B007TB5SP0 EBOK (48 page)

‘I never knew him like it!’

Mrs Sixsmith examined her nails.

‘So violent?’ she ventured.

‘He’s more confused, dear, than violent,’ Mrs Smee explained. ‘He seems to think we’re doing
The Tempest
; Romeo’s tanned
breast he takes for Ferdinand’s. “Mind, Ferdy boy,” I heard him say, “and keep the — out.” Whereupon, his mind wandered to the Russian plays I love, and he ran through some of Irina’s lines from
The Three Sisters
. “My soul,” you know she says, “my soul is like an expensive piano which is locked and the key lost.” Ah, there’s for you; Shakespeare never wrote that. He couldn’t. Even by making piano, spinet. O Russia! Russia! land of Tchekhov, land of Andrief, of Solugub, of Korelenko, of Artzibashef – Maria Capulet salutes thee! And then my man was moved to sing. His love, she was in Otaheite … But as soon as he saw me he was back at
The Tempest
again, calling me Caliban, Countess, and I don’t know what.’

‘Oh, how disgraceful!’

‘After the performance I’ll pop home – Home! – in a drosky and shut him out.’

‘Meanwhile?’

‘He’ll pass for a Friar. The Moujik!’

‘Still …’

‘He’ll probably be priceless; the masses always love the man who can make them laugh.’

Miss Sinquier moved restlessly towards the door and looked out.

All was activity.

Plants for the balcony set, of a rambling, twining nature, together with a quantity of small wicker cages labelled ‘Atmospherics’, and containing bats, owls, lizards, etc., were in course of being prepared.

The manageress knit her brows.

‘Miss Marquis,’ she called, ‘instead of teasing the animals, I suggest you complete your toilet.’

‘… She’d better look sharp!’

Mrs Smee consulted her notes.

‘She reminds me more of a nurse-maid than a nurse,’ she murmured. ‘Not what
I
should have chosen for Juliet at all.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Miss Marquis has no stage presence. And such a poor physique – she’s too mean.’

‘Anyway, Sally’s got fine men. I never saw finer fellows. Even
the Apothecary! Fancy taking the fatal dose from a lad like that; he makes me want to live.’

Mrs Smee purred.

‘To have interesting workmates is everything,’ she said. ‘Hughie Huntress, as Producer, seemed quite stunned at the subtle material at his disposal … In fact, he realized from the first, he told me, he
couldn’t
“produce” all of it.’

Mrs Sixsmith lowered her voice.

‘Where did Sally find her Balthasar?’ she asked, ‘and where did she secure her Tybalt?’

‘My dear Mrs Sixsmith, I’m not in the management’s secrets, remember, so much as you!’

‘Or who put her in the way of Sampson and Gregory? And
where
did she get her Benvolio?’

‘Through an agent, I don’t doubt.’

Mrs Sixsmith threw a sidelong probing glance in the direction of the door. Already in her heart she felt herself losing her hold. Had the time inevitably come to make out the score?

Through the open door came a squeal.

‘Sally, the owls!’

‘Leave them, Réné,’ Miss Sinquier ordered.

‘
Dearest
, what diddlies; one has a look of old Sir Oliver!’ Miss Mant declared, coming forward into the room.

Clad in a pair of striped ‘culottes’, she had assumed, notwithstanding sororal remonstrance, the conspicuous livery of Paris.

‘I just looked in to thank you, darling,’ she began, ‘for all your sweetness and goodness … Oh, Sally, when I saw the playbill with my name on it (right in among the gentlemen!) I thought I should have died. Who could have guessed ever it would be a breeches part?’

‘Turn round.’

‘Such jealous murmurings already as there are; a-citizen-of-Verona, an envious super without a line, whispered, as I went by, that my legs in these tissue tights had a look of forced asparagus.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Of course: I knew that, Sally. But devil take me. How I’ll hate going back into virginals again; these trousers spoil you for skirts.’

‘Sprite.’

‘And I’d a trifling triumph too, darling, which I chose to ignore: just as I was leaving my dressing-room, Jack Whorwood, all dressed up for Tybalt, accosted me with a fatuous, easy smile. “I want your picture, Miss Iris, with your name on it,” he said. “
Do
you?” I said. “I do,” he said. “Then I fear you’ll have to,” I said. Oh, he was cross! But all the while, Sally, he was speaking I could feel the wolf …’

‘Better be careful,’ Mrs Sixsmith snapped.

‘As if I’d cater to his blue besoins!’

‘Réné, Réné!’

‘Although I snubbed him,’ Miss Iris murmured, stooping to examine upon the toilet-table a beribboned aeroplane filled with sweets, ‘he looked
too
charming!’

