by P. G. Glynn
“Perfectly.”
Thinking he had heard the last from Marie, Clive studiously turned his back on her. He said, addressing the assembly: “Better actress than Dolly, indeed! That young madam has a lot to learn. Where were we, prior to that amusing little diversion?”
He might be finished with Marie but she was not finished with him. She was just getting her second wind. Pa had taught her from early on to show respect for her elders and betters as if the two were intrinsically linked. They were not, as Clive had amply illustrated. “Mr Swindall,” Marie called, from right behind him, her vibrant voice seeming to fill the whole room, “who do you think you are – Lloyd George?”
His scrawny body taut, his bushy brows knitting in his fury, he swung round to hiss: “Am I hearing things?”
Marie stood her ground as she faced him, hands clenched into fists, eyes blazing. “You’d have me believe you were Prime Minister, or even the King. But I’ll bet they’re too well bred to talk down to people or treat them with contempt. Why, you aren’t even manager of this theatre! We’re fellow thespians and I’m as entitled to my views as you are to yours. It’s beyond me why you all seem to be on Dolly’s side. She might be a fine actress but she’s utterly unreliable. All Mr Brodie did was give her some professional advice, which surely as manager here is no more than his right. Yet I heard you say earlier that his stifling perfectionism had driven Dolly to doing as she did and I could hardly believe my ears. He was just doing his job, which didn’t warrant her tantrum nor her current absence and all this uncertainty. We’ll have her, not Charles Brodie, to thank if our long awaited and much publicised opening falls flatter than flat.”
“I second that!” nodded Molly Pearson, whose comfortable contours were well suited to her role of Mrs Bumble. “But for Dolly we’d still be rehearsing and our play would be off to a better start.”
Shooting her a grateful glance, Marie warned: “That’s if the play starts at all and Mr Brodie doesn’t do as he said he might and cancel our First Night. Whether or not she intends returning at the last minute, Dolly Martin is holding us to ransom – and Molly has shown I’m not alone in thinking we should expect less selfishness and more of an example from our leading lady.”
There were a few mutterings of assent. Dolly was being selfish and setting a bad example in walking out on them all, especially with a new play just hours away. Were OLIVER TWIST to be cancelled and another play from their repertoire put on in its place, the Company would suffer both at the box office and in its professional status. And who but Dolly could be blamed, ultimately, for such an indignity? The young newcomer had shown some pluck … and spoken some sense.
Acutely aware of the mutterings and of the challenge to his authority, Clive Swindall raised a bony hand for silence and addressed Marie again icily. “You’re right,” he told her, “at least in the respect that I am not the manager of this theatre. I am not. And nor,” he lied, “would I like to hold that office.” His eagle eyes roamed the room to focus upon Molly Pearson, with whom he now had a score to settle. It would be settled, and before too long. Clive never forgot a slight and always got even with those foolish enough to cross him. Precious Marie had carried her foolishness to an asinine degree. He must restore his superiority by getting even with her immediately. “You have,” he told her, “somehow succeeded in winning over at least one member of our Company, so I urge you not to let matters rest there. As you’ve rightly said, you’re entitled to your views … and to airing them. But, if it isn’t too ill bred of me to point this out, you – through youthful inexperience, no doubt, coupled with being fresh from the provinces – have been mistakenly airing them in the wrong direction. If you are dissatisfied with the way the Tavistock is run and if you see your role of understudy as a valid one, then it is surely to Charles Brodie you should be addressing your dissatisfaction … and, obviously,” Clive now permitted himself a knowing smile, “your kind offer to take over from Dolly as our leading lady.”
Looking up at him and at the naked malice in his eyes, Marie saw that she had made an implacable enemy and a shiver ran the whole length of her spine. But she was – she believed – a match for Clive. Dismissing any doubts about the wisdom of her conduct, Marie agreed cheerfully: “Of course Mr Brodie is the man to see! He clearly needs reminding that Dolly has an understudy.”
Swinging almost jauntily on her heel she found herself facing Nell, who implored: “Don’t do it, Marie! You don’t have to, just because of Mr Swindall.”
“No, I don’t have to because of him,” Marie agreed, stooping to give her friend a reassuring kiss on the cheek. “I have to do it because of me. I have to seize this opportunity!”
As Nell watched, appalled, Clive Swindall threw open the Green Room door. Resolutely, Marie lifted her chin and flounced out past him, disappearing into the dark corridor.
2
Charles Brodie sat dejectedly at his big desk, staring into space. A tall man, with broad shoulders, he seemed somehow to have shrunk today. Certainly in his own estimation he was a smaller man than yesterday.
His shoulders were so hunched that they all but obscured his neck, causing his greyish hair to curl where it met the green serge of the jerkin that he wore as Bill Sikes. In profile his nose with its slight hook, his high forehead and jutting chin gave him a look of great strength and distinction. But he had never felt weaker, never less distinguished than at present. Charles was bowed beneath an overwhelming sense of impotence.
