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‘If you want to make it generosity…I thought of it as self-preservation. I know one thing – funny that I haven’t thought of it for ages: but you can kill yourself with jealousy.’ She was trying to make her voice light and humorous. She failed.
‘You said to whoever it was, Bless you, my child, run off to your little amusements, what we have is so strong it can’t affect our marriage?’
‘It wasn’t my marriage. It was later than that. And I certainly never said, Run along! On the contrary, that was it – finished!’ She was surprising herself by the cold anger in her voice. ‘I could never say it couldn’t affect a marriage or anything else. It was a question of…’
‘Well?’ he demanded, and gripped her elbows in large and confident hands. The strength of those hands spoke direct to her, reminding her…His eyes, those interesting pebbles so close to her own, seemed to her now to be tinged with – was that anxiety?
Violent needs conflicted in her. One was to comfort and heal, for she always felt he emanated an appeal, a need: she had never been more aware than now that he guarded a hurt place. But it seemed her own need was stronger, for what burst out of her was: ‘Pride. It was pride.’ And she was surprised – if she could be more surprised than she had already become, seeing what was revealed of a forgotten past – at the violence in the word. What’s the matter with me? she was asking herself, while she withstood the pressure of those uncompromising eyes. ‘Of course it was pride. Do you imagine I’d keep a man who wanted someone else?’
She, Sarah – that is, the Sarah of today – had not spoken these words. Some long ago Sarah had said them. It was getting harder every second to stand there between Stephen’s hands and sustain that long close examination. She felt ashamed, and her face burned.
‘You are talking like the kind of woman you seem determined not to be – to seem to be.’
‘What kind of woman?’
‘A love woman,’ he said. ‘A woman who takes her stand on love.’
‘Well,’ said she, attempting humour again, but with no success, ‘I do seem to remember something of the kind.’ And was about to walk away from the situation, when he tightened his grip on her elbows.
‘Wait, you always run away.’
‘But it was all a long time ago…All right, then, I’ll try. Do you remember Julie’s journals – yes I know you don’t like them. When she was writing about her master printer, she said, And there will inevitably come that night when I know it is not me, Julie, he is holding in his arms, but the wife of the chemist or the farmer’s daughter who brought the eggs that afternoon. I’d rather die. And of course, she did.’ Her voice was full of defiance. ‘Immature – that’s what our Julie was. A mature woman knows that if her husband chooses to fancy the chemist’s wife or the girl who is driving the Express delivery cart, and fucks them in her stead, well, it’s just one of those things.’
‘And vice versa, I think.’ He smiled. ‘The husband knows he is holding in his arms the stable boy, because his wife is?’
‘That’s your – his affair.’
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, full of sardonic relish. He let her go. And as they walked on, while the essences of flower and leaf meandered past their faces, ‘And that marriage of yours? I really am curious. That little way of yours, all passion spent, amuse yourself, my children, while I benevolently look on.’ This was not spiteful, or even resentful: he laughed, a bark of sceptical laughter, but gave her the look of a friend.
Sarah fought to become that Sarah who was able benevolently to look on.
‘It lasted ten years. Then he died.’ Now she believed that the younger Sarah had taken herself off, back into some dark corner. ‘I don’t look back on my pursuit of love after that with much admiration for myself. I was so immature, you see. I was never prepared to settle for the sensible – you know, a widow with two young children should look for a father for her children.’
He snorted a kind of amusement. Then, ‘A real romantic. Who would have thought it? Well, actually, yes, I did, I really did.’
‘And I am walking on a lovely afternoon with a man who is besotted, may I use that word? – with a phantom.’
‘She is no phantom,’ he said gravely.
In front of them the shrubs were thinning: an open space was imminent, showing through the branches.
She heard herself sigh, and he sighed too.
‘Sarah! Do you imagine I don’t know how all this sounds? I am not so mad that…give me some credit.’ They stood on the edge of a vast lawn, glimmering a strong green in yellow light. ‘For a time I believed I was possessed. I even considered going off to be exorcised – but for that kind of thing to work, surely you have to believe in it? But I’m afraid I don’t believe that some Tom, Dick, or Harry of a priest can deal with…Someone no better than I am? Nonsense. And then I began to do a lot of reading, and I found that Julie is that side of myself that was never allowed to live. The Jungians have a word for it. My anima. What’s in a word? It seems to me all that kind of thing amounts to – well, not much more than the pleasures of definition. Why is a word like that useful when you are experiencing…? All I know is that if she walked towards me now I wouldn’t be in the least surprised.’
