The Virgin in the Garden (68 page)

In the interval he had meant to speak to her but was waylaid by Thomas Poole, whose confidences he no longer wanted. Poole said that if only Alexander would stand being the Wedding Guest for ten minutes longer he’d be eternally grateful, and Alexander said, nastily for Alexander, that Poole had got the wrong poet, hadn’t he, he was meant to be Edmund Spenser, sweet poet of sweeter married love, the great shift in sensibility in the amatory epic if C. S. Lewis was to be believed, and that if he, Alexander, was him, Poole, which thank God he was not, he’d retreat into married love
pronto
. Poole did not seem to notice Alexander’s nastiness, or clumsy jocularity, but went on to explain solemnly that he had now found a doctor, through, guess who? Marina Yeo herself. Who had said that her career in the past had depended on knowing reliable doctors with reliable nursing homes, and that she considered it a public service to pass these names on. The problem remained of persuading Anthea, of getting Anthea organised, all of which was highly distasteful, and of finding the money, which on his salary was no joke. Marina Yeo moved in the best circles, gynaecological as well as in other ways.
Alexander said please draw on himself for money, as this play seemed to be making quite a lot. And as for Anthea, if she was scared, that was only to be understood …

Poole said no, she was not scared. She was mad about missing a projected holiday in Juan-les-Pins. And she didn’t like having doctors fingering her, she said. Alexander said that could be a euphemism for worse terrors, and Poole said he wished he could think so. They both had a stiff whisky, on this.

Frederica, prowling in the bushes at the beginning of the second act, unwilling to put off the lovely dress for the last time, met Anthea, in her white diaphane, tinsel crown, and silver-dipped laces, vomiting amongst the laurels.

“Are you O.K.?”

“You can see I’m not. It comes in these awful waves. If I get it over now I can go on and wave my sword and corn-sheaf without feeling dizzy. Have I got trails of gunge on these frills?”

“Only the slightest.”

Frederica licked her handkerchief and rubbed. There was a small slimy trail on the pointed end of one layer of frilling.

“I suppose you guessed I’m preggers.”

“What will you do?”

“Get rid of it. I’ve got to convince Mummy and Daddy I’ve got a good reason for going up to London for a week or two. Marina will have to help.”

“Why should she?”

“Well, she found the medic, and the nursing-home, and all that. She’ll see it through.”

“Do you feel awful?”

Anthea-Astraea stared white as marble in the thickening light at Frederica’s gingery, questing face.

“I feel green. I feel green all the bloody time. I don’t enjoy anything. Not sex, or champagne, or strawberries, or people clapping, or clothes either, because they don’t fit, or anything at all, if you want to know. I feel really cross. I thought nice people could be trusted to take proper precautions. I shall have to look after myself better. And if you think I’m as hard as nails, Frederica Potter, ask yourself how else I could be?”

She tripped off, a light fantastic figure, to take her place in the final presentation of the Masque. Redit et virgo. Redeunt Saturnia regna. So Thomas Poole anachronistically intoned, and the corn-sheaf of fecundity and the sword of justice wavered only slightly from their statuesque immobility.

Frederica found Wilkie. She was nearly in tears. He got hold of her arm – he had just come off after his final rape of Bess Throckmorton – and said, “Hey, steady, what’s up?”

“I don’t know. It’s Anthea. She’s ill. It’s upsetting.”

“Not ill, preggers. Soon mended. Marina says so.”

“Mended is the
wrong word
.”

“I suppose so. I do agree, prevention is better than cure. Perhaps passion overtook prevention. Tut. I trust to continue to manage my own affairs better. How are yours?”

“I don’t know. I can’t. I’m
scared
.”

“You’re a cock-teaser.”

“Oh, is that what it’s called? I didn’t know that word. No I’m not, and you know I’m not, I just don’t know what to do. I lied, and now there’ll be all blood, at best, and I’m ignorant about – taking care – and he doesn’t know I am – and I simply don’t know what to do or how to do it, and he thinks I does, do, and I’m scared.”

“I’m told the blood is usually a myth.”

