10

When Maria woke that morning she could see the flakes of snow falling outside the window. The curtains were pulled aside—she never slept with them drawn—and the snow was falling sideways, slanting to the left, so that if she looked at it for long something happened to her eyes and she felt giddy. She closed them again, but she knew she would not sleep anymore. The Day had come. The dreaded Day.

Perhaps if it went on snowing for several hours the traffic would be stopped by the evening, and no one would be able to get anywhere, and all the theatres would have to close. A message would be sent to the company that owing to the weather the first night had been postponed.

She lay sideways in bed, her knees tucked up to her chin. She could pretend to be ill, of course. She could just lie there in bed all day and people would come in and she would pretend to be in a trance. The most frightful thing has happened. Maria Delaney, who was to play the young lead at the Haymarket, has been suddenly stricken with paralysis in the night. She can’t hear, she can’t speak, she can’t move as much as a finger. It is the most terrible tragedy. Because she was brilliant. We all had such high hopes of her. She was going to do wonderful things, and now she will never act again. She will lie forever more with that wistful, sweet, lost look in her eyes, and we shall all have to tiptoe to her bed and take her flowers…

Poor, lovely, brilliant Maria Delaney.

There was a knock on her door and the heavy-footed housemaid, Edith, burst into the room with her breakfast.

“Lovely weather,” she said, dumping the tray beside the bed. “The snow came over my ankles when I opened the back door. Someone will have to shovel it away for the tradesmen, but it won’t be me.”

Maria did not answer. She kept her eyes closed. She hated Edith.

“You won’t find many turning out to the theater this weather,” said Edith. “It will be three parts empty. There’s a bit about you in the paper, and a photograph. Not a scrap like you either.”

She flounced out of the room, banging the door. Hateful girl. What did she know about the theater being full or empty? No one had been able to get a seat who had not put their names down weeks ago, everyone knew that. The weather was not likely to scare off the lucky ones. Where was that bit about her in the paper? She opened the paper and looked it up and down, right through.

Oh, was that all?… Three little lines, down at the bottom where no one would ever see them. “Miss Maria Delaney, who is appearing in tonight’s new play at the Haymarket, is the eldest daughter of…” and then a whole lot about Pappy. They might just as well have put Pappy’s photograph in the paper instead of hers. Edith was right. It was not like her. Why could not the fools have used the new ones she had had done on purpose? But no. It had to be that idiotic thing of her grinning over her shoulder.

“Miss Maria Delaney, who is appearing in tonight’s new play at the Haymarket…” Tonight. There was no escape. It had come. It was upon her. She turned to her tray, and looked at her grapefruit with distaste. There was not enough sugar, and the marmalade pot was smeared. That was because Truda was away. Truda would be in hospital with an ulcered leg just when she was needed.

There were only two letters on the tray. One was a bill for some shoes, which she thought she had paid. She was sure she had. The brutes had sent it in again. And the other was from that boring girl who had been on tour with her last summer. “I shall be thinking of you when the great day comes. Some people have all the luck. What’s he like? Is he really as exciting as he looks, and is it true he’s nearly fifty? It doesn’t give his age in Who’s Who…”

Not many people knew the address in St. John’s Wood. Pappy and Celia had not been there very long. Most people would send their letters and telegrams to the Haymarket. The flowers too. When you came to think of it the whole business was horribly like having an operation. The telegrams, the flowers. And the long hours of waiting. She ate some of the grapefruit, but it was very bitter and all mixed up with pith. She spat it out.

She heard shuffling footsteps outside the door, and three fingers tapped in the familiar way.

“Come in,” said Maria.

It was Pappy. He wore his old blue dressing gown, and the slippers that Truda had mended again and again. Pappy never bought new clothes. He clung to the things he knew until they were practically insanitary. There was one old cardigan that was held together with pieces of string.

“Well, my darling,” he said.

He came and sat down on the bed and took her hand and kissed it. He had grown much heavier and fatter since the tour in South Africa, and his hair was now quite white. It was as thick as ever, though. It stood up from his powerful head and made him more like a lion than ever. An aging lion.

He held her hand, as he sat on the bed, and he took a piece of lump sugar off the tray and chewed it.

“How are you feeling, my darling?” he said.

“Awful,” Maria told him.

“I know,” he said.

And he smiled, and chewed another lump of sugar.

“You’ve either got it or you haven’t,” he said. “It’s either there at the back of your funny little head, and you’ll do what you have to do instinctively, or you’ll meander through as sixty percent of them do, just hanging about, never getting anywhere much.”

