9

“They came and fetched you, didn’t they?” said Celia. “You did not have long together.”

“We had two days,” said Maria.

Two days… It was always like that, forever afterwards, throughout the years. Niall turning up sometime, somewhere, and being with her. Never for very long. Only for snatches of time. She could never remember where they went, or what they did, or what happened; the only thing she knew was that they were always happy.

Being irritable, being tired, and all the endless worries of problems and plans, none of this mattered anymore when he was with her. He brought with him always a funny kind of peace, and with the peace a strange sense of stimulation. So that when she was with Niall she was rested and excited, both at once.

Never a day passed that she did not think of him at some moment. I must tell Niall that, he would laugh, he would understand. And weeks would pass and she would not see him. Then, suddenly, for no reason and without warning, he would turn up. She would return, exhausted perhaps after a long rehearsal, or having had a row with someone, or the day having gone against her for no reason, and Niall would be sitting there, deep in the armchair, saying nothing, looking up at her and smiling. Her hair needed doing, there would be no powder on her face, and she would be wearing a dress she hated anyway and must give away, but these things would be forgotten in a moment because Niall was there and Niall was part of her and it was like being alone.

“It was Pappy’s fault,” said Celia. “The Headmaster cabled to Pappy and told him Niall had run away, and Pappy cabled back saying, ‘Try the Theater Royal, Liverpool.’ Truda guessed you would have gone to Maria.”

“That was the only unkind action I ever knew Pappy to do in all his life,” said Niall.

“He hated doing it,” said Celia. “He called Truda into the sitting room—we were in Melbourne at the time, there was a heatwave—and he said to Truda, ‘The boy’s bolted. What the devil am I to do?’ ”

Celia remembered how they had to have the fans on all the time. There was one above the door, and another at the far end of the room to make a draft. There was an idea that if you shut the windows and drew the curtains, but kept the fans on full blast, the room kept cool. It was not true. It made the room hotter. Pappy sat about all day in pajamas drinking ginger ale.

“My darling,” he said to Celia, “I shall have to give up. I can’t cope any longer. I hate these people and I hate the country. And, anyway, my voice is going. I shall have to give up.”

He always said this. It did not mean anything. It was part of the ritual of a farewell tour. Only a few months back they had been in New York in a snowstorm, and he had said the same things about America and Americans. His voice was always going. He was never going to sing again. He was not going to sing that night.

“Ring up the theater, my darling,” he would say. “Tell them I’m not going down tonight. I’m very ill. I’m starting a nervous breakdown.”

“Yes, Pappy,” she said, but of course she took no notice at all. She went on drawing imaginary people in her sketchbook, and Pappy went on drinking ginger ale.

The cable came, she remembered, in the middle of the afternoon, and Pappy burst out laughing at first, and threw the piece of paper across the table to Celia.

“Good for Niall,” he said. “I would never have thought he had the guts to do it.”

But she had been anxious at once. She had visions of Niall lying in a ditch somewhere, murdered, or else he had been beaten, beaten unjustly by a brute of a headmaster, or perhaps stoned by the other boys.

“We must tell Truda at once,” she said. “Truda will know what to do.”

And Pappy had just laughed. He had gone on drinking his ginger ale and rocking with laughter.

“What’s the betting he turns up here in six weeks’ time?” he said. “Good for Niall. I never did think much of that damn school, anyway.”

But Truda knew at once that Niall had gone to Maria.

“He’ll be at Liverpool,” she said firmly, putting on the thin, firm mouth that both Celia and Pappy knew too well. “You must cable the school that they’ll find him at the theater in Liverpool. That’s where Maria is this week. I’ve got a list of dates in my room.”

“Why should he go to Liverpool?” said Pappy. “Good God, if I was a boy and had run away from school, I’m damned if I should run to a place like Liverpool.”

“It’s Maria,” said Truda. “He’ll always go to Maria, now his mother’s gone. I know him. I know him better than anyone.”

