—Yes, sir. We can. May I go now?
—I should like to express my gratitude to you, Miss Allgood. My nephew was a difficult man. Always very difficult. His temper was choleric. One had bright hopes, of course, but they were not to be realised. And now, of course, they shan’t be.
—I cannot say I found him difficult. Myself, I mean.
—Nevertheless, he was. Poor Johnnie.
Agnes beatae virginis
natalis est, quo spiritum
caelo refudit debitum
pio sacrata sanguine …
You look at the clock on the post office gable. You must gather yourself, Molly. There is no time to mourn. The other actors will be hurrying through London now, in the tube trains, on foot, minds brimming with lines. You are thinking of your room. The cat staring at the window. You turn down Great Portland Street, in the cold.
12
BROADCASTING HOUSE
4.38 p.m.
The vast lobby has an ordered and brutal imposingness, like a battleship’s stateroom designed by the politburo as a gift for the tyrant’s birthday. You speak your name to the security commodore, who has clearly never heard it before and asks you to repeat it and then to spell it. He pages through his register of those who are expected today, occasionally glancing up to beckon through a messenger or someone bearing a pass or a parcel.
‘And you are an actress, are you, Miss?’
‘So I have been told.’
He looks at you uncertainly. Are you joking?
‘An actress. Yes. I am here for the transmission of a play.’
‘Lord, I don’t see any Allgood, Miss. Definitely not.’
‘I may be listed under my professional name – Maire O’Neill?’
‘No, I don’t have an O’Neill, Miss. Now that is curious. That is curious. By whom is the play in question?’
‘It is by the Irish author Sean O’Casey. It is for the World Service, I believe. The piece is called The Silver Tassie— perhaps you see the title listed there? The producer is Kenneth J. Hartnett.’
‘Ah yes. Indeed. Here it is on my list. You’ll be wanting Room S—1, Miss, in the sub-basement – you probably knew? Transmission to commence at 1800 hours. I’ll just telephone down to the greenroom and let them know you’ve arrived.’
‘I say,’ she attempts, ‘it’s a little like trying to talk one’s way into Paradise, isn’t it?’
‘In which sense, Miss?’
‘Well, St Peter and so on. You are the guardian at the gate.’
He grins at you good-humouredly. ‘I hadn’t ever thought of it in those particular terms, Miss. But I dare say we’ve our share of angels inside.’
Nice man. Handsome. Soldierly in his uniform. Pleasant to watch him dialling the number and speaking quietly into the receiver, a calming sense of properness and efficiency and order, and his neatness and his amiable decorum. Great improvement on some of the staff at the BBC. Fellow they used to employ to drive you home after a performance looked like a lavatory attendant’s slightly stupid apprentice.
‘You will have worked with Mr Hartnett previously I expect, Miss, have you?’
‘Many times, yes. It is always a pleasure.’
‘I’ll tell you a thing about Mr Hartnett, Miss. He’s a gentleman. And a professional.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Married to his career. I declare, that’s true.’
‘Quite.’
He guides you through the barrier and indicates the way on a wall map, despite you knowing every detail of the way already. But indulge him a moment. It’s his job. Make him happy. Over to the door, you say, sir? And two flights down? I’m most awfully grateful. What a saviour you are. You go slowly, with care, for the steps are unusually steep, your hand gripping the banister as though a life-rail on a ship. Through the corridors and landings, past the heating ducts and stairwells and the women polishing the linoleum floors. Yes, you know the building well, have been here many times. Several nights, during the Blitz, you slept here. You enter the little basement elevator and it descends with a whine. You find the Women Artists’ Dressing Room. It is empty and cold. You had been hoping there would be food. There is none.
You wait.
You think.
You look at the walls.
Photographs of famous actors in heavy wooden frames. Household names. Heroes of everyday England. A fire bucket in the corner, rusted, punctured, full to the brim with cigarette ends. An odour of lichen and eau de toilette. Coffee grounds collected in a cone of old paper that is actually the title page of a script. You run the tap several minutes but the water stays cold. It plashes on the metal of the sink. You bathe your hands and throbbing eyelids but the towel is too dirty, so you dry yourself on the hem of your blouse. Then you sit at the table. But nobody comes. And the strange thought strikes you that you are far under the ground; that beyond those walls with their smiling, posed portraits is the black, wet clay of London. Everything is quiet. You can hear your own heart. You are hoping that the peppermint has taken care of your breath. For a moment, you close your eyes.
