Opening Night

‘No, John,’ Miss Hamilton said with great determination. ‘No!’

‘Eureka!’

‘Nothing of the sort. Good morning.’

He gave a shrill whistle and swaggered out. Martyn turned back to find her employer staring into the glass. Her hands trembled and she clasped them together. ‘Martyn,’ she said, ‘I’m going to call you Martyn because it’s such a nice name. You know, a dresser is rather a particular sort of person. She has to be as deaf as a post and as blind as a bat to almost everything that goes on under her very nose. Dr Rutherford is, as I expect you know, a most distinguished and brilliant person. Our Greatest English Playwright. But like many brilliant people,’ Miss Hamilton continued in what Martyn couldn’t help thinking a rather too special voice, ‘he is eccentric. We all understand and we expect you to do so too. Do you know?’

Martyn said she did.

‘Good. Now, put me into that pink thing and let us know the worst about it, shall we?’

When she was dressed she stood before the cheval-glass and looked with cold intensity at her image. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘the lighting had better be good.’

Martyn said: ‘Isn’t it right? It looks lovely to me.’

‘My poor girl!’ she muttered. ‘You run to my husband and ask him for cigarettes. He’s got my case. I need a stimulant.’

Martyn hurried into the passage and tapped at the next door. ‘So they are married,’ she thought. ‘He must be ten years younger than she is but they’re married and he still sends her orchids in the morning.’

The deep voice shouted impatiently: ‘Come in!’ and she opened the door and went in.

The little dresser was putting Poole into a dinner jacket. Their backs were turned to Martyn. ‘Yes?’ Poole said.

‘Miss Hamilton would like her cigarette-case, if you please.’

‘I haven’t got it,’ he said and shouted: ‘Ella!’

‘Hallo, darling?’

‘I haven’t got your case.’

There was a considerable pause. The voice beyond the wall called: ‘No, no. Ben’s got it. Mr Bennington, Martyn.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Martyn said, and made for the door, conscious of the little dresser’s embarrassment and of Poole’s annoyance.

Mr Clark Bennington’s room was on the opposite side of the passage and next to the greenroom. On her entrance Martyn was abruptly and most unpleasantly transported into the immediate past – into yesterday with its exhaustion, muddle and panic, to the moment of extreme humiliation when Fred Badger had smelt brandy on her breath. Mr Bennington’s flask was open on his dressing-shelf and he was in the act of entertaining a thickset gentleman with beautifully groomed white hair, wearing a monocle, in a strikingly handsome face. This person set down his tumbler and gazed in a startled fashion at Martyn.

‘It’s not,’ he said, evidently picking up, with some difficulty, the conversation she had interrupted, ‘it’s not that I would for the world interfere, Ben, dear boy. Nor do I enjoy raising what is no doubt a delicate subject in these particular circumstances. But I feel for the child damnably, you know. Damnably. Moreover, it does rather appear that the doctor never loses an opportunity to upset her.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, old boy, and I’m bloody angry about it. Yes, dear, wait a moment, will you?’ Mr Bennington rejoined, running his speeches together and addressing them to no one in particular. ‘This is my wife’s new dresser, J.G.’

‘Really?’ Mr J. G. Darcey responded and bowed politely to Martyn. ‘Good morning, child. See you later, Ben, my boy. Thousand thanks.’

He rose, looked kindly at Martyn, dropped his monocle, passed his hand over his hair and went out, breaking into operatic song in the passage.

Mr Bennington made a half-hearted attempt to put his flask out of sight and addressed himself to Martyn.

‘And what,’ he asked, ‘can I do for the new dresser?’ Martyn delivered her message. ‘Cigarette-case? Have I got my wife’s cigarette-case? God, I don’t know. Try my overcoat, dear, will you? Behind the door. Inside pocket. No secrets,’ he added obscurely. ‘Forgive my asking you. I’m busy.’

But he didn’t seem particularly busy. He twisted round in his chair and watched Martyn as she made a fruitless search of his overcoat pockets. ‘This is your first job?’ he asked. She said it was not and he added: ‘As a dresser, I mean.’

