Night at the Vulcan

Chapter I THE VULCAN

As she turned into Carpet Street the girl wondered at her own obstinacy. To what a pass it had brought her, she thought. She lifted first one foot and then the other, determined not to drag them. They felt now as if their texture had changed: their bones, it seemed, were covered by sponge and burning wires.

A clock in a jeweller’s window gave the time as twenty-three minutes to five. She knew by the consequential scurry of its second-hand that it was alive. It was surrounded by other clocks that made mad dead statements of divergent times as if, she thought, to set before her the stages of that day’s fruitless pilgrimage. Nine o’clock, the first agent. Nine thirty-six, the beginning of the wait for auditions at the Unicorn; five minutes past twelve, the first dismissal. “Thank you, Miss — ah— Thank you, dear. Leave your name and address. Next, please.” No record of her flight from the smell of restaurants, but it must have been about ten to two, a time registered by a gilt carriage-clock in the corner, that she had climbed the stairs to Garnet Marks’s Agency on the third floor. Three o’clock exactly at the Achilles where the auditions had already closed, and the next hour in and out of film agencies. “Leave your picture if you like, dear. Let you know if there’s anything.” Always the same. As punctual as time itself. The clocks receded, wobbled, enlarged themselves and at the same time spread before their dials a tenuous veil. Beneath the arm of a bronze nude that brandished an active swinging dial, she caught sight of a face: her own. She groped in her bag, and presently in front of the mirrored face a hand appeared and made a gesture at its own mouth with the stub of a lipstick. There was a coolness on her forehead, something pressed heavily against it. She discovered that this was the shop-window.

Behind the looking-glass was a man who peered at her from the shop’s interior. She steadied herself with her hand against the window, lifted her suitcase and turned away.

The Vulcan Theatre was near the bottom of the street. Although she did not at first see its name above the entry, she had, during the past fortnight, discovered a sensitivity to theatres. She was aware of them at a distance. The way was downhill: her knees trembled and she resisted with difficulty an impulse to break into a shamble. Among the stream of faces that approached and sailed past there were now some that, on seeing hers, sharpened into awareness and speculation. She attracted notice.

The stage-door was at the end of an alleyway. Puddles of water obstructed her passage and she did not altogether avoid them. The surface of the wall was crenellated and damp.

“She knows,” a rather shrill uncertain voice announced inside the theatre, “but she mustn’t be told.” A second voice spoke unintelligibly. The first voice repeated its statement with a change of emphasis: “She knows but she mustn’t be told,” and after a further interruption added dismally: “Thank you very much.”

Five young women came out of the stage-door and it was shut behind them. She leant against the wall as they passed her. The first two muttered together and moved their shoulders petulantly, the third stared at her and at once she bent her head. The fourth passed by quickly with compressed lips. She kept her head averted and heard, but did not see, the last girl halt beside her.

“Well, for God’s sake!” She looked up and saw, for the second time that day, a too-large face, over-painted, with lips that twisted downwards, tinted lids, and thickly mascaraed lashes.

She said: “I’m late, aren’t I?”

“You’ve had it, dear. I gave you the wrong tip at Marks’s. The show here, with the part I told you about, goes on this week. They were auditioning for a tour— ‘That’ll be all for to-day, ladies, thank you. What’s the hurry, here’s your hat!’ For what it’s worth, it’s all over.”

“I lost my way,” she said faintly.

“Too bad.” The large face swam nearer. “Are you all right?” it demanded. She made a slight movement of her head. “A bit tired. All right, really.”

“You look shocking. Here: wait a sec. Try this.”

“No, no. Really. Thank you so much but—”

“It’s O.K. A chap who travels for a French firm gave it to me. It’s marvellous stuff: cognac. Go on.”

A hand steadied her head. The cold mouth of the flask opened her lips and pressed against her teeth. She tried to say: “I’ve had nothing to eat,” and at once was forced to gulp down a burning stream. The voice encouraged her: “Do you a power of good. Have the other half.”

