The Swish of the Curtain

by Pamela Brown

  The clapping of the audience ceased as Sandra entered, dejected and drooping.

  Nigel said, “Carmina looks sad tonight.”

  “And I can tell you why,” announced Jeremy.

  He stood up and sang in a husky voice unaccompanied, of how he had heard Carmina bemoaning her fate. Then he tucked his violin under his chin and played, while Sandra sang, “I once used to dance for you, Juan.”

  Her voice suited the song, as it was soft and clear, but she gave it no expression until the end, when she seemed to listen and hear the twang of his guitar in the distance. She reached her top G on the “ar” of “guitar” quite without effort. Then her face, which had brightened for the last few lines, fell again, and, as the audience applauded, she went slowly to the back of the stage and sat down apart from the others. She drank several wine-glasses of raspberry juice, and the audience waited eagerly for the next turn.

  Jeremy nearly forgot to go out to the piano, and Maddy was left standing in front of the stage while he got there. But she just grinned naïvely down at her mother, and, quite on the spur of the moment, as Jeremy played the opening chords, she spat on her hands and rubbed them together. The audience were delighted. She jogged through her little dance, the others shouting the tune and banging tambourines as it got slower and jerkier and slower and jerkier – until it left her standing on one foot waiting for the last crash of chords, which, when it came, was almost drowned by the audience’s vociferous applause.

  Next came Lyn and Sandra’s tambourine dance. Compared with Vicky’s tarantella this would have been feeble had it not been for Nigel’s and Lyn’s excellent miming of flirtation. Sandra, unluckily, lost one of her shoes, which flew off and rolled to the side of the stage, so Lyn was left to carry on, and, when she finally threw the rose from her hair to Nigel and sank on to the bench beside him, the applause was not so much for the dance as for the by-play. The audience had been so busy watching this that they did not notice Bulldog preparing to sing. Lyn, instead of relaxing and allowing attention to focus on Bulldog, went on acting with Nigel.

  Bulldog started before the piano, and when Jeremy skipped a few notes to catch up with him, he started again. Then they both stopped and there was a horrible silence. Bulldog saw his mother’s anxious, pained expression, and tried again. He picked up the accompaniment, and struggled through the first verse. He had a peculiar voice; it had just finished breaking, and was not soprano, nor was it bass, and hardly tenor. The general effect of the song was comical, after the unlucky beginning, and the audience got ready to laugh, but finding it was not supposed to be funny, they tried not to appear amused. In the second verse there was a rattling of the door, and a late-comer walked in through the darkness. Bulldog could discern Mrs. Potter-Smith’s bulk as she shuffled and whispered her way along a row of chairs to a spare seat in the middle of the line. He faltered and struck a wrong note, forgot his words, and continued with the words of the last verse. He turned appealingly to the others. Nigel whispered to Sandra, and they started to sing the last verse all together, in a melancholy chant, as Bulldog tossed down glass after glass of raspberry juice.

  Then Jeremy played his violin solo, putting all his heart and soul into it, and the musical members of the audience appreciated it highly, the bishop among them, who whispered to Mr. Bell, “What a fine musician that boy is!”

  The whole company came to the front of the stage and sang the closing chorus, the girls taking the soprano part, the boys the alto. Bulldog and Maddy, who were at each end of the line, pulled the curtains across in front of them, the stage lights went out, and the auditorium lit up. They scuttled back to the dressing-room to change. Bulldog unpinned the backcloth with set teeth. What a fool he had made of himself with that awful song! And if he wasn’t funny but only silly in Madame Popoffski…

  He removed the benches and erected the practice bar for the dancing-class, and arranged the side curtain so that it hung behind the piano and the pianist could be seen by the audience. Then he hurried into the dressing-room and flung off his Spanish clothes. No one mentioned the conspicuous failure of his song. Their dressing was accompanied by the rattle of coins being dropped into the plate.

  “There’s a half-crown just going in,” prophesied Maddy, pinning her white handkerchief behind her head; but at that moment a thin hand wearing a bishop’s ring was placing a tenshilling note on the heap of previously collected coppers and sixpences.

