Westwood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Well, it iss beautiful. So true and fine,’ said Zita, with a long sigh, turning to Margaret. ‘Do you not think so?’

  Margaret was leaning forward with her chin resting in her hands and gazing absently down into the stalls, where friends were crowding about the Challises and congratulating Seraphina upon what was obviously going to be her husband’s finest play.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered at last in a tone that sounded puzzled at herself rather than at the play. ‘It is beautiful, of course, but –’

  She broke off, wondering whether her present lack of excitement was caused by having looked forward to this occasion with such high hopes that no play ever written could have come up to them.

  ‘I see no fault in it,’ said Zita solemnly. ‘It iss perfect. But we wait und we see. Perhaps something happen to spoil it all. But I think no.’

  They said no more, both being rather tired, and were content to watch the audience and listen to the fierce, gay, cocky little French marches.

  In the bar the critics were talking.

  ‘It’s the oldest dramatic recipe in the history of the modern theatre,’ obstinately said the one who had been reminded of a ladies’ hairdressing saloon. ‘Frou-Frou and Camille done up with confort moderne.’

  ‘But it always fetches ’em.’

  ‘Of course it always fetches ’em and it always will, although this version is a bit dehydrated.’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured another, ‘it’s all there, but God just didn’t blow.’

  For another two hours the tragedy of Kattë unfolded, marching towards its inevitable end over the souls and bodies of her friends and relations. Her father shot her mother, for having borne him such a daughter, then jumped into the Danube. Her crippled brother’s character was corrupted by the young officers who bribed him to carry notes to his sister for them and plead their cause, and he became a pimp. Her younger sister went insane with jealousy when she believed that her own lover had deserted her for Kattë, and the final blow was struck when the old nurse, with whom Kattë had lived since the break-up of her own home, was forced to sell the pet goldfinch to buy a little goulash for their supper and burst into sobs during the meal, blaming Kattë for the loss of the bird.

  Many eyes in the audience were wet as the play drew towards its end, with the last rays of sunset streaming into the poor room in the nurse’s apartment where Kattë sat alone. The lights were going up in the city of Vienna, whose roofs and palaces could be seen through the open window against a darkening summer sky, and from the street below came shouts and laughter as the happy lovers danced to a fiddler playing The Beautiful Blue Danube. The heavy, sensuously sweet melody seemed to be filling the room like water and rippling all about the motionless form of Kattë as she sat by the window, staring out at the city, and nursing the revolver in her white hands.

  A moment later and it was over; she lay dead, with her arms outstretched, and the music was still ringing joyously through the empty room as the curtain came slowly down.

  Another moment, and what a storm of applause burst forth! and the curtains swung apart once more to reveal Miss Schatter, hand-in-hand with Edward Early, smiling and bowing to the enraptured audience and looking more lovely than ever with her hair about her shoulders and her face pale with exhaustion. How they clapped and cheered! Again and again the company had to come forward and be frantically acclaimed, and soon the shout of, ‘Author! Author,’ began to be heard.

  Margaret, clapping as hard as the rest and delighting in her hero’s success, felt her heart beat faster. In another moment she would see him! and the thought banished other and perverse thoughts which had insisted upon obtruding themselves during Kattë’s closing moments.

  ‘It will become a Classic,’ said Zita solemnly, ‘with Hamlet and The Master Builder and Saint Joan it will be.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so! Author! Author!’

  She clapped the harder and called the louder because she was guiltily aware that during the last act she had wanted to shake Kattë, rather than weep over her, and tell her to have a straight talk with her friends and relations instead of looking at them in woeful silence or skipping away tra-la-la-ing. If only she had explained to her sister, Margaret thought, clapping away, that need never have happened. They were all so highly emotional. (‘Author! Author!’) Well, the Viennese are, of course. But are they quite as emotional as all that? Going mad and jumping into the Danube and shooting themselves for very little reason, really, except that everyone fell in love with Kattë. And it could all have been put right so easily!

  The fact is, I don’t believe a w –

  But here her thoughts (perhaps fortunately) were distracted by the renewed applause as Gerard Challis walked slowly out from the wings on to the stage.

