51b
DORIS LESSING
her to her room. There, but
Ollt.
ide it, he kissed her. "And not bad
either," she sa id, describing the moment. "Not - bad - at all! " He
said that shc had passed eyery test, and with hcr permission he would
like to ask her to marry him. She said she would think it over, and
he kissed her hand and hoped that she would sleep well.
Still thinking it over, she returned next day to London, driven
by the manservant, who offered not one word about the midnight
ceremony. She had decided that she would be damned if she would
ask him questions, but she cracked, and so found that the ceremony
of the coffin took place every night of her John's life at midnight.
" It's not every woman ," said the servant, "who goes along with it.
Some I've seen come and go who didn't take it as you did. "
Mary consulted with her lover, who designed her a bridal gown,
inspired, he said, by a fifteenth century French court dress - too
way out to use for current fashions, but he had been dying to make
use of the ideas it inspired.
The dress ready, Mary wrote to John saying that he could
have his answer, but he must come around to the dressing-room
after the performance one night.
If
she could forgive him, he
replied, he would not actually watch the performance again, one
show a year was really enough for him, though it went without
saying, he hoped, that he respected her profession.
When he arrived at the dressing-room door, he was made to
wait. At last the dresser admitted him. He did not immediately know
where to look - Mary was not there, it seemed, and since he had
never been in an actress's dressing-room before, nor, for that matter,
had ever been backstage, the little room with its efficient mirrors,
the cold strong working light, the surgical-looking appliances on the
dressing-table, the clinical jars and bottles, were hostile to him.
There stood the dresser, a small devoted grey figure, hands folded,
her face saying nothing, in front of something that looked like–
yes, she stood aside and there it was, a long black coffin, and in it,
stretched out, dressed in the white wedding gown, eyes closed, hands
folded around flowers , flowers all around her, lay his love Mary,
dressed for a wedding ceremony, but most adamantly dead.
"As dead as blasted Ophelia," as she said, when describing the
scene to her fri ends and her lover in their favourite restaurant later
that night.
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