Final Curtain (10 page)

‘Not being an Ancred, Millamant, you can't be expected to feel this terrible thing as painfully as we do. How Papa, with his deep sense of pride in an old name—we go back to the Conquest, Mrs Alleyn—how Papa can have allowed himself to be entangled! It's too humiliating.'

‘Not being an Ancred, as you point out, Pauline, I realize Papa, as well as being blue-blooded, is extremely hot-blooded. Moreover, he's as obstinate and vain as a peacock. He likes the idea of himself with a dashing young wife.'

‘Comparatively young,' said Cedric.

Pauline clasped her hands, and turning from one member of her family to another, said, ‘I've thought of something! Now listen all of you. I'm going to be perfectly frank and impersonal about this. I know I'm the child's mother, but that needn't prevent me. Panty!'

‘What about Panty, Mother?' asked Paul nervously.

‘Your grandfather adores the child. Now, suppose Panty were just to drop a childish hint.'

‘If you suggest,' said Cedric, ‘that Panty should wind her little arms round his neck and whisper: “Grandpapa, when will the howwid lady wun away?” I can only say I don't think she'd get into the skin of the part.'

‘He adores her,' Pauline repeated angrily. ‘He's like a great big boy with her. It brings the tears into my eyes to see them together. You can't deny it, Millamant.'

‘I dare say it does, Pauline.'

‘Well, but Mother, Panty plays up to Grandpapa,' said Paul bluntly.

‘And in any case,' Cedric pointed out, ‘isn't Panty as thick as thieves with Sonia?'

‘I happen to know,' said Millamant, ‘that Miss Orrincourt encouraged Panty to play a very silly trick on me last Sunday.'

‘What did she do?' asked Cedric.

Fenella giggled.

‘She pinned a very silly notice on the back of my coat when I was going to church,' said Millamant stuffily.

‘What did it say, Milly, darling?' Cedric asked greedily.

‘Roll out the Barrel,' said Fenella.

‘This is getting us nowhere,' said Millamant.

‘And now,' said Troy hurriedly, ‘I really think if you'll excuse me—'

This time she was able to get away. The Ancreds distractedly bade her goodnight. She refused an escort to her room, and left them barely waiting, she felt, for her to shut the door before they fell to again.

Only a solitary lamp burned in the hall, which was completely silent, and since the fire had died out very cold. While Troy climbed the stairs she felt as she had not felt before in this enormous house, that it had its own individuality. It stretched out on all sides of her, an undiscovered territory. It housed, as well as the eccentricities of the Ancreds, their deeper thoughts and the thoughts of their predecessors. When she reached the gallery, which was also dim, she felt that the drawing-room was now profoundly distant, a subterranean island. The rows of mediocre portraits and murky landscapes that she now passed had a life of their own in this half-light and seemed to be indifferently aware of her progress. Here, at last, was her own passage with the tower steps at the end. She halted for a moment before climbing them. Was it imagination, or had the door, out of sight on the half-landing above her, been softly closed? ‘Perhaps,' she thought, ‘somebody lives in the room below me,' and for some reason the notion affected her unpleasantly. ‘Ridiculous!' thought Troy, and turned on a switch at the foot of the stairs. A lamp, out of sight beyond the first spiral, brought the curved wall rather stealthily to life.

Troy mounted briskly, hoping there would still be a fire in her white room. As she turned the spiral, she gathered up her long dress with her right hand and with her left reached out for the narrow rail.

The rail was sticky.

She snatched her hand away with some violence and looked at it. The palm and the under-surface were dark. Troy stood in the shadow of the inner wall, but she now moved up into light. By the single lamps she saw that the stain on her hand was red.

Five seconds must have gone by before she realized that the stuff on her hand was paint.

A
T HALF PAST TEN
the following morning Troy, hung with paint boxes and carrying a roll of canvas and stretchers, made her way to the little theatre. Guided by Paul and Cedric, who carried her studio easel between them, she went down a long passage that led out of the hall, turned right at a green baize door, ‘beyond which,' Cedric panted, ‘the Difficult Children ravage at will,' and continued towards the rear of that tortuous house. Their journey was not without incident, for as they passed the door of what, as Troy later discovered, was a small sitting-room, it was flung open and a short plumpish man appeared, his back towards them, shouting angrily: ‘If you've no faith in my treatment, Sir Henry, you have an obvious remedy. I shall be glad to be relieved of the thankless task of prescribing for a damned obstinate patient and his granddaughter.' Troy made a valiant effort to forge ahead, but was blocked by Cedric, who stopped short, holding the easel diagonally across the passage and listening with an air of the liveliest interest. ‘Now, now, keep your temper,' rumbled the invisible Sir Henry. ‘I wash my hands of you,' the other proclaimed. ‘No, you don't. You keep a civil tongue in your head, Withers. You'd much better look after me and take a bit of honest criticism in the way it's intended.' ‘This is outrageous,' the visitor said, but with a note of something like despair in his voice. ‘I formally relinquish the case. You will take this as final.' There was a pause, during which Paul attempted, without success, to drag Cedric away. ‘I won't accept it,' Sir Henry said at last. ‘Come, now, Withers, keep your temper. You ought to understand. I've a great deal to try me. A great deal. Bear with an old fellow's tantrums, won't you? You shan't regret it. See here, now. Shut that door and listen to me.' Without turning, the visitor slowly shut the door.

‘And
now
,' Cedric whispered, ‘he'll tell poor Dr Withers he's going to be remembered in the Will.'

‘Come on, for God's sake,' said Paul, and they made their way to the little theatre.

