The Playwright and the Actress

by ENID BAGNOLD

IT WAS easy enough to write down what he intended to do. To write that his “man,” his “character,” roughly, was himself. Therefore had all the well-known disabilities, hungers, defeats, vanities — love of this, love of that. Baron had a broad idea for his play. It was to be a home for himself. But either he couldn’t get into it, or when in, it wouldn’t fit round him. And when he actually got down to work, the thing “passed over.” He was writing about a man. But a woman took over the interest. She was to have been his protagonist in the play and started out with a feeble silhouette. Then, suddenly, all the replies were in her mouth. She said the things he had been going to say. He saw that that was natural. She did the transposition: she effected the telescoping: she made it easy for him to speak: because she wasn’t himself. So, being intelligent., he let her have her way. It didn’t matter much to him who held the baby (his nature, his own difficulties). But it mattered to the plot.

The thing had to be rearranged, poked about, threaded, rethreaded, truncated, cut, halved, doubled. In the end it was a funny sort of play. It took him two years, but he thought he’d got himself into it. He thought it was himself. He had a dust-covered mirror near his shoulder on the wall. He turned his face and looked into it. Thin, brown-grayish hair rumpled up. Looked like a man who has just got out of bed. “I’m dying,” he said. But he only meant that there it was — ahead. Two tired eyes were in the mirror, and the dust on the glass didn’t help. Mouth shut too tight, and a flow of wrinkles running round the corners and back down the jaw. That was those false teeth that kept sinking in too low and shortening up his face. This sort of thing happened to everyone. And he’d got himself pinned into the play first, before the children put up the tombstone! Under the guise of a woman. All the better. The children wouldn’t recognize it.

That Denis should be a theatrical critic! Ho didn’t know whether it made him laugh when he thought of it. Cold young face, steely eyes, a lock of black hair falling about, and a pen . . . well Denis knew something about the theatre, and he could write. But he erred on the side of vitriol, like all these high-brow young men. You’d think Denis could write a play himself that would make the town sit up! Baron never said anything like that. He said, “You’ve toasted ‘em again, Denis, I see.” And Denis would say, “Serve ‘em right.” So of course Baron had hidden the fact that he was spending years playwriting himself.

He passed his day at the top of the house in his workroom. It was comfortable. It had the heating pipes running round it, and a small door opened onto a patch of lead roof. You could see miles across London. Nobody was allowed to dust the room: he kept the key in his pocket. The room was respected, taken without question. From it issued the upkeep of the family life: the double column on Sunday (seven hundred a year: sevenfifty promised in the New Year), a column in a couple of weeklies, a regular contribution to America, and lately one to France as well. For a journalist he’d made a proper living for a proper family. Left a widower sixteen years ago he’d set his teeth over Denis and Teresa.

On Saturday nights they always went with him to the theatre. Perhaps that was what had made a critic out of Denis. It had been for years the end-of-the-week treat. They didn t know, of course, that Baron was stage-struck. They took it for granted that he was gayer than usual after tea on Saturdays, popping out a cork for the supper when they came in, decanting burgundy if he had it, or putting a bottle of Chablis to cool in a basin. Saturday night the tropical plant began to grow in him, sea anemones waving. He might be tired, but he’d throw it all off . . - Saturday night . . . stage mania. He’d always had it. Perhaps some sort of frustration but why analyze it? He’d never wanted to be an actor and what a lucky thing he hadn’t been . . . with the children. But he’d wanted to write a play since he was fourteen. And now he’d written one.

At first it had been snatches of talk put down at odd moments, talk on the same lines, curiously and luckily tending to the same end. A stream of thought in him that every now and then bulged and went down onto paper. When it all added up there were the people, the characters, but there wasn’t much plot. He struggled over that. Slowly — it was like bending basket work — a shape began to show. Directly it really showed he got his central man in and the man was as dull as ditchwater. Hazy, legless, pompous fellow. That was just when he heard the woman talking. She was almost speaking aloud. At first he was distressed: it threw everything out. She came more and more alive and she wasn’t wanted. Then, suddenly, one day he allowed her to exist. He was prepared to mow everything down for her, undertake the labor of reconstruction, tear his basket to pieces. For she was himself. She knew all the hard corners, she had a voice (a level of talking) deep enough to carry all he wanted to say. She wasn’t young, not dainty, but jovial, knowing, tough, gay, a card, and — just for fun, to cover her up so that the children wouldn’t know — he handed her beauty as well. Then the plot began to gather — directly she had beauty. She tumbled into situations (owing to this beauty), situations from which she got out again because she had what was himself, had that cork-like life, that resilience, that rueful grin. When anything happened to her it was himself, Baron, that got pinched, and cried out, and got free and shook himself and laughed.

So his character was first-rate. Maybo his play was bad. That had to be seen. lie wished it wasn’t inevitable about Denis knowing.

