Sullivan, page 7
been so terribly fooled.
‘You shouldn’t have done it, Sullivan,’ he said aggrievedly. ‘You
frightened the puddens out of the lot of us.’
Sullivan laughed.
Chapter Seven
It was a long narrow hall. It was thick with the smoke of cigarettes, and the noisy rumbling of the people. Also the seats were wooden kitchen chairs so that everybody was moving uncomfortably. They had to move like that or their behinds would have become atrophied. They had been sitting on them now for about two hours and even the most doting parent was beginning to pray that the final thing would occur and the curtain fall for the last time, and they could get out of there and stretch their legs. They had heard boys singing singly and in fours, and they had seen boys dancing singly and in fours and eights, and they had heard the chief man tell them all about progress last year, assuring them that their fees were not being wasted. So many scholarships, so many prizes; they had been lectured about what they should do at home to put their sons on the straight and narrow path of virtue. All the usual business, and now their programmes told them that the last item would be the performance by the senior boys of the immortal Death of Fionn, and most of them were wishing that he would hurry up and die, for God’s sake.
The curtain on the stage was very thin and was bulging and blowing so that small boys had to stand behind it and hold it shut. Bernie was sitting a bit straighter in her seat because this was the only thing she was interested in seeing. There it was on the programme, the names of the cast, and number two was The Shade of Diarmad .….….. T. A. Sullivan. Sullivan hadn’t told her what it was about. Ah, just a thing, he said, and he didn’t encourage her or invite her to go so that she had to wangle an invitation, and here she was. She had enjoyed the evening. She liked to see boys dancing, particularly the little fellow in the yellow kilt with all the medals hopping on him, and she liked to hear boys singing, particularly the soaring voice of the boy soprano. But she had really come to see Sullivan.
There was a man sitting beside her. He smoked incessantly. His long fingers were stained badly with nicotine. He wasn’t enjoying the business very much. He groaned occasionally, and rustled his programme and crossed his knees, and muttered curses when he hit his knees on the protruding ledges of the chair in front of him. She heard him saying, ‘Oh, never again, never again!’ And he told her he had come since he was one of the old boys, and the Brothers would have been hurt if he hadn’t come and he would have to say how grand it was and how wonderful everything was, and that was hard since he was in the small theatre business himself and he felt like rising every few minutes and shouting, ‘No, no, take that light off, and don’t let your man stand there, get him back on the incline.’
Then the lights went out and the curtain was pulled back. At least it wasn’t pulled back all the way, a long arm had to come out from each side and tug solidly at it and then it was back. The stage was hung in light purple drapes. There were arched doorways at each side painted starkly white, and two shields hanging over them painted in furious colours with Celtic design. At the back was a throne with crossed spears over it trailing vivid ribbons. ‘Not bad, not bad at all,’ the man muttered to Bernie. He wondered who she was. He had seen her a few times knocking about the town. A student, he supposed. She had very regular features and her hair was cut across the forehead in a fringe and waved closely to the rest of her head. She had a good-shaped head. He always looked at people as suitable or unsuitable for parts. She would have been, say, the tragic mother; the suffering one; bearing pain or sorrow with concealed heartache. She could be Kathleen in Countess Kathleen, never Lady Macbeth; she could be Rosalind – och, sort of good girls, he supposed, the type that would make wonderful wives and could be loved or murdered. He laughed. What nonsense! There was a great trumpet call. Actually it was a bugle call, and the bugler broke down in the third bar and brayed like an ass. The audience tittered. Well, the man thought, that starts off the tragedy on a good note. Nothing like a good laugh to establish an honest tragedy.
