by (epub)
“Right,” says Kraut from the back of the stage.
“I haven’t asked you,” shouts back Shark. “Whose idea was it?”
Class-room silence falls on the scene. Shark turns round, as though pricked with a needle in his behind. Coco, who has been standing still up to now, not paying attention to anything, says timidly, in a toneless voice like an idiot: “Mr. Shark made up this line yesterday and told us to say it to-day at the rehearsal at nine o’clock.”
Everybody bursts into laughter. It’s like a bombshell falling into a trench. Shark has completely collapsed. “All right,” he pipes down faintly, “we’ll just cut it out.”
And the girls loudly and in unison: “Thank you, Mr. Shark. Thank you very much for keeping us all morning.”
“Don’t mention it,” says Shark. “We all go home now, Ritornelli! One moment, please, Mr. Ritornelli! If I’m not vastly mistaken, we have a new number.” Here he points to a newly-printed programme. “ ‘Viva in “Old Songs and New.” At the piano, Julian Spencer.’ ”
“What has this to do with me?” says the grasshopper.
“Oh, it might interest you, I thought,” says Shark, quite humbled.
“Interest me?” hisses Ritornelli, with the anger of an attacked bumble-bee. “Listen, Shark, I shall walk out on you one day. I’m sensitive, as we artists are. But everything”—and now he shouts—“come to an end!”
He seems twice his size. He seems to have lost his grasshopper-like build and instead stands like a hissing centipede sitting up on its tail. “I shall leave you one day.”
But Shark smiles soothingly: “But you’ll come back to us, Ritornelli.”
“Certainly!” shouts Ritornelli triumphantly, completely forgetting that he wanted to scare Shark with his dangerous intentions.
Dark silence fills the theatre again. Everybody has gone except the Six Esmonds quietly rehearsing—theirs is a juggling act—at the back of the stage. The little Wizard, this shabby-looking dog, quaint mixture of poodle, Scotch terrier and dachshund, is barking and miauwing in his little cage that stands in the right wing. Sounds produced without a purpose, more to himself than anything: some sort of senseless monologue and lament in one.
But from the Green Room: soft playing on the piano and scraps of subdued conversation. Julian Spencer is rehearsing with Viva: “Some Day I’ll Find You Again.”
Julian has got up from the piano. “I really don’t know, Viva, if you should sing this song.”
“But I like it,” says Viva.
“Quite,” says Julian. “So do I. But the guv’nor, he wouldn’t like it. Royalties, copyright and all that bunk. You know Noel Coward is still alive.”
“What a pity,” says Viva. “I mean, I would love to sing the song from ‘Private Lives.’ It’s so beautiful. And now what?”
“Oh,” says Julian. “You’d better go home, Viva. You didn’t have any lunch, either. You must go and eat something. I shall stay here and practice my solo a little.” And he adds, smilingly: “Something you haven’t heard. I only wrote it yesterday.”
“But I must hear it,” says Viva.
“No, no,” says Julian. “You just go. I said it was a surprise, didn’t I?”
“All right,” says Viva.
But Julian starts playing. A few bars: a few lovely dark tones. Blue tones. It’s like dark night—how can one put it into words? It is so much stronger and so much more beautiful than words can ever be. Night. Blue night. And tree-tops, tops of trees swaying swiftly in a silent soft wind. And sky. Dark sky, so blue, and sprinkled with stars. Stars so far, so far, in the distance. Years of light and light years between this world and the world of stars. And deep down, shimmering water. A brook murmuring quite loudly and then silently through dark, blooming meadows. And mysterious woods. And stars above and nothing but shimmering, glittering water through the night. Dark night, oh, so blue! But suddenly stones, rocks, and more rocks like mountains. And the water breaks and foams. Drops spit into the dark. Then silent water again under dark bridges and dark houses and there is no light but the light of stars and the light of the moon, shivering, cold and clear, and the village is sleeping. Down along the river. A voice! A voice calling. Calling for what? Quiet! Silence! The answer. Somewhere a voice is answering. Calling for you. In the night. In the dark, blue night!
Oh, restless soul! You sway in the wind. Strength will come. Will come to you! And your life will run and run like eternal waters run through the face of the earth. . . .
