Night at the Vulcan ra-16

by Ngaio Marsh

  He touched his shining face with the palm of his hand. Jacko came down the passage and took Martyn by the elbow. “Quick,” he said. “Into your room! You want powdering, Ben. Excuse me.”

  Bennington went into his own room. Jacko thrust Martyn into hers, and leaving the door open followed Bennington. She heard him say: “Take care with your upper lip. It is dripping with sweat.” He darted back to Martyn, stood her near the dressing-shelf and, with an expression of the most ardent concentration, effected a number of what he called running repairs to her makeup and her hair. They heard Percival and Darcey go past on their way to the stage. A humming noise caused by some distant dynamo made itself heard, the tap in the wash-basin dripped, the voices on the stage sounded intermittently. Martyn looked at Gay’s make-up box, at her dressing-gown and at the array of mascots on the shelf and wished very heartily that Jacko would have done. Presently the call-boy came down, the passage with his summons for the final curtain. “Come,” said Jacko.

  He took her round to the Prompt side.

  Here she found a group already waiting: Darcey and Percival, Clem Smith, the two dressers and, at a distance, one or two stage-hands. They all watched the final scene between Helena Hamilton and Adam Poole. In this scene Rutherford tied up and stated finally the whole thesis of his play. The man was faced with his ultimate decision. Would he stay and attempt, with the woman, to establish a sane and enlightened formula for living in place of the one he himself had destroyed, or would he go back to his island community and attempt a further development within himself and in a less complex environment? As throughout the play, the conflict was set out in terms of human and personal relationships. It could be played like many another love-scene, purely on those terms. Or it could be so handled that the wider implications could be felt by the audience, and in the hands of these two players that was what happened. The play ended with them pledging themselves to each other and to an incredible task. As Poole spoke the last lines, the electrician, with one eye on Clem below, played madly over his switchboard. The entire set changed its aspect, seemed to dissolve, turned threadbare, a skeleton, a wraith, while beyond it a wide stylized landscape was flooded with light and became, as Poole spoke the tag, the background upon which the curtain fell.

  “Might as well be back in panto,” said the electrician, leaning on his dimmers. “We got the transformation scene. All we want’s the bloody fairy queen.”

  It was at this moment — when the applause seemed to surge forward and beat against the curtain, when Clem shouted “All on!” and Dr. Rutherford plunged out of the O.P. pass-door, when the players walked on and linked hands — that Poole, looking hurriedly along the line, said: “Where’s Ben?”

  One of those panic-stricken crises peculiar to the theatre boiled up on the instant. From her position between Darcey and Percival on the stage, Martyn saw the call-boy make some kind of protest to Clem Smith and disappear. Above the applause they heard him hare down the passage yelling: “Mr. Bennington! Mr. Bennington! Please! You’re on!”

  “We can’t wait,” Poole shouted. “Take it up, Clem.”

  The curtain rose and Martyn looked into a sea of faces and hands. She felt herself led forward into the roaring swell, bowed with the others, felt Darcey’s and Percival’s hands tighten on hers, bowed again and with them retreated a few steps up-stage as the first curtain fell.

  “Well?” Poole shouted into the wings. The call-boy could be heard beating on the dressing-room door.

  Percival said: “What’s the betting he comes on for a star call?”

  “He’s passed out,” said Darcey. “Had one or two more since he came off.”

  “By God, I wouldn’t cry if he never came to.”

  “Go on, Clem,” said Poole.

  The curtain rose and fell again, twice. Percival and Darcey took Martyn off and it went up again on Poole and Helena Hamilton, this time to those cries of “Bravo!” that reach the actors as a long open sound like the voice of a singing wind. In the wings Clem Smith, with his eyes on the stage, was saying repeatedly: “He doesn’t answer. He’s locked in. The b— doesn’t answer.”

  Martyn saw Poole coming towards her and stood aside. He seemed to tower over her as he took her hand. “Come along,” he said. Darcey and Percival and the group off-stage began to clap.

  Poole led her on. She felt herself resisting and heard him say: “Yes, it’s all right.”

  So bereft was Martyn of her normal stage-wiseness that he had to tell her to bow. She did so, and wondered why there was a warm sound of laughter in the applause. She looked at Poole, found he was bowing to her and bent her head under his smile. He returned her to the wings.

