by P. G. Glynn
Wearing the plaid woollen dressing gown that had been his since boyhood, John finally entered Marie’s bedroom asking: “Darling, what’s up? Tell your worried old uncle.”
“Just about everything,” Marie told him with a wry grin. “I can’t seem to keep anything down.”
At least she could still make light of things! Sitting beside her on the edge of her bed, John said: “This isn’t just a stomach upset, is it?”
“I don’t know what it is … but think I’m beginning to guess.”
John took a deep breath. “Are you telling me that you’re expecting?”
“Giddy godfathers, Uncle John, I hope I’m not!”
“But that is a possibility? If Otto has forced himself on you, then shooting is too good for him.”
“Nobody has done any forcing and … and, if it’s true that I’m carrying, it isn’t his.”
“Not Otto’s?” John queried, seeing beads of perspiration on Marie’s forehead and feeling almost as sick as she did. “I don’t follow.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” Marie said, clutching her stomach as if to expunge its contents. “But I don’t love Otto. I’m stupid enough to love … Charles Brodie.” She laughed humourlessly. “How stupid can one woman possibly be?”
John was shocked to the core. How had this happened? How had he, as her stand-in father, permitted it to happen? Feeling hopelessly inept, he uttered the first words that came into his head: “Darling … he’s a married man!”
“And don’t I know it? If only he weren’t, there’d be no problem … that is, if I could forgive him for turning on me as he did after Otto bribed his way into the auditorium. Anyone would think I’d put Otto up to it.”
“Are you saying,” John asked, struggling to get to grips with all this, “that if Charles Brodie weren’t married already you’d marry him?”
“That’s the gist – but he is!”
“Oh, Marie!”
“Don’t ‘oh Marie’ me – that’s of no use to anybody and I’ll start wishing I hadn’t told you the sad story.”
“You haven’t told me. I only know the bare bones. Mr Brodie’s much older than you, isn’t he?”
“Not all that much,” Marie said defensively. “He’s only in his thirties.”
“I’ll bet he’s nearer forty than thirty – and however old he is, he’s old enough to know better than to … to do as he has done to you.”
“He didn’t do it unassisted, so don’t go thinking he did.”
“Not the act itself, perhaps,” John said, embarrassed, “but he could have prevented … your becoming pregnant.”
“How could he have done that?”
“There are … ways.” He could hardly discuss French letters or the withdrawal method with his young niece, besides which the discussion would be coming too late to avail. “Of course we don’t yet know for certain that you’re expecting a baby.”
Marie again clutched her stomach saying: “I hate thinking there might be something growing inside me, getting bigger by the minute, with me helpless to stop it. I keep telling myself that this isn’t reality … or that if I pinch myself hard I’ll wake up and find it has all been a bad dream.”
It certainly had a nightmare quality. John tried to decide on the best advice to give Marie. “As well as ways of prevention,” he said, “there are ways, I believe, of … aborting it. And,” he added quickly, “I’m not talking about risking life and limb in the hands of some back-street abortionist. First, though, we need to establish for sure whether there’s any need for ... ”
“I think there is.”
“Have you told him?”
“Charles, do you mean?” Marie asked incredulously. “He’s the last person I’d tell, given the way things are between us at present. It’s almost impossible to believe that we were ever … as we were. He’s giving a most impressive performance as the coldest man on earth.”
John saw that she was close to tears and put his arm round her. “Don’t upset yourself,” he said, wishing he felt less inadequate. “No problem is insoluble – so all we have to do is think of a solution.”
Gwen had interrupted them then. Nightly doses of sennapods meant that she always ‘went’ upon awakening and en route for the privy at half-past-six she had wanted to know precisely why John was in Marie’s bedroom at that hour in the morning, talking. What was going on and why, when she had a rich and charming boyfriend, was Marie looking so wan? If she was bilious it was because she was pigging on too much rich food … unless of course there was a worse interpretation. Staring hard at Marie after ticking her and John off for sitting on the bed, she had ended: “A girl’s no less of a slut if a rich man puts her in the club, but at least marriage to Mr Berger would tidy things … and he’d keep Marie in the style to which she has become accustomed.”
