Night at the Vulcan

Chapter V OPENING NIGHT

From noon until half past six on the opening night of Dr. Rutherford’s new play, the persons most concerned in its birth were absent from their theatre. Left to itself, the Vulcan was possessed only by an immense expectancy. It waited. In the auditorium rows of seats, stripped of their dust-cloths, stared at the curtain. The curtain itself presented its reverse side to Jacko’s set, closing it in with a stuffy air of secrecy. The stage was dark. Battalions of dead lamps, focussed at crazy angles, overhung it with a promise of light. Cue-sheets, fixed to the switchboard, awaited the electrician, the prompt-script was on its shelf, the properties were ranged on trestle-tables. Everything bided its time in the dark theatre.

To enter into this silent house was to feel as if one surprised a poised and expectant presence. This air of suspense made itself felt to the occasional intruders: to the boy who from time to time came through from the office with telegrams for the dressing-rooms, to the girl from Florian’s and the young man from the wig-makers, and to the piano-tuner who for an hour twanged and hammered in the covered well. And to Martyn Tarne who, alone in the ironing-room, set about the final pressing of the dresses under her care.

The offices were already active and behind their sand-blasted glass- walls typewriters clattered and telephone bells rang incessantly. The blacked-out box-plan lay across Bob Grantley’s desk, and stacked along the wall were rectangular parcels of programmes, fresh from the printer.

And at two o’clock the queues for the early doors began to form in Carpet Street

It was at two o’clock that Helena Hamilton, after an hour’s massage, went to bed. Her husband had telephoned, with a certain air of opulence which she had learnt to dread, that he would lunch at his club and return to their flat during the afternoon to rest.

In her darkened room she followed a practised routine and, relaxing one set of muscles after another, awaited sleep. This time, however, her self-discipline was unsuccessful. If only she could hear him come in, it would be better; if only she could see into what sort of state he’d got himself. She used all her formulae for repose but none of them worked. At three o’clock she was still awake and still miserably anxious.

It was no good trying to cheer herself up by telling over her rosary of romantic memories. Usually this was a successful exercise. She had conducted her affairs of the heart, she knew, with grace and civility. She had almost always managed to keep them on a level of enchantment. She had simply allowed them to occur with the inconsequence and charm of self-sown larkspurs in an otherwise correctly ordered border. They had hung out their gay little banners for a season and then been painlessly tweaked up. Except, perhaps, for Adam. With Adam, she remembered uneasily, it had been different. With Adam, so much her junior, it had been a more deeply rooted affair. It had put an end, finally, to her living with Ben as his wife. It had made an enemy of Ben. And at once her thoughts were infested with worries about the contemporary scene at the theatre. “It’s such a muddle,” she thought, “and I hate muddles.” They’d had nothing but trouble all through rehearsals. Ben fighting with everybody and jealous of Adam. The Doctor bawling everybody out. And that wretchedly unhappy child Gay (who, God, knew, would never be an actress as long as she lived) first pitchforked into the part by Ben and now almost bullied out of it by the Doctor. And, last of all, Martyn Tarne.

She had touched the raw centre of her anxiety. Under any other conditions, she told herself, she would have welcomed the appearance out of a clear sky and — one had to face it — under very odd circumstances, of this little antipodean: this throw-back to some forebear that she and Adam were supposed to have in common. She would have been inclined to like Martyn for the resemblance instead of feeling so uncomfortably disturbed by it. Of course she accepted Adam’s explanation, but at the same time she thought it rather naïve of him to believe that the girl had actually kept away from the theatre because she didn’t want to make capital out of the relationship. That, Helena thought, turning restlessly on her bed, was really too simple of Adam. Moreover, he’d stirred up the already exacerbated nerves of the company by giving this girl the understudy without, until last night, making public the relationship.

There she went, thinking about last night’s scene: John Rutherford demanding that even at this stage Martyn should play the part, Gay imploring Adam to release her, Ben saying he’d walk out on the show if Gay went, and Adam— Adam had done the right thing of course. He’d come down strongly with one of his rare thrusts of anger and reduced them to complete silence. He had then described the circumstances of Martyn’s arrival at the theatre, and had added in a voice of ice that there was and could be no question of any change in the cast. He finished his notes and left the theatre, followed by Jacko.

