“So much to learn, and so little time to learn it in,” sighed Lynette, stretching and yawning on her bed. The five of them were gathered in the girls’ bedroom as it was the largest, doing their evening study. Although the room was big, very little of it could be seen, for it was snowed under with books and gramophone records. The ugly wallpaper was nearly covered with ballet pictures by Degas belonging to Vicky and photos of film stars belonging to Sandra, and the mantelpiece had been turned into what they called “Lynette’s Shrine”. There were three photos, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, and Sarah Bernhardt, and two books, a volume of Shakespeare and Stanislavsky’s An Actor Prepares. On each end of the shelf burned a twisty red candle in a brass candlestick, throwing shadows on to the faces of the Blue Doors as they bent over their books.
It was the fifth week of term, and all were endeavouring to master their lines for the end of term shows. Not only were they doing a complete production of Pygmalion with two casts, but also some Shakespearean scenes produced by Mr. Whitfield, and a Molière comedy in the French acting class. Nearly every night there was a fresh speech to be learned for the diction, voice-production, or verse-speaking class next day. Bulldog interrupted the low murmur of voices.
“Will you listen to my mime, for a minute?”
“How can we listen to your mime?” mocked Lynette. “O.K. Go ahead.”
Bulldog got up, made a gesture of opening a door, stepped in, stood still, bent his knees slightly, then straightened them, stood blank-faced, bent his knees once more, opened the imaginary door, and stepped out.
“What on earth…” they laughed.
“Bulldog, you are a fool! Whatever is it?”
“Going up in a lift,” announced Bulldog proudly. “Now, what’s this?” He repeated exactly the same movements.
“Going up in a lift!” they shouted.
“You’re wrong,” he grinned. “I was going down that time.”
Lynette hurled a cushion at his head.
At this moment the clock struck nine and Mrs. Bosham shouted up the stairs, “Y’r supper’s on.” There was a stampede down for the rather watery macaroni cheese and college pudding that Mrs. Bosham served up regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
“Is Mr. Nigel in?” she asked, as she entered the dining room.
“Er—no,” said Sandra, “I shouldn’t bother to keep his hot. He probably won’t appear.”
“Well, I never!” she cried, her eyes like saucers. “He is a one, isn’t he? (Would you mind kindly stepping off my ball of wool, Mr. Bulldog.) Never used to be like this, you know. First term he was here, he was up in his room every night, rantin’ and shoutin’ like one o’clock.”
“The old ham,” murmured Jeremy.
“Hasn’t paid ’is rent this week, either,” Mrs. Bosham replied, somewhat meaningly.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Vicky. “I suppose I’ll have to pay it again.” She opened her handbag and took out the money.
“Well, thank you, Miss Vicky. Don’t like to have it hanging over, y’know.” After she had waddled out Vicky said, “Whatever does Nigel do with his money? He gets a bigger allowance than we do, anyhow.”
“What does he do with it? I should think it’s perfectly obvious what he does with it,” Lyn said coldly. “He spends it all on that Auriole creature. He’s out with her every night.”
“But surely,” objected Vicky, “she wouldn’t let him pay for her when they go out? I mean—no-one at the Academy ever does. It’s always Dutch treat.”
“H’m!” growled Lynette. “Not with Auriole. She was boasting in the girls’ dressing-room the other day that a Guards officer spent his month’s pay in two evenings taking her out, so she must be going through Nigel’s allowance like water.”
“I tried to talk to him about it the other day,” put in Jeremy, “but he wouldn’t listen. Said he wasn’t ‘gadding about’, he was merely doing what old Whitfield is always advising—seeing as many plays as possible.”
But there are ways and ways of seeing plays,” observed Sandra. “We’ve been to the theatre every Saturday this term, but we’ve stuck to the gallery, consequently we can pay our rent.”
“And our theatre-going doesn’t include an expensive meal afterwards, and dancing until all hours in some low dive,” added Lynette acidly.
“Sometimes,” Bulldog began timidly, “I wonder if we don’t work a little too hard. It doesn’t look as if it’s getting us anywhere.” They reflected for a minute. Certainly they had as yet made very little impression at the Academy. There seemed to be so many things to unlearn first.