The great lawn, as flat as a lake, was backed by beeches, chestnuts, and oaks; and some shrubs that were all in flower, pink, white, and yellow, although well grown themselves, were made so small by the trees they seemed like flowers in a border. In the middle of the green expanse was a wooden stage, about three feet in height. There the musicians and singers would be tomorrow. A few wooden chairs idled on the grass: apparently this was an audience that liked to stroll about while it listened. Slowly the two approached the little stage, which was like a flat rock in still water. This place, this stage, this lawn, was a vast O framed by trees, green heights around flat green. Now the two were circling the stage. On the far side of it was a poster of Julie, or rather of Julie’s drawing of herself as an Arab girl, a transparent veil across the lower part of her face, her eyes black and – yes, the word haunting would do. Stephen came to a standstill. He made a small sound – a protest. ‘Elizabeth didn’t say she was using this one,’ he said. It was not the picture on the other posters. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she asked. He did not reply. He was staring helplessly, as at an accident, or a catastrophe. He was pale. Sarah put her hand into his arm and moved him away. He walked stiffly, even stumbled. He turned his face to her, and Sarah almost let out that laugh which says, ‘You are doing it well, congratulations.’ Nothing that he had said, nothing she had thought about him – and she believed she had been prepared to dive deep into his wells of fantasy – had prepared her for what she saw. His face was pulled into that mask that illustrates Tragedy – the other side of Comedy; the theatrical stereotypes. She was standing still, staring at him. Her heart beat. Foreboding. Fear – yes, it was that. Yes, she had seen his face wretched; she had said to herself the sanitized sets of words we use in this time of ours, which has banished this kind of thing, has decided it is all an affair of horoscopes, or ‘ghosts’, and that if they squeak and gibber, then they are comic rather than not. She had never even begun to imagine what she was seeing now, the haunted tragic face with the dragged-down mouth that seemed as if an invisible hand held it, a mouth all suffering. She was shocked as if she had opened a door by mistake and seen something like a murder or an act of torture, or a woman in an extreme of grief, sitting rocking, clutching at her hair with both hands, then raking her nails across her breasts, where the blood runs down.
He’s ill, she thought. She thought, That’s grief. What I am looking at – that’s grief. She felt ashamed to be a witness of it and turned her face away, thinking, I’ve never, ever, felt anything like that.
Now he remembered she was there, and he turned his own face away and said, his voice rough, ‘You see, you have no idea at all, Sarah. You simply don’t understand…well, why should you? I hope you never will.’
At supper that night there were seven people. The informal meal was taken in a room that had a hatch through into the kitchen, and it had been cooked and served by a pleasant motherly sort of woman not unlike an auburn-haired blue-eyed sheepdog. This was Norah Daniels, a housekeeper, or something of that sort, and she sat at the table with Stephen and Elizabeth and Sarah and the three boys, James, about twelve, George, ten or so, and Edward, seven. These children were beautifully behaved, in a style imposed on them by their parents: a light impersonal affection, and it was joky, for there was a lot of banter of the kind Sarah remembered from her school days. It was mostly Norah who played this game. Stephen was silent. He claimed he had a headache and they must forgive him. Not ask too much of him was what he meant and what they all heard. It was evident that this was a message heard often in this family, from him, and from Elizabeth, because she was so very busy. She kept saying she was, and that was why she had not done a variety of things she had promised – ring up a friend’s mother, write a letter about a visit, buy new cricket balls. But she would do all these things tomorrow. The three boys, fair, slight, blue-eyed, angelic-looking children, watched the adults’ faces carefully for signals. This was their habit. This was their necessity. They had been taught never to ask too much. Only Norah was outside this pattern, for she smiled special smiles at each of them, helped them to food in an indulgent way, remembered personal tastes, gave Edward, the smallest one, an extra helping of pudding, kissed him warmly, with a hug, and then excused herself, her own meal finished, saying she had things to do. At once the boys asked permission to leave the table, and they slid away into a warm dusk. For a time their high clear voices could be heard from the garden. Soon music sounded from the top of the house – some pop group. Elizabeth remarked that it was time the boys were asleep, and departed, but only briefly, to make sure they were in bed.
Then Stephen and Elizabeth apologized to Sarah, saying they needed a couple of hours to discuss arrangements for tomorrow, for more people were coming than they had expected. ‘This Julie of yours is obviously a great draw,’ said Elizabeth, but it did not seem she meant anything special by it.
