After the Act Read online

  ‘Well, let’s ask Kitty to vet it.’

  ‘She hasn’t the time. Anyway, she hasn’t lived in France for years.’

  At the window I peered out at the parked cars, the solitary walker, under my fingers the rich brocade of the curtains slipped like a woman’s skin.

  ‘Charisse has read the play in the original and seen the London production twice. I don’t feel that with my feeble knowledge of the language I can turn up one morning with a list of amendments to an expert’s translation.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ she said irritably. ‘You’re the author! It’s your play! Without you there’s—there’s nothing. You don’t make your weight felt enough! People don’t realise how important you are. You so quickly take a back seat in everything. And you know as well as I do that half the play’s success depends on implication and innuendo and what one critic called ‘‘the sweetened hemlock that you don’t notice until it has been swallowed.’’ ’

  She got up from the indirectly lit mirror-glass dressing table, whose polished reflections were broken by tidy clusters of pill-boxes. Our bathroom always smelled medicinal, and even the bedroom had its peculiar tang of cosmetics and antiseptics. Harriet was five feet ten, and one of her assets was that her body had never become angular, it still retained the lankiness and awkward grace of its youth. I remembered the first time I’d seen it: in the bed in her flat in Hampstead when she was laid up with fibrositis. (She was living alone but I remember how utterly scrupulously clean everything was about her: the peach-coloured fine-wool long-sleeved nightdress looked as if it had been put on two minutes ago, the sheets hardly creased, the embroidered pillow case.) Should I ever see that other body I now desired? (Did I really desire it? Was it as important as that? In a single meeting, some clashed glances, a half-dozen polite smiles, hands touched, a half promise to telephone: were these the inescapable preliminaries to infidelity? Nonsense. In my youth I had not seldom met girls, liked them, gone on a little way: meetings, kisses, some petting; then the attraction faded. Was this likely to be any different?)

  ‘Morris,’ Harriet said. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  I blinked once or twice as if her cigarette smoke had gone in my eyes. I had never realised before how harsh her voice was. She was watching me keenly; the drink in her made her stare heavy and accusative. In the seven years of our marriage we had each come to a perception of the other’s moods.

  ‘I was thinking of a man I met at a cocktail party Charisse gave. A Scotsman with a French mother. Pretty intelligent type and probably has something to do with the stage, I’d think. When I go over I might see him again and ask him if he’d go over the translation with me when it comes through. Personally I think it’s very much a waste of time, but it wouldn’t take long to try him out.’

  She slipped off her dressing gown and pulled back the satin coverlet of her bed.

  ‘I really need a maid, Morris!’

  ‘In this small flat?’

  ‘Oh, not all the time, but in the mornings. And in the evening when we entertain. It would give me—give me more time to be on hand if you need me; and anyway I hate housework.… What’s his name?’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘This man you met who might help.’

  ‘Oh … Wilshere. Alexander Wilshere. Charisse has his number. I’ll call him if I have the time.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Mlle Wilshere,’ I said, ‘Est-ce-que je peux lui parler?’

  ‘Un moment. Je vais la chercher.’

  I fingered the jeton, having bought a second in case of need. A call box, for some reason, seemed the appropriate place from which to make this call.

  ‘Oui? Allo …’

  ‘Mlle. Wilshere?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘This is Morris Scott. I promised to ring you next time I was in Paris.’

  ‘Oh … Yes … How are you?’ Her voice was hesitant, some of the lilt gone out of it.

  ‘Are you free for lunch today?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  There was someone else in the room; that might be it. ‘When, then?’

  ‘I—don’t really know.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Well, er—’

  ‘For lunch?’

  ‘No. I could manage later. Five o’clock?’

  I had a date in the evening, but that would have to be switched. ‘Fine. Dinner. Where shall we meet? Under the monument in the Place Vendôme?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘At five?’

  ‘At five.’

  When I rang off I found that the hand holding the extra jeton was damp. I had never suffered from sweaty hands in my life. It’s strange what first love will do.

  I was staying at the Scribe—a pleasant enough hotel, central, not cheap. But not the obvious choice for a successful playwright. It was one of the things I found quite difficult—to condition myself to the possession and spending of large amounts of money. Some people take a sudden access of money in their stride. One year they live on their friends, ironing patches on the inside knees of their trousers, darning their turtle-neck sweaters, walking in the rain to save bus fares, without the price of a drink. The next year they have a Bentley and an apartment in Albany, and they lunch nowhere but at the Caprice or the White Tower. I, who had had a decent middle-class upbringing found it impossible in a few months to shake off the habits of a lifetime. One kept up appearances, one scraped a little but not too much, one knew instinctively the things on which it was justifiable to spend money and the things on which one had to save.

  I was in the Place Vendôme by four-thirty. A surer man would have gone into the Ritz for a drink while waiting. Instead I walked down the Rue de Castiglione, deliberately emptying my mind of apprehensions or anticipations for the future. Again, with the habit of forethought long ingrained, this took an effort, but for once it was successful. By the time ten to five came, and she with it, I had somehow—for perhaps the first occasion in my life—become a person without attachments, existing for the moment only in a Paris street, cars streaming by, but with the lights of a summer afternoon ennobling and softening the long colonnades, a person briefly without loyalties, briefly without memories, briefly without intent. I was a man going to meet a girl, surrounded only by anticipation, tautened like a bow-string with pleasure.

