Twopence Coloured (22 page)

T
HE young woman of racial experience, who, on the next morning of her life, walked briskly along the front at eleven o’clock towards the Hotel Metropole (there to meet and confer coolly with the humble object of her transcendent purposes), was not the type of young woman that is waylain by any quibblings of any nature. She had a driving
singleness
of purpose, had this young woman, and on the whole she rather scared him.

The cocktails were a mere formality. These were taken on wicker chairs amongst cages of green parroquets and the sickly atmosphere of morning recuperation. They were as sensitive to this atmosphere as anyone else present, knowing that their own emotional orgy of yesterday exceeded by far any other kind of orgy indulged in by those present. They had, indeed, an emotional “head,” and were anxious to get down to business and justify themselves.

She met all his statements with curt resignation and an implication of their obvious irrelevance to the main issue. To begin with, he said, they could not be married for a very long while indeed. Well, she had expected as much. Two years, he said, at the least. Well, that was nothing. (Jackie was full of rather surly “Wells.”) If, he added, ever. Here Jackie was quiet for a moment, and looked in front of her, but then she said Well, that would be all right, too. He said that it would be far from all right. He maintained that legality and registration were of much graver portent than a young girl of her tender years and experience might have been led to imagine. She asked him whether he Loved her. The question, he said, was neither here nor there. On the contrary, she replied, it was the entire question. Did she not know her own mind? Did he think her an infant?
He did. She was still an infant, legally and virtually. She then brought up in his face every one of his previous opinions on the ethics of marriage, and considered him confounded. He said, however, that it was different. She said that it was not different. It was a perfect case in point. He then told her about his wife.

In this individual Jackie had not the slightest interest. The thing was an error, on Richard’s part, made long ago, and long ago repented. It was a part of a vivid but
incomprehensible
past. It was of a piece with all the other
inexplicable
events that had filled his earthly youth — his visits to Russia and America, his books, his flying during the war, his acting. Richard dated from the first moment of his meeting her. All that had gone before did not affect her: whether he had been sullied or not was of no moment. He was what he was now, and the matter ended there.

He had met her, it appeared, in a night club, and married her while on leave during the war, and they had parted after a year. She came from a middle-class family, was a heavy drinker, and a ruthless pursuer of her own inclinations. She was now living alone in Montmartre, where, so far as he could learn, she was mingling with a crowd of others of similar ruthlessness. The life being exacting, her spiritual and physical existence had lost much of its earlier pleasure in itself, and she was now, he understood, fortifying that
existence
with daily quantities of drugs. She was, however, a devout Catholic, and would not consider divorce. Also, in this connection, she was entirely faithful to her husband, the elevated sensations arising from brandy, ether, and heroin, completely destroying her taste for any coarser delight or indulgence. But the religious scruple was quite sincerely uppermost. These contradictions were unspeakably
revolting
to Jackie, who barely knew of the existence of such characters. Richard had been hit hard. In a vain and excited moment he had lain himself open to chance, and chance had dealt him its worst. He had attached himself to an imbecile.

The process of ridding himself of this imbecile was now carefully discussed by both of them. It was decided that he
should go to Paris at once, there to apprise himself of the exact state of affairs and to seek his freedom. She was to return to Mrs. Lover at West Kensington. He could get jobs for her in the meanwhile.

He had no hopes of a successful issue. They alighted upon two years as the farthest limit of time they could grant to these negotiations. If, at the end of that period, he had not brought the thing off, they would be compelled to “take action.” That was how they put it, and they looked
doubtfully
at each other as the words were spoken.

They had another cocktail, and then he dived for his hat, and handed her bag to her, and they went out on to the front. They walked towards Booth’s, where they intended to lunch.

The front was streaming with rain, and the sea was raging. Life was dull, and swimmingly sad, and swimmingly hopeful.

