André, who was Pappy’s valet, said it was Pappy. That Pappy did everything, Pappy arranged each detail down to the final curtain, and where Mama should place herself, how she should look, what she should wear. Truda, always loyal to Mama and at loggerheads with André, said Pappy had no hand in it, he did only what Mama ordered him to do, that Mama was a genius and Pappy only a brilliant amateur. Which was the real truth we, the three children, never discovered, nor did we care. We knew only that Pappy was the most wonderful man that had ever lived and, to our prejudiced ears, the greatest singer; and that no one, since the beginning of time, had moved and danced like Mama.
These things added to our arrogance as children. As babies, we heard the thunder of applause. We went about, from country to country, like little pages in the train of royalty; flattery hummed about us in the air, before us and within us was the continual excitement of success.
We never knew the ordinary placid routine of child life, the settled home, the humdrum day by day. For if yesterday we were in London, tomorrow would be Paris, and the after-tomorrow, Rome.
There were always new sounds, new faces, bustle and turmoil; and in each and every city was that mainspring of our lives, the theater. Sometimes a gold and gaudy opera house, sometimes a drab and shoddy barrack, but wherever it was the place was ours for the little space of time we borrowed it, forever different yet unchangingly familiar. That dusty, musty theater smell, how it still haunts each one of us in turn, and Maria at least will never shake it free. That swing door with the bar across it, the cold passage, those hollow-sounding stairs and the descent to the abyss. Those notices upon the walls that no one ever reads, that prowling cat with tail erect which mews and vanishes, the rusty fire-bucket into which someone throws the stub of a cigarette. The first sight of it would always be the same, no matter in what city or what country. The posters, sometimes black-printed, sometimes red, with Pappy’s and Mama’s names upon them, and the photographs, always of Mama, never of Pappy—this was a superstition of them both—hanging by the entrance.
We would arrive en famille in two cars. Pappy and Mama and the three of us, with Truda and André, and whatever dog or cat or bird might temporarily possess us, and whatever friend or hanger-on might be in favor. Then the assault began.
The Delaneys had arrived. Order had departed. Chaos reigned.
We poured from the hired cars with whoops of triumph like an Indian tribe. The foreign manager, smiling, obsequious, bowed us welcome, but with a look of apprehension in his eyes at the sight of the animals and birds and, above all, the romping children.
“Welcome to Monsieur Delaney, welcome to Madame,” he began, flinching at the parrot cage and the sudden bursting of a cracker under his nose, and as he began his conventional speech of introduction his shrinking form would melt, would almost disappear under Pappy’s thundering clap upon the shoulder. “Here we are, my dear fellow, here we are,” said Pappy, his hat on one side, his overcoat hanging from his shoulder like a cape. “You see us bursting with health and vigor like the ancient Greeks. Be careful of that case. It contains a Gurkha knife. Have you a small court or yard where we could put the rabbits? The children refuse to be parted from the rabbits.” And the manager, swamped by Pappy’s laugh and Pappy’s flow of conversation, intimidated possibly by Pappy’s height—he was six foot four—turned like a beast of burden into the dark precincts of his theater, with a rabbit cage under one arm, and a bundle of walking-sticks, clubs, and Eastern knives under the other.
“Leave everything to me, my dear fellow,” said Pappy happily; “you will have nothing to do. Leave everything to me. First and most important, what room do you propose to offer to Madame?”
“The best, Monsieur Delaney, but naturally, the best,” replied the manager, stepping on a puppy’s tail, and when he had sorted himself from the confusion, and had given directions for the various items of luggage and livestock to be placed in the passages pending their final destination, he led us down to the dressing room nearest to the stage.
But Mama and Truda were already in possession. They were putting mirrors in the passage, moving dressing tables outside the door, and tearing curtains from their rods.
“I can’t use any of this. All this must go,” announced Mama.
