My Son, My Son

by Howard Spring

  This flashed through my mind as I stood there at the window with my back to the fading light, watching the little group about the fireplace. Rory, so short alongside his tall father, took Dermot by the elbow and propelled him towards his chair. It seemed to me an almost symbolic action. “Keep out now, please. You let me in for this. Well, I’m in it up to the neck. There’s nothing more that you can do but let me go through with it.” That was what I read in it.

  “Uncle Bill?” Rory invited me. I joined the others round the fire, and tea was brought in. Maggie Donnelly poured; and she and Rory talked a little, quietly, of Ireland. A few heroes loomed through their words: Jim Larkin and James Connolly and the Countess Mackievicz. And they talked of the poems of MacDonogh and Plunkett; and there were hints of Rory in a green uniform marching and drilling in the Wicklow mountains with others of an organisation called the Fianna, of which that afternoon I heard the first word. And all they said was said with gravity and resolution, and each seemed to lean for support upon the other, so that the words Maeve had uttered a little while before came back to my mind.

  “You see,” said Rory finally, “what it comes to is this. If, because of a beggarly Bill like this they rear up and shout, what will they do when we demand the freedom that alone will satisfy us? We have tried for it by fair means; but now armed force has been made the issue, and not by us. But since it has been made the issue, we shall not be caught unprepared. Isn’t that it, Maggie?”

  And again, Maggie Donnelly, watching him out of her grave grey eyes, nodded her head like a sybil.

  Suddenly I thought of Oliver, and of his gold cigarette case and of “Pogson’s people,” and I could have fallen on Rory’s neck and cried.

  *

  Maeve came, with apologies for being late. She had been to a dancing-class. Dermot rang for more tea. “Why dancing?” he asked testily. “You’ll be wearing yourself out, girl. Your business is straight acting. Why don’t you stick to it?”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” said Maeve. “I don’t know what my business is. I’m young, and I’ve got time and energy. I want to learn everything.”

  “I’ve wanted that all my life,” Dermot grumbled, “and I haven’t succeeded.”

  Maeve turned to me. “One of these days, Bill, you’ll have to write me a comic part,” she said. “Have you noticed how well the Hargreaves’ party goes in Every Street?”

  “I have indeed,” I praised her.

  “So has Wertheim. He’s mentioned it several times. Something might come of that.”

  The Hargreaves’ party came into the second act of the play. It was the sort of scene you might imagine at a party in any suburban house, provided the family had a daughter like Annie Hargreaves. She had been strictly brought up, in a family that shunned the theatre; but for years she had been secretly visiting and loving the music hall. Called upon to entertain the company at the party, her reserves suddenly broke; and, sitting at the piano, she gave impressions of all her loves—Maidie Scott and Vesta Tilley and Fanny Fields and Marie Lloyd—singing their songs. They were, of course, thoroughly bad imitations, so that coarse words and hinted depravity came across unredeemed by the wit and genius of the players.

  It was a grand scene; I was proud of it; but it was an impossible scene without an actress who could suggest poor Annie Hargreaves’ sad belief that she was “getting it across,” being outrageous and audacious, while, in fact, she was filling the room with mounting horror. It is while she is representing Maidie Scott singing “If the Wind had only blown the Other Way” that Annie suddenly realises that the silence does not denote admiration, but something more grim than she has ever before experienced, and on a great jangling discord at the piano she breaks into tears and rushes from the room.

  Maeve perfectly achieved the mingling of comic and pathetic that the scene called for, and I was not surprised that her work there had caught Wertheim’s especial notice.

  “So you see,” she said, “when he puts on a big musical show, I might get a good part in it, and a part like that would mean singing and dancing and comic acting and all the rest of it. I just want to be ready, that’s all. But, dear Bill,” she added, leaning across and putting her hand over mine, “it’ll be a long, long time, I hope. I want your play to go on and on, making lots of money for all of us.”

  “You’ll be wearing yourself out,” Dermot repeated.

  “Leave her alone,” said Rory. “She’ll do it, because she’s like me. Don’t you think she’s like me, Maggie?”