John had marvelled since at the width of the chasm between him and Gwen. She saw Marie as sluttish and Otto as the epitome of every girl’s dream. She would lose no sleep over his being foreign and wanting to cart Marie off to Bohemia. Nor would Gwen question whether Marie loved him. Had she learned nothing from living in this barren, loveless land with John? It seemed not. Well, that was her prerogative. As for Marie falling for Charles Brodie: there was never any knowing with Cupid. Legend had it that he fired his arrows blindfolded, which perhaps explained why he sometimes fired them a little wide. Gods as well as mortals were fallible. So Marie could not be blamed for falling. Charles Brodie was blameworthy, however.
John seethed with anger. It was reprehensible of someone in Mr Brodie’s position to have done this to her, taking advantage of an innocent young girl. Thanks to him, Marie had not only lost her innocence: she now stood to lose all she had striven for. She was in danger of facing shame and disgrace and a long, hard road back into favour – if, indeed, she were ever to find favour again. It was a harsh, unforgiving world out there and Marie had no idea how tricky life could be for those who strayed from the path of propriety. There were some, though, who had strayed and lived to tell the tale …
Pleased with his thinking, John shared it with Marie in his kitchen after Otto had left and Gwen had gone to bed that evening: “You could always do as Lillie Langtry did.”
Lillie had started her career as a Professional Beauty before taking to the stage. Among her many admirers was ‘Bertie’, Prince of Wales, by whom she had had a daughter, Jeanne. “Go away somewhere to have my … my baby, and then return to the Tavistock as if nothing had happened?” Marie queried. “I couldn’t do that – and, even if I could, it would mean a lengthy absence from the stage as well as endless explanations, not to mention arrangements having to be made for the care of the baby. Oh, everything’s so … so complicated! All I want, Uncle John, is for life to go on as it was.”
Which was all he wanted. What he would give, to be able to wave a magic wand and turn the clock back! But John had no wand and clocks kept ticking on. “Is divorce out of the question?”
“Right out! Think of the scandal there would be. It’d be the end of Charles … and probably of me, even if Madeleine were to agree.”
“He has asked her?”
“He has – and, besides being a Catholic, she put money into his theatre. She’d want that back, she told him, if he were to shame her publicly. So, all in all, I’m in a proper stew, aren’t I?”
“You are,” he agreed, his heart heavy, “and one which suggests getting rid of the baby.”
“I’ve been thinking about that all day and … and I can’t kill something or, rather, somebody that’s part of Charles and me.”
“What other option is there?” John asked wearily.
“I’ve no idea.” Marie was too tired to think. Rehearsals all day and performances each evening on top of such worries were too much for anyone. “But something will turn up. It always does.”
+++++
At the following day’s rehearsal Marie was more conscious than ever before of the similarities between real-life and drama. Just as
she and Charles were apart, so were Florence and her father. Florence dreamed of dying, like her brother, so that as she lay serene and not unwilling to depart, upon the bed that was curtained round with recollections of their darling boy, Dombey would be touched home and would say: ‘Dear Florence, live for me, and we will love each other as we might have done, and be as happy as we might have been these many years!’ She thought that if she heard such words from him, and had her arms clasped around him, she could answer with a smile: ‘It is too late for anything but this; I never could be happier, dear father!’ and so leave him, with a blessing on her lips.
But Florence could not die to order so pleaded with her Mama: “‘I know that you have seen that I am not a favourite child. I never have been. I have never known how to be. I have missed the way and had no-one to show it to me. Oh, let me learn from you how to become dearer to Papa. Teach me, you, who can so well!’” Florence’s tears as Mama shook her head were real, for Marie was crying. She would gladly die, if dying would bring Charles’s arms round her again. Wrapped in the warmth of his arms she would have nothing to fear from death. Oh, where did life end and the play begin – or were they one and the same with some script from an unseen hand mapping people’s paths for them?
