Now she was beginning to realise she might be wrong. Contrary to her belief, people were not only willing to join in, they were grateful at being included. Each seemed simply to have been awaiting the opportunity to make a stage appearance. She wondered why. Perhaps they thought themselves under-employed here, in a foreign capital, in time of war. Perhaps Guy offered them distraction, a semblance of creative effort, an object to be achieved.
Guy’s attitude impressed her, though she had no intention of showing it. He had the advantage of an almost supernatural confidence in dealing with people. It seemed never to occur to him they might not do what he wanted. He had, she noted with surprise, authority.
In the past she had been irritated by the amount of mental and physical vitality he expended on others. As he flung out his charm, like radium dissipating its own brilliance, it had seemed to her indiscriminate giving for giving’s sake. Now she saw his vitality functioning to some purpose. Only someone capable of giving much could demand and receive so much. She felt proud of him.
David, coming to the end of a long speech, looked uncertainly at Guy.
‘Go on,’ said Guy. ‘You’re doing splendidly,’ and David, shouldering importance like a cloak, went ahead with renewed enjoyment.
Bella, arriving in a suit of black corded silk, hung with silver foxes, was asked if she would play Helen.
‘Is it a long part?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Thank goodness for that!’ she exclaimed over-fervently.
Inchcape, bending towards her, said: ‘You are Helen of Troy. We ask only that you should be beautiful. Yours is the face that launched a thousand ships.’
‘Dear me!’ said Bella. She threw off her furs and her cheeks grew pink.
She took the floor, read her exchange with Pandarus and came, flushed and serious, to sit near Harriet. She was, Harriet was beginning to realise, a woman of considerable competence. She knew nothing of acting; she never had been on a stage; her movements were stiff, yet she had done well.
‘What about Troilus?’ Inchcape asked. ‘Who can we get for him?’
Guy replied that he was hoping to cast one of the Legation staff for the part. He was waiting for the Minister’s approval.
‘And Achilles?’ asked Inchcape. ‘Rather a tricky part!’
‘I’ve one of the new students in mind, young Dimancescu, a good-looking boy and a junior fencing champion. He went to an English public-school before the war.’
‘Indeed! Which?’
‘Marlborough.’
‘Excellent!’ said Inchcape. ‘Excellent!’
Harriet burst out laughing. She said: ‘Most of your actors have only to play themselves.’
Guy turned on her frowning. ‘Just try and keep quiet,’ he said.
His annoyance startled her into silence. Guy called the men to read in a group, himself taking the parts still uncast, and avoiding those scenes in which Cressida appeared.
Next day in the students’ common-room, Guy held a meeting of those students he proposed using in his production. While he was out, Dobson telephoned to say the Minister would permit any of his staff who wished to take part in the play.
‘He approves, then?’ Harriet said, surprised.
‘He thinks it a splendid idea,’ said Dobson. ‘Showing the flag and all that. Cocking a snook at the Boche.’
So Harriet had been wrong again. She said to Guy when he returned: ‘This is wonderful, darling,’ but he was not responsive. He was, she supposed, absorbed in his production, and the fact made her feel misgiving like a child whose mother is too occupied with the outside world. Still, she was caught in a sort of wonder at the growing reality of the play.
‘You are rather remarkable,’ she admitted. ‘You make it all seem so easy. You just ignore difficulties that would have brought me completely to a stop.’
His only reply was: ‘I’ll take Yaki with me tomorrow. We’ll have to start rehearsing seriously.’
‘And me?’
‘No.’ He was sitting on the edge of the bed tugging at his shoes, trying to get them off without undoing the laces. As he did so, he gazed out of the window with a frown of decision: ‘I think you’d be more useful doing the costumes.’
‘Do you mean instead of playing Cressida?’
‘Yes.’
She was, at first, merely bewildered: ‘But there isn’t anyone else to play Cressida.’
‘I’ve already got someone.’
‘Who?’
‘Sophie.’
‘You invited Sophie to play my part before you’d even told me?’ She was dumbfounded. This treatment seemed to her monstrous, but she told herself she was not hurt. She did not care whether she was in the production or not. After a pause she asked: ‘Did you tell Sophie that I was to have played the part?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But someone else might have told her.’
‘They might, of course. What does it matter?’
‘You don’t think it matters if Sophie learns she has pushed me out of the play?’
‘She hasn’t pushed you out of the play. It had nothing to do with her. It was simply obvious to me that we couldn’t work together. You would never take the production seriously.’ He started looking about for his slippers. ‘Anyway, no producer can do a proper job with his wife around.’
After she had absorbed the situation she tried to explain it away. Guy, she supposed, found her presence frustrating. She had not actually ridiculed his position – but he feared she might. She made him apprehensive. Her presence spoilt the illusion of power.
After a long interval, she said: ‘I suppose I deserve it.’
‘Deserve it? What do you mean?’
‘I made no attempt to understand Sophie, or to behave, so I brought out the best in her. I suppose I could have played up to her; shown sympathy or something. I didn’t. I was to blame. Now you are giving her an opportunity to get her own back.’
‘Darling, you are absurd!’ Though he laughed at her ideas, he was clearly disconcerted by them. ‘You can’t possibly believe that!’ He frowned down at her, his frown affectionate yet perplexed. He put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a slight shake as though seeking to shake her into a semblance of something more comprehensible. He said: ‘It was only that I had to have someone else. Sophie is suitable. You must agree. You would have done quite well, but I knew I couldn’t produce you. The relationship would have got in the way.’
She let the matter drop. It was only later when everyone she knew was in it that she began to feel hurt at being out of the production. More than that, she was jealous that Guy should be producing Sophie in one of the chief parts of the play. Unreasonably, she told herself. She could no longer doubt that Guy had been perfectly honest about his relationship with Sophie. Innocent and foolish as he was, the idea of marriage to Sophie had been, nevertheless, attractive as an idea rather than a reality. He was not, in fact, one to make a marriage of self-sacrifice. He was a great deal more self-protected – perhaps from necessity – than most people realised. Realising it herself, she could only wonder at the complexity of the apparently simple creature she had married.
22
The spring showers washed away the last vestiges of the snow. With each reappearance the sun grew warmer. More and more people came out at evening to stroll in the streets. Up the Chaussée, where the chestnut branches were breaking with green, the chatter of the crowd could be heard above the traffic. Despite the delights of the season, it was a disgruntled chatter.
The Cabinet had inaugurated internal retrenchment in order that exports to Germany might be increased. To save petrol, taxis were forbidden to cruise in search of fares: they could be picked up only at given points – an unheard-of inconvenience. Food prices were rising. The new French silks were appearing in the shops at an absurd price. Imported goods were growing scarce and would, it was rumoured, soon disappear altogether. In panic, people were buying many things they did not want.