Half an hour later Troy had set up her easel, stretched her canvas, and prepared paper and boards for preliminary studies. The theatre was a complete little affair with a deepish stage. The
Macbeth
backcloth was simple and brilliantly conceived. The scenic painter had carried out Troy's original sketch very well indeed. Before it stood three-dimensional monolithic forms that composed well and broke across the cloth in the right places. She saw where she would place her figure. There would be no attempt to present the background in terms of actuality. It would be frankly a stage set. ‘A dangling rope would come rather nicely,' she thought, ‘but I suppose they wouldn't like that. If only he'll stand!'

Cedric and Paul now began to show her what could be done with the lights. Troy was enjoying herself. She liked the smell of canvas and glue and the feeling that this was a place where people worked. In the little theatre even Cedric improved. He was knowledgeable and quickly responsive to her suggestions, checking Paul's desire to flood the set with a startling display of lighting and getting him to stand in position while he himself focussed a single spot. ‘We must find the backcloth discreetly,' he cried. ‘Try the ground row.' And presently a luminous glow appeared, delighting Troy.

‘But how are you going to
see
?' cried Cedric distractedly. ‘Oh, lawks! How
are
you going to see?'

‘I can bring down a standard spot on an extension,' Paul offered. ‘Or we could uncover a window.'

Cedric gazed in an agony of inquiry at Troy. ‘But the window light would infiltrate,' he said. ‘Or wouldn't it?'

‘We could try.'

At last by an ingenious arrangement of screens Troy was able to get daylight on her canvas and a fair view of the stage.

The clock—it was, of course, known as the Great Clock—in the central tower struck eleven. A door somewhere backstage opened and shut, and dead on his cue Sir Henry, in the character of Macbeth, walked onto the lighted set.

‘Golly!' Troy whispered. ‘Oh, Golly!'

‘Devastatingly fancy dress,' said Cedric in her ear, ‘but in its ridiculous way rather exciting. Or not? Too fancy?'

‘It's not too fancy for me,' Troy said roundly, and walked down the aisle to greet her sitter.

At midday Troy drove her fingers through her hair, propped a large charcoal drawing against the front of the stage and backed away from it down the aisle. Sir Henry took off his helmet, groaned a little, and moved cautiously to a chair in the wings.

‘I suppose you want to stop,' said Troy absently, biting her thumb and peering at her drawing.

‘One grows a trifle stiff,' he replied. She then noticed that he was looking more than a trifle tired. He had made up for her sitting, painting heavy shadows round his eyes and staining his moustache and the tuft on his chin with water-dye. To this he had added long strands of crêpe hair. But beneath the greasepaint and hair his face sagged a little and his head drooped.

‘I must let you go,' said Troy. ‘I hope I haven't been too exacting. One forgets.'

‘One also remembers,' said Sir Henry. ‘I have been remembering my lines. I played the part first in 1904.'

Troy looked up quickly, suddenly liking him.

‘It's a wonderful role,' he said. ‘Wonderful.'

‘I was very much moved by it when I saw you five years ago.'

‘I've played it six times and always to enormous business. It hasn't been an unlucky piece for me.'

‘I've heard about the Macbeth superstition. One mustn't quote from the play, must one?' Troy made a sudden pounce at her drawing and wiped her thumb down a too dominant line. ‘Do you believe it's unlucky?' she asked vaguely.

‘It has been for other actors,' he said, quite seriously. ‘There's always a heavy feeling offstage during performance. People are nervy.'

‘Isn't that perhaps because they remember the superstition?'

‘It's there,' he said. ‘You can't escape the feeling. But the piece has never been unlucky for me.' His voice, which had sounded tired, lifted again. ‘If it were otherwise, should I have chosen this role for my portrait? Assuredly not. And now,' he said with a return of his arch and over-gallant manner, ‘am I to be allowed a peep before I go?'

Troy was not very keen for him to have his peep, but she took the drawing a little way down the aisle and turned it towards him. ‘I'm afraid it won't explain itself,' she said. ‘It's merely a sort of plot of what I hope to do.'

‘Ah, yes!' He put his hand in his tunic and drew out a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez and there, in a moment, was Macbeth, with glasses perched on his nose, staring solemnly at his own portrait. ‘Such a clever lady,' he said. ‘Very clever!' Troy put the drawing away and he got up slowly. ‘Off, ye lendings!' he said. ‘I must change.' He adjusted his cloak with a practised hand, drew himself up, and, moving into the spotlight, pointed his dirk at the great naked canvas. His voice, as though husbanded for this one flourish, boomed through the empty theatre.

Well, may you see things well done there: adieu!

Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!

‘ “God's benison go with you!” ' said Troy, luckily remembering the line. He crossed himself, chuckled and strode off between the monoliths to the door behind the stage. It slammed and Troy was alone.

She had made up her mind to start at once with the laying out of her subject on the big canvas. There would be no more preliminary studies. Time pressed and she knew now what she wanted. There is no other moment, she thought, to compare with this, when you face the tautly stretched surface and raise your hand to make the first touch upon it. And, drawing in her breath, she swept her charcoal across the canvas. It gave a faint drumlike note of response. ‘We're off,' thought Troy.

Fifty minutes went by and a rhythm of line and mass grew under her hand. Back and forward she walked, making sharp accents with the end of her charcoal or sweeping it flat across the grain of the canvas. All that was Troy was now poured into her thin blackened hand. At last she stood motionless, ten paces back from her work, and, after an interval, lit a cigarette, took up her duster and began to flick her drawing. Showers of charcoal fell down the surface.