  How distinguished he looked; how tired! and how sad was the fine faint smile that played about his lips. It means nothing to him, she thought. All this clapping and cheering is just dust and ashes; all he cares about is The Work, and that it should be good. He shrinks from the vulgarity of it all.

  ‘Mr Challis certainly doesn’t look very pleased,’ observed Earl to Hebe, as they stood side by side clapping and gazing up at the stage. ‘Do you think maybe he didn’t like Miss Schatter’s interpretation of the part?’

  ‘Oh, Pops always puts on that face on a first night; he’s as pleased as two niggers, really; he adores being clapped and having silly witches hanging on his every word; if you ask me, I think Kattë was the silliest witch of the lot,’ retorted Hebe loudly above the din, and closed her flowerlike mouth again: it was the first long speech she had made that evening and her first and last comment, beyond significant glances at her mother, on the play.

  Dear old Gerry, thought his wife, it’s the dreariest one yet, but isn’t he loving it all! This ought to keep him a good boy for weeks.

  Alexander (who always enjoyed an evening out in his best clothes, though he enjoyed an evening at home in his old ones equally well) was also clapping, and enjoying the spectacle of the bowing company in their picturesque clothes with the brilliance of the footlights shining upon them. He thought the play was all right; but then, he did not ever care much for plays or poems or novels; he liked real objects best, and next to them, painting real objects.

  Mr Challis stood there, still smiling faintly and bowing first to the line of smiling players on either side of him and then to the audience. He caught his wife’s eye and gave her a slightly, but very slightly, wider smile.

  ‘What do you know, Lev?’ said Hebe out of the side of her mouth to the other American.

  ‘It’s a swell piece of dramma,’ he answered briefly in the same way, ‘but what’s all the grief about anyway? A dame like that, there’s only one thing to do with her –’

  ‘You tell me presently,’ said Hebe, and at that moment Mr Challis, registering reluctance, stepped forward and held up his hand. A hush instantly fell upon the excited house, and Margaret leant breathlessly forward, but even as he parted his lips to speak there arose, muffled yet unmistakable, the howl of the air-raid warning. A half-comical groan went up, and as Mr Challis hesitated a few people began to move unobtrusively towards the exits. Most of the audience, however, remained where it was and there were renewed calls of ‘Speech! Speech!’

  It would never have occurred to Margaret to do anything but stay where she was. But Zita had her by the arm; Zita was dragging her away, past the surprised faces of the people in the same row; Zita’s thin cold hand was trembling and her face was white. Margaret tried to hang back and began to protest, but one glance showed her how things were, and, angry and contemptuous yet pitying, she allowed herself to be pulled down the deserted, softly lit corridors and down the stairs until they came out into the foyer, where a few people were gathered.

  ‘Quick – quick!’ muttered Zita, darting across to the door leading to the street. ‘Dere is a tube across der road und we go down dere.’

  ‘It probably won’t be much,’ said Margaret, as they came out into
the street, where black buildings loomed against the soft, starry May sky. It was not quite dark and there was a ghostly reflected glow everywhere from the searchlights.

  ‘Quick, quick!’ said Zita, shivering, and gripped Margaret’s arm and hurried out across the broad, pale, shadowy road, dodging in and out between the red and green lights of cars and street-signs and the gliding dark shapes of taxis.

  ‘Here we are,’ she muttered, darting into the entrance of the Underground and scurrying down the steps.

  Margaret was still so annoyed that she could not trust herself to speak. She was also very tired from the intense excitement of the evening, and bitterly disappointed that she had not heard Gerard Challis’s speech. It had been arranged that she and Zita should return to Westwood for supper, and she assumed that they were on their way there – unless Zita proposed to stay in the tube all night. What a little coward she was!

  ‘Ach!’ said Zita, with a great sigh of relief as they came out on to the crowded, stuffy platform. ‘Now we are safe!’

  Margaret, looking like a thundercloud, said nothing.

  ‘Oh yess, oh yess, I know you are angry!’ said Zita bitterly, tossing her head, ‘but I am not staying up dere in der noise und der bits falling und der bombs – to please you or anyone.’

