Return to Night (11 page)

“Not at all. Let me look.”

He fished a thick, rubbed leather wallet out of his pocket. “I expect they’re here. Yes, here we are.” He handed them over; the work, she saw, of a competent amateur, no doubt one of the cast. “It looks a strong make-up,” he said, “for the open air. But the audience wasn’t very close; and of course the lighting came on halfway through.”

“It’s very striking,” she said, covering an inward disappointment. “But I still wouldn’t have known you. I should have thought your own face would have done, with a few quirks here and there.”

“I tried it. But I didn’t fancy it.”

“Did you keep any of the clippings about it? The one from the
Observer,
for instance? I’d like to see it again.”

“Very likely.” He produced a strip of newsprint, and handed it over. When she had taken it, he looked for the first time embarrassed. She ran her eye down the cutting, confirming the impressions she had retained.

…
No such allowances, however, had to be made for Julian Fleming’s Oberon. Here was a fresh, strong, and consistent interpretation. A few technical faults, which experience will remedy, were offset by imaginative coherence, a fine presence, and a delivery which wasted nothing of the great incantations. It seemed a pity to handicap a flexible and subtle performance with a make-up so heavily stylized that it approximated to a mask; enough came through, however, to set up a standard inimical to indulgence elsewhere, and
…

She looked up. “I know less than nothing about the theater from inside. But I should have thought that after a notice like this in a London paper, you wouldn’t have much difficulty in breaking into the professional stage.”

He said, with what seemed complete indifference, “Oh, not by now, I should think. They have short memories, you know.”

She said quickly, “You had an offer, then?”

“Vaguely. But there were—various difficulties. I hadn’t had my viva, or the result of my finals or anything. And, oh, well, there were any amount of things.” He took the cutting from her, and put it back. He would have taken the photographs too, but she withdrew them, and sliding away the top ones, took out the one below.

“This isn’t Oberon,” she said. “What is it?”

A second glance made obvious what it was: a flash, taken during performance, of one of the Boar’s Head Tavern scenes from
Henry IV.
Beside an unconvincing lath fireplace, Falstaff, crudely whiskered and padded, with bloat lines penciled on a youthful face, was standing with a tankard. Near him on a long settle Prince Hal was lounging, long-legged in silk hose, one hanging scalloped sleeve brushing the floor, smiling up with lazy impudence into his face. He looked slight and graceful and immensely young; it must have been taken before he was fully grown.

“Well,” she said, “here at last is something I
can
recognize you in. Was this one of the plays at school?”

“Which? Let’s look.” Not only his face, but his voice had altered; both had a guarded lack of expression she had never known in him before. He leaned forward, took the picture before she had made any movement to return it, and gave it a cursory glance. “I thought it was another from the
Dream.
Really, the rubbish one does accumulate.”

He made as if to put the photograph back, but, instead, leaned out of his chair and tossed it into the fire. It struck the unburned end of a log, glanced away, and fell into the fender. Hilary picked it up.

“What did you do that for?”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make a mess of your fireplace.”

He spoke with the appearance of lightness; she sensed, below it, a tension which she tried to ease by continuing to talk. “Oh, nothing seems so dead-and-done-with as the fairly recent past. But you don’t want to throw out the baby along with the bath water. In a few years you’ll be sorry not to have a complete record. What about your memoirs?” She smiled. “You’ll want this for the chapter on Early Successes.”

“Very funny.”

She looked up, quite at a loss. He had spoken with a bitterness which was made doubly disconcerting by his evident impression of having adequately concealed it.

“It wasn’t meant to be so funny. Quite a lot of people have started in Ouds and got to the West End. Why not you?”

“Why not indeed?” He had recovered an almost convincing flippancy. “When I open at His Majesty’s, I’ll send you stalls.”

“I’ll hold you to that. I shall keep this, and give it you then. Don’t laugh, I mean it.”

“I’ve got to laugh. But it isn’t rudely meant.” He added, under his breath, “Early successes. Great God.”

She had been watching his face, and, before she could prevent herself, said with the defensive impersonality which had become a habit with her, “Things stop mattering. I promise you they do.”

“I don’t quite see what you mean.”

