After the Act

by Winston Graham

  I still felt it was not quite solved, but I thought it was moving nearer a solution.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had wanted to go back to the cottage to be alone and to think finally about Alexandra. As if I hadn’t already thought about her and been alone enough. Twice during the afternoon I lifted the receiver to ring Paris, and twice I put it back.

  In the end I left it late ordering a taxi to drive me to Farnham to catch a train; and when I reached London I had only just time to get back to Spanish Place to change and then buy a sandwich at a pub opposite the theatre. As I stole into a second row end stall the curtain was going up on the first London performance of Rhesus Boy.

  The saints always found fasting stimulating to the perceptions. That evening it worked for a non-saint. My food intake over the last forty-eight hours had been a half-dozen sandwiches—four yesterday and two now. I hadn’t touched any liquor today, so that was not the operative force.

  It seemed to me that watching Rhesus Boy I was watching the marrow of my own life, distilled, often distorted for theatrical affect, sometimes more rhetorical than fact, sometimes less; but never far from the newly recognisable truth. The moody boy, ingrown and contemplative but wrestling always with a demon of revolt, liking people yet contemptuous of them, taking a back seat but inwardly aware of the right to a front one, tolerant yet infinitely choosey, a withdrawn perfectionist making do with the next best in himself and in others. The conflict as a younger man between libertine instincts and a biting sense of restraint, part imposed from without, part grown from a fastidious dislike of excess …

  Such a man had written this play, about himself, while still immature, hiding his own emotionalism, his irascibility, his over-sensitiveness by turning it inside out, by putting on the smart coat to show the torn lining, by throwing down the banana skin where the blood and tears should be. The mature man, looking at it, saw it for the first time with a comprehensive vision. I was looking on myself as I had once been.

  After the act was over most people got up and moved towards the bar. I sat stupidly for a time, their laughter ringing in my ears as if this were the echoes of some paradoxical Greek chorus that had strayed into the wrong theatre.

  About halfway through the interval I got up and went out of the theatre and crossed Shaftesbury Avenue to the pub where I had had the sandwiches. This was more crowded now and noisy but I found a place at the bar and ordered a tomato juice. To my annoyance the two people next to me had come out of the theatre too and were discussing the play. They glanced at me, half recognising but uncertain. I moved off and, seeing some people get up, took a seat at a table dotted with empty glasses, smouldering ash trays and wet circles. Someone else came across almost at once and took the seat opposite me. I didn’t think much of it until I saw the stick propped carefully against the edge of the table, and the familiar stiff leg.

  Tim said: ‘It’s going well, Morris.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘It’s a good first act: no preliminaries; it jumps right in and gets to grips in the first ten lines. And it’s a good third act too. In that it’s the opposite from most plays, where the second act contains all the meat sandwiched between two thin slices of bread and butter.’

  He never looked well in a dinner jacket. For a man who normally dressed with taste this was surprising. He looked tired tonight. Perhaps the last two days had taken something out of him too. Even though in a sense I was sick and tired of his company I didn’t resent his presence the way I had the two people at the bar.

  ‘I saw you sitting here,’ he said, ‘and thought there was time to come across and apologise before the curtain goes up again.’

  ‘Apologise?’

  ‘For last night. Maybe for all the efforts I’ve put in over the last eight weeks. Efforts to prove what I knew in my bones but had no evidence of.’

  ‘That I killed Harriet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you feel so certain about it? Why don’t you accept that it was an accident?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t, was it?’

  I sipped my drink.

  ‘Oh, come,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing more I can do. I’ve shot my bolt. You’re safe.’

  ‘But you’d still like to know in so many words.’

  ‘Yes.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘Or maybe not. What does it matter? I know. And you know I know. What the hell does it matter any more? By pressing you I can’t bring her back to life.’

  ‘No.’

  A group of long-haired youths pushed their way in and went noisily over to the bar.

