by P. G. Glynn
After all the dramas over there she had simply not considered heading anywhere else. Wanting to see Lucy again, she had come home and then settled pending the war’s end. It had not entered her head that hostilities would be endless. Had it done so, though, she supposed she would still have come here. With Hitler on the rampage there was much in Monmouthshire’s favour. And being with Lucy compensated to some degree for having to stomach Mam’s oddities. There was the added fact that over the years Lucy had done much more than her fair share of stomaching these. Thanks to her domination by Mam she had had no chance of marriage, or even of living her own life. It had been high time for Marie to arrive and do her sisterly duty by Lucy, at least for a while.
Now Lucy was anticipating the concert with such pleasure and expectation that Marie was panicking slightly. Supposing she had lost the talent that took her from the Empire Theatre in Swansea, via Bath, to the Tavistock and to Charles? Supposing she proved a disappointment to Helena’s aunt and to Lucy or, worse, to the Marie Howard whose star had once ascended and who would be first to know if it were in irreversible descent? Yes, supposing she were to know something so catastrophic and, knowing, have to live with it … ?
She must let none of that happen. If it happened there would be but one place to lay the blame: on these doubts she was entertaining. Doubts were a fertile breeding ground for insecurity and failure. If she didn’t doubt she wouldn’t fail. Secure in her professionalism, she would perform in such a way that even Charles – were he there – would not fault her.
It hurt to think of Charles and remember all there was to remember. Fancy this still hurting, after so many years! Any sensible woman would have forgotten him long since, but where did sense come in? Love was a phenomenon that transcended time and distance. Her love for him simply existed. Yes, it was as simple as that – and as complex. Charles was part of her, wherever he was, even if he was dead. Crikey, he wasn’t dead, was he? Marie could hardly breathe for fear that he might be.
Since Helena came to tea on that fateful Sunday, Marie had been dreaming of the Tavistock regularly. Her dream always began at the stage door, with Ben Stock welcoming her and with those stone corridors stretching away into seeming infinity. Then, her feet above the floor, Marie would drift first to her dressing room where a smiling Sarah Hodgkiss held a hairbrush and a bottle of Bay Rum and subsequently with all speed to Charles. He would gather her up in his arms and she would know she had found home. This knowledge still permeated her when she awakened far from the Tavistock Theatre, oddly confident that the past had existence somewhere. If she could only find it she could be Nancy again to Charles’s Bill, happy in the certainty of his love and of her future as an actress …
But her acting future had been over almost before it began. With hindsight, could she have done things differently? Suppose she had aborted Carla, instead of marrying Otto to give her a father only to lose her soon afterwards? Had she let Mrs Purfitt do her worst, she might have bled to death … or gone back to the Tavistock, her star still in the ascendant. There was no way of knowing which of these would have come to pass – if, indeed, either. Marie knew, though, that not for the world would she have missed the love given and received during Carla’s little lifespan.
That established, she stopped looking back and looked ahead instead as she prepared for Marie Howard’s next appearance …
She had toyed with the idea of reciting Longfellow’s The Death of Minnehaha, which had gone down well aeons ago at a Benefit held in Mumbles, the gateway to a glorious peninsula near Swansea; but she had finally decided that there were other poems, other sentiments more appropriate to this occasion. Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade and Marshall Steele’s For Her Country’s Sake had also come into consideration, as well as various works by John Masefield. But Marie had finally settled on a seventeenth century piece of prose written by Thomas Traherne, along with F.L. Hosmer’s O Beautiful My Country.
Both works were treasures she had discovered while browsing through books that had once belonged to Pa. It was Pa who had started her on her path to the theatre by instilling in her an appreciation of a word’s very texture – and, turning the pages, she had thought of him turning them and reading the words she was reading. He was in a sense integral to the books belonging to him. He had chosen them, delighted in them … left his fingerprints on them. So, as she read, her fingertips in a manner of speaking touched his. Small wonder, then, that when reading she felt him close … felt him helping in her choices for Clydach and in her interpretation. He was ever-present, as was Uncle John whose love also lived on.
“How are you feeling?” asked Lucy, who was sitting with her embroidery. She didn’t often have a chance to sit, but with Mam gone on the afternoon bus to Abergavenny both sisters were free to do as they pleased until it was time to prepare tea.
“Physically or mentally?” smiled Marie, looking up from the book she had been half-reading. “I take it that, with the concert next week, you’re enquiring more after my mental than my general health.”
“I suppose I am,” Lucy agreed. “I know how I’d be feeling if the concert’s success depended on me. Truth to tell, I’d be frightened clean out of my wits. You seem quite relaxed by comparison.”
“I am and I’m not,” Marie told her. “I’ve had my moments of panic but gave myself a good talking to and am now ready, more or less. One might almost say that I’m … programmed for success.”
