A Dream of her Own

by Benita Brown

  ‘So what is it that does matter?’

  ‘Mamma?’

  ‘Something is worrying you, Frank. Making you angry.’

  His mother pulled out the chair opposite to him and sat down. He knew that his studies would have to wait. He sighed. ‘Very well.’ What should he say? He didn’t know how to begin to express his worries for his brother’s future without causing his mother distress. ‘I’m not angry. I want Valentino to be happy just as you do,’ he began cautiously, ‘so I would like to be sure that it is correct for him to marry.’

  ‘Are you worried that Miss Nicholson isn’t a Catholic? She has agreed to take instruction. The children will be brought up in our Church.’

  Frank struck the edge of the table with both hands and his mother’s eyes widened. ‘Mamma, you know there won’t be any children!’ he said. ‘You know that this will not be a proper marriage.’

  His mother flushed but her reply was spirited. ‘And what is a proper marriage? I thought a marriage was when two people promised to love each other and look after each other and make each other happy for the rest of their time on earth!’

  Frank stared at her. Her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing quickly. ‘I’m sorry, but you know what I mean,’ he said.

  There was a silence as his mother’s breathing returned to normal. ‘I know what you mean, Gianfranco.’

  Suddenly she looked so sad that he wished he could change the world for her. He wished that he could turn the clock back to the time of his brother’s birth and somehow perform some miracle of modern medicine that would either make Valentino normal, or prevent him from being born at all.

  Frank groaned when he realized what he had been thinking and his mother got up and came round the table. She rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know that there will be no children and I know why. It is just that I am a foolish old woman and I like to pretend sometimes that ... that...’

  He heard the sob in her voice and he turned towards her and looked up into her face. ‘I know, Mamma, I know.’

  His mother took his face in her hands and bent down to kiss his forehead. ‘You are a gift from heaven, Gianfranco. A good son. I don’t know how I could ever carry my burden without you.’

  After that she left him to get on with his studies but Frank found it difficult to concentrate when he knew that his mother would be sitting alone at the kitchen table determined not to do anything further to distract him.

  A little later he realized that he had turned page after page and couldn’t remember one single word that he had read. He rested his head in his hands. It was true that he had reservations about his brother’s marriage - but that was natural in the circumstances, wasn’t it? But he shouldn’t have worried his mother ...

  He sighed and closed his books. He would go into the kitchen and ask her to warm him some soup, then sit with her for a while. She was always so pleased to do anything for him. Thank goodness she could have no idea of the other cause of his distress: his hopeless longing for a woman he had met only once and who could never be his.

  Constance didn’t know what it was that had awakened her.

  It was late and the room was shadowy. It had been warm and she’d asked Polly to leave the window open and not to draw the velvet drapes. So now the moonlight filtered in through the lace curtains that moved like pale ghosts in the breeze.

  She heaved her bulk into a comfortable position on the feather mattress and then lay still, listening for the sound to repeat itself. But what sound? Not the rustling of the leaves of the trees in the nearby park; that sound was too gentle to have disturbed her.

  Had it been footsteps? Yes, perhaps it had been Polly going to bed, but Polly didn’t have to pass this way in order to get to her room. Constance turned over and picked up the clock from the bedside table. She brought it forward into the moonlight and stared at it. Three o’clock. No, in any case it couldn’t have been Polly; she should have been in bed hours ago.

  John, then. John had said that he might not return until the morning but, instead, he must have caught a late train back from Manchester and he’d gone straight to his room instead of coming in to say good night. It was so late that he wouldn’t want to disturb her.

  Didn’t he realize that she wouldn’t have minded? That she longed for him to come to her room? That she hated the fact that he had not shared a bed with her for months and that she would dearly like him to. Just to be able to lie within the circle of his arms.

  Then she heard it again. It was the sound of voices - low, but unmistakably the sound of two voices. She held her breath and lay very still and listened. The voices seemed far away and she couldn’t hear what was being said, but there was that pattern of sound - of one voice and then another in some kind of conversation. But where was it coming from?

  Constance pushed the eiderdown aside and positioned herself at the edge of the bed before lowering her feet to the floor. She gasped with pain when the child inside her protested and pressed, briefly, on a nerve. She walked to the door, opened it, and stood listening. Silence.

  She started to walk along the passage towards the stairs that led down to the half-landing. Polly’s small room was there, next to the bathroom. Did she have someone in her room with her? Could she have allowed her young sister Jane to stay for the night?

  Constance stopped and gripped the stair-rail. If that was so she would leave them be, although she might say something in the morning about talking the night away and disturbing her sleep.

  But while she hesitated, the conversation started again. It drifted down the stairwell from a room on the third floor and, although it was indistinct, it didn’t sound like Polly and Jane. One of the voices was definitely that of a man. Could Polly have taken Albert Green up there?

