Authors: William Golding
“She’s beautiful.”
Mr. De Tracy smiled down; and each word was like a wasp’s sting.
“She’s a stupid, insensitive, vain woman. She has a neat face and just enough sense to keep smiling. Why! You are three times as—Never let her know your calf-love. It would just go to feed her vanity. And insolent, the pair of them! Not ten guineas’ worth, a hundred, a thousand—”
I opened my mouth but could find no words to say. Mr. De Tracy dropped his arm from my shoulder and straightened up, briskly.
“Well—Here we are.”
He pushed open the swing door and inspected the entrance hall.
“If you bring over that chair for me, Oliver, and sit down
there
,
we shall be comfy between the fireplace and the potted palm.”
He disappeared through the door of the saloon bar. To alter the layout of this impressive building was an
intimidating
thing; but with a sudden sense of change I fetched the chair obediently. Mr. De Tracy returned, carrying two goblets filled with clear liquid.
“Perfectly executed. Your mother would be— No. That was unkind of me. I’m sorry, Oliver, but you see I have—” And he peered about in the air as if he might find the right word written up somewhere. “—I have—
excruciated
.” He handed me one of the goblets and folded himself into the armchair. “One can’t even say it’s in the cause of art. It’s in the cause of ten guineas and you are the first, literally the
first
human being connected with this outrageous exercise in bucolic ineptitude—well. Always excepting your lady mother of course.”
“She’s full of your praises.”
“Is she, now? That’s very gratifying. What about your father?”
“He doesn’t say much, ever.”
“He is the—vast gentleman in grey who plays the violin with a sort of a smouldering dexterity?”
“That’s right.”
“He uses the Stanislavski method. I’ve never
seen
a clearer projection of furious contempt. Not a word said. Eyes on his music. Every note in place. Smoulder, smoulder, smoulder. Why on earth?”
“Mother wants him to.”
I tried my drink and choked.
“Take it slowly, Oliver. You’ll find it very liberating. Dear me! I really
have
drunk a great deal.”
“Liberating? What from?”
“Whatever you want to escape from. Be liberated from.”
I was silent for a while, inspecting the close walls of my life. Suddenly I found a torrent of words in my throat.
“That’s right. That’s it exactly—Everything’s—
wrong.
Everything. There’s no truth and there’s no honesty. My God! Life can’t—I mean just out there, you have only to look up at the sky—but Stilbourne accepts it as a
roof.
As a—and the way we hide our bodies and the things we don’t say, the things we daren’t mention, the people we don’t meet—and that
stuff
they call music—It’s a lie! Don’t they
understand
? It’s a lie, a lie! It’s—obscene!”
“Very famous. Made a lot of money.”
I took a quick gulp.
“You know, Evelyn? When I was young I used to think it was
me
—and it was, of course, a bit—”
“Charming! Charming!”
“It’s so mixed. D’you know? Only a few months ago I—had a girl on the hill up there. Practically in public. And
why
not
?
Was anyone in this, this—was anyone doing anything more—more—”
I broke off, feeling extraordinarily shaken as if at any moment I might burst into tears.
“Did anyone see you, Oliver?”
“My father.”
Mr. De Tracy’s knees opened and shut once or twice.
“You see, Evelyn. It’s like chemistry. You can take it as a
thing—
or you can take it as a
thing
—”
“What is like chemistry?”
“Well. Life.”
“It’s an outrageous farce, Oliver, with an incompetent producer. This girl. Was she pretty?”
“Rather!”
Mr. De Tracy looked at me over his goblet, his two old spot balls very still, his mouth smiling gently beyond the brim, his lantern-jawed face moistened slightly.
“How enviable.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted her, Evelyn, with all those actresses and—she was just a country girl from Chandler’s Close; though come to think of it, why on earth we—”
I stopped, trying to think what it was I wanted to say—something about Evie and Stilbourne and my father’s
binoculars
and the sky, something it would be easy to say to Evelyn since everything was easy to say to him. I peered at him and smiled affectionately. A slight mist had formed round him, leaving him very clear and lovable in the middle. I saw now why his pupils were spots. The irises round them had been invaded by the yellow of his eyeballs in flakes and crystals so that it was difficult to see where they began.