“Certainly, my darling. Whatever you wish. Our friend will see to that,” said Pappy, turning to the manager, clapping him again upon the shoulder. “That you should be comfortable, my darling, is our first concern.” The manager stammered, apologized, lied, promised Mama the world, and she turned her cold dark eyes upon him and said, “You understand, I suppose, that I must have all this by tomorrow morning? I cannot rehearse unless the curtains in my dressing room are blue. No enamel jugs or basins. All must be earthenware.”
“Yes, madame.”
He listened, with sinking heart, to her list of absolute necessities, and then, when she had finished, as a reward she smiled; the smile that came so seldom, but when she gave it, promised the spoils of paradise.
Then the three of us, who had listened to the conversation with bright eyes, turned with shouts of triumph to the pass-door beside the stage. “Catch me, Niall. You can’t catch me,” called Maria, and, running through the pass-door and the passage beyond, she ran down into the murky stalls. She vaulted across the back of one of them, tearing a slit in the cushion, and with Niall in pursuit she ran in and out of the line of stalls, throwing aside the dust-sheets, leaving them to trail upon the floor. The curtain on the stage was raised, and the manager, one eye on Pappy the other on us, stood mute and helpless.
“Wait for me, wait for me,” cried Celia; and hampered by her plump body and her short legs she would inevitably fall. The fall was followed by a wail of anguish, penetrating to the dressing room behind.
“See to baby, Truda,” Mama must have said, cool and composed, knowing that if the child had been crushed beneath the great chandelier of the theater it would only mean one less to take around, and, throwing the contents of yet another valise upon the floor for Truda to sort and tidy after she had retrieved either the living body or the corpse of Celia, Mama would move onto the stage to damn it, to condemn it as unfit for human beings, even as she had condemned the dressing room.
“Pappy, Mama, look at me—look at me,” shouted Maria, now standing in the front row of the gallery, poised on one leg upon the rail; and Pappy and Mama, engaged in heated conversation upon the stage with several men who were carpenters, electricians, allies of the manager or possibly all three things at once, took not the slightest notice of her imminent doom. “I see you, my darling, I see you,” said Pappy, continuing his conversation, never looking at the gallery at all.
So much for the first assault. Carpenters were sullen, electricians exhausted, managers and their assistants despairing, cleaners blasphemous. Not so the Delaneys. Heated, happy, clamoring for supper, we drove away triumphant. And our performance would be repeated in whatever hotel, in whichever suite, we happened to be staying.
At ten o’clock that evening, blown out by a four-course meal taken side by side with Pappy and Mama in the restaurant, and served by shuddering waiters who loathed the sight of us and loved our parents, Pappy in particular, we were still jumping and turning somersaults upon our beds. Jugs of water would be upset upon the floor, cake crumbs, smuggled from the restaurant, spilt and strewn upon the sheets, and Maria, ringleader of every folly, would suggest to Niall a keyhole expedition along the corridor, to watch the other visitors to the hotel undress.
We stole along, in our nightclothes. Maria, her fair hair short and curling like a boy’s, wearing her own nightgown tucked into a pair of Niall’s striped pajamas, with Niall slopping along behind in Truda’s bedroom slippers, because he had been unable to find his own. Celia, trailing a stuffed monkey, brought up the rear.
“First peep to me, I thought of it,” said Maria, pushing Niall away from the closed door, and kneeling down she put one eye to the keyhole while Niall and Celia watched in fascination.
/> “It’s an old man,” she whispered, “taking off his vest,” but before she could continue her description she was whipped off the floor by Truda, who had stolen upon us unseen.
“No, you don’t, miss,” said Truda. “You may take that road one day, but not while you are in my charge,” and down came the heavy hand upon Maria’s delectable bottom, and up went Maria’s fist into Truda’s buttoned, disapproving face. Wriggling, protesting, we were dragged back to our beds, and sprawled upon them, exhausted from our day, to sleep like puppies. In the morning only were we brought up to the value of silence. Pappy and Mama must never be disturbed. Whether in an apartment, in a hotel, or in a furnished house, we spoke in whispers and walked tiptoe in the early hours. To this day, we none of us rise early in the morning. We lie abed until the sun is high. The habit is ingrained within us. This then was our one rule of discipline, with another stricter still. The rule of silence in the theater at rehearsal. No scampering then along the corridors. No jumping over stalls. We sat like dumb things in some far corner, in the circle, probably, or, if in Paris, in one of those loges behind the stalls.
