by P. G. Glynn
She said, all out of breath: “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself. Such nonchalance! There I was, so agog to see what Anthony La Motte and the others had written about you that I was up with the lark, sure you would have been, too.”
“Well, you were wrong,” Marie said, sitting up in bed and stretching. “Gosh, I’d clean forgotten that I’d be in the papers already! What have they written about me?”
“Here, read this one first.”
With THE ERA thrust into her hands, Marie saw that Nell had marked the appropriate passage and, her excitement mounting, she read aloud: “‘Though we mourned Miss Martin for a time our tears soon dried, since into the part of Nancy had stepped at short notice a young actress who set London alight last evening. Those of us privileged to be at the Tavistock Theatre for the First Night of its revival of Mr Charles Dickens’s OLIVER TWIST sat entranced through the West End debut – in a part of any substance – of Miss Marie Howard. Hers is a fresh and natural talent giving the role new life. That talent will, unless I am much mistaken, carry her far. I predict a golden future for her.’” Marie skimmed through praise for Clive Swindall’s Fagin and for Charles and Guy before reading: “‘This was no mere stage illusion, but the very stuff of reality: the living, breathing embodiment of Dickens’s concept. Both for bringing OLIVER TWIST so triumphantly back to London and for discovering an artiste of Miss Howard’s rarity value, Mr Charles Brodie is to be warmly commended.’ Giddy godfathers,” Marie said, sighing, “that’s incredible, coming from him!”
Nell demonstrated her own joy by leaping into the air and giving a short, spirited rendition of the can-can for which she hummed her own accompaniment. Her little dance ended with the splits and she was still flat on the floor, her legs stretched in opposite directions, when Gwen – in flowered overall and dust-cap - stormed in demanding: “Are you trying to bring my ceiling down?”
“Oh, sorry,” said Nell, scrambling to her feet. “I didn’t think … ”
“That’s the trouble with your sort,” Gwen interrupted brusquely. “You never think of others, only of your own whims and wants. Actresses have things far too easy, with all that make-believe. Just you wait, Mary, till real life comes knocking on your door. Perhaps then you’ll have an inkling of what my life is like. I’m just a drudge, doing everything for you and your uncle with no thanks, no gratitude of any kind. Take today: your breakfast is still on the table from when John and I ate ours hours ago. You show no consideration. How am I supposed to get on, with you lazing in bed, your breakfast uneaten and your friend doing her best to make a hole in my floor?”
“Please forgive me, Mrs Jones,” Nell said, shocked that Marie’s aunt had shown no interest whatsoever in last night’s triumph or this morning’s newspapers. “I never meant to cause you distress. But it isn’t every day that a friend of mine becomes leading lady in the West End.”
“That’s a blessing! I couldn’t be doing with early visitors and these goings-on every morning. I’d soon be putting my foot down, I can tell you.”
“Which is all that Nell did,” Marie giggled. “Both feet, that is. If you’d only seen her dancing … ”
“You, my girl, will be the death of me. You’re too flippant by half, with no respect for your elders. Might one ask when you intend condescending to eat your breakfast?”
“Perhaps it’s for the best if I give it a miss, just this once,” Marie said with a smile that would have disarmed anyone other than her aunt. She had no appetite for the cold toast certain to be awaiting her in the kitchen. “Only, you see, I’m too excited to eat at the moment … and Nell and I have plans for an early lunch over at her home.”
“Have we?” Nell queried when Gwen had departed.
“Not necessarily! We can eat anywhere, just as long as it isn’t here. Where do you suggest – Claridge’s or the Ritz?”
“I think they’re beyond even a leading lady’s pocket,” Nell grinned, “that is, until her income catches up with her new status. So why don’t we do as you said and head for the den?”
+++++
Nell’s den was in the roof-space of her mother’s house in Dalmeny Avenue, Camden Town. It was rather a haphazard house, set well back from the road in its own extensive walled garden, and its occupants were – as Elsie Sedgwick herself said – as varied as the weather. With three storeys altogether and several rooms on each floor, there was plenty of scope for variety among the old-stagers who had given their best years to the world of entertainment. They found refuge here in old age and a listening ear for the stories they told of the glories of yesteryear. Nell’s mother was an attentive listener and it was her warmth that contributed in large measure to the welcoming atmosphere.