  What should she do?

  Constance turned back and began to walk towards the stairs that led to the third floor. She knew that she ought to see if John were home yet, she ought to ask him to deal with whatever it was that was going on up there, but she didn’t want Polly to get into trouble. If their maid had her sweetheart in the house in the middle of the night John would have no option but to dismiss her instantly. Constance didn’t want that. She would have to deal with this herself - speak to Polly and warn her that this must never happen again.

  As she went up the stairs, she found that the gloom was relieved by moonlight streaming through the open doors of the upper rooms. When she reached the top and turned to look along the landing she saw the collection of buckets, brooms, mops and dusters. Mrs Green, Polly and Jane had obviously not finished up here.

  Only one door was closed and that was the door at the very end of the landing that opened into the room with the bay in the turret, the room that John had chosen as the sewing room. That’s where the voices were coming from.

  Constance paused with her hand on the door knob. Should she knock? This was her own house and the idea seemed ridiculous. And yet if she didn’t knock, what would she find when she opened the door?

  And then one of the people in the room spoke quite loudly. It was a man and judging by the cultured tones, it certainly wasn’t Albert Green. Constance tried to control the sudden pounding of her heart.

  ‘... but this is a marvellous place,’ the voice said. ‘It will do very nicely for us. It’s like a tower in a fairy tale. Are you being kept prisoner here by the wicked sorceress?’ He laughed. ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!’

  Whoever he was speaking to laughed too, lightly, flirtatiously, and Constance puzzled over the sound which was both familiar and yet strange.

  ‘Come here,’ the first voice said. ‘Let me look at you.’

  She knew that it would be easier to turn and walk away. To go downstairs and back to bed and lie there pretending to be asleep until morning, when she could persuade herself that this had been a dream ... or a nightmare.

  But she found herself gripping the door knob, turning it, and pushing the door open as softly and as silently as she could.

&
nbsp; They hadn’t heard her and they were so absorbed with each other that they didn’t see her standing there. One figure, tall and dark and handsome in the warm light of the flickering candles that had been placed around the room, was Matthew Elliot, as Constance had already guessed.

  But who was the woman that was standing before him? She was wearing an evening gown of dark blue velvet; smooth white shoulders rose from the low-cut neckline and her fair hair was covered with a gauzy veil.

  Matthew took hold of the woman’s hands and drew her towards him. ‘Come here, your ladyship,’ he murmured.

  There was something about the way he said it that reminded Constance of that day long ago, before she had been married, when she and Matthew and John had been walking through the arcade and they had stopped to look at a display of new fabrics in a shop window.

  ‘Do look at that blue velvet. What do you think, John?’

  ‘It’scharming!’

  ‘Not charming - magnificent! I can’t wait to see her ladyship draped in that!’

  Constance had smiled as she had listened to their banter. She had imagined that John was going to make her an evening gown from the blue velvet. But in the months since they had been married he seemed to have forgotten about it. Once, when she reminded him, he’d said, sensibly, that they should wait until after their child was born.

  But now she saw that Matthew hadn’t been referring to her at all. The blue velvet had never been intended for her ...

  As her husband’s friend took the smaller figure in his arms, the veil dropped back, revealing the angel-blond hair that was much too short to be that of a woman. Their faces moved together and Matthew’s lips claimed the other’s in a long, deep kiss.

  The figure in the blue velvet evening dress was her husband. Constance felt something move within her, a falling sensation. She grasped the door and hung on to it with both hands. Her mouth felt dry.

  ‘John!’ she called, but no sound came from her lips.

  She tried again and, at the same time, she let go of the door and took two faltering steps into the room. Still they hadn’t heard her and she was sickened to see how closely they embraced and to hear their soft moans of pleasure.

  She stooped to pick up one of the candlesticks from a small table and her hand shook so that the shadows leaped and danced about the room as she held it high. She felt as though her tongue had swollen up to fill her mouth but she forced herself to speak.

  ‘John!’ she cried again, and this time they heard her.

  The figures sprang apart, their eyes widening with shock. Constance saw her husband snatch at the veil and try to draw it over his face but Matthew stopped his hand.

  ‘Too late, my dear,’ he said, but as he spoke he looked straight at Constance, his expression watchful. And then he took hold of John’s shoulders with both his hands and turned him round to face her. ‘Too late,’ he said again. ‘It is time to tell Constance the truth.’

  Matthew stepped forward, took the candle from her, and held it steady.

