The Warning Bell

by Lynne Reid Banks

  ‘I have no worries about your working hard or not being what used to be called “a good girl,” if only because you know how far I have “stuck my neck out” for you. Have you read much modern American drama? You should. It has a vitality and originality which our own contemporary plays notably lack. There is one about New York detectives. One of them lets a young miscreant off on his own responsibility, and his last word to him is: “Don’t make a monkey out of me”. A word to the wise, Maggie. I, too, would not fancy myself in the role of monkey.’

  Mrs Dalzell was to write a good many bracing and admonitory little notes to Maggie in the course of the next two years. These notes, and her old teacher’s occasional visits, ‘added unto her’ something important, something sustaining, if only because she might otherwise have felt sorely the lack of someone who knew her flawed situation and to whom she could fully unburden herself. Yet, oddly, she seldom did so.

  The reason simply was that she had never been so happy in her life as she was during the following two years. Maggie, that is. Margaret was the trouble. She was continually barking her emotional shins against the iron impediment of her conscience.

  Mrs Dalzell, whose own conscience had been bent into a fairly flexible instrument since her elopement (which had caused her mother a heart attack and forced her younger sister to take her place as home drudge), nevertheless respected the worth of the organ and advised Maggie to pay heed to it — but within limits. ‘If your conscience gets out of hand,’ she once said, after one of Margaret’s rare outbursts of guilt, ‘it can do as much damage as any of the passions. Nobody who starts life in any kind of bondage can ever win their freedom without hurting someone.’

  Life in the M’Crimmond mausoleum was a bit trying at times, for they took their responsibilities seriously; but Maggie was too busy working at what she loved to want to kick over the traces. True, they frowned if she came in late, tutted when she skipped breakfast and would not allow men past the front door even at four in the afternoon, but this last was not important. Maggie only had fellow-students, not men friends, in those two years. The fact of being where she was, doing what she was doing, used up all the daring and rebellion she possessed. As for her sex drives, any time they roused themselves in Maggie, Margaret hit them smartly on the head.

  Mrs Dalzell came to see her at least once a term. They became as close as two women can who are forty years apart in age. ‘Mrs D’ did not want intimacy anyway; she never pried, and such confidences as she made to Maggie about her own past life were part of brief, unirksome homilies or anecdotes illustrating some point relevant to Maggie, such as the utter impossibility of living a fulfilled life in one’s parents’ image. She was never boring, and her knowledge and love of the theatre proved an endless spring, from which Maggie filled and refilled her own little bucket.

  Theatre became her world, learning about it the whole business of her life. Sometimes, as the months flew by, she reflected on the contrast between what her parents imagined she was learning, and what she really was. In her father’s underdeveloped imagination were probably vague pictures of his domesticated child intent upon hand-smocking and hospital corners, breaking eggs for soufflés with one hand and chopping onions to a mush with her eyes shut. What if he knew that instead she was mastering such esoteric skills as running the length of a room and jumping into a man’s arms, reciting ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ as if she had just brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, sitting perfectly still for fifteen minutes, acting out the alphabet?

  Sometimes when she was in ballet or singing classes, throwing her body and voice into their refining and controlling exercises, Maggie would imagine that her father was watching, powerless, outraged, as the dead might watch the living, and it made her strive the harder for perfection. She learnt to throw a whisper for thirty yards; to time to a split-second the striking of a match; to fall downstairs bonelessly; to hold a pause till the instant before the first cough. She learnt to improvise an entire scene at a moment’s notice with only a cadenza on a battered upright for inspiration; to memorise Shavian speeches overnight; to smack someone in the face without touching them; to bring her tongue to a point; to expand her throat and command her diaphragm, and withal to hold her breath for seventy-three seconds, the second-longest in the class.

  She also learnt to act.

  Every term she took part in two plays — or rather, she took a part of a part, for there were always too many girls. She thus tasted the flavours of a dozen wildly assorted contemporary and classical roles. And in her final year, she was rewarded with a whole act of the soubrette in a musical comedy and, in the Public Show, a scene of the mother in Death of a Salesman.