Sarah walked about in the dusk for a while, until the birds stopped commenting on the affairs of the day and the moon made itself brilliantly felt. She telephoned her brother’s house. Anne answered. Yes, she had sent the girls to collect Joyce, who, on arriving home, had at once disappeared again. Anne did not suggest this was Sarah’s fault, as Hal would have done. He had said they should all have a serious talk about Joyce, and suggested Monday night. Sarah agreed, but knew her voice communicated to Anne, as Anne’s did to her, that nothing would come of this.
Sarah’s room was full of moonlight and overlooked the great lawn and the trees beyond, the scene full of glamour and mystery, like a theatre set.
She lay in bed and was determined she would not think about Joyce, for she did not feel strong enough to accommodate the anxiety thoughts of joyce always brought with them, when she was already anxious enough. She had expected to be disturbed by this visit, and she was. Not in the way she had been afraid of. Whatever it was that Stephen and she shared, they shared it still. No, now she felt she had been selfish, for she could not get out of her mind the look on his face that afternoon – such grief, such pain, such a degree of suffering. It was crazy. He might be sane in nine-tenths of his life, this intelligent hard-working many-sided life of his, but in one part of it he was, quite simply, not normal. Well, what of it? It did not seem to be doing much harm, and certainly not to Elizabeth. But there was something bothering Sarah, and she couldn’t put a finger on it. She went off to sleep, glad to forget it all, and woke completely and as suddenly as if there had been a clap of thunder. The moon had left her room. She was remembering a scene at the table of Norah handing Elizabeth a glass of wine, and Elizabeth’s smile at Norah. Well, yes, that was it. And she shut her eyes and replayed the scene. Stephen was at one end of the table, Elizabeth at the other, Norah beside Elizabeth. The women’s bodies had carried on a comfortable conversation with each other, as well-married bodies often do. And Stephen? Now it seemed to Sarah that he was an outsider in his own house – no, for this house had, for all those centuries, accommodated any number of eccentricities and deviations. It was certainly not the house that excluded Stephen. Was he excluded at all? He had said he and his wife were good friends, and evidently they were. But her picture of Stephen – at least tonight, as she lay half asleep – seemed to be merging with that of Joyce, the girl, or child, who was always on the fringes of life, unaccepted by it, unacceptable. And that had to be ridiculous, for Stephen was firmly set in this life of his, born to it, could not be imagined outside it.
Sarah briskly got up, had a long bath, and watched early light come streaming through great trees. Five in the morning. She went quietly down the great central staircase, found a side door where bolts slid easily back, and went out. Two red setters came rushing around the corner of the house, silently, thank goodness, their fringed ears streaming. They put wet noses into her palm and their bodies wriggled with pleasure. She had not gone far into the woods when Stephen came through the trees. He had seen her from his bedroom window. Nothing now could seem more absurd than her earlier thoughts about Stephen. Nor could anything be more pleasant than this strolling about in the trees with cheerful dogs, listening to the raucous exchanges of the crows and the chattering of the small birds as they got their affairs together. At one point Stephen even casually mentioned Elizabeth and Norah, like this: ‘You must have noticed, I’m sure…’ He did not seem disturbed, and there was no sign of the tragic mask she had stared at yesterday. He seemed in good spirits and entertained her with a comic view of himself as a Maecenas. As a young man, he said, he had been a bit of a red, ‘but not too inappropriately extreme for my station in life,’ and had had nothing but contempt for rich patrons. ‘“We know what we are, but know not what we may be,”’ he quoted, and added – and this was the only moment that morning when there was a suggestion of something darker, ‘But the truth is, if we did know what we are, then we would know what we could be. And I wonder how many people would be able to stand that?’
Later, after breakfast, the boys made friends with her in their easy well-mannered way and took her off on a tour around the estate. She could see they had been told to do this. ‘Not Angles, but angels’ inevitably popped into her mind.
