The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [309]
It was only at this point that Olive realised that August Steyning intended to cast a woman as Tom.
She was, in those days, slightly drunken, very tense with the excitement of collaboration. Writing stories, writing books, is fiercely solitary, even if done by housewives in snatched moments at the edge of the diningtable. She had come a very long way, from Goldthorpe in the Yorkshire coalfield to this gilt and velvet palace with the laughing and serious companions with whom she worked. She loved them all, and fought them fiercely when they appeared to misconstrue a narrative thread, or to take possession of her people and change them unacceptably. For she had lived with these shadows in that solitude, and had loved and hated and watched them do as they did, unconstrained.
She was not really a playwright. The auditions taught her that. A true playwright makes up people who can be inhabited by actors. A storyteller makes shadow people in the head, autonomous and complete.
The worst thing about the auditions—apart from the visceral shock of seeing Tom as a woman—was bad acting, wrong “interpretations.” Simpering misses making the sharp Silf sugary in dulcet tones. Gathorns who were neither lithe nor clever but playing for laughs and self-admiring. Queens of Shadows like society ladies, intoning. Rats who were too ratty, which was difficult, in principle. There was also the opposite problem—good actors, who twisted her people, the Elf Queen, the loblolly (who was only a voice attached to a jelly-serpent and lights).
But the worst thing was the women who auditioned for Thomas. Olive had tried to quarrel with August Steyning. If he was auditioning male juveniles for the Gathorn, why not for Tom?
Because of the pantomime tradition, said August Steyning. Olive appealed to the Germans. They said, shiftily, that the work appealed to many traditions, from Wagnerian opera to the puppet theatres. It had balletic elements and elements from the commedia dell’arte. They liked the idea of a central figure with a clear voice, neither broken nor childishly piping.
Olive was a woman who imagined male characters and male creatures. The travellers underground—Tom, the Gathorn, the salamander, the loblolly, were male, as Tom’s angrily detached shadow was male.
Steyning said a woman could better do the element of mask, of über-marionette, he wanted.
Olive needed to please Steyning.
The audition piece was the meeting between Thomas and the Gathorn. A series of variegated Puckish boys talked to a series of boyish women, interspersed with divas. Olive’s medium was words. She thought Lucy Fontaine might do, and imagined Gladys Carpenter as thickset. Sylvia Simon sounded hopeful, whereas Daisy Bremner and Glory Gayheart sounded girlish or unreal.
The women auditioned in skirts. Lucy Fontaine had a pleasant, clear voice and sizeable breasts and hips. Olive shut her eyes, and heard
“I’m lost, and I fear I shall never get out of here alive. I don’t know where I’m going, let alone how to get there. I have this small light, and a sketchy map.”
And the Gathorns. “It’s not so bad. I live here. You can delight in the dark, if you understand it. It’s full of unexpected riches.”
And the boys/women. “Who are you? How do you live down here?”
“You can see in the dark, if you get used to it. There are creatures down here who shine their own light. You need to meet a loblolly.”
“I’ve seen things glowing, or whisking along, in the distance.”
“The mine is full of spirits. Some kind, or fairly kind. Some are tricky. And some are downright nasty.”
“I didn’t ask to—to go on a quest. I just wanted to be in the fields.”
Stop, enough, Steyning would call at this point. Olive tried closing her eyes and simply hearing voices. She learned things. Her hero was more afraid, and less brave, than most heroes. Glory Gayheart, who was skinny enough, had a rich voice, a confident contralto. Lucy Fontaine got exactly