  This was regarded by her fellow students as a howling joke. Hitherto her rather bucolic good looks had led to a relentless diet of ingénues or juveniles. But to everyone’s astonishment she won the prize for the best character actress, which got her name into The Times.

  When she was shown this, her triumph fled before a tide of ice. Though her family took The Scotsman as a matter of course, enough copies of its London rival were circulating in the neighbourhood for it to be virtually certain that her parents would have their attention drawn to the item. For a week she lived in torment, till Mrs Dalzell arrived in the M’Crimmonds’ front parlour, all but dancing with glee at her latest ploy.

  ‘My dear, I took it to them!’ she gurgled. ‘Yes! I did! I carried it to your father and said, had he seen his daughter’s name in the paper? He blenched. But when he read it for himself, his colour soon returned. He never dreamt it might be his Margaret Robertson. I didn’t even have to lie. I haven’t told one lie yet, by the way — not a lie-direct, as Shakespeare has it. My goodness, though, Maggie, what a stroke of luck you didn’t win the Bancroft Gold Medal! Then your picture would have been published, and that would have torn it!’

  Maggie, assailed suddenly by a profoundly sick sensation, said, ‘It will have to be — torn — soon, anyway. Won’t it?’ And the long-suppressed horror of what lay ahead burst upon her. She broke into tears.

  Mrs Dalzell hurried to sit beside her. ‘Now then, what’s this? A prize-winning actress, crying real tears? You must never do that on stage, you know, you’ll ruin your make-up!’

  ‘But what am I to do? I want to stay in London and get a job, or what’s it all been for? I can’t just trail home and start housekeeping. I’ve got to tell them the truth now, and how, how am I going to do it?’

  Mrs Dalzell sat quite quietly until Maggie was calmer. Then she said, ‘Now, my dear, listen to me. In a few months you’ll be of age. You must face it out! After all, you’ve done nothing to be ashamed of —’

  Maggie, ravaged with the imminence of the impossible, stared at her.

  ‘Nothing to be ashamed of!’ she gasped. ‘I’ve practically stolen hundreds of pounds from my father. I’ve lied to him — you may have avoided it, technically, but I’ve told dozens of lies, scores! Every holiday at home has been a performance. Oh, I’ve had a wonderful two years. I’ve learned. I’ve made friends. I know exactly what I want from my life, but — it’s all been built on…’ She stopped because ‘wickedness’ was such a melodramatic word and she could think of no other.

  ‘Would you have been able to have all that, any other way?’

  ‘No —’

  ‘Did you try the straight way? Did you ask him?’

  ‘Yes, once, but —’

  ‘Had you a right to your own life, do you think?’

  Silence.

  ‘Margaret, weren’t you in The Barretts of Wimpole Street last term?’

  ‘But Daddy isn’t Mr Barrett!’

  ‘Only because this is 1949 and not 1849. Take it from me, dear, you did the only possible thing — except abandon your hopes.’

  Maggie was silent.

  ‘Now if you’ll take my advice, you’ll give yourself a week to think things through and rehearse what you’re going to say to your parents. I’d planned a fortnight in town, but I’ll cut it short
if you like and come up with you and we’ll do it together.’

  Maggie quickly refused this offer. ‘No! Of course not. This is for me to do.’ And then — two years too late — the thought came. ‘What will he do — to you, when he knows?’

  ‘What can he do? I’m independent. But you’re not, Maggie. And you must be. You’ll need to get yourself a job as soon as possible, if not acting straight away then something else.’

  ‘I’ve already started writing to managements. The prize should help.’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on that.’

  ‘And Mrs Dalzell, might I — could I leave here now? I feel I want to live on my own. Your cousins have been very kind, but —’

  ‘I’ve told you. You’re of age. If you can keep yourself, all your decisions from now on are in your own hands.’

