by John Coast
And the buses drove off through an endless succession of suburban shopping streets. I was quite lost, and moving up to the driver asked him where our hotel was. Was it far from our theatre, I asked him?
"Far from which theatre, would that be?" "The Winter Garden—in Drury Lane." He laughed out loud.
"You'll be a little matter, I should reckon, of about thirteen miles outside of Drury Lane," he said, capping this with the news we were to live in some students' settlement in Surrey, just outside the fringe of greater London. I had an awful foreboding, yet rather than say anything to depress the Balinese further—they were now silent, hungry, feeling as lost as if on another planet—I just whispered this news to Indrosugondho.
He threw his hands up, exclaiming beneath his breath,
"Who can have chosen such a place? But perhaps it's good there. Let us wait and see."
It was about nine o'clock and the late summer dusk was falling when the buses came to a halt in what seemed in the gathering gloom to be a little red-brick street at the back of nowhere, and I felt something akin to panic rising in me. But at once a friendly, energetic man with a wide smile of welcome on his face, came out to meet us.
"Ah-that's fine," said he. "Here you are at last! The food's all waiting ready for you. Should they go to their rooms first, d'you think, or would they prefer to eat straight away?"
Numbly, trying to suspend judgment, I asked the Anak Agung which would be best. Some of the group still felt sick, he said, and they all were dirty and wanted to bathe.
"They'd prefer to go to their rooms first," I said.
Now our welcomer was that type of man who is full of honest enthusiasm and the scoutmaster instincts. He was frighteningly well meaning. But his establishment, as I soon remarked with black despair, though admirably suited to impecunious students of foreign races who were already acclimatized to the weirdities of the humbler British way of living, repelled and drove the Balinese back into themselves, so that dumbly, hopefully, they looked to us, to anyone who might help them. In this strange new world they asked but two things: that they sleep and live warmly and all as closely together as possible, and that their bellies be swiftly filled with good rice.
Instead, quite innocent of the rebellion he was rousing in their peasant hearts, this cheerful fellow started off to show them to their rooms. He managed, he said pleasantly, some dozen or so houses around this neighbourhood, only the dining room and club rooms being in the house outside which the buses had stopped. The Balinese, who only with difficulty had become inured to the good hotels along the K.L.M. route, were now to be split up, two men on the ground floor of one house, three men in a room on the third floor front in a house a hundred yards away, four in another room three streets off, and so on. The nine girls were all in one room.
It took two rebellious, darkening hours, ourselves carrying their bags, to persuade most of them to walk to their rooms; and when they had been brought back again at about eleven o'clock to the dining hall by a now freely perspiring host, none of them could swallow a mouthful of this, to them, strange-tasting food. The Anak Agung shook his head gloomily.
"John, we've got to find rice for them," he said, "If it goes on like this... adoh!"
None of us ate that night. It was long after midnight when we stopped trying to sort out the last unclaimed suitcases left on the pavement outside, and drove a last insistent photographer from troubling the sleep of the small girls. Then we searched till we found the room of Indrosugondho. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, smoking, running his hands through his rather long, thickly wavy hair. There was little enough that needed saying.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Tomorrow I shall go to the Embassy."
We bade him a good night, Luce and I climbing two or three flights of uncarpeted stairs to our own sparsely furnished quarters. We talked, going over our situation over and over again, till well after five, and rose at seven: and again there was no eatable rice.
The buses came and a hungry collection of Balinese were driven in to London, right up to the stage door of the Winter Garden. Indrosugondho, with a strained face, left at once in a taxi for the Embassy, and when de Marney arrived we told him that we had no idea who was responsible for our feeding arrangements, but that we simply must get rice, lots of hot rice with the vegetables and meat and chilis we had cabled for, and within a few hours. He went out to look for help.
That whole day we spent in the theatre. An outfitter came around and sat efficiently in a gangway seat, measuring the men for their raincoats; and before the rehearsal could start, the cast mooched round the stage, looked in at their dressing rooms, sat with hands in pockets in the front stalls, examined the curtain, quietly discussed the decor, which was a fair reproduction of the gateway design we had sent Hawtrey to copy.
After a while de Marney returned with the tidings that only fifty yards down the street there was a Greek restaurant that would have a hot rice meal ready by three o'clock. So, while we waited for the girls to come back from an expedition with Luce to search for umbrellas, raincoats and strong shoes, he and I sat down for a technical discussion. The contract I was unable to see because it was at the lawyers'.
But I learned that we were to play eight times a week, including two matinees. I asked whether we could play only seven times, and cut one matinee, as we were doing in New York, but in London eight times was normal and the children would have to go through with it. There had not been time to locate Hamish Wilson, who had lit the "Javanese Dancerisn" 1946, so de Marney himself was going to do the lighting. He had a plan in his head, he told me. He wanted to start off in bright sunshine, and because the last item in the programme was a Barong, (which according to the books he had read, always took place in the evening), the last scene would be almost dark. Thus the performance would pass through a Balinese day, from sunlight to dusk.
