Page 75 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

This was one instance in which Cameron would have been glad to see liberal decadence prevail.

The Williams and Dewar families went together to see the play. Cameron hated Shakespeare but he was looking forward eagerly to seeing what Evie would do onstage. She had an air of intensity that seemed to be brought out by an audience. She was like her great-grandfather Dai Williams, the pioneering trade unionist and evangelical preacher, according to Ethel, Dai's daughter. Ethel had said: "My father had the same bound-for-glory light in his eyes."

Cameron had studied Hamlet conscientiously--the way he studied everything, in order to get good marks--and he knew that Ophelia was a notoriously difficult part. Supposedly pathetic, she could easily become comic, with her obscene songs. How was a fifteen-year-old going to play this role and carry an audience with her? Cameron did not want to see her fall on her face (although there was, in the back of his mind, a little fantasy in which he put his arms around her delicate shoulders and comforted her as she wept for her humiliating failure).

With his parents and his kid sister, Beep, he filed into the school hall, which doubled as the gym, so that it smelled equally of dusty hymn books and sweaty sneakers. They took their seats next to the Williams family: Lloyd Williams, the Labour M.P.; his American wife, Daisy; Eth Leckwith, the grandmother; and Jasper Murray, the lodger. Young Dave, Evie's kid brother, was somewhere else, organizing an intermission bar.

Several times in the past few months Cameron had heard the story of how his mother and father had first met here in London, during the war, at a party given by Daisy. Papa had walked Mama home: when he told the story, a strange light came into his eye, and Mama gave him a look that said Shut the hell up right now, and he said no more. Cameron and Beep wondered pruriently what their parents had done on the walk home.

A few days later Papa had parachuted into Normandy, and Mama had thought she would never see him again; but all the same she had broken off her engagement to another man. "My mother was furious," Mama said. "She never forgave me."

Cameron found the school hall seats uncomfortable even for the half hour of morning assembly. Tonight was going to be purgatory. He knew all too well that the full play was five hours long. Evie had assured him that this was a shortened version. Cameron wondered how short.

He spoke to Jasper, sitting next to him. "What's Evie going to wear for the mad scene?"

"I don't know," said Jasper. "She won't tell anyone."

The lights went down and the curtain rose on the battlements of Elsinore.

The painted backdrops that formed the scenery were Cameron's work. He had a strong visual sense, presumably inherited from his father, the photographer. He was particularly pleased with the way the painted moon concealed a spotlight that picked out the sentry.

There was not much else to like. Every school play Cameron had ever seen had been dreadful, and this was no exception. The seventeen-year-old boy playing Hamlet tried to seem enigmatic but succeeded only in being wooden. However, Evie was something else.

In her first scene Ophelia had little to do other than listen to her condescending brother and her pompous father, until at the end she cautioned her brother against hypocrisy in a short speech that Evie delivered with waspish delight. But in her second scene, telling her father about Hamlet's crazy invasion of her private room, she blossomed. At the start she was frantic, then she became calmer, quieter, and more concentrated, until it seemed the audience hardly dared to breathe while she said: "He raised a sigh so piteous and profound." And then, in her next scene, when the enraged Hamlet raved at her about joining a nunnery, she seemed so bewildered and hurt that Cameron wanted to leap onstage and punch him out. Jeremy Faulkner had wisely decided to end the first half at that point, and the applause was tremendous.

Dave was presiding over an intermission bar selling soft drinks and candy. He had a dozen friends serving as fast as they could. Cameron was impressed: he had never seen school pupils work so hard. "Did you give them pep pills?" he asked Dave as he got a glass of cherry pop.

"Nope," said Dave. "Just twenty percent commission on everything they sell."

Cameron was hoping Evie might come and talk to her family during the intermission, but she still had not appeared when the bell rang for the second half, and he returned to his seat, disappointed but eager to see what she would do next.

Hamlet improved when he had to badger Ophelia with dirty jokes in front of everyone. Perhaps it came naturally to the actor, Cameron thought unkindly. Ophelia's embarrassment and distress increased until it bordered on hysteria.

But it was her mad scene that brought the house down.

She entered looking like an inmate of an asylum, in a stained and torn nightdress of thin cotton that reached only to midthigh. So far from being pitiable, she was jeering and aggressive, like a drunk whore on the street. When she said: "The owl was a baker's daughter," a sentence that in Cameron's opinion meant nothing at all, she made it sound like a vile taunt.

Cameron heard his mother murmur to his father: "I can't believe that girl is only fifteen."

On the line "Young men may do it if they come to it, by cock they are to blame," Ophelia made a grab for the king's genitals that provoked a nervous titter from the audience.

Then came a sudden change. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her voice sank almost to a whisper as she spoke of her dead father. The audience fell silent. She was a child again as she said: "I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him in the cold ground."

Cameron wanted to cry too.

Then she rolled her eyes, staggered, and cackled like an old witch. "Come, my coach!" she cried insanely. She put both hands to the neckline of her dress and ripped it down the front. The audience gasped. "Good night, ladies!" she cried, letting the garment fall to the floor. Stark naked, she cried: "Good night, good night, good night!" Then she ran off.

After that the play was dead. The gravedigger was not funny and the sword fight at the end so artificial as to be boring. Cameron could think of nothing but the naked Ophelia raving at the front of the stage, her small breasts proud, the hair at her groin a flaming auburn; a beautiful girl driven insane. He guessed every man in the audience felt the same. No one cared about Hamlet.

At the curtain call the biggest applause was for Evie. But the head teacher did not come onstage to offer the lavish praise and extensive thanks normally given to the most hopeless of amateur dramatic productions.

As they left the hall, everyone looked at Evie's family. Daisy chatted brightly to other parents, putting a brave face on it. Lloyd, in a severe dark-gray suit with a waistcoat, said nothing but looked grim. Evie's grandmother, Eth Leckwith, smiled faintly: perhaps she had reservations, but she was not going to complain.

Cameron's family also had mixed reactions. His mother's lips were pursed in disapproval. His father wore a smile of tolerant amusement. Beep was bursting with admiration.

Cameron said to Dave: "Your sister's brilliant."

"I like yours, too," said Dave with a grin.

---