  Mrs. Halford squeezed her husband’s arm. “Murray, what did you think of Vicky’s dance?”

  “Very good,” replied her husband. “And I remember when someone else with red hair used to dance just as madly as that.”

  He referred to the time before their marriage, when she had been training as a dancer, and he, a young barrister, had knocked her over while driving his car carelessly through a London street. She had lost the use of both her feet, and her back was slightly injured, but this did not prevent her from falling in love with the driver of the car. They were married as soon as she came out of hospital, for he had previously seen her in a dancing display and yearned to make her acquaintance.

  “I wonder why Vicky said she didn’t want to go on learning dancing?” mused Mrs. Halford, “because it is obvious that she loves it.”

  “I told her it was too expensive,” Mr. Halford confessed.

  “You wicked man!” she flared up. “Of course it’s not too expensive. You’re trying to save up to send me abroad, aren’t you? Now, tell me the truth.”

  Under the searching stare of his wife’s hazel eyes he was forced to admit that he had that idea in mind.

  “Well, I’m not going!” she declared. “Not if it means Vicky giving up her dancing.”

  Mr. Halford knew when he was beaten.

  Farther along the front row Mrs. Fayne and Mrs. Darwin discussed Spanish Inn.

  “And didn’t the clothes look nice? Sandra is a good needlewoman.”

  Mrs. Fayne smiled, pleased at the compliment to her daughter, and hastened to reply that Jeremy was an equally good musician.

  “What a very attractive little girl the one with pigtails is!” remarked the bishop, crossing his gaitered legs and leaning back on the blue chair. “And how comfortable these seats are!”

  A general air of satisfaction lay over the audience. They had enjoyed the first item, subscribed generously to the collection, and now the greater part of the programme was to come.

  In the boys’ dressing-room Mr. Fayne and Mr. Darwin counted the collection.

  “Three pounds, two and sixpence halfpenny,” announced Mr. Fayne at last.

  “I’ll make it up to three guineas,” offered Mr. Darwin, bringing out some coppers from his pocket.

  “Three guineas! How lovely!”

  They were surprised at the amount.

  “I have counted the people and there are roughly two hundred,” announced one of the stewards.

  “Hurry up, don’t keep them waiting, then,” urged Sandra, daubing lipstick on Nigel’s mouth.

  She ran on to the stage and sat down at the piano and laboriously thumped out “The Blue Danube”. A titter of laughter ran through the audience when the curtains were drawn, to show her sitting on the piano stool, shoulders hunched up, with her usually brilliant hair dragged back to a bun, and the tip of her nose a violent pink. Then on came Lyn, with her remarkable Russian make-up and long gown.

  “Ah, Miss Smith,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands in a gesture of despair, “you Eenglish have no soul. You play one-two-three, one-two-three, but it is one-two-three, one-two-three. Again, please.”

  “I’b sorry, Badabe Boboffski,” replied Miss Smith, dabbing at her nose with a tiny handkerchief, “id’s the code id by head.” And she thumped harder still.

  “No, no!” screamed Madame Popoffski, waving her arms excitedly, and she let loose a string of words in what was supposed to be Russian.

  Miss Smith sniffed mournfully. “Oh, Badabe Boboffski, dode speak lige thad to the dew pubils; they’re
Lady de Swoffle’s children, you dow.”

  There was a ring off-stage and Madame Popoffski sailed away to answer it. She came back and whispered to Miss Smith, “Those de Swoffle children, they change into ballet dresses – they are the baby elephants. The legs – ah, they have the knees like the gooseberry. And I who must make them to dance!… But they come now.”

  Her expression changed to a sweet, simpering smile as the three boys and Maddy entered. The audience roared. Bulldog had a suspender dangling below his ballet skirt, and Nigel’s white socks were rucked round his ankles.

  “Jeremy makes rather a sweet little girl,” remarked Mrs. Fayne.

  Jeremy was acting shyly and trying to hide behind Maddy.

  “Now, my dears,” purred Lyn, “I wish you to come forward and curtsey and say to me your names.”

