Two for Sorrow jt-3

by Nicola Upson

  While the actors were taking their third curtain call, Josephine left her seat and walked round to the stage door. Larry was already on his way up from the green room, and she congratulated him warmly. ‘Thanks, Josephine,’ he said, giving her that raffish smile which had made him such an attractive Bothwell when he stepped into her Queen of Scots at a week’s notice. ‘The girls said you might be in tonight—I’m glad you liked it.’ He glanced past her to where a dark-haired woman was waiting at the top of the stairs, and his natural charm became something rather more. ‘Excuse me—I have to go now, but it’s lovely to see you again.’ He ran up the steps, two at a time, and Josephine carried on downstairs to look for Lettice and Ronnie.

  The green room was full of the usual post-show detritus—abandoned glasses of wine, half-eaten meals, cast-off modesty—and it didn’t take her long to locate the Motleys amid the shrieking and hilarity coming from one of the dressing rooms. ‘Vivienne was absolutely right,’ Ronnie was saying as Josephine put her head round the door. ‘Her make-up walks on stage and Hephzibar follows three minutes later!’ As the rest of the room dissolved into rowdy laughter, Ronnie noticed her and jumped up from Benvolio’s lap to greet her. ‘Josephine! About bloody time! In town for forty-eight hours at least and not a peep out of you. How on earth have you coped without us?’

  ‘I haven’t. Why do you think I’m here now?’ She hugged Ronnie and Lettice, then went over to kiss Lettice’s fiancé, George, who had taken the role of Peter in the play. ‘It’s a fabulous production—you must all be thrilled with it.’

  ‘We are,’ Lettice agreed, ‘but we’re even more pleased with the houses. For the first time ever, we’re on a percentage of the profits. Every ticket sold is a farthing to us.’

  ‘So make sure they pay for dinner, Josephine,’ said George, smiling.

  ‘Aren’t you joining us then?’

  ‘No, but I am,’ said a voice behind her, and she felt hands on her shoulders and a kiss on the back of her head.

  ‘Lydia! I wasn’t expecting … How lovely to see you.’ Josephine struggled through to the end of the sentence, hoping that she sounded more convincing than she felt. After what had happened earlier, maintaining an air of normality with the Motleys would have been difficult; with Lydia there too, it was nigh on impossible, and her mask seemed to be slipping already.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Lettice asked, looking solicitously at her. ‘You don’t seem quite yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’ve just spent the day in the company of some rather odd people, and it takes me a while to come up for air.’

  ‘That’ll teach you to stay at a women’s club,’ Ronnie said, stubbing her cigarette out and reaching for her coat.

  Josephine laughed. ‘I wasn’t talking about them. I meant the people I’m writing about.’

  ‘Even so, you should be careful. It’s only a matter of time before all that female company rubs off on you.’

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ Lydia said, feigning an expression of self-pity. ‘It’s been so long, I think I’ve forgotten what to do.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we be going?’ Josephine asked casually.

  ‘Yes, we should.’ Lettice looked at her watch and kissed George goodbye. ‘I don’t want them giving our table to someone else—I’m starving. We can catch up on the way.’

  They walked out into St Martin’s Lane, where the snow was just beginning to settle on window ledges and car rooftops. ‘Good God, Marjorie’s still at it,’ Ronnie said, glancing up at the studio windows. ‘Do you think we should pop in and tell her to go home?’ She poked Josephine in the shoulder. ‘And we could show you your outfit for next week—you’re about the only member of the bloody Cowdray Club who hasn’t stepped over our threshold today.’ Just as she finished speaking, the lights went out in the workroom.

  ‘Looks like she’s finally had enough,’ Lettice said. ‘I don’t blame her—she’s worked hard today. We’ll have to show Josephine tomorrow—Marjorie will only feel obliged to stay longer if we go up now, and we don’t want her to think we’re checking up on her.’

