Flavia was suffering. OK, if she was missing just Tam, but she was also missing Kim and Jenny. Moving to Churchester had been bad enough, but now it seemed as though everyone else had moved from Bexham too, and she had no excuse to go back, no one she could go and see, taking the bus, her hair arranged perfectly, her new clothes the same, staring out of the widow at the countryside they passed, imagining that instead of hedges and trees and cottages she saw shops and boutiques, cafés with chairs and tables set about and pretty people sipping coffee, not farmers with cows ambling along in front of them, or chickens in runs.
Staring out of the window was one occupation, but it had to be admitted that another occupation, and one she particularly preferred, was staring at herself, whenever possible. Staring at her own reflection as she passed shop windows, as she sat in the front seat of the bus, or passed a mirror in her own or someone else’s house, for the fact was that Flavia was not just becoming beautiful, she was beautiful. The shop windows, the mirrors everywhere showed her a young woman with perfect features, tall and slim, with long shiny auburn hair and gratifyingly long legs. Besides the shop windows, the men she passed, and not just those working on building sites in Churchester, stared after her, whistled, or just generally showed their admiration in an equally gratifying way. So gratifying that it seemed to Kim, more and more, that the only way forward for her was stardom. And nowadays, in the way of the world, there was only one way to stardom, and that was to become a fashion model. Once you’d starred on the catwalk the world inevitably opened its arms to you, and you became not just rich and famous but, in time, invested with talent, for, as the whole world knew, modelling was only just a short step from the stars.
Following on these conclusions, Bexham became for her startlingly uninteresting. The fishing boats coming in and out in all weathers were no longer crewed by the brave, bonny men that she’d known when she was growing up, all of them friends with her grandfather, but by dull purveyors of fish, who smelt, and drank too much. The gulls, once a source of fascination as they sat posing on the sides of every available spare space, now seemed hysterical and hideous, their curved beaks cruel and greedy, their outlines against the sky as ordinary as wheels on a car. And as for the grown-ups among whom she had lived for so long – if one more adult intoned about the sacrifices that they had made during the war, about the lack of food, the loss of life, she thought she’d scream.
‘But I don’t particularly want you to be a model, it’s such a brainless occupation,’ Rusty had said, once Flavia had confided in her. ‘I’d like you to do something more exciting. Models are just clothes horses.’
Staring out from her Boots mascara, her lips shining with a translucent mauve-pink colour that made her eyes look even larger, Flavia pushed away her plate of carefully prepared steak and kidney pudding and stared out at her mother, realising that Rusty was at her most stubborn. But then Flavia was too, although she was careful not to say anything. She reverted her gaze to her plate. In retaliation for her mother’s remark she made the lightning decision not to eat her steak and kidney pudding. She didn’t care how much they’d all yearned for it during the war, she was not going to eat it. She wanted to look like an emaciated panda, and she certainly wouldn’t achieve that goal if she was forever swallowing large chunks of suet. Instead of eating she returned to the main thrust of her argument.
‘I know I can do well, Mum, at modelling, because I’m so tall, now. They want tall models in London. And if you’re tall you’re going to make the top jobs, and they’re really well paid.’
‘You’re not old enough to go to London to model.’
‘You’d be surprised how young some of these models really are.’
‘Your father would have a fit.’
Rusty quickly cleared their plates, not saying anything about the leftovers, or how long she’d spent making the meal, not wanting to get into a food tussle. Never mind the woman-hours it had taken her to make their dinner, never mind that Peter hadn’t even bothered to turn up for it, preferring to go out with Waldo for a few drinks and a game of snooker, never mind all that, she would give the wretched pudding to the dog, and go for an early night.
As she put the dishes in the sink her thoughts turned once more to Laurel Cottage Creations, and she sighed with sudden satisfaction. Her father’s spare money having come from the sale of the boatyard, when Mickey married and went north, she was not going to risk his security, or her own. She had all to play for, and play for it she would.
Upstairs Flavia quietly locked her bedroom door, and going to her dressing table she removed a bumper pack of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes from under a pile of immaculate white underwear. There were twenty-five in the flat cardboard box. She tiptoed over to her bedroom window and pushed it open. She had to smoke to get thinner. She would smoke and smoke until all appetite had left her. Not very long afterwards she quickly closed the window and hurrying to the hand basin in the corner of her room was quietly sick.
Max was facing what looked like a clutch of uninterested faces. In one of the first rows of the stalls, as he shaded his eyes against the working light of the stage, someone was actually asleep.
‘Anyone out there? Director? Anyone?’ he called boldly.
There was the sound of voices, and then eventually, as Max called out again, a single voice.
‘I’m sorry “Sir” couldn’t be here. He’s been called away to – ah – a press conference . . .’
Max smiled and shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
The triumvirate stared at him. They had at least called him, but then, he quickly realised since ‘Sir’ wasn’t out front, it was obviously because they were the second team and had been put in to deal with the no-hopers.
‘No,’ Max said again to the startled faces he could just see if he peered down. ‘I won’t tell you what I have done, because if I do I will only end up . . .’ He put his feet apart, placed an imaginary spear in his hand and stood motionless.
