Sylvia shook her head.
‘Not want to, got to; they may buy it for part of an hotel, and the money I get will give us something to live on until Mr Legge can trace Gum.’
Petrova sipped her cocoa, and thought how miserable it would be when Mr Simpson did not live in the house; but she could not be so mean as to say so when Sylvia was hating things so much already; instead she said:
‘So that’s what you are doing when you sit up at night.’
‘I’m making an awful thing called an inventory,’ Sylvia explained. ‘The house is mine, but what’s in it is Gum’s, and I’ve got to put down every single thing in every room.’ She got up. ‘Swallow that down; you must go back to bed — I should take another biscuit with you.’ She passed Petrova the box, and then laid her hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you liking the work in the theatre, Petrova? I know Pauline loves it, and you couldn’t stop Posy from dancing; but sometimes I’ve thought you would rather do something else. We may be poor, but I hope you know that we’re not so poor that I would let you do work you weren’t happy in.’
‘What other work could a person of twelve do?’ Petrova asked as casually as she could.
‘None; but you could give it up and train for something else when you are older.’
Petrova’s heart, which had bounded, sank again. For one glorious moment she had thought there was a career for girls of twelve that she had not heard of; anything would do as long as it did not mean speaking on a stage. But there was none, and the money she earned was needed. She got up.
‘Silly Garnie.’ She took a bite of biscuit. ‘You know I love it. Why should I want to do something else?’
Back in bed she considered this statement. That was a lie really, she thought; but in a way it was true. ‘I don’t want not to act when we need the money. I’d only like not to act if we didn’t need it.’
She thought of the house being sold, and all the boarders, especially Mr Simpson, going away; and turned her face on to the pillow, and cried till she went to sleep.
Oberon, true to his promise, had Pauline and Petrova sent for about the two Princes, but Petrova need not have worried. The same producer was producing ‘Richard the Third’ as had produced ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. He did not hold an audition on the stage, but saw everyone in his office. He told Pauline she was engaged the moment she came in; he explained they had wanted to get boys, but they could not, and she was their first choice if they had to have a girl. The only question was her height. She was small for her age and he had doubted if she would look twelve, but she seemed to have shot up a bit lately. Pauline rather haughtily told him she could hardly help looking twelve, since she was fourteen, at which he laughed, and told her not to be so fierce; she was engaged. But when Petrova was shown in, he shook his head.
‘No, my little friend, not again.’ He laughed. ‘It would be much worse than “And I”.’
Petrova laughed too.
‘I knew it would, but I had to ask to play him.’
He looked up.
‘Why?’
‘Well, you see’ — in the interest of conversation she forgot all about her heels being together and her hands folded behind her; she lolled against his desk — ‘it’s the money; our guardian’s Great Uncle has gone away and not come back, and until he does we are very poor, so I have to try and get parts.’
He lit a cigarette.
‘If that’s all, I can use you, and you need never say a word; you shall be a page. There won’t be much money in it, but….’.
‘I know, you needn’t say,’ Petrova interrupted. ‘I’m not worth much.’ They both laughed. ‘Thank you very much for the page; I shall like that.’
‘I might give you the under-study of “York”…’ He broke off, for her face was so horrified. ‘Don’t you want it?’
‘I must have it,’ Petrova groaned, ‘if it earns me more, but I’d much rather not. Think how awful to come to the theatre every night wondering if you’d have to go on.’
‘You are a scream,’ he said. ‘All right, I was only teasing; I’m not offering you an under-study.’
Pauline was really happy as the young ‘King Edward’. Doctor Jakes, who was fonder of ‘Richard the Third’ than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, had great discussions with her about her part.
‘You can’t look of royal blood, Pauline,’ she said, ‘by simply coming on with your head up. Dignity is trained into royal children before they can toddle, graciousness, consideration for others, an unshakeable belief in the greatness of their position. You have got to think of yourself day and night like that until you have the reading of your part fixed. You are not Pauline Fossil; you are a boy who has known that one day he must rule, though had not expected to so soon, but who has accepted his position, and is kingly in every movement.’