  Tim said: ‘ Did you ever realise that I never particularly liked you, Morris?’

  ‘It was mutual.’

  ‘Was it? Yes, I suppose it was mutual.’

  I didn’t speak. He said: ‘I used to think I didn’t like you just because you were what you were. But we can all be dishonest with ourselves. I think probably my dislike was really a subjective thing compounded of envy and jealousy.’

  I looked at him. ‘Of what?’

  ‘You were so clearly talented in a creative way—but not specially well read, not very well educated, not with very good taste, not with much facility for expressing yourself in conversation. I excelled you in all these, and so in a sense I envied your creative talent, which I could never quite fathom, and I resented Harriet’s preoccupation with it; her obvious awareness of your gifts, her utter determination that they must not be wasted.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose she had that.’

  ‘Had it? Good God, it was her creed! And she suffered for it.’

  ‘Suffered?’

  ‘Yes. You forget that.… Let me get you another drink. What was that, a Bloody Mary?’

  ‘No, just tomato juice.’

  ‘Oh … This is a change?’

  ‘Maybe. Go on with what you were going to say.’

  He bent his leg and moved uneasily on the hard settle. ‘ I was going to say that you forget I knew Harriet long before she married you. As an outsider I was able to see the change in her that seven years of marriage brought. This nerviness that she had, this susceptibility to alcohol, her tenseness and inability to relax—where do you think they came from? Out of thin air? No … they came out of seven years of living with you.’ He finished his own drink. ‘That too I resented, watching it happen. Marriage to genius may be heaven or hell; I don’t know. Harriet suffered from being married to, and living too close to, talent … a petulant, difficult, exacting talent. She dominated it, I know that. She controlled and rode and channelled it. Without her possessive, almost obsessive guidance you might never have been heard of—or it would have taken another ten years of your life. She drove you, persuaded you, cajoled you, towards your goal. She succeeded; but not without cost to herself. Living—even with talent—or talent such as yours—is an abrasive business. Before she died she was … was wearing very thin.’

  There was silence for a minute or two. I said: ‘ The second act must be starting.’

  ‘We’d better go.’

  ‘No … Finish what you want to say.’

  ‘There’s not much more.’

  ‘I thought it began with an apology.’

  ‘Yes … Well … These weeks—devoted to trying to find proof of your crime. All I’ve found is a greater understanding of your character. Maybe I would still have you sent to prison for life if I could. But I don’t any longer care. I wouldn’t make any effort, any more effort, to have you convicted. To understand all is to—’

  ‘Do you understand all?’

  ‘No. But a lot more!’

  A white-coated man collected up the used glasses on the table and Tim ordered a whisky for himself and a tomato juice for me.

  ‘Incidentally, why the sudden taking of the pledge?’

  ‘I’m giving it up.’

  ‘What, completely? Why?’

  ‘… It’s just the way I happen to feel.’

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘ when I first heard of Harriet’
s death—and knowing of the affair you were having in Paris—I thought your motives were simple. After all, your attitude to life in your plays is pretty callous: it needed only a single step to move out of the theatre into life. I thought, he’s used Harriet so far as she can go, now he’s moving on—from an intelligent woman older than himself who’s helped him to make a fortune, to a pretty woman younger than himself who’s going to help him spend it. It’s not an unfamiliar progression—the only unfamiliarity is that you didn’t use divorce, which is the more civilised expedient.’

  ‘I can see how you felt. And now?’

  He stared, frowning, across the noisy room. ‘Maybe you couldn’t help it, Morris. I don’t know. If I were a practising psychiatrist and you came to me for advice, I think I should be reluctant to treat you.’

  ‘Why?’

  The man came back with the drinks and Tim paid him, frowning at the money through his spectacles as if his eyes hurt.

  ‘There are always dangers in psychiatry as well as rewards. I’ve seen them in the army. Yours is too much the classic case to be safely tampered with—even talking to you these last weeks as I have, I’ve sensed the rocks under the water.’