She shuddered, gasped and pushed the flask away. “No, please!”

“Is it doing the trick?”

“This is wonderfully kind of you. I am so grateful. Yes, I think it must be doing the trick.”

“Gra-a-a-nd. Well, if you’re sure you’ll be O.K…”

“Yes, indeed. I don’t even know your name.”

“Trixie O’Sullivan.”

“I’m Martyn Tarne.”

“Look nice in the programme, wouldn’t it? If there’s nothing else I can do…”

“Honestly. I’ll be fine.”

“You look better,” Miss O’Sullivan said doubtfully. “We may run into each other again. The bloody round, the common task.” She began to move away. “I’ve got a date, actually, and I’m running late.”

“Yes, of course. Good-bye, and thank you.”

“It’s open in front. There’s a seat in the foyer. Nobody’ll say anything. Why not sit there for a bit?” She was half-way down the alley. “Hope you get fixed up,” she said. “God, it’s going to rain. What a life!”

“What a life,” Martyn Tarne echoed, and tried to sound gay and ironic.

“I hope you’ll be all right. ’Bye.”

“Good-bye and thank you.”

The alley was quiet now. Without moving she took stock of herself. Something thrummed inside her head and the tips of her fingers tingled but she no longer felt as if she were going to faint. The brandy glowed at the core of her being, sending out ripples of comfort. She tried to think what she should do. There was a church, back in the Strand: she ought to know its name. One could sleep there, she had been told, and perhaps there would be soup. That would leave two and fourpence for to-morrow: all she had. She lifted her suitcase — it was heavier than she had remembered — and walked to the end of the alleyway. Half a dozen raindrops plopped into a puddle. People hurried along the footpath with upward glances and opened their umbrellas. As she hesitated, the rain came down suddenly and decisively. She turned towards the front of the theatre and at first thought it was shut. Then she noticed that one of the plate-glass doors was ajar.

She pushed it open and went in.

The Vulcan was a new theatre, fashioned from the shell of an old one. Its foyer was an affair of geranium-red leather, chromium steel and double glass walls housing cacti. The central box-office, marked reserved tickets only, was flanked by doors and beyond them, in the comers, were tubular steel and rubber-foam seats. She crossed the heavily carpeted floor and sat in one of these. Her feet and legs, released from the torment of supporting and moving her body, throbbed ardently.

Facing Martyn, on a huge easel, was a frame of photographs under a printed legend:

She stared at two large familiar faces and four strange smaller ones. Adam Poole and Helena Hamilton: those were famous faces. Monstrously enlarged, they had looked out at the New Zealand and Australian public from hoardings and from above cinema entrances. She had stood in queues many times to see them, separately and together. They were in the centre, and surrounding them were Clark Bennington with a pipe and stick and a look of faded romanticism in his eyes, J. G. Darcey with pince-nez and hair en brosse, Gay Gainsford, young and intense, and Parry Percival, youngish and dashing. The faces swam together and grew dim.

It was very quiet in the foyer and beginning to get dark. On the other side of the entrance doors the rain drove down slantways, half-blinding her vision of homeward-bound pedestrians and the traffic of the street beyond them. She saw the lights go on in the top of a bus, illuminating the passive and remote faces of its passengers. The glare of headlamps shone pale across the rain. A wave of loneliness, excruciating in its intensity, engulfed Martyn and she closed her eyes. For the first time since her ordeal began, panic rose in her throat and sickened her. Phrases drifted with an aimless rhythm on the tide of her desolation: “You’re sunk, you’re sunk, you’re utterly sunk, you asked for it, and you’ve got it. What’ll happen to you now?”

She was drowning at night in a very lonely sea. She saw lights shine on some unattainable shore. Pieces of flotsam bobbed indifferently against her hands. At the climax of despair, metallic noises, stupid and commonplace, set up a clatter in her head.

