Night at the Vulcan

by Ngaio Marsh

  ‘Lights,’ Clem Smith said.

  The shifting world stood still. Circuit by circuit the lights came on and bore down on the acting area. The last toggle-line slapped home and was made fast and the sweating stage-hands walked disinterestedly off the set. Clem Smith, with his back to the curtain, made a final check. ‘Clear stage,’ he said and looked at his watch. The curtain-hand climbed an iron ladder.

  ‘Six minutes,’ said the ASM. He wrote it on his chart. Clem moved into the prompt corner. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Actors, please.’

  J. G. Darcey and Parry Percival walked on to the set and took up their positions. Helena Hamilton came out of her dressing-room. She stood with her hands clasped lightly at her waist at a little distance from the door by which she must enter. A figure emerged from the shadows near the passage and went up to her.

  ‘Miss Hamilton,’ Martyn said nervously, ‘I’m not on for your quick change. I can do it.’

  Helena turned. She looked at Martyn for a moment with an odd fixedness. Then a smile of extraordinary charm broke across her face and she took Martyn’s head lightly between her hands.

  ‘My dear child,’ she murmured, ‘my ridiculous child.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said briskly: ‘I’ve got a new dresser.’

  ‘A new dresser?’

  ‘Jacko. He’s most efficient.’

  Poole came down the passage. She turned to him and linked her arm through his. ‘She’s going to be splendid in her scene,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she?’

  Poole said: ‘Keep it up, Kate. All’s well.’ And in the look he gave Helena Hamilton there was something of comradeship, something of compassion and something, perhaps, of gratitude.

  Dr Rutherford emerged from the passage and addressed himself to Martyn: ‘Here!’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you, my pretty. You might be a lot worse, considering, but you haven’t done anything yet. When you play this next scene, my poppet, these few precepts in thy—’

  ‘No, John,’ Poole and Helena Hamilton said together. ‘Not now.’

  He glowered at them. Poole nodded to Martyn who began to move away but had not got far before she heard Rutherford say: ‘Have you tackled that fellow? Did you see it? Where is he? By God, when I get at him—’

  ‘Stand by,’ said Clem Smith.

  ‘Quiet, John,’ said Poole imperatively. ‘Back to your box, sir.’

  The curtain rose on the second act.

  For the rest of her life the physical events that were encompassed by the actual performance of the play were to be almost lost for Martyn: indeed she could not be perfectly certain that they had happened at all. She might have been under hypnosis or some partial anaesthesia for all the reality they afterwards retained.

  This odd condition which was perhaps the result of some kind of physical compensation for the extreme assault on her nerves and emotion, persisted until she made her final exit in the last act. It happened some time before the curtain. The character she played was the first to relinquish its hold and to fade out of the picture. She came off and returned to her corner near the entry into the passage. The others were all on, the dressers and stage-staff, drawn by the hazards of a first night watched from the side and Jacko was near the prompt corner. The passage and dressing-rooms seemed deserted and Martyn was quite alone. She began to emerge from her trancelike suspension. Parry Percival and J.G. Darcey came off and, in turn, spoke to her.

  Parry said incoherently: ‘Darling, you were perfectly splendid. I’m just so angry at the moment I can’t speak but I do congratulate you.’

  Martyn saw that he actually trembled with an emotion that was, she must suppose, fury. Out of the dream from which she was not yet fully awakened there came a memory of gargantuan laughter and she thought she associated it with Bennington and with Percival. He said: ‘This settles it. I’m taking action. God, this settles it!’ and darted down the passage.

  Martyn thought, still confusedly, that she should go to the dressing-room and tidy her make-up for the curtain call. But it was not her dressing-room, it was Gay’s and she felt uneasy about it. While she hesitated J. G. Darcey came off.

  He put his hand on Martyn’s shoulder. ‘Well done, child,’ he said. ‘A very creditable performance.’

  Martyn thanked him and, on an impulse, added: ‘Mr Darcey, is Gay still here? Should I say something to her? I’d like to but I know how she must feel and I don’t want to be clumsy.’

  He waited for a moment, looking at her. ‘She’s in the greenroom,’ he said. ‘Perhaps later. Not now, I think. Nice of you.’

