Little Stars

  ‘You two girls must stay utterly silent if you sit in on rehearsals,’ he said, pointing at us sternly.

  ‘They’re being very good, Gerald,’ said Miss Royal. ‘And it’s a very long time for the little one to stay quiet. Perhaps we should let her run around a little every now and then?’

  ‘We’re actors, not babysitters.’ Mr Parkinson always pronounced the word actors in a particularly plummy voice, ‘aaac-tooors’. Diamond and I often copied him to make each other giggle.

  ‘It seems silly to have them sitting here hour after hour when we’re not rehearsing their scenes,’ said Harry. ‘What are you planning for tomorrow, Gerald?’

  ‘We need to do the Dora scenes. The pet-shop owner is bringing some likely dogs to see which one is best playing Gyp,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh, Gerald, you old meanie. I wanted to be Gyp,’ said Harry. He crouched down, surprisingly nimble for such a large man, and started running round on all fours, giving high-pitched barks. He nestled up to Stella, growled at Cecil, and then impudently cocked his leg on him, which made everyone laugh, even Mr Parkinson.

  ‘Tell you what, why don’t we let the girls have a day off, seeing as they’re not required,’ said Miss Royal.

  ‘Yes, very well,’ said Mr Parkinson, joining in the fun in spite of himself. He held out an imaginary titbit to make Harry sit up and beg.

  ‘There you are, girls! You can have a little wander around London and enjoy yourselves,’ said Miss Royal. ‘Perhaps you might like to go to the Zoological Gardens?’

  I remember my last trip, the day after the Queen’s Jubilee. I thought of taking Diamond for a ride on Jumbo the elephant – though this wouldn’t really be much of a novelty to a circus child.

  No, I had a much better idea.

  I WOKE VERY early. Diamond and Adeline and Maybelle were all leaning on me and I could barely move. I planned our journey in my head, turning my Mizpah ring round and round. I thought longingly of Bertie and hoped he didn’t think badly of me. I remembered all our squabbles and sulks. They all seemed so silly now. Why hadn’t we just enjoyed our time together? I was missing him so much already.

  I woke Diamond at six and we tiptoed about as quietly as possible. When we slipped softly down the stairs, we heard Harry snoring in his room, great guttural snorts that gave us both the giggles. We had to hold our hands over our mouths, stifling our splutters. We crept down to Miss Grundy’s kitchen for a cup of tea before our journey. She came pattering in herself, her long white hair hanging loose past her shoulders, wearing a white cotton nightgown. Her feet were bare, thin and delicately boned, very white against the dark linoleum.

  ‘You’re bright and early today, girls,’ she said cheerily. ‘Would you like some bread and honey?’

  She felt around carefully, taking the bread out of the crock and then cutting it carefully, handling the knife with caution. She kept the butter on one shelf in the pantry, the honey on another, everything neatly in its place so that she could be sure to find it.

  She let Diamond lick the honey spoon.

  ‘Please may I share it with Adeline and Maybelle? They are my two dollies,’ said Diamond.

  Miss Grundy felt each doll with her long paper-white fingers. Maybelle’s blunt features and baldness must have been a shock after Adeline’s smooth china and flowing locks, but Miss Grundy tactfully didn’t remark on this. She even made two fairy-sized sandwiches for the dolls.

  ‘Thank you so much! My girls are very happy now. But I’d better take your travelling cloaks off, dears, I don’t want you to get them all sticky with honey,’ said Diamond.

  ‘Are they going travelling today, then? Aren’t they rehearsing with you two?’ Miss Grundy asked.

  ‘We’re not needed at rehearsals today, so we’re going to visit a friend,’ I said.

  ‘A very, very dear friend,’ added Diamond. ‘She’s like a mother to us, because we’ve lost our own mothers.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to see you,’ said Miss Grundy. ‘It’s so lovely to have some feminine company. I’ve nearly always had gentlemen lodgers. Ladies don’t always care to live in Soho.’

  ‘We care to live here,’ I said. ‘Thank you for making us so welcome.’

  I hoped Madame Adeline would make us welcome too. I was longing to see her, but I couldn’t help fretting.