Martyn jerked galvanically and opened her eyes. The whirr and click of her fantasy had been repeated behind an obscured-glass wall on her left. Light glowed beyond the wall and she was confronted by the image of a god, sand-blasted across the surface of the glass and beating at a forge under the surprising supervision, it appeared, of Melpomene and Thalia. Further along, a notice in red light, dress circle and stalls, jutted out from an opening. Beyond the hammer-blows of her heart a muffled voice spoke peevishly.

“… not much use to me. What? Yes, I know, old boy, but that’s not the point.”

The voice seemed to listen. Martyn thought: “This is it. In a minute I’ll be turned out.”

“… something pretty bad,” the voice said irritably. “She’s gone to hospital… They said so but nobody’s turned up… Well, you know what she’s like, old boy, don’t you? We’ve been snowed under all day and I haven’t been able to do anything about it… auditions for the northern tour of the old piece… yes, yes, that’s all fixed but… Look, another thing: the Onlooker wants a story and pictures for this week… yes, on stage. In costume. Nine-thirty in the morning and everything still in the boxes… Well, can’t you think of anyone?… Who?… Oh, God, I’ll give it a pop. All right, old boy, thanks.”

To Martyn, dazed with brandy and sleep, it was a distortion of a day-dream. Very often had she dreamt herself into a theatre where all was confusion because the leading actress had laryngitis and the understudy was useless. She would present herself modestly: “I happen to know the lines. I could perhaps…” The sudden attentiveness, when she began to speak the lines… the opening night… the grateful tears streaming down the boiled shirts of the management… the critics… no image had been too gross for her.

“Eileen?” said the voice. “Thank God! Listen, darling, it’s Bob Grantley here. Listen, Eileen, I want you to do something terribly kind. I know it’s asking a hell of a lot but I’m in trouble and you’re my last hope. Helena’s dresser’s ill. Yes, indeed, poor old Tansley. Yes, I’m afraid so. Just this afternoon, and we haven’t been able to raise anybody. First dress rehearsal tomorrow night and a photograph call in the morning and nothing unpacked or anything. I know what a good soul you are and I wondered… Oh, God! I see. Yes, I see. No, of course. Oh, well, never mind. I know you would. Yes. ’Bye.”

Silence. Precariously alone in the foyer, she meditated an advance upon the man beyond the glass wall and suppressed a dreadful impulse in herself towards hysteria. This was her day-dream in terms of reality. She must have slept longer than she had thought. Her feet were sleeping still. She began to test them, tingling and pricking, against the floor. She could see her reflection in the front doors, a dingy figure with a pallid face and cavernous shadows for eyes.

The light behind the glass wall went out. There was, however, still a yellow glow coming through the box-office door. As she got to her feet and steadied herself, the door opened.

“I believe,” she said, “you are looking for a dresser.”

As he had stopped dead in the lighted doorway she couldn’t see the man clearly but his silhouette was stocky and trim.

He said with what seemed to be a mixture of irritation and relief: “Good Lord, how long have you been here?”

“Not long. You were on the telephone. I didn’t like to interrupt.”

“Interrupt!” he ejaculated as if she talked nonsense. He looked at his watch, groaned, and said rapidly: “You’ve come about this job? From Mrs. Greenacres, aren’t you?”

She wondered who Mrs. Greenacres could be? An employment agent? She hunted desperately for the right phrase, the authentic language.

“I understood you required a dresser and I would be pleased to apply.” Should she have added “sir”?

“It’s for Miss Helena Hamilton,” he said rapidly. “Her own dresser who’s been with her for years — for a long time — has been taken ill. I explained to Mrs. Greenacres. Photograph call for nine in the morning and first dress rehearsal to-morrow night. We open on Thursday. The dressing’s heavy. Two quick changes and so on. I suppose you’ve got references?”

