VII
Seven forty-five that evening saw Jackie, standing up in a tube which was flying through Belsize Park, on her way to Hampstead. She wore a coat and skirt, and excited little attention amongst those (many in evening dress) who were bound for the same destination. Her expression in the splitting, infernal din to which all were airily and uncomplainingly submitting, was that of thoughtfulness, and she looked upwards as her body swayed slightly with the motion of the strap….
Going up in the lift she heard a conversation between two old ladies, whose bared heads were dressed for the theatre.
“Of course, you know that Eileen’s on the stage now?” said one of them. “She’s got a job with a Shakespearian Company.”
“Oh — really?” said the other. “Well — I’m not sorry to hear it….
“I mean,” she added, “with talent like that it really would be a pity to Waste….” They agreed with each other.
Jackie wondered how Eileen would fare.
Probably much better with Mr. Claye than herself, she thought. Another rival. She wished she had all that talent.
VIII
Arrived at the theatre, where business was very quiet, she obtained a complimentary seat for herself, and looked about for Mr. Drew. She was unable to spot him before the curtain rose, and decided to go behind after the first act. She had some interest in the play on account of Miss Edna Radley, who was playing the juvenile, and who had been a friend of hers for some time.
Miss Radley’s performance was, she thought, lamentable. The play also was very bad, she thought — but being a war play of an emotional nature it caused her to shed many tears.
*
Miss Radley was very pleased to see her. “My DEAR!” she said….
And, “Well, my dear, what am I like?”
“My dear,” said Jackie. “Mar-ar-ar-arvellous. I’ve been absolutely howling!”
“No, Jackie. Honestly.”
“No, honestly, dear. You were wonderful. You were really.”
“Well, how are you getting on with Claye?”
“Oh, ghastly. That’s what I’ve come up to see Drew about.”
“I know, my dear, isn’t he foul? So SWAIVE and SLIMY…. You feel you can knife him!”
“Oh, have you had any, then?”
“Oh, rather, but it’s no use appealing to Drew. He believes in him implicitly, my dear. He thinks he’s God’s Own.”
“Oh, no — he doesn’t?” said Jackie, appealingly, but, “He DOES, my dear, he DOES!” affirmed Miss Radley.
*
She met Mr. Drew in the foyer after the second act. He was in a hurry. “Ah-ha, Miss Mortimer,” he said. “Getting on all right with the part?” And he held her hand.
“Well, I’m getting on all right,” said Jackie. “I don’t know what Mr. Claye thinks about it.”
“Good. I must fly, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Drew. “I’ll be down there to-morrow. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
And that was that.
*
After the show she stayed some time with Miss Radley, who was with an admirer.
This young gentleman, who was in the chartered accountant business, behaved coyly in the presence of Art, but offered to give Jackie a lift in his car as far as Piccadilly. But Jackie refused, and seeing them off, and waving her hand to them, walked over the deserted street to the deserted station.
As she got into the train, and as the train moved out of the station, she observed that she was sitting opposite Mr. Reginald Byndon. She knew Mr. Byndon slightly, and he had been acting in the play she had just seen. But he did not recognize her. He was about sixty years of age and extremely (indeed professionally) stout: he wore his glasses, on his round red face, in a diagonal fashion which gave his eyes a bleared, profoundly muddled, and blundering expression: and he was smoking a pipe. He was very well-known amongst actors and playgoers, for he had been for forty years in this business. He was looking far from triumphant at the achievement, and he was now, doubtless, going home. Jackie was glad that he had not recognized her, as it was interesting to sit in a corner and observe Reginald Byndon going home.
*
Reginald Byndon going home…. In the roar of the tube it was impossible to read his thoughts. His pipe was out, though still held weakly in his mouth, and he was obviously very weary. Sometimes his eyes would close, and you might think that he slept; but then, all at once, they would be open again, gazing limply down at a point somewhere near Jackie’s ankles…. Reginald Byndon was deep in contemplation of some nature.
Were there not echoes and memories of all those forty years? wondered Jackie. Could he not hear now, in the clash and roar of the train, the clash of all the rehearsals, and the roar of all the applauses, and see again all the fluster and seekings and victories and thwartings that had filled his career? … And now it had come to this. A confused old man (who should have been in bed a long while ago) sitting alone and unrecognized in a late deserted train from Hampstead.
You would call Reginald Byndon a failure, she supposed. His successes, of course, were innumerable. His crowning achievement, seven years ago, in “Bobby,” had coloured and given substance to his whole career. And since then and before then he had never failed of recognition and particular notice….
And the sum of all these successes equalled, in the end, participation in a second-rate production at Hampstead, and a late train home at night….
She endeavoured to conceive him as a young man again, in the flush of his first progresses. His chubbiness and cheerfulness and redness and roundness must have carried all before them at the time. What wisdom he must have acquired since then! — in forty years. He could, indeed, well afford to take pride in his wisdom, but she could detect no pride. His attitude, as he sprawled out in the jolting vehicle, was very patient and even a little suppliant. “You young people,” he had once said to Jackie…. His wisdom flew over to her, unashamed, as she sat there, and dropped at her feet….
