by P. G. Glynn
She was stealing his thunder but Charles Brodie did not care. His mood was triumphant. He had bravely taken a chance on her and she had risen to the occasion like a true star. She was a ‘great’ in the making – and he, through his unerring instinct, was having a hand in the making of her. His little speech at the outset had contained no empty words. Together, Marie Howard and he were writing theatrical history!
After leading her forward from the line-up of artistes as the audience rose rapturously as one body and the cries of “Nancy!” increased, Charles bowed to her and with a gracious gesture handed over his stage to Marie.
She stood serene, London at her feet. This was no dream. It was the culmination of many dreams and, because she had dreamed, was now her reality. There was a strong sense of having known how it would be and also of knowing, as her arms filled with flowers, that this was just the beginning. From now on everything would be different. A new life beckoned: a life she had been expecting and yet …
For no accountable reason Marie suddenly shivered.
The final curtain call taken, there was the usual spate of conversation, coughing and programme-rustling from the auditorium as, the spell broken, people prepared to go home. Marie heard these sounds from afar as Nell darted about gathering up the last of the flowers.
En route for her dressing room there were ‘Bravos!’ from stagehands and cast, whose faces seemed to merge together with the exception of one face: Oliver’s. “Are you too famous, now, to speak to me?” he asked solemnly.
“Bless your heart!” Together in the land between make-believe and reality Marie put her free arm around him, answering: “You’re my friend, or I rather hope you are, as well as my knight in shining armour. Fame – yours or mine – could never interfere with friendship, could it? Not in my book it couldn’t, no matter which of us finds the greatest fame. So can we make a pact to be friends forever?”
“Oh yes, we can!” he told her happily, pink tingeing his cheeks. “Yes, please!”
Charles was waiting for her in her dressing room and when she arrived, glowing and breathless, holding flowers originally intended for Dolly that had found a far worthier recipient in her, he discovered that he was momentarily lost for words. She had said, earlier today, that she might yet take his breath away and she seemed to have taken it. Had he not known better, he could have concluded that she was a sorceress as he had thought, working her magic even on him. “You did well,” he said when he could at last find breath.
“But I could do better?”
He responded to her knowing smile and to her question: “Yes. In our profession we can all, always, do better and it is this certainty which keeps us ever striving for perfection. I suggest that you now go home to bed and that, if your current state of mind permits, you sleep in readiness for what tomorrow will bring. Upon awakening you will,” he smiled, “if you are wise, pay more attention to the study of your script than to your ‘notices’. Fame can be all too fleeting if we believe everything we read. That said, I must commend your handling of the day’s events together with your interpretation of Nancy’s role, which is not the easiest of roles to interpret. I shall, however, expect you in my office at six sharp tomorrow when I shall endeavour to erase a few flaws from your performance. Good night to you.”
He had then turned abruptly on his heel and left, before Marie had even had time to bid him ‘good night’. “He’s a funny one,” she said later to Nell as they walked together to their respective bus stops buttoned up against the biting cold.
“Who is?”
“Charles,” answered Marie. “I can’t quite make him out.”
“So it’s ‘Charles’ now, is it?”
Marie grinned. “It is and it isn’t. On the surface he’s still ferocious Mr Brodie, though I suspect he’s probably sweet underneath.”
A perplexed Nell, who could not imagine anyone less sweet, said: “Really? Well, let’s not talk about him. Tell me what’s gone on since you took yourself off from the Green Room to his office. Can’t you see that I’m close to bursting with curiosity?”
Stopping in her tracks as they turned into Charing Cross Road and peering closely at Nell as if to see, Marie said: “Yes, now that you mention it, you are a bit purplish! So I’ll start at the beginning, shall I, and work through to the end?”