This had been the signal for an extremely messy row in which everybody seemed to bring to light some deep-seated grudge. Ben had quarrelled almost simultaneously with Parry Percival (on the score of technique), with Dr. Rutherford (on the score of casting), with his niece (on the score of humanity) and, unexpectedly, with J. G. Darcey (on the score of Ben bullying Gay). Percival had responded to a witticism of the Doctor’s by a stream of shrill invective which astonished everybody, himself included, and Gay had knitted the whole scene into a major climax by having a fit of hysterics from which she was restored with brutal efficiency by Dr. Rutherford himself.

The party had then broken up. J.G. sustained his new role of knightly concern by taking Gay home. Parry Percival left in a recrudescence of fury occasioned by the Doctor flinging after him a composite Shakesperian epithet: “Get you gone, you dwarf; you minimus, of hindering knot-grass made; you bead, you acorn.” She herself had retired into the wings. The stage-staff had already disappeared. The Doctor and Ben, finding themselves in undisputed possession of the stage, had squared up to each other with the resolution of all-in wrestlers, and she, being desperately tired, had taken the car home and asked their man to return to the theatre for her husband. When she had awakened late in the morning she was told he had already gone out.

“I wish,” a voice cried out in her mind, “I wish to God he’d never come back.”

And at that moment she heard him stumble heavily upstairs.

She expected him to go straight to his room and was dismayed when he came to a halt outside her door and, with a clumsy sound that might have been intended for a knock, opened it and came in. The smell of brandy and cigars came in with him and invaded the whole room. It was more than a year since that had happened.

He walked uncertainly to the foot of the bed and leant on it — and she was frightened of him.

“Hullo,” he said.

“What is it, Ben? I’m resting.”

“I thought you might be interested. There’ll be no more nonsense from John about Gay.”

“Good,” she said.

“He’s calmed down. I got him to see reason.”

“He’s not so bad, really — old John.”

“He’s had some good news from abroad. About the play.”

“Translation rights?”

“Something like that.” He was smiling at her, uncertainly. “You look comfy,” he said. “All tucked up.”

“Why don’t you try and get some rest yourself?” He leant over the foot of the bed and said something under his breath. “What?” she said anxiously. “What did you say?”

“I said it’s a pity Adam didn’t appear a bit sooner, isn’t it? I’m so extraneous.”

Her heart thumped like a fist inside her ribs. “Ben, please,” she said.

“And another thing. Do you both imagine I don’t see through this dresser-cum-understudy racket? Darling, I don’t much enjoy playing the cuckold in your Restoration comedy, but I’m just bloody well furious when you so grossly under-estimate my intelligence. When was it? On the New Zealand tour in 1930?”

“What is this nonsense!” she said breathlessly.

“Sorry. How are you managing to-night? You and Adam?”

“My dear Ben!”

“I’ll tell you. You’re making shift with me for once in a blue moon. And I’m not talking about to-night.”

She recognized this scene. She had dreamt it many times. His face had advanced upon her while she lay inert with terror, as one does in a nightmare. For an infinitesimal moment she was visited by the hope that perhaps after all she had slept and, if she could only scream, would awaken. But she couldn’t scream. She was quite helpless.

Adam Poole’s telephone rang at half past four. He had gone late to rest and was wakened from a deep sleep. For a second or two he didn’t recognize her voice, and she spoke so disjointedly that even when he was broad awake he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“What is it?” he said. “Helena, what’s the matter? I can’t hear you.”

Then she spoke more clearly and he understood.

At six o’clock the persons in the play began to move towards the theatre. In their lodgings and flats they bestirred themselves after their several fashions: to drink tea or black coffee, choke down pieces of bread and butter that tasted like sawdust, or swallow aspirin and alcohol. This was their zero hour: the hour of low vitality when the stimulus of the theatre and the last assault of nerves was yet to come. By a quarter past six they were all on their way. Their dressers were already in their rooms and Jacko prowled restlessly about the darkened stage. Dr. John James Rutherford, clad in an evening suit and a boiled shirt garnished with snuff, both of which dated from some distant period when he still attended the annual dinners of the B.M.A., plunged into the office and made such a nuisance of himself that Bob Grantley implored him to go away.