2

IT WAS a long time before he sent it anywhere. He wasn’t in a hurry to test his talent. Ho typed it out himself, scene by scene, and in the typing things grew, he popped in bits, — sometimes they were good bits. Nobody had the slightest idea. Out came the Sunday political arliclc, and the other articles, short and long, competent, sometimes brilliant, sometimes just a trifle dull, but so far, thank God, what his editors wanted. Saturday nights he went to the theatre. He took Tess now more often alone* Denis had to go during the week for his paper. Baron didn’t secretly like going with Denis as much as he used to. He shrank from the sharp acid poured over the box of puppets. Most Saturday nights lie said to himself, “Mine’s better than that!” Some Saturdays he was crumpled up with envy and despair.

All that was three years ago. The play was refused by every manager in London. Somehow Denis hadn’t got wind of it. Or if he had (Baron sometimes wondered) he had the delicacy not to appear to know it. On the whole he probably didn’t know. There was no reason why he should. He wasn’t in with managers or actors, or anyone likely to talk. The typescript just came traveling back through the post. For two years Baron didn’t lose heart. He went on touching up the play. The woman started to talk some more: and whatever she said was so like Baron he knew it was his heart talking. The play got so full of her talk he began to cut out some of the earlier things: and ha knew he’d improved it.

For two years he thought it was a good play; he was sure. After two years he began to lose spirit. At the same time he grew a little tired of his journalistic writing. He had taken it in his stride all his life and he was the first man to turn to for this sort of political summing up. But he fell there might soon come a time when this work would sour on him. Every penny ite ever earned went into this largish house and the children. Denis couldn’t live yet on his critical writing and Teresa had still Oxford in front of her.

He stopped sending out the play. There was hardly anyone left to send it out to. The play stayed in the drawer, and even the Saturday night theatre began to slow down. Teresa wasn’t so keen as she used to be, and she began to know young men who wanted to take her now. But Baron missed the theatre. Saturday night came round like a birthday that nobody had remembered.

So then it happened that a man came up to him at his club one day and said, “I’ve road your play, Baron. A play of yours.” Baron nearly said, “Which one?” He only said, “Oh . . .”

The man said, “I hope you didn’t mind my reading it. It was at a week-end. Rogers had it. He was reading it for Tenents. I took it off him for the night. Last year . . .”

Baron prayed the man wouldn’t say what he thought of it. He didn’t know who he was, and he had a foxy face that didn’t look as though it had any values. The subject was delicate and painful. Baron, stout, indefinably grubby as usual, was wincing down his skin under his vest.

The man said, “I couldn’t forget it.” Baron reflected you never knew men from their faces. The man’s red-rimmed eyes glittered behind his pince-nez. He had a long nose and a lipless mouth folded away.

“My name’s Haslett,” said the man. “Let’s sit down.” They found a couple of chairs.

“I don’t know what you’re doing with it,” said Haslett. “Perhaps you’re not doing anything with it . . . just yet?” He looked inquiring.

“Nobody seems to want it,” said Baron easily (but not so easily).

“I do a bit of producing,” said Haslett. Baron’s heart stood still. “Practically amateur,” said Haslett.

“Where?”

“In Chester. We’ve got a Club.” He hesitated. “It’s my wife’s show really. It’s her show.” And then, suddenly, unrelatedly, “I used to be a doctor.” He looked at Baron. “I don’t suppose you’d consider it,” be said. “Amateur, I mean. No financial gain, and not any gain of any kind, really. Except, of course, you’d see it put on.”

“I’d see it put on,” said Baron, echoing him.

Haslett warmed up a bit. “Sometimes plays come to London in odd ways,” he said. “Here’s yours. Lying fallow, I suppose. It has a part that my wife . . . I’m really asking you from her. Though I’m keen myself. Very keen myself.” He talked on. “There are chances. Elliott lives outside Chester. He’s got the Adam Theatre in the Aldwych, and on a Saturday night, if he happened to be up from London on a week-end we might. . . . We’d get him to come in.”

“We’re a Club,” he went on. “A membership Club, The members pay ten shillings. We get a hall, free, from the Town Council three times a year. So we put on three plays for that reason. Nobody’s paid. The seats are a few shillings, and the membership money just covers the scenery. We rehearse at my house.”

Baron said Haslett could have the play.

He walked slowly home and went up to his dusty workroom, went out. and stood upon the leads. The lights of London were broken by a little rain. He put his square hot hands on the wet coping of the small roof below him. He could have laughed with tenderness and pity for himself. Denis and Teresa were both in to dinner that night. There was one bottle of port in the cellar. Baron got it out.

“What’s this,” said Teresa. “A birthday?”

“No,” said Baron. “No, no. Nothing like that.” He poured them their glasses and sat down to drink his own.

3

IT WAS June then. Baron had to wait till October. Even an amateur company provides that heartbreak. “We’re ready,” wrote Haslett at last, “if you’d like to come up for the Reading.”

Baron climbed into the train at King’s Cross. Teresa had brushed him but he never looked clean. He took a first-class ticket to make up for the amateur company. He had his rug and his small bag and a copy of the play. Haslett had offered to put him up for the night. Baron knew that would be a mistake. He had taken a room at the railway hotel. He opened his play in the train. Then he closed it again and put it back in his bag. He hadn’t read it for more than a year. “Better have it fresh on my ears at the Reading,” he thought. He watched the scenery. The rain beat on the windows. Gradually the slag heaps raised their triangles. Suddenly he knew he was growing excited.