  The three little girls giggled, and Maddy went round tidying them up, straightening Jeremy’s bow, pulling up Nigel’s socks, and attempting to hide Bulldog’s suspender. She pushed him forward; he squatted down, steadying himself with his hands, and simpered “Oxslip”.

  “You say your name is Oxslip?” repeated Madame, astounded.

  “Yes, miss. They call me Oxo, because I’m beefy,” giggled Bulldog, still squatting on the floor.

  “Oxslip!” groaned Madame Popoffski to the pianist. She shuddered, then forced back her sweet smile and patted him on the head.

  “I see, Oxslip, that I must instruct you to make the curtsey.” She did an exaggerated curtsey. “So, with the toe pointed; and you will please call me Madame.”

  Bulldog tried again, this time putting his legs into such knots that he fell sprawling, catching hold of Madame’s ankles and pulling her down as well.

  “Oh, Oxo!” reproved Maddy, shaking her finger at him.

  Madame got up in as dignified a way as possible, and cooed, “Now, my next little pupil.”

  Nigel curtsied and said coyly, “Velia, Madame. They call me Vealy for short, because I’m not so beefy as Oxo.”

  And so the dancing-lesson went on, with the boys twisting themselves up in the effort to follow the steps and positions as demonstrated by their teacher. Madame told them long stories of how she had danced for the Czar back in Petersburg, and how she escaped from the revolution in a travelling circus. The high spot of this item was Bulldog’s ballet dance. Madame told him that he was getting on so well that she would teach him a few steps, then he must do a little dance introducing them.

  “Arabesque,” said Madame, with one leg raised behind her and her finger-tips lightly touching her chin.

  “Arabesque,” repeated Oxslip, clasping her bottom jaw tightly in both hands and kicking out behind, catching the part of Miss Smith that was sitting on the piano stool.

  “Entrechat,” said Madame, jumping high into the air and clicking her feet several times.

  “Entrechat,” repeated the pupil, jumping with her legs flying out at all angles, and landing with a thud that shook the stage.

  “Pas de bourrée.” Madame glided across the stage on her points, with small steps and a rapt expression.

  “Pas de bourrée.” Bulldog followed her, stumbling about on the tips of his gym shoes, which were stuffed with cotton wool.

  “Now you will dance,” Madame ordered him. “Miss Smith, you will play some tune that suits this young dancer of such grace, such emotion.”

  Sandra banged out, “Pop-eye, the Sailor Man”, and Bulldog, wobbling perilously, did a series of laboured pirouettes on bowed legs.

  “But that is too heavy, too like the Donald Duck,” screamed Madame.

  Miss Smith returned to the “Blue Danube”, and Bulldog did a coy fluttering dance that made the audience rock in their chairs. Whenever he raised his right leg the suspender flapped; he ended up in a final curtsey just as Madame had taught him, with his toes pointing outwards and holding up the frill of his skirt at the back. The only mistake was that he was facing the wrong way, and the view received by the audience was an expanse of red flannel drawers. The bishop mopped his streaming eyes and tried to control himself. Mrs. Bell giggled unrestrainedly. The two friends of Jeremy laughed till they nearly fell off their chairs, and one of them managed to gasp, “Never knew that chap could be so amusing. He’s new this term.”

  Madam Popoffski patted him on the head and said that now it was Velia’s turn. Oxo replied that his little sister wouldn’t dance alone, so they were going to do one together. They trotted over to Miss Smith and whispered in her ear, and she started “A Tisket, a Tasket”, highly syncopated. Jeremy and Nigel skipped to the front of the stage, and in childish, high-pitched voices with an American accent, sang the ridiculous words, as they did what was supposed to be a tap dance. Bulldog joined them, and they swayed and shuffled out. Melodramatically Madame fainted as the curtains were drawn across. The applause was feeble as the audience were still laughing.

  “Isn’t Bulldog a scream?” giggled Mrs. Halford, her usually pale cheeks flushed with laughter. She glanced at her programme. “Vicky’s dancing,” she remarked.

