The Slaves of Solitude (33 page)

She had a help-yourself lunch at a crowded Lyons, and then made her way to Wimbledon partly by bus and partly by District Train.

Mr. Prest had told her to remember that it wasn’t the Wimbledon Theatre, but the Theatre Royal, Wimbledon, and this she had to find.

She arrived a quarter of an hour before the curtain went up. The medium-sized theatre was packed with people and excited children, and she took her seat, which was about nine rows back and on
the side. In view of the crowded house she felt guilty because the seat at her side was being wasted, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Before the curtain went up, the children were going half mad, and appalling expectancy reigned when the house-lights at last went down.

Then, on a darkened stage with a front cloth, in an awful green light, an awful green monster appeared, with awful green sparkling eyelashes and long green sparkling fingernails. And this
character announced its intention to do every kind of damage in every possible way to everybody concerned. Then, in a dazzling silver light on the other side of the stage, a fairy appeared with a
sparkling silver wand, and she declared, in tones at once defiant yet serene and confident, that none of this damage would be done. One would now have to see which was right. The children seemed
rather bored with this, but Miss Roach was excited and interested.

Then the lights went up on a complete stage set, and there was a great deal of singing and gaiety, on the part of a lot of people, and then Mr. Prest appeared as a wicked but absurd uncle, quite
absurdly and preposterously dressed in green.

Piercing yells of pleasure and screams of laughter greeted all that Mr. Prest said and did, and Miss Roach saw at once that he was going to be the hit of the show.

Mr. Prest! How could you believe that this was Mr. Prest? . . . And yet here he was! Here he was, painted, preposterously dressed! Here he was, with a whole house of children screaming at him,
here he was answering them back, winking at them – dancing, singing, falling, getting into difficulties with his trousers, exultantly triumphing!

Somehow his triumph seemed to be Miss Roach’s triumph as well, and her heart was lifted up with pleasure. She had never realised that children could make such a noise – she had,
really, forgotten there were such things as children – and here was Mr. Prest of the Rosamund Tea Rooms, who had invited her to see the show, thus gloriously reminding her of what she should
not have forgotten!

The ‘common’ Mr. Prest . . . Yes, indeed ‘common’ – very much ‘commoner’ here than at the Rosamund Tea Rooms – at moments vulgar perhaps –
and yet, with these children, how very much the reverse of ‘common’, how shining, transfigured, and ennobled!

Oh yes, Mr. Prest, sitting at that table alone, had turned out to be the dark horse, all right!

Looking at him, she had a strong desire to cry, and she roughly guessed what was actually the truth about this Archie Prest – guessed that the elderly comedian, owing to the war and the
shortage of actors, had at last managed to get a job in this somewhat out-of-the-way theatre, and was pulling it off tremendously in spite of his age and long retirement, astonishing everyone, even
himself.

After the interval there was no sign of any abatement in the excitement of the small mad people, the children, and towards the end a sort of frenzy and agony of laughter and hysterics came upon
them.

In the short scene before the finale Mr. Prest, who had already made them sing (first of all in rivalry from all sides of the house, and then in stupendous unison), came forward and took them
into his confidence.

He explained that he was going to play all manner of tricks upon the other comedian, and that he desired the children to maintain, when he appealed to them, that he had done none of these
things.

The children assented to this quietly, it seemed almost reluctantly, and then Mr. Prest began. He came up behind the other comedian, and banged his hat down over his eyes. Then he came forward
to the children and said:

‘
I
didn’t do it, children, did I?’

And then it was seen that the children were on the side of Mr. Prest.

‘
NO!
’ they cried.

Mr. Prest, pursuing this cruel conspiracy, now tripped the other comedian up.

‘
I
didn’t do it, children, did I?’ asked Mr. Prest.

‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’ was the answer, as if such a suggestion, concerning this second assault, was pure wickedness, whereas there might have been some doubt
about the first one.

