But she did think about Bill. When he sat beside her they chatted nicely about any number of things, but particularly about him. Often, his childhood, mostly in a good school in England: as she had thought, he had come from a solid middle-class family. Often, too, he was in that or this school in the States: good schools, for he had been privileged financially if not emotionally. Sometimes there were holidays with both parents, undergone for his sake, since they were divorced. These had not been a success. And he talked a lot about his mother.
Sarah reflected that this easy understanding was the same as the one you enjoy with a child, until, let's say, the age of eleven. Children you have known all their lives — like her brother's girls. (Not Joyce, who had always been on a differ- ent wavelength: you did not have a relationship with her as much as with her anxious and timid smile.) It is the pleasantest of relationships, a simple friendship, a sweetness. With early adolescence it may disappear, it seems overnight, and while the adult mourns, the child forgets, for she, he, is fighting for self-definition, cannot afford this absolute trust and openness. And who was she enjoying it with again? Bill Collins, a man of twenty-six or so, who so much loved his mother.
But the special understanding was being submerged in a group elation that was like a jacuzzi, currents of feeling swirling around, stinging, slapping, bubbling. The group temperature was rising fast, as it was bound to do, to culminate in the euphoria of the first night, after all not such a long way ahead.
Henry, when he dropped into his chair by Sarah's, or rather flung himself into it, was all jokes. He liked this play — if it could be called a play. He liked the cast — well, he had chosen it. He adored the music and the words Sarah had chosen to accord with it. And he was glad Julie herself was not around, because he was very much afraid he would adore her too. And here he rolled up his eyes and for a moment was a clown in love.
Richard Service, or Philippe, often sat by Sarah. He was a modest man, serious, full of surprises, for since he was unable to make a living entirely in the theatre, he worked as well as a lecturer in an agricultural college: his father, a farmer, had insisted he must not rely on the theatre. Sarah joked that he saw Julie as a farm girl, for he had said Julie had been brought up in one forest and lived to the end of her life in another. Why had she committed suicide? As much that she did not want to live in a town as that she was afraid of domesticity. He argued about this too with Sally, for these two often sat together, talking. Sally said in those days everyone was still close to the land one way or another, and what ailed Julie was that she was a woman. At least, Sally said, the girl had the sense not to become an actress. 'Look at me. There aren't so many parts for a fat black woman,' she announced, laughing and sighing. 'No, not so many.' What Richard and Sally talked about most was their children. Both had three. Sally's eldest daughter looked after the two smaller ones when her mother was working. Sally never mentioned a husband. She had wanted this girl to stick it out at school and then go to college, but she was threatening to leave school and take her chances. 'She's a fool,' said Sally. 'I tell her, You're a real fool, girl. In ten years' time you'll think it was the worst thing you ever did. But you can't talk to them at that age. Any more than Julie's mother could make her listen.' Richard's fifteen-year-old had 'dropped out' but been persuaded to try again. His 'dropping out', on that level of income, was hardly the same as Sally's daughter's. It was infinitely touching, the friendship of these two, with their differences. They had for each other a humorous gentleness — a respect? was it curiosity too? — precisely because of these differences.
In that second week, 'Rémy's week', Andrew Stead did not have much time for sitting about. He was busy making himself over from a man you could barely imagine without his horse to Rémy, in one of the heartbreaking transformations one may watch when an actor subdues one personality, using something that looks like a ferocious discipline (though perhaps it is more like a submission, all sensitive patience, a kind of listening?), to another that might very well be the opposite of his own. Andrew remarked that he liked being Rémy, for he was always typecast, and in one film after another he was gangster, crook, cowboy, cop, rancher. And that was because in the very first film he had done he was an outlaw, stealing horses. And so what was he doing here? Ten years ago, he had been at Cannes for the film festival, where a film he was in had won a prize, and he had spent a day in the seductive country behind the coast, visiting the ancient hill towns, and by chance had found himself in a town, Belles Rivieres, where there was a music festival. He had heard Julie Vairon's music and did not think much about it, until later, when he could not get it out of his head. It was the 'troubadour' music that had got to him. His agent had sent him Julie Vairon, and he had turned down a film to do it. No, it was very far from his usual line, and perhaps he wasn't up to it… but there was a side benefit — could he call it a benefit, though? He was being thoroughly unsettled. He was wondering now how much he had become 'typecast' in his life as well. Hard to remember now much about what he had been like before the age of nineteen and his first film: he had positively fallen into it, only chance he had become an actor. Yes, he was a Texan, but that didn't mean he necessarily had to spend his life as a cowboy. '" 'Orses and dogs is not vittles and drink to me",' he quoted, and was pleased that though she guessed Dickens, she did not know it was David Copperfield and he had to tell her. 'Despite appearances, it ain't necessarily so.'
He was not a man one could easily imagine needing reassurance, and when he did arrive in the chair beside Sarah, she did not offer it. How differently people did sit in that chair. Bill sat back, balanced, alert, hands palm down on his thighs, chatting to her while that handsome face of his was always ready to offer to anyone looking his way the smiles he was so good at.