father doesn't exist. Why, he's been playing himself for the last twenty years." ("Michael could play the King, not in French, of course, but if we decided to have a shot at it in London.")
"Poor father, I suppose he's good at his job, but he's not very intelligent, is he? He's so busy being the handsomest man in England."
"I don't think it's very nice of you to speak of your father like that."
"Have I told you anything you don't know?" he asked coolly.
Julia wanted to smile, but would not allow the look of somewhat pained dignity to leave her face.
"It's our weakness, not our strength, that endears us to those who love us," she replied.
"In what play did you say that?"
She repressed a gesture of annoyance. The words had come naturally to her lips, but as she said them she remembered that they were out of a play. Little brute! But they came in very appositely.
"You're hard," she said plaintively. She was beginning to feel more and more like Hamlet's mother. "Don't you love me?"
"I might if I could find you. But where are you? If one stripped you of your exhibitionism, if one took your technique away from you, if one peeled you as one peels an onion of skin after skin of pretence and insincerity, of tags of old parts and shreds of faked emotions, would one come upon a soul at last?" He looked at her with his grave sad eyes and then he smiled a little. "I like you all right."
"Do you believe I love you?"
"In your way."
Julia's face was suddenly discomposed.
"If you only knew the agony I suffered when you were ill! I don't know what I should have done if you'd died!"
"You would have given a beautiful performance of a bereaved mother at the bier of her only child."
"Not nearly such a good performance as if I'd had the opportunity of rehearsing it a few times," Julia answered tartly. "You see, what you don't understand is that acting isn't nature; it's art, and art is something you create. Real grief is ugly; the business of the actor is to represent it not only with truth but with beauty. If I were really dying as I've died in half a dozen plays, d'you think I'd care whether my gestures were graceful and my faltering words distinct enough to carry to the last row of the gallery? If it's a sham it's no more a sham than a sonata of Beethoven's, and I'm no more of a sham than the pianist who plays it. It's cruel to say that I'm not fond of you. I'm devoted to you. You've been the only thing in my life."
"No. You were fond of me when I was a kid and you could have me photographed with you. It made a lovely picture and it was fine publicity. But since then you haven't bothered much about me. I've bored you rather than otherwise. You were always glad to see me, but you were thankful that I went my own way and didn't want to take up your time. I don't blame you; you hadn't got time in your life for anyone but yourself."
Julia was beginning to grow a trifle impatient. He was getting too near the truth for her comfort.
"You forget that young things are rather boring."
"Crashing, I should think," he smiled. "But then why do you pretend that you can't bear to let me out of your sight? That's just acting too."
"You make me very unhappy. You make me feel as if I hadn't done my duty to you."
"But you have. You've been a very good mother. You've done something for which I shall always be grateful to you, you've left me alone."
"I don't understand what you want."
"I told you. Reality."
"But where are you going to find it?"
"I don't know. Perhaps it doesn't exist. I'm young still; I'm ignorant. I thought perhaps that at Cambridge, meeting people and reading books, I might discover where to look for it. If they say it only exists in God, I'm done."
Julia was disturbed. What he said had not really penetrated to her understanding, his words were lines and the important thing was not what they meant, but whether they "got over", but she was sensitive to the emotion she felt in him. Of course he was only eighteen, and it would be silly to take him too seriously, she couldn't help thinking he'd got all that from somebody else, and that