Return to Night (13 page)

“Is she good?”

“Good as gold. The only thing is, one feels she’d make a better job of repelling Morgan’s dishonorable advances if she could bring herself to admit knowing what they mean. I’ve been on the point, once or twice, of suggesting she should go home and ask her mother to tell her. There
are
limits to a producer’s function, after all.”

Presently Julian opened the make-up box, and proceeded to check the contents. She knew him well enough, by now, not to doubt that he had done this already, before starting out. There were still six minutes or so to go. It felt like the prospect of an hour.

Four minutes. The fringes of the village began to appear. With the tail of her eye she saw him glance at her quickly, and then look straight ahead.

“I suppose you gathered, all this Morgan business was rather unpremeditated. I’m sorry about it. I’m afraid I rather let you in.”

Hilary lifted her foot on the accelerator.
I ought to have known,
she thought,
he’d leave it till the last moment like this.
She said, “Oh, I’m used to families. I belong to a large one.”

“I ought to have said something before you came. I never thought of anything cropping up. It’s hard to explain, really. Why she has this thing about my acting, I mean. It’s not that she’s narrow-minded about the stage, or anything. It’s just me. I think it must be just natural apprehension at the prospect of my making a fool of myself in front of a number of people. She’s frightfully un-exhibitionistic herself, and I suppose she extends it to me. That often happens, I believe.”

“Oh, but naturally. Stage fright on someone else’s behalf must be much worse than on one’s own. I suppose one would still feel that about someone belonging to one, even after they’d done pretty well for quite a time.”

“You mean Ouds? Well, you were up yourself, weren’t you? It doesn’t amount to so much to anyone out of touch with the place. That’s another thing I ought to have told you; I—really haven’t often mentioned it. A few lines in a paper easily get overlooked. It was a bit awkward about Oberon, because unfortunately it made a headline, which I hadn’t thought of. However, I was down by that time, and I’ve more or less stuck to producing since. It’s a pity to upset people, I think.”

“I believe,” said Hilary, “I ought to have turned left just now. However, we’ll be there in a few minutes. … Even allowing for families, you don’t strike one, somehow, as likely to be a source of anxiety in a village hall.”

“Well, I rather seem to let myself go to you. Perhaps it’s because you’re the only person who’s seen me, literally, with the lid off. Or something. But after I had, I ought to have warned you. Not that anyone could have coped better if they’d known.”

“Oh, I’ve had to do a certain amount of coping on my own account. You see, my mother made a great success of her domestic and family life, and she’d rather set her heart on my doing the same. She’s forgiven me now, but I don’t think she’s ever quite got over having a daughter who she feels has entirely wasted her vocation as a woman.”

“I should hate to seem rude to your people in any way. But if anyone else had felt that about you, I should have said they weren’t right in the head.”

The brakes squeaked.

“Oh, hullo,” said Julian. “Are we there? I wasn’t noticing.”

Hilary herself had only noticed in time to overshoot the hall by ten yards. She backed. Through the open door beyond the railings came sounds of purposeful confusion. Julian, opening the car, remarked, “Looks about time I came.”

“I won’t be long. If you’re not about I’ll leave it with someone at the door.”

“No, don’t do that, they can fetch me. Oh, just one thing. If you did happen to have a black eyeshade—for one eye, you know—? Sounds crude, but I think I could work it in.”

“Yes, I believe so.” At all events, she knew of a chemist who would sell it to her after hours.

“Sometimes I wonder what I’d do without you.”

There was no need after all to ask for him when she returned. He must have seen her through the open door, for she saw him almost at once, jumping down from the stage-level in the wings. He had changed into his costume, a traditional affair with an aisled coat, ruffles, and a cutlass belt; and must have miscalculated the size of Tom’s feet, for he was wearing tall thigh-boots which seemed not to incommode him. He had not made himself up yet, and had left his frilled shirt open, in readiness, at the neck.