Two helmeted figures appeared in one of the openings carrying a Utter. They could see the black hairy legs of the man on the litter wrapped in the tapes of a warrior. The first two men had a bit of trouble getting the litter through the archway. Space on the stage was sparse, so that they had to turn kind of sideways to get it on. They were dressed in short tunics and cloaks and helmets, and wore long swords. They had to hold the litter with one hand and manœuvre the swords with the other. The litter came in practically by force majeure, so that the white pillars were knocked a bit askew. The audience could see the anxious face of the warrior Fionn on the litter, and see one of the juggled swords rise up and hit him a smack in the puss. A hairy arm went up to feel his mouth and he rose a bit and said in an angry voice: ‘ Here, take it easy, Mulligan!’ ‘Not in the script, not in the script!’ the man beside Bernie said to her, and chortled. So did everybody else. It didn’t help either when the man on the litter realised that he was out in the open and people might have heard what he said. He put his hand up to his mouth in anguish this time. He was wearing a grey wig, and there were sort of death-agony lines painted on his face with lake liner, but all the same he was a very black boy, he was shaving twice a day already, so that actually, far from looking as if he was dying, he looked good for about a hundred and twenty years. The sight of all this amused the people.
‘Oh, my God,’ the man beside Bernie said, holding his stomach.
The dying Fionn had to do something about all the laughing that was going on, so he rose on an elbow and shouted at the top of his lungs. It was a good effort for a dying man. If there was anybody listening to him they could have heard him out on the Aran Islands.
‘Lay me near the window,’ he roared, ‘that my dying eyes may see the sun sinking into the western sea, or that my dying gaze may rest upon the shade of my beloved rising from the Land of Youth.’ The litter-bearers brought him over towards the other arch. They intended to let him down easy but the hands of one of them slipped, and the others let go so that the dying Fionn landed with a tremendous wallop on the boards. His body hopped on the hard litter. He said ‘Oh’ loudly and aggrievedly, and felt for the place he was hurt with his hand. Even the four litter-bearers thought this was funny and started to giggle behind their hands.
‘By the shades of the Fenians,’ said the man beside Bernie, ‘this tragedy should never be performed any other way.’ Bernie was sorry for the boys on the stage, but she couldn’t help laughing either.
Fionn recovered his equilibrium and started shouting again, but it was some time before anybody at all heard a word he had to say. Gradually words filtered through to them, like the Crosshaven foghorn through a mist. ‘… that so much of my young life was spent in pursuing the faithless body of my spouse. Ah, but she was beautiful; her noble form as graceful as a gazelle moving over the plains of Magh Dara; her long hair like the shivering mists of a golden dawn; her skin as soft to the touch of my fingers as the skin of an Eastern peach. Oh, how my soul longs for you, Grainne, my beloved. Out of the mists of time I call to you, the trembling voice of an old man dying in his loneliness surrounded by his foes, his dappled life behind him forever, tortured by his unforgiveness of the only one who had set the veins of his heart throbbing with eternal love. Grainne, I am calling you, my beloved, come to me!’
Apparently at this stage somebody should have come to him, but nobody did, so Fionn raised himself again, muttering, settled his wig more firmly on his head and shouted: ‘with eternal love. Grainne, I am calling you, my beloved, come to me!’
Grainne appeared. She seemed to have been pushed, and took a little time to recover her equilibrium. Fionn was glaring at her with anything but love in his dying eyes. Grainne was a nice boy, but a bit small, not like a gazelle, tripping over a long golden gown. The long fair hair was that all right, but sort of badly dyed so that it looked like old sheep’s wool which had been dipped in a vat of yellow distemper. That wouldn’t have been too bad, but before she appeared Grainne had been obviously taking a few surreptitious pulls at a forbidden cigarette, and when the hurried call came had nipped the butt of the cigarette, pushed back the wig and popped the butt behind her ear. This was unfortunately the ear that was presented to the audience. The audience howled.
Nobody for the next five minutes heard anything at all that was said up there on the stage. Fionn was talking and one of the litter-bearers was talking and Grainne was holding out her arms awkwardly to Fionn as if she was presenting him with twins, and when she walked towards him she had to trip over the gown so that they all saw that she was wearing heavy hobnailed boots, but she remained unperturbed, and caught the gown up in her hands, showing an indecent amount of grey stocking above the boot-tops, and finished her walk and her talk in a great rush, and dropped the gown as if to say: Well, thank God, I got that lot over.
