16

The Dress Rehearsal

The next day was Monday — 26 February, the feast day, as I learnt from Oscar, of St Porphyry. My friend arrived early at the Théâtre La Grange wearing a purple tweed suit and clutching a copy of the life of the saint. He found me, alone, in La Grange’s dressing room, seated on the chaise longue, polishing the great man’s shoes. ‘You don’t read Greek, do you, Robert?’ he said by way of greeting, brandishing the book in the air. ‘I shall have to translate this for you. It’s the most wonderfully lurid account of paganism in antique times. Paris in the late nineteenth century has nothing on Gaza in the early fifth!’

‘You are on song this morning,’ I observed, looking up from my labours.

‘I need to be!’ he declared, dropping the book onto La Grange’s dressing table and feeling in his pockets for his cigarette case. ‘I have a “business appointment” with Monsieur Marais at ten o’clock. When a man offers you a meeting to discuss business you know that whatever the outcome it will not be to your advantage.’ He placed a cigarette between his lips and struck a match, closing his eyes and breathing in the sulphurous fumes as he did so. ‘I don’t want money,’ he went on. ‘It is only people who pay their bills who want money and I never pay mine.’

‘Very droll, Oscar,’ I said. ‘You are on song.’

‘Thank you, Robert.’ He offered me a modest bow and, turning to the cheval mirror that stood by the dressing table, studied his own reflection. ‘I don’t care about money, but Monsieur Marais cares about it very much. I believe he has been swindling La Grange for years.’

I looked at him, surprised. ‘Why? How? Marais seems devoted to La Grange.’

‘Why? Because he is deaf and resents the world. I don’t blame him. How? By the old expedient beloved of box office managers everywhere. Have you noticed that there are thirty-four rows of seats in the stalls in this theatre?’

‘Are there?’

‘There are. But on the theatre plan that Marais goes through every Saturday night with Monsieur La Grange there are only thirty-three. Monsieur Marais reserves the revenue from the invisible row all to himself.’

‘How extraordinary.’

‘How simple. Marais’s a swindler. At our last “business appointment” I told him so. I told him that he might swindle his employer and get away with it, but that he wasn’t going to swindle me.’

I laughed. ‘How was he trying to swindle you, Oscar?’

‘He offered me the equivalent of one hundred pounds for my work on the translation of Hamlet. I told him that La Grange had already promised me twice that.’

‘And had he?’

‘No, but he might have done. Marais will pay me one fee and tell La Grange that he’s paid me quite another —and pocket the difference.’

‘That’s scandalous, Oscar.’

‘That’s business, Robert. But I intend to stand my ground. A translator is worthy of his hire. I want twice what he offered me at our first meeting, not because I care about the money, but because I care about the principle.’ Oscar tugged at his waistcoat. He regarded the cut of his new suit with apparent satisfaction. He took out his pocket watch. ‘Why are you here so early, Robert?’ he asked. ‘The dress rehearsal doesn’t begin till twelve.’ Smirking, he turned back from the looking-glass and gazed down at me. ‘Are you hoping to catch Mademoiselle de la Tourbillon before Eddie Garstrang does and commit her to a tryst in the “club room” on the rue de la Pierre Levée?’

‘Don’t be absurd, Oscar. I’m here preparing La Grange’s wardrobe.’

‘Of course, you are, dear boy; but when I arrived I noticed that you had left the dressing-room door ajar. Could it have been just in case a certain young lady chanced to float by?’

‘I still love her, Oscar,’ I said solemnly. ‘I still want her, but I acknowledge that something’s changed.’

‘Ah?’ said my friend, putting away his pocket watch. ‘Since when?’

‘Since I saw her with Garstrang on Saturday night, since I heard La Grange speak of her as he did yesterday.’

Oscar smiled at me and retrieved his copy of the Life of St Porphyry from the dressing table. ‘On one issue at least men and women agree,’ he said. ‘They both distrust women.’ I laughed. My friend put his hand on my shoulder. ‘That said, mon brave, you are young; if you get the chance, enjoy her. Every twenty-one-year-old should have the benefit of a beautiful mistress of thirty.’ He waved his book towards me as he made for the door. ‘Though whatever you get up to at Monsieur La Grange’s delightful love-nest I am confident it will not rival the goings-on at the Temple of Aphrodite before good St Porphyry came along.’

The little carriage clock on the sideboard began to strike the hour. Oscar departed. ‘I’ll leave the door open, he said gaily. Through the cheval mirror I watched him go. Marais’s office was an inhospitable and windowless room hidden in the bowels of the building. To reach it you had to cross the stage and make your way down a narrow flight of stone stairs in the upstage corner diagonally opposite La Grange’s dressing room. In the looking-glass, with some amusement, I observed Oscar’s halting progress across the stage. He had left full of confidence, with a spring in his step. Now — whether because of the gloom of the darkened stage or a sense of foreboding about his meeting — his pace had faltered. I was about to shout out a wry word of encouragement when I heard a curious, distant creaking sound and then caught sight of Oscar looking upward in alarm. Suddenly, my friend cried out in distress and, as he did so, he threw himself onto the ground. As he fell, face first, onto the stage, a huge stage weight — a square black sack filled with iron and sand — crashed within an inch of his head.