“And they say that Nigel’s student production is terrific,” Bulldog went on.
The senior pupils were all allowed to do one act of a play every term, produced by one of themselves, and this time the honour had fallen to Nigel.
“He only chose Macbeth so that Auriole could play Lady Macbeth. I think she’s rotten,” stated Lynette.
“This is Friday night’s college pudding warmed up,” Bulldog suddenly announced.
“How do you know?”
“Because it has the same funny taste.”
“But it always tastes funny.”
“Yes, but this is the same funny taste as on Friday—not a different one.”
“Oh, let’s fill up on bread and cheese.”
“And pickled onions,” said Bulldog, grabbing the bottle.
“What low tastes!” sighed Jeremy, getting up from the table. “Oh, if only there were a piano!” This was his one complaint. In order to practise he had to get up early and go round to the Academy.
“Who’s coming out for a toddle before bed?” inquired Bulldog. They all set out, muffled up to the ears against the biting February wind, and strode through Regent’s Park, where frost and moonlight were silvering the trees.
“How different this life is from school!” said Lyn, after an argument on voice-production. “Can you imagine us going for a walk after we’d done our homework and arguing about long division or the rivers of Europe?”
“No,” laughed Sandra. “Our conversation was exactly the same in those days as it is now—theatre!”
It was true. They talked, lived, and dreamed theatre. They forgot to look at the newspaper, they had no hobbies, they met no-one who was outside the magic circle. At No. 37, over the lunch table at the Academy, in Raddler’s Café at tea, over snacks in the Corner House, they spoke of nothing else. But their own particular problems depressed them at times.
“Why isn’t sincerity enough?” Lynette would demand. “Everyone talks about technique all the time—but what is it? Nobody ever defines it properly.”
“P’raps it’s really experience, and that’s why we haven’t got it.”
“And by the time we’ve gained experience and technique we shall be too old to play all the lovely young parts that there are.”
“Oh, I know. Let’s play the new game.”
This game consisted of stating what part in what play at which theatre they would like to be performing that night. Vicky plumped for “Peter Pan” at the Winter Garden; Sandra for “Candida” at the Phoenix; Lynette for “Desdemona” in Othello at the New; Bulldog for “Falstaff” in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Haymarket; and Jeremy for “Hamlet” at the St. James. This game made them walk much farther than they had intended, and it was midnight when they returned. Nigel was still out. “He’ll be late for the Academy again in the morning,” sighed Sandra. “Can’t you talk to him, Vicky? He’s your brother.”
“‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” quoted Vicky. “I’ll say he needs one.”
They went to bed and their dreams were of diverse things, from learning how to control the diaphragm muscles, to the sound of an orchestra tuning up for the overture.
Next day at prayers Mr. Whitfield announced, “There is to be a new competition this term. One of the governors has offered a prize for scenic design. The subject is James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan. Only one set is wanted. It must be to scale, and must fit the model theatre in the workshop.” The Blue Doors looked at each other.
“Sounds like Nigel’s cup of tea,” whispered Sandra to Lyn.
“You’re telling me! He could win that with one hand tied behind his back.”
“The work is to be done in spare time, not in Academy hours, but the workshop will be open in the evenings for this purpose. Will those who wish to enter give in their names to Miss Smith afterwards.” Bulldog peered round the theatre for Nigel, but he was not present.
“Looks as if he’s late again,” he muttered. “We must make him give in his name.”
“And Hassan too! A wonderful subject,” enthused Lyn. “We just can’t go home these holidays with not one of us having won anything. And it’s quite obvious that none of us five will.”
Sometimes Lyn despaired of ever learning to act. There was so much to remember all the time. If she tried to think about her voice, she forgot her moves, and if she concentrated on her moves, she forgot her lines.
“You don’t know how to relax,” she was told in Mime.
“Your voice is monotonous,” she was told in Diction.
