Ghost Light (8 page)
Authors: Joseph O'Connor
Changeling …
You had stumbled, shaken, as you stepped into the light.
The house had been full. America loved you. The audience applauded wildly the moment they saw you – threw flowers – called your name – stood up in their rows – for they loved what they knew of your past, your story, and your long-awaited presence stopped the show. Around you, the other actors gave out their lines bleakly, accustoming to the fact of your bombproof eminence. It is hard to share a scene with someone’s muse.
The house had been full. America loved you. The audience applauded wildly the moment they saw you – threw flowers – called your name – stood up in their rows – for they loved what they knew of your past, your story, and your long-awaited presence stopped the show. Around you, the other actors gave out their lines bleakly, accustoming to the fact of your bombproof eminence. It is hard to share a scene with someone’s muse.
Several years had passed since your greatest performances, but that did not seem to matter to the audience or the actors. And really, it didn’t matter to you. You were bowing in a theatre where a president had been shot, but nobody was thinking about the President that night. You knelt to the ovation, touched your breast like a diva. The gallery boys roared, hurled inundations of lilies. ‘Milk them just a little,’ he had always advised you. ‘Then exit while they are begging for more. And once you go, stay gone. Let the gallery riot.
Never
give them everything they want.’
Never
give them everything they want.’
Reporters coming to talk to you. Their sweet, stupid questions. How his ghost seemed to glow with repudiation.
—He was a great man, Miss O’Neill?
—He was a great artist, yes.
—And also a great man?
—What is that?
—Well – how did it feel – being his inspiration? His muse?
—I dislike that word. It belongs to mythology. A great artist needs nothing but his own woundedness, I have found. I was merely his servant. If that.
—His servant?
—In the sense that an actor is the servant of the text. That is my training. Others see it differently. But I have forgotten a great deal about Mr Synge, to be honest. I would prefer to talk about the piece I am playing now.
You rise and move away, through the stillness of the corridors, past the admirals and the queens and the courtiers and the merchants. But some pictures are harder to move away from.
The day you rowed out to Dalkey Island, a cold, overcast April, dampness in the air, the sky grey as gulls’ eggs, an arc of smoky cloud stretching all the way from Howth Head into the mistwreathed mountains of Wicklow. In the distance the Liverpool steam-packet sat moored in the bay, and a red and white lightship was breasting its way out towards the Skelligs where a fog bank was beginning to drift in. The grey-green sea rolled slowly on the strand, sucking stones in its wake, fizzing lowly on the grits, and a seal popped its head through one of the slopping breakers like a surfacing merman in a folk tale.
The day you rowed out to Dalkey Island, a cold, overcast April, dampness in the air, the sky grey as gulls’ eggs, an arc of smoky cloud stretching all the way from Howth Head into the mistwreathed mountains of Wicklow. In the distance the Liverpool steam-packet sat moored in the bay, and a red and white lightship was breasting its way out towards the Skelligs where a fog bank was beginning to drift in. The grey-green sea rolled slowly on the strand, sucking stones in its wake, fizzing lowly on the grits, and a seal popped its head through one of the slopping breakers like a surfacing merman in a folk tale.
You trudged around for a while, him taking photographs and making notes in a jotter, but a spattering rain commenced before you’d been there an hour and there were no trees under which shelter might be had. You huddled close to the wall of the derelict Martello tower, paper bags on your heads making the rainfall smack thunderously. A quartet of wild goats came wandering over the rocks, the male staring resentfully at the churning sea, shaking his dirty beard at it like King Lear. Across the Sound, a herd of schoolboys appeared in Coliemore Park. Some started waving, gesticulating crazily, but they were too far away for their words to be audible. A hare scutted out from a hole in the tower wall and went lolloping away towards the sandflats.
You shared a sodden cigarette. The needling rain eased resentfully into mizzle as though driven away by the smoke. Yachts appeared near the pier, their yellow-white sails. The Dublin train clattered by on the clifftop.
