Parson's Nine

by Noel Streatfeild

  Susanna groaned.

  “At this minute my feet feel as if they’d never dance again.”

  “Was it awful? I’ve often wondered what it was like walking round and round like that.”

  “I felt as though I didn’t exist, that I was just a machine. I don’t think I was even expected to be able to speak. I had to pinch myself to remember I was alive at all.”

  Better, but still deadly tired, she came down to the drawing-room. Mrs. Cary put her arm round her.

  “There isn’t time to introduce you to everybody formally. Miss Susanna Churston. Mrs. Grey, Mr. Leon, Mr. Grey and Mr. Bill Tolman. Come on, dinner’s ready. I do hate missing the beginning of a play.”

  Susanna found herself sitting between Mr. Grey and Mr. Tolman. Mr. Tolman smiled at her.

  “Do they always call you Susanna in full like that? When I know you a little better, I shall call you Sukey.”

  She flinched, then stared at him, her eyes clouded with pain. “Sukey.” She hadn’t heard that for more than two years.

  He looked worried.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve hurt you; I wouldn’t have done that for worlds.”

  They sat next to each other in the theatre. He sighed at the end of the first act.

  “I wish we could just drop a curtain on life when things reach a climax, don’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “So much less trouble than running the other way.”

  “Running the other way from what?”

  “Things.” He had a thin, eager face. Susanna saw a tiny pulse throb in his temple. “Things I don’t like.”

  “And you run away from them? You, a grown-up man?”

  “Yes, disgusting, isn’t it? But running is made so disgracefully easy for me. You see, I’ve two homes; here and in India.”

  “What do you run away from?”

  “Lots of things; some of them you’d laugh at. I’m full of complexes.”

  The curtain went up on the second act. Susanna watched restlessly. As it finished and the applause died away, she swung round eagerly.

  “Tell me about you running away.”

  He laughed.

  “Aren’t you serious.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  He thought she looked disappointed.

  “Yes, of course I was. I’ll tell you all about it. You see, I got into a habit of running away from things when I was a small boy, and now I’m a big man I have to go on doing it.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “Well, that’s all.”

  “No, you’ve only just begun. I want to know the sort of things you run away from.”

  “Well, crowds, for one thing. I hate being pressed and jostled; and smells, for another. Have you ever been to India? No. Well, then, you don’t know what smells are.”

  “And from what else?”

  “Sometimes from—no, Sukey, you shan’t wrest my innermost secrets from me.” And this time, as he said “Sukey,” he noticed she didn’t wince.

  After the theatre, when they gathered in the foyer, Mrs. Cary said:

  “Now, you want to go straight home, don’t you, Susanna?”

  Susanna turned crimson.

  “Me! Why?”

  “Your poor tired feet.”

  “My feet!” Susanna looked down at them in surprise. “I’d forgotten all about them.”

  “Then you’re coming on with us?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Holy Moses!” said Mrs. Cary to herself, as she settled back in her car. “Now what have I done? The child has fallen for Bill. Oh, pray heaven he treats her decently.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  From that night Susanna began to change. Watching her was like watching a thaw break its way through a long frozen countryside: the ground softens, the streams move, each leaf and blade of grass is freed from its stiff white coat, and the whole land can ruffle and flutter once more before the slightest breeze. So it was with Susanna. The hard, bitter expression left her face, and it seemed as though her whole body were softened; and though she still had her oddly aloof manner it no longer suggested unhappiness and boredom, but rather that she was under an enchantment.

  She spent all her spare time with Bill. On weekdays she had endless dress shows, and was seldom free till the evenings, but on Sundays they went out in his small car, and sampled every inn within reach of London, and together watched autumn come. They saw the leaves turn from green to red and gold, and from red and gold to brown, and watched the hedges light up their candles of winter berries.

  “Funny,” said Susanna. “I must have seen the autumn come every year, but this is the first time I’ve noticed how lovely it is. I’ve never liked it much before.”

  Most of their evenings they spent at a pet restaurant, where they got squatters’ rights at a certain corner table. They liked the feeling of being welcomed nightly by the same commissionaire and waiters, and they liked being greeted by Jean, the maitre d’hôtel who gave Susanna sprays of flowers to tone with her frock. And Bill liked seeing Susanna’s head outlined by the gold walls of the place, and Susanna liked the homely feeling of eating daily in the same room, almost as though she and Bill were married.

  One Sunday in November they went to Hampton Court. It was a miserable, cold, blowy day, and they didn’t waste many minutes walking round the gardens.

  “Come on,” said Bill. “This is too awful; let’s go and sit by a fire. We’ll have one of our own; we’ll take a private room. I do hate Sunday lunch crowds.”

  After lunch Bill suddenly pulled Susanna on to his knee.

  “I’m afraid I’m falling in love with you, Sukey.”

  She smiled at him happily. He drew her face to his and kissed her mouth. When at last he released her she stared at him with unfathomable eyes.

  “What is it, Sukey?”

  “I don’t quite know, Bill.” But her heart was singing. “He loves me, and I love him; some day we’ll marry and I shall be able to look after him always.” A long-drawn sigh of happiness whistled through her lips. “Oh, Bill,” she said.

