by Ngaio Marsh
Only partially restored by the evidence of prestige afforded by the gallery queue, he walked down the stage-door alley and into the theatre. He was at once engulfed in its warmth and expectancy.
He passed into the dressing-room passage. Helena Hamilton’s door was half-open and the lights were on. He tapped, looked in and was greeted by the smell of greasepaint, powder, wet-white and flowers. The gas fire groaned comfortably. Martyn, who was spreading out towels, turned and found herself confronted by his deceptively boyish face.
“Early at work?” he fluted.
Martyn wished him good evening.
“Helena not down yet?”
“Not yet.”
He hung about the dressing-room, fingering photographs and eyeing Martyn.
“I hear you come from Down Under,” he said. “I nearly accepted an engagement to go out there last year, but I didn’t really like the people so I turned it down, Adam played it in the year dot, I believe. Well, more years ago than he would care to remember, I dare say. Twenty, if we’re going to let our back-hair down. Before you were born, I dare say.”
“Yes,” Martyn agreed. “Just before.”
Her answer appeared to give him extraordinary satisfaction. “Just before?” he repeated. “Really?” and Martyn thought: “I mustn’t let myself be worried by this.”
He seemed to hover on the edge of some further observation and pottered about the dressing-room examining the great mass of flowers. “I’ll swear,” he said crossly, “those aren’t the roses I chose at Florian’s. Honestly, that female’s an absolute menace.”
Martyn, seeing how miserable he looked, felt sorry for him. He muttered: “I do so abominate first nights,” and she rejoined: “They are pretty ghastly, aren’t they?” Because he seemed unable to take himself off, sho added with an air of finality: “Anyway, may I wish you luck for this one?”
“Sweet of you,” he said. “I’ll need it. I’m the stooge of this piece. Well, thanks, anyway.”
He drifted into the passage, halted outside the open door of Poole’s dressing-room and greeted Bob Cringle. “Governor not down yet?”
“We’re on our way, Mr. Percival.” Parry inclined his head and strolled into the room. He stood close to Bob, leaning his back against the dressing-shelf, his legs elegantly crossed.
“Our little stranger,” he murmured, “seems to be new-brooming away next door.”
“That’s right, sir,” said Bob. “Settled in very nice.”
“Strong resemblance,” Parry said invitingly.
“To the Guv’nor, sir?” Bob rejoined cheerfully. “That’s right. Quite a coincidence.”
“A coincidence!” Parry echoed. “Well, not precisely, Bob. I understand there’s a distant relationship. It was mentioned for the first time last night. Which accounts for the set-up, one supposes. Tell me, Bob, have you ever before heard of a dresser doubling as understudy?”
“Worked out very convenient, hasn’t it, sir?”
“Oh, very,” said Parry discontentedly. “Look, Bob. You were with the Governor on his New Zealand tour in ’thirty, weren’t you?”
Bob said woodenly: “That’s correct sir. ’E was just a boy in them days. Might I trouble you to move, Mr. Percival? I got my table to lay out.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m in the way. As usual. Quite! Quite!” He waved his hand and walked jauntily into the passage.
“Good luck for to-night, sir,” said Bob and shut the door after him.
In the room opposite to Poole’s and next to the Greenroom, Parry could hear Bennington’s dresser moving about whistling softly through his teeth. There is a superstition in the theatre that it’s unlucky to whistle in a dressing-room and Parry knew that the man wouldn’t do it if Ben had arrived. He didn’t much like the sound of it himself, and moved on to J.G. Darcey’s room. He tapped, was answered, and went in. J.G. was already embarked on his make-up.
“Bob,” said Parry, “refuses to be drawn.”
“Good evening, dear boy. About what?”
“Oh, you know. The New Zealand tour and so on.”
“Quite right,” said J.G. firmly, and added: “He was the merest stripling.”
“Well — eighteen,” Parry began and then broke off.
