SIDE BENEFITS
511
predated the husband by years. Her sons? She sincerely hoped not.
Her mother then? - since such figures from the underworld are no
respecters of sex. No. Who? Who, possibly? No one. There was no–
body she could think of, no matter how far back she went in her
childhood, who could possibly have stood in for or inspired this
ambiguously enticing wraith. But she did know, in the present, one,
two, perhaps three of him. Pursuing this discovery, she made the new
one that while until the performance of her first play, twelve years
ago, she had not met once, not once, any person, male or female,
who incarnated the sad clown, since then and starting with the actor
who had played the part (nicknamed Pierrot by the company even
before her play was known by them) and briefly a friend before, as
befitting his character, he faded into a wry offstage existence on the
fringes of her life, she had known several - she was never without
him. The fact was, then, that the making flesh and blood of her–
but her
what?
fantasy? a figure from her night-dreams? - on stage
had had the power to bring him finally towards her? Well if so, it is
not a thought a sensible person could enjoy. Particularly not a
writer. She contents herself, when, meeting a man who turns that
unmistakeable face towards her with saying to herself, never to her
husband, who so strangely and obdurately resents this rival who could
never be one,
here he is again,
and with the secret contraction of the
heart, the laugh that is half a shudder, which are the tributes we
pay to the dark of our natures.
But to return to the light, the easily understood, with a man who
I once knew who claimed tha t his tragedy was, while loving women,
he was unable. He was always in our company, and taking us out,
and being seen in public with us, but, when it came to the point –
there it was, he said. Very well then. He was shooting a big film.
During the course of this, it was necessary he said, to make a screen
test of the leading actor for another film, also to be shot by him, in
which he, the actor, might again play the leading role. Reasonable
enough - it was a very different film in which a handsome alcoholic
eighteenth-century rake would endeavour, but fail, to rape a beautiful
village girl in circumstances which would force her to become his
mistress. In the film which was currently being shot, he was playing
a lusty working-class youth before whom women fell like cut grass.
The scene was set for the test. In came the actor, transmogrified out
