Chapter 12: The Ones Nobody Saw

The man on the ladder came down it one rung at a time and said he would come back after lunch.

He took the ladder with him.

That left the ballroom to the two of them and the twelve banners and the rain on the long windows.

Dorian sat on the floor with a sheet of paper in his hands.

"Don't stop," said Kit, from the wall.

"I mean, you may stop. I only mean I would."

"I'm going to read it," said Dorian.

"All of it. Is that all right?"

"It's already out."

Dorian read.

He read it the way he read the Earl's lines on Kit's good days, without the lift of the hand and without waiting.

"'The play ran for three weeks at a theatre with sixty seats.'"

"'The first thing to say about the lighthouse keeper is that he does not want to be liked.'"

He took a breath.

"'In the third scene he stops before a line. The pause is not the usual one.'"

Dorian read on.

"'It is not a gate. It is a man finding, to his surprise, someone in the room worth telling.'"

He stopped.

Kit looked at the nearest banner.

It said Wooden.

It did not help.

"'I wanted,'" Dorian read, in a lower voice, "'to apologise to the actor for how few of us there were.'"

"'He played to the eleven as if it were a full house.'"

Dorian's voice went quieter.

"'I think it is the best thing I have seen him do.'"

"'He knows he did it. I think no one will ever tell him.'"

The rain went on.

Dorian laid the page on his knee and lifted the second, and the third.

He read the first lines of each.

He read the dates, and the names of rooms.

He read a sentence from the review of a short film shot on a beach: He does not once check how he looks.

"How many of these are there?" he said.

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