Bethel Merriday

XIV

During the week of July 11th, while Nile Sanderac was playing Candida in the evenings, Bethel was rehearsing for Stage Door, along with the whole stock company, all the apprentices, and a few summerite outsiders from Grampion Centre, so large was the cast.

It was the first time that she had ever played with professional actors, the first time she had tried to play comedy, the first time she had had, to devour and treasure, real professional typed 'sides' instead of a book; and in all, the first time she had been entirely away from the pleasing school of extempore acting, as demonstrated in Russian schools, in Point Royal College, and on the bench in the Prindles' garage in Sladesbury.

Andy was David and Mahala was Terry in Stage Door; Iris was the Kaye who committed suicide; Toni was Jean Maitland, who went to Hollywood; Pete Chew was the Texas student of acting; while Harry Mihick suffered clear down to the bottom of his sensitive boots as the coloured houseman.

Bethel's own role was that of Bernice Niemeyer, the curiosity-driven girl who was the pest of the theatrical boarding-house. She was glad that it wasn't merely a pretty ingénue part. She would have to represent a person as alien to herself as Cleopatra, and that was the training for which she longed.

She had heard from Doc Keezer an old stock-company belief that an actor ought not to learn his part before rehearsals, but during them, so that he might tie up lines and business. But two days before the terrifying Tuesday morning when they ran through Stage Door, in the orchestra pit, in front of the Candida set that stared down superciliously at their ragged beginnings, Bethel knew all of the Bernice part, and she had studied such speeches as 'I'd rather go out with the handsome one' as though they were the last words of Fanny Kemble . . . She was Bernice, sharp-nosed and brassy and a little touching in her predestined failure. When Toni demanded, 'Shove over the box of shredded hay' at Monday-morning breakfast, Bethel looked sleepily at her, sighed and murmured, 'With the handsome one'.

Whatever she did, remembering the stripes and afflictions she had borne over Nora, Bethel was not going to overplay the role. Her chief concern was that she had the very first speech, opening the play.

All Saturday night she worked with the other apprentices removing the Night of January 16th set and erecting that of Candida--good work, for all its weariness; laughing and clattering on and off the stage together; the boys in undershirts and belted trousers, their shoulders glittering with sweat, the girls in slacks or babyish gingham rompers, allowed to stay up till dawn, feeling that they were doing something pioneering, something important for the drama; never stopping their boasting about what great actors they were going to be, and swapping faith for faith. Yet again on Monday night, after the Candida opening, Bethel stayed up till three, studying her part at the dormitory dining table, under one economical light (Roscoe saw to that), her legs twisted around a table leg, her small tongue poked out of the corner of her small red mouth. She was, in fact, so thorough about it that when she came to the first rehearsal of Stage Door, at ten on Tuesday, she couldn't remember a word, and had to read her part, like all the others.

At the beginning of the play, set in the jumbled living-room of a boarding-house for girl aspirants, one Olga is at the piano. The busily intrusive Bernice stops her letter-writing to ask about the music. So, beginning the rehearsal, looking not at Olga but at Mr. Roscoe Valentine, who sat in the front row of the orchestra, scratching one fat calf, his usual resemblance to a ripe olive heightened by a dark green hunting jacket, Bethel gave her first line, 'What's that you're playing?' like a plunging sparrow beholding a very small worm. All the while she sat rigid at the writing desk . . . She wasn't overplaying this!

Roscoe bellowed.

Usually, Roscoe would only squeak, pipe, pullulate, whine, whimper, bleat, blat or blether, but this was a man-sized bellow.

'Bethel, have you by any chance looked at the role you're supposed to play? Have you taken one single moment from the golden joys of swimming and amorous dalliance to read maybe a couple of Bernice's speeches? Did anyone tell you that they can be procured in manuscript, all nicely typed? Also in book form, at all literary emporia? Have you looked at the play? Do you even know which character you are, by the wisdom of Mr. Deacon and Miss Sample and myself, elected to portray?'

'I know it by heart.' Bethel wasn't sure whether she sounded dangerous or blubbering. She felt both.

'Then you have no excuse. Or maybe no heart. Now let's save a lot of time at the beginning, by getting your concept of the part right. Bernice is supposed to be an active, inquisitive busybody--a sort of oversized blue jay. When you give your line--what is it?--"What's that you're playing?"--make it as fresh and irritating as you can. And don't sit there lolling. Get up. Make a cross. Look at Olga's music, over her shoulder. Breathe down her neck. Make yourself as generally objectionable as you can. Understand?'

'Yes, sir, I'll try to be very objectionable.'

'On-stage, I meant.'

Roscoe Valentine was a skyrocket; heated-looking for a time, but cooling with celerity. For the first three or four out of the twelve half-day rehearsal periods (including dress rehearsal, on Sunday evening) he was savagely on time, and fussy as a watchmaker. He would spend ten minutes in discussing whether, in view of the fact that she was later to commit suicide, it would be more significant for Kaye Hamilton--that is, Iris Pentire--to turn right or left, when she sat down.