Hilary filled in the next half-hour with a visit that would do as well today as tomorrow, and arrived three minutes to curtain time. The yeomanry had settled in, two benchfuls of small boys were scuffing joyfully at the back; the gentry were appearing; and a thin lady in pale blue with a fox stole was playing
What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor!
very archly on a piano just under the stage. Hilary recognized from afar the back of Mrs. Fleming’s hat, with an empty seat beside it. She had been so preoccupied that she had actually not considered, till now, what she was going to say when they met.

Fate was kind to her. They had no more than exchanged guarded smiles when the curtain was agitated from within, and yielded up a pink young man in a bow tie. Amid breathless silence, he embarked on a speech beginning, “Ladies and gentlemen, owing to unforeseen circumstances …” Its conclusion was greeted with social clapping from the front, interested clapping from the center, and a furor from the small boys’ benches at the back.

The play was a rip-roaring romance, vintage 1910, and struck Hilary as a sensible choice. It called for no subtleties of emotion or technique, offered plenty of parts in which the local accent could flourish unreproved, and allowed the whole cast to be excitingly involved. Before any of the principals were on, she had become aware that it differed from the amateur plays she had seen before in some particular which she could not at first define. Presently she realized that it was moving at almost a professional pace.

While she was making this mental note, the hero came on. He was a healthy and self-conscious young blond, very presentable except for a slight tendency to knock-knees which he underlined by refusing ever to balance his weight on both feet at once. His modest declaration to the captain’s daughter was interrupted by the sighting of the
Jolly Roger
just as the tender moment approached; action stations were called; the heroine cowered virginally; the stricken captain was borne in to entrust, with his last breath, the secret of the hidden bullion to her charge; and the dreaded name of Morgan was heard without.

Offstage, an evil and wholly unfamiliar voice snarled, “Stir, stir, you yellow scum. Break in this door.”

The door swung open. His hand on his cutlass hilt, Julian strode in. Hilary knew him by his clothes, which she had already seen.

She had been prepared for some degree of transformation; but had confidently, perhaps a little amusedly, looked forward to recognizing him through It. Instead she simply found herself receiving, along with the rest of the audience, a shock of fascinated repugnance. The face, on what might be called for convenience its good side, looked a vicious and hard-bitten forty-five. The other side was traversed, upward, by a great drawn scar which, disappearing under the eyeshade, hinted vividly at some hideous mutilation of the concealed eye. Below it, as if by a contraction of the scar tissue, the corner of the mouth was pulled into a permanent doglike grin.

From where she sat, a few yards away, the mechanics of all this should have been, and to some extent were, apparent; but it needed concentration to work them out. He must have counted on a near view, and been at considerable pains to meet it.

She was so set aback, and so absurdly shocked that it took her some time to settle into following the scene. She tried to find her way back as quickly as possible, feeling her too personal thoughts a kind of failure in co-operation; for she sensed, at once, that he was in need of all he could get. Perhaps, she thought, nobody else could tell, as she could instantly, that he was painfully tense. Superficially, against the fidgeting of the others, he conveyed an air of complete assurance merely by remaining almost motionless in an effective pose, and using gesture sparely and to the point.
It isn’t fair,
she thought,
we ought to be shot, both of us, for coming at all.

The plot thickened; the funny man was chased by a whiskered pirate amid side-splitting appreciation; Morgan had a passage with the Dusky Maiden, displaying brutal indifference to her discarded charms.

The interval came soon after. Hilary, finding that refreshments were being sold in aid of whatever charity they were supporting, hastened, perhaps too eagerly, to leave her seat and find Mrs. Fleming coffee. She came back, having killed five minutes of interval time; and now some sort of comment could no longer be delayed.

“They’re all doing very well, aren’t they? And enjoying themselves too; country amateurs are generally so cowed and conscientious. Do you think it’s because there’s such a high proportion of men in the cast?”

“I believe this society is unusual in actually having more available.” Mrs. Fleming’s manner was, irreproachably, that of a perfect hostess; nothing might have happened at all. “So many come from the new aircraft works. No doubt, as it gets larger, it will become socially quite self-contained.” She seemed to approve this prospect. “I don’t know how far Julian influenced the choice of play. He has very little experience in directing women, of course.”