  She had time to register that John’s initial shame was draining from his face to be replaced with defiance and excitement before the pain ripped through her. The falling sensation accelerated and something inside her gave way; a hot gush of water surged out from between her legs, soaking her robe. She clutched at her belly with both hands and she saw the expression on both of the men’s faces turn to horror as she sank, moaning, to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  January 1908

  The applause went on and on, filling the theatre, echoing round the auditorium, rising from the pit to the gods and back again to surge across the stage and engulf the exultant cast of the pantomime. They bowed and curtsied repeatedly, smiling as they took their share of the approval until, one by one, they crept away to leave her standing centre stage and alone. And then the audience went wild.

  ‘Nella! Nella! Nella! One more song! “The Song of the Sparrow ”!’

  They stamped and shouted until she took one step forward and gestured towards the conductor of the orchestra, who raised his baton and half-turned towards the cheering crowd. He posed theatrically with his head thrown back and his arm raised until they settled in their seats again, waiting for complete silence before he turned and gave the signal for the musicians to start playing.

  Nella began to sing and, at that moment, she felt as though she were Queen of England and every one of the people sitting out there was her loyal subject. She never got tired of singing this song, the song that had started it all in this very theatre just over a year ago.

  When the last note had died away there was a moment of complete silence before the applause began again. But there was no encore. This was the end of the matinee and there would be another full performance later that night. Nella, even more than the others, needed to rest.

  The house lights came up as the curtain swept down and, for a moment, Nella was alone on the stage before Valentino strode out from the wings and picked her up in his arms. He carried her to her dressing room and laid her gently on the day bed.

  With her arms still round his neck, Nella looked up into his face. His expression was solemn and tender and infinitely proud. Proud not just of his talented wife, but proud because he had something important to do: he had to take care of her; that was his purpose in life. Nella kissed his face before he relinquished her and began to loosen the ties of her cloak. Freda, Nella’s dresser, was waiting to help but Valentino gently removed the cloak himself.

  ‘Shall I go now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I have to rest before the next performance.’

  Nella smiled up at her husband and for a moment he looked uncertain, then he handed the cloak to Freda and quietly left the room. Both women waited until the door closed and then they relaxed as though they had been holding their breath.

  Freda hung the cloak with the other costumes behind the screen and then brought a jar of cream and a clean rag and began to remove Nella’s stage make-up for her.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Nella said. ‘Just pull that mirror forward a bit, will you? That’s better.’

  Freda watched her for a moment. ‘I know some that don’t bother to clean off in between shows,’ she said.

  ‘And they end up with skin like old boots. I divven’t want to ruin me best feature!’

  Freda left her to get on with it and lit the small gas ring. ‘I’ve often wondered,’ she said, ‘where he goes.’

  Nella knew whom she meant. ‘Usually he just sits somewhere in the theatre and Jimmy Nelson keeps him company, but when we’re here at the Palace, he gans home to tell his mother all about the show - even though she’s heard it all over and over again.’ Nella grinned. ‘Now how about a cup of tea?’

  ‘Coming up. And I got the cream cakes for your guests as you requested.’

  ‘Thank you, Freda. That’s very good of you.’

  ‘It was easy. I just popped next door to the coffee shop and asked Belle McCormack to put up a nice selection. They’d do anything for you, you know. They’re so grateful that you’ve made Valentino happy.’

  Nella looked thoughtful. ‘Yes, I know. And you would have thought that I should be the grateful one. I mean, getting a husband at all, being the way I am.’

  ‘Get away with you,’ Freda said, but Nella was grateful that the older woman didn’t try to contradict her. Freda had worked in the theatre since she was twelve years old and, although she respected talent and hard work, she was completely realistic about her charges once they were off stage. She would never have resorted to false flattery, no matter how big the star.

  Freda busied herself setting up a small table with the tea things. ‘But why do you send him away? Valentino would sit in the corner and never say peep if you told him to.’

  ‘I know. And he would watch me all the time. Never take his eyes off me. I wouldn’t be able to relax.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ There was a knock at the door. ‘That’ll be your guests. Are you ready?’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes.’ Nella reached over and put the jar of cream and the rags on the dressing table. ‘Now, would you pass that rug?’

  Freda arranged the rug over Nella’s legs. Although the dressing room was cosy enough, the Palace was a draughty old theatre and it was the dead of winter. Nella cooled down so much once she came off stage that she was frightened of catching a chill.

  ‘Come in,’ Freda called, and Jimmy Nelson popped his head around the door. ‘Tell Mrs Alvini I’ve found them.’

  Freda tut-tutted. ‘Miss Nicholson, you mean. Your master’s wife is Miss Nicholson when she’s in the theatre.’

  ‘Sorry, keep forgetting, don’t I?’

  ‘No you don’t. You’re too smart to forget anything. You just do it to annoy me.’ Freda wasn’t angry and they both laughed. ‘Now don’t keep those poor folks waiting in that draughty passage, show them in.’