At Death's Door (11 page)

“That's right,” said Granville. “Mother-and-daughter talk.”

Pat had hoped that Granville might freeze them out, but he seemed inclined to be friendly, no doubt to make up for Myra's frostiness earlier in the evening. He smiled at them, a not-very-interesting-leading-man-in-a-not-very-interesting-play sort of smile.

“You're an actor, too, aren't you?” asked Daisy Critchley with a quick stretching of her mouth.

“Oh, a very humble one,” said Granville with practiced self-deprecation and sipping his beer. “Or, if not humble, lowly. A born spear-carrier, I'm afraid. Made to swell a progress, start a scene or two.” He saw that he had lost them. “My lot is mostly endless tours of the provinces,” he explained, “though of course one mustn't call them that these days. When the West End plays go on tour, they tend to call on me to replace the star who's gone off to make a television series. Or one may come to rest with some repertory company in Leatherhead or Guildford. That's what I've been doing for the past six months.”

It was an opening into theatrical gossip, and one the Critchleys were certain to take up. After a time Pat shut out the talk and looked around the room. He was on the long seat under the window, and he had an excellent view. Now that the bar was less crowded, he had a view of individuals, not just of one seething mass. Some of the people standing or sitting with their drinks he already knew, for he and Cordelia had been here often enough in the evening: There was the Maudsley greengrocer, there was the man from the post office, and over there was the family he had talked to on the beach. The woman reading he had seen before somewhere, and there, centrally situated, was that sister of Roderick's whom he had just avoided. She had a table to herself now. Odd woman. Unsettling, somehow. When she had come up to them at dinner, there had been a mixture of hostility and obsequiousness that Pat—with his young man's freshness of vision—found difficult to account for.

Now Isobel was clearly nervous. “Cat on a hot tin roof” was the phrase that sprang to Pat's mind. She fumbled when she put a cigarette into her little gold holder; she smoked a few puffs, then extinguished it and ejected it into the ashtray. She started up from her table, then thought better of it and settled back again, crossing and uncrossing her legs. What's she got to be nervous about? wondered Pat. He decided that she was someone he and Cordelia would have as little to do with as possible, the sort he found quite insufferable: overdressed, neurotic, discontented. How odd that she should be so different from Roderick. The Cotterels had been good to Cordelia—and good
for
her, too. This one, if she got her claws into her half sister, could spread her neuroticism like a small plague.

Isobel made a decision: She got up and marched over to the door that led to the back sections of the Red Lion—to
the lavatories, the kitchens and dining room, and the stairs leading up to the guests' bedrooms. No doubt she was going to fetch something from her room. She had left a filmy scarf on her table to reserve it.

Pat turned his attention back to the conversation.

“Yes, we are newly married—” Granville was saying.

“Congratulations!” said Daisy Critchley. “Of course we saw it in the
Telegraph
.”

“Thanks. But in fact we're . . . friends from way back. It must be—oh, ten, twelve years ago when we met; at Stratford, when I played Fortinbras to her Gertrude.”

It was an odd way of putting it, Pat thought. Perhaps Granville Ashe thought he could rely on the Critchleys' having only the vaguest notions of the importance of the various roles in
Hamlet.
And probably he was right.

“I decided then that Myra was the greatest actress I was ever likely to appear with. And so it has proved. Not that I haven't been in plays with wonderful women—some of them pure magic. Even an unknown like me gets breaks sometimes! But none of them has had the presence, the command, the sheer aura of Myra on stage. Critics would agree. I don't see her Gertrude being equaled in my lifetime.”

Pat had heard quite a lot of this sort of thing in the last few months, and his attention span was accordingly small. His mind wandered. He saw that Isobel had returned to the Saloon Bar. She seemed still more highly strung than before. She bought herself another drink from the landlord at the bar, took it to her table, sipped it, then rummaged in her handbag. Then—apparently having forgotten something upstairs or on the pretense of having forgotten something—she got up again and made for the door leading to the lavatories and the guests' bedrooms.

“How did you meet up with Dame Myra again, then?” Commodore Critchley was prodding Granville.