  They were all on again. Dr. Rutherford came out from the O.P. corner. The cast joined in the applause. Martyn’s heart had begun to sing so loudly that it was like to deafen every emotion but a universal gratitude. She thought Rutherford looked like an old lion standing there in his out-of-date evening clothes, his hair ruffled, his gloved hand touching his bulging shirt, bowing in an unwieldy manner to the audience and to the cast. He moved forward and the theatre was abruptly silent — silent, but for an obscure and intermittent thudding in the dressing-room passage. Clem Smith said something to the A.S.M. and rushed away, jingling keys.

  “Hah,” said Dr. Rutherford with a preliminary bellow. “Hah — thankee. I’m much obliged to you, ladies and gentlemen, and to the actors. The actors are much obliged, no doubt, to you, but not necessarily to me.” Here the audience laughed and the actors smiled. “I am not able to judge,” the Doctor continued with a rich roll in his voice, “whether you have extracted from this play the substance of its argument. If you have done so, we may all felicitate each other with the indiscriminate enthusiasm characteristic of these occasions: if you have not, I for my part am not prepared to say where the blame should rest.”

  A solitary man laughed in the audience. The Doctor rolled an eye at him and, with this clownish trick, brought the house down. “The prettiest epilogue to a play that I am acquainted with,” he went on, “is (as I need perhaps hardly mention to so intelligent an audience) that written for a boy actor by William Shakespeare. I am neither a boy nor an actor, but I beg leave to end by quoting it to you. ‘If it be true that good wine needs no bush—’ ”

  “Gas!” Parry Percival said under his breath. Martyn, who thought the Doctor was going well, glanced indignantly at Parry and was astonished to see that he looked frightened. “ ‘—therefore,’ ” the Doctor was saying arrogantly, “ ‘to beg will not become me—’ ”

  “Gas!” said an imperative voice off-stage and someone else ran noisily round the back of the set

  And then Martyn smelt it. Gas.

  To the actors, it seemed afterwards as if they had been fantastically slow to understand that disaster had come upon the theatre. The curtain went down on Dr. Rutherford’s last word. There was a further outbreak of applause. Someone off-stage shouted: “The King, for God’s sake!” and at once the anthem rolled out disinterestedly in the well. Poole ran off the stage and was met by Clem Smith, who had a bunch of keys in his hand. The rest followed him.

  The area back-stage reeked of gas.

  It was extraordinary how little was said. The players stood together and looked about them with the question in their faces that they were unable to ask.

  Poole said: “Keep all visitors out, Clem. Send them to the foyer.” And at once the A.S.M. spoke into the Prompt telephone. Bob Grantley burst through the pass-door, beaming from ear to ear.

  “Stupendous!” he shouted. “John! Helena! Adam! My God, chaps, you’ve done it—”

  He stood, stock-still, his arms extended, the smile drying on his face.

  “Go back, Bob,” Poole said. “Cope with the people. Ask our guests to go on and not wait for us. Ben’s ill. Clem, get all available doors open. We want air.”

  Grantley said: “Gas?”

  “Quick,” Poole said. “Take them with you. Settle them down and explain. He’s ill.
Then ring me here. But quickly, Bob. Quickly.”

  Grantley went out without another word.

  “Where is he?” Dr. Rutherford demanded.

  Helena Hamilton suddenly said: “Adam?”

  “Go on to the stage, Helena. It’s better you shouldn’t be here, believe me. Kate will stay with you. I’ll come in a moment.”

  “Here you are, Doctor,” said Clem Smith.

  There was a blundering sound in the direction of the passage. Rutherford said “Open the dock-doors,” and went behind the set.

  Poole thrust Helena through the Prompt entry and shut the door behind her. Draughts of cold air came through the side entrances.

  “Kate,” Poole said, “go in and keep her there if you can. Will you? And, Kate—”

  Rutherford reappeared and with him four stagehands, bearing with difficulty the inert body of Clark Bennington. The head hung swinging upside down between the two leaders, its mouth wide open.

  Poole moved quickly, but he was too late to shield Martyn.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Go in with Helena.”

  “Anyone here done respiration for gassed cases?” Dr. Rutherford demanded. “I can start but I’m not good for long.”

  “I can,” said the A.S.M. “I was a warden.”

