The Town in Bloom (14 page)

‘Couldn’t we go somewhere – perhaps back to your dressing-room? Couldn’t we
be
together?’

He turned his head quickly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean … everything. Couldn’t we, please?’

‘We could not.’ Perhaps he only spoke firmly but, to me, he sounded brutal. ‘Good God, child, what am I going to do about you?’ He started the car.

I asked if he was angry.

‘Yes, very. But with myself, not with you. I never ought to have let this thing begin. And it’s got to stop, my dear. It really has.’

For once I was past arguing. I just sat there, with tears rolling down my cheeks. He obviously didn’t care for me, nobody liked my acting, there was nothing left. It was the first time in my life I had experienced misery.

After a few minutes he drove the car into a deserted, dimly lit street and said: ‘Out you get.’ For a bewildered moment I thought he was going to leave me there. Then I
realised I was being invited into the back of the car. Once there, he said: ‘I simply cannot bear to see mice cry. They’re too small and their tears are too large for them.’

‘And you didn’t mean what you said? It won’t have to stop?’

‘Well, not just yet, anyway – unless you make any more immoral suggestions. I was deeply shocked. All you’re going to get now is one chaste kiss on the forehead.’

What followed was the most comprehensive comforting I had come by, and completely restored me to happiness; though we returned to the front of the car sooner than I could have wished and then drove straight back to the Club. When we got there, he advised me to tone down my expression before joining my little friends – ‘You don’t look at all like a girl who’s come home by herself on a bus.’ I went to the cloakroom to tidy up generally. Discretion had become something of a mania with me; so much so that I nowadays told the girls very little about my life at the theatre. I had never even mentioned that I was trying to get into a drama school.

Up in my cubicle I found a note from Lilian saying: ‘Great news! Zelle got bored with being alone in her flat and is staying here for a while. We’re all in room 44 – it’s on the top floor. Come on up.’

I got into my dressing-gown and set out to find room 44. It turned out to be an attic, a very attractive one, with a deep window-seat let into its sloping outer wall. Zelle was sitting there with the window open behind her. Lilian was in the armchair, manicuring her nails. Molly knelt in front of the gas fire, toasting Veda bread which smelt marvellous.

I sat on the bed and listened rather than talked; and soon, thought rather than listened. It seemed to me extraordinary that two girls as strikingly pretty as Molly and Lilian should have only three uninteresting men between them and that Zelle, quite as attractive in her delicate, elusive way, should apparently have no men friends at all except an elderly, married cousin – while I had so recently been kissed by one of the most famous actors in London. I ate my Veda toast with much pleasure and gazed at the summer night sky through the open window, until I heard Molly say: ‘Our Mouse is a hundred miles away.’ But I wasn’t as far away as that; I was in a dimly lit street somewhere in Hampstead.

As I spent so much time at the theatre I saw far less of Zelle than Molly and Lilian did, but even a few mornings and our late evening reunions were enough to convince me that Lilian had been right in thinking her puzzling; though I thought the word ‘odd’ was more applicable. I never felt there was any puzzle to be solved, simply that Zelle had an unusual character which was full of contradictions.

Sometimes there was a trace of grandeur in her manner; this was when she was launching into expenditure – usually on us – and wished to make it clear that the cost was of no importance. At other times she could be humble, slightly scared, and childlike. And though she dressed with a quiet sophistication that was almost elderly, compared with most young Club members, she was undoubtedly childlike in some of her tastes. She had brought with her from her flat a picture of a baby faun crouching over a fire in a misty landscape, at which she would gaze lovingly, making such remarks as, ‘Look at his darling furry ears.’ She had also brought some very impressive books, dealing with politics and world affairs – surprising reading for anyone who admired that faun, though perhaps not more surprising than
The Times
, which was the only newspaper she ever
opened. I have a vivid mental picture of her sitting in the lounge, with her pony-straight legs neatly placed together, turning page after page. All the same, I was never sure if she actually
read The Times
– or the impressive books, though she sometimes handled them. What she certainly did read, swiftly and from cover to cover, was a copy of
Dracula
she found in the Green Room, a Members Only room where people often left their possessions lying about. She became so obsessed by this book that, for several very hot nights, she refused to have her bedroom window open in case Count Dracula climbed up from the street, four floors below, to bite her. She told this against herself, laughing; but she undoubtedly had a terror of the supernatural. When she heard that the top floor of the Club was said to be haunted she seriously considered moving to another floor. We were fond of her attic so Lilian assured her that the ghost only walked, if ever, on Hallowe’en, by which time Zelle expected to be back in her flat. It seemed that her guardian disapproved of women’s clubs and had only agreed to her staying with us while he was out of England; he had recently taken his family to the Continent. ‘In the autumn, I may study something,’ said Zelle, rather grandly. ‘That’s all the more reason why I should enjoy myself now.’

