The door key of Peach Cottage was kept under a brick. Alistair stayed in the pony trap with the driver, telling Vanessa to be quick.
Inside the dark and chilly cottage, Vanessa took stock of the living room. As ever, it was surgically tidy, plant holders, candlesticks and sparse mementoes arranged symmetrically. In this front parlour, she’d read during interminable evenings. She’d sketched and done her homework in front of the fire. It had been her job to bring in the coal and black the grate. And to scrub the herringbone bricks of the floor. There were spots of blood by the stairs. Poor Ruth. Alone, angry, abandoned. What had she ever gained by inducing Johnny back to her?
Vanessa searched the bureau but found no letters. She searched the parlour, the bedrooms. Alistair was calling to her to get a move on. She’d have left, except that she was thirsty. She went into the kitchen for a cup of water. On the drainer next to the copper which was laid with coals to heat the water for washing, Vanessa found a bundle of letters. Each was addressed in the same flourishing hand. ‘Vanessa Quinnell, Peach Cottage, Stanshurst’. She opened the first of them and read:
My dear Vanessa, I am breaking an embargo I was rushed into twenty-one years ago. When you were born, I pledged not to contact you, nor to write or in any way invade your life. But times change. I would never have imagined back then that this country would be at war again, or that I would long painfully to have a child, a daughter, at my side. And so, as you have come of age, I have broken that pledge. I am your father and I want to know you. Would you like to know me? If so, write to Johnny. He will arrange everything. My dear girl, I do hope your answer is “yes.” Yours,’
It was signed ‘W Bovary’ and dated 29th May 1941 – the day of her twenty-first birthday.
Alistair spoke her name and she passed the letter to him, unable to express what she felt. After a moment, he said, ‘Johnny didn’t tell you, did he? I expect he was hoping to manage the affair to his advantage. He wanted to be the broker. Are there others?’
Subsequent letters were dated at six-monthly intervals after the first, and all were invitations to Vanessa to get in touch. In each, Bo had written his address. The Farren, Farren Court, London. That both Johnny and Ruth had, by different means, kept her in ignorance was impossible for Vanessa to deny. In fact, what were the odds that Ruth had intended to burn these letters when she lit the coals for the water? Had she not fallen bringing sheets down from the bedroom, this paper would have been ash by now. Alistair put a hand on her arm.
She turned to him and he frowned at what he saw in her eyes.
She said, ‘I know who my mother is. I’m going back to the Hall, Alistair.’ She gave him Bo’s letters and ran out of Peach Cottage and down Church Hill, taking a path through the park that was too narrow for a pony-and-trap to follow.
Chapter 36
Walking back into Stanshurst Hall, she heard voices from the morning room. Fern and her father.
Vanessa crept up the stairs, intending to return to Ruth’s bedroom, but instead, she found herself in what must once have been a private, upstairs sitting room. A woman’s room with watered silk walls and pastel carpets. Furnishings were draped in Holland covers. She lifted the corner of one and found a French-style ottoman upholstered in striped silk. The sound of hooves took her to the window. She saw Alistair jump down from the trap and run towards the house.
They’d all be here in a while, but she wanted a few moments alone with her discovery. She’d have another go at finding Ruth’s room, she decided, and the picture of the young woman in the Rolls Royce. But something in the room’s shrouded silence tempted her to linger. She walked through an open arched doorway into a sitting room.
And she saw the portrait.
It was above the fireplace. A slight young woman with coppery hair and pale skin peppered with freckles. The mouth was sensual. The eyes’ lively expression was accentuated by arched brows. The irises were a rare, unusual shade of amber. ‘It’s me,’ Vanessa breathed.
‘It’s Margery.’
Lord Stanshurst stood in the archway, Fern behind him. To Vanessa’s relief, Alistair followed them into the room. He looked windswept, suggesting a hectic dash to get here.
Lord Stanshurst continued, ‘It was painted in 1913, for our marriage, when we were the young lord and the brilliant stage star.’ Cynicism misted his expression. ‘Christopher was born the month after war was declared in 1914. In March, 1917, I accompanied my unit to France, leaving Margery expecting Fern. Some months after Fern’s birth, I had a letter from my mother, telling me that Fern was here with her nurse-maids and that Margery was in London. With somebody else.’
