by Pamela Brown
“It’s all right for you, Lyn,” Vicky grumbled. “You can take it.”
“What are you, duck?” Mrs. Bertram turned to Vicky. “Oh, you’re the angel, aren’t you? Oh, well, you can have some hair if you like. I should think Mr. Whitfield would allow it.”
The colour scheme of the whole show was almost entirely in varying shades of blue, white, and gold, which gave the effect of a medieval illumination. Bulldog surveyed his short centurion’s tunic with disgust.
“Why do I always have to wear skirts on the stage? And with my knees.”
“And I seem fated to wear crêpe hair,” joined in Nigel. “Face fungus all the time—whatever the show.”
Vicky made a lovely angel in gilt robes and enormous feathery wings made of cotton wool stuck on to a wire-and-paper frame. And Jeremy in his toga and laurel wreath looked an extremely patrician Roman.
All the staff of the Academy and a few friends came to the dress rehearsal, and in spite of many hitches enjoyed it tremendously. Bulldog, as usual, struck several people as being rather funny. “But never mind,” said Nigel comfortingly. “A year ago if you’d appeared in that kilt arrangement you’d have stopped the show.”
That night they had to pack away their costumes and properties into large hampers, called skeps, ready for their journey next day. They were starting off the tour in the Lake District, and were to travel in their own bus.
The two girls had bought their first pairs of slacks especially for the tour, and felt very daring as they put them on next day. The boys, of course, expressed conventional disgust.
“What would you say if we turned up in skirts?”
“Well, Bulldog, you can hardly talk, can you?”
“But I don’t wear mine for fun.”
“Nor do we—we wear them for comfort and warmth while travelling.”
Mrs. Bosham greeted the slacks with her usual amazement.
“Well, I’m blessed! Natty, eh! Bye-bye, dears. (Knit two together, slip one.) See you next term.”
It was a bright spring morning as they carried their cases to the Academy. Outside the lion gateway stood a shiny red omnibus.
“Oh, what a beauty!” cried Bulldog. “Gosh, I’d like a chance to drive that—”
“Let’s get in quickly and bag good seats.”
They had parked themselves in front seats, and Bulldog was examining the brake and gear levers, when Mr. Whitfield appeared in the doorway of the Academy.
“Come on, you slackers!” he cried. “There’s a lot of loading to be done.”
Gaily they carried out the heavy skeps and scenery. Even their own footlights were taken along, as they would be playing on very rough stages.
At last they were all aboard, and the luggage had been checked. Roma Seymore appeared on the steps and waved her handkerchief.
“Bon voyage!” she cried. “Give my love to the Lake District.”
The driver, a fat little man called Sam, started up the engine, and they were off. London slipped by them, streets and streets of shops and houses and cinemas. Soon all this fell behind and they seemed to smell the country air.
Everyone had brought enormous supplies of food, and as they munched apples and cake they came to the conclusion that touring was good fun.
“I’m glad I’m on the stage!” announced Bulldog. “How awful it would be to be a plumber—or a—an undertaker.”
“You wouldn’t be much of a success as either,” mocked Nigel. “The stage is always the last resort of someone who has slight artistic tendencies, but can’t sing, dance, paint, or write.”
“Look who’s talking! And how dare you say I can’t dance? I’m a riot in the ballet class, aren’t I, girls?”
“Riot is the correct word, especially when you kicked poor old Madame in the tummy when she was showing you how to lift.”
At midday they stretched their cramped limbs, and had lunch at a country pub called “The Deerstalkers” with a crowd of villagers watching their every movement.
“Must be some o’ they circus folk,” Jeremy was amused to overhear. Bulldog greeted this with delight, and immediately ran out to the bus and chalked “Whitfield’s Circus” in large letters across the side. Mr. Whitfield unbent considerably over lunch and told them stories of his early days in the theatre, and of all the famous actors and actresses with whom he had worked.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Lynette. “Why aren’t there any great personalities like that in the theatre today?”
