Night at the Vulcan ra-16

by Ngaio Marsh

  “But this is all nonsense. You’re making a song about nothing. I won’t be taken in by it,” Martyn said and recognized defeat in her own voice.

  Miss Gainsford stared at her with watery indignation and through trembling lips uttered her final cliché. “You can’t,” she said, “do this thing to me,” and broke down completely.

  It seemed to Martyn that beyond a facade of stock emotionalism she recognized a real and a profound distress. She thought confusedly that if they had met on some common and reasonable ground she would have been able to put up a better defence. As it was they merely floundered in a welter of unreason. It was intolerably distressing to her. Her precarious happiness died, she wanted to escape, she was lost. With a feeling of nightmarish detachment she heard herself say: “All right. I’ll speak to Mr. Poole. I’ll say I can’t do the understudy.”

  Miss Gainsford had turned away. She held her handkerchief to her face. Her shoulders and head had been quivering but now they were still. There was a considerable pause. She blew her nose fussily, cleared her throat, and looked up at Martyn.

  “But if you’re Helena’s dresser,” she said, “you’ll still be about.”

  “You can’t mean you want to turn me out of the theatre altogether.”

  “There’s no need,” Miss Gainsford mumbled, “to put it like that.”

  Martyn heard a voice and footsteps in the passage. She didn’t want to be confronted with Jacko. She said: “I’ll see if Mr. Poole’s still in the theatre. I’ll speak to him now if he is.”

  As she made for the door Miss Gainsford snatched at her arm. “Please!” she said. “I am grateful. But you will be really generous won’t you? Really big? You won’t bring me into it, will you? With Adam I mean. Adam wouldn’t underst—”

  Her face set as if she had been held in suspension, like a motion picture freezing into a still. She didn’t even release her hold on Martyn’s arm.

  Martyn spun round and saw Poole, with Jacko behind him, in the passage. To her own astonishment she burst out laughing.

  “No, really!” she stammered. “It’s too much! This is the third time. Like the demon-king in pantomime.”

  “What the devil do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just your flair for popping, up in crises. Other people’s crises. Mine, in fact.”

  He grimaced as if he gave her up as a bad job. “What’s the present crisis?” he said and looked at Miss Gainsford, who had turned aside and was uneasily painting her mouth. “What is it, Gay?”

  “Please!” she choked. “Please let me go. I’m all right, really. Quite all right. I just rather want to be alone.”

  She achieved a tearful smile at Poole and an imploring glance at Martyn. Poole stood away from the door and watched her go out with her chin up and with courageous suffering neatly portrayed in every inch of her body.

  She disappeared into the passage and a moment later the door of the Greenroom was heard to shut.

  “It is a case of mis-casting,” said Jacko, coming into the room. “She should be in Hollywood. She has what it takes in Hollywood. What an exit! We have misjudged her.”

  “Go and see what’s the matter.”

  “She wants,” said Jacko, making a dolorous face, “to be alone.”

  “No, she doesn’t. She wants an audience. You’re it. Get along and do your stuff.”

  Jacko put several parcels on the table. “I am the dogsbody,” he said, “to end all dogsbodies,” and went out.

  “Now, then,” Poole said.

  Martyn gathered up her work and was silent.

  “What’s the matter? You’re as white as a sheet. Sit down. What is all this?”

  She sat behind the machine.

  “Come on,” he said.

  “I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient for you but I’m afraid I’ve got to give notice.”

  “Indeed? As a dresser or as understudy?”

  “As both.”

  “It’s extremely inconvenient and I don’t accept it.”

  “But you must. Honestly, you must. I can’t go on like this: it isn’t fair.”

  “Do you mean because of that girl?”

  “Because of her and because of everything. She’ll have a breakdown. There’ll be some disaster.”

  “She doesn’t imagine you’re going to be given the part over her head, does she?”

  “No, no, of course not. It’s just that she’s finding it hard anyway and the — the sight of me sort of panics her.”

  “The likeness?”

  “Yes.”

