Tempest-Tost

by Robertson Davies

  Nellie bit her lip, and said nothing. She thought of telling Valentine and Solly that Salterton was not New York, but decided to let them find it out for themselves.

  HAVING DECIDED THAT HE WAS in love with Griselda, Hector reflected that he must devise some clever scheme to let her know it. He was not a reader of novels, and he very rarely went to the movies, but he felt that he knew enough about romance to carry out his plan in his accustomed efficient and successful manner. His problem was, he told himself, simple enough in essence: he loved Griselda; he would give gradually stronger hints that this was so until he was able to make an outright declaration; that done, she would love him, for he considered it impossible that a woman should be loved without loving in return; he had heard of such cases, but they did not involve young and inexperienced girls; he and Griselda would then love each other. Beyond that point he did not think. One thing at a time. Affection would beget affection; that, he assured himself, was what always happened.

  The disparity in their ages was against him, in a way. And yet, had she not started the affair by that smile which she had given him? He did not attach too much meaning to it, but he did not discount it, either. Well, here was a field in which he had never tried planning and common sense before, but he would not desert those tried and true friends now. In the black notebook, over a period of a week, appeared a page filled thus:

  PLAN OF CONDUCT

  P C

  be dignified, friendly not too stiff

  make jokes not seem mere buffoon

  show still young, good muscles, etc. take off 25lb., cut pie?

  outsmart people, show trained mind, spend freely don’t overdo, seem wasteful

  To put his plan in action he seized a chair at the first rehearsal, and lightly threw his leg over the back of it.

  “Can you fellows do that?” he asked Roger and Solly, who were talking to Griselda.

  “I’d probably rupture myself if I tried,” said Solly.

  Roger quickly did what Hector had done, first with his right leg and then with his left.

  “Let’s see you do it with both legs,” he said.

  Hector tried it, and although his right leg, with which he had been practising, answered satisfactorily to the call of romance, the left leg knocked over the chair, and he stumbled.

  “See what I mean?” said Solly, officiously seizing him by the arm, to prevent a fall. “You might easily unman yourself doing a trick like that.”

  What a coarse thing to say in front of a young girl, thought Hector. He would have liked to punch young Bridgetower in his loose mouth. He was humiliated. But no one appeared to notice his humiliation. The Torso had joined them, seeing that kicking was toward, and was demonstrating how she could hold her right foot above her head with her right hand, and spin on her left leg. This showed a good deal of her drawers, which were pink and short and had lace on them. Nobody had eyes for the red-faced Hector.

  As for cutting out pie, he had read in the Reader’s Digest that slimming exercises and abstinences should not be embarked upon hastily. And so for a couple of weeks he cut out his usual piece of pie with his lunch on Tuesdays and Fridays, but did not tamper with his dinner menu.

  During those two weeks he found no opportunity to address Griselda directly, but he watched her closely, and the feeling for her which he had decided to call love, a feeling in which worship and the yearning to champion and serve her were untainted by any fleshy aspiration, deepened and took hold of him as no feeling had done since he had made up his mind to get a university degree.

  SOLLY’S EXPEDITION IN SEARCH of Humphrey Cobbler took him to a part of Salterton which was new to him. He walked slowly down one of those roads which are to be found in the new sections of all Canadian cities; rows of small houses lined both sides of the street, and although these little houses were alike in every important respect a miserable attempt had been made to differentiate them by a trifle of leaded glass here, a veneer of imitation stonework there, a curiously fashioned front door in another place, by all the cheap and tasteless shifts of the speculative builder. A glance at one was enough to lay bare the plan of all. Even that last modesty of a dwelling—the location of the water closet—was rudely derided by the short ventilation pipes which broke through each roof at identically the same spot. These were not houses, thought Solly, in which anyone could be greatly happy, or see a vision; no ghost would dream of haunting one of them; the pale babies being aired in their perambulators on the small verandahs did not look to him as though they had been begotten in passion; the dogs which ran from one twig-like tree (fresh from the nursery) to another, did not seem to be of any determinable breed; he could not imagine anyone at all like Griselda living in one of these dreadful boxes.