  ‘I won’t unless you say so, then.’

  He made her a little bow. ‘I am at your service,’ he said and followed Percival down the passage.

  Jacko came round the set with the stage-hand who was to fire the effects gun. When he saw Martyn his whole face split in a grin. He took her hands in his and kissed them and she was overwhelmed with shyness.

  ‘But your face,’ he said, wrinkling his own into a monkey’s grimace. ‘It shines like a good deed in a naughty world. Do not touch it yourself. To your dressing-room. I come in two minutes. Away, before your ears are blasted.’

  He moved down-stage, applied his eye to a secret hole in the set through which he could watch the action and held out his arm in warning to the stage-hand who then lifted the effects gun. Martyn went down the passage as Bennington came off. He caught her up: ‘Miss Tarne. Wait a moment, will you?’

  Dreading another intolerable encounter Martyn faced him. His make-up had been designed to exhibit the brutality of the character and did so all too successfully. The lips were painted a florid red, the pouches under the eyes and the sensual drag from the nostrils to the mouth had been carefully emphasized. He was sweating heavily through the greasepaint and his face glistened in the dull light of the passage.

  ‘I just wanted to say’—he began and at that moment the gun was fired and Martyn gave an involuntary cry; he went on talking—’when I see it,’ he was saying, ‘I suppose you aren’t to be blamed for that. You saw your chance and took it. Gay and Adam tell me you offered to get out and were not allowed to go. That may be fair enough: I wouldn’t know. But I’m not worrying about that.’ He spoke disjointedly. It was as if his thoughts were too disordered for any coherent expression. ‘I just wanted to tell you that you needn’t suppose what I’m going to do—you needn’t think—I mean—’

  He touched his shining face with the palm of his hand. Jacko came down the passage and took Martyn by the elbow. ‘Quick,’ he said, ‘into your room. You want powdering, Ben. Excuse me.’

  Bennington went into his own room. Jacko thrust Martyn into hers, and leaving the door open followed Bennington. She heard him say: ‘Take care with your upper lip. It is dripping with sweat.’ He darted back to Martyn, stood her near the dressing-shelf and, with an expression of the utmost concentration effected a number of what he called running repairs to her make-up and her hair. They heard Percival and Darcey go past on their way to the stage. A humming noise caused by some distant dynamo made itself heard, the tap in the wash-basin dripped, the voices on the stage sounded intermittently. Martyn looked at Gay’s make-up box, at her dressing-gown and at the array of mascots on the shelf and wished very heavily that Jacko would have done. Presently the call-boy came down the passage with his summons for the final curtain. ‘Come,’ said Jacko.

  He took her round to the prompt side.

  Here she found a group already waiting: Darcey and Percival, Clem Smith, the two dressers and, at a distance, one or two stagehands. They all watched the final scene between Helena Hamilton and Adam Poole. In this scene Rutherford tied up and stated finally the whole thesis of his play. The man was faced with his ultimate decision. Would he stay and attempt, with the woman, to establish a sane and enlightened formula for living in place of the one he himself had destroyed or would he go back to his island community and attempt a further development within himself and in a less complex environment? As throughout the play, the conflict was
set out in terms of human and personal relationships. It could be played like many another love scene, purely on those terms. Or it could be so handled that the wider implications could be felt by the audience and in the hands of these two players that was what happened. The play ended with them pledging themselves to each other and to an incredible task. As Poole spoke the last lines the electrician, with one eye on Clem below, played madly over his switchboard. The entire set changed its aspect, seemed to dissolve, turned threadbare, a skeleton, a wraith, while beyond it a wide stylized landscape was flooded with light and became as Poole spoke the tag, the background upon which the curtain fell.

  ‘Might as well be back in panto,’ said the electrician leaning on his dimmers, ‘we got the transformation scene. All we want’s the bloody fairy queen.’

  It was at this moment, when the applause seemed to surge forward and beat against the curtains, when Clem shouted: ‘All on,’ and Dr Rutherford plunged out of the OP pass-door, when the players walked on and linked hands, that Poole, looking hurriedly along the line, said: ‘Where’s Ben?’

