Theatre Shoes (28 page)

Sorrel fidgeted with her plaits.

“Well, I don't believe Aunt Lindsey and Aunt Marguerite would, because they're like Grandmother; they just can't believe there could be anybody in the world who wanted to do anything but act. Of course, there's Uncle Francis, I suppose he might help, but he's rather a distant kind of uncle; even when you seem to be talking to him you never feel absolutely sure he's listening.” Then her face lit up as a thought struck her. “But I'll tell you who I'm certain would help, and that's Uncle Mose.”

“Mose Cohen! Now, of all your family I should have thought that he was the one who would think the stage was the only career.”

Sorrel shook her head violently.

“No, he isn't. Uncle Mose, in a way, is a little like Daddy. Daddy always said about anything I asked him, ‘Well, let's thrash it out, old lady, and see if we can manage it.' Uncle Mose is like that. Of course, he isn't like Daddy always. Daddy doesn't walk on his hands and he isn't funny like Uncle Mose, but Daddy sings sea songs just for cheerfulness, and I think that's why Uncle Mose puts on funny hats.” She looked at Miss Jay with great conviction. “Yes, that's what I'll do if the worst comes to the worst, I'll ask Uncle Mose to help.”

The rehearsals for the broadcast were held in the same studio as Sorrel had been to for the audition, only this time there were a lot of people in the studio and some bits of furniture, and some cups which she was told would be used for clinking sounds when they were supposed to be drinking tea. There was a door in a wooden frame, which was to be shut when anybody was supposed to be going in or out of a door. There was a plank on which to make the sound of footsteps, and there was a doorbell. A young man called Henry, in a Fair Isle jersey and grey slacks, was producing the play, but as well, of course, there were the people in charge in that room upstairs with the glass window looking into the studio. From there came all the music, and green lights for cues and pauses, and a red light for when the cast were on the air, and from there, too, came all the effects. At one end of the studio a little tent had been built, and in this sat the narrator. Henry explained the tent to Sorrel.

“We get the difference that way of pitch and tone. All of you are in the story, but he's the man who tells the between bits and links it all together, and you don't want to sound as if you were all in the same room.”

There were three children in the story. A brother and sister called Robert and Nancy and a cockney evacuee called Bill, and they all met at the beginning in a cove on a beach. The effects upstairs, Sorrel was told, did lovely things to make the beach come true, seagulls mewing and water lapping, and the crunch of steps on pebbles. Sorrel and a fair boy called John, who was playing Robert, and a little red-headed boy called Edward, who was playing Bill, stood round the microphone, their scripts in one hand and their pencils in the other, and read their parts. Henry stopped them at intervals for different things, sometimes they were not excited enough, and sometimes he wanted them to sound as though they were moving about, and what Henry said they wrote down against their lines. Sometimes the woman's voice that Sorrel had heard when she came for her audition broke in. She always talked to Henry as though she was standing next to him.

“We're going to put in some ordinary carrying-on music there, Henry.” “We've found some music that we think will do very well for a trotting pony, then you can go back and do it again from where we faded.” “That music won't do because it's a walking pony, it's not nearly vivid enough for one that's trotting.”

Sorrel and Edward and John, by the time they had gone through their parts twice, began to live them. They met with a thrill of excitement on the beach, and heard from Bill of the queer lights he'd seen on the cliff side, and how he believed it was smugglers, and how he intended to sneak out at night and watch to see what was going on. Sorrel and John then went home to tea with their parents and this was, of course, the place where the cups were clinked, and during tea their father told their mother that he would not after all be able to fish to-morrow because old Bert wanted his boat: there had been lights complained of and the coastguards and wardens would be out having a look.