“Evelyn. I want the
truth
of things. But there’s nowhere to find it.”
Mr. De Tracy drew a long, shuddering breath and his smile increased.
“Truth, Oliver? Well—”
“Life ought to be—”
“Perceptive.”
He inserted one hand in his breast pocket and drew out a small leather wallet. Still watching me, he took out a sheaf of photographs and held out the top one. The mist moved in until it was all I could see; or perhaps since I concentrated, frowning at the photograph, the mist was no more than
inattention
to anything else. Mr. De Tracy pressed the rest of the sheaf into my other hand, but I was riveted by the one I could see. It was unquestionably Mr. De Tracy. He was younger in the photograph, but his long nose and long chin seen in profile were unmistakable. So was his lean figure. The wig of dark hair he wore came down in a bob, half way between his ears and his shoulders, leaving visible a length of sinewy neck. His bare right arm stretched gracefully up away from him, the left behind and down, so that together they formed a diagonal. The ballerina’s costume with its frilly white skirt fitted him closely and his lean legs led down, knees supporting each other, to pumps on his enormous feet. The feminine makeup made him seem even more masculine. I roared with laughter.
“What on earth’s this?”
“Just making a point, Oliver. To the perceptive. Give it back, will you?”
But I was looking through the sheaf. The costume was the same in each and so was Mr. De Tracy. In some of the photographs he was supported by a thick, young man; and in each of these, they gazed deep into each other’s eyes. I laughed until it hurt.
“Give them back, now, Oliver.”
“What
was
it?”
“Just a farce, that’s all. Give them back, please.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen—”
“Oliver. Give them back. And run along.”
“Let’s have another—”
“Don’t forget you’re going to be a beefeater.”
“Oh damn that!”
“Nevertheless.”
I looked out and was surprised to see how Mr. De Tracy had moved away, yards away, though he was still sitting in the same place.
“I suppose—”
“We mustn’t disappoint your mum.”
All at once I remembered.
“You were going to tell me something, Evelyn. What was it?”
“It escapes me, I’m afraid.”
“It was about truth—and honesty.”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“I was telling you about this place—about everything.”
“I think it’s time you went and changed.”
“Is it?”
“Run along, now.”
“Oh, I remember!” I laughed again at the thought of it. “You were going to cure me!”
His face swam into focus.
“So I was, Oliver. A going away present. Well.
After
you have saluted and gone off stage, listen to the ‘Great Duet.’”
“Yes? And?”
“That’s all. Just listen.”
“Right. I’ll come back and tell you—”
“I shan’t be here.”
“What, are you going round in front?”
“I shall—escape.”
Suddenly he was close, holding up his hand and tapping his wristwatch with his forefinger. I saw what the time was and hurried away in a sudden panic. I huddled on my
beefeater
’s costume, then padded away across the Square to the garage. My halberd was quite dry but very heavy. I carried it over my shoulder to the back stairs but the roof was too low to accept me like that. I lowered it to the charge therefore and went on up; but the cast was lining the stairs and in a few seconds what had started as an entry became a furious wrestling match with madeup faces mouthing silent curses at me over the red shaft of my weapon. There were halfbare bosoms too and scarlet mouths and bright clothes and a tangle of limbs. However, I stuck to my halberd, urged on by a desire to get the thing over and go back to Evelyn. I got round the first corner; but when I got to the second the truth was inescapably plain. There was no way in which my halberd could be manoeuvred round it.
If anything, getting my halberd down the stairs took longer than getting it up. For every member of the cast, while willing to be urged a little nearer the magic square on which we were performing the
King
of
Hearts
was mercilessly determined not to be thrust one inch further away from it, towards the cold night air. I got down at last and stood outside the Town Hall, wondering what to do. I leaned my halberd against a pillar and ran to the Crown, but Evelyn was not where I had left him. I poked my head and hat through into the saloon bar.
“Have you seen Mr. De Tracy anywhere, Mrs. Miniver?”
“He’s gone out.”
“Will he be back?”
