Tempest-Tost

by Robertson Davies

  She peered into the cloudy depths of the mirror, expertly avoiding the worst of the distortion caused by the whorl. In her white cotton nightdress, short-sleeved and falling only to her knees, she might have been a sibyl looking for a portent in the sacred smoke; but she was only a girl with the unfashionable sort of good looks staring at herself in a bad mirror. What right had she to be thinking of that glorious Apollo, of that planner of twenty shabby seductions?

  RYE AND TAP WATER; it was to this melancholy potion that Solly turned for solace after he had called in at his mother’s room, and put her mind at ease for the night. He was guiltily conscious that, as he talked to her, he was comparing her age and dilapidated face, so baggy without its teeth, to Griselda’s fresh beauty; when he bent to kiss her a whiff of her medicine rose unappetizingly in his face; she mumbled his cheek and called him “lovey”, a name that he detested. Then, escaping to his attic sitting-room, he was free of her.

  Free? Not much more so than when he sat at her side. He sipped at his flat drink and reflected upon his condition. His loyalty to his mother was powerful. Why? Because she depended so heavily upon it. She had told him, he could not reckon how many times, that he was all that she had in the world. This was true only in an emotional sense, of course. Mrs. Bridgetower had come of a family well established in an importing business in Montreal, and when her father died, well before the days of succession duties, she and a sister had shared his considerable estate. Nor had her husband left her unprovided for. Without being positively wealthy, she was a woman of means. It requires a good deal of capital for two people to live as Mrs. Bridgetower and her son lived, when there has been no breadwinner in the family for ten years. Money, it is often said, does not bring happiness; it must be added, however, that it makes it possible to support unhappiness with exemplary fortitude.

  If only his father had lived, he thought. But when Solly was twelve Professor Bridgetower had surprisingly tumbled from a small outcropping of rock, while with a group of students on a field expedition, and as they gaped at him in dismay and incomprehension, he had died of heart failure in two minutes. The eminent geologist, with his bald head and his surprised blue eyes and his big moustache, was suddenly no more. That night Solly had sat by his mother’s bed until dawn, and in the coherent passages of her grief she made it plain to him that he was, henceforth, charged with the emotional responsibility toward her which his father had so unaccountably abdicated. The intellectual façade, the intricate understanding of the Yellow Peril, the sardonic manner, were a shell within which dwelt the real Mrs. Bridgetower, who feared to be alone in the world and who was determined that she should not be so long as there was a man from whom she could draw vitality.

  It was not that she offered nothing in return. She told Solly, embarrassingly, at least once a year that if it were necessary she would gladly lay down her life for him. But in the sort of life they led nothing resembling such a sacrifice was ever likely to be required. He never made any corresponding declaration, but daily and hourly he was required not to die but to live for her. This had meant the sacrifice of much that would have made his schooldays happier, and when he had gone to Waverley it had made it impossible for him to share fully in the university life.

  Escape to Cambridge had been a glorious break for freedom. A life of bondage had not unfitted Solly for freedom; it had served only to whet his appetite, and his first year at Cambridge had been the realization of many dreams. He had even managed to evade her wish that he should return to Canada for the long summer vacation, and had gone to Europe instead, living life as it can only be lived at twenty-two, dazzling his Canadian eyes with the rich wonders of Mediterranean lands. But toward the end of the Michaelmas Term a cablegram had brought him, literally, flying home: “Your mother seriously ill. Heart. Advise immediate return. Collins.” And when he had reached Salterton three days later, Dr. Collins had informed him, with a cheerful manner which seemed offensive under the circumstances, that his mother had “turned the corner”, and would be all right after six weeks in bed, if she took care of herself. By the end of the six weeks it was plain that this meant that Solly should take care of her; mention of his return to Cambridge had caused her face to fall and a gummy tear or two to creep jerkily down her cheeks; Dr. Collins had informed him, on her behalf, that she should not be left alone at present.