‘With Wilton Bovary.’ Fern’s mouth twisted. ‘You wouldn’t give her a divorce, would you, Pops? In your world, marriage is for life. I wish you’d challenged him to a duel!’
‘A duel? Your grandmamma would have had a fit.’ Lord Stanshurst gave his daughter a sad smile. ‘She forced Margery back here and wrote telling me that my family was together again. I trusted all would be well, as up to then, I’d escaped serious injury but I caught the tail-end of a gas attack in October ’18, a few days before the end of the damn show. They put me in a sanatorium, and I didn’t get out for over a year. By then, Margery was back in London with her lover. Pregnant. His, obviously. What to do?’
It was Alistair who asked, ‘What did you do?’
‘A secluded house on the south coast, on the salt marshes. A private nurse and Ruth Quinnell in attendance. Margery was registered with a doctor under the name “Hunter” so nobody would know that it was Lady Stanshurst giving birth. The child was to be whisked away and adopted incognito.’
‘But that didn’t happen, did it?’ Alistair looked at Vanessa.
‘No,’ Lord Stanshurst admitted. ‘Margery wanted to see the child grow up. She asked Ruth to adopt it, but Ruth refused. Damn right. A lone female, whose husband has been away at war can’t suddenly go home with an infant.’
Vanessa said, ‘You must have orchestrated things very carefully.’
‘Ruth wanted her husband back. She wanted Clive. Johnny, whatever he called himself. But he’d hunkered down in London, refusing to leave some woman he was living with.’
‘Eva,’ Vanessa said. ‘She wasn’t “some woman”.’
‘I understand she was quite a girl,’ Lord Stanshurst said dryly. ‘Margery kept a correspondence going with an actress friend, a Miss Ruskin, who told her that Quinnell was acting at The Farren and co-habiting with their wardrobe woman. They’d recently lost their child and the relationship was in trouble. That was our lever to get Quinnell to return to Ruth and adopt the child.’ He nodded at Vanessa. ‘You, I should say, m’dear.’
‘You drove Ruth to London,’ Alistair suggested.
‘On a burning day in July. I parked in Bow Street, by the magistrates’ court. Kept my coat and goggles on so the blighters swarming in and out wouldn’t see my face. Dear God, I sweated!’
‘How did Ruth induce Quinnell away?’ Alistair asked. ‘Not charm, I daresay.’
‘Five hundred pounds down, another five hundred when Vanessa reached her sixth birthday. From Bow Street, I drove Quinnell and Ruth to Euston station and sent them up to my Scottish estates near Crianlarich. That’s even more remote than the salt marshes. I drove Margery’s baby up with her nurse a few days later. By the time the Quinnells returned to Stanshurst, nobody questioned Ruth and Clive having a little daughter. War has its uses. It muddles the picture.’
‘You make it sound so easy,’ Vanessa said bitterly.
‘It was easy, really,’ Lord Stanshurst said, almost in surprise.
‘When Johnny— Clive, I mean, left again on my sixth birthday, did he collect his five hundred pounds?’
Lord Stanshurst nodded. ‘I gave him the cheque myself.’
Of course! She’d seen a record in the payroll ledgers during her stint as Lord Stanshurst’s secretary. ‘And my name – ’
‘You were baptised Margaret.’ Hearing Fern’s gasp, Lord
Stanshurst reached out to his daughter. ‘Margaret Mary. Those were Margery’s given names.’
‘Why did she get Mother’s name and not me?’ Fern’s face pinched with anguish.
‘You were named Frances for my mother. Chris called you “Fern”, of course, but your baptismal name was my gift to you.’
Fern nodded fiercely. ‘Better than Margaret. Better than Toots.’
She’s my Tootsie-Wootsie. An echo from years ago.
Fern rounded on Vanessa. ‘Don’t think this makes you my sister.’
‘It does, I fear.’ Vanessa’s anger wasn’t with Fern. ‘Did you know before now?’
‘Not until I found that photograph by Ruth’s bed. I knew it was Marge sitting in the car, but it was you, too. Chris told me she’d been unfaithful to Pops and once, when she was ill, she’d hinted at another child. We’re telling nobody about this, you understand?’