Celia, the only one of us to care for dolls and toys, would have two or three with her upon the floor and, with an eye to the movement on the stage, set them in motion.
The bear was Pappy, full-chested, tall, his hand upon his heart; the Japanese geisha girl, her black hair in a topknot like Mama’s when she was rehearsing, bowed and curtsied and stood upon one leg. When she became tired of this, Celia played house; the chairs in the loge were shops, were apartments, and in a little whispering undercurrent, too faint to be heard upon the stage, Celia held converse with her toys.
Maria, even in those days, threw herself into the ardor of rehearsal even as Pappy did, even as Mama. From the back of the stalls or from the circle she would enact the whole of the performance in dumb show, taking up her stance, if possible, before a mirror.
In this fashion she could watch herself, as well as Pappy or Mama upon the stage, and this made a double excitement; she was a singer, she was a dancer, she was a shadow moving among other shadows, the stalls shrouded in their dust-sheets were her audience, and the pitchy blackness of the empty theater sheltered her, caressed her, found no fault with anything she did. Losing herself in silent ecstasy, she threw her arms out to the mirror, like Narcissus to his pool, and her own image smiled at her and wept at her, but all the while one fragment of her brain watched and criticized, noted the manner in which Pappy threw his voice so that the last soft whisper of his song reached her where she stood.
It came, surely without effort, with the greatest ease, that last high note, and he would stand there a moment, a half-smile on his lips, on the opening night of a performance, and then gesture with his hand as if to say, “Take it—it’s yours.” After which he walked away into the wings, loping with that great, easy stride of his, his shoulders and his back proclaiming, “I really can’t be bothered to sing anymore tonight,” and as he did this the applause would come, a deafening clamor, bringing him back, with a shrug, smothering a yawn, to sing again. The people would shout for him, “Delaney! Delaney!” laughing, delighted, adoring the fact that anyone paid for his services could apparently treat them with such contempt and care so little for applause. And they never knew, as Maria knew, as Niall and Celia knew, that these smiles, these walks into the wings, these gestures with his hands, were timed and practiced, an integral part of his performance.
“Once again,” he would say during the rehearsal, and old Sullivan, the conductor who was with us always, on every tour, wherever we were, waited a moment, his baton poised, holding the orchestra—and then into it again they went, the last verse of the song, and the same inflections were repeated, the same gestures, while away back in the circle, on tiptoe in the darkness, stood Maria, a flickering shadow moving across the surface of the mirror.
“That’s all—thank you,” and old Sullivan would take out his handkerchief and mop his brow, and polish his pince-nez, while Pappy crossed the stage to speak to Mama who had been to the coiffeur, or to her dressmaker, or to a masseuse. Mama never rehearsed in the morning, and she would be wearing a new fur cape around her shoulders, or a new little feathered hat, and as soon as she appeared there would be a different feeling in the theater, a sense of strain, stimulating and somehow sapping; the aura that Mama brought with her, always, wherever she went.
Sullivan replaced his pince-nez, straightened himself in his seat, and Niall, who had been crouching beside the first violin trying to read the score, fascinated by those illegible figures that meant less than nothing, his ears humming still with that last final twang upon the strings, would glance up, aware of Mama at once, guilty for no reason except that he felt she did not like him to sit among the orchestra. He heard her voice saying something to Pappy about the intolerable draft upon the stage, something must be done about it before she rehearsed that afternoon, and the whisper of the scent she wore, elusive, gentle, wafted down to him as he crouched by the first violin, and he longed suddenly, with a pain in his heart that was bewildering, to be the theater cat that had found its way onto the stage and was standing now beside Mama, arching his back and purring, rubbing his sleek head against her feet.
