by Joan Wolf
In the dim quiet of the church she looked up at the statue of the Virgin on the side altar. She was holding the infant Christ in her arms. Looking at that serene image of motherhood, Mary recognized that she had never forgiven Kit for suggesting an abortion to her. When the baby had died she had felt that he had almost willed it to happen. It still lay between them. It always would. And that was why she had rejected him this morning. Very slowly she rose to her feet and walked out of the church.
* * * *
She went back to the college and worked on Elizabethan songbooks all afternoon. When she went over to the dining hall for dinner, she devoutly hoped that Kit would not be there. He was. She saw him standing by the fireplace as soon as she walked into the rec room. Tonight he did not turn to look at her.
He didn’t sit at her table for dinner either. Mary, seated between George and Alfred Block, was aware in all her nerve endings of his tall dark figure at the table next to hers, but she forced her eyes and her outward attention to George and Alfred and the students who were sitting with her.
After dinner they went back into the rec room and there it was even worse. To the onlooker, she supposed, they were no different than they had been all last week: polite, civilized toward each other, indifferent. But last week they had been playing a game. This was for real.
“We missed you at dinner last night, Chris,” Mary heard Carolyn say to him.
“Mary and I went into town for dinner,” he replied coolly. “It made for a change.”
They had all known that, of course. The two of them couldn’t have been absent together without causing a great deal of speculation. “Are you two getting back together again?” asked Eric Lindquist sunnily.
“As a matter of fact”—and here Kit’s eyes met hers—“we were discussing a divorce.”
She felt as though someone had hit her over the head with a brick. His eyes were coal-black and inimical. She put her hand up to brush a nonexistent strand of hair off her cheek. Everyone was staring at her. “I suppose it’s time we did something about this unorthodox situation,” she said. She went to pick up her coffee cup and discovered her hand was shaking. She hastily put it down again. “How about some bridge?” she asked Melvin Shaw. She managed to play for two hours without remembering a single card she had in her hand.
Chapter Eleven
The play was due to open the following Saturday night and for the remainder of the week George worked his cast hard. It was the only thing in the whole dreadful week that Mary had cause to be grateful for. Kit spent almost all his waking hours in the theater and Mary was spared the achingly painful sight of him for most of the day. He skipped dinner a few nights as well; the same nights that Margot was absent. She supposed, Mary thought dully, that she should be grateful for that as well.
The result of the heavy rehearsal schedule was that Mary had too much time alone. Ordinarily she would have relished the opportunity for solitude in such lovely surroundings, but in her present emotional state she needed the distraction of other people. When she was by herself, she tended to think of Kit. It didn’t do any good to think of Kit, she didn’t want to think of Kit, but she did think of Kit. Continually. She took to spending her afternoons in the library working on the Elizabethan songbooks. If it was not the vacation she had envisioned, at least it was better than continually brooding about what could not be helped.
On Thursday she slipped into the dark of the theater and sat down in a chair in the back row. It was the first time she had ever come to a rehearsal. She hadn’t meant to come today, but the pull had been too strong. She didn’t think anyone had noticed her entrance.
Kit was halfway through the third soliloquy. Carolyn Nash, as Ophelia, was at stage right, kneeling in silent prayer, her back to Kit. Mary thought the scene looked rather awkward, and George apparently had come to the same conclusion. She heard his voice calling, “Hold up a minute, Chris!” He got up from his chair in the front row and went to the edge of the stage. In a minute he had jumped up, and Mary watched as he rearranged Carolyn so that she was turned more toward the audience. He was saying something to her, but Mary could not hear him. He walked back to the edge of the stage and jumped down. “Let’s try it again,” he said. Kit walked off the stage. “All right,” George called. “Now.”
Very slowly Kit came back on, his head bowed, his eyes on the ground. The scene looked very strange to Mary. Both Kit and Carolyn were wearing jeans and sneakers. In a low yet perfectly audible voice Kit began. “To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
Mary listened carefully, all her senses trained on the man on stage. His voice is like no other actor’s, she thought. The voice alone would get him through. He looked up and saw Ophelia. Mary sat forward on the edge of her chair. She was curious as to how George would stage the “nunnery” scene.
It was not as physical as many she had seen. It was, if anything, restrained. George stopped it once to say to Kit, “You’ve got to generate the intensity of this scene, Chris. It would be easy for me to let you toss Carolyn around and throw the furniture, but I’m not going to do that. For one thing, I don’t want Carolyn all bruised up.”
“Thank you, George,” the girl put in with a grin.
He smiled back at her. “And more importantly, I want to establish the feeling that Hamlet is holding in. He’s a keg of dynamite about to explode. He doesn’t explode—yet. But you’ve got to give out vibes, Chris. You’ve got to be scary.”
Kit had been listening courteously. Now he nodded. “Yes. I see.”
“All right. Let’s take the scene from where you look up and see her.”
They began again. Someone came over in the dark and sat down next to Mary. “You haven’t been in here before,” said the unmistakably English voice of Melvin Shaw.
Mary smiled a little and wished he would go away. “No.”
