Between the acts, p.18
Between the Acts, page 18
“Of course, of course,” she murmured, deprecating his severity, and the coins in her bead bag jingled.
“Nothing’s done for nothing in England,” the old man continued. Mrs. Manresa protested. It might be true, perhaps, of the Victorians; but surely not of ourselves? Did she really believe that we were disinterested? Mr. Oliver demanded.
“Oh you don’t know my husband!” the wild child exclaimed, striking an attitude.
Admirable woman! You could trust her to crow when the hour struck like an alarm clock; to stop like an old bus horse when the bell rang. Oliver said nothing. Mrs. Manresa had out her mirror and attended to her face.
All their nerves were on edge. They sat exposed. The machine ticked. There was no music. The horns of cars on the high road were heard. And the swish of trees. They were neither one thing nor the other; neither Victorians nor themselves. They were suspended, without being, in limbo. Tick, tick, tick went the machine.
Isa fidgeted; glancing to right and to left over her shoulder.
“Four and twenty blackbirds, strung upon a string,” she muttered.
“Down came an Ostrich, an eagle, an executioner,
‘Which of you is ripe,’ he said, ‘to bake in my pie?
Which of you is ripe, which of you is ready,
Come my pretty gentleman,
Come my pretty lady.’ . . .”
How long was she going to keep them waiting? “The Present Time. Ourselves.” They read it on the programme. Then they read what came next: “The profits are to go to a fund for installing electric light in the Church.” Where was the Church? Over there. You could see the spire among the trees.
“Ourselves. . . . ” They returned to the programme. But what could she know about ourselves? The Elizabethans, yes; the Victorians, perhaps; but ourselves; sitting here on a June day in 1939—it was ridiculous. “Myself”—it was impossible. Other people, perhaps . . . Cobbet of Cobbs Corner; the Major; old Bartholomew; Mrs. Swithin—them, perhaps. But she won’t get me—no, not me. The audience fidgeted. Sounds of laughter came from the bushes. But nothing whatsoever appeared on the stage.
“What’s she keeping us waiting for?” Colonel Mayhew asked irritably. “They don’t need to dress up if it’s present time.”
Mrs. Mayhew agreed. Unless of course she was going to end with a Grand Ensemble. Army; Navy; Union Jack; and behind them perhaps—Mrs. Mayhew sketched what she would have done had it been her pageant—the Church. In cardboard. One window, looking east, brilliantly illuminated to symbolize—she could work that out when the time came.
“There she is, behind the tree,” she whispered, pointing at Miss La Trobe.
Miss La Trobe stood there with her eye on her script. “After Vic.,” she had written, “try ten mins. of present time. Swallows, cows, etc.” She wanted to expose them, as it were, to douche them, with present-time reality. But something was going wrong with the experiment. “Reality too strong,” she muttered. “Curse ’em!” She felt everything they felt Audiences were the devil. O to write a play without an audience—the play. But here she was fronting her audience. Every second they were slipping the noose. Her little game had gone wrong. If only she’d a backcloth to hang between the trees—to shut out cows, swallows, present time! But she had nothing. She had forbidden music. Grating her fingers in the bark, she damned the audience. Panic seized her. Blood seemed to pour from her shoes. This is death, death, death, she noted in the margin of her mind; when illusion fails. Unable to lift her hand, she stood facing the audience.
And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse.
No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears.
“O that our human pain could here have ending!” Isa murmured. Looking up she received two great blots of rain full in her face. They trickled down her cheeks as if they were her own tears. But they were all people’s tears, weeping for all people. Hands were raised. Here and there a parasol opened. The rain was sudden and universal. Then it stopped. From the grass rose a fresh earthy smell.
“That’s done it,” sighed Miss La Trobe, wiping away the drops on her cheeks. Nature once more had taken her part. The risk she had run acting in the open air was justified. She brandished her script. Music began—A.B.C.—A.B.C. The tune was as simple as could be. But now that the shower had fallen, it was the other voice speaking, the voice that was no one’s voice. And the voice that wept for human pain unending said:
The King is in his counting house
Counting out his money,
The Queen is in her parlour . . .
“O that my life could here have ending,” Isa murmured (taking care not to move her lips). Readily would she endow this voice with all her treasure if so be tears could be ended. The little twist of sound could have the whole of her. On the altar of the rain-soaked earth she laid down her sacrifice. . . .
“O look!” she cried aloud.