“Is it? Well, most myths have got some sort of basis in reality, some people must bleed somewhere, sometimes, and why not me? Please stop quibbling. I’m not a cock-teaser, and I’m not like that girl, hard as nails, she said, either. I mean, I couldn’t be, look at Stephanie, all creamy, you have to think of the other
possibilities
, Wilkie, like that babies are marvellous, or are people, or something. Though I can’t imagine myself ever wanting one I must say. I expect Steph’s was just as much a case of passion overtaking prevention, only Steph’s got more guts, if that’s what I mean. Either way, not a good example for me.
What am I going to do?
”

“Well –” said Wilkie, “my own plans have gone a bit wonky, to tell the truth. I’d planned a lovely two or three days’ trip up the coast on the bike after this, with my girl, and now she tells me she’s detained in Cambridge and won’t come. Do you want to? Just for the ride?”

“I can’t. What with Daddy and Mummy and Marcus and Alexander and Alexander and Alexander. You know I can’t.”

“Solve a lot of problems. We’d have fun.”

Frederica smiled grimly. “You don’t care about your cock being teased?”

“It wouldn’t be. That is, no, I don’t care, so it wouldn’t be, and then, moreover, there’s no reason for you to be scared of me, because you don’t love me in this daft way, and you haven’t lied to me. So it wouldn’t be – teased – for that reason, either. So why don’t you come? We’d have fun.”

“I never know what you
want
, Wilkie.”

“That’s easy. I want to be the best. Everything else – people included – comes second.”

“The best what at?”

“Everything. Now
that’s
my real problem. That keeps me awake at nights. If you’re the best at everything, how do you know what to do next? Anyway, think about the coast. I’m off, tomorrow. I’ll drop by and either pick you up or kiss you goodbye.”

And so the sun went down for the last time on the last scene of
Astraea
and most of the cast hid behind bushes and brakes to watch it if they could, whilst Alexander and Lodge sat up high on the scaffolding, thus seeing, what was denied that night to a lot of the audience, the single red sliver of descending sun. There had been nights when it had gone down glorious round and bloody behind house, terrace and cushion, there had been nights when the sky had been magnificently slashed with silvered crimson on peacock. Tonight heavy clouds were banking, higher and higher, making dark before the dark of night, so that the light on Marina Yeo had to be reinforced with an arclight from the house, a little lurid, contributing considerably more chiaroscuro than Elizabeth I herself would have thought proper.

There she sat, anyway, for the last time, in her white pleated nightgown on her huge cream silk cushion, under the now clearly ponderous high red wig. The yards of rayed linen worn by Elizabeth II for the simple and sacramental moment of the Coronation ceremony had contributed something to the final conception of this bed-garment, whose sheer weight might never have been guessed from the ease with which Marina, before she began seriously to die, that was, trailed it or swirled it.

There she sat, with her finger, as history, mythology and the text dictated, childishly in her mouth, and, since this was a verse drama, spoke to herself with broken eloquence on the nature of things, solitude, virginity, power, the approaching dark. The hunch-shouldered Robert Cecil came busily up and down the terrace steps. Women, reminiscent of Charmian and Iras, waited around. The cushion had corded seams and fantastic knots of cord on its four corners. The queen spoke of England, babbled of green fields, remembered irascibly that the ring with which she had been wedded to England had had to be sawn off, since her aged marriage finger was deformed. Ringman, she called that finger, remembering, somewhat improbably, another childhood rhyme. She spoke too of mutability, and in Ovidian terms of the Age of Gold, rivers of milk and perpetual ripening corn. Then she fell into silence.

Lodge jabbed Alexander’s ribs.

“Best bit of pure theatre I’ve ever done.”

Slowly, slowly, the erect squatting figure with its jewelled turreted head swayed over on to the cushion. Miss Yeo could hold an audience for an unconscionable time, in dying. The red wig rolled away, reminding those who saw visual patterns of the earlier description of the severance of Mary Queen of Scots’ wig from her severed head, and the white-headed woman sank death-pale into the creamy folds of the cushion. Here she jerked, struggled and stiffened amidst her aurora of white pleating, and the ladies came lovingly and made her into her own monument, straightening clothing and limbs, replacing a crimson rose between the closed, outstretched palms of that Tudor Icon. Because of the weather and the arclight the whiteness of this scene was thrown into more relief than ever before, and the actress seemed faceless, apart from the beaked nose that had been so carefully constructed every night with putty, and would not be again. Once they had her displayed on the cushion it was possible to carry her off, which they did, white, soft and still.

