by Angela Huth
It was during this coffee break that Geoffrey Wysdom suggested, in a tortuous way, that Mr and Mrs Fly might like to join in what they in television called ‘natural sync’. In other words, the Fly family would have a nice natural chat round the fire about virginity, while the cameras whirred, and none of them need worry because he, Geoffrey, would step in if anyone dried up. Mrs Fly was overcome. This unexpected bonus caused her to tremble again. She patted at her hair to disguise her excitement, and said in a shaky voice,
‘I don’t see why not, Ginny, do you? If it’ll help the television people.’
‘That’s the spirit, that’s the spirit,’ encouraged Geoffrey Wysdom, his perceptive instincts telling him that the Flys were the very stuff that good natural sync was made of. Then, controlling his excitement at having won her over, he added in a serious voice,
‘I think it would make a most valuable discussion, Mrs Fly.’
Mr Fly was less easily persuaded.
‘It’s not a subject I’ve ever discussed,’ he said, plainly embarrassed. ‘I have no views, really.’
‘Come on, Ted. It’s different, on television. People discuss all sorts of things,’ his wife encouraged. Perhaps realising what it would cost him if he refused, Mr Fly lowered himself blushingly down on to the sofa, which put him closer physically to his wife than he had been for years, and agreed with an unhappy smile.
Geoffrey Wysdom then invited Virginia to pull up an armchair near her parents. She surprised him by declining.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘I’ve done my bit. If my parents like to discuss my virginity in front of the millions, they’re welcome to do so. But nothing you can say will make me join them.’ There was a hard edge to her voice. Geoffrey Wysdom quickly decided not to try to persuade her, and smilingly suggested she should merely listen. Maybe, when the time came, she would feel there was something she would like to say …
The whole performance started again. This time the director came out from his hiding place behind the armchair and sat in it instead, settling himself down, it seemed, with the happy confidence of one who is going to be well entertained for the next twenty minutes. Virginia sat beside him, noting the return of her mother’s nervous rash, and the downward droop of her father’s mouth, revealing that for him the whole business had gone too far, but who was he to fight the will of a great corporation?
‘Mr Fly, as the father of a, er, pretty daughter who at thirty is still a virgin, can you tell me what you feel, as a father, about her well-preserved state in these days of free love and promiscuity?’
At the word ‘pretty’ Mr Fly’s eyes briefly lit up. No one had ever described Virginia as pretty to him before, and unless he was a bigger sucker than he thought, this Mr Wysdom meant it. While pondering on these things Mr Fly missed the rest of the question, and so when it came to an end the room was filled with one of the now familiar silences.
‘You see, Mr Fly, some people might say …’ Geoffrey Wysdom started up again only to be interrupted by Mrs Fly, who could contain herself no longer.
‘Let me say, speaking for my husband and I’ (she nudged him in the ribs, at which point Mr Fly realised with dismay she had snatched away his answer and he had now lost his chance) ‘… let me say that Ted and I are proud of our daughter …’
It was with horror that Virginia then watched the interchange of ideas on the concept of virginity between her parents. She sensed that the crew, the director, Jenny and Geoffrey Wysdom were all inwardly patting themselves on the back. This, indeed, this ghastly spectacle of people knowing not what they say when the cameras are turned upon them, was for them most valuable natural sync. Geoffrey Wysdom only had to prod a little farther and Mrs Fly, drunk on the excitement of it all, would come out with the after-glow story. And that, naturally, would be far too good television to discard when it came to editing. In spite of the heat in the room Virginia felt quite cold, and when the interview was over she went up to her room to put on a second cardigan.
The television people left with all the merry clamour they had come. Jenny gave Mrs Fly ten pounds cash for ‘facilities’ (‘all the electricity we’ve used, and of course the coffee’) and once again Mrs Fly was overcome almost to the point of speechlessness.
‘My goodness, all the fun of it, and getting paid too,’ she just managed to say. Geoffrey Wysdom repeated how valuable it had been to all of them, to him personally, and how really valuable it would be to the viewers. He shook hands with everyone, calling Mr and Mrs Fly Ted and Ruth by now, and left in a silver flash of his long car, designed once again to cause some wonder in the hearts of the neighbours.