That was a ladder. And that (a cloth roughly painted) was a wall. And that a man with a hod on his back. Mr. Page the reporter, licking his pencil, noted: “With the very limited means at her disposal, Miss La Trobe conveyed to the audience Civilization (the wall) in ruins; rebuilt (witness man with hod) by human effort; witness also woman handing bricks. Any fool could grasp that. Now issued black man in fuzzy wig; coffee-coloured ditto in silver turban; they signify presumably the League of . . .”
A burst of applause greeted this flattering tribute to ourselves. Crude of course. But then she had to keep expenses down. A painted cloth must convey—what the Times and Telegraph both said in their leaders that very morning.
The tune hummed:
The King is in his counting house
Counting out his money,
The Queen is in her parlour
Eating . . .
Suddenly the tune stopped. The tune changed. A waltz, was it? Something half known, half not. The swallows danced it. Round and round, in and out they skimmed. Real swallows. Retreating and advancing. And the trees, O the trees, how gravely and sedately like senators in council, or the spaced pillars of some cathedral church. . . . Yes, they barred the music, and massed and hoarded; and prevented what was fluid from overflowing. The swallows—or martins were they?—The temple-haunting martins who come, have always come . . . Yes, perched on the wall, they seemed to foretell what after all the Times was saying yesterday. Homes will be built. Each flat with its refrigerator, in the crannied wall. Each of us a free man; plates washed by machinery; not an aeroplane to vex us; all liberated; made whole. . . .
The tune changed; snapped; broke; jagged. Fox-trot, was it? Jazz? Anyhow the rhythm kicked, reared, snapped short. What a jangle and a jingle! Well, with the means at her disposal, you can’t ask too much. What a cackle, a cacophony! Nothing ended. So abrupt. And corrupt. Such an outrage; such an insult; And not plain. Very up to date, all the same. What is her game? To disrupt? Jog and trot? Jerk and smirk? Put the finger to the nose? Squint and pry? Peak and spy? O the irreverence of the generation which is only momentarily—thanks be—“the young.” The young, who can’t make, but only break; shiver into splinters the old vision; smash to atoms what was whole. What a cackle, what a rattle, what a yaffle—as they call the woodpecker, the laughing bird that flits from tree to tree.
Look! Out they come, from the bushes—the riff-raff. Children? Imps—elves—demons. Holding what? Tin cans? Bedroom candlesticks? Old jars? My dear, that’s the cheval glass from the Rectory! And the mirror—that I lent her. My mother’s. Cracked. What’s the notion? Anything that’s bright enough to reflect, presumably, ourselves?
Ourselves! Ourselves!
Out they leapt, jerked, skipped. Flashing, dazzling, dancing, jumping. Now old Bart . . . he was caught. Now Manresa. Here a nose . . . There a skirt . . . Then trousers only . . . Now perhaps a face. . . . Ourselves? But that’s cruel. To snap us as we are, before we’ve had time to assume . . . And only, too, in parts. . . . That’s what’s so distorting and upsetting and utterly unfair.
Mopping, mowing, whisking, frisking, the looking-glasses darted, flashed, exposed. People in the back rows stood up to see the fun. Down they sat, caught themselves . . . What an awful show-up! Even for the old who, one might suppose, hadn’t any longer any care about their faces. . . . And Lord! the jangle and the din! The very cows joined in. Walloping, tail lashing, the reticence of nature was undone, and the barriers which should divide Man the Master from the Brute were dissolved. Then the dogs joined in. Excited by the uproar, scurrying and worrying, here they came! Look at them! And the hound, the Afghan hound . . . look at him!
Then once more, in the uproar which by this time has passed quite beyond control, behold Miss Whatshername behind the tree summoned from the bushes—or was it they who broke away—Queen Bess; Queen Anne; and the girl in the Mall; and the Age of Reason; and Budge the policeman. Here they came. And the Pilgrims. And the lovers. And the grandfather’s clock. And the old man with a beard. They all appeared. What’s more, each declaimed some phrase or fragment from their parts. . . . I am not (said one) in my perfect mind . . . Another, Reason am I . . . And I? I’m the old top hat. . . . Home is the hunter, home from the hill . . . Home? Where the miner sweats, and the maiden faith is rudely strumpeted. . . . Sweet and low; sweet and low, wind of the western sea . . . Is that a dagger that I see before me? . . . The owl hoots and the ivy mocks tap-tap-tapping on the pane. . . . Lady I love till I die, leave thy chamber and come . . . Where the worm weaves its winding sheet. . . . I’d be a butterfly. I’d be a butterfly. . . . In thy will is our peace. . . . Here, Papa, take your book and read aloud . . . Hark, hark, the dogs do bark and the beggars . . .