“He’d better. He still owes for his drinks. Theatricals!
I
know them.”
“Where did he go?”
“One of the beer houses I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I must find him!”
“What d’you want him for, young Oliver? An old—”
“It’s about the play. Something’s gone wrong!”
“Oh I see. Well. Try the Running Horse where the stable lads go. And tell him I want the money for those drinks!”
“Right!”
“Because if he goes off on that last bus without paying—”
“Right!”
I fled down the High Street towards the Old Bridge. The Running Horse was almost empty but Mr. De Tracy was in the snug. He was leaning on the corner bar with his back and one elbow on it. When I burst in, he took one look at me and then started to shake from the knees up.
“Evelyn! What shall I do?”
It was remarkable how he could keep that pale, smiling, unchanged face while everything below his waist was writhing and shivering.
“Evelyn! My halberd. Where the stairs joins the passage at the back. I can’t get it up!”
The shaking enveloped him and tumbled the gentle words into the room.
“He couldn’t get his halberd up the back passage. They’ll never believe it.”
“What shall I do?”
“You’ll have to enter from in front, then, won’t you?”
This brought on a paroxysm of shaking; and at the very top of him his tiny tuft of plastered-down hair suddenly broke loose and stood straight up, like a horn.
“But they’ll see me!”
Evelyn did nothing but shake. His elbow slipped off the desk and he got it back on again. I ran out of the Running Horse, thudded up the High Street. I got my halberd from the pillar and went to the main entrance of the Town Hall. I managed to get my halberd through the doors into the dark auditorium without much noise, and stole along the lefthand side of the audience to the green baize beyond the piano. I lifted the bottom carefully, and sensibly, with the blade of my halberd then thrust the shaft after it. Almost immediately I encountered a slight resistance which ceased after a thump! so I crept headfirst under the baize, pushing my halberd in front of me. Inside the curtain there was a small light switched on, an upturned campchair, and a copy of the
King
of
Hearts
with a lot of blue pencil markings on it. I got my feet under me and knelt up. This side of the stage allowed a very narrow passage between the flats and the wall; and at the end of it was the locked door—or part of the locked door into the mayor’s parlour. Looking that way I understood why the resistance to my halberd had never entirely ceased and why, after the first thump, it had seemed to acquire a feeble life of its own, jerking and shaking against my grip and my thrust. A young man lay at the other end of the dark passage, backed against the parlour door, his head and shoulders hard against it, both hands grasping the blade of my weapon an inch or two away from his chest. He was very unreasonable and when I tried to get the halberd away from him he wrestled with it again, mouthing at me.
“But,” sang the gnat voice of Mr. Claymore, “stay, your Royal Highness. We are not alone!”
I was late after all and jerked the halberd away from the young man who most unfortunately let go of it at the same time. I was thankful not to fall backwards on to the stage and glad that only a few feet of halberd butt had inadvertently projected into the light. I turned round therefore between two flats, took a stride and drew myself up. I was facing Imogen and could not see Mr. Claymore anywhere. Looking round for him, I found him in front of me, but bent down as if he were inspecting the buckles on my shoes. Imogen flung out an arm and her eyes blazed at me.
“Leave us!”
I was so confounded by her anger, and cowed by the
gesture
that I slunk away off stage, my ears burning. I did not even hear what the audience were doing. I stood my halberd against the wall behind the cyclorama cursing myself for having forgotten to salute.
The music began.
I found that my heart had not fallen as far as it normally would when I contemplated one of Imogen’s perfections. It was as if Evelyn stood by my side. It was as if he still held his hand on my shoulder. The sweat dried on me. She had walked indifferently into a country to which I had access, of which indeed, I was native. In that landscape where notes of music, and all sounds were visible, coloured things, she trod with ignorant, ungainly feet. It was not just that she could not sing. It was that she was indifferent to the fact that she could not sing; and yet had gone, consenting to this public exhibition. She was so out of tune that the line of the song that should have been spiky as a range of mountains was worn down like a line of chalk hills. I listened, with Evelyn’s absent hand on my shoulder and through the sound of the Great Duet—gnat now allied to drone—I heard his voice.