  ‘So far,’ I said, ‘you’ve confessed to jealousy, envy and hatred. All we need now is contempt. Are you leading up to that?’

  ‘No. You misunderstand me. What I’ve been trying to say is that those feelings don’t possess me any more. Because what I looked on at first as a deliberate and evil act I now think was one that perhaps you couldn’t escape.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘we’ve been here before. In murder there is always a will to kill on one side and a will to be killed on the other. Harriet seduced me into a criminal act.’

  ‘No to that also.’ He took off his glasses and looked at me with eyes much less guarded than usual. ‘I think the act was an act of violence, pressed upwards like an earthquake in the earth’s crust, by tremendous forces that you couldn’t for the moment control. There may have been all sorts of surface things weakening the ordinary skin of behaviour at that moment—but the fundamental cause, the cause of the explosion was a desire to rid yourself of domination … the domination not of one woman but of two—which had endured all your life—two in a single stroke.’

  ‘Two women?’

  ‘Yes. You married Harriet only four months after your mother’s death.’

  There was a sudden wild crow of laughter from the long-haired youths. Someone had told a dirty joke. If I had been younger I would have joined in. Perhaps something of this showed in my eyes, for Tim said: ‘Oh, I know it sounds slick and easy—the press-button psychology that no one believes in any more. But there are basic psychological truths, just as there are basic anatomical truths—and the love-hate relationship of a child for its over-possessive parent is one of them.’

  I swallowed about half of the tomato juice. ‘Any more sick jokes?’

  ‘When—after we talked so much and I got to know you better, I went down to Winchester and tried to find out more about your youth. If I was right in the type of emotional upset which had provoked this crime, there was likely to be something—something similiar if much less important—in your past history. People tend to repeat themselves through the years. But there was nothing recorded anyway.’

  ‘I’m clever,’ I said. ‘That’s the point—I hide my crimes. Did I ever tell you of the time when I broke a glass in a pub in Shaftesbury Avenue and ravaged the face of the man opposite me with the broken edges?’

  He put back his spectacles and smiled slightly. ‘Sorry. I suppose I asked for that.’

  ‘What, the broken edges? No, Tim. Maybe it’s a pity, but I’m not really the savage type.’

  ‘You’re too controlled, aren’t you? Too rigidly controlled.’

  ‘No, too civilised, really. Words will kill. Why pay more?’

  He thought about that for quite a while. A little smear of white saliva had formed at one corner of his lips.

  He shrugged. ‘The sick jokes are not only one way tonight, Morris. I still believe you killed Harriet because of a wish to be rid of her domination, which was a thing not of seven years’ standing, but of twenty-seven. And with it you’ve got your freedom. But I believe you’ve got it too late. I don’t think you can ever put it to proper use. D’you know what a man is like when he’s been in prison all his life? He comes out blinking. fresh air, at first delighted, wanting to enjoy it, but in fact mentally maimed by his imprisonment. To be able to relax he finds he still needs the walls of his cell.’

  I finished my drink and saw he was nearly through his. ‘Come to think of it, you’re right about the play. The second act is the weak spot. I’m glad I shall have missed it.’

  He said: ‘Are you going to marry Alexandra Wilshere?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I heard you’d had an invitation to go to America. Are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I see you don’t trust me still.’

  ‘Trust you? Should I?’

  ‘No … maybe not.’

  We got up and left the pub. Outside the traffic streamed past endlessly. Opposite the bright white lights announced Rhesus Boy by Morris Scott. The fact that my name was up along with the stars was a favourable sign. Presently the bright green lights announced that we could cross.

  ‘Do you ever miss Harriet?’ Tim asked as we reached the island in the middle.

  ‘Of course. She was an intrusive personality.’

  ‘Yes … an intrusive personality. I’ve wondered—has it ever occurred to you to wonder—why you always got so very angry when she took a drop too much?’