At twenty past six the taxi carrying Gay Gainsford and J. G. Darcey turned into Carpet Street. Darcey sat with his legs crossed elegantly and his hat perched on them. In the half-light his head and profile looked like those of a much younger man.

“It was sweet of you to call for me, J.G.,” Gay said unevenly.

He smiled, without looking at her, and patted her hand. I’m always petrified myself,” he said, “on first nights.”

“Are you? I suppose a true artist must be.”

“Ah, youth, youth!” sighed J.G. — a little stagily perhaps, but, if she hadn’t been too preoccupied to notice it, with a certain overtone of genuine nostalgia.

“It’s worse than the usual first-night horrors for me,” she said. “I’m just boxing on in a private hell of my own.”

“My poor child.”

She turned a little towards him and leant her head into his shoulder. “Nice!” she murmured and after a moment: “I’m so frightened of him, J.G.”

With the practised ease of a good actor, he slipped his arm round her. “I won’t have it,” he said. “By God, I won’t! If he worries you again, author or no author—”

“It’s not him,” she said. “Not the Doctor. Oh, I know he’s simply filthy to work with and he does fuss me dreadfully, but it’s not the Doctor really who’s responsible for all my misery.”

“No? Who is then?”

“Uncle Ben!” She made a small wailing noise that was muffled by his coat. He bent his head attentively to listen. “J.G., I’m just plain terrified of Uncle Ben.”

Parry Percival always enjoyed his arrival at the theatre when there was a gallery queue to be penetrated. One raised one’s hat and said: “Pardon me. Thanks so much,” to the gratified ladies. One heard them murmur one’s name. It was a heartening little fillip to one’s self-esteem.

On this occasion the stimulant didn’t work with its normal magic. He was too worried to relish it wholeheartedly. For one thing his row with Dr. Rutherford still lingered like an unpleasant taste in his memory. Apart from the altogether unforgiveable insults the Doctor had levelled at his art, there was one in particular which had been directed at himself as a man and this troubled him deeply. It had almost brought him to the pitch of doing something that he dreaded to do — take stock of himself. Until now he had lived in an indeterminate hinterland, drifting first towards one frontier, then the other, unsure of his impulses and not strongly propelled by them in any one direction. He would, he thought, perhaps have turned out a happier being if he had been born a woman. “Let’s face it,” he thought uneasily, “I’m interested in their kind of things. I’m intuitive and sensitive in their way.” It helped a little to think how intuitive and how sensitive he was. But he was not in any sense a fair target for the sort of veiled insults the Doctor had levelled at him. And as if this weren’t enough of a worry, there was the immediate menace of Clark Bennington. Ben, he thought hotly, was insufferable. Every device by which a second-leading man could make a bit-part actor look foolish had been brought into play during rehearsals. Ben had up-staged him, had flurried him by introducing new business, had topped his lines and, even while he was seething with impotent fury, had reduced him to nervous giggles by looking sideways at him. It was the technique with which a schoolmaster could torture a small boy, and it revived in Parry hideous memories of his childhood.

Only partially restored by the evidence of prestige afforded by the gallery queue, he walked down the stage-door alley and into the theatre. He was at once engulfed in its warmth and expectancy.

He passed into the dressing-room passage. Helena Hamilton’s door was half-open and the lights were on. He tapped, looked in and was greeted by the smell of greasepaint, powder, wet-white and flowers. The gas fire groaned comfortably. Martyn, who was spreading out towels, turned and found herself confronted by his deceptively boyish face.

“Early at work?” he fluted.

Martyn wished him good evening.

“Helena not down yet?”

“Not yet.”

He hung about the dressing-room, fingering photographs and eyeing Martyn.

“I hear you come from Down Under,” he said. “I nearly accepted an engagement to go out there last year, but I didn’t really like the people so I turned it down, Adam played it in the year dot, I believe. Well, more years ago than he would care to remember, I dare say. Twenty, if we’re going to let our back-hair down. Before you were born, I dare say.”

“Yes,” Martyn agreed. “Just before.”

Her answer appeared to give him extraordinary satisfaction. “Just before?” he repeated. “Really?” and Martyn thought: “I mustn’t let myself be worried by this.”

