‘What happened next I have from various witnesses, including his old butler Marston who was dreadfully cut up about it all.
‘As winter approached Purdue went in for a round of gaiety and socialising. Doubtless his approaching nuptials—it was to be a Spring wedding—added to his circle of friends and the goodwill everyone felt towards him. He opened up his own house to parties and festivities of various kinds, and it was at one of these that the tragedy occurred.
‘It was early in December and Purdue had a house full of guests, several of them being husbands and wives with children. As it was late in the year it got dark several hours before it was time to put the young people to bed and so indoor games were proposed. Among those suggested was the Game of Bear. Marston told me that Purdue had at first objected strenuously to the idea, until he was overborne by the importunings of adults and children alike.
‘The Game of Bear, as you know is like a conventional game of hide and seek except that if the hider can spring out and surprise the finder, he then “captures” the finder and can draw the victim into the hiding place with him. Thus the game becomes a kind of battle between the hiders and the finders, but generally it descends into good-humoured chaos long before any clear result is discernible.
‘Well, on this occasion the game was unusually prolonged and boisterous, especially as Purdue’s house, as you may guess, being a rambling structure, was well stocked with places of concealment. When the game was over and the children had been dispatched exhausted to their beds it was suddenly realised that the host was still missing. What could have happened to him? Had he perhaps hidden himself too well and then fallen asleep in his fastness? A search of the house was instituted in which all the adult guests and the servants took part.
‘It was Marston who eventually found him in a cupboard under the stairs. Henry Purdue was huddled into a corner with his knees up to his chin, “like a whipped child”, as Marston put it. Of course poor Purdue was dead but the surprise was that he was cold and stiff. Fortunately there were no children present but two of the ladies fainted when they caught a glimpse of him. The corpse had a dreadful look of fear on its face, and the eyes were open, fixed and staring. Marston also told me—although I rather wish he hadn’t—that in his death throes my friend had bitten his thumb clean through to the bone.’
‘Did you find that book among poor Purdue’s things?’ said Mr B who was by way of being a bibliophile. ‘The Child’s Keepsake, wasn’t it? I should rather like to see it.’
‘I shouldn’t, and I’m very glad to say I found no such thing,’ said Mr A severely.
THE FINAL STAGE
My name was Romeo Cavendish, but I am no longer he. I apologise if that sounds cryptic, but if you choose to read on I hope you will come to understand. It is likely to be the strangest story you have ever read. Even if you believe it to be a fantasy and completely untrue, you must believe that I believe it, and that is possibly the strangest thing of all. I have seen the gates of Heaven and the gates of Hell and in my opinion they are both bloody. I speak from experience, and it is the survival that matters.
The first thing you need to know is that my name was not Romeo Cavendish at all but Horace Parsons, and that may have been at the root of the problem. I changed the name by deed poll shortly before I went to drama school. But I am getting ahead of myself.
The theatre has always been an obsession with me, even before I recognised that it was. The nightmares prove it. I cannot remember a time when I did not have them and they were always the same. I am lying in bed, as if still awake, and staring at the long, curtained windows that face me in my bedroom. Slowly the curtains are drawn upwards and apart into swags to reveal not the windows of my bedroom but a stage vast in extent, though my vision of it is limited by the confines of the window frames. Weird music plays, as if a huge, drunken orchestra were somewhere in the darkened walls of the room. Strange grey shapes drift across the stage. All are faceless. I am enthralled but horrified, especially as it seems I can neither move from my bed nor close my eyes.
It is difficult to say why I feel so threatened, but I do. Perhaps it is because I know that the spectacle has been designed for me and I am being forced to look at it. My chief terror is that those faceless faces will turn on me, but the grey figures seem bound on some journey of which I have no knowledge. They glide from view and then reappear. I can tell them apart because while they are all draped in some grey diaphanous gauzy substance, they are different shapes. Some are tall and skeletally thin while others are so stunted they look like giant heads walking on two feet. The movement of these creatures in particular baffles me because they appear to be walking round in circles. I try to make sense of what they are doing, but cannot, and the fact that they make no sense troubles me deeply. I think these are the first consciously metaphysical thoughts I have ever had. What do they mean? Clearly they ought to mean something, but they don’t. I have looked into my own mind and found Chaos.
Increasingly in these nightmares something happened which appeared to signify something. As I lay dreaming a figure crossed the stage which looked familiar though her head was turned away. She wore the same greyish gauze as the others, but at least the head was not veiled. I recognised the yellow hair as my mother’s, but she would not show her face to me. I became conscious of the paralysis of dream, as if I were tied to my bed by strong but invisible bonds. My distress was extreme because I longed to go to her. She drifted about the stage, elegant as always but still her face was turned from me. I tried to cry out to her but my voice was no more than a tiny pin prick of sound, like the distant shriek of a wild creature in pain. I was desperate to attract her attention, if only to warn her. Of what? I am not sure.
Then she turned her back on me and began to walk up stage away from me. By this time I was frantic and the tiny squeaks I make, though no louder, grew more intense. After one such squeak which seemed to penetrate a little further, she stopped. Her head moved like an animal in a forest that senses something amiss—a predator perhaps?—but cannot determine what it is, then she began to turn her head towards me.