  The lights went off and the curtains were drawn by Mr. Fayne on one side and Bulldog on the other. The stage was bare but for the backcloth, a beautifully drawn rose arbour. Jeremy was at the piano, which was, once again, hidden by the curtains; he played a soft valse from Les Sylphides.

  Vicky, in a crisp snow-white ballet dress, twirled gracefully on to the stage. Coming directly after her brother’s attempt, her entry made a remarkable contrast, and the audience was spellbound. She was a different being from the fiery señorita who had danced the tarantella; she was some vague wood sprite, here for a moment, gone the next. The light had on its blue shade, which gave the slim, white-clad figure an appearance of transparency. She finished up with a series of slow fouettées, and sank on to the ground in a billow of tarlatan. The applause was magnificent, and she was called before the curtain time after time. This gave Jeremy opportunity to remove his little-girl make-up and get dressed to play his part as Anthony. Lyn, fastening up her dress at the side, was quivering with excitement. Her chance was coming, she must act it well; up till now she had just been average, and had made no hit at all, but as Julia she must, oh, she must. Sandra put on the final touches of make-up.

  “You look lovely, Lyn,” she told her, “and if Jeremy won’t make love to you properly just force him to.”

  “He’ll hear about it afterwards,” said the heroine grimly, “if he doesn’t!”

  “What’s that about me,” asked Jeremy, from the other side of the curtain.

  “We were just saying we didn’t suppose you’d make love to Lyn properly.”

  “You just watch me! I’ll be an absolute Don Juan. You ready?”

  He picked up his rake and went on to the side of the stage. Bulldog was arranging the arbour, a rustic bench and a chair and table. Lyn as Julia and Sandra as Lady Whitney came on and sat down with their embroidery, and the curtains parted. It made a pretty picture to the eyes of the audience; the arbour looked its best under the heavy light, and its occupants appeared dainty and calm. They sewed in silence till Lady Whitney’s head drooped and she snored slightly. Julia, noticing this, hastily dropped her embroidery and ran to the edge of the stage, peering across the sunlit garden. She beckoned to someone and retreated, reseated herself, tidying her hair and looking excited.

  Jeremy came on as Anthony, attractively dishevelled in his gardener’s breeches and hose, and doffed his straw hat. At the sound of his footsteps Lady Whitney opened her eyes. Julia laid a finger on her lips, and glanced significantly at her mother.

  “Sh, Anthony, my mother only dozes.”

  They moved over to the other side and conversed in whispers.

  “My darling,” said Julia, “I must speak with you. After our talk in the garden last night…” she looked down, unable to go on.

  He said stiffly, “My dear Miss Julia, I must offer my profound apologies for the unfortunate happenings of last night. It was – it was the moon – and the darkness – and see
ing you so suddenly as I did. Otherwise, not for the world would I have professed my love for you.”

  “But, Anthony, I am glad – glad. It had to happen.”

  “But if your parents were to know! They would not have their only daughter betrothed to a common gardener.”

  “But I love you, Anthony, I love you. They cannot keep us apart!”

  “It is without hope, Miss Julia.”

  “Oh, Anthony, why call me ‘miss’? You spoke differently last night.”

  “By the morning light I recognize our folly. It would grieve your father, Sir William, to know that you love a worthless working man such as I. You must marry some rich and noble gentleman, worthy of your grace and beauty.”

  “Do you remember what you said last night, Anthony?” Julia smiled reminiscently. “You said my eyes were twin stars, and my lips red as the rose. Were you lying?”

  “I’ faith, no! Your lips are so, as red as the rose on yonder bush. It is a plant I have cultivated myself, and I call it the ‘Lady Julia’.”

  “Oh, Anthony, you make the most wonderful speeches. Though your riches may not be great, your tongue exceeds that of any lord or squire.” She stood close to him, gazing imploringly into his eyes. “Last night – you kissed me.”

  He moved backwards, glancing uneasily at her sleeping mother. Julia laughed cruelly. “I see it now. You are a coward, frightened of my parents’ wrath.”

  Enraged by the taunt, he caught her to him. The embrace, awkward and clumsy at rehearsals, went off perfectly. Nigel, as Sir William, entered, complete with curling locks and beard. He held a letter.