And the train roared on, and his eyes opened again, and his eyes shut, and he held the same position. And to-morrow morning, by eleven o’clock, he would be up and about. And it would be Reggie this, and Reggie that, and “What sort of business are you doing up there, Reggy?” and “Pretty fair, old boy, pretty fair.” But to-night it was Reginald Byndon — a lonely, sleepy old gentleman with forty dazing years of the theatre behind him, and about three years of life ahead (and his pipe out), going home….
IX
And she also had to be up in the morning, to face the same tasks that Reggie had had to face in all those years. Even Reggie, for all his age and acquired prestige, was not immune…. “And just a spot quicker, Reggie, old boy — we’re playing too long already. You won’t forget that, will you?” “No, no. I won’t.” “I mean one can’t stop to make points just here, old boy. Don’t you agree?” “Yes, yes. I see.”
What was this coercion to which she and Mr. Byndon were so inextricably and submissively committed? What preliminary urge was it, that had led Mr. Byndon and herself into this hazardous mode of life? And what good had it done either of them? Mr. Byndon’s eyes closed again at this, as though there were no reply.
And what part did he and she fulfill in this world? At best, she supposed, they were a couple who, in the indescribable complexity of modern civilization, spent their evenings in a very harassed and obstructed endeavour to mirror or portray some remoter emotional or intellectual complex of that civilization. She was careful to say at best, for so far she had done nothing of the kind. High Hysterical Laughs and Ronald — pause — three paces — I’m tired of all this — pause — Acting had been the level of her art to date….
She must think about all this some time. At present she had to succeed. She would work at her part to-night, and surrender, hands down, pauses and all, to Mr. Claye in the morning.
And there was her contract with Cannon, wasn’t there?
It was past eleven when her train came in at Charing Cross. She w
ent on the escalator, and up on to the platform of the District Railway. She ran into the returning theatre crowd.
X
There was nothing but them. They filled the whole platform with the murmur of their talk, and the shuffle of their glittering feet, in the green depressed light of the station. They were at once blasé and yet bedecked for an occasion — a curious contradiction. And they were returning to Sloane Square, or Turnham Green, or Ealing; she knew which was doing which. The elder lot were for Sloane Square, and the ladylike young things, with red cloaks, escorted by gentlemanly young things, with mufflers, were bound for Turnham Green or Ealing. She passed unnoticed amongst them.
And these, she reflected, were her masters. To such as these she had devoted, was now devoting, her life, and ambition and energy. Mr. Byndon had done the same. Such was their choice in life.
She was unlucky in her choice of a compartment, in the Ealing train. This was a small one, adjoining a first-class one, and was filled almost exclusively by the escorted young. There was a party of four which had just been (Jackie observed from the programme) to “The Last Thing” — a drama in which she herself, in an extremely damp interview five weeks ago, had sought to play.
And the names of the members of this party were, she discovered, Gladys, George, Diana, and Bobby.
The atmosphere was sprightly. George was the principal sinner. His wit and innuendo were irrepressible. “Oh, shut TUP, George!” cried Gladys. “Will you Shut TUP!”
“Oh, George, will you remember wheah you AH!” …
“My dear George, I shall give you a seveah smacking in a moment.”
An attempt to give George a severe smacking was made, and there was laughter.
“Here, give me that programme,” said George, and he snatched at it.
They then discussed “The Last Thing.”
“I know,” said Gladys. “Wasn’t she a shriek!”
This, Jackie gathered, was an allusion to the young actress who had played the part she herself had sought.
*
And now Jackie, though she could not quite analyse the feeling, began to feel a kind of cold anger arising at this spectacle — an anger which increased as it developed before her eyes. It was not that she resented their light-heartedness and disinterest towards the things which had meant so much to her (though that distressed her somewhat): it was that she suddenly seemed to see life as a whole, and herself in relation to it. And she saw herself as a human being committed to an occupation which, in one of its manifestations at least, led up to, laboured for the benefit of, and finally resulted in, this suburban quartet.
And at the same time, in a sudden access of vision, the infinite disadvantages, humiliations, follies, idlenesses, lyings, self-seekings and base submissions of that occupation itself, flooded in upon her, with ten years made a moment, and set her thinking as she had not thought before.
Ten years of it….
And then she thought of Mr. Claye, and of to-morrow morning. Mr. Claye, who would never guess, could never conceive, her thoughts to-night. Mr. Claye, with his infinite patience, who so far from imagining that she was using him for her own ends, considered himself an end in himself, and a highly excellent one at that…. How very much she desired to enlighten Mr. Claye….
And all that suave and untroubled portentousness for which he stood…. All the Mr. Clayes of life….
Mr. Claye’s “technique” … Mr. Claye’s belief in himself as an artist….
Why was it that she, an independent human being, should be expending the prime of her life in playing tear-stricken pupil to Mr. Claye’s expansive schoolmaster? An independent human being….
“What fun it would be,” thought Jackie, as the train swept in at West Kensington Station, “if I gave it up altogether.”