I threw down La Grange’s shoes and rushed at once to my friend’s aid. As I arrived, two stagehands emerged from the darkness of the wings and ran towards him. Together, we lifted Oscar to his feet.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Alive,’ he said. He began to brush the dust from the front of his tweed jacket and trousers. I noticed that his hands were trembling. The stagehands shaded the sides of their eyes and peered up into the flies of the theatre.

‘Odd,’ said one of them.

‘It’s happened before,’ said a voice from the wings. It was Carlos Branco, standing at the side of the stage. He was dressed in a suit of armour and carrying a helmet in his hands.

‘When was that?’ asked Oscar.

‘Last season,’ said Branco, coming towards us, smiling. ‘We did Don Quixote and La Grange took the view that my Sancho Panza was not up to the mark.’ The old actor looked up towards the flies. ‘He’s a hard taskmaster is the great La Grange.’

‘Ah,’ murmured Oscar, his hands still trembling. ‘You are joking.’

Branco put an arm around Oscar’s shoulder. ‘It was an accident, my friend. In the theatre, these things happen all the time.’

‘How is the fly gallery reached?’ asked Oscar, looking towards the wings.

‘By the ladder at the back of the stage,’ said Branco. ‘It’s the only way.’

The younger of the stagehands — he was a boy of sixteen or seventeen — ran swiftly up the stage and disappeared behind a piece of scenery. ‘There’s no one here,’ he called.

The other stagehand — an older, red-faced man, with a drooping black moustache — was still staring into the flies. ‘There’s no one up there. The weight must just have slipped its moorings. It was poorly fastened.’

‘Are you all right, Oscar?’ asked Carlos Branco, squeezing Oscar’s shoulder.

‘I am alive,’ repeated Oscar. ‘Thank you.’

The two stagehands grunted, nodded to Carlos Branco and picked up the weighted sack. Its weight must have been considerable: between them they struggled to carry it into the wings. Oscar took a deep breath and picked up his book off the floor. He showed the cover to Carlos Branco. ‘St Porphyry teaches us not to believe in omens. He set himself against the snares of superstition.’ He glanced up at the empty flies and then looked at Branco and at me with troubled eyes. ‘I’m unnerved, my friends. I own it. A dog dies; then a blackamoor is killed; and now an Irishman is set to meet his doom.’

Carlos Branco laughed. ‘Do you think there’s a murderer in our midst, Oscar, gradually working his way through the animal kingdom?’

‘It was an accident, Oscar — surely?’ I said.

‘Surely,’ said Oscar, blowing the dust from the cover of his book. ‘If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I have a meeting to attend. I shall be late and Monsieur Marais will have the advantage of me.’

The dress rehearsal of Hamlet — the first of a week-long series of dress rehearsals — was due to begin at twelve noon. At ten o’clock the wings of the Théâtre La Grange were deserted. By 11.30 a.m. the stage and its environs were crowded with strutting players in assorted states of dress, undress and near-hysteria. Many were trying on their costumes for the first time and most were volubly unhappy with the colour, the cut, the fabric, the fit, the finish, the heritage of their attire. The production of Hamlet was new, but the costumes and accessories were not. Bernard La Grange, prince of Denmark, protested that his wig was ‘grotesque’ — ‘laughable, risible, beneath contempt’ — and that he wouldn’t be seen dead wearing blond curls! Maman, wardrobe and wig mistress to the Compagnie La Grange since time immemorial, explained to him that the wig had served his father and his grandfather well enough. Carlos Branco, who was to play the Ghost of Hamlet’s father as well as the role of Polonius, showed his contempt for the outsized suit of armour that he had been given to wear by marching about the ramparts of Elsinore Castle making his visor snap open and shut like the jaws of an ill-tempered alligator.

Edmond La Grange arrived with Agnès on his arm. He was at his gayest — a dress rehearsal was his happiest time — and he knew his costume well: he had worn it when he played Iago in Othello and Edmund Kean in the famous play by Dumas père. (Sarah Bernhardt had been his leading lady on both occasions.) Agnès made no complaint about her costume, either. She was wearing a simple white shift, trimmed and decorated with ribbons of cornflower blue: it was a dress that Maman had first worn sixty years before. Agnès looked serene and appeared much calmer than she had been when I had last seen her at the end of our evening at Le Chat Noir. She brought some flowers — white lilac blossom — to adorn her father’s dressing room.