  “The spit an’ image, in everything but looks,” Maggie confirmed.

  “Oh, looks!” Rory laughed. “Maeve bagged the lot when looks were being handed round in this family. When I was a kid, they used to call me Ugly.”

  “Ugly? Why?” Maggie demanded. “You’re not ugly—you’re just—well—solid—like a mountain.”

  “Ach, woman!” Rory protested, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Ach, woman!” Maggie mocked. “You learned that from Father.”

  “What didn’t I learn from him?” And Rory’s face lit with the fire of a disciple naming his beloved captain.

  *

  Oliver was back at school; Rory and Maggie were back in Dublin; Every Street had settled down to my satisfaction and Wertheim’s; and I had a lot of time on my hands.

  Oliver had enjoyed himself at the Pogsons’ Scottish house. The theme recurred in his letters after he was back at school. “Pogson’s people ran to a butler, and it was most amusing being addressed as ‘sir’ by this reverend person. There was quite a big staff altogether, and the house looked like an ancient castle, though Pogson says it was built by his grandfather. Most of the stone, though, came from an old house that used to stand on the site and that Pogson’s grandfather bought so that he could pull it down.

  Poggy very decently told me all I ought to know about tipping,” Oliver went on, “and even offered to make me a loan, but I didn’t accept much. The grounds are extensive. We overhauled the engines of the yacht, according to plan, and in the last week, with the captain aboard, took her out for a day’s run. It was very interesting to look back from the sea to the romantic turrets of Pogson’s house.

  By the way, as I shall be seventeen in a day or two, and you will no doubt be sending me my accustomed gift, I wonder whether you could make it a really good book on steam yachts—something that gives a useful idea of first cost, subsequent cost of upkeep, management, etc.

  By the way, I haven’t heard from Livia Vaynol for some time. She used to write to me pretty frequently, so if you should chance to see her perhaps you’d be kind enough to give her my greetings. I think your attitude about getting the cigarette case out of pawn was quite right, and I will repay you this money as soon as I can, as I should like to have the cigarette case very much.”

  *

  I have never found it difficult to do nothing, and a successful dramatist is even more fortunately placed than a successful novelist when it comes to that. The play was written, and really it had taken me very little time to write it, and now Maeve and seven or eight other people had to work six nights and two afternoons a week to fill my pockets, while I could afford to do nothing at all for a long time. An unsuccessful writer has a dog’s life; a successful one has the softest job on earth.

  This seemed to me the perfect opportunity to further my acquaintance with Livia. When I look back, it seems remarkable that I should have to put it like that; but, though Livia and I were engaged to be married, the extent of our relationship still amounted to no more than acquaintance. I was able now to see her every day. We always had either lunch or dinner together; we went to theatres, and—what was new for me—to a great many concerts. Her own compositions were jingles that could at most hope to be popularly whistled, but she had a deep hunger for music.

  But though we were so much together, we got nowhere. I could not pretend that there was any depth of cordiality in her feeling. We were just two people who had a fondness for the same ways of spending
time, and spent it together.

  I bought Oliver his book on steam yachts, though I did not see that it was going to be of much use to him. Certainly, I could not run to a steam yacht, and there seemed little prospect of Oliver’s doing so for a long time to come. Livia was with me at the time. “For Oliver,” I told her. “I must post this at once. It’s his birthday tomorrow. He’s seventeen.”

  “Cupid, I suppose,” she said with a laugh, “was ageless. But if he had grown like the rest of us, he’d have been marvellous at seventeen.”

  “I don’t think Oliver’s so marvellous,” I said rather sourly as we left the shop. “I should like to see his mind clinching round something.”

  “Oh, well,” she said gaily, “if you’re talking about mind—”

  “I was impressed by young Rory O’Riorden. In a way, I hate to see so young a boy eaten up by political ideas. But I couldn’t think of Rory as a boy. He’s become quite a personage. Did you meet him?”

  “Casually. I hadn’t much chance. He was staying with Maeve.”