Her mouth was dry. She said: “I haven’t brought—” and was saved by the telephone bell. He plunged back into the office and she heard him shout “Vulcan!” as he picked up the receiver. “Grantley, here,” he said. “Oh, hullo, darling. Look, I’m desperately sorry, but I’ve been held up or I’d have rung you before. For God’s sake apologize for me. Try and keep them going till I get there. I know, I know. Not a smell of one until—” The voice became suddenly muffled: she caught isolated words. “I think so… yes, I’ll ask… yes… Right. ’Bye, darling.”

He darted out, now wearing a hat and struggling into a raincoat. “Look,” he said, “Miss—”

“Tarne.”

“Miss Tarne. Can you start right away? Miss Hamilton’s things are in her dressing-room. They need to be unpacked and hung out to-night. There’ll be a lot of pressing. The cleaners have been in but the room’s not ready. You can finish in the morning but she wants the things that can’t be ironed — I wouldn’t know — hung out. Here are the keys. We’ll see how you get on and fix up something definite to-morrow if you suit. The night-watchman’s there. He’ll open the room for you. Say I sent you. Here!”

He fished out a wallet, found a card and scribbled on it. “He’s a bit of a stickler: you’d better take this.”

She took the card and the keys. “To-night?” she said. “Now?”

“Well, can you?”

“I — yes. But—”

“Not worrying about after-hours are you?”

“No.”

For the first time he seemed, in the darkish foyer, to be looking closely at her. “I suppose,” he muttered, “it’s a bit—” and stopped short

Martyn said in a voice that to herself sounded half-choked: “I’m perfectly trustworthy. You spoke of references. I have—”

“Oh, yes, yes,” he said. “Good. That’ll be O.K. then. I’m late. Will you be all right? You can go through the house. It’s raining outside. Through there, will you? Thank you. Good night”

Taking up her suitcase, she went through the door he swung open and found herself in the theatre.

She was at the back of the stalls, standing on thick carpet at the top of the ramp and facing the centre aisle. It was not absolutely dark. The curtain was half-raised and a bluish light filtered in from off-stage through some opening — a faintly discerned window — in the scenery. This light was dimly reflected on the shrouded boxes. The dome was invisible, lost in shadow, and so far above that the rain, hammering on the roof beyond it, sounded much as a rumour of drums to Martyn. The deadened air smelt of naphthalene and plush.

She started off cautiously down the aisle. “I forgot,” said Mr. Grantley’s voice behind her. She managed to choke back a yelp. “You’d better get some flowers for the dressing-room. She likes roses. Here’s another card.”

“I don’t think I’ve—”

“Florian’s at the corner,” he shouted. “Show them the card.”

The door swung to behind him and a moment later she heard a more remote slam. She waited for a little while longer, to accustom herself to the dark. The shadows melted and the shape of the auditorium filtered through them like an image on a film in the darkroom. She thought it beautiful: the curve of the circle, the fan-like shell that enclosed it, the elegance of the proscenium and modesty of the ornament — all these seemed good to Martyn, and her growing sight of them refreshed her. Though this encouragement had an unreal, rather dream-like character, yet it did actually dispel something of her physical exhaustion so that it was with renewed heart that she climbed a little curved flight of steps on the Prompt side of the proscenium, pushed open the pass-door at the top and arrived backstage.

She was on her own ground. A single blue working-light, thick with dust, revealed a baize letter-rack and hinted at the batten-and-canvas backs of scenery fading upwards into yawning blackness. At her feet a litter of flex ran down into holes in the stage. There were vague, scarcely discernible shapes that she recognized as stacked flats, light bunches, the underside of perches, a wind machine and rain box. She smelt paint and glue size. As she received the assurance of these familiar signs she heard a faint scuffling noise — a rattle of paper, she thought. She moved forward.

In the darkness ahead of her a door opened on an oblong of light which widened to admit the figure of a man in an overcoat. He stood with bent head, fumbled in his pocket and produced a torch. The beam shot out, hunted briefly about the set and walls and found her. She blinked into a dazzling white disk and said: “Mr. Grantley sent me round. I’m the dresser.”

