Twopence Coloured (34 page)

J
ACKIE had many other opportunities for eavesdropping in the next few weeks’ run of “World’s End,” the publicity for which was being capably handled, and which, with a mixed Press, was doing fairly well.

It was the gallery crowd with which she at last became intrigued the most. She had never taken much interest in this part of the theatre before, having conceived of it as little else than a vaguely seething locality to which (as a slight concession and an evidence of your competence) you Spoke Up, so that every line could be heard at the back. But now she came into closer touch with her gallery.

It began with an enormous feeling of gratitude, on her part, towards those submissive little queue-lengths she would observe, as early as half-past six, forming and coagulating (like odd attracted atoms blown from the swirl of a
homegoing
metropolis) outside the back doors of the Empress Theatre. She could never get over her sense of imposture and feeling of pity at this sight. She did not know what it was, but there was something so abject, so ingenuous, so altogether friendly and dependent in this spectacle, judged externally, that she quite experienced shame on their behalf. “Really, you poor, dumb things,” she wanted to say. “I need you indeed, if I’m ever to get my money back, but I would never have considered
you
like that. Why don’t you go to a nice show (preferably a musical one) and enjoy yourselves? Who on earth told you you could get your money’s worth here?” Such was Jackie’s first attitude towards her galleries.

It was not until one Saturday afternoon, when, out of the spirit of curiosity and the desire to learn more of her
profession, she herself queued up and planked down her hurried one-and-twopence for an Olympian view of “World’s End,” that she changed her opinion. It was then borne in upon her that she was not amongst dumb cattle, but amongst Disinterested Theatre Lovers.

Jackie had heard a great deal about Distinterested Theatre Lovers, but now that she found herself face to face with the type she did not think that it was a very enjoyable thing to be. Nor yet a very valuable thing. Indeed, if the theatre (as an art) was to be judged by the standard of its most Disinterested patronage (and by what more valid criterion could it be judged?), she did not think the theatre would come out very well from the ordeal.

In fact, from the long queues of pasty-faced and
overworked
typists, dowdy and genteel young women from
obscure
Universities, genteel and toothless ancients from
Bayswater
boarding-houses, suburban harridans with canvas stools, spotty-faced young men peering at bent-back books, out-of-work actors and medical students — all lined up stodgily between the wall and the gesticulatory histrionic
parasitism
of the down-at-heel but impudent queue-performer — Jackie derived the most depressing sensations. It was not that she reacted so much against the almost plodding
beautiless-ness
of these patrons themselves (though she did do this): it was that the whole scene was antipathetic to her own concept of art. For Jackie’s concept of art was that of a thing bringing light-heartedness, and beauty, and joy into the hearts of its devotees, and there was very little evidence of that here. On the contrary, there was a certain grimness and aggressiveness here, which made itself felt from the moment the door clicked hysterically open, and that
unpleasant
, wolf-like rush up the hollow-clanging stairs (lit garishly by smudged, barred windows) commenced. If art was joy — a not very promising approach to the temple of joy!

And when upstairs, on a dizzy level with the ceiling, and in the wretched dimness cast by the blazing spanglements of the chandelier, and amid the brusquerie of medalled
war-veterans
,
and the casual manners of unresponsive
programme-girls
— the atmosphere was even more chilling. Also an extraordinary touchiness developed in the crowd as the place filled up (which it did very rapidly).

There grew up, in fact, a constrained atmosphere of “This is Engaged, I’m afraid” — or, “Is this Engaged, please?” and, on a cool affirmative, an abrupt and rather unpleasant “Oh”— or, “If you’ll move along a little to the right, we’ll all be happier, won’t we?” To say nothing of various muttered but indubitably testy “Of course, Why People want to Wear Such Hats ——” and occasional pure
outbreaks
of “Other People want to See as well as you, you know!” and appeals to the veterans.

Such was theatre love. And then, as the lights plunged down, and the curtain swished up, and a hush fell, and a late arrival went Stamp-Stamp (or even Plonk-Plank) on the wooden floor as he tried to blunder into a seat, Shshshshshsh! hissed the gallery, and
Shshshshshsh!
(more angrily), and SHSHSHSHSHSH! And leant over, with glistening eyes, as the marvels of “World’s End” were
unfolded
beneath it.

Jackie developed an aloof and doubtful attitude towards theatre love.

But then matinées always had this kind of effect upon Jackie. That ineffectual assumption of darkness and
electriclit
revelry at three hours after noon in a theatre surrounded by a swirling, heavy-labouring and over-lunched London, stole the last shreds of enchantment from her calling. She could see the drama as a whole, and without emotion, at such times, and she was slightly appalled.

Jackie, you see, was crying for faith…. She was for ever, nowadays, examining and appraising the eminences to which she still aspired.

If she was going to be a successful actress, if she was to be given, that is, a medium of self-expression — she wanted to know what awaited her.

Concerning that medium itself she had her doubts. Her medium would be a slightly uncanny, elongated, three-walled, glue-smelling, bright lemon-coloured interior world (a form of symbolism, to begin with, from which the imaginative mind recoiled); and in this world she would walk about with a feeling of peculiar mental undress, knowing that every one of her movements and utterances was espied,
embarrassed
, and generally eaten up by the spiritual magnetism of a fourth and non-existent wall — to which wall all the settees were obviously sprawled (like sun-rays), all the silent and dreadful speeches were made, and all existence was subtly but inescapably referred. (Those sinister glassy eyes of actors and actresses on a first night!)

But although this wall played so large a part, it did not really exist. You could not even look at a picture on this wall (and Jackie had tried this) without getting a laugh….