It was the cheval glass that proved too heavy. Young Bonthorp for all his muscle couldn’t lug the damned thing about any longer. He stopped. So did they all—hand glasses, tin cans, scraps of scullery glass, harness room glass, and heavily embossed silver mirrors—all stopped. And the audience saw themselves, not whole by any means, but at any rate sitting still.
The hands of the clock had stopped at the present moment. It was now. Ourselves.
So that was her little game! To show us up, as we are, here and how. All shifted, preened, minced; hands were raised, legs shifted. Even Bart, even Lucy, turned away. All evaded or shaded themselves—save Mrs. Manresa who, facing herself in the glass, used it as a glass; had out her mirror; powdered her nose; and moved one curl, disturbed by the breeze, to its place.
“Magnificent!” cried old Bartholomew. Alone she preserved unashamed her identity, and faced without blinking herself. Calmly she reddened her lips.
The mirror bearers squatted; malicious; observant; expectant; expository.
“That’s them,” the back rows were tittering. “Must we submit passively to this malignant indignity?” the front row demanded. Each turned ostensibly to say—O whatever came handy—to his neighbour. Each tried to shift an inch or two beyond the inquisitive insulting eye. Some made as if to go.
“The play’s over, I take it,” muttered Colonel Mayhew, retrieving his hat. “It’s time . . .”
But before they had come to any common conclusion, a voice asserted itself. Whose voice it was no one knew. It came from the bushes—a megaphonic, anonymous, loud-speaking affirmation. The voice said:
Before we part, ladies and gentlemen, before we go . . . (Those who had risen sat down) . . . let’s talk in words of one syllable, without larding, stuffing or cant. Let’s break the rhythm and forget the rhyme. And calmly consider ourselves. Ourselves. Some bony. Some fat. (The glasses confirmed this.) Liars most of us. Thieves too. (The glasses made no comment on that.) The poor are as bad as the rich are. Perhaps worse. Don’t hide among rags. Or let our cloth protect us. Or for the matter of that book learning; or skilful practice on pianos; or laying on of paint. Or presume there’s innocency in childhood. Consider the sheep. Or faith in love. Consider the dogs. Or virtue in those that have grown white hairs. Consider the gun slayers, bomb droppers here or there. They do openly what we do slyly. Take for example (here the megaphone adopted a colloquial, conversational tone) Mr. M’s bungalow. A view spoilt for ever. That’s murder. . . . Or Mrs. E’s lipstick and blood-red nails. . . . A tyrant, remember, is half a slave. Item the vanity of Mr. H. the writer, scraping in the dunghill for sixpenny fame . . . Then there’s the amiable condescension of the lady of the manor—the upper class manner. And buying shares in the market to sell ’em. . . . O we’re all the same. Take myself now. Do I escape my own reprobation, simulating indignation, in the bush, among the leaves? There’s a rhyme, to suggest, in spite of protestation and the desire for immolation, I too have had some, what’s called, education . . . Look at ourselves, ladies and gentlemen! Then at the wall; and ask how’s this wall, the great wall, which we call, perhaps miscall, civilisation, to be built by (here the mirrors flicked and flashed) orts, scraps and fragments like ourselves?
All the same here I change (by way of the rhyme mark ye) to a loftier strain—there’s something to be said: for our kindness to the cat; note too in today’s paper “Dearly loved by his wife”; and the impulse which leads us—mark you, when no one’s looking—to the window at midnight to smell the bean. Or the resolute refusal of some pimpled dirty little scrub in sandals to sell his soul. There is such a thing—you can’t deny it. What? You can’t descry it? All you can see of yourselves is scraps, orts and fragments? Well then listen to the gramophone affirming. . . .
A hitch occurred here. The records had been mixed. Fox-trot, Sweet Lavender, Home Sweet Home, Rule Britannia—sweating profusely, Jimmy, who had charge of the music, threw them aside and fitted the right one—was it Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart or nobody famous, but merely a traditional tune? Anyhow, thank heaven, it was somebody speaking after the anonymous bray of the infernal megaphone.
