“There are people who can only see the roles we play, and there are people who can only see the actors pretending. But it’s a very rare and strange thing that a person has the power to see both at once: this kind of double vision is a gift. If your daughters are beginning to frighten you, then it is because they are beginning to acquire it. I am speaking mostly to the woman beneath Mrs. Winter, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Odets, and the rest,” she adds, “the actor I pretend not to see, the woman who plays all women, all the women but never the girls, never the daughters. The role of the daughter is lost to you now, as you know.”
She is gesturing with one hand cupped and empty and upturned. The mothers are nodding.
“Let me introduce my first student now,” she says, “a student of St. Margaret’s College who has been studying with me for almost four years. Please let’s put our hands together and welcome to the stage Briony- Rose.”
“Stanley?” the boy Felix says, pausing at the door of the Green Room and looking in with an air of officious concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m going to bail,” Stanley says into the mirror. His face is white. “I can’t do this. The girl’s parents are in the audience. I can’t do it. I’m going to do a runner. I don’t want to be an actor anymore. I can’t follow through. It’ll bugger up the production, but I can’t do it, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“You’re nuts,” Felix says in what he believes to be a soothing voice. “Think of all the money we’ve spent. If we don’t get box office it’ll come out of everyone’s pocket. Everyone will hate you. You can’t pull out now.”
“I’ll move,” Stanley says. “I’ll move away for a while until everyone has forgotten.” He wants to put his face in his hands, but he has already been through the makeup line and he knows his lipstick and powder will smudge. He howls suddenly and slaps the vanity with both hands. “Why are they here? Why? What kind of sadist parents actually want to see a play about their daughter getting physically abused?”
“What?” Felix says, listening properly for the first time. “You mean the parents of the actual girl? The Victoria girl?”
Stanley moans in reply and kicks the radiator hard. He feels a stab of welcome pain shoot up his calf and linger there.
“Rubbish,” Felix says. “How would they even know about it? Nobody knows what it’s about. It’s opening night. Not even the tutors know. Where did you hear that?”
Stanley turns doleful eyes to Felix and then shakes his head. “I’ve seen them,” he says. “In the foyer. With her little sister.”
There is a pause. Then Felix says, “What kind of sadist parents—”
“She’s come to see me,” Stanley says. “Isolde’s come to see me. As a surprise.”
“Who?” Felix says, by now thoroughly bewildered.
“Isolde,” Stanley says. “Oh, God. And she brought her parents. She doesn’t know what it’s about, she doesn’t know about Victoria or any of it, and they’re just about to—oh, God. I can’t do it. Not in front of them.”
There is a glimmer of panic in Felix’s eyes as it dawns upon him that Stanley might really make good his word and run away. He looks quickly over his shoulder down the dressing-room corridor, and then says, “Your parents here tonight?”
Stanley gives another howl. “My dad,” he says. “To make matters a whole fucking lot worse. My dad.”
“Mine too,” Felix says. Then he says, tentatively, “If the girl’s parents really are here, Stanley, they’ve got to be prepared to be shocked. You can’t actually buy tickets to a show like this and expect to keep your… your innocence. You can’t. They must know what they’re in for. And they’re not kids.”
“But they don’t know what it’s about yet,” Stanley says. “It’s opening night. Where in the fucking program does it say that this is a play about their daughter? It doesn’t. They’re coming to see me, as a surprise.” He looks again at himself in the mirror. The makeup artist has done a good job, powdering over his blond eyebrows and drawing in black arches that are higher and more angular than his own. He has a little red pout, and all the natural shadows of his face are thickened with gray: the creases around his mouth, the hollows of his cheeks, under his chin. His eyes are ringed with black.
Felix is still looking thoroughly confused. “On the bright side,” he says, trying hard to reclaim the situation, “you’re absolutely unrecognizable in your costume and everything. If that’s what you’re worried about. With the parents.”
“Yeah,” Stanley says. Underneath his makeup his jaw is set and his eyes are red and his face is pale, but in the mirror the pouting caricature that is Stanley’s reflection twitches his head and even seems to smile.
Isolde and her parents are already on stage when the lights come up, Isolde on the far end of the settee and leaning still further outward, over the arm, every inch of her body craning away from the other two figures on stage: a stout mustached father and a bony mother who buttons all the way to the top.
“What you need to understand,” Isolde’s mother says, “is that this little taste of what could be is inside you now. You’ve swallowed it up, like candy from a brown paper bag.”
“What you need to understand,” Isolde’s father says, “is now that we know about it, it won’t happen anymore.”
“Remember that the only difference between you and any of the others,” Isolde’s mother says, “is at what price, and under what circumstances, you are prepared to yield.”
Stanley and his father enter, through the frosted French doors in the middle of the false backdrop, preceded by Victoria who has her palm out like she is showing the way.
“He’s here,” she says unnecessarily, making more of the line than she ought to, because it is her only one and she wants to be seen. The mother makes a flapping motion with her hand and Victoria exits, walking with the pursed self-conscious walk of an actor who has too small a part and so has practiced a single move to excess.
The group stand stationary for a moment, Stanley and Isolde looking at each other with an intense smoldering glare that is lost to everyone in the upper circle and in the restricted-viewing sections of the stalls.
Then Isolde’s father says stiffly, “I was just about to say, now that we’re here, let’s sort this out in a civilized way, like adults. But just as it was on the tip of my tongue I realized that the word
There is a silence. Stanley’s father is the first to sit down.
“The purpose of this recital,” the saxophone teacher says, “is really to let the students speak for themselves, as it were. It is really just a vehicle to let them voice their own growth, their own awakening, lay it bare like a virgin at an altar for all of you to see. While you are watching tonight, a good question to ask yourselves might be, What is this performance telling me about the performer? What naked shape emerges out of the rarefying mist of this girl’s music? What private things are being offered, and what private things are being betrayed?”
Julia is sitting in the second row with her sax held loosely on her lap, waiting for her cue to rise and take the stage.
“I mention this,” the saxophone teacher is saying, “because my next student has had a very difficult year. Many things have happened to complicate this girl’s life this year, and if we are very lucky we will see some of these tragic and beautiful things reflected in her performance tonight. Through her misery, every note she plays for you will become a lyric, and she will conjure up much more than a sense of longing and of loss. If we are very lucky, and this is my hope, then we will be able to see the vast extent of the hardship she has endured this year: we will see the unspeakable incest of two women together, played out before us like a rare recording stolen from a vault. You will have to listen carefully.”
Julia’s palms are cold and sweaty, and she wipes them roughly on the knees of her trousers.
“And just before I welcome Julia to the stage,” the saxophone teacher says, “can I just thank all the mothers here tonight for allowing me the strange satisfaction that is got by saying something that nobody hears.”
“You didn’t say he had the main part, Issie,” Isolde’s father says. He points to the program. “Look, his name’s right at the top.”
“He hasn’t told me anything,” Isolde says. “He even said don’t bother coming. I guess he was nervous.” She is looking up at the stage, tense with vicarious pre-show nerves. The lights are on in the orchestra pit and she can
