'I seem to hear it all already,' claimed Bill, sliding into the seat between Sarah and Stephen, but smiling at Sarah. Then, having established his right to intimacy with Sarah — she could see this was his style, or his need — he glanced at Stephen. But Stephen was not going to succumb, for there was a sharp, not to say critical, look to him, as he examined the young man. Bill quietly got up and walked away, not, however, without the quick flash of a smile at her.
Walking to the tube with Sarah, Stephen remarked, 'Molly doesn't look remotely like Julie.'
'She'll convince you when the time comes.'
'And Andrew might as well be a cowboy.'
'Rémy must surely have spent a lot of time on horseback?'
'And as for that young… Julie would never fall for that pretty face.'
'But Julie did fall for a pretty face. Paul has to be a romantic young lieutenant, and not much more, don't you see? For the sake of dramatic contrast.'
'Good God.'
'Nothing she wrote indicated he was more than a good- looking boy.'
They stood together on the pavement. She was thinking that this querulous note in him was new. More, that in the first weeks of their friendship she would have thought him incapable of it. She was relieved to see that now he seemed to be fighting to preserve an obstinate self-respect, while his eyes were full of misery.
Unexpectedly he said, 'Sarah… I'm out of my depth… ' He grimaced, then made this a smile, walked away to the Underground entrance, turned to give her a small apologetic wave — and vanished.
It was the first read-through of the first act. They were nearly all present now, but there did not seem many people scattered about in the large hall. Henry had announced that he would be putting them all into position right from the start, because how people stood, or were, in relation to each other changed their voices, their movements — everything about them. The actors exchanged those smiles — what else? — meaning that from him they expected no less. Their smiles were already affectionate, as they stood about like dancers waiting for liftoff, and for him to command them. He had arrived that morning by plane from New Orleans, but he was already almost dancing his instructions, falling for seconds at a time into the characters they were going to play. He had been an actor, surely? Yes, and a dancer too, but that was before he had become an old man, and he had worked in a circus too: and here he became a clown, staggering over his own inept feet, miraculously recovering himself, and jumping back into his own self with a clap of the hands that summoned them into their positions. He must be of Italian descent, with those dark and dramatic eyes. Often, in southern Europe, you see a man, a woman, leaning against a wall, standing behind a market stall, all loud exclamatory sound and gesticulation, in the moment before they suddenly go quiet, black eyes staring in sombre fatalism: too much sun, too much bloody history, too much bloody everything, and a bred-in expectation of more of the same. And here was Henry Bisley, from the northern United States, standing limp, switched off, his eyes sombre and abstracted, southern eyes, eyes from the Mediterranean, but even as he leaned briefly against a wall, he seemed already on his way somewhere else. And the idea of movement was emphasized by his shoes, for they would have been useful for a marathon. For that matter, all their shoes seemed designed for a hundred-yard sprint.
Stephen and Sarah sat side by side at a table which was a continuation of Henry's — the director's. At the table beyond that was Roy Strether, watching everything and making notes. Mary Ford was photographing at the theatre.
The read-through began with the scenes in Julie's mother's house in Martinique, and the evening party where the handsome lieutenant Paul, brought by his comrade Jean, was introduced to Julie.
Since the musicians were not there, it was a question of going through the scenes while the words of the songs were spoken, so that everyone would get an idea of what would happen. Roy read, in a voice as flat as the recorded telephone announcement 'Your number has not been recognized'.
This first scene had Julie standing attractively by her harp, shoulder outlined in white muslin (in fact Molly wore jeans and a purple T-shirt), a dress bought by papa on his last visit to distant Paris, on mother Sylvie's insistence. Julie was singing (today she only spoke) a conventional ballad from sheet music (a piece of typing paper) brought by the father from Paris with the dress. For while the reputation of this house and the two beautiful women was exactly what might be expected among the young officers who were unwillingly on service in this attractive but boring island, Julie and her mother disappointed expectations by behaving with the propriety used by the mothers and sisters of these young men, and even more so. Nor had they expected to find Parisian fashions.
It was only when the officers had gone that the women became themselves and spoke their minds, in words recorded by Julie.
To start with, beauty was not so much in the eye of this beholder, for that first evening all I thought was, That's a pretty hero! No, it was Maman who was dissolved by Paul. I said to her, He's too much, he's like a present in pretty paper, and you don't want to unwrap it because it would spoil the parcel. Maman said, 'My God, if I were even ten years younger.' Maman was forty then. She said, 'I swear, if he kissed me, it would be my first time ever.'
The two women were to sing a duet, 'If he kissed me it would be my first time ever,' using the first-period music, like a blues.
This was hardly likely to be the first time for Julie, not with all those young officers about. Sarah passed a note to Henry that unless they were careful, this song would get the wrong kind of laughter. He tilted a page towards her to show he had already marked the danger point with an underlined Laughs!
'But I wouldn't mind a smile,' he said, and smiled at her to show the kind of smile.
This cast did laugh a lot. Laughter kept breaking out during the duet, which of course was being spoken, not sung. Henry asked them to cool it, and at once they sobered, the impassioned words being exchanged without emotion, producing an effect of hopeless despair. So sudden was the change that there was a sigh, the long slowly released breath that means surprise, even shock.
'Right,' said Henry. 'That's it. We'll have to wait for the music.'
They were already a group, a family, partly because of their real interest in this piece, partly because of the infectious energies of Henry. Already they were inside the feeling of conspiracy, faint but unmistakable, the we-against-the-world born out of the vulnerability of actors in the face of criticism so often arbitrary, or lazy, or ignorant, or spiteful — against the world outside, which was them and not we, the world which they would conquer. They already believed they would conquer. It was because of Julie Vairon's special atmosphere.
How easily, how recklessly we join this group or that, religious, political, theatrical, intellectual — any kind of group: that most potent of witches' brews, charged with the possibilities for harm and for good, but most often for illusion. Sarah was not exactly a stranger to the fumy atmospheres the theatre creates, but usually she was in and out of rehearsals, doing this job and that, and she had not before written a whole play, based on journals and music she had soaked herself in for months, then been in on the casting, then committed herself to what would be two months, more, of day-by-day involvement with rehearsals. She would not this time be flitting off to other productions, other rehearsals. She would be part of Julie Vairon, day and night, indefinitely.