The rehearsals slipped by Pauline like a dream; for the first time she was not acting — she was feeling a part. The child who was playing little ‘York’ was a great talker, and liked to gossip with Pauline at rehearsals. Pauline knew it would sound silly to say ‘Don’t talk to me before I go on, I want to feel like a king’; but she managed to hide before her entrances, and she would shut her eyes, and imagine that the theatre was gone, and instead was a street in the old London of 1483. Down it she walked, a King, but a King who was on his guard, who knew himself a defenceless boy. She bowed to the imaginary curtsying crowd, she drew herself up with dignity hidden by courtesy to meet the Lord Mayor and his train, remembering always that the greedy eyes of Uncle Gloucester were upon her, and he must not see she was afraid. In this spirit she managed to be so right at even the earlier rehearsals, that it did not seem queer to the nobles and the people to bow and curtsy to her. So strong was her own belief that she was a King that they all felt it. Her dress was a black tunic and silk tights, and she had decorations round her neck and the ribbon of the Garter round her knee. At the dress rehearsal, after ‘York’ had gone on to the stage, she stood a minute staring at herself in a long glass, and she did not see herself, but ‘Edward the Fifth’, and as ‘Edward’ himself, not Pauline acting ‘Edward’, she swept on to the stage.
Pauline attracted a great deal of attention from the critics as ‘Edward’. Doctor Jakes cut all the notices out of the papers, and read her those parts that were about her acting, but not those about her looks. To save trouble, Petrova was put to dress with the two Princes, which meant Nana was in the room all the evening, although Pauline, being fourteen, had no need of a matron, and Nana had strict orders from both Sylvia and Doctor Jakes not to allow her to be shown cuttings. They were afraid that if she read all that was said about her prettiness, she could not help getting self-conscious, which at the moment she was not. But certain results came from all this notice which she could hardly fail to see. She was asked for sittings at about half a dozen of the best photographers’, which the management insisted on her accepting, as the advertisement was good for the play, and after a bit they began to appear in the papers. Pauline, however, showed no signs of suffering from swollen head. The only thing she was proud about was that she was able to give Sylvia three pounds nine shillings a week, for she earned four pounds, and after allowing one shilling pocket money for each of them, and paying the Academy commission, that was what she had left.
Petrova was quite happy as a page; she had no responsibilities, and she was able to help a little towards the house. She earned thirty shillings a week, of which one pound went into the post office and three shillings to the Academy, and she gave seven to Sylvia. Sylvia wanted only to take four, and the other three to go for pocket money, bringing that up to two shillings a week again. But Petrova was shocked at the suggestion, pointing out that pocket money could only be thought of on a high salary, or if, as at Christmas, there were extra matinées.
‘Richard the Third’ ran into July, but just before the end of its run the most exciting thing happened. Pauline was sent for to have a film test. The studio was some way outside London, so Mr Simpson of
fered to drive Pauline and Sylvia down, and wait to bring them home. The studios seemed to be almost a town, there were so many vast buildings collected together. They showed the appointment letter to the uniformed man at the door, who seemed to know exactly what to do with them, and gave them to a messenger who ushered them into a large dressing-room exactly like a dressing-room in a theatre.
‘The make-up room is round the corner to the left, the third door,’ he told them, and disappeared.
Pauline and Sylvia looked at each other. Pauline had on her black velvet audition dress, though it was rather hot for June, but her white organdie would get so crushed in the car.
‘I can’t take anything off,’ she said. ‘So why do you think they put me in here?’
Sylvia had no idea, but said she thought they had better go to the make-up room and see. They followed the directions and tapped timidly on the make-up man’s door. He called out cheerfully ‘Come in’. He seemed to be expecting Pauline, because he wrapped her up in towels without a word, and rubbed some cream into her face before asking who she was.
