Ngaio Marsh - Night at the Vulcan

“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.

He finished his drink quickly and began to grease his face. He noticed how the flesh had dropped into sad folds under the eyes, had blurred the jaw-line and had sunk into grooves about the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. All right for this part, of course, where he had to make a sight of himself, but he’d been a fine-looking man. Helena had fallen for him in a big way until Adam cut him out. At the thought of Adam he experienced a sort of regurgitation of misery and anger. “I’m a haunted man,” he thought suddenly.

He’d let himself get into a state, he knew, because of this afternoon. Helena’s face, gaping with terror, like a fish almost, kept rising up in his mind and wouldn’t be dismissed. Things always worked like that with him: remorse always turned into nightmare.

It had been a bad week altogether. Rows with everybody; with John Rutherford in particular and with Adam over that blasted little dresser. He felt he was the victim of some elaborate plot. He was fond of Gay; she was a nice friendly little thing — his own flesh and blood. Until he had brought her into this piece she had seemed to like him. Not a bad little artist either, and good enough, by God, for the artsy-craftsy part they’d thrown at her. He thought of her scene with Poole and of her unhappiness in her failure and how, in some damned cockeyed way, they all, including Gay, seemed to blame him for it. He supposed she thought he’d bullied her into hanging on. Perhaps in a way he had, but he felt so much that he was the victim of a combined assault. “Alone,” he thought, “I’m so desperately alone ,” and he could almost hear the word as one would say it on the stage, making it echo, forlorn and hopeless and extremely effective.

“I’m giving myself the jim-jams,” he thought. He wondered if Helena had told Adam about this afternoon. By God, that’d rock Adam, if she had. And at once a picture rose up to torture him, a picture of Helena weeping in Adam’s arms and taking solace there. He saw his forehead grow red in the looking-glass and told himself he’d better steady-up. No good getting into one of his tempers with a first performance ahead of him and everything so tricky with young Gay. There he was, coming back to that girl, that phoney dresser. He poured out another drink and began his make-up.

He recognized with satisfaction a familiar change of mood, and he now indulged himself with a sort of treat He brought out a little piece of secret knowledge he had stored away. Among this company of enemies there was one over whom he exercised almost complete power. Over one, at least, he had overwhelmingly the whip-hand, and the knowledge of his sovereignty warmed him almost as comfortably as the brandy. He began to think about his part. Ideas, brand new and as clever as paint, crowded each other in his imagination. He anticipated his coming mastery.

His left hand slid towards the flask. “One more,” he said, “and I’ll be fine.”

In her room across the passage, Gay Gainsford faced her own reflection and watched Jacko’s hands pass across it. He dabbed with his finger-tips under the cheek-bones and made a droning sound behind his closed lips. He was a very good make-up; it was one of his many talents. At the dress rehearsals the touch of his fingers had soothed rather than exacerbated her nerves, but to-night, evidently she found it almost intolerable.

“Haven’t you finished?” she asked.

“Patience, patience. We do not catch a train. Have you never observed the triangular shadows under Adam’s cheek-bones? They are yet to be created.”

“Poor Jacko,” Gay said breathlessly, “this must be such a bore for you! Considering everything.”

“Quiet, now. How can I work?”

“No, but I mean it must be so exasperating to think that two doors away there’s somebody who wouldn’t need your help. Just a straight make-up, wouldn’t it be? No trouble.”

“I adore making up. It is my most brilliant gift.”

“But she’s your find in a way, isn’t she? You’d like her to have the part, wouldn’t you?”

He rested his hands on her shoulders. “ Ne vous dérangez pas ,” he said. “Shut up, in fact. Tranquillize yourself, idiot girl.”

“But I want you to tell me.”

“Then I tell you. Yes, I would like to see this little freak play your part because she is in fact a little freak. She has dropped into this theatre like an accident in somebody else’s dress and the effect is fantastic. But she is well content to remain off-stage and it is you who play, and we have faith in you and wish you well with all our hearts.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Gay said.

“What a sour voice! It is true. And now reflect. Reflect upon the minuteness of Edmund Kean, upon Sarah’s one leg and upon Irving’s two, upon ugly actresses who convince their audiences they are beautiful and old actors who persuade them they are young. It is all in the mind, the spirit and the preparation. What does Adam say? Think in, and then play out. Do so.”

“I can’t,” Gay said between her teeth. “I can’t.” She twisted in her chair. He lifted his fingers away from her face quickly, with a wide gesture. “Jacko,” she said, “there’s a jinx on this night. Jacko, did you know? It was on the night of the Combined Arts Ball that it happened.”