  One of those panic-stricken crises peculiar to the theatre boiled up on the instant. From her position between Darcey and Percival on the stage Martyn saw the call-boy make some kind of protest to Clem Smith and disappear. Above the applause they heard him hare down the passage, yelling: ‘Mr Bennington! Mr Bennington! Please! You’re on!’

  ‘We can’t wait,’ Poole shouted. ‘Take it up, Clem.’

  The curtain rose and Martyn looked into a sea of faces and hands. She felt herself led forward into the roaring swell, bowed with the others, felt Darcey’s and Percival’s hands tighten on hers, bowed again and with them retreated a few steps up-stage as the first curtain fell.

  ‘Well?’ Poole shouted into the wings. The call-boy could be heard beating on the dressing-room door.

  Percival said: ‘What’s the betting he comes on for a star call?’

  ‘He’s passed out,’ said Darcey. ‘Had one or two more since he came off.’

  ‘By God, I wouldn’t cry if he never came to.’

  ‘Go on, Clem,’ said Poole.

  The curtain rose and fell again, twice. Percival and Darcey took Martyn off and it went up again on Poole and Helena Hamilton, this time to those cries of ‘bravo’ that reach the actors as a long open sound like the voice of a singing wind. In the wings, Clem Smith with his eyes on the stage was saying repeatedly: ‘He doesn’t answer. He’s locked in. The b—doesn’t answer.’

  Martyn saw Poole coming towards her and stood aside. He seemed to tower over her as he took her hand. ‘Come along,’ he said. Darcey and Percival and the group offstage began to clap.

  Poole led her on. She felt herself resisting and heard him say: ‘Yes, it’s all right.’

  So bereft was Martyn of her normal stage-wiseness that he had to tell her to bow. She did so and wondered why there was a warm sound of laughter in the applause. She looked at Poole, found he was bowing to her and bent her head under his smile. He returned her to the wings.

  They were all on again. Dr Rutherford came out from the OP corner. The cast joined in the applause. Martyn’s heart had begun to sing so loudly that it was like to deafen every emotion but a universal gratitude. She thought Rutherford looked like an old lion standing there in his out-of-date evening-dress, his hair ruffled, his gloved hand touching his bulging shirt, bowing in an unwieldy manner to the audience and to the cast. He moved forward and the theatre was abruptly silent: silent, but for an obscure and intermittent thudding in the dressing-room passage. Clem Smith said something to the ASM and rushed away, jingling keys.

  ‘Hah,’ said Dr Rutherford with a preliminary bellow. ‘Hah—thankee. I’m much obliged to you, ladies and gentlemen and to the actors. The actors are much obliged, no doubt, to you but not necessarily to me.’ Here the audience laughed and the actors smiled. ‘I am not able to judge,’ the doctor continued with a rich roll in his voice, ‘whether you have extracted from this play the substance of its argument. If you have done so we may all felicitate each other with the indiscriminate enthusiasm characteristic of these occasions: if you have not, I for my part am not prepared to say where the blame should rest.’

  A solitary man laughed in the audience. The doctor rolled an eye at him and, with this clownish trick, brought the house down. ‘The prettiest epilogue to a play that I am acquainted with,’ he went on, ‘is (as I need perhaps hardly mention to so intelligent an audience) that written for a boy-actor by William Shakespeare. I am neither a boy nor an actor but I beg leave to end by quoting to you. “If it be true that good wine needs no bush—” ’

  ‘Gas!’ Parry Percival said under his breath. Martyn, who thought the doctor was going well, glanced indignantly at Parry and was astonished to see that he looked frightened.

  ‘ “—therefore”,’ the doctor was saying arrogantly, ‘ “to beg will not become me—” ’

  ‘Gas!’ said an imperative voice off-stage and someone else ran noisily round the back of the set.

  And then Martyn smelt it. Gas.

  To the actors it seemed afterwards as if they had been fantastically slow to understand that disaster had come upon the theatre. The curtain went down on Dr Rutherford’s last word. There was a further outbreak of applause. Someone off-stage shouted: ‘The King, for God’s sake,’ and at once the anthem rolled out disinterestedly in the well. Poole ran off the stage and was met by Clem Smith who had a bunch of keys in his hand. The rest followed him

  The area back-stage reeked of gas.

