by Pamela Brown
Some days everything seemed to go wrong. People forgot their lines, made wrong moves, and could produce no emotion whatsoever. Over and over again they would do one or two lines in order to get them perfect. De Whit was ruthless in his methods.
“You’re not in rep. at Little-Oozing-on-the-Mud now,” he would roar at Lynette, so that she would have difficulty in restraining her tears. Gradually, through much toil and tribulation the character of “Nita” became real to Lynette, so that she felt as if she knew her as well as the Blue Doors.
There were big excitements when they had to go to an extremely exclusive fashion house in Bond Street, where the clothes were to be made. Lynette saw Marcia floating about in exquisitely lacy underwear, and felt ashamed of her own schoolgirlish undergarments. But the fitter was complimentary about her figure. “A sight easier than wangling things for Miss Meredith,” she said cryptically.
Lynette spent many of her evenings flat-hunting. She saw lovely little flatlets in large blocks, small mews flats, large studio rooms in Chelsea, and expensive suites in Mayfair completely beyond her means. And yet she was loath to make the break with all the old associations of No. 37.
“And Maddy will be coming back for next term. Perhaps I won’t leave the Boshery until Maddy has finished at the Academy.”
She had regular letters from the others telling of the hard work and fun that was going on at Fenchester, and wrote back in detail all about the progress of rehearsals. Some of the Academy people looked her up, and they had tea and talked about “the old days” as if these were years ago. Helen, in her seventh heaven, rang Lynette up to tell her that she was going to Stratford-on-Avon to play small parts in the Shakespeare season.
The summer got hotter and hotter. They had to have glasses of iced water in the wings to soothe their parched throats as they rehearsed, and whenever they were not needed they would hurry to the stage door for a breath of fresh air, and sit on the little stools that were put down for the gallery queues.
“If we run as long as this thriller has,” said Marcia, “We shall be doing well.”
“I think we shall run,” said Lynette optimistically. “The public always lap up anything with a villainess in it, and the title of this will get them too. Beloved Viper—it’s a terrific title.”
“And what a Viper,” thought Lynette. In the striking clothes that had been designed for her, all in varying shades of green, Marcia looked as slinky and dangerous as any woman could. Beside her, Lynette in innocuous pastel shades would appear angelic.
Sometimes after rehearsals Lynette and Timothy would stroll through the hot streets, talking, talking, talking, and always with the same theme—the show. It filled their horizon. There was nothing else in London, nothing else in the world. Everything pertained to it. The weather must not be too fine, nor too bad, or the audiences would not be good. They bought newspapers to see if any advance publicity were out yet; they went to see other plays that they feared might rival the popularity of Beloved Viper. They went round to the studios where the set was being built, and all the time, the show—the show—the show was all that mattered.
“Oh, Lynette!” cried Timothy. “What’s going to happen to us?”
“We must wait and see,” was all there was to be said.
15
PRELUDE TO SUCCESS
One morning Lynette was going up the escalator at Leicester Square tube station when something caught her eye so that she exclaimed aloud. It was the first poster of Beloved Viper, and there was her own name as large as life for all to see—“Lynette Darwin”. She flushed and looked round to see if anyone had noticed it, but everyone else on the escalator was either reading the morning paper or discussing the hot weather. She hadn’t really had a chance to see the poster properly, so when she got to the top of the escalator, she went down again on the other side in order to be able to ascend once more and have a real look at it. It certainly looked nice. Two girls behind her remarked on it this time.
“Coo—look at that, Ethel. What a title, eh?”
“Ooh, Marcia Meredith! She’s ever so lovely. We must see that!”
“Well, that’s two people for the box office,” thought Lynette.
At rehearsal that day they went straight through the play, and it was not until the end that they realized that De Whit had not stopped them once to comment or criticize. He had been sitting in the gloom at the back of the stalls, and now he walked slowly down the gangway between the seats and addressed them across the footlights. “Well, what was wrong with that?” he demanded. They thought hard.