  The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old. Solly’s writhings in his bonds were necessarily ineffective. A sense of duty and fear of a show-down with his mother kept him in check; it was unnecessary for her to take any countermeasures against the discontent which he could not always hide, because she held the purse-strings. His allowance was still, presumably, piling up in the bank at Cambridge, but at home he had nothing except for driblets of money which his mother handed to him now and then with the words, “You must have some little needs, lovey.”

  Little needs! He needed freedom. He needed a profession at which he could support himself. He needed the love and reassurance of someone other than his mother. He needed someone to whom he could talk, without reserve, about the humiliating thralldom which she had imposed upon him since his thirteenth year. As he sat in his armchair, sipping his miserable drink, a few stinging tears of self-pity mounted to his eyes. Self-pity is commonly held to be despicable; it can also be a great comfort if it does not become chronic.

  Griselda’s taunts had cut him sharply. It was all very well for her to imply that he was tied to his mother’s apron strings. But what did she know of his mother’s illness, and of the seriousness attached to it by Dr. Collins? “Your mother must take things very gently; no upsets; you’re the apple of her eye, you know; you must cheer her up—try to take her out of herself.” It was a duty, a work of filial piety which his conscience would not permit him to evade, however distasteful it might sometimes be. How unfair it was of a girl to make no attempt to understand a man’s obligation to another woman whose very life might depend upon his tact and consideration! How hateful women were, and yet Griselda—how infinitely desirable! How could one who looked as she had looked tonight be as unreasonable and as wilfully cruel as she had been? He hated her, and even as he hated he was torn with love for her. There was only one thing for it; he must try to forget his wretchedness in some work.

  It is a favourite notion of romantic young men that misery can be forgotten in work. If the work can be done late at night, all the better. And if the combination of misery and work can be brought together in an attic a very high degree of melancholy self-satisfaction may be achieved, for in spite of the supposed anti-romantic bias of our age the tradition of work, love, attics, drink and darkness is still powerful. The only real difficulty lies in balancing the level of the work against the level of the misery; at any moment the misery is likely to slop over into the work, and drown it.

  This is what happened to Solly. He took up a copy of The Tempest in which he had already made a great many notes, and which was fat with bits of paper which he had thrust into it here and there, with what he believed to be good ideas for the production scribbled on them. But he could not read or think; the words blurred before his eyes, and he could see nothing but Griselda’s face—not pinched and angry, as when she had turned away from his kiss, but as it had been in the clubroom, when she had seemed to sleep through Roger Tasset’s reading. In a few minutes he gave up the struggle, and thought only of her. And as this palls upon even the most heart-sore lover, he went at last to bed.

  4

  For two weeks after Mr. Webster had told him that the Little Theatre was going to invade his garden, nothing happened, and Tom began to deceive himself that perhaps nothing ever would happen. It is thus that a man who has been told by his physician that he has a dreadful disease seeks to persuade himself that the doctor was wrong. He feels nothing; he sees nothing amiss; little by little he thinks that there has been a mistaken diagnosis. B
ut one day it strikes, and his agony is worse because he has cajoled himself with thought of escape. And thus it was with Tom. One morning, shortly after breakfast, a large truck drove across the upper lawn at St. Agnes’, and with remarkable speed four men dug a great hole and planted a Hydro pole in it. When Tom rounded the house half an hour later they were busily setting up a transformer at the top of it.

  “Who gave you leave to stick that thing up in my lawn?” roared Tom.

  “Orders from the office, Pop,” said a young fellow at the top of the pole.

  “Nobody said nothing to me about it,” shouted Tom. “Why didn’t you ask me to take up the sod before you began all this?”

  “Never thought of it, Pop,” said the young man. “Don’t get your shirt in a knot. The grass’ll grow again.”

  “Not so much of your ‘Pop’, my boy,” said Tom, with dignity. “When I was in the Army I took the starch out of dozens like you.”

  “That was cavalry days, Pop. Mechanized army now.”

  “You come down here and get your bloody truck off my grass.”

