Spa Street now looked more like a river than a road. She hoped the shaving-brush chestnuts were enjoying their drench. Back at the hotel the golden lion shone wetly.
She remembered it, shining and streaming, just before she fell asleep.
Birth of a Teeterer
Jill unlocked the door of the flat and strode briskly through the hall, saying brightly, ‘Nice to be back, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Miles heartily.
She was pretty sure he disliked the flat as much as she did but neither of them had, as yet, admitted their dislike aloud.
The sitting room, in the early evening light, looked even more cheerless than usual as there were no flowers; and though the large windows gave an impression of airiness it felt airless. She flung the windows open onto the balcony but was not tempted to step out. After two months she still experienced vertigo when on the balcony; and Miles had recently confessed that he did too. It seemed a pity they hadn’t pooled their vertigo before taking a tenth-floor flat.
She hoped that Miles was not, as she was, remembering many home-comings to their old Islington house where Mrs Topham would have been on hand to welcome them – beloved Mrs Topham, none too clean but a glorious cook, who had been Miles’s housekeeper long before he married. Alas, their leases on home and help had run out at the same time; the house was now demolished and Mrs Topham had retired on what she called ‘me bits of pensions’ – to which now was added one from Miles. Even the friendly old Islington furniture had gone into retirement, as this ultra-modern West End fiat had seemed to call for ultra-modern furniture. They had chosen first-rate pieces; anyway, Miles believed them to be first-rate and she, most implicity, believed in his good taste. She had felt sure she would get to like them but, instead, had come to hate their guts, and doubted if they had any.
‘I ought to have asked Miss Linton to buy us some flowers,’ she said, looking round the spacious, austere room. (‘So wonderful to get such a large room in a flat,’ kind friends said.)
‘They would have withered at her touch,’ said Miles, ‘unless made of tin.’
Miss Linton spent two hours on three days a week keeping the flat scrupulously clean while remaining scrupulously clean herself in spite of the fact that she never donned an overall. She wore neat dark clothes, appeared to be middle-aged, and spoke only when spoken to. Jill had elicited from her that she lived with her mother ‘very quietly,’ but Miles insisted that she was really a robot who returned to a factory every night for servicing.
‘Well, at least she’s never obtrusive,’ said Jill. Mrs Topham had been very obtrusive, but the obtrusiveness had ranked as friendliness.
‘What are you going to do about food? Why don’t you change your mind and come with me to Peter’s?’
She had refused Peter’s invitation partly because she wanted to unpack and do various odd jobs but also because she thought Miles should go on his own. When he was with some of his oldest and best friends she had an idea that he and they occasionally found her presence inhibiting. Also she wanted Miles and Peter to consolidate the beautiful state of agreement they had now reached. During the discussion on the train Miles had surprisingly put up no fight whatever. He pointed out that he had always been willing to accept changes in the direction, once young Cyril had found his feet. And it now seemed that he had been more impressed by Tom Albion’s criticisms than he had admitted, and less impressed by the Spa Town’s approval than Peter had been. He was also, Jill guessed, feeling guilty towards Peter. ‘I muddled you, Peter,’ he said apologetically. ‘If you’d had your way we’d probably have pleased the Spa Town fogies and the Saturday night toughs. It was just that I didn’t want to hurt the boy.’
‘Well, I’ll handle him with kid gloves,’ Peter had said, beaming with relief at having won Miles over. Jill was overjoyed at the sweetness and light in which he and Miles were now basking and they were welcome to an evening of it; also to an evening with Peter’s manservant-friend, Gaston, whom she found trying. She assured Miles that she didn’t fancy going out to supper. ‘I’ll just get myself something here.’
‘There won’t be anything here.’
‘Yes, there will. I asked Miss Linton to get in some staples. And there’s plenty of tinned stuff.’
‘Why not ring down for a decent meal?’
She considered the restaurant on the ground floor charged impressive prices for unimpressive food. ‘Well, I’ll see.’