“You have no poise,” she was told in Ballet. And as for Fencing—poor little Monsieur Desmoulins would twirl his moustache in anguish and cry, “Miss Darwin, please! It is not a sword dance. From ze wrist, if you please.”
In the production of Pygmalion that they were doing, Lynette and Vicky each had a scene of Eliza Doolittle, and Jeremy was playing Professor Higgins, opposite Lyn. Sandra was playing Mrs. Higgins, a character part that she found very difficult, and Bulldog was playing Doolittle; over-playing it, in fact. But Roma Seymore did not object to this at all.
“That’s right,” she would cry. “Go for it. I’d much rather have to tone it down than bolster it up.”
Out of the six girls playing Eliza, the best was definitely Helen, the plain, mysterious girl who spoke to no-one and worked like a Trojan. She was never at Raddler’s for tea, and always brought her own sandwiches and ate them alone in the classroom at lunch-time. Although she had had no experience, she was the only one who showed any spark of genius to warm Mrs. Seymore’s heart. Lynette, perhaps, was the next hope, but at the moment her self-assurance was shaken by having all the new things to learn at once. At the end of the first term a scholarship was always given to the most promising beginner, and this was very often the subject of conversation for the Blue Doors on their way to the Academy.
“Wouldn’t it shake our parents if one of us got it?”
“Yes, but who could?”
“Lyn might.”
“No,” growled Lyn. “Look at Helen—and Otto—and Ali—they’re all better than I am.”
“Your Pygmalion isn’t as good as Helen’s, but by the end of the term your Shakespeare will be.”
“No, Bulldog must get it on his Mr. Doolittle.”
“Don’t be silly! Old Whitfield will say I’m hamming. You know what a tartar he is for ‘subtlety’.”
“The only one of us who can win anything this term is Nigel, for his scenic design. There’s no-one half as interested in it as he is,” said Sandra.
“And even he doesn’t seem madly enthusiastic, you must admit,” added Jeremy.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lyn. “He’s been going down to the workshop every night this week.” There was a rather meaning silence. Lynette looked up sharply.
“Or has he? Do you mean he’s been going out with that Auriole atrocity instead?” The others nodded dumbly. “Well, I’m blowed! What a fool the boy is! He could win the prize with so little effort, if he’d only make the effort.”
“He hasn’t even started,” said Vicky. “I went down into the workshop and had a snoop round. There are about four sets by different people lying about half finished, but nothing of Nigel’s at all.”
“I think,” Lyn said determinedly, “that I shall have a word with Miss Auriole.”
“But you daren’t!” cried Vicky.
“Why not?”
“Well—I mean—she’s a senior.”
“She’s only a girl, the same as me. If she’s a few years older and smokes Turkish cigarettes in a silly great holder, I can’t help it. I shall speak to her after lunch.”
Auriole was holding court on a sofa that stood in an alcove in the foyer when Lyn found her, Nigel at her side mending a fencing foil for her. Ignored by Nigel, Lynette broke through the little group of students who were hanging on every word spoken by the chestnut-haired beauty. “Could I have a word with you, please, Auriole?”
“Oh, look, darling,” said Auriole to Nigel, “here’s your protégée. What do you want, my child?”
“I want to speak to you—privately.”
Auriole looked surprised.
“Good gracious! If you’re wanting good advice don’t come to Aunty Auriole. She’s sure to lead you astray!” She rose languidly and followed Lynette up the stairs.
“Well, what is it?”
Lyn swung round sharply, her dark eyes flashing. “I want to ask you to leave Nigel alone. At least until the end of the term.”
Auriole looked at her closely for a moment, then laughed loudly.
“What a child you are! Why should I leave him alone?”
“Because you’re interfering with his work.”
“Work? What’s that?” laughed Auriole.
Lyn lost her temper. “No, I don’t believe you do know what work is! I’ve never seen you do anything except lounge about flirting with people. Before Nigel met you he was keen and hard-working, but now he’s getting to be as idle as you are. And you’re spending all his money. Do you know he hasn’t paid his rent for three weeks?”
“Hasn’t paid his rent?” Auriole sounded astonished. “But I thought…”
“What did you think?”