He seemed to hover on the edge of some further observation and pottered about the dressing-room examining the great mass of flowers. “I’ll swear,” he said crossly, “those aren’t the roses I chose at Florian’s. Honestly, that female’s an absolute menace.”

Martyn, seeing how miserable he looked, felt sorry for him. He muttered: “I do so abominate first nights,” and she rejoined: “They are pretty ghastly, aren’t they?” Because he seemed unable to take himself off, sho added with an air of finality: “Anyway, may I wish you luck for this one?”

“Sweet of you,” he said. “I’ll need it. I’m the stooge of this piece. Well, thanks, anyway.”

He drifted into the passage, halted outside the open door of Poole’s dressing-room and greeted Bob Cringle. “Governor not down yet?”

“We’re on our way, Mr. Percival.” Parry inclined his head and strolled into the room. He stood close to Bob, leaning his back against the dressing-shelf, his legs elegantly crossed.

“Our little stranger,” he murmured, “seems to be new-brooming away next door.”

“That’s right, sir,” said Bob. “Settled in very nice.”

“Strong resemblance,” Parry said invitingly.

“To the Guv’nor, sir?” Bob rejoined cheerfully. “That’s right. Quite a coincidence.”

“A coincidence!” Parry echoed. “Well, not precisely, Bob. I understand there’s a distant relationship. It was mentioned for the first time last night. Which accounts for the set-up, one supposes. Tell me, Bob, have you ever before heard of a dresser doubling as understudy?”

“Worked out very convenient, hasn’t it, sir?”

“Oh, very,” said Parry discontentedly. “Look, Bob. You were with the Governor on his New Zealand tour in ’thirty, weren’t you?”

Bob said woodenly: “That’s correct sir. ’E was just a boy in them days. Might I trouble you to move, Mr. Percival? I got my table to lay out.”

“Oh, sorry. I’m in the way. As usual. Quite! Quite!” He waved his hand and walked jauntily into the passage.

“Good luck for to-night, sir,” said Bob and shut the door after him.

In the room opposite to Poole’s and next to the Greenroom, Parry could hear Bennington’s dresser moving about whistling softly through his teeth. There is a superstition in the theatre that it’s unlucky to whistle in a dressing-room and Parry knew that the man wouldn’t do it if Ben had arrived. He didn’t much like the sound of it himself, and moved on to J.G. Darcey’s room. He tapped, was answered, and went in. J.G. was already embarked on his make-up.

“Bob,” said Parry, “refuses to be drawn.”

“Good evening, dear boy. About what?”

“Oh, you know. The New Zealand tour and so on.”

“Quite right,” said J.G. firmly, and added: “He was the merest stripling.”

“Well — eighteen,” Parry began and then broke off.

“I know, I know. I couldn’t care less, actually.” He dropped into the only other chair in the room and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I’m so bored with it all. By-blow or not, what does it matter!”

“It only matters,” said J.G., laying down a stick of No. 5, “in so far as it’s driving Gay Gainsford pretty close to a nervous breakdown, and to that I do most strongly object.”

“Really?” Parry raised his head and stared at him. “How altruistic of you, J.G. Well, I mean, I’m sorry for her, poor child. Naturally. And one trembles for the performance, of course.”

“The performance would be all right if people left her alone. Ben, in particular.”

“Yes,” said Parry with great satisfaction. “The situation appears to be getting under the skin of the great character actor. There is that.”

“I’m told,” said J.G., “there was a midnight audition. Jacko professes ecstasy.”

“My dear J.G., there have been two more-or-less public auditions. The object, no doubt, being to make everything look as clean as a whistle. The second affair was this morning.”

“Did you see her?”

“I happened to look in.”

“What’s she like?”

Parry lit a cigarette. “As you have seen,” he said, “she’s fantastically like him. Which is really the point at issue. But fantastically like.”

“Can she give a show?”

“Oh, yes,” said Parry. He leaned forward and hugged his knees boyishly. “Oh, yes indeed. Indeed she can, my dear J.G. You’d be surprised.”

J.G. made a non-committal sound and went on with his make-up.

“This morning,” Parry continued, “the Doctor was there. And Ben. Ben, quite obviously devoured with chagrin. I confess I couldn’t help rather gloating. As I remarked, it’s getting under his skin. Together, no doubt, with vast potations of brandy and soda.”

“I hope to God he’s all right to-night.”