Once again he had let Dolly Martin get the better of him. There was no defending it. She could not have got the better of Irving, who ruled for years at the Lyceum like its rightful king. Sir Henry ensured through the sheer force of his will and personality that his players knew their place. They did not take liberties … did not call him names. Dolly would have been given short shrift in his day. Nobody questioned Irving’s authority because he did not leave it open to question. He spoke and his word was law, such was the respect he commanded. Yes, it all boiled down to respect. Charles was not respected as his mentor had been. He saw that as little short of a catastrophe.
Charles despised weakness in a man above everything. Men should be strong: that was their role, their calling. No man should ever be deflected by a woman’s whim. But he had been, publicly. And there could be no going back, no undoing the morning’s fiasco. He had to face the fact that he had permitted Dolly to make a buffoon of him. To blame her would be to avoid the true issue, this being that he was unfit to walk in Irving’s shadow.
On the wall facing him was a picture of the great man – costumed, ironically, as Sikes playing opposite Nelly Moore’s Nancy. Charles sighed, thinking of tonight and wishing that Nelly (who had died young, reputedly during an abortion) could by some means materialise. If such a thing were only within the bounds of possibility there need be no further confrontations with Dolly, for he could show her the door. That was where he had gone wrong before. No actor/manager worth the title would chance his leading lady walking out on him twice. When she did it last time he should have clarified who was running this theatre and should have made damn sure there was no recurrence. Charles had of course thought he had succeeded in his objective and in impressing on Dolly she must cut down on the drink. Now, though, with hindsight he could see his gullibility in being taken in by the solemn oath she had given him. Dolly had no backbone, no integrity, yet he had let her put a second play at risk. Was he soft in the head … was he demented?
Looking back, Charles saw that he had been swayed by Dolly’s post-trauma performance on-stage. How sparkling she had been … how captivating! It was almost as if all the dramas behind the scenes had added to her inspiration, leading him in his folly to believe she could not be replaced. Well, he was paying for his miscalculation. How he was paying!
When the worse for gin Dolly changed from a reasonably civilised human being into a fiend. Why she had taken to drink was anyone’s guess, but it seemed to him that she was drinking more these days rather than less. And
she was starting in the morning, from the look of things. It would not surprise him if she breakfasted on gin.
Her nonsense must stop. Charles must stop it before the Tavistock was seen to house an amateurish company and before audiences dropped off. The play was the important thing: it was all-important. Yet Dolly saw her own importance as greater than the play’s and it was this that Charles must deal with before tonight’s curtain rose on OLIVER TWIST.
The over-riding question was how to deal with it. He did not doubt that Dolly would return – probably at the eleventh hour, like last time – and that she would expect gratitude, not rebukes, prior to the curtain rising. After it had fallen at the end of the performance and the applause had died down she would be expecting to win him round with another empty vow. And so the cycle could continue … if Charles allowed it to.
He would not allow it. Instead of doing the expected thing he would do the unexpected. He would find the cure for this ill somehow. Resolve straightened his shoulders and now his gaze strayed round the room, first to Marie Wilton who in a photograph above the big bureau was costumed as Pippo in THE MAID AND THE MAGPIE. She was safe, up there in her frame, away from the pressures of the modern age. Charles felt old suddenly and a has-been, for his values were rooted in the last century and perhaps there was no place for them in 1919. In the seven years since forming his Dickensian Company he had never before indulged such a feeling and he might have slumped in his huge leather chair again had he not seen Irving next to Marie, seeming to look out at him from within the guise of Matthias in THE BELLS. Sir Henry would never have yielded to feelings of inadequacy nor, indeed, self-pity. Not that he ever, perhaps, felt inadequate but it was interesting to surmise that at times he might fleetingly have done. There could be no knowing what went on behind that assured exterior. For all Charles knew, Irving could even have suffered an occasional sense of failure. Thinking thus was curiously comforting. Buoyed in spirit, Charles’s gaze now alighted on Charles Coghlan as Shylock – a portrait neighbouring Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Caesar (the role written for him by Bernard Shaw).
Strong men, all of these, but each indubitably with their weaknesses to show Charles that he was by no means alone. His attention was drawn again to the wall opposite and the picture on it of Irving and Nelly Moore as Sikes and Nancy. That production also had its problems – not least that Irving was married and that Nelly was the great love of his life – but these had been surmounted and were now history. Odd to think that today too would be history by tomorrow! Which went to show that everything should be seen in proper perspective … and that dealing with Dolly was not beyond him.
Bolstered by his belief Charles continued to sit very still, thinking. Dolly would have to go on tonight since he had no choice in the matter. He would need time to find another actress of the right calibre to take over from her. Such actresses were hardly two-a-penny since it went without saying that she must have a name and, once found, Dolly’s successor would need further time to learn Nancy’s lines and submerge herself in the character. So he would have to tolerate his errant leading lady for another month at least. But he would not have to tolerate her behaviour! He must make it very plain to Dolly Martin that she had had her last chance and that she should now look elsewhere for a play to sabotage.
Meanwhile, Charles would have his scouts comb London for a worthy replacement for her. Visibly growing in stature, he reached for the telephone receiver to put matters instantly in hand.