  He was surprised, therefore, as he drew near the house which bore Humphrey Cobbler’s number, to hear a burst of cheerful singing, accompanied with great liveliness on the piano. When he rapped at the door it was quickly answered by a red-cheeked, rather stout young woman with very black hair; her feet were bare, and her crumpled cotton frock somehow gave the impression that she wore very little beneath it. She bade Solly come in, and he found himself in a barely furnished and rather dirty room, where a shock-headed man was seated at a grand piano, and four barefoot, tousled children were singing at the tops of their pleasant voices.

  “Hello!” roared the pianist. “Sit down; we’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “Sweet nymph, come to thy lover,” sang the children.

  “Words! Words!” shouted the man. “Spit it out!”

  Obligingly, the children spat it out, with such clarity that when they had finished their song the man cried “Good!” and chased them away.

  “We have a little workout twice a day,” he said to Solly. “Lay the foundation of a good voice before puberty; that’s the whole secret. Train them gently over the break, and then they’ve a voice that will last them fifty or sixty years.”

  “Have you many child pupils?” Solly enquired.

  “Oh, those aren’t pupils; they’re my own. People won’t pay to have children taught to sing. What can I do for you?”

  “You are Humphrey Cobbler, I suppose?”

  “Yes. You’re Solomon Bridgetower. I’ve seen you about.”

  As he explained what he wanted, Solly was able to take a good look at his host. Humphrey Cobbler was the kind of Englishman who has a high complexion and black, curly hair; his nose was aquiline, his build slight. He might have been taken for a Jew, if it had not been for his bright, restless eye, like a robin’s, which leaped constantly from Solly’s face to his feet, from his feet to his hands, from his hands to his ears, and from his ears to something curious and amusing which apparently was hovering above his head. Cobbler, like his wife, was not overdressed; his trousers were held up by an old tie knotted around his waist, his shirt lacked most of its buttons, and his bare feet were thrust into trodden-down slippers. His hair, to which Nellie had referred, was saved from complete disorder by its curls, but there was a great deal of it, and from time to time he gave a portion of it a powerful tug, as though to brighten his wits, much as some people take pinches of snuff.

  When Solly had made his suggestion Cobbler seized upon it with enthusiasm. “Of course I’ll do it,” said he; “we can make a very complete thing of it. There’s plenty of lovely music for The Tempest, but we’ll use all Purcell, I think. I don’t suppose you’d like to revise your plans and do Shadwell’s version of the play, would you? A much tidier bit of playwrighting, really. No? I feared not. Wonderful music there.” Darting to the piano he burst into song:

  Arise, arise, ye subterranean winds!

  “Doesn’t that stir you? Marvellous stuff! However, if you insist on sticking to the old Shakespeare thing we can do something very tasty. Your people can sing, I suppose?”

  “They say so,” said Solly. “I’m not sure about all of them. Perhaps you have met Miss Griselda Webster? She is to play Ariel, and she sings charmingly.”

  “
Let’s hope so,” said Cobbler.

  “I’m afraid we can’t offer you any fee,” said Solly, with some hesitation.

  “I didn’t expect you could,” said Cobbler. “Odd how so few really interesting jobs have any fee attached. Ah, well. You don’t mind if I work Molly and the kids in for a bit of backstage singing, do you? They’d love it.”

  Solly had not liked bringing up the matter of the fee, and in his relief he replied as though the presence of Molly and the little Cobblers backstage were all that was needed to make life perfect. He then brought up the matter of Mr. Snairey. Cobbler opened his mouth very wide, so that Solly was able to see the pillars of his throat, and laughed in a wild and hollow manner.

  “I know it’s a nuisance,” said Solly, “but Mrs. Forrester has asked him, and he has accepted, and it was only with some difficulty that we persuaded her that Snairey’s choice of music might be, well, undistinguished. You don’t think you could get along with him, I suppose, just for the sake of peace?”

