After the Act

by Winston Graham

  ‘Let’s wait and see. It may not even be necessary for me to appear.’

  As Tim had predicted, General Union wanted me to plead not guilty. I told them that my own solicitors were Messrs. Knight, Dickinson & Clarendon, and they said they noted this. Then one morning Tim rang and said: ‘Well, it’s fixed, Morris. My firm have been instructed to appear for you, so I’ll be there on the day, if you’ll have me.’

  I knew it was Harriet’s intention all that week to ring Tim back and tell him the truth. Almost every meal time I expected her to say, ‘Well, I’ve done it.’ But she did not.

  I think what stopped her was this rather peculiar relationship between herself and Tim. They had been friends for over twenty years. There was a certain sexual attraction between them. Harriet was always slightly different, slightly more on her best behaviour when Tim was there, though she certainly wasn’t in love with him. And she obviously valued his opinion of her. So it was probably pride that stayed her hand when she got near the telephone. To admit to being in charge of a car when she was the worse for drink, and to admit to having let me take the blame in the first place, was just more than she could face. With a strange solicitor she would hardly have hesitated.

  But I was glad that she had left it as it was.

  In the meantime I heard from Alexandra that she was in fact returning to Paris on the fourteenth to prepare the house for the Fayardes. I was ready to go over on the fifteenth, but a sudden excitement blew up with a firm and definite offer from Sun International for the film rights of Widow’s Peak. They offered a hundred thousand dollars, which seemed big money to me, but Ralph said not unless they were prepared to include some clause in the deal whereby this figure was increased if the play were a success on Broadway. There were constant telephone calls about this, not only across London but across the Atlantic, and between Ralph’s representatives in New York and the film company in Hollywood. Harriet was alive as I hadn’t seen her for months, arguing, debating, hanging on the telephone, listening in on our discussions on the extension and offering her own intelligent comments.

  However, after two days, silence fell, each side waiting for the other to suggest a compromise; so on the Saturday I said I wouldn’t delay any longer, and left Ralph and Harriet in charge. Harriet was to follow me by train on the twenty-third.

  I met Alexandra at the Place de Varsovie. Behind us was the Trocadero; in front the Eiffel Tower stood astride the approaches to the Pont d’Iéna; the river gleamed like liquid pewter in the September sun. After a minute I saw none of it. I saw Alexandra. I saw her coming towards me. I saw her smile break. I put my hands on her arms and kissed her cold fresh cheek and then her mouth. She smelled strange, looked strange. I took her arm and we walked by the river. We said things that did not matter. She had five hours free, was expected back for dinner at nine.

  We sat on a seat. I looked at her feet and legs, the tightness of her skirt, her small wrists, her hair with its glinting light and shades, her lips young and avid, the way she breathed and spoke. Her eyes reflected the river. There was nothing new to be said any more. I hailed a taxi and muttered something to the driver. Apparently he understood. He took us to a hotel in Montmartre. It was shoddy but it was clean and warm. I booked a room for a week and paid in advance. We went in and I tipped the porter, and Alexandra stood with her back against the door after he went out, and I shot the bolt and began to undress her as she stood against the door, kissing her body as it came unclothed.

  Some hours afterwards she left, and I slept until midnight in the shabby room. This time, as befitted a distinguished playwright, I had taken a suite at the Ballet, one of the big luxury hotels near the Ritz; but I felt unwilling to go back there. Instead I went out and walked for miles through the streets. I thought, I will scrap all my plays and start again. Life isn’t just disillusion. It’s everything, from ecstasy to horror, from the stink of disease to the beauty of beauty. It’s creation and pullulation, the germinal seed for ever flowering and bursting, the contact and conflict of a thousand million egos, the divine spark run amok, the still small voice of purity of heart, the confidence trick of faith, the justification of love, the clamour of cheap minds and the unstillable music of poetry, world without end, amen.

