‘… since then, Basil Hunter, never a word. Your feet haven’t gone cold, have they? … my total involvement with your interests … my ideas crystallizing … had hoped for yours. Isn’t it to be a marriage of ideas? Not only ours, but finally, that of an entire audience. This is what theatre is about!’ (Surely, Mitty: not only in the gang bangs of now, but away back at the moralities.) ‘My antennae tell me that what I have longed for—for you—which is us—has actually happened, and that you will soon be sending me details which will make our plan viable. I have warmed up Aaronson; more, he is downright hot. Says we can have the Slaughterhouse. At his price, I need not tell you … most anxious, as you can imagine, to hear … No room left, unless for me to quote Aaronson: It will be the finest thing for living theatre if a man of Sir Basil’s calibre can face the public with his very own version of the naked truth …’ (Oh yeah? Show them your cock and balls no matter what the cock-and-bull.)
Sir Basil Hunter laughed; it sounded fatty, he thought. But what the hell! He had the money, and money cannot let you down.
He ordered himself another teenzy bottle of Scotch, and sat waiting, hands plaited over his paunch (always lose it before the production, just as you can throw off the grog if you have the willpower).
Oh he would confound them all, the Jackas and Aaronsons, along with the legions of contemptuous youth, by having another go at Lear, and fully clothed. Before it had completely left him, he would dredge up enough of that sensibility which sees, and smells, and knows by instinct. There is a moment, he liked to think, when you can look back and catch the light off the vanishing dew, before the soul has been irrevocably seared. Was that a bit too much? But he had suffered, hadn’t he? his poor forked animal; not least at the hands of his old dying mother and his sister Dorothy Cahoots. And could now look forward to the years of his maturity.
He tried himself out sotto voce in this unappreciative aeroplane, projecting his voice forward into the cavern of his mouth, rolling the words around to extract the utmost in timbre. The results pleased him. Yes, he had matured.
What the smell it is a sealed attic the russet scent of leftover apples the live ones rolling bumping if you touch them off the shelf the rotten splurge brown obscene making a graveyard of the boards these apples are Mummy’s darling I’ve put them here for a purpose what purpose you don’t ask because half the time a person doesn’t know my fruit my darling you have your play haven’t you I shouldn’t dream of interfering with the play like hell she will save it up she will drag out her voice it had got buried under the wrinkles the sheets what is its title in turn her little boy doesn’t want to tell least of all his mum it is I think because this is a collaboration with everyone including what are called my privates my or ‘our’ Year by Year with Lear by Bas Hunter Mitty Jacka Sol P, Aaronson and A. Perv Audience the old is only laughing she is holding something in reserve under her lilac wig it is your call to get into the drag the wig the crown they have made it of Plasticine not to be conformist and Plasticine will suffer more on the road to Dover the ugly daughters can dong it better Histryl and Moan we have engaged Enid and Shiela to give it greater significance hope you know best Mitty I am the actor king who can’t be bothered except with the psyche before the performance limber it up to expose on that tree with only a fool audience to grovel for the bits which fall putrescent lucky for theatre I’m not the soundest fish last call Sir Basil wet the whistle twice for luck and a third before you go on you may never taste another time Sir Bazill that would be Enid she was all ills and isses and a sharp elbow recognize it anywhere Sir Basil’s entrance only project project whoever said attend the lords of France and Burgundy Gloster meantime we shall express our darker purpose COURTIERS laugh the bang-on boys without their jockstraps the jiggle-joggle Bangkok mares everybody’s in the cast a real benefit performance knock you down too soon if they don’t take care Gloster’s a baby that’s how they want it today renewed fanfares of juvenile laughter with a pizzicato on the testicles shake all you maracas audience laughs THIRD ATTENDANT hits herself in the eye with an independent nork it isn’t any laughing matter then DOROTHY CORNWALL aren’t I the legitimate sister? JACKA cracks her whip yes yes everybody’s in it and everyone is everyone that is the absurd point doesn’t life outpanto panto but DOROTHY insists this is my real panto-brother-sister