Dancers in Mourning (26 page)

Now that he had captured his audience and was safely embarked upon his story he seemed to derive a certain amount of enjoyment from the telling. He regarded the other man quizzically. Perched up on the table he looked like some thin, attractive monkey, his eyes sad and clever and disillusioned like an ape's.

‘Four weeks ago she turned up here and wanted a shop,' he went on slowly. ‘You saw the sort of woman she was. She was vain and crazy to appease her vanity. All her life she had relied on her sex to get her by, and now she was beginning to find it hadn't anything like its old power. That's the devil of it, Campion! It goes so quickly. One day it's there and the next day it's gone. The wretched women can't bring themselves to realise it. When Chloe came to me what she really wanted was reassuring. To herself she blamed a change in the times, manners, type of men, anything but the obvious truth. She chose me to come to because I had once loved her and because I was in a position to give her a job.'

‘Why did you give it to her?'

Sutane looked down at his feet.

‘God knows,' he said and sounded as though he meant it.

There was a pause, but he went on again after a little while, his voice resonant and youthful in his eagerness to get the story out.

‘I told her I was happily married, and I thought she was convinced, and that any damned silly attempt upon me was ruled out. She seemed very sensible. I hadn't realised her full trouble then and thought she was merely hard up. Anyway, I took her on. There was a sort of excuse for it. We were justified in having an added attraction for the three hundredth performance and the receipts could stand it easily. She jumped at it, of course, and almost at once I regretted the decision. I remembered all the things I'd forgotten about her – her energy, her constant nattering at one, and her incredible vanity.'

He broke off and looked at Campion shyly.

‘If you're nervy already that sort of relentless pursuit gets under your skin, doesn't it? Besides, she was so appallingly general, if you see what I mean. She had become impossible. I didn't want her at White Walls, for instance, and I told her so. Yet she came just the same. You suddenly find you're at the mercy of a woman like that. There's nothing you can do, short of hitting her. After she was dead I thought I'd risk keeping quiet about our old association. We'd never appeared together in England and no one knew about us, as far as I know, save for a few old-timers like Eva who had dropped out of sight. If there had been any serious public inquiry into her suicide I should have to have spoken. As it was, there seemed no point in it. I used a different name in the early days – La Verne or something equally footling – and I have never used the story of that tour in my publicity because I was not very proud of it. Chloe wasn't a big enough name, and of course, there was the private side of it.'

He spread out his hands in a gesture of finality and looked at Campion inquisitively.

‘Why were you so anxious for her not to come to White Walls?'

The other man put the question hesitantly, disliking himself for disguising it.

Unexpectedly Sutane was ashamed. He sat looking at his feet again, wriggling them inside his shoes.

‘Linda thinks I'm the most remarkable and magnificent person in the world,' he said simply. ‘I was afraid Chloe might come out with some tasteless revelation in front of her. She might have done that easily, you know. She had just that kind of insanity. Linda terrified her, fortunately.'

Since Campion did not speak, but sat with a perfectly expressionless face, he continued hastily:

‘Linda is not an ignorant, foolish little nincompoop. Don't think that. I was considering myself, not her. How would you like to introduce some of your old loves to your new ones?'

Campion pulled himself together. He got up and spoke carelessly.

‘Look here, Sutane,' he said, ‘I understand. It's all quite clear to me and it's over. I shall respect your confidence, of course. In my opinion you took an appalling risk in denying any past acquaintance with Chloe, but, as you say, it didn't matter as it turned out. Now, I've finished. Blest is looking after your other trouble and he'll solve it for you in a day or so. Quite by chance I think I was able to put him on to the right line, but that's really no credit to me. He'll get you proof and between you you'll be able to clear it up for all time. It's a job for a professional and he's doing it very well.'

He smiled. ‘I think I'll fade away,' he said.

Sutane did not speak. Now that he had finished his performance and was off-stage again, as it were, his moroseness had returned and he sat limply, his joints relaxed, looking like a resting marionette.

Campion had collected his hat before his host glanced up. Sutane did not smile.