Haslett had a taxi waiting for him. Baron smelled the wet on trees and saw the lit porch, door open ready for him. Haslett, very much the host, waiting. Baron went on and in.

“Sherry?” said Haslett. “Or gin?”

“Sherry,” said Baron, feeling suddenly his defeat. He drank the sherry alone with Haslett in the lounge-hall. Perhaps no one had come?

Haslett opened the doors into the drawing room.

Ay, aiee, aiee . . . eleven pairs of eyes! The fire burned in a copper grate. “Here we have our author!” said Haslett. Baron shook hands with several of them. His nose tickled. He sneezed.

“My wife’s on the telephone,” said Haslett. “She’ll be here in a minute.”

“We’re very proud to do your play, Mr. Baron,” said a thin girl sitting near.

“Here’s my wife!” said Haslett suddenly. Mrs. Haslett came hurrying into the room, her handkerchief to her nose. Everyone seemed to have a cold tonight. Of course it was dampish. She had a slight stoop, forty perhaps. Beautiful hair. When she took the handkerchief down, beautiful eyes. But tired. A tired face. A responsible-looking woman. Might be the head of a girl’s school. Baron was ready and inured to any disappointment. Come all this way, like a boy, running. And this was private theatricals! Charades! Hardened old journalist for thirty-five years! There’s always a dearest wish to soften one up. And without more ado they began to read.

Baron listened. He didn’t know whether to follow on his script or just listen. He had a pencil in his hand as though to correct them. Correct what? Soon he put the pencil down and just listened. Charades or not, he grew fascinated to hear his words read aloud. To hear them shift and pass along the line of readers, so that a girl spoke for his girl, and a lad for his lad, and Mrs. Haslett read away at the opening lines of that woman of his. She had a nice voice. Haslett sat and listened. Sometimes he interposed and caught a reader back who had stumbled on his line. “Accurate!” he said. “Be careful. I don’t want any fishing. I want the written word. ‘ I hat gave Baron’s heart a squeeze. Presently it came again, Haslett’s quiet voice. “Careful, ‘ he said. “ The words on the page . . . please. Be careful.”Baron couldn’t hear it said too often. They had coffee at the end of the second act. Haslett introduced him to a few more of them, and Mrs. Haslett came nearer. He was astonished to find that she stammered a little. A sentence that she began stopped right off. He glanced at her, saw her eyes blink, and then she went on. She’d never done it as she read. When they’d finished the third act there it was: they’d read it through. There was a small panic about last buses. People thrust their arms into coats, moving to the door. The room emptied. Mrs. Haslett was there of course, and Haslett. Baron wondered what they expected him to say. He really wondered too what was the point of his being there at the Reading.

Haslett said at once, his red eyes blinking, “What would be useful, Baron, would be if you could explain a few things to my wife.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Haslett, “that’s what I would . . . “ — again a big stammer, more a pause than a stammer — “ like. I’ve made some notes of things to ask you.”

She looked at him. He waited, steeling himself. (After all, he had given permission himself for his “woman” to be handled.)

“What’s her age, should you say?” she asked.

Baron considered. “As old as still compatible with charm,” he said. “As near the edge as one can get. Whatever age that is.”

“She’s a vigorous woman?” said Mrs. Haslett. “She has a vigorous way of talking?”

“It’s the word. Yes. Vigorous. But not all the time.”

Mrs. Haslett laughed out loud at that. She looked ten years younger. “You’ve put more in her than vigor!” she said. “What did you think of the dark girl down on the left?”

“She was all right,” said Baron, rather surprised. “I can’t tell, can I? They were reading,”

The smart maid said the taxi had come and couldn’t wait. It had another job unless Baron came at once.

“But you’ve a lot of questions, my dear!” said Haslett. “You’ve got a list, there.”

“No,” said Mrs. Haslett. “Next time. Next . . . time. I’ll work just on . . . vigor.” She seemed somehow amused.

“I feel,” said Haslett, taking him to the door, “we’ve brought you up for very little.” Baron felt that too. Then he remembered that, after all, he had wanted to come. “Look, Haslett,” he said, “if you’re in London . . .”

“I shall be,” said Haslett. “I’ll see you next week.”

“We’ll keep this dark, shall we? It’s an experiment. I’d sooner nothing was said till. . . . Not now.”

“Right,” said Haslett. “Right. Perfectly.”

Baron got into the taxi and the gravel moved under the turning wheels. He summed up, in the hotel bedroom (after he had been on his hands and knees getting a shilling into the meter for t he electric fire), “I’m a fool perhaps. But I’ll see my creatures standing. So long as nobody knows. . . . But I shall have to stop coming up first class,” he said as he got into bed.

Haslett said to him in a week’s time at the club, “We’re getting on.” Baron couldn’t help looking round lest they be overheard. They sat down. “We’ll want you up again,” said Haslett.

“When?”

“Not yet. It’s a long way. It isn’t as if you could keep coming and going. I should say — if you joined in with us the last four nights. The dress rehearsal and the opening night,”

“Making six nights in all? I don’t know that I can spare the time.”

