Theatre Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  While this talk was going on the children were having a superb and uproarious lunch with Aunt Lindsey. Aunt Lindsey took them to a grand restaurant where a band was playing, and they were very lucky because there was goose upon the menu and they all ate it, and not being used to goose, felt a mixture of pride in having eaten it and rather doubtful in the middle because it was not their usual form of food. It was with dismay they saw Aunt Lindsey look at her watch, and heard her say that the best of everything must come to an end and they were already half an hour late for the Academy.

  Climbing the Academy steps each of the children, except, of course, Miriam, felt a sinking inside. People did not mean to look at them differently after yesterday, but they were looking different, there was no doubt of it.

  Half the school were down in the changing room, when Sorrel and Miriam walked in. One of Sorrel’s class ran up to her.

  “Hullo, there you are! We thought you’d gone off for another afternoon. You wouldn’t think it, but we miss your old mug when you’re away.”

  One of the juniors came up to Holly.

  “My mother bought me a Mars bar out of my ration this month. I meant to save you half, but I didn’t quite manage that.” She fumbled in her attaché case and brought out a dusty, bitten little end of chocolate. “There you are! I won’t watch you while you eat it and then I won’t miss it.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  AUDITION AT THE B.B.C.

  Sorrel’s twelfth birthday came at the beginning of the summer term. She woke up to find the sun streaming in and a parcel on the end of her bed. The parcel had been smuggled from the Academy in Mark’s attaché case. It was from Pauline. Inside was a big box marked “Candies” and a card. The card said, “I hope this arrives in time for your birthday. I have sent some money for you to buy something, but I think birthdays ought to have parcels.” The candies were tied up in the loveliest way. Being used to seeing the sweet ration in a paper bag that was inclined to burst, or a flimsy cardboard container, there was pleasure in even unpacking Pauline’s parcel. After the two layers of wrapping were off, the box was done up in fine white paper and tied up with yards and yards of green and scarlet baby ribbon. The candies had come in a tin and the tin itself was something that had not been seen for years, it was green and had a wreath of pretty little flowers painted on it. When the lid was off there was no utility packing, but wads of tissue paper and under that two paper doilies beautifully cut, the sort that if put away would make part of a present for Hannah on her birthday, for she was sure to think them lovely. The candies themselves were breathtaking, large and squashy, many of them covered with nuts. Sorrel put one in her mouth and then hurriedly put the lid on the box to keep away temptation. It would be so easy to eat the lot and then she would feel sick and that would be disastrous on this day of all days.

  Lying back in bed chewing, Sorrel thought about Pauline. She had seen her now, for Alice had taken them to cinemas to get to know the faces of Pauline, Posy, and, especially, Uncle Henry. Pauline was so lovely on the films that seeing her had at first made her a stranger. She had written twice and Sorrel had written back twice. The first letter from Pauline, especially as she wrote so much about the Academy, had made her feel like a friend, and not much older than herself. Then, seeing her on the screen, she had stopped being an old friend, and had become somebody grand and remote. Then had come Pauline’s second letter. Pauline had just received Sorrel’s first letter and this time she really had written like a friend. There did not seem to be the smallest thing about the Academy that she was not interested in and nothing was the slightest bit grand about the way she wrote. What fun it must be to be Pauline! Fancy, when Pauline had been twelve she had played “Alice in Wonderland”! What a lovely part to play! She did wish that she could have a chance to play it, but, of course, she was not clever or pretty like Pauline had been. All the same she was going to an audition to-day. She wished she could tell Pauline about the audition. Winifred said Pauline had never been to an audition at the B.B.C., but Pauline had been to lots of other auditions and she would know just how it felt to wake up in the morning and know you were going to one, a mixture of wormy and excited inside.

  Miss Jay had said, “Let’s pity the poor Children’s Hour staff and try to find something new for your audition. How awful it must be for those who have to listen to hear the same thing over and over and over again.”

  In the end Miss Jay, assisted by Sorrel, wrote a short version of the “Princess and the Pea.” It was nearly all conversation. The princess spoke and the man and woman peasants, and there was a lovely bit at the end where the princess was supposed to be in bed moaning and groaning about the bruises that were coming up on her because of the pea under the mattresses.

  “One ought to have some stuff in dialect,” Miss Jay had said, “but you’re not very good at dialect. I think, for the second item, you’d better recite some Shakespeare. You shall learn Titania’s speech from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ You will be able to have the script in your hands, because people do when they’re broadcasting, but no pupil from this Academy has ever gone to an audition without being entirely word perfect, and they never will.”

  Sorrel sat up in bed. In a much bigger and heartier voice than her own she said, “Sounds a wild night,” then she spoke in a deep gruff voice, “Aye, there’s a rare storm. The yard’s a-swim with water and the river’s running down.” Then she went back to the hearty voice, but this time it sounded anxious, “You’ll not go out again to-night?” Then the man’s voice, “No, I have locked the gates, none will wish to go through now till morning.”

