Tempest-Tost

by Robertson Davies

  Griselda did not recognize The Shed as Tom’s special property. She thought of it simply as an extension of her father’s house. Tom was not the big figure in her world that he was in Freddy’s.

  “What about Larry and Mr. Mackilwraith?” asked Mrs. Forrester.

  “We’ll keep an eye out for them,” said Griselda. “Larry wanted to finish his little sketch of the lawn. Anyway, he’s hanging about to look for What’s His Name—the fellow who’s going to play Ferdinand.”

  “Mackilwraith will not be here until after four,” said Professor Vambrace. “School.”

  “Probably not until after half-past four,” said Solly. “If old Hector hasn’t changed his ways he’ll have some wretched child under his eye for at least half an hour after closing-time. One of the really great detainers and keepers-in of our time, Old Hector.”

  “Mr. Mackilwraith is a schoolteacher,” said Mrs. Forrester to the unknown woman. “I do hope he’ll be able to take a look at the lawn; he’s our business manager, and he can always tell how many it will seat, and what money that will mean, and all those things. A mathematical wizard.”

  “A creaking pedant,” said Solly.

  Professor Vambrace gave him a look which suggested that while irreverent remarks about schoolteachers did not necessarily affect university professors, they were in questionable taste.

  “I speak, of course, in a rich, Elizabethan manner,” said Solly, with a rich, Elizabethan gesture which almost toppled a tower of small flowerpots. “He’s not a bad chap really—I suppose. Freddy, I greet you. You and Miss Rich haven’t met, have you? Miss Rich is from New York and she is going to direct our play. This is Fredegonde Webster; she lives here, but splendour has not corrupted her. A pard-like spirit, beautiful and swift.”

  “How do you do, Miss Webster,” said Miss Rich holding out her hand.

  “I am very well, thank you,” said Freddy, thinking that Miss Rich was a very well-mannered person, and nicely dressed. “Solly is a great tease, as I suppose you have found out.”

  “We only met about an hour ago,” said Miss Rich.

  “Aren’t we dignified, though?” said Mrs. Forrester, with what she believed to be a laughing glance toward Freddy. “When one is just growing up—oh, the dignity of it! I remember when I was that age; do you remember, Val? Wasn’t I just loaded with dignity?”

  “I don’t really remember, Nell,” said Miss Rich.

  “Well, I do.” Mrs. Forrester was firm. “We were both absolutely bursting with dignity.”

  “But you got over all that, didn’t you?” said Freddy, sweetly. “I suppose that’s the fun of being grown up; one has shed so many things which seem desirable to somebody of my age.”

  “That will do, Freddy,” said Griselda.

  Freddy was happy to leave the matter there. Griselda’s rebuke carried little weight, and she was pleasantly conscious of having choked off Old Ma Forrester.

  “Well, have we made up our minds?” asked Professor Vambrace. “Will the lawn do? Will those trees give the background we want? If so, let us make our decision. What do you think, Miss Rich?”

  “I think the setting is charming,” said she; “if it is agreeable to you, I am quite happy about it. But won’t Major Pye have something to say?”

  “He’s sure to have plenty of fault to find,” said Solly, “but he wouldn’t completely approve of any place. You know how technical men are; they love to face problems, and when there are none they create them. They’re overcomers by nature; the way to please ’em is to give them lots to overcome. ‘To him that o’ercometh, God giveth a crown.’ That hymn was written especially to flatter stage managers.”

  “Now don’t begin antagonizing Larry at this stage,” said Mrs. Forrester; “his work will be hard enough, and we must let him get well into it before we offer any suggestions. So do be good, Solly, and jolly him along.”

  “What I love about amateur theatricals,” said Solly to Miss Rich, “is the way everything is done by jollying everybody. You must miss that dreadfully in the professional theatre. Just a dull round of people giving orders and people obeying them; no jollying.”

  “You are quite mistaken,” she replied; “there is really quite a lot of jollying to be done, though perhaps not quite so much as with amateurs.”

  “Solly, if you say amateur theatricals again I shall hit you,” said Mrs. Forrester; “thank Heaven the Little Theatre left all that nonsense behind years ago. In fact, it may be said that we have a truly professional approach. Haven’t we, Walter?”

