The Eye of the Storm (19 page)

There are the born actors: no amount of Cremine will wholly remove their make-up; and there are the Bottomleys: clerks, salesmen, and schoolmasters gone in the wrong direction. There are also the Hunters in a special class of their own. Most of him derived from Betty Salkeld, an
ingénue
stationed behind the willows at the bend in the river to see who was clopping over the bridge, and Elizabeth Hunter, a
grande dame
descending the stairs. Mother was always on the stairs, in an inexhaustible wardrobe, white for preference, and the smile which charmed innocent men, grateful spinsters, seldom other wives, or servants, or children. That for sure was where he got his—gift; let other people use the more pretentious word. He had almost nothing of Alfred in him. For God's sake, he would forget about Dad for years on end, then regret
it;
but what was there to remember? The rams for which he was famous within a circle of limited radius. They ‘erected' a monument to Alfred (‘Bill') Hunter of ‘Kudjeri' in the main street at Gogong. The traffic parts at the point where this insignificant man is permanently stood, in wrinkled bronze trousers, and waistcoat carefully buttoned on a barrel chest, unexpected in anyone so short and mild. The Council had invited Athol Shreve the politician to unveil Alfred Hunter's statue; Mother hadn't been present, but sent a cutting from a grey-paged country newspaper.

For a time you sent your own cuttings to prove the brilliance the family hadn't been willing to believe in: ‘Basil Hunter, a young actor to watch, makes Guildenstern a real presence.' (Not getting Rosencrantz had left you feeling sore till somebody spotted Guildenstern.)
‘Basil
Hunter's Orlando is a dazzling display of virile sensitivity, enough to bewitch Arden girls far less perceptive than
Shiela Sturges's Rosalind.' (According to that old queen Hotchkiss; and poor Shiela had been awful, cerebrating into a boy playing a girl who becomes a boy: she got horribly tangled converting him back into a girl who was Shakespeare's boy.)

Then you left off sending the cuttings: you no longer had to prove you were an actor; there is only, finally, the need to convince that you can leave off acting.

He looked round the almost deserted bar, and out the doorway, at travellers lumped on plastic in a gritty expanse of chrome and concrete. Given better lighting, would any of these detached souls have recognized in him a human being as well as an actor? Hardly likely; who amongst them would have heard of Sir Basil Hunter? And who amongst those who ‘knew', could possibly know? unless they were actors themselves: the eternal bloody actors.

This was where Basil Hunter, contorting on his perch between the mirror and the view through the doorway, tipped the chrome and plastic stool, and almost landed on his arse: for catching sight of what might be—what
was
a whole troupe of actors lugging vanity cases and overnight bags, dolls and paper parasols, trailing coats and stoles, and their own assorted tempers, one or two sustaining that roll of kettledrum brightness they had brought with them courageously from rep, years ago, into the jungle of the West End.

Averting his physical downfall at the bar, the lost actor couldn't wait to identify himself with the troupe, but skedaddled out, suede and rubber thumping tile and concrete, one trouser-leg still rucked at calf-level, his jacket showing too much shirt-cuff; a tie-end, flying, nicked his right eyeball.

Careering towards them, mouthing, he sprayed them at last with his relief. ‘Madge! Waddayerknow, Dudley? For God's sake—not
Babs
!' Kisses for the girls; a shoulder clinch for good old Dudley Howard, a nice bloke, if just about the stodgiest actor.

‘But darling, how in
-cred-ible
!' Madge Puckeridge was the brightest of all kettledrummers. ‘And in Bang
-kok
!'

‘ 'Ere, not in front of ladies!' Born to the halls, Babs Rainbow
couldn't forget it even at the Royal Shakespeare: that's why they signed her up.

There was also a straggle of young things, he noticed, in too much costume and not enough make-up. Some of them he knew by sight, one or two by name, so he ducked his head. ‘Hi, Gemma—Hamish!' Under his bonhomie he was shy of the young. Never let them see it, though. Some of them put on a moony, worshipful look for a famous experienced actor and knight. Others halted unwillingly, hand on sword, still too obviously in codpiece, and convinced they could run rings round this old ham it was their misfortune to bump into.