This she did, to the satisfactory accompaniment of expressive ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and ‘fancy thats!’ from her friend. “You leave me speechless,” Nell commented after Marie’s summary of events. “So even Dolly’s scratches and punches couldn’t stop you going on and knocking the audience dead! And Mr Brodie told her to go easy on the gin, did he? As for Dolly thinking that perhaps he fancied Clive Swindall’s sort – good Lord! She was talking through her hat. After all, Mr Brodie is a married man.”
“And Clive certainly isn’t the marrying kind,” Marie put in, giggling. Having little idea as to precisely what men like him did, she knew that in 1895 Oscar Wilde had been put in prison for doing it with Lord Alfred Douglas. That might have been before she was born, but it was well documented and Mr Wilde’s most famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol had resulted from his imprisonment. “Is Mr Brodie happily married, do you think?”
“I doubt it,” Nell shrugged. “Can you imagine any woman being happy, married to him?” She added as an afterthought: “Although his wife’s French, which might make a difference.” Then, with barely a pause for breath, she asked: “How does it feel, dear, to be a star?”
“I’ll show you,” Marie told her, suddenly sprinting the few yards to a nearby lamppost and springing tomboyishly into the air. Her outstretched hands managed to connect with the twin bars jutting from immediately beneath the gas-lit glass globe and she swung merrily to and fro. Oblivious to stares from passers-by, she sang from the hit musical show CHU CHIN CHOW: “I built a fairy palace in the sky. All women do. A palace built of dreams: can dreams come true?”
A bobby on the beat hurriedly appeared and, tilting his helmet to scratch his head, said: “I’d come down from up there, Miss, if I were you.”
“But you aren’t me!” Marie laughed, amiably springing to the ground. “Dreams can come true, you know. Mine has, this very evening.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Miss,” he grinned, caught up in her mood as were other witnesses to it. “Now move on, do, else I’ll begin to think you’ve been on the drink.”
Before Marie could cause any more commotion Nell linked arms with her and moved her on, rather relieved to see her friend’s bus approaching its stop. She was soon waving her off – and Marie was anticipating telling her tale all over again to Uncle John.
5
John Jones was waiting for his niece where he often waited, by the old Marylebone Watch House at the corner of Oxford Street and Marylebone Lane. That was where Marie changed buses and was convenient for the CROWN & ANCHOR, where John was not averse to passing a pleasant hour. His pleasure as often as not led to Gwen’s displeasure, which was the cross he had to bear. Having long since established that there could be no pleasing the woman he had so rashly married, John never tried to please her any more.
She was so like his mother. How John wished he had seen sooner that he was marrying Ma! Had he only realised in time he’d have run like the clappers at the first mention of marriage. Fool that he was, he had not run, tying himself instead for life to a harridan he had seldom seen smile. Well, he had made his bed and must lie on it – ever restless, next to a snoring, self-righteous Gwen.
Gwen wasn’t just like Ma: she and Janet too were kindred spirits yet – oddly – Janet was his sister, not hers. How she had come to produce such a spirited filly as Marie was a total mystery. John could only conclude that his niece was a Jenkins through and through, much as he would love to claim her for the Jones’s stable. Marie put him in mind of a mare that had yet to be broken in and that would not suffer the process without a fight. She was a thoroughbred, no question, with looks that turned heads wherever she went. Destined for gre
at things was Marie! So she should be, after making her entry on the very day Merman won the Cesarewitch with John’s shirt on him! Since Howard’s death Marie had seemed more a daughter to John than a niece. It went without saying that Gwen had shown neither willingness nor ability to breed.
Marie had not been on her usual bus, or the two after it, and John was trying not to let this bother him. She would turn up soon and tick him off soundly for worrying. Funny how he enjoyed being ticked off by her, whereas when it was Gwen doing the ticking … But he must stop his introspection. Time enough to think of Gwen when her tongue was in action and he had no alternative.
Ah, another bus was coming! John watched the big red double-decker trundling towards him, his heart lifting at the prospect of seeing Marie. She must surely be on this one.