  “Quite,” said the economical Vambrace.

  “I’m sure it may be said, but is it true?” said Solly. “It certainly wasn’t true when I went away; have two years made so much difference?”

  “You’re just conceited because you’ve been to Cambridge,” said Mrs. Forrester. “But you can’t shake off the fact that you got your start with the Salterton Little Theatre, and that it has made you what you are today, theatrically speaking—”

  “Oh, God,” interjected Solly.

  “—if you are anything at all, theatrically speaking, which has yet to be shown. And it is a great privilege for you to be working with Miss Rich, and don’t you forget it, young man.”

  Mrs. Forrester laughed with a little too much emphasis, to show that this lecture was intended to be friendly. She always maintained that you could say literally anything to anybody, just so long as you said it with a smile, to show that there were no hard feelings. It was going to be necessary to keep Solly in hand, she could see that.

  “Mrs. F., you are being grossly unfair,” said Solly. “You want me to jolly Larry Pye, to keep him happy. Jolly Solly, that’s what I’m to be. But do you jolly me? No, you jump down my throat. Why do you, if I may so express it, make flesh of Pye and fish of me?”

  “You’re too young to be jollied,” she replied. “And don’t you call me Mrs. F.”

  “Well, if you are going to badger me in that tone I certainly can’t call you Nellie. If I’m too young to be jollied, you are certainly too old to be treated with friendly familiarity. What do you want to be called: Dame Nellie Forrester?”

  “You can call me Nellie when you are a good boy.”

  “And you shall be called Nagging Nell when you are a bad old girl.”

  Mrs. Forrester never lost her temper. She prided herself upon this trait and frequently mentioned it to her friends. But sometimes, as upon the present occasion, she felt a burning in the pit of her stomach which would have been anger in anyone else. How stupid it was of Solly not to be able to take a rebuke without all this bickering! She groped for something crushing which could be said in a thoroughly good-natured way, but nothing came. Luckily the door opened at this moment and Major Larry Pye came in, followed by a young man in a raincoat, but without a hat.

  “Well, we can do it, but it isn’t going to be easy,” said Larry, who liked to begin conversations in the middle.

  “If anybody can do it, you can,” said Solly, in an artificially hearty voice.

  “It’ll mean a lot of new cable; that’s one thing,” Larry continued, and he would have set out at once to explain the delightful difficulties he had discovered, and which he meant to overcome, if Mrs. Forrester had not pounced on his companion.

  “Roger,” she cried, “how sweet of you to come in all this rain! You don’t know anyone here, do you?”

  “Yes; I know the Major and I’ve met Professor Vambrace,” said the young man.

  “Twice,” said the Professor.

  “This is Miss Valentine Rich, of New York, who is going to direct the play; Roger Tasset, Val, who is to be your leading man. And Griselda Webster, who will probably be our Ariel; Lieutenant Tasset. And this is Solly Bridgetower; he will sort of dogsbody and stooge for Miss Rich; he’s just back from Cambridge. Oh, and I almost forgot dear little Freddy, who lives here. And Tom who is going to be our very good friend, I’m sure. Larry, have you met Tom?”

  “Hullo, Tom,” said Larry.

 
Tom had a firm grip on the fact that Larry, at some distant time, had been a major, and was still addressed by his military title; this seemed to him to be the one truly creditable fact about the group of people who had come bursting into his Shed, tracking dirt everywhere, and talking silly. So he gave Larry something which was almost a salute.

  “Good workshop you have here,” said Larry. “Got a lathe?”

  “No sir,” said Tom.

  “Too bad. But we can do most of our building right here,” said the major. “It will save a lot of cartage. We might as well have everything as convenient as possible.”

  With these words Tom’s last hope of saving The Shed was slain.

  “The rain is growing worse,” said Professor Vambrace.

  “We shan’t be able to do anything else this afternoon,” said Mrs. Forrester. “I suppose we should think about ways of getting home. Now have we really decided that this is the place for the play? If there is an objection of any kind, now is the time to state it.”