  ‘Perhaps we should have telegrammed last night, to say we were coming,’ I said, when we were on the train. ‘It will be such a shame if Madame Adeline and Mr Marvel have gone out for the day – we will have come all this way for nothing.’

  ‘But they can’t really go too far. Mr Marvel would never leave all the monkeys for long,’ said Diamond. ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see little Mavis! Do you think she’ll remember me?’

  ‘Of course she will,’ I said.

  ‘Adeline and Maybelle are so excited.’ Diamond made her dolls jig up and down. ‘Adeline can’t wait to meet her namesake! And Maybelle remembers Madame Addie most fondly, don’t you, dear?’ Maybelle nodded her cloth head so vigorously she nearly unravelled her stitches.

  I was becoming very excited myself. I relived the first moment I’d seen Madame Adeline, when I was a small girl in the village. I’d been dazzled by this fairy-tale woman riding her fine horse, her bright red hair shining, the sequins on her pink costume sparkling in the sunlight. Jem had taken me to the circus and I’d run into the ring to perform with Madame Adeline. She had laughed at my boldness and called me her little star.

  Little Star, Little Star, Little Star, I repeated to the rhythm of the train’s wheels. I kept a careful eye on all the station names, and at last I spotted Little Foxfield. Madame Adeline’s address was very brief: Honeysuckle Cottage, Little Foxfield, Sussex. I imagined a story-book cottage with a thatched roof and mullioned windows, a colourful flower garden in front and honeysuckle in a fragrant tangle around the front door.

  Little Foxfield station was deserted, though we were still waiting hopefully for a station master or porter long after the train had chugged out of sight.

  ‘Well, we might as well look for Honeysuckle Cottage ourselves, Diamond. I’m sure it won’t be far,’ I said.

  We wandered down the lane. We passed a few cottages, but none were named Honeysuckle. I stopped a small child and then a boy ambling along whistling to the birds, but neither seemed to have even heard of Honeysuckle Cottage. After a while the houses petered out and we were left trudging up a steep path, trees and hedges on either side of us. We stopped on the brow of the hill and peered down. More trees, more hedges, many fields – but no sign of any cottage.

  ‘Oh dear, are we lost?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘No, of course not. We must simply have gone the wrong way at the station. We’ll go back,’ I said.

  ‘We will find Madame Adeline, won’t we?’ Diamond demanded.

  ‘Of course we will.’ I tried to sound confident, though I was starting to wonder if there might be another Little Foxfield in a different part of the country altogether.

  We trudged back again, our toes rubbing uncomfortably against the end of our shoes because of the steep incline. The station was still deserted, so we set out the other way. There were more tumbledown cottages, but still none named Honeysuckle. Then we saw a small store with a blue-and-white awning.

  ‘Perhaps the shopkeeper will know where it is,’ I said.

  She was sitting behind her counter, sharing a pot of tea with a man in a navy uniform with brass buttons. Perhaps he was the station master?

  ‘Yes?’ said the woman rather curtly. ‘What do you want to buy?’

  ‘I don’t really want to buy anything, ma’am,’ I started politely.

  ‘Then don’t come bothering me in my store,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at the man in uniform.

  ‘I was just wondering, would you happen to know the whereabouts of Honeysuckle Cottage?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, the whereabouts!’ she said, mocking my accent. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Me neither,’ sai
d the man, shaking his head.

  ‘Madame Adeline lives there. A lady with red hair,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no one with red hair in our village,’ said the man.

  ‘And there’s Mr Marvel – he’s an elderly gentleman, and he has a family of monkeys,’ added Diamond.

  ‘Oh, him,’ said the woman. ‘Old Monkey Man? Him that came to live in the old cottage in the woods with some old biddy?’

  I couldn’t bear to hear her talking about our dear friends so disparagingly.

  ‘Please, just direct us to the cottage,’ I said. ‘Which path should we take?’

  ‘It’s in Larch Woods, over on the left,’ said the man, gesturing. ‘Can’t rightly say which path to take. It’s just a matter of following your nose.’