  Sorrel paused there. It always gave her an excited feeling imagining the scene. The doorkeeper’s home inside the castle walls, the great gates locked for the night, and the whisper running round everywhere, “Our prince is to be married. Our prince is to be married, and who do you think he is going to marry? Why, the very first princess to knock at the palace gates.” When Sorrel thought about all this going on she could hardly wait to knock on the big postern; it was such fun, the part where the princess arrived and, looking small and shabby and dirty, bowed graciously to the two peasants and said kindly, “You may kiss our hand.”

  Holly and Mark and Hannah came bursting in at Sorrel’s door.

  “Happy birthday, Sorrel.”

  “Happy birthday. I’ve bought you the most lovely present, will you undo mine first?”

  Sorrel made room for Holly to get into bed with her. Mark and Hannah sat on the sides. Before she undid her parcels Sorrel opened her box of candy. Hannah made clucking noises.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t go eating all that rich stuff before breakfast, bound to turn your stomachs.”

  Nobody paid any attention to Hannah because they knew that she knew that one sweet before breakfast was permissible when it was a birthday or Christmas or Easter day. Sorrel looked at the three parcels on her knee. She undid Holly’s first. Inside was a pin-cushion made not very well but with immense pain and toil. Alice had given Holly the stuff, which was part of one of Grandmother’s old stage dresses.

  “It’s to be put away until you have a part,” Holly explained, bouncing with excitement. “Now you’re twelve, and going to an audition, you’re sure to have a part soon.”

  In Mark’s parcel there was a ruler, a hammer and a small bottle of glue.

  “That’s so that you can mend anything yourself that wants mending,” he explained, “or at any rate you can get me to come and mend it, and then you’ve got the things you need.”

  From Hannah there were two black bows on little slides.

  “As you’re to wear your black tunic up at the B.B.C. I thought you might like two new ribbons. Alice says you have your plaits undone at an audition.”

  Alice came in with her parcel, or rather it was not a parcel, it was a little tiny screw of tissue paper.

  “It’s a little chain to hang that little fish the sailor gave you round your neck when you go to your audition. He said it was for luck
, so that’s the time to wear it.”

  Mark sprawled across the bed and looked longingly at Sorrel’s box of candies.

  “Of course, I knowit’s Sorrel’s birthday, but anyone would think that she was the only one that was going to an audition, nobody seems to remember that I’m going to sing.”

  Alice gave him an affectionate slap.

  “Nobody’s under any illusion that you’re going to be nervous about it. All I hope is that you don’t break the microphone. As a matter of fact, you’ve not been forgotten, has he, Hannah? Old Hannah here has sat up night after night knitting you some new almond rocks.”

  Mark recognised almond rocks as socks. He looked suspiciously at Hannah.

  “What sort?”

  “Grey wool,” said Hannah, “two pairs lightweight for the summer.”

  Alice moved to the door.

  “Well, I can’t stay here gossiping, I’ve got our breakfast to take up yet. When you’re dressed, Sorrel, your Grandmother would like to give you a kiss.”

  Mark waited until the door had closed behind Alice and then he lowered his voice.

  “Of course, one shouldn’t criticise one’s grandmother, but ever since I’ve been in this house I’ve thought it pretty mean; there’s never been a present, not at Christmas, not at Easter, not on Holly’s and my birthdays, and now not on Sorrel’s birthday.”

  “That’s enough, come and get dressed,” said Hannah. “There are some people that don’t need to give presents to show their affection.”

  Mark followed Hannah obediently to the door, but before he reached it he looked back at Sorrel.

  “I don’t think Grandmother’s one of those sort of people, do you?”

  The audition was going on all the afternoon. Sorrel and Mark had an appointment at half-past three. They were taken by Miss Jay and Doctor Lente. As a rule only one teacher went to an audition, however many pupils were going, and for two people to go caused rather a sensation in the Academy, especially as one of them was Dr. Lente, who never went to auditions. However, a talent once accepted acquired squatter’s rights, as it were, and so the pupils looked wise and said to each other. “That’s because of Mark.”

  They went to the B.B.C. on a bus. Sorrel walked to the bus with a glassy look in her eye, muttering:

  “These are the forgeries of jealousy:

  And never, since the middle summer’s spring,

  Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

  By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,

  Or in the beached margent of the sea,

  To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,

  But with thy brawls, thou hast disturb’d our sport.”

  Mark skipped along, swinging his attaché case in which was his music, his head in the clouds, deciding what his voice looked like when it left him and went out over the air to everybody’s wireless set. Miss Jay was talking to Dr. Lente about some change in the classroom at the Academy when Mark, without warning, broke in with the result of his thinking.

  “It wears long grey trousers made of cloud, its coat is buttoned up with notes, eight of them for the octaves, and the buttonholes are all the sharps and flats. It has a very long grey cloak made of little soft feathers and so long a feather in its hat that no matter how far away anyone’s wireless is, the tip, tip, tip of the feather is still in my mouth.”