  Margaret still said nothing.

  ‘You think I am a coward!’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ lied Margaret, stirred to response by the sudden thought that if Zita marched off in a huff there would be no visit to Westwood that evening, ‘but I do think that you make too much fuss. These little raids aren’t dangerous.’

  ‘So! But for some dey will mean death, und why not for me? No, no,’ laughing angrily, ‘I take no chance und I come away quick down here.’

  Margaret said no more, and just then their train came in and Zita was soon talking away amiably enough about the play, and Margaret, though half of her seemed to be still in the theatre waiting for him to speak, was diplomatically ready to fall in with her changed mood.

  After a slower and much more crowded journey than usual, they got out at Highgate station and found that the warning was still on, but that there had been no gunfire for some time. People standing at the entrance were staring at a red glow in the sky over Hampstead Heath, and saying that a hospital had been hit by incendiaries.

  ‘Shall we go?’ said Margaret, breathing with relief the delicious freshness of the air.

  ‘No, we wait for the All Clear. Perhaps dey come back.’

  So for another quarter of an hour they hung about, while one person after another decided to risk it, and set off smartly for home, until they were the only ones left. All was quiet and the glow over Hampstead was dying down.

  ‘Do let’s go, Zita,’ said Margaret impatiently at last.

  Zita was just shaking her head obstinately when – suggesting as it always did to Margaret the sound of the Last Trump – the All Clear began.

  ‘Ach! Goot!’ she said. ‘Now we go safely. So!’ (looking upwards), ‘You run away like the cowards which you are!’ and she shook her fist at the peaceful night sky. ‘It iss all over for this time and I alive still am! Come, now we go home and haf some supper.’

  Margaret knew that Mr Challis was giving a party for the company and his family at the Savoy after the play, and therefore would normally not have been home until late, but she hoped that the raid might have upset their plans and caused the family to return earlier; this had been her chief reason for wishing to get to Westwood as soon as possible.

  However, when Zita opened the front door everything else was driven out of their heads by the sight which confronted them.

  A newly lit fire smoked in the grate, and every light in the hall was burning. Shawls and coats and shoes were scattered everywhere, slipping out of two large cases filled with children’s clothes and toys, and in front of the fire in a low chair sat Grantey, leaning back and looking white and exhausted, with her eyes shut. In another chair Emma was half-lying, wrapped in a fur coat and crying noisily, and close to the fire was a big basket with Jeremy in it, also crying. Cortway was kneeling beside his sister, trying to force a drink between her lips, and on the hearthrug, surveying the scene with enormous scared eyes in a very pale face and wearing a coat over his pyjamas, sat Barnabas.

  Cortway turned round as the two girls hurried forward.

  ‘So someone’s turned up at last!’ he exclaimed. ‘About time, too. ’Ere, you, Zita, give Mrs Grant a hand, will you, and you, Miss, see to the fire, it’s going out with any luck. Alice, old girl’ – he slipped his arm under his sister’s shoulders – ‘hold up a minute, here’s Zita, she’ll give you a hand up to bed. Oh, hold your noise, do!’ turning to the baby.

  Margaret was already on her knees attending to the fire, and Zita, loudly uttering ejaculations and questions, was helping Cortway to raise Grantey to a sitting position. Suddenly she opened her eyes. ‘The children? Are the children all right?’ she gasped painfully.

  ‘Quite all right. All safe. All here,’ said Cortway, bending forward and shouting into her ear.

  ‘What the matter iss? What hass happened? Ach, mein Gott!’ said Zita. ‘Emma, you notty girl, quiet be!’ and she turned distractedly to the chair and its weeping occupant.

  Emma roared louder than ever, so Margaret, as the fire was now blazing promisingly, went over to her and picked her up. Emma’s cries ceased as soon as she felt herself raised, and she allowed Margaret to wipe her eyes and tenderly rearrange her nightgown, over which a little frock had been hastily pulled. Her tiny feet were naked and blue with cold.

