Summer Storm (16 page)

“All right.”
He sounded suddenly very weary.
He
got to his feet. “But don’t run away from me? Will you promise me that at least?”

She smiled a little. “Yes.”

He stopped for a minute and held her face between his hands. “I can be a very patient man,” he said softly and kissed her forehead before he turned and left the room.

* * * *

Friday was the last day of class. Technically there was nothing to hold Mary any longer at Yarborough. She could grade her papers at home and telephone the marks to George. After telling herself all week that she couldn’t wait to get away, it was distressing to find herself so reluctant when the moment of release finally arrived.

She had to be here on opening night; she had to see for herself how Kit was going to fare. It was as simple as that. When it came right down to it, she thought in grim amusement as she stuffed the final essays into her briefcase, wild horses couldn’t drag her away.

She spent all day on her porch, reading essays and grading them. When she went down to dinner it was to find Kit, Margot, Melvin, Alfred, and George missing. They were in the theater going over the scene in Gertrude’s bedroom, Carolyn told Mary. George had sent over for sandwiches.

Mary felt the tension in the dining room. It was quieter than usual and the only talk that was introduced had to do with the play. “Poor Chris,” said Frank Moore as the main course was served. “I know
I’m
exhausted—we worked on the fencing scene all day long. And he’s still going strong. I don’t know how he does it.”

“And keeps his temper,” put in Adam Truro; They ate for a few minutes in silence and then Adam volunteered, “John Calder is going to stay at the Stafford Inn. George says it’s the first time a New York critic has ever come for his opening night.”

“If the play does go to Broadway,” breathed Carolyn, “I wonder if they’ll replace all the students?”

“We have to get to Broadway first,” said Eric Lindquist. “And we all know who that depends on.” He looked in the direction of the theater and the whole table unconsciously followed his lead.

“I wonder what he’s thinking,” Said Frank, and no one asked to whom he was referring.

“He’s so calm.” Carolyn’s eyes were large with wonder. “He must know how his whole professional reputation is at stake, but you’d never know it to look at him. He hasn’t any nerves at all.”

Oh yes he has, thought Mary to herself. She remembered other opening nights. The calmer Kit appeared the more uptight he really was. She found herself completely unable to eat her dinner.

* * * *

Saturday was interminable. Even the Elizabethan songbooks couldn’t capture Mary’s attention. There was an early dinner served at five o’clock. Everyone was present in the dining room and the atmosphere was brittle with tension. Kit was there this time, looking cool and collected. Mary found herself at the same table with him and she listened as he made Carolyn laugh with a joke and flattered Margot outrageously until some of the strain left her face. He seemed utterly relaxed, utterly nonchalant. Mary wondered if she were the only one to notice that he had eaten scarcely a bite of his dinner.

The meal was almost over when Carolyn repeated the judgment she had voiced about him yesterday. “Honestly, Chris, I don’t think you have a nerve in your whole body.”

“I believe Hemingway, called it ‘grace under pressure,’“ Mary said quietly. She had scarcely spoken at all during the course of the meal.

Kit’s eyes involuntarily found hers. She smiled at him, a sweet and beautiful smile. “Good luck,” she said softly.

He didn’t answer but nodded his dark head at her, his eyes grave and a little abstracted.

After dinner Mary went back to her cabin to change. It was six o’clock. The hour and a half before curtain time stretched before her. She tried to read a magazine but couldn’t concentrate on more than one sentence at a time.

Finally it was time to dress. She put on a raspberry linen sundress with a pleated bodice and full skirt. A string of pearls around her neck dressed it up as did pearl-button earrings. Her hair fell loosely to her shoulders, satiny black, softly curling. It was cooling down so she put a white pique jacket over her bare shoulders. She didn’t know if it was the evening air or nervousness, but she was shivering by the time she reached the theater.

