The Swish of the Curtain (Blue Door Book 1)

by Pamela Brown

  “Gosh, what a lot of people are entering. It’ll fill up the programme for nights and nights.”

  “Yes, it will. But these things always get large audiences, you know.”

  “Do they? My goodness!”

  “Well, will you keep to Friday, or – ”

  Suddenly Jeremy asked, “When do you open in the mornings?”

  “Nine o’clock sharp.”

  “Oh!” Jeremy’s face fell. “I only wondered if we could come before breakfast one morning.”

  The manager looked at them kindly. “Well, it might be managed. I could arrange for one of my men to open up for you at six o’clock. Would that suit you?”

  “Thank you, sir. That’s splendid.” They beamed gratefully at him. “Friday morning before school, then?”

  “Certainly. It’s a pleasure.”

  As they made their way home, Sandra said, “Aren’t people nice to us? Generally speaking, not counting Mrs. P.-S.”

  “We must be conducive to niceness,” observed Jeremy complacently.

  Lyn said, laughing, “Has it struck you that we’ve decided to win the contest and arranged for the dress rehearsal, and we’ve not decided what to act?”

  “Gosh, no! And there’s only a month. How awful! Anyone got any ideas?” There was silence. “Don’t all speak at once.”

  “I bags we write it ourselves, then they’ll excuse anything wrong with it, because we’re young,” said Jeremy artfully.

  “Let’s have it modern,” said Vicky.

  “And morbid,” said Lyn.

  “And – what’s the word they use to describe highbrow novels – forceful, that’s it,” said Jeremy.

  In a week the forceful play was written. They called it Saddler’s Circus. It was like many one-act plays, not so much a narrative as a character study. The nucleus character was Samuel Saddler, manager and ringmaster of a small circus, a brutal man who dominated and oppressed every member of his troupe. This part was to be played by Nigel, whose dark face could easily be made to look villainous. Sandra was playing the part of his French wife, Annette, whom he had met in Germany where she was studying music, married and brought her back to England to lead a sordid, miserable life, tenting. Through her persuasion Jennifer, a village girl, was induced not to join the circus; she had intended to do so, being in love with Peter, one of the tent-hands. Vicky was Jennifer, as there was a scene where she did acrobatics to show Saddler that she would be some use in the circus. Jeremy was Peter, and played his violin for the acrobatics.

  The play took place outside Saddler’s caravan, before and during the last evening show in a southern England village, and the theme was the way Annette dissuaded Jennifer from joining the circus. Bulldog was Jock, a clown, whose desire it was to leave the circus and with his savings to buy a little cottage and grow marigolds and hollyhocks. But Saddler, knowing that he was a fine clown, had tricked him into signing a contract that bound him to work till he was unable, and he was forced to keep on under his hard taskmaster.

  Another incident that made Jennifer change her mind was the accident that occurred to Bobby, the little brother of Pearl, the bareback rider. These rôles were played by Maddy and Lyn respectively. Bobby was learning trapeze, and the night that Jennifer was with Annette at the caravan the trapeze artist was ill, and Saddler made Bobby go on and use the high trapeze, which he had never before experienced. He slipped and hurt his back, and the doctor said he would have to lie on his back for the rest of his life, so Saddler sent him to the workhouse without consulting Pearl. There was a very striking climax. Jennifer having left Peter, the circus members decide to revolt; but as soon as Saddler appears they were once more cowed into submission by his brutality.

  They worked with a feverish intensity, rising to rehearse before breakfast on week-days, and spending every evening and all day Saturday at the theatre. Nigel did a backcloth of a caravan, with a cardboard door that opened, and made real wooden steps to sit on. Flopping into bed at past nine after a fifteen-hour day of hard work, they had only a murmur of sincere prayer before falling into a heavy slumber. They knew the play perfectly in two weeks, as it was very short, and took a mere half-hour to perform. It began to get mechanical after a while, but Lyn said that this was good, for it would mean that they could not go wrong with the dialogue, and once before an audience, it would become fresh and spontaneous again. Sandra was sadly disappointed that there were no splendid costumes to prepare, but found for the first time that a part well studied was easier to play.

