Night at the Vulcan ra-16 Read online

  Gay Gainsford was not good enough. It was not only that she didn’t resemble Poole closely: her performance was too anxious, too careful a reproduction of mannerisms without a flame to light them. Martyn burnt in her shadowy corner. The transparent covering in which, like a sea-creature, she had spent her twenty-four hours respite now shrivelled away and she was exposed to the inexorable hunger of an unsatisfied player.

  She didn’t see Bennington until he put his hand on her arm as the curtain came down, and he startled her so much that she cried out and backed away from him.

  “So you think you could do it, dear, do you?” he said.

  Martyn stammered: “I’m sorry. Miss Hamilton will want me,” and dodged past him towards the improvised dressing-room. He followed, and with a conventionally showy movement barred her entrance.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

  She stood there, afraid of him, conscious of his smell of grease-paint and alcohol, and thinking him a ridiculous as well as an alarming person.

  “I’m so angry,” he said conversationally, “just literally so angry that I’m afraid you’re going to find me quite a difficult man. And now we’ve got that ironed out perhaps you’ll tell me who the bloody hell you are.”

  “You know who I am,” Martyn said desperately. “Please let me go in.”

  “M’wife’s dresser?”

  He took her chin in his hand and twisted her face to the light. Poole came round the back of the set. Martyn thought: “He’ll be sick of the sight of me. Always getting myself into stupid little scenes.” Bennington’s hand felt wet and hot round her chin.

  “M’wife’s dresser,” he repeated. “And m’wife’s lover’s little by-blow. That the story?”

  Poole’s hand dropped on his arm. “In you go,” he said to Martyn, and twisted Bennington away front the door. Martyn slipped through and he shut it behind her. She heard him say: “You’re an offensive fellow in your cups, Ben. We’ll have this out after rehearsal. Get along and change for the third act.”

  There was a moment’s pause. The door opened and he looked in.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Perfectly, thank you,” Martyn said, and in an agony of embarrassment added: “I’m sorry to be a nuisance, sir.”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass,” he said with great ill humour. The next moment he had gone.

  Miss Hamilton, looking desperately worried, came in to change for the third act.

  The dress rehearsal ended at midnight in an atmosphere of acute tension. Because she had not yet been paid, Martyn proposed to sleep again in the Greenroom. So easily do our standards adjust themselves to our circumstances that whereas on her first night at the Vulcan the Greenroom had seemed a blessed haven, her hours of precarious security had bred a longing for a bed and ordered cleanliness, and she began to dread the night.

  In groups and singly, the actors and stage-staff drifted away. Their voices died out in the alley and passages, and she saw, with dismay, that Fred Badger had emerged from the door of his cobby-hole and now eyed her speculatively. Desolation and fear possessed Martyn. With a show of preoccupation, she hurried away to Miss Hamilton’s dressing-room, which she had already set in order. Here she would find a moment’s respite. Perhaps in a few minutes she would creep down the passage and lock herself in the empty room and wait there until Fred Badger had gone his rounds. He would think she had found a lodging somewhere and left the theatre. She opened the door of Miss Hamilton’s room and went in.

  Adam Poole was sitting in front of the gas fire.

  Martyn stammered: “I’m sorry,” and made for the door.

  “Come in,” he said and stood up. “I want to see you for a moment.”

  “Well,” Martyn thought sickly, “this is it. I’m to go.”

  He twisted the chair round and ordered rather than invited her to sit in it. As she did so she thought: “I won’t be able to sleep here to-night. When he’s sacked me I’ll get my suitcase and ask my way to the nearest women’s hostel. I’ll walk alone through the streets and when I get there the hostel will be shut.”

  He had turned his back to her and seemed to be examining something on the dressing-shelf.

  “I would very much rather have disregarded this business,” he said irritably, “but I suppose I can’t. For one thing, someone should apologize to you for Bennington’s behaviour. He’s not likely to do it for himself.”

  “It really didn’t matter.”

  “Of course it mattered,” he said sharply. “It was insufferable. For both of us.”

  She was too distressed to recognize as one of pleasure the small shock this last phrase gave her.

  “You realize, of course, how this nonsense started,” he was saying. “You’ve seen something of the play. You’ve seen me. It’s not a matter for congratulation, I dare say, but you’re like enough to be my daughter. You’re a New Zealander, I understand. How old are you?”

  “Nineteen, sir.”

  “You needn’t bother to pepper your replies with this ‘sir’ business. It’s not in character and it’s entirely unconvincing. I’m thirty-eight. I toured New Zealand in my first job twenty years ago, and Bennington was in the company. That, apparently, is good enough for him. Under the circumstances, I hope you won’t mind my asking you who your parents are and where you were born.”

  “I’ve no objection whatever,” said Martyn with spirit. “My father was Martin Tarne. He was the son and grandson of a high-country run-holder — a sheep-farmer — in the South Island. He was killed on Crete.”