Celia glanced at Pappy. The mention of Mama always did something to him. He stopped laughing, and drinking ginger ale. He looked heavily at Truda, and his body seemed to sag, so that he looked older suddenly and tired.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s beyond me. What am I expected to do about it over here, the other side of the ruddy globe? André.”

And he shouted for André, for André too must be told about it, about Niall’s running away, and not only André, but the waiter when the waiter came, and the chambermaid, and of course everyone down at the theater. He would make a wonderful story, exaggerated but good to tell, about his bright boy of a stepson running away from school.

“It’s no good calling for André,” said Truda, her mouth tight. “What you’ve got to do is to tell the school to get in touch with that theater in Liverpool. They must fetch him away. That’s where he is, in Liverpool.”

“Let him stay then,” said Pappy, “if he’s happy there. He might get a job with the orchestra, playing the piano.”

“His mother wanted him to go to school,” said Truda. “The theater is no place for a boy of his age. He has to have his schooling. You know that.”

Pappy looked across at Celia and pulled a face.

“I suppose we have to do what she tells us,” he said. “Run down and get me a cable form, my darling.”

And Celia went downstairs to the reception desk in the hall of the hotel, and all the time she kept thinking of Niall running to Maria in Liverpool. Niall was her brother, not Maria’s. Why did Niall have to run to Maria? And, anyway, why couldn’t they all be here together? Why was everything so different, so insecure, that had once been permanent and solid? She went upstairs with the cable form, and through the half-open door she heard Truda talking to Pappy.

“I’ve wanted to speak my mind for some time,” she was saying. “Now that I’ve spoken about the boy, I can speak about Celia too. It’s not right, Mr. Delaney, dragging her around from place to place like this. She should be having a proper education, and mixing with other children. It was different when she was a little girl and her mother was alive, and the three of them were together. But she’s a growing girl now. She needs the companionship of other girls her own age.”

Pappy had turned round and was facing Truda. Celia, watching through the half-open door, saw the lost, frightened expression in his eyes.

“I know,” he said, “but what am I to do? She’s all I have left. I can’t let her go. If I ever let her go I shall crack up. If she ever leaves me I shall go to pieces.”

“It’s spoiling her life,” said Truda. “I’m warning you. It’s spoiling her life. You’re giving her too much responsibility. You’re trying to put an old head on young shoulders. She’ll suffer for it. Not you, Mr. Delaney. She’ll suffer for it.”

“Haven’t I suffered?” said Pappy. And he went on looking at Truda with that terrible lost look in his eyes. Then he pulled himself together; he poured out another glass of ginger ale.

“She’s seeing the world,” he said. “The child is seeing the world, and that’s an education in itself. Better than anything she would get in a school. I tell you what we’ll do, Truda. We’ll advertise for a governess. That’s the answer. A good, all-round governess. And we’ll look round for some other girls to come and have tea. That’s it. We’ll ask some children to tea.”

He smiled, then he patted Truda on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Truda. I’ll arrange something. And I’ll send the cable to the school. I’ll tell that Headmaster chap to look for the boy in Liverpool. You’re right, of course. He mustn’t hang about a theater. All right for Maria, she has a job of work to do. No good to the boy. That’s all right. Don’t worry, Truda.”

Celia waited a moment, and then went into the sitting room.

“Here’s your cable form,” she said. They both turned and looked at her and nobody said anything, and there was not a sound except the whirring of the fans.

Celia went away down the passage, and locked herself in the lavatory, and instead of reading the book she kept there, she sat down on the seat and began to cry. She kept seeing Pappy with his lost face saying to Truda, “I can’t let her go. If she ever goes I shall crack up. If she ever leaves me I shall go to pieces.”