oh shit my beard is full of birds the audience is loving it the young trolls are lining up together with their liquescent warlocks to build this tunnel thing bet it wasn’t improvised ENTER A BEARDLESS KING in real crown (stuff the panto) in lilac wig in ghastly gash BODIES make stairs for REAL KING to descend begad it’s Esmé Berenger or Judith Somesuch come to bury a leading man little Shiely Albanesi moans there’s too much earth on her hands too many sister-daughters but don’t you see this is total knockabout LILAC KING opens her legs go on Bas on all fours natch it’s the womb stint you’ve got to expect in living theatre well it happens doesn’t it they pull you through beneath the lilac pubics ATTENDANTS writhing and lithing some of them jolly appetizing fruit if you had the time if somebody’s heel hadn’t put out your eye if you hadn’t choked on somebody’s parts at least you are born at last MITTY blacktights JACKA He is born our King of Kings (crack) forward Basssll well folks here I am this is my real role your fool (jingle bells little soft shoe here) the audience is loving it as for the OLD KING she yawns she is above it she wants to get out from under and into her coffin SISTER-DAUGHTERS simmer as FOOL hogs the scene their bearded king of a crypto brother how now where’s that mongrel? anyone Dorothy is at liberty at a pinch to pinch a line she takes a fancy to and FOOL has all the plums I’ll to bed at noonlight with my sister Dorothy will kill you for this to say nothing of Enid Histryl Shiely Moan and all the others only Cordelia the almoner the one who matters who might care is absent she always was whoever played the part ought to cut it Mitty
oh the intervals of time the oiled oceans patent leather jungles glass mountains white airports streamlined nembutal the audience is coming back too soon as always the sweat doesn’t dry discovering motives don’t you realize he is as he is because he’s arterio-sclerotic I’ve worked it out everybody is clever today
CURTAIN UP or would be if there was
so why not cut Cordelia Mitty yes we’ll cut her at future performances LILAC KING (yawning smiling) all these daughters bore the pants their lives are one long menopause it’s my fool-son I’ll choose to lie with in my coffin as if DOROTHY CORNWALL will allow I am the one must kill our fool-brother-son-king silence in the total audience then FOOL oh Dorothy yours is the kindness which exchanges cap for crown and incidentally pray you undo this button a great roaring of participation DOROTHY CORNWALL oh oh buttons are obscene (silence ALL as she uproots penis) PLASTICINE KING then I am free if only you take my tongue too and perhaps uvula for good measure no more an actor AUDIENCE surges down aisles meeting WHOLE CAST halfway to become involved with one another when finished return C. to stamp KING into coffin.
The LILAC OTHER has evaporated in the sun which burns too bright.
‘Sir Basil Hunter!’
‘Yairs. Yes?’
‘We’re landing in fifteen minutes.’
‘For God’s sake, where?’
‘Amsterdam.’ Like all air hostesses she is smiling for an invalid, in this case, an unsavoury old man.
‘Well, wasn’t it a short hop!’ Still the FOOL.
He must tie his tie, button his collar. If he hadn’t more than undone it: he had torn the damn button off.
Compose a wire then, to the Jacka, if he could get his tongue round the significant word, (FOOL: You can’t throw a stroke at my age, can you? FOOL’S RATIONAL SISTER: Don’t be silly! Young children are known to have had them.)
If dreams were reality you mightn’t have done a murder, slept with your sister, or contemplated what amounts to professional suicide, (MITTY JACKA: You ought to realize by now—if you are in any way creative—that the creative act remains the great suicide risk.)
The dreams oh the wet betwe
en the legs.
Persuade this vivandiere to remember charity and bring out another little bottle of Scotch.
Arnold Wyburd almost never left his office later than five-thirty p.m. Unless the traffic was exceptionally hostile to the Wyburd schedule he could expect to open his front door at six o’clock. After hanging his bound Homburg on the topheavy mahogany stand he would check his time with the grandfather clock at the end of the hall. The grandfather, Bill Hunter’s carriage clock at the office, and his own gold repeater with blue-enamelled figures and hands, were synchronized. It gave him a sense of security, not only to keep in step with time, but to keep time in step. Tonight he saw on consulting with the grandfather that somebody was five minutes out.
He had developed the habit of making a slight pfiffing noise when faced with irritations or shortcomings. He made it now.
