by Dodie Smith
‘Oh, nothing, inwardly. But outwardly they preserve the utmost grimness – I mean, to the public. They think that if they’re even civil, people won’t believe the play’s a real success. Happy box-offices always behave as if they’re repelling invaders.’
In the middle of the afternoon Mr Crossway breezed in with the champagne he had promised us. He dictated some of the more important ‘thank you’ letters, then said he must go and see Brice Marton about various small changes. He paused beside my desk to say, ‘Well, you won’t have to work such long hours now. But I shall miss my little co-director,’ then went on his way while I was saying I should miss him, too. I stared after him.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Miss Lester.
‘It’s just dawned on me that I shall miss him – that is, miss rehearsals and being in on the production.’
She said she’d thought I’d feel that. ‘But you’ll soon get over it. And Mr Crossway says I can send you to a theatre every week or so – which reminds me, I’ve looked out an evening dress in the wardrobe; I’m almost sure you’ll like it. The wardrobe mistress will alter it as soon as she’s finished the dresses for the understudies.’
I thanked her and tried to settle down to typing. But I must have looked gloomy, because before long she said, ‘Would you like to cheer yourself with the champagne?’
‘What, in the middle of the afternoon?’
‘Some people drink it at any time of day. Personally I rather dislike it; so unless you do want to tackle it now, why not take it to the Club and share it with Molly and Lilian?’
I said I’d be glad to, as they were in need of cheering, having recently heard that their show would soon be coming off.
When I displayed the champagne in the village that night Lilian said she was more and more sure Mr Crossway was in love with me. This had been a favourite joke of hers for weeks. She and Molly were already full of tea so they did not fancy champagne just then. ‘We’ll keep it until we’ve something to celebrate,’ said Lilian. ‘And that bottle looks good for a wish.’ There was a vogue in the Club for wishing on almost anything. She patted the bottle and said: ‘Champagne, champagne, bring us something to celebrate with you soon.’ As things turned out we felt the need of it soon but not on an occasion of celebration.
The very next morning, just after Charlotte had brought my breakfast tray, I heard a loud moan from Molly’s cubicle followed by a wail of, ‘Oh, no! Oh, God, how awful!’
Both Lilian and I yelled, ‘What is it?’ We got no answer; Molly just went on wailing, ‘Oh, no!’ I hastily moved my breakfast tray and dashed in to her, colliding with Lilian at the cubicle door. Molly was sitting up in bed holding a letter. She looked at us and said in a tone of the utmost tragedy:
‘Girls, I’m a bastard.’
Afterwards I thought it was funny but I didn’t then. And I guessed what Molly meant even before Lilian had snatched the letter from her and begun to read it aloud. It was from a firm of solicitors who wrote on behalf of Molly’s father’s parents: her grandparents, but they were never referred to as that. They wished her to know that when she became twenty-one, in a few weeks, they proposed to stop the small allowance they had made her since her mother’s death and, instead, pay her a lump sum of a thousand pounds. And buried in the legal phraseology of the letter was the fact – which the solicitors obviously thought Molly was aware of – that her father had never married her mother. The words ‘natural daughter of’ were used several times.
‘But, Molly darling, why do you mind so much?’ I asked when Lilian had finished reading aloud.
Molly glared through her tears. ‘Can’t you understand? I’m a bastard.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lilian. ‘You’re just illegitimate.’
‘They’re the same thing,’ said Molly.
‘They’re not,’ said Lilian. ‘Bastards are only in history or Shakespeare. And they’re always men.’
I said I thought there could be female bastards. ‘But that’s a nicer name in the letter: “a natural daughter”.’
‘Let me read the letter again,’ said Molly.
We waited while she read it. I felt it must be an unusual letter to be read through a lorgnette.
‘It serves me right for being a snob,’ said Molly. ‘I was proud because my father came of a good family, and proud of his D.S.O. Wouldn’t you two mind if you were in my position?’
‘Of course not,’ said Lilian heartily; then added, ‘Well, a bit, perhaps – but not the way you do.’
