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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

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BOOK: The Joys of Love
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“Then what are you talking about? I don't understand you.”
“I told you we didn't speak the same language, Kurt. It—it all just means something different to me than it does to you.”
“The theatre isn't college, Elizabeth.”
“No. It's not. But I'm still Elizabeth Jerrold, whether I'm in college or the theatre.”
“You've had too much Aunt Harriet.” He let her hand fall.
“It didn't have anything to do with Aunt Harriet.”
“No?”
“No. It just had to do with me.”
“Well—” Kurt said, and for the first time as he looked at her white, unhappy face, the assurance left his eyes and a kind of diffidence came into his voice. “I'm sorry we don't see things the same way, Elizabeth.”
“I'm sorry we don't, too, Kurt.”
“I don't like to think that I've upset you.”
“It doesn't matter.”
“Then I have upset you?”
“It doesn't matter, Kurt.”
“But it does,” he persisted. “What can I do to make it all right with you?”
“Nothing. Just leave me alone—please—”
Jane came out into the hall waving the big dinner bell. “Lunch!” she shouted up the stairs above the clanging of the bell. “Hey, time to eat, you two,” she called down the hall to Elizabeth and Kurt.
“Please let me go eat,” Elizabeth said to Kurt in a shaky voice.
At last he moved aside and let her go into the dining room.
After lunch Elizabeth went upstairs to write Aunt Harriet.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed when Ben banged on the door, shouting the question, “Are you decent?”
“Yes, come on in,” Elizabeth called, and wondered, Will it always be this way now with Ben and me, strained and difficult?
Ben plunked himself down on the bed beside Elizabeth and gave her a resounding kiss on top of her head. “Lie down, I want to talk to you,” he said.
Elizabeth gave him a shove and he rolled onto the floor and lay there, legs waving in the air. “Get up, you goon,” she told him.
“I can't. You've injured me for life,” Ben said, scrambling up onto Jane's bed and falling flat on it. He watched her anxiously for a moment, then asked casually, “What're you writing?”
“A letter to Aunt Harriet. My phone call to her yesterday was brief and my explanation even briefer. I don't want things to be more awkward than they have to be when I see the rest of the summer out in Jordan.”
Ben's look was probing, but then he sat up and reached for Jane's hand mirror and began studying himself in it. “You are moving to New York sooner rather than later, right?”
Elizabeth nodded. “But it will probably be much later than I want. I have to have some savings to move. Everybody in Jordan thinks I'm awful to want to work in the theatre when Aunt Harriet's so against it. They think I ought to do what she wants me to do.”
“What does she want you to do?” Ben asked, opening his mouth and examining his teeth.
“I don't know. She doesn't think much of marriage.”
“She doesn't know much about it, does she?”
“Well, she
was
engaged, but her fiancé died a few weeks before they were to be married.”
“I guess she'd be enough to kill anyone off.”
“Oh, Ben, she's not that bad. She's like lots of people in Jordan. I've just shown you the worst side of her.”
Ben put the mirror back on the bureau and picked up the picture of Anna Larsen. “Thank goodness you're not like old Harriet. If your mother wasn't blond and didn't have straight hair, anyone'd think that picture was of you. Golly, but she was lovely to look at. Listen, what I came up for was to say Huntley doesn't have to be at the theatre till four and he'll rehearse
Mourning Becomes Electra
for an hour if we want to. Joe doesn't want me till dinnertime so I'm free, too.”
“Good,” Elizabeth said. “The more work I can get in this week the better. Just let me end off this letter.”
Ben waited patiently until Elizabeth finished, folded the letter, and put it in an envelope. Then he said, “Huntley told a new story out on the porch after lunch. Want to hear it?”
“Is it dirty?” Elizabeth asked, searching for a stamp, and grateful for Ben's noble efforts at normality.
“No. It's just silly.”
“Okay, then. Let's hear it.”
“Well, it seems there was this knight in King Arthur's day and he was so small he couldn't ride a horse, so he rode a St. Bernard dog instead. But in spite of his size he was a marvelous knight and went about rescuing fair maidens from dragons and all kinds of things. Well, one day he was out riding on his trusty steed and he met this other knight and they jostled or joisted or whatever it was they did with those long poles, and he
threw the other knight into a pond to cool off, and then started home. But he'd ridden a long distance that day, and fighting with the other knight had wasted time—”
“‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me,'” Elizabeth declaimed.
“Will you kindly not interrupt me with William Shakespeare or anything else,” Ben said with dignity. “As I was saying, the knight was tired and daylight had already gone when he came to the forest he had to cross to get to his castle. Anyhow, the knight and his dog were about halfway through the forest when it began to thunder and lightning and rain, and the knight got all wet inside his armor. It had gotten kind of dented in his battle with the other knight and so it was leaking and you can imagine what leaky armor would feel like.”
Elizabeth began to giggle, but Ben glared at her. “Wait to laugh till I've finished,” he admonished, and continued. “And the knight's trusty St. Bernard was soaking, too, and her fur was all draggled and she was so tired she could barely drag one foot in front of the other. And then, just as the knight thought they could go no farther, they saw a light through the trees and they rode up to it, and the knight, still seated on his trusty steed, leaned forward in his saddle and knocked at the door. An old man in a nightcap, holding a candle, answered it and said gruffly, ‘What can I do for you?' And the knight said, ‘Oh, sir, as you can see, my trusty steed and I are wet and tired and my castle is on the other side of the forest. Would you give us shelter for the night?' The old man looked at them for a moment; then he said, ‘All right. Come on in. I wouldn't turn a knight out on a dog like this.'”
