Theatre Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  “I’m reciting Titania’s speech from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ by William Shakespeare,” she said. The lines came out of her mouth, just nicely rehearsed words, but meaning nothing. Then suddenly the studio was not there; she was in a wood, there were silver birches round her like there had been at Martins, and leaves were crackling under her feet and she was speaking in a proud way to Oberon who looked, in her imagination, rather like Uncle Henry looked when she saw him on the films, only, of course, as Oberon he was dressed as a fairy.

  “Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,

  Pale in her anger washes all the air,

  That rheumatic diseases do abound.

  And thorough this distemperature we see

  The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

  Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;

  And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown

  An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

  Is, as in mockery set; the spring, the summer,

  The childing autumn, angry winter, change

  Their wonted liveries; and the ’mazed world

  By their increase, now knows not which is which:

  And this same progeny of evils comes

  From our debate, from our dissension;

  We are their parents and original.”

  As she spoke the last words Sorrel gave, in imagination, one more proud, angry look at Oberon. Then the leaves were gone and the silver birches and Oberon, and she was back in the studio. Then quite suddenly a voice came out of nowhere, a nice, cheerful, kind woman’s voice.

  “Thank you very much, Sorrel. That was nice. Now, what else are you going to do for us?”

  Sorrel felt silly talking to someone that you could not see but she answered as politely as possible.

  “Please, I was going to tell you about the ‘Princess and the Pea.’”

  “We shall enjoy that,” said the voice, “it’s one of my favourite stories.”

  Sorrel folded her hands.

  “‘The Princess and the Pea,’ freely adapted from the story by Hans Christian Andersen.”

  She had finished. She had been the princess, she had been the peasants. In her mind it had all been real. At the end she felt she should strip off her overall, just as the princess stripped off her nightdress to show her bruises. She paused to give the peasants time to have a good look at her bruises before she let them say in breathless admiration:

  “This is indeed a real princess.”

  The voice spoke again. It was laughing.

  “Delightful. We all enjoyed that. You doing anything else for us?”

  Sorrel looked at Miss Jay. Miss Jay was talking to the girl who had shown them in, and the girl spoke into the microphone for her.

  “No, that’s all.”

  Then the voice said:

  “Thank you very much, Sorrel. Good-bye.”

  Sorrel was not made to go out of the room while Mark sang. She and Miss Jay sat in a corner and listened. Dr. Lente went over to the piano, and in a rather nervous way got out Mark’s music. Mark, having been shown where to stand, looked as unconcerned as if he were at home. He sang “Where the bee sucks, there suck I.” He sang it beautifully. Evidently the people behind the glass window thought so too. The same voice that had talked to Sorrel said, with obvious enthusiasm: “Thank you so much, Mark, that was lovely. Would you sing us something else?”

  Mark was charmed.

  “I’m going to sing you ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,’ and then something whose name I absolutely never remember.”

  “It seems to be a little folk song translated from the Russian,” said the girl. “Go on, Mark.”

  When Mark had finished the voice said, “Thank you very much indeed,” and then, “Wait a minute,” and then, after a pause, “I’d like to see Dr. Lente before he goes, about fixing Mark into a programme.”

  Sorrel did not mean to feel jealous and it was not exactly jealousy that she did feel. It is hard when your younger brother is engaged and you are not. Pulling on her coat she felt flat and sad. There were Dr. Lente and Miss Jay and Mark and the B.B.C. people in the passage all talking together about Mark broadcasting, and there was she just one other child who had been to an audition, and in whom nobody was particularly interested. It was not even as if singing on the wireless was any good to Mark, in fact it might be very bad for him; it would be a terrible thing if he got to like it, as it would take his mind off his education to be a sailor.

  Leaving the B.B.C. seemed a very different thing to Sorrel from coming into it. Coming in, it had seemed a grand grey building, but full of excitement; going out, it was just the place where you had done your best but somehow it had not come off.

  They walked down the road, Mark skipping along in an unconcerned way, and Dr. Lente and Miss Jay talking about his singing in the Children’s Hour. Sorrel trudged along beside them trying not to look disgruntled, but feeling in that mood when you want to drag your feet and kick at something. Then suddenly Miss Jay turned to her.

  “They were pleased with you, Sorrel. There’s a new serial starting in the Children’s Hour in a few weeks’ time, and they are planning to give you the part of one of the children.”

  Sorrel was so surprised, her breath was taken away.

  “Me!”

  Miss Jay laughed.

  “Yes, you. You did your stuff very well indeed. I gather it’s a very exciting thriller all about catching a spy, you’ll enjoy that.” She caught hold of Sorrel’s arm, “Won’t you?”

  Sorrel beamed at her, marvelling that a world which a few minutes before had seemed so dismal and grey could so quickly be sparkling and colourful.

  “You bet I will, it will be simply super.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  NEWS FOR SORREL

  Perhaps because it was nearly summer or perhaps because Sorrel and Mark were going to broadcast, or perhaps because they began to take an interest in their work, suddenly the Forbes family settled down and found they were quite liking living with Grandmother. Of course, it was a funny life. Now that Grandmother was earning money Alice was trying to improve the appearance of the rooms, but when she had sold the carpets and furniture she had not known there was a time coming when, however much bees and honey you might have, there was no furniture or carpets to buy.

