Ghost Light: A Novel

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘Isn’t it.’

  ‘Molly was the prettiest girl in Dublin,’ the producer says gently. ‘And the sweetest, kindest heart. And the loveliest eyes. Every man in the town was smitten with love for her. Every last one of us. Always.’

  ‘Now Kenneth, you exaggerate.’

  ‘Not by much. Not by much.’

  ‘I declare you’ll have my head swelled if you don’t quit your absurd flattery.’

  ‘We have taken enough of your time, Miss O’Neill,’ the girl’s stepmother says. ‘It’s been most awfully good of you. We appreciate it very much.’

  ‘Have you any last word of advice you could give me, Miss O’Neill?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need advice from an old squawker like me, dear. Only speak your lines clearly and be sparing with movement. Some of the younger actresses nowadays tend to rather jitter about, when there’s really no need; there’s a great power in stillness. And always love the audience, even when they’re tough on you. And earn your chances. And take them when they come.’

  ‘I find the movement part of it hard when I’m actually on the stage. Remembering the cues, I mean.’

  ‘Do you know, in my day at the Abbey, we used to have a giant chessboard painted on a great sheet on the floor – an old mainsail it was – someone bought it from a wrecked ship – and by God you were given your square and you’d better be stuck in it until the moment you were told to move. And woe betide you if you landed up in the wrong position even slightly. Oh my word, you’d have the lard cut out of you before you knew it.’

  The sort of warm, courteous laughter you love ripples around the gathering. You caress the girl’s face briefly, tell her again she is pretty, but to pay attention to her schoolwork and not just the stage, for a career can be brief or may never happen at all, but an education can always be leaned on.

  ‘Now we’d want to be getting ready,’ the producer announces mock-firmly. ‘This will have been a lovely experience for Elizabeth, to have met a true great such as yourself, my dear. It will be something for her always to remember.’

  ‘Goodbye then, Miss O’Neill. Thank you so much for taking the trouble.’

  ‘Wait now a minute.’ You reach into your pocket and take out his letter. To look at it a last time? But no need. No need. You know what it says. You could never forget it. You hand it to Elizabeth Collins, who reads it quickly, eyes widening.

  ‘But it’s from him,’ she says. ‘This was written by Synge.’

  ‘Yes, it was. It’s rather ancient. I was very young when I received it – not very much older than you. He was a bossy old coot, as you’ll see from his tone. But he gave me the wisest guidance I ever received in the profession. Permit the words to lead you to the heart words come from. That is the finest advice of all. Because it’s loving.’

  ‘How wonderful. I’m shaking. His actual handwriting.’

  ‘He was a great, great man. I would like you to have it. As my gift at the start of your career.’

  ‘Miss O’Neill—I couldn’t possibly. I really couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘It’s out of the question, Miss O’Neill,’ the girl’s stepmother says.

  ‘I would like you to. It would honour him. Please permit me to insist.’

  ‘Miss O’Neill, I couldn’t, really. Just to have seen it is enough.’

  ‘It is an old tradition in our profession that a gift from one of us to another must never be refused, particularly when a performance is about to begin. You will bring me a great blessing if you take it, Elizabeth. Look after it for me, won’t you?’

  Tears fill the girl’s eyes. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to me.’

  ‘Put that in some old book and take it down from time to time. And say a prayer for me when you do. Have we a bargain?’

  And it is there that Death comes for you, in that unprepossessing bunker from which the waves reach all over the world. Death finds a way down the labyrinthine corridors, like an odour of winter fog in the city of London, like a forest child who left a trail of crumbs to pursue. Past the turning reels of tape, the windowless offices, the clerks in ashen corduroy, a secretary bringing coffee, a messenger-boy with envelopes, a maintenance man sorting spanners, a correspondent wondering silently if there is anything left to say. Death drifts past all of them, for it is not their turn this evening, and he snuffles for the scent of his quarry. He sees you in the circle of actors surrounding the microphone, their eyes flitting adeptly from the pages to one another. The studio has been darkened – it is better for atmosphere – but near the microphone is a single lamp and it illuminates the faces. A man is producing sound effects with a selection of implements. Like the actors, he has a copy of the script.