“Too slow,” suggested Marcia.
“Underplayed?” asked Lynette.
“No. No, there was nothing wrong with it. If you can do it like that a week tonight, I shall be perfectly satisfied. You remembered everything I’ve ever told you. Now let’s have lunch.”
They glowed with pride for the rest of the day. But after that they began to get stale. People missed entrances and the whole thing became over-rehearsed.
Poor Timothy almost went crazy with anxiety for his play. “Oh, it seems so dull,” he complained. “However will anyone sit through it?”
“That’s a kind thing to say,” Lynette rebuked him, “when we’re all doing our best.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you—I mean the play.”
“It’s only because you’ve seen it rehearsed so many times. I should stay away until the dress rehearsal, if I were you.”
“Of course, if you want to get rid of me…”
“Why not go away for a few days and take your novel with you?” suggested Lynette.
“Yes, perhaps I will. I can’t stand much more of this.”
Later in the day De Whit said, “You’re all being so dull and boring me so much that I can’t bear the thought of seeing you again tomorrow, so I think you’d all better take a long weekend and I’ll see you on Monday. That will give us three days before the first night.”
“Thank goodness,” cried Marcia, “I can have a good morning’s sleep again.”
“Tell you what,” suggested Timothy to Lyn, “I’m going down to stay at Roehampton with some friends. Why don’t you come down tomorrow and we can go swimming in the pool?”
They spent a lazy day in the sun, reading and dozing, eating sandwiches and drinking fizzy lemonade, and plunging into the pool at intervals to cool their sunburnt limbs. The sun soothed and drugged them into forgetfulness of all the ordeals of the next week. They repeated the day’s programme on the two following days, and it seemed as if they had never done anything but lounge in the sun.
“Oh, this is the life for me!” cried Timothy, stretching and wiggling his toes ecstatically. “When you’ve made my fortune for me in this play I shall spend the winter in the South of France.”
“Gosh,” said Lynette, “I’m so sunburnt I shall hardly need any make-up. I’m afraid I shan’t look as pale and ethereal as I should. In fact, I shall be a somewhat lobster-tinted ingénue.”
When she returned to No. 37 on Sunday night she suddenly had a feeling that she had forgotten her lines, and had a hurried study to reassure herself.
Monday began a very busy week. The costumes were brought round to the theatre for a final fitting under the lights, so that De Whit could alter any effects that he did not care for. There was slight trouble because Lynette was wearing a pale green dress when Marcia was also wearing green.
“Quite impossible,” said Marcia in a final tone. “There’s enough green already with me wearing it all the time. No-one else can possibly wear it.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” agreed De Whit. “But what can we do? Either she has to wear the same dress as in the previous scene, or she’ll have to get something ready-made.” At last the couturier agreed to get another dress made hurriedly for Lynette, exactly the same, but in pale mauve.
There were photographs to be brought to hang outside the theatre, her make-up to be looked over and her dressing-room equipped. She had a charming little room on the second
floor with yellow walls and chintzy curtains. Round the mirror she pinned a photo of the Blue Door Theatre, her favourite Van Gogh, and a portrait of Ellen Terry. She bought a little pink cloth for the dressing-table, and was rather rash over a new house coat to match the room. When it was all ready, with her make-up laid out on the table, and Ellen smiling down benignly, she walked slowly round it with her hands clasped in joy. Catching sight of her ecstatic face in the mirror she laughed aloud.
“A dressing-room—a dressing-room all of my own!” She remembered the crowded dressing-rooms at the Academy, on the schools tour, and at Tutworth Wells, where somebody else’s make-up was constantly getting mixed up with hers, and a favourite stick of make-up apt to disappear if left lying about for a second. Her dresser was to be Mrs. White, a sweet, grey-haired old lady, who seemed so old that Lynette felt that she could never let her wait on her. Mrs. White was very much touched by Lynette’s enthusiasm.
“Ah, yes,” she sighed, “I remember how excited I was before my first London first night.”