  All the normal fears of those leaving drama school for the soul-devouring world of showbusiness were summer dapples compared to the black shadow that hung over Maggie. She realised she had simply been shoving the guilt up ahead of her in an ever-increasing lump, like a heedless dung-beetle, until now it was ominously poised to roll backward, right over her. Facing her father and putting herself in the path of his righteous retribution seemed only marginally less terrifying than being squashed by her own unforgettable shame at the cost, in her father’s money and her own integrity, of what she had so deeply and improvidently enjoyed.

  None of Mrs Dalzell’s words had helped. In fact, a judgement against her benefactor and fellow-conspirator was creeping across Maggie’s mind, a shadow upon shadows. Was this woman, on whom she had relied for so long, into whose hands she had put her life and to whose cheerful pragmatic morality she had entrusted her own — was she not responsible for this awful crisis in which Maggie found herself?

  So far she had confided in no one but Stip. He was useless to her now, being four hundred miles away and in any case deep in exams. So she took another confidante, out of sheer inability to bear her burden alone. She chose her closest friend at the Academy, a girl called Tanya Zandler.

  Tanya had had a good deal more life-experience than the other girls at RADA, and was also older by several years. At twenty-three she had found herself cast by her classmates as a sort of surrogate mother-figure. She had the build for it, being tall and statuesque, with a well-cut, rather patrician face and long hair that was infinitely adaptable to the matronly or heroic roles she usually played. The only dangerous corner in her friendship with Maggie occurred when the casting was announced for the Public Show. Tanya had been quite convinced she would play the mother in Death of a Salesman. Wasn’t she the class character-woman as of right? And when the prizes were awarded, Maggie’s joy had been clouded by fear that her friendship with Tanya might be over. Mature, wise and generous though she was, Tanya was an actress first and last, with an actress’s all-excluding and unreasoning ambition. But fortunately Tanya was able, given a week or so, to rise above this blow, and when Maggie’s need drove her to telephone her friend and beg a session of soul-baring, Tanya swiftly agreed.

  Tanya had had an English father and a Czechoslovakian mother, both of whom had vanished in the fires of Hitler’s Europe. Tanya had a British passport, and this saved her life, for the British Foreign Office does not indicate maternal ethnic origins in its documents. The Germans occupying Lyons, where Tanya was studying, were cautious regarding British subjects, presumably because the British held a number of German citizens who had been caught in the United Kingdom when war struck; so a camp was set up for them. Not a concentration camp of the kind where her non-Aryan mother and the man who would not renounce her were being starved and eventually gassed, but an internment camp. She very seldom spoke of what she experienced there, rightly balancing her four years of fears and privations against what might have befallen her.

  In 1945, when the camp was liberated, Tanya was shipped to England more or less willy-nilly with the others. She was taken up by some of her father’s relatives, who sent her to RADA and provided her with as much of a home background as she was ready to accept. All hope for her parents had been abandoned. Taking her mother’s name (or part of it) as a memorial, Tanya faced front, and marched.

  She arrived at the M’Crimmonds’ one summer evening, ringing the brass button bell that little bit longer and louder than most callers, the brrrrring! shooting through the house ahead of her was like an announcement heralding the arrival of someone who knew herself to be marked out for a special destiny. It was like a shout of ‘Here I am! Come quick!’ which sent Maggie dashing down the worn-carpeted stairs to greet her.

  Tanya sat on the now rather washed-out chenille counterpane, chain-smoking in her enviably insouciant fashion, quite silent as she listened except for the little squidge as she stubbed out each cigarette. She watched Maggie at first, her dark eyes unblinking, but after a certain point in the story she stopped watching and stared at the wall so that her bold straight-nosed profile was all Maggie could see.

  She was a girl of swift, remorseless judgement — this Maggie knew, having, during the past two years, been occasionally on the receiving end of some of her more trenchant criticisms. Half-way through her recital, Maggie was wishing she’d never started. Tanya would be sure to disapprove — how could she not? — and would not hesitate to say so unequivocally. Maggie felt that if that happened, in her present state she would not be able to stand it.

