They walked slowly to the house, while she told him about this new production here, and the new members of the cast. She listened, or tried to, for her thoughts would go straying off, while he told her about the Edinburgh Festival. Thus they reached the house, and it was time for the early buffet supper, for soon the play would begin.
The two young women from the town, Alison and Shirley, were there that evening, large, calm, blonde, with red cheeks, as healthy as apples, shedding pleased and maternal smiles on the hectic scene. First nights were not new to them. As for Elizabeth, she might as well have been saying aloud, This sort of thing is to be expected; it is the theatre after all… and she smiled at Susan while handing her a plate of summer pudding. 'You really are so good, Susan,' everyone heard her say. 'You're such a wonderful Julie.' This to remind her of what she was doing here, in this house — Elizabeth's house.
Benjamin left Sarah to talk to Stephen, and the two men stood side by side conversing, holding glasses of wine and waving away food. They were for that time inside their roles as patrons of the arts, for if they were not thinking this, were too modest, even feeling privileged to assist all these talented beings, then others, watching them, had to think: the money men — and we are all dependent on their decisions.
Henry came to Sarah and said in a low voice, 'Sarah, I've had a fax from Millicent. She is coming tomorrow. With Joseph. She'll see tomorrow night's performance, and then we'll both be off.'
'A change of plan?'
'Yes. Elizabeth very kindly invited her to stay a few days, and we said we would, but — well, we're leaving the day after tomorrow, and then we're going to drive around France for a couple of weeks.'
She said nothing and could not look at him.
'So that's how it is, Sarah,' he said, putting down an untouched plate of food. 'And now I'm going out to see how the audience is coming along.'
He went. Soon the players followed him.
Stephen, Sarah, and Benjamin stood on the steps to watch the audience leave their cars and wandered over the grass towards the theatre. It was a perfect evening. Wispy gold clouds floated high in the west, and quiet trees were outlined against them. Birds robustly quarrelled in the shrubs. With nearly an hour to go, the seats were already nearly full.
Sarah saw her brother Hal, Anne, Briony and Nell get out of their car. She had not expected them. He had come from work and wore the dark suit he used for his afternoons in Harley Street. His women wore floral dresses, their fair hair glittered with this evening's sun. For all of them an excursion into Sarah's life was a holiday: for the parents, from hard work; and the girls after all did spend a good part of their lives in an office and a laboratory. Where was Joyce?
Sarah waved at her brother, who granted her an allowance of his confident self in a measured palm-forward salute, like royalty, but because he didn't flutter his fingers he seemed to bestow blessings: light could easily be streaming from that palm towards the three on the steps. Through a gap in the hedge she watched him advance to the front row. She saw a large light black ball being borne shorewards on the frothy crest of a slow wave. He stepped lightly, his head level, his eyes staring straight ahead, and the look on his face was one Sarah had been studying all her life, though it was not a look, in fact, that repaid study: with his full cheeks, his slightly pouting mouth, his protuberant eyeballs, he was like a ship's figurehead. She had often thought he was like a drugged or a hypnotized man. It was his body that expressed absolute assurance, an impervious self-satisfaction. A mystery: he had always been a mystery to her. Where had he got it from, this self-assurance? Where in him was it located? Having reached the front row, he removed the Reserved signs on some chairs — he had not reserved seats — and sat down, assuming his women would arrange themselves. There he sat, the large soft black ball beached, while around him frothed the flowery wave.
In the front row, critics from London were taking their seats, some with a characteristic look of doing the occasion a favour by being there at all, others sliding furtively along the rows, in case they were observed and someone might come to talk to them, thus compromising their integrity. The audience softly chatted, admiring the sky, the gardens, the house.
Henry escorted Stephen, Sarah, and Benjamin to wish the players well. They took with them goodwill faxes from Bill in New York and from Molly in Oregon. 'Thinking of you all tonight.' 'I wish I was with you.' The new, raw building was crammed with people now and already filled with… it is a matter of opinion with what. But the place was no longer an echoing vacuum.
The four took their places, right at the back.
Experienced eyes assessed the critics. Only two of the first-rank ones were here. Elizabeth had been heard thanking them in ringing tones for being so very kind. The others were second-rank, or apprentices, among them Roger Stent, who, having looked cautiously for Sonia and found her, gave her a severe and unsmiling nod, like a judge before opening the day's case. She gave him an 'up yours' sign back, meant to be noticed. The critics were all one of two kinds: theatre critics, who would judge from that point of view, or music critics, here because Queen's Gift had a reputation for its music and its Entertainments, who knew nothing about stage production. None was equipped to judge this hybrid. The audience was another matter, for they at once showed they liked the piece and understood, and when the troubadour music began they applauded, to show they did not find it strange. For one thing, the programme devoted a full page to this kind of music: its history, its origins in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, its Arab influences, its instruments, adapted from Arab originals, its unexpected emergence so many centuries later in the music of Julie Vairon, who — it was safe to assume — could never have heard it.
But that music was in the second act, and the two main theatre critics left after the first, because of driving back to London or catching their train. They both had the affronted put-upon look of critics who have wasted their time. Sarah joked that their pieces would certainly include the phrase 'an insipid piece,' and Mary added, '"Faux exotica,'" and Roy, '"Unfortunately an exotic background will not save this banal play from failure."'
The rest of the theatre critics left at the end of the second act, so they would not know about the limpid other-worldly music of the third act, which transcended, even repudiated, the personal. 'Do you know what?' said Mary. 'I bet every one of their pieces will be headed: "She Was Poor but She Was Honest.'" 'Or,' suggested Roy, '"I can't get away to marry you today — my wife won't let me."' The music critics all stayed to the end.
But the audience stood to applaud, and for them, at least, Julie Vairon was a success, if not as much as it had been in France.
Meanwhile Sarah's attention was being distracted, because during the second act she saw Joyce with her friend Betty and an unknown youth standing near the gap in the hibiscus hedge which was the entrance to the theatre. They had the look of children listening outside a door to the grown-ups talking. Easy to reconstruct what must have happened. Joyce had been invited — no, begged — with the exasperated end-of-tether voices she did hear from her family, to accompany them on their jaunt to Aunt Sarah's play, had refused, but had told Betty, who had said they might as well go. The three had hitchhiked. Even now, when hitching was so risky, Joyce begged lifts, usually from lorry drivers accosted in the forecourts of petrol stations. Joyce had recounted tales of near-disaster, with the timid smile she did offer to adults, partly to find out what the world of authority thought. Sarah had not previously had more than a glimpse of Betty, but now here she was, in full view. The three young people made their way around the back of the seated crowd, Joyce on tiptoe, Betty with bravado, the young man expecting to be accosted and thrown out. Betty plumped herself down on a grassy slope, the two sat by her and Joyce sent frantic waves and smiles to her aunt.