After lunch the theatre contingent arrived. Mary Ford, to take photographs of everything and to interview Elizabeth; Roy Strether, and, unexpectedly, Henry Bisley, the American chosen to direct because of the American money in the production. Besides, he seemed by far the best available. He was in Munich directing Die Fledermaus and had come for the weekend to hear this music. Henry was at first all defensive. There are men who carry with them, as some half-grown fishes are attached to yolk sacs, the shadow of their mothers, at once visible in an over-defensiveness and readiness for suspicion. It happened that on his arrival he walked into a room that had in it four women, Elizabeth, Norah, Mary Ford, and Sarah, and he was on the point of fleeing, when Sarah rescued him and took him out to the gardens. They had become acquainted during the casting session a month before. He was bound to be wary of her on two counts: first that she was co-author of this play, and then that as one of the four who ran The Green Bird, she had engaged him. Soon he was reassured. For one thing, he was not by temperament ever likely to remain in one place, physically or emotionally. A man of about thirty-five: his restlessness seemed appropriate for someone younger: he danced rather than walked, as if to stay still might make him vulnerable to attack, and black eyes darted enquiries into a place, a person, and moved on to the next thing, which was also bound to be a challenge. She talked soothingly about this and that, noting that she was employing the murmuring maternal persona identified and rejected by Stephen. She showed him the gardens. She showed him the big lawn – the theatre area. She took him to see a half-built new block of rehearsal rooms. He was subdued by the beauty of the place, and flattered by it, being absorbed, as they all were, into a munificence like a general blessing. As they went back into the house he stopped to look up at its façade and ask why those top windows were barred. She did not know. Encountering Norah, who was pushing through the hall a trolley laden with cleaning equipment, like those used in hotels, Sarah asked about the barred windows, and Norah said they were probably for the first Mrs Rochester. ‘Well, they must have had plenty of loonies here, in all that time.’
The afternoon went enjoyably past, while Mary Ford photographed them all. A buffet supper was served, in a much larger and grander room, Elizabeth and Norah supervising Alison and Shirley, two girls from the near town, whose healthy and wholesome prettiness reminded everyone that so recently there had indeed been country girls. Guests arrived, it seemed far too many, but these grounds could accommodate large numbers without seeming overpopulated. People went wandering about, stood on the lawn talking, sat on the grass. A company from London did Elizabethan dances. A local group sang songs composed by Tudor monarchs. Then came the main event, Julie’s music, with the words Sarah had put to it. This was the late music, and there were singers only, without accompaniment, for it had been agreed that her ‘troubadour music’ needed the old instruments to do it justice, and not all had yet been found. The singers stood on the little stage in a strong yellow evening light, four girls in white dresses with their hair loose, a style appropriate, they had decided, for this music that filled the great grassy space between the trees with shimmering uncomfortable patterns of sound continually repeating, but not exactly, for they changed by a note, or a tone, so that when you thought you were listening to the same sequence of notes, they had subtly changed, gone into a different mode, while the ear followed a little behind. The words were half heard, were cries, or even laments, but from another time, the future perhaps, or another place, for if these sounds mourned, it was not for any small personal cause. The music floated in the dusk, and the dark filled the trees and the moon lifted over them, and the singers too seemed to float in their pale dresses. Lights came on in the big house, but not here. The girls were chanting to a silent crowd.
Sarah stood in anxiety with her colleagues. None had heard this music sung with words. Solid and sensible Mary, solid and reliable Roy, stood on either side of Sarah, reserving judgement, and then, unable to contain themselves, exclaimed that it was marvellous, it was wonderful, and Sarah herself could hardly believe it was she who had done this – though it was not her at all, it was rather Julie Vairon. The three stood close, part of their attention charmed into passivity, listening, while the other part was energetically at work on this material, imagining it in various settings and modes. Stephen came up and said, ‘Sarah, I’m hearing something I simply didn’t expect. I had no idea…’ and he strode off into the dusk. Mary Ford summed up professionally: ‘Sarah, it’s all going to work.’ And Henry Bisley materialized in front of her, his dark eyes shining in the light from the high windows of the house, and said in a voice full of surprise and gratitude, ‘Sarah, that’s so beautiful, it’s so beautiful, Sarah.’
They all had to get back to London, and Henry to Munich. Sarah went with them. She said she had to work, but the truth was she did not want to spoil by daytime ordinariness the other-worldly charm of that evening. Charm…what is it, what can account for it? One says, charm, enchantment, and nothing has been said. But this place, and this group of people who were going to work together to make Julie Vairon, were charged with some subtle fascination, like the light that fades from a dream as you wake.
That night at home, Sarah thought she could not remember another time in her life that had this quality of…whatever the word should be. She found herself smiling, as at a child or a lover, without meaning to, without knowing she was going to. But what was making her smile, or even laugh, she had no idea at all.
If you find a ghost in your arms, better not look at its face.
– Julie Vairon’s Journals, English edition, page 43
But Sarah was choosing not to remember Stephen’s tragic mask.
And now it was Monday night. It occurred to Sarah, as she waited for the doorbell, that her exhilaration could only be because she actually believed some sort of sensible solution would end this talk. You’re living in a dream world, she told herself, and hummed ‘Living in a dream world with me.’ All the same, she strolled about her rooms arranging sentences in her mind which would be persuasive enough to make Hal – well, make him what?