And when there were a lot of people present at the same time in this world, the person speaking spoke three times louder than he would have ordinarily, and all the other people either remained queerly silent and attentive, or spoke amongst themselves three times more quietly than they would have spoken ordinarily, and stood extraordinarily close to each other, like conspirators…. With
discrepancies
and eccentricities of this nature this world was filled, and it was, on the whole, a grouped and arranged world as little resembling actual life as Frith’s selected picture resembles Derby Day.

Such, normally, would be her vehicle, and she did not complain. It was undoubtedly the business of the actress to subdue these disadvantages to her own purpose. She now came to the use to which she was to put that vehicle.

*

Now Jackie was quite clear on this point — as far as she herself was concerned. She desired simply to convey to
others as much as possible of her own personal observations and spiritual experiences in this world. Not only did she wish to indicate, in a lighter vein, some of the inconsistencies and piquancies and unadjustable ironies besetting herself and her fellow-creatures in their thwarted social endeavour; she also thought that she could, if given the opportunity, touch upon some of the higher and more mysterious and beautiful intimations she had had from time to time. She had had exalted moments, she knew — she had had her day in the rain on the Sussex downs, and she knew a great deal about many lovely things….

Moreover, she was convinced that these things had said something uniquely to herself, and that she very keenly desired to express that something to others, and that she would be able — she did not quite know how, but somehow or other with her gestures or her voice (which had great scope and flexibility at times) — to summon, and perhaps half mystically to suggest these appeals….

And that was all there was to it. She was (she now
understood
) neither a very clever nor exceptionally sensitive
being
: but she had the straightforward desire to express and unburden herself in these respects.

*

She found, however, that so far from being permitted to express her own self in this vehicle she had chosen, she was to be called upon to interpret the mostly obscure and always half-heartedly conveyed ideas of another. And more than that, these ideas, before coming under her control, had not only to pass filtrated through the whims and urgencies of the mime-master himself, but to be embarrassed and effected by the exigencies of her fellow-performers.

Actually she had heard in the theatre, abroad and
unashamed
, talk of gallantries and selfishnesses with Sympathy. If she was to be a true artist she knew that she could not possibly recognize such a word, and what freaks of
characterization
and falsities of sentiment, what ludicrous games of emotional Snap-dragon, were in progress around her, she did not dare contemplate.

And over and above this, there was the actual quality of the ideas which, after infinite waylayings, she would in general have the opportunity of interpreting. And taken all in all, from her present experience and general
observations
, she did not think that they were likely to prove either very noble, clear, or shrewd ideas. Indeed the world of the average play was a world she did not know. For although it was beyond measure preoccupied by the topic of love (and what more vital, imposing, and absorbing topic could there be?) — for one who had had her day on the Sussex downs in the rain, and observed what she had observed then, its treatment of this subject was too irrelevant and silly altogether.

But then it was an irrelevant world. It was a world in which purity consisted either of abstention from contacts which Jackie (and her actor and actress friends) believed to be perfectly decent and human contacts — or else of a
sentimental
idealization of a still rather reprobate escape from that abstention. It was a world in which Comedy was either the pat utterance of humorous quips, or a series of creaking Situations in which somebody discovered somebody else doing something he shouldn’t, and watched him trying
ineffectually
to hide it up. And it was a world in which Tragedy was unalterably confused with self-sacrifice.

But even with all this she would be content. Again she told herself that a great actress (and though she had never yet observed one in action, she was convinced that there must be some such thing) could defeat and weld these
conflicting
factors to her own purpose.

And if there was also such a thing as a great drama, then the fault lay with herself and not with her profession.

But, taking into account these conflicting factors, she was overwhelmed by the enormous arduousness of the task facing her fellow-professionals….

Whereat she was immediately appalled by the
frivolousness
with which these demands were habitually met.

Indeed actors and actresses (from what she knew of the greater part of them), so far from spending their entire undisturbed mornings closeted in rooms for the purpose of practising inflexion, tone, rhythm, modulation and gesture, till they were sick of their own voices and themselves — so far from observing, note-taking, and harassing their producer or author to the breaking-point — so far from debating every doubtful point amongst themselves until a working
agreement
was reached (and she had heard famous producers being derided for entering into the entire past history, place of birth and upbringing, illnesses and unique vices of the character to be portrayed) — so far from this, they were up to all sorts of daily occupations of which the Rockingham Hard Court Tennis Club was but one shining example.

The obvious stumbling-blocks and difficulties of this art (if it was to be an art) being so much greater than those of any other, a supremer effort (she felt) was called for. She was therefore disturbed to observe that in this, of all arts, the least effort was being made.

She found, in fact, that those who had set out to hold the mirror to life and manners, were not merely as
subjectively
involved by that life, and those manners, as the rest of human kind, but, in a curious way, a great deal more so….

This was a distressing conclusion, which she took some time in reaching. She commenced to observe it shortly after her acquaintanceship with the Rockingham Hard Court Tennis Club, and her first inkling of it arose, possibly, through Crashes in the War….

Now in her social contacts, both apart from and in the theatre, Jackie had naturally encountered several individuals who had had Crashes in the War. They were quite easy things to have had. But, however accessible, they did, she
found, confer a certain obvious distinction (even in her own mind) upon their victims — and particularly if they were Crashes…. To have been severely wounded would not have been quite the same thing (though she personally would rather have put it like that)…. There was something expansive and livid about a Crash….

Now it is strange that these accidents (and talk of these accidents) should have led Jackie to the unique conclusion she at last formed concerning the temperament of actors and actresses, but there it was. For she found that, however much the world in general might indulge in Crashes in the War, the theatrical world was indulging in them a little bit more, and a little more heavily….