“No, I didn’t mean six. Our First Night’s always a Wednesday. Could you come on the Saturday? By six? You could see it through that night. Plenty of time to make alterations then.”“Time?”

“Oh yes. It’ll have a fixed shape in a way. But it’ll undo at the joints. Our trouble is, being amateurs, we can only rehearse in the evenings. It’s not enough.”

Baron was astonished. “Only once a day?”

“They all work, you see,” said Haslett. “They come when they’ve finished. Miles — some of them. By bus and tram. They’re very keen. Shop girls. A chemist. One — like me — is a doctor.”

“And you are no longer?”

“I was a special category. Remedial. A form of paralysis.”

“And you don’t practice now?”

“I’ve only one patient,” laughed Haslett. “No, the stage is my love!”

“It’s an odd play,” said Baron, “for you all to have chosen.”

“I chose it,” said Haslett, and his face closed up. It was so strange he should never say why. Never once even say that he liked it.

4

BARON worked on in his room at the top of his tall house. He puffed a little going up the stairs and in his sharp way he observed it. “Cracks. Cracks all over.” Funny he should keep a looking glass so near his shoulder as he worked. It was not from vanity, and he never remembered how it had got there in the first place. But once there it was a dusty companion, the face he had known so well so long, the face he couldn’t change, but which the years changed for him, slowly. In that glass, in that room, the face had done its living for thirty years. He had bought the tall house with a legacy when he first married.

One night he threw his pen down with an exclamation. “It’s like love!” he said, quite loud, astonished. He was thinking of his play. He never spoke aloud when alone, hut tonight he heard his own voice, so full was the force of conviction that surged up, tossing the words like foam off the surface of his heart.

He looked at his watch. Seven. Nearly dinnertime. But seven — they were in the middle of a rehearsal. And seven — Mrs. Haslett was speaking aloud his words. That gave him a turn! It was like letting her read his diary. He wouldn’t have given the whole thing up now for the world — even though he winced. Plug, plug ... on at the article on Armament! He stalked down to dinner looking dusty and tired. His eyes ached, “I’ll be away,” he said, “a bit later on in the month.” He had trained them to that sort of independence. They too enjoyed the same. He just thought, almost thought, there was a flash of something in Denis’s eye. “If he’s heard anything, and says anything ... I’ll shut him up. I’ll give no reasons.” But Denis said nothing.

Next morning Baron read Denis’s article on the “New Moon” in the New Sun. The New Sun was the very latest magazine of the harsh view of life. Denis’s criticism of the “New Moon” was brilliant and curdling. Baron wondered in what room in what dressing gown in what state of mind the author was reading it. He longed to say to Denis, carelessly, “Ever thought of writing a play yourself?” He had no idea at all what he would answer. Denis meant much to him. He loved him; but he was the great enemy, the new generation. Not because he was new, but because he hadn’t yet learned how awkward the whole thing is, how wearing, how slow the extinction of courage, how much there is to be taken into consideration, the . . . the . . . coincidental factors of living. And then, dear me, just for the moment (it would right itself) Denis was so old and he so young.

His eyes blinked as he leaned over the joint and carved for them. “You’ll catch your hair, Daddy!” as he bent down over the candles. He had always carved for them, the grown-up Cuckoos!

“Tess! I won’t carve any more!”

“Are you angry?”

“No. Not angry. But why should I carve at my age ? ‘ ‘

“You always have.”

“Tonight’s the end. One’s got to get old some time.”

They laughed, and teased him. He was happy, He had this secret, like love. He sat down, and Tess took round the plates, and Denis seemed to watch him.

“I’ve been reading William Archer,” said Denis. But Baron wouldn’t talk of plays. Instead he talked to Tess of Oxford, where she was going next month.

He had a letter from Haslett, the date now quite fixed. It had been pretty well known already, but now there was a confirming letter from the Town Clerk about the Hall. Would Baron come up Saturday week? Would he stay with them this time?

No, he wouldn’t — thought Baron. What did the hotel cost? A pound a day, and perhaps an evening meal with Haslett? No, not that either. And then there was the taxi, of course. That was rather an extra. Still — this was his private patch of life: he was prepared to pay for it. To stay in that clean, cold house, with probably chintz like a sheet of ice in his bedroom . . . No. The hotel was what he loved. A little grimy, the yells of engines, the meditative breakfast in the Coffee Room, perfectly happy with all that.

On Saturday he took his first class ticket again (he couldn’t resist it), a bag of books with him, foolscap, and his typewriter. He’d have to manage the Sunday article (or some of it) before the Wednesday. And there was another thing . . . a memorial luncheon to Piggott. He’d promised, three weeks ago, when Piggott died. There was a nine-fifty after the First Night performance. He didn’t mind turning night into day for a journey. He’d polish the speech in the train, get home, sleep some hours, and go to the luncheon.

He enjoyed the journey up, the restaurant car, his glass of sherry. When he arrived at the hotel they pleased him by giving him the same room as he had had before, — (and the electric fire, this time sustained by somebody else’s shilling). He ordered something cold to eat for when he came in, and the porter got him a taxi.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Haslett when he got there, “to make alterations. It’s not too late. Take notes and tell me afterwards. And do remember ...”

