Theatre

  'If I believed in God I'd be a priest,' he said at last.

  'A priest?'

  Julia could hardly believe her ears. She had a feeling of acute discomfort. But his answer sank into her mind and in a flash she saw him as a cardinal, inhabiting a beautiful palazzo in Rome, filled with wonderful pictures, and surrounded by obsequious prelates; and then again as a saint, in a mitre and vestments heavily embroidered with gold, with benevolent gestures distributing bread to the poor. She saw herself in a brocaded dress and a string of pearls. The mother of the Borgias.

  'That was all right in the sixteenth century,' she said. 'It's too late in the day for that.'

  'Much.'

  'I can't think what put such an idea in your head.' He did not answer, so that she had to speak again. 'Aren't you happy?'

  'Quite,' he smiled.

  'What is it you want?'

  Once again he gave her his disconcerting stare. It was hard to know if he was serious, for his eyes faintly shimmered with amusement.

  'Reality.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'You see, I've lived all my life in an atmosphere of make-believe. I want to get down to brass tacks. You and father are all right breathing this air, it's the only air you know and you think it's the air of heaven. It stifles me.'

  Julia listened to him attentively, trying to understand what he meant.

  'We're actors, and successful ones. That's why we've been able to surround you with every luxury since you were born. You could count on the fingers of one hand the actors who've sent their son to Eton.'

  'I'm very grateful for all you've done for me.'

  'Then what are you reproaching us for?'

  'I'm not reproaching you. You've done everything you could for me. Unfortunately for me you've taken away my belief in everything.'

  'We've never interfered with your beliefs. I know we're not religious people, we're actors, and after eight performances a week one wants one's Sundays to oneself. I naturally expected they'd see to all that at school.'

  He hesitated a little before he spoke again. One might have thought that he had to make a slight effort over himself to continue.

  'When I was just a kid, I was fourteen, I was standing one night in the wings watching you act. It must have been a pretty good scene, you said the things you had to say so sincerely, and what you were saying was so moving, I couldn't help crying. I was all worked up. I don't know how to say it quite, I was uplifted; I felt terribly sorry for you, I felt a bloody little hero; I felt I'd never do anything again that was beastly or underhand. And then you had to come to the back of the stage, near where I was standing, the tears were streaming down your face; you stood with your back to the audience and in your ordinary voice you said to the stage manager; what the bloody hell is that electrician doing with the lights? I told him to leave out the blue. And then in the same breath you turned round and faced the audience with a great cry of anguish and went on with the scene.'

  'But, darling, that was acting. If an actress felt the emotions she represented she'd tear herself to pieces. I remember the scene well. It used to bring down the house. I've never heard such applause in my life.'

  'I suppose I was a fool to be taken in by it. I believed you meant what you said. When I saw that it was all pretence it smashed something. I've never believed in you since. I'd been made a fool of once; I made up my mind that I wouldn't ever be made a fool of again.'

  She gave him her delightful and disarming smile.

  'Darling, I think you're talking nonsense.'

  'Of course you do. You don't know the difference between truth and make-believe. You never stop acting. It's second nature to you. You act when there's a party here. You act to the servants, you act to father, you act to me. To me you act the part of the fond, indulgent, celebrated mother. You don't exist, you're only the innumerable parts you've played. I've often wondered if there was ever a you or if you were never anything more than a vehicle for all these other people that you've pretended to be. When I've seen you go into an empty room I've sometimes wanted to open the door suddenly, but I've been afraid to in case I found nobody there.'

  She looked up at him quickly. She shivered, for what he said gave her an eerie sensation. She listened to him attentively, with a certain anxiety, for he was so serious that she felt he was expressing something that had burdened him for years. She had never in his whole life heard him talk so much.

  'D'you think I'm only sham?'

  'Not quite. Because sham is all you are. Sham is your truth. Just as margarine is butter to people who don't know what butter is.'

  She had a vague feeling of guilt. The Queen in 'Hamlet': 'And let me wring your heart; for so I shall, if it be made of penetrable stuff.' Her thoughts wandered.

  ('I wonder if I'm too old to play Hamlet. Siddons and Sarah Bernhardt played him. I've got better legs than any of the men I've seen in the part. I'll ask Charles what he thinks. Of course there's that bloody blank verse. Stupid of him not to write it in prose. Of course I might do it in French at the François. God, what a stunt that would be.')

  She saw herself in a black doublet, with long silk hose. 'Alas, poor Yorick.' But she bethought herself.

  'You can hardly say that your father doesn't exist. Why, he's been playing himself for the last twenty years.' ('Michael could play the King, not in French, of course, but if we decided to have a shot at it in London.')

  'Poor father, I suppose he's good at his job, but he's not very intelligent, is he? He's so busy being the handsomest man in England.'

  'I don't think it's very nice of you to speak of your father like that.'

  'Have I told you anything you don't know?' he asked coolly.

  Julia wanted to smile, but would not allow the look of somewhat pained dignity to leave her face.

  'It's our weakness, not our strength, that endears us to those who love us,' she replied.

  'In what play did you say that?'

