I was a bit desperate by then. I thought I’d try.’
‘Without, I suppose, mentioning this famous “connection”?’
‘Yes.’
‘And finding there was nothing for you in the piece you applied for the job of dresser?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s fantastic, but at least it’s less fantastic than pure coincidence would have been. One rather respects you by the way, if it’s not impertinent in a second cousin once removed to say so.’
‘Thank you,’ she said vaguely.
‘The question is: What are we going to do about it?’
Martyn turned away to the ranks of dresses and with businesslike movements of her trembling hands, tweaked at the sheets that covered them. She said briskly: ‘I realize of course that I’ll have to go. Perhaps Miss Hamilton –’
‘You think you ought to go?’ his voice said behind her. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s an awkward business.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But I’d like to – it’s difficult to suggest –’
‘I’ll be perfectly all right,’ she said with savage brightness. ‘Please don’t give it another thought.’
‘Why, by the way, are you still in the theatre?’
‘I was going to sleep here,’ Martyn said loudly. ‘I did last night. The night-watchman knows.’
‘You would be paid on Friday.’
‘Like the actors?’
‘Certainly. How much is there in the exchequer between now and Friday?’ Martyn was silent and he said with a complete change of voice: ‘My manners, you will already have been told, are notoriously offensive but I don’t believe I was going to say anything that would have offended you.’
‘I’ve got two and fourpence.’
He opened the door and shouted: ‘Jacko!’ into the echoing darkness. She heard the greenroom door creak and in a moment or two Jacko came in. He carried a board with a half-finished drawing pinned to it. This he exhibited to Poole. ‘Crazy, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Helena’s costume for the ball. What must I do but waste my beauty-sleep concocting it. Everybody will have to work very hard if it is to be made. I see you are in need of my counsel. What goes on?’
‘Against my better judgement,’ Poole said, ‘I’m going to follow your advice. You always think you’re indispensable at auditions. Give me some light out there and then sit in front.’
‘It is past midnight. This child has worked and worried herself into a complete bouleversement. She is as pale as a pierrot.’
Poole looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her. ‘It won’t take ten minutes.’
‘I don’t understand, but I’m all right.’
‘There you are, Jacko,’ Poole said and sounded pleased. ‘It’s over to you.’
Jacko took her by the shoulders and gently pushed her down on the chair. ‘Attention,’ he said. ‘We make a bargain. I live not so far from here in an apartment house kept by a well-disposed French couple. An entirely respectable house, you understand, with no funny business. At the top one finds an attic room as it might be in a tale for children, and so small, it is but twice the size of its nice little bed. The rental is low, within the compass of a silly girl who gets herself into equivocal situations. At my recommendation she will be accommodated in the attic which is included in my portion of the house and will pay me the rent at the end of a week. But in exchange for my good offices she does for us a little service. Again, no funny business.’
‘Oh, dear!’ Martyn said. She leant towards the dressing-shelf and propped her face in her hands. ‘It sounds so wonderful,’ she said and tried to steady her voice, ‘a nice little bed.’
‘All right, Jacko,’ Poole said. She heard the door open and shut. ‘I want you to relax for a few minutes,’ his voice went on. ‘Relax all over like a cat. Don’t think of anything in particular. You’re going to sleep sound tonight. All will be well.’
The gas-fire hummed, the smell of roses and cosmetics filled the warm room. ‘Do you smoke?’ Poole asked.
‘Sometimes.’
‘Here you are.’
She drew in the smoke gratefully. He went into the passage and she watched him light his own cigarette. Her thoughts drifted aimlessly about the bony structure of his head and face. Presently a stronger light streamed down the passage. Jacko’s voice called something from a great distance.
Poole turned to her. ‘Come along,’ he said.
On the stage, dust-thickened rays from pageant-lamps settled in a pool of light about a desk and two chairs. It was like an island in a vague region of blueness. She found herself seated there at the desk, facing him across it. In response to a gesture of Poole’s she rested her arms on the desk and her face in her arms.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘and don’t move. You are in the hall of an old house, beautiful but decaying. You are the girl with the bad heredity. You are the creature who goes round and round in her great empty cage like a stoat filled with a wicked desire. The object of your desire is the man on the other side of the desk who is joined to you in blood and of whose face and mind you are the ill reflection. In a moment you will raise your face to his. He will make a gesture and you will make the same gesture. Then you will say: “Don’t you like what you see?” It must be horrible and real. Don’t move. Think of it. Then raise your head and speak.’
There was a kind of voluptuousness in Martyn’s fatigue. Only the chair she sat on and the desk that propped her arms and head prevented her, she felt, from slipping to the floor. Into this defencelessness Poole’s suggestions entered like those of a mesmerist, and that perfection of duality for which actors pray and which they are so rarely granted now fully invested her. She was herself and she was the girl in the play. She guided the girl and was aware of her and she governed the possession of the girl by the obverse of the man in the play. When at last she raised her face and looked at him and repeated his gesture it seemed to her that she looked into a glass and saw her own reflection and spoke to it.
‘Don’t you like what you see? ’ Martyn said.
In the pause that followed, the sound of her own breathing and Poole’s returned. She could hear her heart beat.
‘Can you do it again?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessly. ‘I don’t know at all.’ She turned away and with a childish gesture hid her face in the crook of her arm. In dismay and shame she set loose the tears she had so long denied herself.
‘There now!’ he said, not so much as if to comfort her as to proclaim some private triumph of his own. Out in the dark auditorium Jacko struck his hands together once.
Poole touched her