Elizabeth groaned, “Oh, Ben!”
But Ben was rolling on Jane's bed in spasms of laughter and after a moment Elizabeth began to laugh, too. The two of them laughed until they were weak and Elizabeth was reminded of the hysterical, joyful, abandoned laughter of childhood. This was a laughter that was almost as much of a purge as tears.
John Peter shouted up the stairs at them. “Elizabeth! Ben! Huntley's ready for us! Come on down!”
“Oh, Ben, what fools we are.” Elizabeth sighed, getting up and wiping her eyes.
“Yes, but don't you think it's funny?” Ben asked.
“I think it's sweet—but it isn't funny ha-ha the way we were acting.”
“It's better than your story about the lobsters going to the movies.”
“That's a wonderful story!” Elizabeth protested, running a comb through her hair. “Come on, Ben. Race you downstairs.”
They ran madly down the stairs, Elizabeth arriving breathlessly a hair's breadth ahead of Ben.
“Where's the fire?” Huntley asked from the living room. “All ready, kids? Where's Bibi?”
“I think she went down to the beach before you said you could work with us,” Ditta said.
“Of course it didn't occur to her to ask. Most of you apprentices think you're here for a suntan and nothing else. Okay, we can manage just as well without her. We'll start with the scene Ben and Elizabeth and Sophie are doing.”
“Soapie's gone,” Ben reminded him.
“Oh, yes, so she has. Jane, read her part, will you? You
might as well take it over. Here's a script. How's the furniture? Arranged all right?”
Ben was tugging at one of the big chairs. He looked at it critically, sat down on it, moved it a few inches, and sat down again. “Okay now.”
After they had been working a short time Huntley said, “Elizabeth, remember what I told you last time about moving on that line?”
“Oh, yes, Huntley. I forgot. I'm sorry. May we go back?”
A moment later she missed a cue and Jane prompted her.
When they had run through the scene Huntley said, “Now let's do it again. Liz, it strikes me that your mind is not on your work this afternoon.”
“I'm sorry. I'll try to concentrate better.”
“See that you do,” Huntley said, rather severely. “Maybe you kids get tired of Miss Hedeman's talking about discipline every two minutes, but the old girl's got the right idea just the same. If you want to work in the theatre, you don't let your mind wander during rehearsal. It doesn't matter if you've received a telegram saying your mother's just died or you've discovered your boyfriend is two-timing you or the doctor's just told you that you have six months to live. When you come to rehearsal the only person whose emotions you worry about is the character you're portraying. And see that you don't forget that. I'm not saying this to Liz in particular but to all of you in general. I'm very sorry Bibi and one or two others I can think of aren't here to hear it. Ben, you're much too apt to clown. You've worked in the theatre long enough to know when to cut out the funny business. Ditta, you usually concentrate but
you're so darned intellectual about it that half the time you forget that emotions spring from the heart and not from the brain. Jane, you do just the opposite. You need more objectivity. You get the emotions, all right, but you hug them inside you and forget the audience wants to be let in on the secret. Sincerity doesn't hide or excuse lack of technique. Not that your technique's bad for a kid, but most of the time what you need is just a touch of plain old-fashioned ham. Watch Mariella Hedeman closely to see what I mean. John Peter, you're a selfish actor. Remember that you're not the only person onstage. I don't mean that you do it deliberately; you don't upstage people or anything; but you don't give enough to the other actors. And most important of all, kids, you've got to make the audience believe in you. If they don't believe in you as whatever character it is you're playing, you might as well get off the stage, but quick. Okay, let's start the scene again.”
Elizabeth had noticed with wonderment that while Huntley was speaking to them his whole face seemed to change. The puffiness seemed to recede, his eyes sprang to life, the bitter lines eased themselves from his mouth. Why, he could be a wonderful person if he only would, she thought.
Then she forgot Huntley. She forgot Elizabeth Jerrold. She was interested only in the scene she was working on and the characters it involved.
 
“Huntley's got so much sense about some things,” John Peter said after Huntley had left for the theatre. “It's a shame he's such an ass about his private life.”
“Oh, well, there's no accounting for love,” Jane said. “After all, I love you.”
“I am not
Dottie Dawne
,” John Peter announced.
“I should hope not!” Ben said.
“Do you suppose if I'd made a couple of lousy movies I'd have Dottie's morals and her delusions of grandeur?” Jane asked.
“Dottie this, Dottie that. Let's stop talking about Dottie,” Elizabeth said.
Ben got down on the floor and started doing push-ups. “Got to broaden my shoulders,” he panted. “I can do fifty push-ups at a time, now.” After twenty he collapsed and rolled over onto his back. “Listen, who's doing tables tonight?”
“John Peter and I,” Jane said.
“Well, come on, we've got just enough time for a quick swim before supper if Liz and I help you set the tables when we get back. Okay, Liz?”
“Sure.”
“I'll help you, too,” Ditta said.
As they started toward the stairs Jane said in a low voice to Elizabeth, “You seem kind of muted today, Liz. Anything wrong?”
“Muted? Good heavens, I'm not muted,” Elizabeth said, and gave forth with one of Miss Hedeman's exercises in a voice that would have carried to the farthest ranges of the highest peanut gallery and that brought Lulu Price out into the hall, a glass of whiskey in her hand.
“Will you apprentices please be quiet! I'm working on the
books. Was it you who was making that frightful noise, Elizabeth Jerrold? It's a good thing you're leaving next week. I don't think we could have stood you for an entire summer. Every year I beg J.P. not to have apprentices and every year he goes on having them. I'm sure I don't know why.”
BOOK: The Joys of Love
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