Theatre (12 page)

On Sundays they had a good many people down for the day, actors and actresses, an occasional writer, and a sprinkling of some of their grander friends. Julia found these parties very amusing and she knew that people liked to come to them. On the first Sunday after Roger's arrival there was a great mob. Roger was very polite to the guests. He did his duty as part host like a man of the world. But it seemed to Julia that he held himself in some curious way aloof, as though he were playing a part in which he had not lost himself, and she had an uneasy feeling that he was not accepting all these people, but coolly judging them. She had an impression that he took none of them very seriously.

Tom had arranged to come on the following Saturday and she drove him down after the theatre. It was a moonlit night and at that hour the roads were empty. The drive was enchanting. Julia would have liked it to go on for ever. She nestled against him and every now and then in the darkness he kissed her.

'Are you happy?' she asked.

'Absolutely.'

Michael and Roger had gone to bed, but supper was waiting for them in the dining-room. The silent house gave them the feeling of being there without leave. They might have been a couple of wanderers who had strolled out of the night into a strange house and found a copious repast laid out for them. It was romantic. It had a little the air of a tale in the
Arabian Nights.
Julia showed him his room, which was next door to Roger's, and then went
to bed. She did not wake till late next morning. It was a lovely day. So that she might have Tom all to herself she had not asked anybody down. When she was dressed they would go on the river together. She had her breakfast and her bath. She put on a little white frock that suited the sunny riverside and her, and a large-brimmed red straw hat whose colour threw a warm glow on her face. She was very little made-up. She looked at herself in the glass and smiled with satisfaction. She really looked very pretty and young. She strolled down into the garden. There was a lawn that stretched down to the river, and here she saw Michael surrounded by the Sunday papers. He was alone.

'I thought you'd gone to play golf.'

'No, the boys have gone. I thought they'd have more fun if I let them go alone.' He smiled in his friendly way. 'They're a bit too active for me. They were bathing at eight o'clock this morning, and as soon as they'd swallowed their breakfast they bolted off in Roger's car.'

'I'm glad they've made friends.'

Julia meant it. She was slightly disappointed that she would not be able to go on the river with Tom, but she was anxious that Roger should like him, she had a feeling that Roger did not like people indiscriminately; and after all she had the next fortnight to be with Tom.

'They make me feel damned middle-aged, I don't mind telling you that,' Michael remarked.

'What nonsense. You're much more beautiful than either of them, and well you know it, my pet.'

Michael thrust out his jaw a little and pulled in his belly.

The boys did not come back till luncheon was nearly ready.

'Sorry we're so late,' said Roger. 'There was a filthy crowd and we had to wait on nearly every tee. We halved the match.'

They were hungry and thirsty, excited and pleased with themselves.

'It's grand having no one here to-day,' said Roger. 'I was
afraid you'd got a whole gang coming and we'd have to behave like little gentlemen.'

'I thought a rest would be rather nice,' said Julia.

Roger gave her a glance.

'It'll do you good, mummy. You're looking awfully fagged.'

('Blast his eyes. No, I mustn't show I mind. Thank God, I can act.')

She laughed gaily.

'I had a sleepless night wondering what on earth we were going to do about your spots.'

'I know, aren't they sickening? Tom says he used to have them too.'

Julia looked at Tom. In his tennis shirt open at the neck, with his hair ruffled, his face already caught by the sun, he looked incredibly young. He really looked no older than Roger.

'Anyhow, his nose is going to peel,' Roger went on with a chuckle. 'He'll look a sight then.'

Julia felt slightly uneasy. It seemed to her that Tom had shed the years so that he was become not only in age Roger's contemporary. They talked a great deal of nonsense. They ate enormously and drank tankards of beer. Michael, eating and drinking as sparingly as usual, watched them with amusement. He was enjoying their youth and their high spirits. He reminded Julia of an old dog lying in the sun and gently beating his tail on the ground as he looked at a pair of puppies gambolling about him. They had coffee on the lawn. Julia found it very pleasant to sit there in the shade, looking at the river. Tom was slim and graceful in his long white trousers. She had never seen him smoke a pipe before. She found it strangely touching. But Roger mocked him.

