After the Cabaret (19 page)

‘From the sink, where she went immediately to start washing up, she said, “Turn on the gas, I suppose. Do myself in. Funny, we're out of Jeyes' Fluid.”

‘“I'm saving it up to drink when Hitler marches in,” claimed Pym.

‘Sally's eyes were on Theo – they almost always were. ‘“What will you do, Theo?”

‘“Oh, run,” he said.

‘“Where to?”

‘“America – where else?”

‘“Can I come too?” she asked – silly girl.

‘He went round the table and kissed her ear. “You'll have your looted fur coat to keep you warm.”

‘Sally smiled at him, but she wanted more, more than Theo would give – probably more than he
could
give. Funnily enough it was Pym who called him a bastard.

‘“During these great movements of history there's no time for personal relationships,” Theo remarked.

‘“Which is all right for you because you've never had one,” Pym told him.

‘Theo gave him a nasty look and said, “Look who's talking, duckie.”

‘Sally went upstairs. She was upset. But she came down, dressed, made-up and smiling and made Theo take her out to lunch at the Ritz and soon they seemed happy again, happy enough. After all, at that moment everything was temporary and conditional, there simply was no future to plan. It's always so in war, I suppose.

‘Sally was in love – she glowed, the sun shone, they went away for the weekend to stay in a castle in Scotland. It was a dream for her,' said Bruno Lowenthal's voice on the tape. ‘Theo so handsome, so clever, so bold, Sally with her feeling of being loved and protected. Nobody mentioned the baby, of course.'

Here Greg, transcribing busily in the damp Bloomsbury flat with its hissing gas fire, looked up and thought, why not? Sally's baby was a very big blank in the story. And where was the baby now? He turned on the machine again and the harsh, accented voice continued.

‘I remember them coming in one night from the Café de
Paris, where they'd been dancing, Sally in a sequinned red dress, very good cut, very low, Theo a fine figure in a dinner jacket. They stood in the doorway at Pontifex Street, he with his arm round her shoulder, and they glowed. A golden couple, they had come through the darkness on foot, with just a little torch, and it was as if they had absorbed all that darkness and worked it into light. They made everyone else in the room, the two Army girls, the air commodore, the aide to the exiled Yugoslav king, drab and dull and stiff, like shop-window models. Theo had that effect.

‘Poor Sally, silly cow. He left two days later for an undisclosed place and she didn't see him or hear from him again for more than a year.

‘All right,' Bruno had told Greg, ‘I liked and didn't like Sally, but Sally in love – poor Sally – she wasn't like the normal English rose. Not like that bitch Julia, who seemed all cream but underneath was determined to make Peveril leave his wife. Sally lacked a skin. She was naïve. She thought Theo was like her, all for love, but, of course, he wasn't. Underneath that careless charm he was like a clever boy, ambitious, competitive, emotionally neutral. The perfect spy, in fact. He couldn't afford to get into any trouble.

‘After he left, Sally was very depressed. Theo'd gone without saying what she wanted to hear. I came across her crying into her gin one night, still in her cabaret dress, makeup running down her face. “There's a war on,” she told me. “None of us can commit ourselves beyond tomorrow.” Then she broke down. “But it's a bit much, Bruno.”

‘What could I say? “Silly girl, pull yourself together. Theo's got other targets in his sights” – no, I couldn't tell her that.

‘But you see, we'd all overheard Theo on the phone one evening talking to someone and saying, “If you're speaking to Blanche give her my dearest love. Don't forget.”

‘Pym had been lying in a chair, half drunk, but not too drunk to understand. “Theo's off to Washington,” he told Briggs. “He had a fling with Blanche Mencken when her uncle was
en poste
here in London. The Menckens are stinking rich – steel, railroads and automobiles. She's a very pretty girl, too.”

‘“If he's going to Washington, he'll be keen to find out what the Menckens are up to,” Briggs said.

‘“Do you think so?” Pym said. “It's not information about the US war effort our hero's after, believe me.”

‘Then Theo came back into the room. “Washington?” Pym queried.

‘Theo didn't deny it. “Nice over there,” Pym said. “Fridges, steaks, no rationing, no bombs, all those little inconveniences we're used to.”