  And there is one sin: a Twelfth Commandment; the fashionable sin of boredom. Thou shalt not commit boredom. Dishonour thy father, bear false witness in a law court and betray thy wife. But the ultimate sin is boredom. This I must say sometime, not as a snide comment in a black comedy, but as a statement of fact existing alongside all the cheap-jack sneers and more valid. Dullness, acceptance of the commonplace, being levelled down by the tyranny of routine: all are sins as great as the cult of pure hedonism; and the one common meeting ground for all, the ultimate end where all mingle, is boredom—which is as destructive as suicide, a sin against the Holy Ghost, an even greater sin against man himself.…

  Sometime I found my way back to the Hotel Ballet and the lush suite with its double bedroom with sixteen shaded lights and the draped windows and the iron-scroll balcony, and the sunken bath and the sitting room gold and crimson, all costing more per day than a bank manager earned in a week. All in preparation for my wife who arrived on Wednesday. And a play …

  The telephone woke me. It was Ralph sounding aggrieved. He had tried to ring me last evening but I was nowhere to be found. At the play. But this was early in the evening. Out with Charisse. How is the play? Not bad. Charisse seems satisfied. Another proposal has come in from Sun International. They will add to their offer two thousand dollars for every week the play runs on Broadway. Will you accept? Of course, I said. Of course I’ll accept. A superb offer. What more could one possibly desire? Perhaps a little disconcerted by this enthusiasm, Ralph sounded hesitant. Of course it’s a good offer. Of course it takes care of the main objection we raised. But with the Paris first night so very close, it might be worth waiting a few days. A smash hit in Paris might send the price up all over again. Or a smash failure? I said. Well, that’s hardly likely. On the whole, viewing the situation as a whole, Ralph said, I think it’s worth waiting these few days before we close; I honestly don’t think any harm will come of the delay, of not seeming too eager. But I have to have your authority. What does Harriet think? I asked. Harriet agrees we should wait. Then wait.

  Bath and breakfast. I have done this all before—on the fourteenth of July. Nothing has changed, nothing progressed. I am more deeply tied to Alexandra and no more free of Harriet. I cannot go on.

  The play that evening. Front row of the circle with Alexandra. Pleasant theatre, neither too big nor too small. Odd little seats at the sides of the stalls. In a few days it will be full of people, strange people, not even my own countrymen, listening and staring. Bang, bang, just as on the first night, even though there are only five people watching. Curtain up.

  Interesting décor. Not as substantial, not as realistic as the English set, but with more flair, more panache. Pity the cast are still in slacks and old jerseys.

  They speak so quickly it’s hard to follow one’s own lines. This my play at all? … Wait a minute, what has happened to the second argument in Act One? It has disappeared. And surely they are overdoing the satire in the love scenes. Marie Paladini overacts consistently and so does the other girl. The two chief men are good, giving stability round which the others gyrate and mime. But half the success of the London production lies in the dead-pan way in which the lines are delivered. To act them up turns satire into farce.

  I had arranged after the play to go back with Alexandra to the room; it had been the one committed thing of the whole day. Yet as the play went on, scene by scene, situation by situation, every instinct of my professional mind clamoured that another priority now existed. This was Sunday. The play opened on Thursday. If anything could be done to correct the wrong emphasis it must be done at once.

  By what I had muttered to her between the scenes, Alexandra knew something of how I felt. Yet she enjoyed the play and was plainly surp
rised that I felt so very strongly about it. She was still more surprised to discover that I was prepared, however unwillingly, to cancel an appointment with her in order to argue about what she thought were technicalities. Because she was to spend all Monday with Jackie, it meant that we could not meet again until Tuesday.

  This was the first time I had seen her put out in this way, and the knowledge of how very reasonable and even-tempered she normally was made me sorer than ever and almost willing to throw the play to the winds in order to go with her. But then Charisse came round, and at once, there in the front row of the circle, battle was joined.

  He, in his polite, detached, magisterial way, was also surprised, and at first inclined to take my opinions in his stride. It was only when I said that we should have to consider a postponement of the play that his face changed and he began to argue in earnest.