“I know, I know. I couldn’t care less, actually.” He dropped into the only other chair in the room and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I’m so bored with it all. By-blow or not, what does it matter!”
“It only matters,” said J.G., laying down a stick of No. 5, “in so far as it’s driving Gay Gainsford pretty close to a nervous breakdown, and to that I do most strongly object.”
“Really?” Parry raised his head and stared at him. “How altruistic of you, J.G. Well, I mean, I’m sorry for her, poor child. Naturally. And one trembles for the performance, of course.”
“The performance would be all right if people left her alone. Ben, in particular.”
“Yes,” said Parry with great satisfaction. “The situation appears to be getting under the skin of the great character actor. There is that.”
“I’m told,” said J.G., “there was a midnight audition. Jacko professes ecstasy.”
“My dear J.G., there have been two more-or-less public auditions. The object, no doubt, being to make everything look as clean as a whistle. The second affair was this morning.”
“Did you see her?”
“I happened to look in.”
“What’s she like?”
Parry lit a cigarette. “As you have seen,” he said, “she’s fantastically like him. Which is really the point at issue. But fantastically like.”
“Can she give a show?”
“Oh, yes,” said Parry. He leaned forward and hugged his knees boyishly. “Oh, yes indeed. Indeed she can, my dear J.G. You’d be surprised.”
J.G. made a non-committal sound and went on with his make-up.
“This morning,” Parry continued, “the Doctor was there. And Ben. Ben, quite obviously devoured with chagrin. I confess I couldn’t help rather gloating. As I remarked, it’s getting under his skin. Together, no doubt, with vast potations of brandy and soda.”
“I hope to God he’s all right to-night.”
“It appears Gay was in the back of the house, poor thing, while it was going on.”
“She didn’t tell me that,” J.G. said anxiously and, catching Parry’s sharpened glance, he added: “I didn’t really hear anything about it.”
“It was a repetition of last night. Really, one feels quite dizzy. Gay rushed weeping to Adam and again implored him to let her throw in the part. The Doctor, of course, was all for it. Adam was charming, but Uncle Ben produced another temperament. He and the Doctor left simultaneously in a silence more ominous, I assure you, than last night’s dog-fight. Ben’s not down yet.”
“Not yet,” J.G. said and repeated: “I hope to God he’s all right.”
For a moment the two men were united in a common anxiety. J.G. said: “Christ, I wish I didn’t get nervous on first nights.”
“You, at least, have something to be nervous about. Whereas I half kill myself over the dimmest bit in the West End. When I first saw the part I nearly screamed the place down. I said to Adam if it wasn’t that he and Helena had always been very sweet to me—”
J.G. paid this routine plaint the compliment of looking gloomily acquiescent, but he barely listened to it.
“—and anyway,” Parry was saying, “what chance has any of us as long as this fantastic set-up continues? In Poole-Hamilton pieces the second leads go automatically to the star’s husband. I suppose Adam thinks it’s the least he can do. Actually, I know I’m too young for the part but—”
“I wouldn’t say you were,” J.G. said, absently. Parry shot an indignant glance at him but he was pressing powder into the sides of his nose.
“If he tries any of his up-stage fun-and-games on me to-night,” Parry said, furiously hissing his sibilants, “I’ll just simply bitch up his big exit for him. I co
uld, you know. It’d be no trouble at all.”
“I wouldn’t, dear boy,” J.G. said good-naturedly. “It never does one any good, you know. One can’t afford these little luxuries, however tempting. Well, that’s taken the polish off the knocker on the old front door.” He took his nose delicately between his thumb and forefinger. “The play stinks,” he said thoughtfully. “In my considered opinion, it stinks.”
“Well, I must say you are a comfort to us.”
“Pay no attention. I always feel like that at about half-hour time.”
“Half-hour! God, have they called it?”
“They will in five minutes.”
“I must dart to my paints and powders.” Parry went out, but re-opened the door to admit his head. “In case I don’t see you again, dear J.G., all the very best.”