  But in the end, all Tanya said, in her still slightly accented voice, was: ‘H’m. Well. Judge not that ye be not judged! My God though, my hair is standing up a bit I must say. I’ve always thought you such a goody-shoes, refusing to go into pubs and kissing on stage with your behind sticking out… Still, I could a tale, or even two, unfold of my own which would straighten the curl in your hair, too, so I’d better just give you the advice you are looking for and then shut up.’

  A desire for a foretaste of punishment drove Maggie to ask for it.

  ‘You think I’m awful?’

  ‘Awfully reckless, and scarcely what you could call honest, but also incredibly brave. I think I would be shocked if I were not so surprised. To be truthful, Maggie, I didn’t think you had it in you to be so spunky.’

  Maggie, tense as she was, could not restrain a giggle. Tanya looked stricken. ‘Oh God! What have I said wrong? Is it wrong, “spunky”? I know I’ve heard it!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Or maybe read?’

  ‘Do you read old comics?’

  ‘No. Boys’ adventure books,’ she confessed. ‘I love them.’

  ‘Read them but don’t copy the dialogue.’

  Tanya grinned at her. She had a wide, red, mobile mouth but imperfectly aligned teeth, so she was more apt to grin than smile. She put out her hand and Maggie, sitting on an upright desk-chair for the purpose of confession, jumped up and went to sit on the bed with Tanya, who held her hand and gave her the advice she had asked for.

  It was that Maggie should try to get a job-offer before going back up to Scotland to face the music. That would not only give her essential confidence, it might mollify her father.

  ‘Because the first thing you must try to do is to pay back the money, of course,’ said Tanya. ‘It may be the money, more than the deceits, that will gall him the most.’

  Then they talked it over more and the room grew dim and the glow of Tanya’s cigarette-end came and went. They savoured the special intimacy — for which there is no substitute — of woman-friendship. After a couple of hours, they went out and drifted through the streets of London, arm in arm, talking. They ended up in the spaghetti joint near RADA, starving, and, in Maggie’s case, much happier than she had the slightest right to be.

  Getting a job-offer in the week Maggie had allowed herself sounded impossible, but the prize did help, after all. London managers and agents might behave as if they’d never heard of the Public Show, but a small, well-reputed company in Wales to whom she had written a not very hopeful letter wrote back and offered her a season of weekly rep by the sea for the s
ummer. She was to start rehearsals in a week, during which time she was expected to provide herself with clothes and makeup for the season (‘All the plays scheduled are modern. We can’t afford costume hire, so bring every rag you’ve got’) and begin to memorise the part of Pat in Flare Path, a French’s acting edition of which was — most thrillingly, for it was as good as a contract — enclosed.

  At this point, Maggie was forced to realise that winning the prize had given her ideas above her station. Since listening to Tanya, she had revised the scenario Mrs Dalzell had advised her to rehearse, to include the announcement to her parents of some glamorous job with the BBC or a number one tour, or at the very least, some notable provincial company such as Coventry or Birmingham… Since at least eight out of ten of the people she’d written to had still to reply (she was inexperienced enough to suppose that most of them would) she might have spurned the Wales offer, had it not included the play book.

  Reading it — imagining herself in it, a leading part all to herself — she grew irresistibly excited. A seaside town, where people would get to know you, where the company was small and everyone got a fair share of good parts, where she might be playing character one week, juve the next, SM-ing the week after, learning, learning all the time … the fun, the sheer fun and challenge of it! She would have to buy some clothes, borrow others… If only her mother had been on her side! She had loads of clothes, and they were the same size… It was now that a little irritation, an imp to fight a big black devil of guilt, crept into her thoughts about her parents. How could it be that they stood in the way of this first small but indicative triumph? Her first job! She needed them, to know, to be glad for and proud of her, to help…