“Don’t you think they’re good? Or would you rather not bother about them now? They can wait… How about some coffee, or a stiff drink, maybe?”
He said sharply, looking up: “Why did Oppeler send them to Foy?”
“I don’t know, and neither does Harry—he particularly asked me to tell you it wasn’t his fault they didn’t come direct to you. They should have, he knows it.”
“That relieves my mind enormously.”
“Oh, now, Paul, don’t talk like that. How could he help it if the artist made a mistake?”
“These drawings seem to be another of his mistakes.”
“You really haven’t looked at them yet.”
“Enough to know that I’d rather do without scenery altogether. He’ll have to try again.”
“They’re as bad as that?”
“How bad do they have to be? If they aren’t good enough, they’re bad.”
“Are you sure Oppeler’s the right man? Perhaps someone else—”
“Of course he’s the right man. He’s the best set designer in London if he ever gets a chance to prove it.”
“Tell him that, then he’ll WANT to try again.” She wondered how far his obduracy was loyalty to the artist or to his own judgment in choosing him, but whatever it was, the switch from attack to defence was characteristic. While she was thinking of this he turned on her suddenly. “How did it happen you got these from Foy?”
“I met him in the street and he told me they’d just come.”
“He had them with him?”
“No. They were at his house.”
“So you went to his house?”
“Yes.”
“What time did you meet him?”
“I—I don’t know—about two o’clock. Or soon after.”
“It’s four now. How long did you stay at his house?”
“Perhaps an hour. Does it matter?”
“How COULD you spend a whole hour there? He’s such a bore—”
“He doesn’t bore me. We just talked.”
“What about?”
“The theatre, of course—the play—you—me— him—he likes you so much.” She said that because he always liked to hear that people liked him, even if he didn’t like them, but this time there was no response except the sort of sarcasm that might have come from a bookish schoolboy; he said: “Again my mind is infinitely relieved.”
She faced him with dawning astonishment. “Paul… what’s happened? Why are you talking about Harry like this?”
“HARRY?… So you call him HARRY?”
“So do you. So does everybody—we did from our first meeting, didn’t we? Paul… PLEASE… it can’t be that you—oh no, that would be too ridiculous.”
He stood up with his back to the fire, his face flushed, eyes glinting. “Carey, I’m not a fool—do you suppose I haven’t noticed the way you look at that man every time he comes to the theatre? And his manner to you —he knows he attracts you—no wonder he won’t miss a rehearsal. And the other day when he made all that fuss about something in his eye —a childish manœuvre—”
“But there was something, a little fly, and I got it out.”
“He didn’t have to ask YOU! Any excuse, though—these drawings are another—”
“Paul! This is really funny… almost… you think a man puts a fly in his eye just for the pleasure of—”
“Carey, tell me this, why SHOULD he ask you to his house? Why not send over the drawings by messenger—he has servants and it’s only a few blocks away! And an hour—with HIM—just for talk. How much do you expect me to swallow?”
She was speechless for a moment; it was now beyond a joke, and as full awareness of what was happening took possession of her, she found she had no voice for anything but a few scattered sentences. “Paul, you know I love you. Are we actually quarrelling—and about something so utterly beyond reason?… I don’t know what to say, except that… your suspicion… any suspicion you can possibly have… about anything… is just plain silly. You believe me, Paul, don’t you?”
He stared at her with hard eyes. “I believe you’re becoming a very good actress.”
That changed her mood abruptly; she stepped away from him in a cold rage that made her feel physically sick. “All right. What more can I say?… It would be wasted time. I’m going out for a walk… Take your temperature and see if you still have a fever. Maybe that’s what’s driving you crazy.”
She dashed out of the room, snatching hat and coat on the way to the door. In the street a car just missed her as she ran across. She knew people were staring; she heard the man who had nearly run her down calling after her in anger. She checked her pace and turned into the first side-street. A few yards along this she heard footsteps overtaking her; Paul, dishevelled and panting, seized her arm and pulled her roughly to a standstill. “Come back —come back—” he gasped.