“How am I to know?” said Maria. “People never tell one the truth, not the real truth. It may be all right tonight, and the notices may be good, and everybody be nice—but I shan’t really know.”

“You’ll know all right,” he said, “here.” And he tapped his chest. “Inside,” he said.

“I feel it’s all wrong to be nervous,” said Maria. “I feel it’s lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding.”

“Some people do,” he said, “but they’re the duds. They are the ones that win prizes in school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It’s part of your life from now on. You’ve got to go through with it. Nothing’s worthwhile if you don’t fight for it first, if you haven’t a pain in your belly beforehand.”

He got up and pottered to the window. His bedroom slippers made a shuffling sound.

“When I first sang in Dublin,” he said, “there was a hell of a crowd. A real mixed bunch. And there had been some fuss about the tickets. The wrong people had got the wrong seats. I was so damn nervous beforehand when I tried to open my mouth my jaw got stuck—I couldn’t close it for about five minutes.”

He laughed. He moved over to the washstand and fiddled with Maria’s tube of toothpaste.

“Then I got angry,” he said. “I got angry with myself. What the hell am I frightened of, I said to myself, they’re nothing but a lot of Micks sitting out there, and if they don’t like me I don’t like them, and it’s just too bad for all of us. So I walked onto the platform and sang.”

“Did you sing well?” asked Maria.

He put down the tube of toothpaste. He looked at her and smiled.

“If I had not, we wouldn’t be here now,” he said, “and you could not be walking onto that stage at the Haymarket tonight. Now get up and take your bath, and don’t forget you’re a Delaney. Give ’em hell.”

And he opened the door, and shuffled off down the passage to his room, shouting to André to bring his breakfast.

“He’ll kiss me tonight and send flowers to the dressing room,” thought Maria, “but none of that will matter. This is what matters. What he said to me just now.”

She got up and went to the bathroom and turned on the hot water, and she emptied into the water all the bath salts that Celia had given her for Christmas.

“It’s like anointing a corpse before you bury it,” she said to herself.

It went on snowing all the morning. The little garden in front of the house was covered. It had a dead, flat look. And everything was silent and still, the queer, muffled stillness that comes with snow. You could not hear the traffic in Finchley Road.

Maria kept wishing Niall would come, but his train was not due until the afternoon. He was leaving school at Easter. This was his last term. Pappy had wangled special leave for him to come up because of the first night. Why could he not come in the morning, why must she wait until the afternoon? She wanted Niall to be with her.

The shoulder strap of her chemise tore when she put it over her head. She looked in the chest of drawers for another and could not find one. She went to the door and shouted for Celia.

“All my underclothes have disappeared,” she stormed. “I can’t find a thing. You’ve taken them.”

Celia was up and dressed. She was always up before Maria in case Pappy wanted her for anything, to answer the telephone, to write a letter.

“Nothing’s back from the laundry,” she said. “It’s because Truda isn’t here. There’s always a muddle. You shall have my best chemise and knickers. The ones Pappy gave me for Christmas.”

“You’re much fatter than me, they won’t fit,” grumbled Maria.

“They will fit, they’re too small. I was going to give them to you, anyway,” said Celia.

Her voice was gentle and soothing. She’s doing it on purpose, thought Maria. She’s being especially nice because of it being my first night and she knows I’m nervous. For some reason, the knowledge of this was irritating. She snatched the chemise and knickers out of Celia’s hands. Celia watched her put them on in silence. How lovely Maria looked in them. They fitted perfectly. What it was to be slim and straight…

“What are you going to wear tonight?” asked Maria.

Her voice was grumpy. She would not look at Celia.

“My white,” said Celia. “It’s back from the cleaners, and it looks rather nice. The trouble is it’s shrunk a bit, and when I dance it may give at the back. Do you want just to run through your words? I’ll hear them for you.”

“No,” said Maria. “We did all that yesterday, I’m not going to look at the thing again.”

“Is there no rehearsal call today?”

“No, nothing. Oh, he’s down there, I suppose, messing about with the lights. The rest of us aren’t wanted.”

“Oughtn’t you to send him a telegram?”

“I suppose so. He’ll have about five hundred. He doesn’t open them, anyway. The secretary does all that.”

She looked at herself in the glass. Her hair was frightful, but she would wash it after lunch and dry it in front of the dining room fire. As a matter of fact, she was not going to send him a telegram. She was going to send him some flowers, but she did not want Celia to know, or Pappy. She knew exactly what she was going to send. Anemones, blue and red, in a white bowl. He talked about flowers once at rehearsal, and he said anemones were his favorite flowers. They had some at that florist at the corner of Marylebone Road, she had noticed yesterday. The bowl was extra money, but it did not matter for once. It was extra too to have them sent down to the Haymarket.