  She repressed a gesture of annoyance. The words had come naturally to her lips, but as she said them she remembered that they were out of a play. Little brute! But they came in very appositely.

  'You're hard,' she said plaintively. She was beginning to feel more and more like Hamlet's mother. 'Don't you love me?'

  'I might if I could find you. But where are you? If one stripped you of your exhibitionism, if one took your technique away from you, if one peeled you as one peels an onion of skin after skin of pretence and insincerity, of tags of old parts and shreds of faked emotions, would one come upon a soul at last?' He looked at her with his grave sad eyes and then he smiled a little. 'I like you all right.'

  'Do you believe I love you?'

  'In your way.'

  Julia's face was suddenly discomposed.

  'If you only knew the agony I suffered when you were ill! I don't know what I should have done if you'd died!'

  'You would have given a beautiful performance of a bereaved mother at the bier of her only child.'

  'Not nearly such a good performance as if I'd had the opportunity of rehearsing it a few times,' Julia answered tartly. 'You see, what you don't understand is that acting isn't nature; it's art, and art is something you create. Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty. If I were really dying as I've died in half a dozen plays, d'you think I'd care whether my gestures were graceful and my faltering words distinct enough to carry to the last row of the gallery? If it's a sham it's no more a sham than a sonata of Beethoven's, and I'm no more of a sham than the pianist who plays it. It's cruel to say that I'm not fond of you. I'm devoted to you. You've been the only thing in my life.'

  'No. You were fond of me when I was a kid and you could have me photographed with you. It made a lovely picture and it was fine publicity. But since then you haven't bothered much about me. I've bored you rather than otherwise. You were always glad to see me, but you were thankful that I went my own way and didn't want to take up your time. I don't blame y
ou; you hadn't got time in your life for anyone but yourself.'

  Julia was beginning to grow a trifle impatient. He was getting too near the truth for her comfort.

  'You forget that young things are rather boring.'

  'Crashing, I should think,' he smiled. 'But then why do you pretend that you can't bear to let me out of your sight? That's just acting too.'

  'You make me very unhappy. You make me feel as if I hadn't done my duty to you.'

  'But you have. You've been a very good mother. You've done something for which I shall always be grateful to you, you've left me alone.'

  'I don't understand what you want.'

  'I told you. Reality.'

  'But where are you going to find it?'

  'I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't exist. I'm young still; I'm ignorant. I thought perhaps that at Cambridge, meeting people and reading books, I might discover where to look for it. If they say it only exists in God, I'm done.'

  Julia was disturbed. What he said had not really penetrated to her understanding, his words were lines and the important thing was not what they meant, but whether they 'got over', but she was sensitive to the emotion she felt in him. Of course he was only eighteen, and it would be silly to take him too seriously, she couldn't help thinking he'd got all that from somebody else, and that there was a good deal of pose in it. Did anyone have ideas of his own and did anyone not pose just a wee, wee bit? But of course it might be that at the moment he felt everything he said, and it wouldn't be very nice of her to make light of it.

  'Of course I see what you mean,' she said. 'My greatest wish in the world is that you should be happy. I'll manage your father, and you can do as you like. You must seek your own salvation, I see that. But I think you ought to make sure that all these ideas of yours aren't just morbid. Perhaps you were too much alone in Vienna and I daresay you read too much. Of course your father and I belong to a different generation and I don't suppose we can help you. Why don't you talk it over with someone more of your own age? Tom, for instance.'

  'Tom? A poor little snob. His only ambition in life is to be a gentleman, and he hasn't the sense to see that the more he tries the more hopeless it is.'

  'I thought you liked him so much. Why, at Taplow last summer you just lived in his pocket.'

  'I didn't dislike him. I made use of him. He could tell me a lot of things that I wanted to know. But I thought him an insignificant, silly little thing.'

  Julia remembered how insanely jealous she had been of their friendship. It made her angry to think of all the agony she had wasted.

  'You've dropped him, haven't you?' he asked suddenly.

  She was startled.

  'I suppose I have more or less.'

  'I think it's very wise of you. He wasn't up to your mark.'

  He looked at her with his calm, reflective eyes, and on a sudden Julia had a sickening fear that he knew that Tom had been her lover. It was impossible, she told herself, it was only her guilty conscience that made her think so; at Taplow there had been nothing; it was incredible that any of the horrid gossip had reached his ears; and yet there was something in his expression that made her certain that he knew. She was ashamed.

  'I only asked him to come down to Taplow because I thought it would be nice for you to have a boy of that age to play around with.'

  'It was.'

  There was in his eyes a faint twinkle of amusement. She felt desperate. She would have liked to ask him what he was grinning at, but dared not; for she knew; he was not angry with her, she could have borne that, he was merely diverted. She was bitterly hurt. She would have cried, but that he would only laugh. And what could she say to him? He believed nothing she said. Acting! for once she was at a loss how to cope with a situation. She was up against something that she did not know, something mysterious and rather frightening. Could that be reality? At that moment they heard a car drive up.

  'There's your father,' she exclaimed.