She had a seat in the third row and looked around her, trying to pick out the critics. The lights were dimming when George slipped into the seat next to hers. “That’s Calder there,” he murmured in her ear,

Mary stared at the gray head in front of her.
“Oh.”
The lights went out and she closed her eyes, breathing a wordless prayer of supplication. When she opened them the curtain was slowly rising, revealing Dan Palmer and Mark Ellis, two of her students, dressed as soldiers. “Who’s there?” said Mark sharply. The play was on.

Mary sat tensely throughout the first scene. George had handled the ghost very skillfully, she thought, using shadows and a tape recorder. The stage was cleared and then, with a fanfare of trumpets, the court swept on.

In center stage, on twin gilt chairs, sat Alfred Block and Margot Chandler—the King and Queen. Surrounding them was a mass of courtiers dressed in bright clothing: Melvin Shaw as Polonius, Frank Moore as Laertes, Carolyn Nash as Ophelia, and various other students. In the corner, apart, wearing severe black, was Kit. Alfred began his speech:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death        

The memory be green, and that is us befitted            To bear our hearts in grief...

Alfred’s voice was strong, his bearing dominant, but Mary’s whole attention was focused on the still, black figure in the corner. Gradually, as the scene went on, she realized that she was not alone in her reaction. The people seated around her were watching Kit as well. Finally came the line she was waiting for: “But, now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—” said Alfred.        

Kit didn’t look up, didn’t move, but his whole tense figure seemed to quiver at the words. “A little more than kin, and less than kind!” His beautiful voice was edged with bitterness and scorn. Next to her Mary heard George let out his breath, as though he had been holding it for a long time.

George’s confidence seemed to increase as the first act progressed. At the end of it—as Kit said despairingly:

“The time is out of joint, 0 cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!”

—George leaned over and whispered to Mary, “He’s pulling it off. He didn’t have this in rehearsals.”

At the first intermission it seemed that the audience agreed with George. Mary wandered around the lobby, assiduously eavesdropping, and general opinion seemed to be that Kit was remarkably good. As Mary heard one lady say to her friend, “My dear, that voice! I think I could listen to him recite the telephone directory and be happy.”

The audience settled back in their chairs and the play resumed. It opened with Act III, the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, and the nunnery scene. And it was then that Mary, and the rest of the audience as well, began to realize what it was that they were seeing. Kit seemed to have himself under iron control. His voice was harsh and low; only twice did he forget himself and begin to shout. But the force of emotion he generated was overpowering: the anger, the pain, the furious sense of betrayal, it was all there. You have to be scary, George had told him. He was.

And he was so much more. He reached into the heart of the character and laid bare all the anguish that underlay Hamlet’s wild and enigmatic behavior. The blighted ideals, the betrayed love, the aching uncertainty, and above all else, the poignant and unbearable loneliness. His big scene with Margot, the one that George had rehearsed and rehearsed yesterday, was absolutely shattering. When it was over, Mary realized, a little dazedly, that Kit had been right about Margot. She made the perfect Gertrude: lovely, sexual, affectionate, but shallow. The power of the scene came from
the
contrast between her grief and repentance, which manifested itself in easy tears, and his, which was harsh and violent, tearing apart his heart and his mind.

The intermission that followed this scene was different from the first one. People were quiet now, almost subdued. No one showed a disposition to linger over his cigarette and stillness had fallen over the auditorium even before the lights had begun to dim for the opening of Act IV.

The last two acts were stunning in their emotional impact. What moved Mary more than anything else was the way she could see aspects of Kit’s real character coming through the words and emotions of Hamlet. When he leaped into Ophelia’s grave after Laertes, his bitter searing anger reminded her vividly of the morning he had gone after Jason Razzia.

The final dueling scene with Frank Moore had the audience on the edge of their seats. “Frank fenced on his college team,” George murmured in Mary’s ear. “That was one of the reasons I chose him for Laertes.”

Kit’s fencing was a match for Frank’s. He must have put in long hours of practice, thought Mary, as she watched the swords flashing on stage. The final moment had almost arrived: the infuriated Laertes, unable to break through Hamlet’s guard, stabbed his unsuspecting opponent between bouts with his sharp and poisoned sword. There was a moment of breathless silence as Kit looked down at his wounded arm and realized for the first time that Laertes was playing with a sharp sword. His eyes narrowed, his breath hissed between his teeth, and he advanced on Laertes, sword up.