As she walked down Talgarth Road she played with the idea as with a fascinating toy.
No more rehearsals, she thought, no more agents, no more hand-holding, no more submissions, no interviews, no maulings, no highmindedness, no first nights. She could elaborate the idea indefinitely.
If it had not been an idle thing to do.
XI
She had to wash a lot of stockings that night, and by the time she had had her bath, and got into bed, it was well past midnight.
It began, as she lay on her back, and just before she was going to turn over to go to sleep.
Now if she were placed differently, she thought, she might have had a pleasant flirtation with that idea….
If she had been a success, for example — if she had justified herself, if she had demonstrated that she at least could mount to the eminences which she now secretly disparaged — then she might turn from them with immunity from the accusations of failure.
But until then — until then…. “Oh, yes, she was on the stage for a long while, but never did any good at it….”
Iris Langham….
Did human beings, at a certain age, and after a certain amount of affliction, find themselves losing their early pride? She hoped this was not happening to her.
She turned over to go to sleep.
Of course — if she did particularly well in her contract with Cannon….
A contract with Cannon would be enough — a stamp of success in itself….
Of course, thought Jackie, there were two ways of never returning to the stage, weren’t there? One would be to make known your intention, with some solemnity, never to return to the stage. And the other would be never, from this very instant, to return to the stage….
In that case you would not have to face Mr. Claye in the morning…. Surely no one had ever left the stage like that…. Surely no living creature, overnight, and in a sudden access of enlightenment, had ever decided to leave the stage, and done so at once…. Decided it in the dark at night….
Wouldn’t it be fun, though, to lie here, sleeping on in the morning, while at ten-thirty (Sharp) that rehearsal was commencing … commencing up there … lying here sleeping on … commencing up there … Mr. Claye walking about … Mr. Claye growing suaver and suaver … sleeping on … Mr. Claye mutely deciding to dismiss her … sleeping on … Mr. Claye himself dismissed….
Mr. Claye had said “Sharp.” Suppose she, with one magic gesture, relieved herself, slipped out from the chains of that bland ascendancy. Suppose Mr. Claye had made miscalculations as to the persons he could say “Sharp” to….
This was unprofitable. She must sleep now, or it would be all the worse for her in the morning. She turned over.
But Mr. Claye’s Face … when he learnt that the bird had flown … learnt that he was not indispensable to life … learnt that he was on the same footing as his pupil …
This was pure naughtiness. She must go to sleep.
And then, all at once, in the darkness of the second hour in the morning, Jackie stiffened herself in her bed, and listened to a voice from within her. And this voice urged her to be just as naughty as she liked….
XII
And five minutes after that Jackie sat straight up in bed, and stared, with glowing eyes, into the darkness.
“I’m not going back!” she said. I’m never going back!”
She threw back the bed-clothes, and fumbled weakly and tremblingly into her slippers.
“Oh, God!” she said. “I’m never going back!”
She ran over to the window, not knowing what to do with herself, and drew back the curtains, and looked down at the quiet street.
She was a convert. She was free. She understood what it was to be a convert.
XIII
Free! She turned from the window, she clasped her hands, and the word surged through her like a rejoicing melody. Free! Not so much from all she had suffered as from her own aspiration! She surrendered and she was free. But from all she had suffered, as well. It seemed as though the weight of ten years had been lifted in a moment. It was too simple. Why had she not thought of it before?
To-morrow morning — now — she was a free woman! She could p
ass a stage-door, she could meet an actor, she could hear of a likely new show, and it would mean nothing to her! She could look the whole world in the face! She could take a walk to-morrow morning, and read a book in Kensington Gardens! She would take a walk to-morrow morning and read a book in Kensington Gardens! She was childish, she was impish, she was disembodied with joy. She was without care. She had lost desire. She had all her desire. She was a failure. She had the courage to be a failure — the originality to be a failure.
She walked up and down the room, she returned to the window, she swung round and clasped her hands.
XIV
A complete failure, thought Jackie (as she lay snuggled up again), and now she could hug the thought to her bosom like a child. There were no half measures about it — her humiliation was perfect, and she gloried in her humiliation. A stage-struck little fool who never, at one point, had brought it off. She could go back with nothing to her credit. She had no theatrical technique, no theatrical gossip, no ideas (save a few very decided ones) on the theatre, and no earthly interest in the theatre. She knew no one of repute intimately, she had no Christian names at her disposal, she had never had a job worth calling a job, and the whole West End acting world, with its social intrigue and garrulity, remained a closed door to her — a thing beyond her. They had defeated her. A silly little stage-struck idiot who had made an attack upon London and failed on every side. And now (final and most delicious disgrace!) she was going to try and settle down! …
There were one or two things to be done, of course. There would have to be a wire to Mr. Claye in the morning, and a letter to Mr. Drew…. How very sweet it was to be letting some one down for a change! She had wanted all her life to let some one down.
And to-morrow afternoon she was seeing Charles…. It was very lucky that Charles should have chosen to-morrow to come up…. And Charles would hear all about it…. Charles….
Twopence Coloured Page 34