Even at such a moment there was faint comedy in the thought that he who hated to run had actually been forced into a chase. She might have begun to smile had not she seen that his own gasps and chokings were partly of laughter. That made her more furious than ever. “No—leave me alone —I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Carey—come back—I’ll explain everything—”
“Please let me take my walk.”
“But I want to explain—I can’t talk to you while you’re walking —Carey, darling—come back… I’ve got a temperature—I oughtn’t to be out here in the cold air—”
Two things leapt to her mind—first, that he had called her ‘darling’. He never had before—it was a word that did not come easily to him, except ironically or extravagantly when he addressed others. The second thing was his temperature. A gust of anxiety shook her about that. She let him lead her back to the flat without further protest and went straight to the bathroom for the thermometer.
“Only just over ninety-nine,” he said, following her and waving the instrument aside. “I took it just now—nothing to worry about. Let’s have that drink.”
By this time her own emotions were too confused to seek expression. She felt weak and empty of concern, one way or another. “I must rest for a minute, Paul. This kind of thing upsets me.”
He came beside her, kneeling on the floor by the chair and pressing her hand to his face.
“Listen to me, Carey—no need to be upset… just let me explain… don’t interrupt…”
“I’m too tired to interrupt.”
“Carey, I want to talk to you—about jealousy. Sexual jealousy. It’s a terrible thing. It destroys the mind, it warps the judgment—it can make clever people stupid and stupid people murderous—it infects —it poisons—and when the victim’s innocent the others become innocent too, but in a horrible kind of way… Do you remember how you first reacted—the feeling you had when I told you my suspicion? You were STUPEFIED. Not indignant, at first—not angry—not even protesting… but BEWILDERED. The look on your face—blank— expressionless—uncomprehending. Then later you told me very simply how much you loved me, how wrong I was… Only after that, when I said I still didn’t believe you—only THEN you got mad and lost your temper… for which I don’t blame you a bit… Did you ever notice the eyes of a dog that hasn’t done what he’s accused of, but because master is master his only reaction is innocence itself—the sheer acceptance of limitless injustice from the limitlessly beloved? You have to think of animals nowadays to visualize that—a modern heroine isn’t capable of it. But Desdemona WAS, the poor sucker, and it’s the key to the whole interpretation—you have to play the first two attitudes— bewilderment and pure heartbreaking innocence—without ever touching the third one—anger! See?… And by the way, there was one true thing I said—that you were becoming a good actress. That’s what struck me as funny—to pay you my first real compliment and have you stalk out of the room as if you’d been insulted!… But those two things—hang on to them, won’t you?—first the bewilderment, then the simple statement of innocence… Why, what’s wrong?
What’s the matter?”
“I think I’m beginning to find out—what’s the matter—with you.”
He laughed again, but comfortably now—a chuckle, as at a practical joke so comic that the victim should at least be sporting enough to smile. “Carey, don’t you see?—I wanted you to learn from the heart, not from the mind! And you did—even my bad acting took you in completely. Good God, it must have done, for you to think THAT… and Harry of all people!… But I believe it’ll help you to feel the character—she’s a difficult dame, probably the hardest of all Shakespeare’s heroines, because the way she takes a beating isn’t really meekness, it’s a sort of strength in disguise —fascinating the way it builds up during the course of the play —if you’d like us both to go over it again—the handkerchief scene, begin with—”
“Oh no, no. It isn’t so much the part that’s troubling me now.”
“Good. I’m glad you feel more confident.”
She couldn’t control her tears, of pity for him as well as of fading anger and growing relief, but there was a glimpse of horror in his ready assumption that all was well, that his explanation, once made, could instantly undo all the mischief.