But each day Roscoe was later at rehearsals, each day he was angrier when actors were even later than himself. By the end of the week, when an actor would ask, 'Don't you think I ought to cross here?' or 'What about my standing up before I answer?' Roscoe would clasp his breast and moan, 'Hasn't anybody told you the news? We're not rehearsing ten weeks! We're playing stock, with six days for rehearsal! I'm directing for tempo and mood, not for business. Can't you work out anything for yourself?'

At his best, Roscoe could take out enough time in explaining that he hadn't enough time for directing to have directed a mystery melodrama.

Yet, with it all, Bethel learned more about the drama than she had in four years of college library and of Miss Bickling. The week was an idyll. Whatever foam from Roscoe had to be wiped away, she was working with professional actors: Andy, Mahala, Clara Ribbons, Doc Keezer, Tudor Blackwall, Maggie Sample. Whenever she was sent up to Grampion Centre on an errand, though the bright waters and dancing boats in the harbour beckoned, and the fresh watery odour, she hastened back to the dark interior of the scrubby theatre--a sacred chamber more illuminated than the sun-washed ocean. Through the open doors she could see one gay little pine tree against blue open sky. She felt that it was her friend, her totem, and for her, just now, it was forest enough.

The whole business of rehearsal had an exasperated fascination. She had early noted that the actors who had the fewest lines were those who were least likely to be ready for entrance, and that the less they had to memorize, the less likely they were to know it. Clara Ribbons never fully knew her lines till the Wednesday of actual playing--with the pleasant result that she threw everybody who played with her.

Bethel had resolved not to be one of these slovenly work-men, doomed to dreariness, and yet--you waited so long for your line to come; you sat out on the step, sniffing the air; someone came and spoke to you; or perhaps, alone, you were going over and over, over and over just the line you were waiting to give, and then, in horror, you heard Roscoe yelping, 'Bernice! Where the hell is Bernice? She's on now!' And you bolted into the rehearsal space so rattled that you forgot the line that you had been repeating till you knew it better than your own name! And Roscoe scowled, as you stammered and felt sick and could remember nothing at all. And Fletcher's kind voice gave you the first words, and you said, 'Oh, of course!' And afterward, you laid your forehead on your elbow on the upright piano and looked as though you were weeping, but you were again repeating the line--over and over, over and over.

The acutest twinge of rehearsals, always, was to be going on smoothly, feeling that you were giving a speech perfectly, really becoming Bernice Niemeyer, and then to be jerked out of the superreality of the actor's unreality by Roscoe's sharp, 'All right! We'll go back to David's entrance again'. That was like stubbing your toe when running. And you stumbled thus, and your heart stopped, twenty times an hour.

But the moment came, the last day, when you weren't saying lines, weren't rehearsing, but playing, lost, absorbed, and that was the second when you left the earth and were flying.

During rehearsals the democratic comradeship of the theatre was at its surest. While they were awaiting their scenes, they sat back together, young and old, veteran and raw apprentice; Andy in white flannel trousers unelegantly extended over the top of a seat; Doc Keezer, as the Dr. Randall of the play (he would always be playing doctors and ministers), sitting back with closed eyes, so indifferent to everything but his own lines that it is doubtful whether he knew what any of the play was about; Iris with a small, set, misty smile ignoring the fact that Pete Chew was gaping wistfully at her from the circle of Toni, Tudor Blackwall, Mahala and Cy Fickerty, who were squatting on the stage and shooting craps, while Harry Mihick looked on them in sorrow at such desecration.

At rehearsals they were given to fantastic clothes: Walter Rolf to overalls, sneakers and a lumberman's green-and-yellow flannel shirt; Tudor Blackwall to mauve or maroon lounging pyjamas. But whatever they wore, almost every man carried his brown-covered part in his back pocket.

They were all serious children; very childish, very serious, and apparently the only people still existent, in a world of Hitler and Buchmanism, who enjoyed life. At every mistake, at every dropped line, they laughed, and laughed together. And together they shared the one, profoundest misery that a rehearsing actor could know: that in a wooden summer theatre you were not permitted to smoke. Oh, you did smoke, of course, and flattened the butts with your toe, and kicked them under chairs, but it took away the relaxation.

All over the theatre grounds, as they lay studying lines or reading Steinbeck and Hemingway and Noel Coward or plain sleeping and acquiring a sun tan, and at rehearsals, when they sat slouching on their shoulder blades, listening, there was a flaunting of brown legs of girls in shorts, but they were very nice legs, and so numerous that they became as modest as noses. Some of the students were aloof and arty, but most times they were a gay crew--shouting at each other when they met for rehearsals, goading those who were late--Pete Chew had the disease of chronic, inevitable lateness--smiling generously when a speech had been said with spirit, and fiendishly when an apprentice had earnestly given the line 'How do you justify your terms?' as 'How do you tustify your germs?'

