In a glance she had taken in the young girl who entered her dressing-room.
She was young, with a pretty little face and a snub nose, a good deal made-up and not very well made-up.
‘Her legs are too short,’ thought Julia. ‘Very second-rate.’
She had evidently put on her best clothes and the same glance had told Julia all about them. (‘Shaftesbury Avenue. Off the nail.’) The poor thing was at the moment frightfully nervous.
Julia made her sit down and offered her a cigarette.
‘There are matches by your side.’
She saw her hands tremble when she tried to strike one.
It broke and she rubbed a second three times against the box before she could get it to light. (‘If Roger could only see her now! Cheap rouge, cheap lipstick, and scared out of her wits. Gay little thing, he thought she was.’)
‘Have you been on the stage long, Miss—I’m so sorry I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Joan Denver.’
Her throat was dry and she could hardly speak.
Her cigarette went out and she held it helplessly.
She answered Julia’s question. ‘Two years.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen.’ (‘That’s a lie. You’re twenty-two if you’re a day.’)
‘You know my son, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s just left Eton.
He’s gone to Vienna to learn German.
Of course he’s very young, but his father and I thought it would be good for him to spend a few months abroad before going up to Cambridge.
And what parts have you played?
Your cigarette’s gone out.
Won’t you have another?’
‘Oh, it’s all right, thanks.
I’ve been playing on tour.
But I’m frightfully anxious to be in town.’
Despair gave her courage and she uttered the speech she had evidently prepared.
‘I’ve got the most tremendous admiration for you, Miss Lambert.
I always say you’re the greatest actress on the stage.
I’ve learnt more from you than I did all the years I was at the R.A.D.A.
My greatest ambition is to be in your theatre, Miss Lambert, and if you could see your way to giving me a little something, I know it would be the most wonderful chance a girl could have.’
‘Will you take off your hat?’
Joan Denver took the cheap little hat off her head and with a quick gesture shook out her close-cropped curls.
‘What pretty hair you have,’ said Julia.
Still with that slightly imperious, but infinitely cordial smile, the smile that a queen in royal procession bestows on her subjects, Julia gazed at her.
She did not speak.
She remembered Jane Taitbout’s maxim: Don’t pause unless it’s necessary, but then pause as long as you can.
She could almost hear the girl’s heart beating and she felt her shrinking in her ready-made clothes, shrinking in her skin.
‘What made you think of asking my son to give you a letter to me?’
Joan grew red under her make-up and she swallowed before she answered.
‘I met him at a friend’s house and I told him how much I admired you and he said he thought perhaps you’d have something for me in your next play.
‘I’m just turning over the parts in my mind.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of a part.
If I could have an understudy — I mean, that would give me a chance of attending rehearsals and studying your technique.
That’s an education in itself.
Everyone agrees about that.’ (‘Silly little fool, trying to flatter me.
As if I didn’t know that.
And why the hell should I educate her?’)
‘It’s very sweet of you to put it like that.
I’m only a very ordinary person really.