‘You’re the little girl, aren’t you?’ he said at last, ‘playing in the Shakespeare along with Mr Houghton?’
‘That’s right,’ Pauline agreed. ‘But I can make myself up, you know.’
‘In the theatre, yes,’ agreed the man. ‘For the pictures, no. You use grease-paints, don’t you?’
‘A little,’ Pauline said. ‘Number five with a little eight for background and…’
But the man was not interested in what Pauline used for her face on the stage; instead he held up a tube.
‘But I use Max Factor, and that’s different.’
It was different, Pauline found. Instead of a stick of greasepaint, it was a paste which was massaged into the skin and allowed to dry on. When he had finished with her, her face looked most unlike itself, and she did not think much of it; but she thanked him politely, and asked where she should go next. He told her to go back to her room, and she would be sent for.
A messenger came to fetch her. He said she was to go to studio three, where they were waiting for her on the floor. Pauline was a bit puzzled at this, as she could not imagine where people should stand except on the floor; she had yet to learn that in film jargon a floor was a stage. Pauline was too used to auditions to be very nervous, and never having faced a movie camera before, she was not as scared by it as she would have been if she had known more about it. A man, whom everybody called Mr Sholsky, shook her hand and told her what he wanted her to do. They were not difficult things, and all different. Once she came into a room, and sat on the arm of a chair in which Mr Sholsky sat, and answered the questions he asked her, and another time she had to look for something hidden amongst papers, and read one of them. Nothing difficult, but all rather confusing because of the bright, hot lights, and the crowds of men on the cameras. There seemed to her to be a fearful lot of time wasted. Before each little thing that she was told to do the same routine was gone through. Suddenly all the lamps would be switched on, and the cameras start to whirr, then a boy came in front of the set, facing the cameras with a board on which was written in chalk: ‘Pauline Fossil. (Test.) Director, Mr Sholsky. Camera, Mr Lewis. Sound, Mr Part. Take.’ In front of the word ‘Take’ were two wooden slots into which were slipped number One, Two, Three, Four, etc. After standing in front of the camera for a moment the boy clacked two wooden clappers together, and ran off. There was a moment’s pause and then Mr Sholsky said ‘Action’, which meant Pauline had to start. Each time she had finished what she had been given to do, the lamps were switched off, and the cameras stopped turning, and the camera-man and Mr Sholsky had a whispered discussion, after which someone rang a telephone bell and asked ‘O.K. for sound, Bill?’ After some minutes the answer came back ‘O.K. for sound’, and Mr Sholsky told Pauline what to do for the next take.
When at last they had finished with her, Mr Sholsky walked back to the dressing-room with them and told them they were looking for a girl to play Charles the Second’s sister in a big film about Charles the Second. They were not using the grown-up Henrietta much, but her childhood as an exile in France. He told them he was testing a great many girls for the part, but that it would do no harm for her to read up Charles the Second’s reign, just in case she was engaged.
Mr Simpson drove them home very quickly, but not quickly enough for Pauline, who was longing to get at Doctor Jakes and say, ‘Tell me all about Charles the Second’s sister Henrietta.’
CHAPTER XVII
Making a Picture
AUGUST always seemed to be an unlucky month in the family, and this one found them in a worse state than usual. No one had any work, and there was none in prospect, unless Pauline was engaged to play Henrietta in the film, and that seemed a remote chance, as it was seven weeks since her test and they had heard nothing. Pauline was very worried, and would stare anxiously at herself in the glass.
‘It’s an awful thing, Nana,’ she said, ‘if my face is no good for the films, for it’s difficult to be in permanent work in the theatre, and films do pay so well.’
Nana sighed.
‘It’s very worrying,’ she agreed. ‘We were all saying when you went for your test that you ought to do well. Clara says you are cut out for it, and she ought to know, seeing the time she spends at the Pictures.’