His face had frozen. She regretted her folly; but the conversation had to be rescued. “Oh, I mean any of the contretemps that loom at the time. For instance—” She related a story against herself, about an indispensable object she had dropped on the theater floor on the first occasion when she had assisted Sanderson. It was true that she had minded a good deal. The operation had had to be held up for five minutes while it was re-sterilized; and she had been the first woman ever to be taken on Sanderson’s firm. “I couldn’t get myself inside the theater for a week afterward, even to look on. I imagined everyone talking about it. Then months later, when I knew him better, I mentioned it to him by way of a joke, and he didn’t even remember. People don’t; they’ve enough troubles of their own.”

He said, slowly, “It was nice of you to tell me that. You don’t really want this thing, do you? You’re welcome. Only stick it away somewhere, if you don’t mind.”

She went over to her desk, and put it in a drawer. “About this skeleton; if you can’t get one, would a skull be any help”? Now I think of it, I have got one of those.”

“No, do you mean it? But that’s terrific. I can suggest the body perfectly well, under some sort of rags. And the hands, threaded cane would make those …” He was well away at once, as if nothing had happened. Relieved, she would have looked out the skull for him then and there, but of this he would not hear. “Grubbing about in cold box rooms, when you’re not feeling good. The show isn’t for a fortnight. Mayn’t I come and collect it, some time next week? That is, if you don’t find me an intolerable nuisance, dodging in and out?” His doubt about this was evidently genuine. She reassured him, and to her own rather disgusted surprise (for she detested third-rate amateur acting) found herself telling him that she was looking forward to seeing the show. He looked doubtful.

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t daunt you, charity and all that. But your time’s rather precious, it really doesn’t seem fair. It’s just a romp, you know. The most I hope to do is to get the lines heard and keep it moving. It’s a drafty hole, too.”

“I’d still like to come. What’s it called?”

“High Barbary.
It’s piratical—hell’s bells and buckets of blood. Plenty of good type-casting parts, though. And the fellow who does Morgan has really got something. He’s the test pilot at the aircraft place. He’s half promised to take me up one day. Don’t mention that at home, though; you know how it is.”

“Don’t be crazy,” she said, with a warmth that surprised herself. “You’re not ready for that sort of thing. The internal strains are terrific. You couldn’t choose anything worse.”

“I thought you were all for me leading a normal life.”

So he did get it. “Do you call stunt flying normal?”

“I don’t know. The ordinary kind feels good. All right, if you think so. But it would have been something to look forward to.”

After he had gone, she found that it was this sentence, with it’s disturbing note of weary resignation, that stuck most in her mind.

Lisa stayed in London four days instead of two. She came back with an air of trying to be present but not wholly succeeding. But by next evening she was herself again—or, at all events, the self with which Hilary was familiar—and, coming to announce that dinner was ready, started, stared, and exclaimed, “My dear, what
have
you got there? Are you meditating on your latter end? I warn you, if Annie sees it you’ll have to be on the spot to render first aid.”

“I’m sorry.” Hilary followed her eyes and laughed. “I really ought to have put it away. Familiarity breeds contempt. I hope it didn’t give you a jolt.”

“Considering what the news has been like lately, I shouldn’t have thought you needed a
memento mori
.”

“I want it for a quite escapist purpose, really. It’s going to be a stage property in a play about pirates. I promised it to that Fleming lad.”

“Oh, he acts, does he? Well, I’m not surprised.”

“He does, I believe. But he’s only producing this time.”

“If he has the smallest spark of talent, I wonder what he’s doing here. He couldn’t need much, with that maiden’s prayer of a face. But I suppose even for that, one needs a certain amount of drive.”

It was not usual to find oneself making excuses for Lisa in order not to be annoyed. It was, indeed, so unreasonable that Hilary made herself particularly agreeable all through the ensuing meal. After it she explained that she was behind with her records, and spread them out ostentatiously in her sitting-room lest anyone, including herself, should doubt it.

He’ll probably forget to come,
she thought when the clock’ struck eight-thirty; but a few minutes later she heard him being shown through.

“Are you busy?” he asked, looking at the daybook.

