“Worked out very convenient, hasn’t it, sir?”
“Oh, very,” said Parry discontentedly. “Look, Bob. You were with the Governor on his New Zealand tour in ’thirty, weren’t you?”
Bob said woodenly: “That’s correct sir. ’E was just a boy in them days. Might I trouble you to move, Mr. Percival? I got my table to lay out.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m in the way. As usual. Quite! Quite!” He waved his hand and walked jauntily into the passage.
“Good luck for to-night, sir,” said Bob and shut the door after him.
In the room opposite to Poole’s and next to the Greenroom, Parry could hear Bennington’s dresser moving about whistling softly through his teeth. There is a superstition in the theatre that it’s unlucky to whistle in a dressing-room and Parry knew that the man wouldn’t do it if Ben had arrived. He didn’t much like the sound of it himself, and moved on to J.G. Darcey’s room. He tapped, was answered, and went in. J.G. was already embarked on his make-up.
“Bob,” said Parry, “refuses to be drawn.”
“Good evening, dear boy. About what?”
“Oh, you know. The New Zealand tour and so on.”
“Quite right,” said J.G. firmly, and added: “He was the merest stripling.”
“Well — eighteen,” Parry began and then broke off.
“I know, I know. I couldn’t care less, actually.” He dropped into the only other chair in the room and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, dear,” he said, “I’m so bored with it all. By-blow or not, what does it matter!”
“It only matters,” said J.G., laying down a stick of No. 5, “in so far as it’s driving Gay Gainsford pretty close to a nervous breakdown, and to that I do most strongly object.”
“Really?” Parry raised his head and stared at him. “How altruistic of you, J.G. Well, I mean, I’m sorry for her, poor child. Naturally. And one trembles for the performance, of course.”
“The performance would be all right if people left her alone. Ben, in particular.”
“Yes,” said Parry with great satisfaction. “The situation appears to be getting under the skin of the great character actor. There is that.”
“I’m told,” said J.G., “there was a midnight audition. Jacko professes ecstasy.”
“My dear J.G., there have been two more-or-less public auditions. The object, no doubt, being to make everything look as clean as a whistle. The second affair was this morning.”
“Did you see her?”
“I happened to look in.”
“What’s she like?”
Parry lit a cigarette. “As you have seen,” he said, “she’s fantastically like him. Which is really the point at issue. But fantastically like.”
“Can she give a show?”
“Oh, yes,” said Parry. He leaned forward and hugged his knees boyishly. “Oh, yes indeed. Indeed she can, my dear J.G. You’d be surprised.”
J.G. made a non-committal sound and went on with his make-up.
“This morning,” Parry continued, “the Doctor was there. And Ben. Ben, quite obviously devoured with chagrin. I confess I couldn’t help rather gloating. As I remarked, it’s getting under his skin. Together, no doubt, with vast potations of brandy and soda.”
“I hope to God he’s all right to-night.”
“It appears Gay was in the back of the house, poor thing, while it was going on.”
“She didn’t tell me that,” J.G. said anxiously and, catching Parry’s sharpened glance, he added: “I didn’t really hear anything about it.”
“It was a repetition of last night. Really, one feels quite dizzy. Gay rushed weeping to Adam and again implored him to let her throw in the part. The Doctor, of course, was all for it. Adam was charming, but Uncle Ben produced another temperament. He and the Doctor left simultaneously in a silence more ominous, I assure you, than last night’s dog-fight. Ben’s not down yet.”
“Not yet,” J.G. said and repeated: “I hope to God he’s all right.”
For a moment the two men were united in a common anxiety. J.G. said: “Christ, I wish I didn’t get nervous on first nights.”
“You, at least, have something to be nervous about. Whereas I half kill myself over the dimmest bit in the West End. When I first saw the part I nearly screamed the place down. I said to Adam if it wasn’t that he and Helena had always been very sweet to me—”
J.G. paid this routine plaint the compliment of looking gloomily acquiescent, but he barely listened to it.
“—and anyway,” Parry was saying, “what chance has any of us as long as this fantastic set-up continues? In Poole-Hamilton pieces the second leads go automatically to the star’s husband. I suppose Adam thinks it’s the least he can do. Actually, I know I’m too young for the part but—”
“I wouldn’t say you were,” J.G. said, absently. Parry shot an indignant glance at him but he was pressing powder into the sides of his nose.
“If he tries any of his up-stage fun-and-games on me to-night,” Parry said, furiously hissing his sibilants, “I’ll just simply bitch up his big exit for him. I could, you know. It’d be no trouble at all.”
“I wouldn’t, dear boy,” J.G. said good-naturedly. “It never does one any good, you know. One can’t afford these little luxuries, however tempting. Well, that’s taken the polish off the knocker on the old front door.” He took his nose delicately between his thumb and forefinger. “The play stinks,” he said thoughtfully. “In my considered opinion, it stinks.”
“Well, I must say you are a comfort to us.”
“Pay no attention. I always feel like that at about half-hour time.”
“Half-hour! God, have they called it?”
“They will in five minutes.”
“I must dart to my paints and powders.” Parry went out, but re-opened the door to admit his head. “In case I don’t see you again, dear J.G., all the very best.”
J.G. turned and raised his hand. “And to you the best, of course, dear boy.”
Left alone, he sighed rather heavily, looked closely at his carefully made-up face and, with a rueful air, shook his head at himself.
Clark Bennington’s dresser, a thin melancholy man, put him into his gown and hovered, expressionless, behind him.
“I shan’t need you before the change,” said Bennington. “See if you can help Mr. Darcey.”
The man went out. Bennington knew he’d guessed the reason for his dismissal. He wondered why he could never bring himself to have a drink in front of his dresser. After all, there was nothing in taking a nip before the show. Adam, of course, chose to make a great thing of never touching it. And at the thought of Adam Poole he felt resentment and fear stir at the back of his mind. He got his flask out of his overcoat pocket and poured a stiff shot of brandy.
“The thing to do,” he told himself, “is to wipe this afternoon clean out. Forget it. Forget everything except my work.” But he remembered, unexpectedly, the way, fifteen years ago, he used to prepare himself for a first night. He used to make a difficult and intensive approach to his initial entrance so that when he walked out on the stage he was already possessed by a life that had been created in the dressing-room. Took a lot of concentration: Stanislavsky and all that. Hard going, but in those days it had seemed worth the effort. Helena had encouraged him. He had a notion she and Adam still went in for it. But now he’d mastered the easier way — the repeated mannerism, the trick of pause and the unexpected flattening of the voice — the technical box of tricks.