There were tears in her eyes when she kissed him good-bye, but she would brush them away so soon, too soon, directly she left the platform.
“It must have been great fun,” said Celia. “I wish I hadn’t missed all that. And Maria, even if the others were sniffy about you, you must have been good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be where you are now.”
“That’s just it,” said Maria. “Where am I now?”
Niall knew what she meant, but Celia was puzzled.
“Really,” she said, “whatever more can you want? You’ve reached the top. You’re popular, everyone rushes to whatever play you happen to be in.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Maria. “But am I really good?”
Celia stared back at her, nonplussed.
“Why, surely,” she said, “you must be. I’ve never seen you bad. Some things are better than others, but that’s bound to happen. Of course you’re good. Don’t be such an idiot.”
“Oh, well,” said Maria. “I can’t explain. You don’t understand.”
She forgot most things in life, but not all. The little whispers, the careless innuendoes clung. She could not brush them off. Influence, she does it by influence. Someone else said that later. She does not do a stroke of work. She slipped in by the back door. It was the name. It was the name that did it. The whole thing was luck. Luck from start to finish. She landed that first big part in London because she set her cap at You-Know-Who and he was mad about her… It lasted quite a time, but of course… What she does is clever, but it’s monkey cleverness. No one could call it acting. She’s inherited Delaney’s charm, and she has a photographic memory and a box of tricks. Nothing more to it than that, they say, they say… they say… they say…
“You see,” said Maria slowly, “no one is ever honest with a person like me. No one really tells me the truth.”
“I’m honest,” said Niall, “I tell you the truth.”
“Oh, you,” sighed Maria, “you’re different.”
She looked across at him, and his queer, expressionless dark eyes, his lanky hair, his narrow mouth with the jutting underlip. There was no part of him she did not know, no part of him she did not love, but what had that to do with her acting? Or had it everything to do with it? Were the two things hopelessly mixed? Niall was the reflection in the mirror, to whom she danced and gestured as a child. Niall was the scapegoat, bearing all her sins.
“What you really mean,” said Niall, “is that we’re none of us first-class. Not the way Pappy was, or Mama. And that’s one of the things Charles was getting at when he called us parasites. We’ve fooled most people with our individual antics, but we know the truth, the three of us, inside.”
And he was standing in the shop in Bond Street, Keith Prowse, looking for a record. A record of Pappy singing an old French song. He could not remember the title, but there was the line about le cor.
“Que j’aime le sond du cor, le soir au fond du bois”
Some line like that. He knew the record well. It had “Plaisir d’amour” on the other side. No one, ever, had sung those songs as Pappy had sung them. But the silly fool of a girl hunting through the lists stared at him blankly.
“It’s not listed. It must be a very old one. I don’t think it’s recorded anymore.”
As she spoke the door opened of one of the little rooms leading off the passage, one of the rooms where people tried out records, and Niall heard the jigging rhythm of one of his own songs played rather indifferently by a second-rate band. A man in the shop passed at that moment, and recognized Niall, and smiled, nodding his head in the direction of the little room.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Delaney. You must be getting tired of hearing that one. I’m almost tired of it myself.”
The girl behind the counter looked at him curiously, and Niall’s song seemed to grow louder and louder, filling the shop with sound. He had made some excuse, and left the shop hurriedly, and walked away.
“The trouble is you’re both of you ungrateful for success,” said Celia. “You had it too young. It came to you, Maria, when you were barely twenty, in that roaring success at the Haymarket, and I was sitting at home in that house in St. John’s Wood, looking after Pappy.”
“You loved looking after Pappy,” said Maria. “You know you did.”
“He was drinking too much,” said Celia. “You never noticed, or if you did, it never worried you. I had the awful thing of watching him go to the sideboard. And Truda was not with us. Truda was in hospital at the time with that ulcered leg.”
“You made too much of it,” said Niall. “Pappy never got unpleasantly drunk. He never actually fell down or anything. He used to be rather funny. He always recited. Yards and yards of poetry. Nobody minded. And he sang better than ever.”
“I minded,” said Celia. “When you’ve loved someone all your life, and you’ve looked after them, and you see them gradually slip away, and the best in them run to waste, you mind then.”
“It was because he wasn’t singing,” said Maria. “He knew it was the beginning of the end, and it did something to him. When I begin getting old I shall probably drink too.”
“No, you won’t,” said Niall. “You’re too conceited. You care too much about your figure and your face.”
“I don’t care,” said Maria. “I don’t have to, thank goodness.”
“You will one day,” said Niall.
Maria looked at him sullenly.
“All right,” she said, “go on. Say something else unpleasant. And, anyway, we all know what you were up to, that winter.”
“Yes,” said Celia. “That was another thing. Poor Pappy, he was very worried about you, Niall. It really was rather shocking.”
“Nonsense,” said Niall.
“You were only just eighteen,” said Celia. “It caused an awful lot of talk.”
“You mean Pappy talked,” said Niall. “He always talked. It was the breath of life to him.”