  “I can,” said Jacko.

  “And I,” said Poole.

  “In the dock, then. Shut these doors and open the outer ones.”

  Kneeling by Helena Hamilton and holding her hand, Martyn heard the doors roll back and the shambling steps go into the dock. The doors crashed behind them.

  Martyn said: “They’re giving him respiration. Dr. Rutherford’s there.”

  Helena nodded with an air of sagacity. Her face was quite without expression and she was shivering.

  “I’ll get your coat,” Martyn said. It was in the improvised dressing-room on the O.P. side. She was back in a moment and put Helena into it as if she were a child, guiding her arms and wrapping the fur about her.

  A voice off-stage — J. G. Darcey’s — said: “Where’s Gay? Is Gay still in the Greenroom?”

  Martyn was astonished when Helena, behind that mask that had become her face, said loudly: “Yes. She’s there. In the Greenroom.”

  There was a moment’s silence and then J.G. said: “She mustn’t stay there. Good God—”

  They heard him go away.

  Parry Percival’s voice announced abruptly that he was going to be sick. “But where?” he cried distractedly. “Where?”

  “In your dressing-room, for Pete’s sake,” Clem Smith said.

  “It’ll be full of gas. Oh, really! There was an agonized and not quite silent interval. “I couldn’t be more sorry,” Percival said weakly.

  “I want,” Helena said, “to know what happened. I want to see Adam. Ask him to come, please.”

  Martyn made for the door, but before she reached it Dr. Rutherford came in, followed by Poole. Rutherford had taken off his coat and was a fantastic sight in boiled shirt, black trousers and red braces.

  “Well, Helena,” he said, “this is not a nice business. We’re doing everything that can be done. I’m getting a new oxygen thing in as quickly as possible. There have been some remarkable saves in these cases. But I think you ought to know it’s a thinnish chance. There’s no pulse and so on.”

  “I want,” she said, holding out her hand to Poole, “to know what happened.”

  Poole said gently: “All right, Helena, you shall. It looks as if Ben locked himself in after his exit, and then turned the gas fire off — and on again. When Clem unlocked the door and went in he found Ben on the floor. His head was near the fire and a coat over both. He could only have been like that for quite a short time.”

  “This theatre,” she said. “This awful theatre.”

  Poole looked as if he would make some kind of protest, but after a moment’s hesitation he said: “All right, Helena. Perhaps it did suggest the means, but if he had made up his mind he would, in any case, have found the means.”

  “Why?” she said. “Why has he done it?”

  Dr. Rutherford growled inarticulately and went out. They heard him open and shut the dock-doors. Poole sat down by Helena and took her hands in his. Martyn was going, but he looked up at her and said: “No, don’t. Don’t go, Kate,” and she waited near the door.

  “This is no time,” Poole said, “to speculate. He may be saved. If he isn’t, then we shall of course ask ourselves just why. But he was in a bad way, Helena. He’d gone to pieces and he knew it”

  “I wasn’t much help,” she said, “was I? Though it’s true to say I did try for quite a long time.”

  “Indeed you did. There’s one thing you must be told. If it’s no go with Ben, we’ll have to inform the police.”

  She put her hand to her forehead as if puzzled. “The police?” she repeated, and stared at him. “No, darling, no!” she cried, and after a moment whispered: “They might think — oh, darling, darling, darling, the Lord knows what they might think!”

  The door up-stage opened and Gay Gainsford came in, followed by Darcey.

  She was in her street-clothes, and at some time during the evening had made extensive repairs to her face, which wore, at the moment, an expression oddly compounded of triumph and distraction. Before she could speak she was seized with a paroxysm of coughing.

  Darcey said: “Is it all right for Gay to wait here?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Helena.

  He went out and Poole followed him, saying he would return.

  “Darling,” Miss Gainsford gasped, “I knew. I knew as soon as I smelt it. There’s a Thing in this theatre. Everything pointed to it. I just sat there and knew.” She coughed again. “Oh, I do feel so sick,” she said.

  “Gay, for pity’s sake, what are you talking about?” Helena said.

  “It was Fate, I felt. I wasn’t a bit surprised. I just knew something had to happen to-night.”

  “Do you mean to say,” Helena murmured, and the wraith of her gift for irony was on her mouth, “that you just sat in the Greenroom with your finger raised, telling yourself it was Fate?”