“Pappy’s asked him to the party afterwards,” said Celia. “Will he bring that awful wife?”

“She’s away. She’s in America.”

“What a good thing,” said Celia.

She wondered just how nervous Maria was now, at this moment, and whether it would go on getting worse throughout the day or ease off, like a brewing pain. Here was her sister, an actress, about to play her first important part in London, and Celia wanted to talk to her about it and yet she could not; she held back, oddly shy.

Maria went to the wardrobe and pulled down a mackintosh.

“You’re surely not going out?” said Celia. “It’s snowing hard.”

“I shall stifle if I stay here,” said Maria. “I must walk, I must move about.”

“We shall be alone to lunch,” said Celia. “Pappy’s going to the Garrick.”

“I shan’t want much,” said Maria. “I’m not hungry.”

She went out of the house and round the corner of the avenue into the Finchley Road, and caught a bus to the florist where they had anemones. The title of the play was written in broad black letters on the side of the bus, with his name above it in red. It was a good omen. She must remember to tell Niall.

After she had chosen the anemones with great care, she went to the table in the corner of the shop to write her card. She was not sure what to put. It must not be too familiar. It must not be facetious. The simple thing was always best. She just put his name, and then “With love from Maria.” She stuck the card among the flowers, and went out of the shop. She glanced at her watch. Twelve o’clock. Just over eight hours to go.

They had Irish stew for lunch, and apple charlotte. They finished earlier than usual because of Pappy not being with them. Directly lunch was over, Maria washed her hair and then set it in pins, and lay with her back to the dining room fire.

“Perhaps,” she said to Celia casually, yawning a little, “perhaps you could just hear me that bit in the middle of the third act. Just for the words.”

Celia read the cues in a flat, level voice. Maria answered them, her hands over her eyes. It was all right. She was word-perfect, anyway.

“Anywhere else?” asked Celia.

“No, nowhere else.”

Celia turned over the pages of the crumpled script. It was marked all over with pencil notes. She looked down at Maria, still lying with her hands over her face. What must it be like for Maria to kiss that man, and have his arms round her, and say all those things that she had to say? Maria never talked about it. She was funny and reserved about things like that. She would say So-and-So had been in a bad temper, or had a hangover, or had been very funny and amusing, but if you tried to question her about more personal things she was evasive. She did not seem to be interested. She shrugged her shoulders. Perhaps Niall would ask her. Perhaps she would tell Niall.

It was dark very early, about half-past three. It had stopped snowing, but it was cold and bleak outside. Edith came in to draw the curtains.

“It’s left off for the moment,” she said, dragging the curtains with a jerk, “but there’s more to come. And it’s ever so mucky underfoot. I just went down to the post and I got drenched.”

She stumped out again, leaving a stale current of air behind her.

“Don’t they ever wash?” said Maria fiercely. She sat up, and stretched herself, and began pulling the pins out of her hair. It stood out round her head, short and golden like a halo. Celia put away the script. She had been reading it right through again, from start to finish. She knew it almost as well as Maria.

Suddenly, she asked a question. She could not help herself.

“Do you like him?” she said.

“Who?” said Maria.

Celia waved the script in her face.

“Yes, he’s awfully nice. I told you,” said Maria.

She got up from the floor and straightened her skirt.

“But what’s it like kissing him at rehearsal? Don’t you feel awkward?” said Celia.

“I feel awkward if I have to kiss him in the morning,” said Maria. “I’m always afraid my breath will smell. It sometimes does, you know, when you’re hungry. That’s why it’s always better after lunch.”

“Is it?” said Celia.

But that was not really what she wanted to know.

“Your hair looks lovely,” she said instead.

Maria turned and looked at herself in the glass.

“It’s queer,” she said, “but I don’t feel this is happening to me at all. This is some other person going through my day. It’s a dreadful feeling. I can’t explain it.”

They heard the sound of a taxi drawing up outside the house.

“It’s Niall,” said Maria. “It’s Niall, at last.”

She ran to the window and pulled the curtain. She banged on the window. He turned, smiling, and waved his hand. He was paying off the driver.

“Go and let him in, quick,” said Maria.

Celia went to the front door and opened it. Niall came up the steps carrying his bag.

“Hullo, funny face,” he said, and kissed her.

He was frozen, of course. His hands were like ice, and his hair was all over the place and needed cutting. They went into the dining room together.