My relief at this was quickly turned to dismay, because though her head was turning her body did not; that remained with its back to me. The head swivelled round in a one hundred and eighty degree turn until it faced me, but it was not my mother. It had the same shape of head as hers and the same yellow hair, but in the place of her features there was nothing, utterly nothing. I was staring at a black hole the size and shape of her head, infinitely black and infinitely deep. My cry of terror broke free of its confines and became a scream that filled the room. With that I was awake, sweating, inconsolable, sobbing. And sometimes my mother has heard me and comes to comfort me, and sometimes she does not. When she is with me I try to tell her that the dream is a warning but she does not listen; she only wants to soothe me.
My mother had been a professional actress before she married my father. He was a successful barrister and it would not exactly be true to say that her career was blighted by marriage and my arrival—I was an only child—but these events certainly contributed to its limitations. My mother would tell me stories of her past life, of the companies she was in, the dresses she wore, the compliments and flowers she received. If she did occasionally work in the theatre—my father did not exactly forbid it—it would be a ‘special week’ or ‘special fortnight’ here or there in repertory. That was in the days when there still was such a thing as repertory theatre. I remember sitting in brightly-lit dressing rooms and wondering at it all. In a vase by the light-encircled mirror there would be a small bunch of flowers in a vase from my father, that was all. They were memorable, those special weeks. I remember one in particular in which she played Mrs Erlynne in Lady Windermere’s Fan at the Mercury, Colchester, I think it was. I was nine at the time, and it was in the school holidays, and I would help her on with a succession of late Victorian ball gowns and ‘walking out’ costumes. She called me ‘my little dresser’, and by the end of the
performance fortnight so did the rest of the company. I was someone for the first time in my life. That may have set the seal on it.
Her maiden and her stage name was Venetia Cavendish, and with that name she should have been a star, she really should. She was beautiful and gifted enough, heaven knows. I always liked the name Cavendish. I am told it’s an aristocratic name, but that is not why. It sounded to me like the swish of a ball gown across a brightly lit stage, the soft, almost hush of a curtain rising to reveal a starry firmament of bright lights above a sea of dim faces, and the murmurous music of a wondering audience. The theatre was to be my life; and the death of me.
Yes, I was stagestruck, I still am. But had I any gift for it? When I was young that question didn’t even occur to me. I loved the theatre; I loved acting; I was destined for it. When one is young the wish alone is enough, but I must have had something because when I left school at seventeen I auditioned for the Irving Academy of Speech and Drama and was accepted.
Was I happy there? More than others, I think, less than some. To me drama school was a prelude only, not a thing to be enjoyed for itself. I worked hard, because the craft did not come naturally to me, and perhaps the combination of hard work and a certain lack of ease did not endear me to others: that and the fact that I had no time for and no desire for relationships. There were some discoveries that were beyond me at the time. But I meant and wished no harm to my fellow students and that palliated any hostility people may have felt. I was very dedicated: ‘conscientious’ was the word my instructors used, perhaps with a note of condescension in their voice. But I was not content with the present because I was already longing to step out onto the stage as a professional.
Another factor which limited my social horizons was that I lived with my mother. My father had long since deserted the family home and, to be honest, my mother and I did not suffer much from the loss. We were sufficient to each other. I am aware, of course, that this sort of thing might be regarded as ‘unhealthy’ for a young man approaching his twentieth year. One shouldn’t generalise. There is no such thing as normal in my view.
My teachers at the Irving did not prophesy a sparkling career ahead of me, though one did say cryptically: ‘You may surprise us all one day, not least yourself.’ As a matter of fact I was one of the first in my year to get a job from Drama School. It was not very distinguished admittedly, just theatre in education, acting little plays in schools, but my next job was understudying and stage managing on a tour of Dial M for Murder. I never went on stage to act once during that tour, but I made the consoling discovery that it was the theatre as a whole I loved, not simply my appearance on it. It was the physical stage, the darkness behind the scenes, the murmur of an audience behind the curtain. I loved the richness of an old theatre, the red plush seats and the gilding. I could stand on the stage during ‘the get-in’ and feel even then that this was my life and my death. I took photographs of the theatres I was in, especially the old ones, the plush and gilded plaster ones, the ones built by that master of Victorian theatre architects, Frank Matcham. Frank was the architect of my secret world.
At the end of that tour something happened. My mother began to die. She had not told me of her illness, though I had sensed something was wrong before my tour began. I think she may have said nothing because she wanted me to go on tour. Had I known for sure I would have stayed behind. It was cancer of the liver and relatively free of pain. There was nothing to be done but summon help and stay with her. My mother and I had always been close and during that time we became closer. There were times in those last days when we would have the same dream, There was only one.