There she was! He spotted her springing off and the next minute a whirlwind hit him. As Marie hugged her uncle and was hugged in return she said: “I was hoping you’d have waited, despite my lateness. I might have known you would have. You’ll never guess what kind of day I’ve had. How has your day been?”
“Uneventful, as ever,” he said, the ordinariness of his existence weighting him as she linked her arm through his and they started walking. “So that’s all we need say about me. I gather from the look of you that yours has been extraordinary – so spill the beans!”
“I hardly know where to start spilling from – and I certainly don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.” She smiled broadly at him. “Do I seem different?”
“You’re obviously on top of the world,” he commented after studying her for a moment, “which is not so very far from where you usually are. Wait a second – yes, there is an extra something! Don’t tell me … let me guess. Lloyd George has stepped down and as soon as his advisers heard you too were Welsh they suggested … ”
“It’s better than that,” Marie gaily interrupted, “much better than being Prime Minister. You’re right about someone stepping down, though, and me taking over.”
“She never did?” John stopped walking and stared at her, his dark eyes glinting in the light from a lamp above him. “Not Dolly Martin! You’re never Charles Brodie’s leading lady already!”
“You’d better start believing it,” Marie giggled, “because that’s exactly what I am. I played Nancy tonight and … and the audience liked me.”
“I’ll bet they did!” John scooped her up in his arms and swung her round as if she were thistledown. “My little beauty!” he sang out. “You didn’t hang about before making your mark on dear old London Town. But I’m amazed that Dolly stepped down.”
“She didn’t do it unassisted,” Marie confessed as he set her back on the ground.
“So you helped things along a bit, did you?” he grinned, gazing at her. How he loved and believed in this girl and how loved and believed in he felt in return! She did not seem to see the man that others saw but instead saw through to the man inside him. The wonder was that under the steadfastness of her regard he became that man, his speech losing its slur, the haze over his vision clearing. Yes, he became the man that he could have been, had he played the hand dealt him differently. “Good for you! Nobody gets anywhere in this world, it seems to me, by waiting in the wings. So now tell me exactly how you did it – and how it feels to be playing Nancy!”
“Dolly had another tantrum … ” she began, taking his proffered arm and falling into step again beside him. With his rugged Welsh features and black wavy hair, he was to her handsome and she was proud to be seen in his company. Never mind that Mam said he was a waster. Mam did not know him as Marie did, besides which she was his exact opposite. And Mam was tied in her mind to the village where she had always lived and would always live whereas tonight, in his great-coat, bowler and highly polished shoes, Uncle John – if one disregarded the smell of beer on his breath – looked every inch the city gent. Pity he was married to Aunt Gwen.
She spoke, he listened and the listening was pure magic for him. What a girl she was, his niece! The sheer nerve of her, to do as she had done: John wished he had half her gumption, half her pluck. If only he had, who knew where he might be today? He knew where he would not be: walking in Gwen’s direction down Marylebone Lane. But how selfish of him, to be thinking of himself at such a time. He should be thinking exclusively of his darling Marie. He was the luckiest man alive to have her on his arm – and lodging in his home, which was thanks to Howard laying the law down years ago. But for him, Janet would never have countenanced Marie (or Mary as she still persisted in calling her) living with her good-for-nothing brother. Howard, however, had strongly believed in blood being thicker than water and had stipulated that if Marie made it to London she should come under John’s protection. How proud Howard would be now, knowing that his beloved daughter was already on her way to greatness! “You’re a caution,” John told Marie, hugging her again as she finished her tale. “What a story! At this rate you’ll soon have overtaken Lillie Langtry. One word of warning: don’t go getting entangled like she did. Let nobody,” he grinned boyishly, “not even a prince, come between you and immortality.”
“He was a mere man,” she smiled back, “and I’d never let any man, prince of the realm or not, come between me and my dream.”
John could not have said why, but Marie’s carefree words troubled him.
