Twopence Coloured (37 page)

“Ronald,” said Jackie.

“Ronald,”
said Mr. Claye.

“Ronald,”
said Jackie.

“Ronald,”
said Mr. Claye.

“Ronald,”
said Jackie.

“Better, better,” whispered Mr. Claye.

“Ronald,”
said Jackie. Mr. Claye made no comment. She started again.

“Ronald,” said Jackie. “I’m tired of all this acting.” And she tried to walk on the line, in a weak endeavour to
circumvent her instructor, whose style of acting was neither her style at all, nor (she believed) the style of any intelligent human being.

“NOnononononononoNO!” cried Mr. Claye. “Wait till you get there before you start ‘I’m tired’!”

“Ronald,” said Jackie, and took three paces over to Mr. Maddox. “I’m tired of all this acting.”

“But
pause
before ‘acting’!
Pause
before ‘acting’!” cried Mr. Claye.

“I’m tired of all this acting,” said Jackie.

There was a heavy silence. Mr. Claye came over, and looked at her as though he would at last have to punish her.

“Miss Mortimer,” said Mr. Claye. “Is it that you can’t do this, or that you have some objection to it?”

“Well, to tell you the truth,” said Jackie, who was nearly in tears, “I
don’t
really feel it. I don’t think it’s quite natural, somehow.”

“You don’t think it’s quite natural?”

“No,” said Jackie, who had detected her own tears, and wanted to cry at the thought that she might cry in a moment. “I think it’s rather mechanical.”

“You think it’s rather mechanical?”

“Yes,” said Jackie.

“Yes, Miss Mortimer, but
I
’m
looking at this show from the front, aren’t I? … Now, let’s try that again, shall we? We’ll get this if we go on long enough….
Ronald!”

“Ronald,”
said Jackie.

*

At 5.30 the rehearsal concluded. By this time the
blandness
of temperament habitual to Mr. Claye had returned to him. He assumed a suave and sing-song voice for his summing-up.

“Yes, that’s very, very much better, Miss Mortimer. We’ve still got a long way to go, but I can see you’re trying your best, and if we work together we’ll manage to hammer something out. So will you go home and think over all those things I’ve been telling you?”

“Yes,” said Jackie. “I will.”

“You see, all these things are a question of technique, Miss Mortimer, aren’t they? We can all take ourselves as seriously as we like, but it’s a slightly different thing when we’re faced by the problem of putting it across. I have no doubt that you’ve got the Music in your head, but now it’s a question — well ——” Mr. Claye here switched on his most winning smile, “— of learning to Play the Piano. Do you follow?”

“Yes,” said Jackie. “I see.”

“So you go home and Slog like anything at that to-night, and when you come again in the morning we’ll start afresh, shall we?”

“Yes,” said Jackie. “I will.”

“Good.” Mr. Claye smiled again, and turned away. “You coming my way, Lockyer?”

The stage-manager and Mr. Claye commenced to pack their attaché-cases.

“Well, I’m off,” said Mr. Maddox. “Good-bye all.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

The pass-door slammed behind Mr. Maddox as he left. The time was twenty to six. Rehearsal was done. A great silence and awe seemed to creep up from the untenanted but still vigilant stalls. Something prompted Jackie to come forward to the floats, and look out and around in the darkness of the auditorium…. Mysterious hour, she thought…. Mysterious way of spending your afternoon….

*

“Well — ten-thirty, to-morrow, then,” said Jackie.

“Ten-thirty to-morrow,” repeated the stage-manager.

“Sharp,” added Mr. Claye, agreeably, and sharply snapping his attaché-case.

She left.

She wished he had not said “Sharp” like that. It had leapt so neatly from his suavity, and yet was like the crack of the whip of his ascendancy over her. And what an inexplicable ascendancy it was! Truly, human nature would submit to all things, to achieve its own purposes.

When she reached the stage-door, she found that she had lost a glove. She turned back to seek it on the stage. Approaching this, by a dark passage, she heard Mr. Claye’s upraised voice.