  No; I suppose Maeve would not have encouraged an acquaintanceship between Rory and Livia. The less those whom Maeve liked saw of Livia, the better Maeve was pleased. She would have liked me to see less of Livia. She would have liked me to see nothing of Livia.

  When I had left Livia at her flat and was driving home, I asked myself why it was that Maeve’s judgement, which I was prepared to respect in most matters, had no influence with me here. Maeve would have liked to marry me; let me face that frankly; but I knew that her dislike of my association with Livia sprang from more than that. Friendly at first, she had come on deeper acquaintance to dislike Livia herself.

  But it was not a matter of respecting Maeve’s judgement, or my own judgement. Judgement didn’t come into it. Nothing came into it except that Livia’s looks and ways and voice were things I loved when I had them, sickened for when they were absent.

  Her ways? Her ways included that odious encounter with Maeve on the first night of Every Street, and they included flippancy whenever, struggling as I was in an emotional situation that was beyond my depth, I tried to get solid ground beneath my feet. Ought I to have felt humiliated because I permitted these things? Perhaps I ought; but I didn’t; and, going over my position as I had done again and again, facing even the fact that Livia had me, to use the crude effective expression of childhood, on a bit of string, I saw that humiliation didn’t enter into the matter any more than judgement did. No, indeed; I felt nothing so base as humiliation when I thought of Livia.

  All I wanted now, with time on my hands, was to spend as much of that time as I could with her. And then things so turned out that she had not much time to spend with me.

  It was towards the middle of June that I had taken her to lunch, and at another table in the restaurant was Wertheim, splendid and iridescent in a silk suit that shimmered like a peacock’s plumage when he moved. A gorgeous creature was with him, and it amused me to see her make her way steadily through cantaloup, cold salmon, strawberries, ice-cream and iced coffee while Wertheim ate a few pieces of dry toast and drank a glass of Evian water. He went to the door with her when the meal was over, conducting her as ceremoniously as though she had been a queen and he a humble viceroy who had been accounting for his corner of territory. She gave him a condescending smile from gorgeous eyes shining from under a wide hat-brim and held out a languid white-gloved hand. Then he hurried to my table, sat down, and wiped his forehead with a large silk handkerchief. “The bitch!” he said. “She would never have got me if Josie had not been away. I will not employ her!” He flicked a crumb off the table, and so the exquisite creature was disposed of.

  “But you,” he added, “I want to see you. Where can we talk?”

  “Would I be in the way?” Livia asked. “There is my flat. I’ll take you there and then clear out.”

  “Good, good,” Wertheim agreed. “Let us go there, and you stay, too. At my house we should be pestered. You see—” And he waved a hand towards the door through which he had bowed his beauty.

  “Shall we walk?” Livia asked mischievously when we were in the street. It was a sweltering day; the pavements were burning. Wertheim held up his stick to a passing taxi. “I never walk,” he said. And, indeed, when I came to think of it, I had never seen Wertheim on his legs unless he were inside a building.

  When we got to Livia’s flat, he sank, shimmering in his silken suit, into an easy chair, and asked permission to light a cigar. “Do, please,” said Livia, “and you light your pipe, Bill.”

  Wertheim carried a silver cigar-piercer on one end of his watch-chain. As he ritually adjusted this to the cigar, he said, without looking up from what he was doing, “What d’you think of these revues, Essex? I suppose you’ve been seeing some of ’em?”

  “Yes; I’ve seen a few, and I like them. I like their speed and colour, and some of the sets were magnificent.”

  “Well, I’ve never done a revue,” he said, “and I want to do the best one there’s ever been. Reach for the Sky was all right in its way, but there was too much of the old musical comedy about it.” He lit his cigar, blew out a long streamer of smoke. “Something different from that. A bigger chorus than anyone’s ever put on—all picked girls—all beauties. Lovely dresses. Lovely sets. Good songs. The dancing’ll have to be superb. The leading lady’ll have to be able to sing anything—sentimental song, comic song, and she’ll have to be an actress. And she’ll have to be able to dance. I want to get going. I want a book, and I want ideas about people new. I don’t want the old gang. I don’t want Doris Trent.”

