THE ARTISTE. — She, the artiste, would enter upstage, like so,

from back there,

she’d come on,

walking slowly

from the back of the stage towards the audience

and she’d sit down.

Sometimes, it happened more than once, sometimes,

when there was no way of coming on from the back,

or when the stage wasn’t deep enough,

or at other times again, when the lights must have been set up differently,

the artiste, then,

it was a way she’d found for dealing with that kind of incident,

the artiste would enter upstage from the side and then, with no mean skill I might say,

she’d walk in a shallow half-circle across to the centre line and advance,

“as if nothing were amiss”,

towards the audience,

and down she sit, in the same place, in the same way,

slow and unconcerned.

At other times, once or twice,

and as recently as a year ago,

at other times, upstage centre there would be no door,

and in these extreme cases,

but it was as well to provide for them just in case,

seeing that as recently as a year ago, and at other times too,

and in circumstances where one never could have foreseen it,

such a situation might fall within the bounds of possibility,

the artiste would already be on stage,

waiting, upstage centre, and when the show would go up

— but it was always she who decided when to begin —

when the show would go up, she’d walk straight down towards the audience and she’d sit,

always in the self-same manner, slow and unconcerned.

Like so, “as cool as you please”.

At other times, once,

twice,

I forget,

and it would be as well, frankly,

or so I think,

sometimes, once or twice,

three times,

let’s say four,

I’m checking it out, I thinking back and I’m checking it out,

four times then,

sometimes, not only was there no door,

nowhere at all, neither upstage centre nor to the side,

and furthermore,

— and that’s the point I’m coming to —

and one has to admit that it was no small matter,

— when I saw that I could have wept, and in spite of the fact that such an eventuality had been provided for,

I never would have imagined that one day I might have to resort to that, fall back on such a solution —

furthermore,

the stage was so small, truly, from there to there, no more, that there was no way at all that one might walk, very slowly and quite unconcerned, no way at all,

I mean to say, one had to face the fact,

— I could have wept, that’s the truth, no-one believes me, I don’t look the type, but I could have wept —

so very small, indeed, that the artiste,

it was the answer to the problem,

that the artiste had to be already on stage, seated, “as cool as you please”, already, yes, already on stage,

squeezed in between the upstage wall and the audience, hardly an inch between them.