After he had gone she unpacked, got herself a drink, and then went into the small, gleaming kitchen. During a girlhood spent in bed-sitting rooms and boarding houses she’d had few chances to cook, and scarcely more during Mrs Topham’s benevolent dictatorship. She had planned to cook at the flat but Miles preferred to go out for most meals. ‘Anyway, you couldn’t really cook in that kitchen,’ he told her. ‘It looks outraged if so much as an egg-boiler’s out of its place.’ Not that they had an egg-boiler.
She now wondered if she would attempt something dashing, then decided that toast and Gentleman’s Relish would do very well – and coffee. The sitting room, when she carried her tray in, was now rather too airy. Before closing the glass doors she stood for a moment admiring the view, that view which had played a major part in attracting them to the flat (and if they had to leave their beloved old house, surely something quite new and stimulating was a good idea?). She could see the Houses of Parliament. Did the Thorntons live in Westminster? Yes, she remembered Geoffrey Thornton saying so, during supper at the Civic Reception. Pleasant people…. Really, it was absurd: even to think about the drop below the balcony made the backs of her knees feel peculiar. She closed the doors and retreated to a nice, safe armchair.
Later, she wondered if there would be any interesting music on the radio, something like the Schubert Octet – how extraordinarily happy she had felt while listening to it. But though she twiddled with a will, even trying foreign stations, she could get nothing that pleased her. She settled for television. Miles, returning, found her fast asleep in front of it.
‘You didn’t have a proper meal,’ he said, looking at her tray. ‘I shall make you some bread-and-milk. I’ll have some, too.’
She smiled. ‘I wonder if we’re really as fond of bread-and-milk as we think we are – or is it sheer association with that first time you made it for me? Anyway, it would be nice.’
The next morning, when they were discussing where they should meet for lunch, Miles asked if she could manage to give a party after the first night of the play.
She looked at him in astonishment. ‘But you loathe even going to first-night parties, let alone giving them.’
‘I know. They’re ghastly if a play’s gone badly – and even if it’s gone well, one’s never sure. But it’s Frank Ashton’s first production and a young author’s first play. And I’d like to do a little something for the company. Everyone was a bit shattered on Saturday night.’
‘You mean you want to ask the whole company?’
‘Well, not unless you think you can manage.’
‘Oh, I’ll manage all right,’ said Jill. ‘But it won’t be like one of our Mrs Topham parties.’
Mrs Topham could always be counted on for hot suppers served in enormous earthenware dishes, the contents of which combined tastiness with mystery. Guests had been known to penetrate her kitchen to ask for recipes, only to be fobbed off with, ‘Oh, this and that, madam, depending on what I had by me.’ There was, indeed, some truth in this. Mrs T. was as improvisatory as a Jazz player.
‘How about getting in a firm of caterers’?’ said Miles.
‘I might. But their food’s so conventional. Don’t worry, I’ll cope. Let’s add up how many. Lucky the company’s small.’
Still, with the understudies, the stage management, Frank Ashton, the author, Peter, the Albions … they were soon up to twenty.
‘And how about the Thorntons?’ said Miles. ‘Those girls would love it.’
‘They would indeed. Well, it’ll be a squash but we ought
to be able to manage with a room this size.’
‘And if it’s fine we can use the balcony – that is, people who aren’t us can. I must go now. I said I’d meet Peter at the theatre. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’
‘You can order a great deal of champagne,’ said Jill.
‘Right. I’ll do that on my way.’
After he had gone she found the Thorntons’ number in the telephone directory and rang it. Kit answered and accepted the invitation to the party ecstatically. ‘Oh, roll on, Thursday. We’re all gasping to see you again, Mrs Quentin.’
Jill found herself feeling cheerful. Somehow she would manage to make it a good party, not a formal, catered affair. The restaurant below should be bullied into sending up some really interesting hot food. And she would shop for exciting cold additions. She began to feel hungry – absurd, at ten in the morning.
