by Pamela Brown
“I saw you sitting out on the grass this morning. You know that’s not at all a wise thing to do. Oh, no! Now a second cousin of mine who lived at Chiswick once sat on the damp grass on a Sunday, and the following Sunday we went to her funeral.” Lyn and Vicky registered interest, and hastily excused themselves to get down to the theatre for the reading.
Diana was there with her father and Mark, the leading man, looking handsome in flannels that were just too light and a tie that was just too bright. The other two girls, Chloe and Ingrid, both appearing very confident, read Tessa first. Chloe had played so many ingénues in her months at Tutworth that she made Tessa sound just like all the rest. Ingrid read it well, but appeared rather tall for the part.
“We can do it better than that!” Lyn kept whispering to Vicky, who was feeling sick with nerves. Lyn read next, and put all she knew into it. When she had finished, Diana’s father said, “Very nice.” Vicky was terribly nervous and stumbled and fluffed all over the place. She knew that she had lost all chance of playing Tessa.
“Thank you, everyone,” said Diana. “Pop and I will have a little confab about it, and we’ll put the complete cast up tomorrow morning.”
Going out of the stage door Lyn and Vicky heard Chloe say to Ingrid, “I’ve got a scream of a gym tunic to wear if I play Tessa, and if you play it, you can borrow it, if you like.”
“It’ll shake them if one of us plays it,” Vicky remarked softly. That evening it was hard to settle to anything, and they wandered aimlessly about the hotel and the park.
“Our one free evening—and we just squander it.”
It was quite a relief when they saw Terry puffing up the road towards them, his hair almost completely hiding his vague eyes.
“For goodness’ sake come down to the theatre and help me!” he implored. “The set will never be ready for dress rehearsal tomorrow.”
“My goodness,” Lyn told him. “I could paint ten sets in the time you take to do one.”
But somehow, as they splashed paint about in the courtyard behind the theatre, they were happier and thought less of tomorrow’s cast list.
Next day they were up before the ancient chambermaid had mumbled outside their door. They gulped down the watery coffee and toast, and could not stay to dissect the herrings. But when they arrived, panting, at the theatre, the cast list was still as it had been on Saturday, with the four vacant spaces.
“Let’s tidy the prop-room,” sighed Vicky. “It will pass the time.”
“There’s certainly plenty of scope for tidying!”
The prop-room, which was approached by a wooden ladder, was in a little attic built over the stage. One could look down through the cracks in the floor into the wings. Lyn and Vicky were soon covered in dust and cobwebs as they piled up old books and pictures of all descriptions. There were a few old hats, which they tried on each other, giggling and making silly faces. Lyn found a piece of paper on which was scrawled in a large, childish hand, “Progress on the stage is often crab-like, and little parts, big parts, and no parts at all must be accepted as ‘all in the day’s work’.—Ellen Terry in her memoirs.”
“Listen to this!” she cried, and read it. “I wonder who copied that out? Some previous little A.S.M., I suppose.”
“It’s a jolly good motto,” said Vicky. “I’ve been madly crab-like so far.”
They had momentarily forgotten The Constant Nymph, when Chloe’s voice floated up through the floor-boards.
“Well, I’ll be blowed! Ingrid, come here! The cast list has gone up, and—that Lynette is playing Tessa.”
“Lynette!” Ingrid’s voice chimed in. “Why, it’s crazy! That kid has never played a really long role in her life. She’ll never do it.”
“Oh, won’t I, Miss Pettinger!” Lyn breathed softly.
“And the other one is playing Paulina. Oh, it’s too awful!”
“What am I playing?” demanded Ingrid from her dressing-room.
“Kate.”
“Oh, bother! She’s an awful drear! And you’re playing Antonia?”
“Yes. It’s a nice little part, even if it is short.”
“But you ought to be playing Tessa.”
“I know. I was engaged to play ingénues—and if Tessa isn’t an ingénue—what is?” Their voices merged into discontented mumblings.
“So it’s like that, is it?” said Vicky, turning to Lyn with a pale face. “Oh, whatever shall we do, Lyn?”
