The Town in Bloom

  ‘Then anyone could have got in,’ said Lilian.

  ‘Oh, well, they’re insured,’ said Zelle cheerfully. She looked up and down the mews. ‘The cat’s not here tonight – because of the rain, I suppose. So I’ll leave her usual Sunday supper where she usually sits. Such a pathetic little alley cat.’ She fished a paper bag from her raincoat pocket, took out a leg of chicken, and put it on a window sill.

  When the taxi came we all made sure that this time the door was really locked. Zelle said thoughtfully, ‘Perhaps I won’t mention to Bill that his house was open for a week.’

  Just as everything had gone wrong before, now everything went right. We soon found our cases; once we got the right street we recognised the house. The nice landlady offered to make us tea but Zelle said it would spoil our dinner. (I noticed she slipped a ten shilling note into the landlady’s hand as we left.) Then we drove to a small but expensive-looking hotel where Molly, Lilian and I changed out of our spoilt dresses and hats in the Ladies’ Room. After that, as it was still early for dinner, we sat in the lounge and had drinks. That was the first time I had a cocktail. I had decided that not drinking was dull.

  It was while we were there that Zelle acquired her nickname. A man came in who was extremely like a pig and this started Molly, Lilian and me on our game of picking the animals people resembled. After we had done some of the people in the lounge, Zelle said: ‘Now do me. Bill says I put my feet down like a pony.’

  Her face could not have been less like any kind of horse but she did use her feet in a pony-like way, stepping both briskly and delicately; I had noticed it as she walked into the lounge. Thinking of this, and her colouring, and the way her eyes were set – and perhaps because of her dappled dress – I said: ‘Could she be a gazelle?’

  Molly and Lilian thought that was exactly right. It turned out that none of us quite knew what a gazelle was like but that didn’t worry us. One of us then said that ‘Zelle’ would make a nice name for her. She had told us her name but I doubt if any of us had yet used it or if we ever did. From that moment, she was always Zelle.

  We had a marvellous dinner with a vast number of courses. Zelle apologised for not ordering it à la carte – ‘Bill says one always should but I’m not good at choosing.’ We drank champagne and perhaps that reminded Molly of the morning she had learned she was illegitimate. Suddenly she told Zelle about it, finishing by saying, ‘I thought you ought to know in case you mind.’

  ‘Heavens, how could anyone?’ said Zelle.

  Molly said she did and would never get over it. Then Lilian called her poor old Moll Byblow, which Zelle thought a lovely name, and soon we were all laughing again.

  After dinner Zelle went to her flat to get clothes for the night. Lilian asked if we could come with her and see the flat but Zelle said she wanted just to dash in and out and the flat wasn’t worth seeing – ‘Bill rented it for me, furnished, before I came to London, and I’ve never let him know how dreary I think it is. But I shall furnish a flat for myself when the lease is up next year. By then I shall have control of my money.’

  It seemed to me she was already in control of a good deal of money but we gathered that, until she was twenty-one, her guardian doled it out to her.

  After she had gone, of course we discussed her, saying how miraculously kind and generous she was. We found that, in spite of having talked with her for hours, we knew hardly anything about her background. I said this probably meant we had talked too much about ourselves and there were three of us to one of her.

  ‘It isn’t only that,’ said Lilian. ‘Don’t you find her a bit mysterious?’

  I agreed. ‘She has a princesse lointaine quality.’

  ‘Now our gifted Mouse has swallowed a French dictionary,’ said Molly. But when I managed to explain lointaine she saw what I meant. Lilian didn’t – or rather, it wasn’t what she meant by ‘mysterious’. She said, ‘I just mean puzzling. But anyway, I couldn’t like her better.’

  When Zelle came back we went on talking till midnight; the clock struck just as Lilian was asking where she had lived before coming to London.

  ‘We’ll postpone that dreary story,’ said Zelle, getting up. ‘Now we really should go to bed. I’m rather tired.’