“What do you think?” he asked her.
“What do you think?” she returned. “You’ve done a lot of Shakespeare. You’ve seen how this production is shaping up.”
“I don’t know quite what I think,” he returned slowly. “To be frank, I wasn’t at all pleased to discover that Chris had replaced Adrian Saunders. I almost pulled out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I believe in sticking to my contracts, for one thing. And George has acquired a rather good reputation recently. A reputation that is deserved, incidentally. He has a great deal of respect for the play as it is written. But any Hamlet lives or dies by the actor who plays the lead.”
“Oh,” said Mary. “Kit sounded good to me,” she added cautiously.
“He needs more fire,” said Melvin Shaw. “He’s got all the equipment to do the part. He’s the only American actor I’ve ever known who has a genuine feel for the language. He’s got the intelligence. But does he have the soul?”
“I think he does,” she said defensively.
“Well, my dear, Saturday night will tell us.” He smiled at her. “I’m looking forward to our bridge game this evening.”
Mary’s heart sank. “So am I,” she answered hollowly.
George began to call for Melvin, and as soon as he had walked down the aisle Mary slipped out of her seat and out the theater door.
* * * *
She begged out of the bridge game that night. Kit and Margot had been at dinner and she felt she couldn’t bear to spend the evening playing cards and listening to Margot play up to Kit. “I have a headache,” she said to Melvin with an apologetic smile. “I think I’ll have an early evening.”
He looked extremely glum. “I’ll turn in too, then. Good night, my dear.”
She turned and found George beside her. “I’ll walk back with you,” he said.
“All right.” The night was chilly and she put her arms into her sweater as they went up the hill to the cottages.
“What did you think of our rehearsal this afternoon?” he asked.
“I didn’t think you saw me,” she returned in surprise.
&nb
sp; “I have a sixth sense where you’re concerned,” he said. She didn’t reply and after a minute he repeated, “What did you think?”
“I was there for less than half an hour, but from what I saw I thought it looked good. Are you pleased?”
“Pretty much. It’s coming together. Alfred has surprised me. He’s very strong as Claudius.”
“Well that’s good,” she answered. They had reached her cottage. “Claudius needs to be strong.”
He smiled down at her. “Will you invite me in for a drink?”
She hesitated. She hadn’t missed George’s comment earlier about having a sixth sense where she was concerned, and she didn’t want to lead him on. On the other hand, she knew she wouldn’t sleep at this early hour and she did not fancy spending the next few hours alone.
“Of course,” she said. “Come on in.”
She mixed Scotches and went to sit on the sofa. “I thought Carolyn did well this afternoon,” she said as soon as he was seated in the wing chair.
“Yes. She has the kind of fragile prettiness one needs for Ophelia. And she can act. I think she’ll be one of those who make it.”
Silence fell. Her throat felt dry and she sipped her drink. They were both studiously avoiding talking about the one person they were both thinking about. George brought the subject up first. “I don’t know if Chris is going to come through or not.”
“How do you mean?” Her voice sounded husky and she took another swallow of her drink.
‘There’s something missing. He has everything down; he hasn’t put a foot wrong on stage all week. But . . .” He frowned a little, trying to find the right words.
“Melvin said he needed more fire.”
“It isn’t just that, either. The damnable thing is, I feel as if he has it and is holding it back. But I may be wrong.”
“Well,” she said weakly. “I suppose Saturday night will tell.”
“It certainly will. There will be critics from three TV networks, two national magazines, and the New York Times in the audience. I usually get the critics sometime during the course of August, but this is shaping up into a regular opening night
“God have mercy,” said Mary.
He grinned. “It’s not God’s mercy we need, but John Calder’s. He’s the Times theater critic and he’s the one who will decide our fate. If he likes it, we’ll almost certainly get a Broadway run.”
“Broadway,” she said. “My goodness.”
He put his drink down and came over to sit next to her on the sofa. “I’m tired of talking about the play,” he said. “I want to talk about you.”
Her blue eyes widened and she looked a little warily into his face. “What do you mean?”
“Is it true that you and Chris are getting a divorce?”
There was a barely perceptible hesitation and then she said, quite firmly, “Yes.”
“I am very glad to hear that.” He took her drink from her unresisting hand. “You are driving me absolutely crazy,” he said. And kissed her.
His mouth was warm and hard and insistent on hers. She was quiet in his arms, letting him kiss her but giving him very little response.
“Mary,” he said shakily and touched her cheek.
“Oh George,” she said sadly. “I didn’t mean this to happen.”
“I should imagine it must happen to you all the time.” She had been looking at the open collar of his shirt, but when his words registered she raised her eyes to his face. At the flash of blue a muscle flickered alongside his mouth. “I don’t mean that you try to be provocative,” he said. “Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. But you’re quite a special lady. Any man would want to get near you.”
“No one ever has,” she replied in a low voice, “except Kit.”
“Whom you are going to divorce.”
“I—yes.”
“I don’t want to rush you, Mary, but I should like so much to be more to you than just a friend.”