“Do? Our best, of course. We can’t do any more. I suppose we should feel the same if someone younger and less experienced than us took our opportunities.”
It was hard to concentrate on the dress rehearsal of The Wild Duck, and Lyn and Vicky missed “noises off” and lighting cues.
“If it’s bad this week, it will be worse next week, when we’re all three playing,” seethed Jean, and ranted on about the inefficiency of A.S.M.s, the bad policy of the theatre, and the poor salaries. But the first performance that evening went off with as much ease as was possible, after the brief week’s rehearsal.
“And this time next week,” Lyn whispered to Vicky, “we shall have made our first professional appearance.”
“Oh, gosh, I shall never learn Tessa in a week, and all the stage management, too.”
“Don’t worry,” Vicky said valiantly. “I’ve got piles less to learn than you, so you needn’t bother about the stage management. I’ll cope all right.”
“Thanks, ducky. Oh, how I wish I’d got a whole term to study it in! And to think that at the Academy, with all the time in the world, we usually only have one scene of a play each!”
“I’m dreading the first rehearsal tomorrow, aren’t you?” said Vicky. “Though you read all right. My tongue never seems to do what I want it to.”
Next day at the reading everything seemed to go at a terrific speed, and very often they had not enough time to write in their moves in pencil on the battered scripts. Mark was playing Lewis Dodd, and seemed affronted at having to play opposite a mere A.S.M. He sighed heavily whenever she stopped to make sure of any certain point with Diana, and tapped his cigarette testily on his elegant gold cigarette case. Chloe and Ingrid didn’t seem to take the rehearsal at all seriously, and clowned about until everyone got the giggles, including Diana. But Lyn and Vicky were too harassed and anxious to join in.
“Don’t worry, dear,” Diana said kindly to Lyn afterwards. “You’re going to be quite all right. I’ll try to get in some extra rehearsal for you and Mark.”
“And won’t Mark love that!” thought Lynette.
After the evening performance Lyn and Vicky took their sandwiches home and ate them in bed as they learned their first-act lines ready for rehearsal next day. It was past two by the time they could reel them off.
“Like parrots!” said Lynette bitterly. “Oh, it’s a wicked system! I take my hat off to all the poor wretches who’ve been playing big parts in rep. week in and week out.”
There was hardly time to write to the Blue Doors to tell them of her piece of luck. By Friday Lynette felt that she had her lines, but knew that she was going through her part like a puppet. By this time Chloe and Ingrid, and even the character woman, appeared to be thoroughly bored by the play, and were constantly chatting in corners, and missing entrances. Vicky was always being sent off on errands concerning the stage management, and missing rehearsal of her scenes. On Saturday night, after taking down the set, they returned home almost demented.
“I’ve not even thought about clothes for Monday night,” wailed Lynette. “Oh, thank heavens it’s Sunday tomorrow!”
“I should sleep late if I were you,” advised Vicky. “You’re not rehearsing until the afternoon.”
The question of sleep had now become of the utmost importance, and they found themselves snatching snoozes in odd corners of the theatre whenever they had the chance.
As Lynette entered the theatre on Sunday she heard Diana saying sharply to Mark, “So I do think you might be a bit more charitable towards the child
. She may be inexperienced, but I can tell you this—she’s a harder worker than you’ll ever be in a thousand years!” Lyn crept out and came in again a few minutes later, singing loudly to warn them of her approach.
“You sound happy!” Diana laughed. “Come on, let’s get cracking.” Diana’s little lecture must have done Mark some good, for he was quite helpful and pleasant, and in the absence of the rest of the company Diana had more time to go into the psychology of the play. Lynette began gradually to feel the exalting “larger than life” feeling that she recognized from the unselfconscious days of the Blue Door Theatre. But Mark was all wrong for Lewis Dodd. He played it as a matinee idol, instead of a dream-ridden, aesthetic musician. “But still,” thought Lynette, “all the women in the audience will be crazy about him. They won’t know that he plucks his eyebrows and that when Vicky and I are nearly killing ourselves sweeping the stage he complains of the dust!”