Lucy said in awe: “You’re a marvel, Marie, you really are! In your shoes I’d be petrified of failing, yet you don’t consider failure.”
“I have considered it – and rejected the whole idea! Marie Howard mustn’t fail. She was successful before and will be again.”
“I wish I could think more like you do. I wish … ”
When this wasn’t forthcoming, Marie queried: “Am I responsible for the fact that you still live here with Mam? I mean, had I not gone back to Bohemia after Uncle John died, and had you had the chance to study at RADA … ”
“No.” Lucy shook her head slowly. “That life wasn’t for me. I was relieved, more than anything, not to have to go and audition. I’d been trying to be you, you see, instead of being me … and there could only ever be one Marie. I was born a mouse whereas you were born a lion and I honestly prefer squeaking to roaring. If I’d been anything in a theatre, my best bet would have been to be wardrobe mistress, so that I could absorb atmosphere without ever having to risk humiliation on the stage. That’s the big difference between us – you’re a risk-taker whereas I’m one for playing safe. You also believe in yourself, with good reason, while I can see no reason to believe in me. I’m just little Lucy, who might have preferred not to live with Mam and be a spinster, but who never seemed to have any choice in the matter.”
“That’s so sad! You did have choices. You still have them. And you aren’t ‘just’ anything. You’re a unique human being, with endless potential, if I can only help you see it. Oh Lucy, stop selling yourself short! I’m sure that being Mam’s doormat was never your destiny. Everything begins with belief. There’s nothing you can’t do, just as long as you believe you can do it. And there’s nowhere you can’t go, once you make up your mind to go there. The world doesn’t begin and end in Beulah.”
“I feel as if it does,” Lucy sighed, “even though I know from your experience that it doesn’t. And in many respects I’m content with this feeling. It’s only now and then that I wonder what I might have done … where I might have gone.”
“Stop speaking in the past tense, as if your life were already virtually over! It has hardly begun in terms of all you can still achieve, Lucy.”
“I’ll soon be forty.”
“That sentiment would make more sense if you were saying that you’d soon be ninety-five. Forty is no age to put your dreams away. What was the wish you didn’t express near the start of this conversation?”
“It was nothing important.”
“Let’s hear it anyway.”
&nb
sp; “It will sound silly.”
“The sillier the better, if you ask me.”
“I wish I were strong, like you are, instead of weak … confident instead of fearful.”
“You can be, so easily! I’m not always strong, or confident. I’ve had my times of weakness and terror, believe me, but these pass when I remember that strength – and everything else – starts in one’s head. We can work, together, on your thought-processes and you’ll soon be surprising yourself. There’ll be a few surprises too for Mam and Alice, neither of whom treat you as you deserve to be treated.”
“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we,” Lucy said with a girlish grin, “from my original question as to how you were feeling? Indeed to goodness, we have … and my, how the time has been flying! I’d best make a start on tea or else Mam will be … ” She stopped there; then, instead of finishing her sentence, said: “A woman in her thirties should find better outlets for her energy than I’ve been finding. So I’ll stop worrying about Mam’s likely reactions and start making the tea when I’m good and ready.”
“That’s an excellent beginning,” approved Marie. “I can’t wait for Mam to meet the new Lucy.”
“And I can’t wait to see you drawing in the crowds next week.”
+++++
Waiting in the wings for Blodwen Davies to finish her rendering of We’ll Meet Again, Marie felt the adrenalin flowing. This might not be a ‘proper theatre’ but there was an audience out there and audiences needed pleasing, wherever they were. Against the event of tonight’s audience giving her an encore – or encores – she had taken the precaution of refreshing her memory with verses first learned at Pa’s knee. It would never do to be caught without a full repertoire. That would be most unprofessional and Marie had no intention of being anything less than the professional artiste she used to be.
Her fists were clenched. She unclenched them and took a deep breath. In the process a sudden image of Mam stole into her head. Complaining that her rheumatism wouldn’t permit the uphill walk to Clydach, Mam had told Lucy over tea to stay at home and keep her company – to which Lucy’s spirited response had been: ‘Not blooming likely! Nothing and nobody, not even God, will stop me going to watch Marie’. Mam, taken aback, had retorted peevishly that Lucy should know better than to blaspheme.
Smiling at the memory, Marie braced herself as Blodwen’s – and Vera Lynn’s – song ended. It was almost time to be Marie Howard again. She was Marie Howard already, wasn’t she? Yes, she had somehow slipped back into her old skin …
Mr Walford Price – an optician from Brynmawr better known locally as Wally-the-Eye – strode on-stage now to announce Marie. “Not,” he said, “that she needs any introduction from me. Her star once shone so brightly that she was the talk of London Town … and people still speak of her in awed tones hereabouts. I give you the girl from Gilchrist who went on to find fame and fortune both in England and abroad. She’s here to show us whose side she’s on in this war. Ladies and gentlemen, a big hand please for someone whose past glories are written in history: I give you our very own Marie Howard!”