  Death listens to the words. He has heard them before. He too has a copy of the script. He is not impressed by artistry, is far beyond catharsis. He crosses towards the circle, looks calmly in your eyes. Such a shame to take you now, but a cue is a cue, and Death has his own role to play.

  You are halfway through your third soliloquy when the pain begins in earnest: softly, subtly, like a rumour of pain, but then suddenly blooming violently in the floor of your abdomen, and you press through it, thinking it will pass, as it always has before. The other actors look at you, sensing something is wrong, but you wave your pages abruptly, do not want to pause or demur when the end of the scene is in sight. You are Maire O’Neill. You do not kill a scene. The show will go on at all costs.

  And the pain comes burning harder, finding a way through your veins, into nerve endings you have forgotten you ever had. A girl hurries from the booth and stares at you, transfixed, like a woman looking at a frightening apparition. You don’t know who she is. An assistant? A secretary? She shimmers and hazes in your sight.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she mouths. You nod, still speaking the speech, shushing her away with your script. The soundman brings a glass of water and stands by your side; your colleagues eye you fearfully but you concentrate on the microphone. It is now the only thing that matters in the room and in the world; it seems to be growing larger or wider or smaller, or changing its dimensionality in some other way you can’t name. The leading man comes in with his reply; you know he is slowing his lines, creating time for you to sip the water, become collected. Every text has an elasticity, like a symphony or a song; in a crisis it can always be found by the experienced. The water tastes of dust. You stare at the ceiling. You spiral your hand at the leading man, encouraging him to accelerate the speech, for the hour available is limited and must on no account be overrun. And in you come again, finding the words a kind of lifebuoy. Hold fast to them, Molly. The welter will pass. Let the ocean thrash around you, and the breakers rise to mountains, but never let go of the text.

  You can see that in the booth Mr Hartnett is on his feet, speaking urgently into a telephone, looking worried. He pushes his fingers through his hair and gapes at you as though lost. You smile back Don’t worry, gesture for him to sit. You have a sense of pushing Death away; as one would banish an unwanted admirer at a dance you never wanted to go to. India is listening. The words must be spoken. Ireland is listening. Canada. Hong Kong. Children glancing up from homework, couples seated by fireplaces, old men alone in cold rooms. And they will not be betrayed. It is not in you to stop. Death will have to wait until the closing soliloquies, for it is the ambition of every member of your profession to die with the boots on, and to be taken before the end of the show would be shameful. And so you utter the lines and wait, and the cues are taken up, and you feel Death recede resentfully into the cracks in the floorboards. It is not time, after all. It was only a rehearsal. He has departed to gather his forces.

  ‘Molly darling – what happened?’

  ‘Just a touch of indigestion, Ken. Heartburn. Nothing more.’

  ‘It looked like serious pain. Are you quite all right? … Molly? … Look at me? … I have told them to fetch a doctor. Won’t you come and sit down a moment? No, you must … you must.’

  ‘If there was
something to eat, darling? … Just a little something small? … Silly fool, I forgot to have lunch …’

  Across Brickfields Terrace, in the upper room of the bombed-out house, the light of your unknown neighbour is glowing. There is solace in seeing it. You know he is there. The cat is asleep on the floor near the cooker. Through the walls comes the voice of a man on the wireless saying tomorrow will bring a storm to the Orkneys. Humber. Dogger. Forties. Rockall. Fair Isle. Malin. Stornoway.

  Ghost light. An ancient superstition among people of the stage. One lamp must always be left burning when the theatre is dark, so the ghosts can perform their own plays.

  You stoke the fire and kneel before it, pull the blanket round your shoulders. It is almost midnight now. What a long, strange day. But a day full of blessings. To be alive – even this. To be sent home in a beautiful taxi from the BBC in London and the cost not even to be mentioned. The British people paid your fare. When they have nothing, nothing. And you stepping out of its blackness like the Queen of the Faeries. O did you ever think it, Molly, and you streeling around Mary Street knowing nothing of the truths of the world? A slight little brown-eyes; pretty thing you were. Your head full of nonsense and boys and old furniture and bits of songs you didn’t understand. And the driver opening the door for you and handing you your carpetbag. And if only some of the neighbours had witnessed your arrival. But that is only vanity. You prideful vixen!