  She was in a scarlet flared skirt, with a navy-blue frilled blouse and a bright scarf. The way she looked was something discovered afresh. Perhaps it was a reflection of the sun, but it seemed as if her skin had a flush. Her fine-textured hair had been fumbled by the breeze coming up from the gardens, her eyes were alert, smiling, full of zest, she wore too little make-up.

  I didn’t know what to say. ‘Where shall we go? Are you English enough to drink tea?’

  ‘Yes, love it.’

  Even then I did not take her into the Ritz—this possibly because there might be friends—so we sat at a café sheltered from the breeze, and she took off her gloves, slowly finger by finger, undressing her hands in public, hands with good nails, untinted, long firm hands for so soft-seeming a woman: when they were naked she folded the gloves, carefully laid them on the table; all this done in silence.

  No rings. The waiter came and I ordered.

  She said: ‘Is your play coming along well?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not in rehearsal yet—won’t be until September, I imagine. We’re waiting for the translation.’

  We discussed this, but absently, as if it were happening to a third party. While at the first meeting we had talked factually, hastily, as if time and life were short, now at the second we picked our way through a fog of casual words and made no contact.

  She at last it was who said: ‘Tell me about yourself. You’re married, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. And you?’

  ‘Oh!’ She laughed under her breath. ‘No.’

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘There is someone?’

  ‘There was some
one.’

  ‘Past tense?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘French?’

  ‘No, Scottish. Another cup?’

  ‘Please.’

  She poured it out, frowning a little. ‘Jackie is always trying to hook me up with someone.’

  ‘Jackie?’

  ‘The Comtesse de la Fayarde. A born match-maker. You’d think she might have lost her zest.…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘After all her experience.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see. But it doesn’t trouble some people. They make a habit of it.’

  ‘Her name was Jackie Bunt, you know. The X-ième richest heiress in America. I’ve forgotten which—fifth or sixth. Her first three husbands were all adventurers: they went through her money faster than train bandits. By the time she married Jules she had only a million dollars left.’

  ‘My heart bleeds for her.’

  ‘All right, all right. But Jules—I’m told—was then just an army officer, mon colonel among the colons, or something like that. Everyone predicted he would get through the last million at a blinding rate. But it hasn’t happened. French husbandry has stepped in. He’s caring for her money for the first time ever; Jackie even complains he keeps her short.’

  It pleased me too much to hear her talk: the lilting, faintly accented voice was a spell-binder.

  ‘He was a count, of course?’

  ‘I see you’ve heard something. No, I gather he half inherited it, half bought it after his marriage. It pleases Jackie and does no one any harm. He’s quite unpretentious about it, and they’re happy together.’ She looked past me. ‘This all happened five years ago, of course; before I came here. I only go on hearsay.’

  ‘And you say she always tries to match-make for you? With married men?’

  ‘Not specially. But then she’d hardly look on marriage as an insuperable bar, would she?’

  ‘At least not to tea in the Rue de Rivoli.’

  She didn’t smile. With her left hand she was building a small triangular house of wrapped sugar cubes. It was as if I had sent out a reconnaissance force and failed to make contact.

  To change the subject I told her of my doubts (Harriet’s) about the translation, the wish to check it against another knowledgeable opinion, and asked if she could give it. She was obviously surprised at this, and flattered.

  ‘I’ll try. I certainly mix with young French people. Whether I could do it I don’t know. When will you have a copy?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I hope. I have an English copy with me, and you could have that too.’

  ‘You go back to England tomorrow?’

  ‘No, Friday.’

  ‘I couldn’t do this for you by then.’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t expect it. There’s no hurry.’

  ‘You see … if I did make criticism I’d want to be sure. I could post it to you. Next week—’

  ‘I’d rather come over.’

  She smiled then, glinting, as at some personal thought. ‘You like Paris?’

  ‘I like Paris.’

  ‘My mother does not come from here. She’s a Marseillaise. Dark and slight.’

  ‘Is she as beautiful as you?’

  This was a subtle approach for a man of my years, but I was past finesse. She sipped her tea, finishing it, gave the question unhurried thought.

  ‘I think she is nicer looking than I am—still. She is—finer built, finer boned.… You’re laughing at me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But beauty … Do you ever sit on the Champs Elysées on a fine morning and watch the women pass? They make me feel fat, ungainly, blunt-faced, badly dressed, uncouth. Beauty indeed! …’ She pushed over her pyramid of sugar.

  ‘What do you look for?’ I asked. ‘The number of hairs to an eyebrow; the colour of the mascara?’

  She was thoughtful. ‘I suppose really the French-woman, whatever sort of face she has, always dresses as if she’s meant to be a beauty. It makes a difference. That just makes the difference, you know.’

  ‘You may be right. But I wasn’t talking only of superficialities.’