“No, I’ve finished now. It’s more comfortable doing it here than at the surgery.”

“Yes, I should think so. Have you been looking after yourself?”

Good heavens,
she thought,
has he got it into his head that I enjoy bad health. It serves me right.
“I’m fit enough to push a house down. Look, there’s your skull.”

“My word, what a beauty.” He turned it over, lovingly. “Isn’t it
clean?
”

“We prefer them that way. I hope it’s realistic enough.”

“I should say so. I only mean it seems too good. All polished up, and the lid fitting so beautifully.
To what base uses do we come, Horatio.”

“You can keep it, ready for that.”

“Hark at her, sweetie pie.” He addressed the skull, which returned a gap-toothed grin. “She thinks the milk isn’t wiped off our mouths yet.”

“Wouldn’t you like to do it?”

“I’ll tell you in ten years. You know”—he twirled the skull intimately between two fingers—“one knows simply everything about Hamlet at, say, nineteen. But everything—from the outside. It looks fine. Then one reads it again, after something’s happened, or something. And the outside has a little crack, if you see what I mean, through which you get a minute glimpse into the interior. Then you feel a bit of a fool, if you’ve any sense at all, and you put it in cold storage to take a look at when you’re thirty.”

He gave the last word so airy a remoteness that it might have been “fifty” with equal effect.

“I expect you’re right,” she said.

He wandered over with his burden, and curled himself on the hearthrug at her feet.

“I wonder just what sort of hell it was,” he said, “that Shakespeare went through. The private part, I mean. I think it will be a pity, really, if anyone ever digs up the facts. Not that they’d tell you anything, I dare say. But meanwhile, everyone who reads
Hamlet
will always be able to think maybe it was something like their own. And that’s rather steadying, I expect.”

“Yes,” she said. She looked down at him, for he was looking at the fire, the skull lying slackly on his knees. Presently, with-out self-consciousness or jar, he collected himself into the moment. Lifting the hinged vault of the skull, and peering with interest into the cavity, he asked, “Is that what they did to my head?”

“My dear! Not that size. Give it to me.”

He uncurled and shifted himself to lay it in her lap, resting his arm there along with it. She showed him on the temporal bone the area of Sanderson’s flap.

“Quite a good slice, though,” he observed with unashamed importance. “Could you still find it on me?”

“With that thick hair? Not by looking; one could still feel it, I expect.”

He laid his head confidingly on her knees, so close to the skull that they almost touched brows. She put it down quickly on the floor, and drew her fingers through the heavy dark sweep of hair across his forehead. Faintly she traced the elliptical edge of the incision; the union had been the least degree uneven, so that it was palpable still, but it felt sound enough. As she explored it with the delicate stroking movements that were necessary to find so slight an outline at all (for the external weal had vanished long ago) she felt a difference in his weight and pressure, and saw that he had relaxed sleepily, and closed his eyes. Abruptly she took her hand away.

“Don’t stop,” he murmured placidly. “It feels nice.”

“Don’t be such a baby.” She laughed, and pushed his head away.

“Did you find it?”

“Just. It’s going on nicely. Don’t knock it about.”

“Oh, I’m really very tender with it. I’m developing a permanent crouch from avoiding the low beam in the hall.” Recovering the skull, he remarked, “Queer to think one has this all the time, inside, isn’t it? I wonder what mine looks like.”

“I have the advantage of you; I’ve seen an X-ray.”

“Nothing’s hid from you, is it? Quite alarming. Did I look just the same?”

“Not really. This is a narrow one; a woman’s probably. The malar bones and the jaw would both be broader. And I don’t think I shall give it you, it’s making you morbid.”

“Oh, no, but why? It’s interesting. I mean, to know that everyone has a second face hidden away that nobody’s ever seen.”

“Well,” she observed, “it may be interesting to know; but to get much enjoyment out of it one would need to be pretty seriously dissatisfied with the face on top.”

He said nothing, but fiddled with the jawbone of the skull. Presently he exclaimed, “Good Lord, this hinges too; you never told me,” and made an elaborate business of closing it again. She saw that he flushed to the roots of his hair, and was stooping to hide it.
How is one to cope with him?
she thought.