“I’ll see what can be done.”
“John,” said Miss Hamilton, “is worried about it too, Adam.”
Poole said: “Then he should talk to me.”
“You know what the Doctor is.”
“We all do,” said Parry Percival, “and the public, I fear, is beginning to find out. God, there I go again.”
Poole looked at him. “You’ll get along better, I think, Parry, if you deny yourself these cracks against the rest of the company. Rutherford has written a serious play. It’d be a pity if any of us should lose faith in it.”
Percival reddened and made towards the door. “I’m just being a nuisance,” he said. “I’ll take myself off and be photographed like a good boy.” He made an insinuating movement of his shoulders towards Miss Hamilton, and fluttered his hand at her dress. “Marvellous,” he said—“a triumph, if the bit-part actor may be allowed to say so.”
The door shut crisply behind him, and Miss Hamilton said: “Darling, aren’t you rather high and grand with poor Parry?”
“I don’t think so. He’s behaving like an ass. He couldn’t play the part. He was born to be a feed.”
“He’d look it.”
“If all goes well Ben will be it.”
“If all goes well! Adam, I’m terrified. He’s—”
“Are you dressed, Helena? The cameras are ready.”
“Shoes, please, Martyn,” said Miss Hamilton. “Yes, darling. I’m right.”
Martyn fastened her shoes and then opened the door. Miss Hamilton swept out, lifting her skirts with great elegance. Martyn waited for Poole to follow, but he said: “You’re meant to be on-stage. Take make-up and a glass and whatever Miss Hamilton may need for her hair.”
She thanked him and in a flurry gathered the things together. Poole took the Persian lamb coat and stood by the door. She hesitated, expecting him to precede her, but found that he was looking at the cheval-glass. When she followed his gaze it was to be confronted by their images, side by side in the mirror.
“Extraordinary,” he said abruptly, “isn’t it?” and motioned her to go out.
When Martyn went out on the stage, she was able for the first time to see the company assembled together, and found it consisted, as far as the players were concerned, of no more than the six persons she had already encountered: first in their fixed professional poses in the show-frame at the front of the house, and later in their dressing-rooms. She had attached mental tags to them and found herself thinking of Helena Hamilton as the Leading Lady, of Gay Gainsford as the Ingenue, of J. G. Darcey as the Character Actor, of Parry Percival as the Juvenile, of Clark Bennington regrettably, perhaps unjustly, as the Drunken Actor, and of Adam Poole — but as yet she had found no label for Poole, unless it was the old-fashioned one of “Governor,” which pleased her by its vicarious association with the days of the Victorian actor-managers.
To this actual cast of six she must add a number of satellite figures — the author, Dr. John Rutherford, whose eccentricities seemed to surpass those of his legend, with which she was already acquainted; the man in the red sweater, who was the stage-manager, and was called Clem Smith; his assistant, a morose lurking figure; and the crew of stage-hands, who went about their business or contemplated the actors with equal detachment.
The actors were forming themselves now into a stage “picture” moving in a workman-like manner under the direction of Adam Poole, and watched with restless attentiveness by an elderly, slack-jointed man, carrying a paint pot and brushes. This man, the last of all the figures to appear upon the stage that morning, seemed to have no recognizable jobs but to be concerned in all of them. He was dressed in overalls and a tartan shirt, from which his long neck emerged, bird-like and crepe-y to terminate in a head that wobbled slightly as if its articulation with the top of the spine had loosened with age. He was constantly addressed with exasperated affection as Jacko. Under his direction, bunches of lights were wheeled into position, camera men peered and muttered, and at his given signal the players, by an easy transition in behaviour and appearance, became larger than life. A gap was left in the middle of the group, and into this when all was ready floated Helena Hamilton, ruffling her plumage, and becoming at once the focal point of the picture.
“Darling,” she said, “it’s not going to be a flash, is it, with all of you looking like village idiots, and me like the Third Witch on the morning after the cauldron scene?”
“If you can hold it for three seconds,” Adam Poole said, “it needn’t be a flash.”
“I can hold anything, if you come in and help me.”
He moved in beside her. “All right,” he said, “let’s try it. The end of the first act”; and at once she turned upon him a look of tragic and burning intensity. The elderly man wandered across and tweaked at her skirts. Without changing pose or expression, she said: “Isn’t it shameful the way Jacko can’t keep his hands off me.” He grinned and ambled away. Adam Poole said “Right”; the group froze in postures of urgency that led the eye towards the two central figures and the cameras clicked.
Martyn tried, as the morning wore on, to get some idea of the content of the play, but was unable to do so. Occasionally the players would speak snatches of dialogue leading up to the moment when a photograph was to be taken, and from these she gathered that the major conflict of the theme was between the characters played by Adam Poole and Clark Bennington and that this conflict was one of ideas. About a particular shot there was a great deal of difficulty. In this Poole and Gay Gainsford confronted each other, and it was necessary that her posture, the arrested gesture of her hand, and even her expression should be an exact reflection of his.
To Martyn, Poole had seemed to be a short-tempered man, but with Gay Gainsford he showed exemplary patience. “It’s the old story, Gay,” he said. “You’re over-anxious. It’s not enough for you to look like me. Let’s face it—” he hesitated for a moment and said quickly: “We’ve had all this, haven’t we — but it’s worth repeating — you can’t look strikingly like me, although Jacko’s done wonders. What you’ve got to do is to be me. At this moment, don’t you see, you’re my heredity, confronting me like a threat. As far as the photograph is concerned, we can cheat — the shot can be taken over your shoulder, but in the performance there can be no cheating, and that is why I’m making such a thing of it. Now let’s take it with the line. Your head’s on your arms, you raise it slowly to face me. Ready now. Right, up you come.”
Miss Gainsford raised her face to his as he leaned across the writing desk and whispered: “Don’t you like what you see?” At the same moment there was a cascade of laughter from Miss Hamilton. Poole’s voice cracked like a whip-lash: “Helena, please,” and she turned from Parry Percival to say: “Darling, I’m so sorry,” and in the same breath spoke her line of dialogue: “But it’s you, don’t you see? You can’t escape from it. It’s you.” Gay Gainsford made a hopeless little gesture and Poole said: “Too late, of course. Try again.”
They tried several times, in an atmosphere of increasing tension. The amiable Jacko was called in to make an infinitesimal change in Gay’s make-up, and Martyn saw him blot away a tear. At this juncture a disembodied voice roared from the back of the circle:
“Madam, have comfort: all of us have cause
To wail the dimming of our shining star!”
Poole glanced into the auditorium. “Do shut up like a good chap, John,” he said.
“Pour all your tears! I am your sorrow’s nurse,
And I will pamper it with la-men-ta-ti-ons.”
The man called Jacko burst out laughing and was instantly dismissed to the dressing-rooms by Poole.