“It appears Gay was in the back of the house, poor thing, while it was going on.”

“She didn’t tell me that,” J.G. said anxiously and, catching Parry’s sharpened glance, he added: “I didn’t really hear anything about it.”

“It was a repetition of last night. Really, one feels quite dizzy. Gay rushed weeping to Adam and again implored him to let her throw in the part. The Doctor, of course, was all for it. Adam was charming, but Uncle Ben produced another temperament. He and the Doctor left simultaneously in a silence more ominous, I assure you, than last night’s dog-fight. Ben’s not down yet.”

“Not yet,” J.G. said and repeated: “I hope to God he’s all right.”

For a moment the two men were united in a common anxiety. J.G. said: “Christ, I wish I didn’t get nervous on first nights.”

“You, at least, have something to be nervous about. Whereas I half kill myself over the dimmest bit in the West End. When I first saw the part I nearly screamed the place down. I said to Adam if it wasn’t that he and Helena had always been very sweet to me—”

J.G. paid this routine plaint the compliment of looking gloomily acquiescent, but he barely listened to it.

“—and anyway,” Parry was saying, “what chance has any of us as long as this fantastic set-up continues? In Poole-Hamilton pieces the second leads go automatically to the star’s husband. I suppose Adam thinks it’s the least he can do. Actually, I know I’m too young for the part but—”

“I wouldn’t say you were,” J.G. said, absently. Parry shot an indignant glance at him but he was pressing powder into the sides of his nose.

“If he tries any of his up-stage fun-and-games on me to-night,” Parry said, furiously hissing his sibilants, “I’ll just simply bitch up his big exit for him. I could, you know. It’d be no trouble at all.”

“I wouldn’t, dear boy,” J.G. said good-naturedly. “It never does one any good, you know. One can’t afford these little luxuries, however tempting. Well, that’s taken the polish off the knocker on the old front door.” He took his nose delicately between his thumb and forefinger. “The play stinks,” he said thoughtfully. “In my considered opinion, it stinks.”

“Well, I must say you are a comfort to us.”

“Pay no attention. I always feel like that at about half-hour time.”

“Half-hour! God, have they called it?”

“They will in five minutes.”

“I must dart to my paints and powders.” Parry went out, but re-opened the door to admit his head. “In case I don’t see you again, dear J.G., all the very best.”

J.G. turned and raised his hand. “And to you the best, of course, dear boy.”

Left alone, he sighed rather heavily, looked closely at his carefully made-up face and, with a rueful air, shook his head at himself.

Clark Bennington’s dresser, a thin melancholy man, put him into his gown and hovered, expressionless, behind him.

“I shan’t need you before the change,” said Bennington. “See if you can help Mr. Darcey.”

The man went out. Bennington knew he’d guessed the reason for his dismissal. He wondered why he could never bring himself to have a drink in front of his dresser. After all, there was nothing in taking a nip before the show. Adam, of course, chose to make a great thing of never touching it. And at the thought of Adam Poole he felt resentment and fear stir at the back of his mind. He got his flask out of his overcoat pocket and poured a stiff shot of brandy.

“The thing to do,” he told himself, “is to wipe this afternoon clean out. Forget it. Forget everything except my work.” But he remembered, unexpectedly, the way, fifteen years ago, he used to prepare himself for a first night. He used to make a difficult and intensive approach to his initial entrance so that when he walked out on the stage he was already possessed by a life that had been created in the dressing-room. Took a lot of concentration: Stanislavsky and all that. Hard going, but in those days it had seemed worth the effort. Helena had encouraged him. He had a notion she and Adam still went in for it. But now he’d mastered the easier way — the repeated mannerism, the trick of pause and the unexpected flattening of the voice — the technical box of tricks.

He finished his drink quickly and began to grease his face. He noticed how the flesh had dropped into sad folds under the eyes, had blurred the jaw-line and had sunk into grooves about the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. All right for this part, of course, where he had to make a sight of himself, but he’d been a fine-looking man. Helena had fallen for him in a big way until Adam cut him out. At the thought of Adam he experienced a sort of regurgitation of misery and anger. “I’m a haunted man,” he thought suddenly.

