‘If you only knew the agony I suffered when you were ill!
I don’t know what I should have done if you’d died!’
‘You would have given a beautiful performance of a bereaved mother at the bier of her only child.’
‘Not nearly such a good performance as if I’d had the opportunity of rehearsing it a few times,’ Julia answered tartly.
‘You see, what you don’t understand is that acting isn’t nature; it’s art, and art is something you create.
Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty.
If I were really dying as I’ve died in half a dozen plays, d’you think I’d care whether my gestures were graceful and my faltering words distinct enough to carry to the last row of the gallery?
If it’s a sham it’s no more a sham than a sonata of Beethoven’s, and I’m no more of a sham than the pianist who plays it.
It’s cruel to say that I’m not fond of you.
I’m devoted to you.
You’ve been the only thing in my life.’
‘No. You were fond of me when I was a kid and you could have me photographed with you.
It made a lovely picture and it was fine publicity.
But since then you haven’t bothered much about me.
I’ve bored you rather than otherwise.
You were always glad to see me, but you were thankful that I went my own way and didn’t want to take up your time.
I don’t blame you; you hadn’t got time in your life for anyone but yourself.’
Julia was beginning to grow a trifle impatient.
He was getting too near the truth for her comfort.
‘You forget that young things are rather boring.’
‘Crashing, I should think,’ he smiled.
‘But then why do you pretend that you can’t bear to let me out of your sight?
That’s just acting too.’
‘You make me very unhappy.
You make me feel as if I hadn’t done my duty to you.’
‘But you have.
You’ve been a very good mother.
You’ve done something for which I shall always be grateful to you, you’ve left me alone.’
‘I don’t understand what you want.’
‘I told you. Reality.’
‘But where are you going to find it?’
‘I don’t know.
Perhaps it doesn’t exist.
I’m young still; I’m ignorant.
I thought perhaps that at Cambridge, meeting people and reading books, I might discover where to look for it.
If they say it only exists in God, I’m done.’
Julia was disturbed.
What he said had not really penetrated to her understanding, his words were lines and the important thing was not what they meant, but whether they ‘got over’, but she was sensitive to the emotion she felt in him.
Of course he was only eighteen, and it would be silly to take him too seriously, she couldn’t help thinking he’d got all that from somebody else, and that there was a good deal of pose in it.
Did anyone have ideas of his own and did anyone not pose just a wee, wee bit?
But of course it might be that at the moment he felt everything he said, and it wouldn’t be very nice of her to make light of it.
‘Of course I see what you mean,’ she said.
‘My greatest wish in the world is that you should be happy.
I’ll manage your father, and you can do as you like.
You must seek your own salvation, I see that.
But I think you ought to make sure that all these ideas of yours aren’t just morbid.
Perhaps you were too much alone in Vienna and I dare say you read too much.
Of course your father and I belong to a different generation and I don’t suppose we can help you.
Why don’t you talk it over with someone more of your own age?
Tom, for instance.’