  “She needn’t look, at you. I’m afraid she’s the most complete ass, that girl,” he muttered. He picked up a fold of the material Martyn had been sewing, looked absently at it and pushed the whole thing across the table. “Understand,” he said, “I won’t for a second entertain the idea of your going. For one thing Helena can’t do without you, and for another I will not be dictated to by a minor actress in my own company. Nor,” he added with a change of tone, “by anyone else.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry for her,” Martyn said. “She feels there’s some sort of underground movement against her. She really feels it.”

  “And you?”

  “I must admit I don’t much enjoy the sensation of being in the theatre on sufferance. But I was so thankful—” She caught her breath and stopped.

  “Who makes you feel you’re on sufferance? Gay? Bennington? Percival?”

  “I used a silly phrase. Naturally, they all must think it a bit queer, my turning up. It looks queer.”

  “It’d look a damn sight queerer if you faded out again. I can’t think,” he said impatiently, “how you could let yourself be bamboozled by that girl.”

  “But it’s not all bamboozle. She really is at the end of her tether.”

  Martyn waited for a moment. She thought inconsequently how strange it was that she should talk like this to Adam Poole, who two days ago had been a celebrated name, a remote legend, seen and heard and felt through a veil of characterization in his films.

  “Oh, well,” she thought and said aloud: “I’m thinking of the show. It’s such a good play. She mustn’t be allowed to fail. I’m thinking about that.”

  He came nearer and looked at her with a sort of incredulity. “Good Lord,” he said, “I believe you are! Do you mean to say you haven’t considered your own chance if she did crack up? Where’s your wishful thinking?”

  Martyn slapped her palm down on the table. “But of course I have. Of course I’ve done my bit of wishful thinking. But don’t you see—”

  He reached across the table and for a brief moment his hand closed over hers. “I think I do,” he said. “I’m beginning, it seems, to get a taste of your quality. How do you suppose the show would get on if you had to play?”

  “That’s unfair,” Martyn cried.

  “Well,” he said, “don’t run out on me. That’d be unfair, if you like. No dresser. No understudy. A damn shabby trick. As for this background music, I know where it arises. It’s a more complex business than you may suppose. I shall attend to it.” He moved behind her chair, and rested his hands on its back. “Well,” he said, “shall we clap hands and a bargain? How say you?”

  Martyn said slowly: “I don’t see how I can do anything but say yes.”

  “There’s my girl!” His hand brushed across her head and he moved away.

  “Though I must say,” Martyn added, “you do well to quote Petruchio. And Henry the Fifth, if it comes to that.”

  “A brace of autocratic male animals? Therefore it must follow you are ‘Kate’ in two places. And — shrewd Kate, French Kate, kind Kate, but never curst Kate — you will rehearse at eleven to-morrow, hold or cut bow-strings. Agreed?”

  “I am content.”

  “Damned if you look it, however. All right. I’ll have a word with that girl. Good day to you, Kate.”

  “Good day, sir,” said Martyn.

  That night the second dress rehearsal went through as for performance, withou
t, as far as Martyn knew, any interruption during the action.

  She stayed throughout in one or the other of Miss Hamilton’s dressing-rooms and, on the occasions when she was in transit, contrived to be out of the way of any of the players. In the second act, her duties kept her in the improvised dressing-room on the stage and she heard a good deal of the dialogue.

  There is perhaps nothing that gives one so strong a sense of theatre from the inside as the sound of invisible players in action. The disembodied and remote voices, projected at an unseen mark, the uncanny quiet offstage, the smells and the feeling that the walls and the dust listen, the sense of a simmering expectancy; all these together make a corporate life so that the theatre itself seems to breathe and pulse and give out a warmth. This warmth communicated itself to Martyn and, in spite of all her misgivings, she glowed and thought to herself, “This is my place. This is where I belong.”

  Much of the effect of the girl’s part in this act depended not so much on what she said, which was little, but on mime and on that integrity of approach which is made manifest in the smallest gesture, the least movement. Listening to Miss Gainsford’s slight uncoloured voice, Martyn thought: “But perhaps if one watched her it would be better. Perhaps something is happening that cannot be heard, only seen.”