Refusing to feel like a relic and slightly hitching the skirt of her long red dress, Marie strode purposefully across the boards, smiling at her audience as they applauded. She could see Lucy sitting in the front row with Hugo and Helena and what seemed to be the whole Gwyn family; and she could see Alice and the portly Stan seated in the third row, right on the end. Was that so that they could slip out without causing a stir, should Alice feel embarrassed by her sister? Marie had soon banished this inconsequential thought and stepped forward to give her all to Thomas Traherne’s Child’s Vision of the World:
“Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world than I when I was a child. The corn was orient and immortal wheat which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.
The Men? O what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in the streets were moving jewels: I knew not that they were born or should die. All things abided eternally as they were in their proper places. Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared, which talked with my expectation and moved my desire. The City seemed to stand in Eden or to be built in Heaven. The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world was mine; and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.
So that with much ado I was corrupted, and made to learn the devices of the world, which I now unlearn, and become, as it were, a little child again that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.”
As her last words resonated through the hall Marie saw that her audience was transported. For many moments there was no applause … and rapt faces were upturned toward her. Then, as she bowed her head, there was a ripple of assent that quickly grew into a roar of approval. The clapping began, seeming for a while as if it would never stop, and Marie drank again at the font of recognition. She drank thirstily, conscious of how much she had missed this. Blood coursed through her veins and she became the girl she had been: the one to whom Charles Brodie had once handed his stage.
Marie said as silence finally reigned. “In case doubt remains, because of my marriage to a foreigner, as to where my loyalties lie, my next offering is a poem by F.L. Hosmer which in view of the war we are fighting against oppression seems singularly fitting. Here it is:
O beautiful my country!
Be thine a nobler care
Than all thy wealth of commerce,
Thy harvest waving fair:
Be it thy pride to cherish
The manhood of the poor;
Be thou to the oppressed
Fair freedom’s open door.
For thee our fathers suffered,
For thee they toiled and prayed;
Upon thy holy altar
Their willing lives they laid.
Thou hast no common birthright,
Grand memories on thee shine;
The blood of pilgrim nations
Commingled flows in thine.
O beautiful my country!
Round thee in love we draw;
Thine is the grace of freedom,
The majesty of law.
Be righteousness thy sceptre,
Justice thy diadem,
And on they shining forehead
Be peace the crowning gem.”
The word peace had been breathed so persuasively that it remained on the air after the poem ended and a collective sigh whispered through the hall before hands came together in further rapturous applause. Now there were also cries of ‘Encore!’ making Marie glad of her large repertoire.
She gave them Clement Scott’s The Women of Mumbles Head, followed by Weatherby’s sad story of Punchinello. Then Ella Wheeler Wilcox came into her own:
“Build on resolve, and not upon regret,
The structure of thy future. Do not grope
Among the shadows of old sins, but let
Thine own soul’s light shine on the path of hope
And dissipate the darkness. Waste no tears
Upon the blotted record of lost years,
But turn the leaf, and smile, oh! smile, to see
The fair white pages that remain for thee.
Prate not of thy repentance. But believe
The spark divine dwells in thee: let it grow.
That which the upreaching spirit can ac
hieve,
The grand and all-creative forces know;
They will assist and strengthen as the light
Lifts up the acorn to the oak tree’s height.
Thou hast but to resolve, and lo! God’s whole
Great universe shall fortify thy soul.”
Marie’s audience seemed to be insatiable but the clock was ticking on. She said: “I shall end – really end, ladies and gentlemen – with a Wheeler Wilcox poem that has special meaning for me. It’s title? Reunited:
Let us begin, dear love, where we left off;
Tie up the broken threads of that old dream;
And go on happy as before; and seem
Lovers again, though all the world may scoff.
Let us forget the graves, which lie between
Our parting and our meeting, and the tears
That rusted out the goldwork of the years;
The frosts that fell upon our gardens green.
Let us forget the cold malicious Fate
Who made our loving hearts her idle toys,
And once more revel in the old sweet joys
Of happy love. Nay, it is not too late!
Forget the deep-ploughed furrows in my brow;
Forget the silver gleaming in my hair;
Look only in my eyes! O darling! There
The old love shone no warmer then than now.
Down in the tender deeps of thy dear eyes,
I find the lost sweet memory of my youth,
Bright with the holy radiance of thy truth,
And hallowed with the blue of summer skies.
Tie up the broken threads and let us go
Like reunited lovers, hand in hand,
Back, and yet onward, to the sunny land
