The Joys of Love (11 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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Ditta laughed. “Thanks. I'll save it for Ben. I've got enough flesh on my bones already.”
John Peter brushed by Elizabeth, whispering, “Watch out for Ben. He's going to throw something at the divine Sarah yet.”
Elizabeth sighed. “That I would hate to miss, but I have to go change.”
She hurried upstairs and got dressed for ushering. She looked quickly at the pictures on her bureau. You'd be glad about
Macbeth
, Father, she thought. I'm sure you would. Then she looked at her mother. I wonder what you'd think? Would you be glad, too? She had seen her mother only once to remember, and that was after her death. She sat down on the creaking bed and pulled on her sandals.
 
After the last performance of the drawing room comedy in which Sarah Courtmont starred, supported by Kurt Canitz, Elizabeth ran over to the Cottage to change quickly out of her dress and into blue jeans, sweater, and sneakers, then rushed back to the theatre to meet Kurt.
“A walk on the beach, eh, Liebchen?” he suggested.
“That would be wonderful.”
They started down the boardwalk, then jumped onto the sand. Jane and John Peter were already down on the beach, sitting on the sand playing their recorders. The music floated on the wind to Elizabeth and Kurt.
Kurt pulled himself onto one of the old barnacled piles,
held out a hand to Elizabeth, and helped her onto the one next to his. He moved beautifully; his actions seemed to pour from his body as smoothly as honey. Elizabeth was agile and strong, but she still moved with the long-legged jerkiness of a very young animal.
“Kurt …” she said softly.
“Yes, Liebchen?”
“Do you like it?”
“Like what?”
“
Plaisir d'Amour
. What Jane and John Peter are playing.”
“Yes, I like it very much. Why?” Kurt's tone was filled with the gravity an adult uses in talking to a sweet and intelligent child.
“Oh, no reason particularly … It makes me think of the sound of the buoys, the way they sound from the ferry at night.”
Kurt began to sing along with the recorders, his voice warm in the cool night air:
“Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment,
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.”
“The joys of love,” Elizabeth translated softly for herself, “last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long. Do you believe that, Kurt?”
“Sure,” Kurt said.
“Don't you think the pleasure lasts too?”
Kurt shrugged. “Why?”
“I don't see why you can't remember the good things as well as the bad.”
“Most people have more bad things than good to remember.” Kurt's voice was suddenly bitter.
“You sound as though you'd been awfully hurt, Kurt,” Elizabeth said tentatively.
“Everybody gets hurt at least once,” Kurt said. “I don't get hurt often and I think I will not get hurt again. This is a very dull conversation, Liebchen. Let us talk about something else.”
Elizabeth stared out over the ocean. “I should like to sit here sometime at high tide in a storm,” she said, “with the water wild all around me.”
“You're a funny kid, Liz.” Kurt looked at her rather curiously.
“Am I?”
“You're going to get hurt yourself, and badly, if you take everything so hard.”
“Am I?” she asked again.
“The tide's coming in.”
They lapsed into silence. Then Kurt said, “Dottie's rather upset about losing her part.”
“I'm sorry about Dottie, but she asked for it.”
“Are you being fair? Don't you think it was—well, shall we just call it a trifle high-handed—to toss Dottie out like that? But I'm more than happy that you're getting the chance, dearheart, and I don't see why Dottie's making such a fuss.” Kurt made his voice annoyingly reasonable. “You should not be so scornful of Dottie, Liebchen. You could learn a great deal from her. She has beauty and assurance. She's an asset to any stage.”
“Wouldn't it help if she could act?” Elizabeth asked dryly.
“You don't think she can?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Elizabeth looked out across the water for a moment. Then she thought, Well, he asked me, so I might just as well say what I think. “Most of the time she just poses and postures—like Courtmont, only Courtmont has the—the spark—and Dottie's just an empty imitation. And she hams so, Kurt. Such mugging and—and tearing a passion to tatters.”
55
“Okay, what's your idea of good acting, then?” Kurt asked.
In the dark Elizabeth grinned rather sheepishly. “My favorite second-rate actor's definition.”
“Whose?”
“Shakespeare's. When Hamlet coaches the players.”
“Say it.”
“Oh, you know it, Kurt. You know it better than I do.”
“I like to hear you quote. You're such an erudite little thing, Liz. All that college education when you should already have been working in the theatre.”
“I know that,” Elizabeth said. “Now I just have to work harder. Anyhow, thank goodness I never was an ingenue.”
“Back to Shakespeare,” Kurt said. “How do you happen to know that particular bit by heart? Now don't tell me you played Hamlet in college.”
“Don't be silly, Kurt. Mr. Eakins, one of the professors in the Theatre Workshop, had all his students learn it.”
“Go on, then. Let me see if you remember.”
Hurrying over the words because she was embarrassed, Elizabeth said, “‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus'”—she kept her right hand very still because it was covered by Kurt's, and it seemed that an electric current was flowing between them, passing from hand to hand—“‘but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags … Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor—'” She broke off suddenly.
“Go on,” Kurt said softly. “I like to hear you. You're hurrying so that your voice is all tumbled, like little waves. Continue, heart's dearest.”