‘Nobody will hear of it from me.’ Vanessa turned to Lord Stanshurst. ‘Why am I called Vanessa? Why steal a dead child’s name?’
Lord Stanshurst put his hands to her shoulders. ‘We couldn’t have you called Margaret, it would have given the game away. Quinnell acquired his deceased child’s birth certificate after he left that wardrobe woman.’
‘Eva.’
‘You took her name, birth date, everything.’
On the brink of retching. Vanessa walked out of the room. She’d been living another girl’s life, having another girl’s birthday, for twenty-six years. She’d taken the name of Eva’s little dead scrap. Alistair came after her.
‘We need that poor pony again,’ he said. ‘Or shall we walk?’
‘We’ll miss the matinee.’
‘Damn the theatre. Bugger Lady Windermere.’
‘Then let’s walk. I want to go, now.’
At the end of the avenue of bare trees alive with chattering rooks, Vanessa looked back at Stanshurst Hall. A mother she’d never really known had been lonely here, and found solace with a beguiling actor-manager.
She stopped. ‘Heck. I left Bo’s cloak in the pony trap.’
‘Shall we fetch it?’
She thought a moment. ‘I’ll keep it as a memory. The night we met, I amused Bo, I think.’
‘You’d have liked each other.’
‘I made him late.’ Playing Lane the manservant, Bo was one of the beginners on stage in The Importance of Being Earnest. Curtain-up was at half seven. ‘He bumped into a shivering WAAF and we enjoyed a verbal tussle. I went into the saloon bar and looked for Johnny. I saw workmen, and an ARP warden. A man monkeying around at the piano wearing a flat, check cap. His hair was grey, his face worn.’
‘That was Johnny.’
‘I hadn’t reckoned on how the years would have changed him. I walked out.’ Her fingers dug fiercely into Alistair’s arm. ‘I delayed Bo by talking. Do you suppose he burst his heart running to the theatre?’
‘No,’ Alistair said with absolute finality. ‘It was mischance. Or fate. You said it yourself. “Fate is co-incidence with strings attached.”’
He kissed her, and when she met his eyes, they glittered. ‘None of it was your doing.’
‘Do you mind me being Marge Stanshurst’s daughter? Ruth called her “a whore”. And I always thought she worshipped her mistress!’
He put his arms around her. ‘I suspect Ruth’s adoration was actually for Lord Stanshurst. You know, I didn’t think you could be more precious to me, but knowing you’re Bo’s daughter . . . if we have children, he lives on.’
She shivered in his arms. ‘My parents were Margery and Wilton and my given name is Margaret.’
‘Now we need to prove it,’ Alistair said. ‘So you can inherit his money.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘If you don’t claim it, Sylvia Rolf and Barbara Bovary will eventually get it. And after them, Edwin. Think about it, Edwin Bovary spending your inheritance.’
Chapter 37
Three weeks into the new year of 1947, a letter arrived for Vanessa.
Gilmore & Jackson, Solicitors
South Audley Street, W1
Dear Mrs Kingcourt,
In response to Cdr Redenhall’s letter asserting your claim to the late Mr W Bovary’s residual estate, I would urge you to present proof as soon as you are able. Proof would consist of papers of adoption, the sworn testimony of your birth-mother and the doctor attending, or a person in a position of trust, such as a magistrate who was party to your fostering by Mr and Mrs Quinnell. A birth certificate alone is insufficient. Letters sent to you from Mr Bovary do not constitute evidence, as it is too late to confirm their provenance.
Yours faithfully,
P Jackson
Vanessa passed the letter to Alistair at the breakfast table. He read it, then frowned, saying, ‘Lord Stanshurst won’t back up your claim. Ruth might – ’
‘She won’t go against Lord Stanshurst. He owns her home and pays her a wage still.’
‘Then we need to find proof positive. Show me that key.’
Vanessa pulled Eva’s key from under the four jumpers she was wearing. Penetrating, Arctic cold had arrived on January 21st, gripping the country. Though they moved the electric fire from room to room, Alistair and Vanessa felt they were living outside in a cave.
‘When Eva gave you this and talked about your “rights”, did she give any indication she meant Bo’s wealth?’
