The Joys of Love (16 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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“Oh?” Ben looked pointedly at Kurt.
But Kurt ignored him and turned to Elizabeth. “Thanks for being such a good sport about it, Liebchen. Mariella Hedeman has a whole gallon of coffee downstairs. Come on down with me and let's have a cup of coffee and we can talk for a few minutes.”
Elizabeth hesitated a moment. “I'm in my pajamas.”
“Just pull your blue jeans over them then. It won't take you a second.”
Elizabeth hesitated again, then gave a small sigh and said, “Okay, Kurt.”
But when they got downstairs Kurt stopped in the hall. “Liebchen, I don't want to go in with that mob again, but I couldn't say that in front of your friends, so I used it as an excuse to get you away. Come along to my dressing room for a few minutes so we can really talk.”
“All right. But just for a few minutes, Kurt. I'm awfully tired.”
“So am I,” Kurt said. “That's why I wanted to get away somewhere with you and just talk for a little while. You're wonderfully restful, Elizabeth.”
They walked over to the theatre and Kurt pulled out his key and let them in. His dressing room doubled as an office. It was a small room with a desk in it, a filing cabinet, a straight chair, and a studio couch. Sometimes after a particularly late rehearsal (or one of the more rowdy of the professional company's parties) he would spend the night there instead of going up the boardwalk to the Ambassador. Now he said, stretching, “I think I'll stay here tonight instead of going up to the hotel. I'm bone-tired.”
Elizabeth laughed a little and said, “Aunt Harriet would certainly think I was a fallen woman, wouldn't she, going into a man's room like this.”
Kurt laughed, too, and his laugh was not uncertain like
Elizabeth's. “Your Aunt Harriet doesn't realize that things are different in the theatre. Things that would be all wrong according to the outmoded moral code of wherever it is—”
“Jordan, Virginia.”
“—Jordan, Virginia, are all right here and now. Aren't you hot, Liebchen? Don't you want to take off that sweater?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I'm not hot.” Involuntarily she pulled her sweater more closely about her and realized that she was almost shivering. She sat down on the straight chair by the desk while Kurt sprawled across the couch, lighting a cigarette.
“Sweet Elizabeth,” he said. “After an evening of Dottie's company—well, I wonder how I can ever be such a fool as to spend five minutes with her when I could be with you. To hell with her Hollywood charms. And, dearheart, I'm terribly sorry about your part in
Macbeth
. I know you must be sick with disappointment.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I am disappointed,” she admitted, “but I guess I'm not surprised, and I'm okay about it now. At any rate, I can stay another week on Soapie's room and board and I can see it every night.”
“Elizabeth,” Kurt said. “I wish I could just go to Price and get him to keep you on a small salary. You're more than worth it. But if I did that, he'd misinterpret my reasons, and this—being director here—is rather a testing ground for me. I bought myself the job, naturally, but if I should wish to return here next summer I must keep on good terms with Price. I didn't do as well as I should have with my two New York plays—of course the scripts were impossible—but I should
have done better in any event. Possibly my directing was too European in its approach, and I myself was going through a period of personal chaos, but I should not have allowed it to be reflected in my work. I feel that this summer I am making progress as a director. I was against Andersen coming since she's doing her own directing, but I find I've learned a good bit from watching some of her rehearsals. I am young and now is the time I must leap ahead. I am ambitious, you see, Liebchen. Acting, producing—fine as sidelines. But it is directing that I care about, conducting a play as I might a great orchestra.” He looked up at her and blew her a kiss. “Bring me an ashtray, please, Liebchen.”
Elizabeth picked up a large glass ashtray from the desk and took it to him. As he reached for it Kurt took her wrist and pulled her down so that she sat beside him on the couch.
“Ah, that's better,” he said. “You looked so austere and formidable by the desk, as though we were having a business interview.”
Kurt put his arm about her. “Ah, Liz, Liz, you're such a funny creature, so completely different from anybody else I've ever known.”
“Am I?”
“I'm maybe five years older than you are,” Kurt said, “and yet I'm a million years older. You give me my lost youth and innocence again. I've been old forever, it seems, Elizabeth. I don't think I ever had that quality of innocence that shines out of you like a candle.”
