Ballet Shoes Part 15

Petrova's heart, which had bounded, sank again. For one glorious moment she had thought there was a career for girls of twelve that she had not heard of; anything would do as long as it did not mean speaking on a stage. But there was none, and the money she earned was needed. She got up.

'Silly Garnie.' She took a bite of biscuit. 'You know I love it. Why should I want to do something else?'

Back in bed she considered this statement. That was a lie really, she thought; but in a way it was true. 'I don't want not to act when we need the money. I'd only like not to act if we didn't need it.'

She thought of the house being sold, and all the boarders, especially Mr Simpson, going away; and turned her face on to the pillow, and cried till she went to sleep.

Oberon, true to his promise, had Pauline and Petrova sent for about the two Princes, but Petrova need not have worried. The same producer was producing 'Richard the Third' as had produced 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. He did not hold an audition on the stage, but saw everyone in his office. He told Pauline she was engaged the moment she came in; he explained they had wanted to get boys, but they could not, and she was their first choice if they had to have a girl. The only question was her height. She was small for her age and he had doubted if she would look twelve, but she seemed to have shot up a bit lately. Pauline rather haughtily told him she could hardly help looking twelve, since she was fourteen, at which he laughed, and told her not to be so fierce; she was engaged. But when Petrova was shown in, he shook his head.

'No, my little friend, not again.' He laughed. 'It would be much worse than "And I".'

Petrova laughed too.

'I knew it would, but I had to ask to play him.'

He looked up.

'Why?'

'Well, you see' - in the interest of conversation she forgot all about her heels being together and her hands folded behind her; she lolled against his desk - 'it's the money; our guardian's Great Uncle has gone away and not come back, and until he does we are very poor, so I have to try and get parts.'

He lit a cigarette.

'If that's all, I can use you, and you need never say a word; you shall be a page. There won't be much money in it, but....'.

'I know, you needn't say,' Petrova interrupted. 'I'm not worth much.' They both laughed. 'Thank you very much for the page; I shall like that.'

'I might give you the under-study of "York"...' He broke off, for her face was so horrified. 'Don't you want it?'

'I must have it,' Petrova groaned, 'if it earns me more, but I'd much rather not. Think how awful to come to the theatre every night wondering if you'd have to go on.'

'You are a scream,' he said. 'All right, I was only teasing; I'm not offering you an under-study.'

Pauline was really happy as the young 'King Edward'. Doctor Jakes, who was fonder of 'Richard the Third' than any other of Shakespeare's plays, had great discussions with her about her part.

'You can't look of royal blood, Pauline,' she said, 'by simply coming on with your head up. Dignity is trained into royal children before they can toddle, graciousness, consideration for others, an unshakeable belief in the greatness of their position. You have got to think of yourself day and night like that until you have the reading of your part fixed. You are not Pauline Fossil; you are a boy who has known that one day he must rule, though had not expected to so soon, but who has accepted his position, and is kingly in every movement.'

The rehearsals slipped by Pauline like a dream; for the first time she was not acting - she was feeling a part. The child who was playing little 'York' was a great talker, and liked to gossip with Pauline at rehearsals. Pauline knew it would sound silly to say 'Don't talk to me before I go on, I want to feel like a king'; but she managed to hide before her entrances, and she would shut her eyes, and imagine that the theatre was gone, and instead was a street in the old London of 1483. Down it she walked, a King, but a King who was on his guard, who knew himself a defenceless boy. She bowed to the imaginary curtsying crowd, she drew herself up with dignity hidden by courtesy to meet the Lord Mayor and his train, remembering always that the greedy eyes of Uncle Gloucester were upon her, and he must not see she was afraid. In this spirit she managed to be so right at even the earlier rehearsals, that it did not seem queer to the n.o.bles and the people to bow and curtsy to her. So strong was her own belief that she was a King that they all felt it. Her dress was a black tunic and silk tights, and she had decorations round her neck and the ribbon of the Garter round her knee. At the dress rehearsal, after 'York' had gone on to the stage, she stood a minute staring at herself in a long gla.s.s, and she did not see herself, but 'Edward the Fifth', and as 'Edward' himself, not Pauline acting 'Edward', she swept on to the stage.

