‘Holy Moses.’
‘Where is it, John?’
‘I mustn’t have tied it properly. Damn.’
You ascended a mound of rocks and saw it fifty yards away in the Sound, bobbing and slowly circling, its oars trailing from the oarlocks, its mooring-guy dragging behind like a tail. A cormorant was perched on the cross-bench, proprietorial somehow, as though having pirated the dory away out of spite. It occurred to you suddenly what the schoolboys had been shouting about.
‘Damn,’ he said, again. ‘This is a very nice pancake.’
‘It is all right. Let’s not be panicking. Calm down.’
He stripped off his shirt and waded into the water, which must have been achingly cold. And it is odd, because when you remember this, for some reason there is a reversal. It is you who are conscious of the pounding of your heart, the hardness of breathing, the sting of the waves, the terror encountered by the unskilled swimmer that the whole world is made of water. Somehow he clambered in, his frantic flailing almost capsizing the dory, and by the time he had sculled a way back through the cross-current to the beach, your clothes were soaked rags and you were shaking. It was an incident you would often feel should be funny to remember. But in truth it wasn’t funny at all.
The next day you were at the theatre, on your way to a costume-fitting backstage, when you overheard Lady Gregory speaking to someone in her office. Something queer in her tone magnetised you towards the door, which was an inch or two ajar, an unusual enough occurrence, for Lady Gregory insisted on doors being kept closed in the theatre, except when it was absolutely necessary to open them. It was a matter of shutting the heat in, she would insist to the staff. Coal did not grow on the trees.
It seemed to you at first that some strange play was being read. After a while you could see that this was true, in its way, and you wondered if you yourself were in the wings, as it had seemed then, or were actually at centre stage.
‘I am told that when the company was on tour you permitted yourself to be seen in a public place, in a certain attitude with our gifted Miss Allgood.’
‘I am not sure what you mean, Augusta. An attitude?’
‘With your arm about her shoulder. Or something of that nature.’
‘The eyes of the world are observant indeed. You may rest assured it was only her shoulder. Nothing else.’
‘My dear John, it is not for me to opine on your private friendships, of course. Nor on the terrestrial coordinates of your arm.’
Her Ladyship had this mode of unimpeachable if clipped courtesy, cross-hatched with disenchantment, as though everything being said to her was an apology for some failing and she was being magnanimous in not shrieking at the speaker. Your lover was the only one of her writers who knew how to deal with it, perhaps because he was fluent in it too.
‘I value your wisdom greatly under all aspects, Augusta.’
‘Dash it all, this is a little difficult. One does not wish to be a Carmelite. But there are younger and impressionable people among the company, as you know.’
‘Impressionable?’
‘Yeats feels the same way. He feels he cannot speak to you. Perhaps it is because you are both men.’
The passageway was dusty; a dirty sunbeam slanted in through a skylight. You could see the seagulls wheeling or hanging in the airstreams as though in observation of something worth scavenging. For no reason it occurred to you that the river was close by, and beyond it the cold expanse of Dublin Bay. Beyond that, the freedom of Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds, some room in a town of smokestacks, where nobody knew either of you. You had sensed that the coke-black sternness of England’s northern cities was a lie, a camouflage of the liberty that might be found there.
‘Strong fences make good neighbours, John. If you follow my line. Fraternisation with the players can cause confusion, a certain restlessness. Especially when it takes place under a public gaze. And there are differences between you and Miss Allgood, of course.’
‘Indeed.’ He laughed quietly. ‘I had noticed.’
‘I do not think it entirely a matter for mordant amusement, if you will permit me the licence of fond friendship. I have to tell you that there has been talk of a kind that is not helpful to our work. Among the younger members of the company especially. I feel you know this, of course. You are a listener of immense skilfulness and subtlety.’
‘These little backstage snobberies are surely inconsequential.’
‘You say snobbery – but it is more a question of fellow feeling for you, John. And for Miss Allgood too. Importantly.’
‘Forgive me, dear Augusta, I am not sure I follow.’
‘Let me put it to you in the general. As a woman. As your friend. It would be a great violence to any girl to be given baseless expectations or to be allowed to form such expectations unenlightened. Particularly if she were very much younger and less educated than the man who might permit silly hopes. And not – well, you know what I mean.’
‘Not what?’
‘You are intent on ribbing me by making me use terminologies I do not find it agreeable to employ.’
‘You may speak candidly, Augusta, if that is your wish.’
‘I never trust people who do that. They are irremediably vulgar. Candour is the last resort of the tasteless.’
‘If you mean that Miss Allgood is of a differing social order –’
‘Those are your words, John.’
‘What are yours?’
‘Your inheritances – put it like that – are in few evident ways comparable.’
‘Which means?’
‘In effect, it means that some of us are bequeathed our furniture. Whereas others buy and sell it as a living.’
‘I have not noticed too many debutantes or duchesses on our stage.’
‘Your point being?’
‘I think you know my point. I need not paint a picture. We have devoted ourselves to that class of people who have inherited nothing but their courage. It is they who are given flesh on our stage every night. But in life, one is to hold one’s nose to them?’