  She had taken two double rooms and asked me to share hers. I thought this part of the particular kindness she had shown me since I had mentioned how frightened I had been while trespassing in her cousin’s house. Once we were on our own she showed no sign of tiredness and talked all the time we were undressing. (I noted that she practised my tent technique.) Her nightgown was heavy white silk, plain except for an embroidered monogram. I admired it much more than the rather fancy nightgowns worn by Molly and Lilian, usually pink or blue trimmed with café au lait lace.

  Even after we put the light out she kept the conversation going, questioning me and seeming especially interested in my childhood. At last I pulled up and said, ‘I’ve talked and talked and given you no chance to. And yet I long to hear about you.’

  She said, ‘Truly? Well, if you’re sure it won’t bore you.’ Then she began speaking hurriedly leaving out details, as if she wanted just to state the bare facts. She told me our lives had been rather similar as she, like me, could barely remember her parents. But she had been brought up by a grandfather, not an aunt. They had lived in a remote Welsh mountain village, in an old house where everything was falling to pieces. She was supposed to go to the village school, but it was a long walk so she often stayed away and nobody bothered – ‘You’ll find me terribly uneducated.’ She had always imagined they were poor – and then, when her grandfather died, it turned out he’d been a miser and there was plenty of money – ‘Only it takes time to clear things up. Bill’s doing that. Imagine the poor man’s position, having it all wished on him, plus a girl of nineteen.’

  She said he’d only known about it a few weeks before her grandfather died – ‘He sent for Bill because he was our one relation. They hadn’t met for thirty years and Bill didn’t even know I existed, but he was wonderfully kind to me. At first he had me to live with him and his wife in their country house, but it was hopeless. So he took this dull flat. I’ve been there for a year – and never made any friends.’

  ‘Well, you’ve made some now,’ I assured her.

  ‘Really? And you won’t mind my horrid Welsh accent?’

  I had noticed she spoke with a slight lilt but had not realised it was Welsh. Anyway, it was pretty. I told her so.

  ‘Perhaps it’s not as bad as it used to be. I’ve had elocution lessons. By the way, would you tell Molly and Lilian all I’ve told you, and ask them not to question me? I have a horror of talking about my life in Wales, but you’re easy to talk to. Let’s go to sleep now and then tomorrow will come quicker. It’s so lovely to have something to look forward to.’

  It was just what, as a child, I had often thought when I knew I was going to a theatre the next day.

  I lay awake for a while, thinking. Welsh mountains were a perfect background for a princesse lointaine. I tried to imagine the old house and the miserly grandfather and then Bill coming to the rescue. It seemed a pity he was elderly and married.

  The next morning, while we were having breakfast in bed, I asked what had happened to the house. She said it had been sold – ‘Sad, in a way, as the family had lived there for over two hundred years, but I couldn’t stay on alone.’ Then she talked about the house and gardens, speaking eagerly, not in the stilted way she had told me her history the night before. She described the panelling and wide staircase, and a rose garden, and lawns leading down to a lake. She made it all sound wonderful, though I thought that if her grandfather had been a miser the gardens must have been overgrown. I asked about this and she said, ‘Oh, yes, of course they were. Let’s not talk about it any more. And you will ask the others not to question me, won’t you?’

  I got the chance to, while Zelle was settling up with the hotel. I only had time, then, to give the girls a brief outline of what I’d
been told, but they said they quite understood.

  After that, Zelle came back to the Club with us; she wanted to join it. We made sure we now had our cubicles, and then showed her round and introduced her to various members. She was charming to them all, and one old lady notorious for snobbishness told her she was just the type of member the Club needed.

  We were ashamed of the anaemic lunch we gave her but she said she enjoyed it and would often come to lunch once she was a member, which would be in only a few days as there was a board meeting that week; Lilian and Molly would propose and second her. When I left for the Crossway she was planning to take them to a theatre that night. I was sorry to be out of it.

  ‘Still, be thankful you’ve a job to go to,’ Lilian called after me. She and Molly were gloomy about being out of work.