Kurt drew her toward him and kissed her then, and she smelled the faint astringent perfume of his aftershave lotion.
Somehow alone with him in his dressing room she found his kisses different from when they were strolling on the boardwalk or sitting on the old piles.
She pulled away. “I ought to go back to the Cottage now, Kurt.”
“Why?”
“I just—I'm just terribly tired. So many things have happened today—having Miss Andersen hear me do Nina and give me a part in
Macbeth
—and now not doing it—” And finding out Ben knew Mother, she added to herself.
Kurt ran his fingers over her cheek tenderly. “I'm a selfish brute,” he said. “Run along and get your beauty sleep. Did you know your skin is as soft as a baby's? Good night, heart's dearest.” He kissed her again, but very gently this time, and she left him.
ON SUNDAYS practically no one had breakfast at the Cottage. Elizabeth and Ben sat out in the kitchen with Mrs. Browden, eating chicken livers on toast. John Peter came in while they were eating, and one side of his face was swollen from his toothache. Mrs. Browden clucked over him anxiously.
“I'm full of aspirin,” John Peter said, “and it might just as well be bread crumbs for all the help it's given my tooth.”
“You better get right off to the dentist, pet lamb,” Mrs. Browden told him.
“On Sunday?” John Peter asked gloomily.
“Oh, my soul, so it is. But you just sit down, dear John Peter, and warm your tooth with some coffee, and I'll go call my daughter-in-law. She's got a brother who's a dentist.” And she bustled off.
John Peter groaned. “I've got a psychosis about dentists,” he said. “I must have been scared by a dentist at an early age.”
“That's very possible,” Ben said. “I know I was.”
John Peter took a sip of hot coffee and groaned again. “This thing's killing me. I suppose I shall
have
to go to Mrs. Browden's daughter-in-law's brother.”
“Le dent de mon oncle est dans le parapluie de ma soeur,”
Ben said.
“What?”
“The tooth of my uncle is in the umbrella of my sister. French. I took it in the fourth grade.”
Elizabeth grinned. “Sounds like it.”
“All I have to do is go by a sign that says DENTIST and I break into a cold sweat,” John Peter said.
“Get him to give you gas,” Ben suggested, making himself a sandwich of bread and jelly.
“He'll probably be one of those brutes who won't even use Novocaine. Jane not down yet?”
“No, she said she didn't want any breakfast,” Elizabeth told John Peter.
“What's up?”
“Have you forgotten she and Ben are doing their scene from
The Seagull
for Miss Andersen this morning?”
“Oh, Lord,” John Peter said. “What with my tooth it flew right out of my head. Poor girl, I know she's frantic.”
Mrs. Browden bustled back into the kitchen. “You're to go right over,” she told John Peter with enthusiasm.
John Peter groaned. “Thanks, Mrs. Browden. Where does the scene of slaughter take place?”
“You know where Cherry Street is?”
“No.”
“Well, you walk down the boardwalk till you get to it. It's just beyond Lukie's. Then you turn on Cherry Street—”
“Which way?” John Peter asked, taking a gingerly sip of coffee.
“The only way there is to turn without your walking into the ocean. Walk down Cherry Street till you come to Oak Street and you'll see a sign saying DENTIST. He's expecting you.”
“Please tell Jane I've gone to be slaughtered and wish her good luck on her scene. And good luck to you, Ben. Thanks again, Mrs. Browden.”
Mrs. Browden shook her head after him as he left. “Things like toothaches and colds always seem to make actors sicker than anyone else. In all the summers I've been cooking here I never seen one what didn't go to pieces with a splinter in his finger. But they got to be so you have to take them out on a stretcher before you can keep them from going over to that theatre at night.”
“The show must go on,” Ben intoned.
Elizabeth grinned. “Judging by a couple we've seen, sometimes I wonder why. I'm going to walk over with you so I can beg Mr. Price to use the phone to call Aunt Harriet, and then I'm going swimming. This'll be the first chance I've had to swim all week. Coming upstairs, Ben?”