  “That was Doris Trent you were having lunch with?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. She’s extraordinarily beautiful.”

  “She is. And that’s all there is to her. She’s welcome to a job in the chorus, though her legs are on the thin side. Ever seen ’em?”

  “No.”

  “I have.”

  He smoked for a while in silence, then said suddenly: “Look! Tell me if you think this is crazy. You know, you’ve put me in touch with an interesting set of people. Look at Maeve. That girl’s versatile. There she is doing a magnificent piece of straight acting in Every Street, and in the middle of it she plunges into that party scene. It shows a grand sense of comedy. I don’t know, but I think there’s my leading lady. Now there’s her father. I like that man. I’ve had a lot of talk with him. I’ve been round his workshops. He’s got the best business of its sort in this country, and yet you find him playing about with planes and chisels as if he was an apprentice. He’s got a marvellous sense of modern design. I want to use it. He could do me some grand sets.”

  “A family affair?”

  “Yes. Here’s Miss Vaynol.”

  Livia leaned forward in her chair, her eyes shining. “Do I come into it?” she whispered.

  “You’ll have a chance to come into it,” he said. “O’Riorden tells me you design dresses, and he likes them. Well, what he likes is all right, I should say. When we’ve got some idea of the book, and the sort of dresses it will call for, I want to see what you can do. Mind,” waving a fat finger at her, “I’m making no promise. It’s a chance—if you can take it.”

  “And do I come into it?” I asked, smiling.

  Wertheim looked at me in his sulky way for a long time. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the dark horse. I’d like you to, because I’ve liked working with you on your play. But I don’t know. I wondered about the book. Does it appeal to you? D’you think you could do that sort of thing?”

  “Oh, Bill, yes, yes. Let’s keep it all in the family!” Livia cried excitedly.

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t see it, Wertheim. I’d like to think of myself as a man of all the talents—novels, plays, revues—but I don’t see it. It’s not up my street at all.”

  “Thank you for knowing your mind,” said Wertheim. “It’s rare.”

  And when, a long time after that, Choose Your Partner went on at the Palladia
n, I had had nothing to do with it. The book was written by Clive Seymour—brilliantly—and most of the songs, as well as the dresses, were Livia’s. But I felt glad, all the same, that I had been present at that small conference of three which first discussed the spectacular affair that blazed through the war years, that produced songs that soldiers whistled and sang and played on gramophones in trenches and dug-outs, that made a bright, remembered patch between stages of the cross for untold thousands of men. How strange it would have seemed to me then could I have foreseen what was to be a common spectacle no long time hence: the earthy burrow, the guttering smoky candle, the rifles and equipment leaning against the wall, the table of planks and boxes supporting the gramophone on which weary eyes are strained from tired faces. “When it’s with you it’s wonderful.”

  And every man thought of the “You” his own heart meant, as he recalled the Palladian spotlight dropping its blue-white cone on Maeve, stock-still as if bewitched in its moony circle, Maeve wearing the strange white hieratic dress with one red rose that Livia had designed, Maeve singing out into the dark hushed white-face-crowded auditorium, in that husky voice she used for giving enchantment to this song, the words that Livia had written: “When it’s with you it’s wonderful.”

  “Oh, Man, I hate it, I hate it! What must they think! So many of them going back tomorrow—tonight!”

  “Dear Maeve! I know. I know.”

  “I can’t go on doing it. They send me letters—flowers...”

  She went on to the end.

  *

  So there it was. High summer of 1913 was on us, and my dream that Livia and I might do this or that—go to Heronwater, go abroad, perhaps even get married—faded out. Now she was a different woman. Now she had a job for her talents. Now it seemed she didn’t want me at all. I might call at the flat and take her out for a quick lunch, and she seemed grateful; or, at the end of her long day, I might take her out to supper; but she wouldn’t linger. She would want to go home, repeating some wise maxim about early to bed.