He continued jauntily: “Remember in Dublin I said that when an actor feels an emotion intensely it’s natural for him to act? Here’s the corollary —that to make him act you must sometimes make him feel intensely… shock treatment… to get the final rightness—to pin it down once and for all. We’ll know tomorrow if that’s happened to you.”
“Something else may have happened too. Isn’t it a bit dreadful, Paul, to be willing to risk so much? Supposing you hadn’t caught up with me in the street—suppose I’d had hours to walk and think and worry… wouldn’t it have mattered to you at all? Perhaps you’d have laughed all the more… And I nearly got run over.” She began to laugh herself at last, though with a touch of hysteria. “Quite a joke, on every score. And all those things you said about Harry—the nonsense you invented—how CAN you use your friends like that?”
“Now look, Carey, I only called him a bore—and I think he is, but if you don’t, that’s fine—he’s not a bad fellow, we both know that…” Then he caught a note behind her laughter that made him add, in simple wonderment: “You aren’t REALLY upset, are you?… Oh, if you are, I’m sorry. I’m a son of a bitch at times like this—I have the damned play on my mind—I don’t think of anything else. But if you ever leave me I don’t know what I’ll do… that’s what I was thinking all the time I was talking the nonsense—I was thinking, suppose it WAS true, suppose you WERE carrying on with Harry or some other man… what WOULD I do?”
She was laughing now in the sheer pleasure of hearing him confess so much. “Stifle me, perhaps, as in the play?”
“No, I’d think you were lucky and I deserved what I got, because I know I’m not good enough for you. I mean that, Carey.”
They made love, then had drinks, then looked over the drawings to decide what had to be changed. By that time it was dusk and he declared his cold so much better that he would enjoy a good dinner in town, so they went to the restaurant in Lisle Street in a mood of celebration. After the bizarre events of the day she was very happy.
The extraordinary thing was that when she rehearsed in the morning there was such a marked improvement in her performance that she startled herself as well as the others. For the first time in her life she enjoyed an experience that was later to become the thing aimed for—a sudden swimming bliss in which her own self split effortlessly into two identities, the one Desdemona, the other a calm observer of herself acting. When she finished there was no need for Paul to tell her she had been excellent. She knew it in her bones, with a warm satisfaction that made it pleasant to reply quietly: “You said I would be, didn’t you?”
Paul, of course, enjoyed no such serenities. Nor, she was sure, did there ever come to him a sense of incredibility in the contrast between this terrific emotional and creative effort on the part of a dedicated few and the apathy of the multitude which, if the play were to succeed, it must conquer and divert. She had an idea that Paul regarded audiences too arrogantly even to think of this, much less to be appalled by it; he would give people not what THEY wanted, but what HE wanted, thus involving him in the further task of making them WANT what he wanted. No one could essay this without an eagerness to be consumed, and it was true that, as opening night approached, Paul reached flashpoint; his whole being clenched into a total effect of alertness, so that it could be said that he neither saw nor heard, but constantly watched and listened. She wondered how he could keep it up, but she guessed that some of the physical energy he forbore to expend was somehow transmuted into these more combustible channels. Yet there was nothing of the conventional ascetic about him; he ate prodigiously (he could do this without gaining weight during such stressful days), drank quite enough, smoked cigars all the time, sat up half the night and fell into dreamless sleep from about 4 A.M. till 10. While he was asleep his breathing was often imperceptible, he rarely turned or stirred, and his face, usually pale because he spent so little time out of doors, became paler still; there was only one word that occurred to her, though she tried never to think of it—he looked DEAD, as if he had switched off the waking turbine by some act of deliberation. Physically he grew lazier as the ultimate ordeal approached; he would call a taxi for the short distance to the theatre, and during later rehearsals he would sit in one of the back-row seats for hours on end, summoning actors next to him for private talk. Or else Foy would arrive with news about programmes, posters, advertisements, box-office arrangements, and be regally motioned to another adjacent seat to wait his turn. Paul had a lively finger in every pie, and was quite capable of making the size of the ticket-stubs an issue for first-class bickering. It was against his nature to delegate authority, he much preferred to enlist willing slaves; and perhaps Carey’s appeal to him to treat Foy more generously did have some effect, for during the final weeks of preparation Paul received him back to favour in the role of an overburdened but unfailingly cheerful office-boy.
