Humphry and Olive were in the box of Mr. Rosenthal, the impresario, with his wife, Zelda, Sir Laurence Porteous, a theatrical knight, and some Liberal politicians. The Sterns were behind the scenes, directing, deploying and manipulating the life-size puppets, the stringed marionettes, the loblolly and the salamander. Steyning was in the box with the Wellwoods, unusually fidgety. He felt that only he could get the lighting precisely perfect—the flood of blood, the White Damp, the Fire Damp, the brilliance surging out of the coal-ball. He was next to Olive, and at one point gripped her silver sleeve, and then muttered an apology.
The Wellwood children, with Violet, had a box of their own. Dorothy had not come. Tom was not in evening dress, but he was cleaned up, and had a clean shirt and an acceptable jacket. He was between Phyllis, in a golden caramel-coloured dress, made by Violet, and Hedda, in sea-green silk with a lace collar. Violet sat the other side of Phyllis. She wore black, trimmed with mauve, and a cameo brooch at her neck. She had set her pretty gilt chair back into the shadows.
The younger boys, Florian, Robin and Harry, now sixteen, fourteen, and thirteen, were grouped beyond Violet, washed and brushed.
Tom leaned his chin on the velvet rim of the box and stared out. The box was in the upper air of the dome, which was rich midnight-blue and star-studded. Gilded angels with silver trumpets sailed across it. There was a huge chandelier, a waterfall of crystal droplets, containing and scattering brightness. Tom looked out into emptiness, paradoxically crowded, with gargoyles under the boxes, and dreamy cherubs sitting above the curtained stage, which was a deeper emptiness.
Hedda said “You always feel as though you ought to jump, don’t you?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Violet.
Hedda insisted. “It sort of pulls you, to fall into it.”
“You’re making me feel sick,” said Phyllis, smiling. Tom put his head further into the cradle of his arms.
The orchestra arrived, and shifted and shuffled and made the usual discordant scraping and peeping tuning noises. Then they played. The music had light-footed dances in it, and whirlwinds scattering leaves, and a kind of dark, downward sucking drift from the clarinets and bassoons. The curtains with their floating bats and spiders drew back, and revealed a walled garden in the sun, on which an artificial sun shone brightly and evenly, across which a man-size rat scampered and danced to flute and drum music, carrying in its teeth, which were sharp and glittering, a limp smoky-grey web, which it spread out, using its forepaws, to reveal an elongated human shape, uniformly ash-grey, lifeless. And it rolled it up and jumped out, over the wall.
And the shadowless boy came into the garden. He sat on a bench, and played a recorder. He sang a ballad. He was a woman. Tom was disgusted. She wore doublet and hose, and had shapely legs. She had a cropped cap of silver and gold hair. She had red lips and polished fingernails. She moved her hips like a boy but they were women’s hips. Another boy—a real one—came into the garden, and they played, and talked and the second boy said “Look at my shadow,” and threw it across the lawn. And then Tom, its name was Tom, discovered it was single and had no shadow.
The story wound on. Tom knew, and didn’t know, the story. His skin crawled. The Elf Queen came—she too had no shadow—and talked to Tom. The scene changed. It was a bare heath, with a crack which was a door in a wall of rock which was the backcloth. Red light poured blood from the wings. The orchestra played bloody sounds. Tom remembered Loie Fuller in Paris. He refused grimly to suspend disbelief. The woman-Tom was up to the knees in the bloodlight, and staggered dramatically.
Tom cradled his head in his hands. Phyllis tapped him reproachfully on the shoulder. “You’ve got to look,” she hissed. “I
The interval came and the audience applauded vigorously and there was a buzz of talk. Hedda said “It’s brilliantly atmospheric. The puppets are so clever. It’s sinister, don’t you think, Tom?”
Tom excused himself, and blundered out in the direction of the lavatory. He stood in an anonymous line of males, and went in and pissed into the porcelain and tried not to think, which he had trained himself to do, or not to do.
He went back to the box. He was both not-thinking, and not-believing. Something had been taken from him, certainly, but in these lights, against this backcloth, it was something fabricated and trivial, which it made no sense to mourn.
The end came. Light, and silken ferns in multifarious transparent greens and golds, flowed out of the coal- ball.
The audience, in the same way, erupted into cries of approval and hands beating hands.
“You ought to clap, Tom,” said Phyllis, clapping prettily.
Tom clapped, so that she would stop talking. They could see into the box where Olive was. People were applauding and pointing. She came with August Steyning, to the rim of their space, and inclined her head to the calling and clapping.
Tom thought, we are all shut up in these boxes and we can’t get out.
He knew he was prohibited from thinking about his mother. He was shut in a box, and there was nothing he could do.
“Must get out,” said Tom. “Air. Need air.” He pushed his golden chair back, found the door in the red throat of the box-trap, and stumbled out.
So that when Olive came with Humphry, to be kissed and congratulated by her children, Tom was not there. She was dazed with success; her hair was coming loose, she had to put it up, again and again. She had not looked into the cupboard in her mind when she had locked away any anxiety about Tom Wellwood and Tom Underground. It would work out. Things worked out. Violet said “I trust you are happy” and Olive then looked round her children,