  Cold night now. The wind in the rafters. Sacred Heart of Jesus, help the tramps and the drifters and the sleepers in the doorways of London. A long, strange day. You’ll remember it. Yes. Sure, the day you didn’t make a friend is a waste, so it is. From out on the street, the shrilling of the roughnecks. Oh you’re not gone yet, girl. Not by a ways. There’s a crack of the whip left in Molly Allgood.

  Look closer at the fire, girl. Another little drink. Aberdeen for Christmas – your daughter, her twins. And on Boxing Night you might slip across to Fusco’s and treat the children to a fish supper. Not be letting on your plan; just say you’re away to the chapel, but come home with the cod and the sausages and the ray and the newspapers all sodden with vinegar. And Pegeen will be such a scold, not be wasting your money, but secretly she’ll be delighted, and the children might sing. Bitter night now. Sit you in to the hearth. Oh, the warmth on your face, the red sheen on your glass – even on your fingernails, your skin. Lady Gregory is in the flames with white-haired Yeats. They look gentler than you remember them, so mild, so at peace. As though some layer of their earthliness had been washed away by time. All that tenderness they hid by giving imitations of themselves for so long – now visible in the shining coals. Augusta and William. Won’t you call us by name? There is an old friend we would like you to meet.

  The cover of the London Daily Echo one morning next week will have a headline about the murder of a police officer, Sidney Miles. Two cosh-boys, Bentley and Craig, will be charged with the crime. Christopher Craig is sixteen; Derek Bentley will hang. The sort of terror that garners outrage and questions in Parliament; men will write plays about it one day. In the late edition, a small article appears on page eleven. Nobody will ever write a play about this.

  WOMAN UNCONSCIOUS

  Last Tuesday, constables and firemen broke into a boarding-house room in Brickfields Terrace, London W2. A severely burnt elderly woman was found unconscious on the floor, having collapsed into the fireplace where she had evidently been burning books, having no other fuel at hand. Foul play is not suspected. A number of empty bottles were in evidence. Residents of the house did not know her name. It is thought that she was originally from Ireland and may have worked for a time in the theatre. She had been intemperate in her habits and was known to have approached passers-by for assistance. Anyone with information is asked to contact Maida Vale Police Station. It is believed that she was either widowed or unmarried.

  13

  PARK PRUETT MENTAL HOSPITAL HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND

  November 1952

  … Streetcar named Desire. Beautiful name for a play. American title if ever there was. Everything in America is blared, vivid: yes their scenery, the way they feel, their sousaphones and skyscrapers, their steak so steaky, their apples the size of grapefruits, the iron-jawed chatter of their factories and taxi-men. Only an American would write a play called A Streetcar Named Desire. An Englishman would entitle it A Bus Called Passing Interest.

  Dorset. Cumbria. Coniston Water. The moorlands of Yorkshire. The Medway towns. King’s speech on the wireless. Muddling through. Brown soup. Watered beer. A bunk-up in a doorway. Little helpful hypocrisies that keep everything going. Snobbism deep in those who have nothing. Kindliness. Bravery. Hyde Park in a mist. Dirt under fingernails. Shakespeare’s face on pub signs. Wordsworth. Cider. Sandbags. Contraceptives. Notting Hill Gate. Broadgate. Billingsgate. ‘Ham’ in the town names. Toffee-apples. Pleasantness. Brown paper and vinegar. Sadness. Fog. Best people in the world. English and Americans. Tragedy and Comedy. Twins.

  Peaceful. Yes. The sisters come and go. Hear them mumbling I’m here a week. Don’t know if I am. And they giving me injections sometimes. Think that’s what they’re doing. And the pain all swallowed up in an eiderdown of drowse and the clock on the wall does be ticking.

  Night-time now. Pretty Jamaican nurse comes on at midnight. Hear her singing quiet as a wren as she’s coming and going. Isn’t a man in the whole world but wouldn’t fall for her if he heard it.

  Ah do do Kitch, don make mi cry,

  Ya know I love yuh

  Yuh playin shy.