Robert and Nancy had to ask casually about this and they expected, of course, to hear that the lights had been seen in the cove where they had met Bill; but not at all, it was somewhere quite a long way up the coast. After tea Nancy and Robert had an excited conversation in which Robert made Nancy see how queer and suspicious it was that Bill should see a light in one place and the coastguards and wardens and people should be sent off to another. It looked as if there were funny goings-on somewhere. It was Nancy's idea that they should take out their ponies and ride over to old Bill's to see if they could get out of him who it was that had complained about lights. It was not until after they had talked to the coastguard that Robert and Nancy were anxious about Bill. There had been very strong complaints about the lights from a lady who was staying in the hotel. She was a stranger in those parts, and the coastguard might have thought she was just one of those women who were full of spy scares, only she had fetched two other visitors in the hotel to come and look at it, and on the face of it, though Bill himself did not think it was much, he thought they ought to go and sort it out. Then came the really exciting thing. A lady walked up the road and the coastguard casually said, “That's the lady who reported the lights.” When Robert and Nancy were jogging home again on their ponies they took a short cut and put their ponies to some jumps over some gorse bushes. Nancy got separated from Robert doing this and she had cleared a jump when she saw, to her horror, that she had only just missed jumping on the lady who was staying at the hotel, and who had been sitting behind the gorse bush. The lady, startled, jumped up, and—this was what was so queer—she said: “Ach, Himmel!”

Of course, some of this was to be heard by the listeners as actually happening, and some of it was told by Nancy to Robert, her words falling out over each other in excitement. It was Robert who saw how dangerous this might be for Bill. Just suppose they had run on something, an enemy submarine re-fuelling or anything like that, Bill ought to know; anyway, he ought not to be alone in the cove. He might want help. Sorrel was being Nancy by now and she felt a thrill of fright run through her as she agreed with Robert that the only thing they could do was to go down to the cove and warn Bill to be careful, and since, of course, something really serious might be going on, stay and see what was happening, and, if need be, fetch the police.

There were some other scenes after this and then some effects which were, they were told, an owl hooting and a distant church clock chiming eleven, and then Robert and Nancy crept out of the house and, terrified of every sound, crunched their way across the cove to look for Bill.

Sorrel's broadcast, when she came to the performance of that first episode, was completely eclipsed as far as home interest was concerned by a family storm. Uncle Francis was, as Alice had told the children, putting on “The Tempest.” He was, of course, to play Prospero and he had engaged a splendid Caliban, about whom he was excited. In the ordinary way when he did a London season he performed two or three plays as a repertory, but this time he had decided to give all his attention to one production, which should be as beautiful as war conditions would allow. All Shakespearean actors have violent views on different plays and parts. Uncle Francis had always had ideas about “The Tempest.” One was that the ideal Ariel would be a child. Now suddenly he had an idea. Miranda should play Ariel. Uncle Francis was the sort of man who expected everybody to do what he wanted. He simply could not believe that anyone would do anything to displease him, and so he thought that when the time came he had only to ask for Miranda to be released from her part in her present play for it to be granted. Unfortunately, he had not waited to ask the management before he had told Miranda. He had told her what he meant to do and that she was to study the part, but she was not, for the moment, to speak about it. That had been three months ago, and in those three months Miranda had lived and dreamed Ariel. Miranda was Shakespeare mad. She was perfectly prepared to play in modern comedies, for she knew quite well that good Shakespeare productions are few and far between, but her ambition was in the big tragic parts; most of all she longed some day to play Lady Macbeth. That before she was fourteen she should have a chance at Ariel was beyond her wildest dreams. She had often asked her father to give her a part and he had always said he did not care for precocious children, she must wait until she was eighteen. When Grandmother had over-persuaded him and Miranda had been allowed to play Sylvia, on the first possible occasion when he was playing near London he had seen her perform at a matinée, and had been full of pride, and that was how he came to think of trusting her with Ariel.

Uncle Francis did not even write a very pleading letter to Miranda's management; he simply stated that he was putting on “The Tempest” at the end of June and he would like them to release his daughter for the part of Ariel. The management wrote back courteously but very firmly, and said they would not consider it under any circumstances whatsoever; it was then the fur began to fly. Uncle Francis saw Grandmother, Grandmother saw Aunt Marguerite and Grandmother interviewed her management. According to Miriam, who was a grand reporter on an occasion like this, her mother and Aunt Marguerite never by any chance left the telephone.