The bell rang. Peremptory. Hal stood there, stood dramatically, apparently waiting for a formal invitation, while Anne, with glances and smiles that managed to be both apologetic and exasperated, simply came in and stood with her back to both of them, at the window.
‘Oh, do come in, Hal,’ said Sarah, annoyed with him already. She left him standing and went to sit down. Hal did not at once enter. He was giving her living-room a good once-over: he had not been in it for some time. The room had been variously used in this family flat’s long history. It had once been her children’s bedroom, but it had been a living room now for years. She was seldom in it. She would not have invited her brother into her study or her bedroom, where he would see photographs, piles of books, all kinds of objects that would emanate the intensely personal look of continuous use, which he would find irritating, even shameless, like underclothes left lying about. As he stood there, he sent suspicious glances to a drawing of Julie pinned on the door. Anne at the window could not be saying more clearly that she did not consider herself part of this scene. She was a tall woman, thin – too thin, a rack of bones – and her pale dry hair was tied back roughly behind her head. As usual she was surrounded by a fug of tobacco smoke, which seemed the very essence of dry exhaustion. She had lit a cigarette already, but furtively: she always smoked with guilt, as if still in her hospital, knowing she was giving a bad example to her patients. At the sight of her, Sarah’s compunctious heart reminded her that Anne’s perennial exhaustion was why she, Sarah, could never bring herself to ‘put her foot down’ over Joyce. She had never not pitied her sister-in-law.
And now Hal did come in, letting it be understood by means of compressed lips and raised brows – useful perhaps for indicating to patients that their lifestyle did not meet with his approval? – that it was time his sister took her room in hand. He looked judiciously at a cheerful if faded chair opposite Sarah’s – would he allow himself to sit in it? He did.
Hal was not the elder brother, as his air of command might suggest, but three years younger than Sarah. A large comfortable man, with an affable manner; everything about him must give his patients confidence. He was a success in his professional life, and his family life wasn’t so bad either, though he had always been unfaithful to Anne. She forgave him. Rather, one deduced that she must, since she did not go in for confidences. Probably she did not care, or perhaps it was that one could not imagine him unforgiven. Now Hal was sitting on the stiff chair, his arms folded high on his chest, legs apart and braced, as if he might otherwise bounce as he sat. He looked like a great delightful baby, with his little wisps of black hair, his fat little tummy, his little chins. He had small black eyes like large raisins.
Sarah offered them drinks, tea, coffee, and so forth, and her brother’s impatient shake of the head made it clear he was pressed for time.
‘Now look here,’ he said. ‘We do realize you have always been amazingly good with Joyce.’
There are occasions, when it becomes evident they are bound to develop in a certain way, that have a quite intoxicating momentum.
‘Yes, I think I have too.’
‘Oh, really, Sarah,’ he exclaimed hotly, his wells of patience already overdrawn.
And now he began on the rhetorical statements (the counterpart of her prepared reasonings to him) rehearsed and polished on the way here. They had the theatrical ring which goes with a thoroughly false position. ‘You must see that Joyce looks on you as a mother,’ he said. ‘You have been a mother to her, we both know that.’ Here he looked at Joyce’s mother, wanting her agreement, but she was smoking furiously, her back turned. ‘It really isn’t on for you to drop her like this.’
‘But I haven’t dropped her, any more than you have.’
He registered this shaft with a hostile look and a quiver of his lips which said he felt he was unfairly treated. ‘You know very well what I am saying.’
‘What you are saying is that I should give up my job and sit here for when she does turn up, even if it is only once in six months for an evening. Because that is what it amounts to.’
‘Exactly,’ said Anne angrily.
Hal sat puffing his lips out, hugging himself with both arms: he was a threatened man; he had two women against him. ‘Why can’t you take her with you to rehearsals, that kind of thing?’
‘Why don’t you take her to your hospital and to Harley Street? Why doesn’t Anne give up her job and sit at home waiting for Joyce?’
At this Anne let out a loud theatrical titter. ‘Exactly,’ she said again, through swirls of smoke. She swatted her hand at the smoke, to show how she deplored her weakness.
‘Look, Hal,’ said Sarah, keeping her voice down. ‘You’re talking as if nothing has changed. Well, they have. Joyce is a young woman. She’s not a little girl any longer.’
‘No,’ said Anne, ‘he can’t see it. Or won’t.’