The Green Room. Julian has stopped playing. This was nothing but the last composition he did yesterday and the day before. And nobody has heard it except Viva. Because, after all, she didn’t leave him. She sat behind him on the couch. And now she gets up, and she seems to be moved. How could she help it? That was not a piece composed for a piano, for a broken-down upright piano standing somewhere in a Green Room in a theatre in London. And she feels this. No. She knows it. What is going on in this consumptive young man? This Julian Spencer? She flings her arms round him. And he wakes up, and looks at her, and looks again. Thrown again on the kerb-stone of this bitter, cold, hard and cruel reality.
“Julian,” she says, “I love you.”
But he doesn’t seem to hear her. Where is he? Why is he so tortured? Why this insane, haunted and chased look in his eyes? “Viva,” he says.
And she comes down to earth. A dancer in a vaudeville show. Four pounds fifteen a week. And cheap make-up on her cheeks and lips, and she has to support her mother. You see, life is like that.
And she says: “Julian, it’s so beautiful. I know what you feel. I know. It’s your mother. The sitting-room. That awful sitting-room. And I shall never forget the clock on the mantelpiece there. It stopped at a quarter to twelve. And nobody wound it up again. It’s all dead there. But we, we shall live! And be free!”
Julian gets up. And he stands before Viva. The only person he loves in this world, which is empty and cold as a damp coffin on a rainy and empty night. “Viva,” he says. “If you only love me. Hold me. Stick to me. Stay with me. Whatever might happen. Because I know, I feel it. I know. Something horrible will happen. It’s not Mother alone, but there’s something about which is nagging, dragging, trying to take whatever there is in me and in this world of ours.”
Viva sees there is something he has never mentioned. Maybe—and let’s hope—it is only something on his mind. In him.
He flings his arms round her, and there they stand, both ready to accept life: but life together. And she takes his head between her hands and a kiss creeps, chokes, chokes up into their lips, and they kiss.
“Viva, I love you. Your body, your arms, your neck, so white. Your hands and your breasts. Your body!”
“Julian! Don’t! Julian!”
“Viva! I——”
And there’s one more very faint and very humble “Julian!” again. . . .
“One—two—catch—hold—throw—stop—hold—catch—one—two!” The Six Esmonds are rehearsing on the stage. They are rehearsing for ever: the Six Esmonds. Rehearsing for ever. For ever. For ever.
Bellometti tries in his greasy, Italian way to calm her down. “You pay me to-morrow. No hurry, Mrs. Spencer. You are de good customer.”
But Mrs. Spencer insists. “Bellometti,” she says breathlessly, “here, this very minute—in an envelope—hundred and two pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence—must have lost it.”
Bellometti tries again. “What is de two pounds, sixteen shilling, and de pence for a Signora like Mrs. Spencer?”
“No, no,” says Mrs. Spencer. “Bellometti, one hundred and two pounds!”
Has he heard aright? He pushes his hat to the back of his head. What did she say? A hundred? “Mrs. Spencer, that is de mistake. Not one hundred and two pounds, de shillings, de pence?”
But Mrs. Spencer nods her head, so that the spectacles run down the sharp pointed nose.
At this very moment: “. . . and broke my heart and left me so alone! It was so beautiful, and
all is gone!”
That damned piano on wheels and that husky voice. There stands Mrs. Spencer, broken-down, grief-stricken, and on top of everything that loud, murderously loud, merciless voice and piano.
Bellometti can’t make head or tail of it. “Mrs. Spencer,” he says again. “You go home. Pay me to-morrow. Go to your apartimento. De hot tea, and de speck of de brandy. It’s only de chill. Cold on de liver.”
Mrs. Spencer walks away. There is the market again, with all those subdued lights, lanterns, acetylene contraptions swinging in the wind on a dusty dark afternoon in November. And this nerve-racking music, as she waddles on, heartbroken. Heartbroken Mrs. Spencer. Everyone who puts his hand suddenly into his pocket looks like the finder of this precious envelope with Finnagan’s money in it.
“He has it,” she says to herself. And she looks at that face, that man had smallpox once, and now he smokes a cigar, and his cigar wanders from one corner of his mouth to the other, rather nervously. Is he the thief? No. She, this woman. With a child dragging along. She holds something under her jacket. Of course, she took it. No. There, now, of course she has just picked it up. That blowsy woman, thin and haggard, but bloated and blown-up, too. The singer.