She looked searchingly into his narrow, clever, attractive face. She liked George very much. She had thought once she would marry a man very like him. “I had no idea you felt like this,” she said honestly.
“I thought for a while there that you and Chris were going to get back together.”
“I thought so too. For a while.” She took a deep breath. “I love him, George. I think I always will. But I can’t live with him.”
He was staring intently at her face. “Why not?”
“Oh—reasons,” she replied evasively. “But the thing is, I’m just not interested in anyone else. Not that way, at least. I like you very much, but...”
Her voice trailed off and he finished her sentence for her, “... as a friend.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry it sounds so trite.”
“Look here,” he said strongly, “I hope you aren’t planning to spend the rest of your life alone just because your marriage didn’t work out.”
“That's what Hamlet advises Ophelia,” she replied a little bitterly, “ ‘What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.’ ”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he snapped. “This is the twentieth century, not the sixteenth. And Ophelia was a simp.”
Mary’s lips curled at the corners. “She was, rather, wasn’t she?”
“Mary,” he said, his voice a note deeper than usual. “Beautiful, beautiful Mary. Listen to me....”
“No.” She pulled back from him and stared with somber eyes across the room. “No, George. Please don’t upset me by saying things I don’t want to hear. It isn’t just my feelings for Kit. There are religious reasons, too.”
“All right.” He sounded suddenly very weary. He got to his feet. “But don’t run away from me? Will you promise me that at least?”
She smiled a little. “Yes.”
He stopped for a minute and held her face between his hands. “I can be a very patient man,” he said softly and kissed her forehead before he turned and left the room.
* * * *
Friday was the last day of class. Technically there was nothing to hold Mary any longer at Yarborough. She could grade her papers at home and telephone the marks to George. After telling herself all week that she couldn’t wait to get away, it was distressing to find herself so reluctant when the moment of release finally arrived.
She had to be here on opening night; she had to see for herself how Kit was going to fare. It was as simple as that. When it came right down to it, she thought in grim amusement as she stuffed the final essays into her briefcase, wild horses couldn’t drag her away.
She spent all day on her porch, reading essays and grading them. When she went down to dinner it was to find Kit, Margot, Melvin, Alfred, and George missing. They were in the theater going over the scene in Gertrude’s bedroom, Carolyn told Mary. George had sent over for sandwiches.
Mary felt the tension in the dining room. It was quieter than usual and the only talk that was introduced had to do with the play. “Poor Chris,” said Frank Moore as the main course was served. “I know I’m exhausted—we worked on the fencing scene all day long. And he’s still going strong. I don’t know how he does it.”
“And keeps his temper,” put in Adam Truro; They ate for a few minutes in silence and then Adam volunteered, “John Calder is going to stay at the Stafford Inn. George says it’s the first time a New York critic has ever come for his opening night.”
“If the play does go to Broadway,” breathed Carolyn, “I wonder if they’ll replace all the students?”
“We have to get to Broadway first,” said Eric Lindquist. “And we all know who that depends on.” He looked in the direction of the theater and the whole table unconsciously followed his lead.
“I wonder what he’s thinking,” Said Frank, and no one asked to whom he was referring.
“He’s so calm.” Carolyn’s eyes were large with wonder. “He must know how his whole professional reputation is at
stake, but you’d never know it to look at him. He hasn’t any nerves at all.”
Oh yes he has, thought Mary to herself. She remembered other opening nights. The calmer Kit appeared the more uptight he really was. She found herself completely unable to eat her dinner.
* * * *
Saturday was interminable. Even the Elizabethan songbooks couldn’t capture Mary’s attention. There was an early dinner served at five o’clock. Everyone was present in the dining room and the atmosphere was brittle with tension. Kit was there this time, looking cool and collected. Mary found herself at the same table with him and she listened as he made Carolyn laugh with a joke and flattered Margot outrageously until some of the strain left her face. He seemed utterly relaxed, utterly nonchalant. Mary wondered if she were the only one to notice that he had eaten scarcely a bite of his dinner.
The meal was almost over when Carolyn repeated the judgment she had voiced about him yesterday. “Honestly, Chris, I don’t think you have a nerve in your whole body.”
“I believe Hemingway, called it ‘grace under pressure,’“ Mary said quietly. She had scarcely spoken at all during the course of the meal.
Kit’s eyes involuntarily found hers. She smiled at him, a sweet and beautiful smile. “Good luck,” she said softly.
He didn’t answer but nodded his dark head at her, his eyes grave and a little abstracted.
After dinner Mary went back to her cabin to change. It was six o’clock. The hour and a half before curtain time stretched before her. She tried to read a magazine but couldn’t concentrate on more than one sentence at a time.
Finally it was time to dress. She put on a raspberry linen sundress with a pleated bodice and full skirt. A string of pearls around her neck dressed it up as did pearl-button earrings. Her hair fell loosely to her shoulders, satiny black, softly curling. It was cooling down so she put a white pique jacket over her bare shoulders. She didn’t know if it was the evening air or nervousness, but she was shivering by the time she reached the theater.