And she would never leave him, never. But how was he spoiling her life? What did Truda mean? Was she missing something? Was she? The things that other girls did at school, like playing hockey, writing notes and hiding them, laughing, pushing each other over? She had no wish to do any of those things. She just wanted to stay with Pappy. But if only one of the others could be with her, if only Niall or Maria could be there too so that there was someone young…

“How did Niall get back?” said Celia. “Did one of the masters arrive from the school and take him away? I’ve forgotten.”

“They sent the padre,” said Niall, “the chap who used to take the services in the chapel. He had sandy hair, and used to make us laugh. He loved the theater. That’s why the head beak sent him. He wasn’t a fool, he knew what he was doing.”

“He took us out to tea, before you caught the train,” said Maria, “and he kept telling us funny stories all through tea so that we had no time to think.”

Many years later, in London, he had come to see her at the theater. He had been in front, and had sent a note round asking if he could pay his respects to her, and she had said yes, very bored, wondering who on earth it was going to be. She was tired, she wanted to get away early; and as soon as he appeared she recognized him, the round-faced padre with the sandy hair, but it was not sandy anymore, it was white. Niall was not in London. And they had sat there in her dressing room, talking about Niall, and she forgot she was tired.

“He bought us chocolates at the tea shop,” said Niall, “an enormous box with a scarlet ribbon. You tore off the ribbon at once and put it in your hair. It looked wonderful.”

“Showing off,” said Celia. “I bet she was showing off. She hoped the padre would fall in love with her and let Niall stay.”

“You’re jealous,” said Maria. “You’re still jealous after all these years. You wish that you had been with us up in Liverpool.”

Niall was hungry in the night. He had always been one of those boys who were hungry at the wrong times. A good breakfast or a heavy lunch was wasted upon him. He would eat nothing. And then suddenly, at three in the afternoon or at three in the morning he would want a kipper, or a great plate of sausages. He would be so hungry that he would want to eat the doorknobs.

“We crept downstairs to the larder, do you remember?” said Maria. “The kitchen smelled of cat, and Mrs. Rogers. Her shoes were in the fender.”

“Strapped ones,” said Niall, “bursting at the seams. They stank.”

“There was some cheese,” said Maria, “and half a loaf of bread, and a jar of paste. We took it up to my bedroom, and you came and lay on my bed in your vest and drawers because you hadn’t any pajamas.”

Niall had been cold. He was always a cold boy. Always shivering, his feet like blocks of ice. Often since he had lain beside her, cold and shivering, and she had to put blankets on the bed, or rugs, once even a great heavy carpet, because of Niall being cold. Dragging a carpet between them, hysterical, choking with laughter, and heaving it on a bed.

“There was a Bible on the table beside the bed,” said Niall “We lit two candles and read it together. We did that thing of opening it at random and whatever we saw had to be a symbol of the future.”

“I do it still,” said Maria. “I’m always doing it. I do it before a first night. But it never works. The last time it was, ‘And he that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes.’ It just didn’t mean a thing.”

“You can cheat a bit,” said Niall. “If you open the last half of the Bible it’s the New Testament. The New Testament is better. You get things like ‘There shall be no more fear.’ ”

“I wonder what you got that night in Liverpool?” said Celia. “I don’t suppose you remember, either of you.”

Maria shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s too long ago.”

Niall said nothing. He remembered, though. He could see again the flickering, greasy candle in the green china candlestick. One of the candles much shorter than the other, with a blob of grease at the top beside the wick. And Maria putting a blanket round his shoulders because of the cold, tucking it round his middle, and she herself warm and cozy in flowered pajamas, girl’s pajamas that did up at the side, and they had to speak in whispers because of Mrs. Rogers in the room next door. He was eating bread and paste, with the cheese on top of the paste, and they opened the Bible, and it was the Song of Solomon, and the verse was “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he feedeth among the lilies.”

“That’s you,” said Maria. “But you aren’t among the lilies. You are sitting here in bed with me, eating bread and paste.”