I said, quite truthfully, that I’d find it romantic. ‘And it’s more exciting to have an unmarried D.S.O. for a father than a married chartered accountant, as I had.’
‘Chartered accountants can make a lot of money,’ said Lilian, with interest.
‘Well, my father doesn’t seem to have. Did you never suspect, Molly?’
‘Never. Of course he spent very little time with us – he was so often away with his regiment. We just stayed in our little house near Ranelagh. Now I see why Mother asked me to use her maiden name when I went on the stage. I thought it was because she’d acted under it herself and wanted it carried on. But it’s really the only name I’m entitled to.’ Again the tears flowed.
Charlotte came in. She had been doing Frobisher’s cubicle and made no bones about having heard everything. Kneeling by the bed, she took Molly in her arms and assured her there was nothing to be ashamed of. ‘You’re just a love-child, Miss Molly. We ought to have guessed it from your looks. All the most beautiful babies are love-children.’ Molly wept more and more.
‘Oh, stop it, Charlotte, you’re making her worse,’ said Lilian; then threw me a harassed look. ‘I must pull her together some how. We’ve a matinée this afternoon.’
‘How about the champagne?’ I suggested.
‘Wonderful! And it’s terribly smart to drink it in the morning. But it ought to be iced.’
‘I could get bits of ice from the kitchen,’ said Charlotte.
‘One’s supposed to put the champagne in the ice, not the ice in the champagne,’ said Lilian. ‘Still – yes, see what you can do. And borrow some wire cutters in case we need them and some champagne glasses; tooth mugs aren’t quite the thing.’
‘And bring a glass for yourself,’ Molly called after Charlotte, showing signs of recovery.
Charlotte came back with glasses and wire cutters but only a meagre supply of ice; still, it tinkled cheerfully and helped to make what I thought a very pleasant drink. Lilian praised the champagne knowledgeably, adding that of course it would be good, coming from Rex Crossway. She let us all have a glass and a half, then took a firm hand with Molly, refusing to give her any more. ‘Enough’s enough. You’re looking positively blowsy.’
It was the right word. Molly’s red hair was in disorder, her baby face was flushed with crying and champagne, and her shawl and nightgown had slipped off one shoulder. I suddenly thought of Moll Flanders and Moll Davis. Slightly flushed by champagne myself, I said: ‘Here’s to Moll Byblow,’ then wondered if she would mind; but she didn’t. A few minutes later, Lilian said, ‘Now up you get, Moll Byblow,’ and Molly had her nickname, as firmly as Lilian had Lily de Luxe and I had Mouse – though only rarely were Molly and Lilian addressed by their nicknames; these were mainly used when speaking of the girls, as: ‘See if you can hurry Moll Byblow,’ or ‘Madam Lily de Luxe won’t like that.’
Molly showed no signs of lasting distress about her illegitimacy but it had an effect on her manner. She discarded her half-playful and never offensive superiority and, though she still used her lorgnette – she had to – she no longer tilted her head back when she looked at people through it. I feel sure she was not conscious of any of this; it simply emanated from some inner loss of confidence. And from then onwards Lilian’s behaviour to her was more dominating – Lilian got into her stride that very morning by taking her to the writing-room and making sure the thousand pounds was accepted. ‘Just in case your illegitimate grandparents change their minds.’
Ye
s, Lilian was certainly in for a period of ascendancy. When I got back from the theatre that night she informed me that the three of us were going to leave the Club for a month and share a flat in a mews. A friend had called on her after the matinée to offer it.
‘She’s going to be away with a concert party and she says we can have the flat rent free if we’ll water her window-boxes and forward letters and let her know if anyone important rings up. And it’s a darling place – I went there to a party once – small, but terribly amusing. It’s a converted mews flat, of course – in Belgravia, couldn’t be smarter.’
There would be room for us all as there were two beds in the bedroom and a divan in the sitting-room. ‘It’ll be fun cooking our meals,’ Lilian went on. ‘And think how we’ll save with no rent to pay. That’s important as our show will so soon be off.’
‘I wonder when my thousand pounds will come,’ said Molly.