  “It’s not,” she would say, looking at the bare boards in Mark’s bedroom, “that we aren’t willing to put our hands in our sky rocket, but we’re not going to give, even if we had it, a hundred pounds for a bit of carpet that would be expensive at five.”

  Mark heard what Alice said, but naturally he knew nothing about prices and conditions, and he supposed that Alice was trying to put Grandmother in a good light.

  “Even,” he said to Hannah, Sorrel and Holly, “if Grandmother had to spend a million pounds I wouldn’t think it too much. I’d rather spend a million pounds than make my grandchild sleep in a room that’s much too shabby to give to a dog that’s got distemper.”

  Mark, having got something into his head, was not the sort of boy to let it go again, and he would, as long as he lived in the house, and quite likely always, be angry with Grandmother about his room. All the same he did not dislike Grandmother. All the children had grown, in a way, fond of her. It was not the sort of fondness that anyone would expect to have for a grandmother. Not that kind of fondness that means you feel you can tell her things because she is tolerant and gentle, as well, of course, as being admirable about Christmas and birthdays. Instead, they had found their Grandmother exciting, which is the last thing that you expect to feel about a grandmother. Grandmother, with her moods and fusses, made such a difference in the house even when you never saw her. The first news of her came after Alice had taken up her breakfast.

  “We aren’t half in one of our moods this morning. Swore the coffee was cold, and then swore I’d done it on purpose when she burnt her mouth drinking it!” “My word! We’re in a state. We’ve had a letter that we think insults us, but we�
��ll read it through later on and see it wasn’t meant the way we took it.” “Everything in the garden’s beautiful this morning, everybody’s a darling and nobody can do anything wrong. I wonder how long we’ll go on feeling like that.”

  On the top floor, of course, the need for quietness while getting up had become ingrained in the children. Alice had taken it for granted that they would understand and collaborate.

  “Now, for goodness’ sake don’t make a noise in the morning. Wake us before we’re ready and poor old Alice will be half murdered. We don’t sleep very late and the moment we’re awake I’ll let you know how we’re feeling. If we’re in a good mood you can scream the place down, but if we’ve got one of our days then it’s never a whisper and down the stairs with your shoes in your hand.”

  Now that Grandmother was working she was not in a great deal. She, of course, acted every night and the children were out all day, so the only possible meeting days were Sundays, for on Saturday afternoons she played a matinée. On Sundays she often had people to see her and she usually sent for the children, but since Christmas, on the Sundays when she was alone, she always sent for them, and though she was sometimes difficult to understand, she was entertaining and they discovered that, though she never seemed to take much interest in what was happening to them, she obviously talked quite a lot to Madame on the telephone because she seemed to know exactly how they were getting on.

  Another thing which made a change for the better in their lives was the Square garden. In the spring it was beautiful. Of course, there was not much of it, but what there was had been used in the loveliest way. Almond and crab-apple and double-cherry trees flowered everywhere. There was a sloping bank which one day was turned blue by a carpet of blue-bells. There was a whole bed of lilies-of-the-valley, which scented the air for quite a distance round. As well, what the gardener had said was true; the children had come back. The houses in the Square began to be lived in again, not properly lived in, of course, because there was no one to look after them, but one or two floors were opened and, in these, families settled down and nearly all of them seemed to be partly children. The three they had met on Christmas Day became friends. There was a little very pretty fair child whom Holly played with and mothered. She was called Penny, and Holly treated her like a doll. There were babies in perambulators and babies toddling, and lots of the families had dogs and were willing to let other people know their dogs well. When the spring flowers disappeared summer ones began to come out, roses and lupins and delphiniums, and more and more chairs were set out on the lawns on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and a very friendly atmosphere sprang up. It was lovely, when the children came into the garden, to hear the voices of the other children shout, “Hullo, Sorrel!” “Hullo, Mark!” “Hol-lee, Hol-lee!” and the grown-up people would open their eyes as they passed and smile and say: “How are you today, Sorrel dear?” “How’s Mark?” “How are you getting on, Holly?”

  At the Academy, life had been quite different ever since the day Holly took the attaché case. Very few of the pupils lived in central London, and so there was no possibility of the children being asked out to tea or anything like that, but Madame’s words had taken root and everybody did their best to be extra nice. It was not that they would not have been nice before, because all three of the children were quite popular, only nobody had thought them in need of extra niceness. They had been used to Miranda and had learnt from her that to be a granddaughter of the Warren family was so grand a thing that it put a child in a world apart. When the Forbes children and Miriam arrived, they had quite a lot to live down. After the attaché-case affair and what Madame had said the children, as it were, started again. All the other pupils let their natural feelings of friendship for them have free play without any intervening wonder as to whether they were putting on side or getting unfair advantages because they were Warrens.