She began to laugh and she had to stuff her handkerchief in her mouth because of Mrs. Rogers. Niall pretended to laugh with her, but in reality his mind did a somersault and jumped ahead. He saw Maria dancing through the years, living for the moment, caring for no one much and for nothing in particular, troubles slipping from her shoulders, soon forgotten; and he himself trailing after her like a distant shadow, always a step or two behind, always a little in the dark. It was midnight and she was warm, and tomorrow was another day. But tomorrow, thought Niall, something will happen. They will trace me from the school, and I shall have to go back again.

And he was right. The padre came. It was useless protesting. He had no money, Maria could not keep him. So back he went again, the padre lighting up a pipe in the corner of the smoking carriage, and Niall leaned from the window waving, watching Maria who stood at the far end of the platform, with the scarlet ribbon from the chocolate box tied round her hair.

There were tears in her eyes when she kissed him good-bye, but she would brush them away so soon, too soon, directly she left the platform.

“It must have been great fun,” said Celia. “I wish I hadn’t missed all that. And Maria, even if the others were sniffy about you, you must have been good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be where you are now.”

“That’s just it,” said Maria. “Where am I now?”

Niall knew what she meant, but Celia was puzzled.

“Really,” she said, “whatever more can you want? You’ve reached the top. You’re popular, everyone rushes to whatever play you happen to be in.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Maria. “But am I really good?”

Celia stared back at her, nonplussed.

“Why, surely,” she said, “you must be. I’ve never seen you bad. Some things are better than others, but that’s bound to happen. Of course you’re good. Don’t be such an idiot.”

“Oh, well,” said Maria. “I can’t explain. You don’t understand.”

She forgot most things in life, but not all. The little whispers, the careless innuendoes clung. She could not brush them off. Influence, she does it by influence. Someone else said that later. She does not do a stroke of work. She slipped in by the back door. It was the name. It was the name that did it. The whole thing was luck. Luck from start to finish. She landed that first big part in London because she set her cap at You-Know-Who and he was mad about her… It lasted quite a time, but of course… What she does is clever, but it’s monkey cleverness. No one could call it acting. She’s inherited Delaney’s charm, and she has a photographic memory and a box of tricks. Nothing more to it than that, they say, they say… they say… they say…

“You see,” said Maria slowly, “no one is ever honest with a person like me. No one really tells me the truth.”

“I’m honest,” said Niall, “I tell you the truth.”

“Oh, you,” sighed Maria, “you’re different.”

She looked across at him, and his queer, expressionless dark eyes, his lanky hair, his narrow mouth with the jutting underlip. There was no part of him she did not know, no part of him she did not love, but what had that to do with her acting? Or had it everything to do with it? Were the two things hopelessly mixed? Niall was the reflection in the mirror, to whom she danced and gestured as a child. Niall was the scapegoat, bearing all her sins.

“What you really mean,” said Niall, “is that we’re none of us first-class. Not the way Pappy was, or Mama. And that’s one of the things Charles was getting at when he called us parasites. We’ve fooled most people with our individual antics, but we know the truth, the three of us, inside.”

And he was standing in the shop in Bond Street, Keith Prowse, looking for a record. A record of Pappy singing an old French song. He could not remember the title, but there was the line about le cor.

“Que j’aime le sond du cor, le soir au fond du bois”

Some line like that. He knew the record well. It had “Plaisir d’amour” on the other side. No one, ever, had sung those songs as Pappy had sung them. But the silly fool of a girl hunting through the lists stared at him blankly.

“It’s not listed. It must be a very old one. I don’t think it’s recorded anymore.”

As she spoke the door opened of one of the little rooms leading off the passage, one of the rooms where people tried out records, and Niall heard the jigging rhythm of one of his own songs played rather indifferently by a second-rate band. A man in the shop passed at that moment, and recognized Niall, and smiled, nodding his head in the direction of the little room.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Delaney. You must be getting tired of hearing that one. I’m almost tired of it myself.”