‘When it does you’re going to invest it,’ said Lilian. She then turned to me a trifle huffily. ‘Of course you don’t have to come, Mouse, but I thought you’d want to. It’s bound to be terrifically exciting.’
I felt I could do with excitement. Life at the Crossway was now very flat, with a lot of work to be done and no time, even, to look at the play through the spy-hole. So I accepted Lilian’s invitation enthusiastically.
Molly had already agreed, though she was troubled at the thought of losing our cubicles in this particular village and the services of Charlotte the Harlot. However, we didn’t have to, as the Club secretary promised we could have them back in a month. We were, it seemed, in her good books because we paid our bills every week instead of waiting to be nagged.
So we had our trunks from the box-room and packed away everything but a suitcase of summer clothes each, as Lilian thought there might not be too much cupboard space. She said she wished she could remember the flat better – ‘Though in a way it’s more fun not to.’
We moved on the following Sunday afternoon, Lilian’s friend having gone off that morning, after telephoning to say where we should find the key. As our taxi entered the mews Lilian cried: ‘There! You can tell the flat by the window-boxes. Aren’t they sweet?’
There were no other window-boxes and no other gaily painted front door. Probably all the other flats were occupied by chauffeurs or servants from the huge houses backing onto the mews.
We paid the taxi off and then Lilian got the key from the highly original hiding place of under the mat. When the door was opened we faced steep, narrow stairs so close that we could not shut the door until two of us were on our way up.
‘Quaint, isn’t it?’ said Lilian.
‘Smells of kippers,’ said Molly as she mounted the stairs.
I followed her, with my suitcase bumping into the wall. It was almost dark, once Lilian got the door closed. She called up, ‘I think the kitchen’s ahead of you.’
‘I’m in it,’ called Molly. ‘It’s just a landing – not even that, really; just the top of the stairs. I’ll move out so that Mouse can move in.’
She went through a door and I stepped up into the kitchen. It seemed that anyone using the gas-stove or sink would be in danger of falling downstairs backwards. I followed Molly into the sitting-room. It was quite pretty, with framed Underground posters on the walls. The afternoon sun was pouring in and the whole effect was cheerful, except for the remains of a kippery breakfast on the table. There was a note propped against the tea-pot saying: ‘Sorry couldn’t wash up or make the beds. Overslept and had to dash for train. I’ve left milk and bread and you can use any of my provisions if you’ll replace them. Please pay laundryman tomorrow and I’ll settle later.’
We went on into the bedroom, where there were two unmade beds. ‘She must have had some girl friend here,’ said Lilian.
‘Not unless the girl friend used shaving soap,’ said Molly.
‘Nice to have a fitted washbasin,’ said Lilian, ignoring the shaving soap. She opened a narrow door. ‘This’ll be the bathroom.’
But it was merely the smallest lavatory I ever saw. In order to close the door from the inside one had to edge past the seat, in danger of banging one’s head against the cistern.
‘Then where is the bathroom?’ said Lilian.
‘There isn’t anywhere for it to be,’ said Molly.
‘But I’m sure she said there was a bath – and plenty of hot water.’
Just then I found the bath, under a bed. It was a round shallow rubber bath with a coil of piping curled up inside it.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Lilian brightly. ‘One pipes the hot water from that dear little geyser over the washbasin. What bliss it’ll be, not having to put pennies in the bathroom door. Which reminds me, there’s a gas-meter somewhere that takes shillings.’
There was a fairly large cupboard only half full of its owner’s clothes, and a half-emptied chest of drawers. We should have to keep most of our things in our cases.
‘Before we unpack anything, we’ll get the flat straight,’ said Lilian. ‘You do the washing up, Mouse, while we make the beds. I saw a pile of sheets on the divan.’
The washing up was not my idea of fun as the sink only had a cold tap; and when I put the kettle on, the gas ran out. But I found the meter, daintily be-frilled, put in a shilling and finished my job. Then I got tea ready. When I carried the tray into the sitting-room the windows were open and the smell of kippers had gone out. But a very peculiar smell was coming in.