  “My dear fellow,” said Cobbler, “my whole life is moved by the principle that the one thing which is more important than peace is music. It is because I believe that that I am poor. It is because I believe that that many people suppose that I am crazy. It is because I believe that that I have just said that I will take care of the music for your play. I shall get no money out of it, and my experience of theatre groups leads me to think that I shall get little thanks for it. If, as you suggest, I get along with old Snairey for the sake of peace, it will be your peace, and not mine. I have not often heard him attack anything which I would dignify with the name of music, but when I have done so, that music has been royally—indeed imperially and even papally—bitched. I shall have nothing to do with him, in any circumstances whatever.”

  “That creates rather a situation,” said Solly.

  “If I’m to be captain of music I must be allowed to pick my own team.”

  “Yes; I see that, of course.”

  “And you also see, if I mistake not, that you will have a terrible row with Mrs. Forrester, and another with old Snairey. Let me give you a piece of advice, Bridgetower; don’t borrow trouble. To a surprising extent trouble is a thing one can allow other people to have, if one doesn’t throw oneself in its path. You have already the harried look of a man who regards himself as the Lamb of God who takes upon him the sins of the whole world. That’s silly. Now let me tell you what to do: go back to Mrs. Forrester and tell her—in front of witnesses, mind—that I’ll do it, but I won’t have Snairey. Then let her deal with Snairey. He’s senile, anyhow. Promise him a couple of seats for the play and he’ll be all right. Pass the buck. It’s the secret of life. You can’t fight every battle and dry every tear. Whenever you’re dealing with something that you don’t really care about, pass the buck. You’ve got me to do your music; that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Very well then, let Mrs. Forrester clean up the mess.”

  He turned again to the keyboard, and began to improvise very rapidly in the manner of Handel, singing the words “Pass the buck” in a bewildering variety of rhythms and intonations. Solly, sensing that the interview was over, left the house, and for some distance down the street he could hear the extemporaneous cantata, for piano and solo voice, on the theme “Pass the buck”.

  SOLLY GAVE NELLIE COBBLER’S MESSAGE, in front of witnesses as he had been told to do, at the very next rehearsal; he chose a moment when she was already distracted by other worries, said his say, and hurried off to attend to something else. He felt that he was behaving meanly, but comforted himself with the assurance that in certain complex situations perfect honour and fair dealing were out of the question. And he had, indeed, enough to worry him. Larry Pye, who had not read The Tempest, was discovering from the rehearsals which he occasionally overheard that there were magical devices in the play which he was expected to supply. His technique in meeting this problem was in the best Cobbler tradition of passing the buck. “You plan ’em, and I’ll make ’em,” said he, and Valentine had asked Solly, as her assistant, to see what he could do.

  Solly’s first move when confronted with a problem was to seek help from books. The Waverley Library, he discovered, was fairly well stocked with books about magic as anthropologists understand the word, and it could provide him with plenty of material about medieval sorcery; it also contained books by Aleister Crowley and the Rev. Montague Summers which assured him feverishly that there was plenty of magic in the world today. But of practical illusion it yielded only The Boy’s Book of Magic and two books by Professor Louis Hoffmann, who wrote about card tricks in an intolerably facetious style and obscured his already obscure explanations still further with Latin quotations and badly drawn diagrams. After two days of poring over these works Solly reported to Valentine that Shakespeare’s blithe direction “with a quaint device the table vanishes” was still impossible of realization by any means which he could discover.

  “Oh, never mind then,” said she; “we’ll just use the old pantomime tipover trick. It is really the simplest when it’s well done. I merely thought you might find something better.”

  So she had known a way of doing it all the time! For five minutes Solly was convinced that he hated Valentine.

  He could not hate her for long, however. He was compelled, many times at each rehearsal, to admire the firmness, the good humour, the speed without haste, the practical knowledge of the stage, and the imagination which she applied to the task of training the actors of the Salterton Theatre to do what they had never done, or dreamed of doing, before in their lives. She very soon discovered what each actor might reasonably be expected to give, and then set to work to make sure that he gave it all. It was she who revealed to the world, and to Mr. Leakey himself, that Mr. Leakey could be quite funny if he didn’t try to be his very funniest. It was she who found out that Mr. Shortreed had a large bass voice, and could outroar Professor Vambrace. It was she who demonstrated that The Torso, having once been made to cry, could stand perfectly still on the stage and look unexpectedly distinguished as well as merely pretty. And it was she who allowed it to be seen, tactlessly, in Nellie’s opinion, that Griselda Webster was a slacker, unwilling to make a sustained effort.