  Alexandra wanted to slip away but I would not let her. Though she took no part in the discussion, her mere presence was a help, especially when Charisse was joined by the stage manager and the assistant director who naturally took his side.

  We argued for a solid hour, and then, finding me adamant on at least ten major points, they began reluctantly to give way. From then on it became a question of discussion of the play scene by scene, and here Alexandra left.

  The following day I rang her up to apologise, but she was already out. All that day I spent in the theatre, but I found time over a snatched déjeuner to write her a letter. The important phrase for us both, I think, was near the end when I wrote: ‘When you are my wife none of this can happen, because after a crisis I can come home to you.’

  On the Tuesday we met for lunch at the Cercle Rive Gauche, which is a sort of Left Bank Authors’ Club, and stayed there until she had to leave. On the Wednesday I went to the Gare du Nord to meet Harriet.

  The first night of a major Paris production is given over to an invited audience: it closely resembles the old cinema première which at one time used to herald every important motion picture to arrive in London.

  Harriet had immediately taken my side in the dispute with Charisse, and when she saw the play being run through on the Wednesday evening she thought it still much overplayed—even though it had been drastically toned down since Sunday. Charisse shrugged philosophically and said: maybe we were right; but he knew his audiences; the element of over-playing in this type of production was an understood thing in Paris; the easy laughs did not take from the satire, they existed on a different level. He had undertaken to interpret the play, and this was what he had done. The change from one capital city to another involved more than a formal translation of language. By doing what he had done since Wednesday he had already reduced the chance of a runaway success.

  It was a distinguished audience; Charisse had seen to that: partly Parisian, partly drawn from the international set; two or three ambassadors and half a dozen deputies; a Dutch princess who was visiting Paris; the French Minister of Culture; sixteen critics—a bottom set of teeth, Charisse called them.

  Harriet had spent the morning in the Faubourg St. Ilonoré and had come away with a frock that accentuated her tallness but gave her a special look of dignity. We shared a box with the latest Mme. Charisse. There are three circles in the Bouffes-Parisiens and the jewels and the formal suits quickly gave way to casual clothes in the upper reaches. Alexandra was in the third row of the stalls; I contrived to wave to her and bow to the Fayardes at the same time. I saw her looking intently at Harriet.

  The curtain was due to go up at nine, but at ten past the audience was still circulating happily without regard for the business in hand. At twenty minutes past they began to settle into their seats, and at half past the usual two heavy knocks heralded the raising of the curtain and brought a degree of silence.

  The first act, because of the re-arrangement, lasted an hour and five minutes. Even then the tempo was pretty fast in places, and because it takes longer to say things in the French language than the English, there was not enough time for the words to ‘get out of the way of the acting’, as Montague describes it somewhere. All the same, the audience was held. It was not going as well as it had on the first night in England, but that was perhaps to be expected. ‘The French,’ Charisse had said to me yesterday, ‘are the most unshockable race, and this is the highest distillation of them.’ And of course this proved itself tonight. In order that a paradox shall have its full effect, it must operate from certain fixed assumptions; there must be preconceptions in the mind to overthrow.

  In the interval I would not budge. Let them make up their own minds. Harriet stayed with me talking. Her brain was brimming with ideas and observations; she was distinctive and smart tonight, her eyes glittering, her Indian-black hair coiled on the nape of her neck, her pale skin made finer by the severe line of the frock and the absence of jewellery. All this evening was meat and drink to her, for she had none of my doubts. Her back, she said, had been better all week. What did I think of the final offer from Hollywood? I had, of course, been converted into a limited company some months ago; and Ralph was of the opinion that if the deal for the film rights went through we should now buy a film property or two on our own account. It was good business, said Harriet. Yes, I said, looking for Alexandra, who had gone out. They would meet at the reception after the show. That could not be avoided, though nothing need be made of it. But if I did not make a move within two weeks I broke my undertaking.