Miss Linton arrived and, though unable to lend a hand at the party as her mother could not be left in the evening, showed willingness to wash all the glasses in readiness. Less robotish than usual, she remarked, ‘This flat needs a party.’
‘Of course!’ Silly not to have realized that before. Miles would like the flat much better after a party, and so would she … perhaps. But she was in for a wild rush between now and Thursday night, what with the food and the flowers, getting her hair done and having a last fitting for her dress, buying presents for the whole company, meeting Miles for most meals, and spending much of Wednesday at the dress rehearsal.
The day sped by with far less accomplished than she had counted on. But she made better headway on Tuesday as she was off duty for lunch – Miles said he was going to take Cyril out for it, ‘In case he’s been upset by the morning rehearsal.’ When she got back to the flat, after a satisfactory afternoon of present-buying, she found the boy in the sitting room with Miles. Cyril was looking distressed, she even thought he had been crying; (impossible to believe he was eighteen). Miles, with a slightly histrionic breeziness, said, ‘We’ve been having a little private rehearsal. Cyril found things a bit difficult this morning.’
‘Last-minute changes are always worrying,’ said Jill sympathetically. ‘But we all want to do what’s best for the play, don’t we, Cyril?’
Cyril merely nodded and gulped. Yes, he had been crying. She was wondering if she should offer him tea – or a drink, perhaps? – when Miles said, ‘Now off you go, young Cyril. We’ll have another run-through at the theatre in the morning, and you’ll be as right as rain by the dress rehearsal.’ He put his arm round the boy and steered him into the hall. Cyril barely managed a dejected ‘Goodbye, Mrs Quentin.’ Just before the front door closed she heard a short, low-toned conversation, out of which all that came to her clearly was ‘I swear it, Mr Quentin. I won’t let you down.’
‘I take it things are difficult,’ she said, as Miles returned.
‘Well, those kid gloves of Peter’s had holes large enough to let his claws through. Not that I altogether blamed him. The boy’s just a drooling mass of self-pity.’
It was so unlike Miles to speak so harshly that she guessed he must be worried. ‘Well, you’ve done all you can,’ she told him. ‘Just try to get your mind off his troubles.’
‘That’s easier said than done. You don’t know the half of them.’
‘And I don’t think I want to,’ said Jill firmly. ‘Oh, I’m not unsympathetic but you really must relax. Now let’s have a drink and then go out to an early dinner.’
She was thankful that he did not mention Cyril again all evening. And even more thankful that, as almost always, he slept well.
Next day the dress rehearsal, due to start at six-thirty, started only ten minutes late, but from then on it became a classic example of the bad dress rehearsal; indeed, there was a time when Jill thought it was going to prove a record-breaker for productions in which Miles had played. Scenery fell down, all the new lighting cues went wrong. No one, not even Miles, remembered the subtler points of Peter’s re-direction, and Cyril reverted to the shouting performance he had given all the previous week; the end of Act II had to be done six times. Three people, including Cyril, wept. (Peter said, ‘It’s like hysteria going through dog kennels.’) Miles and Peter had a shouting match across the (non-existent) footlights. Around one A.M. Frank Ashton, feeling he ought to make a noise like a management, came to Peter and said, ‘Running a bit late, aren’t we?’ Peter, white with temper, said, ‘Go away.’ Frank Ashton, wisely, went. The author said miserably to Jill, ‘I suppose this means we can’t open?’ She soothed him, handing out all the dope about bad dress rehearsals being lucky. And in the end the record remained unbroken as they finished at three A.M. She could remember a dress rehearsal that had lasted until five, and then the last act had been held over.
As she took Miles home she decided they lived in a lunatic world. None of this should happen – but again and again it did. And if the play succeeded one forgot about the nightmare, much as women were said to forget the agonies of childbirth.
But could this play succeed?
Some sixteen hours later, after working so late on last-minute preparations for the party that she barely had time to change into her new evening dress, she was almost past caring. She just longed to get through the first night and the party, and go to sleep. She gave a loving look at her bed, and then mentally shook herself. At least she didn’t have to act, as Miles and the company did. And the stage management would be the tiredest of all.