Elizabeth continued, trying to hurry and yet not give the appearance of rushing. “‘Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.'” Again she stopped.
“Well, go on,” Kurt said. “Finish.”
“‘Now this overdone,'” Elizabeth said softly, very conscious of Kurt's fingers stroking her own, “‘or come tardy off, though it makes the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve—' That's enough, Kurt. Please.”
“Why does it embarrass you?” Kurt asked.
“I don't know. It seems sort of pompous, somehow, and—oh, I don't know—my quoting Shakespeare to you.”
“You strange, sweet child,” Kurt said, and then, changing the subject abruptly, “What do you think of Jane and John Peter?”
“I like them tremendously. And I think they're both awfully talented.”
“Do they sleep together?”
Sitting on the barnacled pile in the darkness, Elizabeth blushed. “I don't know. It—it never occurred to me.”
Mariella Hedeman paused on the boardwalk and called out good night.
“Good night, Miss Hedeman,” Elizabeth and Kurt called back, their voices pulled and torn by the wind like wisps of fog.
“I never realized before Miss Hedeman got after me that I didn't breathe from the diaphragm naturally,” Elizabeth said. “Jane does. But I have to make the most awful effort.” She held one hand over her diaphragm to see that it was moving properly and let forth with one of Miss Hedeman's voice exercises. Her voice did not lack for power and Kurt put his hands over his ears.
“Hung-ay-oh-ooo-aaaaaaaaaawwwww!” Elizabeth howled.
John Peter called from down the beach. “Shut up! You're interrupting our concert.”
Elizabeth shouted back, “You have no musical appreciation. I'm improving. Play
Plaisir
again, will you please?”
“Okay,” John Peter called, and in a moment the haunting melody was blown along the sand again to them. “It's funny
how that song gets me,” Elizabeth said. “It means so many things to me. Particularly …”
“Particularly what?”
“Nothing.”
“You're a funny kid, Liz.”
“You've said that before.”
“You're so much more of a child than you seem to be at first.”
“I don't mean to be.”
“You're really an awful baby.”
“And people as tall as I am shouldn't be babies.”
“You're much too sensitive about your height.”
“I know it.”
“You're no giant. How tall are you?”
“Five foot nine and three quarters.”
“That's five foot ten.”
“Five-nine and three quarters.”
“Little fool,” Kurt said. He leaned across the pile and kissed her. Elizabeth clung to him and he kissed her again.
When Dottie, strolling down the boardwalk with Huntley Haskell, saw them, she stopped. “My, you two make a pretty picture,” she said.
Kurt laughed and grinned up at Dottie. Elizabeth stared miserably out over the ocean, shame and fury battling for uppermost in her mind.
“Good performance tonight, Dottie,” Kurt said.
“Thanks. Know your lines, Liz?”
There was immense sarcasm in Dottie's voice, and Elizabeth answered, “Yes,” shortly, not looking up. Dottie laughed.
“Too bad about you, Dottie,” Kurt said. “I must say I think Andersen shouldn't keep people hanging around the theatre all day and then be surprised if they're not there when she calls a scene. However, if it had to happen, I'm glad our little Liz will have a chance.”
Dottie laughed again, a metallic laugh with nothing warm or pleasant about it. “For heaven's sake, don't be sorry for me, Kurt. I wouldn't mind a week off. But I'm not sure I shall have one.”
“Oh?” Kurt asked. “What gives?”
“Oh, we'll see, my pet, we'll see.”
Huntley spoke for the first time. “Dottie likes to be sphinxlike. Courtmont's throwing a party at Irving's before she leaves tonight, Canitz old boy. Coming, aren't you?”
“Hadn't decided yet.”
Dottie's tone was softer. “Oh, do come, Kurt. It won't be any fun without you.”
“Want to come, Liz?” Kurt asked.
“Thanks,” Elizabeth said, “but I'm not included in the company.”
“Oh, you can come if you want to, kiddo.” Dottie was the great movie star, graciously condescending. “Bibi and a couple other apprentices are there already.”
“I think I'll stay here. Thank you.” Elizabeth looked down at the sand holding the old piles steady.
“Okay.” Dottie sounded relieved. “Be a good girl and go to bed early.”
Kurt leaned close to Elizabeth and whispered, “You don't
mind if I go, Liebchen? I'd rather stay with you, but it would be rude to Courtmont.”
“Of course,” Elizabeth said. “Have fun.”
Dottie took Kurt and Huntley each by the arm and they strolled off down the boardwalk. Elizabeth sat very still on the barnacled pile, listening to the plaintive music of the recorders. After a while she called out in an unsteady voice, “Play something else!”
“You just asked us to play that,” John Peter shouted.
“I know, but play something else. Play something silly.”
John Peter and Jane obligingly started on a gay Elizabethan madrigal. Elizabeth tried to sing along with them. “In these delightful pleasant groves …” But her voice wavered and she put her head down on her knees. In her mind's ear she kept hearing Kurt's happy, unembarrassed laugh when Dottie and Huntley discovered them kissing. I should have laughed, too, she thought. I should have been able to. But I couldn't. It was too important. How could Kurt laugh like that if it were important to him?

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