I stand in the wings of a vast theatre. The curtain is up and beyond it is a vast and whispering sea of spectators. The stage itself is empty and I am waiting with apprehension the arrival of someone. Then she comes, wearing a long grey gown. It is my mother, looking elegant but thin and colourless. I cannot see her face entirely because she looks away from me. The sound of the audience builds, but I do not know if the sound is applause or mockery. The faces are elastic and uncertain, and the figure of my mother is slowly dissolving into them. Then she is no more than a column of smoke which blows this way and that and then is dissolved into the gilding and the faces of that vast palace. You will ask how it is that my mother had the same dream. Well, she told me that it was the same for her except that it was she who stood in the wings and I who was on stage.
I was with her on the day that she died and I watched as she heaved the last few breaths and then became silent and still. It did not seem to me like an event but a process, an exit from the stage of life, or an entrance into a vaster theatre. For a brief second between life and death I had the sensation irresistibly reminiscent of that timeless moment when the lights dim and the curtain rises. Then grief enveloped all in blackness. It made me long for death myself, and at the same time fear it. Now that I have seen it even more close at hand I feel the same.
Shortly after her death I had luck. I was engaged to play small parts and understudy in a national tour of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. Victor Kean—you know the name I am sure. He is what they call a ‘star’—took the leading role of Sydney Carton and the rest of the cast consisted of cheap, reliable unknown actors like myself. I began to feel that my luck had changed and that I had taken my first step towards a desired goal. Why, I do not know but I connected this in my mind with the death of my mother. The death card in the Tarot Pack means change. I knew that this production was to be an agent of change.
Fortune seemed to drive me forward. I had been understudying various minor roles, until the man who was covering for the leading role of Sydney Carton fell ill. It was a sudden seizure and on the day he was taken ill, I thought I saw my mother staring at me from the wings. Well, the long and the short of it was I was deputised to cover for Sydney Carton. I had become Victor Kean’s understudy, next in line, you might say, to a star. I knew now that it was only a short step before I took over the role. I learned the part assiduously and did well in the understudy rehearsals.
At that time I still believed that fame and glory as an actor was the lodestar of my life. It blotted out all other considerations. It did not make me ruthless or cruel, as a consuming ambition does sometimes, but it did make me obsessive. The problem with monomania is that it reduces self-awareness to a tiny shard. I did not know myself, and yet, despite all this, I lived and functioned.
Every night I watched from the side of the stage as Victor Kean played his part. I studied every movement of his, I analysed every twitch and gesture, not so much to copy him as to find the secret of his magnetism. And I believed I had found it, though I cannot tell you now what it was. Perhaps, like so much in the theatre, it was just another illusion. I continued to make progress in the understudy rehearsals, and once or twice I saw people come in to watch me act. You must know that understudy rehearsals on a tour are listless and perfunctory affairs, usually constructed by a stage manager who would much rather be playing golf or pursuing his (or her) liaison with the wardrobe mistress.
One evening I came into the theatre early. An empty theatre is a place of shadows and sinister excitement; it appeals to me. I was glad that nobody seemed to be around. Quietly, as if unwilling to disturb the silence and solitude I pushed through the pass door and crept into the wings. The curtain was up and a faint light came from the auditorium where the fire exit signs were still illuminated. One of the features of our set design was a rostrum upstage centre on which stood a guillotine, a design feature of our play set during the French Revolution. It was a ‘powerfully symbolic reminder of the fate awaiting enemies of the revolution’, you see, or so the director kept telling us. I mounted the rostrum and began to recite the last words of the play.
‘It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’
I spoke first quietly in a drugged voice, as if from a sleep. Then I spoke again with a slightly
different emphasis:
‘It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’
I tried the words a hundred different ways, each time louder, more emphatic until I heard an echo coming back to me from the empty gilded balconies that told me I had made it. Did I hear the faint ironic clapping of someone in the auditorium? Or was it laughter? Perhaps it was my imagination, but at that moment I did not care.
The following day I was called in for a special understudy rehearsal. Victor Kean had twisted an ankle while out walking on Hadrian’s Wall: that was the week we were in Newcastle. He was receiving treatment and would probably make the performance but it was better to be safe than sorry. This was to be a technical rehearsal since it was clear that I knew the words. We would go through the lighting cues and entrances. I was to wear his costume and negotiate the changes. It was all straightforward until we came to the last scene of all.
In it Sydney Carton mounts the scaffold and speaks his last line: ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’
He is then taken to the guillotine by two guards and placed with his head under the blade. The executioner releases the lever, the blade descends and just before it hits my neck there is a blackout. Then, in a traditional theatre, like the Theatre Royal Newcastle, the curtain descends. It is all quite straightforward, simple and safe, but it needs some practice to get right.
The procedure on this day was gone through meticulously, but for some reason on this day the blade became stuck.
‘Okay, that’s all right,’ said the stage manager from the stalls. ‘That’s what rehearsals are for. Don’t move, Romeo.’
But I did. Some irresistible urge prompted me to shift myself round in my prone position and half raise my head to see what had gone wrong. At that moment the blade was released and fell with full force on my half turned neck. Now, of course the ‘blade’ of the guillotine was not sharp, but it was heavy and made out of some resin which looked like metal. It stunned me and worse. I can remember no more. Later I heard I had been rushed to hospital and had an operation on my vertebrae which saved me from paralysis, perhaps even death.
The Ballet of Dr Caligari Page 12