  They carried on to the restaurant, and Lydia fell into step with Josephine, leaving the sisters to talk about work. ‘Of course, neither of them can wear tights,’ she said cryptically. ‘Larry’s really too thin, and Johnny’s completely knock-kneed.’ It was a game attempt to be light-hearted, but Josephine knew how difficult it must be for Lydia to watch a younger woman in the role she so craved, and to know in her heart that she was unlikely ever to play Juliet again. ‘Johnny promised me we’d do it together one more time,’ she continued, ‘and then the bastard goes behind my back and gives it to Peggy without even having the decency to explain why. Tell me honestly—you’d never know there was seventeen years between me and her, would you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Josephine said, painfully aware that the triumph of Peggy’s performance lay in the way she had preserved Juliet’s youth with her passion. She remembered how often she had seen Lydia on stage, long before they ever met, and how much she had admired her; to Josephine’s mind, she was a much finer actress than any of her contemporaries, but that was no consolation when the theatre belonged to a new generation. ‘You know how it is, though,’ she continued vaguely. ‘Politics always get in the way. I’m sure if Johnny had a free hand you’d be his first choice, but he has so many people to please. And it’s not as though you haven’t been busy.’

  ‘Picking up Flora’s crumbs in a second-rate play at the Savoy is hardly the same thing. I really won’t be sorry to see the back of this year—I feel like I’ve been frustrated at every turn. I hope to God that 1936 will be better.’

  ‘At least you have the cottage,’ Josephine said, knowing that the house in the country which Lydia had bought after the success of Richard of Bordeaux was her greatest solace in Marta’s absence.

  ‘Tagley? Yes, it’s heavenly—you must come and see it.’ She took Josephine’s arm. ‘I’m sorry to be such a miserable cow, but I still haven’t heard from her. I had this stupid idea that we might be able to spend Christmas together at the cottage—use it as a place to start again. If I’m honest, I suppose that’s partly why I bought it, but she hasn’t answered any of my letters.’

  ‘Has there been anyone else?’ Josephine asked. ‘For you, I mean,’ she added hurriedly.

  ‘Nothing serious. I haven’t got the heart for anything that matters, and I never thought I’d hear myself say that.’ She sighed. ‘God, Josephine—eighteen months ago I had everything I wanted. You can lose it all so quickly, can’t you?’

  Josephine nodded. ‘If Marta did get in touch, would you do things differently this time?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, after she left, you told me that if you’d paid more attention to her and how she was feeling, things might have been different. So would you put Marta first now? Ahead of the next part?’

  ‘Of course I would.’ She caught Josephine’s eye. ‘Well, I’d try to. I’d convince myself I could. Let’s face it, I’m going to have more time on my hands as I get older, not less.’

  ‘That sounds like a choice by default.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it does.’ Lydia was quiet for a moment. ‘It worked, though, didn’t it?’ she asked eventually. ‘You thought we were happy together?’

  Josephine recalled the time she’d spent with Marta and Lydia; brief though it was, she had envied their closeness with an intensity which had surprised her and, in the months since, had found herself acknowledging her own restlessness—she refused to call it loneliness—with alarming regularity. Perhaps that was why Marta had made her so angry: by threatening to betray Lydia, she had also betrayed Josephine’s fragile hope that a partnership based on love and respect and compromise might yet be possible for her. ‘Yes, I did,’ she admitted truthfully. ‘As happy as two people can be.’

  ‘Ever the optimist,’ Lydia said, smiling at her, and there was a trace of their old friendship in her gentle mockery. Josephine reali
sed suddenly how much she had missed it; they talked so rarely these days. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Lydia sighed. ‘Perhaps she’d be better with someone else, and I should stick to wining and dining chorus girls at the Ivy.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘I know, and don’t worry—I’m not quite ready to give in yet.’

  They reached the restaurant and Josephine opened the door gratefully, anxious to be seated at a table where the conversation would be diluted. She didn’t know who to blame more—Marta for putting her in this position, or herself for allowing it to happen—but at least while she was angry, she didn’t have to think more deeply about how she actually felt.

  As well as having the distinction of being just across the street from the Motleys’ new apartments, Rules was the oldest restaurant in London and a second home to most of the theatrical profession. In fact, it had long been crowded with celebrities from all walks of life, and past customers from Dickens to Edward VII lived on in the cartoons and photographs which lined the walls. The family had built its reputation on traditional London food, and the restaurant still specialised in game, much of which was brought in from its own estate; it was the sort of menu which would normally have delighted Josephine, but tonight she merely glanced at it perfunctorily and chose the first thing on the list.

  ‘So tell us more about these odd people you’ve been hanging around with.’ Lettice’s tone was bright enough but she looked curiously across the table, sensing that something was wrong. ‘Archie says it’s got something to do with a real crime.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ They listened as she outlined the bare bones of the Sach and Walters case, then explained her own connection with what happened at Anstey years afterwards.