‘I’ve worked in the theatre before.’

‘And where was that?’

‘In New Zealand.’

‘Really?’ he said as if she had answered some vitally important question.

‘I’m afraid,’ Martyn went on quickly, ‘it’s not in the overcoat.’

‘God, what a bore! Give me my jacket then, would you? The grey flannel.’

She handed it to him and he fumbled through the pockets. A pocket-book dropped on the floor, spilling its contents. Martyn gathered them together and he made such a clumsy business of taking them from her that she was obliged to put them on the shelf. Among them was an envelope bearing a foreign stamp and postmark. He snatched it up and it fluttered in his fingers. ‘Mustn’t lose track of that one, must we?’ he said and laughed. ‘All the way from Uncle Tito.’ He thrust it at Martyn. ‘Look,’ he said and steadied his hand against the edge of the shelf. ‘What d’you think of that? Take it.’

Troubled at once by the delay and by the oddness of his manner Martyn took the envelope and saw that it was addressed to Bennington.

‘Do you collect autographs?’ Bennington asked with ridiculous intensity –’or signed letters?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ she said and put the letter face down on the shelf.

‘There’s someone,’ he said with a jab of his finger at the envelope, ‘who’d give a hell of a lot for that one in there. A hell of a lot.’

He burst out laughing, pulled a cigarette-case out of the jacket and handed it to her with a flourish. ‘Purest gold,’ he said. ‘Birthday present but not from me. I’m her husband you know. What the hell! Are you leaving me? Don’t go.’

Martyn made her escape and ran back to Miss Hamilton’s room where she found her in conference with Adam Poole and a young man of romantic appearance whom she recognized as the original of the last of the photographs in the foyer – Mr Parry Percival. The instinct that makes us aware of a conversation in which we ourselves have in our absence been involved, warned Martyn that they had been talking about her and had broken off on her entrance. After a moment’s silence, Mr Percival, with far too elaborate a nonchalance, said: ‘Yes: well there you have it,’ and it was obvious that there was a kind of double significance in this remark. Miss Hamilton said: ‘My poor Martyn, where have you been?’ with a lightness that was not quite cordial.

‘I’m sorry,’ Martyn said: ‘Mr Bennington had trouble in finding the case.’ She hesitated for a moment and added, ‘Madam.’

‘That,’ Miss Hamilton rejoined, looking at Adam Poole, ‘rings dismally true. Would you believe it, darling, I became so furious with him for taking it that, most reluctantly, I gave him one for himself. He lost it instantly of course and now swears he didn’t and mine is his. If you follow me.’

‘With considerable difficulty,’ Poole said, ‘I do.’

Parry Percival laughed gracefully. He had a winning, if not altogether authentic air of ingenuousness, and at the moment seemed to be hovering on the edge of some indiscretion. ‘I am afraid,’ he said ruefully to Miss Hamilton, ‘I’m rather in disgrace myself.’

‘With me, or with Adam?’

‘I hope not with either of you. With Ben.’ He glanced apologetically at Poole, who did not look at him. ‘Because of the part, I mean. I suppose I spoke out of turn, but I really did think I could play it – still do for a matter of that, but there it is.’

It was obvious that he was speaking at Poole. Martyn saw Miss Hamilton look from one man to the other before she said lightly, ‘I think you could too, Parry, but as you say, there it is. Ben has got a flair, you know.’

Percival laughed. ‘He has indeed,’ he said, ‘he has had it for twenty years. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Honestly, I am sorry.’

Poole said, ‘I dislike post-mortems on casting, Parry.’

‘I know, I do apologize.’ Percival turned ingratiatingly, and the strong light caught his face sideways. Martyn saw with astonishment that under the thin film of greasepaint there was a system of incipient lines, and she realized that he was not, after all, a young man. ‘I know,’ he repeated, ‘I’m being naughty.’

Poole said, ‘We open on Thursday. The whole thing was thrashed out weeks ago. Any discussion now is completely fruitless.’