Joy was on its way to Florence for she was soon to have a son. Her tears flowed freely as she brought him home to the house that had been grand but which was no longer grand: home to the father who had faced ruin and who was now a poor pretence of the man he had been. “‘Papa! Dearest Papa!’” she said. “‘Pardon me, forgive me! I have come back to ask forgiveness on my knees. I never can be happy more without it. Dear Papa, oh don’t look strangely on me. I never meant to leave you. I never thought of it, before or afterwards. I was frightened when I went away, and could not think. Papa, dear, I am changed. I am penitent. I know my fault. I know my duty better now. Papa, don’t cast me off or I shall die!’”
He tottered to his chair. He felt her draw his arms about her neck; he felt her put her own round his; he felt her kisses on his face; he felt her wet cheek laid against his own; he felt – oh, how deeply! – all that he had done. Upon the breast that he had bruised, against the heart that he had almost broken, she laid his face, now covered with his hands, and said, sobbing: “‘Papa, love, I am a mother. I have a child who will soon call Walter by the name by which I call you. When it was born and when I knew how much I loved it, I knew what I had done in leaving you. Forgive me, dear Papa! Oh say God bless me and my little child. You will come to my new home with me, Papa, and see my baby. A boy, Papa. His name is Paul. I think – I hope – he’s like … ’” She could not go on.
Nell rushed to the rescue as Marie broke down, sobbing. Timid as a mouse on her own account, her timidity went as she defended her friend. With her arms round Marie she protested to Charles Brodie: “You’re driving her too hard! Whatever your reasons are, you aren’t playing fair with her – or with the rest of the cast. We’re all nearly dropping with fatigue, yet you never make allowances or consider how we’re feeling. Marie’s paler by the day and permanently looks on the verge of a faint but either you don’t notice or you don’t care. Is that any way to treat your leading lady? Not in my book, it isn’t … and who’ll step into her shoes, I’ve been asking myself, if you tax any more of her strength?”
Rising to his feet and feeling as tottery as the man he was portraying, he took a deep breath. Nell Sedgwick had spoken sense and the fact that she had spoken showed her to be a true friend. Would that he could be such a friend to Marie! He had been so preoccupied with his own misery that except on the edge of his awareness he had not noticed Marie’s pallor. Was something wrong with her? She wasn’t ill, was she? If she was, it was his fault. In keeping her from Otto Berger, or trying to, he had not stopped to think of the effect on her and on the whole Company of overwork. He was not fit to be manager here. He had never been fit to be Marie’s lover. She was still sobbing as if her heart would break. Was her heart breaking? If it was, how could he help her … how could he help himself?
He must say something … say anything. His Company were waiting for him to utter words of wisdom or, at the very least, to speak. Swallowing, Charles said: “It has been remiss of me to forget that work can be harmful if taken to extremes. This should not have needed pointing out, but I accept that it did and am grateful to Miss Sedgwick. Our rehearsal is finished for today and we shall not rehearse again until next Tuesday. I suggest that you all … take some ease between now and then, when we are not performing in OLIVER TWIST. Thank you for your … understanding.”
Nell would never understand him. Never, if she lived to be a hundred, would she understand how he could treat Marie so inconsiderately – nor how Marie could possibly still prefer him to Otto. With a gentleman like Otto Berger so attentive and so obviously in love with her, how on earth could she still pine for a man too wrapped up in himself to see what was under his nose? Mr Brodie was so self-absorbed that he was oblivious to the suffering he was causing Marie, whose acting ability off-stage was not all that great. She might be unsurpassed as Nancy, and shaping up well as Florence despite her emotional state, but behind the scenes – in Nell’s eyes at least – she still wore her heart on her sleeve. While playing the part of a girl enamoured with the gallant Otto Berger, she clearly loved Charles as much as ever and Nell was desperately worried about her.