“Dresser?” the man said hoarsely. He kept his torchlight on her face and moved towards her. “I wasn’t told about no dresser,” he said.

She held Mr. Grantley’s card out. He came closer and flashed his light on it without touching it. “Ah,” he said with a sort of grudging cheerfulness, “that’s different. Now I know where I am, don’t I?”

“I hope so,” she said, trying to make her voice friendly. “I’m sorry to bother you. Miss Hamilton’s dresser has been taken ill and I’ve got the job.”

“Aren’t you lucky,” he said with obvious relish and added, “Not but what she isn’t a lady when she takes the fit for it.”

He was eating something. The movement of his jaws, the succulent noises he made and the faint odour of food were an outrage. She could have screamed her hunger at him. Her mouth filled with saliva.

“ ’E says to open the star room,” he said. “Come on froo while I get the keys. I was ’avin’ me bit er supper.”

She followed him into a tiny room choked with junk. A kettle stuttered on a gas ring by a sink clotted with dregs of calcimine and tea leaves. His supper was laid out on a newspaper — bread and an open tin of jam. He explained that he was about to make a cup of tea and suggested she should wait while he did so. She leant against the door and watched him. The fragrance of freshly brewed tea rose above the reek of stale size and dust. She thought, “If he drinks it now I’ll have to go out.”

“Like a drop of char?” he said. His back was turned to her.

“Very much.”

He rinsed out a stained cup under the tap.

Martyn said loudly: “I’ve got a tin of meat in my suitcase. I was saving it. If you’d like to share it and could spare some of your bread…”

He swung round and for the first time she saw his face. He was dark and thin and his eyes were brightly impertinent. Their expression changed as he stared at her.

“ ’Ullo, ’ullo!” he said. “Who give you a tanner and borrowed ’alf-a-crahn? What’s up?”

“I’m all right.”

“Are you? Your looks don’t flatter you, then.”

“I’m a bit tired and—” Her voice broke and she thought in terror that she was going to cry. “It’s nothing,” she said.

“ ’Ere!” He dragged a box out from under the sink and not ungently pushed her down on it. “Where’s this remarkable tin of very pertikler meat? Give us a shine at it.”

He shoved her suitcase over and while she fumbled at the lock busied himself with pouring out tea. “Nothin’ to touch a drop of the old char when you’re browned off,” he said. He put the reeking cup of dark fluid beside her and turned away.

“With any luck,” Martyn thought, folding back the garments in her case, “I won’t have to sell these now.”

She found the tin and gave it to him. “Coo!” he said. “Looks lovely, don’t it? Tongue and veal and a pitcher of sheep to show there’s no deception. Very tempting.”

“Can you open it?”

“Can I open it? Oh, dear.”

She drank her scalding tea and watched him open the tin and turn its contents out on a more dubious plate. Using his clasp knife he perched chunks of meat on a slab of bread and held it out to her. “You’re in luck,” he said. “Eat it slow.”

She urged him to join her but he said he would set his share aside for later. They could both, he suggested, take another cut at it to-morrow. He examined the tin with interest while Martyn consumed her portion. She had never before given such intense concentration to a physical act. She would never have believed that eating could bring so fierce a satisfaction.

“Comes from Australia, don’t it?” her companion said, still contemplating the tin.

“New Zealand.”

“Same thing.”

Martyn said: “Not really. There’s quite a big sea in between.”

“Do you come from there?”

“Where?”

“Australia.”

“No. I’m a New Zealander.”

“Same thing.”

She looked up and found him grinning at her. He made the gesture of wiping the smile off his face. “Oh, dear,” he said.

Martyn finished her tea and stood up. “I must start my job,” she said.

“Feel better?”

“Much, much better.”

“Would it be quite a spell since you ate anything?”

“Yesterday.”

“I never fancy drinkin’ on an empty stomach, myself.”

