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      As I’m sure you can imagine, I was absolutely desperate to pursue this line of enquiry still further (I could’ve followed it to the ends of the earth, quite frankly!) but I was suddenly overwhelmed by a strong – almost violent – urge to find out something even more pressing, i.e.: DID TAMMY THORNDYKE KNOW YET???

      I just yelled it at them. I just screamed it. I lost all sense of self-control.

      ‘DOES SHE KNOW?! DOES TAMMY KNOW?!’

      (Then I got rather short of breath and started to cough, and had to rummage around in my bag for my asthma inhaler.)

      ‘Nobody knows,’ Meredith snapped. ‘I really didn’t want to tell anyone until we’d sorted out the finer details of his contract.’

      (Good heavens, Jess! Get her! What a terrible, old sourpuss!)

      At this point Sebastian butted in again and started congratulating Meredith on how she conducted the night’s warm-up. He said, ‘I always find the trust exercises you use so extraordinarily liberating, Meredith. And it’s not just the exercises themselves, it’s how you approach them, how you time them. So much skill! Such finesse! In fact I rarely finish one of your sessions without feeling this wild surge of emotion. I often get quite tearful! It’s rather embarrassing! They’re just so… so potent, so “connecting,” so… so empowering.’ (Well, it’s no great mystery how he managed to wrangle himself The Disciple Jesus Loved Best, then!)

      Of course I wasn’t going to be outdone (even if I don’t currently have a speaking role!). I heartily agreed with him. I said, ‘When Tom Augustine touched my forehead and whispered, “You are alive, Emily! You are utterly free! Take your freedom, now, and celebrate the world with it!” I honestly thought I was going to wet myself! His hand was so cold! It was like being prodded by a frozen chicken leg!’ (In fact I seriously thought I had wet myself, Jess. That’s why I seemed so distracted when you were asking me whether the wigs were still kept on the top of the prop box.)

      I then went on to say how I thought the improvisational exercises tonight had been absolutely priceless (weren’t they, though?!)! I said, ‘My favourite moment was when Arthur Wolf was “being an egg”, Sally Trident broke him into a frying-pan and then Jess [you!] yelled, “Oh no! Look! You’ve gone and broken his yolk!”’ (I mean that was hilarious! And utterly spontaneous, to boot!)

      I’d barely finished speaking when Seb turned and delivered me THE MOST FILTHY LOOK!!!

      ‘Yes,’ he says, snidely, ‘Jess is quite the little comedian!’

      (?!?!?)

      With the benefit of hindsight, Jess, I think you were right to be suspicious of him. I think he does have it in for you. And it’s not only because you aren’t officially ‘one of us’, i.e. not currently resident in the village, but because he’s jealous of your talent – pure and simple! He’s still stewing over the fact that your audition for Angel of the Lord went down so well. People were talking about it for weeks! Pammy Stevens got palpitations! The way you worked with the light towards the end – turned to face it, dumbly, questingly, then extended out your arms and slowly, dramatically, dropped your chin on to your chest…

       Beautiful!

      There was such an incredible atmosphere – you could’ve heard a pin drop in that hall.

      WHY MEREDITH DIDN’T GIVE YOU THE ROLE I WILL NEVER, NEVER UNDERSTAND!!

      I mean all that hogwash she came up with afterwards about the cast ‘not being about individual egos, only about The Collective Will’, and ‘really needing to find the right kind of balance’ (it’s an amateur production of The Passion, Jess, not a Soviet-era-style, group gymnastics display)! And that interminable speech about things being ‘real’, and then ‘moving into fast-forward’, and then ‘suddenly becoming hyper-real’ – but ‘not acting, never acting’, just ‘being’, just ‘believing in the moment’, just ‘cherishing the moment’, just ‘making the moment true…’ (what on earth does that even mean, Jess? ‘Making the moment true’?).

      If Meredith is – as she claims – such a staunch advocate of the truth (what’s her other favourite catchphrase? ‘Be sincere, be here’ – with a pious little pat on her heart?!) then how on earth can she possibly justify casting Tammy Thorndyke as St Martha?! St Martha!

      Tammy Thorndyke’s converted to Buddhism! I swear to God, if I have to hear another syllable about that infernal trip she and Baxter took to Tibet last year, and how she got altitude sickness halfway up a mountain and collapsed, and then, when she came to, how she felt ‘an incredible warmth in her throat chakra’ which slowly spread throughout her entire body, making her feel like ‘a glowing bottle of preserved ginger’ I honestly think I shall spontaneously combust!

      As I said to Jill Harpington the other day (while we were picketing Wharfedale Council about those awful, new recycling bins), ‘Isn’t it unfortunate that Tammy’s recent “conversion” doesn’t appear to be offering any kind of formal impediment to her singing lead soprano in the church choir?!’ (Ouch! Climb back into the knife drawer, Emily!)

      But that awful, piercing vibrato, Jess! It’s more than my shattered nerves can bear! Drew Cullen – on the organ – even turns off his hearing aid, and he’s deaf as a dodo!

      I actually conducted an informal survey with the help of Gillian Reed last year (Gill’s the blowsy, buck-toothed piano tuner’s wife who polishes the church pews etc.) after she mentioned to me, in passing, that the bats were defecating at almost twice their usual volume on the days when the choir either rehearsed or performed.

      With a little casual investigation it became increasingly clear (I can show you the graphs if you like – in fact I’ll dig one out for you, right now) that the more music we sang in a higher register, the more guano the bats produced – often (like when we were rehearsing ‘Jerusalem’, for example) defecating over three times as much!

      Then – and this was the real eye-opener, Jess – when Tammy was off for a month in August (nursing her youngest daughter through a botched nose-job down in Guildford) the overall quantities produced fell by almost two-thirds! OVERNIGHT! Right across the scale! I SWEAR!

      Utterly fascinating (I know), but I suppose we’re trespassing a little off the subject here, because let’s face it, Jess (as I said earlier this evening), if ‘the truth’ really is Meredith’s main priority, then why does she persist in ignoring what’s so patently true about St Martha, i.e. that it’s not a glamorous role at all!

      Martha’s a work-horse, Jess! She spends virtually all of her time throughout the Gospels JUST DOING THE WASHING-UP!!

      That’s why Jesus gets into a row with her when she tells Mary Magdalen to stop hanging around with the boys all night and give her a quick hand with the kitchen chores! Jesus gets into quite a bate about it. He tells her that Mary is much better off where she is (just sitting on the floor, staring at his ‘Godhead’), and that Martha’s eternal soul would be far better served by doing the same thing herself!

      (Well, that’s all fine and dandy, Jess, but if Martha hadn’t done the chores, what in heaven’s name would The Twelve have eaten for dinner? How could Jesus have hosted The Last Supper? And what would Michelangelo have painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, all those years later? A dozen hungry people arguing over a raw turnip?! Hardly an appropriate subject matter for such a prominent art work I’d’ve thought!)

      It’s ridiculous, Jess! Pure hokum!

      I mean Tammy Thorndyke has a dishwasher, for heaven’s sake! And she has a char (if it’s socially acceptable to describe dear Susan Trott in those terms)! And she gets all her dinner parties professionally catered by the sister of that haughty besom who runs Pinenuts (the Swiss tea-house in Ilkley). D’you know her?

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