When they had all gone Mrs Fly, with an effort to force herself back to reality, went to check on the lunch. Virginia paced the sitting-room marvelling at the renewed peace, the space, the quiet. On the one hand she despised herself for ever having agreed to do the interview. On the other hand, it left her full of a strange hope. Someone, somewhere, might be inspired by that smile.
She went to join her mother. Mrs Fly, apronless, was frying chips in a dream-like state. Suddenly, fat from the frying pan spat up on to the neck of her party dress, clotting a lump of the white cony fur. She looked down at it, for once uncaring.
‘The price of fame,’ was all she managed to say.
Chapter 3
On an evening late in January, in Ealing, Rita Thompson, widow, walked down the middle of a small street towards her house. She had a theory that by walking in the middle cars coming either way would be in no danger of not seeing her, and somehow it was safer than the shadows of the pavements.
Mrs Thompson, just turned fifty, was dressed as a fairy godmother. Not wanting to spoil her wings, which had taken two weeks hard work, cutting cardboard, pasting tinsel, spraying gold paint, and finally sewing a delicate harness to fit over her shoulders, she clutched her warm tweed coat under her chin, letting it fall over her front. This meant that her back, protected only by the magnificent wings and the thin, dyed parachute silk of her ball dress, was naked to the foggy air, and she shivered.
Mrs Thompson had been up at the old folk’s club taking part in the pantomime. It had, she felt, been a success. And well it might have been. She and the girls – six other sporting, middle-aged ladies, had been rehearsing a condensed form of Cinderella for the past eight months. Whenever they all had a free evening, they had gathered in one or other of their houses, and put the thing together. It had been fun, mind. Oh, some of the laughs they’d had. Mrs Thompson’s particular talent was thinking up the jokes: every joke in the script, she could honestly say, was her contribution. She had found them mostly in small print in the Reader’s Digest, but some of the dirtier ones – they couldn’t be too blue for the old folk – she remembered from years of summer shows on various seaside piers.
They’d had their little differences, too, but that was to be expected, in eight months. There was the time when the casting was at a critical stage, and there had been a certain tension between Mrs Thompson and Mrs Wavell: both fancied themselves in the lead part. Mrs Wavell had it over Mrs Thompson in that she was a scraggy little thing, and a good ten years younger. But she did have a slight squint. Mrs Thompson had never imagined Cinderella with a squint, as she told her close friend Mrs Baxter, later: but she was too much of a gentlewoman to bring up that particular misgiving at the general meeting, and Mrs Wavell won the vote. Mrs Thompson forced herself to be a good sport about the whole thing. Apparently delighted at the idea of being the fairy godmother instead of Cinderella, she stood all the girls a round of sherries at The George that night to show there was no ill-feeling. The only thing she could not have borne would have been if everybody had instantly voted her to be one of the ugly sisters. But they didn’t, because there were two obvious choices for these parts – Mrs Fields, who was no beauty but a great laugh, and Mrs Ryman, who knew herself to be the plainest woman in Ealing and said she didn’t care.
Both the performances at the club had gone well, particularly the las
t one, to-night, when the actors had got over their nerves and were beginning to enjoy themselves. Mrs Thompson still thought, privately, more could have been made of Cinderella – for whom she’d written some lovely lines, in the days when she still felt a chance of playing the part herself. Mrs Wavell had a silly, simpering voice which didn’t carry much beyond the first few rows of the church hall, and when she smiled at the prince her squinting eye – or did Mrs Thompson imagine it? – seemed to lock itself more firmly against the side of her nose. But still, the main thing was, as Mrs Baxter had pointed out over the rock cakes afterwards, they’d given joy. The vicar himself had made a vote of thanks, and some of the old folk had tears in their eyes when the lights came on. Their pleasure gave Mrs Thompson a good feeling. ‘Do as you would be done by’ had always been her motto, and having enjoyed a splendid Christmas and New Year herself, it was rewarding to think the efforts of the last eight months had been worth it. She was pleased to feel she had been able to contribute to a scrap of happiness for those less fortunate than herself.
