The Town in Bloom

by Dodie Smith

  As I carried the scripts to the office I thought that, if I hadn’t come into the theatre to finish them, none of this would have happened. Was I sorry it had? I sat wondering, while Brice finished his note. Did I even like him? I wasn’t at all sure. But I was quite sure I wanted him to kiss me again – wanted it so much that, when he looked up, I hastily turned away, afraid my expression might tell him so; not that he didn’t know already.

  I put my scripts on Eve’s desk and he put his note on top of them and told me to leave the theatre keys there too, as he had his own keys and would take me out of the stage door; he wanted to pick up a coat from his office. We went down and across the dust-sheeted stalls to the pass door. Brice unlocked it and stood back to let me through. Half-way up the steps to the stage I turned and looked down, remembering the day I had crashed into the audition. My memory of seeing Rex in the stalls, through the pass door, was so vivid that when Brice slammed the door after him I felt he was slamming it on Rex. A second later, Brice said: ‘Do you remember that first day, when I threw your cloak and umbrella after you through the pass door?’ It was a queer kind of shared memory, Brice thinking of his first meeting with me while I thought of my first meeting with Rex.

  We got Brice’s coat and then went out of the stage door and along the alley. The wind was almost a gale and the baskets of geraniums at the front of the theatre were swinging madly.

  ‘I’ll have to take these down,’ said Brice, and went back to the stage door for a chair to stand on. To shelter from the wind I stood close to one of the glass doors to the foyer. Through it I could see the painting of my dear as Charles Surface. It now meant little to me compared with his present, far less handsome self, but it served to focus my thoughts back to him. And I was conscious of a devastating sense of loss.

  It would be exciting to let Brice make love to me – it was a comfort that anyone wanted to, after all the blows my pride had suffered. It would be interesting to work in a repertory theatre; obviously I ought to jump at the chance. And yet I knew it would be a mistake, somehow a crossing of my fate. But even so, it was fated; for I felt quite sure Brice would not let me change my mind. And it gave me pleasure to feel this, for it was the ruthless force of his character that attracted me. He came back with a chair and lifted down the baskets, and I helped him to carry them to the stage door. Then we set off again. He gripped my arm through my cloak and marched me along. Even the grip of his hand excited me. I took one last look at the theatre, knowing that – though I should be back next day and it might be weeks before Brice and I finally left – this was my real farewell.

  BOOK THREE

  ‘Every Day Speaks a New Scene …’

  1

  By the time I got back to the hotel Molly and Lilian had left the window table in the restaurant and were waiting in a stately and almost deserted lounge to which the head porter conducted me. Lilian looked up so eagerly that I hated telling her Zelle had eluded me; but I had made up my mind that – for the present – it was the best thing to do, best both for her and for Zelle.

  I had thought out my story and was careful to account for all the time I had been away. I described how my taxi-driver had lost Zelle’s bus at traffic lights and how we had caught up with it later and followed it a long way, only to find that Zelle was not on it. ‘She must have got off before we caught up with it.’

  Lilian accepted this resignedly. ‘I felt you wouldn’t catch her. It was Zelle, or she’d never have run away.’

  ‘What we don’t know,’ said Molly, ‘is if it was Zelle in disguise or Zelle as she really is now.’

  ‘And we never shall know,’ said Lilian.

  I longed to console her. ‘We might, Lilian. Perhaps she’ll come to our next reunion.’

  ‘There won’t be another. When I put “This may be the last reunion” I didn’t mean it, but I do now. We three can meet any time we like, so there’s no point in working oneself up like this when Zelle’s shown she doesn’t want to come. Besides, forty years on is my limit. Forty-five would be an anti-climax.’

  ‘Forty years on isn’t as I expected it to be,’ said Molly. ‘I thought we should all be doddering.’

  ‘So you said at that first lunch,’ I reminded her. ‘And Lilian thought we should be exquisite old ladies. Instead of which – well, we’re not really old at all. Just elderly.’