Mrs Smee chafed gently her hands.

‘I must return to my Friar,’ she said.

‘He is saying the grossest, the wickedest things!’

‘Mr Smee’s sallies at times are not for young ears,’ Mrs Smee loftily observed. ‘His witticisms,’ she added, ‘aren’t for everyone.’

‘My friend, Miss Tird, who came to watch me dress, was quite upset by his cochonneries!’

‘Although your little friend appears scarcely to be nine, she seems
dazed
by her sex and power,’ Mrs Smee unfavourably commented.

‘I’ll have to go, I suppose,’ Miss Sinquier sighed, ‘and see how matters stand.’

‘Prenez garde: for when making up he mostly makes a palette of his hand,’ Mrs Sixsmith said. ‘I happen to know – because one day he caught hold of me.’

Mrs Smee protruded her tongue and drew it slowly in.

‘Hist!’ she exclaimed.

Along the corridor the call-boy was going his rounds.

‘First act beginners,’ chirped he.

Miss Sinquier quivered.

‘… Soften all hostile hearts and let them love me …’ she prayed.

The sound of rain-drops falling vigorously upon the glass roof awoke her. A few wind-tossed, fan-shaped leaves tinged with hectic autumnal colours spotted marvellously the skylight without, half-screening the pale and monotonous sky beyond.

With a yawn she sat up amid her pillows, cushioning her chin on her knees.

After last night’s proceedings the room was a bower of gardenia, heliotrope, and tuberose, whose allied odours during slumber had bewildered just a little her head.

Flinging back the bed-clothes, she discovered as she did so a note.

‘Sally,’ she read, ‘should you be conscious before I return, I’m only gone to market, cordially yours R. Iris. Such mixed verdicts! I’ve arranged the early papers on your dressing-table. I could find no reference to me. This morning there were rat-marks again, and part of a mangled bat.’

‘Oh, those “atmospherics”!’ Miss Sinquier complained, finding somnolently her way into the inner room.

Here all was Italy – even the gauze-winged aeroplane filled with sweets had an air of a silver water-fly from some serene trans-Alpine garden.

Dropping to a fine
cassone
she perused with contracted brows a small sheaf of notices, the gist of which bore faint pencilled lines below.

‘Her acting is a revelation.’

‘We found her very refreshing.’

‘There has been nothing like it for years.’

‘Go to the Source.’

‘An unfeminine Juliet.’

‘A decadent Juliet.’

‘… The Romeo kiss – you take your broadest fan.’

‘The kiss in Romeo takes only fifteen minutes … “Some” kiss!’

‘The Romeo kiss will be the talk of the town.’

‘A distinctive revival.’

‘I sat at the back of the pit-stalls and trembled.’

‘Kiss—’

‘The last word in kisses.’

‘Tio, Tio, Io! Io! jug – jug!’

‘Shakespeare as a Cloak.’

‘A smart Juliet.’

‘An immoral Juliet.’

‘Before a house packed to suffocation—’

‘Among those present at the Source last night were’ – she looked – ‘were, Queen Henriette Marie, Duchess of Norwich, Dismalia Duchess of Meath-and-Mann, Lady Di Flattery, Lord and Lady Newblood, Mr and Lady Caroline Crofts, Sir Gottlieb and Lady Gretel Teuton-Haven, ex-King Bomba, ex-King Kacatogan, ex-Queen of Snowland, ex-Prince Marphise, Hon. Mrs Mordecai, Lady Wimbush, Lord and Lady Drumliemore, Sir John and Lady Journeyman, Lord and Lady Lonely, Lady Harrier, Feodorowna Lady Meadowbank, Lady Lucy Lacy, Duchess of Netherland and Lady Diana Haviours, Miss Azra, Miss Christine Cross, Sir Francis and Lady Four, Madame Kotzebue, Comtesse Yvonde de Tot, Mlle de Tot, Duque de Quaranta, Marquesa Pitti-Riffa and Sir Siegfried Seitz.’

So … she sneezed, all was well!

A success: undoubtedly.

‘O God! How quite …
delicious
!’ she murmured, snatching up a cinquecento cope transformed to be a dressing-gown, and faring forth for an airing upon the stage.

At that hour there wasn’t a soul.

The darkened auditorium looked wan and eerie, the boxes caves.

The churchyard scene with its unassuming crosses, accentuating
the regal sepulchre of the Capulets (and there for that), showed grimly.

‘Wisht!’ she exclaimed, as a lizard ran over her foot.

Frisking along the footlights, it disappeared down a dark trap-hole.