Compared with the old days Marie resembled a wraith. Her eyes didn’t shine as they once did and she was losing weight. What with rehearsals and with Otto always dancing attendance Nell had had few opportunities to talk to her lately, but must now make an opportunity since she feared there might be more amiss than heartache. Oh, to have Marie tell her that her fears were unfounded and that she shouldn’t be such a worrier! Somehow, though, Nell doubted she would hear this from Marie’s lips. There was an awful dread in her as to what she would hear.
She waited her moment, which came a little later when they were in Marie’s dressing room and Sarah had gone on an errand. Nell asked: “Are you feeling any better?”
Stretched out full-length on the couch, Marie said: “You’re such a good friend.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I thought I was hearing things when you stood up to Charles as you did. I never thought you had that in you … but I’m glad you have! If I’d gone on with that scene it would have been the finish of me.”
“Why, Marie … why that scene, especially?”
“Because … oh crikey, Nell, you won’t want to hear this!”
“Try me. You should know by now that I don’t shock easily.”
“No, but you worry.”
“I’m worried already. I’ll be more worried if you don’t tell me than if you do – so spill the beans, dear, do! Holding back isn’t a bit like you.”
“I don’t feel a bit like me. I feel like somebody else entirely.” Marie managed a watery smile. “I used to think that being me was the very best thing to be, but my view has changed dramatically. You see … I missed my last monthly, I feel permanently sick and … and I think I might be having a baby.”
“Mr Brodie’s?”
“Of course it’s Charles’s!” Marie could hardly credit that Nell had asked the question. “Who else’s could it be?”
“Well, you’ve been seeing a lot of Otto lately. I wondered whether there was any possibility … ”
“None!” Marie interrupted. “I might have seen a lot of him, but I’ve also kept him well and truly at arm’s length! I must say, you’ve taken my news remarkably calmly.”
“It hasn’t come as much of a surprise to me. You’ve had … that look about you recently.”
“A pregnant look, you mean?”
“Don’t joke, Marie! I take it you haven’t told Mr Brodie.”
“You’ve seen how things are between Charles and me. I certainly haven’t, though I might have blurted it out to him if he’d asked me along to his office like he did last week, instead of stalking offstage an
d leaving you to deal with me.”
“He’s a man, Marie, and can’t cope with emotions – his own or anyone else’s, yours especially! When men see women crying all they want to do is retreat to their cave till the sun comes out again. And after the episode with Otto suggesting tea for three, he wouldn’t want to risk another trip down that road – though why I’m putting his point of view to you I don’t know. How far gone are you?”
“I’m not sure, of course, that I’m ‘gone’ at all, but I’ve been counting and it’s six weeks since the last time we … ” Marie’s face crumpled and she started crying uncontrollably. “Oh, Nell, I can’t bear this … any of it! I wish I could die. I don’t want to live.”
“Rubbish! I never thought to hear you, of all people, say such a thing. Come on now, dear, snap out of it so that we can put our heads together and think. How about a nice cup of tea while you’re snapping?”
Marie shuddered, saying: “Even the smell of tea makes me feel sick.”
“Do you want rid?”
“I don’t know what I want. You tell me, Nell. You seem to be taking all this in your stride, whereas I … ”
“It might be for the best, unless … ”
“Yes?”
“Seems to me, you either get rid … or get married.”
“Married? There’s a suggestion! Madeleine is bound to divorce him so that his baby by me can be born legitimately.”
“I wasn’t thinking … ”
“You certainly weren’t!”
“I meant that I wasn’t thinking of your marrying Mr Brodie. Otto is so sweet on you that he … ”
“Otto?” Marie echoed incredulously. “You’re suggesting that I marry Otto, to give Charles’s baby a name?”
“It’s been done before,” Nell said meekly, “and no doubt will be again. There are worse options.”
“Are there? I could never marry Otto!”
“Why not? He seems quite a catch to me.”
“And about as aggravating as a flea! But for him, I’d have gone with Charles to his office last week and by now we’d probably be happy.”