  They took to being the characters in everyday life, bewildering their school friends. Sandra, sprung on to answer in class, would reply with a flutter of hands and a French accent, while Vicky acquired a permanent Somerset drawl. Nigel, when riled, often found himself trying to twist the black moustache he wore in the play, and his language became shocking. Bulldog grumbled that he only felt at home in his white clown suit, borrowed from a member of Vicky’s dancing class. Maddy and Lyn studied Cockney from the butcher boy, who was a Londoner, and used some of his choicest expressions to shock their parents. In order to get used to the feel of their clothes they wore them whenever possible about the house.

  Nigel assumed splendid attire: a scarlet tail coat – also borrowed from Vicky’s dancing-class friend, who did tap solos in a red evening suit – tall riding boots, buff breeches that his father had had in India, and Mr. Fayne’s top hat. An immense whip was borrowed from a theatrical agency in the town, and a sweeping black moustache completed the effect. Sandra wore a black dress and a white shawl, Lyn a ballet frock of Vicky’s, Vicky a blouse and detachable skirt, as she wore tights underneath, Jeremy an old pair of flannels and a grey polo neck jumper, Bulldog the clown suit, Maddy dungarees and a cap to hide her plaits. There were no lighting effects, and the only stage properties were the steps and a few soap boxes.

  “It’s simplicity itself to act,” declared Lyn, “so I think we ought to try to get real tears where needed, don’t you?”

  Maddy, of course, could do this with ease, Lyn found it a more difficult job, and Vicky simply could not until the dress rehearsal. This was held before breakfast on Friday, a week before they had to appear, and as the theatre was chilly and unfriendly at this early hour, it helped to make the play still more depressing.

  “If it doesn’t move the audience it ought to,” pronounced Lyn, when it was over. Then she put the question that had been on their lips for weeks, “Do you think we’ll win?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nigel slashed with his whip, stepped to the end of the stage, and glaring fiercely out over the empty seats, said firmly, “But we’ll make a good try.”

  The deserted theatre echoed the words exultantly.

  18

  THE SEYMORE TROPHY

  Their hands ached with clapping, but still they went on, stamping their feet to supplement the appreciative noise. The members of the Fenchester Teachers’ Dramatic Society bowed again and again to the applause, and little bursts of laughter broke out as the more humorous characters took their bows. They had acted a very witty comedy about a village council meeting, and had had the audience eating out of their hands two minutes after the rise of the curtain. They were all elderly, but had the sharp humour peculiar to school teachers. When the curtain fell: “Gosh,” sighed Lyn, “we shall never beat them. They deserve to win!”

  “That Mr. Pringle ought to be on the stage,” remarked Nigel. “He’s better than any actor in touring companies that have been here.”

  “Look at Roma Seymore,” said Vicky. “She’s laughing like anything.”

  Mrs. Seymore was a tall, stately lady with an abundance of jet black hair. Age had not been able to spoil the beauty of her calm white face, and she had luminous, sympathetic eyes. She sat at the table in the gangway of the gallery, and with her was the president of the B.A.G., an elderly gentleman with white hair, and the local secretary, who was a member of the Fenchester Amateurs.

  This was the second night of the three, and
five of the eight performances had been given. The previous night the contest was opened by the Fenchester Amateurs, who did a scene from The School for Scandal. It was well performed, and the Blue Doors felt sure they could not beat it. The St. Anne’s Amateurs were next, a small parish club with more enthusiasm than ability. They did a rather sickly play called Sir John’s Bride. The Fenchester Church Lads’ Brigade completed that night’s programme with a thriller that was amusing rather than thrilling, especially in parts that were meant to be serious. Tonight had been very successful so far. The Police Force Club gave a tough performance in a play taking place in a transport café on the Great North Road, in which there was some excellent fighting, but the teachers were definitely the winners so far.

  The Blue Doors had arrived early on both nights to obtain seats near the adjudicator, so that they might study the effect of the various plays on her, as she chatted during the interval with the president and the secretary. The Blue Doors began to feel as if they knew her personally.

  Nigel looked at the programme.