Had Réné been setting more traps? Upon a mysterious mound by a jam jar full of flowers was a hunk of cheese.

She stood a moment fascinated.

Then bracing herself, head level, hands on hips, she executed a few athletic figures to shake off sleep.

Suddenly there was a cry, a cry that was heard outside the theatre walls, blending half-harmoniously with the London streets.

The rich trot of funeral horses died imperceptibly away.

Looking out somewhat furtively from beneath her veil, Mrs Sixsmith could observe only a few farmers conversing together beneath the immemorial yews of S. Irene.

It was over.

There was nothing left to do but to throw a last glance at the wreaths.

‘From the artists and staff of the Source Theatre as a trifling proof of their esteem’ – such the large lyre crushing her own ‘Resurgam’. And there also was the Marys’ with their motto: ‘All men and women are merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.’ And the ‘Heureuse!’ tribute by the sexton’s tools – she craned – was Yvonde de Yalta’s, it appeared.

‘Yvonde de Yalta!’

Mrs Sixsmith gulped.

‘You grieve?’

Canon Sinquier stood beside her.

‘I—’ she stammered.

‘So many tributes,’ he said.

‘Indeed, sir, the flowers are extremely handsome.’

‘So many crowns and crosses, harps and garlands.’

‘One has to die for friends to rally!’

‘Were you in her company?’

‘I, Canon? … I never was on the stage in my life!’

‘No?’

‘My husband never would listen to it: he holds with Newman.’

‘… I don’t recollect.’

‘Besides, I’m no use at acting at all.’

‘You knew my poor daughter well?’

‘I was her protégée … that is … it was
I
who tried to protect her,’ Mrs Sixsmith replied.

‘My dear madam.’

‘Oh, Canon, why was her tomb not in Westminster where so many of her profession are? I was reading somewhere only the other day there are more
actresses
buried there than kings!’

‘It may be so.’

‘Here … she is so isolated … so lost. Sally loved town.’

‘Tell me,’ he begged, ‘something of her end.’

‘Indeed, sir—’

‘You’re too weary?’

‘Oh, I
hate
a funeral, Canon! Listening to their Jeremiads.’

‘You shall take my arm.’

‘Her father was her cult, Canon … In that she resembled much the irresistible Venetian –
Catarina Dolfin-Tron
.’

‘Sally seldom wrote.’

‘Her time, you should remember, was hardly her own.’

‘Tell me something,’ he insisted, ‘of her broken brilliance.’

‘Only by keening her could I hope to do that.’

‘One would need to be a Bion. Or a Moschus …’

‘We laid her, star-like, in the dress-circle – out on Juliet’s bier … Mr and Mrs Smee and her dresser watched … Berinthia … Sylvester … came. I cannot lose from mind how one of the scene-shifters said to me, “How bonny she looked on the bloody balcony.” ’

‘My poor darling.’

‘On the evening of her dissolution, I regret to say, there was a most unseemly fracas in the foyer – some crazy wretch demanding back her money, having booked her place in advance; every one of the staff in tears and too unstrung to heed her. Had it been a box, Canon; or even a stall! But she only paid four shillings.’

‘Was there anything on my poor child’s mind distressing her at all?’

‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘No little affair …?’

‘No …’

‘Nothing?’

‘Your girl was never loose, Canon. She was straight. Sally was straight … at least,’ Mrs Sixsmith added (with a slight shrug) … ‘to the best of my knowledge, she was!’

‘In a life of opportunity …’

‘Ah, sh—, sir, sh—!’

‘Had my daughter debts?’

‘Indeed she had … she owed me money. Much money. But I won’t refer to that … Sally owed me one thousand pounds.’

‘She owed you a thousand pounds?’

‘She was infinitely involved.’

‘Upon what could she spend so much?’

‘Her clothes,’ Mrs Sixsmith replied with a nervous titter, ‘for one thing, were exquisite. All from the atelier of the divine Katinka King …’

‘King?’

‘She
knew
! Puss! The white mantilla for the balcony scene alone cost her close on three hundred pounds.’

‘And where, may I ask, is it now?’

‘It disappeared,’ Mrs Sixsmith answered, a quick red shooting over her face, ‘in the general confusion. I hear,’ she murmured with a little laugh, ‘they even filched the till!’

‘What of the little
ingénue
she took to live with her?’

‘May Mant? Her sister is sending her to school – if (that is) she can get her to go!’

‘It was her inadvertence, I take it, that caused my daughter’s death.’

‘Indeed, sir, yes. But for her – she had been setting traps! She and a girl called Tird! a charming couple!’