“Yep. I'd better get Jane.”
“Want anything more to eat, my pets?” Mrs. Browden asked.
Ben finished his bread-and-jelly sandwich, stuck a spoon in
the jelly jar, and took a large mouthful. “I think I'll survive. You haven't got a couple of apples we could take in case we get hungry before lunch, have you, Mrs. Browden?”
“Indeed I have,” she told them. “Two beauties.” She polished them on her apron and gave them to Elizabeth and Ben. “We're having roast beef for dinner and I'll see that you get yours nice and rare the way you like it.”
“Angel!” Ben cried. “Come on, Liz. I'm going up to get Jane. I feel as though we were off to be slaughtered ourselves. I'd much rather go have a tooth pulled. Honest.”
“Don't be a nut,” Elizabeth said sympathetically. “Just don't get excited and overact. You've got to watch out for that.”
“Are you going to wait to swim until we are done?” Ben asked hopefully. “Then we can go together.”
Elizabeth considered a moment, and said, “Okay. Meet me at the Cottage when you're finished. I want to know right away what Miss Andersen said but I know she'll think you're wonderful.”
Upstairs in the bedroom Jane was standing by the window, her fingers clenched till her knuckles showed white, her lips moving swiftly over Nina's words. She had made her bed and dressed herself carefully in a pressed grey cotton dress of rather an old-fashioned cut, and had a fresh grey velvet ribbon holding back her pale hair, and an antique brooch at her neck. Bibi was still asleep, half of her bedclothes tumbled on the floor.
“Where's John Peter?” Jane asked nervously.
“He's gone to the dentist,” Elizabeth whispered. “He said to
tell you and to wish you luck. Mrs. Browden got her daughter-in-law's brother to take him.”
“Oh dear,” Jane said unhappily. “Poor John Peter—”
“Come on.” Ben's nervousness made him snappy. “Let's go.”
“I'm so scared …” Jane whispered.
“What
is
this?” Ben asked. “It's not like you to get in a tizz like this, Jane.”
Jane looked first at Ben, then at Elizabeth. “Well, I suppose I might as well tell you,” she said.
“Tell us what?”
“She's my aunt.”
“I beg your pardon,” Ben said, “but who did you say was your aunt?”
Jane sat down on the foot of her bed. “Valborg Andersen. She's my Aunt Val. I didn't tell anybody because—well, I didn't want to be known as Valborg Andersen's niece. I wanted to be known as Jane Gardiner. I didn't get this scholarship through her, either. Price doesn't know. But I don't mind if you do. And yesterday—being off down on the beach when I ought to have been rehearsing Nina—I know she was disappointed in me about that, and I care so terribly what she thinks.”
“When she sees your Nina it will be all right,” Elizabeth said.
“John Peter's tooth hurt and he didn't feel like rehearsing yesterday,” Jane said, “but I shouldn't have stayed out on the beach with him. I should have come on in to rehearse anyhow. It was the kind of thing we criticize Bibi for doing.”
“Shhh,” Elizabeth said.
Jane glanced over at Bibi. “She's sound asleep. Anyhow it's true. If you want to get anything out of being an apprentice at a summer theatre, you can't spend all your time out on the beach.”
“Okay, Jane,” Ben said, patting her shoulder. “Sure you were wrong yesterday. But it gave Liz a chance to have Andersen see her, and you've got your chance to redeem yourself now. Come along. Let's not be late. That wouldn't help anything. Liz is going to walk over with us so she can call her aunt.”
Once they reached the theatre, Ben turned to Elizabeth and said, “Kiss me. It's customary to kiss the condemned before he goes to the executioner.”
Elizabeth kissed him on the cheek and then went into Mr. Price's office to use the telephone. Mr. Price was shuffling through some papers at his desk and looked up when Elizabeth hurried in.
“Yes?” he said, and looked back down at his papers.
“Thanks again for letting me have Sophie's room and board. Please, Mr. Price, may I use your telephone to let my aunt know that I'm staying?”
Mr. Price stacked some of the papers together. “If you type these letters up for me when you're done.” He got up and handed them to Elizabeth as he left the office.