There was general laughter at this, as one and all, no matter their preliminary lack of interest, now had no trouble in recognising his imitation of the spear carriers so beloved of Shakespearean productions.
‘I don’t want to be carrying the old spear through seventy-two seasons.’
Max began his audition piece, which was from Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck being one of the parts for which he was being auditioned.
From the first he had them, not just because he’d made them laugh at the outset, but because he’d thought out a new angle to this well-loved character. Whether they agreed with it or not, whether it would fit in with the well-known director’s reading of the play, no matter. He had them, and once you had ’em you were halfway to being cast.
Afterwards he flew home on the wings of confidence. They’d shaken his hand, violently, once if not twice, all of them. The man in the first row had woken up. It didn’t matter now whether he was cast or not cast, all that mattered was that he hadn’t failed that first crucial test. He lived again in his own eyes, and, after months of being out of work, that meant a lot.
As he turned his key in the lock of the front door he heard the telephone in the sitting room ringing. He ran to it, thinking naively that the caller might be his agent, and he might have heard already. But it wasn’t his agent, it was Tony’s.
‘Tony there?’
Max gave a quick look round the sitting room. ‘No.’
‘Well, when he comes in, tell him the Royal will see him about Puck. Ten thirty tomorrow. Wish him luck, although after what I told them he won’t have much need of it. He has a great new angle on the part, he really has, terrific new reading.’
‘Yes, he has, hasn’t he?’ Max’s heart was beating faster and faster.
‘He told you, did he? Going to make him send up all the other fairies, not just make with the mischief. Rather good I thought.’
Max nodded at the telephone. ‘Yes. I thought so too. Apparently he’s going to bend the little
finger, and go ever so dainty on the vowel sounds, and so on,’ he said, lightly detailing the audition he himself had just given.
‘Yah. Anyway, tell Tony from me, good luck. I’m off to New York, hear all about it when he gets back.’
As Max replaced the telephone his heart still seemed to be turning somersaults.
‘You bastard, Tony. You bastard.’ He turned away, making towards the kitchen and a glass of water which he drank sipping slowly as if he had a bad attack of hiccups. As he finished he dipped two fingers into the water and ran them across his head to calm himself. ‘Right, Tony old love, now you’ve had it,’ he murmured.
When Tony came in, much later, Max was watching television.
‘Oh, by the way, mate, your agent phoned.’
Tony, half throttled from an evening in the pub, turned by the staircase and came back into the sitting room.
‘Ian rang, did he? What did he say?’
‘The job he put you up for . . .’ Max feigned vaguely slurred speech. ‘Yes, they can see you next week.’ He picked up a telephone pad. ‘They can see you next Wednesday. Yes, next Wednesday, at ten thirty.’
Tony took out his very small, dark blue, distinctly unglamorous diary.
‘Wednesday next, yes, I can do that. Good.’ He turned the pages of his blank diary. ‘Yes, I think that will be fine.’
Max turned back to the television, acting casual.
‘Do you know that – that untalented so-and-so John Deerham? He’s only on both channels tonight, did you know that, mate? Both bloody channels,’ he murmured, shaking his head.
‘Untalented so-and-so. He’d sell his grandmother for a part, he would,’ Tony stated, once more heading for the stairs and his bed. ‘They’re all so-and-so’s, untalented so-and-so’s. We’ll show them, we’ll crack it, you’ll see, mate. We’ll be up there,’ he turned and pointed up the stairs, ‘and he’ll be down there.’ This time he pointed down at his feet. ‘Yes, we’re going to be up there, with the stars.’
Max watched him weaving his way up the staircase.
‘That’s right, mate, you’ll be up there with the stars.’ He waited until he heard Tony’s bedroom door slam, and then he murmured, ‘But not if I’ve got anything to do with it, Tony love.’
Loopy stared across the estuary at the lights on the other side of the inlet. It was one of her favourite times of day, when the lights seemed to be appearing one by one, sometimes suddenly three or four at a time, but all as if by some unseen instruction. She turned to Jenny who was sitting beside her on the conservatory sofa, sipping a lemonade while Loopy sipped a glass of sherry. Since coming to her grandparents Jenny seemed to have improved in leaps and bounds. She no longer stayed upstairs in her room, but came down every day at the usual times, and in between developing her own paintings helped Loopy about the studio, washing up and tidying, while they chatted and talked about what mattered to them, what should matter to them, and what had mattered to them.
That she had no wish to return home to her parents was a sadness, but it was not a sadness that Loopy was prepared to indulge. She knew that Jenny must go home, and she knew that now, before she went in for another operation, was the perfect time. Mattie had been patient enough God knows, and John too, of course. They had spent hours transforming two of their rooms into a suite specially for Jenny, with a piano and paints and heavens only knew what else. For Jenny not to go home now would be quite wrong, no matter what Hugh had to say on the matter.
Hugh of course wanted her to stay, to play the piano, to go on painting and helping Loopy in the studio and generally being about the place for him to love and be concerned over, but Loopy knew that would not be right. Jenny was her parents’ child, not theirs. She must go home to be with younger people, to face operations on her face, and come back and forth from her parents’ home in the normal manner. For Hugh and Loopy to try to be more than her grandparents would be quite wrong, and finally even Hugh accepted this.