Marie felt this embracing her as she and Nell arrived with the newspapers. They had read the DAILY MAIL, DAILY EXPRESS and NEWS CHRONICLE reviews on the bus, which left the heavier TELEGRAPH & MORNING POST and THE TIMES to pore over later, in less restrictive surroundings than a double-decker.
“I’ve brought Marie back with me,” Nell said as Elsie appeared in a doorway, shooing a large marmalade cat through into the huge, gloomy hall where the girls were removing their winter coats and draping them over other garments on the mahogany hat stand.
“So I see.” Elsie was as small and dainty as her daughter. She seemed almost to purr as she talked – not too surprisingly since often as not she was talking to one or other of the abandoned cats that she took in. It would not have surprised Elsie to sprout whiskers, so feline did she sometimes feel. “I made an elastic lunch, just in case.” She smiled up at Marie. “Nell tells me you’re famous. Fame hasn’t knocked on our door before – unless we count the time Doctor Crippin came knocking. Saints alive, there’s a comparison to make! Forgive me, Marie, and enjoy your fame. May it also bring you joy. Now where, I wonder, is Valentine?”
As Nell’s mother bustled off again, Marie was uncertain whether Valentine was a man or a cat. Not that it much mattered, not in this house where everything was so happy and relaxed. She knew, though, of Doctor Crippin’s visit ten or so years ago when he brought a stray cat to the Sedgwick’s knowing that here it would find a home. That was back before the body of Belle Elmore was found buried in the cellar of his house in Hilldrop Crescent, which was just round the corner from here. The Sedgwicks still could not credit that such a mild-mannered man was a murderer.
At Nell’s suggestion she and Marie made straight for her den. Their route took them up two wide flights of stairs and across two landings before they reached the third, narrow, flight. It was a route that changed each time according to who they bumped into during their climb. They might see a tragedian or a comic, a singer, dancer or musician, a conjuror or even a magician. Whoever they saw – and usually there were at least two or three to greet – it was guaranteed that the lodger in question would want to re-live some memories. Thanks to the Sedgwick brand of hospitality all who ended their days here were also periodically given the opportunity to perform again. At regular parties in the oak-panelled drawing room where a grand piano had been put for their use, they would each resurrect a past performance and receive rapturous applause from their fellow residents. Marie hoped that, should she ever have need of it, such a house as this would exist for her to live in. But old age seemed very far off today. Would she ever be old? Secure in her youth and vitality, Marie rather doubted she would be.
Reaching the den, which was blessed with sloping ceilings and dozens of intriguing nooks and crannies, the girls collapsed on to the patchwork coverlet on Nell’s bed and read through the rest of Marie’s ‘notices’. These eventually caused Nell to question: “Does it feel strange, reading so much praise in the papers?”
“Not a bit. Oddly, it’s as if I’ve always been expecting it.”
“Just fancy!” Nell could not imagine having expected such a thing. Then, thinking back over the morning, she commented: “Your aunt’s a bit of a card, isn’t she?”
“That’s one description
,” said Marie dryly. “I can think of others.”
“What’s wrong with her? I mean … why is she permanently so angry?”
“Search me! She just is. I’ve never known her any different. She and Uncle John don’t get on. That might have something to do with it. She feels put upon – but then, so does he. Perhaps they’re both suffering from an overdose of incompatibility.”
“Or perhaps sex is the problem.”
“How do you mean?”
“If she’s frigid and he’s frustrated … not, probably, that people indulge in sex at their age.”
“Don’t they?” Marie queried with interest. “No, I doubt they do once they’re past making babies. Anyway, I can’t even begin to imagine those two … doing it, can you?”
“I can’t,” Nell said, shaking her head, “but then it’s difficult to picture anyone getting up to such antics.”