“Hi,” shouts Mrs. Spencer, “give it to me! Give it back to me!”
Didn’t this woman pick up an envelope from the pavement?
“What do you want?” shouts back the woman.
But Mrs. Spencer claws her little, sharp-nailed, long-fingered, dirty hands in the other’s arm. “Come on,” she hisses, “give it back, it’s a fortune.”
The man at the piano stops. “Leave her alone!” he shouts. “You old hag. Leave her alone!”
“It’s my money,” pleads Mrs. Spencer. “Do you hear me?”
“What money?” says the constable, shoving himself into the picture.
“Officer, this woman is drunk.” There are people suddenly surrounding the scene. Seven, eleven, fifteen, no, more and more, all standing about and watching this hideous but so amusing scene.
“How much money did you lose?” says the officer.
There is a sudden change in Mrs. Spencer’s face. If she says one hundred and two pounds and so many shillings and pence they might think . . . they might suspect . . . they might inquire . . . investigate . . . no, no! “Two pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence.”
“But, officer,” says the piano-player. “Don’t you see I am an ex-soldier?”
“I can see. I know.”
“We all know her, she’s crazy!”
The officer has lost interest. “Come on! Move on! Move on!”
Murmuring: “Drunk” “Fool” and “Drunk again,” everybody moves away, rather disappointed. They expected a real good fight, but it’s always like that.
A shabby suitcase flung open and in go socks, a shirt, handkerchiefs, and another pair of socks and some sheet-music. Julian Spencer is packing up his few belongings.
They are going to-morrow to Brighton, train leaving Victoria at ten minutes past eight. He wants to have everything ready by to-night, as he is going out shortly to dine with Viva at Castano’s in Greek Street. There isn’t much time left and he is busy, and whistling.
He stops suddenly. Mrs. Spencer has come in. She walks into the room, but doesn’t look at her son. After a few uncertain steps she goes down on her knees, lifts up the carpet over there by the door, gets up again, and moves the arm-chair, hastily fumbling about down the back and the sides.
Julian looks at her. He has never seen her like this. “Mother,” he says, after watching her for a few moments, “have you lost something?”
“Yes,” she says, “I have lost some money.”
Julian wants to help her. “You haven’t lost it in the street, Mother?”
“Don’t ask questions,” says Mrs. Spencer, adjusting her spectacles. “Don’t talk to me. I have lost something.” And down she goes on her knees peering around under the sofa.
“I’ve got some money,” says Julian. “Some money in advance. I can give you some. How much did you lose? It couldn’t have been much. I only gave you two shillings. Here,” he says, and hands her half-a-crown. “You’ll tear your clothes, Mother.”
“Go on packing. Go on packing. Don’t look at me.” And suddenly, almost shouting: “Can’t you go, Julian? Can’t you ever go and leave me alone?”
“Yes, Mother,” says Julian quietly, taking his hat and coat from the sofa and leaving the room.
Mrs. Spencer silently goes on searching for this little white envelope with Finnagan’s hundred and two pounds, sixteen shillings and fourpence. Suddenly she stops. She hears a strange sound from above. A slimy, sliding, slithering, dragging shuffling. Now, what’s that? What was that? A chair is knocked over and something else with glass in it. Mrs. Spencer seems to be terrified and she runs upstairs, as quickly as she can. She stumbles, falls, rises again. Her skirt is torn, but she arrives, breathless, fumbling for the key for this shining, strong Yale lock. She opens the door.
“Go back,” she screeches, standing in the dark. “Come on! Move! Go back!”
And she closes the door again heavily, quickly.
Down below in the street two shadows and the piano on wheels. “. . . and broke my heart and left me all alone! It was so beautiful and all is gone!” And a faint voice from the attic: “I’m hungry, Mother! I am so very hungry!”
A platform. A train. A few passengers standing about, motionless. Even the little newspaper boy: “Times! Telegraph! Morning Post! Daily Mail!” shuffling along, carrying his basket-tray, isn’t trying very hard to sell any of his papers. It’s all very sleepy, grey and cold, like dropped ashes on a drawing-room floor from the night before. Something stale about it. On the windows of the compartment it says: “Smoking” and on some it says: “Non-smoking,” but it’s of no importance or consequence, as they are practically all empty.