“What?”

Haslett smiled ruefully, “. . . how few rehearsals we’ve been able to have!”

5

THE handful of people, looking, in that drawing room, like the committee of a nursing association, began on his words. The dark girl and the boy had it all to themselves for a time. They were slow off the mark. The replies halted, and the bits of business had no lines striking across them. Baron scribbled down his comments. “Telescope together,” he wrote, and “shove along faster.” The boy and the girl were joined by a subsidiary character (a man Baron had thought a neat bit of work). And now — for Mrs. Haslett. Here she came, limping a bit, in a brown dress and an old cardigan. By God, she was going to stammer! She was as nervous as a cat. She crossed the room, paused at the exit, said her bit over her shoulder and went out. Due back when you turned over the page. He had his finger on his script. When she came back she suddenly clicked more upright and said a fine say. He heard her voice liking the words. But he’d have done it differently: he’d had another idea. Never mind. She was off again. There were more things she didn’t do as he expected, but some things she did better . . . little things he’d not been sure of . . . they came out now very effective. That pause she made — he hadn’t put that in, but he was glad she had thought of it. Suddenly he began to know she’d thought a great deal about his woman. At the end of the first act she didn’t come near him. Hurried out. It was her own house, — perhaps she had something she had to do. Haslett came up to him, while Baron remembered Mrs. Haslett had only stammered that once. “You can’t judge by this. There’s so much to be done.” Haslett sounded a little nervous.

“The boy and girl opened slow,” said Baron cautiously.

“I’ve got a note of that,” said Haslett. “I’ll take them together. We’ll find half an hour tomorrow. Of course, from now on, if they’d been professionals, we’d have been rehearsing all day.”

Baron wondered whether he had to say that Mrs. Haslett had surprised him. The words stuck in his throat. Haslett left him just as he was wondering and they started on the second act.

Mrs. Haslett began to sweep about the drawing room now. It seemed rather exaggerated. She didn’t limp when she turned as quick as that, turning away from the man she spoke to, and as quick as you like back again. She had big gestures. Really too big. There now! She had the small coffee table over! They had to stop to mop it up. She looked embarrassed. And the stammer came back for a minute. But the words — you could tell she’d thought about them. Baron was so interested he had long lost the place in his script where he had meant to be making notes. She said the words — not very loud — almost in an undertone, as though she were thinking more how to fit the gestures that went with them. They carried on like that to the end — Mrs. Haslett moving swiftly, saying things rather fast, rather low. All the effectiveness was in the dumb show. Yet the words had the right emphasis. She understood what she was saying.

Baron was irked when the end came, for he felt he had to say something. But once again he was saved by the rush for the buses. He smiled genially, as one speeds a party, “Excellent! Excellent!” and they were gone. Now face to face with the Hasletts. And still yet again she had slipped away.

“I wanted to tell your wife,” said Baron looking round, “ how I appreciate . . .”

“You think she’s good?” said Haslett quickly. “But she’ll be better. Don’t . . . don’t bother your head. Don’t worry . . .”

“I’m not worrying.”

Haslett looked from left to right. “A little nervous,” he said, like a conspirator. “Have a drink. I’ve sent for a taxi.” Everything repeated itself. Baron drove back to the hotel. That was Saturday night.

On Sunday night they concentrated on the first act, and tightened it up considerably. Mrs. Haslett was exactly the same, and the boy and girl came on faster. They took three minutes off the acting time. On Monday they went to the Hall. Baron was curious to see the scenery, but it was still in pieces being finished in the cellars below. He sat on a gilt chair in the dark. There were no real seats. He looked round the hall, thinking it might hold four hundred. He’d had his play so long in a drawer that he felt a little shy seeing all these gilt chairs.

It was this Monday night that Mrs. Haslett first surprised him. She came onto the stage above him, removed from him. She had thrown a sort of beauty over her tired face. No limp, no stammer, and the fatigue was all right. The right kind of fatigue in her manner. Not as he knew it, elderly man, eyetired, rumpie-headed, but in her a nobility, a fatigue of living. His words that he had hung over so long were coming from her mouth like her own. Could it last? Could she do it again? He stared and listened. He felt Haslett bump down beside him in a gilt chair: breathing a bit, Baron thought. He didn’t want to talk to him and in a few minutes Haslett was restlessly gone again. Haslett, with his intermittence, his comings and goings, almost as though he had a sense that something was due to Baron which he couldn’t give.

With the chair empty beside him he was more at ease. Those gestures he had thought too big in the drawing room, what a surprise they were now. She flounced — in a way. But it was a flounce of intolerance, impatience, vigor. What had she said about vigor? “I’ll work it that way!” This was a woman made out of a man, a rib. This was a woman almost too old for sex, yet full of it. Half disregarding it, frowning at it, treating it like something she mustn’t use any more, treating it with a sort of patience because it wouldn’t die. This was — his old girl — himself! Baron could have cried. That was the end of Monday night. He got away alone.

