Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, Tales by A. E. Coppard

Author:A. E. Coppard [Coppard, A. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ghost stories, weird fiction
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1946-04-17T23:00:00+00:00

"Kate, my lovely."

She was saying brokenly: "You know what I said.

I've come to make it all up to you. I promised, didn't I?"

Something shuddered in his very soul—too late, too late, this was no love for him. The magic lantern looked a stupid childish toy, the smell of the acid was repulsive. Of all they had written upon the blackboard one word dimly remained: Jesu.

She stirred in his arms. "You are changed, David." "Changed, yes, everything is changed." "This is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were acting."

"Yes, as if we were acting. But we are not acting. Let us go up and sit in the gallery."

They ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and looked down to the tiny platform and the white curtain. She sat fondling his hands, leaning against him. "Have you ever acted—you would do it so well?" "Why do you say that? Am I at all histrionic?" "Does that mean insincere? O no. But you are the person one expects to be able to do anything."

"Nonsense! I've never acted. I suppose I could. It isn't difficult, you haven't to be clever, only courageous. I should think it very easy to be only an ordinary actor, but I'm wrong, no doubt. I thought it was easy to write—to write a play—until I tried. I once engaged myself to write a little play for some students to act. I had never done such a thing before and like other idiots I thought I hadn't ever done it simply because I hadn't ever wanted to. Heavens, how harassed I was and how ashamed! I could not do it, I got no further than the author's speech."

"Well that was something. Tell me it."

"It's nothing to do with the play. It's what the author says to the audience when the play is finished."

She insisted on hearing it whatever it was. "O well," he said at last, "let's do that properly, at feast. I'll go down there and deliver it from the stage. You must pretend that you are the enthusiastic audience. Come and sit in the stalls."

They went down together.

"Now imagine that this curtain goes up and I suddenly appear."

Kate faintly clapped her hands. He stood upon the platform facing her and taking off his hat, began:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"I am so deeply touched by the warmth of this reception, this utterly undeserved appreciation, that—forgive me—I have forrotten the speech I had carefully prepared in anticipation of it. Let me meet my obligation by telling you a story; I think it is true, I made it up myself. Once upon a time there was a poor playwright—something like me—who wrote a play—something like this—and at the end of the performance the audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience—something like this*—called him before the curtain and demanded a speech. He protested that he was unprepared and asked them to allow him to tell them a story—something like this. Well, that, too, was a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience, so they didn't mind and he began again.

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