I pointed out that this production was set exactly according to the programme viewed by Freddie Schang in Bali. The second dance, for example, the Monkey Dance, had to be done in near-darkness. The Barong finale used a comic and noisy story for which I wanted the lights full up.
Next I asked about the script for the Storyteller. Had they found a suitable Indonesian girl, I enquired? No—Mrs. Subandrio had been able to find us no pretty or charming girl, he said. But they had improved my script—they'd cut it around a lot and it was much better now. Remember, I said to myself, de Marney only heard about our dancers a few weeks ago. Be patient with him. How could he have any inkling of the sweat and blood that had gone into the making of this thing?
It was a strangely unreal day. The stage crew arrived, and two amiable young women moved up into the girls' dressing room to learn to help Luce. The wings were filled with irritating Indonesian shadows who flitted they knew not where, save certainly in our way.
And confident in all white villainy, they slipped into dressing-rooms and appeared on the stage, whispering into the ears of our friends rumours of anticipated foreign trickery and exploitation.
Meanwhile, I asked the Anak Agung where north was, for otherwise we could never have orientated and directed the dancers; to the Balinese dancer, left and right do not exist, only west or east, nor is there an upstage or downstage, only a north and south. Then we placed the gamelan on the stage. The acoustics were fine and I ran the programme through, myself running about the auditorium, from back of the stalls to the balcony, listening, observing, positioning, explaining. The crew were good, picking up the lighting cues quickly, and on the curtain calls de Marney helped me with advice. For more than two hours we worked. By then the Balinese were muttering about eating, and the restaurant owner came in just at the right time to tell them that their food was ready.
I looked around the auditorium, conscious again. I found two ballet critics, old friends, Lionel Bradley and A. V. Coton. I discovered Peggy van Praagh and Maggie Dale, who had run around from Sadler's Wells
to see what new exoticism had been brought to town; Baron, our photographer from Bangkok, with an elegant redhead, was enthusing over the show as I counted the dancers off the stage on their way to the restaurant. I was still preoccupied, so that when a shadowy figure came up to introduce himself I nodded vaguely at him and said, "Twenty-eight," still counting.
The figure pounded a stick on the floor.
"Perhaps you did not hear my name," it said, very distinctly. "I am Sol Hurok."
"Oh God—I'm so sorry about your offer, Mr. Hurok. Please stay for the afternoon. Let us talk of the tragedy of your delayed letter." The Balinese ate and came back rather more happily. The rehearsal went on again. De Marney complained bitterly that he had no time to fix the lighting, which was only too true. We were walking through the whole show for his cues this second time, and we were trying out the male Storyteller. The Balinese only half understood what was being done, and there were frequent checks. Critics, correspondents, the curious, meandered in and out in the back stalls.
The Storyteller was put into Balinese costume and looked soft and apologetic. In place of my script, sentimental phrases such as "our three precious maidens" tumbled from his lips. There was no time as yet to remodel it. Let it go on. Later, perhaps, we could inject something of Bali into him, something earthy and real. After arriving only a day and a half before an opening night, who could be blamed? On, on, on, till the buses honked outside as dusk approached, waiting impatiently to take us away again.
It was quiet, ominously so, in the bus that night. lndrosugondho sat silently near us. The little girls were slumped over, asleep. Whenever we caught a Balinese eye, we smiled back feebly, for their appeal was so obvious and heartrending. In the dining room the children sat wretchedly before the table. Anom had to be shaken gently to keep her awake. And again none of the little ones could eat. Anom started to cry quietly. Her face taut, Luce led the children and girls up to their room, two streets away, where she stayed with them, herself on the verge of tears.
The Anak Agung and I sat once more in lndrosugondho's room. I said, speaking slowly in careful Indonesian, and near mad with thinly controlled rage: "Brother lndro and Father Agung—it would be without use to criticize or complain. Maybe we should never have been encouraged to come to London. Maybe we'd have done better to have stayed longer in Djakarta and flown straight to New York. All I want to ask of you now is this: if I can find a hotel near the theatre and move all the girls out of here tomorrow as a fait accompli, will you support me?"
"Allah! If you can but do it!" said lndrosugondho,"I was myself weeping just now when I saw Anom in the dining room tonight."
"Then things might start improving tomorrow—but back me up! This insult to our people, I will stand no longer. Nor do I believe that all the hotels are full up and too expensive." Before the midday meal next day thirteen places had been found in the Grand Hotel in Southampton Row for all the girls, for the Anak Agung and Sampih, for Luce and myself. On the following day we would look for rooms for the rest of the group. And at once the news spread like fire among the Balinese, whose faces again became happy, so that we were no longer so ashamed. Hanuman was up to his tricks again, they told one another.
That afternoon de Marney worked steadily at his lighting cues and I continued to shudder at the un-Balinese, romantic lines of our Storyteller. Backstage, the artificial flowers were being fixed by Luce and Gusti Kompiang, as in Bali, into the headdresses; the windows were sealed to prevent draughts; the crew were jumpy and worried. Already our First Night was upon us.