Pauline attracted a great deal of attention from the critics as 'Edward'. Doctor Jakes cut all the notices out of the papers, and read her those parts that were about her acting, but not those about her looks. To save trouble, Petrova was put to dress with the two Princes, which meant Nana was in the room all the evening, although Pauline, being fourteen, had no need of a matron, and Nana had strict orders from both Sylvia and Doctor Jakes not to allow her to be shown cuttings. They were afraid that if she read all that was said about her prettiness, she could not help getting self-conscious, which at the moment she was not. But certain results came from all this notice which she could hardly fail to see. She was asked for sittings at about half a dozen of the best photographers', which the management insisted on her accepting, as the advertis.e.m.e.nt was good for the play, and after a bit they began to appear in the papers. Pauline, however, showed no signs of suffering from swollen head. The only thing she was proud about was that she was able to give Sylvia three pounds nine s.h.i.+llings a week, for she earned four pounds, and after allowing one s.h.i.+lling pocket money for each of them, and paying the Academy commission, that was what she had left.

Petrova was quite happy as a page; she had no responsibilities, and she was able to help a little towards the house. She earned thirty s.h.i.+llings a week, of which one pound went into the post office and three s.h.i.+llings to the Academy, and she gave seven to Sylvia. Sylvia wanted only to take four, and the other three to go for pocket money, bringing that up to two s.h.i.+llings a week again. But Petrova was shocked at the suggestion, pointing out that pocket money could only be thought of on a high salary, or if, as at Christmas, there were extra matinees.

'Richard the Third' ran into July, but just before the end of its run the most exciting thing happened. Pauline was sent for to have a film test. The studio was some way outside London, so Mr Simpson offered to drive Pauline and Sylvia down, and wait to bring them home. The studios seemed to be almost a town, there were so many vast buildings collected together. They showed the appointment letter to the uniformed man at the door, who seemed to know exactly what to do with them, and gave them to a messenger who ushered them into a large dressing-room exactly like a dressing-room in a theatre.

'The make-up room is round the corner to the left, the third door,' he told them, and disappeared.

Pauline and Sylvia looked at each other. Pauline had on her black velvet audition dress, though it was rather hot for June, but her white organdie would get so crushed in the car.

'I can't take anything off,' she said. 'So why do you think they put me in here?'

Sylvia had no idea, but said she thought they had better go to the make-up room and see. They followed the directions and tapped timidly on the make-up man's door. He called out cheerfully 'Come in'. He seemed to be expecting Pauline, because he wrapped her up in towels without a word, and rubbed some cream into her face before asking who she was.

'You're the little girl, aren't you?' he said at last, 'playing in the Shakespeare along with Mr Houghton?'

'That's right,' Pauline agreed. 'But I can make myself up, you know.'

'In the theatre, yes,' agreed the man. 'For the pictures, no. You use grease-paints, don't you?'

'A little,' Pauline said. 'Number five with a little eight for background and...'

But the man was not interested in what Pauline used for her face on the stage; instead he held up a tube.

'But I use Max Factor, and that's different.'

It was different, Pauline found. Instead of a stick of greasepaint, it was a paste which was ma.s.saged into the skin and allowed to dry on. When he had finished with her, her face looked most unlike itself, and she did not think much of it; but she thanked him politely, and asked where she should go next. He told her to go back to her room, and she would be sent for.

A messenger came to fetch her. He said she was to go to studio three, where they were waiting for her on the floor. Pauline was a bit puzzled at this, as she could not imagine where people should stand except on the floor; she had yet to learn that in film jargon a floor was a stage. Pauline was too used to auditions to be very nervous, and never having faced a movie camera before, she was not as scared by it as she would have been if she had known more about it. A man, whom everybody called Mr Sholsky, shook her hand and told her what he wanted her to do. They were not difficult things, and all different. Once she came into a room, and sat on the arm of a chair in which Mr Sholsky sat, and answered the questions he asked her, and another time she had to look for something hidden amongst papers, and read one of them. Nothing difficult, but all rather confusing because of the bright, hot lights, and the crowds of men on the cameras. There seemed to her to be a fearful lot of time wasted. Before each little thing that she was told to do the same routine was gone through. Suddenly all the lamps would be switched on, and the cameras start to whirr, then a boy came in front of the set, facing the cameras with a board on which was written in chalk: 'Pauline Fossil. (Test.) Director, Mr Sholsky. Camera, Mr Lewis. Sound, Mr Part. Take.' In front of the word 'Take' were two wooden slots into which were slipped number One, Two, Three, Four, etc. After standing in front of the camera for a moment the boy clacked two wooden clappers together, and ran off. There was a moment's pause and then Mr Sholsky said 'Action', which meant Pauline had to start. Each time she had finished what she had been given to do, the lamps were switched off, and the cameras stopped turning, and the camera-man and Mr Sholsky had a whispered discussion, after which someone rang a telephone bell and asked 'O.K. for sound, Bill?' After some minutes the answer came back 'O.K. for sound', and Mr Sholsky told Pauline what to do for the next take.