A
CTUALLY it was two years and a half. In that period Jackie gained the bedrock of her experience, and at the end of that period she came out a professional actress. Not that Jackie ever believed herself to be an actress, or that any play she acted in was a quite genuine play…. She knew she was playing at it (just as she was playing at being twenty-four and grown up), but at the same time she knew that she had achieved the outward signs of this role in life, and the world was taking her at her face value.

She had, in all, six jobs during this period. She gained an exhaustive knowledge of the railway systems of England, and she was acquainted with every leading town. She travelled not less than 20,000 miles in trains. A Sunday earth swept reeling away beneath her feet, and she came to recognize mounds, rivulets, or fields she had passed on a Sunday six months ago. Sunday England! To the infinite piquancies and horrors of Sunday she was alive: she was part of its drear dreaminess: she partook avidly of its hideous drugs — cocoa, tea, coffee — these at the junctions or termini, or at her rooms immediately, when she arrived late….

She was unclassed and without fixed abode. One Friday night she would be having a tepid, rusty bath by candle-light in a Cardiff slum — by the midday of Tuesday next she would be buying suède gloves at a granite-built shop in Aberdeen. One Thursday afternoon she would be fighting the rain and wind in Princes Street, Edinburgh — by next Wednesday evening she would be watching the sweet stars break over the seven black hills of Torquay…. And by next Tuesday evening she would be under Peterborough Cathedral, with a new stick of number five in her bag…. 

Her first engagement in these two and a half years, obtained for her by Richard before he left for France, was with that well-known play, or rather creaking series of forlornly
humorous
situations, “Charley’s Aunt.” This was played at No. 2 (or, if the district was vile, No. 1) houses all over London, and also in the southern provinces. Dates were
precarious
, and often they were out for a week or fortnight. These holidays were pleasant enough to Jackie, but to others of the company they bore a more troubled aspect, as Jackie incredulously discovered. But then, with this play, Jackie changed her whole outlook on her fellow-professionals.

There were practically none in the cast under the age of thirty-five, very few under the age of forty, and few of them had been less than fifteen years in their profession. They were a depressed and mechanical crew. They had naturally no belief in their work as an art: they would not dream of so much as inwardly criticizing each other’s performances: they were heavily married: they called each other “dear” incessantly: and the gentlemen drank bitter, and were chaffed for it, and the ladies drank apologetic Guinness. This was to “pick them up.” Only Guinness — for where Guinness was medicinal, common beer was sin in a woman. They never had More than One, and they never did have more than one. And for the purposes of being picked up they were allowed to follow their men into the Saloon bar, where they sat looking perkily and restlessly around with the firm belief that they could not be mistaken for street-walkers — in which belief they were justified. The sight of one of their own men drunk would have caused heart-failure. They were the public-house ultra-respectables. They helped, advised, and relied on each other. “Damn” was audacious, if
allowable
in a wag. Jackie’s short skirts and bobbed hair evaded censure in one so young: otherwise she would have been esteemed “fast.”

They had all the pious superstitions of their domesticity. For whistling in a dressing-room there were exclamations of genuine horror, and you were bustled outside and made to turn round three times before returning. Uttering the last
line of a play during rehearsal spelt ruin. Most of them had children at fourth-rate preparatory schools, where they wore green caps, were quite extraordinarily promising all round, brilliant at wireless, and certainly not going to adopt their parents’ profession.

They hung about agent-land during the day, and at night they reported progress. The word “Town” flashed in and out of their discourse like a bird from Paradise across the Hades of their provincialism. “West End” similarly.
Admittedly
it was thus. They were without snobbery. “We shall see you in Town next!” was a common form of raillery. Or, “These West End Actors — my word!”

It was here that Jackie realized she was up against the true professional. Their profession was taken so much for granted that they were without response to it. This may not have been so when they had started, fifteen years ago, but it was so now. Any views expressed on the subject of acting would have been fanciful (if quite interesting). Their leading technicalities were appraisements of the weather with respect to business. If it was raining They wouldn’t come Out: if it was fine They wouldn’t come In….