Elizabeth stared at the phone. Making this call was the last thing she wanted to do. Aunt Harriet would be furious. She took a deep breath, lifted the receiver, and dialed the operator. Acting, she thought. I'll act my way out of this.
When she told her aunt that she would not be returning to Jordan until next Sunday, the world did not end. “I don't approve,”
Aunt Harriet said, “but at least you won't be there the whole summer.”
Elizabeth smiled and opened the door of the office again so she could hear if the others came out. She typed up the letters for Mr. Price, and when she finished she went back to her room in the Cottage to wait.
She pulled out her battered volume of Shakespeare and sat cross-legged on her bed, which she had made before breakfast. Once in a while Bibi grunted or turned in her sleep, but she did not awaken. Elizabeth read until she heard Ben and Jane on the stairs. Then she shut her book and went out into the hall to meet them. “How'd it go?” she asked.
Jane sat down on the top step. “I couldn't have been worse but she was awfully nice about it.”
“Jane's an idiot,” Ben said. “It may not be the best she's ever done Nina, but it was good and Andersen told her so. I stank.”
“You're the idiot,” Jane said. “Aunt Val was very impressed with you.”
“She certainly tore me apart,” Ben said. “I thought she was telling me I'd better give up all idea of ever working in the theatre, and quick.”
“Yes, but then when she'd finished she said it was only because you were worth criticizing that way that she'd bothered. And she told you she thought you had great talent and there were very few young people she said that to, and then she said that judging from the little she'd seen she thought we must be a very unusual group of apprentices, and Ben just up and said, ‘Oh, we are.'”
“Oh, Ben!” Elizabeth laughed.
“Well, she knew what I meant,” Ben said.
“You should have seen him,” Jane told Elizabeth. “He was so embarrassed over saying it that he turned almost purple.”
“I explained I didn't mean me,” Ben said. “I meant Jane and Liz and John Peter and Ditta and all of us.”
“Aunt Val's really a wonderful person,” Jane said. “She's always been my favorite relative, and at least she didn't seem to want to disown me or tell me to get out of the theatre. Nobody but you two and John Peter knows about her being my aunt, so don't for heaven's sake forget and say anything.”
“Of course not.”
“Oh, and she spoke especially about you, Liz. Says you have a really unusual quality, that thing that makes people watch you onstage whether you have talent or not, but you have talent, too.”
“Did she really?” Elizabeth beamed.
“And she was very nice about my being on the beach yesterday. And I'm glad it happened so she got a chance to see you, Liz, but it won't ever happen again.”
“Come on, hurry up,” Ben urged. “We can talk more down on the beach. I'm dying to get in the ocean and cool off. I'm in a lather. Get into your bathing suits, quick. I'll meet you on the beach.”
Ben trotted downstairs and Elizabeth and Jane went into the bedroom where Bibi was now lying on her back and gently snoring.
Jane took off her dress and hung it up. “I really ought to wait for John Peter,” she said, wrinkling her brow anxiously.
“Poor darling, I was afraid his tooth wasn't going to get any better. I just hate to think of his being hurt.”
“He'll probably be ages,” Elizabeth said, “and I'm sure he'll look for you on the beach first. Come along.”
“Okay. I guess I'll go down, then. But poor John Peter, it does seem a shame, and on a Sunday, too.” Jane slipped into a two-piece bathing suit, black, brief, and very becoming to her even though her shoulders were burned. Elizabeth's suit was an old green woolen one and had been darned in two or three places where moths had dined on it, but Jane looked at her admiringly.
“That color's beautiful with your tan and your hair. Kurt seen you in it?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth blushed.
There was the sound of someone walking heavily down the hall and Ditta thudded in. “Hey, anybody going swimming?” she asked loudly.
Elizabeth and Jane both shushed her and Bibi groaned and turned over. “Oh, sorry,” Ditta whispered. “I just came to see if anybody was going swimming.” She wore a badly draped flowered bathing suit and had taken her glasses off so that her eyes looked weak and red, something that Elizabeth was grateful that hers, nearsighted though they were, never did.

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