“You—you were on the stage?”
“Yes, Miss Darwin. Many years ago, of course. On the musical side. A dancer, I was.” It was hard to imagine that the stiff old limbs beneath the faded black dress had ever been filled with music.
“And I?” thought Lynette. “What is there to stop me ending up as a dresser?” And she looked around her room again with more sober eyes.
On Tuesday, the day before the dress rehearsal, they went straight through the play in the morning and afternoon, and were given all day Wednesday off. The set was to be put up during the day, and at six-thirty the dress rehearsal would commence. It was to be a semi-public affair, with an audience of friends and relations especially invited.
“Sort of trying it out on the dog,” as De Whit put it. Lynette had invited Helen, Mrs. Bosham, and Miss Smith and Mrs. Bertram from the Academy. Mr. Whitfield and Roma Seymore would be at the first night.
On Wednesday morning Lynette stayed in bed very late, and Mrs. Bosham brought her up an egg for her breakfast.
“Must fatten you up,” she said.
“For the kill,” added Lyn mentally in a morbid manner. She played soothing records on the gramophone, but her stomach was turning over with nerves.
“Tonight is really as bad as the first night,” she thought, “but thank goodness the Press isn’t being allowed in until tomorrow.”
She got up in time for a rather dreary lunch, with Mrs. Bosham telling her stories of plays which she had seen that had been booed off. The one bright spot was the arrival of an illustrated magazine containing a lovely “candid camera” photo of a rehearsal at the St. Christopher’s, showing De Whit explaining something to Marcia, Lynette, and Vivian Conroy. The caption underneath said, “Producer Duncan De Whit discusses a tricky point with his stars, Marcia Meredith, Vivian Conroy, and Lynette Darwin.” Marcia was leaning on Lynette’s shoulder in a friendly manner.
“Gosh, I must send this home,” thought Lynette.
In the afternoon Lyn went to the theatre to take a few more oddments for the dressing-room. On the stairs she bumped into Joan, and they went out to have tea together.
“I do envy you your part,” exclaimed Joan over waffles and ice-cream. “It’s so compact and dramatic. Mine is so ragged. I keep popping on and popping off.”
“It’s a lovely part,” Lynette agreed soberly. “If only I can do justice to the play—and to Timothy.”
“Don’t let Marcia intimidate you,” said Joan. “She’s inclined to over-shadow you, you know.”
“But of course!” cried Lynette. “She’s supposed to. She couldn’t help doing so.”
“But don’t let her have it all her own way,” insisted Joan, and Lynette thought this over carefully. Perhaps she was a little colourless beside Marcia’s verve and brilliancy!
Back in the theatre she pottered round the dressing-room until it was time to make up and get dressed for the first act. Her pale mauve frock was the most beautiful garment she had ever worn, and she surveyed herself almost with awe. She didn’t look like Lynette, the untidy schoolgirl, nor Lynette dressed up for a Blue Door show, nor like the typical Academy student. She looked like—
“Why, yes, of course—I look like Nita!”
She thought about her part as hard as she could and then Timothy knocked and came in, and started getting her in a dither because he was so nervous himself. At last she said, “Timothy, please go. I’ve got to go on that stage and act tonight—not you, so please keep your nerves to yourself.” And she bundled him out of the door. “Good luck, dear,” he shouted as she shut it.
Her dresser did the back of her hair for her, “overture and beginners” was called, and Lynette ran down the stone stairs. The rest of the company were in the wings all looking surprisingly more handsome and pretty with their make-up on. Marcia looked absolutely ravishing, and was laughing and joking as if entirely carefree. Only the cigarette that trembled between her fingers gave her away.
“It’s only a dress rehearsal,” they kept assuring each other. “Nothing to be worried about. No-one important in front at all.” And yet they patted their hair and rearranged their dresses, and paced up and down the set with peculiarly hunted expressions. The set was beautiful; creamy white, and so solid-looking that it was difficult to believe it was only canvas and wood. De Whit came up and gave them a few bits of last-minute advice and then departed to watch from the front. The panatrope played a few bars of overture, and the heavy curtains slid apart and up. Lynette was not on until half-way through the first scene. She stood with Vivian Conroy in the wings, listening to the appreciative chuckles from the audience at the witty lines.