Their humour (of which there was not much) consisted principally of chiding each other for making puns. They would pretend to faint, or collapse, when a pun was made, or be nauseated beyond all measure. The men in particular. “Come along! Get on out! Turn him out —
tur
n him out!” Or, “You ARE! …” Or, “Any more of THAT, my boy!” and a very threatening look…. They felt full of the warmest and most kindly sentiment at these moments. They were a warm and kindly people.

*

Much less pleasant was Jackie’s next engagement, which was with Mr. Stephen Linell and his Shakespearian
Company
. It will be remembered that she paid a visit to this gentleman on her first day in the theatre. Here she was at the other end of the pole, as far as professionalism was
concerned
, and amongst the young of her own class. This was a great shock to her vanity. That she, in the height of her
youthful ambition, should have staked her self-respect in the romantic gesture of fighting her way into this business, was a thing allowed; but the spectacle of over a score of other young romantics, all apparently labouring under the same urge, had a wholesale aspect which revealed unpleasantly the values of her own case. And while barely able to admit that it was vanity in her own case, Jackie was all too alive to the vanity that lay behind this youthful and inefficient crowd forcing itself upon an overstocked profession — with, she noticed, combined ignorance and scorn of the true
professional
it was succeeding in ousting. The ignorance she forgave (she was ignorant enough herself), but the scorn she could not overlook. For she saw nothing to choose
between
the urge of vanity which led young persons to spit and fulminate Shakespeare’s lines with great heroism and an air of superb artistic achievement, and the urge of
circumstances
which led elder and much more experienced
individuals
to revive, with quietude and modesty, a threadbare and foolish farce. Moreover, she was troubled by another
observation
she made on joining this company — an
observation
on the subject of Looks. She had often wondered to what extent these entered into the calculations of the aspirant, and she was now horrified to sense, all around her, the
enormous
weight they must have carried. Indeed, it was all too obvious. Young persons stricken with permanent plums in their mouths, to say nothing of lisps, and inabilities to pronounce “r” otherwise than as “w” (with one of which natural errors the majority of this company were smitten), must perforce rely upon Looks in the creation of dramatic beauty. The thing that irritated Jackie (and particularly on the male side) was a patent consciousness of Looks in the placid owners of the same, combined with a suave
unconsciousness
of Plums…. The more so when the horrors of the latter completely nullified the barely discernible charms of the former, which they quite invariably did….

It was thus, from reasonings of this nature, that Mr. Linell himself commenced to lose whatever attractions he had ever had for Jackie. Indeed, that gentleman’s hawk-like medallion
of a countenance relapsed entirely from the patrician
character
it had once seemed to bear, revealing instead (it is to be feared) a disturbing resemblance to the head of a bird of prey. A bird of prey upon the vanity of the young. Or, worse than that, a bird of prey upon the less forgivable vanity of the parents of those young, whose premiums (though repaid in salary) lined his pockets. This impression became ineradicable when one reflected upon the absolute
ruthlessness
and fullness of his exploitation and capitalization of vanity in general. He had it every way. He began by
organizing
the foibles of others at enormous profit to himself (his bookings were prodigious): he then gave full rein to his own inclinations by playing all the leading parts and filling the centre of the stage: and then, having taken all the credit for this, swooped down and indulged by far his greatest passion (that for dominion over docile souls) by his
Coaching
, as it was called, in the rehearsal room. And he took the credit for this, too. He was, in fact, an indisputable genius at eating his cake, and having it too, and then gobbling it up. After which he would swallow it. Jackie might have admired this feat, seeing that she regarded those imposed upon by it (Plums, to wit) as richly deserving of their fate; but there were, unhappily, certain Bathing and Cricket complexes in Mr. Linell at which she stuck. Not only did Mr. Linell, by the weight of his terrible personality, compel his pupils to chatter their teeth at abominable hours of the morning at all the seaside towns they visited (himself squirming hairily and skinnily over the stones in a very queer pink costume): he also organized cricket matches amongst his pupils, at which he became horribly angry if you got him l.b.w. (which you could easily do), but didn’t show it apart from a little muttering about Whole Things being Farces of course…. Things were, in the course of nature, farces, if they defeated Mr. Linell’s habitual miracle with his cake. And there was also a Briar Pipe complex, which embraced Fresh Air, flannel trousers, sports coats, Wholesomeness, and the idolization of Rudyard Kipling — particularly “If,” which was Mr. Linell’s life’s motto. Mr. Linell was a perfect marvel at
keeping his head when all about him were losing theirs and blaming it on him. Such a thing happened frequently. Directly Mr. Linell began to announce that he was Keeping his Head, you kept as far away as possible, for what Mr. Linell really wanted you to do was to Lose yours and Blame it on him — which would not have been a wise course to adopt. But perhaps it was Wholesomeness which Jackie found least acceptable in Mr. Linell. For it was on behalf of Wholesomeness that Mr. Linell angled for those celebrated Talks with his young men, while on tour. For these he asked them to tea with his wife, and having dismissed the good woman, and begged his victim (whom he would address as Old Man) to Put on a Pipe, proceeded to discourse with all the delicate obscenity of the Clean. The young men came out with the glorious news that their Bodies were Temples. Also that whenever they were in Trouble they had only to come to him. They were pleased to hear this, but had a faint awareness that their trouble would have to be a rather indecent one if it was to get his consideration.