Here they were on their way from Japan, he remembered now. ‘But why Bangkok?'

Madge explained. ‘A British Council return gesture for a ballet or something they sent us.' Several of them groaned.

‘Only a two-night stand.'

‘Fabulous temples, if you can beat the heat to them.'

‘Then Delhi.'

‘And you, Bas?' It was Babs, whose Nurse and Mistress Quickly were rather special. ‘Where are you taking your one-man band?'

‘To Australia.' He made the face they would expect, though not all of them did.

‘I'd
adore
to go to Australia. Must be simply ravenous for theatre.' Herself a hungry thing: a mini-kirtled draft mare, about the thighs at least; the kind of face which is Plasticine to emotions.

‘This isn't theatre.' Sir Basil Hunter could tell he was about to lose an audience, some of whom were already bored. ‘It's a deathbed. My old mother.' He wagged his head from side to side to make it lighter, gayer, more acceptable for those it didn't concern.

‘Better let's all have a drink, Basil old boy.' It looked as though Dudley had found the only possible way out of a difficult situation, not to say dead end.

Madge was sputtering and fizzing. ‘Poor darling, how utterly tiresome for you! Alcohol is definitely called for.' Although a loyal and generally reliable actress, she was giving a bad per
formance, and knew it; but how could you make death convincing off the stage?

Suddenly he was disappointed; he hadn't found the hoped-for reality in these reinforcements of himself: these other actors. Time stretched almost as elastic as in the peach-tinted bar with its pretty little Thai barman and gusts of ice. He was more than disappointed: he was horrified.

‘Yes. Alcohol. Why don't I come with you while they fix this bloody machine? I can keep in touch from the hotel.'

However little they had to give in the present circumstances, or perhaps ever, they were of his life, and that was in itself heartening: the ‘pros' as opposed to the ‘public'. Some of them had come in so far back they had probably forgotten you had slept together. (Madge Puckeridge one night in Manchester after particularly stinking notes from that cunt Arundel Hallett; that was before Madge's apparently endless marriage with Dudley, after Shiela had taken her child and gone; Shiela would have liked to make a barnstorm out of her departure, but her style wasn't broad enough.)

They were all bundling into a bus. ‘We're staying at the Miramar—some of us,' Dudley said. ‘The rest are on another flight, arriving later.'

Lights were spinning: the drinks Sir Basil had downed on his own must be catching up with him.

Babs Rainbow cackled. ‘Remember Phyl Spink, Bas?'

‘What about her?'

‘She died. They found her in the bath with a gin bottle floating beside her.' Babs must have smoked a fortune in cigarettes: her lungs rattled worse than this complimentary bus. ‘What a lovely way to die!'

‘I won't, I
will—
NOT!'
Madge was protesting. ‘I'm a Christian Scientist in everything but the label.'

Some of the silent young were barely suffering the bus ride: those lithe boys still in their swords and hose, who seem to burn themselves out in the performance; nothing to give afterwards, unless perhaps to their equivalent girls.

He experienced another surge of anxiety: if he could no longer
make contact with the Madge Puckeridges, the Dudley Howards, the Babs Rainbows, and certainly not with the silent young, where exactly did he stand?

‘Are you terribly fond of her?' It was the mini-kirtled draft-mare, he recognized, as the street-lights played on the thighs beside him.

‘Fond of who?'

‘Your mother.'

‘Oh, Lord—I don't know! I haven't seen her in more than half a lifetime.'

She had not been prepared for that degree of unconventionality in an old man and knight; perhaps it was surprise which made her near thigh increase its pressure.

Then they were signing the register, receiving their keys and mail, finding rooms, and one another. He lost interest: other people's hotel arrangements have an importance it is impossible to believe in; while they, from their side, had cast him off temporarily.

He looked in a mirror and tried to remember his mother, but couldn't distinctly: his own reflection got in the way. Funny he couldn't remember ever having known what it feels like to be a father; or not funny, considering.

It was better in Madge and Dudley's room after the bottles had arrived, and the ice, and Babs returned on getting rid of her foundations. There was a handful of the younger ones, on the whole only those who make a practice of ‘sitting at the feet of.'