“Well, he was very upset,” said Celia. “He never forgave that woman.”
“People always say ‘that woman’ when they dislike a person,” said Maria. “What reason had you to dislike poor old Freada? Actually, she was a very good sort. She was very good for Niall. She did him no harm at all, quite the reverse. And, anyway, she was an old friend of Pappy’s and Mama’s.”
“Perhaps that was why Pappy was angry,” said Niall.
“Did you ever ask Freada?” said Maria.
“God, no,” answered Niall.
“How funny men are. I would have done,” said Maria.
“It all began at that awful party,” said Celia. “It was a horrible evening. I shall never forget it. That awful party at the Green Park, or whatever the hotel was called. Pappy would give the party for Maria, after the first night at the Haymarket.”
“It wasn’t an awful party,” said Maria. “It was a wonderful party.”
“Of course, it was wonderful for you,” said Celia. “You had just made a big success. It wasn’t wonderful for me. Pappy got tight at the party and couldn’t get the car to start afterwards, and there was all that snow.”
“Snow everywhere,” said Niall. “It amazed me that anyone came to the party at all, let alone the play. It was inches thick all up the Haymarket. I know, because I spent most of the evening walking up and down. I couldn’t go in the theater and watch. I was too nervous for Maria.”
“Nerves! Don’t talk to me of nerves,” said Maria. “My hands and my feet and my tummy got colder and colder through the day. I went and said a prayer in St. Martin’s in the Fields.”
“Once you got on the stage you were all right,” said Celia.
“I was not all right,” said Niall, “walking up and down the Haymarket with chattering teeth. I might have caught pneumonia.”
Maria looked across at him. She was still a little sullen, still a little resentful.
“Well, your evening ended up all right, didn’t it?” she said.
“If it ended the way it did, it was your f
ault,” said Niall.
“Oh, go on,” said Maria. “Blame everything on me.”
Celia had not been listening. She was still thinking of the car that would not start, and Pappy bending down, doing things to the handle.
“If you come to think of it,” she said, “it was a queer sort of evening for all of us.”
10
When Maria woke that morning she could see the flakes of snow falling outside the window. The curtains were pulled aside—she never slept with them drawn—and the snow was falling sideways, slanting to the left, so that if she looked at it for long something happened to her eyes and she felt giddy. She closed them again, but she knew she would not sleep anymore. The Day had come. The dreaded Day.
Perhaps if it went on snowing for several hours the traffic would be stopped by the evening, and no one would be able to get anywhere, and all the theatres would have to close. A message would be sent to the company that owing to the weather the first night had been postponed.
She lay sideways in bed, her knees tucked up to her chin. She could pretend to be ill, of course. She could just lie there in bed all day and people would come in and she would pretend to be in a trance. The most frightful thing has happened. Maria Delaney, who was to play the young lead at the Haymarket, has been suddenly stricken with paralysis in the night. She can’t hear, she can’t speak, she can’t move as much as a finger. It is the most terrible tragedy. Because she was brilliant. We all had such high hopes of her. She was going to do wonderful things, and now she will never act again. She will lie forever more with that wistful, sweet, lost look in her eyes, and we shall all have to tiptoe to her bed and take her flowers…
Poor, lovely, brilliant Maria Delaney.
There was a knock on her door and the heavy-footed housemaid, Edith, burst into the room with her breakfast.
“Lovely weather,” she said, dumping the tray beside the bed. “The snow came over my ankles when I opened the back door. Someone will have to shovel it away for the tradesmen, but it won’t be me.”
Maria did not answer. She kept her eyes closed. She hated Edith.
“You won’t find many turning out to the theater this weather,” said Edith. “It will be three parts empty. There’s a bit about you in the paper, and a photograph. Not a scrap like you either.”
She flounced out of the room, banging the door. Hateful girl. What did she know about the theater being full or empty? No one had been able to get a seat who had not put their names down weeks ago, everyone knew that. The weather was not likely to scare off the lucky ones. Where was that bit about her in the paper? She opened the paper and looked it up and down, right through.
Oh, was that all?… Three little lines, down at the bottom where no one would ever see them. “Miss Maria Delaney, who is appearing in tonight’s new play at the Haymarket, is the eldest daughter of…” and then a whole lot about Pappy. They might just as well have put Pappy’s photograph in the paper instead of hers. Edith was right. It was not like her. Why could not the fools have used the new ones she had had done on purpose? But no. It had to be that idiotic thing of her grinning over her shoulder.
“Miss Maria Delaney, who is appearing in tonight’s new play at the Haymarket…” Tonight. There was no escape. It had come. It was upon her. She turned to her tray, and looked at her grapefruit with distaste. There was not enough sugar, and the marmalade pot was smeared. That was because Truda was away. Truda would be in hospital with an ulcered leg just when she was needed.