Fionn’s voice emerged from the upheaval … ‘my dying eyes have rested once more on your beauty, but to save my shade from the dark beyond you must call to me the one I pursued with such bitter and unrelenting hatred, the young warrior Diarmad, in his youth the noblest warrior of them all, strong of arm, fearless in battle, the tyrant of iniquity, the beloved darling of the women of Ireland. Grainne, from the depths of Hades call to me the young one. Oh, Diarmad, how I have wronged you; with what bitter tears have I endeavoured to push back the aeons of time, that you might forgive the unrelenting persecution with which I favoured you, my bright one. Grainne, call to him, call!’
Grainne obviously bad to move. But she looked at the gown and remembered what had happened to her before, and maybe she got a bit boggled in the script, because she stayed where she was, stretched her arm and shouted: ‘Hey, Diarmad!’ She said it four times. Nobody heard her the last three. Diarmad was down under the stage. He was strutting for the benefit of his admirers. He was dressed in his Celtic costume and he was wearing a bowler hat and walking up and down using the sword as a walking-stick. He nearly missed his cue. He threw away the bowler and ran for the stairs and hesitated and then walked on with the carriage of a prince.
He wondered why the audience were roaring. He looked at Fionn and he looked at Grainne. They didn’t look particularly funny to him. And then as he was looking out of the side of his eye he noted that he was still wearing the horn-rimmed spectacles that he had donned below. Now what are you going to do, Sullivan? He took off the glasses with his right hand (his left was holding a spear), raised the edge of his tunic and shoved the glasses up under the short drawers he was wearing. There was elastic on the ends of them, so that fixed that. He allowed for the laughter, and then he walked forward. But the laughter had increased, not diminished, and he saw both Fionn and Grainne looking down at his legs. The four litter-bearers weren’t looking. They were turned away from the audience and were laughing. Sullivan looked down at his own legs. Oh-oh. He was wearing socks and suspenders. He had forgotten to take them off and tape his legs. No wonder everybody was breaking their hearts. What do you do now, Sullivan? Sullivan shrugged and went on with his speech. He said the first line and he kept saying it over and over again, pulling it up from his stomach so that it got greater and greater volume. I am a dead Diarmad and there is a dying Fionn and I have come back from the grave to comfort his dying hours.
Bernie had her hands over her eyes and her head bent, as the waves and waves of embarrassment went through her. For Sullivan’s sake. She wanted to shut out the sound of the laughter from her ears, and then she listened and to her amazement noted that the laughter was dying out, and tbat the man beside her was sitting up as straight as herself. She opened her eyes and she looked up at the stage.
He was standing up there, tall and straight, his copper hair throwing glints from the arc-lamps, and he looked good standing there, even with socks and suspenders and plain black shoes, you could forget them somehow. His legs were well shaped. Sullivan looked like a young warrior. His voice was musical and the words flowed out of his mouth with ease. The man beside Bernie couldn’t believe his eyes. Here was carriage. Here was the mysterious something that could silence one of the most upset audiences that the man had ever been among, could silence them and make them listen to him, even after all this, and even after the way he looked.
‘… time cannot heal the pursuit of evil; the decadence of a man’s sins will follow him far beyond the grave. I have learned that in the hallways of Hell, Fionn. To a man beyond the grave is given all knowledge, but to none beyond the grave is given the talent of return. But for you, brave Fionn, this the gods say …’
It went on. They listened to him. Even Fionn was mesmerised into replying in a tone that implied credibility. Even Grainne, now that her disturbed hair had fallen about and concealed the butt in her ear, even she became so that you could believe her, right up to the end when one on each side of what was now a bier they spoke across the body of the dead warrior, separated for eternity by their sins. Nothing could spoil it. Not even the trumpet call that wavered and brayed at the end, and when the curtain fell and rose again the audience got to their feet and clapped and laughed like mad. And Bernie was on her feet too, and her eyes were glittering because she knew that they were clapping Sullivan, even if they didn’t know it, and she knew that Sullivan knew it, standing there, bowing right and bowing left, jeering she could see, sardonically she could see, but oh, enjoying himself to the full, right up to the brim.
‘Who is he? Who is he?’ the man beside her was asking Bernie.
‘Who is he? Oh, that’s Sullivan,’ she said.
‘You know him?’ he asked.