  ‘Such a boring, stodgy word,’ said Lilian. ‘Sometimes old age has a kind of harrowing beauty. But elderly – ugh!’

  I said, ‘Well, don’t let’s think of ourselves as that. As a matter of fact, whenever I speak of myself as elderly, something within me protests.’

  ‘I don’t wonder,’ said Lilian. ‘Seeing the way you sprinted after Zelle. But then you’re just an infant – still in your fifties. What puzzles me is this: When my grandmother was my age she did seem old – you couldn’t have called her anything else, though she was strong as a horse; lots of old ladies are. Now, did she feel older than I do, because one thought of her as old? Molly, do your grandchildren think of you as old?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Molly. ‘But I’m almost sure I see myself as older than you two see yourselves. Perhaps that’s because even to be a mother, let alone a grandmother, one needs to pretend one’s a bit old. It’s a pity you two haven’t had any children.’

  ‘Not if they make you feel older,’ said Lilian.

  ‘I must go,’ said Molly. ‘I’ve some shopping to do for Hal before I collect him at his club.’

  She took her shopping list from her handbag and got busy with her lorgnette which nowadays contained both reading glasses and long-distance glasses; these shot out when she pressed the right button but she usually pressed the wrong button first. In all the years no normal pair of spectacles had been allowed to rest on that delicate nose. ‘Come with me, dear children. I don’t like shopping all alone.’

  We went out into the sunny September afternoon and trailed around while underwear for Hal was bought, or rather, ordered; nothing offered was ever large enough. We finally left Molly on the steps of his club where her affectionate regret at parting from us was obviously outweighed by her loving eagerness to be with him. ‘Poor dear, he’ll have been so bored,’ she said. He had driven her up to London and put in a day merely waiting to drive her home again.

  Lilian, as we walked away, remarked, ‘They say no one’s completely happy but she’s always come pretty close to it.’

  ‘I don’t know, Lilian. With a family that size, even the small anxieties must be enough to take the edge off happiness.’

  ‘I doubt it. If all’s well with Hal – and all usually is, touch wood and God bless the dear, dull man – then all’s well with Molly. I think home, now.’ She hailed a taxi.

  Regent’s Park was looking as beautiful as it never failed to look. I said so to Lilian, as we stood on the steps of the newly painted house while she found her key.

  ‘I don’t seem to notice it much now.’ She let us in.

  Passing the dining-room I glanced through its open door. Rex, at thirty, was still over the mantel. Rex, now eighty, would be above in the drawing-room. In between these two, as we went upstairs, I tried to visualise Rex at forty, the Rex I had thought of as my dear, hoping it would help me to be tactful and patient.

  ‘He’s looking forward to seeing you,’ said Lilian. ‘That is, if he hasn’t forgotten you’re coming.’

  We found him seated in an armchair near one of the tall windows, gazing across the park; though, judging by the blankness of his expression, he was gazing without seeing. He did not turn his head until Lilian said: ‘Look who’s here, Rex.’ Then he gave me a quick smile.

  ‘Ah, how delightful! Lilian should have told me you were coming. Then I could have enjoyed looking forward to it.’

  She did not point out that she had told him. She merely said she had a few things she must see to – ‘Unless there’s anything I can do for you, Rex?’

  He frowned and shook his head as if pushing the question a
way. Only when the door had closed behind her did he give me his welcoming smile again. I pulled up a chair and sat facing him; then said brightly, ‘Well, how are you, dear Rex? You look wonderful.’

  He did, indeed. As an old man he was far handsomer than he had been in middle age. He was thinner and the fineness of his features was no longer obscured by a slight pudginess. His once fairish hair – really no-coloured – which had stopped receding in the days of his number one toupee, was glossily white and looked much more luxuriant now that he no longer took stern measures to flatten its wave. His fair skin was remarkably unwrinkled; even the laughter lines at his eyes and mouth seemed to have been ironed out. I have heard that some faces look younger after death; in Rex’s case it was a lack of life while still living which gave him a fictitious youth. But for the moment he seemed fully alive.