“Doesn’t an audience make a difference?” he remarked.
“And don’t they love Marcia?” said Lynette. “What a round she got on her entrance!”
Lyn’s cue came nearer. She had feared that the enormity of appearing on the stage of the St. Christopher’s would overpower her and she would find herself tonguetied and helpless as in so many nightmares, but once she was on, the weeks of rehearsal made it seem as normal as walking on to the stage of the Pavilion, Tutworth Wells, or of the Academy theatre. Immediately she sensed the friendliness of the audience, and knew that she had created a good impression. This first scene was happy and amusing, with the relationship between mother and daughter quite carefree. Lyn was happy, bubbling over with joy inside her, and her nervousness gone. Behind the layers of other important thoughts in her mind—carefulness for her moves and voice and thoughts belonging to the part—there was a little phrase that kept cropping up, “At last I’m where I’ve always wanted to be. I must make the most of it.” And she did, getting every ounce that there was to be extracted from her part, matching up to Marcia in quality and strength. It was as if the steps of a difficult dance had suddenly become easy to her. It was like suddenly learning to swim or to ride a bicycle. At the end of the scene, when the curtain had fallen, Marcia kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“Good little creature,” she purred. “But be careful not to upstage me, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Sorry,” said Lyn, dancing off to change into her next dress.
“It’s going lovely,” her dresser told her, waddling about the room fetching and carrying. “Watched some of it from the flies. You were a real treat.”
The next scene was somewhat more emotional, and Lyn had to get rid of some of the buoyancy that she was feeling. She sat in a corner before her entrance and tried to think of awful things, of how she would feel if the same situation occurred between herself and her own mother. She was thinking so hard that her cue came before she was really ready for it, and she had almost to run to get on to the stage in time. The audience were hushed and still during this scene as the true nature of the woman Marcia was portraying became apparent. Occasionally someone made a little exclamation at some of the more pointed lines. Lyn had a rather long speech of which she had been frightened, but it went without a hitch. Her last line cam
e:
“Well, Mother, is it peace or war?”
“War,” was Marcia’s almost inaudible reply as she stubbed out her cigarette and the curtain fell. The first act was safely over.
De Whit bounced round and said it was going over wonderfully well.
“Keep it up, boys and girls, and we’ve got a sure success.”
When Lynette had changed into her pale blue suit for the second act Timothy came in, pink to the ears with excitement. “It’s terrific. You’re stupendous. It’s amazing,” was all that he could say.
The second act was the most difficult of the three. Lynette had a rather tricky love scene with Vivian Conroy, who, although handsome, was not a good actor, but tonight he outshone himself, and as they made their exit together there was a spontaneous round of applause.
In the third act Lyn had a quick change from a dressing-gown and pyjamas into a coat and hat, and this she had to do in a little quick-change room at the side of the stage. She had been scared of this for a long time, for she had had so little rehearsal with the actual garments. But Mrs. White was a tower of strength, fastening her up and tidying her hair. There was even time to repowder before entering for her longest and most emotional scene. In this scene Marcia was truly the “viper” of the title. In her slim-fitting green dress she was incredibly serpentine, and Lynette was filled with an almost genuine fear and horror at her raging temper. The scene mounted up to a crescendo of hysterics. Tonight it was easy for Lyn. She was so strung up that any outlet was a relief. She sobbed and screamed in the complete abandon that De Whit had bullied and pleaded out of her. When the curtain fell she was almost exhausted. The remaining scene was one of pathos and aftermath. The dispirited, dejected little figure in a grey dress as she wandered round the empty room after her mother had gone, saying “Mother” over and over again brought a flutter of handkerchiefs and a burst of applause at the final curtain.