That evening Lynette, Vicky, Terry, and the character woman went out on the river. It was a warm, still evening, and they lazed back on the cushions, just drifting, pretending to go over their lines, and the elderly actress gave Lynette some last-minute tips from her considerable store of theatrical wisdom, that had only taken her as far as the Pavilion, Tutworth Wells.
“Pick your cues up more quickly, dear. In what is supposed to be normal conversation, it’s always the sign of an amateur when there’s even a split second’s pause before someone speaks. And you could play Tessa as a little bit younger. I know you’re about the right age to begin with, but the important thing about Tessa is her youth, so you can afford to accentuate it.”
That night Lynette slept badly. For a long time she tossed and turned in the heat of the low-ceilinged attic, going over and over her lines. And even when she finally fell asleep it was only to dream that on the first night of Constant Nymph she found that she had learned the wrong play altogether. Then she and Mark were in a little rowing boat trying to row up Tutworth Wells High Street to the Pavilion in time for the show, but all the old ladies from the hotel kept crossing the road in front of them so that they had to slow down.
She woke with a sense of foreboding. At breakfast “Hepzibah” came up to her and said, “I’m coming to your first night tonight. I hear it’s a very nice little play.”
“Er—I hope you’ll like it,” Lyn said doubtfully.
“I wonder,” the old dame pursued, “whether you would accept this little trinket to bring you good luck.” She handed Lynette a tiny silver charm representing a Cornish pisky. “It belonged to a very dear aunt of mine, who died of food poisoning some twenty years ago.”
“Thank you so much. It’s sweet of you. We must fly.”
“I hope it brings you better luck than it brought her very dear aunt,” giggled Vicky, as, loaded with their clothes for the show and shiny tin grease-paint boxes, they made their way to the theatre.
The dress rehearsal could not have been worse. As it was such a large cast they had had to call in several amateurs to play tiny roles, and they seemed to be under everybody’s feet all the time. No-one seemed to know any lines, and the set was still having last minute touches added, so that people got paint all over their costumes.
“I wish,” Mark said sourly to Lynette, “that you would not cling round my neck quite so tightly. I can’t get my lines out.”
“But she would—she would,” cried Lynette. “Don’t you see she would?”
“I only know that my face is completely screened from the audience, and that you have wiped your grease-paint all over my clean shirt. Don’t they teach you anything at that Academy?” This was the cruellest taunt of all, and Lynette shed a few tears in the toilet. Vicky called her excitedly when the rehearsal was over.
“There are tons of telegrams for you.” There were six: two quite normal ones that said, “Best of luck for tonight—Love, Mummy and Daddy”, and “Trembling for you, but know you’ll be terrific—Love, Maddy and Sandra”, and four crazy ones, one saying, “Up, Guards, and at them”, signed “D. Wellington”, another, “Madly envious, darling”, which was signed “G. Garbo”, and one supposedly from Pojo, Maddy’s little dog, saying, “Thinking of you with sympathetic growls”, and one which terrified Lynette, that said, “Coming to see your show, dear girly—Mrs. Potter-Smith”.
“Oh, Vicky,” gasped Lynette. “That awful Fenchester hag.”
“It’s only one of the boys being clever,” Vicky pointed out. “Look! It’s been sent from Nottingham. That’s where their tour is this week.”
“Oh, gosh! It gave me quite a shock.”
“Come on. We must dash back to the hotel if we want to eat.”
“Eat!” cried Lyn. “I couldn’t!”
“But you must!” insisted Vicky, and dragged her back to the hotel, where in the deserted dining-room a sort of high tea was always provided for them at six o’clock.
“If only I’d had more rehearsal!” mourned Lynette. “I’m going on when I’ve only reached the state one should be in about a week before the first night. Oh, thank goodness, no-one from the Academy will see me!”
On the way back to the theatre Lynette wished with all her heart that she was merely to stage-manage that night’s show. As they approached the Pavilion some children of a family who were walking along behind them whispered loudly, “I wonder if those two are in it this week?” and their parents replied, “Well, you’ll soon see tonight, won’t you?” And it was with a certain sense of pride that Lyn and Vicky entered through the shabby stage door of the Pavilion.