  I got to the office full of our meeting with Zelle; Miss Lester was always interested in what happened to me. She knew I found life dull after my work at rehearsals and she had done what she could to cheer me up, sending me to matinées at several theatres. And as Mr Crossway still had not given me any introductions to managers, she had given me one herself, saying he was interested in my work. The manager had been charming but I did wonder if he might not be a little drunk. Everything I said made him laugh and I certainly wasn’t trying to. At last he remarked blurrily, ‘Yes, I see why Rex is interested. You’re quite a little dear. But I do have some little dears of my own who need jobs. Rex must find you something himself.’ When I told Miss Lester she laughed but said she mustn’t expose me to anything like that again. I hadn’t minded being exposed.

  I had barely finished talking to her about Zelle when Lilian rang up to say they all wanted to come to the Crossway that night and could I help them to get seats? I hoped there might be some returned, also I knew some were withheld from sale until the late afternoon in case Mr Crossway needed them. So I asked Miss Lester and she coped with the box-office. There were four seats and she said she would give me one for myself and I could wear my new evening dress. I told Lilian I would meet them in the foyer.

  From then onwards, much of the afternoon was devoted to getting me ready – luckily we weren’t busy. My dress was still with the wardrobe mistress, the alterations only recently finished. It had been imported from Paris, a year or so earlier, for a temperamental leading lady who had refused to wear it. Miss Lester said it was a robe de style, independent of any prevailing fashion. At first I thought it was quite like my own tight-bodiced, full-skirted dresses, but I soon saw that the cut was very different and there were details which gave it the authority to defy fashion. The material was a corded silk in a deep shade of coral, and its little jacket was embroidered with white, gold and turquoise beads. It was not merely the most beautiful dress I had ever worn. It was the most beautiful dress I was ever fated to wear; a dress to be remembered for a lifetime.

  Miss Lester sent me out to buy gold sandals and a small evening bag; there was a theatrical shoeshop quite near where I could get both and charge them to the management. She said they were a bonus for my work at rehearsals.

  We went out to dinner early so that I should have time to dress. Walking back through the blue early evening I looked up at the brilliantly lit theatre and suddenly felt wildly excited. Later I told myself this had been a premonition that something was going to happen; but I was only being wise after the event. I needed no premonition to excite me. Even on an ordinary evening I found the lit-up theatre exciting – and tonight I should be showing that theatre, my theatre, to my friends. Also, up in the Throne Room waited that never-to-be-forgotten dress.

  8

  The girls arrived early and were in the foyer when I sailed downstairs, to be received by their admiring gasps. They all wore pretty dresses but I don’t think I was flattering myself in believing mine was prettier; and I remained convinced that women’s waists ought not to be round their behinds.

  There was a very different atmosphere in the theatre from the one I had noticed on the first night. Then, even the audience had seemed overwrought. Now, one felt that everyone was confident the play would be good. Tension had been replaced by a sense of settled success.

  We had the middle gangway seats in the fifth row and I was put on the outside as there was a low-sitter in front of that seat. Lilian was next to me and turned out to be a whisperer. Soon after the curtain rose she told me she thought the tall young girl who played the part I had hankered for was very dull. I more than agreed and it seemed to me that the girl was being even duller than I had remembered.

  In the first interval we all went up to the office and had coffee with Miss Lester, who showed the girls round the Throne Room. Lilian gazed ecstatically at Mr Crossway’s portrait and said, ‘I can’t think why our Mouse doesn’t fall in love with him.’

  ‘Our Mouse has too much good sense, I’m glad to say,’ said Miss Lester, smiling at me.

  I said, ‘I think it’s more that I’m too old to fall in love with actors. I was passionately in love with him when I was twelve. I mentioned it to his photograph every night, after my prayers.’

  ‘You should tell him that,’ said Miss Lester, laughing. ‘He’s rather vain about his schoolgirl admirers.’

  Then we heard the bells ringing to call the audience in for the second act. As we went down, Lilian said, ‘You didn’t tell us Miss Lester was like that – terribly elegant in a don’t-give-a-damn-about-it way. Not at all like most secretaries.’