He had hardly got back to the hotel before there was Haslett beside him. They sat down in the lounge while coffees were being served.

“What do you think of my wife?” said Haslett.

Baron took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

“She upsets me,” he said at last.

Haslett looked at him. “I’m afraid to ask what you mean,” he said slowly.

Baron said, “I wrote that play years ago. It took me a long time. I put myself into it, bit by bit. Why does your wife understand every word?”

“So you think she’s good!” said Haslett triumphantly. His voice altered. He wasn’t nervous any more. His red eyes shone behind his pince-nez. He talked of receipts, advertisement, Elliott and the chances of his coming, a note to the Post, the Advertiser. He covered himself up, he covered his wife up, he was hearty, he stood up, “You must go to bed,” he said. He went.

6

MONDAY night had been a dress rehearsal in a way. Tuesday night was the dress rehearsal proper. Baron sat heavily on his small gilt chair and waited. Everyone was busy on the stage, Haslett answering questions, correcting a detail of dress, the electrician shouting to his mate at the back of the hall. People came and went, a chair brought onto the stage was taken out again. Baron sat watching with nothing to do. This of course was not the scenery of his mind. How could it be? But he was content. He was strangely content when you came to think of it. The amateur company remained an amateur company. His curious, clumsily built, heavy play, his sad, rich play was too much for them. Haslett had done everything possible in the time, compacted them, driven them together, welded them, but they remained of course what they were — inexperienced. And for Mrs. Haslett there was only tonight for any more surprises, experiments. Tomorrow was the Night-Itself.

He was waiting intensely for her. He shouldn’t take his eyes off her, so what did the rest of the company matter? After a life time of journalism this play was the only thing he had made, and Mrs. Haslett the only woman likely to play in it. To her speeches, her exclamations, he had hitched his heart. His pain was her pain, never uttered in his life before. There had been times in the past when he could not read his play without self-pity. Each night Mrs. Haslett in her murmurous tones (her voice would never reach to the back of the hall) came nearer to him. What was strange was that she had never consulted him. Only that first time, in those few broken-off words. She had decided by herself how she would play it.

And Haslett — how much had he to do with it — the foxy fellow, with his anxious, probing air, yet his air of withdrawal, as though he was afraid Baron would ask something or hear something that he must not hear or ask. And never a word about Baron’s part in it! And, once again, what a play to choose for this bunch of nice, inexperienced people! He shifted his frail chair and looked round the hall, calling up before his mind the seated audience tomorrow night. He felt sure he would hear them say afterwards, or between the acts, “Do you understand it?” “Not a word.”

Haslett, the Intermittent, was near him again for a moment. “You must take it,” he said, “as a sketch.”

“A sketch?”

“For a painting. A sketch for a painting. We must get Elliott . . .”

“Can Elliott really come?”

“He might. He’s got a house near here. I shall see him. . . . What I wanted to say . . .”

“Yes?”

“Take it as a sketch. No more than a sketch.”

“Don’t worry. I’m very satisfied.”

Not a word about his wife! The only obvious, striking, salient subject for conversation.

Now it was time to start. The play creaked forward. On this night, the night before The Night, Baron heard his play with the ears of the outside world. The gilt chairs poured out ghostly criticism. What a time that boy and girl took over their opening! He almost wondered could he ever sit it out?

But Mrs. Haslett had another surprise for him. She’d found the amplifier: she’d taken the muffler off: she had a large carrying, obedient, elastic voice. His chin sagged and his mouth came open he was so astonished. Now the big gestures and the voice came together. The poor little company couldn’t stand up to it: it became abashed. It wouldn’t do. But it was wonderful.

He waited for the scene where she reproached the dead man (not knowing he was dead). She had a page and a half to reproach him with, and he couldn’t let her down because he naturally hadn’t anything to say. She said all the things to him that she wanted: she got it all off her chest (he sitting, dead, in the dark on the sofa away from the lamp). Then she was for going out of the room, but at the door she said more. Then went, not knowing ho was dead. The audience knew though. That was a good bit.

Mrs. Haslett sailed into this and Baron listened as though he had never heard it before. She had nobody to let her down with a fumbling, underdone reply. The man was dead, so she had it all to herself. Baron saw too how well he had written the words. “We’ve done it together,” he thought. He was quite certain she thought so too. He had a sense of creation that overwhelmed him. What he had written, what he had seen in his room at home, here it was, thus it spoke, thus it moved, thus it felt and retaliated, and got the pain off its heart. He wanted to speak to her, at all costs, at the end of the rehearsal. He wouldn’t let her slip away. But once again he hadn’t bargained for Haslett. Haslett said she wasn’t well and took her just as she was on his arm down to the car. They could have dropped Baron at his hotel bat they didn’t. He went back as usual in his taxi. It occurred to him to send her flowers.

Next morning he went out looking for a flower shop. He found some hothouse gladioli but he didn’t care for them. In the next flower shop — where they had bunches of cold November rosebuds — he saw himself in the florist’s mirror, dusty, shabby, bookish. “We can’t deliver,” they said. He couldn’t walk away carrying rosebuds, he said, eying himself in the mirror. In the end he prevailed by paying for a taxi for the messenger.