‘You don't understand, old boy,' he said. ‘I'm an important person – so damned important I'm terrified whenever I think of it. Three hundred people in this theatre are dependent on me. With Konrad dancing the show wouldn't last a week. There's not another star in London who could carry it. It depends on me. Then there's White Walls. Gardeners, Campion. Maids – Linda – Sarah – Eve – Sock – Poyser – old Finny – the nurse – they're all dependent on me. On my
feet
. Every time I look at my feet I feel sick with apprehension. Every time I look at this damned great theatre I go cold with terror. White Walls turns my stomach over. I'm frightened of it. They're all directly or indirectly supported and held up by me, and I'm an ordinary poor little bloke who has nothing – God help him – but his feet and his reputation. Nothing must go wrong with me, Campion. I've got nothing to fall back on. A business man has his organisation and his firm, but I've got nothing. I'm doing it alone. Now do you understand?'

There was no art in this appeal. It came out unadorned with all the poignancy of truth.

‘I've got no money. The whole ridiculous organisation takes every ha'penny I make, and I make something fabulous. I go bobbing along with my coat-tails flapping like Eliza on the ice. If I was run over by a bus I shouldn't care – it would be over. I shouldn't see the crash. But if I get driven into a breakdown, if I once lose my nerve …? I'm terrified, I tell you. Terrified!'

He got off the dressing-table and solemnly executed an intricate little dancing step. His lean body in the dark mourning clothes, which he had not changed since the funeral, trembled in the air. The ecstatic movement, so indescribable and so satisfying, was there. The sight of him was amusing, stimulating, and aesthetically comforting.

‘That's all,' he said, his long face puckered. ‘That's all I've got, and it depends on my mind, which is being attacked. That's all it is and it supports a mountain. It's a dizzy cathedral balancing on a joke. If there's anything in your power that you can do to help me you've got to do it. Can't you see that? You've got to be on my side.'

It was an extraordinary appeal, utterly unanswerable. Campion kept his hat in his hand, but he did not go.

After a while they went down the corridor and into Konrad's dressing-room, where an anaemic young man was helping the understudy into a suit of white tails. Konrad was delighted with himself. Made up for the lights his face was indecently pretty.

‘Hallo, Jimmy,' he said, ‘how am I doing? Going down all right?'

‘Sounds so. Haven't seen you yet.' The unnecessary lie tripped out so naturally that even Campion believed it for a moment. Sutane went on:

‘It was charitable of you to dig out Eva this afternoon.'

Konrad bent closer to the mirror, before which he had seated himself.

‘Oh, did you know her?' he said casually. ‘One likes to do what one can at such a time. Chloe's dresser told me they had been great friends, so I looked her up. Frightful case. Positively puts one off gin, my dears. Oh, by the way, I wanted to see you, Jimmy. I'm calling in at White Walls for my precious bicycle on Sunday morning. The club is meeting at Boarbridge just down your line for lunch. I simply couldn't face a thirty-mile run before eating. I mean it's inhuman. So I thought I'd come down to Birley in the morning, take a cab up to your place, change, collect my machine and ride down to the station, taking the local train for the odd fifteen miles. The boys will think I've come from London and be on the station to meet me. Sock can bring my case back to Town, can't he? It's all arranged.'

‘It sounds like it.' Sutane was annoyed and Campion reflected that it was queer that few things should be more irritating than the elaborate arrangements of others which involve, however slightly, one's own house. Konrad flushed.

‘Well, it was all arranged when I was down there last week-end,' he said.

‘Was it? Whom with?'

‘You, I think. I told someone. It must have been you.' Konrad turned a face towards them which was scarlet under the grease. ‘If you're going to be childish throw the bicycle out of the gate and I'll change behind a hedge,' he said and giggled.

Sutane flushed.

‘You made no arrangement with me,' he persisted obstinately. ‘But it doesn't matter in the least. There'll be a room at your disposal on Sunday morning.'

Konrad rose. He made no attempt at thanks.