Do I know him? Do I know Sullivan? Yes, I know him, she thought. He is seventeen and I am twenty. He is a schoolboy (but this is his last year as a schoolboy). It’s all terrible and it’s all awful and ridiculous, but I’m afraid of my life that I’m in love with Sullivan, and maybe it will go away. He is older than his years. It’s just like getting a sudden sickness. You can recover from that, or can you?
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know him.’
‘I want to meet him,’ the man said. ‘ Will we go up there and meet him?’
‘All right,’ said Bernie.
They pushed their way through the crowd to the stage and the man paused on the way to comfort the Brother who turned his face to the wall when he saw him. The man patted his shoulder. ‘It’s a tough racket, Brother,’ he said. ‘But we won’t see a good show like that again in the history of the world.’ This was the Brother who had to produce the show. He wouldn’t turn around. He kept his face to the wall.
Bernie, up the steps and inside, was calling: ‘Sullivan! Sullivan!’
He came to her laughing. His face lighted a bit when he saw her. She noted that. She was flushed.
‘Hello, Sullivan,’ she said. ‘Here’s a man who wants to meet you. I don’t even know his name.’
‘Mahon,’ the man said, ‘Tony Mahon.’
‘I know you,’ said Sullivan. ‘You’re the fellow that has the Little Theatre. You want a good actor.’
‘How did you know?’ Mahon asked, a little squashed.
‘Let’s face facts,’ said Sullivan. ‘I’m your man.’
‘I can see you have the makings of an actor all right,’ said Mahon. ‘You start right off with the ego.’
Sullivan laughed.
Chapter Eight
Tony Mahon sat shading in the lines on his face, and in the long mirror watched the behaviour of Sullivan.
Sullivan was a puzzle to him. Mahon himself was a dedicated man. He worked an average of twelve to fourteen hours a day holding the small theatre together. He designed and painted the scenery, he made flats and stretched the canvas on them, he kept the accounts, drew up the advertising, learned off long parts, trained raw actors to become presentable, making as he thought silk purses out of sows’ ears. He did all this for a feverish love and enough money to keep his belly half full and fairly respectable clothes on his back. He knew that he was not an oddity. There were people like himself in every country doing exactly the same thing. For love. He wondered. how long it could continue, this unrequited love; how long you could go on before you became tired and had to enter into the relaxing jungle of complete professionalism.
Now this Sullivan. Sullivan was a born actor. There are born actors and there are competent actors who can be trained to say a speech as if they meant it, put the emphasis on the right words and carry a part as if it was not a burden. Sullivan was born for that. He had presence. He instinctively used the right emphasis. It didn’t have to be pointed out to him. He could hold your attention. He could malice you listen to a whisper. He could hold you petrified by an upraised hand. It all came instinctively to him. He didn’t have to be taught. He used his voice like a bagpipe. He squeezed the bag of his solar plexus and the sound came clearly from an open throat. All these things. They would normally take years of working before they could be even half mastered. Mahon always said to them: ‘ It takes ten years, my friends, it takes ten years before you can say that you are anything more than an apprentice. After that you can start to learn the profession, and if you live to act until you are ninety you will be still learning, because no new part is the same as one you have done before, and will inevitably present a new problem.’ Mahon was a good actor himself. He knew the tricks of the trade from long association, but he would never fire people. He could make them listen to him and be affected by him, but he could never make them sit up in their seats as he knew Sullivan could.
So all during rehearsals he had watched Sullivan. He was implicitly obedient, which was unusual in the first place. The competents and the half-competents usually gave you a long argument as to why they would be better moving here than moving there, and you would have to explain the whole pattern of your thought to them, how it fitted into the whole and why it was necessary to move here now, so that later you would be in a position for such a movement. Sullivan never argued. He went where he was told and acted. You could feel the joy emanating from him. Sullivan loved to act, and his sincerity was striking. You had to listen to him because he was not listening to himself. So he was a silk purse. All Mahon had to say to him was: Listen, Sullivan, bottle the exuberance. Think of yourself as a can of condensed milk I don’t know how many pints of milk go to make up a pint can of condensed milk, but say it is half a gallon. Well, you have half a gallon squeezed into a pint can. That’s what you want to do. That was all he could tell Sullivan, and for the rest sit back and watch in awe an actor who had been fashioned to act from birth.