  “I don’t understand you, Mrs. F.,” said Solly spitefully. “You know that we have had our hearts set on this place from the first. Now we’ve got it. Why fuss?”

  “Solly!” cried Mrs. Forrester, and stamped her foot. But in an instant she was smiling. “He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases,” she said. Solly was always quoting; she could quote too.

  “It’s not as cut and dried as all that,” said Larry Pye. “Where’s your heavy duty cable to come from? I’d be glad if somebody would tell me that.” He looked around at the company. All they thought about was strutting in fine clothes. But it was the old story of the grasshopper and the ant; when the practical business had to be done, they had to come to him. He knew very well where the heavy duty cable would be brought in; he had it all clear in his mind; but it would never do for them to know that.

  “The lawn and the trees are quite lovely,” said Valentine Rich, “and if you can solve your technical problems, Major Pye, I should like to use this setting very much. I’ve heard that you are a wonderful stage manager, and that you do miracles every year.”

  “Don’t know about miracles,” said Larry, looking like a little boy who has been given a six-bladed jack-knife, “but I’ll do my best. Can’t say any more than that.”

  “Then I haven’t another worry,” said Miss Rich, smiling at him, whereupon he giggled, and decided that it really took a professional to understand what he was up against.

  “Did you see the upper lawn, Roger?” asked Mrs. Forrester.

  “The Major showed it to me,” said Roger Tasset; “jolly good.”

  “It’s wonderful of Roger to act with us,” the president continued. “He’s terribly busy, taking a course, or giving a course, or something. But I know he’s going to be simply wonderful.”

  “I don’t guarantee it,” said Roger. “Haven’t done anything in this line since I was at school. Can’t say I know the play awfully well, as a matter of fact. Is it the one where the chap turns into a donkey?”

  “No, it’s the one with the shipwreck,” said Solly.

  “Oh? Good show!”

  “We hope it will be,” Solly replied, with a courtesy which was a little overdone.

  The door opened once more, and a man in a raincoat and a sober grey hat stepped inside, lowered his umbrella, and shook it carefully out of the door before bringing it in after him. Not a drop fell on Tom’s floor.

  “I’m sorry to be late,” said he. “I had to oversee some detentions.”

  It was Hector Mackilwraith. He brought with him an air of calm command, developed during eighteen years in the schoolroom, which had its effect even upon Solly. He did not take charge, but in his presence Mrs. Forrester quickly established and ratified the already obvious fact that The Tempest would be performed six weeks hence on the upper lawn at St. Agnes’. Major Pye agreed that the problem of the heavy-duty cable, though vexing, could be solved. From measurements supplied by Major Pye it was soon decided by Hector Mackilwraith that a sufficient audience could be accommodated to pay the costs of the production and realize a useful profit. Then a silence descended, and when it was plain that there was nothing more to be said, Griselda suggested that she should fetch the big car and drive them all home. It was Hector Mackilwraith who held his umbrella over her as they walked to the garage; and as they drove about the city, dropping the Little Theatre enthusiasts at their widely separated dwellings, it was Hector Mackilwraith who sat by her side.

  When they had gone, Freddy and Tom looked at one another in glum dismay. The coming six weeks stretched before them as a period of sheer Hell.

  “WELL, IF YOU WON’T STAY with us, I suppose you won’t,” said Mrs. Forrester, with a pout which had been rather attractive fifteen years earlier, “but we could have had a barrel of fun.”

  “It’s not that I won’t, Nell; it’s that I can’t,” said Miss Rich patiently. They had covered this ground more than thoroughly during the evening meal. “I shall have to be busy every day, seeing lawyers and auctioneers and so forth. I’d be a nuisance.”

  “Well, then, let’s not talk about it any more. We don’t want to quarrel. Though I’ve been looking forward to having you just a little bit to myself. Haven’t I, Roscoe?”

  Roscoe nodded, with a smile which might have meant anything, but which probably meant goodwill, sympathy in his wife’s disappointment, understanding of Valentine Rich’s predicament, reluctance to let a friend of his wife’s stop at a hotel, and pleasure that no guest would disturb the peaceful routine of his household. Roscoe Forrester was an admirable salesman; he made a very good income from selling insurance; one of his foremost assets in this highly competitive work was his ability to share with perfect sincerity in several opposed points of view.