‘I have nowhere to keep the bicycle in Town,' he said petulantly. ‘I live in a service flat, as you very well know, and the fools won't let me bring it into the theatre. If I leave it down at the garage it may get tarnished. It's silver-plated.'

The call-boy interrupted Sutane's comment, which was rude, and Konrad resumed his mood of excited triumph.

‘I must fly,' he said quite unnecessarily. ‘Sweet of you both to have dropped in to wish me luck.'

The door closed behind him and Sutane glanced round the room with distaste.

‘Blast the bicycle,' he said briefly. ‘Little ass. Did you hear him getting at me? It's an unwritten law in the theatre that one never watches one's understudy work, you know. He forgets I'm the producer as well.'

He did not leave, but wandered round the small apartment, conveying contemptuous dislike for all that it contained. The dresser kept out of his way as far as possible in the confined space and watched him with an oblique and respectful eye.

Konrad's personality as displayed in dressing-room adornment tended towards the sentimental and old-maidish. His many mascots included a small model of the discus-thrower and a child's stuffed white dog with a blue bow round its neck. A number of photographs, many of himself, adorned the walls, and there was also a poster of the ill-fated show in which he had starred. A small hanging book-case below the grating of a window contained an incense-burner and half a dozen volumes as well as a box of very expensive Cyprian cigarettes.

Sutane took down one of the dusty books and opened it. From where he stood Campion could see that it was verse. The dancer glared at the flyleaf and his face changed. He was suddenly deeply and quietly angry and the bone at the angle of his jaw showed white through the skin. He handed the volume to Campion, who read the inscription:

‘
In friendship. B
. 1934.'

The words were written in green ink and the hand-writing was uncomfortably familiar.

‘Where's that invitation card?' Sutane's tone was ominously casual.

‘Blest has it,' said Campion.

Sutane put the book under his arm. Outside the door he glanced at the other man.

‘I'll see Blest tomorrow. We'll go, shall we?'

He made no comment on the discovery, which was curious since there was so much that might have been said. Campion was surprised until he saw his deep, weary eyes in the gleam of a wall light. Then he saw that he was consumed with anger and was holding it down with extreme difficulty.

They parted at the stage door. Sutane smiled and shook hands.

‘If Blest fails I shall still rely on you, my dear fellow,' he said.

As Mr Campion walked away down the dark side street to the avenue vivid with lights and roofed with summer stars he was appalled to find that he did not care if Sutane's suspicion concerning the inscription and the invitation card was well founded.

Hitherto he had been an observer only in the many dramas which he had investigated and that circumstance had given him an unfounded sense of superiority. Tonight he felt cold and disillusioned; no longer shocked but frankly despairing to find himself both so human and so miserably unhappy.

T
HE
rumour appeared in London somewhere about tea-time on what afterwards proved to be the closest Sunday of the year.

It ran through the lazy crowds in the park, sped along the broad dusty streets, dived underground with the tube trains, was carried to the suburbs on a thousand plump red buses, growing and changing as it travelled, trickled into clubs, houses and tea-shops, mounted a million stairs to flats and roof-tops and waved its coloured tongues in every idle ear.

It was not a definite story at any one time; rather a series of unsubstantiated statements ranging the whole way from the frankly electrifying to the merely sad. Its effect was gently unsettling, producing in the public mind a vague sensation of excitement only faintly tinged with alarm, as though it had been an unexplained bump in the night or the just incomprehensible shouts of newsboys in far-off streets.

It came from one of the great railway termini where trains were thought to have been delayed for anything between one and twenty hours. Because it was a Sunday the usual channels of news were stopped, but the bus conductors, who can generally be relied upon to know most things, had a wild story about unidentified enemy aircraft reducing the garrison town of Colchester to smouldering ruin.

In the Corner House in Coventry Street the waitresses had a theory that it was not enemy aircraft at all, but two Air Force bombers who had come to grief in a built-up area while carrying out secret practice on the South Coast, and an enterprising newspaper vendor in Oxford Circus chalked ‘Pit Explosion: Many Dead' on an empty board and actually sold a quantity of left-over morning papers before his fraud was discovered.