Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"A Chaplain at the Troop Carrier Command," Michael said, "objects to the profanity used in our production of 'Folly of Youth'. He says the leading man says damn seven times and the ingenue calls one of the characters a son of a bitch in the second act."

Mincey shook his head. "I told that ham to cut out all profanity in this theatre of operations," Mincey said. "And he swore he would. Actors!" He moaned. "Tell the Chaplain I absolutely agree and the offending individuals will be disciplined."

"That's all for now, Captain," Michael said.

Mincey sighed and put his medicine in his pocket. Michael started out of the room.

"Wait a minute, Whitacre," Mincey said.

Michael turned round. Mincey regarded him sourly, his asthma-oppressed eyes and nose red and watery. "For Christ's sake, Whitacre," Mincey said, "you look awful."

Michael looked down without surprise at his rumpled, overlarge tunic and his baggy trousers. "Yes, Captain," Michael said.

"I don't give a damn for myself," Mincey said. "For all I care you could come in here in blackface and a grass skirt. But when officers come in from other outfits, they get a bad impression."

"Yes, Sir," said Michael.

"An outfit like this," Mincey said, "has to look more military than the paratroopers. We have to shine. We have to glisten. You look like a KP in the Bulgarian Army."

"Yes, Sir," said Michael.

"Can't you get yourself another tunic?"

"I've asked for one for two months, now," Michael said.

"The Supply Sergeant won't talk to me any more."

"At least," Mincey said, "polish your buttons. That's not much to ask, is it?"

"No, Sir," said Michael.

"How do we know," Mincey said, "General Lee won't show up here some day?"

"Yes, Sir," said Michael.

"Also," Mincey said, "you always have too many papers on your desk. It gives a bad impression. Put them in the drawers. Only have one paper on your desk at any one time."

"Yes, Sir."

"One more thing," Mincey said damply. "I wonder if you have some cash on you. I got caught with the bill at Les Ambassadeurs last night, and I don't collect my per them till Monday."

"Will a pound do?"

"That all you got?"

"Yes, Sir," said Michael.

"O.K." Mincey took the pound. "Thanks. I'm glad you're with us, Whitacre. This office was a mess before you came. If you'd only look more like a soldier."

"Yes, Sir," said Michael.

"Send in Sergeant Moscowitz," Mincey said. "That son of a bitch is loaded with dough."

"Yes, Sir," said Michael. He went into the other office and sent Sergeant Moscowitz in to see the Captain.

That was how the days passed in London, in the winter of 1944.

"O, my offence is rank," the King said, when Polonius had gone, "it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, A brother's murder!"

In the little shadow boxes on each side of the stage, put there for that purpose, the sign "Air Raid Alert" was flashed, and a moment later came the sound of sirens, and immediately after, in the distance, towards the coast, the rumble of gunfire.

"Pray can I not," the King went on, "Though inclination be as sharp as will: My strongest guilt defeats my strong intent…"

The sound of gunfire came rapidly nearer as the planes swept across the suburbs. Michael looked around him. It was an opening night, and a fashionable one, with a new Hamlet, and the audience was decked out in its wartime best. There were many elderly ladies who looked as though they had seen every opening of Hamlet since Sir Henry Irving. In the rich glow from the stage there was an answering glow from the audience of piled white hair and black net. The old ladies, and everyone else, sat quiet and motionless as the King strode, torn and troubled, back and forth across the dark room at Elsinore.

"Forgive me my foul murder?" the King was saying loudly.

"That cannot be since I am still possess'd Of those effects for which I did the murder, My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen."

It was the King's big scene and he obviously had worked very hard on it. He had the stage all to himself and a long, eloquent soliloquy to get his teeth into. He was doing very well, too, disturbed, intelligent, cursed, with Hamlet in the wings making up his mind whether to stab him or not.

The sound of guns marched across London towards the theatre, and there was the uneven roar of the German engines approaching over the gilt dome. Louder and louder spoke the King, speaking across the three hundred years of English rhetoric, challenging the bombs, the engines, the guns. No one in the audience moved. They listened, as intent and curious as though they had been sitting at the Globe on the afternoon of the first performance of Mr Shakespeare's new tragedy.

"In the corrupted currents of this world," the King shouted, "Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above; There is no shuffling…"

A battery of guns opened up just behind the back wall of the theatre, and there was a double explosion of bombs not far off. The theatre shivered gently "… there the action lies in his true nature," said the King loudly, not forgetting any of his business, moving his hands with tragic grace, speaking slowly, trying to space his words between the staccato explosions of the guns.

"… and we ourselves compell'd," the King said, in a momentary lull while the men outside were reloading, "Even to the teeth and forehead…" Then rocket guns opened up outside in their horrible, whistling speech that always sounded like approaching bombs, and the King paced silently back and forth, waiting till the next lull. The howling and thunder diminished for a moment to a savage grumbling. "What then?" the King said hastily, "what rests?

Try what repentance can: what can it not?"

Then he was overwhelmed once more and the theatre shook and trembled in the whirling chorus of the guns.

Poor man, Michael thought, remembering all the opening nights he had ever been through, poor man, his big moment, after all these years. How he must hate the Germans!

"… O wretched state!" swam dimly out of the trembling and crashing. "O bosom black as death!"

The planes stuttered on overhead. The battery behind the theatre sent a last revengeful salvo curling into the noisy sky. The rumble of guns was taken up, further away, by the batteries in north London. Against their diminishing background, like military drums being played at a general's funeral in another street, the King went on, slow, composed, royal as only an actor can be royal, "O limed soul, that struggling to be free Art more engaged! Help, angels!" he said in the blessed quiet, "make assay; Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.

All may be well."

He knelt at the altar and Hamlet appeared, graceful and dark in his long black tights. Michael looked around him. Every face was calmly and interestedly watching the stage; the old ladies and the uniforms did not stir.

I love you, Michael wanted to say, I love you all. You are the best and strongest and most foolish people on earth and I will gladly lay down my life for you.

He felt the tears, complex and dubious, sliding down his cheeks as he turned to watch Hamlet, torn by doubt, put up his sword rather than take his uncle at his prayers.

Far off a single gun spoke into the subsiding sky. Probably, thought Michael, it is one of the women's batteries, coming, like women, a little late for the raid, but showing their intentions are of the best.

London was burning in a bright circle of fires when Michael left the theatre and started walking towards the Park. The sky flickered and here and there an orange glow was reflected off the clouds. Hamlet was dead now. "Now cracks a noble heart," Horatio had said. "Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" Horatio had also said his final words on carnal, bloody and unnatural acts: of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, while the last Germans were crashing over Dover, and the last Englishmen were burning in their homes as the curtain slowly dropped and the ushers ran up the aisles with flowers for Ophelia and the rest of the cast.