She had invited Tom Albion and his elderly, still-handsome wife to share her box. She liked a box for London first nights, so that she could watch the audience and also avoid mingling with it, except for people who knew her well enough to come up to the box in the intervals.
‘Well, here we go again,’ said Tom, as the house lights dimmed before the rise of the curtain. ‘Peter tells me I shall see quite a different play.’
‘You’ll be lucky if you see any play, judging by last night. I’m glad you weren’t able to be there.’
But within ten minutes she had realized that, as so often, the first-night miracle had happened: chaos had been replaced by smoothness. But she did not think anyone was very good; even Miles seemed to her rather quiet. She turned her attention to the audience and decided there was nowhere near the enthusiasm of the previous week’s first night. But she could not detect signs of actual boredom, let alone hostility. And the applause at the end of the act was good.
‘Much, much better,’ Tom pronounced.
‘It didn’t strike you as a bit tame?’
‘Dear heart, it needed taming. I shouldn’t wonder, now, if the damn thing didn’t succeed.’
She looked him in the eye. ‘You don’t mean that, Tom.’
‘I don’t quite not mean it. I just don’t know – yet. Come and have a drink.’
But she stayed where she was and chatted to friends who came up. They were all enthusiastic but she never believed a word anyone said on a first night.
The second act was even more tamed than the first. The less spectacular lighting made a surprising difference and there was a general toning down of melodramatic effects. Cyril (now ‘Doug’ on the programmes) remembered his new cuts and not to shout at the end of the act (no spotlight on him now, poor Cyril). Indeed, he mumbled; but Jill had recently decided that audiences no longer expected to hear fully; conditioned by ultra-natural television acting they took it for granted that they just had to guess. Anyway, Miles was superb and the end of the act now belonged to him. The applause, as assessed by Jill, was generous verging on handsome.
In the second interval, having located the Thorntons in the stalls, she beckoned them up to the box. She had arranged to meet them at the stage door and take them to see Miles. Now she had to tell them she wouldn’t be able to. The play was running later than she had expected and she would need to dash off the minute the curtain fell – ‘Otherwise I shan’t be back to take in the hot food. And I’ve quite a lot to do before the party starts.’
‘Ma
y Kit and I come and help?’ said Robin.
‘No, really. It’s sweet of you but you want to go back-stage. Miles is expecting you.’
‘We can visit him some other time,’ said Kit. ‘Of course we shall come with you. Have you a taxi ordered?’
‘I don’t think you can order taxis to wait outside theatres. I was trusting to luck.’
‘Oh, the commissionaire can manage something. We’ll talk to him now, before the interval ends. Come on, Robin.’
Robin started off, then called back, ‘What time’s the curtain likely to be down?’
Jill made the best guess she could, then looked rather dazedly at Geoffrey Thornton.
He smiled. ‘I know. They can be a bit over-powering. But you really will find they’re a help. I’ll let your husband know what’s happened to them.’
‘And to me, please. He’ll be expecting me.’
During the last act she was more anxious about getting home than about the play, which continued to proceed smoothly. She was out of the box as the curtain fell and had the pleasure of hearing solid applause as she sped from the theatre.
The taxi was there all right, with the two girls standing by its open door. Jill, helped inside so firmly that she nearly fell on her face, had the sensation of being kidnapped.
They reached the flat in time to receive the hot food – or rather, the girls received it, decided it wasn’t hot enough, and put it in the oven. They then got cold food from the refrigerator. Robin, dismissing Jill – ‘Perhaps you’ll want to do a little something to your lovely hair,’ added, ‘Don’t worry about us. We really are terrifically domesticated. We have to be, to run our house with only a little help from a poor dear who used to look after Mother, and now needs looking after, herself. Oh, will Mr Quentin open the champagne? If not, we do know how, even though we don’t drink it.’