The Rose Garden (24 page)

Mr. Briscoe saw her standing alone, from his own solitary point of vantage next to the table with the glasses on it. He started moodily in her direction, holding a full glass in his right hand.

“Why are you so proud?” he asked masterfully.

She retrieved her gaze from a distant part of the room and fell in love with him, as she had often fallen in love before.

Greatly pleased with the impression he had made, he conducted her to a sofa. “I am a London actor, out of work and penniless. My name is George Briscoe. I was impelled to speak to you because you are the only beautiful woman in the room. I am not married,” he said to her, drinking and staring at her.

He was a wide man, with a face and hands of dazzling whiteness, and a low forehead, from which he combed his hair straight back to conceal as well as possible the baldness of his crown. He wore a yellow checked waistcoat.

“I am a magnificent actor, but I cannot find work. They no longer want real actors on the stage. They want robots, automatons, expressionless vacuum heads. Above all, they want thin young men. An older man can only get a job if he has been rewarded with a title, or if he has made a name in films. Unless he wants
to found his own company.” He gave her a bland smile in which there was no resentment. “Tell me anything you would like to tell me,” he added.

“I am Jane Rooney, teacher of music,” said Jane with a harsh laugh of delight and embarrassment. “I dabble in all the arts. I am devoted to the theater in all its forms.”

“My dear girl,” he began, leaning toward her, “the theater has only one form.” Jane began to listen.

“I would like to escort you home,” he said much later. “If you do not live too far away.”

When they arrived at her flat he suggested that he come in with her. “Otherwise,” he said sensibly, “I shall spend the night on the streets.”

Since there was only one bed in the flat, he settled himself on a chair in her little parlor, but after an hour he arose, sighing, and found his way into the bed alongside her. Jane lay rigid, staring at the ceiling with bulging eyes. She had never lain next to a man before.

“I hope you aren't a restless sleeper, my dear,” he said, settling himself comfortably, and fell asleep.

Jane lay awake all night, and when the first breath of day came into the room she slipped out of bed and away to the kitchen, where she said her prayers and cried nervously. “God forgive me,” she said, “but I couldn't very well send him out in the cold.”

When eight o'clock came, she got off her knees and set a tray for his breakfast. She had to give a piano lesson at half past nine.

“Good girl,” he said when he opened his eyes and saw the tray. “Oh, I can't sit up,” he said roguishly, holding the blankets up under his chin, “till you give me something to cover my nakedness. A big towel will do,” he said, brushing aside her embarrassment.

She brought a large shawl, and turned aside while he arranged
himself.

“You're all dressed and ready to go out,” he said admiringly. “What a clever girl you are.”

After the first lesson she had a second, but as soon as she was free she hurried home. He was sitting in the parlor, with a fine red glow in the grate and one of her collections of plays in his hands. He closed the book and held out his hand to her. “I hope I didn't disturb your sleep, Jane,” he said.

She fell on her knees beside him and pressed her plain face against his hand. “I was so afraid I would never see you again,” she said.

He stroked her thick springy hair. “What a wonderful color your hair is,” he said. “Is it really this color?”

“Oh, yes. I wouldn't dye it,” Jane said quickly.

George found the little flat very comfortable. He was not lazy. He did some housework while Jane was out and even helped in the kitchen. They went for a stroll every night, and once to the pictures, walking very casually past Jane's landlady's door.

At the end of a week, Jane's landlady stormed up the stairs and demanded to see Jane alone, and asked her what did she think she was up to. “I'm surprised at you,” she said curiously. “I'd never have thought you were that sort.”

“I'm as much that sort as anybody else,” Jane said. “Anyway,” she added, “it isn't the way it looks. He's been very gentlemanly, if you know what I mean.”

Mrs. Dolan drew back with an imploring smile. “Have a heart, girl,” she said. “I'm a married woman. You're not expecting me to believe a thing like that?”

“Believe it or not as you like, Mrs. Dolan. What can I do? Put him out on the street?”

“Well, you can't let him impose on you like this,” said Mrs. Dolan. She thought of the glimpse she had had of him as she came
in. “He looks a helpless sort of poor fellow, the way he's settled down beside the fire. It seems a heartless thing to do, to tell him to get up and go.”

“I know,” Jane said. She was wearing the green tweed skirt and beige jersey, with a necklace of large amber beads, that she usually wore in the daytime.

“Why wouldn't you marry him?” Mrs. Dolan asked coaxingly.

“He hasn't asked me,” Jane said in surprise, and began to dab at her eyes.

Mrs. Dolan gazed in indecision at the kitchen door. She opened it and looked in at George, where he sat with his book.

“Would you come out here a minute, sir?” she cried.

“Certainly, Mrs. Dolan,” he said. “We'll leave the door open, if you don't mind. This is such a very small kitchen.”

“Mr. Briscoe, if you don't mind my saying so, you've got this girl into terrible trouble,” Mrs. Dolan said.

“Mrs. Dolan is afraid for my good name,” Jane said, with an attempt at a smile.

“Why wouldn't you marry her, sir?” Mrs. Dolan said. “No hurry, of course, sir,” she added, not wanting to spoil Jane's chances. “But later on, when you've made up your mind.”

“I'm a poor man,” George said. “An out-of-work actor. How can I ask any woman to marry me?”

