Patrick Steele – the Founding Four. And, too, Sonia Rogers, an energetic redhead who was being ‘tried out’. They were still saying that she was being tried out when it was evident she was a fixture, because no one wanted to admit an era was over. Why Sonia? Why none of the other hopefuls who worked in and around the theatre, sometimes without payment or for very little? Well, it was because she was there. She was everywhere, in fact. ‘Turn the stone and there you find her,’ jested Patrick. She had come in as a ‘temp’ and had at once become indispensable. Simple. She was at this meeting because she had come into the office for something and was invited to stay. She perched on the top of a filing cabinet as if ready to fly away at one cross word.
Patrick opened fire with ‘What’s the matter with Stephen Whatsit’s play? It just needs a bit of tightening, that’s all.’
Mary sang, ‘ “She was poor but she was honest, victim of a rich man’s whim”.’
Roy said, ‘Two rich men, to be accurate.’
Sarah said, ‘Patrick, these days you simply can’t have a play with a woman as a victim – and that’s all.’
Patrick said, sounding, as he did so often, trapped, betrayed, isolated, ‘Why not? That’s what she was. Like poor Judy. Like poor Marilyn.’
‘I agree with Sarah,’ said Sonia. ‘We couldn’t have a play about Judy. We couldn’t do Marilyn – not just victims and nothing else. It’s not on.’
There was a considerable pause, of the kind when invisible currents and balances shift. Sonia had spoken with authority. She had said We. She wasn’t thinking of herself as temporary, on trial. Right, the Founding Four were thinking. And now that’s it. We have to accept it.
They all knew what each of the others was thinking. How could they not? They did not need even to exchange glances, or grimaces. They were feeling, were being made to feel, faded, shabby – past it. There sat this Sonia, as bright and glossy as a lion cub, and they were seeing themselves through her eyes.
‘I agree absolutely,’ said Mary, finally, assuming responsibility for the moment. And her smile at Sonia was such that the young woman showed her pleasure with a short triumphant laugh, tossing her fiery head. ‘They wouldn’t do an opera about Madame Butterfly now.’ Mary went on.
‘Everyone goes to see Madame Butterfly,’ said Patrick.
‘Everyone?’ said Sonia, making a point they were meant to see was a political one.
‘How about Miss Saigon?’ said Patrick. ‘I’ve read the script.’
‘What’s it about?’ asked Sonia.
‘The same plot as Madame Butterfly,’ said Patrick. ‘You talk your way out of that one, Sarah Durham.’
‘It’s a musical,’ said Sarah. ‘Not our audience.’
‘Disgraceful,’ said Sonia. ‘Are you sure, Patrick?’
‘Absolutely.’
Patrick pressed his attack. ‘Then how about the Zimbabwe play? I don’t remember anyone saying it should be a musical.’
The Zimbabwe play, by black feminists, was about a village girl who longed to live in town, just like everyone else in Zimbabwe, but there is unemployment. Her aunt in Harare says no, her house is already over-full. This precipitates a moral storm in the village, because the aunt’s refusal is a break with the old ways, when the more fortunate members of a family had to keep any poor relation who asked. But the aunt says, I have already got twenty people in my house, with my children and my parents and I’m feeding everyone. She is a nurse. The village girl catches the eye of a local rich man, the owner of a lorry service. She gets pregnant. She kills the child. Everyone knows, but she is not prosecuted. She becomes an amateur prostitute. She never thinks of herself as one: ‘This time the man will love me and marry me.’ Another baby is left on the doorstep of the Catholic mission. She gets AIDS. She dies.
‘I saw it,’ said Sonia. ‘It was good.’
‘But that was all right, because she was black?’ said Patrick, and laughed aloud at the political minefield he had invited them into.
‘Let’s not start,’ said Mary. ‘We’ll be here all night.’
‘Right,’ said Patrick, having made his point.
‘It’s too late anyway,’ said Roy, summing up, as he generally did. Calm, large, unflappable, one of the world’s natural arbiters. ‘We’ve already agreed on Sarah’s play.’
‘But,’ Sonia directed them, ‘I do think we should at least remember that it is the story of girls all over the world. As we sit here. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.’
‘But it’s too late,’ said Roy.
Mary remarked. ‘I don’t think the French are in on it because they like the idea of a good cry. They don’t see it as a weepy. When I talked to Jean-Pierre on the phone yesterday about the publicity, he said Julie was born out of her time.’
‘Well, of course,’ said Sarah.
‘Jean-Pierre says they see her as an intellectual, in their tradition of female bluestockings.’
‘In other words,’ said Roy, ending the meeting by standing up, ‘we shouldn’t be having this conversation at all.’
‘What about the American sponsors?’ demanded Patrick. ‘What have they agreed to? I bet not a French bluestocking.’
‘They bought the package,’ said Sarah.
‘I can tell you this,’ said Patrick. ‘If you did Stephen Whatsit’s play there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.’
As Mary and Roy went banging off down the wooden stairs, they sang, ‘“She Was Poor but She Was Honest”,’ and Patrick actually had tears in his eyes. ‘For goodness sake!’ said Sarah, and put her arms around him. As people did so often: There there! He complained they patronized him, and they said, But you need it, with your wounded heart always on view. All this had been going on for years. But things had changed…Sonia wasn’t going to spoil him. Now, at the foot of the stairs, she looked critically at Patrick who – always ornamental, and even bizarre – was today like a beetle, in a shiny green jacket, his black hair in spikes. But Sonia, in the height of fashion, wore black full Dutch-boy trousers, a camouflage T-shirt from army surplus and over it a black lace bolero from some flea market, desert boots, a jet Victorian choker necklace, many rings and earrings. Her hair, in a variation of a 1920s shingle, was in a tight point at the back, and in front in deeply curving lobes, like a spaniel’s ears. But her hair was seldom the same for more than a day or two. Her get-up did not please Patrick. He had already been heard shrilly criticizing her for lack of chic. ‘Being a freak isn’t smart, love,’ he had said. To which she had replied, ‘And who’s talking?’
Sarah did not go to bed on the night before she was due to meet Stephen Ellington-Smith. For one thing, she had not finished cleaning until three in the morning. Then she decided to do the programme notes after all. Then she reread Julie’s journals, preparing herself for what she believed would be a fight with Julie’s Angel.
‘Look,’