With the most beautiful, baby-like absence of self-consciousness, they were to be seen standing in corners, glaring at a wall, and to it addressing hysterical lines of love. At rehearsals the actor tossed an entirely imaginary cloak about his shoulders as though it were heavy brocade, courteously removed a hat made of air, and seriously set out on a suppositious table a non-existent dinner, after sedulously cooking it on a kitchen range that was a chair. In everything was the spirit of children's play--not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.

She was rehearsing with Andy! She had a scene with Andy alone!

He came on as the young movie producer--not only handsome and rich but the donor of jobs; and as the desperately pretentious job hunter, she pretended not to see him, preened herself, and babbled to an imaginary auditor offstage: 'Yes, Mattie, an actress's life is such an interesting one. . . . For example, an English actress came into the office to-day. "My dear Harry, how definitely ripping to see you. Definitely ripping!"'

She worked desperately at acting Bernice desperately misacting an Englishwoman, and when (on the stage!) Andy looked at her with irritated pity, she was content.

Their relationship had now progressed so far that Andy usually remembered her name.

The company were beginning to pair off: Andy and Mahala, Doc Keezer and Clara Ribbons. Walter Rolf and Marian Croy read plays aloud; Roscoe Valentine and Tudor Blackwall and Bruce Pasture were usually together; and Bethel and Fletcher Hewitt, who was as busy with script at rehearsals as he was with off-stage noises and curtains during performances, were accepted as uninspired friends. The only active triangle was of Pete Chew and Toni Titmus and Iris Pentire.

Mr. Chew was a fool and Mr. Chew was noisy, but Mr. Chew had a kind heart and lots of money. And Toni seemed to have a good time with him and to like his dancing. It is doubtful if Iris ever thought of having a good time; in her spun-glass quietness she cared for nothing more vulgar than being admired. With Pete, as with Cy Fickerty and Walter Rolf and Fletcher and Bruce Pasture, she was always delicately amused, waiting, unmoving.

Whenever Pete invited Iris to a dance--that must have been, on an average, nine times a week--she refused with pallid sweetness, 'Oh, not to-night, I think, but it's so kind of you'. Whereas Toni always accepted, and always accepted with a whoop of 'Oh boy, ask me, ask me!' So, naturally, Pete fell out of love with Toni and into love with Iris, as devastatingly as he had fallen in love with Bethel, long, long ago--days and days ago. He gaped at Iris during rehearsals; he lolled at her delicate feet on the shoreward rocks; and when she fluted such revelations as 'I think committing suicide on the stage is quite dramatic, don't you?' Pete rumbled, 'It certainly is--you bet your life--it certainly is!'

What the feline Iris would do with her plump boy-mouse, Bethel did not know. Perhaps Iris herself did not know. Perhaps Iris merely enjoyed waiting and stretching her claws and feeling the quickness in them.

Gravely tearing a lobster claw to pieces, at the Lobster Pot, where the Nutmeg apprentices swarmed after the evening show to drink beer and coffee and to play that monstrous form of charades called 'The Game', Fletcher Hewitt studied Bethel, and said slowly:

'Pete--Iris--Mahala--all those amateurs--they spend too much time working up an artificial sex stimulation. It takes up the energy they ought to give to acting. I think you're free of it.'

'So are you,' said Bethel.

'Me? Huh! I have to be. I have my mother to support--bless her. Beth! Are you falling for Andy Deacon?'

'How ridiculous!'

'Why are you?'

'Oh, you know. He's so lovely and childish and beaming.'

'He's a nice fellow, Andy, for a rich young man, and he might be a fair actor if he ever got any training. But you better duck under shelter when he turns on that golden smile of his. All you kids fall for it. But it's no use.'

'I know, Fletcher.'

'In fact some day, Beth, when you and I have been sufficiently licked in this insane gamble of the theatre, we'll retire and get married and go keep a summer hotel. That'll give us enough people to fool with. Okay?'

'Yes, okay, Fletcher.'

She wasn't sure but that both of them half meant it.

Between them, Bethel and Cynthia Aleshire made much of the Bernice Niemeyer costumes, and Bethel was so excited by them that she forgot her meals . . . well, she forgot one meal. Bernice was to flaunt sleazy satin frocks and to paint her face like a gasoline pump.

When, at the dress rehearsal on Sunday evening, Bethel stood up from the desk to reveal herself in an apricot-coloured tea gown, with purple panels, slightly torn, with a chain of carved imitation-ivory beads, a chain of crimson glass beads, a chain of coins, a souvenir bracelet hung with small silver animals, and a broad chased bracelet of plated silver, with her lips widened and (under Cynthia's tutorship) her temples and cheeks hollowed, she received a tiny hand of applause from the Grampion theatre sponsors, and she heard Roscoe whimper to Cynthia, 'Why, she looks the part pretty well'.

Ah, that was heavenly praise! Ah, that was praise enough for Bernhardt! Dear youth!