‘“One goes where duty calls,” Theo observed, cool as a cucumber.

‘Sally came racing in from outside complete with tin hat, gas mask and wearing a soldier's coat. It had been raining. Theo went over and embraced her. “Shall we go out for a dance, darling?”

‘“Let's,” she cried. It was touching, her open face smiling up at him. They went off, into the darkness, leaving us
sitting there like three sad old bachelors. Then, of course, the place began to fill up, as it always did.

‘The day after that Theo left.

‘Sally plunged,' Bruno reported gloomily. ‘After that, she didn't care. It's not that she knew where Theo was. She went on thinking pathetically that he was in some horrible field of war, fighting gallantly with partisans in sheepskin coats, sending messages back to London from caves in the mountains. But even that didn't seem to make any difference. He'd left without giving her any guarantees, or any reassurance that he'd come back for her if he could. She got very depressed.

‘Pym used to go about the flat when Sally was there singing, in a fake Irish tenor, “Oh, mother dear, what a fool was I, To kill myself for the creamery boy.” What a nasty man he was.'

‘So for a month,' Bruno said, ‘Sally left La Vie each night with a man who wanted her – a Norwegian seaman, a British official, a pilot, on one occasion a nursing sister, she didn't care, she was too drunk. She got good presents, though, a bracelet here, a ring there, little boys were always coming round with flowers, the phone never stopped ringing. The atmosphere in the flat was terrible. Pym and Briggs became very censorious. Pym! Who went through the blackout like Dracula, sinking his teeth into whoever he could find in the darkness. There was never a call or a note from Theo.'

Bruno reflected, ‘That was probably what put paid to her chance of the medal she might have been awarded for heroism in France – the night she stood on the table, dancing naked, dead drunk, in front of the Minister of Food and the exiled King of Yugoslavia.

‘Then she got very quiet. She went to Pym, Briggs and many others. She had to contact Theo. Was there any way? She was very pale and vomiting in the mornings.
Nothing was said, but we all knew she was pregnant. Of course, everyone had to pretend they didn't know where he was, but I know Briggs wrote to Theo in Washington giving him the bad news. There was no reply. It was a horrible episode. No one could stand it. I told Julia one day she should speak to Sally but all she said was, “My God, why on earth should I? It's got nothing to do with me.” Finally I think the nurse helped out. Anyway, she and Sally spent a day or two in Sally's garret, after which Sally emerged, pale and shaky, and went back to work and we all went on pretending nothing had happened.

‘She was pretty low during that autumn. She'd never had a voice, as I've told you, only what today they would call an attitude, and when that went, Cora thought of giving her the sack. I can remember her going round the flat in her pyjamas, covered in a soldier's great-coat she had got from somewhere, singing in a tinny high soprano,

‘I'm going to meet him today,

Oh, I'm in a tizz

And the people that I meet

When I'm going down the street

Will say you are a bloody fool.'

She'd stand in the kitchen, knocking up the wartime recipes – unspeakable things, sheep's head broth, swede and carrot pie. She'd hung four thrushes in the larder for days. I came across her frying them. When I asked her what she was doing, because when our rations ran out at Pontifex Street we just went out or ate in restaurants – which was why
at the end of the war Pym owed Briggs four thousand pounds in food bills – Sally just said, “It's for the war effort,” and burst out crying. She lost weight, got paler and paler. Poor Sally.

‘You see Theo, like so many so-called lady-killers, specialised in confusing women. He didn't know what he was doing, and didn't want to, so he made no vows, no promises for the future and, when he began to feel unhappy or uncomfortable, he ran. It was hard on Sally. He was her first love but she never understood him and she was never wise enough to decide she must forget him. If she had, he would have sensed it and arrived a week later – that's what those men are like.

‘Anyway,' said Bruno, ‘she was so depressed that when her father rang and asked her to go home for Christmas, she went. I don't think it was a success.'

The Christmas party at Glebe House in 1942 consisted of Harold and Geneviève Jackson-Bowles, Sally's sister Betty and her husband Gideon Cunningham, their two boys aged five and seven and Sally's old Nanny, Miss Adelaide Trotter, who had come back to look after Gisela. There was, of course, Gisela herself, now aged eighteen months, walking and talking.