“Well, he always seemed so free with his money. I thought he was very well off. I thought you all were—the whole gang of you. You always look it.”
“Nigel and all of us have a very small weekly allowance from our parents, which just about pays our rent and leaves a few shillings over for pocket-money—certainly not enough to cater for expensive tastes like yours. Anyhow, it will have to stop soon, because Nigel is absolutely broke.”
“Well, thanks, dear, for telling me. Saves me from wasting my time, doesn’t it?” And Auriole sailed down the stairs to lavish her attentions on one of the old Etonians from the beginners’ class.
From then on Nigel returned to the fold. He spent his evenings either working on the model theatre at the Academy or at No. 37 with the Blue Doors, studying and talking. On Saturday he accompanied them out to the theatre queues, where they sat outside on hard little stools for several hours, reading, eating chocolate, and doing crossword puzzles, until the doors opened and they scrambled in to get the best seats in the front row of the gallery. Entranced, they sat through Shakespeare, ballet, American comedies—all that the theatres offered them, and returned to Fitzherbert Street drunk with excitement and ambition.
On Sundays they had a system of going to a different famous church each time. In this way they visited St. Paul’s, Westminster Abbey, St. Martin in the Fields, Westminster Cathedral, and Brompton Oratory. Sunday afternoons usually found them walking over Hampstead Heath, and having tea at one of the little old inns that held the ghosts of so many poets and great men of the past.
As the end of the term drew near the whole Academy was in a turmoil. Each day in the little theatre there were performances by one class or another, and the rest of the students turned up in full force to applaud, laugh, or boo with twice the vigour of an ordinary audience. There was always a smattering of friends and relations of the performers at these shows. Lynette had an unfortunate experience of this. She was watching a particularly agonizing performance of Dear Brutus, in which a very fat girl was playing the “dream child”, and turning to Sandra in the interval, Lynette remarked, “Some dream child—more like a nightmare. She ought never to be allowed on the stage.”
“I agree,” said a voice on the other side of Lyn, “and I’m her mother.” For the rest of the show Lynette was so covered with shame she could hardly look up at the stage.
“And to think,” she said to Sandra afterwards, “that before long it will be us up there on the stage with everyone in the audience being catty about us. Oh, how awful!”
Their first show was the Molière comedy, but as the French class included students out of all the classes in the Academy, the Blue Doors had very small walking-on parts.
As the day approached for the performance of Pygmalion, the rivalry between Helen and Lynette became more and more keen. One day Helen remarked to her bitterly, “Of course you’ll get the scholarship. You’re bound to. Our performances are about equal, but you look all right on the stage.” This made Lynette feel guilty somehow.
Helen seemed to be growing very strange and nervy. One day in class Roma Seymore asked her suddenly, “Do you come from a theatrical family, Helen?” Helen looked at the floor, flushed brick red, then burst into tears and ran out of the room.
“What an odd thing!” said Mrs. Seymore. “Lynette, dear, go and see if she’s all right.”
Lynette found her crouching outside on the stairs, racked with sobs.
“Go away. Don’t touch me. How dare she pry into my affairs.”
“But she wasn’t prying. It was meant as a compliment, really it was!” Helen rose unsteadily, her pale face blotched with tears.
“Well, I don’t want compliments. They’re no good to me. All I want is that scholarship—and I know I shan’t get it.” She hurried off down the stairs before Lyn could stop her. But it was not long before Lyn saw her again.
That evening Lyn could not settle down. There was nothing to be learnt. She had polished her Eliza Doolittle scene and her Constance in King John until any more work on them would probably only make them worse. Sandra was sewing some of their costumes that needed alterations. Vicky was mending ballet shoes. The boys were spread out on the floor discussing some of the technical details of Nigel’s model stage set.
“I’m going out,” said Lyn. “Shan’t be long.”