  In the second interval we walked about outside the theatre and were looked at a good deal, especially Molly, who put in heavy work with her lorgnette. When we went back for the last act I was sorry to feel the evening was so nearly over.

  It must have been about five minutes later when I noticed that the tall, dull young actress was being worse than dull; she was being positively bad, saying her lines as if she didn’t even know what they meant. This was during an ensemble scene so was not very noticeable at first. Then she failed to come in on a cue. I heard Tom prompt her but she just sat staring in front of her with a strained expression. Mr Crossway went on without the missing line, which meant skipping the line that should have answered it. For the next few minutes everyone acted with extra briskness, as if to distract attention from the girl; but they didn’t distract mine and I saw she was sitting with her eyes closed and that her face looked drawn with pain. I knew she would soon need to rise and say, ‘Come with me, Aunt Caroline,’ and then go off, but when the cue came she neither spoke nor moved. The elderly actress who played Aunt Caroline was sitting beside her and able to help her up, saying, ‘Let’s go together, dear.’ They managed to get across the stage, the elderly actress practically holding the girl up, and off through an archway. Then, just as they were out of sight, there was a thud.

  Lilian instantly whispered, ‘Did you hear that? She’s fainted.’ And various people in the front stalls whispered to each other. Mr Crossway gave one quick look after the girl, then went on with his lines, and in a few seconds the leading lady came on from the opposite side of the stage and the play was continuing normally. I knew that the girl would not have to come on again for quite a while. Ten minutes? Perhaps a little longer. I imagined the scene in the wings, and Brice Marton or Tom dashing upstairs to warn the understudy—

  And then I remembered. A couple of days earlier Brice Marton had been up in the office talking to Miss Lester about an understudy who was ill. He had grumbled because there weren’t enough understudies – ‘This girl’s covering three parts. Even when she’s not ill, it isn’t safe.’ Miss Lester had said Mr Crossway loathed paying understudies to sit around doing nothing, it was the only thing he was mean about. And the girl would be back on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.

  It was Monday now. Was the girl back?

  I was hurrying out of the stalls less than a minute after that off-stage thud. If the understudy was not back this might be my great chance.

  I rushed up to the foyer and round to the stage door. As I passed the stage door keeper he was teleph
oning for a doctor. I dashed downstairs hoping to find Brice Marton.

  I saw him standing outside the iron door leading to the stage, talking to the leading lady’s understudy, who held an open script of the play. As I raced towards them I heard her say, ‘But I’ve never in my life been asked to do such a thing. I shall be ludicrous.’ I guessed what was happening: she was being urged to go on and read the girl’s last scene. And it certainly would be ludicrous as she was quite forty-five and wearing a most unbecoming tweed suit; also horn-rimmed spectacles through which she was worriedly looking at the script.

  Brice Marton said, ‘I’ve got to keep the curtain up.’

  I reached him then and implored him to let me play, assuring him I knew every word, every movement. The leading lady’s understudy received me as if I were an angel from heaven – ‘But of course you must do it! Mr Marton, I simply won’t go on now this child is available. Look at me – in these awful clothes; I’m just back from the country. Oh, you marvellous girl – and what an enchanting dress! Mr Marton, please!’

  I thought he would argue but he only asked if I was sure I knew the lines – ‘If not, you’d better read.’

  ‘Absolutely sure. I swear it.’

  ‘Anyway, we can prompt you. If you can even give a general idea of the scene—’ He opened the iron door and listened. ‘You’ve got nearly five minutes yet.’

  ‘She ought to have some make-up,’ said the leading lady’s understudy. She scurried to the nearest dressing-room, which was the leading lady’s. The dresser was at the open door.

  ‘Do you want to look at the script?’ asked Brice Marton.

  I shook my head decidedly. ‘I’m sure I still know every line. Have you cut anything since rehearsals?’

  ‘Not a thing. One move was changed, putting the girl more upstage for the long speech. But it doesn’t matter.’