  For Sorrel, life had looked up very much since she was engaged to broadcast. Mark’s broadcasting was taken as a matter of course. He was one of the small children too young to have a licence and, therefore, not competing for parts; but Sorrel was engaged for one of the children’s parts in the new serial after being heard at an audition, and she was given it because she had the right voice for it, and was chosen from amongst hundreds of children. There was a very decided barrier amongst the over-twelves between those who were working and those who were not. There were, of course, quite a number of pupils who were not supposed to be working, who had been sent to the Academy with a view to their being dancers or going on the stage when they grew up. But amongst those who wanted work, to be engaged for a part, whether in a film or on the stage or on the air, was very much something—it gave you a cachet.

  Sorrel knew nothing about the negotiations for her part in the serial, because these were conducted for her by the school, and she only knew she had the part when she got the first instalment of her script, and was called for rehearsal. The script was given to her by Miss Jay.

  “You won’t find the whole story here, Sorrel. This is the first week’s instalment. It seems most exciting as far as it goes; you’re to play Nancy.”

  Sorrel knew that if she was going to broadcast she was probably going to be paid. She had always kept Alice’s conversation about bees and honey in the front of her mind. Alice had said she had sold things because tradespeople had to be paid. Of course, now that she had met all the family she could see that nobody would ever let Grandmother starve, but equally it would not be fair to expect her to keep them all, and more than anything it would not be fair to let her pay for Mark’s school. Not that, as things were at present, Grandmother would dream of paying for Mark’s school. She did not even know that Alice had promised to see that he went to a proper school when he was eleven. Of course, by then, all those things that Alice had talked about to do with probate and lawyers might have been settled, and then the question of Mark’s school fees would not arise; but it was certain that, in case there was any lack of bees and honey when the time came, it would be a great help if she had some money to offer, at least for the first term. She was terribly shy of talking about money to Miss Jay, but she felt she must.

  “What happens to money that I earn?”

  Miss Jay looked amused.

  “What do you want to happen to it?”

  Sorrel liked and trusted Miss Jay and she decided suddenly to explain about Mark. Miss Jay listened in attentive silence until she had finished.

  “I think I can help about that. I can arrange that your money is put for you in the post office; a certain proportion has to be by law in any case. That is one of the terms on which performing licences are issued to children. As for Mark, I don’t know what to say. If it is your father’s wish that he should be trained as a sailor, I think you should get your uncles and aunts to help. Don’t you think they would?”

  Sorrel fidgeted with her plaits.

  “Well, I don’t believe Aunt Lindsey and Aunt Marguerite would, because they’re like Grandmother; they just can’t believe there could be anybody in the world who wanted to do anything but act. Of course, there’s Uncle Francis, I suppose he might help, but he’s rather a distant kind of uncle; even when you seem to be talking to him you never feel absolutely sure he’s listening.” Then her face lit up as a thought struck her. “But I’ll tell you who I’m certain would help, and that’s Uncle Mose.”

  “Mose Cohen! Now, of all your family I should have thought that he was the one who would think the stage was the only career.”

  Sorrel shook her head violently.

  “No, he isn’t. Uncle Mose, in a way, is a little like Daddy. Daddy always said about anything I asked him, ‘Well, let’s thrash it out, old lady, and see if we can manage it.’ Uncle Mose is like that. Of course, he isn’t like Daddy always. Daddy doesn’t walk on his hands and he isn’t funny like Uncle Mose, but Daddy sings sea songs just for cheerfulness, and I think that’s why Uncle Mose puts on funny hats.” She looked at Miss Jay with great conviction. “Yes, that’
s what I’ll do if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll ask Uncle Mose to help.”

  The rehearsals for the broadcast were held in the same studio as Sorrel had been to for the audition, only this time there were a lot of people in the studio and some bits of furniture, and some cups which she was told would be used for clinking sounds when they were supposed to be drinking tea. There was a door in a wooden frame, which was to be shut when anybody was supposed to be going in or out of a door. There was a plank on which to make the sound of footsteps, and there was a doorbell. A young man called Henry, in a Fair Isle jersey and grey slacks, was producing the play, but as well, of course, there were the people in charge in that room upstairs with the glass window looking into the studio. From there came all the music, and green lights for cues and pauses, and a red light for when the cast were on the air, and from there, too, came all the effects. At one end of the studio a little tent had been built, and in this sat the narrator. Henry explained the tent to Sorrel.

  “We get the difference that way of pitch and tone. All of you are in the story, but he’s the man who tells the between bits and links it all together, and you don’t want to sound as if you were all in the same room.”

  There were three children in the story. A brother and sister called Robert and Nancy and a cockney evacuee called Bill, and they all met at the beginning in a cove on a beach. The effects upstairs, Sorrel was told, did lovely things to make the beach come true, seagulls mewing and water lapping, and the crunch of steps on pebbles. Sorrel and a fair boy called John, who was playing Robert, and a little red-headed boy called Edward, who was playing Bill, stood round the microphone, their scripts in one hand and their pencils in the other, and read their parts. Henry stopped them at intervals for different things, sometimes they were not excited enough, and sometimes he wanted them to sound as though they were moving about, and what Henry said they wrote down against their lines. Sometimes the woman’s voice that Sorrel had heard when she came for her audition broke in. She always talked to Henry as though she was standing next to him.