Her face burnt against the palms of her hands. “But I don’t… I mean, I know. I mean I was a bit faint and somebody… a girl… she was terribly kind…”

“Does yer mother know yer aht?” he asked ironically, and took a key from a collection hung on nails behind the door. “If you must work,” he said.

“Please.”

“Personally escorted tour abaht to commence. Follow in single file and don’t talk to the guide. I thank you.”

She followed him to the stage and round the back of the set. He warned her of obstructions by bobbing his torchlight on them and, when she stumbled against a muffled table, took her hand. She was disquieted by the grip of his fingers, calloused and wooden, and by the warmth of his palm, which was unexpectedly soft. She was oppressed with renewed loneliness and fear.

“End of the penny section,” he said, releasing her.

He unlocked a door, reached inside and switched on a light

“They call this the Greenroom,” he said. “That’s what it was in the old days. It’s been done up. Guv’nor’s idea.”

It was a room without a window, newly painted in green. There were a number of armchairs in brown leather, a round table littered with magazines, a set of well-stocked bookshelves and a gas fire. Groups of framed Pollock’s prints decorated the walls: “Mr. Dale as Claude Amboine.” “Mr. T. Hicks as Richard I.” “Mr. S. French as Harlequin.” This last enchanted Martyn because the diamonds of Mr. French’s costume had been filled in with actual red and green sequins and he glittered in his frame.

Above the fireplace hung a largish sketch — it was little more than that — of a man of about thirty-five in mediaeval dress, with a hood that he was in the act of pushing away from his face. The face was arresting. It had great purity of form, being wide across the eyes and heart-shaped. The mouth, in particular, was of a most subtle character, perfectly masculine but drawn with extreme delicacy. It was well done: it had both strength and refinement Yet it was not these qualities that disturbed Martyn. Reflected in the glass that covered the picture she saw her own face lying ghost-wise across the other; their forms intermingled like those in a twice-exposed photograph. It seemed to Martyn that her companion must be looking over her shoulder at this double image and she moved away from him and nearer to the picture. The reflection disappeared. Something was written faintly in one corner of the sketch. She drew closer and saw that it was a single word: Everyman.

“Spittin’ image of ’im, ain’t it?” said the night-watchman behind her.

“I don’t know,” she said quickly. “Is it?”

“Is it! Don’t you know the Guv’nor when you see ’im?”

“The Governor?”

“ ’Strewth you’re a caution and no error. Don’t you know who owns this show? That’s the great Mr. Adam Poole, that is.”

“Oh,” she murmured after a pause, and added uneasily: “I’ve seen him in the pictures, of course.”

“Go on!” he jeered. “Where would that be? Australia? Fancy!”

He had been very kind to her, but she found his remorseless vein of irony exasperating. It would have been easier and less tedious to have let it go but she found herself embarked on an explanation. Of course she knew all about Mr. Adam Poole, she said. She’d seen his photograph in the foyer. All his pictures had been shown in New Zealand. She knew he was the most distinguished of the younger contemporary actor-managers. She was merely startled by the painting because… But it was impossible to explain why the face in the painting disturbed her and the unfinished phrase trailed away into an embarrassed silence.

Her companion listened to this rigmarole with an equivocal grin and when she gave it up merely remarked: “Don’t apologize. It’s the same with all the ladies. ’E fair rocks ’em. Talk about ’aving what it takes.”

“I don’t mean that at all,” she shouted angrily.

“You should see ’em clawing at each other to get at ’im rahnd the stage-door, first nights. Something savage! Females of the speeches? Disgrace to their sexes more like. There’s an ironing board etceterer in the wardrobe-room further along. You can plug in when you’re ready. ’Er royal ’ighness is over the way.”