When at last they had finished with her, Mr Sholsky walked back to the dressing-room with them and told them they were looking for a girl to play Charles the Second's sister in a big film about Charles the Second. They were not using the grown-up Henrietta much, but her childhood as an exile in France. He told them he was testing a great many girls for the part, but that it would do no harm for her to read up Charles the Second's reign, just in case she was engaged.

Mr Simpson drove them home very quickly, but not quickly enough for Pauline, who was longing to get at Doctor Jakes and say, 'Tell me all about Charles the Second's sister Henrietta.'

CHAPTER XVII.

Making a Picture AUGUST always seemed to be an unlucky month in the family, and this one found them in a worse state than usual. No one had any work, and there was none in prospect, unless Pauline was engaged to play Henrietta in the film, and that seemed a remote chance, as it was seven weeks since her test and they had heard nothing. Pauline was very worried, and would stare anxiously at herself in the gla.s.s. always seemed to be an unlucky month in the family, and this one found them in a worse state than usual. No one had any work, and there was none in prospect, unless Pauline was engaged to play Henrietta in the film, and that seemed a remote chance, as it was seven weeks since her test and they had heard nothing. Pauline was very worried, and would stare anxiously at herself in the gla.s.s.

'It's an awful thing, Nana,' she said, 'if my face is no good for the films, for it's difficult to be in permanent work in the theatre, and films do pay so well.'

Nana sighed.

'It's very worrying,' she agreed. 'We were all saying when you went for your test that you ought to do well. Clara says you are cut out for it, and she ought to know, seeing the time she spends at the Pictures.'

This year there was no picnic for Petrova's birthday. Mr and Mrs Simpson had gone to Eastbourne, and the two doctors to the cottage on the Common in Kent, where they had all been to convalesce after whooping-cough, and Theo to a dancers' congress in Germany. Cook was away for her holiday and Clara running the house, which meant that everybody had to help a good deal. The girls loathed helping in the house, and Pauline and Petrova felt it an injustice they should be asked to in their holidays, when they had been earning the family income for months past. They grumbled and argued until Sylvia, Clara, and Nana said it was less trouble to do it themselves, and then they felt ashamed, and feeling ashamed made them more cross than ever. The truth was they were all tired, and badly in need of a change of air. On Petrova's birthday they made their vows in the sitting-room after tea.

'We three Fossils vow to try and put our name into history books, because it's our very own, and n.o.body can say it's because of our grandfathers, and we vow to try and earn money for Garnie until Gum comes home.'

Petrova held up her right arm.

'We vow,' she said.

They both looked at Posy.

'What happened to the "Amen"?' Posy whispered because she did not want to interrupt the vowing.

'Go on, vow,' Petrova hissed at her.

Posy held up her arm.

'We vow.'

Then suddenly she burst into tears.

Pauline and Petrova stared at her.

'What on earth's the matter?' Pauline asked.

'Last year you said "Amen",' Posy wailed, 'and it brought us luck; we had pocket money and I went and saw the ballet; and now everything's so miserable, and I thought if we said "Amen" again everything might come right.'

Petrova went to the window and looked out. Cromwell Road was looking hot and dusty; there was nothing to do except go for walks, because there was only just enough money for necessities. Certainly everything was miserable, and it was her birthday, which made it worse. A lump came into her throat, and before she could stop them tears began to drip off her nose.

'Oh, for goodness sake don't you cry too!' Pauline gulped, for she was not feeling at all cheerful herself. 'I still might get the film.'

The other two did not answer to that, not wanting to be unkind, but they were both sure somebody else had been engaged long ago. Instead they sobbed. Pauline looked first at one and then at the other, then suddenly she ran out of the room and slammed the door. She raced down to the drawing-room.

'Garnie,' she said, jumping on to the arm of the chair in which Sylvia was sitting in front of her desk, 'can I take my money out of the savings bank and buy a little tent and the three of us go and camp for a fortnight?'

'But you can't camp alone,' Sylvia protested.

'No, but we could on the common next to the doctors, because it's free to camp, and then my money would pay for a room as well at the little inn, and you could come one week, and Nana the other; we could be fetched very quickly from there for an audition.'

'All your savings?' Sylvia looked worried. 'I don't like it.'

'We need a holiday,' Pauline said firmly. 'The other two are crying.'

'What about?'

'Just nothing.'

'Well, that certainly does sound like needing a holiday,' Sylvia agreed. 'Where's Nana?'

'Was.h.i.+ng in the bathroom - shall I fetch her?'

Nana entirely approved of the idea, but she absolutely refused to have a week at the inn herself.