Why should anybody go with a train leaving at ten minutes past eight to Brighton? At this time of the year.
Suddenly: barking—it’s Coco’s Little Wizard! Talking, chatting, and here and there, but quite rarely, laughter. Jimmy Walker’s Vaudeville Show is going to Brighton. And here are Ritornelli and Mr. Shark and Kraut and the rest of the celebrities. They have to hurry. And somewhere there is a compartment reserved for them. And the guard raises his hand, and at last: Julian Spencer and Viva Naldi. Thank God! They haven’t missed the train. Smoke from the engine, and more smoke. The Little Wizard still on the platform sniffing at a few cases of Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits. Destination “Rottingdean, Sussex.” Coco tries to yank him away. The guard shouts, so do Shark and Kraut leaning out of their windows. Shouting faces. “Hey! Wizard! Coco! Wizard!”
It’s like a dozen cuckoo-clocks in a row with the little birds in action. More smoke; engine and wheels; and smoke and suburban houses. Cold laundry on strings fluttering in the wind, and a golf-course with two little figures and houses all alike in a row, all made after the same pattern, design and construction, grey, uninteresting, uninspired, half-dead, and it’s cold and nasty and eight o’clock in the morning and life goes on and you can’t help it—besides, you don’t care. Clapham Junction!
There isn’t much to see in London, either, at this time of the day. Mrs. Spencer, who stands in Doctor Finnagan’s cold waiting-room, looks at the charwoman who cleans cold ashes out of the fireplace. Then she looks up again, and now she walks without being asked into the doctor’s consulting-room. She sits down at the desk. There are a few pieces of cotton-wool, little mirrors with handles, a few forceps, and a few wooden tongue-depressors lying about. It’s early, as the doctor never starts working before ten. He probably doesn’t get up before nine, as—but here he is himself. He is in pyjamas. A winter coat over them, the collar turned up.
Mrs. Spencer gets up. “Sorry, Finnagan, I had to come so early.”
“What’s the matter?” says Finnagan, quite frightened. “Nothing wrong with him, is there? Out with it! Out with it! What’s the good of comin
g at this time of the day? Say something! Why did you come at this time of the day? Waking me up!”
“Doctor Finnagan,” says Mrs. Spencer, “the money you gave me yesterday—it’s no good.”
“What do you mean?” shouts the doctor. “It’s no good?” He picks up his cheque-book. “I gave James a cheque on the Westminster Bank, Harley Street Branch. It’s perfectly all right. And he gave you the cash, didn’t he?”
Mrs. Spencer shakes her head.
“What?” cries the doctor. “Do you mean to say James didn’t give you——”
“No, that isn’t it,” says Mrs. Spencer, quite frightened, and very timid.
“Don’t torture me,” shouts Finnagan again. “Come out with it!”
“I lost it,” says Mrs. Spencer tonelessly. “Maybe it was stolen from me. It’s gone.”
“Gone? Do you mean to say a hundred and two pounds—just gone?” But suddenly drawing himself up, laughing hysterically. “I get you! Ha! Ha! That’s a new one! Congratulations!” and he tries to shake hands with her. But suddenly his hand is a fist, and he shakes it against her face. “You swindler! Fool! Trying a new trick! Blackmail, I call it! Just blackmail!”
“Finnagan,” says Mrs. Spencer, trying to reason with him. “Finnagan, it’s not my fault. And I need the money. Bellometti, the butcher I buy the meat from, won’t wait. Or I would have to give references. Maybe if I tell him your name he’ll do it. That I don’t know.”
Finnagan shouts sharply: “What! My name! Don’t you dare!”
“All right,” says Mrs. Spencer, quite calmly. “I shall just starve him. Of course he might get quite wild. And there are some tenants next door. They could hear him. You know, Finnagan, they’ve just moved in and they wonder already what there is moving next door. All night. Hungry and moving.”
Finnagan is speechless. He is standing with his back to her looking out of the window down the street where a dust-cart is busy collecting bottles, old rugs, newspapers, apple-peelings, crumpled up little potatoes and empty bottles again.