Lal called from the living-room, ‘Is that you, Arnold?’ as she always did, and it was never anybody else.
She had on her glasses. They looked too big and heavy for her face. The girls brought the children’s socks for her to mend, and she was peering at a sock she was darning.
‘You’ll ruin your eyesight,’ he warned, though both had realized long ago it was impossible to improve each other.
He switched the light on. She was vain about her darning: doesn’t it remind you of petit point? she liked to ask and offer it as proof. Now the light showed she was smiling at the darning egg.
He bent and kissed her on the bony structure of the forehead, avoiding the finely quilted cheek; to kiss her on the cheek at that hour would have been going too far.
‘I think I shall retire,’ he told her.
‘Oh dear, have you a cold?’
‘No. From the office.’
She did not answer. She sighed. She had heard it before.
He poured himself his evening whiskey, rather more than usual, and swamped it in case Lal should notice. Not that she would have disapproved: he was his own sternest judge, and this was a day when recurring thoughts made him the object of his deepest disapproval. To make matters worse, he could tell from her frown and the pleating of her lips, above and below, Lal would have liked to comfort him.
‘On Thursday next,’ he informed her, ‘the auctioneers will take care of the furniture at Moreton Drive. The house itself can be offered for sale.’
‘Is it so long?’ Long or short, Mrs Wyburd could not have reckoned; she only knew their life was no longer disrupted by commands and tempests. (‘She did bully you, you’ve got to admit!’ she had once dared remark, and as soon wished she had not.)
The solicitor went upstairs to what they called his study. At least he kept some of his law books there, and on a Sunday afternoon, would sit down to answer any letters his wife could not be expected to tackle. Otherwise the room was not much used, though he liked to shut himself up in it briefly on returning from the office: so as not to be disturbed, was the explanation he might have given if he had been asked for one; there was a clock too, which required his attention.
Tonight after checking the clock against his gold repeater Arnold Wyburd went to the bookcase and took out Halsbury Vol XV. His bearing was so stiff (he could almost hear his bones cracking) his manner so deliberate, anybody watching might have suspected a long contemplated, dishonest move.
It was, in fact, dishonest: one of his two memorable dishonesties.
When he had found what he wanted by exploring the space behind the books, he sat awhile at his desk, beside the lamp with the green porcelain shade inherited from a great-uncle on his mother’s side. He did not feel less guilty, but more resigned to dishonesty, when at last he began to chafe, to revive, the jewel he was holding in his hand.
Finally he looked at his sapphire. He invoked the star hidden in it.
He fitted the live sapphire on to the little finger of his left hand, above the flat blue, formal signet he had worn since his twenty-first. The sapphire glowed painfully.
His eyes, normally pale and reserved, snapped and glittered. Caged in the ribs from which he had only once escaped, his breathing had become a torment: more so, the eye of the sapphire, with its bars, or cross, of recurring light.
He could hardly bear to look at it. He closed his eyes, preferring to experience through memory the invitation to drunkenness the nipples tasting unexpectedly of rubber the drops of moisture as flesh was translated into light air nothing all. Perhaps this was what others know as ‘poetry’ and which, he would have had to confess, he was unable to recognize on the page.
He was shocked to hear footsteps on the stairs. He dropped the ring, which rolled where? under the desk? some-where.
‘Arnold?’
His dear wife; temporarily blinded, he would not be able to face her.
‘You’re not brooding?’ she asked.
‘Yes!’
She withdrew as though she had been burnt.
When he had got on his knees and found it, he returned the sapphire to the bookcase, ramming Halsbury Vol XV into the void where his jewel would continue smouldering.
Sister Badgery had come, and Mrs Lippmann was giving them lunch in the breakfast room.
Badgery said, when she could get a word past her chicken, ‘Quite like old times, isn’t it? Except for Her.’ She swallowed. ‘And Flora Manhood.’
For some reason the others were unwilling to chat. ‘What’s become of little Flora?’ It would have been unnatural not to inquire.
Sister de Santis professed ignorance. Mrs Lippmann made no attempt to answer; she had never looked so livery: some Jewesses are near as anything black.