“Where on earth have you been?” said Maria angrily. “Why didn’t you come sooner?” She did not smile at him at all, nor did she kiss him.

“I went to see Truda,” he said. “The hospital is miles away, as you know, and with all this snow it took simply ages.”

“Oh, how good of you,” said Celia. “Poor Truda, she must have been pleased. How was she?”

“Better,” said Niall, “but awfully crochety. Grumbling at everything. The nurses, the food, the doctors, the other patients. I stayed quite a bit and made her laugh.”

“I think it’s very selfish of you,” said Maria. “You knew it was my day of days, and that I’d be here wanting comfort, and you go off to the other end of London to see Truda. Any time would do for Truda. Now I’ve only got about two hours before I go down to the theater.”

Niall did not answer. He simply went to the fire and knelt down and held his hands to the flames.

“Truda’s sent you a present,” he said. “She asked one of the nurses to go specially and buy something during her off-time. She told me what it was. It’s a horseshoe in white heather. It’s gone down to the theater. She was so pleased. Tell Maria I’ll be thinking of her all the evening, she said.”

Maria said nothing. She stuck out her underlip and looked sulky.

“I’ll go and see about tea,” said Celia, after a moment.

It was better to leave them together. They knew how to sort themselves out. She went out of the room and upstairs to her bedroom until it should really be time for tea.

Maria knelt down by the fire next to Niall. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.

“I feel terrible,” she said. “It started in my tummy, and now it’s gone to my throat.”

“I know,” he said, “I feel it too. All over. From the soles of the feet to the back of the neck.”

“And every minute,” said Maria, “it gets nearer and nearer to the time, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“When I saw the snow this morning,” said Niall, “I hoped there’d be an avalanche, and it would bury the Haymarket so you couldn’t open.”

“Did you think that?” said Maria. “So did I. Oh, Niall… if I ever marry and have a baby, will you have it for me?”

“It would be one way of getting famous, anyway,” said Niall.

He felt in his pocket.

“I didn’t really spend all that time with Truda,” he said. “I went and bought you a present.”

“Oh, Niall. Show me, quick.”

“It’s nothing much,” he said. “It’s not valuable or anything. I got it with the money Pappy gave me for Christmas. But I hope you’ll like it.”

He gave her a small package. She undid the string and tore off the paper. It was a little red leather box. Inside the leather box was a ring. The stone was blue. It glistened when she turned it in her hand.

“Niall, darling Niall…” she said. It fitted the third finger of her right hand.

“It’s nothing much,” he said. “It’s not worth anything.”

“It’s worth everything to me,” she said. “I shall wear it always. I shall never take it off.”

She held out her hand, and watched the blue of the stone glisten as she turned the ring. It reminded her of something. Somewhere, some time, she had seen a ring like that. Then she remembered. Mama used to wear a blue ring on her left hand. It was like Mama’s ring, only, of course, cheaper.

“I’m glad you like it,” said Niall. “Directly I saw it in the shop, I knew I must get it. I knew it was right for you.”

“I want you to come with me in the taxi to the theater,” said Maria, “and leave me there, at the stage door. Pappy and Celia will come later in the car. Will you do that?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I meant to do that.”

The hours went past too quickly. Tea came, and tea was over, and it was time for Niall to go upstairs and change. Pappy came home about six o’clock. He was very jovial, very merry. He must have had a few drinks at the Garrick.

“The whole world will be there tonight,” he told them, “and we’re landed with about ten more people for the party afterwards. Celia, you’d better ring up the Green Park. I’m damned if I know who’s coming and who isn’t. Niall, you’d better wear a button-hole. André, where’s a button-hole for Niall?”

He lumbered up the stairs, laughing loudly, calling for Maria, calling for everybody in the house. Maria came down from her bedroom with a suitcase. She had her dress in it, for changing afterwards. Celia did not know who looked the whiter, Maria or Niall.

“I think we’d better go,” said Maria, her voice tight and rather strained. “I shall feel better down at the theater. I think we’d better go. Did anyone order a taxi?”

There was no going back now. No returning. The thing had to be faced. It was exactly like an operation. A terrible major operation. And Celia, standing there in the draughty hall, wore the encouraging smile on her face that nurses wore.

“Good-bye darling… good luck,” said Celia.

The taxi was the trolley. The taxi, taking her off to the theater, was the trolley that carried the corpse.

“Oh, Niall…” she said. “Oh, Niall…”

He put his arm round her, and the taxi jogged through the slushy streets.

“You must never leave me,” she said. “You must never, never leave me.”

He held on to her and said nothing.