When I had finished dressing La Grange, I was des-patched to offer any assistance that Maman might require. On my way to find her, in the crowded wings, I came face to face with Gabrielle de la Tourbillon. It was the first time I had seen her since Edmond La Grange had said that Garstrang and I could ‘share’ his mistress. It was the first time, too, since she had held my thigh at Le Chat Noir and I had seen her embrace Garstrang in the apartment hallway. She looked different. She looked old. She saw the confusion in my eyes. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s disconcerting. You don’t recognise me, do you, Robert? It is the make-up. And the embon point. Gertrude is a mother. A mother has breasts.’

At twelve noon, the stage manager walked through the wings and across the stage ringing a hand bell. Slowly, the company began to come to order: the actors filed onto the stage and positioned themselves, according to seniority, around the ramparts; the stagehands and the wardrobe ladies hovered at the edge of the wings. No one told anyone where to stand: instinctively each seemed to know their place. The principals — Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, Polonius — clustered centre stage. Immediately behind them stood Horatio and Laertes, with Osric, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern just beyond. Bernardo, Marcellus, Reynaldo and Fortinbras formed a line upstage right; the Player King and Queen and the grave-diggers formed another upstage left. The English Ambassador and the Norwegian Captain stood on the battlements, with attendant lords and ladies, priests and players, ranged on either side of them.

When everyone was gathered, Edmond La Grange walked onto the stage with Oscar Wilde and Richard Marais at his side. Marais carried a wooden stool which he placed centre stage in front of the footlights. Steadied by Oscar, La Grange stepped up onto the stool to address his troops. He smiled at them benevolently. ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are about to perform a play with few equals in a version without equal. We can thank Monsieur Oscar Wilde for that.’ Oscar bowed his head as the company applauded. ‘This is our first dress rehearsal,’ La Grange continued. ‘You will remember our usual rules, of course — definition, clarity, energy, attack — but today our principal concerns are the costumes and the scenery. I hear that we had an accident this morning: a weight fell from the flies. Take care this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Watch your step. By the end of the rehearsal, I want you to feel at ease in the clothes that you are wearing and at home in the setting that surrounds you.’ His eyes scanned the battlements and ramparts. He glanced towards the flies. ‘It’s painted wood and canvas, brought in and out by ropes and winches: we know that. By five o’clock, however, it must seem to you to be the very stones of Elsinore.’ He paused. ‘Any questions?’

Carlos Branco lifted his helmet’s visor. ‘This suit of armour stinks!’

As the laughter subsided, La Grange looked down at him. ‘That’s as it should be. You’ve read the play. “Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.”‘

‘This wig is absurd,’ said Bernard La Grange, holding the mop of golden curls up in the air for all to see.

‘It’s a family tradition,’ squawked Maman from her station at the edge of the wings.

‘I won’t wear it!’ cried Bernard.

‘Don’t,’ said La Grange. He looked down at Bernard. ‘It doesn’t suit your colour.’

‘But the La Grange tradition,’ protested Liselotte La Grange, her arms outstretched like an aged crone in a Greek tragedy.

‘The tradition is dead, Maman,’ snapped La Grange.

‘Forget it.’ He turned back to the company. ‘Live in the moment, ladies and gentlemen. We start in five minutes.’

As La Grange jumped off the stool, the crowd dispersed. Eighty men and women — leading actors, supporting players, spear-carriers and sailors, stagehands, fly-men, carpenters and firemen, seamstresses and wardrobe assistants — moved at once, in an assortment of directions, like ants purposefully, preordinately going about their business.

Oscar and I passed one another briefly outside La Grange’s dressing room. ‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Oscar is himself again,’ he answered, smiling.

‘And Marais? How was the meeting?’

‘Not easy. Marais sat behind his typewriting machine, hammering at the keys throughout. The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is not more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation, but it is annoying. Marais, of course, does not hear the noise it makes.’

‘Did you stand your ground?’

‘I did. And I doubled my money. This afternoon’s performance will give me twice the pleasure it might otherwise have done.’

I watched the dress rehearsal from the corner of the wings closest to La Grange’s dressing room. Oscar watched it from the auditorium. The performance was flawed, of course: there were technical hitches, missed lines and botched entrances; Maman and one or other of her helpers kept appearing on stage to sort out details of costume and accessory; the stage manager and his men took an eternity to change the scenes; there was no music; the lighting was perfunctory; the whole experience lasted nearly six hours instead of three. Nevertheless, it was already clear that this production of Hamlet was destined to be a memorable one, with extraordinary performances, especially from the twins.

Edmond La Grange told me once that a great actor must be in possession of ‘energy, an athletic voice, a well-graced manner, some unusually fascinating originality of temperament; vitality, certainly, and an ability to convey an impression of beauty or ugliness as the part demands, as well as authority and a sense of style’. Bernard and Agnès La Grange were blessed with all the necessary gifts.

At the end of the performance, Edmond La Grange called the entire cast and company onto the stage to give us ‘notes’ and to rehearse the curtain-call. It was then that we realised that Ophelia was missing.