UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Grand Festival Concert
By COLIN SHAW (St. Peter's Hall, Oxford) THE hall was long and narrow. There was a peculiar smell about it which no amount of disinfectant, heavy and sweet-smelling, had yet managed to banish. Several holes had recently appeared in the wooden roof, and the warden lamented the high cost of repairs and the maliciousness of small boys. Over several of the windows thin green curtains drooped sadly as if embarrassed at their own inadequacy. A broken pane had been replaced by a piece of brown cardboard on which someone had scrawled a pathetic obscenity. Behind a little table by the door a small man- with no collar was tearing tickets off a long roll and trying to explain why a shilling was being charged for a ticket marked sixpence. Through the door came an uncertain flow of small children, their mothers and an occasional father, and several youths in coloured vests driven from the street-corners by the heavy rain. Two small boys were accosting everyone who arrived with the question, " Have you seen Joe ? " Joe was the pianist and had not put in an appearance. Then somebody remembered it was Thursday, and Joe always went to the speedway on Thursdays. Could Mrs. Merrett sing without accompaniment ?
The warden looked at his watch and then at the door. The audience, its clothes attempting a shabby respectability, shuffled its slow way past the little table towards the row of chairs and the four lines of benches set in front for the children. Behind the curtains which concealed the stage, put together during the afternoon, a man was hammering nails into the wall. His brother was walking backwards and forwards a few feet away, predicting the collapse of the stage before the evening was out. At the back of the stage, in the room that usually served for a kitchen, two women were rubbing flour into their hair and giggling at each other before a huge mirror which was mottled with damp patches. The two small boys had found a kitten and forgOtten Joe. The kitten purred a little irregular purr, seeming to doubt the propriety of having its stomach tickled.
The rattle of coins on the bare top of the little table faltered and then stopped. The man with no collar stood up and waved at the warden, who had just succeeded in finding a substitute for the errant Joe. He waved back triumphantly. The pianist pushed his mackintosh under the chair and .slowly peeled his way through the pile of music thoughtfully provided by Mrs. Merrett. From the distance came the sound of " Colonel Bogey," played on a gramophone whose needle was long past its best. The warden disappeared behind the curtains to stop the hammering which was still continuing. The lights went out abruptly, and then came on again to allow Mrs. Beasley to find her chair. " All right ? " " Yes, thanks, love," and the lights• went out once more.
As the warden appeared in front of the curtains, the children in the first four rows cheered shrilly. Their elders behind clapped mildly. They were still not sure whether they approved of the warden. He was a Londoner, and they were themselves only in the first stages of transformation from the country to the town. The,cstate was a new one, built since the war to accommodate the workers of a growing industry, and the attempt to mould its people into a community was proving difficult. The warden admitted the difficulties, and seemed at times to doubt whether the effort was really worth it. The payment he received was small reward for the worry. Now, standing in front of the curtains, he tapped the fingers of his right hand in the palm of his left., He apologised for the poor black-out, deplored the rain, welcomed the audience, mar- velling at its size, and regretted that owing to the late start. it would not be possible to provide the usual tea. There would, however, be pop and crisps for those who wanted them, which seemed to include all the children. They were checked into a • sidlen mutter of disappointment by their parents. Maisie Palmer, Iasi to be quelled, gazed round the darkened hall and subsided into her seat again. The warden announced the last whist-drive of the season to be held the following night, and then Introduced Mrs. Merrett, who was standing, song in hand, in the middle of the stage as the curtains jerked, partly subsiding, open.
Mrs. Merrett was perhaps better known for her ownership of the fish-shop round the corner where she was thought "a good sort." She had sung, during the war, at a factory concert which had been relayed by the B.B.C. She was tall, inclining to middle-age, and had a husband who sat at the back of the hall, fixed by her eye. She began with her favourite song which was, perhaps oddly, " My Hero," from " The Chocolate Soldier." Had the pianist found the music ? He had. Was he ready to begin ? He was. Mrs. Merrett began, " I have a true and noble lover.. ." Mr. Merrett grinned appreciatively. The warden took his seat at the side of the stage and scribbled a message on the back of an envelope. It was passed furtively to the pianist, who paused to read it and left Mrs. Merrett, momentarily, unsupported. From her expression it must be doubted whether she knew. As an encore, she sang " My Heart and I," which was another of her husband's favourites.
After promising to return later in the evening, Mrs. Merrett disappeared from the stage and was replaced by a Mrs. Walters, who was partnered by her son. re lacked two teeth, and wore a girl's gym-slip with a red sash. She was altogether toothless, and wore a girl's gym-slip with a green sash. The song they sang was comic, and it was plain that the pianist disliked it intensely. He abandoned whole bars of it and sucked his teeth. There were referencei to bailiffs, lodgers, fleas and the unsatisfactory state of the drains. It was obvious that the audience were delighted by it. They roared and whistled their approval and insisted upon an encore. Did they consider these things daring in some way that a more sophisticated listener would not And was there any analogy at other levels of entertainment^ Some of the laughter was the high-pitched laughter of the pleasurably shocked, but most of it was quite unabashed.
There followed a one-act play, the first offering of the adult drama group. The warden had succeeded months before in finding a producer willing to overcome the disadvantages of rehearsing for six months on one evening a week. The play was bad, but it was apparent that the actors had been much impressed by it. The hero was a poet, hopelessly neurotic and talking incessantly of vers libre. He was played with a strong local accent and a slow delivery. At the end of it all the warden thanked the players for their efforts and hoped for more. More was promised in the autumn.
The interval, was -announced. The children scrambled over the benches and scattered the chairs in their rush to the back of the hall where two elderly women served pop, and crisps from a high trestle-table. There was a steady sound of tearing paper and the rattle of bottle-tops thrown to the floor. Despite the weather outside, the walls were streaming with condensation. The warden made vain efforts to bring the audience back to their seats. He shook his head sadly. "No sense of discipline." he said, and added, " Now, in London. . . ." It was comforting to forget that the c)ub in London had driven him to the edge of a nervous collapse. He took hold of several small hands and guided their owners over the benches back to their places. The pianist sat down again. The lights went out. At ten o'clock the last of the audience made their way past the little table into the rain which was still falling outside. The second half of the concert had satisfied them no less than the first. They wanted more concerts, they said, and asked why Mrs. Merrett didn't try to better herself. They had heard worse on the wireless. they said. Mrs. Merrett thanked them. and took her husband back to their fish-shop. The warden began to lock up the rooms and promised to help the cleaner in the morning. " It's a start," he said, but his eyes were tired, and, when he was outside in the rain, he could only push his bicycle with slow steps up the hill.
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