He’d let himself get into a state, he knew, because of this afternoon. Helena’s face, gaping with terror, like a fish almost, kept rising up in his mind and wouldn’t be dismissed. Things always worked like that with him: remorse always turned into nightmare.

It had been a bad week altogether. Rows with everybody; with John Rutherford in particular and with Adam over that blasted little dresser. He felt he was the victim of some elaborate plot. He was fond of Gay; she was a nice friendly little thing — his own flesh and blood. Until he had brought her into this piece she had seemed to like him. Not a bad little artist either, and good enough, by God, for the artsy-craftsy part they’d thrown at her. He thought of her scene with Poole and of her unhappiness in her failure and how, in some damned cockeyed way, they all, including Gay, seemed to blame him for it. He supposed she thought he’d bullied her into hanging on. Perhaps in a way he had, but he felt so much that he was the victim of a combined assault. “Alone,” he thought, “I’m so desperately alone,” and he could almost hear the word as one would say it on the stage, making it echo, forlorn and hopeless and extremely effective.

“I’m giving myself the jim-jams,” he thought. He wondered if Helena had told Adam about this afternoon. By God, that’d rock Adam, if she had. And at once a picture rose up to torture him, a picture of Helena weeping in Adam’s arms and taking solace there. He saw his forehead grow red in the looking-glass and told himself he’d better steady-up. No good getting into one of his tempers with a first performance ahead of him and everything so tricky with young Gay. There he was, coming back to that girl, that phoney dresser. He poured out another drink and began his make-up.

He recognized with satisfaction a familiar change of mood, and he now indulged himself with a sort of treat He brought out a little piece of secret knowledge he had stored away. Among this company of enemies there was one over whom he exercised almost complete power. Over one, at least, he had overwhelmingly the whip-hand, and the knowledge of his sovereignty warmed him almost as comfortably as the brandy. He began to think about his part. Ideas, brand new and as clever as paint, crowded each other in his imagination. He anticipated his coming mastery.

His left hand slid towards the flask. “One more,” he said, “and I’ll be fine.”

In her room across the passage, Gay Gainsford faced her own reflection and watched Jacko’s hands pass across it. He dabbed with his finger-tips under the cheek-bones and made a droning sound behind his closed lips. He was a very good make-up; it was one of his many talents. At the dress rehearsals the touch of his fingers had soothed rather than exacerbated her nerves, but to-night, evidently she found it almost intolerable.

“Haven’t you finished?” she asked.

“Patience, patience. We do not catch a train. Have you never observed the triangular shadows under Adam’s cheek-bones? They are yet to be created.”

“Poor Jacko,” Gay said breathlessly, “this must be such a bore for you! Considering everything.”

“Quiet, now. How can I work?”

“No, but I mean it must be so exasperating to think that two doors away there’s somebody who wouldn’t need your help. Just a straight make-up, wouldn’t it be? No trouble.”

“I adore making up. It is my most brilliant gift.”

“But she’s your find in a way, isn’t she? You’d like her to have the part, wouldn’t you?”

He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Ne vous dérangez pas,” he said. “Shut up, in fact. Tranquillize yourself, idiot girl.”

“But I want you to tell me.”

“Then I tell you. Yes, I would like to see this little freak play your part because she is in fact a little freak. She has dropped into this theatre like an accident in somebody else’s dress and the effect is fantastic. But she is well content to remain off-stage and it is you who play, and we have faith in you and wish you well with all our hearts.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Gay said.

“What a sour voice! It is true. And now reflect. Reflect upon the minuteness of Edmund Kean, upon Sarah’s one leg and upon Irving’s two, upon ugly actresses who convince their audiences they are beautiful and old actors who persuade them they are young. It is all in the mind, the spirit and the preparation. What does Adam say? Think in, and then play out. Do so.”

“I can’t,” Gay said between her teeth. “I can’t.” She twisted in her chair. He lifted his fingers away from her face quickly, with a wide gesture. “Jacko,” she said, “there’s a jinx on this night. Jacko, did you know? It was on the night of the Combined Arts Ball that it happened.”

“What is this foolishness?”

“You know. Five years ago. The stage-hands were talking about it. I heard them. The gas fire case. The night that man was murdered. Everyone knows.”

