B007TB5SP0 EBOK (47 page)

Dear heart! How much he seemed to love it. He had known by their green-room names all the leading stars, and could tell, on occasion, little anecdotes of each.

It was he who narrated how Mrs Mary (as she was then), on the first night of
Gulnara, Queen of the Lattermonians
, got caught in the passenger-lift on the way from her dressing-room
to the stage and was obliged to allow her understudy to replace her, which with the utmost
éclat
she did, while Mrs Mary, who could overhear the salvos from her prison, was driven quite distraught at a triumph that, but for the irony of things, would most certainly have been hers.

Miss Sinquier sighed.

‘Which reminds me,’ she murmured, fixing her eyes upon the storied ceiling, ‘that I’ve no one at all, should anything happen to me.’

She lay back and considered the inchoate imagery painted in gouache above her.

Hydropic loves with arms outstretched in invitation, ladies in hectic hats and billowing silks, courtiers, lap-dogs, peacocks, etc., all intermingled in the pleasantest way.

As she gazed a great peace fell upon her. Her eyelids closed.

‘Breakfast!’

Miss May Mant woke her with a start.

‘Oh!’

‘I laid it to-day in the stalls.’

‘Extraordinary child.’

‘Crumbs in the boxes, I’ve noticed, encourage mice … They must come from the spring, I think, under the stage.’

‘One ought to set a trap!’

‘Poor creatures … they enjoy a good play, I expect, as much as we do,’ Miss Mant murmured, setting down the kettle she was holding and lowering her cheek graciously for a kiss.

‘Well?’

‘You were asleep.’

‘Was I horrid?’

‘You looked too perfectly orchidaceous.’

‘Orchidaceous?’

‘Like the little women of Outa-Maro.’

Miss Sinquier sat up.

‘What is there for breakfast?’ she asked.

‘Do you like porridge?’

‘Oh, Réné!’

Miss Mant raised a bare shoulder and crushed it to an ear.

‘Really,’ she remarked, ‘I’m at a loss to know what to give you, Sally; I sometimes ask myself what Juliet took …’

‘Why, potions.’

‘
Ita
takes tea luke with a lemon; and it makes her
so
cross.’

‘Disgusting.’

‘À la Russe.’

‘Is she still away?’

‘Yes … She writes from a toy bungalow, she says, with the sea at the very door and a small shipwreck lying on the beach.’

‘What of Paris?’

‘I’m Page to him, you said so!’

‘With her consent.’

‘Oh, Ita hates the stage. She’s only
on it
of course to make a match … she could have been an Irish countess had she pleased, only she said it wasn’t smart enough, and it sounded too Sicilian.’

‘Everyone can’t be Roman.’

‘… Oh, she’s such a minx! In her letter she writes, “I don’t doubt you’ll soon grow tired of the Sally-Sin Theatre and of dancing attendance on the Fair Sink.” ’

‘Cat.’

‘And her Manting ways just to annoy. Mant, Mant, Mant! She does it to humiliate. Whenever the Tirds are in earshot she’s sure to begin.’

‘The Tirds?’

‘Llewellyn and Lydia. Lydia Tird has an understanding with my big brother. Poor lad! Just before I left home he took the name of Isadore: Isadore Iris. Oh, when Ita heard! Bill Mant she said and made Llewellyn laugh.’

‘Oh!’

‘And now that Mrs Sixsmith “Mants” me almost as much as Ita.’

‘Why do you dislike her so much?’

‘Cadging creature!’

‘Réné?’

‘Limpet.’

‘Réné?’

‘Parasite.’

‘Réné—!’

‘Scavenger.’

‘
Basta!
’

‘I know all about her.’

‘What do you know?’

‘If I tell you, I’ll have to tell you in French.’

‘Then tell me in French.’

‘Elle fait les cornes à son mari!’

‘What next?’

‘She’s
divorcée
!’

‘Poor soul.’

‘Out at
Bois St Jean
– St John’s Wood – she has a villa.’

Miss Sinquier got up.

‘Anyway,’ she murmured.

‘Oh, Sally …’

‘Well?’

‘You do love me?’

‘Why,
of course
.’

‘Let’s go presently to a Turkish bath – after rehearsal.’

‘Not to-day.’

‘… Just for a “Liver Pack”?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because … and when you’re out, don’t, dear, forget a mousetrap!’