‘You are speaking to me like a socialist vicar. And you are being a little disingenuous.’
‘Augusta –’
‘I have had a letter from the girl’s grandmother. A redoubtable person. I am informed that there have been anxieties among Miss Allgood’s family, John. There is no father, as you know. The girl is very young. Not young in years only but in development, in sensibility. Plainly the feeling exists that there are certain vulnerabilities. I cannot help but feel this, too. On both sides.’
‘There are no sides to the case.’
‘Between a man and a woman? I think there will always be sides. Could we but limit them to two we should be doing the work of wizards.’
‘It is essentially a matter of the wholly private sphere, which with great respect is not the proper concern of any other person.’
‘Were complexities down the road to conclude your understanding with Miss Allgood, I would ask you to consider the fact that she would face the continuation of her career, which is still in its infancy, in a shadow that might not be pleasant. Some would advise that it were better for the friendship to conclude itself now. Before harm of a serious nature is done.’
‘To her career?’
‘To that, too.’
‘My friendship with Miss Allgood will not be concluding. It is an attachment I have come to value very deeply.’
‘Evidently. Well, there it is. Perhaps you will reflect, at any rate.’
‘I hope that I will never fail to reflect on the counsel of a wellwisher.’
‘Yes. That is always wise. When it happens.’
‘May we now return to our work? There is a text needing editing.’
‘I would hate the day to arrive when I had to let her go. She may well have a talent. Not that of her sister, of course. Your Miss Allgood lacks the vein of hollowness every actor of the highest order must have. Her excess of personality means that she wil
l never achieve anything great. But she has a gift all the same. I like her voice.’
‘I share the hope that the day you envisage does not arrive, Augusta. Because if it did, you would be letting go of me, too.’
‘But come, my dear friend. Are you threatening your deepest admirer?’
‘I could never threaten the staunchest ally my writing has known. I merely aver that any theatre having no place for Miss Allgood needs other talents than mine.’
‘I rarely think it at all shrewd to offer a hostage to fortune, John.’
‘Quite. Neither do I. Be assured.’
You halt before a portrait of a kindly looking magistrate in the wig of a Pepysian character. He is red-faced, gouty, but his eyes shine with mildness, and his ruff is as yellow as a cornerboy’s teeth, which gives him the faintest little touch of the disreputable rogue, a thing you have always liked in a man. Sir Richard Persse-Leigh. How are you, sir? Quite well? You are looking fierce handsome; quite the mickey dazzler. May I remain with you a moment? I will not detain you long. The truth is, I am a little unsteady on my feet this cold morning. The spirituous liquors, alas. But if you will permit me a tiny minute in the balm of your company the steadiness I seek will return. I have been thinking, you see, of events in the past, and they cannot be changed so are better forgotten – but this morning, for some reason, they are at me like dogs, so I need a gallant friend like yourself, sir.
Does it frighten you at night, sir, the quietness of this place? Can you hear the infernal motor cars as they cross Trafalgar Square? In the war, used you awaken to the drone of the bombers? I did, myself. Did you weep? Do you natter to one another when the gallery is empty? Are you courting the Duchess of Blandford, perhaps? Are there great chivalrous dances when you slip from your frames, and gavottes in the halls when the night porter sleeps? I’d say you know what’s what when it comes to a woman. You have the look of a right pleasure-man, I’m thinking. Oh now, oh now, don’t deny it, you old scallywag. He’s the boogie-woogie bugle boy/Sir Richard Persse-Leigh.
Would you take me to the Four Hundred or the Milroy some time? Those are nightclubs, sir. I used to go when I was younger. After a first night, perhaps. We would wait for the reviews. All the smart, young poets would be arguing in the alcoves, the air thick with rhymes, and tuxedos on the chair-backs, and oh the champagne and oh the flirtations and the elations of exhausted Soho suppers. Lobster Newberg in Croustades, Crown Roast of Lamb, Potatoes with Parsley Butter, Peas with Mint Cream. An admirer once offered twenty guineas for one of my garters. Can you imagine the impertinence? Do you know what I told him? Free to those who can afford it, expensive to everyone else. He whispered that if I would permit him to take me to his bed I could decide into which category he should be placed. Well, I went to his rooms, sir, in Handel Street, Bloomsbury, for I was bold once or twice, there’s no point in denials, and he soon stopped me chatting, sir, I will give him that for nothing. He was patient, ruthlessly expert, said little. In the morning we talked. He was not long down from Oxford. Did you ever eat a snail, sir? We should go to L’Escargot. My name is Molly O’Neill, sir. I was once in love myself. It was a long time before the nightclubs and the slippers of vermouth. There are portraits of the man I loved. Not here, though.
He comes to you again as you look at the picture. Always so persistent, so jealous. That day not long after Dalkey Island when you were leaving on tour to England. He had some errands to do in Dublin and you arranged to meet him in a café. He was scrawling in his notebook as you entered slightly late and he gestured to you as you approached the table, rolling his eyes in mock impatience, unable to leave off from his work. Slowly twirling a carpenter’s pencil in the fingers of his right hand, his gaze on the ceiling as though trying to see an insect, and his gloved left hand held up to you like a policeman’s halting traffic, for fear you might speak and break his spell.