“So you and Billy didn’t … ?”
“No, more’s the pity! We were saving ourselves for the marriage … ” Nell’s voice tailed off to a whisper “ … that never happened.”
There was a framed photograph of Billy on Nell’s bedside table. He was wearing his army uniform and looked heartbreakingly young. Marie wondered what it was like to love as Nell had loved and then to lose the loved one. “You still miss him, don’t you?” she said.
“Still?” Nell was shocked by the question. “I’ll always miss him. Part of me died when he died. I’ll go on loving and missing Billy every day of my life.”
“Cripes! I’m sorry, Nell. I didn’t realise … “
“Why should you have realised?” Nell asked with a wan smile. “You never knew Billy. You weren’t to know how much he meant to me.”
“No,” Marie conceded, “but I should have known better than to say something so trite. Never having been in love, though, I suppose I’m a bit mystified by how it might feel.”
“Not for long you won’t be!”
“How do you mean?” Marie asked artlessly.
“After last night and your reviews this morning half the men in London will be falling in love with you, so it’s just a matter of time before one of them sweeps you off your feet. I wonder who he’ll be. Why, with you so famous and all, he might even be royalty – or at the very least a member of the aristocracy!”
“Yes, he might, mightn’t he?” Marie agreed absently. “Nell, for some reason your little door’s beckoning me.”
Nell, adjusting to her friend’s sudden whim, said: “Then let’s go where it beckons.”
It was a very small door, with a glass panel through which one could see the sky and the clouds scudding by. Beyond it, Marie had begun thinking eagerly, would be some cat-free air. The only thing wrong with this house was that there were cats everywhere, their smell and their fur integral to the atmosphere. Opening the door and crouching down to go through it on to the low-walled parapet surrounding the roof, the two girls were almost blown backwards by a gust of wind. Regaining their balance they stood among the chimneys, clutching one for safety as they were buffeted. The view from up there was spectacular, with the dome of St Paul’s in the distance and, more distant still in a different direction, the mind-tingling tips of the Palace of Westminster. Pa had told Marie about the Houses of Parliament and about how Sir Charles Barry had been the inspiration behind them, but until she had seen Big Ben and the rest for herself she had not even begun to appreciate the degree of Sir Charles’s vision. Long dead himself, he had left for subsequent generations – like an exquisite phoenix soaring from the ashes of the 1834 fire (Pa’s words, not hers) – these majestic buildings which were in a sense a testament to him. While hoping to leave something of herself behind when it was her turn to die, Marie contrasted in her mind the historic landmarks on the horizon with the grim contours of another landmark closer by.
Only the high wall at the bottom of Nell’s back garden separated the Sedgwick’s home from Holloway Prison, which housed four hundred women. And Nell said that their cries in the dead of night were quite enough to curdle the blood. “How can they stand being shut in there?” Marie queried.
Following her friend’s gaze, Nell answered: “I’ve no idea. I keep reminding myself when it’s dark, though, and their wails are worst, that they wouldn’t have to stand it if they’d only been law-abiding instead of murderesses and the like. It has to be looked at from both sides. Shall we go back in? I’m freezing!”
Later, with one of Elsie’s substantial lunches inside them, they returned to the den, lying on their stomachs on Nell’s bed again. “I expect you know much more than I do about … sex,” Marie said.
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. On the grounds that I’m older than you – and have read SONS AND LOVERS – I might, I suppose.”
“You’ve read something of D.H. Lawrence’s?” Marie was awed. “He writes about nothing but sex, doesn’t he? His books are always so controversial.”
“They are,” Nell agreed, “but they’re good stories, with quite a bit besides sex in them actually. You can borrow SONS AND LOVERS if you want to … and if I can find my copy.”
Picturing Mam’s reaction to a daughter of hers reading a book by Lawrence, Marie smiled. “Oh, can I? Try to find it right now, will you?”
Searching willingly under some eaves, Nell queried: “You’ve never bought a book of his?”
“Not blooming likely! The bookseller would think I was a loose woman, wouldn’t he?”