‘Besides, she can come here whenever she wants. We are always here, at the moment, and she knows it.’
Their last evening together in the studio, before Jenny returned home, Loopy put her arm round her granddaughter, sensing her feelings of loss and unease, and hugged her.
‘You’ll be OK, sweetheart, you’ll see.’
Jenny allowed herself to be hugged while her eyes still stared ahead to the water, and the lights. She was sure that Loopy was right, she would be OK, but how long would it be before she was more than that? How long before she was just like everyone else? She turned away from the thought, watching, always watching the lights, concentrating on them as if she thought she might never see them again.
Chapter Six
By the time the spring term ended and April turned the wind about, bringing sharp squalls of rain in off the sea, they’d finished fitting the shop out and painting the sign above the street window in a smart, deep red glossy paint, the sign writer adding the final touch:
LAUREL COTTAGE CRAFTS
Proprietor Rusty Sykes
Needless to say, as soon as it was painted in gold the proprietor was to be found standing outside looking up at the nameboard with a mixture of pride and panic. In the windows were a small selection of mugs on which she’d managed to persuade a local craftsman to paint scenes of Bexham Harbour with its boats, and the church spire in the background. Besides the mugs there were some hand-painted eggcups, by the same artist, a stock of Official Guide Books to Historic Bexham, and a quantity of tea towels die-stamped either with a map of Bexham and the surrounding countryside or, to give choice, a seagull on the side of a wooden rowing boat.
‘I thought you said you were going in for fashion,’ Peter said, when he picked her up the day before the opening. ‘I thought that was what Laurel Cottage was all about.’
‘I’m starting small,’ was all Rusty would say, and she stared out of the window at the countryside thinking that whenever she left Bexham, even for the evening, she felt a pang.
On Opening Day, the ceremony was performed, most graciously, by Lady Melton.
‘If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you should also have some tea towels with the station on them,’ she told Rusty after a preliminary polite inspection. ‘After all, Bexham station has won Prettiest Sussex Station for four years running now.’
Despite knowing Lady Melton’s weakness for the station, and not least her beloved trains, a weakness that had achieved something of a flowering when she and her old maid, Gardiner, had acted as stand-in ticket inspectors during the war, Rusty thought this a good idea, and quickly made a note to ask the artist in question. As she did so a flash bulb exploded and Lady Melton turned and smiled graciously towards the camera pointing at them.
‘The Churchester Chronicle – if you could give me your names and ages.’
‘The first but not the last,’ Lady Melton told the photographer, quite firmly, still smiling.
For the remainder of the photographs they were joined by members of the Yacht Club. Since the editor of the Chronicle was a keen member of Bexham’s exclusive yachting establishment, it was to be hoped that this tactfully ensured the item’s being printed in a prominent position in the paper. Of course other village residents also came to the opening, but having duly exclaimed apparent appreciation of the all too limited stock they drifted away with vague smiles to escape out of the door and return to their television sets.
‘That went quite well, didn’t it, Flavia?’
Rusty tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice, while Flavia turned away, too embarrassed by her mother’s tone to be able to say anything remotely encouraging.
During the first week of its existence, Laurel Cottage Crafts sold one hand-painted mug, and three tea towels. During its second week it sold two hand-painted mugs, and one tea towel. Week three saw the sale of three mugs and two eggcups, and a run of two copies of the Official Bexham Guide Book, but no tea towels. Trade was so slow that Rusty didn’t even have to bother to ask Flavia to stand in
for her, closing time inevitably finding her mother pulling down the blind after a day of reading paperback novels, dusting the already spotless mugs in the window, or making endless cups of tea in the tiny back room.
Rusty was heading for a flop, and she knew it. Her father might have lent her the money, but she still felt honour bound to pay him back, and at this rate that would take more years than he’d already been alive.
‘You should stock up with fisherman’s sweaters and yachting clothes,’ Flavia kept telling her. ‘They’re really dolly, they are.’
‘Dolly?’ Rusty turned and stared at Flavia.
‘Mmm, really, they are.’
Rusty ignored Flavia, until the day that rare sight, a customer, came into the shop and started to grumble about the sale of a fishing licence out of the harbour.
‘That’s disgusting,’ she heard herself agreeing with Mrs Chimes, the stout and redoubtable matriarch of the Chimes family, one of those already affected by the loss of the licence.
‘That’s boat owners for you,’ Mrs Chimes sat down on the one wobbly bentwood chair provided, while most regrettably not making any movement towards her worn handbag, or her purse. ‘They sell the boat and the licence and in one fell swoop two families lose their way of living. It’s more than disgusting, to my mind it’s criminal.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’
Mrs Chimes shook her head miserably. ‘No idea, no idea at all. And he’s only gone and sold to a foreigner, at that. First time it’s ever happened in Bexham for someone to sell a licence outside the village. Never been known before, really, it hasn’t.’
Since she herself came from one of the oldest families in Bexham, Rusty knew this to be true.
The Moon At Midnight Page 17