“Be silent!” Jacko said loudly. “This is idiocy. I forbid you to speak of it. The chatter of morons. The Combined Arts Ball has no fixed date and, if it had, shall an assembly of British bourgeoisie in bad fancy dress control our destiny? I am ashamed of you. You are altogether too stupid. Master yourself.”

“It’s not only that. It’s everything. I can’t face it.”

His fingers closed down on her shoulders. “Master yourself,” he said. “You must. If you cry I shall beat you and wipe your make-up across your face. I defy you to cry.”

He cleaned his hands, tipped her head forward and began to massage the nape of her neck. “There are all sorts of things,” he said, “that you must remember and as many more to forget. Forget the little freak and the troubles of to-day. Remember to relax all your muscles and also your nerves and your thoughts. Remember the girl in the play and the faith I have in you, and Adam and also your Uncle Bennington.”

“Spare me my Uncle Bennington, Jacko. If my Uncle Bennington had left me where I belong, in fortnightly rep, I wouldn’t be facing this hell. I know what everyone thinks of Uncle Ben and I agree with them. I never want to see him again. I hate him. He’s made me go on with this. I wanted to throw the part in. It’s not my part. I loathe it. No, I don’t loathe it, that’s not true. I loathe myself for letting everybody down. Oh, God, Jacko, what am I going to do?”

Across the bowed head Jacko looked at his own reflection and poked a face at it. “You shall play this part,” he said through his teeth. “Mouse-heart, skunk-girl. You shall play. Think of nothing. Unbridle your infinite capacity for inertia and be dumb.”

Watching himself, he arranged his face in an unconvincing glower and fetched up a Shakesperian belly-voice.

He caught his breath. Beneath his fingers, Gay’s neck stiffened. He began to swear elaborately, in French and in a whisper.

“Jacko. Jacko. Where does that line come from?”

“I invented it.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t. It’s Macbeth,” she wailed. “You’ve quoted from Macbeth!” and burst into a flurry of terrified weeping.

“Great suffering and all-enduring Saints of God,” apostrophized Jacko, “give me some patience with this Quaking Thing.”

But Gay’s cries mounted in a sharp crescendo. She flung out her arms and beat with her fists on the dressing-table. A bottle of wet-white rocked to and fro, overbalanced, rapped smartly against the looking-glass and fell over. A neatly splintered star frosted the surface of the glass.

Gay pointed to it with an air of crazy triumph, snatched up her towel and scrubbed it across her makeup. She thrust her face, blotched and streaked with black cosmetic, at Jacko.

“Don’t you like what you see?” she quoted, and rocketed into genuine hysteria.

Five minutes later Jacko walked down the passage towards Adam Poole’s room, leaving J.G., who had rushed to the rescue in his shirt-sleeves, in helpless contemplation of the screaming Gay. Jacko disregarded the open doors and the anxious painted faces that looked out at him.

Bennington shouted from his room: “What the hell goes on? Who is that?”

“Listen,” Jacko began, thrusting his head in at the door. He looked at Bennington and stopped short. “Stay where you are,” he said and crossed the passage to Poole’s room.

Poole had swung round in his chair to face the door. Bob Cringle stood beside him, twisting a towel in his hands.

“Well?” Poole said. “What is it? Is it Gay?”

“She’s gone up. Sky-high. I can’t do anything nor can J.G., and I don’t believe anyone can. She refuses to go on.”

“Where’s John? Is this his doing?”

“God knows. I don’t think so. He came in an hour ago and said he’d be back at five to seven.”

“Has Ben tried?”

“She does nothing but scream that she never wants to see him again. In my opinion, Ben would be fatal.”

“He must be able to hear all this.”

“I told him to stay where he is.”

Poole looked sharply at Jacko and went out. Gay’s laughter had broken down in a storm of irregular sobbing that could be heard quite clearly. Helena Hamilton called out, “Adam, shall I go to her?” and he answered from the passage: “Better not, I think.”

He was some time with Gay. They heard her shouting: “No! No! I won’t go on! No!” over and over again like an automaton.

When he came out he went to Helena Hamilton’s room. She was dressed and made up. Martyn, with an ashen face, stood inside the doorway.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Poole said, “but you’ll have to do without a dresser.”

The call-boy came down the passage chanting: “Half-hour. Half-hour, please.”

Poole and Martyn looked at each other.

“You’ll be all right,” he said.