“Oh, that's simple. Myra's at the National at the moment. I'm sure you know the system there: lots of plays playing in repertory. That means you may be in
John Gabriel Borkman
for three or four nights, then have several days off. Days off don't exactly suit Myra. She's an actress first, last, and all stops in between. She has a one-woman show that she takes around the country. It's called
A Room of My Own,
and it's about women writers: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf. Letters, extracts from diaries, and so on. She doesn't exactly
do
them, or anything like that, so the show can be done from a suitcase. Not really my cup of tea, but a damned fine evening even so. Anyway, she brought it down to Guildford for a Sunday evening performance, and that was that.”

“Guildford's where you've been acting, is it?” asked Daisy Critchley. She asked it guilelessly, but Pat felt sure it was with malicious intent. Thus did Noel Coward dismiss Norfolk.

“That's right.” Granville Ashe smiled ruefully. “Not the middle of the theatrical universe, but it means even a very minor luminary like myself can get good parts there. Since the beginning of the year I've done Benedick, Teddy in
The Homecoming,
and we've just finished
Noises Off.
There are some compensations, I assure you, about Guildford.”

“Oh, please, I wasn't—”

But Daisy Critchley was interrupted. Isobel Allick had hurried back into the Saloon Bar, and this time she came straight over to them. Her manner was nervous, but also—Pat was sure of it—excited. As if she got what she had hoped for and intended to make the most of it. She addressed herself to Granville Ashe and Pat, her mouth working convulsively.

“Oh, Mr. Ashe, and—I'm sorry, I don't know your name. I thought you ought to know. I had to go upstairs a
little while ago, to . . . to fetch a handkerchief, and there were these very loud voices coming from your wife's room. Well, not to mince matters, a row. And I've just had to go up again for—well, actually, I was worried, because Cordelia
is
my sister, in a way, and I just
hoped
she wasn't going to do anything foolish—and in fact there were sounds of . . . of violence. I mean they were actually physically
fighting
.”

Her voice faded away. Both the Critchleys were looking up at her with naked, avid interest. But Granville Ashe put a restraining hand on Pat's arm and smiled his young-leading-man's smile up at her.

“Thanks you for telling us, Mrs. . . . er . . . I'm sure you are concerned, but really you don't have to be. I've seen plenty of women fighting during my time in the theater. They may make a lot of noise, but I can assure you they never do each other any real harm. It's like women's tennis; it just doesn't have the ferocity of men's. Just relax. We knew there were likely to be difficulties. This sounds worse than it is. There's no cause to be alarmed.”

There was a moment's silence. Isobel couldn't think what to say.

“Well, I hope you're right.”

The remark came out flatly. Isobel had obviously expected to cause a great sensation. She went back to her table, took a discontented swill at her drink, and sat back, looking at the ceiling. Then Pat saw a thought occurring to her, and she leaned over sideways and conversed in low tones with the woman reading Drabble.

Granville Ashe had kept his hand on Pat's arm.

“I meant what I said to that interfering bitch. It
is
much less worse than it sounds, always. If one of us goes up and tries to intervene, we'll just fan the flames—
and
get caught in the middle, to boot. It will work itself out quite quickly, you'll see. Probably Cordelia will flounce off,
they'll both feel they've won, and the whole thing will just go off the boil. This is just women's nonsense. Much better we don't interfere.”

The way Granville put it rather shocked Pat. You didn't talk in those terms in his circles. Clearly the women's movement had had little effect on the world of provincial rep. He wondered if Granville was right. This was surely something more than a mere backstage brawl. There were real issues here, and real hatred. Hatred, Pat suspected, on both sides. Myra was a formidable personality, determined to have her way, and Cordelia was large physically. There lurked in him the fear that they could do each other real harm. On the other hand, was a final, violent explosion just what the relationship needed? Would it purge each from the other's system, finally and beneficially? Pat was a peaceful soul but not a pacifist. He believed that some long-festering emotions find in violence their healthiest outlet. Perhaps that would be the case here.