“Hullo, Minet, Minet,” said Mama, and she stooped, and picked up the fawning cat, and now his head was tucked inside the wide dark collar of her fur cape, and she was stroking him, whispering to him, and the cat and the fur cape were one, they were blotted against each other, and Niall on sudden impulse leaned over to the piano in the orchestra and clamped both his hands upon the keys, fierce and loud, in a hideous discord of sound.
“Niall?” She came to the footlights and looked down upon him, her voice no longer gentle, but hard and cold. “How dare you do that? Come up on the stage, instantly.” And old Sullivan, apologetic, lifted him over the head of the first violin, and set him down upon the stage before Mama.
She did nothing to him; the slap he would have welcomed never came. She turned, ignoring him; and now she was speaking to Pappy, arranging some detail for the rehearsal that afternoon, and Truda was by his side, brushing his coat that had become crumpled and dusty from kneeling beside the first violin, while dancing through the pass-door into the wings came Maria and Celia, with smeary finger-marks upon their faces and cobwebs in their hair.
3
Niall stopped playing the piano when Charles went out of the room.
“I’ve got that queer feeling,” he said, “that I used to have as a child, and I haven’t had for years. That all this has happened before.”
“I have it often,” said Maria. “It comes suddenly, like a ghost touching you, and then it goes again, leaving you rather sick.”
“I believe there’s an explanation for it,” said Celia. “One’s subconscious thinks ahead a fraction before one’s brain, or vice versa, or something. It doesn’t really matter.”
She reached out once more for the workbasket, and took the sock with the hole in it in her hand, and looked at it.
“When Charles called us parasites he was thinking of me,” she said. “He was thinking how I come down here every weekend and never leave him alone with Maria. When he goes into the schoolroom I’m there playing with the children, breaking into their routine with Polly, taking them for walks when they should be resting, or telling them stories when they ought to be learning lessons. The other Saturday he found me in the kitchen showing Mrs. Banks how to do a soufflé, and yesterday morning I was in the shrubbery with a pair of clippers, clearing the brambles. He can’t get rid of me, he can’t shake himself clear. It has happened all my life, this business of clinging to people, of getting too fond of them.”
She threaded the needle and began to darn the sock. It was worn and rubbed and rather smelly from the little boy’s foot, and she thought of the many times she had done this, always for Maria’s children, never for a child of her own, and how up to now it had not mattered too deeply, but this afternoon the whole scheme of things was altere
d. She could never come to Farthings again with the same lightness of heart, because Charles had called her a parasite.
“It was not you,” said Maria; “it was me. Charles is devoted to you. He loves having you about the house. I have always told you he picked the wrong one.”
She lay down again on the sofa, sideways this time so that she could see the fire, and the hot white ash from the smoldering wood curled and fell away through the bars to the dead stuff below.
“He should never have married me,” she said. “He should have married someone who likes the things he likes, the country in winter, riding, going to point-to-points, having couples to dinner and playing bridge afterwards. It has never been any good to him, this mixed-up life, me in London, working, coming down only at weekends. I pretended we were happy, but we haven’t been happy for a long while.”
Niall closed the lid of the piano, and stood up.
“That’s absurd,” he said abruptly. “You adore him; you know that perfectly. And he adores you. You would both have parted years ago if it had not been so.”
Maria shook her head.
“He doesn’t really love me,” she said: “he only loves the idea he once had of me. He tries to keep it in front of him always, like the memory of a dead person. I do the same with him. When he fell in love with me I was playing in that revival of Mary Rose. I’ve forgotten how long it ran—two or three months, wasn’t it?—but all the time I thought of him as Simon. He was Simon to me; and when we became engaged I went on being Mary Rose. I looked at him with her eyes, and with her understanding, and he thought it was the real me, and that’s why he loved me, and why we married. The whole thing was an illusion.”
And even now, she thought, gazing into the fire, as I say these things to Niall and Celia, who understand, I’m still acting. I’m looking at myself, I’m seeing a person called Maria lying on a sofa and losing the love of her husband, and I’m sad for that poor, lonely soul, I want to weep for her; but me, the real me, is making faces in the corner.