Receive unto your love the soul of Ernest Michael Duglacz and may all the souls of the good through the mercy of God rest in peace this day. Blessed Mother, intercede for the soul of my broken John Synge, the soul of his mother, of my son, my father, of all who need forgiveness, of all who were hurt, and Jesus, Mary and Joseph assist me in my last agony and angel of God my guardian dear to whom God’s love commits me here ever this day be at my side to light and guard to rule and guide, amen.
You cross the corridor to S – 1. All the lights are off. Is it possible you have made a mistake?
But the porter would have known. It was there, on his list. You throw a switch – the room is flooded with hard, cold whiteness. There is the faintest metallic hum from the vents. You leaf through the script but the hunger is distracting. Often there is food at the BBC: a curled-up sandwich, a cake, a cup of tea. You had been banking that there would be something. Perhaps the girl has forgotten. Usually there is a girl whose job is to bring food. Is there a way of asking someone that would not seem impolite? Where has everyone gone?
Deep in your right ear a hard spangling of pain. Shocking. So sudden. Is it your eardrum or a tooth? Out of the wince, somehow, Yeats’s voice comes to you. If in doubt, speak the text. Do not gesture or flounce. Our purpose is not to entertain; it is the creation of beauty. Praise may be the result; it must never be the aim. Biddy and her Pat may go to the pantomime. Our quest is not that of the jester.
What a silly he was sometimes, like all Great Men in that way. How very, very little he knew. Never done howling for solitude in his poems, but he forever jaunting to London and manoeuvring himself onto committees and talking incessantly and getting mixed up with women and writing letters about important matters to the newspapers. He’d no more stick a day of solitude than would a monkey without his troop. Fond old divil. And yet so kind.
Never saw the everyday, the warp and weft of a life, the forgettable conversations and meaningless glimpses few storytellers could include in a tale. Afraid of a drapery window, a conversation on a tram, an old man’s non-sequiturs, a cat crossing floorboards. And yet, you have come to feel that those nothings are the story. Mahler, yes, but the cry of a newsboy; that has its music too. A woman walking hungry through snowblown streets. Is this not a drama worth playing? And where in the world is the sculpted Michelangelo that compares to a weary seamstress on the Tube? You are the daughter of a junkshop, a child of rag and bone, raised amid the tat no one wanted any more, the bric-a-brac and clutter, the ugly and expendable, but give the junk a little rub and you’ll see your reflection. A bit of spit and polish works wonders.
Close your sore eyes, Moll. What do you see? A pretty girl in a tenement bedroom, bent over an old copybook she still has from Mary Street School. Can you make out the phrases she is secretly writing? ‘Mrs John M. Synge—Mrs Molly Synge, Kingstown – Maire Synge-O’Neill—Mrs Synge.’ The poor smitten dote. T
he dreams you’d be swimming through. And if you had borne him a child – yes, there is still that thought sometimes – he would be middle-aged now. You always imagine a son. Why is that, Molly, when he understood women so well? Catch a hold now, Molls, someone’s coming. Buck up. Am I laughing or crying? I don’t know. Well, gather, Molls, gather, and beam like the sunshine on a summertime fairground in Kerry. Because it really wouldn’t do to be letting down your guard, especially when the door is opening.
‘Ah, Molly, my auld pet and you radiance entirely.’
He shuffles into the waiting room, his left hand in a glove, his right leaning hard on a walking stick. ‘I had a little fall a couple of weeks ago, made a royal hames of my ankle. Oh I’m fine, not a bother, it’s just a bloody nuisance getting about. Oh, but look at you, how beautiful. You’re growing lovelier with the years.’
‘You tell such pretty lies, darling.’
A fond embrace is exchanged.
‘I don’t know how you do it, Molly. Have you a portrait in the attic?’
‘Get away, you outrageous charmer. I look like Methuselah’s mother.’