“Well, if there aren’t,” laughed Mr. Whitfield, “it leaves all the more scope for your generation to create them, doesn’t it?”
Back in the bus they sang choruses as the green countryside sped by. Sam, the driver, taught them a lugubrious little ditty, the chorus of which went:
Boom-boom, boom-boom,
Boom-boom, boom-boom,
Y-es, you’re going to die.
And they yelled it joyfully.
“Where are we staying tonight, Mr. Whitfield?” Lyn inquired.
“At a Youth Hostel near Windermere. I believe it’s a very lovely old house. You’ll stay sometimes in Youth Hostels, sometimes in hotels, sometimes in digs. The local education people are arranging all that.”
The country became gradually more wild and beautiful, and they were soon “ooh-ing” and “ah-ing” out of the windows at torrential waterfalls, looming hills, and stretches of clear, silvery lake.
“And to think,” said Vicky, “that we’re being paid to do this!”
“You wait!” laughed Mr. Whitfield. “You’ll be playing twice daily after tomorrow, and only one-night stands, so it won’t be quite such a picnic as today has been.”
“But it’ll be fun to be doing the show,” said Lyn almost indignantly. Mr. Whitfield laughed at their enthusiasm.
By the time they reached Windermere, dusk was creeping on and they were tired and silent.
“I didn’t know sitting still all day could be so tiring,” sighed Vicky. “I feel as if I’d done hours and hours of ballet practice.”
“This looks like the place!” cried Mr. Whitfield, as they neared a large grey stone house among some dark trees, with a Youth Hostel sign on the gate-post.
After an enormous meal in an airy, white-washed room, they sat round the wood fire and made an effort at a word rehearsal, and then retired to bed.
“Now no midnight feasts or anything,” warned Mr. Whitfield. “I know you’re in dormitories, but please don’t go all fifth form about it.” But in spite of this, on the landing at some minutes past midnight there was a violent battle with pillows, girls versus boys. And if the Matron of the hostel heard the muffled yelps and laughter and thud of pillows she turned a deaf and kindly ear.
Next day dawned clear and warm, and over breakfast they made the discovery that they could see the lake at the bottom of the garden.
“Dear Mr. Whitfield, please may we go on the lake this morning?”
“By all means, but don’t (a) fall in, (b) be late for lunch, or (c) catch colds.”
Soon an armada of little boats set out across the smooth surface of the lake.
“Yo-o-heave-ho!” sang Bulldog, very flat, catching crabs with both oars at the same time.
“Thank goodness Maddy isn’t here! She’d be sure to fall in,” said Jeremy, stretched out in the stern.
“Oh, isn’t it heavenly!” Lyn cried, posing in the bows, knowing that she made a good picture in a red jumper, with the wind streaming her dark hair out behind her. Bulldog caught a particularly large crab, and it was Lynette who nearly went overboard. They had boat races, they towed each other, and drank fizzy lemonade, purchased at the boat-house. By lunch-time they were at the opposite side of the lake.
“Heavens!” cried Vicky, “and the call is at two.”
Everybody took an oar, and they skimmed back across the lake, panting with the effort, only to find that Mr. Whitfield was still on the lake with the Matron. When he arrived he said, “Let’s start prompt at two. It’s not a very long journey,
but I should like to have a little run-through before the show. We go up at five, and afterwards there’s a long journey to where we stay the night.”
The bus stopped at a tiny village hall right among the hills.
“But wherever will the audience come from?” they asked, dismayed. “There aren’t any houses.”
“They’ll be pupils from the school over there—children who live on farms scattered all round here.”
It was a tiny stage with holes in the floor-boards, and it needed all the initiative of the stage management, plus assistance from Nigel and Bulldog, to get it into shape for the show. Everyone was so busy fetching and carrying, ironing dresses, and making-up that all forgot to be nervous. The hall began to fill up with children whose shouting and screaming penetrated to the tiny dressing-rooms where the students were struggling into their Biblical costumes.