This year there was no picnic for Petrova’s birthday. Mr and Mrs Simpson had gone to Eastbourne, and the two doctors to the cottage on the Common in Kent, where they had all been to convalesce after whooping-cough, and Theo to a dancers’ congress in Germany. Cook was away for her holiday and Clara running the house, which meant that everybody had to help a good deal. The girls loathed helping in the house, and Pauline and Petrova felt it an injustice they should be asked to in their holidays, when they had been earning the family income for months past. They grumbled and argued until Sylvia, Clara, and Nana said it was less trouble to do it themselves, and then they felt ashamed, and feeling ashamed made them more cross than ever. The truth was they were all tired, and badly in need of a change of air. On Petrova’s birthday they made their vows in the sitting-room after tea.
‘We three Fossils vow to try and put our name into history books, because it’s our very own, and nobody can say it’s because of our grandfathers, and we vow to try and earn money for Garnie until Gum comes home.’
Petrova held up her right arm.
‘We vow,’ she said.
They both looked at Posy.
‘What happened to the “Amen”?’ Posy whispered because she did not want to interrupt the vowing.
‘Go on, vow,’ Petrova hissed at her.
Posy held up her arm.
‘We vow.’
Then suddenly she burst into tears.
Pauline and Petrova stared at her.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ Pauline asked.
‘Last year you said “Amen”,’ Posy wailed, ‘and it brought us luck; we had pocket money and I went and saw the ballet; and now everything’s so miserable, and I thought if we said “Amen” again everything might come right.’
Petrova went to the window and looked out. Cromwell Road was looking hot and dusty; there was nothing to do except go for walks, because there was only just enough money for necessities. Certainly everything was miserable, and it was her birthday, which made it worse. A lump came into her throat, and before she could stop them tears began to drip off her nose.
‘Oh, for goodness sake don’t you cry too!’ Pauline gulped, for she was not feeling at all cheerful herself. ‘I still might get the film.’
The other two did not answer to that, not wanting to be unkind, but they were both sure somebody else had been engaged long ago. Instead they sobbed. Pauline looked first at one and then at the other, then suddenly she ran out of the room and slammed the door. She raced down to the drawing-room.
‘Garnie,’ she said, jumping on to the arm of the chair in which Sylvia was sitting in front of her desk, ‘can I take my money ou
t of the savings bank and buy a little tent and the three of us go and camp for a fortnight?’
‘But you can’t camp alone,’ Sylvia protested.
‘No, but we could on the common next to the doctors, because it’s free to camp, and then my money would pay for a room as well at the little inn, and you could come one week, and Nana the other; we could be fetched very quickly from there for an audition.’
‘All your savings?’ Sylvia looked worried. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘We need a holiday,’ Pauline said firmly. ‘The other two are crying.’
‘What about?’
‘Just nothing.’
‘Well, that certainly does sound like needing a holiday,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘Where’s Nana?’
‘Washing in the bathroom — shall I fetch her?’
Nana entirely approved of the idea, but she absolutely refused to have a week at the inn herself.
‘I’ll stop here, dear,’ she said to Sylvia; ‘you go down — you haven’t been away in years. I’ll go to my sister’s for a day or two when you get back.’
It was surprising how cheerful they all became the moment the holiday was decided. They sent a prepaid telegram to the doctors asking if they could book them a camp, and got a reply in an hour and a half, saying: ‘Splendid! Will arrange everything.’
The next morning Pauline applied at the post office to draw out her savings. Sylvia wanted her to take out only ten pounds as a start, but she said ‘No; she’d promise to put back anything that was over.’ They thought they would have to wait three days after that before they could buy the tent, but Clara said she had ten pounds and would lend it. In the wildest excitement they went out and bought a tent and a ground sheet, and stuff for three palliasses. They gave Nana and Sylvia the stuff, and then went out again and bought shorts and shirts. When they came in, one of the palliasses was done, and Clara and Nana were working on the other two, while Sylvia looked out suitable blankets and pillows.
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