Nor did Jackie have any great belief in Mr. Linell’s powers either as an actor or as a tutor of that art. This was because she did not believe in teaching young people (who might one day, if they were lucky, become at least cheerful
nonentities
in the provinces) the village-Hampden principle of
defying
and stamping and spitting in almost every phase of their performance. Nor did she believe that, in dramatic or tragic moments, young persons should be advised to
pronounce
such lines as “Take it away. My heart wants it not” as “Ték it awé. Merhut wunts it nut!” and to stagger about the stage like a rather serious-minded drunkard. Nor yet, in romantic moments, to pronounce such lines as “Still let me sleep in dreams of bliss” as “Steele lett mee sleep in dreams of bleace!” and to give every appearance of being about to float voluptuously in air. She had no doubt that this kind of thing was the kind of thing expected of Mr. Linell’s productions, but she was aware that it would have to be unlearnt by those desirous of making their living.

Jackie did not get much further than the playing of
wenches and pages during this tour, which lasted eighteen weeks. She understudied heavily, though, and, on the illness of her senior, Miss Lily Danham, played Cordelia in “King Lear.” The affecting filial proximity to Mr. Linell involved by this, revealed rather dirty ears, not to say Lozenges, both of which took her mind off her performance. Mr. Linell said nothing about her performance: nor did anyone else in the company: but she was mentioned favourably in the local Press. “The beautiful Miss Lily Danham,” it was said, “played throughout with a delicacy and fine restraint.”

The Press received Mr. Linell with unvarying adulation. Mr. Linell, indeed, was one of those persons who had done More for Shakespeare…. What Shakespeare had done for Mr. Linell was not debated. It was assumed automatically that he was a martyr, for he never left off saying how he Backed his Belief in the British Public’s Good Taste and Love for Shakespeare, and no one but a martyr did that. Who Said, asked Mr. Linell defiantly, that the British Public didn’t want the Good Things when it Saw them? Whoever did didn’t dare to lift his head, and every one was pleased. With the exception, perhaps, of the younger members of the various visiting school parties, girl guide parties, etc., who had two and a half hours of life and air and amusement stolen for ever from their lives by the pious exigencies of Mr. Linell’s Belief. But even they, being children, probably got some fun from the grotesquerie and incomprehensibility of the spectacle.

At the end of this tour, which (she told herself) she would not have survived had she not been seeing a great deal of Richard all the time, Jackie, nothing daunted, sought fresh work. She still had a perfect faith that she would one day succeed in. getting in touch with her profession, and that the mechanical imbecilities at which she had so far assisted, valueless in themselves, were serving to equip her for honest work. Her next engagement, however, which raised her hopes by giving her a little foretaste of Town, fulfilled none of these requirements.