‘Oh really,’ exploded Hal, and then he collapsed. He let his arms fall, and stared, his face all disconsolate lines.
This man who had all his life been lucky and successful had met something intractable. But the point was, this had happened not this week but years ago. It was as if he had never taken the truth in. ‘It is really quite appalling,’ he said. ‘What are we going to do about it? She runs around with drop-outs and layabouts and all sorts of people.’
‘Alcoholics and drug pushers and prostitutes,’ said Anne, and at last turned herself around. Her face was flushed, and brave with the determination to have her say. ‘Hal, at some point you have to face up to it. There’s nothing we can do about Joyce. Short of chaining her down and locking her up. All we can do is to take her in when she does turn up and not lecture her. Why do you always shout at her? No wonder she comes here to Sarah.’
Some people are the moral equivalent of those who have never, ever, been ill in their lives and, when they are at last ill, might even die from the shock. Hal could not face up to it: if he admitted one defeat, what might then follow? He sat silent, breathing heavily, arms hanging, not looking at them. His little pink mouth stood slightly open – like Joyce’s, in fact. ‘It’s awful, awful,’ he sighed at last, and got up. He had inwardly shelved the problem, and that was that.
‘Yes, dear, it is awful,’ said his wife firmly. ‘It has always been awful and it will probably go on being awful.’
‘Something has to be done about it,’ he said, just as if beginning the conversation, and Sarah breathed, ‘Good God!’ while Anne said, with a tight and derisive smile, ‘You two are so funny.’
Sarah felt all the indignation due when one is in the right but being classed with someone in the wrong.
Anne explained apologetically, ‘You both seem to think that if you just come up with something, then Joyce will become normal.’ She shrugged, gave Sarah an apologetic grimace. Husband and wife went to the door, the big man drifting along beside Anne, his eyes abstracted. He had inwardly removed himself. Sarah was able to visualize furious scenes between these two, when Anne tackled Hal, and Hal simply repeated, ‘Yes, we must do something.’ For years. Meanwhile good old Sarah looked after Joyce. Nothing at all would change as a result of this talk. Well, something had. Sarah had not before seen that somewhere or other she did believe that Joyce would suddenly become normal, if only they could come up with the right recipe.
The door was shut, and she listened to their feet on the stairs, their voices raised in connubial disagreement.
Sarah sat at her desk and stared into the watery depths of the mirror. She had to do more work on the songs, fitting Julie’s words to music and even making some words up. I don’t know why it is, Julie had written, and this was when she had just agreed to marry Philippe the master printer, but every scene I am part of, when there are people in it, rejects me. If someone were to reach out a hand to me and I stretched out my hand to him, I know my hand would go into a cloud or a mist, like the spraythat lies over my pool when there has been heavy rain in the hills. But suppose in spite of everything my fingers closed over warm fingers? She called the music she wrote that spring ‘Songs from a Shore of Ice’.
Sarah began, ‘If I reached my hand into cloud or river spray…’ She, Sarah, had found a hand in a cloud or mist – for Stephen had certainly been an unknown – a warm hand, kindly by habit, a strong one, but holding it, she had felt its grasp become desperate. Help me, help me, said that hand.
The rehearsals were to be in London, in a church hall, a utilitarian place that managed to be dim enough to need some lights on, in spite of the sunlight outside. Fewer than the full company arrived for the first rehearsal. The musicians and singers would come later. Henry Bisley was in New Orleans for the opening of his production of La Dame aux Camélias, set in the brothels of that town at the turn of the century. Roy Strether, Patrick Steele, and Sandy Grears, the lighting and effects man, were all busy on the final rehearsals for the opening in The Green Bird of Abélard and Héloïse, which would precede Hedda Gabler. Patrick had announced that he was glad Julie Vairon would need so little in the way of scenery. He was so disappointed: Sarah had turned his Julie into a bluestocking, he explained, and he did not think he could ever forgive her.