  ‘Thank you for all your help,’ I said sarcastically. I grabbed Diamond and pulled her out of the shop.

  ‘What a horrid pair!’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s find this cottage in the woods. We will indeed follow our noses!’

  I tried to sound light-hearted, but I worried as we set off into the woods.

  I was used to woods from my early childhood, when I played happy squirrel-house games with Jem, but this wood seemed too dark, too quiet, too inhibiting. The branches reached out, the twigs like grasping fingers, and the roots crept stealthily beside the path, intent on tripping us. Diamond held my hand so tightly I couldn’t move my fingers. She had her dolls clasped in her other arm, and all the while she tried to murmur comfortingly to them, though she was nearly in tears.

  I began to doubt the existence of this cottage. The man and woman in the shop were probably laughing at us now, slapping each other on the back and spilling their tea. Could Madame Adeline and Mr Marvel really live in the middle of this hateful wood? They were an elderly couple now. How could they negotiate their way to the village shop in rain, in snow?

  Madame Adeline had sounded so positive in her letters. She had said that the cottage was out in the country, she had told us how she had to clean it and paint it and make curtains and rag rugs, but she had somehow made it sound cosy and comfortable. She had never once mentioned that it was in the middle of a dark wood.

  Diamond kept looking about her, glancing fearfully this way and that. Every now and then she stopped, her head on one side, listening. ‘What’s that?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘It’s just the leaves rustling in the breeze,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes! Why, do you think someone’s following us?’

  ‘Not exactly. But this wood is just like the one in the picture book,’ she said.

  ‘Which picture book?’

  ‘The fairy-tale one. The Red Riding Hood story.’

  ‘Diamond, I promise you, there can’t possibly be any wolves in this wood,’ I said firmly.

  ‘There could be.’

  ‘There aren’t any wolves left in England, not nowadays.’

  ‘How do you know? There might be just a few creeping about.’

  ‘Oh, do stop it!’ I said impatiently, because I was worried she might be right, even though I knew it was a crazy idea.

  We were still bickering when the wood thinned a little – and suddenly we found ourselves in a sunlit clearing. And there was a cottage! It was very old and tumbledown, the brickwork crumbling and cracked. It had a thatched roof of sorts, with many bare patches. But the front door had been given a coat of bright green paint and someone had trained a slender spiral of honeysuckle up a lattice beside it.

  ‘Oh, Diamond, it’s Honeysuckle Cottage, it must be!’ I cried.

  We both rushed forward and started tapping on the green door. The knocker was polished, though it didn’t look as if any visitors ever came to the cottage to use it.

  ‘Madame Adeline! Madame Addie, are you in?’ Diamond called.

  The door opened and an ancient old lady peered out at us, blinking in the light.

  We hung back uncertainly, wondering if we had the wrong cottage after all. This lady was surely much older than Madame Adeline. She had sparse grey hair, worn so thin her scalp showed. Her face was very pale, with brown smudges under her eyes. The fingers clutching her robe were shaking. It was the green floral wrapper I recognized, not Madame Adeline herself.

  ‘Madame Addie!’ I said.

  ‘My girls!’ she gasped, and held out her arms.

  The three of us hugged as if we would never let go. But then a little light creature suddenly leaped onto Diamond’s shoulder, thin arms clutching her long hair.

  ‘Mavis!’ she cried delightedly. ‘Oh, darling Mavis! Don’t pull my hair now, naughty girl! Oh, you remember me, don’t you! But where are all the others? Are they in a cage? And where’s dear Mr Marvel, Madame Addie?’

  I felt her shaking. ‘Gone,’ she murmured.

  ‘Gone?’ I repeated. ‘He left you?’

  ‘No, no, he – he became ill. And so did the monkeys. Oh, girls, it’s been so terrible.’

  ‘Mr Marvel,’ said Diamond, her lip quivering. ‘Oh please, Mr Marvel can’t be dead. I love Mr Marvel!’

  ‘Diamond!’ I said softly. ‘Hush now. Madame Adeline loved him too.’

  ‘But not enough,’ she said, starting to weep.