There were only two letters on the tray. One was a bill for some shoes, which she thought she had paid. She was sure she had. The brutes had sent it in again. And the other was from that boring girl who had been on tour with her last summer. “I shall be thinking of you when the great day comes. Some people have all the luck. What’s he like? Is he really as exciting as he looks, and is it true he’s nearly fifty? It doesn’t give his age in Who’s Who…”
Not many people knew the address in St. John’s Wood. Pappy and Celia had not been there very long. Most people would send their letters and telegrams to the Haymarket. The flowers too. When you came to think of it the whole business was horribly like having an operation. The telegrams, the flowers. And the long hours of waiting. She ate some of the grapefruit, but it was very bitter and all mixed up with pith. She spat it out.
She heard shuffling footsteps outside the door, and three fingers tapped in the familiar way.
“Come in,” said Maria.
It was Pappy. He wore his old blue dressing gown, and the slippers that Truda had mended again and again. Pappy never bought new clothes. He clung to the things he knew until they were practically insanitary. There was one old cardigan that was held together with pieces of string.
“Well, my darling,” he said.
He came and sat down on the bed and took her hand and kissed it. He had grown much heavier and fatter since the tour in South Africa, and his hair was now quite white. It was as thick as ever, though. It stood up from his powerful head and made him more like a lion than ever. An aging lion.
He held her hand, as he sat on the bed, and he took a piece of lump sugar off the tray and chewed it.
“How are you feeling, my darling?” he said.
“Awful,” Maria told him.
“I know,” he said.
And he smiled, and chewed another lump of sugar.
“You’ve either got it or you haven’t,” he said. “It’s either there at the back of your funny little head, and you’ll do what you have to do instinctively, or you’ll meander through as sixty percent of them do, just hanging about, never getting anywhere much.”
“How am I to know?” said Maria. “People never tell one the truth, not the real truth. It may be all right tonight, and the notices may be good, and everybody be nice—but I shan’t really know.”
“You’ll know all right,” he said, “here.” And he tapped his chest. “Inside,” he said.
“I feel it’s all wrong to be nervous,” said Maria. “I feel it’s lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding.”
“Some people do,” he said, “but they’re the duds. They are the ones that win prizes in school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It’s part of your life from now on. You’ve got to go through with it. Nothing’s worthwhile if you don’t fight for it first, if you haven’t a pain in your belly beforehand.”
He got up and pottered to the window. His bedroom slippers made a shuffling sound.
“When I first sang in Dublin,” he said, “there was a hell of a crowd. A real mixed bunch. And there had been some fuss about the tickets. The wrong people had got the wrong seats. I was so damn nervous beforehand when I tried to open my mouth my jaw got stuck—I couldn’t close it for about five minutes.”
He laughed. He moved over to the washstand and fiddled with Maria’s tube of toothpaste.
“Then I got angry,” he said. “I got angry with myself. What the hell am I frightened of, I said to myself, they’re nothing but a lot of Micks sitting out there, and if they don’t like me I don’t like them, and it’s just too bad for all of us. So I walked onto the platform and sang.”
“Did you sing well?” asked Maria.
He put down the tube of toothpaste. He looked at her and smiled.
“If I had not, we wouldn’t be here now,” he said, “and you could not be walking onto that stage at the Haymarket tonight. Now get up and take your bath, and don’t forget you’re a Delaney. Give ’em hell.”
And he opened the door, and shuffled off down the passage to his room, shouting to André to bring his breakfast.
“He’ll kiss me tonight and send flowers to the dressing room,” thought Maria, “but none of that will matter. This is what matters. What he said to me just now.”
She got up and went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water, and she emptied into the water all the bath salts that Celia had given her for Christmas.
“It’s like anointing a corpse before you bury it,” she said to herself.
It went on snowing all the morning. The little garden in front of the house was covered. It had a dead, flat look. And everything was silent and still, the queer, muffled stillness that comes with snow. You could not hear the traffic in Finchley Road.
Maria kept wishing Niall would come, but his train was not due until the afternoon. He was leaving school at Easter. This was his last term. Pappy had wangled special leave for him to come up because of the first night. Why could he not come in the morning, why must she wait until the afternoon? She wanted Niall to be with her.
The shoulder strap of her chemise tore when she put it over her head. She looked in the chest of drawers for another and could not find one. She went to the door and shouted for Celia.
“All my underclothes have disappeared,” she stormed. “I can’t find a thing. You’ve taken them.”
Celia was up and dressed. She was always up before Maria in case Pappy wanted her for anything, to answer the telephone, to write a letter.
“Nothing’s back from the laundry,” she said. “It’s because Truda isn’t here. There’s always a muddle. You shall have my best chemise and knickers. The ones Pappy gave me for Christmas.”
“You’re much fatter than me, they won’t fit,” grumbled Maria.
“They will fit, they’re too small. I was going to give them to you, anyway,” said Celia.
Her voice was gentle and soothing. She’s doing it on purpose, thought Maria. She’s being especially nice because of it being my first night and she knows I’m nervous. For some reason, the knowledge of this was irritating. She snatched the chemise and knickers out of Celia’s hands. Celia watched her put them on in silence. How lovely Maria looked in them. They fitted perfectly. What it was to be slim and straight…