  ‘I don’t know. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I would. That’s why I was asking.… And another thing.’ We had reached the foyer of the theatre. ‘Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why you switched places with her after the accident?’

  ‘Oh, you believe that now. I’m obliged. Yes, I’ve told you why. She had two endorsements and was likely to lose her licence. I have one now, but that’s beside the point.’

  ‘Nothing’s beside the point,’ Tim said.

  As we walked down the sloping corridor to the stalls we heard a burst of clapping that heralded the end of the second act.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Dear fellow,’ said Ralph Diary, ‘ you’ve got another hit on your hands.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I have.’

  ‘Suppose? There’s no doubt about it! One or two of the high-brow critics may crab it, but by and large we shall have a wonderful press. I know. And I also know, with that sort of audience reaction, that you’ll soon be independent of the press. When people really enjoy a play, the news spreads like a Chinese cracker.’

  ‘Odd, isn’t it,’ I said, ‘that four years ago it was written off as a failure?’

  ‘Darling,’ said Isabel Chokra, ‘ congratulations! It could hardly have gone better. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you. The décor was fine anyway.’

  ‘A mite. But thank you for mentioning it. But it would have come over in sackcloth.’

  ‘Morris, they won’t give me elbow room to kiss you!’ exclaimed Mary Arlett. ‘There! And there! And not a lipstick smear!’ In my ear she said: ‘ Where were you in the second act? You missed my scene with Rachel: it went better than it’s ever done.’

  ‘I was at the back. I wanted to see it from a distance.’

  ‘My dear Morris,’ said Peter Jollif, the Rhesus Boy himself. ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘Thank you. Congratulations yourself.’

  ‘Yes, wasn’t I good! One day London will wake up to the fact that they have a great actor on their hands!’

  ‘Some of us already have,’ said Hughes, an older actor. ‘Only your modesty now stands in your way.’

  I took a glass of champagne from one of the stage hands but did not drink it. This was a much more modest celebration than the one in Paris. Just the company and a few close friends stood about on the stage while the s
cene shifters broke the set for tomorrow’s opening. One or two of the minor characters were already beginning to drift off to get changed to go home, content enough without more celebration that they had rewarding steady work in prospect for the next few months.

  ‘I must go,’ Isabel Chokra said. ‘Bina will be home by now. You look better, Morris.’ This was as we all moved together towards the door.

  ‘Better? Good God.’

  ‘More settled, somehow. Did you go to see …?’

  ‘Dr. Sangham? Yes.’

  ‘Did it help?’

  I squeezed her arm. ‘It helped. Thank you for the kind thought.’

  She kissed me. ‘I’m so delighted if things are settling down for you after these awful months.’

  ‘They’re becoming clearer anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Morris, you’re not going?’ Ralph came back again, his bald head shining.

  ‘Not for a minute. But soon.’

  ‘Mary and her husband are planning a quiet supper at their flat and they want you to join them.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. But I’d rather not. For some time to come, first-night celebrations are going to be too reminiscent.’

  ‘But he’s looking better, don’t you think?’ Isabel said. ‘I was just telling him so.’

  Ralph eyed me. ‘I don’t know. I thought he was looking pretty haggard. How d’you feel, Morris, that’s the important thing?’

  ‘Like a fakir who’s been sleeping on a bed of nails for a couple of nights.’

  They both laughed, but uncertainly, not sure whether I meant it wholly as a joke.

  ‘Good-bye, Jack. Bye, Sophie.’

  ‘Bye, Morris. Bye, Ralph. See you tomorrow, Mike. Bye …’

  Isabel left and I said to Ralph: ‘Look. I think I will go now. Make my excuses to Mary and Joe. Give them my love and explain.’

  ‘Of course. If you’re quite certain. I would have thought it might have taken your mind off things.’

  He walked with me down the steps and followed me to the stage door. ‘ I had another talk with Carl Walbach last night, and he said he still hoped you’d come to do the scripting for Widow’s Peak.’