He was asked to write a card, to be attached to the flowers. He thought of many things that one might put down on a card with admiration for one’s actress, one’s interpreter. But Mrs. Haslett was an enigma, so he only put his name. After that he wandered on through Chester and back to the hotel for lunch. Haslett had said, “Don’t come down to the theatre. Keep fresh for six-thirty.” And he’d given him his ticket so that he could go straight to his seat.

7

ASSIGNATION in the evening. If this wasn’t love it was as like it as two peas. All the afternoon he forced himself to work on the speech for tomorrow, for Piggott. He had arranged to catch the nine-fifty that night after the performance.

At six-thirty Baron joined the audience as they pressed into the foyer of the Hall. He knew the whereabouts of his gilt chair. The chairs were tied together now in lines with a gilt batten. He shoveled his way into his row. It was last night, he reflected, that he’d had such a sense of an audience. The empty chairs then had suggested something that he really didn’t see in the faces around him. The women were busy unwrapping their heads from their scarves, the men fumbling for coins for the programs. It was an ordinary night at a small theatre. He had been to many such. Soon the curtains wore parted — off once again. Boy and girl no better. Worse, if anything. Nervous. And Baron cared nothing, not even at all that it was his own First Night. His whole interest was bent to hear his lines come alive in Her voice — perhaps for the last time, ever. When she came on he shut out the rest of the stage. When she went off he dropped his eyes to his lap and watched his circling thumbs. He’d had his pleasure out of this experiment.

Denis, with his weary professional attitude, would have thought it: incredible. Airs. Haslett was much as she had been the night before, but that was good enough for Baron. With a peculiar pleasure undimmed by repetition he was aware of each line before she came to it, enjoyed it as she said it, and noted here and there a touch superimposed. The audience was moderately enthusiastic and there were calls for the author. But Baron had arranged all that with Haslett. He wouldn’t go on. He had seen too many muggins come bowing and smiling, unpainted and foolish. He wasn’t such a goose. He watched the audience press away again, as they had pressed in. He caught the very sentences he had invented. “ Did you understand it ? ” “Not a word!”

When they had gone he knew he must thank the players before catching his train. He got through to the back and Haslett found him and led him to the dressing rooms. Nervously he collided with a few hurrying figures, recognizing members of ihe company, murmuring embarrassed thanks. The thin girl repeated what she had said on the first night of the Reading. “It was an honor to play in your play, Mr. Baron. I hope you were pleased?” How well she said it — so easily. “I hope you were pleased?” said the Boy and Girl, going by in their outdoor coats.

“Thank you for the flowers,” said Mrs. Haslett, turning quickly on her stool by the dressing table as Haslett took him in to her dressing room. “It went well — don’t you think?” She said it lightly, and turned back to the glass. He looked at her, his heart full. “I want to thank you,” he said, “for a great experience.” But her back looked extraordinarily unreceptive. “It’s been shared,’ she said into the glass, unwillingly. “And my thanks too. My thanks, and my . . .”— again the long stammer, and Baron noticed that the hand that lay in her lap was twitching, while the other was still — “gratitude . . .”Haslett pulled out his watch. “If you’ve really got to catch that nine-fifty,” he said, “I’ll take you to my car. It can come back for us.”

It seemed as though Haslett spent his time leading Baron away from his wife. At the door Baron resisted. He looked back at Mrs. Haslett. “Goodbye,” he said, “I wish I could say what I felt.” She only turned and looked at him mutely as though she was at a loss for words.

He sat warm in his corner of the train, not sleeping, but thinking of his play, thinking of the adventure. It was intact, unbroken, unspoiled, he would not go back to see it again. He could remember Mrs. Haslett perfectly, her every gesture. When he chose he could always read a speech or two and conjure her up. Unwillingly he took out his pad at length and polished the speech for tomorrow. The famous dead man had been a lifelong acquaintance and at times even a friend. Denis would be there at the luncheon to hear him, — a luncheon got up by a literary society. He had no feeling about Denis and his speech. As a critic on Piggott he was in his own kingdom. The sharpened pencil paused and hovered in the pool of light from the lamp above him. He flicked out an adjective too much, made a note in the margin. In the end he would probably improvise, after the body of the summing up. He felt old, responsible, and certain of himself in his judgment. And he knew how young he had been these last four days.

8

FROM the moment he took up his London life a nostalgia invaded him. The routine was waiting like an old dressing gown; reluctantly he put it on. But nightly, as he stumped down the three flights of stairs to dinner, flushed, stooped, rumpled, a paterfamilias, a father, he remembered Chester. The children said not a word about his absence. He almost wondered at it. But then he knew how bright their lives shone for them, how full of hope, relationships, adventure. Denis, for all Lis cold eye, writing daily to a girl. Teresa, with a flushed face, asking for a little money for her clothes for Oxford. They were going forward; but he too had something in his life. Nightly, as he was given his plate by Teresa, he heard the woman’s voice ringing behind his shoulder. Alone, he pondered sometimes whether he was in love with Mrs. Haslett. She wore, in a way, his clothes, invaded his life, confessed his confession. Suddenly, with a start, he wondered why he wasn’t going up for the last Saturday. What was holding him back? He wired directly to the hotel, and to Haslett.

