Between the acts, p.12
Between the Acts, page 12
(she stretched out her swarthy, muscular arm)
Stretched his arm in contentment
As home from the Isles came
The sea faring men. . . .
Here the wind gave a tug at her head dress. Loops of pearls made it top-heavy. She had to steady the ruffle which threatened to blow away.
“Laughter, loud laughter,” Giles muttered. The tune on the gramophone reeled from side to side as if drunk with merriment. Mrs. Manresa began beating her foot and humming in time to it.
“Bravo! Bravo!” she cried. “There’s life in the old dog yet!” And she trolloped out the words of the song with an abandonment which, if vulgar, was a great help to the Elizabethan age. For the ruff had become unpinned and Great Eliza had forgotten her lines. But the audience laughed so loud that it did not matter.
“I fear I am not in my perfect mind,” Giles muttered to the same tune. Words came to the surface—he remembered “a stricken deer in whose lean flank the world’s harsh scorn has struck its thorn. . . . Exiled from its festival, the music turned ironical. . . . A churchyard haunter at whom the owl hoots and the ivy mocks tap-tap-tapping on the pane. . . . For they are dead, and I . . . I . . . I,” he repeated, forgetting the words, and glaring at his Aunt Lucy who sat craned forward, her mouth gaping, and her bony little hands clapping.
What were they laughing at?
At Albert, the village idiot, apparently. There was no need to dress him up. There he came, acting his part to perfection. He came ambling across the grass, mopping and mowing.
I know where the tit nests, he began.
In the hedgerow. I know, I know—
What don’t I know?
All your secrets, ladies,
And yours too, gentlemen . . .
He skipped along the front row of the audience, leering at each in turn. Now he was picking and plucking at Great Eliza’s skirts. She cuffed him on the ear. He tweaked her back. He was enjoying himself immensely.
“Albert having the time of his life,” Bartholomew muttered.
“Hope he don’t have a fit,” Lucy murmured.
“I know . . . I know . . .” Albert tittered, skipping round the soap box.
“The village idiot,” whispered a stout black lady—Mrs. Elmhurst—who came from a village ten miles distant where they, too, had an idiot. It wasn’t nice. Suppose he suddenly did something dreadful? There he was pinching the Queen’s skirts. She half covered her eyes, in case he did do—something dreadful.
Hoppety, jiggety, Albert resumed.
In at the window, out at the door,
What does the little bird hear? (he whistled on his fingers)
And see! There’s a mouse. . . .
(he made as if chasing it through the grass)
Now the clock strikes!
(he stood erect, puffing out his cheeks as if he were blowing a dandelion clock)
One, two, three, four. . . .
And off he skipped, as if his turn was over.
“Glad that’s over,” said Mrs. Elmhurst, uncovering her face. “Now what comes next? A tableau . . . ?”
For helpers, issuing swiftly from the bushes, carrying hurdles, had enclosed the Queen’s throne with screens papered to represent walls. They had strewn the ground with rushes. And the pilgrims who had continued their march and their chant in the background, now gathered round the figure of Eliza on her soap box as if to form the audience at a play.
Were they about to act a play in the presence of Queen Elizabeth? Was this, perhaps, the Globe theatre?
“What does the programme say?” Mrs. Herbert Winthrop asked, raising her lorgnette.
She mumbled through the blurred carbon sheet. Yes; it was a scene from a play.
“About a false Duke; and a Princess disguised as a boy; then the long lost heir turns out to be the beggar, because of a mole on his cheek; and Ferdinando and Carinthia—that’s the Duke’s daughter, only she’s been lost in a cave—falls in love with Ferdinando who had been put into a basket as a baby by an aged crone. And they marry. That’s I think what happens,” she said, looking up from the programme.
“Play out the play,” Great Eliza commanded. An aged crone tottered forward.
(“Mrs. Otter of the End House,” someone murmured.)
She sat herself on a packing case, and made motions, plucking her dishevelled locks and rocking herself from side to side as if she were an aged beldame in a chimney corner.
(“The crone, who saved the rightful heir,” Mrs. Winthrop explained.)
’Twas a winter’s night (she croaked out)
I mind me that, I to whom all’s one now, summer or winter.
