Author, Author by David Lodge

Author:David Lodge [David Lodge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

1

‘ONE more year.’ He had not forgotten making that bargain with fate at the end of 1893, but in the event he had been obliged to wait slightly longer – till the fifth day of 1895 – to discover whether or not he would succeed as a playwright. He had underestimated (though he should have known better, given what he had already experienced) the chronic delays, the endemic frustrations, the multiplicity of unforeseen obstacles, that seemingly attended every theatrical venture. The whole of 1894 had passed with Guy Domville still waiting impatiently in the wings of the St James’s to ‘come on’, as Mrs Tanqueray ended its long run only to be succeeded by the almost equally extended run of Jones’s The Masqueraders. The success of that play had been all the more frustrating for being unforeseen – though he suspected Alexander of having misled him about its prospects in order to secure his option on Guy Domville. Theatre people, managers anyway, were blithely and chronically mendacious about such matters – they simply told you whatever they thought you wanted to hear, and whatever it suited their interest to have you believe, at any given moment. If Alexander had been perfectly frank in the summer of 1893 when they had their first meetings, and had told him that in all probability he would not be able to put on Guy Domville for another eighteen months, he might very well have decided to take it elsewhere. Not that that would necessarily have been to his advantage, for he would merely have encountered another set of delays, frustrations, and obstacles from a different source. At least Alexander was an efficient and hard-working producer. It was not his fault that he had gone down with German measles just after The Masqueraders closed, so that rehearsals for Guy Domville had to be postponed for three weeks. If it hadn’t been for that unlucky circumstance the play in which all his hopes of dramatic glory were now invested would have been put to the test just inside the stipulated calendar year. But now, at last, the waiting was a matter of hours.

How many hours he could not precisely calculate. He had heard a distant clock strike the half, but of which hour? It might be three, or four, or five. It could hardly be only half past two, since he had not gone to bed until after midnight (Alexander had called for a second, late dress rehearsal) and he felt as if he had had at least a few hours’ sleep; but he sensed that it could not yet be past six o’clock – the silence in the street outside was too profound. The pitch darkness of his curtained bedroom gave no clue – that would last until well after seven o’clock in the depths of a London winter. He could of course fumble for a match and look at his watch, lying on the bedside table where he always left it on retiring, but in truth he didn’t really want to know the time.

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