Like quicksilver sliding, filings magnetized, the distracted united. The tune began; the first note meant a second; the second a third. Then down beneath a force was born in opposition; then another. On different levels they diverged. On different levels ourselves went forward; flower gathering some on the surface; others descending to wrestle with the meaning; but all comprehending; all enlisted. The whole population of the mind’s immeasurable profundity came flocking; from the unprotected, the unskinned; and dawn rose; and azure; from chaos and cacophony measure; but not the melody of surface sound alone controlled it; but also the warring battle-plumed warriors straining asunder: To part? No. Compelled from the ends of the horizon; recalled from the edge of appalling crevasses; they crashed; Solved; united. And some relaxed their fingers; and other uncrossed their legs.
Was that voice ourselves? Scraps, orts and fragments, are we, also, that? The voice died away.
As waves withdrawing uncover; as mist uplifting reveals; so, raising their eyes (Mrs. Manresa’s were wet; for an instant tears ravaged her powder) they saw, as waters withdrawing leave visible a tramp’s old boot, a man in a clergyman’s collar surreptitiously mounting a soap-box.
“The Rev. G. W Streatfield,” the reporter licked his pencil and noted, “then spoke . . .”
All gazed. What an intolerable constriction, contraction, and reduction to simplified absurdity he was to be sure! Of all incongruous sights a clergyman in the livery of his servitude to the summing up was the most grotesque and entire. He opened his mouth. O Lord, protect and preserve us from words the defilers, from words the impure! What need have we of words to remind us? Must I be Thomas, you Jane?
As if a rook had hopped unseen to a prominent bald branch, he touched his collar and hemmed his preliminary croak. One fact mitigated the horror; his forefinger, raised in the customary manner, was stained with tobacco juice. He wasn’t such a bad fellow; the Rev. G. W. Streatfield; a piece of traditional church furniture; a corner cupboard; or the top beam of a gate, fashioned by generations of village carpenters after some lost-in-the-mists-of-antiquity model.
He looked at the audience; then up at the sky. The whole lot of them, gentles and simples, felt embarrassed, for him, for themselves. There he stood their representative spokesman; their symbol; themselves; a butt, a clod, laughed at by looking-glasses; ignored by the cows, condemned by the clouds which continued their majestic rearrangement of the celestial landscape; an irrelevant forked stake in the flow and majesty of the summer silent world.
His first words (the breeze had risen; the leaves were rustling) were lost. Then he was heard saying: “What.” To that word he added another “Message”; and at last a whole sentence emerged; not comprehensible; say rather audible. “What message,” it seemed he was asking, “was our pageant meant to convey?”
They folded their hands in the traditional manner as if they were seated in church.
“I have been asking myself”—the words were repeated—“what meaning, or message, this pageant was meant to convey?”
If he didn’t know, calling himself Reverend, also M.A., who after all could?
“As one of the audience,” he continued (words now put on meaning), “I will offer, very humbly, for I am not a critic”—and he touched the white gate that enclosed his neck with a yellow forefinger—“my interpretation. No, that is too bold a word. The gifted lady . . .” He looked round. La Trobe was invisible. He continued: “Speaking merely as one of the audience, I confess I was puzzled. For what reason, I asked, were we shown these scenes? Briefly, it is true. The means at our disposal this afternoon were limited. Still we were shown different groups. We were shown, unless I mistake, the effort renewed. A few were chosen; the many passed in the background. That surely we were shown. But again, were we not given to understand—am I too presumptuous? Am I treading, like angels, where as a fool I should absent myself? To me at least it was indicated that we are members one of another. Each is part of the whole. Yes, that occurred to me, sitting among you in the audience. Did I not perceive Mr. Hardcastle here” (he pointed) “at one time a Viking? And in Lady Harridan—excuse me, if I get the names wrong—a Canterbury pilgrim? We act different parts; but are the same. That I leave to you. Then again, as the play or pageant proceeded, my attention was distracted. Perhaps that too was part of the producer’s intention? I thought I perceived that nature takes her part. Dare we, I asked myself, limit life to ourselves? May we not hold that there is a spirit that inspires, pervades . . .” (The swallows were sweeping round him. They seemed cognizant of his meaning. Then they swept out of sight.) “I leave that to you. I am not here to explain. That role has not been assigned me. I speak only as one of the audience, one of ourselves. I caught myself too reflected, as it happened in my own mirror . . .” (Laughter) “Scraps, orts and fragments! Surely, we should unite?”