To bring together certain of the dramatic critics (such high arbiters of the stage as Sylvester Fry of the
Dispatch
, Lupin Petrol of
Now
, Amethyst Valer of
Fashion
, Berinthia of
Woodfalls
, the terrible, the embittered Berinthia who was also Angela) cards had been sent out from Foreign-Colony Street, in the comprehensive name of Sir Oliver Dawtry, the famous banker and financier, inviting them to meet the new lessee of the Source.

It was one of those sultry summer nights of electricity and tension, when nerves are apt to explode at almost nothing. Beyond the iron Calvary on the Ursulines’ great wall, London flared with lights.

Perched upon a parapet in brilliant solitude, her identity unsuspected by the throng, Miss Sinquier, swathed in black mousseline and nursing a sheaf of calla lilies, surveyed the scene with inexpressive eyes.

‘And there was the wind bellowing and we witches wailing: and no Macbeth!’ a young man with a voice like cheap scent was saying to a sympathetic journalist for whatever it might be worth …

Miss Sinquier craned her head.

Where were the two ‘Washingtons’? or the little Iris girl?

By the Buddha shrine, festively decked with lamps, couples were pirouetting to a nigger band, while in the vicinity of the buffet a masked adept was holding a clairaudience of a nature only to be guessed at from afar. An agile negro melody, wild rag-time with passages of almost Wesleyan hymnishness – reminiscent of Georgia gospel-missions; the eighteenth century in the Dutch East Indies – charmed and soothed the ear.

Miss Sinquier jigged her foot.

At their cell windows, as if riveted by the lights and commotion, leaned a few pale nuns.

Poor things!

The call of the world could seldom wholly be quenched!

She started as a fan of seabirds’ feathers skimmed her arm.

‘Sylvester’s come,’ Mrs Sixsmith in passing said.

‘Oh!’

‘Aren’t you scared?’

‘Scared?’

‘You know, he always belittles people. Sylvester traduces everyone; he even crabs his daughter; he damns all he sees.’

‘Boom!’

‘How he got up those narrow stairs is a mystery to me.’ Mrs Sixsmith smiled.

Miss Sinquier raised her face towards the bustling stars. An elfish horse-shoe moon, felicitously bright, struck her as auspicious.

‘One should bow to it,’ she said.

‘Idolatry!’

‘There! look what nodding does.’

A blanche bacchante with a top-knot of leaves venturesomely approached.

‘I’m Amethyst,’ she murmured.

‘Indeed?’

‘Of
Fashion
. You are Miss Sinquier, I take it, whose costumes for Romeo – Renaissance, and ergo
à la mode
! – I so long to hear about.’

Miss Sinquier dimpled.

‘The frocks,’ she said, ‘some of them, will be simply killing.’

‘I want your first.’

‘Loose white.’

‘I suppose,
coiffé de sphinx avec un tortis de perles
?’

Miss Sinquier shook her head.

‘No “Juliet-cap” of spurious pearls for me,’ she said.

‘You dare to abolish it?’

‘I do.’

‘You excite me.’

‘Unless the bloom is off the peach, Juliet needs no nets.’

Miss Valer lowered discreetly her voice.

‘And your Romeo?’ she queried. ‘He must make love angelically?’

‘He does.’

‘I admire enormously his friend.’

‘Mr Nice?’

‘He has such perfect sloth. I love his lazaroni-ness, his Riva-degli-Schiavoni-ness … He’s very, very handsome. But, of course, it cannot last!’

‘No?’

‘Like an open rose. Have you no sympathy yourself?’

‘None.’

‘That’s a pity. An actress … she needs a lover: a sort of husbandina, as it were … I always say Passion tells:
L’amour!
’

Miss Sinquier threw a glance towards Mrs Sixsmith, who stood listlessly flirting her fan.

‘I’m going to the buffet, child,’ she said.

‘Then I think I’ll join you.’

And drawing her friend’s arm within her own, Miss Sinquier moved away.

‘She must belong to more than one weekly!’ she reflected.

‘You didn’t mention your Old Mechlin scarf, or your fox-trimmed nightie,’ Mrs Sixsmith murmured, dexterously evading the psychic freedoms of the masked adept.

‘Have you no shame, Paul?’ she asked.

‘Paul!’

Miss Sinquier wondered.

‘Mephisto! I know his parlour tricks … though it would only be just, perhaps, to say he did foresee our separation some time before it occurred.’

‘Oh, how extraordinary.’

‘Once as I was making ready to pay some calls, in order to frighten me, he caused the hare’s foot on my toilet-table to leave its carton sheath and go skipping about the room.’

‘What ever did you do?’