  Miss Hamilton, when she came off for her changes, spoke of nothing but the business in hand and said little enough about that. She was indrawn and formal in her dealings with her dresser. Martyn wondered uneasily how much Poole had told her of their interviews, whether she had any strong views or prejudices about her husband’s niece, or shared his resentment that Martyn herself had been cast as an understudy.

  The heat radiated by the strong lights of the dressing-rooms intensified their characteristic smells. With business-like precision Miss Hamilton would aim an atomizer at her person and spray herself rhythmically with scent while Martyn, standing on a chair, waited to slip a dress over her head. After the end of the second act, when she was about this business in the star-room, Poole came in. “That went very nicely, Helena,” he said.

  Martyn paused with the dress in her hands. Miss Hamilton extended her whitened arms, and with a very beautiful movement turned to him.

  “Oh, darling,” she said. “Did it? Did it really?”

  Martyn thought she had never seen anyone more lovely than her employer was then. Hers was the kind of beauty that declared itself when most simply arrayed. The white cloth that protected her hair added a Holbein-like emphasis to the bones and subtly turning planes of her face. There was a sort of naïveté and warmth in her posture: a touching intimacy. Martyn saw Poole take the hands that were extended to him and she turned her head away, not liking, with the voluminous dress in her arms, to climb down from her station on the chair. She felt suddenly desolate and shrunken within herself.

  “Was it really right?” Miss Hamilton said.

  “You were, at least.”

  “But — otherwise?”

  “Much as one would expect.”

  “Where’s John?”

  “In the circle, under oath not to come down until I say so.”

  “Pray God, he keep his oath!” she quoted sombrely.

  “Hullo, Kate,” Poole said.

  “Kate?” Miss Hamilton asked. “Why Kate?”

  “I suspect her,” said Poole, “of being a shrew. Get on with your job, Kate. What are you doing up there?”

  Miss Hamilton said: “Really, darling!” and moved away to the chair. Martyn slipped the dress over her head, jumped down and began to fasten it. She did this to a running accompaniment from Poole. He whispered to himself anxiously as if he were Martyn, muttered and grunted as if Miss Hamilton complained that the dress was tight, and thus kept up a preposterous duologue, matching his words to their actions. This was done so quaintly and with so little effort that Martyn had much ado to keep a straight face and Miss Hamilton was moved to exasperated laughter. When she was dressed she took him by the arm. “Since when, my sweet, have you become a dressing-room comedian?”

  “Oh God, your only jig-maker.”

  “Last act, please, last act,” said the call-boy in the passage.

  “Come on,” she said, and they went out together.

  When the curtain was up, Martyn returned to the improvised dressing-room on the stage and there, having for the moment no duties, she listened to the invisible play and tried to discipline her most unruly heart.

  Bennington’s last exit was followed in the play by his suicide, off-stage. Jacko, who had, it seemed, a passion for even the simplest of off-stage stunts, had come round from the front of the house to supervise the gunshot. He stood near the entry into the dressing-room passage with a stage-hand who carried an effects-gun. This was fired at the appropriate moment and, as they were stationed not far from Martyn in her canvas room, she leapt at the report, which was nerve-shatteringly successful. The acrid smell of the discharge drifted into her roofless shelter.

  Evidently Bennington was standing near by. His voice, carefully lowered to a murmur, sounded just beyond the canvas wall. “And that,” he said, “takes me right off, thank God. Give me a cigarette, Jacko, will you?” There was a pause. The stage-hand moved away. A match scraped and Bennington said: “Come to my room and have a drink.”

  “Thank you, Ben, not now,” Jacko whispered. “The curtain comes down in five minutes.”

  “Followed by a delicious post mortem conducted by the Great Producer and the Talented Author. Entrancing prospect! How did I go, Jacko?”

  “No actor,” Jacko returned, “cares to be told how he goes in anything but terms of extravagant praise. You know how clever you always are. You are quite as clever to-night as you have always been. Moreover, you showed some discretion.”

  Martyn heard Bennington chuckle. “There’s still tomorrow,” he said. “I reserve my fire, old boy. I bide my time.”