He went out, opened a further door, switched on a light and called to her to join him. g>

As soon as she crossed the threshold of the star dressing-room she smelt greasepaint. The dressing-shelf was bare, the room untenanted, but the smell of cosmetics mingled with the faint reek of gas. There were isolated dabs of colour on the shelves and the looking-glass; the lamp-bulbs were smeared with cream and red where sticks of greasepaint had been warmed at them; and on a shelf above the wash-basin somebody had left a miniature frying-pan of congealed mascara in which a hair-pin was embedded.

It was a largish room, windowless and dank, with an air of submerged grandeur about it. The full-length cheval-glass swung from a gilt frame. There was an Empire couch, an armchair and an ornate stool before the dressing-shelf. The floor was carpeted in red with a florid pattern that use had in part obliterated. A number of dress-boxes bearing the legend Costumes by Pierrot et Cie were stacked in the middle of the room, and there were two suitcases on the shelf. A gas heater stood against one wall and there was a caged jet above the wash-basin.

“Here we are,” said the night-watchman. “All yer own.”

She turned to thank him and encountered a speculative stare. “Cosy,” he said, “ain’t it?” and moved nearer. “Nice little hidey hole, ain’t it?”

“You’ve been very kind,” Martyn said. “I’ll manage splendidly, now. Thank you very much indeed.”

“Don’t mention it. Any time.” His hand reached out clumsily to her arm. “Been aht in the rain,” he said thickly. “Naughty girl.”

“It’ll soon dry off. I’m quite all right.”

She moved behind the pile of dress-boxes and fumbled with the string on the top one. There was a hissing noise. She heard him strike a match and a moment later was horribly jolted by an explosion from the gas heater. It forced an involuntary cry from her.

“ ’Ullo, ’ullo!” her companion said. “Ain’t superstitious, are we?”

“Superstitious?”

He made an inexplicable gesture towards the gas fire. “You know,” he said, grinning horridly at her.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand?”

“Don’t tell me you never ’eard abaht the great Jupiter case! Don’t they learn you nothing in them antypodes?”

The heater reddened and purred.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “it’d be before your time. I wasn’t ’ere myself when it occurred, a-course, but them that was don’t give you a chance to forget it. Not that they mention it direct-like, but it don’t get forgotten.”

“What was it?” Martyn asked against her will.

“Sure yer not superstitious?”

“No, I’m not”

“You ain’t been long in this business, then. Nor more am I. Shake ’ands.” He extended his hand so pointedly that she was obliged to put her own in it and had some difficulty in releasing herself.

“It must be five years ago,” he said, “all of that. A bloke in Number Four dressing-room did another bloke in, very cunning, by blowing dahn the tube of ’is own gas fire. Like if I went nex’ door and blew dahn the tube, this fire’d go aht. And if you was dead drunk, like you might of been if this girl-friend of yours’d been very generous with ’er brandy, you’d be commy-tose and before you knew where you was you’d be dead. Which is what occurred. It made a very nasty impression and the theatre was shut dahn for a long while until they ’ad it all altered and pansied up. The Guv’nor won’t ’ave it mentioned. ’E changed the name of the ’ouse when ’e took it on. But call it what you like, the memory, as they say, lingers on. Silly, though, ain’t it? You and me don’t care. That’s right, ain’t it? We’d rather be cosy. Wouldn’t we?” He gave a kind of significance to the word “cosy.” Martyn unlocked the suitcases. Her fingers were unsteady and she turned her back in order to hide them from him. He stood in front of the gas fire and began to give out a smell of hot dirty cloth. She took sheets from a suitcase, hung them under the clothes pegs round the walls, and began to unpack the boxes. Her feet throbbed cruelly and she surreptitioasly shuffled them out of her wet shoes.

“That’s the ticket,” he said. “Dry ’em orf, shall we?”

He advanced upon her and squatted to gather up the shoes. His hand, large and prehensile, with a life of its own, darted out and closed over her foot “ ’Ow abaht yer stockings?”

Martyn felt not only frightened but humiliated and ridiculous — wobbling, dead tired, on one foot. It was as if she were half-caught in some particularly degrading kind of stocks.