“Why I’m doing it I can’t think,” she said. “It gives no pleasure to me or anyone. It’s an absurd thing to do. I hate it.”

“You don’t hate it, you love it,” he said.

“It’s not true, I hate it,” she said.

She looked out of the window. The streets seemed unfamiliar in the snow.

“Where’s he going?” she said. “He’s going the wrong way. I shall be late.”

“You won’t be late,” said Niall. “There’s heaps of time.”

“I must pray,” said Maria. “Tell him to go to a church. I must pray. If I don’t pray, something dreadful will happen.”

Niall thrust his head out of the window.

“Stop at a church,” he said, “any church, it doesn’t matter where. This young lady wants to get out and pray.”

The driver turned round, a moon-face of astonishment.

“Anything wrong?” he said.

“No,” said Niall, “it’s just that she’s got to act in about an hour’s time. Please find a church.”

The man shrugged his shoulders, and jerked in the clutch. He stopped outside St. Martin’s in the Fields.

“She’d better go in there,” he said. “It’s where they hold the memorial services for actors when they die.”

“It’s an omen,” said Niall, “a good one. You must go. I’ll wait in the taxi.” His teeth were chattering with cold.

Maria got out of the taxi and went up the steps of St. Martin’s. She pushed through the doors, and went and knelt down in a pew on the left.

“Let it be all right,” she said. “Let it be all right.”

And she kept saying this over and over again, because there was really nothing else to say.

Then she got up and bobbed to the altar, because it might be a high church, she did not know, and there was a woman in the pew behind looking at her, and she went down the slippery steps to the taxi.

“Feeling better?” said Niall. He looked whiter than ever, and very anxious.

“Much,” she said. But she wasn’t really. She felt just the same. It was a good thing done though. Like touching wood. No harm could come of it… In a few moments they were outside the Haymarket.

“We’re here,” said Niall.

“Yes,” she said.

He carried out the suitcase, and paid the driver. Pappy had given him the money. Maria had none at all. She had forgotten all about money for a taxi.

“Good-bye,” said Maria. She looked at him, she tried to smile.

Suddenly, she tore off her glove and showed him her ring.

“You’re with me,” she said, “I’m safe. You’re with me.”

And she passed through the stage door and was inside the theater. Her heart was still beating fast, and her hands were burning, but she felt steadier suddenly, the feeling of panic had gone from her. It was because she was inside the theater. She was with the others. One of them poked her head round the door. Her face was covered in cold cream, and she had a towel round her head.

“I’ve got dysentery,” she said. “I’ve lost the whole of my inside. You look wonderful.”

Maria knew then that everything was going to be all right. It was what she had asked for in St. Martin’s in the Fields. They were all together, the whole lot of them. She was not alone. She was part of them and they were all together.

Suddenly, she saw him standing in the passage. He was standing by the door looking at her, and whistling under his breath.

“Hullo,” he said.

“Hullo,” said Maria.

“Come and see my flowers,” he said. “It’s like a crematorium.”

She went to the door of his room. The dresser was unwrapping yet another package. It was some sort of alabaster vase, filled with a gigantic shrub.

“They’ve been down to Kew,” he said, “uprooting something. It doesn’t smell at all. Funny. You’d think a thing that size would smell.”

She glanced round the room. There were flowers everywhere. And telegrams. Stacks of them. Some of them opened.

Then she saw her bowl of anemones. They were on his dressing table. Just by the looking glass. There were not any other flowers there; only her anemones. He saw her looking at them, but he did not say anything.

“I must go,” said Maria.

He looked at her a moment, and she looked back at him, and then she turned and went out of the room.

She went to her own dressing room, and found the flowers from the family. The telegrams. The heather horseshoe from Truda. She hung her coat on the door and reached for her dressing gown. Then she saw the parcel. It was long and flat. She felt calm and steady, not excited anymore. She opened the parcel and it was a red leather box. Inside was a gold cigarette-case. Her name was written inside the case, “Maria,” and his name and the date. She sat looking at it for a moment, and then she heard her dresser coming along the passage.

She put the cigarette-case hurriedly, furtively, into her evening bag and thrust the bag at the back of the drawer in the table. When the dresser came into the room Maria was bending over Pappy’s roses, and reading his card, “Good luck, my darling.”

“Well,” said the dresser, “how are you feeling, dear?”

Maria pretended to start. She looked round as though surprised to see the dresser come into the room.

“Who, me?” she said. “Oh, I’m fine. Everything’s going to be all right.”

She leaned forward, and began to cream her face.

Yes, everything was going to be all right.