The girl behind the counter looked at him curiously, and Niall’s song seemed to grow louder and louder, filling the shop with sound. He had made some excuse, and left the shop hurriedly, and walked away.

“The trouble is you’re both of you ungrateful for success,” said Celia. “You had it too young. It came to you, Maria, when you were barely twenty, in that roaring success at the Haymarket, and I was sitting at home in that house in St. John’s Wood, looking after Pappy.”

“You loved looking after Pappy,” said Maria. “You know you did.”

“He was drinking too much,” said Celia. “You never noticed, or if you did, it never worried you. I had the awful thing of watching him go to the sideboard. And Truda was not with us. Truda was in hospital at the time with that ulcered leg.”

“You made too much of it,” said Niall. “Pappy never got unpleasantly drunk. He never actually fell down or anything. He used to be rather funny. He always recited. Yards and yards of poetry. Nobody minded. And he sang better than ever.”

“I minded,” said Celia. “When you’ve loved someone all your life, and you’ve looked after them, and you see them gradually slip away, and the best in them run to waste, you mind then.”

“It was because he wasn’t singing,” said Maria. “He knew it was the beginning of the end, and it did something to him. When I begin getting old I shall probably drink too.”

“No, you won’t,” said Niall. “You’re too conceited. You care too much about your figure and your face.”

“I don’t care,” said Maria. “I don’t have to, thank goodness.”

“You will one day,” said Niall.

Maria looked at him sullenly.

“All right,” she said, “go on. Say something else unpleasant. And, anyway, we all know what you were up to, that winter.”

“Yes,” said Celia. “That was another thing. Poor Pappy, he was very worried about you, Niall. It really was rather shocking.”

“Nonsense,” said Niall.

“You were only just eighteen,” said Celia. “It caused an awful lot of talk.”

“You mean Pappy talked,” said Niall. “He always talked. It was the breath of life to him.”

“Well, he was very upset,” said Celia. “He never forgave that woman.”

“People always say ‘that woman’ when they dislike a person,” said Maria. “What reason had you to dislike poor old Freada? Actually, she was a very good sort. She was very good for Niall. She did him no harm at all, quite the reverse. And, anyway, she was an old friend of Pappy’s and Mama’s.”

“Perhaps that was why Pappy was angry,” said Niall.

“Did you ever ask Freada?” said Maria.

“God, no,” answered Niall.

“How funny men are. I would have done,” said Maria.

“It all began at that awful party,” said Celia. “It was a horrible evening. I shall never forget it. That awful party at the Green Park, or whatever the hotel was called. Pappy would give the party for Maria, after the first night at the Haymarket.”

“It wasn’t an awful party,” said Maria. “It was a wonderful party.”

“Of course, it was wonderful for you,” said Celia. “You had just made a big success. It wasn’t wonderful for me. Pappy got tight at the party and couldn’t get the car to start afterwards, and there was all that snow.”

“Snow everywhere,” said Niall. “It amazed me that anyone came to the party at all, let alone the play. It was inches thick all up the Haymarket. I know, because I spent most of the evening walking up and down. I couldn’t go in the theater and watch. I was too nervous for Maria.”

“Nerves! Don’t talk to me of nerves,” said Maria. “My hands and my feet and my tummy got colder and colder through the day. I went and said a prayer in St. Martin’s in the Fields.”

“Once you got on the stage you were all right,” said Celia.

“I was not all right,” said Niall, “walking up and down the Haymarket with chattering teeth. I might have caught pneumonia.”

Maria looked across at him. She was still a little sullen, still a little resentful.

“Well, your evening ended up all right, didn’t it?” she said.

“If it ended the way it did, it was your fault,” said Niall.

“Oh, go on,” said Maria. “Blame everything on me.”

Celia had not been listening. She was still thinking of the car that would not start, and Pappy bending down, doing things to the handle.

“If you come to think of it,” she said, “it was a queer sort of evening for all of us.”