  ‘I don’t quite see her problem myself,’ Ronnie said, washing her sarcasm down with a swig of champagne. ‘It sounds to me like her mother had hit on a bloody good idea. I once had to look after a friend’s baby for half an hour—and I would have considered thirty pounds to be a very reasonable price.’

  ‘But how on earth did they ever think they’d get away with it?’ Lettice asked, fascinated. ‘Surely they should have been more careful?’

  ‘Yes, I can’t help feeling that it would have been wise to prepare a more eloquent defence than “I never murdered no babies”.’ Ronnie lapsed into a convincing cockney accent, and Lydia smiled approvingly at her. ‘Seriously, though,’ she added, leaning back to allow the waiter to place a large plate of oysters in front of her, ‘isn’t this gala something to do with a children’s charity as well as the Cowdray Club?’

  ‘Yes—the Actors’ Orphanage. It’s Noël’s pet cause, and his aunt’s on the club’s committee.’

  ‘It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’

  ‘In what way?’ Lettice asked, irritated by her sister’s habit of never quite explaining her point.

  ‘Well, here we are in 1935, still having to raise money for unwanted children, just so they can grow up in institutions which can’t be very pleasant, even if they are supported by the lord of the London stage. It might be legal, but it doesn’t exactly sound like progress.’

  ‘It’s funny—the first time I ever saw Gertie on stage, she was so pregnant she could hardly squeeze into the costumes,’ Lydia said, reaching for some bread. ‘It was just after the war, and I gather she did a matinee and an evening performance on the day before the birth. Of course, that all went tits up. If she hadn’t had her mother to dump the kid on, I suppose she would have ended up in the orphanage as well.’

  ‘You are sure it’s the charities that this money is going to?’ Ronnie asked, looking at Josephine with a wicked glint in her eye. ‘I’d check the takings very carefully if I were you. Charity begins chez Lawrence with her current predicament.’

  ‘Don’t be so scandalous,’ chided Lettice. ‘That’s all behind her now. She’s paying off the debts at fifty pounds a week—they’ve just cleared her of the bankruptcy.’

  ‘Bankruptcy?’

  ‘Good God, dear—where have you been? Don’t they have newspapers in Inverness? Miss Lawrence’s financial embarrassment has been the toast of the press for months. Apparently, she was so busy ordering new cars and flowers that she forgot to pay her laundry bills. It’s easily done, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, it’s been simply awful for her,’ Lettice said sympathetically, balancing roast potatoes around the edge of her steak-and-kidney pie. ‘Gertie, her maid, even her dog—they were all turned out on to the street. In the end, her agent took them in.’

  ‘Good to know they’re useful for something,’ Lydia said bitterly. ‘Although I have to say, I haven’t noticed any marked drop in standards now Gertie’s slumming it.’

  ‘No, she’s determined not to cut back on anything.’ Lettice’s familiarity with the gossip columns was legendary, and Josephine wasn’t at all surprised by her intimate knowledge of Gertrude Lawrence’s financial affairs. ‘No—she says she’ll make up every penny through cabaret and extra bits of filming.’

  ‘And charity galas.’

  As the Motleys continued their bickering, Josephine noticed how often Lydia’s face reverted to sadness, and she could bear it no longer. If she stayed here, she was likely to take Lydia discreetly outside and tell her everything that Marta had said, which would surely only make things worse. ‘I’m afraid I have to go,’ she said when there was a break in the sparring. ‘I’ve got another appointment with the baby farmers in the morning, and I should be getting back.’

  ‘Not so early, surely? You’ll stay for dessert?’

  ‘No, but I promise to stop by the studio tomorrow and look at my outfit. Archie assured me it’s worth trying on. I’ll see you then—about three o’clock?’

  The girls nodded and let her go without any further argument. Outside in the street, she breathed a sigh of relief and looked up to Archie’s flat, but it was in darkness. Disappointed not to find him in, she turned and walked down Maiden Lane, hoping to be lucky with a cab in Bedford Street, but she hadn’t got far before she heard someone call her name. ‘I couldn’t possibly let you just go like that,’ Lettice said, hurrying up to her. ‘You’ve been upset all evening. What’s wrong, Josephine? Has something happened between you and Archie?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. It’s Lydia—I wasn’t expecting to see her tonight, and it was a bit awkward.’