Perhaps it was lucky that Sally had only a two-day break because she was needed back at the post office after Boxing Day.

She arrived for the family gathering late on Christmas Eve after one of those long war-time journeys, in a darkened train full of servicemen, which had stopped on a siding outside Reading for two hours while a munitions train made its slow way past them.

Geneviève Jackson-Bowles was unhappy. Before the war, the household had included a cook, two maids and a gardener-handyman. Now the gardener had been called up and the
maids were doing factory work in Birmingham. Only the cook and Miss Trotter were there, and Geneviève's hitherto impeccable house was suffering from the staff shortage. It was generally held by the family that Sally's inconsiderate dumping of Gisela there was to blame for all difficulties and shortages. Gisela, dark, bright-eyed and volatile, spent much of her time in the nursery with Miss Trotter. She was asleep when Sally arrived. On Christmas Day, Sally gave her an inordinately large doll, acquired through one of Cora's mysterious back-door visitors, and spoiled the atmosphere of war-time misery and deprivation by producing, from the same source, two pairs of nearly new roller skates for her nephews. Such things were now unheard of. ‘Black market, I'm afraid,' Geneviève was heard murmuring to her son-in-law.

On Christmas morning Miss Trotter, Sally and Gisela went out for a walk, Gisela trailing the doll, which was nearly as big as she was.

‘You don't look very happy,' said Miss Trotter. ‘Can't you at least try to look as if you're enjoying yourself?'

‘Theo's left me again,' complained Sally.

‘That might be the sixth or seventh time,' the woman who had brought her up commented remorselessly. ‘I wonder if you're entitled to say he was ever really with you. I warned you about him when you were sixteen. Never mind,' she added, more kindly, ‘one day you'll get fed up with him and settle down with someone nice.'

‘I don't think so,' Sally said.

‘I do,' said Miss Trotter firmly. ‘But with the war on, and in London where things are so terrible, perhaps I shouldn't
say this but I suppose the best thing you can do is get as much fun as you can, while you can.'

Sally grinned. ‘You're a terrible woman, Trot.' She looked at the little figure running ahead of them down the lane. ‘Thank goodness you came to look after little Geezer. She's a sweetheart and it's all your doing.'

It might have been expected that at this point Miss Trotter would have made some reference to the influence of heredity on temperament, but she did not.

‘That's partly why I'm here,' said Sally. ‘There's something I must tell you about Gisela. I daren't tell anybody else, but just in case I get hit by a bus—'

Miss Trotter looked at her calmly. ‘You'd better let me know what it is then, hadn't you?' So Sally did.

There was a goose for Christmas dinner, and a Christmas pudding, and much talk of shortages. Sally smoked right through the meal. Her mother stiffened every time she lit up but said nothing. Over the port and nuts the argument broke out. The younger of Betty Cunningham's boys was being forced now to wear his older brother's outgrown clothes. ‘I used to give them to the charwoman,' Betty mourned. ‘Now I haven't even got a charwoman.'

‘It's a bit easier down here in the country, though,' remarked Sally. ‘There's more food, and so forth.'

‘I feel I can complain at nothing when I think of the troubles of France,' Geneviève said.

‘They're probably all right, Maman, unless something's gone very wrong recently,' said Sally, who had been drinking her father's whisky since she had come in from the walk.

‘I find that remark a little curious,' said Gideon, Sally's brother-in-law. ‘I can't imagine how dreadful it would be to think of your family under German occupation.'

‘All I'm saying, Maman, is that the du Tours are all right. They go to and fro between Paris and the farm and old Jean comes up on a bike with provisions when they're in Paris and they've still got Célestine. The last time I saw Paris, all was tickety-boo in the
faubourg
.'

‘I can't understand what you're saying, Sally,' said Geneviève. ‘If you mean to be reassuring, I don't think such remarks are of help. In fact, I find them rather unsympathetic.'

‘Perhaps Sally's heard something,' Harold Jackson-Bowles said. ‘If you have, Sally, perhaps you could tell us exactly what it is.'