‘I’m very tired, Angelo.’
‘A little caviare to begin with, madame, or some oysters?’
‘Oysters, Angelo, but fat ones.’
‘I will choose them myself, Miss Lambert, and to follow?’
Julia gave a long sigh, for now she could, with a free conscience, order what she had had in mind ever since the end of the second act.
She felt she deserved a treat to celebrate her triumph, and for once she meant to throw prudence to the winds.
‘Grilled steak and onions, Angelo, fried potatoes, and a bottle of Bass.
Give it me in a silver tankard.’
She probably hadn’t eaten fried potatoes for ten years.
But what an occasion it was!
By a happy chance on this day she had confirmed her hold on the public by a performance that she could only describe as scintillating, she had settled an old score, by one ingenious device disposing of Avice and making Tom see what a fool he had been, and best of all had proved to herself beyond all question that she was free from the irksome bonds that had oppressed her.
Her thought nickered for an instant round Avice.
‘Silly little thing to try to put a spoke in my wheel.
I’ll let her have her laughs tomorrow.’
The oysters came and she ate them with enjoyment.
She ate two pieces of brown bread and butter with the delicious sense of imperilling her immortal soul, and she took a long drink from the silver tankard.
‘Beer, glorious beer,’she murmured.
She could see Michael’s long face if he knew what she was doing.
Poor Michael who imagined she had killed Avice’s scene because she thought he was too attentive to that foolish little blonde.
Really, it was pitiful how stupid men were.
They said women were vain, they were modest violets in comparison with men.
She could not but laugh when she thought of Tom.
He had wanted her that afternoon, he had wanted her still more that night.
It was wonderful to think that he meant no more to her than a stage-hand.
It gave one a grand feeling of confidence to be heart-whole.
The room in which she sat was connected by three archways with the big dining-room where they supped and danced; amid the crowd doubtless were a certain number who had been to the play.
How surprised they would be if they knew that the quiet little woman in the corner of the adjoining room, her face half hidden by a felt hat, was Julia Lambert.
It gave her a pleasant sense of independence to sit there unknown and unnoticed.
They were acting a play for her and she was the audience.
She caught brief glimpses of them as they passed the archway, young men and young women, young men and women not so young, men with bald heads and men with fat bellies, old harridans clinging desperately to their painted semblance of youth.
Some were in love, and some were jealous, and some were indifferent.
Her steak arrived.
It was cooked exactly as she liked it, and the onions were crisp and brown.
She ate the fried potatoes delicately, with her fingers, savouring each one as though it were the passing moment that she would bid delay.
‘What is love beside steak and onions?’ she asked.
It was enchanting to be alone and allow her mind to wander.
She thought once more of Tom and spiritually shrugged a humorous shoulder.
‘It was an amusing experience.’
It would certainly be useful to her one of these days.
The sight of the dancers seen through the archway was so much like a scene in a play that she was reminded of a notion that she had first had in St Malo.
The agony that she had suffered when Tom deserted her recalled to her memory Racine’s Ph?dre which she had studied as a girl with old Jane Taitbout.
She read the play again.
The torments that afflicted Theseus’ queen were the torments that afflicted her, and she could not but think that there was a striking similarity in their situations.
That was a part she could act; she knew what it felt like to be turned down by a young man one had a fancy for.
Gosh, what a performance she could give!
She knew why in the spring she had acted so badly that Michael had preferred to close down; it was because she was feeling the emotions she portrayed.
That was no good.
You had to have had the emotions, but you could only play them when you had got over them.
She remembered that Charles had once said to her that the origin of poetry was emotion recollected in tranquillity.
She didn’t know anything about poetry, but it was certainly true about acting.