‘John?’
‘Please. Don’t say anything at all. Would you mind very terribly? I am losing my train. Don’t move.’
Seven minutes you waited, by the clock on the wall.
‘Sorry about that, old thing. Just a scene. How are you?’
‘Grand. I am looking forward to the tour.’
‘You’ll be missed,’ he said quietly.
‘Tis fierce romantic you are, altogether.’
‘I mean it,’ he said, perhaps more abruptly than he meant to. Lately his habitual brusqueness had been perplexing you slightly more. You had come to wonder if it was not in fact, like all habitual modes, the result of careful manufacture over time.
You regarded him. ‘Come with me, so.’
His laugh by then was harsh, something probably not his fault; an effect of repeated surgery on the glands of his throat, but the guttural hack of his amusement was a difficult thing to hear. He hated hearing it himself, you knew.
‘I can’t go with you to London, my silly little monkey.’ His long musician’s fingers now engaged in the making of a cigarette, butterfly paper, cheap, coarse-cut tobacco, like a workingman’s, tucking and rolling with the efficiency of long habit but no fluency.
‘Why not?’
‘You will be busy. You will be working. I don’t want to be in your way.’
‘Oh yes. My way. Who’d want to be in that?’
‘What time is the sailing?’
‘In three hours. We’d have to hurry.’
‘I can’t. I have unbreakable appointments at the theatre.’
‘A woman of my charms is practically throwing herself at him for a flit across the water and he can’t. Dear God, ladies and gentlemen. What’s the world coming to at all?’
‘I said I can’t, Molly. Now let the matter rest if you would.’
Again it came assertively and you felt the mirth in your expression melt. The waiter brought your orders, placed the plates and water glasses.
‘You are very hard sometimes, John.’
‘I am sorry. I am tired.’
‘You would give a girl the feeling that you are ashamed of her company.’
‘I could never be ashamed of my changeling. And you are correct to scold me, Molly. It’s this pig of a beastly play. It is sending your ungrateful wretch daft. We shall have a nice little outing the very day you come home. And I shall write to you every night you are gone. You’ll see. I shall dream of sitting in the box and cheering you along. And of cursing the rest of the company for clodhoppers.’
He flourished a smile and you returned it. But something between you had curdled. In some ways, it was easier to be together now the feeling was less intimate; your talk came freely, of things that didn’t matter, and if he began to look wearier you put it down to the oppressive heat of the café, the noise of nearby conversations, the comings and goings. As in all eating establishments in Dublin, the tables were too close together. You could smell your neighbour’s food.
‘Then I had better be going, John. There can be crowds at the weekend.’
He paid and you went out to Sackville Street but there were no hackneys on the stand. He waited with you, and you wanted to kiss him but were afraid to do so in public. He slipped his hand into yours without meeting your eyes. The air was sharp and cold, cleansed by the rain. You imagined being with him in London, the crowded noisy streets, an image of the two of you walking across Trafalgar Square towards the gallery, through the beggars and the mournful balladeers. Or simply being on the ship with him, in a windowless cabin, low-raftered, with a lamp, and the creaking of the boards. The sharing of conspiratorial laughter, like disobedient schoolchildren putting a spontaneous mischief into action. The cabin would be warm, so narrow that the bunk would touch two of the walls. You’d eat hungrily, often chuckling as you glanced at one another. The sailing would be atrocious; navvies would be drunk. A small, bright adventure to share.
He gave the jarvey-man five shillings and told him you were in a hurry. You remember it all. Every detail of that day. But the young woman from America would never want to know such a thing. She wou
ld think it all irrelevant. Understandably.
5
A REHEARSAL AT THE ABBEY THEATRE, DUBLIN
‘Miss O’Neill, the manner in which you spoke the line is not quite correct.’
‘Mr Synge, I am after speaking it the way it is written.’
‘An entirely understandable mistake. Please do not admonish yourself too severely. One’s intention was for it to be spoken as though your character did not quite fully mean it.’
‘There is no direction saying that, so I read it the way it appears.’
‘Again, Miss O’Neill, your error is almost entirely forgivable. I would only contend that you will see, if you give consideration to the previous five lines, and indeed to the general tenor and thrust of the scene, and to the numerous previous conversations we have had in the rehearsal room on the question, that undoubtedly she does not mean what she is saying. We have gone over the ground a hundred times. It must surely be clear.’
‘That is not clear to me at all.’
‘Then perhaps, Miss O’Neill, you should read the soliloquy again.’
‘And perhaps, Mr Synge, you should have written it different.’
Yeats looked up slowly from his place in the stalls, as though awoken by a mysterious bell. He took from his waistcoat pocket and wiped thoughtfully on his lapel an object that proved to be a monocle. He was not smiling, exactly, at his colleague, the playwright, but his mouth was perhaps curling, perhaps amiably. He breathed delicately on the monocle and held it up to the light like a jeweller examining a nugget of lapis lazuli.