  He said he was well enough – ‘But bored. That’s my com plaint. And there’s nothing one can do about it.’

  He had been saying this to me at all our meetings for the last five years. Usually I suggested radio or television programmes which might interest him, or told him of books I had liked. But it never did much good. He complained that radio and television so often sent him to sleep – ‘Though perhaps one should be grateful for that’ – and books were so dull that he could not remember the thread from page to page. He did read news papers but disliked the news.

  Today, knowing that Lilian sometimes persuaded him to go to first nights, I asked what plays he had seen. He could not remember their names but said they had been dreadful or unintelligible or both. ‘And our new star performers are exhibitionists who face front and shout.’

  I suggested he should come back to the theatre and show them a thing or two. The topic momentarily interested him. ‘But where could I find a play? Drawing-room comedies are no longer written. And one’s hardly a kitchen-sink man.’

  I said classical comedy was popular – ‘More so than when you retired. And you’ve never yet played Sir Peter Teazle. There’s an idea for you.’ It was nonsense, of course. He could not conceivably memorise any part; it was his growing difficulty in memorising, far more than any change in public taste, that had caused him to retire in his early seventies. But at least the subject was still giving pleasure.

  ‘Then you must be my Lady Teazle,’ he said, looking at me with a flicker of his old amusement. I quickly began – ‘Do you remember …?’ and it was as if a veil had been lifted. We chatted gaily about our first meeting and his memory was almost better than mine. Then he remembered several details incorrectly and I tactlessly pointed this out. He brushed my correction aside irritably and then lost interest; I had made the mistake of nagging his memory.

  However, his affection for me conquered his irritation and he was soon asking me questions about myself. But he took little interest in what I told him and finally dismissed my present doings by saying he could never understand why I had exiled myself to the country. ‘But then, you always were an incalculable little creature. And such a mishmash you’ve made of your life – acting, writing, book shops, dress shops; I’ve lost count of your goings on. Of course you should never have deserted us at the Crossway. You had great things ahead of you there.’

  This was news to me. ‘Such as? Hardly as an actress. Surely you haven’t forgotten how hopeless you thought me?’

  He chuckled. ‘No, my memory’s not bad enough for that. But there would have been … other things for you, if you hadn’t run away with Brice – not that I haven’t always liked and admired him. Remarkable man – though formidable, nowadays. Have you seen him lately?’

  ‘Not for months. I hope to see him tonight.’

  ‘Give him my love. Yes, I missed you both when you bolted together. I suppose it turned out all right for him, leaving the Crossway. But not for you. I was thinking of it only last night, in the small hours. I often wake then and scout round for something pleasant to think about. You’d be surprised how often I choose you. But naturally I think of you as you were then, not as you are now.’

  I said it was cheering to know that for someone I was still eighteen. Actually, I found it harrowing.

  ‘Charming child you were – and still are, as my little com panion of the small hours. Of course you have some glamorous competition for my attention but you usually win.’

  It was a curious victory to have, forty years too late.

  Tea arrived then, brought by one of Lilian’s two Italian maids. (I was convinced that, as long as there was any resident ‘help’ left in London, some of it would be in Lilian’s employ.) The girl’s dark dress and muslin apron made a gesture towards the uniform of a parlour maid and the tea tray was worthy of one of Rex’s drawing-room comedies. I was thankful that Lilian arrived to officiate as I should certainly have got into difficulties with the silver spirit-kettle.

  Rex, surveying her with rather more approval than usual, remarked that he had once taught her to pour out tea and she had never forgotten.

  ‘What you taught me was how to get some very tricky laughs while I poured it out,’ said Lilian.