‘We shall never be as young as we are today, my love. But – is something the matter, darling? You look sad?’
‘A little shock, Ken, that’s all. I was just in town earlier seeing to an errand or two and I heard a friend had passed away not too long ago.’
‘Oh my dear, I am so sorry. Anyone I knew?’
‘No, a bookseller, a darling man. He was elderly and so on, but still, just knocked me slightly. There it is.’
‘Would you like a few minutes? I can let you alone if you wish? I’d say go home but it’s a tad late for me to find a replacement at this stage.’
‘You know me better than that, Ken. We always give the show.’
‘You’re certain now, Molly? You’re up to the job?’
‘Never funked a performance in fifty years, darling, hardly going to start today.’
‘Good girl, there’s my stager. We’ll have a little drink afterwards, you and I? We might trundle around to the Bunch of Grapes for a bite of supper if you’d like. Richard might join us; I’d mentioned I was seeing you.’
‘And how is my princely Richard? It’s been too long, it really has.’
‘Oh he had a little stroke a while ago but he’s terrifically on the mend. Do you know we’re twenty years together in January, isn’t that an astonishing and ghastly thing? We’re like an old pair of slippers, that’s what he always tells me. I’ll ring him up and we’ll make a trio, if you’re game?’
‘Lovely, darling.’
‘Now, before the others descend, there’s the little question of the source of all evil. The usual rate would be two guineas but I went and said I can’t offer that. This is strictly entre nous, by the way, not a word to the others. “This is Maire O’Neill,” I said, “the Maire O’Neill, I simply will not insult an artist of her calibre,” so I hope you can accept three pounds ten. You’ll be paid in cash this evening, immediately we’re finished the broadcast. And I’ve told them I won’t stand for any of their pen-pushing nonsense, I’ll be up to the comptroller’s office with a blunderbuss.’
‘Thank you, Ken; that will be useful. It was good of you to think of it.’
‘We are privileged to have you, Molly. We don’t see you often enough. And how is the beautiful Pegeen keeping? In the pink?’
‘I do miss her now she’s in Aberdeen; she was always my lovely girl. And her husband can be a little austere – we’ve never quite hit it off. Funny thing, like most convinced atheists one has come across down the years, he has rather a touch of the Reformation.’
‘Ah.’
‘Still, the chicks must flee the nest, and we have to let them go. They’re living out of a tin of beans, of course, but she’s happy, that’s what matters. Tiny one-bedroom flat. Not much room for old Mum. We’ve to sort of shove up in the bed when I visit.’
‘The boys must be getting a fine size? Do you know, I remember them as babies.’
‘Turned seven in August, great gallumping galoots. But the sweetest pair of naughty monkeys you’d meet in a leap year’s travel. I shall go to them for Christmas. Hope so, anyhow. If son-in-law hasn’t barred me as undesirable.’
‘And I noticed the Abbey are in town. You’ll be attending the party, of course?’
‘Oh, I mightn’t bother really, darling. These affairs are such a bore. They bombarded me with invitations to this and to that, as you can imagine. A lecture by Professor Something of Something College Somewhere. Do you know, I’d just as soon stop at home with the cat and a book. All the hoo-hah rather gives me a headache.’
‘Molly, you’re a card. Oh, here are the others now. Mr Doyle I believe you know, and Miss Hargreaves and Peter Eglantine.’
‘Delighted, Miss Allgood.’
‘Deeply honoured, Miss O’Neill.’
‘Lovely to see you again, Molly.’
‘All present and correct, then,’ the producer says amiably. ‘Well I think we know what we’re about, unless anyone’s got a question? No? Good. Yes, Peter, of course. Just be sure of the tone when we get to that speech, give me a lot of colour in the voice and nice and sharp and clear, and really sing it strong in that lovely Welsh way, we’ll keep a welcome in the hillsides, you know? Same with you, Helen, keep it crisp as a knife and really let me know what she’s feeling in that little bit in Act Two. But that’s teaching granny to suck eggs of course, you’ll be wonderful, I know. All shipshape with yourself, Bob? Good man, that’s the ticket. Anything else, then? Molly, you’re all right? Of course you are, darling. Excellent. Well, I believe ladies and gentlemen that we will do our work well, and perhaps if you would do me the honour we’ll just run through a couple of the cues. I have the finest cast in London and I hope that you will enjoy yourselves immensely and I have every confidence in your wonderful abilities.’