“Hark at the lions roaring for their prey,” remarked Lynette.
“They’re only excited,” Vicky said in her best motherly voice.
“Little dears!” said Lyn sarcastically, smoothing on an olive foundation.
“Five minutes, please,” shouted the assistant stage manager, diving hastily into her costume.
When the curtain went up there were loud cries of “Sh!” from the teachers, but the children, who seemed never to have seen a play before, still chattered quite audibly. Soon, however, they became immersed in the adventures of the centurion’s little daughter, at the first Easter time. They were completely natural in their reactions and booed the entrances of Judas and Pontius Pilate, as if they were at the cinema. It all reminded Lyn of the old days in the little Blue Door Theatre, when they had sometimes given shows for the Sunday School children, and she completely forgot the anxieties of technique that had troubled her all the term. She let herself go and thoroughly enjoyed the performance, stimulated as she entered by the loud whisper from a little girl in the front row, “Don’t she look lovely, eh?” Afterwards, when the children had cheered their heads off, Lyn turned to Vicky.
“Wasn’t that fun!” she said. “For the first time in months I couldn’t have cared less what my diaphragm was doing, and I’m sure it was working properly.”
“Mr. Whitfield says I look too much like a pantomime fairy,” said Vicky. “I’ll have to cut out the gold dust on my hair.”
“Hurry up and get your make-up off, and come across to the schoolroom. There’s a meal for us,” Mr. Whitfield shouted. “We’ll pack up afterwards.”
They suddenly realized they were hungry, and slammed on the removing cream. As they went to the schoolroom they were waylaid in the streets by nearly all the audience, clamouring for autographs. It gave them a wonderful illusion of being professionals as they signed their names with appropriate flourishes.
“Never seed a play before,” one adenoidal child said to Lynette. “Enjoyed it ever so. Think I’ll be a nactress.”
It was on the tip of Lynette’s tongue to say, “I should get those adenoids seen to first,” but remembering how kindly she had been treated by Felicity Warren, the actress, when begging an autograph, she smiled and said, “Well, dear, I wish you luck.”
The meal in the schoolroom was delicious. It consisted of jugged hare and home-made apple pie with clotted cream. The teachers all expressed their joy at seeing a play in this out-of-the-way corner of the Lake District, and it was after nine before “Whitfield’s Circus” could drag themselves away to load up the bus and depart. At eleven o’clock they were still speeding through the dark country lanes.
“This,” said Bulldog, “is going to become a little wearing after five weeks, don’t you think?”
“It’s a very good thing for you,” said Mr. Whitfield, overhearing. “Your first tour being rough and ready—a ‘fit-up’ as we call it in the theatre—will make you appreciate the moderate comfort of an ordinary commercial tour playing the provincial theatres. Some of the best actors have started their careers in ‘fit-ups’ doing one-night stands. It will teach you that acting isn’t all long psychological discussions on what Ibsen really meant, and chocolate cakes at Raddler’s.”
They laughed at this description of Academy life, and Lyn said quietly to Vicky, “I’m going to enjoy every minute of it!”
And so she did—for the first three weeks. The country through which they travelled was delightful in these early days of spring, and they stayed in pleasant old inns with oak beams and no hot water. But the late hours, night after night, two shows at different places during the day, and the loading and unloading began to tell on their inexperience. Gradually the days seemed to merge into one another. On waking in the mornings they could not remember in which town or village they were. Their mail from home seemed to have lost touch with them, and all contact with the outside world was gone. There was only the show, the same nineteen other students, and, every day, two different halls filled with children who all seemed to have the same faces and to make the same noises as on the previous day. At the meals they were given after the performances they tired of the same polite conversation of school teachers and local education committees.
“I shall pin a label on me,” sighed Lyn wearily, “saying ‘Yes, I’m enjoying the tour. No, I don’t know where we’re playing next. Yes, I think the country is lovely.’”