  I led her inside the cottage, Diamond following, her arms full of dolls and monkey. The living room was neat and tidy, with little decorative touches: lace curtains tied up with blue ribbon, coloured lithographs of horses on the wall, wild flowers in a jam jar on the scrubbed wooden table. There were two worn armchairs on either side of the fireplace. I sat Madame Adeline in one and Diamond in the other and then went to set the kettle on the hob.

  I found two blue-and-white striped mugs and a set of gold-rimmed rose patterned china. This was Madame Adeline’s pride and joy, and for decoration only. I made tea and poured it into the two mugs and a rinsed-out jam jar.

  ‘Is there cake?’ Diamond asked hopefully.

  Madame Adeline shook her head. I peered into her larder. There was hardly any food at all, just an end of bread and a tiny morsel of cheese that would scarcely feed a mouse. I looked at Madame Adeline closely. She’d always been slender, but now she was stick-thin, all long wrists and bony ankles, and the delicate bones in her face seemed to poke through her skin.

  I wished we’d thought to bring some food with us. I could have bought a big fruit cake, a bunch of grapes, a bottle of tonic wine . . . How could I have been so thoughtless?

  I gave Madame Adeline her tea, and then sat at her feet, leaning my head against her knee.

  ‘Dear Hetty,’ she murmured, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘And dear Diamond. My two girls. I never thought I’d see you again.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us in your letter? Couldn’t you bear to?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘It was so sad. I didn’t want to upset you, especially Diamond.’

  ‘But we’d have come at once!’

  ‘Yes, I know, but you’ve made your own lives now. At the Cavalcade! I’m so proud of you both,’ she said.

  ‘Well, actually we’re not there any more. We’re going to be actors in the West End, so hopefully you’ll be even prouder.’

  I told her all about it, and she nodded and shook her head in all the right places, and did her best to smile. Diamond laid her dolls down flat for a rest and concentrated on playing with Mavis.

  ‘Poor little girl, she’s an orphan now,’ she said. ‘So I shall make even more fuss of her. How did all the other monkeys die, Madame Addie? Did they all die at once?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, they did,’ said Madame Adeline uncertainly.

  ‘And Mr Marvel too?’

  She covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Diamond, I don’t think Madame Adeline wants to talk about it just now – it’s too upsetting. Why don’t you take Mavis for a little walk outside? Have you got a lead for her, Madame Adeline?’

  We fixed it to her collar, and then Diamond took her out into the garden. We heard them chattering together in a very touching
way.

  Madame Adeline uncovered her face. ‘The monkeys didn’t get ill. They were attacked by a fox. Mavis was the only one who escaped, because she’s so nimble,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh goodness, how dreadful.’

  ‘Marvel kept them in their big travelling cage in the shed at the back of the cottage. It was partly to please me. He’d have liked them in the house, but I didn’t like the smell. The monkeys didn’t mind – they were used to their cage, they probably preferred it. At least, that’s what I told myself. Marvel doted on his monkeys, you know that. He gave them such tender loving care. But he was getting older, much older. I’ve no idea how old he was, he wouldn’t tell me, but he was sometimes forgetful – he couldn’t help it. And one night, after feeding them their supper, he didn’t remember to latch the cage properly. I should have checked. But I didn’t, and in the night the fox came.’

  ‘How terrible!’

  ‘Don’t tell Diamond. It would upset her so. She loved those monkeys. Thank goodness Mavis escaped. We found her right at the top of the tallest tree. It took hours to talk her down, and she was traumatized for days. So was Marvel. He couldn’t bear it. He blamed himself. He just took to his bed. I tried to comfort him, but I could do nothing. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink, wouldn’t get up. He didn’t want to live any more. He died at the end of the week.’

  ‘Oh, Madame Adeline,’ I said, putting my arms round her and rocking her. I kissed her poor scalp.

  ‘If only I’d loved him more, Hetty. He was a good man, a kind man, a sweet soul. We got along well together, but I wouldn’t really call it love, just friendship. He might have lived on if I’d been more tender with him,’ she wept.

  ‘He was very, very old. I think he’d have died no matter what. You know what those monkeys meant to him.’