J.G. turned and raised his hand. “And to you the best, of course, dear boy.”
Left alone, he sighed rather heavily, looked closely at his carefully made-up face and, with a rueful air, shook his head at himself.
Clark Bennington’s dresser, a thin melancholy man, put him into his gown and hovered, expressionless, behind him.
“I shan’t need you before the change,” said Bennington. “See if you can help Mr. Darcey.”
The man went out. Bennington knew he’d guessed the reason for his dismissal. He wondered why he could never bring himself to have a drink in front of his dresser. After all, there was nothing in taking a nip before the show. Adam, of course, chose to make a great thing of never touching it. And at the thought of Adam Poole he felt resentment and fear stir at the back of his mind. He got his flask out of his overcoat pocket and poured a stiff shot of brandy.
“The thing to do,” he told himself, “is to wipe this afternoon clean out. Forget it. Forget everything except my work.” But he remembered, unexpectedly, the way, fifteen years ago, he used to prepare himself for a first night. He used to make a difficult and intensive approach to his initial entrance so that when he walked out on the stage he was already possessed by a life that had been created in the dressing-room. Took a lot of concentration: Stanislavsky and all that. Hard going, but in those days it had seemed worth the effort. Helena had encouraged him. He had a notion she and Adam still went in for it. But now he’d mastered the easier way — the repeated mannerism, the trick of pause and the unexpected flattening of the voice — the technical box of tricks.
He finished his drink quickly and began to grease his face. He noticed how the flesh had dropped into sad folds under the eyes, had blurred the jaw-line and had sunk into grooves about the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. All right for this part, of course, where he had to make a sight of himself, but he’d been a fine-looking man. Helena had fallen for him in a big way until Adam cut him out. At the thought of Adam he experienced a sort of regurgitation of misery and anger. “I’m a haunted man,” he thought suddenly.
He’d let himself get into a state, he knew, because of this afternoon. Helena’s face, gaping with terror, like a fish almost, kept rising up in his mind and wouldn’t be dismissed. Things always worked like that with him: remorse always turned into nightmare.
It had been a bad week altogether. Rows with everybody; with John Rutherford in particular and with Adam over that blasted little dresser. He felt he was the victim of some elaborate plot. He was fond of Gay; she was a nice friendly little thing — his own flesh and blood. Until he had brought her into this piece she had seemed to like him. Not a bad little artist either, and good enough, by God, for the artsy-craftsy part they’d thrown at her. He thought of her scene with Poole and of her unhappiness in her failure and how, in some damned cockeyed way, they all, including Gay, seemed to blame him for it. He supposed she thought he’d bullied her into hanging on. Perhaps in a way he had, but he felt so much that he was the victim of a combined assault. “Alone,” he thought, “I’m so desperately alone,” and he could almost hear the word as one would say it on the stage, making it echo, forlorn and hopeless and extremely effective.
“I’m giving myself the jim-jams,” he thought. He wondered if Helena had told Adam about this afternoon. By God, that’d rock Adam, if she had. And at once a picture rose up to torture him, a picture of Helena weeping in Adam’s arms and taking solace there. He saw his forehead grow red in the looking-glass and told himself he’d better steady-up. No good getting into one of his tempers with a first performance ahead of him and everything so tricky with young Gay. There he was, coming back to that girl, that phoney dresser. He poured out another drink and began his make-up.
He recognized with satisfaction a familiar change of mood, and he now indulged himself with a sort of treat He brought out a little piece of secret knowledge he had stored away. Among this company of enemies there was one over whom he exercised almost complete power. Over one, at least, he had overwhelmingly the whip-hand, and the knowledge of his sovereignty warmed him almost as comfortably as the brandy. He began to think about his part. Ideas, brand new and as clever as paint, crowded each other in his imagination. He anticipated his coming mastery.
His left hand slid towards the flask. “One more,” he said, “and I’ll be fine.”