And thereafter it was ‘
I
didn’t do it, children, did I?’ ‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’,  and ‘I didn’t
do
it,
children, did I?’ ‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’

And as Mr. Prest continued to seek and obtain repudiation of his guilt in a wild crescendo of yells, Miss Roach looked at the children – laughing, writhing, clapping, all at once standing
up and looking at the stage with silent and ferocious intensity, all at once sitting down and appealing to their parents with their eyes to understand the superb piquancy of the situation, and
rubbing their hands and bouncing about, and crying ‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’ . . . ‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’ . . . ‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’ . . .

In the middle of this a quiet, spectacled, stoutish man in a dark-blue suit came quietly up to her seat at the side and asked her if she was Miss Roach. She said yes, that was right, and then he
explained that Mr. Prest had asked him to come round and ask her to go behind, and to escort her there. Would she like to go now, or did she want to wait till the end? Not knowing what she was
wanted to say, she said she would go now, and the man made a sign to her to follow him.

He took her through the Exit curtains near the orchestra, and then up a few stairs and through a door marked Private, and then up some stone stairs, and through a huge door made of iron and on
to the stage. She had never before been to the back of a theatre, and she was impressed by an enormous air of tension and quiet amidst noise.

‘
NO
–
O
–
O!
’
 
she heard the children crying, but it was altogether a different sort of sound from here. And she heard great bumping
sounds coming from the stage, and Mr. Prest’s voice. And she stood in the dim light, peering, along with the man in the dark-blue suit, through a small space, at Mr. Prest, who was only
visible when he came forward to the front of the stage. And she was aware of the near presence of painted and powdered chorus-girls waiting to go on for the finale – madly painted, they
seemed from here, and exuding a sort of crude, oppressive glamour and vitality and fleshiness which added to the general mystery and novelty of the atmosphere . . .

Then Mr. Prest for the last time asked, ‘I didn’t do it, children – did I?’ and the children yelled for the last time ‘
NO
–
O
–
O!’
and the next moment Mr. Prest was rushing off the stage, and, having seen her, coming up to her.

Mr. Prest was madly painted too; and sweat was pouring down all over his elderly, pugilistic face.

He was so excited that he did not so much as greet her properly.

‘Aren’t they
grand
?’ he said, looking into her eyes and taking her by the arms. ‘Aren’t they
lovely
? Isn’t it grand to hear ’em?
Aren’t they lovely kids?’

And looking into Mr. Prest’s excited eyes Miss Roach believed that she positively discerned tears of joy and triumph. It might, of course, have been the sweat which seemed momentarily to
blind him – but she believed that it was otherwise. And, if these were indeed tears, she fancied that they arose from something else besides mere joy and triumph. There was an extraordinary
look of purification about the man – a suggestion of reciprocal purification – as if he had just at that moment with his humour purified the excited children, and they, all as one, had
purified him.

And, observing the purification of Mr. Prest, Miss Roach herself felt purified. She would have been surprised, a few months ago, if someone had told her that she was one day going to be purified
by Mr. Prest – that that forlorn, silent man in the corner, that morose wearer of plus-fours, that slinker to his room, that stroller to the station, that idler and hanger-about in bars, had
within him the love of small children and the gift of public purification!

3

‘How are you, my dear?’ said Mr. Prest, pulling himself together. ‘I’ve got to rush and change now. Charlie’ll look after you, and then
we’ll have some tea.’ He fled.

She would have been surprised also to learn, a few months back, that Mr. Prest would one day be calling her ‘my dear’. Charlie, apparently, was the quiet man in the dark-blue
suit.

With Charlie, who talked to her, expatiating quietly on the remarkable success of her friend Mr. Prest in this pantomime, she had glimpses of the finale, and then was taken through another iron
door and along passages to Mr. Prest’s dressing-room.

Mr. Prest returning to this, she went outside while he changed, and then was called in, and watched him taking off his make-up with cream. This he did with tremendous
between-the-matinee-and-evening-show haste and vigour, and talked to her the while.

‘Well, how are you, darling?’ he asked. ‘And how are all the folks down at home?’

(‘Darling’!)