  ‘Oh God—you know something about Marta, don’t you? Has she been in touch with you?’ Josephine nodded. ‘And she’s not ready for a happy reunion, by the sound of it?’

  ‘No, not at the moment. Perhaps not ever.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you tell Lydia?’

  ‘Yes, I should, but I need to think carefully about what I’m going to say first.’

  ‘Marta always liked you, didn’t she?’ Lettice looked at her and Josephine knew what was going through her mind, but she was kind enough not to force the point. Instead, she said: ‘I’m sure you’ll work it out, but if you need any help, you know where I am. No one else need ever know.’

  Josephine smiled gratefully at her. ‘What will you tell the others? They’ll wonder why you’re chasing after me in the snow.’

  ‘No they won’t—they think I found your glove under the table.’ She squeezed Josephine’s hand. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  When Marjorie came round, she found herself lying on the workroom floor. All the main lights in the studio had been switched off, and the only glow in the room came from a lamp on Hilda Reader’s desk. It was desperately cold, and she tried to raise herself to a sitting position, but her body felt heavy and the nausea and dizziness were so extreme that she found it impossible to stay upright for more than a few seconds. Her head fell back on to the boards and she lay there in the silence, waiting for the symptoms to pass and trying to make sense of what had happened. The room was so quiet that she thought she was alone, but her relief was short-lived; a noise came from over to her left, a sound like pills being shaken from a bottle, and, as she list
ened more carefully, she could hear footsteps moving softly around the room. Something in their leisure-liness made her afraid.

  She must have passed out again. When she regained consciousness, she was dimly aware of someone standing over her, then she felt hands under her arms, lifting and dragging her like an invalid over to the head cutter’s table. She was pulled roughly on to a chair, where her hands were fastened behind her with a length of soft material. Although she tried to protest, the words were thick and heavy in her mouth and the noise that came from her throat was unrecognisable even to her. A cold sweat broke out on her face and the palms of her hands, and—whilst a small part of her told her that it must be the effect of the spray she had inhaled—it felt like the physical expression of her fear, spreading slowly but irrevocably through her body. Desperately, she tried to see what was going on but there was a shadow between her and the lamp, and only when it moved away did she realise that what she had experienced so far was nothing compared to what was to come. The light from the lamp shone down on to a needle—not the sort that was commonplace on Hilda Reader’s desk but a sack needle, used for hessian rather than silk and familiar to Marjorie from her time in prison. Next to it were the beads she had bought that morning, still in their box. As the box was calmly lifted and opened, she heard again the sound which she had believed to be pills, and watched in horror as the beads poured out on to the desk in front of her, a stream of sharp, black glass.

  The waiting was unbearable, eased only by the fact that she was so dreadfully tired. More than anything, she wanted to lie down again and allow unconsciousness to get the better of her, but she was tied to the chair and, in any case, what instinct for life she had left told her that she must try to stay awake. Her breathing came in deep, irregular sighs now, but she made one last effort to look this madness in the eye. It was her final act of defiance. The deadly calm was replaced in an instant by a frenzy of violence and hatred, and Marjorie felt hands on her face, wrenching her mouth open and stifling any attempts at a scream with handful after handful of glass. The sharp edges of the beads cut into her tongue and ground against her teeth, and her mouth began to fill with blood. She tried to spit the glass out before too much of it went back into her throat, but strong fingers held her nose, forcing her to swallow in order to breathe, and she felt the piercing certainty of death moving down into her stomach. Just for a second, the hands moved away and she was able to gasp for air, but the intensity of her breathing only served to aid the invasion of her body, leaving her choking and helpless, and then the torture began again. Her head was yanked back from behind and the needle tore through her skin, focusing her mind on a pain so great that nothing else existed, ripping the tissue in an outpouring of rage. The sensation of the thread moving in and out of her lips made her gag, but there was nowhere for the vomit to go except through her nose or back into her throat. She felt herself slowly suffocating, and her feet beat uselessly against the floor, counting out the final seconds of her life. Just before her vision began to fade, the hands were once more at her face, but this time the violence was gone. Unable to struggle any longer, Marjorie allowed her head to be moved gently round to the right and, in the full-length mirror which had been so carefully placed, she watched the ugly, humiliating horror of her own death.