  What a relief! The scene was intolerable, and she was thankful that his arrival must end it. In a moment Michael, very hearty, with his chin thrust out and his belly pulled in, looking for all his fifty odd years incredibly handsome, burst into the room and, in his manly way, thrust out his hand to greet, after a six months' absence, his only begotten son.

  28

  Three days later Roger went up to Scotland. By the exercise of some ingenuity Julia had managed that they should not again spend any length of time alone together. When they happened to be by themselves for a few minutes they talked of indifferent things. Julia was not really sorry to see him go. She could not dismiss from her mind the curious conversation she had had with him. There was one point in particular that unaccountably worried her; this was his suggestion that if she went into an empty room and someone suddenly opened the door there would be nobody there. It made her feel very uncomfortable.

  'I never set out to be a raving beauty, but the one thing no one has ever denied me is personality. It's absurd to pretend that because I can play a hundred different parts in a hundred different ways I haven't got an individuality of my own. I can do that because I'm a bloody good actress.'

  She tried to think what happened to her when she went alone into an empty room.

  'But I never am alone, even in an empty room. There's always Michael, or Evie, or Charles, or the public; not in the flesh, of course, but in the spirit, as it were. I must speak to Charles about Roger.'

  Unfortunately he was away. But he was coming back for the dress-rehearsal and the first night; he had not missed these occasions for twenty years, and they had always had supper together after the dress-rehearsal. Michael would remain in the theatre, busy with the lights and so on, so that they would be alone. They would be able to have a good talk.

  She studied her part. Julia did not deliberately create the character she was going to act by observation; she had a knack of getting into the shoes of the woman she had to portray so that she thought with her mind and felt with her senses. Her intuition suggested to her a hundred small touches that afterwards amazed people by their verisimilitude; but when they asked her where she had got them she could not say. Now she wanted to show the courageous yet uneasy breeziness of the Mrs Marten who played golf and could talk to a man like one good chap to another and yet, essentially a respectable, middle-class woman, hankered for the security of the marriage state.

  Michael never liked to have a crowd at a dress-rehearsal, and this time, anxious to keep the secret of the play till the first night, he had admitted besides Charles only the people, photographers and dressmakers, whose presence was necessary. Julia spared herself. She had no intention of giving all she had to give till the first night. It was enough if her performance was adequate. Under Michael's businesslike direction everything went off without a hitch, and by ten o'clock Julia and Charles were sitting in the Grill Room of the Savoy. The first thing she asked him was what he thought of Avice Crichton.

  'Not at all bad and wonderfully pretty. She really looked lovely in that second-act dress.'

  'I'm not going to wear the dress I wore in the second act. Charley Deverill has made me another.'

  He did not see the slightly humorous glance she gave him, and if he had would not have guessed what it meant. Michael, having taken Julia's advice, had gone to a good deal of trouble with Avice. He had rehearsed her by herself upstairs in his private room and had given her every intonation and every gesture. He had also, Julia had good reason to believe, lunched with her several times and taken her out to supper. The result of all this was that she was playing the part uncommonly well. Michael rubbed his hands.

  'I'm very pleased with her. I think she'll make quite a hit. I've half a mind to give her a contract.'

  'I wouldn't,' said Julia. 'Not till after the first night. You can never really tell how a performance is going to pan out till you've got an audience.'

  'She's a nice girl and a perfect lady.'

  'A nice girl, I suppose, because she's madly in love with you, and a p
erfect lady because she's resisting your advances till she's got a contract.'

  'Oh, my dear, don't be silly. Why, I'm old enough to be her father.'

  But he smiled complacently. She knew very well that his love-making went no farther than holding hands and a kiss or two in a taxi, but she knew also that it flattered him to imagine that she suspected him capable of infidelity.

  But now Julia, having satisfied her appetite with proper regard for her figure, attacked the subject which was on her mind.

  'Charles dear, I want to talk to you about Roger.'

  'Oh yes, he came back the other day, didn't he? How is he?'

  'My dear, a most terrible thing has happened. He's come back a fearful prig and I don't know what to do about it.'

  She gave him her version of the conversation. She left out one or two things that it seemed inconvenient to mention, but what she told was on the whole accurate.

  'The tragic thing is that he has absolutely no sense of humour,' she finished.

  'After all he's only eighteen.'

  'You could have knocked me down with a feather when he said all those things to me. I felt just like Balaam when his ass broke into light conversation.'

  She gave him a gay look, but he did not even smile. He did not seem to think her remark as funny as she did.

  'I can't imagine where he got his ideas. It's absurd to think that he could have thought out all that nonsense for himself.'

  'Are you sure that boys of that age don't think more than we older people imagine? It's a sort of puberty of the spirit and its results are often strange.'

  'It seems so deceitful of Roger to have harboured thoughts like those all these years and never breathed a word about them. He might have been accusing me.' She gave a chuckle. 'To tell you the truth, when Roger was talking to me I felt just like Hamlet's mother.' Then with hardly a break: 'I wonder if I'm too old to play Hamlet?'

  'Gertrude isn't a very good part, is it?'

  Julia broke into a laugh of frank amusement.

  'Don't be idiotic, Charles. I wouldn't play the Queen. I'd play Hamlet.'