  There was a pause. Martyn heard one of them fetch a long sigh — Jacko, evidently, because Bennington, as if in answer to it, said: “Oh, nonsense.” After a moment he added: “The kid’s all right,” and when Jacko didn’t answer: “Don’t you think so?”

  “Why, yes,” said Jacko.

  On the stage the voices of Helena Hamilton and Adam Poole built towards a climax. The call-boy came round behind the set and went down the passage chanting: “All on for the curtain, please. All on.”

  Martyn shifted the chair in the dressing-room and moved noisily. There was a brief silence.

  “I don’t give a damn if she can hear,” Bennington said more loudly. “Wait a moment. Stay where you are. I was asking you what you thought of Gay’s performance. She’s all right. Isn’t she?”

  “Yes, yes. I must go.”

  “Wait a bit. If the fools left her alone she’d go tremendously. I tell you what, old boy. If our Eccentric Author exercises his talent for wisecracking on that kid to-night I’ll damn well take a hand.”

  “You will precipitate a further scene, and that is to be avoided.”

  “I’m not going to stand by and hear her bullied. By God, I’m not. I understand you’ve given harbourage, by the way, to the Mystery Maiden.”

  “I must get round to the side. By your leave, Ben.”

  “Plenty of time.”

  And Martyn knew that Bennington stood in the entry to the passage, barring the way.

  “I’m talking,” he said, “about this understudy-cum-dresser. Miss X.”

  “You are prolific in cryptic titles.”

  “Call her what you like, it’s a peculiar business. What is she? You may as well tell me, you know. Some ancient indiscretion of Adam’s adolescence come home to roost?”

  “Be quiet, Ben.”

  “For tuppence I’d ask Adam himself. And that’s not the only question I’d like to ask him. Do you think I relish my position?”

  “They are getting near the tag. It is almost over.”

  “Why do you suppose I drink a bit? What would you do in my place?”

  “Thi
nk before I speak,” said Jacko, “for one thing.”

  A buzzer sounded. “There’s the curtain,” said Jacko. “Look out.”

  Martyn heard a kind of scuffle followed by an oath from Bennington. There were steps in the passage. The curtain fell with a giant whisper. A gust of air swept through the region back-stage.

  “All on,” said the stage-manager distantly. Martyn heard the players go on and the curtain rise and fall again.

  Poole, on the stage, said: “And that’s all of that. All right, everyone. Settle down and I’ll take the notes. John will be round in a moment. I’ll wait for you, Helena.”

  Miss Hamilton came into the improvised room. Martyn removed her dress and put her into her gown.

  “I’ll take my make-up off out there,” she said. “Bring the things, Martyn, will you? Grease, towels and my cigarettes?”

  Martyn had them ready. She followed Miss Hamilton out and for the first time that night went onto the set.

  Poole, wearing a dark dressing-gown, stood with his back to the curtain. The other five members of the cast sat, relaxed but attentive, about the stage. Jacko and Clem Smith waited by the Prompt corner with papers and pencils. Martyn held a looking-glass before Miss Hamilton, who said: “Adam, darling, you don’t mind, do you? I mustn’t miss a word but I do rather want to get on,” and began to remove her make-up.

  Upon this scene Dr. John James Rutherford erupted. His arrival was prefaced in his usual manner by slammed doors, blundering footsteps and loud ejaculations. He then appeared in the central entrance, flame-headed, unshaven, overcoated, and grasping a sheaf of papers.

  “Roast me,” he said, “in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! ’Ere I again endure the loathy torment of a dress rehearsal! What have I done, ye gods, that I should—”

  “All right, John,” Poole said. “Not yet. Sit down. On some heavy piece of furniture and carefully.”

  Clem Smith shouted: “Alf! The Doctor’s chair.”

  A large chair with broken springs was brought on and placed with its back to the curtain. Dr. Rutherford hurled himself into it and produced his snuff-box. “I am a child to chiding,” he said. “What goes on, chums?”

  Poole said: “I’m going to take my stuff. If anything I have to say repeats exactly any of your own notes you might leave it out for the sake of saving time. If you’ve any objections, be a good chap and save them till I’ve finished. Agreed?”