I tried to analyse it while we had tea. I could detect petrol and a whiff of dustbins. But there was something else. At last I said, ‘It’s crazy, but there’s a smell of horses.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lilian. ‘There can’t have been horses here for years.’
‘Our Mouse is psychic,’ said Molly. ‘She’s smelling the ghosts of horses.’
‘No, truly. There’s a leathery smell and a smell of manure.’
Neither of them believed me but I was right. All the stables in that mews were now used as garages except the one under us. That housed some tradesman’s horse. And either it was an insomniac horse or it was a confirmed sleep-stamper. Night after night I was fated to lie awake listening to it. And because I lay awake I learned, for the first time, how uncomfortable beds could be.
All the three beds were uncomfortable but they were uncomfortable in different ways. And Lilian decided it would only be fair if we each spent a week in each bed (and tossed up for the fourth week). So just when one had got the knack of avoiding the broken spring in the divan one had to learn how to dodge the lumps in one of the bedroom beds, and then cope with the uniform hardness of the other (here a cushion under the hip-bone helped). Lilian also insisted that we should each put in a week on kitchen work and then move on to other housework. Being small, I could fit into the kitchen fairly well, whereas poor large Molly invariably bumped herself. One day, glaring around the kitchen (or rather at it; ‘around’ was hardly a word one could apply to that tiny strip) she remarked, ‘This place is supposed to have been converted. But if you ask me, it’s still a heathen.’ Ever afterwards, the mews flat was referred to as ‘The Heathen’.
Lilian, to whom the past is always sacred but often amusing too, insists that a very funny book could be written about The Heathen. She is wrong. Our discomforts weren’t particularly funny. One might work up something about Molly’s attempt to empty the rubber bath single-handed. (The horse below must have thought it was out in the rain.) And there was a night when a drunk friend of The Heathen’s owner, having had the front door shut on him, stood below our windows wailing, ‘But I’m always welcome to a bed here.’ And Molly and Lilian got a laugh when I fed the horse with sugar and it neatly removed my green hat. But for the most part we endured a month of bad nights, bad meals and sometimes very bad tempers.
I, at least, was at the theatre in the afternoons and evenings, and I got a good brown dinner at the pub. Lilian and Molly spent far more time at The Heathen than I did, particularly after their show closed at the end of our first
week; and there was no good cheap restaurant near. Sometimes they went all the way to the Club for dinner. And once, during very hot weather and a plague of flies in the mews, they tried to get our cubicles back. But the Club was full. We just had to stick our month out.
During the last few days of it, we worked hard getting The Heathen into perfect order; well, as perfect as The Heathen would permit. We cleaned and polished, refurbished the window boxes, bought flowers and provisions. The Heathen’s owner had written to say she was bringing a new friend with her, ever such a nice boy. ‘She hasn’t had too much luck with her boy friends,’ said Lilian, ‘so we’ll do our best to start her off well this time.’
At last it was Sunday morning. We put on clean sheets, washed up, packed, and all signed a glowing note of thanks to leave behind us. (After all, we hadn’t paid any rent.) Then we bumped our cases down the narrow stairs, slammed the door, put the key under the mat and trudged along the mews. As the girls were now out of work we felt we must go by bus instead of taxi.
‘God bless the old Club,’ said Molly, as we entered the hall – only to learn we were not expected until next day and there was no room for us.
‘But we left on a Sunday, for a month, so we come back on a Sunday,’ said Lilian.
The secretary was off duty so the housekeeper was sent for. Her theory was that we must have left a day earlier than the secretary expected us to. Anyway, the booking sheet showed we were not due until Monday and our cubicles were occupied; so was every bed in the whole Club.
Molly suggested we should sleep on sofas. The housekeeper would not hear of it. She said, ‘You’ll just have to go to a hotel,’ and left us flat.
We went down to lunch seething with indignation. None of us knew of a cheap hotel and none of us could afford an expensive one. Then Lilian remembered that, while looking for food shops near the mews, she had walked through a long drab street where dozens of windows displayed cards saying ‘Apartments’. We could try there.
‘Then we must have a taxi,’ said Molly. ‘I can’t face another trek burdened with suitcase, coat, umbrella and handbag.’