  Sweet Pegeen the other evening. Or maybe it was dawn. But I couldn’t speak couldn’t move. Felt sad and she gone. Coming back tomorrow. So like Sara, her eyes. You’ll be all right Mam, you’ll be all right Mam, and a drawing from the twins of three galleons on the sea, the Nina and the Pinta and the Santa Maria and Columbus with a feather in his cap. Had frightened her. My appearance. Well she hadn’t been warned. Molly girl, a nice pancake you’re after getting into now. No beauty beforehand. But Jesus help you now, girl. Can’t feel my face for the bandages. Like a mummy.

  Mr Ballantine come this morning. Nice, soft man. O the flowers and the chocolates and a True Romance and a card. Well he wasn’t to know I’ve no use for them now. Asked him: Ted, why are we here? He goes I’m not a religious man, Moll. I said No, love, what I meant was why are we in fucking Basingstoke? And he laughing into his hands. Nice, soft man. Told me I was brung here from St Mary’s up above for there’s the best man here for the burns. You’ll be right as the mail, Moll. More lovely than ever. We’ll throw a knees-up at the World. My Ellie’s home from Canada. You remember my daughter Ellie? Got a baby on the way. Couldn’t really see him. Recognised his voice. Heard him and he leaving and he whispering to the matron.

  —How long has she got, love?

  —A few days perhaps.

  —Let me know. About the arrangements. I’d like to see to things proper.

  —You’re a relative?

  —No, love. We was friends.

  Woman in the bed across from me does be coughing, spewking. Hard to close my eyes. Lids burnt. Ointment on my arms, my legs, my breasts. Can barely put a sheet over me. Three screens around the bed. Pictures like a film. Make a little story of them, pass the night hours. Won’t show me a mirror. Matron knows best. At noon on an April morning before Adam was a boy, here’s this doxy leaving a cheap hotel, the Prince Regent in San Francisco, and she walking the eleven long blocks through the leafed-out streets to the grand old Grand Central Station. Well, let’s see; what’s on her mind? And she trudging and thinking. Her husband and her sister and the other actors are waiting. Let them wait, the rip thinks. Good enough for them to wait. Holy Moses the cheeky mare. Thinks she’s Cleopatra so she does. High Queen of Mary Street. God love her.

  So what can she see, Moll? What does it all feel like? Give her a scene worth playing, why don’t you? Well, there’s this flat heavy heat after descending on the hilly city. So tiring to walk in the beautiful scarlet sho
es and God between us but she’s a bit hung-over. Yes, Molls, she is hung-over, no point in saying she isn’t. Apple blossom drifting on the hot air of 3rd Street through clouds of fly-filled pollen. And you’d clutch it in your hand like confetti so you would. And its powder on the silk of your glove. Then the darkness of the station so cooling, soothing. The players drinking iced coffee in the concourse café. Can you see them? There they are! They’re beckoning.

  America is not her country – she was born in Mary Street, Dublin, when the dinosaurs roamed Phoenix Park and the groves of Chapelizod, and they lumbering the Atlantical forest connecting Inishmaan and Manhattan and their eyes as gentle as giraffes’. Lived a few years in London, now and again in New York. Lower East Side mainly: cheap the rents there. Life of a strolling player, wouldn’t know where you’d awaken. But a professional engagement is after taking her to this Pacific city where she has played many times, oh many times. Her husband is a good actor and he’s not a good husband. There he is, foostering around among the younger women of the company, flirting with her sister, with the costume-girls, the waitresses, and he pulling dimes from their curls and scarves of laughter from their lips and every inch of him the jolly roving ploughboy.

  The country is not at war but there’s a rake of kitbagged soldiers and their neatly dressed sweethearts all pretty as a parcel. O you wouldn’t be up to the lipstick and the rouge and the powderclouds and the scent and the bonnets. And a Stars and Stripes flag the size of a tennis court draped on the gable over the gates to the platforms. Silk enough in it for fifty dresses for the beautiful sweethearts, and a star on the bosom of each.

  And up comes a recruiting sergeant and he approaching her sister for an autograph. Always the same: oh modesty personified. Who, me? Oh how kaind. One can eaunly do one’s best. Sign the fucking thing, bitch. Don’t be blushing and fanning yourself and trying to string everything out.