Lowering her voice discreetly, Hilary remarked. “I should say, considering his material, he was probably wise.”

“I don’t believe the level of talent was very high. But there must have been some disappointments, I’m afraid. When he gets carried away by an idea, he doesn’t always make as certain as he should that no one’s feelings are upset.”

“One can’t always, can one, if one means to get results?”

She had spoken unthinkingly, out of her experience and instinctive way of thought; but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she saw in Mrs. Fleming’s face that she had confirmed a conclusion, ratified a judgment on herself. Something like this had been expected of her, and she had supplied it.

Having received no answer to the question, she went on, “He certainly seems to have pulled the cast well together.”

“He gets on well with most people.”

“And he’s giving a very capable and unselfish performance himself, don’t you think?” Something had sooner or later to be done with an omission which was becoming so oppressive; she got it over.

“Acting used to be quite a hobby of his, some years ago.”

The curtain went up again, and the play pursued its hearty and predictable course.

It was not till the last threads were being tied, that Hilary had time for her own conclusions. She remembered his lack of all but vicarious rehearsal; the quality of his support, of the play itself; the continual temptations to burlesque which both must have held out to anyone with a sophisticated technique. She remembered Caliban; before she met him, she had ceased to think of it as a rendering at all; it had become part of her permanent conception of the play. With a hesitancy akin to fear she thought,
But he must really be good; not by these standards, by others that I don’t sufficiently understand. What shall I do?
For she had ceased, by now, to question her own sense of responsibility present and to come.

The curtain was coming down. She clapped, like everyone else, with palm-scorching energy, feeling a little fidgeted as she did so by she scarcely knew what. As the curtain rose again on the assembled cast, she identified the source of her irritation with Mrs. Fleming, who in the midst of all this had been making furtive efforts to touch up her face. Hilary realized that she had been, if not weeping, at least so near to it that she distrusted the light. It was a discovery so unsettling, so destructive of all the adjustments she herself had been trying to make, that she scarcely noticed Julian being stamped and yelled for, and saw him appear in front of the curtain with vague surprise.

Luckily there were many more curtain calls after, and a full-length rendering of
God Save the King,
to which Hilary accorded a rigid Eyes Front. At the door of Mrs. Fleming’s car they said all the right things to one another; their courtesies, thought Hilary, were hygienic to the point of sterilization. Mrs. Fleming started the car immediately.

Hilary’s own car was parked in an alley beyond the stage door. She walked round to it at leisure, lighting a cigarette on the way to settle herself. She had almost reached it when she saw something white moving weirdly inside. Recovering from the unpleasant start it gave her—her nerves were not quite what they ought to be tonight-she threw open the door. The white object, which revealed itself as an indescribably streaked and filthy towel, was lowered, and from it emerged Julian’s face, recognizable and tentatively smiling. He said, shyly, “Hullo,” and stuffed the towel into his pocket.

“Well!” said Hilary. “You made me jump, for a minute.”

“Sorry.” He eased out his long booted legs to stand aside for her, and hovered uncertainly with one foot on the running board. “I just looked in to say good night. I never thanked you properly; there wasn’t time before.”

“Come in and sit down for a minute,” she said. “It’s cold.” He climbed back again with willing promptness, and shut the door. It was a moment which found her quite incapable of the constructive thought she had meant to give it. She could only remember that he must be the only member of the company for whom no one was waiting, somewhere or other, with a good word.

“My dear,” she said, “if you’re not pleased with yourself tonight, you ought to be.”

“Was it all right?” Under the sketchiest pretense of casualness, he expanded so simply that she could no more have kept herself from giving him what he had come for than from continuing to breathe.

“Of course it was. I don’t only mean you, I expected that. The whole thing. It moved so well.”

“That’s a relief. We were five minutes overtime, but it was twenty at the dress rehearsal. They were quite snappy on their cues tonight.”