Читать книгу The Willow Cabin - Pamela Frankau - Страница 4

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The curtain rose upon the company standing in line. From the third row of the stalls, Margaret Radcliffe-Preston observed her daughter Caroline, who was giggling at some private joke with the young man who had played the part of the detective. This was entirely to be expected of Caroline. Obviously she was not in the least impressed with her good fortune.

“At twenty-two,” Margaret thought, “with her small experience, it is something to have a part in a Brookfield play. And a part that is not unimportant. She looks as though she doesn’t care. She isn’t even bowing with the others. She just goes on giggling at that boy; her manners are terrible.”

She tried to excuse the girl on the grounds that the success of Jay Brookfield’s intellectual thriller might not be apparent from Caroline’s side of the footlights. Yet surely, this solid applause, these rocketing shouts of “Author!” must make it plain. “It will run a year,” said the man on Margaret’s left. “And if it did,” Margaret thought, “Caroline would still be unimpressed.”

“Here he comes,” said Margaret’s husband.

Jay Brookfield stood quite still, facing the crescendo of sound; a young man with a pale, triangular face, black hair and a long thin body, a sexless harlequin of a young man. When he bowed he bent so low that you could see the back of his neck and the top of his high white collar. He straightened himself and spread out his hands on either side of him, to include the company. His face was unsmiling; set. His voice, hard and clipped, said, “All I can say is that if you have enjoyed watching it as much as we have enjoyed your reception of it, you must have had a very good time indeed.” He ducked again to kiss the leading lady’s hand, fondled the leading man’s shoulder, bowed so low that he seemed about to turn a somersault and strode into the wings. The curtain fell. “Now,” said Margaret, while her husband folded her chinchilla wrap across her spare white shoulders, “we must find Caroline.”

“Is she coming to supper with us?” Leonard asked; he was a large red man with china-blue eyes and a stubbly moustache.

“I imagine so,” said Margaret. Leonard’s attitude to his stepdaughter was unfathomable; she did not know what he had thought of Caroline’s performance. This was not his kind of play. Leonard’s idea of the theatre was like Mr. Van Koppen’s idea of Paradise, “something with girls in it,” something called a Show. He seemed more at home when they had followed the crowd through the pass-door. There was an atmosphere of the Stage-Door-Johnny about him now and he should properly have headed for one of the two main dressing-rooms, whose open doors with the sycophants pouring through showed spectacular glimpses of flowers, of coloured greeting-telegrams stuck aloft on walls and mirrors. Only a few people went the way taken by the Radcliffe-Prestons, down a long tunnel of corridor and up three stone steps.

“Hullo, you two,” said Caroline; she shared this restricted space with the young woman who played the part of the maid. She was already in her dressing-gown, with a white cloth tied over her hair; she was smearing off the last of the make-up, her fingers tipped with gouts of cold cream.

To Margaret there was about the small dressing-room an atmosphere at once embarrassing and raffish, two adjectives that she often applied to Caroline. She found it hard to look straight into the glass at her daughter’s reflection. It was impossible to see whether the girl was hideous or beautiful. She had Margaret’s high cheekbones; not Margaret’s arched nose, blue eyes and tiny mouth. Caroline had greenish eyes that slanted, a short blunt nose, a mouth that was large and square. She could look like a deer or a Mongol or a decadent nymph; at the moment she was just a shiny mask. Then she pulled off the white turban, shook her short, brown, curling hair and turned from the glass to grin at them both. “We’re a hit; blow me down; what a thing....” Caroline said, in her deep, resonant voice that was, Margaret thought, so much more cultivated than its pick of words.

“You are indeed. Congratulations, Caro,” said Leonard heartily. “You were very good,” said Margaret, hearing herself sound more temperate than she had intended. This was Caroline’s inevitable effect upon her.

“I don’t think I was,” said Caroline, “I loused up the last speech; and that was Bobby’s fault for making me giggle. Know what the bastard did?” she asked. “When he handed me the photograph—and my line, get it, is ‘But she’s exquisite’—it was just a picture of a baby hippopotamus.”

She passed the powder-puff across her nose and chin, dabbed at her eyelashes, painted her mouth carefully and stood up, saying: “Do have a drink; there’s some whisky left, isn’t there, Jenny?” “Ooh, rather,” said the other young woman, appearing from behind the screen. “May I introduce Miss Webster? My mother and my stepfather.” “How dew yew dew. Dew let me give yew a drink”; her refinement was pressed down firmly over a Cockney accent; she had flashing teeth.

“No thank you, really,” said Margaret, “I never drink whisky. And we’re just going out to supper. You’re coming, aren’t you, Caroline?”

“Me? No. Thank you kindly, but I’m going to Jay’s party.”

“To Jay’s party?” Margaret was impressed in spite of herself.

“Well, to be accurate, it is his sister’s party. She has a mansion off Sloane Square.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Alaric Forrest’s house?”

“Et’s roight,” said Caroline in exaggerated cockney; she disappeared behind the screen.

“Is the whole cast invited?”

“Couldn’t say. Kate Forrest came in to watch some of the rehearsals and gave me my summons. She is fun. Almost a bitch, if you see what I mean.”

“Caroline, must you use that language?”

“I don’t know; that is what I ask myself,” the deep voice grumbled. Leonard yawned engulfingly. He said: “Well, better be getting along.” Margaret hesitated; it seemed that there was something more to be said, something gracious and friendly, but when she spoke she found that she had asked: “Will you be late back?” The corollary: “You must be tired,” she did not say, and the question sounded hectoring, fussy.

“Probably; and probably drunk.”

Leonard said: “That’s the stuff,” with another attempt at heartiness.

“Good-night, Caroline. And many congratulations.”

“Thank you, Mamma.”

Margaret said to Leonard as they walked toward their car: “At Kate Forrest’s house she will certainly meet the right kind of people; the people she affects to despise.”

“Alaric Forrest’s a good chap,” said Leonard. “Can’t say I care for Kate; none of those Brookfields appeal to me much. That Jay.... They’re Jews, aren’t they?”

“I believe there is some Jewish blood. But Jay and his brother both went to Winchester. The brother owns the Brookfield Art Galleries, you know.”

“M’m,” said Leonard, who obviously did not know. He opened the door of the car and Margaret settled herself; for once she could feel a little courageous about Caroline’s future. She could see it only in terms of marriage; the rich, respectable marriage that so often appeared a forlorn hope. In her mind she began to conduct one of her periodical arguments with Caroline’s father. “You see ... the Forrests invite her. That is because of me; Kate Forrest wouldn’t invite just any little actress who had a part in her brother’s play. I have given Caroline something; something more than this absurd passion for the stage, inherited from you, with everything else that is awkward about her.”

“Didn’t give her a name, though, did you? I see that she appears on the programme as Caroline Seward, bless her....”

“By adoption, her name is Radcliffe-Preston; and from the fuss that she makes about calling herself Seward, anyone would think that you were Gerald du Maurier instead of a third-rate performer in concert-parties.”

The image of Caleb Seward was quite clear now. She saw the laugh, the hat-brim, the cigarette that clung to the lower lip. The battered gentleman-of-fortune was laughing at her.

“You’ll never forgive me, will you?” the phantom voice murmured. “Not as long as our brat continues to shape like me.”

She blinked his image away. Beside her Leonard was saying: “ ’Must say, Caroline takes it all pretty calmly.”

“She’s spoiled,” said Margaret. “Everything has come too easily. Thanks to you.” She patted Leonard’s arm; he said: “Oh, I don’t know,” embarrassed as ever by any reference to what he had done for Caroline.