the attraction of entertainment was strong; Steen spent most of his limited pocket-money on tickets for the music hall and in 1923 launched himself as Mario, the Melodic Whistler. In spite of changes in name and act, he was never a success as a performer, but became increasingly interested in the business of promotion and management. The first act he managed was Herbert and his Horrible Dogs in 1924.
Soon he was progressing from individual acts to the presentation of complete shows. Though he started with wrestling and all-girl revues, by 1930 he was presenting variety bills at music halls all over the country. Through the Thirties he centralised his activities on London and, in 1935, had his first major success with the spectacular revue Go With The Girls . None of these early productions had a great deal to recommend them artistically, but Steen always maintained that success must be measured by public reaction alone. And by that criterion his shows were highly successful.
Steen continued presenting revues, with an increasing reliance on scripted comedy rather than just dancing girls, until the outbreak of war. Then he moved into the cinema and, with his customary unflagging energy, set up a series of films in keeping with the jingoistic spirit of the times. Of these the most memorable was Brothers in Battledress , directed by William Hankin.
After the war Marius Steen continued to put on shows and gradually he forsook revue for musicals and
Similar Books
