Twopence Coloured (35 page)

It was the most subtle thing on earth. It was not even as though these casualties were mentioned more often or more solemnly in theatrical circles than in others: it simply was that, in an ineffable way, they lay more heavily and more self-consciously upon those who had suffered from them….

It was almost (almost — not quite) as though actors were endeavouring to imply that
they
could have Crashes in the War as well as anybody else…. It was almost as though you had made some accusation….

Now when once Jackie had alighted upon this discovery with respect to Crashes, she commenced to apply the same line of thought to various other manifestations of the same kind of thing…. All this was far from being confined to Crashes. It was, rather, in the literary, lingual, scholastic, and most particularly social spheres that she identified the same atmosphere again. And in these other instances it was the perpetually recurring introduction of the two words “Of Course” which principally attracted her attention.

Jackie could have multiplied the theatrical “Of Courses” indefinitely. They were always applied to other people in the theatrical profession, for to have applied them to yourself would not have been quite modest — but they conferred distinction on the profession…. There was Of Course Getting his blue at Cambridge for Rugger: there was Of
Course speaking German and Norwegian like a native: there was Of Course coming from really
the
most
(old boy)
English
County Family: and there was Of Course being a Cousin or something of Lord Ladaming. There was Of Course Really Understanding all about Baroque, and all that: there was Of Course having a Really Quite Astonishing Army Record: there was Of Course not being able to get any Polo since he came back: there was Of Course having to trail off at an Unearthly Hour of the morning to look over a Horse he was purchasing (there was a lot of equine “Of Courses”): and there was Of Course getting into Fearful State finishing this new book of his….

But Jackie (assuming Socratic naïveté) could really not see
why
these things were taken as such a matter of course. A great deal of these activities, to her mind (which was that of a struggling young actress), appeared to involve the
expenditure
of time and money which she herself could
certainly
not afford — let alone take for granted. She wished that
she
was the cousin — or even the something — of Lord Ladaming. Wouldn’t she just make him back plays!) And though it was very nice to be able to speak so many languages, and buy so many horses, and know such a lot about Baroque, and attend such exclusive functions — it was not so very difficult, really, if you had the time; and in view of her present concepts of the arduousness of the actor’s task, she doubted if the time was there.

Or if the time was there — should not these things be
relegated
to a subsidiary or even recreationary functioning? But this was not the case. For just as War Crashes had attached to themselves that curious over-emphasis noted above, so did all these manifold interests and occupations undoubtedly make themselves felt in a more heavy and self-conscious manner than they did with those who could devote themselves to such things wholly.

Indeed at times she grew so weary of listening to this kind of talk, and observing this kind of talk being translated into everyday and week-end action, that she would often think that the philosopher who had suggested that actors and
actresses were so busy being ladies and gentlemen that they had no time left in which to be actors and actresses — had not spoken quite accurately. She rather thought that it would have been more apt to say that these ladies and gentlemen were so busy being actors and actresses that they had no time left in which to be ladies and gentlemen — what with rehearsals, and playing at night, and looking for jobs, and visiting agents and one thing and another.

I
T was shortly after having arrived at (or dallied with) various conclusions of this nature, that Jackie came into the belated (but not displeasing) knowledge that she had Done Something. Her Work, in fact, in certain quarters, was Known.

Jackie had not previously been conscious of having Done anything — let alone work (indeed, looking back on the last ten years, she could not remember a stroke); but the tacit assurance that she had, gave her the same agreeable sensation one would experience on coming into a trifling but unexpected legacy.

Suffering from one of those periodic scares (to which human nature is subject) that she had no friends in this world, and must either come out and mix with her fellows or remain eccentrically recluse for ever, she began at this time to lay herself open to as many invitations as might come her way in the direction of social intercourse.

The aura of affluence and slight mystery which had
surrounded
Jackie since the production of “World’s End,” stood by her well in this. She was asked a great deal to dinner, and here it was that she first became aware that she had Done Something and that her Work was Known.

There were quite a lot of other people, it seemed, who were similarly placed. In fact, several of these nightly
concourses
she attended were positive Dinners to People who had Done Something….

Dinners to People who had Done Something were rather damp affairs. Those who gave them were not persons of means, and they generally took place somewhere in St. John’s Wood, and they began with a rather insecure and
electric-bell
-ringing
prelude during which the diffident exponents of achievement arrived and were made softly acquainted with each other. They then worked themselves up (with the aid of gin and Italian vermouth) into a slightly brighter and more loquacious plane, before an invasion was made into the dining-room, where seats were found and taken in a large but good-humoured silence.

Conversation at Dinners to People who had Done
Something
, when at last it got going, ranged from prolific mutual registration of places visited abroad, to light-hearted inquiry into the final values of civilization and evolution. And there was generally at least one gentleman present, probably of the theatrical but possibly of the journalistic persuasion, who would ask, “But what
are
morals? Do tell me, please. I want to know. What
are
morals?”

Jackie herself had little faith in morals (as has been shown), but she rather thought she had got beyond the “
But-what
-
ar
e
-morals?” stage.

Humour at these dinners was mostly confined to Repeating Humour.

“My dear Johnnie,” a lady would say. “I don’t approve of your bowler hat.”

“You don’t approve of my bowler hat?”