In her room across the passage, Gay Gainsford faced her own reflection and watched Jacko’s hands pass across it. He dabbed with his finger-tips under the cheek-bones and made a droning sound behind his closed lips. He was a very good make-up; it was one of his many talents. At the dress rehearsals the touch of his fingers had soothed rather than exacerbated her nerves, but to-night, evidently she found it almost intolerable.
“Haven’t you finished?” she asked.
“Patience, patience. We do not catch a train. Have you never observed the triangular shadows under Adam’s cheek-bones? They are yet to be created.”
“Poor Jacko,” Gay said breathlessly, “this must be such a bore for you! Considering everything.”
“Quiet, now. How can I work?”
“No, but I mean it must be so exasperating to think that two doors away there’s somebody who wouldn’t need your help. Just a straight make-up, wouldn’t it be? No trouble.”
“I adore making up. It is my most brilliant gift.”
“But she’s your find in a way, isn’t she? You’d like her to have the part, wouldn’t you?”
He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Ne vous dérangez pas,” he said. “Shut up, in fact. Tranquillize yourself, idiot girl.”
“But I want you to tell me.”
“Then I tell you. Yes, I would like to see this little freak play your part because she is in fact a little freak. She has dropped into this theatre like an accident in somebody else’s dress and the effect is fantastic. But she is well content to remain off-stage and it is you who play, and we have faith in you and wish you well with all our hearts.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Gay said.
“What a sour voice! It is true. And now reflect. Reflect upon the minuteness of Edmund Kean, upon Sarah’s one leg and upon Irving’s two, upon ugly actresses who convince their audiences they are beautiful and old actors who persuade them they are young. It is all in the mind, the spirit and the preparation. What does Adam say? Think in, and then play out. Do so.”
“I can’t,” Gay said between her teeth. “I can’t.” She twisted in her chair. He lifted his fingers away from her face quickly, with a wide gesture. “Jacko,” she said, “there’s a jinx on this night. Jacko, did you know? It was on the night of the Combined Arts Ball that it happened.”
“What is this foolishness?”
“You know. Five years ago. The stage-hands were talking about it. I heard them. The gas fire case. The night that man was murdered. Everyone knows.”
“Be silent!” Jacko said loudly. “This is idiocy. I forbid you to speak of it. The chatter of morons. The Combined Arts Ball has no fixed date and, if it had, shall an assembly of British bourgeoisie in bad fancy dress control our destiny? I am ashamed of you. You are altogether too stupid. Master yourself.”
/> “It’s not only that. It’s everything. I can’t face it.”
His fingers closed down on her shoulders. “Master yourself,” he said. “You must. If you cry I shall beat you and wipe your make-up across your face. I defy you to cry.”
He cleaned his hands, tipped her head forward and began to massage the nape of her neck. “There are all sorts of things,” he said, “that you must remember and as many more to forget. Forget the little freak and the troubles of to-day. Remember to relax all your muscles and also your nerves and your thoughts. Remember the girl in the play and the faith I have in you, and Adam and also your Uncle Bennington.”
“Spare me my Uncle Bennington, Jacko. If my Uncle Bennington had left me where I belong, in fortnightly rep, I wouldn’t be facing this hell. I know what everyone thinks of Uncle Ben and I agree with them. I never want to see him again. I hate him. He’s made me go on with this. I wanted to throw the part in. It’s not my part. I loathe it. No, I don’t loathe it, that’s not true. I loathe myself for letting everybody down. Oh, God, Jacko, what am I going to do?”
Across the bowed head Jacko looked at his own reflection and poked a face at it. “You shall play this part,” he said through his teeth. “Mouse-heart, skunk-girl. You shall play. Think of nothing. Unbridle your infinite capacity for inertia and be dumb.”
Watching himself, he arranged his face in an unconvincing glower and fetched up a Shakesperian belly-voice.
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where got’st thou that goose look?”