  He turned and looked directly at her for the first time since she had come into the room.

  “I see. And your mother?”

  “She’s the daughter of a run-holder in the same district”

  “Do you mind telling me her maiden name, if you please?”

  Martyn said: “I don’t see what good this will do.”

  “Don’t you, indeed? Don’t you, after all, resent the sort of conjecture that’s brewing among these people?”

  “I certainly haven’t the smallest desire to be thought your daughter.”

  “And I couldn’t agree more. Good Lord!” he said. “This is a fatheaded way for us to talk. Why don’t you want to tell me your mother’s maiden name? What was the matter with it?”

  “She always thought it sounded silly. It was Paula Poole Passington.”

  He brought the palm of his hand down crisply on the back of her chair. “And why in the world,” he asked, “couldn’t you say so at once?” Martyn was silent. “Paula Poole Passington,” he repeated. “All right. An old cousin of my father’s — Cousin Paula — married someone called Passington and disappeared. I suppose to New Zealand. Why didn’t she look me up when I went out there?”

  “I believe she didn’t care for theatricals,” said Martyn. “She was my grandmother. The connection is really quite distant.”

  “You might at least have mentioned it.”

  “I preferred not to.”

  “Too proud?”

  “If you like,” she said desperately.

  “Why did you come to England?”

  “To earn my living.”

  “As a dresser?” She was silent. “Well?” he said.

  “As best I could.”

  “As an actress? Oh, for God’s sake,” he added, “it’s damnably late and I’ll be obliged if you’ll behave reasonably. I may tell you I’ve spoken to Jacko. Don’t you think you’re making an ass of yourself? All this mystery act!”

  Martyn got up and faced him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a silly business but it’s not an act. I didn’t want to make a thing of it. I joined an English touring company in New Zealand a year ago and they took me on with them to Australia.”

  “What company was this? What parts did you play?”

  She told him.

  “I heard about the tour,” he said. “They were a reasonably good company.”

  “They paid
quite well and I did broadcasting too. I saved up enough to keep me in England for six months and got a job as assistant children’s minder on a ship coming here. Perhaps I should explain that my father lost pretty well everything in the slump, and we are poor people. I had my money in traveller’s cheques and the day we landed they were stolen out of my bag, together with my letters of introduction. The bank will probably be able to stop them and let me have it back, but until they decide, I’m hard up. That’s all.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A fortnight.”

  “Where have you tried?”

  “Agencies. All the London theatres, I think.”

  “This one last? Why?”

  “One of them had to be last.”

  “Did you know of this — connection — as you call it?”

  “Yes. My mother knew of it.”

  “And the resemblance?”

  “I — we saw your pictures — people sometimes said—”

  They looked at each other, warily, with guarded interest.

  “And you deliberately fought shy of this theatre because you knew I was playing here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know about this piece? The girl’s part?”

  Martyn was beginning to be very tired. A weariness of spirit and body seeped up through her being in a sluggish tide. She was near to tears and thrust her hand nervously through her short hair. He made some kind of. ejaculation and she said at once: “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “But you knew about the part when you came here?”

  “There’s a lot of gossip at the agencies when you’re waiting. A girl I stood next to in the queue at Garnet Marks’s told me they wanted someone at the Vulcan who could be made up to look like you. She’d got it all muddled up with yesterday’s auditions for the touring company in another piece.”

  “So you thought you’d try?”

  “Yes. I was a bit desperate by then. I thought I’d try.”

  “Without, I suppose, mentioning this famous ‘connection’?”

  “Yes.”

  “And finding there was nothing for you in the piece you applied for the job of dresser?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s fantastic, but at least it’s less fantastic than pure coincidence would have been. One rather respects you by the way, if it’s not impertinent in a second cousin once removed to say so.”

  “Thank you,” she said vaguely.

  “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  Martyn turned away to the ranks of dresses, and with business-like movements of her trembling hands tweaked at the sheets that covered them. She said briskly: “I realize of course that I’ll have to go. Perhaps Miss Hamilton—”

  “You think you ought to go?” his voice said behind her. “I suppose you’re right. It’s an awkward business.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But I’d like to — it’s difficult to suggest—”

  “I’ll be perfectly all right,” she said with savage brightness. “Please don’t give it another thought.”

  “Why, by the way, are you still in the theatre?”

  “I was going to sleep here,” Martyn said loudly. “I did last night. The night-watchman knows.”

  “You would be paid on Friday.”

  “Like the actors?”

  “Certainly. How much is there in the exchequer between now and Friday?” Martyn was silent and he said with a complete change of voice: “My manners, you will already have been told, are notoriously offensive, but I don’t believe I was going to say anything that would have offended you.”

  “I’ve got two and fourpence.”

  He opened the door and shouted “Jacko!” into the echoing darkness. She heard the Greenroom door creak and in a moment or two Jacko came in. He carried a board with a half-finished drawing pinned to it. This he exhibited to Poole. “Crazy, isn’t it?” he said. “Helena’s costume for the ball. What must I do but waste my beauty-sleep concocting it. Everybody will have to work very hard if it is to be made. I see you are in need of counsel. What goes on?”