“No. I most decidedly do
not
approve of your bowler hat.”

The baffled owner would turn to Jackie.

“She doesn’t approve of my bowler hat,” he would say.

“She doesn’t approve of your bowler
hat
,”
Jackie would reply.

“Poor old Johnnie,” a new-comer would say. “They don’t approve of his bowler hat.”

Mr. Marsden attended as many Dinners to People who had Done Something as he was asked to.

“World’s End” was withdrawn after a two months’ run, and she saved about £300 from its debris. She considered herself lucky.

She wished, of course, that she had spent the other £400 on herself instead of the public, but she considered herself lucky.

She wrote to Charles, who had adopted, in his letters, at first a discouraging, and then a very helpful and solicitous attitude towards her speculation, that she had “just got out.”

One night Jackie (a little while after “World’s End” had come off, and she had been going round and round for jobs again) thought she had got influenza or something.

She went to bed, under the directions of Mrs. Lover, who brought her hot brandy and aspirin, and she tried to get to sleep. But she was trembling so, and going first hot, and then cold, in such an unusual manner, that she could not do this, and lay tossing for hours.

Illness was a very dreadful thing, she thought. So far she had reckoned with many things, but she had not reckoned with illness.

She lay in the darkness and heard the trains thundering away to Baron’s Court beneath her. She was alone in London, and without friends. Others might be ill, she thought, but she could really not afford it….

West Kensington…. She had no background for an illness….

Her teeth chattered and another train thundered by….

A
ND then, all at once, her skies cleared, and her chance came.

One morning she came down to breakfast and found two letters on her table. And one of these letters was from Mr. Ronald Drew (the producer), who asked to see her at eleven o’clock that morning, and the other of these letters was from Mr. Andrew Cannon (the producer), who asked to see her at eleven o’clock that morning.

At eleven o’clock that morning she was (it need hardly be said) at the offices of Mr. Andrew Cannon. On reading his letter she had lost colour. Actresses of greater repute than Jackie have lost colour on receiving a summons from Mr. Cannon, and personal friends of such actresses have been known to assume very sickly congratulatory smiles on hearing of such actresses having brought it off with Mr. Cannon (for there is envy in the theatrical profession). And the even doubtful rumour of Mr. Cannon being in Front, circulating round stage passages at about 9.30 of a night, has had a bracing effect upon more dramas than could be counted. For this producer, by means of various talents (mainly, perhaps, a lack of highmindedness and a distaste for golf) had forged for himself an eminence in the theatrical profession such as it will be difficult to excel in the future.

How Mr. Cannon had now come to send for Jackie was a thing beyond her understanding. But the ways of this terrifying man were notoriously dark, and he had pounced upon many a nonentity, to elevate them, with a contract, to fame, before now. Not that Jackie had never met Mr. Cannon. He had been at school with Richard, and after her performance in “The Knocking at the Gate” she had
had the fortune to have been personally congratulated by him.

She entered Mr. Cannon’s offices at eleven o’clock, and she came out at twenty to one (after half an hour’s interview with Mr. Cannon) with the prospect, nay promise, of a year’s contract, commencing at £5 a week in January. It was now November.

Jackie had quite forgotten what it was to be drunk with bliss, and she now found it as agreeable a sensation as you could have.

She walked down Villiers Street, and when she reached Charing Cross District Station she went straight into a telephone box.

She did this in order to try and get a friend to come to lunch with her. She would have entertained every one of her friends, at the same time, if she could have done so, and dropped the news, with extravagant casualness, over the cocktail….

It is a pity that Jackie should have been as spiteful as all this — but she had suffered a good deal of late.

And now commences the queerest part of Jackie’s story, for it was on the afternoon of this day that Jackie, all
unknowingly
, sealed her own fate. For on this afternoon, after a lunch which included a cocktail but was taken alone (for none of her friends were obtainable), Jackie, feeling in a still joyful, and also slightly aggressive mood, decided to follow up the other letter she had received that morning. She had completely ignored this in the flutter caused by Mr. Cannon’s communication, but now, by use of the telephone (and the employment of chicanery), she succeeded, without loss of honour, in obtaining an appointment for half-past four.

From this appointment she emerged with a script under her arm and a definite engagement to play what was described as a Sort of Lead in a play entitled “The Underdog,” to
be produced at the Cumberland Theatre, St. Martin’s Lane, in three and a half weeks’ time. On reaching home that night she read the part and the play.

It was a very fair play, she thought, and the part itself was interesting. As she re-read some of the lines she paced about the room, trying them softly out….

She was to be produced, she understood, by Mr. Lionel Claye. She knew Mr. Claye, having acted with him in “North”— a long while ago. But she had barely spoken to him at that time, and she had not been aware that he was a producer. She wondered how she would get on with him.

She was another creature as she got into bed that night.

A
ND then, on top of all this, and the very next day, a letter from Charles. Charles had, of course, been back from Australia a long while now (he had hurt his foot and it had been a slightly disastrous trip for him), and he had been up to see her several times. She had spent the day with him, in fact, the day before her interview with Cannon.

To which Jackie, after a day’s labour and contemplation, sent the following reply:

This document, which was as sincere a one as Jackie had ever composed in her life, received no reply. She was vaguely and unreasonably disappointed….