'Do you smoke it because it makes you feel manly or because you like it?'

'Shut up,' said Tom.

'Finished your coffee?'

'Yes.'

'Come on then, let's go on the river.'

Tom gave her a doubtful look. Roger saw it.

'Oh, it's all right, you needn't bother about my respected parents, they've got the Sunday papers. Mummy's just given me a racing punt.'

('I must keep my temper. I must keep my temper. Why was I such a fool as to give him a racing punt?')

'All right,' she said, with an indulgent smile, 'go on the river, but don't fall in.'

'It won't hurt us if we do. We'll be back for tea. Is the court marked out, daddy? We're going to play tennis after tea.'

'I daresay your father can get hold of somebody and you can have a four.'

'Oh, don't bother. Singles are better fun really and one gets more exercise.' Then to Tom. 'I'll race you to the boathouse.'

Tom leapt to his feet and dashed off with Roger in quick pursuit. Michael took up one of the papers and looked for his spectacles.

'They've clicked all right, haven't they?'

'Apparently.'

'I was afraid Roger would be rather bored alone here with us. It'll be fine for him to have someone to play around with.'

'Don't you think Roger's rather inconsiderate?'

'You mean about the tennis? Oh, my dear, I don't really care if I play or not. It's only natural that those two boys should want to play together. From their point of view I'm an old man, and they think I'll spoil their game. After all the great thing is that they should have a good time.'

Julia had a pang of remorse. Michael was prosy, near with his money, self-complacent, but how extraordinarily kind he was and how unselfish! He was devoid of envy. It gave him a real satisfaction, so long as it did not cost money, to make other people happy. She read his mind like an open book. It was true that he never had any but a commonplace thought; on the other hand he never had
a shameful one. It was exasperating that with so much to make him worthy of her affection, she should be so excruciatingly bored by him.

'I think you're a much better man that I am a woman, my sweet,' she said.

He gave her his good, friendly smile and slightly shook his head.

'No, dear, I had a wonderful profile, but you've got genius.'

Julia giggled. There was a certain fun to be got out of a man who never knew what you were talking about. But what did they mean when they said an actress had genius? Julia had often asked herself what it was that had placed her at last head and shoulders above her contemporaries. She had had detractors. At one time people had compared her unfavourably with some actress or other who at the moment enjoyed the public favour, but now no one disputed her supremacy. It was true that she had not the world-wide notoriety of the film-stars; she had tried her luck on the pictures, but had achieved no success; her face on the stage so mobile and expressive for some reason lost on the screen, and after one trial she had with Michael's approval refused to accept any of the offers that were from time to time made her. She had got a good deal of useful publicity out of her dignified attitude. But Julia did not envy the film-stars; they came and went; she stayed. When it was possible she went to see the performance of actresses who played leading parts on the London stage. She was generous in her praise of them and her praise was sincere. Sometimes she honestly thought them so very good that she could not understand why people made so much fuss over her. She was much too intelligent not to know in what estimation the public held her, but she was modest about herself. It always surprised her when people raved over something she had done that came to her so naturally that she had never thought it possible to do anything else. The critics admired her variety. They praised especially her capacity
for insinuating herself into a part. She was not aware that she deliberately observed people, but when she came to study a new part vague recollections surged up in her from she knew not where, and she found that she knew things about the character she was to represent that she had had no inkling of. It helped her to think of someone she knew or even someone she had seen in the street or at a party; she combined with this recollection her own personality, and thus built up a character founded on fact but enriched with her experience, her knowledge of technique and her amazing magnetism. People thought that she only acted during the two or three hours she was on the stage; they did not know that the character she was playing dwelt in the back of her mind all day long, when she was talking to others with all the appearance of attention, or in whatever business she was engaged. It often seemed to her that she was two persons, the actress, the popular favourite, the best-dressed woman in London, and that was a shadow; and the woman she was playing at night, and that was the substance.

'Damned if I know what genius is,' she said to herself. 'But I know this, I'd give all I have to be eighteen.'