Mrs Thompson unlocked her front door – the plum paint was horribly chipped, but repainting it was one of the things she was never able to get round to doing – and let herself into the small, chilly front hall. She was met by a strong smell of potatoes, cabbage, onions and carrots – the vegetable stew she’d left in the oven, anticipating she’d be hungry. But now she was back, and the excitement was over, she didn’t feel much like eating after all.
Judging by the silence in the house, the lodger, who had lived upstairs since Bill had died, was out. When he was in, he played his hi-fi almost continually, too loudly, a lot of pop stuff, nothing she liked very much. Sometimes she complained a little, and Jo (who was a perfect lodger in every other way) turned the music down a couple of decibels for a few days, then gradually it went back to its normal volume. But sometimes Mrs Thompson was quite grateful for the noise. To-night, for instance, she would have preferred it to the silence.
She went to her bedroom and began to grapple behind her back with the harness of her cardboard wings. When she had got them off she laid them on the double bed and contemplated them with some pride. They were a work of art, she thought: too good to be thrown away. She must find a place for them somewhere.
One of Mrs Thompson’s economies, like sticking old bits of soap together and using envelopes twice, was to have no central heating in the bedroom. As a result, while contemplating the wings, arms crossed, she shivered. She was a large woman, but not ungainly. Plump thighs but good ankles; fleshy arms but delicate wrists; narrow hips but a solid stomach overshadowed by a hefty bosom. The blue parachute silk of her ball dress clung to her, revealing that in past years she must have had a good, sporting figure. Her neck was still well preserved, and though the skin of the face was beginning to sag, it was over good bones. She had wide apart, well-set eyes, sticky with blue shadow and thick false lashes, and a thin, wide mouth over which she had painted rather too bulbous red lips. She was, as her friend Mrs Baxter was always telling her, a marvel for fifty. Mrs Baxter even maintained that everyone would think the salt-and-pepper effect of Mrs Thompson’s curly hair was entirely nature’s work.
Now, alone in her bedroom, the evening still early, Mrs Thompson wondered what to do. She could of course go down to The George, as usual, but for some funny reason she didn’t feel enthusiastic at the prospect this evening. In a strange way she wanted to keep on the blue silk dress for a few hours. It was only a tatty old thing, wartime material, run up in a few hours, but dressing up earlier on, and doing her face with especial care, had given Mrs Thompson the kind of kick she hadn’t felt for a long time. It reminded her, she supposed, of her glamorous life thirty years ago – a time she hadn’t, in fact, spoken of to anyone, including Bill or Mrs Baxter – but a glamorous time, in its way, all the same. In those days she had a nice little flat in Soho – two bedrooms, one for her Chinese maid, one for herself – and a room to receive in, which she kept strictly for friends. Her bedroom was papered in maroon flock wallpaper, and there were apple green satin sheets on the bed, sent by an anonymous admirer (she had her suspicions who he was). She had a whole small room full of clothes: beautiful fox furs, soft shiny velvet, satin and crêpe dresses, with shoes dyed to match each one. In those days, in her class of the profession, there was no vulgar business about dressing up warm to go out on the streets: she simply waited for the telephone to ring, sat back looking glamorous, and waited till her client arrived. She had her favourites, and they were good to her. Some brought her chocolates or flowers. They wafted in, in opera cloak and white kid gloves, smelling of their companion’s expensive scent, and told her she was what they’d been waiting for the whole evening. She would offer them a tiny glass of Cointreau, and they would joke together, or talk quite seriously, some of them, or play a record, before getting down to business. Mrs Thompson received most of her education from her clients. From them she picked up smatterings of information about the opera, the theatre, politics, and stored it all up in her mind. Years later she would surprise Bill by coming up with some inside piece of information about Mr Chamberlain, for instance, and Bill would say:
‘Where on earth did you gather that?’ and she would always reply,
‘I kept my ear to the ground, you know, dear.’ He never guessed.