George was not one to fight fate. After Jane discovered this about him, she marveled that no woman had run off with him before she found him.

In the second year of their marriage she became pregnant, and they had to move, because children were not allowed in the flats. Using Jane's savings, they bought a small red brick house on a terrace in the suburbs. Their house was covered with a Virginia creeper, the same rich red brown as Jane's hair. The big pointed
leaves clustered thickly around the front door and around the windows, and made their house seem older and more opulent than its neighbors. They had a small front garden and a larger back garden, and Jane grew very enthusiastic about her flowers. There was a laburnum tree at the back, and little John's first recollection was of the laburnum in full bloom, brighter, yellower, gayer, and more splendid than anything he ever saw in his life again.

“‘John Briscoe' is a good-sounding name, no matter what he decides to do,” George said.

George could hardly ever get a part, and it depressed him to be turned down. He learned Robert Emmet's “Speech from the Dock,” and began to go around to all the schools declaiming it, with a sash over his right shoulder and a sword in his hand. Jane had many friends among the schoolteachers. That is how the thing got started. He was reciting the speech for them all at home one Sunday night, and one of the teachers asked him to give it for her students. Afterward he learned the “Lament for Owen Roe” (did they dare, did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill), which he recited in a ragged jacket, sitting down with his hands clasped on a walking stick, and his eyes half shut, because he was convinced that the man who wrote it was blind.

He was paid a little money for these performances. When John passed his seventh birthday he went with his father one day to help with the properties, and after that he always went, and always accepted the fee from a minor teacher while his father was talking and charming the head of the school. Once they got outside, he would slip the money into his father's pocket, not saying anything.

The Briscoes used to have very successful Sunday evenings. Other music teachers came, and amateur concert singers, and once in a while even an actor would come, and bring a friend—perhaps a fellow who wrote poetry. They used to sing and have long, delightful discussions. George was always the center of attention,
and Jane guarded the hospitality of the house and rested herself, and sometimes led into the discussion with some foolish theory of hers, as she had in her single days.

George never grew impatient with her. He never grew impatient with anyone. She knew herself to be less intelligent and less well informed than he, and when she spoke up he would give her a jesting look and shake his head to prevent her getting too excited. He talked a great deal about his years on the fringes of the London theater, and though the guests by no means believed all he told them, they enjoyed listening to him, because he was different from themselves. In years gone by, Jane had always been a hanger-on at the parties she attended. She found it pleasant to be at the center of things. She hardly changed, except that her hair began to fade, and then she dyed it, so that really she didn't change at all. She still had her hopes, and they were still the same, and her dreams were still alive and complete, but she was so comfortable with them that they no longer glittered recklessly in her eyes, nor did she ever now smile contemptuously about her as she said in her own mind, “Look at me, what I am, what I shall be.”

Her husband, however, while taking life calmly, watched the future with confidence in his own prophecy. “The old days are coming back,” he would say. “They'll want my sort of acting again. All this dead man's walk is just a passing fad. We'll go to New York, when John is old enough, and I'll get a character part, perhaps go to Hollywood. Nowadays what they want in Hollywood is really good English character actors, with a solid training behind them.” He took to wearing a black cape.

John was proud of his father, and of his mother, because they were different from the other parents on the terrace. His father went to work when he pleased, when there was a performance at one of the schools. Even his mother kept irregular hours. They were bohemians. They let John stay up as late as he liked, and every Sunday night he sat on the little piano stool and listened
to the conversation. Often a teacher from his own school would come, and he could boast of her visit in class the next day. Sometimes his mother would give him permission to invite a teacher on his own. One of the teachers told him that his mother's house was a veritable salon, and that John should appreciate the privileges of his upbringing.

Another good thing—John used to be let off from school a half hour early on performance days. Those days, he would meet his father near the strange school, and they would walk into the strange classroom or, if there was a hall, onto the stage, and all the strange children would stare up at him and be envious. His father would be wearing the black cloak, and he would take if off and John would hand him the sword and sash or whatever he wanted. John felt very important.

When he was nine, John began to write poetry. One Sunday night, he stood up during a lull in the conversation and asked his mother for permission to speak. She smiled beamingly at him and nodded, and glanced around at the others, and his father turned away from his discussion with the girl who taught French to smile and clap his hands noiselessly, for encouragement.

“I would like to read a poem I have written,” John said in a rather artificial voice that was modeled after his father's reciting voice. “It is called ‘To My Mother.'

                
“I love my mother, darling Jane,

                
Who brought me to this world of pain.

                
She is my dear, my hope, my joy.

                
I'll always be her loving boy.

                
“She works that I may dine on cake.

                
I'd walk through fire for her sake.

                
If she should die I could not live.

                
To be with her my life I'd give.

                
“At night upon my knees I pray

                
That she'll be safe an extra day.

                
I love her more than all the rest.

                
I love my mother, Jane, the best.”

When he had finished, John sat down on the piano stool and stared at the floor. His face was flushed. His mother rushed forward and took him in her arms. She pressed her face against his cheek. She was weeping. The rest of the audience murmured appreciatively. George came over to pat his son's head. “I am greatly moved,” he said. “We must see that you have your chance.”

“That young man will be heard of,” said one of the men present, a government worker who acted in his spare time. He had a long gaunt face, and he took his pipe from his mouth and nodded at John. “Mark my words,” he said, “a new young poet for Ireland.”