  “It’s Mrs. P.-S. and her ladies now,” he observed.

  “It’s called The Statue,” said Vicky. “I expect we’ll see Mrs. Potter-Smith as Venus.”

  “Sh!” said Sandra, as she had been saying every time people made personal remarks. “There may be friends of hers behind us.”

  The curtain rose. Mrs. Potter-Smith in her favourite Greek tunic stood in a wobbly pose on a white pedestal holding a garland of flowers. A group of Bacchanalian “ladies” ran in, and the Blue Doors wriggled ecstatically in their seats. A slow smile spread over the mobile features of Roma Seymore. It was a ridiculous play, the theme being the return to life of a statue of some Greek goddess, and her romance with a present-day young man. The modern young man was played by Mr. Bell’s junior curate, who looked like a most mournful relic from the Victorian era, and spoke in a muffled undertone. The Greek goddess thumped about the stage, striking dramatic poses and declaiming in her weak, sugary voice. Agony replaced the amusement of the adjudicator, and she scribbled in her note-book. Some impolite people, noticeably those who had performed their plays, actually laughed out aloud, but the Blue Doors stuffed handkerchiefs in their mouths, and were relieved to think that, after this, they could certainly not be bottom.

  When the statue had at last returned to her pedestal and the curtain fell Sandra said, “Come on, now, home and bed, and we must sleep late in the morning, even if it means being late for school. We don’t want headaches tomorrow night.”

  They hurried home discussing the plays hypercritically. At their gates Lyn said, “Do you think we’ll win?”

  No one answered, for the Fenchester Teachers had made a big impression on them.

  “We can only try,” Nigel said at last, and they went to sleep with valiant hope in their hearts.

  “Can you answer that question, Madelaine?” asked Miss Green suddenly.

  Maddy jerked herself away from her dreams.

  “No, Miss Green.”

  “Can you if you think carefully?”

  “No,” said Maddy.

  “Did you hear the question?”

  “No,” said Maddy.

  “Have you any interest whatsoever in what I’ve been saying?”

  “No,” said Maddy truthfully, and received her third order mark that day. The first was for over-sleeping and being late for school, and the second was for breaking a pipette in chemistry.

  The other girls, now in Middle Five A, had hardly fared better. Vicky had an order mark for turning round to talk to Lyn, Sandra burnt a pudding in cookery, and Lyn felt sick with nerves and had to go and lie down. In the afternoon at the Grammar School Bulldog played so horribly in a cricket practice that he was put out of the second team. Nigel, at his typing lesson, thumped so recklessly at the keys that he broke one, and Jeremy, who had no regular lessons now, as his form were on the verge of School Certificate, lay on the cricket field “doing prep.”, but in reality going through and through the play.

  They met at the bottom of the Grammar School hill and strolled slowly home.

  “Shall we go up on the fields and have a rest as usual?” asked Sandra.

  “I’ve got to go and have a bath and do my feet,” objected Vicky.

  “You’ll have time afterwards,” Jeremy told her. “The show doesn’t start until half-past seven, and we’re the second and last to perform. That means we shan’t be able to see the Hanston Dramatic Class show.”

  “I was thinking,” said Sandra, “that if we don’t win we could join Miss Hanston’s class.”

  “About all we’ll be fit for.” Nigel moodily picked leaves off a hedge as he passed, leaving a trail of green behind him.

  “I think I shall be a school mistress if we don’t win, then I shall join the Fenchester Teachers,” said Lyn.

  “What will you teach? Maths?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. English, of course.”

  They lay under the tree on Miller’s Hill, pretending not to be frightened.

  “Won’t it be annoying if we only lose by one or two marks?” said Nigel.

  “It’ll be more annoying if we lose by more than two or three.”

  “Yes; but it won’t be a ‘so near and yet so far’ feeling.”

  “It’ll be an anticlimax,” said Lyn, her hands under her head, gazing up into the dizzily blue sky. Lyn hated anticlimax.

  They went home to tea, to find their parents in as nervous a condition as themselves. Mr. Halford surprised his children by saying, “Well, I hope you’re going to do me credit by winning tonight.”

