being enacted, where not one movement, one phrase, one glance, was new or could be new. Everyone here — there were a good thousand people now, and more were pressing in to watch — had seen similar scenes or taken part in them. It was the music that struck straight to the heart, or the senses. The crowd was silent. They watched Julie as intently as the citizens of Belles Rivieres had watched her a hundred years ago. As for the townspeople rehearsed that morning by Roy, they were unnecessary, for nothing could be more powerful than this silent staring crowd. Then, as the light slowly went, a twenty-foot high projection of Julie the young woman appeared on a screen behind and above her house. It was at first a faint image, for the light had not gone, but it gathered substance, and changed: Julie aged on that screen, until she was the comfortable lady Philippe had wooed, and then she was a small child, her own daughter, or herself. Stephen said into Sarah's ear, 'I'm off. I'll walk. Do me good. I'm going to telephone Elizabeth and tell her what is happening here and ask her what chance there is of a decent run. We have been thinking of three or four days — but just look.' For people still approached through the trees, coming to a dead stop when the music enveloped them. As Stephen left his chair (Sarah thought that he showed all the signs of a man escaping), Henry took it. He put his lips to her ear and said, 'Sarah, Sarah, life's a bitch, Sarah… it's a bitch, I love you.' He said this in time with the music, so he was theatrical and absurd, they both had to laugh. But his lips were tremulous. All the appropriate thoughts clicked through her mind: But this is obviously nonsense, it's all the fault of the theatre, of show business, so don't take any notice. But at the same time she thought, This is Julie's country: anything can happen. Old women can seem like young ones, and a blue-eyed Irish girl with plump freckled shoulders can become a girl as slender and bright and tigerish as a bee, just like the fairy tales. She was shaken, oh yes, but managed to offer Henry, who was leaning as close as he could, a gently amused smile. What a hypocrite.
The scenes in Martinique were coming to an end. The sun had gone, but reflected rays arbitrarily picked out a buckle on Paul's belt, or the handkerchief Madame Vairon was sobbing into, while the golden hair of one of the singers seemed to be on fire. Julie and Paul walked away from weeping Maman into patterns of dusky forest light and shade, appropriately, since the next scene was in the forest, was in fact here. A large window frame stood up behind the actors, to show that the scene was inside the house and not — as it must appear to the literal eye — outside it. And now here was a tiny living room, where there was not only the harp but a lute, a recorder, a viola, while flutes and a clarinet lay on a rack. An easel, on which was a large self-portrait in pastels, and a table where Julie wrote her journals were carried on by the four youths who a moment ago had been officers.
The end with Paul, inevitable and perhaps not the most interesting part of the tale, came quickly, while the singers sang, most hauntingly, words that were all Julie's, if from different years and about two different men, but arranged by Sarah, who, just like Julie, half believed she heard the music of those musicians of nearly a thousand years ago and knew the words they might have sung.
There was an interval, a long one, while Henry talked to the players and the singers. Words and song had been pitched for a crowd of three hundred, not for many hundreds. It must be discussed tomorrow morning whether amplifiers must be used, at the meeting which they knew must take this modest production a step up into something more ambitious. And the first night was tomorrow, with so much to be done.
During this first interval people were humming Julie's songs, and Henry made a foray into the crowd to report success, and again during Act Two, when he could return to say, with satisfaction, that there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Meanwhile on her other side Benjamin sometimes engaged her attention with this or that comment, made in the hope they would not be found inappropriate from this theatre innocent. They weren't. All were to the point, and Henry took note of them. Benjamin was pleased, and, too, that he had a golden finger in this pie.
The second interval was brief, but long enough for the company to work up a fine head of anxiety.
What were they, the audience, going to make of Julie's 'second-period' music, the impersonal music so much a contrast to the sorrowful songs that had gone before? Yet, if unemotional, why did it bring tears to the eyes? Did that mean it acted on some unnamed part of the organism, such as a disembodied heart or liver? And the third act asked so much of an audience: Julie alone, mourning for her child. Julie ostracized. The programme did say this was for the sake of dramatic simplicity, and in fact the little girl had been two years old when she died of 'brain fever' — whatever that was. And then there was the so satisfactory suitor, and the prospect of happiness — rejected, and many sound and sensible citizens must always find this a confirmation that there was something really wrong with the woman.
As the curve of a low hill finally absorbed the last rays, so they were all steeped in a hot twilight, the music ended with the chilly octaves of Julie's death, the chanting of a flute, and the long groaning under-note of the shawm. At once the evening was noisy with cicadas, their din signalling applause, at first sporadic, and then prolonged. The seated people stood up to clap wildly, and while the crowd dispersed they clapped and cheered and shouted.
Some enterprising firm, hearing of the big audience up in the hills that would need transportation, had caused three coaches to stand waiting, which was all that would fit into the space.
There were limousines for the company: Bill got in by Sarah, Benjamin on her other side.
'What a wonderful success,' said Benjamin.
'You must be so pleased,' said Bill, and kissed her cheek with suggestive lips. Furious, she turned and kissed him on the lips, a real kiss, which he took with a smile half shocked, half delighted, while he glanced, embarrassed, at Benjamin, who was staring straight ahead, apparently to listen while the engaging young driver assured them that
When the car reached the hotel it was still not eleven. Stephen had left a note for Sarah to say he had spoken to Elizabeth. The news was good. There could be at least two weeks' run at Queen's Gift.
The company settled around the pavement tables, absorbing into itself tourists and townspeople who had been at the theatre and who were demanding autographs with that calm determination to get their rights, that is to say, a piece of the action, or the pie, or the property, which characterizes autograph hunters from one end of the world to the other. The players were restless, full of suspense. For even a successful dress rehearsal is still not a
Molly came from the hotel, later than the others, and found an empty chair near Bill. He at once bent down to kiss her. She did not respond. The moment the kiss was over, Bill lifted his chair over to a place near Sarah's and murmured, 'You look beautiful tonight.'
Sally appeared, looking for a chair. Bill pulled one forward and Sally slid into it, while her eyes searched for Richard Service. Sally still vibrated with all the emotions of having been Julie's mother, and her black skin glistened with heat against the red of her dress. Bill smiled warmly at her and kissed her, but she turned her head so her lips were out of reach. She laughed, an all-tolerant laugh, and directed to Sarah something not far off a wink. Her smile was satirical, regretful. Then she shrewdly examined Molly, who sat suffering, but then she turned away, out of delicacy.
Then she drank off Sarah's glass of
