“Sorry, old boy,” whispered Grantley, and began to wonder what hope in hell there was of persuading the distinguished author to have a drink in the office during the interval with a hand-picked number of important persons.
He was still preoccupied with this problem when a side door in the set opened and a dark girl with short hair walked out on the stage.
Grantley joined in the kindly applause. The Doctor remained immovable.
The players swept up to their major climax, Adam came on, and five minutes later the curtain fell on the first act. The hands of the audience filled the house with a storm of rain. The storm swelled prodigiously and persisted even after the lights had come up.
“Ah, good girl,” Bob Grantley stammered, filled with the sudden and excessive emotion of the theatre. “Good old Adam. Jolly good show!”
Greatly daring, he clapped the Doctor on the shoulder.
The Doctor remained immovable.
Grantley edged away to the back of the box. “I must get back,” he said. “Look, John, there are one or two people coming to the office for a drink who would be—”
The Doctor turned massively in his seat and faced him.
“No,” he said, “thank you.”
“Well, but look, dear boy, it’s just one of those things. You know how it is, John, you know how—”
“Shut up,” said the Doctor without any particular malice. “I’m going back-stage,” he added. He rose and turned away from the audience. “I have no desire to swill tepid spirits with minor celebrities among the backsides of sand-blasted gods. Thank you, however. See you later.”
He opened the pass-door at the back of the box.
“You’re pleased, aren’t you?” Grantley said. “You must be pleased.”
“Must I? Must I indeed?”
“With the girl, at least? So far?”
“The wench is a good wench. So far. I go to tell her so. By your leave, Robert.”
He lumbered through the pass-door and Grantley heard him plunge dangerously down the narrow stairway to the stage.
Dr. Rutherford emerged in a kaleidoscopic world: a world where walls fell softly apart, landscapes ascended into darkness and stairways turned and moved aside. A blue haze rose from the stage, which was itself in motion. Jacko’s first set revolved bodily, giving way to a new and more distorted version of itself, which came to rest facing the curtain. Masking pieces were run forward to frame it in. The Doctor started off for the dressing-room passage and was at once involved with moving flats. “If you please, sir.”
“Stand aside there, please.”
“Gear stage, by your leave.” His bulky shape was screened and exposed again and again as he plunged forward confusedly. Warning bells rang, the call-boy began to chant: “Second act beginners, please. Second act.”
“Lights,” Clem Smith said.
The shifting world stood still. Circuit by circuit, the lights came on and bore down on the acting area. The last toggle-line slapped home and was made fast and the sweating stage-hands walked disinterestedly off the set.
Clem Smith, with his back to the curtain, made a final check, “Clear stage,” he said and looked at his watch. The curtain-hand climbed an iron ladder.
“Six minutes,” said the A.S.M. He wrote it on his chart. Clem moved into the Prompt corner. “Right,” he said. “Actors, please.”
J. G. Darcey and Parry Percival walked onto the set and took up their positions. Helena Hamilton came out of her dressing-room. She stood with her hands clasped lightly at her waist at a little distance from the door by which she must enter. A figure emerged from the shadows near the passage and went up to her.
“Miss Hamilton,” Martyn said nervously, “I’m not on for your quick change. I can do it.”
Helena turned. She looked at Martyn for a moment with an odd fixedness. Then a smile of extraordinary charm broke across her face and she took Martyn’s head lightly between her hands.
“My dear child,” she murmured, “my ridiculous child.” She hesitated for a moment and then said briskly: “I’ve got a new dresser.”
“A new dresser?”
“Jacko. He’s most efficient.”
Poole came down the passage. She turned to him and linked her arm through his. “She’s going to be splendid in her scene,” she said. “Isn’t she?”
Poole said: “Keep it up, Kate. All’s well.” And in the look he gave Helena Hamilton there was something of comradeship, something of compassion and something, perhaps, of gratitude.
Dr. Rutherford emerged from the passage and addressed himself to Martyn. “Here!” he said. “I’ve been looking for you, my pretty. You might be a lot worse, considering, but you haven’t done anything yet. When you play this next scene, my poppet, these few precepts in thy—”
“No, John,” Poole and Helena Hamilton said together. “Not now.”
He glowered at them. Poole nodded to Martyn, who began to move away but had not got far before she heard Rutherford say: “Have you tackled that fellow? Did you see it? Where is he? By God, when I get at him—”
“Stand by,” said Clem Smith.
“Quiet, John,” said Poole imperatively. “Back to your box, sir.”
The curtain rose on the second act.
For the rest of her life the physical events that were encompassed by the actual performance of the play were to be almost lost for Martyn. That is to say, she was to forget all but a few desultory and quite insignificant details, such as the fact of Jacko kissing her after she came off in the second act (he smelt of toothpaste and nicotine), and of Poole, when the curtain came down, giving her his handkerchief, which surprised her until she found her face was wet with her own tears. He had said something to her, then, with a manner so unlike anything she had found in him before that it had filled her with immense surprise, but she couldn’t remember his words and thought: “I shall never know what he said.” She knew that when she was not playing and during the intervals, she had stood near the entry to the passage and that people had spoken to her while she was there. But these recollections had no more substance than a dream. Still more unreal was her actual performance: she thought she remembered a sense of security and command that had astonishingly blessed her, but it was as if these things had happened to someone else. Indeed, she could not be perfectly certain that they had happened at all. She might have been under hypnosis or some partial anaesthesia for all the reality they afterwards retained.
This odd condition, which was perhaps the result of some kind of physical compensation for the extreme assault on her nerves and emotions, persisted until she made her final exit in the last act. It happened some time before the curtain. The character she played was the first to relinquish its hold and to fade out of the picture.
She came off and returned to her corner near the entry into the passage. The others were all on; the dressers and stage-staff, drawn by the hazards of a first night, watched from the side and Jacko was near the Prompt corner. The passage and dressing-rooms seemed deserted and Martyn was quite alone. She began to emerge from her trance-like suspension. Parry Percival came off and spoke to her.
“Darling,” he said incoherently, “you were perfectly splendid. I’m just so angry at the moment I can’t speak, but I do congratulate you!”
Martyn saw that he actually trembled with an emotion that was, she must suppose, fury. Out of the dream from which she was not yet fully awakened there came a memory of Gargantuan laughter and she thought she associated it with Bennington and with Percival. He said: “This settles it. I’m taking action. God, this settles it!” and darted down the passage.
Martyn thought, still confusedly, that she should go to the dressing-room and tidy her make-up for the curtain-call. But it was not her dressing-room, it was Gay’s and she felt uneasy about it. While she hesitated J.G. Darcey, who had come off, put his hand on her shoulder. “Well done, child,” he said. “A very creditable performance.”