It had been clear to you from the start that his way of dealing with uncomfortable subjects was to avoid them or displace them by unsubtle attempts at irony. It had not been a difficulty. If anything, you were glad. But you wondered to yourself, then, as you headed away from the tower and back towards the greasy beach where he had tied up the rowboat, if someone employing these defences could ever love anyone or be approached in such a way that you could know him. It seemed to you that he carried experiences not grieved for or even experienced. He was one of
those people who would make sandwiches at a parent’s funeral, being brave, unselfish, deflecting unwelcome questions, sweeping a broom around the coffin in the church. He was good at redirecting. You barely noticed he was doing it until the subject of your conversation had moved on. And by then it would be bad manners to try to go back. He understood how most people work. But such thoughts were about to disappear like snow off a rope. When you returned to the beach, the boat was gone.
those people who would make sandwiches at a parent’s funeral, being brave, unselfish, deflecting unwelcome questions, sweeping a broom around the coffin in the church. He was good at redirecting. You barely noticed he was doing it until the subject of your conversation had moved on. And by then it would be bad manners to try to go back. He understood how most people work. But such thoughts were about to disappear like snow off a rope. When you returned to the beach, the boat was gone.
‘Holy Moses.’
‘Where is it, John?’
‘I mustn’t have tied it properly. Damn.’
You ascended a mound of rocks and saw it fifty yards away in the Sound, bobbing and slowly circling, its oars trailing from the oarlocks, its mooring-guy dragging behind like a tail. A cormorant was perched on the cross-bench, proprietorial somehow, as though having pirated the dory away out of spite. It occurred to you suddenly what the schoolboys had been shouting about.
‘Damn,’ he said, again. ‘This is a very nice pancake.’
‘It is all right. Let’s not be panicking. Calm down.’
He stripped off his shirt and waded into the water, which must have been achingly cold. And it is odd, because when you remember this, for some reason there is a reversal. It is
you
who are conscious of the pounding of your heart, the hardness of breathing, the sting of the waves, the terror encountered by the unskilled swimmer that the whole world is made of water. Somehow he clambered in, his frantic flailing almost capsizing the dory, and by the time he had sculled a way back through the cross-current to the beach, your clothes were soaked rags and you were shaking. It was an incident you would often feel should be funny to remember. But in truth it wasn’t funny at all.
you
who are conscious of the pounding of your heart, the hardness of breathing, the sting of the waves, the terror encountered by the unskilled swimmer that the whole world is made of water. Somehow he clambered in, his frantic flailing almost capsizing the dory, and by the time he had sculled a way back through the cross-current to the beach, your clothes were soaked rags and you were shaking. It was an incident you would often feel should be funny to remember. But in truth it wasn’t funny at all.
The next day you were at the theatre, on your way to a costume-fitting backstage, when you overheard Lady Gregory speaking to someone in her office. Something queer in her tone magnetised you towards the door, which was an inch or two ajar,
an unusual enough occurrence, for Lady Gregory insisted on doors being kept closed in the theatre, except when it was absolutely necessary to open them. It was a matter of shutting the heat in, she would insist to the staff. Coal did not grow on the trees.
an unusual enough occurrence, for Lady Gregory insisted on doors being kept closed in the theatre, except when it was absolutely necessary to open them. It was a matter of shutting the heat in, she would insist to the staff. Coal did not grow on the trees.
It seemed to you at first that some strange play was being read. After a while you could see that this was true, in its way, and you wondered if you yourself were in the wings, as it had seemed then, or were actually at centre stage.
‘I am told that when the company was on tour you permitted yourself to be seen in a public place, in a certain attitude with our gifted Miss Allgood.’
‘I am not sure what you mean, Augusta. An attitude?’
‘With your arm about her shoulder. Or something of that nature.’
‘The eyes of the world are observant indeed. You may rest assured it was only her shoulder. Nothing else.’
‘My dear John, it is not for me to opine on your private friendships, of course. Nor on the terrestrial coordinates of your arm.’
Her Ladyship had this mode of unimpeachable if clipped courtesy, cross-hatched with disenchantment, as though everything being said to her was an apology for some failing and she was being magnanimous in not shrieking at the speaker. Your lover was the only one of her writers who knew how to deal with it, perhaps because he was fluent in it too.
‘I value your wisdom greatly under all aspects, Augusta.’
‘Dash it all, this is a little difficult. One does not wish to be a Carmelite. But there are younger and impressionable people among the company, as you know.’
‘Impressionable?’
‘Yeats feels the same way. He feels he cannot speak to you. Perhaps it is because you are both men.’
The passageway was dusty; a dirty sunbeam slanted in through a skylight. You could see the seagulls wheeling or hanging in the airstreams as though in observation of something worth scavenging.