‘She couldn’t say much at all. Billy thinks Eva may have left something for me in her sewing box, but –’
‘We don’t know where Eva’s sewing box is. Chalker thinks she left it at the theatre.’
‘Darling, there’s no point setting our hearts on this money.’ Vanessa reached for the marmalade, which she was going to spread on a slice of cold Yorkshire pudding. They were out of bread. ‘Things are going well enough, aren’t they?’
‘We’re level in cash,’ Alistair agreed. ‘But there will be a lull come February. The weather will be in command then.’
If that was a premonition, Alistair was spot on. In London, temperatures plummeted further and the streets became perilous. Deep snow blanketed even the main thoroughfares and their evening performance on Friday, January 23rd, played to a crowd of thirty. The usherettes encouraged a straggling audience into the centre of the stalls, to give the actors a focus. Alistair then cancelled the Saturday matinee as only one person turned up. The green room echoed with dark mutterings. ‘This is worse than the war!’ Forty souls made it to the evening performance.
Gas pressure got so low, the central heating struggled. On stage, the actors’ breaths solidified like dandelion clocks.
‘I’m wearing three vests – I only wore two when I toured Scotland in ’43.’ Ronnie Gainsborough’s teeth chattered as he awaited his cue. On stage, Clemency, Rosa and Tanith shivered so violently in their silk and lace that they couldn’t project their voices in a low register. Vanessa had run up under-shifts from stockinette fabric. To accommodate the added bulk, corsets had been let out. All the ladies looked as if they’d had a surfeit of Christmas pudding.
When a power cut shut down central London, the riggers substituted battery-powered spotlights. Alistair said to Vanessa during the interval. ‘We need kettles on, hot cocoa backstage at all times.’
Trains had ground to a stop, stranded in sidings from Scotland to Cornwall. Buses were at a stand-still. The only people moving freely in the capital were Scandinavian ex-patriots who happened to have skis with them. Spirit burners in the dressing rooms kept the mist off the mirrors and allowed the actors to soften their makeup.
Alistair, Vanessa and Macduff spent Sunday the 26th wrapped in rugs, huddling in front of a wood fire in Alistair’s office. Coal had run out. Every two hours, they’d dash round the theatre to check the pipes. On Monday, at dawn, Doyle came on shift. Of all the employees, he seemed least perturbed by the misery, the hardship. When Vanessa commented, his answer was simple: ‘It’s no worse than being at sea in winter.’
The following Mon
day’s matinee brought in a respectable house, the audience bundled into mufflers, pom-pom hats and double overcoats. They drank soup from Thermos flasks. The usherettes doled out cocoa.
As they geared up for the night’s show, Alistair showed Vanessa their latest financial position. ‘We’ll survive the month on current takings.’
‘I can’t believe this bitter snap will outlast the month.’
‘Can’t you?’ he smiled. ‘The Russian convoys were breaking ice in June. Your place or mine tonight?’ A joke. They would sleep once again in Alistair’s office. Getting back and forth twice a day, even a short distance, had become dangerous and energy-consuming. They slept together on a mattress, Macduff across their feet. Only Doyle knew of the arrangement and his lips were sealed. His old commander could do no wrong.
Glacial January culled the cast. Some through illness, others through sheer exhaustion. New faces came, rehearsed by Patrick Carnford, who took over as Producer once Terence Rolf’s forced resignation took effect. Patrick put in two hundred pounds of his own money, and waived his January salary. Under Carnford, the understudies got their chance. Clemency Abbott produced a doctor’s note stating that she had pneumonia.
‘A star fades, the world turns,’ Patrick said on reading the note. Joanne Sayer, out of work following the closure of High Jinx, made her Wildean debut as Lady Windermere on the first of February. She was a hit with audiences, less so with Irene Eddrich, who believed it to be her role to smoulder dangerously.
‘Lady Windermere is supposed to douse Lord Darlington, not arouse him.’
Ronnie Gainsborough, missing Clemency, compared Joanne’s performance with that of a ‘pert chambermaid who has successfully seduced the son of the house’. Joanne snuck into his dressing room and filled his shoes with snow. Patrick gave her private rehearsals, teaching her how to project innocence. A dramatic reversal, Rosa Konstantiva observed, of his usual habit.
The Wardrobe Mistress Page 36