  “Who’s going to make me?”

  “I know how to get a monkey out of a tree,” said Tom. He had a crowbar in his hand, and with this he deftly struck the base of the pole. The young man, whose climbing irons were stuck in the pole, got the full benefit of the vibration, and did not like it.

  “Hey, go easy, Pop,” he shouted.

  “You get your truck off my lawn,” said Tom.

  The truck was backed away to the drive, and Tom felt that honour had been preserved. But he knew also that he was fighting a rearguard action. During the afternoon a party of soldiers arrived with another truck, which they drove on the grass, and under a corporal’s direction they set up two brown tents.

  “What’s all this?” said Tom.

  “For the Little Theayter,” said the corporal. “One tent for lights; the other for odds and ends. Major Pye’s orders, sergeant.”

  Tom liked to be recognized as a sergeant in mufti, but he knew that after those tents had been up for three weeks he would never get the grass right that summer.

  That evening two cars brought Mrs. Forrester, Miss Rich, Professor Vambrace, Solly Bridgetower and Major Larry Pye to St. Agnes’. They surveyed the pole and the tents with pleasure.

  “It’s always a big thrill when a show begins to shape up, isn’t it Tom,” said Nellie.

  Tom, who had been haunting the upper lawn in case new liberties should be taken with it, said that he didn’t know, never having had any experience with shows, but if his opinion was asked he thought that the pole and the tents looked a fair eyesore.

  “Of course they do,” agreed Nellie. “But they won’t when you’ve planted some nice shrubs and little trees around them.”

  “Maybe you’d like me to camoofladge this telegraph post as a tree, ma’am,” said Tom. But his sarcasm was wasted on Nellie.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. “Of course that would be wonderful.”

  “We don’t want to put you to extra work any more than is needful,” said Professor Vambrace, “but it will be necessary to give us some sort of raised stage. Something about two feet high, fifty feet across and thirty feet deep will be wanted, I should think. Can you do that with sod?”

  “Now, now, let’s treat first things first,” said Major Pye. “I’m going to want a pit dug right in front of the acting area—not a big thing, but a pit about four feet deep, eight feet wide and four feet across, lined with waterproof cement.”

  “Oh Larry, what for?” said Nellie.

  “To put my controls in,” said Larry. “That’s where I’ll be all through the show. I’ll have my board down there. And every change of light—bingo! Along comes the cue and I hit it right on the nose—bingo! You can put the prompter down there with me, if she doesn’t take too much room,” he added, magnanimously.

  “And just when am I supposed to get all this done by?” said Tom.

  “You’ve got the better part of five weeks,” said Nellie. “Of course we’ll be rehearsing here a great deal, and you won’t be able to work while we are busy, but you’ll have your mornings to yourself as a general thing.”

  “Now just a minute, ma’am—” he began, but Valentine cut him short.

  “I think it would be well if I made all the arrangements with Mr.—?” She paused.

  “Gwalchmai’s the name, miss; Thomas Gwalchmai.” Rarely has the fine old Welsh name of Gwalchmai sounded less accommodating to the lazy Saxon tongue than as Tom spoke it then.

  “With Mr. Gwalchmai,” said Valentine, smiling pleasantly and pronouncing it to perfection. “We shan’t need a raised stage, and it would be unthinkable to dig a pit in this perfect lawn. We have done quite enough damage as it is. Shall we say then, Mr. Gwalchmai, that nothing need be done to the grounds until it has been discussed with me?”

  “Well, I don’t want to be a stumbling-block, miss,” said Tom, much softened, “but there’s a limit to what can be done, and—”

  “Of course there is,” said Valentine. “But it will be most helpful if we may rehearse here during the evenings and perhaps on a few afternoons, as well.”

  “Oh, that’ll be quite all right, miss,” said Tom, eager to please.

  Later, when they had gone inside the house for further discussion, Professor Vambrace complimented Valentine on the skill with which she had managed Tom, whom he described as “an obstructionist—hide-bound, like all people who live close to the soil.”