To Carey the kind of man she had married became a source of increasing wonderment. She was aware of his separateness in a world she could not invade with him, and when he returned to her, as from this world, it was often to talk of its glories in a way that might have bored her had she not loved him. She knew him too well now to expect him to share so many simple things that she enjoyed—a few hours taking pot-luck at a local cinema, fun with the landlady’s cat, a walk on Hampstead Heath in the morning, with the yellow autumn sun peering through mists above London’s roof-tops. Yet she remembered that their first real acquaintance had been during a long walk in Phoenix Park, and that on the night before he left Dublin he had actually walked the mile or so from Rowden’s house to her own in Terenure. Walking thus became a symbol of what he had once done, for her and with her, but would no longer do. Was it because, as with his first cordiality to Foy, he could always bring himself to do things if he thought them worth while for some personal end? She did not much care. If he had been so keen to know her that he had paid a price of any kind, it only proved how keen he had been. And he still was, she knew that, because he had explored so much more of the ways in which she could help him. She sometimes thought that after the crisis of love-making came a second and perhaps to him a deeper one that had grown up out of her own subconscious desire to play whatever part he cast her for; in this she would cradle him in an embrace that was almost sexless, yet as close to him (she felt instinctively) as she could ever get.
Once he talked about his mother in Milwaukee. “She doesn’t get on too well with my brother and his wife. The first thing I’ll do when I’ve made some money is to take her away somewhere else—New York, London, anywhere —she wouldn’t mind, so long as it’s near me… I suppose you’re surprised to find I have an ambition in life that isn’t connected with the theatre?”
“Yes,” she answered. “But I’m rather glad. It seems to give me a chance.”
* * * * *
It would be an exaggeration to say that Paul Saffron’s Othello (Shakespeare’s being a name too well known to be worth mentioning) at the Nonesuch Theatre, Hampstead, on December Twenty-Seventh, Nineteen-Twenty-Two, made theatrical history; it was, however, a big event in the lives of both Paul and Carey, because it was their first success together, so they could both feel they were lucky for each other. The London press was favourable, and since praise for a Shakespeare play is primarily for the production, Paul could not have found a better vehicle to advertise himself. Carey was praised too, her performance being hailed by one important reviewer as “the only Desdemona I ever saw who didn’t seem more dumb than innocent”.
In other respects Paul’s optimistic prophecies proved wrong. Foy did not make any fortune, nor did his theatre achieve the fame that would establish it in the regular West End firmament (indeed, the controversy about ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore had given it far more spectacular publicity). The truth was that only a limited number of people wished to see Othello, however well done, and only a limited number of these would make the journey by Tube to Hampstead. The play, moreover, had been staged so expensively, to meet Paul’s every whim, that it could yield only a moderate profit if the house were always full, and after the first few weeks there were enough empty seats to whittle down any accumulated surplus. All of which might have been called a disappointment by those who remembered Paul’s extravagant forecasts. Paul was not one of them. He seemed unperturbed, even bored by the box-office returns, and once he casually remarked that he had never expected financial success at all, and that the excellent critical notices were a complete satisfaction of his aim. Whether or not this was true, Carey reached a tentative conclusion that in the larger sense he was indifferent to money; what he did want were plaudits, power, prestige, and the satisfaction of a boundless artistic ego —plus, of course, enough of someone else’s money to spend and, if necessary, to lose. There remained, however, a question she could not answer either then or whenever afterwards it recurred—was his tremendous all-embracing optimism before the opening night of any of his plays authentic, or part of an enthusiasm deliberately generated as part of the basic strategy of stage-direction? Or, to put it another way, did he always fool himself when he fooled others?