Julie had arrived, a strong healthy girl with the misty blue eyes that can only be Irish. She was Molly McGuire, from Boston. Philippe the master printer was Richard Service, from Reading, a quiet middle-aged man of the observing non-commenting kind: probably similar to Philippe Angers. Paul, or Bill Collins, was a handsome, in fact beautiful, young man, who at once claimed he was all cockney, and proved it by singing ‘She Was Poor but She Was Honest’ – a song which by now they had all understood would be the theme song of the rehearsals. Actually he was from a prosperous London suburb, or at least partly, for he had lived half his life in the States, because of the complicated marriages of his parents. In impeccable English, he said, ‘I’m all things to all men, that’s it, mate, that’s me, Bill, the all-purpose all-weather dancing and singing cockney actor from Brixton.’ The Noël Coward drawl that went with this vanished, as he said in an American accent, and this had the effect of changing him completely: face, smile, set of body, ‘Don’t you believe it. I’m a pretty limited sort of guy. “I won’t dance, please don’t make me, I won’t sing, please don’t make me…,’’ singing this not badly at all. ‘Limitations I do have –’ He hesitated and might have stopped there, but added, compelled to it, with a sudden cold ruthlessness, ‘But I know how to sell myself.’ Now he gave a swift look around to judge the effect of all this, saw them disconcerted, realized the reason was what he had said last, heard it as they had, and sent a nervous small boy’s smile all around. Then, with the grimace that goes with I don’t know why I do this sort of thing, he walked quickly to a chair in a corner and sat there alone. So unhappy did he look that Julie’s mother, Madame Sylvie Vairon (Sally Soames from Brixton – really from Brixton; she had been born there), went over to sit with him, apparently casually. She was a large stately beautiful black woman, who, it was already clear, was going to dominate any scene by her looks, just as Bill did.
Rémy Rostand, or Andrew Stead, was a Texan, with sandy hair, freckles, and pale blue eyes which had too many wrinkles around them for his age, probably forty. He had just come from making a film about the old gauchos, shot on the high plateaux of north-west Argentina. He walked like a horseman, stood like a film gunman, and had shortly to become Rémy, with all the diffidence and hard-to-achieve self-respect of a youngest son. Had Henry known what he was doing when he cast this bandit for the role? In the early days of every production, this unvoiced query is in the air. An unemphatically good-looking, ordinary young man, George White, was going to be Paul’s comrade-in-arms in Martinique, then Rémy’s older brother, not to mention Philippe’s assistant in the printing shop.
On the first day, Sarah and Stephen were more prominent than they had planned, because of the absence of Henry, but luckily Mary Ford had ordered a photo session, and the six actors and two authors were photographed, separately and in couples and in groups, endlessly photographed, the actors at least posing with practised good nature, obedient to the god Publicity. And Mary’s face was solemn, concentrated, for she was utterly given up to her devotions as she took the pictures. Photographers are always in search of that perfect, that paradigmatic, but just out of reach summit of revelation. The next one – yes! – that will be it…do you mind turning your head just half an inch…that’s it, but no, don’t smile…yes, this time smile…this one will be…just one more…one more…and now…yes, I think I got it that time…but I’ll just use up this roll…All over the world these pictures are stacked up in piles, in files and folders, in drawers, on shelves, on walls, the visible record of that race of transcendence-seekers, the photographers’ compulsive quest.
And while Mary sat chatting with them all, her camera was held between alert fingers, ready to swoop it up into place to catch that unique and utterly unrepeatable pose or look which would transform a summary biography – twenty lines on the programme – into irresistible truth.
During that first day a good deal was said about how wonderful a thing Julie Vairon was, how altogether unique. This was because the actors were all taking a chance, much more than is usual with that hazard the theatre. The piece was a sport: not a play, not an opera. They had not heard the music that would fit the words. All of them confessed to having been attracted to Julie Vairon, but they did not know why, for all they had been sent – all they could have been sent – was an assemblage of scenes so lightly sketched that sometimes only a phrase or a sentence indicated passionate love, or renunciation. They were reassuring themselves.
First Molly came to Sarah, who invited her to sit down between her and Stephen, to say she had been told by those who had been at Queen’s Gift how wonderful the music was, and the songs, and she simply couldn’t wait to hear it all. Stephen only allowed himself a glance at this dangerous girl and then stared off at the others, while Sarah talked for him. Molly went, and then Bill, who had been watching for an opportunity, appeared by them, murmuring congratulations on the script and the lyrics. It was a shock to hear the word lyric used to describe those bitterly sad, some said abrasive, songs of the ‘first period’, and the broken lines of the ‘second period’, when there might be no more than a phrase repeated many times, or a word chosen for its sound.
‘I seem to hear it all already,’ claimed Bill, sliding into the seat between Sarah and Stephen, but smiling at Sarah. Then, having established his right to intimacy with Sarah – she could see this was his style, or his need – he glanced at Stephen. But Stephen was not going to succumb, for there was a sharp, not to say critical, look to him, as he examined the young man. Bill quietly got up and walked away, not, however, without the quick flash of a smile at her.
Walking to the tube with Sarah, Stephen remarked, ‘Molly doesn’t look remotely like Julie.’
