The Foolish Lovers

by St. John G. Ervine

"How much will you pay me for it?"

"Well, we gave the chap that wrote The Girl Gets Left ... poor chap, he died of drink about six weeks ago ... couldn't keep away from it ... signed the pledge ... ate sweets ... did everything ... no good ... always thought out his best jokes when he was drunk ... well, we gave him thirty bob a week for The Girl Gets Left ... and mind you he was an experienced chap, too ... but Dolly and me, we've decided you have to pay a bit extra for classy stuff, and we'll give you two quid a week for the piece if it suits us. Two quid a week as long as the play runs, Mac. The Girl Gets Left has been played for four years ... four years, Mac ... all over the civilised globe. If your piece was to run that long, you'd get Four Hundred and Sixteen Quid. Four Hundred and Sixteen shiny Jimmy o' Goblins, Mac! Think of it! And all for a couple of afternoons' work!..."

"And how much will you get out of it?" John asked.

"Oh, I dunno. Enough to pay the rent anyhow. You know, Mac, these high-class chaps like Barrie and Bernard Shaw, they've never had a play run for four years anywhere, and yet old Hookings, that nobody never knew nothing about and died of drink, his play was performed all over the civilised world for four years. That's something to be proud of, that is. Four solid years! But there was nothing in the papers about him, when he died ... nothing ... not a word. And if Barrie was to die, or Bernard Shaw ... columns, pages! Barrie ... well, he's all right, of course ... not bad ... but compare him with Hookings. Why, he doesn't know the outside of the human heart, not the outside of it he doesn't, and Hookings knew what the inside of it's like. You take that play of Barrie's, The Twelve Pound Look. Not bad...not a bad play, at all ... but where's the feeling heart in it? Play that piece in front of an audience of coalminers and what 'ud you get? The bird, my boy! That sort of stuff is all right for the West End ... but the people, Mac, want something that hits 'em straight between the eyes and gives 'em a kick in the stomach as well. The best way to make a man sit up and take a bit of notice is to hit him a punch on the jaw, and the best way to make the public feel sympathetic is to hit it a punch in the heart!..."

The little man broke off suddenly and glanced towards the door. "I must toddle down to Dolly now. She gets fretful if I'm out of her sight for long. I'll see you later on ... seven o 'clock, old chap!"

"Very good," John answered.

"Aw reservoir, then!" said Cream, as he left the room and hurried downstairs.

II

He told himself that he ought to do some work, but the desire to see more of London overcame his good resolution, and so he left the house and set out again for the town. He hoped that he might see Eleanor Moore. If he were to go to the tea-shop at the same hour as she had entered it yesterday, he might contrive to seat himself at her table again, and this time perhaps she would listen to him. When he reached the City, he found that he was too early for the mid-day meal, and so he resolved to go and stand about the entrance to the office where Eleanor Moore was employed. He would see her coming out of it and could follow discreetly after her.... But although he waited for an hour, she did not appear, nor was she to be seen in the tea-shop, when, tired and disappointed, he took his place in it. He dallied over his meal, hoping every moment that she would turn up, but at length he had to go away without seeing her. At teatime, he told himself, he would come again and wait for her. He climbed on to a 'bus and let himself be taken to Charing Cross, where he enquired the way to the National Gallery. He wandered through the rooms until his eyes ached with looking at the pictures and his feet were sore with walking on the polished floors. He felt self-conscious when he looked at the nudes, and he blushed when he found a woman standing by his side as he looked at the portrait of Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne his wife by van Eyck. He turned hotly away, and wondered that there was no blush on the face of the woman. In Ballyards, a man always pretended not to see a woman about to have a child ... unless, of course, he was with other men and the woman could not see him, when he would crack jokes about her condition!... Here, however, people actually exhibited pictures of pregnant women in a public place where all sorts, old and young, male and female, could look at them ... and no one appeared to mind. It might be all right, of course, and after all a woman in that way was natural enough ... but he had been brought up to be ashamed of seeing such things, and he could not very well become easy about them in a moment.... And he became very tired of Holy Families and Crucifixions!...

"I'll walk back to the place," he said to himself as he left the Gallery and crossed Trafalgar Square. He dappled his fingers in the water of one of the fountains, and listened to two little Cocknies wrangling together....