Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [129]
There was total silence in the room. Everyone was staring at Caroline.
No one had heard the door open and Orlando come in.
“Clytemnestra!” he said distinctly. “What a brilliant idea! How extraordinarily clever of you, Mrs. Fielding. Mama has never done the Greeks. That would be a whole new career, and superb! And there is also Phaedra!” He turned to Cecily. “You are too old for Antigone, but you could always do Jocasta . . . but Mrs. Fielding is right, Clytemnestra would be the sublime vehicle for you. Who would want Gertrude after that?”
Cecily looked at Caroline, her head high, her eyes bright.
“Perhaps I should be obliged to you, Mrs. Fielding. I admit, I am surprised. I should never have thought of you as being so . . . liberal in your views of art. You must tell me, why do you think I might do Clytemnestra well?” She laughed. “I hope it is not merely because she has adult children?”
Caroline looked back at her with just as much bright candor.
“Of course not, although that does make a difference to one’s life. But I was thinking of the fact that she is central to the play, not secondary. She is the character whose passions drive the plot. And she has been profoundly wronged in the sacrifice of her daughter. Her murder of her husband is not a sympathetic action, yet it is one most mothers would identify with. It needs an actress of extraordinary power to carry the audience with her and neither play to their pity and lose her own dignity, nor yet become unattractive because of her power and her willingness to take the ultimate step.” She took a deep breath. No one had interrupted her by so much as a movement.
She plunged on. “It should leave one emotionally wrung out and yet deepened in experience, and perhaps with more compassion and understanding than before.” Unwittingly the old lady came to her thoughts again. Horror for endless pain could change one’s own life immeasurably, cast so much in a different view.
For the first time Cecily looked at her directly and without any mask of emotion. “You are most surprising,” she said at length. “I could have sworn you had not a revolutionary idea in your head, much less your heart. And here you are recommending that we stir up the complacent society out there by making them feel Clytemnestra’s passions!” She smiled. “You will provoke letters to the Times and thunder from the Archbishop, not to mention disfavor from the Queen, if you suggest that to murder your husband can even be acceptable!” The edge of mockery was back in her voice again.
She swiveled around. “Joshua darling, you had better be careful how you treat your wife’s daughters!” She gestured to Caroline. “You do have daughters, don’t you? Yes, of course you do—one of them is married to that policeman with all the hair. I remember him. For heaven’s sake, darling, don’t sacrifice them to the gods, or you may end your life abruptly with a knife in your heart. There sleeps a tiger inside that calm and dignified-looking wife of yours.”
“Yes, I know,” Joshua said smugly. He placed his hand very lightly on Caroline’s arm just for a second, but it was a gesture of possession, and Caroline felt the warmth ripple through her. The door opened and Bellmaine came in, still dressed in his Polonius robes, the smudges of greasepaint on his face lending him greater gravity rather than detracting from it.
“Wonderful!” he said radiantly. He spoke to all of them, but it was Orlando his eyes rested on. “Wonderful, my dears. You surpassed yourselves. Cecily, you had Gertrude to perfection! I had never seen her in such a sympathetic light before. You made me believe in her unaware-ness of what she had done—until it was too late—a woman caught in the mesh of her own passions. I wept for her.”
“Thank you,” she accepted graciously, smiling at him, but