  He didn’t know what she meant, but he did know that she was adorable, and that the afternoon mustn’t be wasted, so he kissed her again.

  After that Sunday he became very possessive, and sulked if she had to be away in time which he felt should belong to him. Sometimes she worked in the evenings, and then they nearly quarrelled.

  “I’ve got a dress show two nights this week, Bill.”

  “Oh, I say, that really is too thick. Must you?”

  “I’m afraid so, not really because of the money, because we are better off again now, Mother says, but she thinks a girl ought to have something to do. Besides, if I wasn’t doing anything, they might expect me to come home.”

  “Good lord! They mustn’t do that. But you might try not to fix things up in the evenings.”

  “I will”

  Beatrice came to her in triumph.

  “That agency we sent our photographs to has got us both a day’s filming. There’s a p.c. for you about it.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night, filming all night on Victoria Station. I know a lot of people who are going to be in it; ought to be rather fun.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I want to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to film.”

  “Well, you poor cow, you put your name down at the agent’s to say you did.”

  “I know, but I thought they made films in the mornings.”

  “Oh, so that’s it. Well, let me tell you, you’re going to film tomorrow. I introduced you to the agents, and I’m damned if I’ll have them annoyed.”

  “But thousands of people will love to do it instead of me.”

  “Well, they aren’t going to.”


  “I can’t come out to dinner tomorrow,” Susanna said nervously to Bill. “I’m doing a bit of filming; it takes all night.”

  “Good lord, films now! You seem to love filling up our evenings.”

  “Oh, Bill, I don’t. I tell you what: come with me. I expect there’ll be such a lot of people there, they’ll never notice an extra one; and we could talk.”

  “What! Stand in a draughty station all night? Not if I know it.”

  Susanna looked surprised. “Men are odd,” she thought. “I’d stand in all the draughts in the world if I could have Bill to talk to.”

  “Well, what did that long bit of trouble of yours say when he heard you were filming tonight?” asked Beatrice, as the two girls set off on a bus for Victoria.

  “Do you mean Bill?”

  “Do I mean Bill? You poor fish, who else? I can’t think what you see in the man. When does his leave finish?”

  “January.”

  “And a damn good job too.”

  Susanna grinned cheerfully, but said nothing. “She must be jealous,” she thought.

  At the station they fell in with a large party of friends of Beatrice’s. They were all very vivacious and loud-voiced, with a currency of jokes and illusions amongst themselves which made their conversation puzzling to the outsider. They were all slightly attached to one or other of the arts: two of the girls played occasional small parts in the West End, one of the men painted a bit, two more wrote now and again. They all, as far as Susanna could judge, lived in studios in order to do such work as they did do, and all seemed to have a certain amount of money and a vast quantity of time, both of which were mainly spent on throwing parties. Beatrice introduced her, but none of them paid any attention; they merely settled themselves down in the middle of the station, cheerful and noisy, and proceeded to paint their faces yellow, while a group of porters stood and stared at them with interest and admiration.

  “Chinese, are you?” asked one.

  “No,” replied the young man whom Susanna had gathered was an artist. “Just the great British Public welcoming home its war heroes.”

  “Well, if there was a war now,” said another of the porters with relish, “you’d ’ave ‘ter be in uniform, you would.”

  “Too true. But God decreed that I should be a child throughout the hostilities, and I decreed that nothing would induce me to go down to a filthy studio in order to get into somebody’s old khaki, so here I am in my nice brown suit.”

  A girl wandered across to them from the ladies’ cloakroom. She was dressed as a W.A.A.C.

  “Oh, children, look at Lucia!” exclaimed the noisier of the two boys who wrote.

  “My poor Lucia,” said one of the girls. “How did you let this happen to you?”

  Lucia laughed.

  “Aren’t you green with jealousy? Let me tell you, little ones, that I’m a star in this picture. ‘Young girl from village joins the ranks.’ Tonight I am being met by old and tear-stained parents—very touching, and an extra guinea for me, and two days’ work in the studio. Call that nothing?”

  “And in whose bed did you have to sleep to win all that?” another of the girls queried.

  “Meow, a saucer of milk for Marion, please,” Lucia retorted. She came nearer to them, and dropped her voice. “As a matter of fact—”

  At this minute, to the bitter disappointment of the porters, the conversation came to an end, for a distraught-looking man appeared and yelled through a megaphone: “Everybody on the platform, please.”

  “Lumme!” said the porters, as the party vanished. “ ’Ot stuff.”

  As soon as they reached the platform, Susanna was separated from Beatrice and her friends, and was sent with a mixed collection of people to greet a General arriving at the back of the train.

  “Who’s your detached little friend?” the artist asked Beatrice.

  “I did introduce her, but none of you listened; you’re a damned rude lot.”

  “Well, we don’t like outsiders much.”

  “Susanna, her name is; she’s nice.”

  “She looks our sort. Bring her along next time one of us throws a party.”

  “I might some time; just now she’s properly tied up with a bit of no-good. Anyway, I’m not sure how she’d fit in with us.”

