Heaven and Hell by John Jakes Read Free Book Online

with Wood. You shouldn't pass up this chance because of that. Just be cautious."
    The
    young woman going down the passage in a rush was Willa Parker. She was a tall, leggy girl, slim enough for trouser roles, yet with a soft, full bosom ideal for Juliet. She had wide-set, slightly slanted blue eyes that lent her an exotic quality, and hair so pale blond it shone silvery when she was onstage in the limelight. Mrs. Drew, with affection, called Willa a gamine. Her charming Irish husband, John, called her "my fair sprite."
    Her skin was smooth, her mouth wide, her face given an air of strength by the line of her chin. Sometimes she felt forty years old, because her mother had died when she was three, her father when she was fourteen, and she'd played theatrical roles since age six. She was the only child of a woman she couldn't remember and a freethinking, hard-working father she loved with total devotion until a heart seizure felled him in the storm scene of Lear.
    Peter Parker had been one of those actors who worked at his profession with ardor and enthusiasm even though he had realized as a young man that his talent would provide only a subsistence, never let him shine with his name above the title of a play. He'd begun playing child parts in his native England, growing into older roles done in the dignified classical style of the Kemble family and Mrs. Siddons. In his twenties, he'd performed with the flamboyant Kean, who won him away Lost Causes 31
    from classicism to Kean's own naturalism, which encouraged an actor to do whatever the part demanded, even scream or crawl on the floor.
    It was after his first engagement with Kean that he forever abandoned the last name he'd inherited at birth, Potts. Too many unfunny uses of it by fellow actors--Flower Potts, Chamber Potts--convinced him to adopt Parker as more practical and more likely to inspire favorable recognition. Willa knew the family name, which amused her, although from her earliest years she'd thought of herself as a Parker.
    To his daughter, Parker had passed on various technical tricks of different acting styles and some other characteristics. These included the energy and idealism typical of actors, an encyclopedic knowledge of theatrical superstition, and the defensive optimism so necessary to survive Page 34

    in the profession. Now, going through the stage door, Willa called on that optimism and assured herself that her employer wouldn't be angry.
    In the shadows just inside, the elderly janitor was struggling into a rubber rain slicker. "He's in the office, Miss Parker. Shouting for you every five minutes, too."
    "Thank you, Joe." So much for optimism. The janitor jingled his keys, preparing to lock up. He was leaving early. Perhaps Wood had given him the night off.
    Willa dashed through the backstage area, dodging between bundles of unpainted prop tree branches--Birnam Wood, which would come to Dunsinane in the next production. The vast fly space smelled of new lumber, old make-up, dust. Light spilled from a half-open door ahead.
    Willa heard Wood's deep voice:
    "/ go, and it is done--the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell--that summons thee to heaven or to hell." Then he repeated "or to hell," changing the inflection.
    Willa stood motionless outside the office, a shiver running down her back. Her employer was rehearsing one of the leading character's speeches somewhere other than the stage. This play of Shakespeare's was a bad-luck piece, most actors believed, although some noted that it contained a great deal of onstage fighting, and thus the causes of a gashed head, a bad fall, a broken arm or leg were in the text, not the stars. Still, the legend persisted. Like many other actors and actresses, Willa laughed at it while respecting it. She never repeated any of the lnes backstage, or in dressing rooms or green rooms. She always reefred
    to it as "the Scottish play"; saying the title in the theater guaranteed misfortune.
    She glanced