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’ve left there – I got fed up. I came up today.’

‘My God,’ said Mr. Prest. ‘So did I! And are you staying in London? Where are you staying?’

For some absurd reason she could not tell a man like Mr. Prest that she was staying at Claridge’s – it would sound too silly!

‘I’m not absolutely sure at the moment,’ she said. ‘But they’re fixing it up for me. I’ll know this evening.’ She changed the subject. ‘I thought
you were absolutely wonderful this afternoon, Mr. Prest.’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’ said Mr. Prest, suddenly shy. ‘Those kids are wonderful. They just do it for you.’

People kept on knocking at the door and coming in and going out, and Mr. Prest’s dresser came and went busily.

After a while there entered a tall, middle-aged woman, in whom Miss Roach, on being introduced, recognised the glittering fairy who had defied the monster with such serenity and assurance. She
evidently knew Mr. Prest well, and for a little while they talked about matters which Miss Roach did not understand.

‘You were doing pretty well for yourself this afternoon, Archie,’ the middle-aged woman then said, ‘if I may say so.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Prest. ‘It was going over big, wasn’t it? Those kids are grand. They’ve never been better.’

‘Yes, he was wonderful, wasn’t he?’ said Miss Roach, and the middle-aged woman, while assenting to this view, looked with sardonic affection at Mr. Prest.

Then Mr. Prest and the middle-aged woman became in their talk a little more vulgar than Miss Roach was used too, and then, when Mr. Prest was dressed, they were joined by a plump, pretty
chorus-girl in plain clothes, and all of them went out to the stage door and into the blackness of the world at war.

Mr. Prest took Miss Roach’s arm, the two women went ahead, and a minute later all had arrived safely at a crowded tea-and-coffee bar in which there were marble-topped tables all along the
wall. In spite of the crowd there was a table kept in the corner for Mr. Prest, who was evidently, for the time being, a public character in this part of the world.

They were given tea, and horrible sausages on nice chips, and slices of bread and margarine. Mr. Prest talked mostly to the proprietor, and other acquaintances who accosted him, and Miss Roach
talked cordially about coupons, and points, and rationing with the middle-aged fairy and the plump, pretty chorus-girl.

If they could only see me at the Rosamund Tea Rooms now, thought Miss Roach, if they could only see me!

Soon enough they had to race back to the theatre for the evening show, and they raced Miss Roach back with them. Just inside the stage door the two women said goodbye to her and flew away, and
Mr. Prest asked if she could find her way all right in the dark. She said that she could do this easily, and thanked him eagerly for the afternoon.

‘Not a bit of it, darling,’ said Mr. Prest. ‘And look us up some time. Let’s know where you are.’

‘Oh yes, I will,’ said Miss Roach, with the same eagerness, but with a feeling that it was not likely that she would ever see Mr. Prest again. ‘And thank you
so
much.
Goodbye!’

‘Goodbye, dear,’ said Mr. Prest, and, as he shook her hand, she had a final look at the coarse, battered, pugilistic face of the low comedian – the purifying and purified being
– and went in to the darkness again, astonished and haunted by the mystery of all things under the sun – or rather under the black-out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

1

H
AVING
to collect her suitcase at Paddington, she was only just able to reach Claridge’s by six-thirty, and this
only because she had managed to get a taxi at the station.

On her arrival at the famous hotel a porter with a torch opened the door of the taxi, and her luggage was somewhat alarmingly snatched away from her in the darkness. As she was fumbling in her
bag to pay the fare she heard, with relief, Mr. Lindsell’s voice at her side.

‘I thought it was you,’ he said.

Having Mr. Lindsell with her, the business of entering Claridge’s, so far from being the ordeal which she had been dreading during the last half-hour, was an adventure and delight.

She was taken to a bright reception room where she was registered under the polite surveillance of a young man in a frock-coat who knew Mr. Lindsell, and the whole atmosphere and suggestion was
that there was nothing fantastic or absurd about Miss Roach staying at Claridge’s at all.