Lyn insisted on helping with the dusting and sweeping of the stage and the last-minute oddments. Diana, entering the theatre, remarked, “Well, I’m glad to see that you haven’t gone all ‘leading lady’ on us. But you’d better get your make-up on—not much, remember. You want to look rather pale.”
Lyn and Vicky were in the same dressing-room as Chloe and Ingrid.
“I wish this charade were over!” Chloe grumbled.
“Oh, so do I!” Lyn was the first to agree.
She looked at her terrified reflection in the mirror—two enormous eyes, and very little else. She had pinned up her telegrams, and the Cornish pisky sat in the tray of her make-up box. Vicky kept dashing off to call the time, but would not let Lyn take her turn.
“Save your voice,” she said. “You’re going to need it.”
Diana looked in to tell them that the theatre was packed, and the “house full” board up already.
“Let’s tell them the plot and give them their money back,” suggested Lyn.
“You’ll be all right,” Diana told her. “I have perfect confidence in you.” Terry slipped round to wish her luck, and Chloe and Ingrid did the same, but the naked envy in their eyes embarrassed her.
When Vicky called the five minutes, Lyn tried to start “thinking herself into the part” but could not concentrate, so she went on to the stage and listened to the overture on the panatrope, and the mumble of the audience on the other side of the curtain, as she wandered round the stage rearranging cushions and ornaments. Then Jean yelled, “Beginners, please!”
She went and stood in the wings—shivering in her simple gingham dress, although the evening was warm. She and Vicky had to enter together after the first five minutes or so of the play. They stood hand in hand, great shivers shaking them from head to foot.
“We’ve got to be cheerful!” Lynette whispered sepulchrally.
“And young,” added Vicky shakily.
“And carefree—carefree of all things.” Their cue approached ever nearer. There was no escaping it.
“I can’t!” whispered Vicky.
Then it came, and they ran, laughing, on to the stage.
7
INDIAN SUMMER
The first act was a trifle wobbly, there was no denying it. It contained so many entrances and exits and meals and even some operetta singing. All the week Lyn had been terrified of the little song that she had to sing, but tonight it came out without a false note. For the fir
st time since they had started rehearsing the story felt real, and her discovery of the death of her father brought down the curtain of the first scene to loud applause, the audience having completely forgotten that there had been two rather loud prompts, and that Mark’s spectacles had fallen off and been trodden on. During the interval Vicky, in her little short dress and hair in pigtails, scurried about like a mad thing, refusing to let Lyn help. By this time Lynette was as happy as a sandboy. She knew she was doing well, and realized that she was at last playing a part that had been on her little list for a long time.
The second act went off without a hitch with an inspiring hush of attention from the audience. Even Mark seemed to be enjoying himself, and actually deigned to offer a Lyn a cigarette between the second and third acts. The third act contained some difficult scene changes, and for these it was “all hands on deck” to get it done quickly. Jean was playing the part of the lodging-house keeper in the last scene, and this she did so well that Lyn wondered why she ever bothered to slave away as a stage manager when she was such a competent actress. By this time Lynette was exhausted by the mental strain and physical effort of the part, and was pale as death without the help of make-up. She wore a white petticoat during most of the scene, and this had a curiously shroud-like effect. At the end of the scene, as she died upon the ugly iron bedstead, there was a flutter of handkerchiefs among the audience and a clearing of throats.
“Tessa’s got away. She’s safe. She’s dead!” Mark cried in an effectively strangled voice, and then the curtain fell.
“Are you all right?” Mark asked anxiously. Lyn sat up and blinked.
“Er—yes, I think so.”
“You look so awful. You quite worried me.”
As she slipped her coat on to take the curtain everyone crowded round and whispered, “Jolly fine” before lining up to bow to the enthusiastic audience. Lyn was too tired to think consciously that this was her first professional appearance safely over, but Vicky was simply glowing with achievement. In the bottom of her mind had been the faint fear that the audience might boo or hiss her, but no-one had seemed to notice anything odd in her performance of the small part of Paulina. She had even got a few laughs. Diana hurried round to the dressing-room with some notes she had made during the performance, and a lot of praise.