“If they stop ringing each other up for one second Mum screams, ‘Oh, of course, I know what Marguerite must do,' or ‘I'm sure I've thought of something.' And there she is, dial, dial, dial. When Dad comes in at night she tells him all about it and she forgets and leaves the telephone off. It doesn't matter when I'm up because I hear it howl and put it back on its rest, but goodness knows who does it when I'm in bed.”

It took ten days, during which Uncle Francis fought passionately and tried everything including the use of lawyers, before it was finally accepted that Miranda was not going to be released. She had made a success, her management wanted her and were keeping her. It was then that Grandmother had her brilliant idea.

“I quite realise that it's not at all the same thing to you, Francis, because naturally you wanted your daughter, but, fortunately, you have a niece who also has Warren blood and who also is very promising.” She saw that Uncle Francis was going to argue, so she spoke in her firmest and most settled kind of voice. “Sorrel shall play Ariel.”

CHAPTER XVIII

ARIEL

It was the day after Sorrel's first broadcast. Hannah, when Sorrel came back from the Academy, told her that she was to sit up in her dressing-gown to see Grandmother when she came back from the theatre. Nothing like that had ever happened before and the children were wild with curiosity to know what Grandmother could want to see Sorrel about.

“I expect she didn't like your broadcast,” said Holly. “I expect she was sorry that she borrowed somebody's wireless set and had it in her dressing-room. I can't think why she shouldn't like it because we thought you were awfully good, didn't we, Mark?”

The only wireless set in the house belonged to Alice and lived in the kitchen. Mark and Holly had been allowed to leave the Academy early, for as Sorrel was going to the B.B.C., there would be no one to take them home and Hannah would have to fetch them. By arrangement with Hannah they were back in plenty of time to hear the broadcast. They had sat round the table in the kitchen expecting to be thrilled at hearing Sorrel's voice. Actually they found the story so exciting that they had clean forgotten that Sorrel was Sorrel and thought she was Nancy. Mark tried to explain this.

“It wasn't till this morning that I remembered it had been you, and that was odd because that girl, Nancy, rode a pony and you can't.”

If the children had to do stage work, then, from Hannah's point of view, let them appear in the Children's Hour for the B.B.C. At the vicarage her favourite listening had been the Children's Hour. She approved of everything about it, especially the short services. She considered Uncle Mac what she called “a good Christian gentleman,” and she was sure no harm could come to Sorrel from mixing with the likes of him. “Of course, what I'd fancy for you,” she said, “would be to take a part in one of those Bible stories, but that would mean acting on a Sunday and I couldn't think that right.” Then she looked muddled. “Not but what it makes very suitable listening to, so maybe somebody ought to do it. But I don't think it is anything to do with that your Grandmother wants, certainly not in a complaining way, for Alice told me on the quiet that it was a bit of good news. Your Grandmother sent for me before she went out this afternoon. ‘Hannah,' she said, ‘I wish to see Sorrel when I come in to-night.' ‘What!' I said, ‘that'll be after nine, and Sorrel will have been in bed an hour and a half.' Then your Grandmother made one of those tittering noises she makes when she's impatient and said,' I'll see her in her dressing-gown.'”

Because she was sitting up to see Grandmother, Sorrel had a special supper with Hannah in the kitchen. There was a recipe that Hannah had heard given out on the wireless for making a sort of scrambled egg with powdered egg and onion and cheese.

“A bit indigestible,” said Hannah, “but it'll have time to settle before you're in bed.”

Sorrel was sitting on the kitchen table.

“I do wish I knew what Grandmother wanted. Even though you say it's going to be good news I can't help feeling as though I was waiting to go into the dentist's.”

Hannah never seemed to know when she was telling something really important. Important things dropped out of her mouth in just the same tone of voice as when she said “That was ever so nice a bit of meat I got from the butcher this week” or “I've been round to see that shoe-mender again and he's promised Mark's shoes by Thursday without fail.” She was at the stove, stirring the scrambled egg.