Patrick White - The Eye of the Storm

For a time you sent your own cuttings to prove the brilliance the family hadn’t been willing to believe in: ‘Basil Hunter, a young actor to watch, makes Guildenstern a real presence.’ (Not getting Rosencrantz had left you feeling sore till somebody spotted Guildenstern.) ‘Basil Hunter’s Orlando is a dazzling display of virile sensitivity, enough to bewitch Arden girls far less perceptive than Shiela Sturges’s Rosalind.’ (According to that old queen Hotchkiss; and poor Shiela had been awful, cerebrating into a boy playing a girl who becomes a boy: she got horribly tangled converting him back into a girl who was Shakespeare’s boy.)

Then you left off sending the cuttings: you no longer had to prove you were an actor; there is only, finally, the need to convince that you can leave off acting.

He looked round the almost deserted bar, and out the doorway, at travellers lumped on plastic in a gritty expanse of chrome and concrete. Given better lighting, would any of these detached souls have recognized in him a human being as well as an actor? Hardly likely; who amongst them would have heard of Sir Basil Hunter? And who amongst those who ‘knew’, could possibly know? unless they were actors themselves: the eternal bloody actors.

This was where Basil Hunter, contorting on his perch between the mirror and the view through the doorway, tipped the chrome and plastic stool, and almost landed on his arse: for catching sight of what might be — what was a whole troupe of actors lugging vanity cases and overnight bags, dolls and paper parasols, trailing coats and stoles, and their own assorted tempers, one or two sustaining that roll of kettledrum brightness they had brought with them courageously from rep, years ago, into the jungle of the West End.

Averting his physical downfall at the bar, the lost actor couldn’t wait to identify himself with the troupe, but skedaddled out, suede and rubber thumping tile and concrete, one trouser-leg still rucked at calf-level, his jacket showing too much shirt-cuff; a tie-end, flying, nicked his right eyeball.

Careering towards them, mouthing, he sprayed them at last with his relief. ‘Madge! Waddayerknow, Dudley? For God’s sake — not Babs !’ Kisses for the girls; a shoulder clinch for good old Dudley Howard, a nice bloke, if just about the stodgiest actor.

‘But darling, how in -cred-ible !’ Madge Puckeridge was the brightest of all kettledrummers. ‘And in Bang -kok !’

‘ ’Ere, not in front of ladies!’ Born to the halls, Babs Rainbow couldn’t forget it even at the Royal Shakespeare: that’s why they signed her up.

There was also a straggle of young things, he noticed, in too much costume and not enough make-up. Some of them he knew by sight, one or two by name, so he ducked his head. ‘Hi, Gemma — Hamish!’ Under his bonhomie he was shy of the young. Never let them see it, though. Some of them put on a moony, worshipful look for a famous experienced actor and knight. Others halted unwillingly, hand on sword, still too obviously in codpiece, and convinced they could run rings round this old ham it was their misfortune to bump into.

Here they were on their way from Japan, he remembered now. ‘But why Bangkok?’

Madge explained. ‘A British Council return gesture for a ballet or something they sent us.’ Several of them groaned.

‘Only a two-night stand.’

‘Fabulous temples, if you can beat the heat to them.’

‘Then Delhi.’

‘And you, Bas?’ It was Babs, whose Nurse and Mistress Quickly were rather special. ‘Where are you taking your one-man band?’

‘To Australia.’ He made the face they would expect, though not all of them did.

‘I’d adore to go to Australia. Must be simply ravenous for theatre.’ Herself a hungry thing: a mini-kirtled draft mare, about the thighs at least; the kind of face which is Plasticine to emotions.

‘This isn’t theatre.’ Sir Basil Hunter could tell he was about to lose an audience, some of whom were already bored. ‘It’s a deathbed. My old mother.’ He wagged his head from side to side to make it lighter, gayer, more acceptable for those it didn’t concern.

‘Better let’s all have a drink, Basil old boy.’ It looked as though Dudley had found the only possible way out of a difficult situation, not to say dead end.

Madge was sputtering and fizzing. ‘Poor darling, how utterly tiresome for you! Alcohol is definitely called for.’ Although a loyal and generally reliable actress, she was giving a bad performance, and knew it; but how could you make death convincing off the stage?

Suddenly he was disappointed; he hadn’t found the hoped-for reality in these reinforcements of himself: these other actors. Time stretched almost as elastic as in the peach-tinted bar with its pretty little Thai barman and gusts of ice. He was more than disappointed: he was horrified.

‘Yes. Alcohol. Why don’t I come with you while they fix this bloody machine? I can keep in touch from the hotel.’

However little they had to give in the present circumstances, or perhaps ever, they were of his life, and that was in itself heartening: the ‘pros’ as opposed to the ‘public’. Some of them had come in so far back they had probably forgotten you had slept together. (Madge Puckeridge one night in Manchester after particularly stinking notes from that cunt Arundel Hallett; that was before Madge’s apparently endless marriage with Dudley, after Shiela had taken her child and gone; Shiela would have liked to make a barnstorm out of her departure, but her style wasn’t broad enough.)

They were all bundling into a bus. ‘We’re staying at the Miramar — some of us,’ Dudley said. ‘The rest are on another flight, arriving later.’

Lights were spinning: the drinks Sir Basil had downed on his own must be catching up with him.

Babs Rainbow cackled. ‘Remember Phyl Spink, Bas?’

‘What about her?’

‘She died. They found her in the bath with a gin bottle floating beside her.’ Babs must have smoked a fortune in cigarettes: her lungs rattled worse than this complimentary bus. ‘What a lovely way to die!’

‘I won’t, I will— NOT!’ Madge was protesting. ‘I’m a Christian Scientist in everything but the label.’

Some of the silent young were barely suffering the bus ride: those lithe boys still in their swords and hose, who seem to burn themselves out in the performance; nothing to give afterwards, unless perhaps to their equivalent girls.

He experienced another surge of anxiety: if he could no longer make contact with the Madge Puckeridges, the Dudley Howards, the Babs Rainbows, and certainly not with the silent young, where exactly did he stand?

‘Are you terribly fond of her?’ It was the mini-kirtled draft-mare, he recognized, as the street-lights played on the thighs beside him.

‘Fond of who?’

‘Your mother.’

‘Oh, Lord — I don’t know! I haven’t seen her in more than half a lifetime.’

She had not been prepared for that degree of unconventionality in an old man and knight; perhaps it was surprise which made her near thigh increase its pressure.

Then they were signing the register, receiving their keys and mail, finding rooms, and one another. He lost interest: other people’s hotel arrangements have an importance it is impossible to believe in; while they, from their side, had cast him off temporarily.

He looked in a mirror and tried to remember his mother, but couldn’t distinctly: his own reflection got in the way. Funny he couldn’t remember ever having known what it feels like to be a father; or not funny, considering.

It was better in Madge and Dudley’s room after the bottles had arrived, and the ice, and Babs returned on getting rid of her foundations. There was a handful of the younger ones, on the whole only those who make a practice of ‘sitting at the feet of.’