One of her clients – not exactly a gentleman, but he’d made a lot of money in shoes – sometimes took her to the theatre: she believed implicitly in mixing business with pleasure. On those occasions, Mrs Thompson felt, nobody would have taken her for anything but a lady of high birth. She dressed with impeccable taste: the blonde streaks in her pretty hair were as pale as moonbeams, and if her escort dared offer her an orchid on arrival, she would make some elegant excuse not to pin it on her coat or dress.
In four years at this job Rita made a lot of money. Even in those days she made her small economies – meat only once a week for the Chinese maid, only one gin and lime a day for herself – and she scrupulously saved for the vague future when she would be ‘past it.’ But long before she was past it she treated herself one year, after a particularly strenuous spring, to a ten day holiday in Monte Carlo. There, on the first night, she met Bill Thompson in the bar of her modest hotel. He was on business, something to do with the French railways – a tall, thick, jovial man, with a slight limp and a booming voice, fifteen years older than herself.
They fell in love in five minutes. Rita, who had been determined her rest would not turn into a busman’s holiday, behaved decorously as a virgin. This fired Bill not only to greater passion, but to an honourable proposal of marriage within forty-eight hours.
Rita accepted, cut her holiday short, and raced back to England. There, she quickly sold her flat, her beautiful clothes, and sacked the Chinese maid. Equally swiftly she took a small, gloomy room in the Bayswater Road and bought herself some plain, sensible skirts and jerseys. By the time Bill arrived back in London he found her happily settled in what he imagined had been her home for years, and which he was determined to release her from as soon as possible. The only reminder Rita had kept of the past were a few trinkets – silver ashtrays and porcelain figures – which some of her clients had given her on special occasions. These she put behind glass on lighted shelves, and said she had inherited them from her family. Bill, for his part, was pleased to think his wife had the kind of family who left her nice things.
They moved to the flat in Ealing (now the lodger’s flat) and bought the freehold of the whole house ten years later. Rita never managed to have any children. They decided at one time to adopt some, but then the war came, and when it was over they abandoned the idea. Nevertheless they were, as Mrs Baxter often pointed out, an ideal couple: a rarity in these days of easy come, easy go, in marriage, and they remained loving to the last, which was in 1965, when Bill died of lung cancer.
Since then Rita, who wasn’t one to let things get her down, however traumatic, had taken a hold on herself, as she called it. She had started helping ou
t at the old people’s club not long after Bill died, and regularly visited some of the members who were confined to their homes, cheering them with her gay laugh and gossipy stories. She had also taken a course in typing and did occasional work for a retired general in Knightsbridge, whose failing sight meant he overlooked most of her mistakes. Apart from that, she knitted very complicated jerseys, some of which she sold to an elderly boutique off Oxford Street: and she had her acquaintances and her one good friend, Mrs Baxter. Alternate Tuesdays she and Mrs Baxter visited each other’s houses for a prolonged high tea, followed by a drink in The George, and sometimes went to a musical or a film. But in spite of the busyness of her life – and never for one moment would Mrs Thompson let anyone think it was not overflowing with activity – there were still many unfilled gaps during the day, and sometimes the evenings were long. On those occasions familiar worries filled her mind, haunting her. She tried to suppress them, but never could succeed.
As she pulled one of her own brightly knitted jerseys over her head, down over the shiny parachute silk dress, once again some of these thoughts shot aggressively into her head, so that she clapped her hand over her mouth and groaned out loud. Should she or shouldn’t she have told Bill? Should she have let him go to the grave deceived, and happy? Or should she have spoiled his illusions, and possibly wrecked their marriage? All these questions, asked a million times in the last thirty years, she could never answer, never put to anyone else: only wonder to herself. It was too late, anyway, to do anything about it. Bill could never know now. There was no way of relief.
With a sigh of impatience at herself Rita made her way to the kitchen. She still walked with a certain allure – small strides, bottom slightly shaking. ‘Sexy,’ Bill used to call her, sometimes, on Saturday nights. ‘Wouldn’t be safe to let you anywhere without me.’