Sister Badgery said, ‘Perhaps she’s decided he’s Mr Right after all. Well, good luck to her!’ She sighed, laughed, and popped another forkful of chicken into her mouth, all at the same time. (She would pay for it: creamy foreign sauce, smelling, she would not have admitted to her thought, of some women’s stale underwear.)
‘Will you attend the auction?’ Sister Badgery asked; they were so down in the mouth she only wanted to cheer them up.
Neither Sister de Santis nor Mrs Lippmann could whip up enthusiasm for auctions.
Sister Badgery might look in. ‘Buy myself a keepsake. If everything isn’t beyond my means—as it well might be.’ She showed her gums, and a morsel of chicken fell back on her plate. ‘Perhaps find a present to take my friend Sister Huxtable.’
‘Sister Who?’ Mrs Lippmann asked.
‘Winifred Huxtable of Auckland, New Zealand. Don’t you remember—she and I—went with a group—year before last—to Lord Howe Island?’
Her audience seemed peculiarly apathetic. Sister Badgery tilted her head, dropped one shoulder, and began mopping up her sauce with a gobbet of bread. They would both know she knew what you don’t do; but weren’t we among friends?
‘Surely you must remember, Sister?’ A corner of Sister Badgery’s mouth failed to contain a drop of that grey, stale-smelling sauce. ‘Win Huxtable—a large girl with a flushed complexion. Well, she’s a woman now. And more flushed, if anything. Didn’t we all do obstets together?’
Sister de Santis had to confess she couldn’t remember doing obstets with the flushed Winifred Huxtable.
‘There are those who say— malicious people,’ Sister Badgery crooked a finger to flick a speck of sauce off her front, ‘and a great many people are malicious, aren’t they? they say that Win Huxtable in her middle age is red as a beetroot. If she is, nothing can be done about it. I know. She and I never refer to her affliction. Those same malicious, hurtful people imply it’s caused by alcohol. It isn’t. I could assure them. Not that Win doesn’t enjoy her brandy dry—socially. She never goes too far, though.’
Sister Badgery might have enjoyed another mopping of sauce if Mrs Lippmann had not begun clearing the plates; there was nothing you could do about that either, short of forgetting yourself.
‘Sister Huxtable and I have planned a coach tour of New Zealand—both islands,’ she informed them after controlling her wind: that sauce again.
Mary de Santis is putting on weight. ‘It’s thanks to Mrs Hunter—her gift,’ Sister Badgery said rather loudly. ‘The five hundred dollars.’ She crooked her finger above the still unused pudding spoon. ‘Do you—I ask you in confidence, Sister—do you think it all above board? I would have expected more of Mrs Hunter, such a generous woman—and lovely lady. What I mean to say is, she mightn’t have had her own way. Others may have dictated, so to speak.’
Sister de Santis might have been listening; she might not.
‘Don’t think I’m not grateful,’ Sister Badgery insisted. ‘It’s thanks to Mrs Hunter that I’m doing this little tour of New Zealand with Win Huxtable. Only if the legacy had been slightly larger—Win has had quite a windfall—we might have got as far as Japan.’
The silence was awful in the breakfast room where they still had to finish what Mrs Hunter had always, and now Sister Badgery herself, referred to as ‘luncheon’.
Sister Badgery suddenly snorted down her nose. ‘It looks as if I have a lust for travel!’ The confession made her giggle. ‘You will understand that, Mrs Lippmann.’ She turned to the housekeeper who had brought this ‘tort’.
‘Oh, I have travelled. But have no lust.’
The Germans are a heavy lot.
As the housekeeper dished up the pudding, Sister Badgery noticed a bandage.
‘Damaged yourself, have you, dear?’
‘It is nothing. I have cut my finger. It is my new little vegetable knife, which is sharper than I have thought.’
Sister Badgery sucked her teeth. ‘There’s nothing like a superficial cut for incapacitating a person.’ She had done her duty, and might be allowed to return to graver issues. ‘This will,’ she said, ‘if you won’t think I’m harping on it. Mr Wyburd, though a good soul, was always too soft. Sir Basil Hunter is the perfect gentleman—you can tell. I know nothing about actors, but can recognize a gentleman.’ Something forced Sister Badgery to pause. ‘It’s Princess Dorothy—I feel—would not be above manipulating.’
The Eye of the Storm Page 64