Once more the journey — brushed by Teresa. At Crewe it occurred to him that they were playing it now, this minute. He tried to work out what Mrs. Haslett might be saying, but he didn’t know if they started at two or two-thirty. He arrived, hurried to the theatre. Haslett was in the foyer waiting for him. “He’s here! Elliott!” he said. There was just time to brush into a seat.

“Which . . . where is he?” Baron asked.

“Up in the box. With a carnation,” said Haslett. Baron raised his head and looked at the important man.

Elliott was very black, very red, very clean. He had his woman with him, his Mink-and-Peroxide. She was his Week-ender. A shame to have worried them.

The Curtain divided and tottered apart . . . the Boy and Girl paraded . . . “Here we are,” said Baron, and glad to be there, how glad of the familiar emotion. This last night, clean cut for him like a small death. Never again would this Boy and Girl make their lamentable mistakes for him. Not for a moment, never in word or deed, had they improved. They were readers, who had memorized their readings. Baron shut his eyes and waited.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Haslett, appearing in the wings, as she had appeared for the last nine nights. “. . . is that what you said . . . Louise?" Sho crossed the stage, paused, “. . . or have I heard it wrong?" She looked at tho boy and girl.

“She couldn’t have heard!” said the girl, shrinking. Baron waited. Mrs. Haslett reappeared, stood In the doorway, altered in expression. “We don’t often hear,” she said with a sad severity, “what we truly are . . . Louise . . He settled down to listen. She was weeping. She was that much better he couldn’t have believed she’d done it in nine days. She’d altered some lines, the hussy! She’d been tampering. He was prepared to wince, but she’d heightened the effects. Once he glanced up at Elliott, who was leaning forward, the Mink-andPeroxide straight as a post at his side. The audience was caught, stiffened. It watched like one personality, like a sea iced over, waves crested and hard.

There was a chance in the play for one big performance, and Mrs. Haslett gave it. There was a scene in the third act of excitement and passion. It was clumsily put in, and it died away on a misfire, but Mrs. Haslett had roped it, lassoed it, in the nine days of his absence. Perhaps Haslett had something to do with it? They’d done a bit of rewriting. They’d thought he wasn’t coming back. But he forgave them. It was tremendous. Not his play but the ten minutes she had alone on the stage. Now it was drawing to its end. Now they’d arrive at the fold-over into a backwater. It never had been convincing. A literary ending, with weak innuendoes. He recognized it as such but hadn’t been able to do anything better. Still he’d done his . . . what did Archer call it? His scène à faire. He’d done his scène à faire, and Mrs. Haslett had driven it like an engine with the throttle open. She’d got everything there was to be got out of his scène à faire. And now Elliott, damn him, was talking to his Mink during the play’s close. Showed how a professional knew a bad thing when he saw it. It was over.

“ You know who she is?” said the woman next to him suddenly. He’d never looked at her before. “I live next door to them.” She had to boast to someone. The audience rose and Baron stood through “God Save tho King.” His line of gilt chairs shifted as the people turned sideways like the Creed. The voice came from behind him. “You’d never believe, would you, that she was ten years on her back?” Baron was stooping at the moment to pick up his program. He wanted to keep it. “Infantile paralysis,” said the woman. “She was an actress in Australia. Ten years on her back and he taught her to walk again. I tell him (I tease them) that he married her because she had it! He started this Club for her. At first she took small parts —

“And — just fancy — tonight! ”

Sho was cut off by a surge of people at the end of the row. Baron made his way round to the stage and on to the corridor and dressing rooms.

There was Elliott coming out of Mrs. Haslett’s drassing room with Haslett. Baron stood still, looked at Haslett, but Haslett looked the other way. Elliott passed him. No one introduced him. Baron understood that Elliott hadn’t taken his play. He entered the dressing room. Mrs. Haslett was crying. He walked up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Whatever happens,” he said, “it’s been a great performance. If they don’t want us . . .”

To his horror Mrs. Haslett got up and put her arms round his neck. “They want me,” she sobbed. “They don’t want you. They want me.” Baron didn’t know what to do. He hardly held her. He let her sink down again on her stool by the dressing table. She put her face in her hands.

“It’s Elliott,” said Haslett from the door. “He’s mad about her. He’s made her an offer.”

“In this play?” said Baron. But he had an overwhelming impression of their guilt.

“Look here, old man,” said Haslett, and, as usual, he put his arm through Baron’s and got him to the door. “You’re no further back than you were. You’ve seen it played. I told you it would be useful. It’s got one magnificent part in it. There’s a lot of philosophy and fine writing, but the rest is difficult, you know, difficult. Elliott saw that. You’ve seen it played. You’ve seen it done. (He took him through the door.) “You’ve seen it put on.”

“Yes,” said Baron, with a sense of being finally put out of tho theatre. “I’ve seen it put on.”

Which was true. So he had. And anyway a year later it was Denis who captured the theatre. Unknown to his father he’d long been writing his first play.