  “Darling Aunty — I’m sorry. I forgot. Darling Helena, wasn’t it amazing?”

  Helena made a little gesture of defeat. Miss Gainsford looked at her for a moment and then, with the prettiest air of compassion, knelt at her feet. “Sweet,” she said, “I’m so terribly, terribly sorry. We’re together in this, aren’t we? He was my uncle and your husband.”

  “True enough,” said Helena. She looked at Martyn over the head bent in devoted commiseration, and shook her own helplessly. Gay Gainsford sank into a sitting posture and leant her cheek against Helena’s hand. The hand, after a courteous interval, was withdrawn.

  There followed a very long silence. Martyn sat at a distance and wondered if there was anything in the world she could do to help. There was an intermittent murmur of voices somewhere off-stage. Gay Gainsford, feeling perhaps that she had sustained her position long enough, moved by gradual degrees away from her aunt by marriage, rose and, sighing heavily, transferred herself to the sofa.

  Time dragged on, mostly in silence. Helena lit one cigarette from the butt of another, Gay sighed with infuriating punctuality and Martyn’s thoughts drifted sadly about the evaporation of her small triumph.

  Presently there were sounds of arrival. One or two persons walked round the set from the outside entry to the dock and were evidently admitted into it.

  “Who can that be, I wonder?” Helena Hamilton asked idly, and after a moment: “Is Jacko about?”

  “I’ll see,” said Martyn.

  She found Jacko off-stage with Darcey and Parry Percival. Percival was saying: “Well, naturally, nobody wants to go to the party, but I must say that as one is quite evidently useless here, I don’t see why one can’t go home.”

  Jacko said: “You would be recalled by the police, I dare say, if you went.”

  He caught sight of Martyn, who went up to him. His face was beade
d with sweat. “What is it, my small?” he asked. “This is a sad epilogue to your success story. Never mind. What is it?”

  “I think Miss Hamilton would like to see you.”

  “Then I come. It is time, in any case.”

  He took her by the elbow and they went in together. When Helena saw him she seemed to rouse herself. “Jacko?” she said.

  He didn’t answer and she got up quickly and went to him. “Jacko? What is it? Has it happened?”

  Jacko’s hands, so refined and delicate that they seemed like those of another woman, touched her hair and her face.

  “It has happened,” he said. “We have tried very hard but nothing is any good at all, and there is no more to be done. He has taken wing.”

  Gay Gainsford broke into a fit of sobbing, but Helena stooped her head to Jacko’s shoulder and when his arms had closed about her said: “Help me to feel something, Jacko. I’m quite empty of feeling. Help me to be sorry.”

  Above her head Jacko’s face, glistening with sweat, grotesque and primitive, had the fixed inscrutability of a classic mask.

  Chapter VII

  DISASTER

  The fact of Bennington’s death had the effect of changing the values of other circumstances in the theatre. One after another the members of the company had said what they could to Helena Hamilton, and she had thanked them. She was very tremulous and uncertain of her voice, but she did not break down at any time and seemed, Martyn thought, to be in a kind of trance. At first they were all uncomfortably silent but, as the minutes slipped by, they fell into muted conversation. Most of what they said was singularly aimless. Matters of normal consequence were forgotten, details of behaviour became ridiculously important.

  The question, for instance, of where they should assemble exercised the whole company. It was almost eleven o’clock and the stage was beginning to grow cold.

  Clem Smith had rung up the police as soon as Dr. Rutherford said that Bennington was beyond recovery, and within five minutes a constable and sergeant had appeared at the stage-door. They went into the dock with Rutherford and then to Bennington’s dressing-room, where they remained alone for some time. During this period an aimless discussion developed among the members of the company about where they should go. Clem Smith suggested the Greenroom as the warmest place, and added tactlessly that the fumes had probably dispersed and if so there was no reason why they shouldn’t light the fire. Both Parry Percival and Gay Gainsford had made an outcry against this suggestion on the grounds of delicacy and susceptibility. Darcey supported Gay, the A.S.M. suggested the offices and Jacko the auditorium. Dr. Rutherford, who appeared to be less upset than anyone else, merely remarked that “All places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens,” which, as Percival said acidly, got them nowhere.