‘And I couldn’t agree more. Good Lord!’ he said. ‘This is a fatheaded way for us to talk. Why don’t you want to tell me your mother’s maiden name? What was the matter with it?’
‘She always thought it sounded silly. It was Paula Poole Passington.’
He brought the palm of his hand down crisply on the back of her chair. ‘And why in the world,’ he asked, ‘couldn’t you say so at once?’ Martyn was silent. ‘Paula Poole Passington,’ he repeated. ‘All right. An old cousin of my father’s – cousin Paula – married someone called Passington and disappeared. I suppose to New Zealand. Why didn’t she look me up when I went out there?’
‘I believe she didn’t care for theatricals,’ said Martyn. ‘She was my grandmother. The connection is really quite distant.’
‘You might at least have mentioned it.’
‘I preferred not to.’
‘Too proud?’
‘If you like,’ she said desperately.
‘Why did you come to England?’
‘To earn my living.’
‘As a dresser?’ She was silent. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘As best I could.’
‘As an actress? Oh, for God’s sake,’ he added, ‘it’s damnably late and I’ll be obliged if you’ll behave reasonably. I may tell you I’ve spoken to Jacko. Don’t you think you’re making an ass of yourself? All this mystery act!’
Martyn got up and faced him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s a silly business but it’s not an act. I didn’t want to make a thing of it. I joined an English touring company in New Zealand a year ago and they took me on with them to Australia.’
‘What company was this? What parts did you play?’
She told him.
‘I heard about the tour,’ he said. ‘They were a reasonably good company.’
‘They paid quite well and I did broadcasting too. I saved up enough to keep me in England for six months and got a job as an assistant children’s minder in a ship. Perhaps I should explain that my father lost pretty well everything in the slump, and we are poor people. I had my money in traveller’s cheques and the day we landed they were stolen out of my bag, together with my letters of introduction. The bank will probably be able to stop them and let me have it back but until they decide, I’m hard up. That’s all.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘A fortnight.’
‘Where have you tried?’
‘Agencies. All the London theatres, I think.’
‘This one last? Why?’
‘One of them had to be last.’
‘Did you know of this – connection – as you call it?’
‘Yes. My mother knew of it.’
‘And the resemblance?’
‘I – we saw your pictures – people sometimes said –’ They looked at each other, warily, with guarded interest.
‘And you deliberately fought shy of this theatre because you knew I was playing here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know about this piece? The girl’s part?’
Martyn was beginning to be very tired. A weariness of spirit and body seeped up through her being in a sluggish tide. She was near to tears and thrust her hand nervously through her short hair. He made some kind of ejaculation and she said at once: ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’
‘But you knew about the part when you came here?’
‘There’s a lot of gossip at the agencies when you’re waiting. A girl I stood next to in the queue at Garnet Marks’ told me they wanted someone at the Vulcan who could be made up to look like you. She’d got it all muddled up with yesterday’s auditions for the touring company in another piece.’
‘So you thought you’d try?’
‘Yes. I was a bit desperate by then. I thought I’d try.’
‘Without, I suppose, mentioning this famous “connection”?’
‘Yes.’
‘And finding there was nothing for you in the piece you applied for the job of dresser?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s fantastic, but at least it’s less fantastic than pure coincidence would have been. One rather respects you by the way, if it’s not impertinent in a second cousin once removed to say so.’
‘Thank you,’ she said vaguely.
‘The question is: What are we going to do about it?’
Martyn turned away to the ranks of dresses and with businesslike movements of her trembling hands, tweaked at the sheets that covered them. She said briskly: ‘I realize of course that I’ll have to go. Perhaps Miss Hamilton –’
‘You think you ought to go?’ his voice said behind her. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s an awkward business.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘But I’d like to – it’s difficult to suggest –’
‘I’ll be perfectly all right,’ she said with savage brightness. ‘Please don’t give it another thought.’
‘Why, by the way, are you still in the theatre?’
‘I was going to sleep here,’ Martyn said loudly. ‘I did last night. The night-watchman knows.’
‘You would be paid on Friday.’
‘Like the actors?’
‘Certainly. How much is there in the exchequer between now and Friday?’ Martyn was silent and he said with a complete change of voice: ‘My manners, you will already have been told, are notoriously offensive but I don’t believe I was going to say anything that would have offended you.’
‘I’ve got two and fourpence.’
He opened the door and shouted: ‘Jacko!’ into the echoing darkness. She heard the greenroom door creak and in a moment or two Jacko came in. He carried a board with a half-finished drawing pinned to it. This he exhibited to Poole. ‘Crazy, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Helena’s costume for the ball. What must I do but waste my beauty-sleep concocting it. Everybody will have to work very hard if it is to be made. I see you are in need of my counsel. What goes on?’
‘Against my better judgement,’ Poole said, ‘I’m going to follow your advice. You always think you’re indispensable at auditions. Give me some light out there and then sit in front.’
‘It is past midnight. This child has worked and worried herself into a complete bouleversement. She is as pale as a pierrot.’
Poole looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked her. ‘It won’t take ten minutes.’
‘I don’t understand, but I’m all right.’
‘There you are, Jacko,’ Poole said and sounded pleased. ‘It’s over to you.’
Jacko took her by the shoulders and gently pushed her down on the chair. ‘Attention,’ he said. ‘We make a bargain. I live not so far from here in an apartment house kept by a well-disposed French couple. An entirely respectable house, you understand, with no funny business. At the top one finds an attic room as it might be in a tale for children, and so small, it is but twice the size of its nice little bed.