As he did so, a knock sounded on his office door. He had not sent for anyone. So Dolly must be back – and the fact she was knocking showed she had at least learned not to march straight in, as had been her habit. That, Charles supposed, was something. Sighing deeply and replacing the receiver, he called: “Come!”
Marie needed no second invitation. In she came, her figure boyish because a compressor fashionably camouflaged her curves. He saw her and doubted what he saw for here, surely, was Nelly Moore. No matter that Nelly was fair while this apparition had a flowing mane of dark hair. Those wide, lustrous eyes, that dramatic bone structure, that mouth which was smiling much as Nelly’s had smiled – who else could she be, but Nelly? “I’ve come of my own accord,” she said, almost skipping to a position just across the desk from him, “to save you the bother of sending for me, Mr Brodie.”
Charles blinked. Was he dreaming? He must be. Having wished for a while that Nelly might materialise, here she was in response to his wish and such phenomena occurred solely in dreams. But he was not asleep. Lacking certainty he closed his eyes, the better to decide. When he opened them again and found her still present he said: “I would have sent for you … would I?”
The fact that he had to ask showed Marie she had a clear advantage. “Yes, you would,” she told him matter-of-factly, “once you had had time to recall why you hired me.” When this information brought no more than a troubled frown to his brow Marie, who had begun wondering what was wrong with him, was more enlightening: “As well as a soubrette I am, of course … Dolly Martin’s understudy.”
“Ah!” Charles cleared his throat, hoping that his head might also clear. The way he was behaving word would go round the theatre like wildfire that Dolly had been right in terming him a silly bugger. It was vital that he pull himself together. “I do remember bringing you in – from Bath, wasn’t it?”
“It was.” Now Marie felt that she was at last getting somewhere. “You said at the time that it went in my favour, my having played Nancy to packed houses both in Bath and Swansea.”
“I did?” Charles could not recall saying that. If only he could rid his mind of Nelly Moore’s image and begin to grip reality! “I would have meant in the sense that you were familiar with Dickens. There would have been no other meaning.” He ended lamely: “Dolly Martin has a name, you see.”
“So have I!” she smiled and he saw how her smile further lit her eyes. “I especially chose Marie Howard because of how it would look in lights. Everyone starts, don’t they, with an unknown name? Nobody’s born with one that’s famous.”
Charles could not fault her logic despite its accompaniment by a startling naivete. Would that he didn’t feel so dazed! “Correct,” he said, for want of anything better, “but they don’t start here. They find fame elsewhere before aspiring to the role of Charles Brodie’s leading lady.”
“Oh, they do, do they?” Marie’s scorn showed in her expression. “And I suppose that golden rule applies even when Dolly Martin’s missing, with the curtain virtually about to rise? Fame should bring with it a degree of responsibility, it seems to me.”
“I have not asked for your opinion … and the fact that you’ve proffered it, unasked, demonstrates a breathtaking degree of effrontery. Now leave me, Miss Howard.” Still watching her, he shuffled some papers on his desk. “I am excessively busy.”
She could not leave for the simple reason that she could not move her feet. They seemed to have rooted. Mr Brodie reminded her so achingly of Pa when he said one thing and all too clearly meant another. That had happened once after chapel, when Mam smacked Marie for being cheeky. All Marie had said was that she was tired of having bara brith for tea: a sentiment with which she knew Pa privately agreed. But for the sake of peace and quiet he had sided with Mam when she said that there was no better bread than bara brith – and that ungrateful girls didn’t deserve any tea. Now Mr Brodie was doing similarly. He could not agree openly with Marie about Dolly’s irresponsibility because he could not face the likely consequences of agreeing with her. So he was saying things he thought he should say rather than those he might wish to say. Were men more cowardly than women or did they just believe in playing safe? Marie must help him see how much better it would be to play more adventurously.
“I can be breathtaking,” she told him, “in more ways than one – that is, not just for my effrontery. Whatever your reasons might have been for making me Dolly’s understudy and however much you doubt I deserve that title, don’t you think that now might poss
ibly be the right time to try me in the role of Nancy? You won’t know how good – or, for that matter, bad – I might be until you’ve tried me. For all we both know I could actually take your breath away … and just think of the effect that would have on Dolly!”
Charles was thinking. He had also been observing, carefully, as Marie made her plea and determining that here was an actress indeed. Her face changed with each nuance of emotion experienced and changed in such a way that he could virtually see her feelings. It was also a handsome face, with more to it than mere beauty. There was a radiance within which lifted one’s spirits, causing one almost to believe that she … But no. Desperate he may be: not so desperate, though, even to ponder an act of such recklessness. This young woman might well have proved a hit in the provinces (he seemed to recall seeing some effusive reviews) but she was unknown in London and quite untried here in a role of any substance. It was unthinkable that she should step on to his stage as his leading lady. So why was he giving the thought any room? Because of Dolly, that was why, and his need to show her conclusively that he, not she, ran the Tavistock … but also, if he was honest, because had he been a praying man he would have had to consider the fact that Marie Howard had arrived in answer to a prayer.
