Night at the Vulcan Read online

  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 disc 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.

  ‘He says to open the star room,’ he said. ‘Come on froo while I get the keys. I was ‘avin’ me bitter 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 paint 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 case. 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.

  ‘ ’Allo, ‘allo!’ he said. ‘Who gave 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 perticerlar 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. ‘Nothing 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 to the bench.

  ‘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 than 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 tomorrow. 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 drinking 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 your mother know you’re 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. Guvnor’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 medieval 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’.

  ‘Spitting image of him, ain’t it?’ said the doorkeeper behind her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said quickly; ‘is it?’

  ‘Is it! Don’t you know the guvnor when you see ‘im?’

  ‘The governor?’

  ‘Streuth, 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 fo
und herself embarked on an explanation. Of course she knew all about Mr Adam Poole, she said. She had 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 farther 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.

  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 doorkeeper. ‘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. ‘Been aht in the rain,’ he said thickly. ‘Naughty girl.’

  ‘I’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.

  ‘ ’Allo, ‘allo!’ 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 anti-podes?’

  The heater reddened and purred.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ he said, ‘it’d be before your time. I wasn’t here 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-toes 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 time until they ‘ad it all altered and pansied up. The guvnor 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, isn’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 the suitcase, hung them under the clothes pegs round the walls, and began to unpack the boxes. Her feet throbbed cruelly and, with a surreptitious manipulation, she 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. ‘OK,’ 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 tifter, 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 goodnight.’

  ‘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 dilig
ence 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 focused 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.