  The second act began badly and, to my hypercritical gaze, betrayed that it had been artificially cut away from the preceding scene at this point. At Charisse’s suggestion we did not even have a lowered curtain at the end of the old second act but went straight on with a darkened sky outside and a few link lines. This, surprisingly, worked well, and my play, now launched towards its end, gathered momentum. Then, Marie Paladini, catching some sort of inspiration from the air, suddenly played one scene at almost double the pace of normal so that words flew like bullets from her lips; the audience, assailed, sat back and then loved it. For the last twenty minutes the play went over even better than it had done in London.

  At the end there were curtain calls, and eventually Marie Paladini came forward and with a graceful gesture indicated me in the box. I had never taken calls and never wanted to, but now I had to get up and bow half a dozen times and wave my felicitations towards the stage, so that everyone was happy when the lights went up.

  Then we had to claw our way back stage among a throng of people trying to get from one dressing room to another and calling congratulations on the way. Half the audience appeared to have stayed behind, and, the back stage of Parisian theatres being even more inconvenient than those in London, bottle-necks formed where people could neither move forward nor back. The main dressing rooms of the Bouffes-Parisiens are reached by way of iron staircases climbing spirally like fire escapes, and in the end people got stuck on the stairs and perched patiently on them until one end or the other began to move.

  After about half an hour the crush lessened, and we made our way back to the stage where behind the curtains a party was being prepared for the actors and about forty special guests. Among these were some of the people I had seen at that first cocktail party, the Duc de Beloff, Mme. Job, Lord Antar, and of course the Comte and Comtesse de la Fayarde and their pretty secretary. As the champagne corks began popping, Charisse managed a word in my ear.

  ‘I think we are in for a success, my friend. Jean-Jacques Gautier of Le Figaro was enthusiastic, and he is the most influential. Pierre Julien of L’Aurore also much liked it. Some of the others I am not so sure of. Of course you will discount the meaningless compliments of tonight; but there was a body of accord which promises well. Just for the moment it wavered.’

  ‘And Marie saved it.’

  ‘Yes. That is why she has the reputation. No one else except perhaps Feuillère could have done it. Madame …’ He turned and bowed over Harriet’s hand. ‘I hope you no longer disapprove of me.’

  ‘That I’ve never done,�
� Harriet said. ‘Only of what you did to Morris’s play.’

  ‘And now I am forgiven?’

  ‘There is nothing to forgive. It is a success. What more can we ask?’

  Champagne glasses were put into our hands. I saw the Fayardes on their way over and went to meet them. They sprayed me with unfelt, unmeant compliments, though I believe that, so far as they could enjoy any play, they had enjoyed mine. Alexandra held back a little; as I took her hand my heart thumped like the knocks when the play was beginning. She was in white: everything she wore made her young and ravishing; she would have looked attractive in an old potato sack.

  ‘Lovely, darling,’ she said in an undertone. ‘ It’s come off. Now do I have to meet her? I’m in a panic. Stay somewhere near.’

  I introduced Jules and Jackie and then Alexandra. Harriet smiled at them a shade too brilliantly. To her they were no more than any other distinguished guests congratulating her on her husband’s play, but by now the excitement of the evening was having its effect. Then suddenly she made a remark that I had not expected.

  ‘Wilshere? Was it—your brother, your husband—who advised Morris about the translation of the play?’

  Alexandra was nonplussed and unfortunately glanced at me. ‘No,’ was all she could say.

  Jackie had heard but was the coolest of us all. Opening her overgrown eyes enough to part the sticky lashes she said: ‘Dear Mrs. Scott, your sophisticated husband lives inside his shell and we can’t get at him; but never. We tap and tap, and he answers back but we never know what he’s thinking until we come to see it on the stage. And then what a surprise! He has known the worst about us all the time!’

  This was a fine talking point, and I believed Harriet had been diverted. At least they began to talk together like old friends, and in the pretence of getting some cavier on bits of toast I was able to keep beside Alexandra for a moment or two.