  They continued with their meal of spiced meat and salad from the delicatessen, ice-cream from the dairy, and cookies from the bakery. Mrs. Forrester believed in what she called “streamlining household work”.

  The Forresters, as they told everyone they met, had “neither chick nor child”. Their failure to have a chick never provoked surprise, but it was odd that they were childless; they had not sought that condition. But they were not driven apart by it, as people of more intense feelings sometimes are; if anything, Roscoe Forrester was a little more attentive toward his wife for that reason, as if he reproached himself for having failed to provide something which might have given her pleasure. He helped her in any way he could with her amusements, which she called “activities”, and he gave in to her in all matters of dispute. His attitude toward her was admiring and protective, and in his heart he believed that she was a remarkable woman.

  She had, for instance, Taste. Their apartment showed it. Many people would have sworn that only an interior decorator could have produced such an effect. In the living room, he would explain, there were just two Notes of Colour; one was a picture, a print framed in natural wood, of some red horses playing rather violently in a field; the other was a large bowl, of a deep green, which stood on the pickled oak coffee table. All else in the room was cleverly arranged to be of no colour at all. The suite of two armchairs and a sofa was upholstered in a dingy shade called mushroom; the walls were distempered in a colour which recalled, if anything, vomit. The carpet, a broadloom, was mushroom too, and the hardwood floor, where visible, repeated more firmly the walls’ note of delicate nausea. There was one other chair, with no arms, which sat upon a spring-like arrangement of bent wood. This was very modern indeed, and was avoided by all save the lightest guests.

  An arch in one wall of the living room gave upon the dining-room, which was smaller, but just as tasteful. Certain concessions to human frailty were permitted here; for instance, on the top of a cabinet sat an effigy in china of an old woman in a bonnet, offering for sale a bunch of rather solid-looking balloons. The furniture was of old pine, which Mrs. Forrester, and Roscoe under her direction, had rubbed down with pumice, and rubbed up with oil, and shellacked until it had a permanently wet look. It was
old, and the table was so low that it was rather inconvenient for large guests, but everyone assured Mrs. Forrester that the effect was charming. The bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom of the flat were not carried through on this high level of Taste, but they bore many personal touches; the guest towels, for instance, were marked “Yours” (in contrast to “His” and “Hers” which were used by the owners) and by the bedside in the guestroom was a cigarette box with three very dry cigarettes in it, and two packets of matches, wittily printed with the words “Swiped from The Forresters”. Their library was accommodated in a single case in their own bedroom. The most coherent part of it was what Mrs. Forrester called “her drama library”; it comprised three anthologies of plays, a curiously unhelpful manual called Play Direction For Theatres Great and Small (written by a professor who had never directed a play in any theatre which might be called great), and a handful of dog-eared acting copies of plays in which Mrs. Forrester had herself appeared. There was also a book about acting by Stanislavsky, which Mrs. Forrester had read to the end of the first chapter and marked intelligently in red pencil, and which she recommended to amateurs who did not know what to do with their hands when on the stage. There were also several books which instructed the reader that peace of mind of the sort possessed by great saints could be achieved by five minutes of daily contemplation, and two or three complementary books which explained that worry, heart disease, hardening of the arteries, taedium cordis and despair could all be avoided by relaxing the muscles. There was a book which explained how one could grow slim while eating three delicious, satisfying meals a day. There was a copy of the Rubaiyat bound in disagreeable limp suede (a wedding gift from Mrs. Forrester’s aunt). And in addition there were twenty or more novels, some bound in cloth and some in paper covers.

  “It’s going to be a wonderful lift for our group to work with you, Val,” said Mrs. Forrester as they took their coffee into the living room; she switched on a tasteful lamp, which lit the ceiling very well, and in the increased light the red horses whinnied tastefully to the green bowl, which echoed tastefully again. “I mean, now that you’ve worked with professionals for so long. You’ve got an awful lot to give. Don’t you feel that?”