  Miss Jay was always willing to talk to Mark.

  “Who is this?”

  “My voice, coming out of the loud speaker.”

  Miss Jay ran rapidly over Mark’s description to see if there was anything about it that would spoil his singing that afternoon.

  “If that feather is in your mouth it mustn’t spoil your singing, because I’ll tell you something about the man that you don’t know. If anything happens to that feather on his hat his heart stops beating and he’s dead.”

  Mark rather liked this version.

  “And before anybody knows what’s happening there’s the dust cart shovelling him away for salvage.”

  Miss Jay looked at Mark severely.

  “Do you know what’s going to happen to you if you sing badly? Madame is going to take charge of your attaché case.”

  “What, for ever?”

  Miss Jay looked as if even that were possible, but she followed Madame’s instructions.

  “No, but perhaps for a great many days; it would all depend on how bad the singing was.”

  “There’s no need for anybody to get in a flap. I’m going to sing very well indeed. I can’t think why anybody thought I wasn’t.”

  The B.B.C. looked very imposing with its police outside and sandbagged entrance, and when they got inside past the policeman, and Miss Jay and Dr. Lente were at the reception desk getting passes, even Mark was reduced to respectful silence.

  They were taken upstairs by a page boy whom Mark looked at with envy. He did not appear to be much bigger than he was himself. What a gorgeous thing to do no lessons and be a messenger boy in the B.B.C.! That would be even better than going into the Navy.

  There were quite a lot of other children in the Children’s Hour waiting-room. Three boys who obviously came to sing, a very smartly dressed girl of about fourteen, who had a mother who kept pulling her curls over her shoulders, and a small boy in spectacles with a violin case on his knee. The door opened into the studio and somebody ushered a girl out and said that they would be writing to her. Then they called in the first of the singing boys. His voice came to them faintly through the door singing “I’ll walk beside you.” The girl with ringlets was sitting beside Sorrel. She gave her a nudge.

  “I got here much too early—that’s the eighth time someone has sung that song; it must be pretty awful for them up there,” she jerked her thumb at the ceiling.

  “What is up there?” Sorrel asked.

  “The judges. They sit in a room with a glass window looking into the studio, all our voices come to them up there. You can see them peering down at you. I always wonder what they’re saying.”

  “Have you been to an audition before, then?”

  “Twice. Once before the war, and once in Bristol; each time I was going to be used my family moved and I couldn’t.”

  “What do you do?” Sorrel asked.

  “Well, I think it’s a mistake not to give them an all-round view of your work, don’t you? I’m doing a speech from Bernard Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan,’ that’s just for diction, and then I’m doing a speech of Edelgard’s out of ‘Children in Uniform’—it’s two separate speeches really, but I’m putting them together—and then I’m doing a little short funny thing in Scotch, and a rather pathetic bit about a child waiting for its father who’s down the mine, that’s with a Welsh accent. I finish up with a bit of good old North country, which is where I come from. What are you doing?”

  Sorrel was appalled. How clever everybody else in the world was! How idiotic everybody in the B.B.C. would think it that she had only got a little bit of the ‘Princess and the Pea’ and one speech of Titania’s!

  “I’m just doing some Shakespeare, and a version of one of Hans Andersen’s fairy stories. It doesn’t seem much, does it?”

  “Well, it’s no good doing what you can’t, is it? It will only put them”—the ringletted girl jerked her finger at the roof again—“off.”

  The door opened and the boy singer came out and the second one went in. Once more there were muffled sounds of “I’ll walk beside you.”

  The girl sighed.

  “You’d think it was catching, like measles or something.”

  Dr. Lente rolled anguished eyes at the roof.

  “It is not suitable, as a song for little boys, and that child has a voice that overtrained is.”

  It was after the third boy had sung “I’ll walk beside you” that Sorrel was called. Miss Jay gave her a smile and sounded as matter-of-fact as she did in the classroom

  “Come along, dear.”

  In the studio there was a piano on the left-hand side, seats all round the room a
nd in the centre, of course, the most important thing, the microphone. There was a solid stand and across this an adjustable bar, and from one end of the bar the microphone was hanging. A nice girl came up to Sorrel and asked her what she was going to do, and whether she would announce herself or would like to be announced. Sorrel looked desperately at Miss Jay, but Miss Jay was nodding and smiling to what appeared to be the roof. Sorrel, turning round, saw behind her the glass window and the faces looking through that the girl with the curls had told her about. She touched Miss Jay on the arm.

  “They want to know if I want to announce myself.”

  “Certainly,” said Miss Jay, “and you’ll start with the Shakespeare as arranged.”

  It was a queer feeling to stand by yourself in the middle of the room and speak to an inanimate thing like a microphone. It was a queer feeling to think that in the room behind the glass window people were not hearing your voice as it sounded in the studio, but as it sounded brought to them over the air. It was altogether so odd that just at first the queerness of everything overawed Sorrel and she could not bring Titania to life.