The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [3]
There is a general leave-taking and paying of bills.
“I say, Gladys, ’e’s ’ad a drop too much, ain’t ’e?”
The hero and heroine drive away in a taxi.
Halfway down Pont Street, the heroine stops the taxi.
“Don’t let him come any farther, Adam. Lady R. will hear.”
“Good night, Imogen dear.”
“Good night, Adam.”
She hesitates for a moment and then kisses him.
Adam and the taxi drive away.
Close up of Adam. He is a young man of about twenty-two, clean-shaven, with thick, very dark hair. He looks so infinitely sad that even Ada is shaken.
Can it be funny?
“Buster Keaton looks sad like that sometimes—don’t ’e?”
Ada is reassured.
Buster Keaton looks sad; Buster Keaton is funny. Adam looks sad; Adam is funny. What could be clearer?
The cab stops and Adam gives it all his money. It wishes him “Good-night” and disappears into the darkness. Adam unlocks the front door.
On his way upstairs he takes his letters from the hall table; they are two bills and an invitation to a dance.
He reaches his room, undresses and sits for some time wretchedly staring at himself in the glass. Then he gets into bed. He dare not turn out the light because he knows that if he does the room will start spinning round him; he must be there thinking of Imogen until he becomes sober.
The film becomes darker. The room begins to swim and then steadies itself. It is getting quite dark. The orchestra plays very softly the first bars of “Everybody loves my baby.” It is quite dark.
Close up: the heroine.
Close up: the hero asleep.
Fade out.
NEXT MORNING 8.30 A.M.
The hero still asleep. The electric light is still burning.
A disagreeable-looking maid enters, turns out the light and raises the blind.
Adam wakes up.
“Good morning, Parsons.”
“Good morning, sir.”
“Is the bathroom empty?”
“I think Miss Jane’s just this minute gone along there.”
She picks up Adam’s evening clothes from the floor.
Adam lies back and ponders the question of whether he shall miss his bath or miss getting a place at the studio.
Miss Jane in her bath.
Adam deciding to get up.
Tired out but with no inclination to sleep, Adam dresses. He goes down to breakfast.
“It can’t be Society, Gladys, they aren’t eating grape fruit.”
“It’s such a small ’ouse too.”
“And no butler.”
“Look, there’s ’is little old mother. She’ll lead ’im straight in the end. See if she don’t.”
“Well, that dress isn’t at all what I call fashionable, if you ask me.”
“Well, if it isn’t funny and it isn’t murder and it isn’t Society, what is it?”
“P’r’aps there’ll be a murder yet.”
“Well, I calls it soft, that’s what I calls it.”
“Look now, ’e’s got a invitation to a dance from a Countess.”
“I don’t understand this picture.”
The Countess’s invitation.
“Why, there isn’t even a coronet on it, Ada.”
The little old mother pours out tea for him and tells him about the death of a friend in the Times that morning; when he has drunk some tea and eaten some fish, she bustles him out of the house.
Adam walks to the corner of the road, where he gets on to a bus. The neighbourhood is revealed as being Regent’s Park.
THE CENTRE OF LONDON’S QUARTIER LATIN
THE MALTBY SCHOOL OF ART.
No trouble has been spared by the producers to obtain the right atmosphere. The top studio at Maltby’s is already half full of young students when Adam enters. Work has not yet started, but the room is alive with busy preparation. A young woman in an overall—looking rather more like a chorus girl than a painter—is making herself very dirty cleaning her palette; another near by is setting up an easel; a third is sharpening a pencil; a fourth is smoking a cigarette in a long holder. A young man, also in an overall, is holding a drawing and appraising it at arm’s length, his head slightly on one side; a young man with untidy hair is disagreeing with him. Old Mr. Maltby, an inspiring figure in a shabby silk dressing gown, is telling a tearful student that if she misses another composition class, she will be asked to leave the school. Miss Philbrick, the secretary, interrupts the argument