You form trios for rehearsal. There isn’t time for a full runthrough. An engineer arrives to see to the cabling and test-connect the microphone. Water is poured into tumblers.
The studio is thick with cigarette smoke, a great bluish cloud of it, floating up towards the lights and the gleaming steel ducts and the pipes and the soundproofing tiles. The heavy Roman numerals of the clock on the wall tell you there are less than thirty minutes to go. And your hunger is fading. Everything is fading. You are among people you understand. All is well. You turn and notice a golden-haired girl of about seventeen come into the room, accompanied by a woman who is clearly her mother. The girl is wearing a dark-green brocaded dress. Her pale face is freckled and hopeful. She is like a girl out of a novel of Somerset or Wessex, as heartbreakingly lovely as an English cornfield in August. A necklace of amber stones. Green ribbons in her hair. If a boy kissed her lips in a summertime orchard, he’d smell forget-me-nots and apples and sweet william and sweat and he’d remember it every time he heard bees. She is holding a satchel and looking at you intensely. She purples as you meet her limpid eyes.
‘Mr Hartnett?’ says her guardian, in an apprehensive voice. ‘We’re not interrupting proceedings, I hope?’
‘Oh, Molly,’ says the producer, ‘this is Elizabeth Collins and her stepmother, Olivia. Elizabeth will be working with me soon on a production of Romeo and Juliet we’re doing. She is going to be our Juliet; it is her first leading role. Sort of experiment I’m having a crack at; going to play the whole thing before an audience in the Concert Studio upstairs. Miss Collins is a great admirer of yours and I happened to mention you would be with us today. She asked if she could pop by for a moment to say hello.’
The girl comes forward nervously, her stepmother encouraging silently, and seems afraid to accept your hand. ‘You’re my absolute heroine, Miss O’Neill. I’ve read up on all your performances. In reviews and old newspapers. I can’t believe I’m meeting you.’
‘Why, you dear, dear girl. What a lovely thing to say.’
‘Elizabeth saw you when she was seven in The Islander’s Revenge at Craw
ley, Miss O’Neill,’ says her stepmother. ‘It’s no exaggeration to tell you that you are the reason she wanted to act. Nothing we could do about it, her poor old dad and I. She’s hoping for a place at RADA. We’re very proud of her.’
‘Well, work hard, dear, work hard. And who knows what may happen? You are pretty enough for any role, but you must work like a demon too. And attend an actual production every chance you get. We mustn’t only study. We must see.’
‘And steer clear of the boys,’ says the producer, with a frown. ‘Brutish, malodorous goats.’
‘Dad and I do our best on that score,’ her stepmother smiles. ‘But there’s one candidate we’ve not managed to shoot down just yet. He’s a nice boy, really. Poor Elizabeth is blushing. Better shut up or I shall be in trouble going home.’
‘Oh as long as it’s not too serious,’ you say to the girl. ‘Just have plenty of friends and nothing too tying. But I can tell you’re a sensible young lady, as well as a beautiful one. I find the younger people extremely wise, I must say.’
‘Could I dare to ask you to sign something for me, Miss O’Neill? If that would be all right?’
‘But of course, dear. Of course. I should be absolutely delighted.’
She reaches into her satchel and takes out a dog-eared paperback copy of The Playboy of the Western World. His story of a boaster, a peacock, a cosh-boy, a jolly roving ploughboy, a lover. Many lines are underscored. Tiny notes in the margins. A bus ticket doing duty as bookmark.
‘It’s my very favourite play of all time, Miss O’Neill. I’m learning Pegeen Mike’s last speech. As one of my audition pieces for the Academy.’
‘That old thing,’ you say, as you inscribe its yellowed flyleaf. ‘Such a fuss it caused at the time. And when you think of what’s going nowadays.’
‘They say he wrote the part for you, Miss O’Neill.’
‘Oh now, they say lots of things.’
‘It’s such a romantic story.’
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