“He didn’t seem to think that when I bought this,” Nell grinned, holding her copy up triumphantly.
Marie started reading there and then about Paul Morel and his complex relationships. She was still engrossed when the clock on the landing below chimed five and Nell reminded her that she was due in Charles Brodie’s office at the Tavistock by six.
“Giddy godfathers,” cried Marie leaping to her feet, “and he’ll be expecting me to have studied my script!”
6
Charles Brodie had been upstaged by Marie Howard last night and much to his surprise found he did not mind. The Company’s opening in OLIVER TWIST had been such a triumph that he felt generous toward his new leading lady. Additionally, he felt a degree of bonhomie toward the world in general now that he was free of Dolly Martin. He had not only achieved freedom, but also found a real jewel in Marie. The critics had been unanimous in their eulogy. Yes, he had struck gold yesterday and in doing so had grown in his own estimation both as an actor/manager and as a man.
Dolly had been sapping his confidence along with his strength. Now that he had succeeded in ridding himself and his theatre of her destructive presence he could see the degree to which she had undermined him with her gibes and belittlement. He had of course known all along that no self-respecting manager would take the insults from her that he had taken and the knowledge had done nothing for his equilibrium. Beneath his pretence that all was well, he had felt a self-contempt that had caused him to become impotent in more ways than one.
He had been ineffectual within his theatre and also within his marriage, where lovemaking had faded into a distant memory. But last night, after that rapturous reception given to OLIVER TWIST, he had actually felt a surge of his old virility. And how did Madeleine react to his overtures? Typically, with Gallic indifference as to whether he carried on or not. So discouraging was her reaction that he had not bothered. More accurately, thanks to Madeleine’s rebuff his equipment had quickly reverted from rod to rubber. The trouble was that with Madeleine he had long felt only half alive. She and Dolly shared the unerring ability to make a man feel useless, whatever the extent of his achievements. Why did he attract such women, both personally and professionally? Charles could not fathom why.
He had no time, though, to waste on irrelevances. Last night’s revival had been seen by the press and by his peers in the acting profession as a tour de force – a masterly piece of casting that had lifted the status quo of the whole Company. Far from being reviled for ousting Dolly, he was being feted for finding the beguiling Marie
Howard. To think that Dolly had so often accused him of being outdated and unimaginative! He had shown her, along with the whole of London, that he was very much up-to-date and that there was nothing wrong with his imagination. But he had naturally played his achievement down when speaking to people who had telephoned to congratulate him. Gravely accepting their congratulations, he had then behaved as if finding a new star for the Tavistock were almost commonplace. Nobody must ever know how close he came to the brink yesterday. He wished to obliterate the state he had been in before Miss Howard knocked on his office door.
Had she knocked in response to an unspoken prayer? Was it possible that there was a God, somewhere up there? Charles did not see how there could be an unseen power behind everything – one that was all-seeing, all-hearing, all-enveloping. He saw himself as an intelligent man and his intelligence would not permit the existence of such a phenomenon. Where would God have come from? He could not have come from nowhere, from nothing. Nothing came from nothing. Everything had to have a beginning – and an end. So it was quite ludicrous to suggest that God did not and that He had been around for thousands of years listening to prayers and answering them as He saw fit. Madeleine and her like could believe in God and the Blessed Virgin if they wished. Sheer logic prevented Charles – or, surely, any thinking person – subscribing to such a myth.
It followed, therefore, that Marie Howard had simply knocked on his door of her own accord. She was an ambitious actress, after all. So he should just accept that with faultless timing she had delivered herself to him for the purpose of furthering her ambitions. He had no cause to suspect that an invisible unproven God had any hand in it.
It would soon be six and she would be arriving to give his spirits another lift. Except that they didn’t need lifting. Charles was a new man today. He might have been born in 1884 but felt as if he had just been re-born. At thirty-five he was in his prime, at the height of his considerable powers – a man whose achievements of tomorrow would far outweigh his successes of yesterday. Yes, without question he was young again.