Chapters (12)
There followed a very long silence. Martyn sat at a distance and wondered if there was anything in the world she could do to help. There was an intermittent murmur of voices somewhere offstage. Gay Gainsford, feeling perhaps that she had sustained her position long enough, moved by gradual degrees away from her aunt by marriage, rose and, sighing heavily, transferred herself to the sofa.
Time dragged on, mostly in silence. Helena lit one cigarette from the butt of another, Gay sighed with infuriating punctuality and Martyn’s thoughts drifted sadly about the evaporation of her small triumph.
Presently there were sounds of arrival. One or two persons walked round the set from the outside entry to the dock and were evidently admitted into it.
‘Who can that be, I wonder?’ Helena Hamilton asked idly, and after a moment, ‘Is Jacko about?’
‘I’ll see,’ said Martyn.
She found Jacko off-stage with Darcey and Parry Percival. Percival was saying: ‘Well, naturally, nobody wants to go to the party but I must say that as one is quite evidently useless here I don’t see why one can’t go home.’
Jacko said: ‘You would be recalled by the police, I dare say, if you went.’
He caught sight of Martyn who went up to him. His face was beaded with sweat. ‘What is it, my small?’ he asked. ‘This is a sad epilogue to your success story. Never mind. What is it?’
‘I think Miss Hamilton would like to see you?’
‘Then, I come. It is time, in any case.’
He took her by the elbow and they went in together. When Helena saw him she seemed to rouse herself. ‘Jacko?’ she said.
He didn’t answer and she got up quickly and went to him. ‘Jacko! What is it? Has it happened?’
Jacko’s hands, so refined and delicate that they seemed like those of another man, touched her hair and her face.
‘It has happened,’ he said. ‘We have tried very hard but nothing is any good at all and there is no more to be done. He has taken wing.’
Gay Gainsford broke into a fit of sobbing but Helena stooped her head to Jacko’s shoulder and when his arms had closed about her said: ‘Help me to feel something, Jacko. I’m quite empty of feeling. Help me to be sorry.’
Above her head, Jacko’s face, glistening with sweat, grotesque and primitive, had the fixed inscrutability of a classic mask.