You say the sun shines? I believe you, Sir.
‘Oh but it’s winter, and the fog’s abroad.’
All’s one to Elsbeth, summer or winter,
By the fireside, in the chimney corner, telling her beads.
I’ve cause to tell ’em.
Each bead (she held a bead between thumb and finger)
A crime!
’Twas a winter’s night, before cockcrow,
Yet the cock did crow ere he left me—
The man with a hood on his face, and the bloody hands
And the babe in the basket.
‘Tee hee,’ he mewed, as who should say, ‘I want my toy.’
Poor witling!
“Tee hee, tee hee!” I could not slay him!
For that, Mary in Heaven forgive me
The sins I’ve sinned before cockcrow!
Down to the creek i’ the dawn I slipped
Where the gull haunts and the heron stands
Like a stake on the edge of the marshes . . .
Who’s here?
(Three young men swaggered on to the stage and accosted her)
—Are you come to torture me, Sirs?
There is little blood in this arm,
(she extended her skinny forearm from her ragged shift)
Saints in Heaven preserve me!
She bawled. They bawled. All together they bawled, and so loud that it was difficult to make out what they were saying: apparently it was: Did she remember concealing a child in a cradle among the rushes some twenty years previously? A babe in a basket, crone! A babe in a basket? they bawled. The wind howls and the bittern shrieks, she replied.
“There is little blood in my arm,” Isabella repeated.
That was all she heard. There was such a medley of things going on, what with the beldame’s deafness, the bawling of the youths, and the confusion of the plot that she could make nothing of it.
Did the plot matter? She shifted and looked over her right shoulder. The plot was only there to beget emotion. There were only two emotions: love; and hate. There was no need to puzzle out the plot. Perhaps Miss La Trobe meant that when she cut this knot in the centre?
Don’t bother about the plot: the plot’s nothing.
But what was happening? The Prince had come.
Plucking up his sleeve, the beldame recognized the mole; and, staggering back in her chair, shrieked:
My child! My child!
Recognition followed. The young Prince (Albert Perry) was almost smothered in the withered arms of the beldame. Then suddenly he started apart.
Look where she comes! he cried.
They all looked where she came—Sylvia Edwards in white satin.
Who came? Isa looked. The nightingale’s song? The pearl in night’s black ear? Love embodied.
All arms were raised; all faces stared.
Hail, sweet Carinthia! said the Prince, sweeping his hat off. And she to him, raising her eyes:
My love! My lord!
“It was enough. Enough. Enough,” Isa repeated.
All else was verbiage, repetition.
The beldame meanwhile, because that was enough, had sunk back on her chair, the beads dangling from her fingers.
Look to the beldame there—old Elsbeth’s sick!
(They crowded round her)
Dead, Sirs!
She fell back lifeless. The crowd drew away. Peace, let her pass. She to whom all’s one now, summer or winter.
Peace was the third emotion. Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotions made the ply of human life. Now the priest, whose cotton wool moustache confused his utterance, stepped forward and pronounced benediction.
From the distaff of life’s tangled shin, unloose her hands.
(They unloosed her hands)
Of her frailty, let nothing now remembered be.
Call for the robin redbreast and the wren.
And roses fall your crimson pall.
(Petals were strewn from wicker baskets)
Cover the corpse. Sleep well.
(They covered the corpse)
On you, fair Sirs (he turned to the happy couple)
Let Heaven rain benediction!
Haste ere the envying sun
Night’s curtain hath undone. Let music sound
And the free air of Heaven waft you to your slumber!
Lead on the dance!
The gramophone blared. Dukes, priests, shepherds, pilgrims and serving men took hands and danced. The idiot scampered in and out. Hands joined, heads knocking, they danced round the majestic figure of the Elizabethan age personified by Mrs. Clark, licensed to sell tobacco, on her soap box.
It was a mellay; a medley; an entrancing spectacle (to William) of dappled light and shade on half clothed, fantastically coloured, leaping, jerking, swinging legs and arms. He clapped till his palms stung.
Mrs. Manresa applauded loudly. Somehow she was the Queen; and he (Giles) was the surly hero.