Her main way of enjoying herself seemed to be treating people to meals, which was a godsend to Molly and Lilian. They had now been promised work in the autumn but we were still only at the beginning of August and they had to be economical. (Molly’s thousand pounds – referred to by her as ‘bastard’s pay-off’ – had not yet arrived.) Zelle, overriding their mild protests, had taken them out to
dinner almost every night since we had first met her. She also took them to theatres and a concert (both Molly and Lilian felt one concert was more than enough) and suggested Westminster Abbey for her first Sunday. The girls declined this firmly. ‘Well, what
can
one do on a Sunday?’ said Zelle, whose ideal was at least one
entertainment
per day. It was the scarcity of Sunday entertainments that led her to take the girls on an outing that changed all our lives.

I had known for some time that Mr Crossway had a younger brother, named Adrian, who was the vicar of the Suffolk village near which Mr Crossway had a country house. A few days after Zelle came to stay at the Club, Miss Lester told me that Adrian Crossway was about to give a garden party, in aid of his church, at which an entertainment would be performed by villagers. This happened every August. Mr Crossway always spoke the prologue and epilogue and read the lessons at the church services; the party had to be on a Sunday so that he could be free. Brice Marton stage-managed the entertainment, and this year he had asked Miss Lester if I could be his assistant, thus releasing Tom, who particularly wanted the day off.

Brice had been up in the office quite often since the night I had ‘kept his curtain up’. (As predicted by Mr Crossway, the row between them had blown over.) He had been very pleasant to me and I now considered we were friends, so I was only too willing to help him and delighted to be in on the vicarage garden party. I happened to speak of it to Zelle, at lunch one day, and she at once saw a way of spending a Sunday – the party was open to the public.
She decided to hire a car; and when I left for the theatre, she and the girls were discussing what they should wear.

It was now over a week since my happy excursion to Hampstead and, except in the presence of Miss Lester or through the spy-hole, I had not seen my dear. He had warned me that it would be difficult to arrange meetings but I had expected him to manage something before this and I was feeling starved. So I was thankful when he came up to the office that afternoon and found me alone, Miss Lester being out having her hair done.

It was damping to learn that he had come to see her, not me. And he did not at first show any wish to take advantage of this fine opportunity for affection. However, he succumbed quite soon, if only briefly.

While disentangling himself he said, ‘This reminds me. I hear Brice is bringing you to my brother’s garden party on Sunday. When we meet there, will you please treat me with the respect due to me from my junior secretary?’

I nodded resignedly. ‘I suppose your wife will be there.’

‘No, she’s away, staying with her father. But all the village pussy-cats will be around with their very wide-open old eyes. So be a good child and behave discreetly, will you?’

I said it didn’t sound as if I should
get
the chance not to.

‘Well, you won’t if I can help it. But one never knows what you’ll be up to, especially as I shall be looking my best. I speak the prologue as an eighteenth-century squire – almost as ravishing as when I played Charles Surface, except for the corsets.’

‘
Did
you wear corsets?’

‘I did indeed. Doesn’t that put you off?’

‘It wouldn’t put me off now if you wore a truss – whatever that is.’

This amused him so much that he again succumbed to affection and we narrowly missed being caught by Miss Lester. He carried things off well and at once began talking to her about business matters. Before he left he said to me: ‘Well, I shall see you on Sunday. If I’ve a free moment I’ll show you round my workroom. I’ve some models of stage sets that will interest you.’ This raised my hopes of a private meeting.

Miss Lester told me that the workroom was in a converted barn, close to the house, and that he sometimes stayed there when working on a production. The house itself was seldom used now as Mrs Crossway did not care for it. Realising how little I knew of Mrs Crossway, I asked what she was like.

‘Beautiful and charming. Beyond that, I know little. We’ve probably not met a dozen times in all the years I’ve been here.’

I found this astonishing. And I noticed Miss Lester changed the conversation. My guess was that she didn’t like Mrs Crossway.

On the Sunday morning I got up at six-thirty (wakened by the night porter, to the sleepy wrath of disturbed neighbours) and met Brice Marton at the station in time to have breakfast before we caught an early train. The journey sounded complicated; we should have to change from this train into a smaller one and then a car was booked to meet us. At first I thought it might be difficult to keep a conversation going but it got easier and easier – perhaps because Brice kept questioning me about myself
and seemed interested in everything I told him. I questioned him, too, but for a long time the conversation kept sliding back to me.

Eventually we worked out that as he had lived in Manchester until he was fifteen – and I was eight – it was possible we might have been in a theatre at the same time; he and his mother had often had ‘passes’ and I had begun my theatre going very early. Apart from this, we had little common ground. He had never been in my suburb and thought of it as a luxurious place almost in the country. The ‘slum’ he had once said he was brought up in was the street where his mother, now dead, had been a theatrical landlady. He said residential streets in large industrial cities were apt to be slummy – ‘But theatrical lodgings can be cosy. Old pros like Mr Crossway’s father often preferred them to hotels.’

‘Did he stay with your mother – Sir Roy?’

‘Tour after tour. I first knew him when I was two years old. He was very kind to me – used to bring me toys. And soon after I left school he found me a job as a call boy.’