  “We hope so, Dad!”

  The parents were coming to watch that night, but did not start out with the children, who had to go to the Blue Door Theatre to fetch their costumes. They went into their little haven and surveyed it lovingly.

  “I do wish we were acting here tonight. We’d feel so much more at home,” sighed Sandra regretfully.

  “But it’ll be nice to act on a really large stage, won’t it?” said Lyn.

  “Yes, but we’ll have to speak up. Inaudibility is one of the greatest sins in the opinion of the audience,” remarked Nigel.

  “Where shall we put the trophy if we win it?” asked Maddy.

  “We could put a bracket over the door.”

  “What’s the trophy like? Does anybody know?”

  “A cup, I should think,” Vicky speculated.

  They looked up at the door, trying to imagine a cup reposing above it, then Nigel said, “Come on, there’s an hour and a half before we go on at nine.” He picked up the immense roll of paper, thickened at one end with cardboard, that was the caravan backcloth. Bulldog took up the wooden steps, and the girls the attaché cases; they made their way to the Palace Cinema. Tonight there was no need to show their little badges with “Performer” to gain admission, for the girl in the box office, seeing their luggage, smiled and wished them good luck.

  “I advise you to go round to the stage door,” she said. “It’ll be easier than by the manager’s office.”

  “Of course, how stupid of us!”

  As they retraced their footsteps from the foyer many people turned to stare at these extraordinarily young performers. They were shown into two tiny bare dressing-rooms by the manager, who expressed his earnest hope that they might win.

  Sandra set out their cosmetics and brushes and combs on the dressing-table, their flannels and soap at the wash basin, and pronounced that it looked more homely. Lyn was thrilled to find a notice on the wall saying that Mrs. Siddons had once used the dressing-room while on tour.

  “Gosh! This part of the theatre must be pretty old,” she said. “I wonder if she had stage fright?”

  Jeremy knocked at the door to ask Sandra to come and make them up.

  “It’s funny not to be able to hear you on the other side of the curtain,” he said with a grin. “Quite a rest cure.”

  The boys’ dressing-room was already in a litter, and she gave them a good scolding as she bu
stled about, tidying up.

  “This isn’t the way to win trophies,” she said. “The place looks as though a pig has been let loose. Bulldog, fold up your shirt, and have you got enough on under your clown suit? It’ll be draughty on the stage.”

  “Don’t fuss,” rebuked the clown, doing a somersault. “I pity your children, Sandra.”

  “If I didn’t fuss, no one else would. Come here and be made beautiful.”

  She slammed on the conventional clown’s make-up, red nose and cheeks on a dead white face.

  “You don’t need much make-up, Jerry,” she told him. “Or rather, you wouldn’t if we were at the Blue Door, but here, with footlights, you’ll have to. I’ve bought some real grease paint.”

  She made him up with a pale face and heavy blue lines under his eyes, brushing his fair hair till it shone.

  “Yes, you look just right; attractive but weak.”

  “That’s me all over,” he said complacently.

  Nigel was still looking peaceful and law abiding in his ringmaster’s clothes, but without any make-up. Sandra gave his eyes emphasis, and made the contour lines of his face less pleasant, and the moustache completed the evil effect. He twirled them joyously.

  “Sing ho, for the life of a cad.”

  “And now I must dash and see to the girls. How much longer, Nigel?”

  “Three quarters of an hour.”

  The familiar sights met her eyes in the girls’ dressing-room – Lyn pacing the floor like a caged lioness; Vicky limbering up, holding on to a chair; and Maddy screwed up into a tight little ball, sitting on a chair with her face on her knees.

  “Come on,” Sandra said calmly, “who’s going to be made up first? You, Vicky, because you’re easiest.”

  She gave her a normal, beautifying make-up and told her to hurry and dress, so there would be no need to dash at the last minute. Lyn was made up with scarlet lips, white face, with a trace of colour high on the cheekbones; but try as she might Sandra could get no resemblance between her and Maddy as brother and sister. She gave Maddy a sunburnt face, and was just about to settle down to her own make-up when Vicky said, “Good Lord, you’re not going to leave the child like that?”