‘My dear, I was disgusted. It really seemed as if the whole of Womanhood was outraged. So, to
punish
him – for revenge –
instead of going to a number of houses that day, I went to only one.’

‘There wouldn’t be time?’

‘I shall always blame myself …’

‘Why?’

But a lanthorn falling in flames just then above them put an end to the conversation.

‘That’s the second I’ve seen drop,’ Miss May Mant exclaimed, darting up.

‘What have you been up to?’

‘Having my bumps examined.’

‘What!’

‘By the masked professor … Oh, the things he said; only fancy, he told me I’d cause the death of one both near and dear! Ita’s near … but she certainly isn’t dear – odious cat.’

‘He must have thought you curiously credulous,’ Miss Sinquier murmured, turning her head aside.

To her annoyance she perceived the scholarly representative of the
Dispatch
– a man of prodigious size – leaning solidly on a gold-headed cane while appraising her to Sir Oliver Dawtry, from her bebandeaued head to her jewelly shoes.

‘She reminds me just a little of some one
de l’Évangile
!’ she could hear the great critic say.

‘Sylvester!’

‘Oh?’

‘Should he speak,’ Mrs Sixsmith murmured, wincing at the summer lightning that flickered every now and then, ‘don’t forget the mediaeval nightie or the Mechlin lace! Five long yards – a cloud …’

Miss Sinquier buried her lips in her flowers.

Through the barred windows of the convent opposite certain novices appeared to be enjoying a small saltation among themselves.

Up and down the corridor to the yearning melody of the minstrel players they twirled, clinging to one another in an ecstasy of delight.

Her fine eyes looked beautiful as, raising them fraught with soul, they met the veteran critic’s own.

‘O, dear God, help me. Hear me, Jesu. Hear me and forgive me and be offended not if what I ask is vain … soften all hostile hearts and let them love me – adore me! – O Heaven, help me to please. Vouchsafe at each
finale
countless curtains; and in the “Potion Scene”, O Lord, pull me through …’

Unwilling to genuflect in the presence of her maid, who would interpret any unwontedness of gesture as first-night symptoms of fear, Miss Sinquier lifted her face towards the bluish light of day that filtered obliquely through the long glass-plating above.

‘There’s a cat on the skylight, Smith,’ was what she said as her maid with a telegram recalled her wandering gaze to earth.

It was a telegram from her father.

‘Missed conveyance York,’ she read. ‘Bishopthorpe to-night archiepiscopal blessings.’

‘Ah, well …’ she professionally philosophized, ‘there’ll be
deadheads
besides, I’ve no doubt.’

‘Any answer, miss?’

‘Go, Smith, to the box office, and say G 2 and 3 (orchestra) have been returned; there’s no answer,’ she added, moving towards the brightly lit dressing-room beyond.

Ensconced in an easy chair, before a folding mirror that, rich in reflections, encompassed her screen-like about, sat Mrs Sixsmith pensively polishing her nails.

Miss Sinquier bit her lip.

‘I thought—’ she began.

‘Sh—! Be Juliet now. We’re in Verona,’ Mrs Sixsmith exclaimed. ‘
Fuori
the doors.’

‘Fancy finding
you
.’

‘Me?’

‘What are you doing in
my Italy
?’

Mrs Sixsmith threw a glance at herself in the glass. ‘I’m a girl friend,’ she said; ‘a Venetian acquaintance: someone
Julie
met while paddling in the Adriatic – in fact,
cara cuore
, I’m a daughter of the Doge. Yes; I’m one of the Dolfin-Trons.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m Catarina Dolfin-Tron.’

‘Kitty Tron!’

‘Your own true Kate.’

‘When are you going round?’

‘Let me finish my hands. My manicurist has left me with such claws … Poor little soul! When she came to my wedding-finger she just twiddled her rasp and broke out crying. “To be filing people’s nails,” she said, “while my husband is filing a petition!” ’

‘Wonderful that she could.’

‘This city has its sadness. Your maid, Smith, while you were in the other room, said, “Oh, marm, what you must have endured;
one Smith
was enough for me.” ’

‘Poor Kate!’

‘Ah, Julie …’ Mrs Sixsmith sighed, when the opening of the door gently was followed by the entry of Mrs Smee.

‘Am I disturbing you?’ she asked.

‘No, come in.’

‘I want to tell you my husband isn’t himself.’

‘He’s ill?’

‘He’s not himself.’

‘In what way?’

‘It’s a hard thing for a wife to confess. But for a première he’s nearly always in wine.’

‘Is he …
much
?’