The Children's Book

thing was the women who auditioned for Thomas. Olive had tried to quarrel with August Steyning. If he was auditioning male juveniles for the Gathorn, why not for Tom?

Because of the pantomime tradition, said August Steyning. Olive appealed to the Germans. They said, shiftily, that the work appealed to many traditions, from Wagnerian opera to the puppet theatres. It had balletic elements and elements from the commedia dell’arte. They liked the idea of a central figure with a clear voice, neither broken nor childishly piping.

Olive was a woman who imagined male characters and male creatures. The travellers underground—Tom, the Gathorn, the salamander, the loblolly, were male, as Tom’s angrily detached shadow was male.

Steyning said a woman could better do the element of mask, of uber-marionette, he wanted.

Olive needed to please Steyning.

The audition piece was the meeting between Thomas and the Gathorn. A series of variegated Puckish boys talked to a series of boyish women, interspersed with divas. Olive’s medium was words. She thought Lucy Fontaine might do, and imagined Gladys Carpenter as thickset. Sylvia Simon sounded hopeful, whereas Daisy Bremner and Glory Gayheart sounded girlish or unreal.

The women auditioned in skirts. Lucy Fontaine had a pleasant, clear voice and sizeable breasts and hips. Olive shut her eyes, and heard

“I’m lost, and I fear I shall never get out of here alive. I don’t know where I’m going, let alone how to get there. I have this small light, and a sketchy map.”

And the Gathorns. “It’s not so bad. I live here. You can delight in the dark, if you understand it. It’s full of unexpected riches.”

And the boys/women. “Who are you? How do you live down here?”

“You can see in the dark, if you get used to it. There are creatures down here who shine their own light. You need to meet a loblolly.”

“I’ve seen things glowing, or whisking along, in the distance.”

“The mine is full of spirits. Some kind, or fairly kind. Some are tricky. And some are downright nasty.”

“I didn’t ask to—to go on a quest. I just wanted to be in the fields.”

Stop, enough, Steyning would call at this point. Olive tried closing her eyes and simply hearing voices. She learned things. Her hero was more afraid, and less brave, than most heroes. Glory Gayheart, who was skinny enough, had a rich voice, a confident contralto. Lucy Fontaine got exactly the right mix of bleakness, light clarity, friendliness. “Zu viel Brust,” said Anselm Stern. Daisy Bremner was eager and girlish, Glory Gayheart was operatic, Sylvia Simon was scared and not good-looking, though Olive thought she knew what she was doing. Gladys Carpenter was tall and thin, with cropped white-blonde hair. Her face was bony. She had the luck of having by far the best Gathorn, a boy called Miles Martin, with a huge mouth which he curled into a variety of smiles and grins, a husky voice, a curly mop of hair and large eyes. He had worked out a crouching and skipping set of moves but when Gladys spoke, he listened, and she spoke to him. Olive shut her eyes again. The voice was sexless and silver. It was brave and full of the fear of the dark. She opened her eyes. This upright girl had crept into the skin of the boy she had imagined.

“I fear I shall never get out of here alive.”

Matter-of-fact, dignified, desperate.

“She’ll do,” said August. “The only one without too much expressiveness.”

They rehearsed. The Sterns worked on the puppets, the marionettes, the salamander, the loblolly, the coal-ball. Steyning designed and redesigned the sets. He rehearsed the masked groups—White Damp, Choke Damp, Fire Damp, the Fireman in white linen with rod and candle, rats, bats, shadows, spiders. New scenes were written to make more happen. The Silf—a girl of nineteen who looked fourteen and was called Doris Almond—was wound and unwound with cobwebs. They changed the material the cobwebs were made from, to something that shone, a little, and caught the light. The turntable that rose from under the stage broke and ground to an unbalanced halt. It was mended. Puppets were discarded as too small, or ineffective. Wolfgang Stern designed and redesigned the coal-ball. A curtain was made, painted with black ferns, black dragonflies, black monstrous millipedes. Programmes were printed. The play opened. Steyning had given it a title: Tom Underground. Olive had not told Tom, either that they had adapted his story, or that they had taken his name. She had not thought about Tom whilst the work was going on. Names impose themselves on writers, and will not be changed, and come to be facts in nature, like stones, like plants, that are what they are. Only another writer, Olive thought, now it came to telling Tom Wellwood about the play, would believe her if she said that, about names. It was possible Tom would be pleased that his name was at the centre.

Steyning sent out invitations to the first performance. They were elegantly printed, with a silver bough and a coal-ball. “Olive Wellwood, August Steyning and the Management of the Elysium Theatre invite you to Tom Underground, a new form of theatrical drama.”

Tom opened his at breakfast. Olive was watching him. He read it out, to Violet, Florian, Hedda, Harry and Robin, all of whom had similar envelopes. Humphry was away, in Manchester, but would be back for the First Night. Olive knew she should say—should already have said—something.

Violet said “So the hero’s called Tom. That’s nice, Tom.”

“Yes,” said Tom, “that’s nice.” His voice was unemphasised, toneless, not, Olive thought desperately, unlike Gladys Carpenter. He said

“I wasn’t asked. Or told.”

Violet said “It was saved up for a nice surprise.”

Hedda said “Lots of people are called Tom. It’s a common name.”

“What’s it about?” asked Robin.

Violet said “That’s saved up for a nice surprise, too.”

44

The First Night was New Year’s Day 1909.