Love, Again

At rehearsals that week she missed Stephen, but she rang him or he rang her to find out how they were going. Meanwhile she sat by Henry, or rather by his chair while he was working with the actors. If Henry did actually arrive back to sit down for a moment, he was off again after whispering a word or two, usually a joke. This was becoming their style: they jested. Yet he felt threatened. For he must: she could see herself, that watchful (that maternal) presence, making notes. And she was still at work on the lyrics, if that was the word for them, for often the actors said something, improvised, suggested changes. She was needed here: she had to reassure herself because she knew how very much she did not want to leave. Julie had her in thrall. A sweet insidious deceptiveness seemed now to be the air she breathed, and if it was a poison, she did not care.

The actors all came to sit by her, in Henry's empty chair, or in Stephen's, but she soon saw that Bill was there oftener than any of them. This gift of his for establishing instant intimacy — she felt she had known the young man for years. But she was not the only one being offered his charm. He seemed to be making a gift of himself to everyone. During this first week, which was devoted to the first act, the handsome lieutenant Paul had to dominate: he was in nearly every scene. And his part was so sympathetic, for he was so innocently as well as so madly in love with Julie. From the moment he first saw Julie standing by her harp, he was in a fever, not only of love, but the intoxication of the discovery of his own tenderness. The apprentice loves of young men tend to be brutal. He was truly convinced of their happiness once they reached France, and did not know it was an idyll possible only in Martinique, in this artificial and romantic setting, with its outsize butterflies, its brilliant birds, its languorous flowers and insinuating breezes. He forgot that it had been not his but Julie's idea to run away, taking their idyll with them. The young man simply shone with the confidence of love, its triumphs, its discoveries, and this was not only during Paul's scenes with Molly, where the two were entirely professional, making the jokes about their passion necessary to defuse those stormy love scenes. And yet, more than once, Sarah had caught him glancing at herself while he was making love to Molly, a quick hard calculating look from a world far from the simplicities of sympathy they enjoyed when he sat chatting in a chair beside her. He wanted to know if she was affected by him. Well, she was. But so was everybody else. Sally, that handsome black lady, who always wore an air of sceptical worldly wisdom and a sweet derisive worldly smile, a woman who commanded attention even when she sat knitting in a chair offstage (not one to waste time, she knitted not only for her family but for sale to a certain very expensive shop) — Sally watched Bill Collins with exactly the same fatalistic short laugh and shrug that, as Julie's mother, she allowed herself when first observing her daughter's passion for Paul. She and Sarah exchanged glances of female appreciation for the young man, but they were critical too, because he was so conscious of his looks and so skilled at using them. Well, good luck to him, those looks said. The other females present were the same. Mary Ford and Molly (as Molly) caught each other's eyes and grimaced: no, he is really altogether too much.

He continued to pay Sarah a much more than professional attention. Several times, Henry, returning to his station to check notes or even to rest for a moment, had smilingly to ask him to vacate his chair. Then Bill gracefully and modestly got up, and brought Stephen's chair closer to Sarah and sat in it.

There was no doubt he genuinely liked her. Perhaps a little more? He looked at her, when she was not looking at him, in ways she remembered (had to make herself remember, for she had so thoroughly put all that behind her). He made excuses to touch her. She was flattered, amused, and curious. If she wanted to be cynical, then her possibilities for doing him good professionally were not large. The Green Bird was not such a big deal for an actor who — he allowed them to know, but without boasting — was in demand. Though not always for parts he respected.

At the end of the first week this incident occurred: Bill had been sitting by Sarah, and they had been chatting in their way of easy intimacy, when he was summoned by Henry to go through a certain scene again. Sarah watched how he positioned himself by Molly in order to rehearse the moment when they finally decided to run away. They had — naturally — to embrace. First they looked long into each other's eyes, braving the future. Then Paul ran his hand from Julie's shoulders to her buttocks. Rather, Bill ran his hand from Molly's shoulder to her buttocks. For this quick movement was absolutely not impersonal and professional, but intimate and sexual, with something brutal about it. This slithering insinuating caress was calculated. Sarah saw how he sent her, Sarah, a swift diagnostic glance to see if she had been watching, had seen, had been affected. She had, and so had Molly, who went stiff under that skilled caress, took a step backwards, and then, as Julie, moved forward into an embrace that had again become professional. But Molly's look at Bill had been everything that was not professional. She had fallen in love, or in lust, instantly, because of that infinitely skilled and promising caress. Her body had burst into flames, had filled with need, and as she stepped back out of the embrace, her face, turned up to the triumphant (he could not hide it) young man, confessed to him, Yes, here I am.

Sarah did not like what she herself had felt.

She did not waste time saying it was absurd, for that went without saying. That weekend she was forced to acknowledge she had fallen a little in love with the young man. He had certainly taken enough trouble to make sure that she did. This was probably his way of dealing with life. By now she knew his story well. His mother was the centre of his life, they were close. The father was… 'Well, he's a coper,' Bill had said, laughing. ' 'E's a coper, aren't we all, just a coper, after all,' sang Bill, to the tune of 'I'm a Dreamer', inside his cockney persona, which apparently went with moments when he felt threatened. And then, seeing she had comprehended more than he had wanted, he said, sardonic, intimate, reckless, 'Yes, tha's i', inni, tha's 'ow i' is, awlri'.' And he danced a few steps, his long legs, in pale blue jeans, and his whole body as satirical as his face. But for one flash of a moment he had a crumpled look, and she could see where, in thirty or forty years' time (but probably sooner if the signs were there already), that beautiful face would crease and wrinkle. American Molly, American Henry, intrigued with this little cockney act, had clapped and demanded more, and Bill obliged with a repertoire of cockney songs, first — of course — 'She Was Poor but She Was Honest', making Molly sing it with him, so that the two clowned together.

It seemed to Sarah certain that this young man had had to survive a childhood — but then, who does not? — and had found very young that he had this lucky gift of good looks and — even more potent — instant sympathy. Self-doubt, weakness, discouragements, could be silenced because he could make people fall in love with him.

Perhaps the pleasure of any new company of people, particularly in the theatre, is simply this, that the families, the mothers and fathers, the wives and husbands and girlfriends and boyfriends, the siblings and the children, are somewhere else, are in another life. Each individual is sharply herself, himself, is simply there. That leech, that web, that box of distorting mirrors, is out of sight. The strings we dance to are invisible. But already — and it had only been a few days — two of the men here were no longer magnificently themselves. She could see the puppet strings only too clearly, though she did not want to. And Stephen? It occurred to her that she had known Stephen for weeks, could call him friend, could say they were intimates, yet while she observed how he was pulled and tugged by something deadly, she could not see the strings.