'I'll stop here, dear,' she said to Sylvia; 'you go down - you haven't been away in years. I'll go to my sister's for a day or two when you get back.'

It was surprising how cheerful they all became the moment the holiday was decided. They sent a prepaid telegram to the doctors asking if they could book them a camp, and got a reply in an hour and a half, saying: 'Splendid! Will arrange everything.'

The next morning Pauline applied at the post office to draw out her savings. Sylvia wanted her to take out only ten pounds as a start, but she said 'No; she'd promise to put back anything that was over.' They thought they would have to wait three days after that before they could buy the tent, but Clara said she had ten pounds and would lend it. In the wildest excitement they went out and bought a tent and a ground sheet, and stuff for three pallia.s.ses. They gave Nana and Sylvia the stuff, and then went out again and bought shorts and s.h.i.+rts. When they came in, one of the pallia.s.ses was done, and Clara and Nana were working on the other two, while Sylvia looked out suitable blankets and pillows.

Two days later they arrived on the Common. The doctors had arranged to have Sylvia in the cottage, and had got permission from a farmer for the girls to camp in the field of a farm near by. They had fixed that they should come every day for their middle-day meal at the cottage, for which Pauline was to pay a pound a week. For breakfast, tea, and supper they were to cook and cater for themselves.

Perhaps it was because they were not expecting a holiday at all, or perhaps because it was Pauline's holiday which she had paid for, but there was not one second which they did not find perfect. They took turns to cook, and it was lovely waking in the mornings to hear the cows mooing, and the c.o.c.ks crowing, and to turn over and prod the day's cook to get up and deal with breakfast. The pallia.s.ses stuffed with straw they found gloriously comfortable, and it was the height of luxury to lie on them sniffing the first smoke of the fire through the open flap of the tent before jumping up to race down to the stream in a bathing dress for a wash before breakfast.

The food varied a lot with who was cooking and catering. Eggs were the easiest things for breakfast, because they bought them from the farm; but for supper they had all sorts of things - sausages when Petrova was in charge, and two courses at least from Pauline. When Posy was catering, a great deal of cake got into the menu.

The weather was not too good, but the farmer lent them a large barn for wet days, in which they practised every morning, wet or fine, as they had, of course, their ballet shoes with them; here, when it rained, they played a new and glorious Hnd of hide-and-seek. It consisted in the hiders burying themselves in the straw, which the nervous seeker had to prod. If the hider could grab any part of the seeker, she won; but if the seeker could see a movement in the hay, and lay a hand on the place, and say 'One of you is here', then she won. The game was such a thrilling one that when it was wet Sylvia and the two doctors usually came and played too.

Just before they were due to go home, Nana sent Sylvia a telegram. Pauline was to be taken to the studio; she was to play Henrietta.

Pauline's picture relieved financial worry for the time being. She was engaged at ten pounds a day, with a minimum of ten days' work. Even allowing for ten pounds of that belonging to the Academy, ninety were for the house and clothes. They planned to start shooting the picture by the end of September or the beginning of October; but Pauline learnt that films were a different matter from plays. For a play they said rehearsals would begin next Monday, and they began next Monday; but with a film, weeks could go by between the day they expected to start and the day they actually began.

She was called to fittings for clothes throughout September, and very exciting she found it, as they were the most beautiful she had ever had - simple, of course, for a child, but most beautifully made and embroidered. In spite of the fact that her clothes had been finished for weeks, it was not until the last week in October that she was called to the studio.

Pauline had spent such time as she was free from the Academy and from working for her school certificate, which she was taking in the spring, in studying books on Charles the Second, and reading all she could find about Henrietta. She came to work at the studios with the same strong feeling of being out of herself, and into another person that she had with 'King Edward'. She had been discouraged by the script the studio had sent her; the speeches were short, and she was confused by the way the scenes were divided into 'takes'; they seemed to her so short that it would be difficult to sustain the part when everything was broken up.

When she came on the floor for her first day's work she grasped that this was a new technique; it was not doing stage acting in front of the camera; it was doing film acting, which was a totally different thing. She loathed it, she loathed the hours of hanging about, the endless rehearsals before a scene was right, and the still more innumerable 'takes' before it would pa.s.s for cameras and sound.