‘She’ll convince you when the time comes.’
‘And Andrew might as well be a cowboy.’
‘Rémy must surely have spent a lot of time on horseback?’
‘And as for that young…Julie would never fall for that pretty face.’
‘But Julie did fall for a pretty face. Paul has to be a romantic young lieutenant, and not much more, don’t you see? For the sake of dramatic contrast.’
‘Good God.’
‘Nothing she wrote indicated he was more than a good-looking boy.’
They stood together on the pavement. She was thinking that this querulous note in him was new. More, that in the first weeks of their friendship she would have thought him incapable of it. She was relieved to see that now he seemed to be fighting to preserve an obstinate self-respect, while his eyes were full of misery.
Unexpectedly he said, ‘Sarah…I’m out of my depth…’ He grimaced, then made this a smile, walked away to the Underground entrance, turned to give her a small apologetic wave – and vanished.
It was the first read-through of the first act. They were nearly all present now, but there did not seem many people scattered about in the large hall. Henry had announced that he would be putting them all into position right from the start, because how people stood, or were, in relation to each other changed their voices, their movements – everything about them. The actors exchanged those smiles – what else? – meaning that from him they expected no less. Their smiles were already affectionate, as they stood about like dancers waiting for lift-off, and for him to command them. He had arrived that morning by plane from New Orleans, but he was already almost dancing his instructions, falling for seconds at a time into the characters they were going to play. He had been an actor, surely? Yes, and a dancer too, but that was before he had become an old man, and he had worked in a circus too: and here he became a clown, staggering over his own inept feet, miraculously recovering himself, and jumping back into his own self with a clap of the hands that summoned them into their positions. He must be of Italian descent, with those dark and dramatic eyes. Often, in southern Europe, you see a man, a woman, leaning against a wall, standing behind a market stall, all loud exclamatory sound and gesticulation, in the moment before they suddenly go quiet, black eyes staring in sombre fatalism: too much sun, too much bloody history, too much bloody everything, and a bred-in expectation of more of the same. And here was Henry Bisley, from the northern United States, standing limp, switched off, his eyes sombre and abstracted, southern eyes, eyes from the Mediterranean, but even as he leaned briefly against a wall, he seemed already on his way somewhere else. And the idea of movement was emphasized by his shoes, for they would have been useful for a marathon. For that matter, all their shoes seemed designed for a hundred-yard sprint.
Stephen and Sarah sat side by side at a table which was a continuation of Henry’s – the director’s. At the table beyond that was Roy Strether, watching everything and making notes. Mary Ford was photographing at the theatre.
The read-through began with the scenes in Julie’s mother’s house in Martinique, and the evening party where the handsome lieutenant Paul, brought by his comrade Jean, was introduced to Julie.
Since the musicians were not there, it was a question of going through the scenes while the words of the songs were spoken, so that everyone would get an idea of what would happen. Roy read, in a voice as flat as the recorded telephone announcement ‘Your number has not been recognized’.
This first scene had Julie standing attractively by her harp, shoulder outlined in white muslin (in fact Molly wore jeans and a purple T-shirt), a dress bought by papa on his last visit to distant Paris, on mother Sylvie’s insistence. Julie was singing (today she only spoke) a conventional ballad from sheet music (a piece of typing paper) brought by the father from Paris with the dress. For while the reputation of this house and the two beautiful women was exactly what might be expected among the young officers who were unwillingly on service in this attractive but boring island, Julie and her mother disappointed expectations by behaving with the propriety used by the mothers and sisters of these young men, and even more so. Nor had they expected to find Parisian fashions.
It was only when the officers had gone that the women became themselves and spoke their minds, in words recorded by Julie.
To start with, beauty was not so much in the eye of this beholder, for that first evening all I thought was, That’s a pretty hero! No, it was Maman who was dissolved by Paul. I said to her, He’s too much, he’s like a present in pretty paper, and you don’t want to unwrap it because it would spoil the parcel. Maman said, ‘My God, if I were even ten years younger.’ Maman was forty then. She said, ‘I swear, if he kissed me, it would be my first time ever.’
The two women were to sing a duet, ‘If he kissed me it would be my first time ever,’ using the first-period music, like a blues.
This was hardly likely to be the first time for Julie, not with all those young officers about. Sarah passed a note to Henry that unless they were careful, this song would get the wrong kind of laughter. He tilted a page towards her to show he had already marked the danger point with an underlined Laughs!
‘But I wouldn’t mind a smile,’ he said, and smiled at her to show the kind of smile.