I said I had only seen Sir Roy when he was an old man, as Sir Peter Teazle; and though I realised he was a splendid actor I had thought his personality harsh. ‘But perhaps that was the part. I expect you were fond of him.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Brice Marton. ‘I hated him like hell.’

‘How extraordinary, when he was so kind to you. But then, Mr Crossway’s kind and you’re not exactly fond of him, are you?’

‘Frankly, no. But I don’t hate him like I hated Sir Roy. And as a matter of fact I’m fairly well disposed to Mr C. at
the moment. I’m apt to be, for some weeks after we’ve had a row, because he behaves so well. There isn’t another man in his position who would apologise to his stage manager.’

‘Why don’t
you
apologise, for a change?’

‘Because I’m never in the wrong – I mean, with him; I apologised to you, when I was. Anyway, apart from the row, this is one day of the year when I almost love our Rex, because he’s so much nicer than his horrible brother Adrian. Do you know why we’re coming all this way? It’s so that Adrian Crossway can say to people, “My brother puts his stage staff at my disposal.” The villagers could manage quite well on their own but that wouldn’t satisfy Adrian’s sense of importance.’

‘Is he like Mr Crossway to look at?’

‘Much handsomer – you’ll probably fall for him, especially when you see him welcoming the audience. He stands up on a mound under a cedar tree and stretches out his arms like St Francis blessing the birds. And then he turns into Christ suffering little children – he has all the smallest ones at his feet to watch that show. Sorry if that shocked you. I’m an atheist.’

I said I had been one at sixteen. ‘Getting confirmed so terribly put me off God. But I think I’ve more or less slid into being an agnostic – a sort of Christian agnostic, really.’

He grinned. ‘Mind you don’t slide into being a
full-blown
Christian. You might, if you go to Adrian’s service this evening. What with Adrian in the pulpit looking superb and Rex at the lectern sounding superb, and the church lit only by candlelight except for a stray gleam of sunset – if there wasn’t a sunset I swear Adrian would fake
one – the whole show would pack any London theatre. Of course the truth is that Adrian’s a frustrated actor. He played a few parts and was shocking, stiff as a poker. Which reminds me, what did Rex say to you about your performance that night?’

‘Well, he didn’t say I was stiff as a poker, but he said almost everything else bad. He just doesn’t think I can act.’

‘You could get a job on tour if you tried hard enough. What’s happened to all the drive you had when you butted into that audition?’

‘I wonder.’ And as I said it, I did wonder, but only for a second. Then I knew that I now wanted something far more than I had ever wanted a job on the stage, and every bit of my driving force was directed towards getting it. This was so startlingly clear to me that I almost feared Brice might read my thoughts – he was looking at me intently. So I changed the subject by asking what county we were passing through. He said we were just about entering Suffolk.

We had talked so much that I had hardly looked out of the window. By now we had changed into the little train and were passing through lovely country, unlike any I had seen before. Most of my childhood’s holidays had been spent at the seaside. ‘The country’, for me, had mainly meant Cheshire or Derbyshire, around which friends had sometimes taken me for drives. Here in Suffolk the trees were softer, somehow furry, their leaves a paler green. The whole landscape seemed to me gently blurred, with no harsh outlines; cornfields, water meadows, the thatched roofs of cottages and the tiled roofs of farms all merged into each other under the summer sun. And I kept mentally
turning the real landscape into a painted landscape. I mentioned this to Brice, who said it might be because we were in Constable country. But Constable landscapes are darker, browner, than my landscape that day. I was painting it myself, covering it all with the hazy wash of my own happiness.

Brice had quite a lot to do with that happiness. I felt on such easy terms of friendship with him; and I had never before had a man friend. Also he was stimulating to talk to about life in general; we did not discuss only personal matters, as I always did with the girls at the Club. But I was shocked to learn that he rarely read a book. He said he had been fond of reading as a child but had lost the habit once he became connected with the theatre. I was even more shocked to realise that, since coming to London, I had not read a book myself – nor, until now, noticed that I hadn’t; every day had been filled with its own interest. Though I had, since falling in love, repeated a good deal of poetry to myself while riding on buses: the only time, except when sleeping, that I was on my own.

After the little train dropped us at a tiny station we had a two-mile drive along a narrow road, mainly bordered by cornfields, until we reached the park surrounding Mr Crossway’s old, gabled house, which was not as large as the words ‘country house’ had led me to expect; though Brice said it was the local Hall. I spotted the barn which must be Mr Crossway’s workroom and wondered when he would show it to me. Then we passed the small, less old, lodge. A woman looked out of a window and Brice said she acted as caretaker, now the house was not used, and
looked after Mr Crossway when he occasionally came down for a night.

A few hundred yards ahead was the church, very old, square-towered, and much larger than I had expected – as was the Georgian vicarage just opposite, which seemed to me more imposing than Mr Crossway’s gabled house. The road had turned sharply before we got out of the car at the vicarage, and I could see the beautiful village street. I longed to explore it, also to go into the church and hear Mr Crossway read the lessons – the bells were still ringing – but Brice said we were due to meet the local stage manager in the vicarage garden. So we went in, through an arched wooden door in the high wall.