He sat on, irresolute. Around him the talk had turned back to theater. The landlord, going on his rounds collecting glasses, had paused to listen. Names were being shamelessly dropped by Granville. Pat slipped out of his seat and went toward the door leading to the loos.

As he went through it, the back door to the pub banged shut. He nearly darted over to open it, to see who had gone out, but then he restrained the urge. If it was Cordelia who had just gone out, he thought, she would certainly need time to recover herself emotionally. He stood against the door. To his right was a door marked
PRIVATE;
that, he knew, led to the landlord's quarters. To his left was a passageway leading to the ladies' and gentlemen's lavatories, and beyond that to the kitchens and the dining room, which also had a more acceptable entrance on the other side of the bar. Ahead of him was the staircase leading to the guests' bedrooms.

Pat stood at the foot of the stairs, listening. He felt an intruder. There was a notice suspended from the ceiling saying
HOTEL GUESTS ONLY.
He could hear no sounds of conflict. From a distant room he could hear a transistor radio; that was all. He darted up the stairs and stopped four or five steps from the top. The corridor, with the doors to ten or twelve guest bedrooms, was deserted. Pat had seen Myra's room key on the table at dinner. It was Room 3. The door with that number on was quite near the head of the stairs. It stared back at him. Behind it, all was quiet—neither voices nor sounds of struggle. Pat sighed with relief. Apparently the fight was over.

When he got back to the bar, the circle around Granville had been augmented. The landlord had sat down, the man from the post office had come over and stood near, and people from other tables were listening in.

“Oh, yes, I've acted with Judi Dench,” Granville was saying. “An absolute sweetie.”

Pat looked at his glass of beer. There was only a quarter of an inch left in it. He'd leave them all to it. He slipped toward the Saloon Bar door and out into the twilight. Then he walked toward the Volkswagen, parked around the side.

Granville Ashe was rather enjoying himself. It is true that if he had announced himself in the Saloon Bar of the Red Lion as an actor, he would in any case have been the object of interest and curiosity. That had always been his experience, gained in bars up and down the country. Still, it was certainly also true that being Dame Myra Mason's husband meant that the interest was sharpened, became more personal. His wide-ranging anecdotes were enjoyed, but someone eventually always brought the conversation back to Myra. If questioned, Granville replied gallantly but unrevealingly and directed the conversation off in another direction. The perfect stage gentleman.

Granville dropped names, but he did not only drop names; he had a fund of theatrical disasters, of coincidences and premonitions, traditions and superstitions. He had just finished
Noises Off
, itself the story of accumulating theatrical disaster. One or two of his listeners had seen it, and he could direct his stories at them.

“You remember in Act Two, after the business with the axe, when Dottie's tied my shoelaces together and I sort of
hop
onstage—of course we're backstage at this point—well, as I went through the bedroom door . . .”

Granville was a good raconteur. He made the story vivid even to those who hadn't seen the play.

“And even though the play is
about
disasters onstage, if you actually
have
one that isn't in the script, it has dreadful consequences, because everything is so carefully organized and timed. God knows if anyone in the audience realized it, but there were one or two onstage that were close to heart attacks that night, I can tell you.”

His audience laughed easily. He had put them at ease. Now he was in full flood.

“Plays
about
the theater are always hell to do. You have to make a distinction between the characters' theatricality
on
stage and
off
stage. I remember once when I was in
Trelawny of the Wells
at Bristol—”

He was interrupted by a loud report. A sharp, split-second bang. Everyone around the two tables jumped in the air, but Granville was the first to laugh.

“Golly—you should have seen yourselves. Must be some old banger going by. Probably my new stepdaughter and her boyfriend, if what I hear is true. Good that those spoilsports at the Ministry of Transport allow a few old crates on the roads still. What was I talking about? Oh, yes,
Trelawny of the Wells.
Well, there was this young actress, and between you and me there wasn't a lot of talent there, or a lot between the ears, and the producer was
getting pretty frayed around the edges trying to drum things into her, and the more he went on at this pretty little thing with the tiny brain, the more she turned to jelly, so that before long she was reduced to three or four stock movements, and her voice had become a squeak of panic. Well, two or three of us saw what was happening, and we decided—”