But the Balinese, who have natural theatrical instincts, played up gallantly at their opening performance. The gamelan cascaded its fugal tones out into the auditorium, loud and magnificent. Not a mistake was made, and not a seat was empty. And after the show the ambassador gave a reception and champagne buffet on the stage.
There, for the first time little Raka, with Sampih and the Anak Agung—the latter had developed on an instant a warm and dominating stage personality-sipped at the cup of fame. But they accepted it coolly and easily, with their intrinsic dignity and charm. But below the surface enthusiasm of our guests and friends on the stage that evening, and beneath the loud voices of the pompous and the glitter of the socially minded and the gorgeously dressed, the small hand of a Legong caught at Luce's arm, and a little singsong voice chanted up at her, "Ibu Luce! Mother Luce! We go home soon, yes? Home to our new hotel? Tonight, yes?" And indeed that night saw the beginning of a happier era for the children. They were delighted with the Grand Hotel. The nine girls had four rooms, the Legongs closest to us. They fitted two in a single bed with ease, explored their tiled bathroom, squealed with delight at the hot and cold running water, so that nightly Luce and I had to listen before going to sleep, for as like as not the children would be all three playing and chattering and shouting in their bath after the show at one o'clock in the morning, waking up the other guests. They loved the flow of the water running over them, for it reminded them of the streams in which they bathed at home.
On their first morning they started to snare the hearts of the hotel servants and management. They "Oooh-ed" with delight as the lift sank downward, and "Ooosh-ed" with mock consternation as they were swept up again afterwards. They carried little umbrellas, wore black velveteen-collared grey coats over their Indonesian kains, with always a tiny blossom or two in their well-brushed hair. Everywhere they went arm-in-arm, commenting, discussing, laughing, asking us questions all the time. In the dining room they were soon at their ease, after the second morning ordering their own breakfast by pointing to the menu and giggling. This all-important part of our family was happy again.
But most of the men dancers and the gamelan club were doomed to disappointment. Though Indrosugondho and I, accompanied by Made Lebah to represent the club, found rooms for them all in Bayswater, they were never permitted to move. Only now we were told, defensively, evasively, that the other rooms had been paid for two weeks in advance. It would be too expensive to move everybody. So now the club was divided into the privileged and the unprivileged, and for the first time in over two years they saw my hands tied in such a way that I could do nothing to relieve their distress.
One day we came down to the theatre to find Freddie Schangsitting in one of the dressing-rooms, a wad of press cuttings in his hands. He had flown over from New York to see the production on a real stage. He jumped up and we greeted one another warmly; but then he stood back and looked at me. "For heaven's sake, Johnnie, what's wrong? You've a fine success on your hands-l've been reading your reviews —but you look about as happy as a ghost."
Over a table in Soho our troubles came out reluctantly, one by one. "I've always loathed officials, Freddie, even when I was one myself. But the worst of the breed I've found yet are the pompous little creatures who think they know something about art."
"Come down to hard cases—I don't get you."
"I don’t get it. We've been here a week and I'm damned if I could tell you who is even meant to be responsible for what. Tony Hawtrey, with whom I was negotiating till a couple of weeks ago, is nowhere on the scene. De Marney, in addition to acting as our local manager with no previous briefing, is also having to help out with food and heaven knows what besides. He's trying to do the work of three blind men. But there are these bevies of helpful officials to trip over in every conceivable corner. No one could produce theatre discipline on this stage. Why-d'you know what one of the leading metallophone players said to me last night? He said, 'Never mind, Tuan John—in another Jew days we’ll be on our way to America.’ They, my dear Freddie, are pitying me in my own country!"
"Well, don't let it get you down, boy. We'll soon h'ave 'em all right when they get to New York. Tell you what—I'm going to propose a toast—that the three of us work together and pledge ourselves to remember always that this company is only as strong as the three little girls." We drank, and felt better.
T
hat same afternoon my father came up from the country to meet his daughter-in-law, and before the performance he came backstage and greeted the Anak Agung as a kinsman, too, and with old fashioned manners, shook the hand of each member of the cast. Though he knew little of my troubles, this simple act of his helped to bring another family motif into the club, who were impressed at this courteous, white-haired old gentleman.
In the second week things improved a little. De Marney helped practically by arranging two rice meals a day at the nearby Greek restaurant and by preparing a list of salaries, strictly according to Equity rules, and though the original gamelan members objected to dancers who had only recently joined us being paid more than them, who had worked for two years, they were all now able to go around the shops, looking for things to buy, with their eyes especially out for gold sovereigns and for bicycles to send home.
Then the leading dancers of Sadler's Wells came to see the Balinese dance, and the Balinese were invited to Covent Garden to watch a dress rehearsal of Sylvia. When we brought little Raka down onto the vast Covent Garden stage to be photographed with Margot Fonteyn and Frederick Ashton, they asked the Anak Agung what he thought of the Sylvia ballet.
"Please tell them said he, "that we are so happy to see that people in the West use stories of ancient gods and goddesses and spirits of the woods for their dancing, just as we Balinese do. This ballet reminds me of the tale of our Raja Pala—the Raja who went down to bathe in the river and found some heavenly nymphs swimming in his own pool."