“Will
Not
Learn!”
Mr. Claye was saying. “Will Not
Learn.
A lot of infantile notions of their own, and Will not take the Trouble to do
Conscientious
Work.”

She could not hear what the stage-manager replied.

“Well, if she doesn’t do what I tell her to-morrow, I shall have to get rid of her, that’s all. That’s all there is to it….”

It seemed as though Jackie’s whole theatrical career
collapsed
about her, as she heard these words. She had laboured for ten years, and she had reached this.

She went back without her glove.

“‘Will Not Learn’…” reflected Jackie, as she had tea. She was having this at a little table by a little window
overlooking
the Haymarket in the Thistle Tea Rooms. And on one side of her, down below, was the swirl and grind of the spacious one-way street, and on the other was the china clatter and eager feminine loquaciousness of an inflowing matinée crowd, full of the sights it had seen and the sounds it had heard. She observed the latter with a certain inimical and professional interest. In a vain and struggling endeavour to be one of those who catered for such, she had given ten years of her life. They were all too unaware of the sacrifice.

“Will not learn,” reflected Jackie. “Ronald”— pause — three paces — “I’m tired of all this” — pause — “Acting! …” And then she was to meet his eyes with a Frank,
Challenging
Look….

Mr. Claye was right. She was not good at this at present. Perhaps, in another ten years, she would have become so.

Seven forty-five that evening saw Jackie, standing up in a tube which was flying through Belsize Park, on her way to
Hampstead. She wore a coat and skirt, and excited little attention amongst those (many in evening dress) who were bound for the same destination. Her expression in the
splitting
, infernal din to which all were airily and
uncomplainingly
submitting, was that of thoughtfulness, and she looked upwards as her body swayed slightly with the motion of the strap….

Going up in the lift she heard a conversation between two old ladies, whose bared heads were dressed for the theatre.

“Of course, you know that Eileen’s on the stage now?” said one of them. “She’s got a job with a Shakespearian Company.”

“Oh — really?” said the other. “Well — I’m not sorry to hear it….

“I mean,” she added, “with talent like that it really would be a pity to
Waste
….” They agreed with each other.

Jackie wondered how Eileen would fare.

Probably much better with Mr. Claye than herself, she thought. Another rival. She wished
she
had all that talent.

Arrived at the theatre, where business was very quiet, she obtained a complimentary seat for herself, and looked about for Mr. Drew. She was unable to spot him before the curtain rose, and decided to go behind after the first act. She had some interest in the play on account of Miss Edna Radley, who was playing the juvenile, and who had been a friend of hers for some time.

Miss Radley’s performance was, she thought, lamentable. The play also was very bad, she thought — but being a war play of an emotional nature it caused her to shed many tears.

*

Miss Radley was very pleased to see her. “My DEAR!” she said….

And, “Well, my dear, what am I like?”

“My dear,” said Jackie. “Mar-ar-ar-arvellous. I’ve been absolutely howling!”

“No, Jackie. Honestly.”

“No,
honestly,
dear. You were wonderful. You were really.”

“Well, how are you getting on with Claye?”

“Oh, ghastly. That’s what I’ve come up to see Drew about.”

“I
know,
my dear, isn’t he
foul?
So SWAIVE and SLIMY…. You feel you can knife him!”

“Oh, have you had any, then?”

“Oh, rather, but it’s no use appealing to Drew. He believes in him
implicitly,
my dear. He thinks he’s God’s Own.”

“Oh, no — he
doesn’t?”
said Jackie, appealingly, but, “He DOES, my dear, he DOES!” affirmed Miss Radley.

*

She met Mr. Drew in the foyer after the second act. He was in a hurry. “Ah-ha, Miss Mortimer,” he said. “Getting on all right with the part?” And he held her hand.

“Well, I’m getting on all right,” said Jackie. “I don’t know what Mr. Claye thinks about it.”

“Good. I must fly, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Drew. “I’ll be down there to-morrow. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

And that was that.

*

After the show she stayed some time with Miss Radley, who was with an admirer.

This young gentleman, who was in the chartered accountant business, behaved coyly in the presence of Art, but offered to give Jackie a lift in his car as far as Piccadilly. But Jackie refused, and seeing them off, and waving her hand to them, walked over the deserted street to the deserted station.