  “Against my better judgement,” Poole said, “I’m going to follow your advice. You always think you’re indispensable at auditions. Give me some light out there and then sit in front.”

  “It is past midnight. This child has worked and worried herself into a complete bouleversement. She is as pale as a Pierrot.”

  Poole looked at her. “Are you all right?” he asked her. “It won’t take ten minutes.”

  “I don’t understand, but I’m all right.”

  “There you are, Jacko,” Poole said and sounded pleased. “It’s over to you.”

  Jacko took her by the shoulders and gently pushed her down on the chair. “Attention,” he said. “We make a bargain. I live not so far from here in an apartment house kept by a well-disposed French couple. An entirely respectable house, you understand, with no funny business. At the top one finds an attic room as it might be in a tale for children, and so small, it is but twice the size of its nice little bed. The rental is low, within the compass of a silly girl who gets herself into equivocal situations. At my recommendation she will be accommodated in the attic, which is included in my portion of the house, and will pay me the rent at the end of a week. But in exchange for my good offices she does for us a little service. Again, no funny business.”

  “Oh, dear!” Martyn said. She leant towards the dressing-shelf and propped her face in her hands. “It sounds so wonderful,” she said and tried to steady her voice, “a nice little bed.”

  “All right, Jacko,” Poole said. She heard the door open and shut. “I want you to relax for a few minutes,” his voice went on. “Relax all over like a cat. Don’t think of anything in particular. You’re going to sleep sound to-night. All will be well.”

  The gas fire hummed, the smell of roses and cosmetics filled the warm room. “Do you smoke?” Poole asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “Here you are.” She drew in the smoke gratefully. He went into the passage and she watched him light his own cigarette. Her thoughts drifted aimlessly about the bony structure of his head and face. Presently a stronger light streamed down the passage. Jacko’s voice called something from a great distance.

  Poole turned to her. “Come along,” he said.

  On the stage, dust-thickened rays from pageant-lamps settled in a pool of light about a desk and two chairs. It was like an island in a vague region of blueness. She found herself seated there at the desk, facing him across it. In response to a gesture of Poole’s she rested her arms on the desk and her face on her arms.

  “Listen,” he said, “and don’t move. You are in the hall of an old house, beautiful but decaying. You are the girl with the bad heredity. You are the creature who goes round and round in her great empty cage like a stoat filled with a wicked little desire. The object of your desire is the man on the other side of the desk, who is joined to you in blood and of whose face and mind you are the ill reflection. In a moment you will raise your face to his. He will make a gesture and you will make the same gesture. Then you will say: ‘Don’t you like what you see?’ It must be horrible and real. Don’t move. Think it. Then raise your head and speak.”

  There was a kind of voluptuousness in Martyn’s fatigue. Only the chair she sat on and the desk that propped her arms and head prevented her, she felt, from slipping to the floor. Into this defencelessness Poole’s suggestions entered like those of a mesmerist, and that perfection of duality for which actors pray and which they are so rarely granted now fully invested her. She was herself and she was the girl in the play. She guided the girl and was aware of her and she governed the possession of the girl by the obverse of the man in the play. When at last she raised her face and looked at him and repeated his gesture it seemed to her that she looked into a glass and saw her own reflection and spoke to it.

  “Don’t you like what you see?” Martyn said.

 
; In the pause that followed, the sound of her own breathing and Poole’s returned. She could hear her heart beat.

  “Can you do it again?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know at all.” She turned away and with a childish gesture hid her face in the crook of her arm. In dismay and shame she let loose the tears she had so long denied herself.

  “There, now!” he said, not so much as if to comfort her as to proclaim some private triumph of his own. Out in the dark auditorium Jacko struck his hands together once.

  Poole touched her shoulder. “It’s nothing,” he said. “These are growing pains. They will pass.” From the door in the set he said: “You can have the understudy. We’ll make terms to-morrow. If you prefer it, the relationship can be forgotten. Good night.”

  He left her alone and presently Jacko returned to the stage carrying her suitcase.

  “Now,” he said, “We go home.”

  Chapter IV

  SECOND DRESS REHEARSAL

  When Martyn opened her eyes on the second morning of her adventure it was with the sensation of having come to rest after a painful journey. At first the events of the previous night seemed to be incorporated in the sleep that had followed them, and her happiness had something of the precarious and transitory quality of a remembered dream. It was difficult to believe that nine hours ago she had faced Adam Poole across a table on the stage of the Vulcan Theatre and had done so, for the moment at least, as an actress. The subsequent drive in a taxi with the unusually silent Jacko, their entrance into a sleeping house, creaking tiptoe up the stairs, the rapture of a hot bath and her subsequent oblivion — all these events flowed together in her memory and she felt she was as yet neither asleep nor fully wakened.