  I remembered that play, the last she had acted in with Rex, all of thirty years earlier. Around this time I could see there was some rift between them, though I did not know what had caused it. For some years Lilian acted with other managements but with no great success, for without Rex’s teaching she was no actress and he would no longer give her even a minimum of coaching. Still, they had gradually reverted to being on reasonably good terms and she had always, as I had once predicted, made him an admirable wife, putting up with his infidelities while remaining (as I could not have predicted) completely devoted to him. On the whole, I thought they had been fairly happy. But of recent years, boredom and patchiness of memory had rendered him liable to an irritability which, when directed towards Lilian, sometimes amounted to an ill-temper utterly unlike such a sunnily natured man. And she bore it with a patience that was unlike a not very patient woman.

  During tea he was at his best because his memory was good (though only about the past; he twice forgot things I had told him since I arrived). What pleased me most was that he was charming to Lilian as well as to me. I think he saw us as our youthful selves; he kept referring to us as ‘you girls’. His mood held until he went off to take his pre-dinner nap, having first made sure he would see me at dinner.

  Lilian turned to me eagerly. ‘You’ve done him good. All he needs is stimulation. He’s wonderfully young for his age, really – his doctor says there isn’t a trace of senility. This memory trouble is a kind of laziness and probably a way of escape.’

  ‘From what, exactly?’

  Her cheerfulness ebbed. ‘Me, more than anything. I get on his nerves. But if I so much as suggest a weekend away from him he raises objections.’

  I said he depended on her so much.

  ‘He does, really. But I don’t think he admits it even to himself. Let’s go up to my room. I want to show you something.’

  During the early years of her marriage Lilian had been too impressed with the house to make many changes. She would have preferred a bedroom that reflected her personality rather than that of the first Mrs Crossway, but Rex had liked it as it was so she had kept it much the same even when it had to be re-decorated. But after he had finally moved out on her, to a room of his own, she had compensated by an orgy of interior decoration. This had been in the ’thirties and the bedroom had come to resemble a setting for a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film. Off-white and pastel satins had abounded. Lilian’s bed was raised on a silver-leafed platform and surmounted by a canopy held by silver-leafed cupids. I remember telling her she had at last done Madam Lily de Luxe proud. And I did, then, admire the spacious luxury; it was such a contrast to the theatrical digs I had been living in while touring as a highly unsuccessful actress.

  Since then, Lilian had made many changes though she had kept her ornate bed, and the furnishings had always been carefully planned to go with it. But for some time now, she had taken to dotting photographs
and souvenirs about. And when she opened the door today, I saw there were now so many knick-knacks that the room was really untidy.

  She said, ‘I know this is a mess but I’ve a craze for having bits of the past around me. I spend a lot of time up here, especially in the evenings; Rex usually goes to bed soon after nine. This seems the only place I can feel at home in now. It’s funny how I’ve bowed out of the rest of the house.’

  ‘And you used to love it so.’

  ‘Too much. I sometimes think this house is to blame for everything. Do you remember this?’

  It was the little print of Regent’s Park I had given her on her first appearance at the Crossway; she had kept it hanging in her dressing-room as long as she acted there. She said, now, that she had recently unearthed it from a box of things connected with her stage career. ‘Look, I stuck the card you sent with it on the back. “Little did we think when we walked round the park!” Funny, when you wrote that you didn’t know I’d ever live in this house. Do you think one can force things to happen, just by wanting them terrifically? I do. I think the powers that be said, “All right! The girl shall have her house – no matter how many lives she wrecks in getting it.”’

  ‘Lilian, what rubbish! And whose lives have you wrecked?’

  ‘Oh, my own and Rex’s and yours and Zelle’s, though Zelle’s had nothing to do with my wanting this house. I’m just a natural life wrecker.’ She had wandered over to the window. ‘I used to love this view. Now I find it sad.’

  ‘Then stop looking at it and let’s try to sort this nonsense out. First of all, me: I’ve had nothing but kindness and generosity from you since we were girls. How have you wrecked my life?’

  ‘By marrying Rex, of course. If I hadn’t, he’d have married you in the end.’