  “He seems very nice,” she replied; “we must be careful to give him his due; that’s the secret of getting on with most people.”

  Professor Vambrace, who had a deep conviction that he himself had never received his due, assented earnestly. Larry Pye, who considered himself a born colonel who had been kept down by jealousy in high places, nodded vigorously. The world is full of people who believe that they have never had their due, and they are the slaves of anyone who seems likely to make this deferred payment. Valentine, in a few days, had assumed this character among them, and they were all convinced that she was a woman of extraordinary penetration. She never sought or demanded anything for herself, she was ready to listen to everybody, within reason, she had no interest in humiliating or thwarting anybody, and in consequence all the keys of power in the Salterton Little Theatre had been gathered into her hands.

  Always excepting, of course, those widespread powers which Nellie regarded as her own. She had, as she explained to Roscoe, grown up with Valentine Rich, and although Valentine had undoubtedly made a name for herself in the theatre she, Nellie, had gained what was perhaps an even wider experience. In the Little Theatre, she always said, you got a broader grounding; she had painted scenery, made costumes, acted, directed, dealt with matters of business, done everything, really, that could be done in a theatre. What was more, she knew Salterton as Valentine did not, and she had to see that no local apple-cart was upset. Oh, she didn’t deny for a moment that Valentine knew her job, but after all, Salterton was not New York, and there was no good pretending that it was.

  When it was time to talk about music for the play, therefore, Nellie felt obliged to make her opinions known.

  “You needn’t worry about it at all,” said she; “I arranged everything with Mr. Snairey last week. The Snairey Trio should sound lovely in the open air. And he’s had experience, you know.”

  “Surely that isn’t old Snairey who used to play in the Empire for vaudeville when we were children,” said Valentine.

  “I should think he played there when your grandfather was a lad,” said Solly. “You don’t seriously mean that you’ve asked him, Mrs. F.?”

  “Of course I do. He says he has some lovely music which theatre orchestras always play for Shakespeare; Sir Edward German’s Henry VIII dances.”

  “I see,” said Valentine, in a voice which suggested that she saw more than Nellie. “And what about the songs?”

  “I mentioned them, and he said he thought he
could fake something. His daughter Loura can sing offstage, and the girls onstage can fill in with mime. He hasn’t any music for the songs in the play, but he said he thought we could use something pretty and Old English.”

  “From what I know of old Snairey, that means that they will play William Tell during the storm scene, and Ariel will flit across the stage to the strains of The Farmer’s Boy. Really, Mrs. F., you’ve done it this time.”

  “Oh Solly, don’t be so superior,” said Nellie; “there are a million things to be done, and I appear to be the only one ready to do them. If you know so much, why didn’t you arrange about the music?”

  “Because nobody asked me to,” said Solly, bitterly.

  “Well, it’s settled now, for good or ill.”

  “No,” said Valentine; “Mr. Snairey can be dealt with, I expect. Very likely he and his Trio can play, but someone must see that suitable music is provided. Who is the best musician in town?”

  “Myrtle Swann, by long odds,” said Nellie; “they say she has forty pupils.”

  “But we don’t want a piano teacher; we want someone who can direct an orchestra and some singers,” said Valentine.

  “The obvious man is Humphrey Cobbler,” said Solly.

  “Oh heavens, you can’t have him,” said Nellie; “he’s not right in his head.”

  “Who says so?” said Solly.

  “Oh, lots of people at the Cathedral. And he’s such an untidy dresser. And sometimes he laughs out loud at nothing. And he never gets his hair cut.”

  “He has many of the superficial marks of genius,” said Valentine. “Who is he?”

  “The organist and choirmaster at St. Nicholas’,” said Solly. “I assumed he would be the first man to be asked.”

  “Not by me,” said Nellie. “They say he’s a Drinker.”

  “That’s probably just a mannerism from being an organist,” said Valentine; “they use their feet very oddly. Go and see him, Solly, and find out what can be done.”