  A whistle blew piercingly, various men shouted, a mass of arc lights flooded on to the platform, and the man who was directing the picture climbed up on to a lorry, and spoke to them all earnestly through a megaphone:

  “Now I want tenseness, expectation, all your eyes fixed up the line, for you are waiting for the train to arrive which will bring you back your fathers, sweethearts, lovers. That’s it, plenty of excitement, they’re coming home! home! More excitement; that’s got it, grand. Cut.”

  Three times they went through this scene, and on the fourth the cameras began to whirr. This sound put the actors off their animation, and carried their eyes away from the incoming train up to the cameras on the lorries.

  “Cut,” shouted the producer furiously. When he had obtained silence, he talked to them once more through his megaphone. This time he was not so friendly, but rather hurt. “Now look here, folks, it’s a train you’re expecting, and not a fiery chariot from heaven, so I guess you’ll get a better view of it down the line than looking up at the perches. Now, all right, I’m not going to say any more, but let’s have it right this time. Right away.”

  They were “right away” three times more, always being beseeched to show greater animation; but at last they got it, the cameras purred, and the first shot was taken.

  “Cut,” shouted the producer. “Now, folks, that was great, that was fine. Now we’ll fix the first shot with the train.”

  The train puffed into the station with a young man and his camera tied on in front of the engine. This sight so stimulated the crowd that only two or three rehearsals were needed, and in two shots they had it right. Then, to the great surprise of Susanna and anyone else unversed in film-making, the train shunted out of the station, the arc lights snapped out, and the producer and his staff and all the electricians climbed down from their lorries and vanished.

  “Somethin’s wrong with one of the cameras,” explained a little man next to Susanna, knowingly.

  She looked down at him. His appearance was odd, for he was mainly dressed in uniform incredibly too large for him, but his legs, loosely looped with puttees, finished mysteriously with button patent boots.

  “ ’Ave a cup of coffee?” he asked her, as the travelling station canteen was pushed by.

  “Thank you.”

  “Done much in this line?” he inquired, as they sipped at the queer-tasting but boiling concoction they were given.

  “No, this is my first day at it.”

  “Ah, the lure of the pictchers, but it’s ’eartbreakin’ work, that’s what it is. Take me, no one ’asn’t more talent than what I ’as, but I ’aven’t the influence, that’s what does it, influence. Why, the agent said to me when ’e offered me tonight’s work, ‘I know, Fred, a man of your ability shouldn’t be doin’ this, but it’s all I can offer, so take it or leave it.’ ”

  “And you took it.” He nodded his head mournfully. Susanna looked at him compassionately. “Who are we supposed to be?” she asked, more to distract him from his sad thoughts than because she wished to know.

  “Well, nothin’ and everythin’, so to speak. ’Ere’s a General comin’ ’ome from the war, and ’ere’s us, the great B.P. come to meet ’im, an’ the scene stands or falls by our rehactions.”

  “Oh, does it?” Susanna looked nervously at the producer, his staff, and the electricians, who were at this moment climbing back on their lorries, but before she had time to really consider her reactions, the producer was talking to them once more through his megaphone:

  “Now, folks, I want more than acting from you here; I want to
see your hearts beat. Think! Think! Here’s a train coming into a station, full of loved ones who have been dragged from the jaws of death; that’s what I want to hear in your heartbeats and see in your faces. Don’t just stand around like so much cheese; here are men, and women too, who are waiting to fall straight out of the train into your arms. Don’t let’s just see it, let’s feel it.” As this remarkable speech ended, a low murmur of admiration crept out from the crowd, but the producer was not one to notice sounds made by inferiors, so he just shouted, “Right away.”

  All night long the train shunted in and out, shoals of Tommies, officers and uniformed girls hurled themselves on to the platform into strange, but expectant arms. Sometimes the producer shouted, “Fine, fine! My word, folks, you’re fine!” But more often he groaned, and yelled through his megaphone, “Cut. Now, what do you folks think we’re at? Do you think we’ve hired a whole station and a doggone train to give you a nice sleep?”

  But whether they did well or whether they did badly, Susanna was unable to detect the slightest variation in their massed performance. But to her little companion each shot was a new creation.

  “See what I did then?” he asked her eagerly. “Tried to wave me ’and, then couldn’t; blew me nose instead, overcome—see?” And another time: “I’ve got an idea. I’ve served under the General in the war, and as ’e steps on to the platform, there I am standin’ at the old salute. Be a lovely bit of business if ’e could salute back.”

  “Do we show much?” Susanna questioned doubtfully, looking at the distant cameras.

  The little man looked at them too. He had a wistful eye; he also looked at some very large men between him and the foreground of the picture.

  “Oh well,” he said in a would-be jaunty manner, “it’s all perfectin’ one’s art an’ any’ow they’re bound to take a close-up of this bit presently, and we’ll come out large in that and no mistake.”

  But after one of the final shots, a girl in the crowd called out to the man playing the General:

  “Are they doing a close-up of this, George?”

  “No,” he said. “We did it in the studio last week.”