“Bravo! Bravo!” she cried, and her enthusiasm made the surly hero squirm on his seat. Then the great lady in the bath chair, the lady whose marriage with the local peer had obliterated in his trashy title a name that had been a name when there were brambles and briars where the Church now stood—so indigenous was she that even her body, crippled by arthritis, resembled an uncouth, nocturnal animal, now nearly extinct—clapped and laughed loud—the sudden laughter of a startled jay.
“Ha, ha, ha!” she laughed and clutched the arms of her chair with ungloved twisted hands.
A-maying, a-maying, they bawled. In and out and round about, a-maying, a-maying. . . .
It didn’t matter what the words were; or who sang what. Round and round they whirled, intoxicated by the music. Then, at a sign from Miss La Trobe behind the tree, the dance stopped. A procession formed. Great Eliza descended from her soap box. Taking her skirts in her hand, striding with long strides, surrounded by Dukes and Princes, followed by the lovers arm in arm, with Albert the idiot playing in and out, and the corpse on its bier concluding the procession, the Elizabethan age passed from the scene.
“Curse! Blast! Damn ’em!” Miss La Trobe in her rage stubbed her toe against a root. Here was her downfall; here was the Interval. Writing this skimble-skamble stuff in her cottage, she had agreed to cut the play here; a slave to her audience—to Mrs. Sands’ grumble—about tea; about dinner—she had gashed the scene here. Just as she had brewed emotion, she spilt it. So she signalled: Phyllis! And, summoned, Phyllis popped up on the mat again in the middle.
Gentles and simples, I address you all (she piped)
Our act is done, our scene is over.
Past is the day of crone and lover.
The bud has flowered; the flower has fallen.
But soon will rise another dawning,
For time whose children small we be
Hath in his keeping, you shall see,
You shall see. . . .
Her voice petered out. No one was listening. Heads bent, they read “Interval” on the programme. And, cutting short her words, the megaphone announced in plain English: “An interval.” Half an hour’s interval, for tea. Then the gramophone blared out:
Armed against fate,
The valiant Rhoderick,
Bold and blatant,
Firm, elatant, etc., etc.
At that, the audience stirred. Some rose briskly; others stooped, retrieving walking-sdcks, hats, bags. And then, as they raised themselves and turned about, the music modulated. The music chanted: Dispersed are we. It moaned: Dispersed are we. It lamented: Dispersed are we, as they streamed, spotting the grass with colour, across the lawns, and down the paths: Dispersed are we.
Mrs. Manresa took up the strain. Dispersed are we. “Freely, boldly, fearing no one” (she pushed a deck chair out of her way). “Youths and maidens” (she glanced behind her; but Giles had his back turned). “Follow, follow, follow me. . . . Oh Mr. Parker, what a pleasure to see you here! I’m for tea!”
“Dispersed are we,” Isabella followed her, humming. “All is over. The wave has broken. Left us stranded, high and dry. Single, separate on the shingle. Broken is the three-fold ply . . . Now I follow” (she pushed her chair back . . . The man in grey was lost in the crowd by the ilex) “that old strumpet” (she invoked Mrs. Manresa’s tight, flowered figure in front of her) “to have tea.”
Dodge remained behind. “Shall I,” he murmured, “go or stay? Slip out some other way? Or follow, follow, follow the dispersing company?”
Dispersed are we, the music wailed; dispersed are we. Giles remained like a stake in the tide of the flowing company.
“Follow?” He kicked his chair back. “Whom? Where?” He stubbed his light tennis shoes on the wood. “Nowhere. Anywhere.” Stark still he stood.
Here Cobbet of Cobbs Corner, alone under the monkey puzzle tree, rose and muttered: “What was in her mind, eh? What idea lay behind, eh? What made her indue the antique with this glamour—this sham lure, and set ’em climbing, climbing, climbing up the monkey puzzle tree?”
Dispersed are we, the music wailed. Dispersed are we. He turned and sauntered slowly after the retreating company.
Now Lucy, retrieving her bag from beneath the seat, chirruped to her brother:
“Bart, my dear, come with me. . . . D’you remember, when we were children, the play we acted in the nursery?”
