They tried several times, in an atmosphere of increasing tension. The amiable Jacko was called in to make an infinitesimal change in Gay’s make-up, and Martyn saw him blot away a tear. At this juncture a disembodied voice roared from the back of the circle: ‘Sister, have comfort. All of us have cause to wail the dimming of our shining star.’
Poole glanced into the auditorium. ‘Do shut up like a good chap, John,’ he said.
‘Pour all your tears! I am your sorrows nurse And I will pamper it with la-men-ta-ti-ons.’
The man called Jacko burst out laughing and was instantly dismissed to the dressing-rooms by Poole.
There followed a quarter of an hour of mounting hysteria on the part of Gay Gainsford and of implacable persistence from Adam Poole. He said suddenly, ‘All right, we’ll cheat. Shift the camera.’
The remaining photographs were taken with a great deal of trouble. Miss Gainsford, looking utterly miserable, went off to her dressing-room. The man called Jacko reappeared and ambled across to Miss Hamilton. There was an adjustment in make-up while Martyn held up the mirror.
‘Maybe it’s lucky,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to look like somebody else.’
‘Are you being nice or beastly, Jacko?’
He put a cigarette between her lips and lit it. ‘The dresses are good,’ he said. He had a very slight foreign accent.
‘You think so, do you?’
‘Naturally. I design them for you.’
‘Next time,’ she said gently, ‘you’d better write the play as well.’
He was a phenomenally ugly man but a smile of extraordinary sweetness broke across his face.
‘All these agonies!’ he murmured, ‘and on Thursday night everyone will be kissing everyone else and at the Combined Arts Ball we are in triumph and on Friday morning you will be purring over your notices. And you must not be unkind about the play. It is a good play.’ He grinned again, more broadly. His teeth were enormous and uneven. ‘Even the little niece of the great husband cannot entirely destroy it.’
‘Jacko!’
‘You may say what you like, it is not intelligent casting.’
‘Please, Jacko.’
‘All right, all right. I remind you instead of the Combined Arts Ball, and that no one has decided in what costume we go.’
‘Nobody has any ideas. Jacko, you must invent something marvellous.’
‘And in two days I must also create out of air eight marvellous costumes.’
‘Darling Jacko, how beastly we are to you. But you know you love performing your little wonders.’
‘I suggest then, that we are characters from Chekhov as they would be in Hollywood. You absurdly gorgeous, and the little niece still grimly ingénue. Adam perhaps as Vanya if he were played by Boris Karloff. And so on.’
‘Where shall I get my absurdly gorgeous dress?’
‘I paint the design on canvas and cut it out and if I were introduced to your dresser I would persuade her to sew it up.’ He took the glass from Martyn and said, ‘No one makes any introductions in this theatre, so we introduce ourselves to each other. I am Jacques Doré, and you are the little chick whom the stork has brought too late, or dropped into the wrong nest. Really,’ he said, rolling his eyes at Miss Hamilton, ‘it is the most remarkable coincidence, if it is a coincidence. I am dropping bricks,’ he added. ‘I am a very privileged person but one day I drop an outsize brick, and away I go.’ He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger and looked through it, as though it were a quizzing glass, at Martyn. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘it is a pity you are a little dresser and not a little actress.’
IV
Between the photograph call and the dress-rehearsal, which was timed for seven o’clock, a state of uneven ferment prevailed at the Vulcan. During the rare occasions on which she had time to reflect, Martyn anticipated a sort of personal zero hour, a moment when she would have to take stock, to come to a decision. She had two and fourpence and no place of abode, and she had no idea when she would be paid, or how much she would get. This moment of reckoning, however, she continually postponed. The problem of food was answered for the moment by the announcement that it would be provided for everyone whose work kept them in the theatre throughout the play. As Miss Hamilton had discovered a number of minor alterations to be made in her dresses, Martyn was of this company. Having by this time realized the position of extraordinary ubiquity held by Jacko, she was not surprised to find him cooking a mysterious but savoury mess over the gas-ring in Fred Badger’s sink-room.
This concoction was served in enamel mugs, at odd intervals, to anyone who asked for it and Martyn found herself eating her share in company with Bob Cringle, Mr Poole’s dresser. From him she learnt more about Mr Jacques Doré. He was responsible for the décor and dressing of all Poole’s productions. His official status was that of assistant to Mr Poole but in actual fact he seemed to be a kind of superior odd-job man. ‘General dogsbody,’ Cringle gossiped, ‘that’s what Mr Jacko is. “Poole’s Luck” people call him, and if the guvnor was superstitious about anything, which ’e is not, it would be about Mr Jacko. The lady’s the same. Can’t do without ’im. As a matter of fact it’s on ’er account ’e sticks it out. You might say ’e’s ’er property, a kind of pet, if you like to put it that way. Joined up with ’er and ’is nibs when they was in Canada and the guvnor still doing the child-wonder at ’is posh college. ‘E’s a Canadian-Frenchy, Mr Jacko is. Twenty years ago that must ’ave been, only don’t say I said so. It’s what they call doglike devotion, and that’s no error. To ’er, not to ’is nibs.’
‘Do you mean Mr Bennington?’ Martyn ventured.
‘Clark Bennington, the distinguished character actor, that’s right,’ said Cringle drily. Evidently he was not inclined to elaborate this theme. He entertained Martyn, instead, with a lively account of the eccentricities of Dr John Rutherford. ‘My oaff,’ he said, ‘what a daisy! Did you ’ear ’im chi-ikeing from the front this morning? Typical! We done three of ’is pieces up to date and never a dull moment. Rows and ructions, ructions and rows from the word go. The guvnor puts up with it on account he likes the pieces and what a time ’e has with ’im, oh, dear. It’s something shocking the way doctor cuts up. Dynamite! This time it’s the little lady and ’is nibs and Mr Parry Profile Percival ’e’s got it in for. Can’t do nothing to please ’im. You should ’ear ’im at rehearsals. “You’re bastardizing my play,” ’e ’owls. “Get the ’ell aht of it,” ’e shrieks. You never seen such an exhibition. Shocking! Then the guvnor shuts ’im up, ’e ’as an attack of the willies or what-have-you and keeps aht of the theaytre for a couple of days. Never longer, though, which is very unfortunate for all concerned.’
To Martyn, held as she was in a sort of emotional suspension, the lives and events enclosed within the stage walls and curtain of the Vulcan Theatre assumed a greater reality than her own immediate problem. Her existence since five o’clock the previous afternoon when she had walked into the theatre, had much of the character and substance of a dream with all the shifting values, the passages of confusion and extreme clarity which make up the texture of a dream. She was in a state of semi-trauma and found it vaguely agreeable. Her jobs would keep her busy all the afternoon and tonight there was the first dress-rehearsal.
She could, she thought, tread water indefinitely, half in and half out of her dreams, as long as she didn’t come face to face with Mr Adam Poole in any more looking-glasses.