  It was she, moreover, who dealt with the difficult problem created by Mrs. Crundale. This lady might have been an artist of some attainment if she had not married Mr. Crundale, and devoted her best efforts to furthering his career as a bank manager. The costumes which she designed for The Tempest were charming and imaginative. It was true that all the Reapers were expected to reveal a great deal more muscular shoulder and leg than they were likely to possess, and that costumes which she had designed for emaciated people seven feet tall had to be adapted for plump people considerably shorter after the casting had been done. But this was not the crux of the problem presented by Mrs. Crundale. The crux was simply that she had designed costumes for Ariel, all the goddesses and the Nymphs which required that their bosoms be bare, not partly or fleetingly, but completely and indeed aggressively. She had shown these designs to almost everyone connected with the play and everyone had obediently admired them, while wondering what was to be done.

  Mrs. Crundale’s position was clear, and had been clear for years. She was an Artist, and to her the human body was simply a Mass, with a variety of Planes; twelve years ago she had explained this thoroughly after a nice-looking rugby player from Waverley had spiritedly declined her invitation to pose for a portrait in the nude. Nobody connected with the Little Theatre quite liked to explain to Mrs. Crundale that the breasts of several well-known young ladies of Salterton, though undoubtedly Planes, had other connotations, and could not fittingly be unveiled at a public performance. But Valentine did so.

  “These dresses will look charming when they are standing still, Mrs. Crundale,” said she, “but when the girls dance your line will be completely spoiled. I suggest that you revise these slightly, giving some concealment for a strapless brassiere underneath.”

  And Mrs. Crundale,
who had really only wanted to make the point that the human body was nothing to her but an arrangement of planes, agreed without a murmur. Devoted, tireless little Mrs. Hawes, who was head of the costume-making committee, assured Valentine that because of this backing-up on the part of Mrs. Crundale, she was able to breathe easily for the first time in many weeks. She had, she explained, dreaded the fittings.

  Valentine showed herself no less able in her handling of intangible problems than in her swift settlement of the question of Mrs. Crundale’s unworldly designs. Solly was deputed, like assistant directors everywhere, to deal with a variety of matters of bothersome detail, and he revealed a genius for complicating and fantasticating all details. Instructed to look after the furnishing and decoration of the vanishing banquet table he worked busily with a group of assistants, and created a pleasant but confusing mass of gilded ewers, plates of exotic fruits, flasks of wine in colours no vintner would have recognized, and monstrous edibles which suggested that every guest was to be served with a whole wedding cake; this feast, spread upon a cloth which had been painted and gilded to the last inch, was widely admired by all except the actors who had to carry it. They were wearing fantastic masks, made by a young woman whom Solly had encouraged to do her uttermost, and they complained that they could not see. One of them, a Waverley lecturer in economics whose devotion to the drama was limited to murder plays and farces, declared that if he were expected to wear a lion mask, and carry a peacock in its pride at the same time, he would withdraw from the whole affair. Solly was aggrieved.

  “But you can’t achieve a big effect by niggling methods,” said he; “of course it could all be made simpler, but this isn’t a simple play.”

  It was at this point that Professor Vambrace chose to explain that all works of genius were essentially simple, and were best interpreted by simple methods. In such a play as The Tempest, said he, it was vital that the magnificence of the words should not be lessened by too great a show of costumes and accoutrements. Simplicity, he told Solly, and the world in general, was the keynote of greatness. What was the use, he asked, of an actor like himself bringing the fullest power of his intellect to bear on the proper interpretation of his role, if the audience was to be perpetually distracted by shows of petty magnificence which had nothing to do with the play?