He remembered. Red Indians the game was; a reed with a note wrapped up in a pebble.
“But for us, my old Cindy”—he picked up his hat—“the game’s over.” The glare and the stare and the beat of the tom-tom, he meant. He gave her his arm. Off they strolled. And Mr. Page, the reporter, noted, “Mrs. Swithin; Mr. B. Oliver,” then turning, added further “Lady Haslip, of Haslip Manor,” as he spied that old lady wheeled in her chair by her footman winding up the procession.
To the valediction of the gramophone hid in the bushes the audience departed. Dispersed, it wailed, Dispersed are we.
Now Miss La Trobe stepped from her hiding. Flowing, and streaming, on the grass, on the gravel, still for one moment she held them together—the dispersing company. Hadn’t she, for twenty-five minutes, made them see? A vision imparted was relief from agony . . . for one moment . . . one moment. Then the music petered out on the last word we. She heard the breeze rustle in the branches. She saw Giles Oliver with his back to the audience. Also Cobbet of Cobbs Corner. She hadn’t made them see. It was a failure, another damned failure! As usual. Her vision escaped her. And turning, she strode to the actors, undressing, down in the hollow, where butterflies feasted upon swords or silver paper; where the dish cloths in the shadow made pools of yellow.
Cobbet had out his watch. Three hours till seven, he noted; then water the plants. He turned.
Giles, nicking his chair into its notch, turned too, in the other direction. He took the short cut by the fields to the Barn. This dry summer the path was hard as brick across the fields. This dry summer the path was strewn with stones. He kicked—a flinty yellow stone, a sharp stone, edged as if cut by a savage for an arrow. A barbaric stone; a pre-historic. Stone-kicking was a child’s game. He remembered the rules. By the rules of the game, one stone, the same stone, must be kicked to the goal. Say a gate, or a tree. He played it alone. The gate was a goal; to be reached in ten. The first kick was Manresa (lust). The second, Dodge (perversion). The third, himself (coward). And the fourth and the fifth and all the others were the same.
He reached it in ten. There, couched in the grass, curled in an olive green ring, was a snake. Dead? No, choked with a toad in its mouth. The snake was unable to swallow; the toad was unable to die. A spasm made the ribs contract; blood oozed. It was birth the wrong way round—a monstrous inversion. So, raising his foot, he stamped on them. The mass crushed and slithered. The white canvas on his tennis shoes was bloodstained and sticky. But it was action. Action relieved him. He strode to the Barn, with blood on his shoes.
The Barn, the Noble Barn, the barn that had been built over seven hundred years ago and reminded some people of a Greek temple, others of the middle ages, most people of an age before their own, scarcely anybody of the present moment, was empty.
The great doors stood open. A shaft of light like a yellow banner sloped from roof to floor. Festoons of paper roses, left over from the Coronation, drooped from the rafters. A long table, on which stood an urn, plates and cups, cakes and bread and butter, stretched across one end. The Barn was empty. Mice slid in and out of holes or stood upright, nibbling. Swallows were busy with straw in pockets of earth in the rafters. Countless beetles and insects of various sorts burrowed in the dry wood. A stray bitch had made the dark corner where the sacks stood a lying-in ground for her puppies. All these eyes, expanding and narrowing, some adapted to light, others to darkness, looked from different angles and edges. Minute nibblings and rustlings broke the silence. Whiffs of sweetness and richness veined the air. A blue-bottle had settled on the cake and stabbed its yellow rock with its short drill. A butterfly sunned itself sensuously on a sunlit yellow plate.
But Mrs. Sands was approaching. She was pushing her way through the crowd. She had turned the corner. She could see the great open door. But butterflies she never saw; mice were only black pellets in kitchen drawers; moths she bundled in her hands and put out of the window. Bitches suggested only servant girls misbehaving. Had there been a cat she would have seen it—any cat, a starved cat with a patch of mange on its rump opened the flood gates of her childless heart. But there was no cat. The Barn was empty. And so running, panting, set upon reaching the Barn and taking up her station behind the tea urn before the company came, she reached the Barn. And the butterfly rose and the blue-bottle.