The draft-mare, whose name was Janie Carson, announced that she would contribute her duty-free to the party, ‘to drink to the time I barged into Sir Basil Hunter'. (Possibly Janie embarrassed some of her contemporaries, to whom she might have explained herself more fully:
all right there's art we all know that but who's going to look after Janie if she doesn't look after herself and the ways of getting on are the same old ways it's only art that changes.)

The refrigeration in a second-class tropical hotel was turning over groggily: you would see everybody's thoughts before the night was half over.

Two or three new faces put in an appearance at the door; the
second flight had arrived, flogged, from Tokyo. They faded on seeing someone they knew only in the press or by repute.

One of them thought to call, ‘Diana's sure she's pregnant. She thinks she took the seasick pills instead.'

A male guffawed.

That old bawd Babs Rainbow was grinning above her ginny-boo. ‘Diana must leave it to Auntie Babs'; while Madge and Dudley, childless as far as you could remember, smiled rather thin, trying to show they were with it.

It was here that Janie rolled over and started fingering the clock on his sock. ‘Possibly you don't know—I was at school with Imogen—your daughter.'

He swallowed half a tumblerful.

‘Imogen and I were
chums,'
she added.

Not unlikely: two coarse-boned girls, equal in age; only Imogen hadn't Janie's plastic face: her missionary zeal would not have allowed it.

‘Imogen sometimes asked me home. Shiela was ghastly, and Imogen always wonderful to her.'

He drank the rest of the whiskey in his glass. ‘She isn't my daughter, you know. No blood offspring, I mean.' Why was he telling this young thing with the swinging hair and partially revealed twat? Honesty? Or masochism?

‘I hadn't realized.' Some prude ancestor forced her to lower her eyes; a closer influence made her suck on her glass.

‘Oh, no—definitely no!' he was emphasizing. ‘Shiela admitted—out of spite. She made use of Len Bottomley, the most bloody uninteresting actor in the profession—butlers, friends, courtiers, all that—because she was jealous of me. She took Len as her stud, and Imogen—my “daughter”—is the result.'

Janie Carson looked as though she hadn't wanted to hear about it: confessions, when not launched as amusing details of gossip, can become embarrassing.

One of the burnt-up young men, Garth by name, was smouldering at him with what looked like contempt.

Janie said, ‘What an awful time you've had, Basil, what with all that, and now your mother.' She delivered her line in a level tone of voice, except at the point where she swooped on his Christian name.

But he wasn't interested in the reactions, the preoccupations of Janie Carson or any of the present company. Although it boiled up in him at times, he was not interested in the past, or the messes he had made in certain corners of a successful career. What obsessed him was the future and its threats.

Again he was speaking to this girl, not because she offered him more than a token sympathy, but because her slight interest might help him give shape to some of his more shadowy thoughts. ‘When I spoke of my mother's “deathbed” I was exaggerating—I think. I don't believe she'll die till she wants to. And I suspect she doesn't want to. What makes any strong-willed old person decide to die is something I've never worked out.' He looked round at the other faces, none of which, with the possible exception of Janie's, was giving attention to what he had to say. ‘I haven't had much experience of the old and senile; in fact I've always gone out of my way to avoid that sort of thing.'

Good old solemn Dudley was dutifully automatically sleepily pouring you another drink. It was a relief to sink your mouth afresh; and no one had accused you of ignoble intentions.

‘I must admit that when I've had a study I've longed for the star girl to drop dead.' Janie shook her hair and giggled at her glass.

‘Not death again!' The word had broken through to Madge at the other end of the room; she was holding her chin too high to stretch the wrinkles in her throat.

Garth, the dark thin young hawk, had raised his beak; his eyes were contemplating no one else but Sir Basil Hunter the famous ham. ‘Did you ever hear—sir,' he coughed for a word he used unwillingly; words probably made him feel awkward unless they were handed to him in lines: then he knew how to kindle them, ‘I think I read it—that fear of sex underlies an obsession with death?' It was uttered with a seriousness so intense it fell wide and heavily.

‘No. I hadn't heard it.' Sir Basil smiled the smile which had vanquished many.