One day she was called for a small scene played between herself and Charles the Second. Charles was a film actor known all over the world, an Englishman who had made his name in Hollywood. The scene was before a journey of his to England, in which he begged his little sister to write. She had to say that she would try, and he had to take her chin in his hands and say: 'Not "I will try", Minette, but "I will".' Then he had to look away and say almost under his breath: 'Mine is a lonely road, little sister.' They rehea.r.s.ed for nearly two hours, and then they began the 'takes'. Mr Sholsky mopped his forehead. The boy with the board came forward. '"Charles the Exile. Director, Mr Sholsky. Camera, Mr Rosenblaum. Sound, Mr Benjamin. Scene 84. Take one".' The lights were all on, the cameras whirring. The boy clacked the clappers. 'Oh, how boring this is!' thought Pauline. 'Action,' said Mr Sholsky. They played the tiny scene. Charles turned away. 'Mine is a lonely road, little sister.' She looked at him as directed, and was amazed; after rehearsing so long, and in spite of the scene being so short, his eyes were full of tears. After the 'take' Mr Sholsky came over to her.

'You got a look in your face when you looked up at Charles, that was the first sign you've given me that you aren't made of wood.'

'That was him,' Pauline explained. 'When I looked at him, he was almost crying.'

Mr Sholsky caught both her hands in his.

'That man can act for the pictures. You've been holding out on me since the shooting began because a lot of c.o.c.keyed critics gave you a write-up as the Prince in the Tower. Well, forget it. You've everything to learn in motion pictures; today watching Charles you saw something real. Well, you can do that too; let's have it from you.'

Pauline told n.o.body what Mr Sholsky had said. When Sylvia, who came down to the studio with her every day, asked her what he had been saying, she answered vaguely it was about the part; but from that moment she found the work far less tedious, and sometimes, for a moment or two, she was able to feel not Pauline, but Princess Henrietta.

Sylvia sold the house; it was to be part of an hotel, and the purchaser would take it over on the June quarter day of next year. Petrova, knowing how often she had cried at the thought of the house going, was very sorry for the others; but she wasted her sympathy, for neither of them cared as she did. Pauline was too busy at the studio, and Posy too wrapped up in her dancing.

That Christmas, Pauline was engaged for the Fairy-G.o.d-mother in a pantomime of 'Cinderella', and Petrova was one of twenty-four jumping beans, who were to do speciality dances in 'Jack and the Beanstalk' in a theatre in the suburbs.

Pauline's film was finished, and there was no suggestion of using her for another, so she was glad to get the Fairy G.o.dmother, though she found the words she had to say terrible rubbish. Petrova and Posy thought her part an awful joke. They quoted it endlessly: '"Oh Cinders, Cinders, do not fear. Your Fairy G.o.dmother is here",' Posy said on bursting into the bathroom while Pauline was in the bath. Or Petrova recited when she saw her start off to her rehearsal:'"If after twelve you should delay, Your glories all will pa.s.s away".' Pauline did not care how much they laughed, she had the most lovely fairy dress for the transformation scene, and rather a nice solo dance to do. Nana was entranced by her dress.

'That's more like it,' she said, 'white and silver tissue, and nice wings and a wand - nothing could be prettier. That's better than those high-brow combinations.'

Sylvia or Nana took her to her rehearsals, and fetched her again for lunch, and after work was over for the day; she was just fifteen, and they thought they could trust her to look after herself. It made her feel very grown-up, and she enjoyed it.

Petrova thought being a jumping bean the worst thing that had happened to her. The twenty-four beans were taken to rehearsals by a matron, Mrs Brick. She was a nice woman, but strict. She made all the children walk two and two, and she expected them to be very quiet on the underground, and she liked them to get into their shoes and practice-rompers the second they reached the theatre, and if she could, would have marched them on to the stage as though they were soldiers. When they were not wanted on the stage she liked them to work at their exercises, as she said 'Satan found...'

They were too far away to get back to the Academy for tea, so they had it in the dressing-room before they went home, and just before the production, after the school holidays had started, they had a sandwich lunch there as well, with what Mrs Brick called 'a nice brisk walk' afterwards. A nice brisk walk meant that they all had to change back into their outdoor things and, two and two, walk rapidly four times round the big square outside. She thought that it was dull for children to hang about with nothing to do when they were neither wanted nor practising, so she brought games for them to play, and books which she read out loud to them. The other twenty-three girls loved Mrs Brick, and enjoyed being read to, and playing Happy Families; but Petrova had one of her mechanical handbooks always with her, and she longed for any corner where she could get away in peace and quiet to study it. Actually, if she had explained what she wanted to Mrs Brick, it would have been arranged for her; but she never did, and so she spent her free time during rehearsals, and in between the matinee and evening performances, after the run had started, listening to books being read out loud which she did not like, and playing games she did not want to play. Mr Simpson was the person who appreciated how she must feel.

'Pretty boring that jumping bean stuff, isn't it?' he said.

Petrova made a face.

'Simply disgusting.'

'Must be. I've fixed up for us to go up from Stag Lane on Sunday.'