  It was extraordinary how little was said. The players stood together and looked about them with the question in their faces that they were unable to ask.

  Poole said: ‘Keep all visitors out, Clem. Send them to the foyer.’ And at once the ASM spoke into the prompt telephone. Bob Grantley burst through the pass-door, beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘Stupendous!’ he shouted. ‘John! Ella! Adam! My God, chaps, you’ve done it—’

  He stood, stock-still, his arms extended, the smile dying on his face.

  ‘Go back, Bob,’ Poole said. ‘Cope with the people. Ask our guests to go on and not wait for us. Ben’s ill. Clem: get all available doors open. We want air.’

  Grantley said: ‘Gas?’

  ‘Quick,’ Poole said. ‘Take them with you. Settle them down and explain. He’s ill. Then ring me here. But quickly, Bob. Quickly.’

  Grantley went out without another word.

  ‘Where is he?’ Dr Rutherford demanded.

  Helena Hamilton suddenly said: ‘Adam?’

  ‘Go on to the stage, Ella. It’s better you shouldn’t be here, believe me. Kate will stay with you. I’ll come in a moment.’

  ‘Here you are, Doctor,’ said Clem Smith.

  There was a blundering sound in the direction of the passage. Rutherford said, ‘Open the dock doors,’ and went behind the set.

  Poole thrust Helena through the prompt entry and shut the door behind her. Draughts of cold air came through the side entrances.

  ‘Kate,’ Poole said, ‘go in and keep her there if you can. Will you? And, Kate—’

  Rutherford reappeared and with him four stage-hands bearing with difficulty the inert body of Clark Bennington, the head swinging upside down between the two leaders, its mouth wide open. Poole moved quickly but he was too late to shield Martyn. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Go in with Helena.’

  ‘Anyone here done respiration for gassed cases?’ Dr Rutherford demanded. ‘I can start but I’m not good for long.’

  ‘I can,’ said the ASM. ‘I was a warden.’

  ‘I can,’ said Jacko.

  ‘And I,’ said Poole.

  ‘In the dock then. Shut these doors and open the outer ones.’

  Kneeling by Helena Hamilton and holding her hand, Martyn heard the doors roll back and the shambling steps go into the dock. The doors crashed behind them.

  Martyn said: ‘They’re giving him respiration, Dr Rutherford’s there.’

  Helena no
dded with an air of sagacity. Her face was quite without expression, and she was shivering.

  ‘I’ll get your coat,’ Martyn said. It was in the improvised dressing-room on the OP side. She was back in a moment and put Helena into it as if she was a child, guiding her arms and wrapping the fur about her.

  A voice off-stage—J. G. Darcey’s—said: ‘Where’s Gay? Is Gay still in the greenroom?’

  Martyn was astonished when Helena, behind the mask that had become her face, said loudly: ‘Yes. She’s there. In the greenroom.’

  There was a moment’s silence and then J.G. said: ‘She mustn’t stay there. Good God—’

  They heard him go away.

  Parry Percival’s voice announced abruptly that he was going to be sick. ‘But where?’ he cried distractedly. ‘Where?’

  ‘In your dressing-room for Pete’s sake,’ Clem Smith said.

  ‘It’ll be full of gas. Oh, really!’ There was an agonized and not quite silent interval. ‘I couldn’t be more sorry,’ Percival said weakly.

  ‘I want,’ Helena said, ‘to know what happened. I want to see Adam. Ask him to come, please.’

  Martyn made for the door but before she reached it Dr Rutherford came in, followed by Poole. Rutherford had taken off his coat and was a fantastic sight in boiled shirt, black trousers and red braces.

  ‘Well, Ella,’ he said, ‘this is not a nice business. We’re doing everything that can be done. I’m getting a new oxygen thing in as quickly as possible. There have been some remarkable saves in these cases. But I think you ought to know it’s a thinnish chance. There’s no pulse and so on.’

  ‘I want,’ she said, holding out her hand to Poole, ‘to know what happened.’