But she knew that wasn't true. If she were given the chance to go back again would she take it? No. Not really. It was not the popularity, the celebrity if you like, that she cared for, nor the hold she had over audiences, the real love they bore her, it was certainly not the money this had brought her
_;
it was the power she felt in herself, her mastery over the medium, that thrilled her. She could step into a part, not a very good one perhaps, with silly words to say, and by her personality, by the dexterity which she had at her fingertips, infuse it with life. There was no one who could do what she could with a part. Sometimes she felt like God.

'And besides,' she chuckled, 'Tom wouldn't be born.'

After all it was very natural that he should like to play about with Roger. They belonged to the same generation. It was the first day of his holiday, she must let him enjoy
himself; there was a whole fortnight more. He would soon get sick of being all the time with a boy of seventeen. Roger was sweet, but he was dull; she wasn't going to let maternal affection blind her to that. She must be very careful not to show that she was in the least put out. From the beginning she had made up her mind that she would never make any claim on Tom; it would be fatal if he felt that he owed something to her.

'Michael, why don't you let that flat in the mews to Tom? Now that he's passed his exam and is a chartered accountant he can't go on living in a bed-sitting room.'

'That's not a bad idea. I'll suggest it to him.'

'It would save an agent's fees. We could help him to furnish it. We've got a lot of stuff stored away. We might just as well let him use it as have it moulder away in the attics.'

Tom and Roger came back to eat an enormous tea and then played tennis till the light failed. After dinner they played dominoes. Julia gave a beautiful performance of a still young mother fondly watching her son and his boy friend. She went to bed early. Presently they too went upstairs. Their rooms were just over hers. She heard Roger go into Tom's room. They began talking, her windows and theirs were open, and she heard their voices in animated conversation. She wondered with exasperation what they found to say to one another. She had never found either of them very talkative. After a while Michael's voice interrupted them.

'Now then, you kids, you go to bed. You can go on talking to-morrow.'

She heard them laugh.

'All right, daddy,' cried Roger.

'A pair of damned chatterboxes, that's what you are.'

She heard Roger's voice again.

'Well, good-night, old boy.'

And Tom's hearty answer: 'So long, old man.'

'Idiots!' she said to herself crossly.

Next morning while she was having her breakfast Michael came into Julia's room.

'The boys have gone off to play golf at Huntercombe. They want to play a couple of rounds and they asked if they need come back to lunch. I told them that was quite all right.'

'I don't know that I particularly like the idea of Tom treating the house as if it was a hotel.'

'Oh, my dear, they're only a couple of kids. Let them have all the fun they can get, I say.'

She would not see Tom at all that day, for she had to start for London between five and six in order to get to the theatre in good time. It was all very well for Michael to be so damned good-natured about it. She was hurt. She felt a little inclined to cry. He must be entirely indifferent to her, it was Tom she was thinking of now; and she had made up her mind that to-day was going to be quite different from the day before. She had awakened determined to be tolerant and to take things as they came, but she hadn't been prepared for a smack in the face like this.

'Have the papers come yet?' she asked sulkily.

She drove up to town with rage in her heart.

The following day was not much better. The boys did not go off to play golf, but they played tennis. Their incessant activity profoundly irritated Julia. Tom in shorts, with his bare legs, and a cricket shirt, really did not look more than sixteen. Bathing as they did three or four times a day he could not get his hair to stay down, and the moment it was dry it spread over his head in unruly curls. It made him look younger than ever, but oh, so charming. Julia's heart was wrung. And it seemed to her that his demeanour had strangely changed; in the constant companionship of Roger he had shed the young man about town who was so careful of his dress, so particular about wearing the right thing, and was become again a sloppy little schoolboy. He never gave a hint, no glance even betrayed, that he was her lover; he treated her as if she were no more than Roger's mother. In every
remark he made, in his mischievousness, in his polite little ways, he made her feel that she belonged to an older generation.' His behaviour had nothing of the chivalrous courtesy a young man might show to a fascinating woman; it was the tolerant kindness he might display to a maiden aunt.