She walked as far as Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall, and on to Westminster Bridge. The air was salt, as if it were the seaside, and the Houses of Parliament towered grey and delicate. All along the riverside the lights glittered and were reflected in the water. She leaned on the bridge for a long time. Suddenly she felt hungry, and decided that a cup of coffee was necessary before she attempted the long walk home. On the other side of the river she found a little café called the Riverside Dining Rooms and went in. While she waited to be served she drew out her pocket volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets and was deeply immersed when the waitress asked, “What can I get you?”
Lyn looked up quickly and her mouth fell open. It was Helen in a shabby cap and apron, with a tray in one hand, looking down at her viciously.
“I feared someone from the Academy would come here one day,” she hissed. “Why did it have to be you?”
“But do you—do you have to do this?” Lyn asked timidly.
“Yes, I do! I haven’t got any parents to send me a nice little weekly allowance. I had to do this for a year first, to save enough to pay my fees for this term. And now if I don’t get the scholarship I’ll have to leave until I can save enough to pay my fees for another term. It’s going to take rather a long time, isn’t it?” she snarled.
“But how long do you work here?”
“From six in the evening until one in the morning.”
“You must get tired.”
“I’m used to it now. Look, I’d better serve you or the old dragon will be nattering.”
The “old dragon” was a skinny old woman who sat behind the cash desk in a dirty black dress. When Helen brought her coffee Lynette said, “Won’t you tell me why you were so upset when Roma Seymore asked if you came from a theatrical family?”
Helen looked sullen for a moment, then said “My mother was Deirdre Anderson. I expect you’ve heard of her. She was a wonderful actress in her day—but extravagant. She died three years ago when I was fifteen. She didn’t leave anything—except debts. All her friends had deserted her by that time, so I started to work, but I knew—just knew that I had to act. So even if it takes me years to save enough money, I’m going to get my training.”
“But why don’t you find a job in a nicer place?” Helen laughed cynically. “That’s the joke. I can’t work anywhere where I’d be likely to meet any theatre people. I thought this place was as safe as any, until you walked in.”
“But why should you be ashamed of it?” cried Lyn. “I should be proud—terribly proud.”
“Waitress!” came a vexed shout from another table, and Helen hurried off. Lyn paid her bill and went out. On the way home she was deep in thought.
Next day neither Helen nor Lyn spoke to each other, and Lyn did not tell the rest of the Blue Doors about their meeting.
The performance of Pygmalion went off quite well, with Lynette and Helen both acclaimed as excellent “Elizas”. Bulldog’s “Doolittle” was much appreciated by the students, who laughed every time he opened his mouth, but Mr. Whitfield was not particularly amused. Their Shakespeare scenes were performed on the day before the last day of the term. Helen had a scene from Cleopatra which brought the house down. Lynette’s “Constance” was equally good. When the show was over and Lynette had removed her grease-paint she ran down the stairs to Mr. Whitfield’s office, knocked, and walked in.
“Please, Mr. Whitfield,” she said, “I’m going to be terribly presumptuous. But everyone says you don’t know whether to give the scholarship to me or to Helen. Even Mrs. Seymore said that. So please don’t think I’m being impertinent when I ask you not to give me the scholarship. I can do without it, but Helen can’t. I’ve got a small allowance, and though a scholarship would help, it’s not terribly necessary. But Helen will have to leave tomorrow unless you give her the scholarship. Oh, please do.”
Mr. Whitfield smiled quietly. “But how do you know that I am not intending to give the scholarship to Bulldog—or our Indian friend?”
“Well, you might be for all I know. But if you’re thinking of giving it to me, please give it to Helen instead.”
He looked thoughtfully at her for a few seconds, then said, “How much does the stage mean to you, Lynette?”
“Everything.”
“You can go now.”
Next day, at the end-of-term prize-giving Lyn clapped loudly as Nigel received the prize for scenic design, which was a beautifully equipped model theatre, like the one belonging to the Academy. “Alone I did it!” she whispered to Sandra.
And when Mr. Whitfield announced that the beginners’ scholarship had gone to Helen, Lyn clapped until her hands nearly came off.
“You ought to have had it!” all her friends told her. “It’s a shame!”
“No, it’s not. I’m quite happy about it,” she told them. And to herself:
“Happy about it? I’m positively smug!”