“I shall put on mine, ‘Tea—strong, plenty of sugar, plenty to eat, and leave me alone, please,’” growled Bulldog. “What do you think that hearty old dame asked me just now? Didn’t I think that country dancing was jolly good fun!”
“What did you reply?” laughed Nigel. “‘Madam, I am dedicated to the ballet’?”
Windermere, Ullswater, Keswick, and on up to the Border—halls where the stoves smoked, halls where they wouldn’t light at all. Halls where the curtains stuck, halls where there were no curtains. Audiences of twenty or thirty, audiences where the auditorium seemed jammed to the ceiling. Sumptuous spreads of country fare or watery tea and digestive biscuits. Hard, narrow hostel beds, voluminous feathery mattresses in country pubs. Digs where they could not understand the dialect of the cottagers, hospitality in the mayor’s house, where their host dressed for dinner. There was constant change, and yet a sameness. The students all became so well acquainted that before it was made, they knew each other’s every remark and gesture. There were little feuds, and days when some people were “not speaking”, but usually the need to do the show well bound them together. Once or twice there were accounts of the show in the little country papers, and Lynette was always praised enthusiastically.
“The Much-Stooging-in-the-Mud Courier approves of you, my child,” laughed Nigel, “so what more can you want? Next stop—the West End.”
The days got warmer and they ran about in slacks and jumpers, and paddled in streams wherever they got the chance. The Academy seemed far away and forgotten, so that it came as a surprise one day to see Mr. Whitfield making out the form lists for the following term. Lyn, peering discreetly over his shoulder, noted that she and the other five had all moved up one class.
“How lovely not to be a beginner!” she thought.
“Only another week,” Mr. Whitfield reminded them, “so make the most of this vagabond life.”
But by this time they were too tired to rise early in the mornings to explore each new neighbourhood. The Blue Doors worked out a rota for taking up the others’ breakfasts in bed in the morning, so that only one need get up for it. Mr. Whitfield tried to keep the journeys short, but Sam often lost his way in the unfamiliar lanes, and they rarely reached home before midnight.
At the last performance it seemed hard to realize that they would never again say the words that had become so familiar to them. To combat the feeling of slight dismay that this caused they were inclined to clown somewhat. Bulldog appeared wearing Nigel’s beard, which dissolved Lynette into helpless giggles, and the school children were quite convinced that the centurion was meant to be a comic character.
When the curtain fell the Director of Education made a speech. Mr. Wh
itfield replied, and there was a little bunch of violets for each of the girls, and bars of chocolate for the boys.
“I shall press these,” said Lynette, sniffing the fragrant little bunch. “My first bouquet!”
“I shan’t keep mine!” said Bulldog, scoffing his chocolate at one go.
That night they sat over cups of cocoa in a youth hostel.
“You’ve all done very good work,” Mr. Whitfield told them. “You’ve had a tough time and stuck it very well. I hope to take you all out on tour again before you leave me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Whitfield,” said the stage manager, “for looking after us so nicely.”
On the long journey back next day thoughts had already turned to the coming term.
“I wonder if I’ve moved up?”
“I wonder what show we’ll do?”
“I wonder if old So-and-so is coming back?”
Soon the greenery disappeared. They saw the first tube station, the first red omnibus, the first dumpy taxi, and London engulfed them once more.
4
DANCING IN THE SQUARE
No sooner had they stepped inside the murky hall of No. 37 than the telephone shrilled. It was fixed on the wall between a large photo of the late Mr. Bosham and the head of a melancholy-looking horned animal that the late Mr. Bosham claimed to have shot. When the phone was answered they both seemed to peer down in a wistful manner, as if wondering why nobody ever rang for them. The Blue Doors all leaped to answer this ring, and Nigel got there first. Sandra’s voice came from a long way off.
“Don’t say you’ve come back at last! I’ve been ringing you for days. Have you got my letters?”