The two men began to fight again, not in a sporting contest this time, but for blood. The clash of swords and the heaviness of their breathing were the only sounds in the entire theater. Finally Kit, with a strong skillful stroke, struck the sword from Laertes hand. Bending, he picked it up. Slowly he held out to Laertes his own sword, which was blunt and harmless. His face was implacable, and Laertes, knowing as he did that the sword Kit retained was not only sharp but also tipped with deadly poison, was forced to accept. The fight resumed.

Mary’s hands were clasped tensely in her lap. She knew what would happen, even knew the exact words that would be spoken, but when they came, when Kit cried out in a terrible voice of mingled anguish and fury;

“O villainy! Ho! let the door be locked. Treachery! Seek it out,”

she felt her hand go, involuntarily, to her throat.

It stayed there throughout the remainder of the scene, as Adam Truro, playing Horatio, clasped the dying Hamlet in his arms. His broken voice uttering the famous farewell, “Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” brought stinging tears to her eyes.

There was the sound of drums and Eric Lindquist, blond, handsome, boyish Eric, playing Fortinbras, came marching in. His clear blue eyes swept around the stage, littered with the corpses of Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Hamlet. He reared his golden head: “I have some rights of memory in this kingdom,” he said clearly, “which now to claim my vantage doth invite me.”

The contrast was devastating: the brilliant, tortured, complex Hamlet and this sunshiny boy who saw in the cataclysmic ruin before him only his own advantage.

The muffled drums began to roll and four students stepped forward to lift Kit’s still body up, high in the air above their heads. Eric’s voice rolled out across the audience, over the drums:

Let four captains

Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,

For he was likely, had he been put on,

To have proved most royal; and for his passage

The soldiers’ music and the rite of war

Speak loudly for him.

The soldiers carrying Kit moved slowly up the scaffolding that represented the castle steps. In the distance a gun began to shoot. They reached the top of the scaffolding and stood still, Kit’s body still raised high above them. The curtain fell.

For fully half a minute there was not a sound in the theater. Then the clapping began, at first a ripple, then a growing tide as the curtain calls began. Tremendous applause greeted the supporting cast, with Margot getting the biggest hand of all. Then, out on to the stage to join his fellow performers, came Kit. The theater erupted in a storm of acclaim. He smiled, bowed, and held out his hands to Margot and Carolyn. The curtain came down but the clapping refused to subside. At last it came up again to reveal Kit, alone on the stage. The audience rose to its feet in thunderous ovation. Mary felt herself crying. It was the most overwhelming tribute she had ever heard an audience bestow on a performer. She turned to look at George. His face was glowing. “You did it.” He seemed to be talking to Kit across the avalanche of sound. “I wasn’t sure if you would, but by Christ you pulled it out. Best goddamn Hamlet I ever saw.”

Mary picked up her purse to fish for a tissue. “And you directed it,” she said shakily.

“No.” He shook his head and looked at her. “No one directed what Chris did tonight. That he did all by himself.” He grinned. “The SOB was saving it up. And I was scared to death. Wait until I get my hands on him.” The crowd was beginning to move toward exits. “I’m going backstage,” said George to Mary. Coming?”

“Not just yet,” she replied. “You go ahead.” As he walked toward the front of the theater she took her place in the crowd that was leaving by the rear exit.

She went back to her cottage and sat down in the living room. She understood now what Kit meant when he had said that to do Hamlet well he would have to reveal himself. In order to portray the emotions he had this evening he had first to have felt them. And then he had to show what he had felt up there on the stage.

Kit was a very private person. His strong feelings about his privacy had always been a source of despair to his agent and to the various publicity people who had been associated with his pictures. Mary understood that part of him, that passionate feeling of not wanting to be exposed, written about, journalized. For such a man to do what he had done tonight—the sheer blazing courage it had taken to get up on a stage and reveal all
that-—
shook her profoundly.