  ‘Well, I couldn’t find her blinking socks,’ Cortway said defensively, seeing Margaret’s frown. ‘Half the side of the house blown out and the hospital across the road blazing – I thought me heart would have stopped when I came round the corner and saw it.’

  ‘But what happened? Was the cottage hit?’ said Margaret, raising her voice to make herself heard above Zita’s noisy exclamations.

  ‘Near enough,’ said Cortway grimly, reaching across to Jeremy and beginning to pat him mechanically. ‘I was just turning on to hear the news –’

  ‘Oh, it was dreadful!’ interrupted Grantey faintly. ‘I was just getting Emma settled in the shelter and Barnabas was being such a good boy and helping me (Jerry was asleep, thank goodness; bless his little heart, he never stirred) and suddenly there was that awful whistling noise – you know –’

  ‘I went under the table the tooter the sweeter I can tell you,’ said her brother. ‘Like old times, that was.’

  ‘– and the most awful crash and then a sort of sighing sound and the Anderson kind of heaved up and down and then I heard the bricks come tumbling down. Oh, I was frightened! There, there, there’s a good boy,’ and she feebly turned towards the baby, whose cries were becoming less as Cortway steadily patted him.

  ‘They copped it just across the road at the Black Bear and the front of Lamb Cottage was blown out,’ said Cortway. ‘The wardens got me on the ’phone and I went over and fetched Alice and the kids in the car. Nice state of affairs for Mr and Mrs Niland to come home to, I don’t think,’ he ended. ‘Half your house gone and your kids frightened into fits. “Oh, ain’t it a lovely war!”’

  ‘I’m not frightened,’ said Barnabas suddenly.

  ‘Of course you aren’t,’ said Cortway, giving his white face a glance of approval. ‘And you was a great help to Grantey too, and took care of your little brother and sister, didn’t you? And now I’m going downstairs to make us all a nice hot cup of cocoa. How’ll that be, eh?’

  ‘I shall like that,’ said Barnabas. He glanced across at Margaret. ‘How is Emma now?’ he demanded.

  ‘Better, thank you, Barnabas. Look, she’s nearly asleep,’ and she gently moved aside a fold of the fur coat and showed the peaceful little face, with eyes dreamily watching the flicker of the fire, the lids slowly falling and then opening wide again.

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Barnabas. ‘When will Mummy and Daddy come home?’
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  ‘Very soon now, sonny,’ said Cortway, and went off to make the cocoa.

  ‘Oh dear, I do feel so bad,’ said Grantey fretfully, ‘and it’s not at all like me to give way. It’s this heart, I suppose. The doctor said shock would make it worse.’

  Margaret glanced inquiringly at Zita, not having heard of Grantey’s heart before, and Zita made an ominous face. In fact, Grantey had kept her trouble to herself, merely letting it be known that she was not well and must take it easy – the latter prescription being a cause of much ironical laughter on her part.

  ‘Douglas, Douglas – can’t you make it tea, not that nasty heavy cocoa?’ she now called imploringly after her brother. ‘Make cocoa for Barnabas and the rest of us’ll have tea.’

  ‘A goot strong cup of coffee,’ said Zita longingly.

  ‘Tea for me,’ whispered Margaret, looking up from the child with a warning grimace. But it was too late; Emma sat upright, cast off her coverings and looked about her.

  ‘Co-co?’ she said inquiringly.

  ‘There!’ said Cortway. ‘Now we’ve done it. She loves cocoa.’

  ‘I will come und coffee make,’ said Zita, hurrying away. Grantey sank back again, but she looked slightly less exhausted and her gaze rested with languid satisfaction upon the children.

  ‘Poor Miss Hebe, what she must be going through,’ she murmured, as if to herself.

  Poor Miss Hebe, indeed, thought Margaret scornfully. Why couldn’t she ring up here? At that moment the telephone-bell did begin to ring, startlingly loud in the dreamy hush.

  ‘Oh dear – that’ll be Miss Hebe,’ exclaimed Grantey, struggling up.

  ‘I’ll go – here, you take her,’ said Margaret, quickly but gently putting Emma down on her lap, and she hurried across the hall.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Is that Highgate 00078? Hold on, please; Martlefield wants you.’