Their steps were all too soon halting in front of his terraced home. A light shone through the small glass pane in the door that opened on to the pavement, but no welcome waited within. Gwen was never welcoming. Were she and this drab house all that he had to show for his forty-eight years?
Shrugging, John inserted his key in the lock and turned it. “With a bit of luck,” he said, “she’ll have gone to bed.”
Marie was mystified as to why Uncle John had married Aunt Gwen. Why would a man like him marry a woman who was such a grumbler? He could not possibly love her and with his looks could surely have had his pick of women. So why on earth would he have picked Aunt Gwen … or had she picked him? That was the only explanation making any sense. Pa used to say that women did the choosing and that certain men just acquiesced. Was he talking about Uncle John, back then, or was he perhaps talking about himself? Marie somehow doubted he had chosen Mam any more than Uncle John could have chosen Aunt Gwen. Did that suggest they were both weak men, or just too chivalrous for their own good? She was sure that the latter must be true … and that poor Uncle John had simply submitted to being landed with a shrew.
No sooner had John shut the front door behind him than Gwen emerged from the back-kitchen demanding: “And what time do the two of you call this?”
“A little after midnight,” John replied, forcing a smile.
“A little after?” Gwen echoed sarcastically. “You’re forgetting I’ve got eyes in my head.”
In an attempt to mollify her he said: “Just wait till you hear about our niece’s triumph. Then you’ll be glad you waited up for us.”
“Our niece? Mary’s nothing to do with me, apart from being my responsibility. It’s because I don’t take my responsibilities lightly that I … ”
“Oh shut up, woman, and listen for once!” Even on Marie’s night of nights, John could not help himself. But for the lack of beer in prison, he’d happily have strangled Gwen.
“That’s no way to talk to me,” she told him huffily.
“You started it,” said Marie. “If you’d only let him say his piece, he wouldn’t get angry.”
“Don’t you go putting your oar in, too. Oh, I’ve had enough of both of you! And,” she added, before turning her back on them and retreating peevishly into the kitchen, “I’m not the least bit interested in Mary’s news.”
“She wouldn’t be, would she?” John said wearily, helping Marie out of her coat. “She’s interested in nothing except scrubbing the house daily with carbolic and making my life a misery.”
“She is,” smiled Marie.
“Is she?”
“Yes, if I let her she’d like to
make my life a misery, too, but I won’t let her – and neither should you.”
Awakening next morning, Marie could smell fresh carbolic. So what time was it? Aunt Gwen was always on her hands and knees and up to her elbows in soap by eight, but she might have been scrubbing for hours or have only just started. Who cared what time it was, anyway?
Marie lay luxuriating in the memory of yesterday and listening to the sounds from the Lane. She loved hearing traffic passing her window: loved all the ceaseless bustle of London. After being brought up in a tiny village she had found Swansea an eye-opener and Bath even more so. Neither of those even began to compare with London, though. This extraordinary city seemed to her like the heart of the whole universe. And last night it had been hers!
She heard running footsteps on the pavement below and next minute there was a frantic banging on the front door. Who on earth would come visiting first thing in the morning – if it was first thing? Anyone brave enough to come would get a frosty reception from Aunt Gwen, who discouraged callers before her housework was finished. She often said people should know better than to turn up uninvited on her doorstep of a morning. Marie agreed with this philosophy. People should know better than to risk Aunt Gwen’s displeasure. She saw her aunt as a grey woman and not just because of the colour of her hair and skin. Her personality too was greyish, as if the sun never shone in. Perhaps it never did. Come to think of it, Aunt Gwen was really a poor old thing!
Crikey, it was Nell downstairs! Marie heard her friend’s voice and then Gwen’s telling her that yes Mary was still in bed. Before she had time to blink, let alone wonder what had brought Nell over from Camden Town so early, her bedroom door burst open and – with background protests from Aunt Gwen that guests weren’t permitted upstairs – Nell stood there, her arms clasping newspapers.