  ‘Neither was I … I don’t think this is a very good conversation, do you?’

  ‘Start another, then.’

  She laughed. ‘I’d rather walk. D’you mind walking? The Tuileries are looking at their best.’

  We walked energetically for upwards of an hour, then went to a cinema near the Rond Point. Afterwards we dined at a restaurant and watched the wild night traffic of the Champs Elysées. I was still pretty uncertain. The need to see this girl again had been a compulsive one; but I had come to the encounter today prepared to let the thing drop, before it took on the look of a real commitment. I was comfortably married; I owed more to Harriet than I could repay; I was on the crest of sudden success. I was not such an idiot as to want to foul up that success with a deliberately invited situation in my personal life.

  But as the evening wore on I felt less and less inclined to brake at the warning lights.

  Obviously there had to be two equations in this problem—the one I had just considered: my own intention to go on or withdraw—and hers. We were both shy. No doubt this will rock the smart boys to the soles of their Sulka socks. A man of thirty-two who has spent seven years in the theatre, or on the periphery of the theatre, and is the author of the current success of the year in London: he and a girl working as secretary to an American divorcée prominent in Paris society because of her money and a bought title. Innocence appears in the most peculiar places.

  Well, if either of us had been any different, nothing but the most trivial affair would ever have come of it.…

  She told me her mother had escaped to England in 1940 with her parents and had met and married Douglas Wilshere, a naval engineer, the following year. Alexandra had two brothers, one in Canada, the other still at school. Her father now worked at Rosyth; she had come to Paris to study at the Sorbonne and had stayed on after.

  She asked me about myself, and at first I turned the questions, aware that I could not be as frank as she, or that if I was it might nip the bloom of the evening. But towards the end, so far had we come in a few hours that I thought, isn’t this the test?

  So I said: ‘ Well, you know the last part. Success stories are a bore. What else is there to say? My father’s a doctor. He wanted me to be. I didn’t want to be. We fought battles over it. In the end I said I would be one. So I did; I read and studied and qualified. I practised for twelve months and then gave it up to write. He’s never forgiven me.’

  ‘Not even now?’

  ‘No … You see, he’s a dedicated man. He’s dedicated and thinks I should have been. To a man who devotes his life to curing sick people, a playwright who entertains a few healthy people after dinner each evening is pretty small beer. At least … if he has a talent for medicine, he’s wasting his talent.’

  ‘Had you?’

  ‘No. But he thinks I had—or should have had.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died eight years ago. She thought as he did. It was more—much more her pressure than his that prompted me to qualify.’

  ‘And when she died you gave it up?’

  ‘Well, yes. At least, it wasn’t exactly cause and effect like that.’

  We were getting near the crux of the account. So far I had listened to myself and felt that truth had been served and the truth had no hurt in it.

  She was staring out through the window, and the extra lights from passing cars cast new illuminations over her face. It was such a gentle young face that my heart choked.

  But already I knew well enough that there was more than gentleness there: great vigour, the ruthlessness of youth if confronted by blurred motives. I said: ‘Soon after she died I was working as locum for a man in Hampstead and I was called in to see a woman—a girl—called Harriet Quigley. We got friendly—and then engaged—and then married. Harriet was crazy on the theatre; she’d done a bit of acting and stage production. She read some things
I had written and was enthusiastic about them. It was a great link.… She had money of her own—not a fortune but enough to live on. After we married she persuaded me to give up medicine and write full time. That I did.… For a while it was a struggle; but it has paid off in the end.’

  Alexandra was still looking at the cars. To break her of it I pushed a packet of cigarettes across the table but she shook her head.

  ‘When I was sixteen I fell in love with an English boy,’ she said. ‘It hurt so much. It really hurt. If we had been old enough we should have got married. We should have got married to relieve the pain. But in fact nothing happened—nothing immoral—nothing progressive—nothing constructive. Nobody, I think, knew of it either in his family or mine. Our love lived and died in a sort of vacuum of good behaviour. It was pathetic but it wasn’t funny. I’ve never felt as strongly about anyone since.’

  The waiter came and I ordered Turkish coffee.

  She said: ‘Perhaps love’s like smallpox: if you get an inoculation against it early on, you grow up resistant. But if you drift along untroubled till a really active germ bites you, then you’re knocked out flat.’

  I laughed. ‘And some people go down with small attacks all their lives.’

  She looked at me. ‘Which are you, Morris?’

  Her eyes were quite light and clear, as if the question had no important meaning for her. I learned later that she was able often to bring a detachment to emotion when it most threatened her.

  ‘Maybe I was naturally resistant. Or preoccupied with other things …’

  ‘Your wife doesn’t come over with you?’

  ‘She hasn’t yet. She doesn’t like flying, and there’s no particular point in her rushing backwards and forwards.’

  ‘Is she older than you?’

  ‘A few years … Who told you?’

  ‘No one. There was something in your voice.’

  ‘It isn’t enough to make that degree of difference.’

  ‘Are you happy with her?’

  The coffee was rich and sweet—foreign, cloying. ‘I wish I could answer that.’