As she got into the train, and as the train moved out of the station, she observed that she was sitting opposite Mr. Reginald Byndon. She knew Mr. Byndon slightly, and he had been acting in the play she had just seen. But he did not recognize her. He was about sixty years of age and
extremely (indeed professionally) stout: he wore his glasses, on his round red face, in a diagonal fashion which gave his eyes a bleared, profoundly muddled, and blundering
expression
: and he was smoking a pipe. He was very well-known amongst actors and playgoers, for he had been for forty years in this business. He was looking far from triumphant at the achievement, and he was now, doubtless, going home. Jackie was glad that he had not recognized her, as it was interesting to sit in a corner and observe Reginald Byndon going home.

*

Reginald Byndon going home…. In the roar of the tube it was impossible to read his thoughts. His pipe was out, though still held weakly in his mouth, and he was
obviously
very weary. Sometimes his eyes would close, and you might think that he slept; but then, all at once, they would be open again, gazing limply down at a point somewhere near Jackie’s ankles…. Reginald Byndon was deep in
contemplation
of some nature.

Were there not echoes and memories of all those forty years? wondered Jackie. Could he not hear now, in the clash and roar of the train, the clash of all the rehearsals, and the roar of all the applauses, and see again all the fluster and
seekings
and victories and thwartings that had filled his career? … And now it had come to this. A confused old man (who should have been in bed a long while ago) sitting alone and unrecognized in a late deserted train from Hampstead.

You would call Reginald Byndon a failure, she supposed. His successes, of course, were innumerable. His crowning achievement, seven years ago, in “Bobby,” had coloured and given substance to his whole career. And since then and before then he had never failed of recognition and particular notice….

And the sum of all these successes equalled, in the end, participation in a second-rate production at Hampstead, and a late train home at night….

She endeavoured to conceive him as a young man again, in the flush of his first progresses. His chubbiness and
cheerfulness
and redness and roundness must have carried all before them at the time. What wisdom he must have acquired since then! — in forty years. He could, indeed, well afford to take pride in his wisdom, but she could detect no pride. His attitude, as he sprawled out in the jolting vehicle, was very patient and even a little suppliant. “You young people,” he had once said to Jackie…. His wisdom flew over to her, unashamed, as she sat there, and dropped at her feet….

And the train roared on, and his eyes opened again, and his eyes shut, and he held the same position. And to-morrow morning, by eleven o’clock, he would be up and about. And it would be Reggie this, and Reggie that, and “What sort of business are you doing up there, Reggy?” and “Pretty fair, old boy, pretty fair.” But to-night it was Reginald Byndon — a lonely, sleepy old gentleman with forty dazing years of the theatre behind him, and about three years of life ahead (and his pipe out), going home….

And she also had to be up in the morning, to face the same tasks that Reggie had had to face in all those years. Even Reggie, for all his age and acquired prestige, was not immune…. “And just a spot quicker, Reggie, old boy — we’re playing too long already. You won’t forget that, will you?” “No, no. I won’t.” “I mean one can’t
stop
to make points just here, old boy. Don’t you agree?” “Yes, yes. I see.”

What was this coercion to which she and Mr. Byndon were so inextricably and submissively committed? What
preliminary
urge was it, that had led Mr. Byndon and herself into this hazardous mode of life? And what good had it done either of them? Mr. Byndon’s eyes closed again at this, as though there were no reply.

And what part did he and she fulfill in this world? At best, she supposed, they were a couple who, in the indescribable complexity of modern civilization, spent their evenings in a very harassed and obstructed endeavour to mirror or portray some remoter emotional or intellectual complex of that
civi
lization
. She was careful to say at best, for so far she had done nothing of the kind. High Hysterical Laughs and Ronald — pause — three paces — I’m tired of all this — pause — Acting had been the level of her art to date….

She must think about all this some time. At present she had to succeed. She would work at her part to-night, and surrender, hands down, pauses and all, to Mr. Claye in the morning.

And there was her contract with Cannon, wasn’t there?