For no reason it occurred to you that the river was close by, and beyond it the cold expanse of Dublin Bay. Beyond that, the freedom of Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds, some room in a town of smokestacks, where nobody knew either of you. You had sensed that the coke-black sternness of England’s northern cities was a lie, a camouflage of the liberty that might be found there.
For no reason it occurred to you that the river was close by, and beyond it the cold expanse of Dublin Bay. Beyond that, the freedom of Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds, some room in a town of smokestacks, where nobody knew either of you. You had sensed that the coke-black sternness of England’s northern cities was a lie, a camouflage of the liberty that might be found there.
‘Strong fences make good neighbours, John. If you follow my line. Fraternisation with the players can cause confusion, a certain restlessness. Especially when it takes place under a public gaze. And there are differences between you and Miss Allgood, of course.’
‘Indeed.’ He laughed quietly. ‘I had noticed.’
‘I do not think it entirely a matter for mordant amusement, if you will permit me the licence of fond friendship. I have to tell you that there has been talk of a kind that is not helpful to our work. Among the younger members of the company especially. I feel you know this, of course. You are a listener of immense skilfulness and subtlety.’
‘These little backstage snobberies are surely inconsequential.’
‘You say snobbery – but it is more a question of fellow feeling for you, John. And for Miss Allgood too. Importantly.’
‘Forgive me, dear Augusta, I am not sure I follow.’
‘Let me put it to you in the general. As a woman. As your friend. It would be a great violence to any girl to be given baseless expectations or to be allowed to form such expectations unenlightened. Particularly if she were very much younger and less educated than the man who might permit silly hopes. And not – well, you know what I mean.’
‘Not what?’
‘You are intent on ribbing me by making me use terminologies I do not find it agreeable to employ.’
‘You may speak candidly, Augusta, if that is your wish.’
‘I never trust people who do that. They are irremediably vulgar. Candour is the last resort of the tasteless.’
‘If you mean that Miss Allgood is of a differing social order –’
‘Those are your words, John.’
‘What are yours?’
‘Your inheritances – put it like that – are in few evident ways comparable.’
‘Which means?’
‘In effect, it means that some of us are bequeathed our furniture. Whereas others buy and sell it as a living.’
‘I have not noticed too many debutantes or duchesses on our stage.’
‘Your point being?’
‘I think you know my point. I need not paint a picture. We have devoted ourselves to that class of people who have inherited nothing but their courage. It is they who are given flesh on our stage every night. But in life, one is to hold one’s nose to them?’
‘You are speaking to me like a socialist vicar. And you are being a little disingenuous.’
‘Augusta –’
‘I have had a letter from the girl’s grandmother. A redoubtable person. I am informed that there have been anxieties among Miss Allgood’s family, John. There is no father, as you know. The girl is very young. Not young in years only but in development, in sensibility. Plainly the feeling exists that there are certain vulnerabilities. I cannot help but feel this, too. On both sides.’
‘There are no
sides
to the case.’
sides
to the case.’
‘Between a man and a woman? I think there will always be sides. Could we but limit them to two we should be doing the work of wizards.’
‘It is essentially a matter of the wholly private sphere, which with great respect is not the proper concern of any other person.’
‘Were complexities down the road to conclude your understanding with Miss Allgood, I would ask you to consider the fact that she would face the continuation of her career, which is still in its infancy, in a shadow that might not be pleasant. Some would advise that it were better for the friendship to conclude itself now. Before harm of a serious nature is done.’
‘To her career?’
‘To that, too.’
‘My friendship with Miss Allgood will not be concluding. It is an attachment I have come to value very deeply.’
‘Evidently. Well, there it is. Perhaps you will reflect, at any rate.’
‘I hope that I will never fail to reflect on the counsel of a wellwisher.’
‘Yes. That is always wise. When it happens.’
‘May we now return to our work? There is a text needing editing.’
‘I would hate the day to arrive when I had to let her go. She may well have a talent. Not that of her sister, of course. Your Miss Allgood lacks the vein of hollowness every actor of the highest order must have. Her excess of personality means that she will never achieve anything great. But she has a gift all the same. I like her voice.’
‘I share the hope that the day you envisage does not arrive, Augusta. Because if it did, you would be letting go of me, too.’
‘But come, my dear friend. Are you threatening your deepest admirer?’
‘I could never threaten the staunchest ally my writing has known. I merely aver that any theatre having no place for Miss Allgood needs other talents than mine.’
‘I rarely think it at all shrewd to offer a hostage to fortune, John.’
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