“Twisted it a bit,” said Lodge. “She
did
get into bed, the old bitch, at last. But what theatre.”

There were subdued farewells on the terrace after the play. People’s clothes were already being taken from them and put into wicker crates for Stratford and elsewhere. Wilkie for some reason was ordering a lugubrious smashing of the equipment of the Bottle Chorus. He had a place in the stable yard where all bottles were to be thrown, and whilst some of the little boys enjoyed the crash and clatter of this, some protested tearfully that they had meant to keep their very own bottle as a memento. And of what use, said Wilkie severely to these backsliders, did they suppose one note would be, without the consort? They could make any bottle, any time, sing some sort of music. No, no, the whole thing was going to be smashed now, and he himself had the blueprint and at some future date, in some future place, he promised, the Music of the Spheres should ring out again. In the interim he didn’t want his concept mangling, and besides, broken glass glinted prettily. So they threw, and threw, and threw, in a splintering cacophony.

Frederica approached Crowe, who was busy, it appeared, listening to Marina giving Anthea sensible advice. She said she wished to thank him for all he had done. She said – more tentatively – that she wished to consult him about her future. He said, at his most urbane, that he would be delighted to advise about this, if she really wanted him to, and gave her a glass of something – very sweet sherry, she feared, it was, tho’ this
seemed unlikely. And what, asked Crowe, did she particularly require advice
about
.

Well, said Frederica, she had always wanted to be an actress. She wondered if, with these reviews – she did not say, this performance – behind her, she might try for drama school, or rep even, try and build on it. It was what she
wanted
, a career in the theatre. Did Crowe have any particular suggestions as to how to set about it? Crowe smiled, and patted her shoulder. He smiled more.

“Naturally,” he said, “Lodge’s advice to you would be of more use than mine, or even maybe – doubtfully – dear Alexander’s. But you have asked for mine. And shall have it, dear girl. So brace yourself. In order to make a career on the stage you must first –” smooth as silk – “get a new face, and a new body. And then learn to enact something other than yourself. It may be that you can do all these things. But my advice would be to do as Daddy suggests, dabble your toes in amateur dramatics and build on those excellent A Levels, about which we’ve all heard
so very much
. You can’t really
act
, you know. You were type-cast, and there’s not many of those types around to be type-cast as. You have said – with justice – that sweet Anthea was cast for prettiness and grace, but on the
stage
,
in general
, Frederica, those qualities are slightly more in demand than yours. I agree it would be better if sweet Anthea’s voice were less twittering, but then, we can’t have everything, although the drama schools are crowded out, I believe, with damsels who combine prettiness, grace, sweet tones, and a modicum of that very special wit – not your kind – that is required in actresses.”

“I see,” said Frederica.

“I’m sure you do. May I congratulate you again on your excellent performance, which surpassed all expectations – even mine. An intelligent hunch, it turned out. And may I wish you luck, in Oxford, or Cambridge, or wherever it may turn out to be. Now I must go back to Anthea’s absorbing little problem. Goodbye, Frederica.”

There were a few tears – not many, for she was furiously proud – in the grease, as Frederica took off her make-up in the mirror for the last time. She watched Marina Yeo covertly. Marina was ugly. Might never have been beautiful. Could, she supposed, always have seemed so. What Crowe had said was because of the Sun Bed, but also meant, she had the wit to realise, and even, she had also the wit to recognise, probably true. So that was that. She watched Jenny too, who seemed hectic, but not dispirited, as she had been. She looked at her own face. Crowe was right, it was odd and nothing, a schoolmistressy face with freckles and a pointed mouth and chin. As to her breasts – tugging the whalebone
away for the last time – they were hardly breasts, knobs more, and there were knobs in other places, elbows, knees, which spotlights would lovingly pick out. Alexander came up behind her.

“Take you home?”

“Take Mrs Parry.”

“I expect her husband will come for her.”

“He doesn’t usually.”

“It’s the last night. Don’t be scrupulous. Frederica, Frederica,
come
.”

She came. She let him march her off without a backward glance, from either of them, at Jennifer. She sat beside him in the car, and cried a little.