She said: “Look here, you’re a good chap. You’ve been terribly kind. Let me get on with the job.”

His grip slackened. He looked up at her without embarrassment, his thin London face sharp with curiosity. “O.K.,” he said. “No offence meant Call it a day, eh?”

“Call it a day.”

“You’re the boss,” he said, and got to his feet He put her shoes down in front of the gas fire and went to the door. “Live far from ’ere?” he asked. A feeling of intense desolation swept through her and left her without the heart to prevaricate.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got to find somewhere. There’s a women’s hostel near Paddington, I think.”

“Broke?”

“I’ll be all right, now I’ve got this job.”

His hand was in his pocket. “ ’Ere,” he said.

“No, no. Please.”

“Come orf it. We’re pals, ain’t we?”

“No, really. I’m terribly grateful but I’d rather not. I’m all right.”

“You’re the boss,” he said again, and after a pause: “I can’t get the idea, honest I can’t. The way you speak and be’ave and all. What’s the story? ’Ard luck or what?”

“There’s no story, really.”

“Just what you say yourself. No questions asked.”

He opened the door and moved into the passage. “Mind,” he said over his shoulder, “it’s against the rules but I won’t be rahnd again. My mate relieves me at eight ack emma but I’ll tip ’im the wink if it suits you. Them chairs in the Greenroom’s not bad for a bit of kip and there’s the fire. I’ll turn it on. Please yerself, a-course.”

“Oh,” she said, “could I? Could I?”

“Never know what you can do till you try. Keep it under your titfer, though, or I’ll be in trouble. So long. Don’t get down’earted. It’ll be all the same in a fahsand years.”

He had gone. Martyn ran into the passage and saw his torchlight bobbing out on the stage. She called after him: “Thank you — thank you so much! I don’t know your name, but thank you and good night.”

“Badger’s the name,” he said, and his voice sounded hollow in the empty darkness. “Call me Fred.”

The light bobbed out of sight. She heard him whistling for a moment and then a door slammed and she was alone.

With renewed heart she turned back to her job.

At ten o’clock she had finished. She had traversed with diligence all the hazards of fatigue: the mounting threat of sleep, the clumsiness that makes the simplest action an ordeal, the horror of inertia and the temptation to let go the tortured muscles and give up, finally and indifferently, the awful struggle.

Five carefully ironed dresses hung sheeted against the walls, the make-up was laid out on the covered dressing-shelf. The boxes were stacked away, the framed photographs set out. It only remained to buy roses in the morning for Miss Helena Hamilton. Even the vase was ready and filled with water.

Martyn leant heavily on the back of a chair and stared at two photographs of the same face in a double leather case. They were not theatre photographs but studio portraits, and the face looked younger than the face in the Greenroom: younger and more formidable, with the mouth set truculently and the gaze withdrawn. But it had the same effect on Martyn. Written at the bottom of each of these photographs, in a small incisive hand, was: Helena from Adam, 1950. “Perhaps,” she thought, “he’s married to her.”

Hag-ridden by the fear that she had forgotten some important detail, she paused in the doorway and looked round the room. No, she thought, there was nothing more to be done. But as she turned to go she saw herself, cruelly reflected in the long cheval-glass. It was not, of course, the first time she had seen herself that night; she had passed before the looking-glasses a dozen times and had actually polished them, but her attention had been ruthlessly fixed on the job in hand and she had not once focussed her eyes on her own image. Now she did so. She saw a girl in a yellow sweater and dark skirt with black hair that hung in streaks over her forehead. She saw a white, heart-shaped face with smudges under the eyes and a mouth that was normally firm and delicate but now drooped with fatigue. She raised her hand, pushed the hair back from her face and stared for a moment or two longer. Then she switched off the light and blundered across the passage into the Greenroom. Here, collapsed in an armchair with her overcoat across her, she slept heavily until morning.