“Play?”
“Be an actress. I thought I’d better warn you,” Olive laughed, “I don’t know when it started. I know Mark wouldn’t like it. Otherwise the child’s the delight of my life.” She sank into a couch and asked, “Now, what are these diplomatic idiots doing in Paris? I don’t like the look of things.”
“Arranging for another war.”
“I do hope they’ll arrange it for twenty years from date. I’ll be past sixty then and I won’t care. I’ll be able to sit and grin at the women who’re going through what—Only, of course, I shouldn’t grin. I’m a true blue Briton of the old breed when it comes to an emotion. I simply can’t enjoy an emotion when it’s my emotion.... Had you ever thought that that’s why bad plays and cinema rubbish are so popular? It’s the unreality of the passions.... I dare say that’s why I’ve just been to church.... Perhaps that’s why Margot wants to go on the stage. She’s never had an emotion worth shedding a tear for. Well, how’s Mark?”
“Putting on three plays after Christmas and thinks they’re all winners.”
She drew her hands over her eyes and murmured, “Mark’s extraordinary. Endless enthusiasm. Like a kiddy with a box of water colours. I suppose it’s belief. He really believes in his job.... I once thought he needed education.... If he’d been educated, he couldn’t have believed so hard.... There has to be something childish to get along in the theatre.... If he were worldly wise he’d have known half these plays were rubbish and the rest not very good.... But I’m not sure what a good play is, Gurdy. Tell me. You’re young, so you should know.”
He flushed, then laughed and asked what play Margot and her friends rehearsed. The loud, spaced voices came across the hall. He felt an unruly curiosity stir.
“It’s a one act thing of Ronny Dufford’s—Colonel the Honourable Ronald Dufford. Quite a pal of Margot’s. That was he talking to you in the hall just now—the Brass Hat. What are you laughing at?”
“Wondering what would happen to an American General Staff man if he wrote plays.... Dufford? Mark put a thing of his on in nineteen sixteen. It failed.”
“His things are rather thin. He’s been nice to Margot, though. He took her about when I was in mourning—He’s a good sort. Forty eight or so. I dare say he lectured Margot on the greatness of Empire and the sacredness of the House of Lords. It didn’t hurt her. She hears enough about the sacredness of the plain people, in the studios.”